p# •^iiKM 't':':Vj:'::'?;-r;'f^:i;';' theological ^cminaviu I'KIXCETOy. -V. ./. W: BR 45 .B35 1852 A Hampton lectures THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INFIDELITY AND SUPERSTITION IN CONTRAST WITH CHRISTIAN FAITH : EIGHT DIYINITY LECTURE SERMONS, PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, IN THE YEAR MDCCCLII, ON THE FOUNDATION OP THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON) M.A^ I_e.O.+UT*€ CANON OF SALISBURY. BY JOSEPH ESMOND RIDDLE, M.A. OF ST. EDMUND HALL, MINISTER OF ST. PHILIP AND ST. JAMES, LECKHAMPTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. /85^ OXFORD PRINTED BY J. WRIGHT, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY. LONDON : JOHN W. PARKER AND SON. OXFORD : W. GRAHAM. 1852. EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to " the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University " of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and sin- " gular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the " intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to " say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the " University of Oxford for the time being shall take and " receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and " (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions " made) that he pay aU the remainder to the endowment " of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for " ever in the said University, and to be performed in the " manner following : " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in *' Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads " of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room ad- " joining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten " in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach " eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at " St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the a 2 iv EXTRACT FROM CANON HAMPTON S WILL. " last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week " in Act Term. " Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the " following Subjects — to confirm and establish the Christ- " ian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics " — upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures — " upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fa- " thers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church " — upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus " Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost — upon the " Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the " Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two " months after they are preached, and one copy shall be " given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy " to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor " of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the " Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall " be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given " for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the " Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, " before they are printed. " Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be " qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, un- " less he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, " in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ; " and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity " Lecture Sermons twice." CONTENTS, LECTURE 1. (Preached March 7.) THE SOUL OF MAN : ITS INTEGRITY AND CORRUPTION, Psalm cxxxix. 1 4. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and ivonderfully made ; inarvellous are thy works, and that my sotd knowefh right well. . . . • Page 1 LECTURE II. (Preached March 14.) RENEWAL OF THE SOUL BY FAITH IN THE REDEEMER. HosEA xiii. 9. 0 Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself but in me is thine help. ...••• 42 LECTURE III. (Preached March 21.) INFIDELITY IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS. Isaiah liii. 1. Who hath believed our report ? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed f ... 75 vi CONTENT S. LECTURE IV. (Preached May 2.) THE CAUSES, OCCASIONS, AND EFFECTS OF INFIDELITY. John viii. 43. Why do ye not understand my speech f Even because ye cannot hear 7ny word. . • • HO LECTURE V. (Preached May 9.) THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF SUPERSTITION. Romans i. 22. Professing themselves to be tvise, they became fools. 151 L E C T U R E VL (Preached May 16.) THE EFFECTS OF SUPERSTITION. Jonah ii. 8. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. . . . . • • 184 LECTURE VII. (Preached May 23.) INFIDELITY AND SUPERSTITION COMPARED. Jeremiah ii. 3. My people have committed two evils ; they have for- saken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. 217 CONTENTS. vii LECTURE VIII. (Preached June 13.) INFIDELITY AND SUPERSTITION HOW TO BE PREVENTED AND WITHSTOOD. Judges vi. 15, 16. And he said unto him, Oh yny Lord^ wherewith shall I save Israel f behold, my family is poor in Ma- nasseh, and I am the least in my father s house. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be ivith thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. ....... 252 PEIHGSTOH LECTURE I. THE SOUL OF MAN : ITS INTEGRITY AND CORRUPTION. Psalm cxxxix. 14. / will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made ; rnarvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. v^LEAR indications of the hand of an al- mighty and intelligent Creator have been long since traced in the structure of our bodily frame, and in various phenomena of our animal existence ; and we have reason to expect that, in this field of observation, the progress of science will yet disclose to us new wonders, and bring to light fresh proofs of the wisdom and power of our Maker. If, for example, it shall be shown that the condi- tions of animal and vegetable life are closely connected with the subtle agency of some potent fluid diffused throughout the universe, the legitimate result of such discovery will be to enlarge our conceptions of that great Being to whose will and power we shall be B 2 LECTURE I. compelled to trace at once the existence of this simple law, and all those countless adap- tations of the material upon which it has been brought to bear. Just as our acquaint- ance with the law of gravitation has served to exalt our apprehension of Him who sustains the planets in their orbits, so also, we may confidently predict, new illustrations of cre- ative energy will accrue from every fresh observation of physical truth connected with the world in which we live. If we ascend from a consideration of our animal structure and life to a survey of the connection which subsists between this por- tion of our nature and our higher faculties of mind, we pass into a region of still greater wonders. We all know that the body acts upon the soul, and the soul upon the body, so that each can help or hinder the opera- tions of the other ; but what is the connect- ing link, and what are the precise conditions of this agency, none can tell. And it is probable that these questions will still be involved in mystery, notwithstanding all the light which may be thrown upon the laws of mere animal existence. Still, however, if we duly attend to the phenomena presented by the reciprocal influence of body and mind, we shall find not only much to raise our LECTURE I. s admiration, and to excite our thankfulness, but much also to instruct us in matters of prac- tical wisdom. It will be no useless know- ledge, if our minds are duly impressed with a conviction that, according to the design of our Creator, the body is not, as some have supposed, the prison of the soul, but rather its lodging or its home; a partner, rather than a burden or a drag; an instrument or servant, rather than a taskmaster or tyrant. But, how wonderful soever may be the union which exists between body and mind, and how beneficial soever the results of that connection, we cannot but feel that we have before us a still higher object of contemplation when we consider the soul itself. Fearfully and wonderfully as the body has been made, and marvellously as it has been adapted to its purpose in the economy of our being, yet the greatest wonder after all is the mind that is able to recognise these things, the soul that " knoweth" them " right well." Who shall undertake to give a full an- swer to the question. What is the human soul ? It is possible, however, to arrive at an answer to this inquiry which shall be true, although confessedly incomplete ; and it is in the hope of supplying an answer of this kind, that I venture to propose for consideration, R 2 4 LECTURE I. this morning, the large and important ques- tion which now lies before us. I must crave your indulgence, indeed, for thus introducing into the present discourse a topic more abstruse and less directly theo- logical than may appear to suit this place ; but it is not without reason that I now call your attention to the nature and relations of those living powers, intellectual and active, which we claim for the immortal part of man (l)""; and I will take care that these ob- servations upon questions of mental philoso- phy shall be brief, and shall extend no further than is absolutely needful for the argument which is to follow. In the ensuing course of Lectures it will be my endeavour to draw a comparison be- tween Infidelity and Superstition^ and to con- trast these evil and perilous states of mind with Christian Faith. And it is in order that our progress may not hereafter be impeded by a frequent discussion of first principles, that I begin with some considerations respect- ing those faculties of the soul which are ne- glected, perverted, or abused by the man who rejects the gospel, and are rightly employed, and brought into due exercise by the man who, through divine grace, believeth unto righteousness. In the next Lecture I shall " These numbers refer to the notes in the Appendix. LECTURE I. 5 have occasion to describe the nature and office of true Christian Faith. Our way will then have been prepared for considering, in the two following discourses, the phases and bearings of Infidel systems, with their causes and occasions, and the results to which they lead. A similar survey of the errors of Super- stition will follow: — and then, having com- pared the one class of evils with the other, I hope to make such practical remarks upon the whole subject as may be useful for the con- firmation of truth and for the promotion of godliness, not without special regard to the aspect of the times in which we live. Suffer me now to make those introductory remarks to which I have alluded, concerning the nature and faculties of the hunfian soul. The existence of our spiritual nature is an ultimate fact of consciousness, which does not even admit of proof; and the same may be said concerning our personal identity : so that we at once assume the existence of that individual self, which we denominate the Soul (2). And then the question arises. What is this soul ? — a question which, within cer- tain limits, we are both competent and con- cerned to answer. We ask, what is the soul of man, not as to its essence, of which we can know nothing, but as to the faculties C LECTURE I. with which the Creator has endowed it, as to its operations, and the manifestations of its being ? Only let us remember that, while we speak of the various faculties or powers of the soul, we must not conceive of our spi- ritual being as a mere collection or combina- tion of independent forces ; and we should be careful lest, from our employment of sepa- rate terms, we slide into the conception of regions or portions of the soul really distinct from each other (3). The soul is one ; and its several powers are combined, not as colours in the rainbow, but as the same colours when blended in the pure and perfect light. We may indeed contemplate and treat of our mental faculties apart, just as we may regard separately the several constituents of atmo- spheric air ; but, as neither of those sub- stances alone constitutes the air, and as the subtraction of one of those constituents in- volves, in fact, the destruction of the ele- ment, so also, neither one nor another of our living powers, taken separately, constitutes the soul, and the loss or absence of either would be equivalent to the destruction of its being. We have spoken of the soul as endowed with an apparent variety of powers ; strictly, we ought to say, a variety of capacities and powers. For the soul is passive, as well as LECTURE I. 7 active ; not wholly passive, as if it could only receive impressions or ideas ; but yet not wholly active, and not independently active at all. In the constitution of our nature, large room is assigned to capacities of de- velopment, and to susceptibilities of influence from without, and especially from above. It is even a feature of our condition as finite creatures, that the very power of activity has its foundation in the passive reception of God's gifts. And therefore, when we speak of the powers of the soul, we must remember that we are speaking of a power of receiving, and a power of becoming, as well as of a power of producing or of acting. Nor should we forget that the faculties and operations of the mind are always in themselves the same, however different the objects on which they may be employed ; — that our faculties are the same, and the laws which they follow are the same, whether our minds are conver- sant with the common concerns of this world, or with the great realities of religion and eternal life. Having made these general remarks con- cerning the powers of the mind, we are now prepared to entertain the question. What are those powers, and what is their relation to each other ? 8 LECTURE I. Intellectual power, in its lowest grade, and in its first development, displays itself as sen- sation and perception ; sensation, by which we receive and recognise impressions from external objects, and perception, or the spon- taneous recognition of those objects them- selves and their attributes in relation to us (4). We thus obtain notices of all the phenomena of the outward world, including not only the forms of matter, with their apparent qualities, but also the indications of mind, disposition, temper, and design in those animate and in- telligent beings who surround us. To the senses a considerable portion of our ideas and sentiments must be ultimately traced; and, in one point of view, we may even regard them as the inlets, or the primary means and instruments, of all the knowledge we possess : but we are altogether wrong if, with the ancient sophists and some modern philoso- phers (5), we so attribute all our ideas to sense as that the mind itself shall appear to be nothing more than a result or product of sensation, possessing no independent powers, and in fact not having any real existence. Our senses are instruments of conveying im- pressions from outward objects to the mind, means of exciting its activity and calling forth its energies ; and there are doubtless LECTURE T. 9 some things which we apprehend only by perception ; but then, there are also other and higher faculties to which sensation and perception can only minister. Sensation is not the whole mind in a rudimentary con- dition (6) ; nor can its development, however perfect, produce any other of those mental powers, which have really proceeded, in com- mon with sensation itself, from the fiat of the Creator. The senses are needful organs of the mind, but they are not its foundation ; it is one thing to say, correctly, that they are the inlets of knowledge, and another thing to teach that sensation, under certain conditions, is our only faculty of knowledge. Nor can we assent to a proposition, which has the sanction of high names, to the eifect that all our knowledge is to be ascribed to sense and inspiration (7) ; as though we possessed, over and above the power of sensible perception, no more than the passive faculty of receiving knowledge directly imparted to us by the Father of our spirits (8). But we claim for the human soul, a power of intuitively dis- cerning truth which does not fall under the cognizance of the senses, — a faculty distinct from sensible perception, and above it. The mind has an inherent power of grasping, for example, the truth of a mathematical axiom, 10 LECTURE I. as soon as that truth may be presented to its view ; and this too in such a manner, and with such effect, that its convictions do not even admit of being strengthened by experi- ence or by argument. In such cases the truth is, as we say, self-evident (9) ; that is, strictly speaking, the mind of itself knows that the proposition is a true one (10). This noetic faculty, or as we may be content to denominate it, Reason, lies at the foundation of demonstration, properly so called, when the certainty of truth, otherwise unknown, is proved by reference to that which is self- evident. For we must remember that truth which is proved has for its foundation truth which cannot be proved, — truth which cannot be proved, but yet may be most certainly known by intuition, by the direct and simple act of mental consciousness (11). And we claim for this faculty of intuitive discernment a high place among our intellectual powers. We have here the ultimate source of a large amount of our most valuable knowledge ; the source of our ideas of power and causa- tion (12), and even of our assurance of the very being and presence of things the quali- ties of which fall under the observation of our senses ; the source also of arts and sci- ences, and of all that command over the LECTURE I. 11 material world which distinguishes man from the inferior orders of animate creation. More than this. Let it be borne in mind that we are now speaking, and shall for some time continue to speak, of human nature in its integrity, — of our intellectual and moral constitution such as it has been " wonder- fully" made by God, — and not as it has been wofully marred by sin. Accordingly, we proceed to say that, as the mind of itself is capable of perceiving fundamental principles of truth, so also, according to the original and perfect constitution of our nature, it pos- sesses the power of discerning fundamental principles of the right and good, — a sound faculty of moral perception and judgment. Not that this judgment of the mind creates the distinction between right and wrong ; that distinction already exists in the immut- able relations of things, according to the will of God ; and it is this real distinction, not any mere phantom of our own devising, which the mind has the power of discerning. This moral faculty, like the power of apprehend- ing axiomatic truth, or the power of sensible perception, we can neither analyse, nor ac- count for, nor explain. It is a primitive fact of human consciousness, antecedent to moral feeling or emotion, and not to be resolved 12 LECTURE I. into any other process of the mind which may report an action, or course of action, as right only when it may have discovered its expediency. There is, indeed, a process of the understanding connected with moral truth ; there are also moral emotions which hold an important place in the economy of the human soul ; and of these we will here- after speak : — but what we now affirm is, that, at the foundation of the whole there exists in the human mind, as it came from the hands of the Creator, an instinctive, ori- ginal, moral faculty (13), — a power of directly or intuitively discerning the moral quality of actions, — a distinct primitive judgment, or fundamental notion of right and wrong. Some persons regard this power as a peculiar gift of God ; and it matters little if they suppose it to have been superadded to all other fa- culties, or even to have been originally the effect of a special inspiration, as was probably the case with the faculty of speech : but, as we have no consciousness, so neither do we possess any adequate means of information on this head ; we do not know at what stage or period of man's creation God bestowed upon his creature this marvellous endow- ment ; and therefore we can have no warrant for affirming that moral distinctions are in LECTURE!. 13 such wise matter of divine revelation as that they can be know^n only by the medium of tradition*",^ — nor can w^e find cause to assent to the proposition, that our moral percep- tions, or power of discerning between good and evil, are coeval only with the fall*'. We cannot give the history, nor can we strictly analyse the operations of this power of the mind ; but we know that we possess it, — we know that, according to the primitive con- stitution of our nature, there is inherent in us a moral faculty, by which we directly dis- tinguish right from wrong, as the eye dis- tinguishes colours, or as the mind apprehends the truth of axioms. Limited, however, would be the amount of our knowledge and the extent of our percep- tions, if w^e were entirely dependent on those channels of information which have been hitherto described, — that is to say, upon the notices of our own individual sense, or the intuitions of our own unaided intelligence. In that case we should be ignorant of all that is removed from us by distance or by time ; at best we could but guess and form conjec- tures with regard to every thing beyond the b Bishop Van Milclert, Boyle Lectures, serm. xiv. On the contrary, see Hare, INIission of the Comforter, note Q. ^ See Thokick, Lehre von der Siinde, cap. i. 14 LECTURE I. range of our own senses or perceptions. But through the bountiful goodness of Him by whom we have been so "fearfully and wonder- fully made," we are not left in this position respecting that vast multitude of things which lie beyond the reach of our own personal observation. There is another fundamental principle of our intellectual nature, distinct from any of those which have been hitherto enumerated, but in harmony with them all, — the principle o^ faith, — the faculty of grasp- ing evidence, with a propensity to admit it when duly presented to the mind. Just as by sensation and perception we discern cer- tain objects through the medium of the senses, and as by reason we discover some truths, or discern them upon their simple presentation (14), without any other warranty than the voice within, so also by faith we discern other truths through the means of testimony, or by the voice of authority. At- tempts to analyse this quality of the human mind have been often made, and have as often failed. But still the fact remains, that, according to the original constitution of our nature, we are able and disposed to yield to evidence in proportion to its nature and its strength (15), — to assent to testimony con- cerning facts not present and manifest (16), LECTURE I. 15 — and to submit to authority in the an- nouncement or proposition of truths, inde- pendently of any internal and direct percep- tion of them by ourselves (17). In matters of common life, from childhood to old age, we continually act, and are compelled to act, upon this principle (18). The child believes its parent or its nurse, and reposes in this belief; and, under certain conditions, the man believes the records of past history, — the testimony of eyewitnesses, — and the very af- firmations of trustworthy persons, capable of understanding that which they affirm. And it is not too much to say that, apart from this principle and practice of belief, man, even in the full exercise of all his other intellectual powers, would be enveloped in such a cloud of ignorance on even the most ordinary sub- jects, that an arrest would be laid upon all the affairs of civilized life, and there must be an end of all social harmony and order. It is by this means that we attain a certainty, — not of sight, — not of demonstration, — not of direct and immediate intuition, — but yet a real and efficient certainty, in many matters of high practical importance concerning which we must otherwise be hopelessly ignorant and in the dark. Here is that which lies at the foundation of human affections and family 16 LECTURE I. ties, of agricultural and commercial activity, and of a large portion of our most valuable knowledge in science, and our highest attain- ments in art. Above all, it is thus that we obtain our knowledge of many things divine, and especially of relations subsisting between God and ourselves ; — an acquaintance with which, as we shall hereafter see, is of the ut- most importance to us, while yet, independ- ently of the exercise of faith, it is utterly beyond the reach of every man living (19). Connected with all those primary intellec- tual powers which have been thus far de- scribed, and designed to render service to them all, is that discursive or logical faculty, which has of late been often denominated the under stmidlng, as distinguished from the reason (20), or, with reference to the termi- nology of ancient times, the dia7ioetic faculty, in contradistinction to the noetic. This consists in the power of reasoning, — that is to say, of classifying, arranging, and drawing inferences from those truths which have been appre- hended by the mind in its more fundamental faculties ; it carries out principles into their various details and conclusions ; and in this way it at once gives clearness to our ideas, and enables us to apply our knowledge to the practical purposes of life. And let it be LECTURE I. 17 carefully observed that it is the province of the understanding to reason not only upon the notices of sense, but also upon truths which are discerned by intuition, by the moral faculty, and even by faith itself. In a w^ord, the understanding is a secondary or instrumental faculty (21), in which we possess an apparatus for the use of all our knowledge ; and this possession may at once suggest to us the fact, that the vast and varied powers of our intellect are not designed to terminate in themselves, or in the mere contemplation of their objects, and that we know nothing aright unless we apply our knowledge to some good and appropriate purpose. It was not until our survey had embraced this dianoetic or logical faculty, the Under- standing, that we could proceed to take a full view of a subject of considerable importance, to which I now solicit your attention, namely, the relations which subsist between Faith and the other conditions and operations of our in- tellectual nature. Faith is opposed to Sense ; by which we ought simply to understand, not that these faculties contradict each other, but that their spheres of operation are totally dis- tinct : where sense operates, there is no room for faith ; where faith works, the absence of sense is implied. Mistakes have been made c 18 LECTURE I. even on this simple point ; but still greater confusion of thought has been introduced in the contemplation of the offices and claims of those powers which have been usually compre- hended under the denomination of Faith and Reason. Here we must ask, What is meant by the term Reason ? To the ambiguity of this term w^e may trace much of the confusion and error which have arisen on the subject now before us ; and it may be useful to con- sider how the case stands, according to some of the leading senses which this term has been made to bear. — Sometimes by Reason a querist or an objector understands the human Intellect. And an error is at once committed by supposing that Faith is at all opposed to, or distinct from, Intellect. On the contrary, Faith is itself an intellectual faculty, designed for the recognition of its appropriate truths when duly presented ; as much so as the power of direct and immediate intuition, which is designed for the grasping of abstract and necessary truth, or as the moral faculty, which distinguishes between right and wrong. And this is doubtless what has been often meant, — although the meaning has been sometimes but imperfectly expressed, — when it has been said that Faith is the highest reason, or that Faith is but one way by which LECTURE I. 19 reason is instructed. — Sometimes, again, when Reason and Faith are compared, Reason de- notes the intuitional consciousness of pri- mary or necessary truth immediately present to the mind. And it is of Reason, in this sense, that it has been so often and so justly said that Faith cannot and must not contra- dict it. The objects of Faith are above this reason, but not contrary to it (22) ; we cannot properly believe what a sound intuitional con- sciousness rejects and denounces as false. In other words, Reason, in this sense, can never tell us what we ought to believe, but it can tell us what we ought not to believe ; — it may and ought to serve as a negative inform- ant, as a check and guard upon our faith. And hence again, when it does not interpose its negative, it acts as a support and corro- boration of our faith. It is, in fact, faith's regulator. So far from there being properly any opposition between these two faculties and their several notices, their harmonious but independent action contributes in no slight degree to the beauty and strength of our intellectual system. — Observations such as these, however, are of no force, and are altogether out of place, if by Faith and Rea- son we mean Faith and the logical Under- standing. Our logical conclusions are not c 2 20 LECTURE I. entitled — as reason is entitled — to check or limit our faith. The understanding must stand in its proper place — its place of an as- sistant or minister — to faith, as well as to all other primary faculties ; it must not affect to stand side by side with it. And, be it ob- served, this instrumental faculty has its pro- per functions to discharge, with respect partly to the exercise of faith, and partly to the truth which forms its object. It has not any authority, indeed, to admit or reject that truth on the ground of agreement or dis- agreement with its own conclusions ; as, for example, we have no right, such as has been lately claimed, to " criticise the contents of Scripture ;" — but this faculty has been ap- pointed to weigh and examine the evidence which claims the assent of faith (23), to ascer- tain what is the truth proposed, and to take the truth which faith embraces as the basis of its own reflections and deductions. And here is the true meaning of a saying, which, if applied to any other faculty than the logical under- standing, is more or less at fault, — that we must believe a thing before we can under- stand it. Belief is antecedent to understand- ing ; while at the same time it is not contra- dictory to reason, that is, to immediate intu- ition ; and it is entirely distinct from sense. LECTURE I. 21 Just as we must perceive by sense before we can understand the sensible object, and as w^e must apprehend by reason before we can understand the truths presented to our cogni- tive faculty, or comprehend their bearings and relations, — so also we must believe before we can be logically acquainted with the ob- jects of our belief (24). Our formula, rightly and fully conceived, is this, — ' Non intelligere ut videam, ut vsciam, ut credam, — sed videre, sed scire, sed credere, ut intelligam.' It is always better to know a truth than to believe a falsehood ; or, in other words, it is wrong to believe in opposition to what we see or know : but there are also cases in which it is better to believe than to reason ; or rather, in which it is right to believe before we reason. In one word, the understanding or logical faculty is not competent to contra- dict or to limit the notices of faith, when once it has admitted the evidence upon which we are bound to believe ; but its pro- vince is to take those notices of faith as its subject-matter, to study their relations, to deduce inferences, and to generalize, to clas- sify, to arrange, and to apply to use. Hence our Theology, properly so called ; theology, a science, not founded in the logical under- standing, but, like all other sciences, elabo- 22 LECTURE I. rated by it with materials supplied from a higher source. To proceed. "Fearfully and wonderfully" as we are made in respect of our intellectual powers, — their nature and extent, their nice adjustment and delicate relations, — we must yet remember that intellect, with the sum total of its faculties, does not constitute the whole human soul. Far from it. Even that limited survey of those powers which we have now been taking may well suggest to us the thought that they do not exist by or for themselves alone. If we have the power of a minute and accurate acquaint- ance with surrounding objects, persons, and events ; — if our mind has been endowed with the capacity of grasping abstract truth, and of proceeding from first principles to the sublimest discoveries of science and the most useful inventions and appliances of art ; — if, by an inward intuition, we can di- rectly recognise the great antithesis between right and WTong, between good and evil ; — if, by the eye of faith, we can discern the invisible, the absent, and the past, and have thus been " fearfully and wonderfully" en- riched with a capacity of acquainting our- selves even with the unseen God, and with his workings in creation, and his ways of pro- LECTURE I. 23 vidence, so far as it may please Him to reveal himself and his operations to us, the crea- tures of his hand ; — if we are endued with a faculty of reflecting and reasoning upon all we know, of arranging and marshalling our ideas, and of drawing sound and useful con- clusions from truths which are self-evident and already known ; — if, in one word, to sources of knowledge almost boundless there are su- peradded, in the constitution of our nature, powers of application no less diversified and vast, — how is it possible to suppose that all this strength and acuteness of intellect, with its amplitude of provision, its manifold adap- tations, and its far-reaching energy, has yet been designed to terminate simply in it- self,— that man was appointed to know for the sake of knowing, to believe for the sake of believing, or to reason for the sake of reasoning ? Accordingly, we find that the soul has not only powers whereby it discerns and appre- hends truth, but also powers, mighty in them- selves and momentous in their consequences, whereby it puts forth energy and originates action. It is not a mere intelligence, it is an mtelligent will. Nor do either of these powers exist in a state of independence ; but there is an intimate union between the intel- 24 LECTURE I. lect and the will, between the head and the heart : the intellect is designed to guide and inform the will, and it is quickened in its own operations by the determinations and promptings of this active faculty. When the mind apprehends certain objects, it becomes subject to emotions and affections correspond- ing to its apprehensions, — emotions of plea- sure or pain, affections of love or aversion, modified according to the nature of the case. And these emotions and affections are not designed to terminate in themselves ; it is altogether an unhealthy condition of the mind when emotion is excited and dies away without leading to any result, or when affec- tion is dormant and inactive. These powers or sensibilities of the soul are properly the springs of wishes, of desires, of volitions, and thus of action or endurance, of fixed pur- poses, and of a settled character. And these active living powers we denominate the Will (25) ; a wondrous faculty, which we should in vain attempt to analyse, and the existence of which, as a simple fact of consciousness, it would be useless to endeavour to prove. All language gives utterance to expressions denot- ing the will to possess or to enjoy an object, to command or to perform an act, without room for inquiry as to the meaning which LECTURE I. 25 those expressions are designed to convey. In this matter, as in many others, a child may apprehend what a philosopher is unable to explain. Now this will is naturally free, — it is a self-determining power. Not, however, that it has been given to us as a separate or single faculty, independent of ail other powers of the mind: on the contrary, as has been al- ready said, it ought to be controlled and guided by the intellectual powers in their due and healthy exercise ; and thus it is pro- perly subject to the influence of motives, and is capable of being disciplined and strength- ened by the force of practical habits. The will is not free as a planet may be said to be free, if starting from its orbit and wandering in space ; but it is free as the planet is free from all bonds and shackles, from every thing- external to the system of which it forms a part. The will is not the servant of neces- sity, that is, of any foreign restraint or force determining its choice (26) ; and while it is true that the will is quickened, or has its energies aroused and called forth, by the in- fluence of motives, yet it must be remembered that motives do not fashion the will, or im- press on it its character. Naturally, that is to say, according to the original and perfect 26 LECTURE I. constitution of our nature, the will is free. Wishes, desires, and volitions follow in the track of the emotions and affections ; and these in their turn are excited in a certain definite way, by an enlightened and duly regulated intellect (27) ; but, except through the medium of the intellect, the will knows of no bias or constraint whatever : and, more than this, while it ought to submit to the regulation of intelligence, of the moral fa- culty, or of faith, it is yet capable of refusing this submission ; it has the power — the fear- ful power — of spurning and breaking loose from legitimate control, of resisting the most cogent motives, of turning a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. And in this freedom or self-activity of the will, this inherent power of obeying or re- sisting the dictates of a lawful guide, we find the foundation of human responsibility, and the elements of human virtue (28). Man is responsible for his actions and his character, for his feelings and dispositions ; because, with reference to these matters, he possesses, or ought to possess, a power, — if sometimes an indirect, yet always a real and effectual power, — of self-control (29). It is not the strong will, or the firm and steady purpose. LECTURE I. 27 which, as such, is good and praiseworthy (30) ; but it is excellent and commendable only when putting forth its energy under lawful and appropriate guidance ; — Uke a noble animal that yields obedience to its rider (to which it has often been compared), or like the wheels of a machine that move swiftly, not, as might be the case, at random and in confusion, but under the influence of a regulator. — And as the intellect pervades and rules the will, so also the will has been appointed in its turn to act upon the intellect (31). Nothing has been a matter of more common observation than the fact that purity of heart, or a well- directed will, largely contributes to the vigour and acuteness of our intellectual faculties. Indeed it is hard to say to what extent the intellect is dependent on the will for its very play and operation, — for the exercise and consequent development of its powders. Our intellectual powers appear to be susceptible of influence from the will, as the strings of a harp are dependent for their tone on the state of the surrounding atmosphere. And amidst the whole range of our intellectual powers, none are more pow^erfully afi^ected by the state of the will than are the moral faculty and faith (32). Now, it is in the full harmony of all these 28 LECTURE I. powers, existing in their several relations, that we find human Virtue, or the moral good- ness of this complex being, man (33). Virtue consists in the right control and exercise of the intellectual and active powers. In our perfect state, the moral faculty, with its at- tendant minister, the logical understanding, is sufficiently able to declare to us what is right; and virtue consists in the obedience of the will to this faculty, pointing, as it does, to the due employment of the mind in the pursuit of truth, and to the right direction of the will, in the supreme love of God, the true love of our neighbour, and a well regu- lated self-love in subordination to the whole. Still, however, after all the announcements of our moral perception and judgment on this head, the question remains. Where is the obligation to virtue and a virtuous course of conduct ? If we suppose this question to be answered by intelligence, or by will, or by both combined, then we represent these facul- ties as sitting in judgment on themselves. But we seek a faculty, supreme alike with reference to both, and adapted to command them in their relations to each other. And that faculty we find in Co7iscience, properly so called ; — conscience, not the moral per- ception and judgment which declares, This is LECTURE I. 29 right and that is wrong, — but the law within the heart which says, What is right, that you are bound to do, what is wrong, that you must avoid (34). This is no mere faculty of discernment; it is a sense of duty, a con- sciousness of moral obligation. It is an in- ward law ; — not the objective law of right, which is apprehended by the moral percep- tion and judgment, but a law supreme within the soul, demanding submission to the law without. It is the presiding faculty, calling upon all the powers of the soul for the dis- charge of their respective functions, and the preservation of their appointed harmony. — And besides this, it is the work of con- science to notice and record the neglect or the fulfilment of its own commands. There is a sentiment within the heart, together with a law ; a sentiment of peace under a discharge of duty, or a sense of guilt and uneasiness and pain when there has been a departure from the principles of godliness and virtue. — But, whence this peace, whence these pangs and terrors? What is their re- motest source ? And what also is the ultimate ground of that moral obligation which con- science so distinctly apprehends (35) ? The answer is, that conscience, most deeply seated in the soul of man, brings it within sight of 30 LECTURE I. God. The sense of obligation which is in- separable from the utterances of conscience when speaking authoritatively, as by law, and the peace or pain which adheres to con- science, as a sentiment, when the law has been either observed or broken, all point to that living One, that sovereign personal God, whose will is contravened by the breach of this inward law, or fulfilled by its observ- ance, and whose favour or displeasure are the objective realities reflected in the conscience as an inward sentiment. Hence our obligation to that which is holy, just, and good. The moral faculty discerns that it is right ; the understanding discovers that it is useful ; con- science declares that it is according to the will of God. We are bound to a life of godliness and virtue, not merely because this is expedient, not even only because it is right, but because it is prescribed to us by the sovereign authority of Him who is our almighty Father, our right- eous Governor, and our Judge. Conscience is that spiritual faculty which has been ordained to receive, and to rejoice in, the smiles of our Almighty Father. Enlightened and quick- ened by that blessed Spirit, who alone effec- tually teacheth man knowledge, — and with- out whose gracious visitations, be it carefully observed, all our faculties, even in their best LECTURE I. 31 estate, are nothing worth, — yet, with power conveyed to it from that heavenly source of Hght and life, here is that faculty of the human soul which devoutly contemplates the holy God ; here is that which knows and feels that God is love. The soul — the intel- ligent ivill, self-conscious, and responsible in the sight of God — enjoys unspeakable delight while it perceives in its own rectitude a con- formity to the pure and holy will of the Most High. And it is thus that the moral and spiritual harmony is complete ; it is thus that the radiance of clear sunshine is cast over all those beauties of order and proportion which exist in a well-regulated mind, in a pure and upright heart. Wonderful, even in itself, is the harmony that is evolved from this most curious and finished piece of spiritual me- chanism ; and when the soul, through its most refined and spiritual faculty the con- science, hears God himself pronouncing that it is very good, — when the stamp of Heaven's approbation has been placed upon all its ap- prehensions and conclusions concerning the true, the beautiful, and the good, upon its every emotion and affection, upon every de- termination and aspect of its will, every wish, every desire and volition, and upon the whole course of its activity from first to last, — then 32 LECTURE!. indeed do all these powers of the soul, like the morning stars, sing together and shout for joy ! And wonderful indeed is the capa- city of our spiritual nature for happiness such as this, — happiness, not sought for as a chief or only end, but flowing, as a direct result, from godliness and virtue. Who can estimate the peace, satisfaction, and delight prepared for the soul of man in the healthful exercise of its manifold powers of apprehending truth, of appreciating the lovely and the fair, of discerning what is right and good, and of re- ceiving instruction from on high ? Who can, above all, recount its joys in the harmonious movement of its will in accordance with truth and goodness thus discerned, in conscious compliance with the will of God, in the pos- session of divine favour now, and in the prospect of that favour for ever ? But, where is this harmony to be found? Where is the man who possesses an intel- lectual and moral nature pure, unclouded, and upright, — a will perfectly subservient to the commands of conscience, guided by the light of truth and morality and well-founded faith, — and a conscience, accordingly, in a state of unbroken peace with God ? Alas, we nowhere find a living man corresponding to this type ; but we find ourselves in presence LECTURE I. 33 of a fact, declared to us in Scripture, that human nature, which was originally very good, is now in a state of moral disorder and spiritual desolation. When we endeavour to ascertain the original constitution of man from a consideration of his present state, we can do so only as an architect sketches the plan of a building from its ruins. And, just as a ruin has sights and sounds peculiar to itself, — as it has acquired many a fantastic form, and many a foreign hue and tint, with foliage out of place, and has become a habita- tion of inferior creatures instead of the abode of men or a temple consecrated for holy worship, — so also we find within a fallen soul the mutilation and perversion of its faculties, and the presence of ideas and feelings, of desires and volitions, which form no part of the original gift of our all-wise and benevo- lent Creator. Man, in his actual state, is not the possessor of an upright intelligent will, conscious of its rectitude, and rejoicing in the sight of God ; he does not fulfil the purpose of his being; he does not enjoy that happi- ness which the harmony of his nature is adapted to produce, quickened and irradiated by the approbation of his Creator. And holy Scripture gives us all needful information concerning the origin of this mournful state D 34 LECTURE I. of things. The record of the Fall, which, without question and without hesitation, we take as it lies before us in the Bible, makes it plain that man lapsed into this state of ruin by his own abuse of the liberty wherewith God had graciously endowed him, — by his voluntary choice of evil at the instigation of the tempter (36). Sin is not, as some modern theorists maintain, merely a negation, or a natural defect (37) ; — it is not the result of sensuousness, or selfishness, inherent in man's system, as it came from the hands of God ; — it is not either a necessary evil, or an inferior modification of good, originally designed to work out beneficent effects in due time and under favourable circumstances ; — but it is a moral effect, and that too a mischief and a plague, of which man is himself the cause. Now, the root of sin is in the will (38). Man fell from his state of original upright- ness, when his will disobeyed his conscience commanding what was right according to the will of God (39). And it is precisely in this aversion of the will from God that we place the corruption of our nature, or that original sin, which is the sad inheritance of every one born into the world. Let us not exaggerate this evil ; an evil, if rightly understood, al- ready of appalling magnitude (40). The Fall LECTURE I. 35 has not directly thrown mankind into a state of total ignorance ; it has not at once de- stroyed all our intellectual and moral powers; it has not obliterated all right views and all right feelings, all moral sentiment, all justice and benevolence ; nor has it destroyed that freedom of the will without which no re- sponsibility can exist. And, in like manner, the Fall has not silenced the voice of con- science as a law, nor destroyed its power as a sentiment within the heart. But still, tre- mendous is the evil of that sin which really does adhere, and universally adhere, to our fallen nature. It is, as we have said, the aversion of the will of man from the will of God ; and this aversion God righteously con- demns. Here, therefore, is a breach between the creature and the Creator, a relation of opposition and enmity in the place of har- mony and love ; and Conscience testifies to this state of disorder ; it is restless and imeasy (41), and bears on it a reflection of the most certain truth that the holy God is offended with the sinner. Here is a wound in our moral nature, which, if not healed, is deadly ; — a mischief which involves in its continu- ance no less than the everlasting desolation and misery of the offender. And, as the fear- ful and wonderful construction of the human D 2 36 LECTURE I. soul is apparent in the harmonies and excel- lence of its perfect state, so again does this become manifest in the history of its degra- dation and its ruin. If you inflict a wound upon the human frame, the mischief, if not stopped, will spread; disease and derange- ment will extend from fibre to fibre, from limb to limb, until at length the whole body, so curiously wrought, so " fearfully and won- derfully made," will become a mass of cor- ruption, and will return unto its dust. And such too is the wound which sin inflicts upon the soul. We find herein the commencement of a deadly process; and it is just because the spiritual mechanism is so fine and so delicate, and because there are such nice relations and sympathies established between all the pow- ers of tlie soul, that this process is so certain, and its results are so fearfully complete. Mark now the progress of this evil, — great in its beginning, still greater and more tre- mendous in its issue. Man has sinned ; God is offended ; and, by the sufferings which he lays upon the sinner, by the restraints with which he hems him in, by the penalties which he has solemnly denounced, and which he causes to follow in the train of disobedience, he makes his displeasure manifest. At the same time, the sinful soul stands, like a LECTURE I. 37 culprit, at a distance from its Maker, with the displeasure of the Most High reflected in the accusations of an upbraiding con- science, torn by the conflict of contending feelings, and oppressed by the weariness of unsatisfied desire. — But this state of things cannot last. If there be not a fresh infusion of spiritual life, there must be the consum- mation of spiritual death. Already, in the evil that has taken place, the seeds of still further evil are contained. An uneasy Con- science— a conscience disturbed by sin, and not yet lawfully set at rest — produces wretch- edness in a variety of forms ; it generates fresh sin ; it may even conduct its unhappy subject to the very extremities of blasphemous despair. And as for the rebellious Will, this too is the seat of a corruption which cannot but spread and increase, if the root of the evil remains. The will that has broken loose from God is not, and cannot be, independent. Having renounced its allegiance to the Cre- ator, it falls under the power of the creature. Having cast off" that service of God which is perfect freedom, it has entered into bondage. Abandoned to the caprice of irregular desires, with the besetting and enthralling influence of the objects of sense and appetite, it be- comes continually more and more the slave 38 LECTURE I. of passion ; — it is entrapped and fettered and debased in the region of selfishness, of self- indulgence, self-will, and self-conceit ; — it is doomed to drudgery in the service of a worldly mind, with all the evils of an inor- dinate love of wealth, of honour, or of power ; — or it is defiled by the pollutions of fleshly lusts, lost in the pursuit of pleasure more or less refined, and fearfully exposed to those manifold horrors to which coarse sensuality has been known to conduct its victims even on this side of the grave. Such are the bondage and corruption which await the sin- ful will that disobeys the voice of conscience, and departs from a lawful and loving con- formity to the will of God. — And the evil stops not here ; but by degrees it thoroughly pervades the faculties of that complex and wonderful organisation of which it has taken hold. The depraved Will impairs the Intel- lect (42). It withholds attention where at- tention is due, and at other times fixes it with undue or exclusive intensity ; — it inter- feres with the powers of observation, and ob- scures the perception of truth ; — sometimes it gives an undue prominence or activity to one faculty and sometimes to another ; — and not unfrequently it hinders or forbids the needful operations of the mind to such an LECTURE I. 39 extent as to incapacitate it from comprehend- ing the light by this unlawful influence of its own sinful love of darkness. Such is the overpowering and devastating action of the perverse will, that has escaped from the re- straints of conscience, which was ordained to regulate its otherwise destructive force ; like the rush of water bursting in a torrent over the homes of a busy population, and sweep- ing to destruction that very apparatus of ela- borate machinery which it was designed to set in regular motion by the ministry of an equable and constant stream. — Amidst all the confusion and dimness of the mental vision produced by the influence of a de- praved will, there is a cloud of thick dark- ness especially drawn over the knowledge of the Most High : — and, not only may this darkness arise, as it were indirectly, from false reasonings and vain speculations con- cerning the nature and attributes of God, but, more directly still, it may be induced by the corruption of the Conscience (43). Alas, it is possible, too possible, that a corrupt will, and a perverted or beclouded intellect, may carry disorder and pollution into even that spi- ritual faculty which at first testifies against transgression and pleads for God within the soul. When its functions as the regulating 40 LECTURE I. principle of man's moral being have ceased to tell upon the mind and heart, then the disorders of the soul begin to act destructively upon itself. It learns to cry Peace, where there is no peace. It is constrained to falsify its reports to God, or to make no reports at all : — its commands are silenced ; or, v^hat is w^orse, it may be so infatuated or so bribed, as to grant license and permission, and even to give commands, at variance w^ith its own proper dictates in conformity with the law of God. Conscience itself becomes, in this way, a delusion and a mockery ; it ministers to the worship of an idol enshrined in the darkness of a corrupt and sinful soul. And eventually, so far may spiritual ruin proceed, even in this present state of being, that the very sense of responsibility in the sight of heaven may be destroyed, and ma7i may say within his heart, There is no God. Alas, this sinful delusion may continue, until it shall be dispelled in those regions of eternal woe, where devils believe and tremble ! For this tremendous evil — this source of unutterable misery— where shall we find a remedy ? Who shall say. Peace, be still, to the troubled and accusing Conscience ? How shall the wandering Will be brought back, — the rebel be subdued, and its energies once LECTURE I. 41 more enlisted in the service of its lawful sovereign ? Who shall pour fresh light into the dark chambers of the soul, and there re- duce confusion into order, and for unhappi- ness give peace and joy ? Burdened and sin- worn humanity may ask these questions, but all its wisdom and philosophy must fail to return an answer (44). Then let us be de- voutly thankful that " the things which are impossible with men are possible with God*^:" let us meekly and gladly receive the assur- ance conveyed to us by the word of inspira- tion— an assurance which it will be my wel- come duty to consider in the next Lecture as fully as I can — that " being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ ^" d Luke xviii. 27. « Rom. v. i. LECTURE II. RENEWAL OF THE SOUL BY FAITH IN THE REDEEMER Hose A xiii. 9. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. _LO the question, Where shall we find a remedy for the evils of the Fall ? nature returns no answer. True indeed it is that God has never left himself without witness in the world ; true also that the world has never been utterly unable to receive that witness (45); and that, accordingly, in one very important sense, natural religion lies at the foundation of revealed. But what is this natural religion, and what its value and its power ? It lies, as we have said, at the foundation of revealed religion ; but it is by no means the root from which it springs. Man's natural idea of the Deity is, to say the least, imperfect and obscure (46) ; it is not what it would have been if reflected, in its integrity and its beauty, from a pure and LECTURE IT. 43 tranquil conscience ; there is great reason to believe that in its present impaired condi- tion, the human mind is, of itself, unable to rise above the ideas of polytheism, or pantheism, at the best : and even if, by the progress of our intellect, we attain to a con- ception of one living and personal God (47), still we have no means of knowing Him under his character of Love, and we are utterly incompetent to find our way to the restoration of a state of peace and amity between this great Being and ourselves. Left to its own impulses and devices, the natural religion of fallen humanity is es- sentially selfish ; its aim is simply to escape divine vengeance, or to derive some benefit from God's favour. And if it ascends beyond this idea to that of purer adoration, it still keeps more than a reverential distance from the object of its worship ; it stops short, hopelessly and always short, of holy com- munion and friendship, of confiding and rejoicing love. As it tells us nothing of God drawing nigh unto us, so it also leaves us without power to draw nigh unto God ; it provides us with no cure for that radical and elementary corruption of our nature, the perverse and selfish bias of our will. By the best and most diligent use 44 LECTURE 11. of the light of nature, and under the in- fluence of the purest motives which even cultivated nature (48) can supply, man is of himself unable to rise in the scale of moral excellence and consequent felicity beyond a state of internal discord,with a sense of unsatis- fied want, and the experience of feebleness and wretchedness without prospect of relief (49). In a word, natural religion, so far from being able to point out a remedy for the evil which has befallen us, can, at the best, but make the mischief more apparent ; in- stead of furnishing a solution of our diffi- culties, its office is rather to proclaim those difficulties, and to raise the inquiry, hope- less though it be. Where shall our help be found (50)? Now, this help, rightly understood, is no- thing less than the great comprehensive blessing of Redemption, in the Christian ac- ceptation of the term. The twofold evil in- cluded in the Fall of man involves the ne- cessity of a twofold method and process of recovery. There is need, as it is commonly said, of a deliverance at once from the guilt and from the power of sin ; in other words, the disturbed relation between the Creator and his offending creature must be restored, and at the same time the corrupt will of LECTURE II. 45 the offender that had turned away from God must be turned to Him again. And here the matter of primary import- ance is the renewal of a friendly relation between God and man, — the work of Becon- ciliation. Primary this must necessarily be, because it must rest altogether with the Most High to effect this great work, if it be His pleasure so to do, — and to effect it in His own way, and by the methods of His own appointment. No change in the sub- jective state of man can, of itself, produce a change in the position which he occupies on account of the unalterable past. The reason of such a change must be found, if any where, in the will of God. And pri- mary again must this aspect of Redemption be, because, whatever may be the value of a subjective change for the better, if it should take place, yet a guilty conscience unappeased is sufficient to hinder such a change, and to stand for ever in the way of a renewal of man's will to its original recti- tude and the love of God. Accordingly, some act of the divine government whereby guilt may be cancelled, and a way opened for communion between the life-giving Spirit of God and the sin-stricken soul of man, is the matter of our first necessity. Nor must 46 LECTURE II. we conceive of this outward or objective redemption as accomplished merely for the sake of promoting that other work which has need to be wrought within us. Atonement for sin is a real and most solemn transaction of itself, needful to make way for the exer- cise of divine benevolence. It is not merely a display of that benevolence, made with a view to allay the apprehensions of mankind, and to produce a favourable impression on the human mind and heart ; but, while it is indeed a result and manifestation of the divine goodness, it is, in itself, an act of homage to God's unchangeable and holy law (51). The justice of the Most High is not, as we are sometimes told, a mere mo- dification of his benevolence ; but there is in Him the righteousness of a moral go- vernor as really as the tender compassion of a Father. And it is to Love, not alone, but in union with the most unbending holi- ness and truth, that we ascribe the mighty w^ork whereby the controversy between God and man has been appeased, and a recon- ciliation has been effected, so complete on the part of the Most High, that "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ^." a I Cor. XV. 22. LECTURE II. 47 Closely connected with this objective re- demption, or the work of reconciliation ex- ternal to ourselves, is that great blessing of redemption subjective, with the consideration of which we are now more immediately con- cerned. This consists in deliverance from the power of sin by the influence of the Holy Spirit in the soul. And our question is, how is this brought to pass ? On what principles, and in what way, does the divine agent ac- complish his great work within us ? We shall find that while He works according to his own laws, or agreeably to the methods and within the limits which He has himself pre- scribed. He condescends also to operate in accordance with the previously established laws of our intellectual and moral nature. Christ, by his Spirit, enlightens the soul of man, as the sun enlightens the atmosphere around us. The air, of itself, is dark ; the light that pervades it is not its own ; but yet there would be no light without the atmo- sphere, for the sun makes use of it in order to disperse his rays. And just so the Holy Spirit employs, while he quickens, the faculties of the human soul. Only let it be carefully observed, that it is one thing to say that the Spirit operates according to established laws, and another thing to affirm or to imply that 48 LECTURE II. all spiritual influence resolves itself into law (52). To adopt this latter position would be, in effect, to maintain that man is the sub- ject of no real spiritual influence at all ; and to represent him as dependent for spiritual health upon the workings of his own mind, or the progressively improving functions of his own intellectual and moral nature, che- rished by favourable circumstances or condi- tions, and advancing of itself, or by the aid of kindred spirits, towards its perfection. But our case is widely different ; our help is not discoverable here. " The natural, powers and faculties of man's mind," to adopt the lan- guage of Hooker, " are through our native corruption so weakened, and of themselves so averse from God, that without the influ- ence of his special grace they bring forth nothing in his sight acceptable, no not the blossoms nor the least buds that tend to the fruit of eternal life Which powers and facul- ties notwithstanding retain still their natural manner of operation, although their original perfection be gone; man hath still a reason- able understanding and a will thereby f ram- able to good things, but is not now there- unto able to frame himself. Therefore God hath ordained grace to countervail this our imbecility, and to serve as his hand, that LECTURE 11. 49 thereby we which cannot move ourselves may be drawn, but amiably drawn. In a word, the manner of God's operation through grace is, by making heavenly mysteries plain to the dark understanding of man, and by adding motive efficacy unto that which there pre- senteth itself as the object of man's wiir." These things having been premised, we proceed to ask, in what way, under the eco- nomy of the gospel, does the Holy Spirit bring back man's will into conformity to the will of God? How does he fulfil his great mission within the human soul ? It is no mean part of the manifold wisdom of God displayed in our salvation, that the Holy Spirit, herein w^orking according to the constitution of our nature as described in the preceding Lecture, begins his great work by pacifying Conscience. Conscience is disturbed by sin ; and, even if this uneasiness be not attributable to the Spirit of life and holiness — as assuredly the disturbing of a corrupt and hardened conscience must be traced back to this heavenly source — yet, if mere natural conscience, as the Fall has left it, can proceed so far as to fill the soul with a feeling of dis- b Hooker, Fragments of an Answer to the Letter of cer- tain English Protestants; Appendix, No. I. to Book V. of the Ecclesiastical Polity, Keble's edition. E 50 LECTURE II. satisfaction and confusion, or a fear of danger, still we may confidently say that it can pro- ceed no further in the direction of spiritual health. It may disturb, but it cannot tran- quillise itself; it may do harm, but it cannot do good, within the chambers of the soul : — selfishly, man may be wretched under a sense of want or in prospect of suffering, but self cannot cure this wretchedness. Our help in this matter is in God alone. And observe the process by which this help is graciously administered. The Spirit does not address Himself immediately to the agitated senti- ment; but He reaches it in what we may de- nominate a regular and lawful way, — a way conformable to the constitution of our na- ture. He first convinces the soul of sin, — not merely of the fact of sin, but of its evil na- ture, of its ill desert ; awakening and giving new force to that sense of obligation which a sense of the mere fact of sin, however painful, tends directly to weaken or obscure ; making the soul feel that it has destroyed itself, and that it deserves the condemnation which is appointed to ensue. This is not natural to fallen man ; his own impulse is to justify himself; but God teaches him to condemn himself. And He teaches him this lesson by disclosing to him the extent, the beauty, and LECTURE 11. 51 perfection of the law which he has broken, by setting it before him in its true character as holy, just, and good, and by making him sensible of the most certain truth that this holy law is no other than a transcript of the perfect will of God. Hence the value of those earlier portions of the sacred record which some persons regard with but little reverence. Here is the true significance of the awful thunders of Sinai, of the solemn denuncia- tions of Jewish prophets, and of all the legal announcements of the Bible, whether in the Old Testament or in the New. By the law, declared without, and brought home to the heart by an influence within, the Spirit teaches sinful man to lay his mouth in the dust, and to confess that God is righteous who taketh vengeance (53.) Great is the work which has thus far been accomplished. Already has the Conscience been brought into a state that may bear upon the Will for good. The soul has been made to view sin, in some measure, as God views it, to hate what he hates, and to condemn what he condemns. And is not this already an incipient conformity of will ? When two parties agree in hating the same thing, have they not herein at least some bond of union with each other? And therefore blessed be E 2 52 LECTURE II. that light and that influence from on high which teaches me to hate what God hates, even though it be sin that is dwelling and reigning within my fallen soul ! But, is this a state of peace ? Is it even a state of mind which must inevitably conduct to peace? Undoubtedly not. To the soul that is still led and quickened by the Spirit this will indeed be found to have been an entrance upon the way of peace. In that case, the next step in the spiritual progress conducts to holy mowning over sin, and to a desire, — an earnest and deep desire, — for the favour and friendship of the holy God. But a progress such as this can be effected only under the guidance of the Spirit. If the Spirit be grieved, resisted, quenched, even after the conviction of sin shall have been wrought within the soul, — and if man, with all this conviction upon him, be abandoned to himself, — think not that his conviction will conduct him to conversion. Be assured that it may even minister to evil ; it may become a means of driving the sinner further from God, rather than drawing him nearer. If the only truth that man has grasped be that which relates to the evil nature of his sin, — and if his own unaided understanding be left to reason upon this truth. Behold I LECTURE II. 53 am vile, — who shall say that there shall not speedily arise this torturing inquiry, How is it possible that God loves man, or that he ever did love man even as the innocent crea- ture of his hand, seeing that He has suffered him to fall under the dominion of that sin which I now feel to be so evil and so hate- ful ? God may be righteous who taketh ven- geance, but who shall persuade me that God is love ? Tremendous question ! And how does the Holy Spirit, in his infinite wisdom, meet it? Does God, as it were, argue this point with his fallen creature ? He does nothing of the kind. He lends no sanction to our speculations concerning the origin of evil ; nor does he lead us to expect any bene- fit from a solution of the questions to which such speculations would conduct us. Know- ing what is in man, — dealing with us accord- ing to the constitution of our nature, — He addresses himself at once to our primary fa- culties ; He first of all announces salutary truth which we may know, and presents to us sound first principles which we may em- brace,— and then, but not until then, he en- ables the understanding to confront the de- ductions which it had falsely drawn from the truth already apprehended, with the deduc- tions which it now correctly draws from the 54 LECTURE II. new truth which he graciously presents to it. In his wisdom and his love, He comes to the awakened conscience with the announcement of a fact. He meets the fact of our sin and condemnation with the fact of our Redemp- tion and its attendant blessings. And this is Revelation, in the full and pro- per sense of that expression (54). Revelation is not a mere raising or refining of man's natural powers, so that those powers may comprehend or effect what they could not in their otherwise debased condition ; — ^but it is the declaration of a mystery, that is, of fact or truth which our natural faculties, even if exalted to their utmost pitch, are unable to discern or to discover {55). And the Christ- ian revelation, in particular, is the declara- tion of that great mystery of godliness,— the redemption of mankind by Christ {56) ; it is an authoritative announcement of an act, and that too a rare and exceptional act, in the divine government, achieved in order to re- medy the evils of man's rebellion. " Revela- tion," says Bp. Butler truly ^ "is to be consi- dered as informing us of somewhat new, in the state of mankind, and in the government of the world, as acquainting us with some relations in which we stand which could not c Analogy, part II. chap. i. LECTURE II. 55 otherwise have been known." True : — these relations could not otherwise have been known. The things which the gospel re- veals are " things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man''." Even those facts of redemp- tion which might be historically known could not be apprehended in their true character, in their meaning and power, independently of an express and authoritative declaration on the subject made by God to man. For these are the counsels of the Most High re- specting the recovery of our fallen race ; these are facts and methods of proceeding concern- ing which it must be emphatically said, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor^?" "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God*^." As without Christ we cannot know God in his relation to ourselves, so without revelation we can obtain no knowledge of Christ (57). " God was in Christ," says St. Paul, " reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them ; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation^." Here is a plain statement «iiCor.ii.9. eU0m.xi.34. f I (Jor. ii. 1 1 . S2Cor.v.i9. 56 LECTURE II. of the importance of the gospel as well as of that work of Christ which forms the sub- stance and subject of the gospel. Suppose the work of the Redeemer to have been ac- complished,— that he had taken on him our nature, had died for our sins and risen again for our justification, and had ascended up on high, — suppose, in short, every thing to have been done which was needful to atone for sin, and to make the work of our redemp- tion objectively complete ; — but yet suppose too that all this had been unknown to us, — that there had been no attestation to the Saviour's person, no record of his work, no declaration of God's good will to man in and through the Redeemer; in a word, suppose that there had been a Saviour but no gospel, — a Saviour but no tidings of salvation brought to the ears of man, — then do you not perceive that there would have been wanting one great provision towards the re- storation of the fallen soul ? A gospel with- out a Saviour would indeed be no gospel at all : but even a Saviour without the gospel would be no Saviour to tis. This is the rod of the Saviour's power in the kingdom of his grace. And we thank God that there is not only the Saviour who "is our peace''," but h Eph. ii. 14. LECTURE II. 57 also the word of revelation ^^ preachirig peace by Jesus Christ V' This revelation, or divine exposition of the work of Christ, with its causes and re- sults, is not imparted to individuals by any independent and special impulse on their minds ; nor is it in any measure entrusted to uncertain oral tradition ; but it is written in a book (58), in itself the most durable monument and the safest repository of truth with which human nature is acquainted, and, in this particular instance, by the guardian care of its almighty Author, preserved in its essential integrity throughout the lapse of ages to the present day. This sacred vo- lume,— the vehicle of a revelation which is no dead letter, but a spiritual thing, a living communication from the infinite mind of Deity to the finite mind of man, — we there- fore thankfully receive, with reverent regard, as the charter of our salvation (59). And, although this acceptance of Scripture has been long since scoffed at under the name of Bibliolatry (60), and is even to this hour by too many men derided or denounced, still to this principle we steadily adhere. And here is no spiritual bondage ; rather, here is real spiritual freedom. In this case it is i Acts X. 36. 58 LECTURE II. emphatically true that where there is no law there is no liberty ; and our spiritual liberty is secure only so long as we submit, without reserve, to the authority of Scripture. We reject the licentious doctrine that the Bible proposes a spiritual problem which must be solved by the human mind in the exercise of its own inherent powers (61) ; and with equal determination we reject also that despotic principle which affirms the coordinate au- thority of Tradition, or sanctions the preten- sions of an infallibility supposed to reside in any community of men (62). We carry our finite understanding and our uncertain Tra- ditions to Scripture, not Scripture to our Understanding or Tradition. When once we have ascertained the contents of Scrip- ture, we receive these things not as the sub- ject of our criticism, but as the basis of our Faith ; and in so doing we are not in bond- age to the letter, nor in bondage to man, but we are freemen of the truth, and of Him concerning whom it has been said, " These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye might have life through his namek"(63). This sacred record contains, we say, that ^ John XX. 31. LECTURE ir. 59 objective revelation which the Holy Spirit employs as a means or instrument in his subjective operation on the soul of man (64). While He outwardly testifies of Christ, He gives inwardly power to believe. But to whom does he give this power ? Observe how the work of which we now speak is really a continuation or carrying forward of the work to which we have already refer- red : — how both the preaching of the Cross and the faith which receives it stand in im- mediate connection with the preaching of the Law and the contrite conviction of sin. For, what is the preaching of the Cross, or the gospel of the grace of God ? It is a message to man, bidding him to lift up his eyes, and look upon the rainbow of the cove- nant. But that bow must rest upon a cloud ; and the cloud on which it rests is no other than the broken Law and the gathering wrath of Almighty God, which the Spirit has already made manifest to the conscience of the sin- ner. And more than this. At the very mo- ment that the Spirit points to the bow in the cloud, he makes that cloud itself darker and more terrible than ever. Never was such a testimony borne to God's hatred of iniquity as that which was given when Christ died 60 LECTURE II. " the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God^". In the death of the Re- deemer, more than in all the denunciations of the Law, we discern a witness of the evil nature of transgression, a warning that sin must not and will not be unpunished, a solemn foreboding of the storm of unmiti- gated wrath that is ready to burst upon un- godly and unpardoned souls. But then, in the cross of Christ, we do also see, at the same time, the bow upon this cloud ; and it is indeed a great advance in the work of the renewing and sanctifying Spirit when He proclaims, in addition to God's hatred against sin, His love and compassion towards sinners, when He takes up the very subject-matter of His distinct and special revelation, and, point- ing to the cross of Jesus, cries aloud, with a voice distinctly heard from one generation to another, " God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life""', — a voice which may well call forth that responsive echo, " Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitia- tion for our sins°". " Behold, what manner 1 I Peter iii, ]8. ^ John iii. i6. " i John iv. lo. LECTURE II. 61 of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God !"" Such then is, in its essence, the preaching of the Cross. And as the preaching of the Law was a preparation for the proclamation of the gospel, so also the contrition and the yearnings of a lowly heart are an introduc- tion to that faith by which the gospel is embraced. This faith is no isolated act, no independent state of mind, nothing that takes place apart from the work in which the Spirit has already been engaged. For, who is the man that believes the gospel ? Not the man who is in love and in league with sin. Not the careless or hardened transgressor. But the man who has been convinced of sin, as none but the Spirit can convince him ; the man whose heart has been made humble and tender, who has been made to hunger and thirst after righteous- ness, and to long for peace with God. It is in complete accordance with the constitution of our nature that, for the reception of the gospel by faith, there must exist a previously formed disposition and desire {65), no less than a present perception of the truth. There must be the seed, indeed, — the seed of divine truth, — before there can be the " I John iii. i. 62 LECTURE 11. plant ; but the seed cannot produce the plant unless it be cast into a congenial soil ; that which is seed in the intellect becomes a living plant only in the heart (66), — that honest and good heart which has been pre- pared by the heavenly Husbandman. Alone, this preparation would be useless ; thorns and briars, as we have already seen, may overrun the soil that had been cleared ; sin may again reign within the heart that has been made to hate it, if there be not within that heart a new affection that shall finally subdue it. But the husbandman comes with his good seed, and casts it into the waiting heart. To the humble and earnest soul the Spirit not only outwardly proclaims the gospel, but gives inward power to believe it (67): — and the soul, thus prepared and empowered, embraces the truth of God, and places its ivJiole ti^ust and coyijidence in the Hedeemer whom that truth reveals (68). Re- velation addresses itself to faith, or that power of the mind whereby we believe upon testimony facts which we do not know by personal experience, and receive upon autho- rity truths, not contrary to reason, but yet such as reason, by its own direct intuition or consciousness, is unable to discern. This is no new faculty with which the Holy Spirit LECTURE 11. 63 endues the soul for the single purpose of receiving gospel truth ; but it is that ex- isting faculty which this Almighty agent quickens and directs, at the same time that He presents to it an appropriate object. Under this heavenly influence, religious faith is a belief in God, as a living personal being vi^ith whom we have to do, and who has gra- ciously made a communication from Himself to our spiritual nature , and Christian faith, in particular, is a believing consciousness of redemption declared to us in Scripture, with a recognition and cordial acceptance of the historical personal Redeemer, as the object of our unlimited trust and confi- dence (69). "Nor will the firmest belief in the Scripture narrative, with the clearest apprehension of the gospel scheme and the soundest views of Christian doctrine, consti- tute faith in Christ, until, to this clear con- viction of the sufficiency of his atoning sacri- fice, be added a real desire for its fruits, and a heartfelt confidence in its efficacy ; until the Spirit has enabled us to repose in hum- ble reliance, for time and for eternity, upon the mercy and truth of a reconciled God (70)." And " the just shall live by faith p." In the way that has been now described, help has P Rom. i. 17. 64 LECTURE II. been provided from on high for fallen man who had morally destroyed himself. By a stupendous act of the divine government, ac- complished according to the wise and merciful counsels of God's own will, all distance or dis- pleasure of the Most High towards his fallen creature has been, for His part, entirely re- moved,— reconciliation for iniquity has been made, — and large gifts of divine bounty, larger than any that had been promised to mankind in the state of primeval innocence, have been placed within the reach of every penitent and returning sinner. The gospel, the procla- mation of this exercise of mercy, made to the man whose heart has been humbled by a sense of his lost estate, after his conscience has been awakened to perceive it, — this truth of God, outwardly revealed and inwardly ap- plied by the Holy Spirit, becomes the effec- tual means or instrument of spiritual re- newal (71). The soul that had been cast down by a sense of sin is raised up again by a perception of redeeming love ; the heart that had fainted under a sense of moral and spiritual weakness is reassured by a believing reliance on the arm of Almighty power. And so, that great work of Redemption, in and by which God is reconciled unto man, becomes, when apprehended by faith, the source of that LECTURE II. 65 saving subjective change in the human soul whereby man is reconciled unto God. Hence ^om^ peace of conscience , — that "peace of God which passeth all understanding'." " Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ''." And " we which have believed do enter into rest^" Happy are they who cordially respond to that word of redeeming love, " Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee""," whose ears are open to the voice of heavenly remission, whose hearts are filled with the spirit of adop- tion ! Rich indeed are the tones of peace and consolation which flow from the word of reve- lation for the refreshment and delight of the listening believer. Blessed are the people who practically know that joyful sound, " Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God" !" And while the gospel leads the soul to peace, it at the same time calls forth love {72)- When " we have known and believed the love that God hath to us"," — when we feel our- selves once more in the position of children in the presence of a Father, and are under the influence of the Saviour's Spirit, pleading his cause within our hearts, — then, " the love of i Phil. iv. 7. ^ Horn. v. 1. 1 Heb. iv. 3. m Mat. ix. 2. " Isa. xl. i. « i Johniv. 16. 66 LECTURE II. Christ constraineth us V' and "we love Him be- cause he first loved us '^ (73) . " Here is the great fundamental principle of Christian morals sup- plied to us by the gospel. And " the second is like unto itV' " Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another ^" Nor is it possible to overrate the importance of that office of Christian faith which consists in this kindling of holy love. For love is the very strength of spiritual life. True indeed it is that there are the beginnings of life in an awaken- ed conscience, and in the aspirations of good desire. And faith is itself an act of spiritual life. Life, however, possesses no vigour with- out love ; and nothing less than love can be eternal. But " God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son*." Love flows down from the Redeemer's cross into the be- lieving heart. And who, we ask, can esti- mate the greatness of this blessing? Consider, for a moment, the expansive quality, the un- unwearied progress, the perpetual vitality of divine and holy love. Love is of God, always flowing from Him or returning to Him ; it proceeds from God, through Christ, to all men, but specially to them that believe, and then it goes back to Him, carrying with it P 2 Cor. V. 14. q I John iv. 19. r Mat. xxii. 39. s I John iv. II. t I John vi. 11. LECTURE 11. 67 the affections and desires of the believer by whom it has been apprehended and received. And the law of its nature is that it shall never stop in its beneficent career ; it must flow on- ward, through all the infinitude of being, far abroad over the whole surface of God's intel- ligent and moral creation. Here is the great law of life and motion in the spiritual world. Sin is the breach and violation of this law ; it is an obstruction that has been impiously thrown up to stay the onward flow of that holy principle which gushes forth from the fountains of eternity. But redemption throws this barrier down. In Christ the love of God has gathered up its strength, it has put forth its omnipotence, and the barrier falls and is swept away for ever ; once more the love of God is shed abroad in the believer's heart, takes its free course through his thoughts and sentiments and desires, his words and actions and the whole tenor of his life, goes out into the world with its manifold tokens and re- sults, and pursues its destined course until it returns again to heaven. It is this holy love, in its direction towards God, that animates prayei\ and draws near to the throne of grace in acts and offices of holy worsliip ; worship, not, as some would repre- sent it, " rendered to mere dictation," but F 2 68 LECTURE II. rendered as part of a reasonable service, through " the right state of affection towards God." The son asks the father for bread; the captive, ransomed from the dungeon, lies low before the throne. — And the Christian's love to God does not expend itself even in acts of worship ; but it rules and controls his will. To the ivill that has been made capable of receiving an impulse such as this, love is a motive principle of sovereign and pervading power. Out of the mouth of Christ pro- ceedeth a two-edged sword ; and as with one edge that sword cuts up self- righteousness, so with the other it destroys self-will. The believer who sues for mercy, and enters into peace, on the terms propounded in the gospel, and who comes with an empty hand and with a craving heart to receive the blessings of re- demption, comes also with an inquiry rising from the depths of a subdued and obedient spirit, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do""?" His faith produces within him a holy con- formity and a cheerful submission to the will of God, with a desire and effort to be perfect, even as his Father in heaven is perfect. And hence this living principle puts forth its energy in raising the whole moral character ; it governs or quells the passions according to V Acts ix. 6. LECTURE II. 69 the dictates of an enlightened conscience and a sound morality; it subdues the re- mainder of pride, restrains and regulates self- love, overcomes the world, and quenches the fiery darts of temptation ; while to all moral goodness it gives a stability and weight which we look for in vain from any other principle that can be brought to bear upon the soul. As a spiritual sense of the broken law leads us to embrace the proffered grace of the gos- pel, so the grace of the gospel sets us upon the hearty fulfilment of the law, — the law, not in the letter, but in the spirit, not as a rule imposed upon us merely from without, but as a principle regulating the heart within ; our love to God Himself passing over, by a ])rocess altogether in accordance with the constitution of our nature, into love towards His law. Nor does the work of faith stop here. The moral character, thus purified and invigorated within the man, impresses its energy upon his outward life cmd course of action. Faith is no speculative, dreamy, sentimental habit of the soul ; it is eminently practical (74). The man who lives the life of faith is the man who at the same time works the works of God, — works of integrity and uprightness, •—works of benevolence and mercy, — works of industry and labour, — works for the glory 70 LECTURE II. of God and for the welfare of mankind,— works as of one who has a spring of activity within him, as well as a glorious reward be- fore him. A mere assent of the understand- ing, even when accompanied by strong con- viction and intellectual belief, may be dor- mant, powerless, and still,— putting forth no power within the soul, impressing no cha- racter upon the heart, leading to no energy in action. But faith, which grasps the re- vealed truth of God, has within it a principle of heavenly life ; and it lies in its very na- ture to impart its own vigour to every thing within its reach. It penetrates and invi- gorates all the powers of the soul. It is found among those powers, wherever it ex- ists, not as a jewel or as a piece of gold that is embedded in a heap of sand, but rather, according to the just conception of Luther, as the heat of fire is found in water that has been made to boil. Without it, the powers of the soul may be cramped and fet- tered, may be wasted, misdirected, perverted, or abused ; but Christian faith liberates and heightens all the mental faculties, while it ennobles and expands all the sentiments and impulses of the heart, imparts to them a right direction, and finds them a congenial em- ployment. LECTURE II. 71 It is worthy of special remark, that the healthy condition of the affections and the will, attendant upon Christian faith, assists the believer's intellectual apprehension of di- vine truth, and makes him, in his measure, " of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord "." As the depraved affections and the debased will entangle or impair the intel- lect in matters of religion, so the renovated will and the rectified affections liberate and restore it (75). The loving spirit is the ready learner in the school of Christ. As to the meaning and interpretation of Scripture, as to the power and application of first princi- ples of Christian morals and the rule of a holy life, and even with respect to the deep things of God, the man of faith and love is often found to possess a power of penetration and a correctness of judgment far superior to the attainments of other men more learned than himself, but less richly furnished with the gifts of heavenly grace. And hence those words of our Saviour, " I thank thee, O Fa- ther, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- dent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight ''." Nor ought we to overlook the " Isa. xi. 3. " Mat. xi. 25, 26. 72 LECTURE 11. fact, that, even in matters not directly reli- gious or moral, a connection may frequently be traced between strength of intellect and the presence of Christian principle (76). Again and again has the individual mind, under the power of religious faith, displayed a clearness, vivacity, and vigour to which it had been otherwise a stranger. And if we look abroad upon the history of the world, we find that in proportion to the prevalence of the Christian spirit among a people — and, to a certain degree, even according as the masses of society have been instructed in the elements of Christian knowledge — there has been an incomparable advancement of science and art, an augmentation of all the substantial blessings of civilized life, and a progress in those works of industry and those appliances of skill which tend to the well-being of the human race. In this way, and in many others, the faith of the gospel is, beyond all question, the most powerful promoter of social and public welfare (77) ; it is the friend of liberty, the advocate of order, the bond of peace, the sup- porter of law (78), the favourer of progress in all that is really good, the counsellor of the wealthy, the benefactor of the poor, and the patron of all social institutions for the spread LECTURE II. 73 of sound knowledge, for the relief of misery and want, and for the establishment or growth of friendly intercourse between man and man. Nor is it strange if, in that faith which is the mainspring of godliness and virtue, we find also the secret of human happiness. Hence flow, in very truth, serenity, cheerful- ness and joy to the individual believer, — peace and contentment, harmony and glad- ness, within the confines of a happy home, — wisdom in prosperity, comfort in adversity, — the true relish and enjoyment of life, — calm- ness and composure, hope and triumph, in the hour of death. Until that hour, indeed, faith must maintain a struggle ; the sword of the Spirit must be in her hand, contending against evil,— slaying the hitherto unsubdued cor- ruptions of the heart, and overcoming the evil power of the world; and it is, at the same time, her constant office to cover the soul as with a shield from the assaults of its malicious and watchful enemy. But, when that hour shall arrive, the conflict will have ceased for ever ; the believer, made more than conqueror through Him that loved us^, will receive his crown of life ; and then, but not until then, will the real blessedness of faith y See Rom. viii. 37. 74 LECTURE II. be fully understood. In the mean time, let us thankfully remember that while this Christ- ian grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, con- fers priceless benefits, even for the present time, upon individual souls, — while it ani- mates the church and labours to regenerate the world, — it also involves a preparation for those "new heavens" and that "new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ^" — where the sons of men will no more fall away from their allegiance to the Most High, but, having found their help in Him who has redeemed them, will cleave to Him for ever as the fountain of their being and the source of their felicity, and will joyfully unite in that song of everlasting thanksgiving and praise, "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen^." y See 2 Pet. iii. 13. ' Rev. i. 5, 6. LECTURE III INFIDELITY IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS. Isaiah liii. 1. Who hath believed our report f and to ivhom is the arm of the Lord revealed f Christian faith, in its vitality and power, includes, as we have seen, not only an intellectual belief of revealed truth, but also an act of the will whereby we heartily embrace that truth, desire the fulfilment of the promises made to us in Christ, and rely upon Him for whose sake they have been given, and by whose faithfulness and power they are to be accomplished. Without affiance in the revealed Re- deemer, it is to little purpose that we assent to the word of revelation. And, accordingly, while we admit the credibility of the gospel narrative, and believe, or think that we be- lieve, all Christian truth, there is still room for the inquiry, " Dost thou believe on the 76 LECTURE III. Son of God^ (79) ?" Where is our cordial acceptance of the Saviour as he is set before us in the gospel, if there be no hearty sur- render of ourselves to Him to be saved by his merits and to be ordered by the govern- ance of his Holy Spirit, — if self-righteousness and self-v\^ill are still dominant within us ? In order, hovs^ever, to that habit of trust and confidence which fills up the measure of faith in Christ, there is need, as we have already seen, of a belief of Christian truth. Even if there can be a belief of the gospel without faith in Christ, yet certain it is that there cannot be faith in Christ without a belief of the gospel. Hence the evil and danger of Infidelity, that fearful state of mind which I have undertaken to consider in the present Lecture and the one which is to follow. And here let it be once for all observed, that, when I speak of Infidelity, I do not intend to imply any thing like con- tempt or scorn. I shall use this word rather with deep sorrow, because it alone seems fitly to denote the subject which we have in hand ; that is to say, unbelief or disbelief concerning Christian verities, not latent, or cherished only in the heart, but speculative, systematic, and avowed. As to the difference a John ix, 'i,^. LECTURE III. 77 between unbelief and disbelief, it may be said that unbelief denotes properly a rejection of the proofs of Christianity, as insufficient in its favour, or a rejection of its doctrines, as not discernible or discoverable by reason ; while disbelief implies an assumption that we possess evidence sufficient to counter- balance the proofs alleged, or that we per- ceive the doctrines to be contrary to reason. But these two states of mind, in point of fact, are closely connected with each other. Mere unbelief, or a state of pure doubt or sus- pense of judgment, for any length of time, is hardly possible on a subject such as this : there may indeed be a real and culpable in- difference ; but if there be doubt, it may be regarded for the most part as only a transi- tion to belief or to disbelief. Disbelief, too, it should be remembered, involves, more or less certainly, an opposite belief: the mind that really disbelieves the gospel is not likely to be a mere blank with reference to the sub- ject-matter of the gospel ; but it is likely rather to believe something else, at variance with the system which it repudiates. The disbelief suggested to our first parents in Paradise was not a simple rejection of God's word, — ("Ye shall not surely die,") — but it included the admission of a promise in oppo- 78 LECTURE III. sition to that word, — (" Ye shall be as gods.") An element of faith has been lodged in our very nature ; and hence it is that, if we do not believe the truth, we are prone to be- lieve a lie. Be assured that I am not insensible to the painful nature of the subject which now lies before us. I know that it is a ghastly spec- tacle which I am about to bring before your view : it is no better than a corpse, a mould- ering corpse ; intellect without the know- ledge of God, — man's whole soul without the love of Him. How can we turn aside to see this mournful sight, now, on the first day of the week, when our Saviour burst the fetters of the tomb, and rose, for ever, from the dead ? I confess to you that, on reviewing the course of observations which I am still prepared to urge upon your notice, I felt for a moment no slight degree of hesitation as to their fitness for an occasion like the pre- sent. But, upon earnest consideration after- wards,— regarding the intentions of the founder of this Lecture, — remembering also that our blessed Lord and Master, in the temple of Jerusalem, not only proclaimed the truth, but exposed hypocrisy and un- belief,— and trusting that what I have to say may, by God's blessing, be made subservient, LECTURE III. 79 if not to the edification of the sound and established believer, yet to the instruction of the unlearned, or to the confirmation of some weak and wavering soul, — I have felt it consistent with my duty, or rather I have found myself in duty bound, not to shrink from the task of calling your attention to the existence and nature of speculative un- belief. Considering, too, that, in the present day. Infidelity presents itself under manifold aspects, and that, though less threatening than formerly, it is yet perhaps not the less dangerous, by reason of its pliable principles and its exceeding versatility of form, I have judged it expedient to propose as the sub- ject of this Lecture a survey of the various phases of this gigantic evil (80) ; intending, as we proceed, to intimate the logical con- nection of its different forms with each other; and hoping, in this way, to minister at least a cause of thanksgiving to those per- sons who, by God's grace, are beyond the reach of these anti-Christian principles, and to give a salutary warning to others, who may be almost upon the borders of this spiritual vortex. Consider, in the first place. Infidelity, scarcely fashioned, and perhaps hardly con- scious of its own true character, but yet 80 LECTURE III. really existing and putting forth some de- gree of energy, in the form of a rationalistic rejection of Christian doctrine. In this form, having reference rather to the substance of the gospel than to its proofs and evidences. Infidelity is capable of such diversified mo- difications, and assumes so many disguises, that it may sometimes escape detection, and is often in a position to repel, with logical correctness, the charges v^^hich may be justly brought against it by those who perceive its real tendency and nature. Here, therefore, is no inconsiderable peril ; peril for the young, — peril for the unstable, — peril for all whose feet are not finnly planted on the Rock of ages, — peril too for all who think that they are standing on that Rock securely in their own strength, — the strength of their own reason, — the ardour of their love, — or even the pvn-eness of their conscience in the sight of God. The faintest, but still dangerous, phase of this rationalistic spirit consists in the habit of making an arbitrary choice and selection of dogmas to be believed, by those who pro- fessedly, and with more or less sincerity, accept the Christian revelation as a whole. Certain tenets are received, as upon the authority of the record : but^otliers are re- LECTURE III. HI jected, more or less consciously, in spite of that authority. What is this but Infidelity begun ? To say the least, here is something- less than simple and entire submission to divine teaching ; here is a refusal to receive the whole truth in its breadth and fulness, and therefore in all its vital power. Together with some measure of faith, the mind che- rishes a principle at variance with faith, — a principle of self-reliance and self-will in matters from which these feelings ought to be excluded. And either this intrusive and rebellious spirit must be subdued, or faith, already sickly, will expire. Beware then of rejecting any truth which you recognise as among the contents of Scripture, on the ground of its being above the reach of your own independent apprehension, or at vari- ance with some of your own logical con- clusions. From this unhealthy state of mind the transition is too easy to a systematic eleva- tion of reason above all the notices of reve- lation,— that is, to Rationalism applied to the whole substance of the gospel. This takes place when men systematically require that revealed truth shall be, — not only not contradictory to sound reason, which is to be justly expected, — but that it shall be in 82 LECTURE III. accordance with the independent notices of reason or deductions of the understanding, — that it shall be such as they are of them- selves able to discern or to discover, — that it shall not transcend their own mental powers. The Rationalist undertakes to judge for himself, or by mere human aid, what are the truths which revelation ought to propound, and then brings the actual re- velation to the standard which he has set up (81): what agrees with his own precon- ceived opinions or theory, he is ready to receive ; but all beyond this he rejects. Or, if he allows that his individual reason is not of itself equal to the task proposed, still he maintains that the standard of re- vealed truth is to be found in the common consent of mankind ; and that we may safely refuse our assent to dogmas said to be contained in the inspired record unless they have found admission into the minds of at least a majority of those men to whom they have been propounded. And so he is ready to believe (as he imagines) what rea- son has already affirmed, or what the under- standing can fully comprehend when sub- mitted to its action ; but here he is deter- mined that his faith shall find its limit. The truth, however, is, that, so far as this tendency LECTURE III. 83 prevails, there is no exercise of faith at all. It is of the very essence of Faith, as we have already seen, to believe what reason cannot of itself discern ; it is enough that reason does not contradict it. And, as to the un- derstanding, it may fail to comprehend the notices received by faith without thereby throwing discredit upon faith itself, just as it must fail to comprehend many of the notices of sense and reason, while yet the authority of those powers remains unim- peached and unshaken. Under the rationalistic system to which we are now referring, there is for the most part a rejection of all the vital and distinc- tive doctrines of Christianity (82), — those which announce the relations subsisting be- tween God and man. By this process, the mind lets go its hold, one by one, of all the essential and specific doctrines of the gospel ; for example, the divinity and incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ ; the real and proper influence of the Holy Spirit as a personal divine Agent working upon the soul of the believer ; the efficacy of prayer ; the value of instituted ordinances as peculiar and effec- tual means of grace to those who rightly use them ; the personality and tempting agency of Satan and his angels ; the resurrection of G 2 84 LECTURE TIL the dead; the eternity of future punish- ments ; and the individual and personal possession of eternal life by the righteous. In short, natural religion is falsely held to be the method by which man may draw nigh to God, and live in conscious peace and har- mony with his Maker, — whereby his passions may be restrained, his morals purified, his whole soul made to move in the region of spiritual harmony and holy love. But, when all the distinguishing doctrines of Christianity have been set aside, what is there in the gospel to entitle it to our regard as an express revelation from heaven ? By rejecting the substance of the message, a foundation has been laid for a logical dis- avowal of the fact that such a message has been conveyed to us. And accordingly, among teachers of the class to which we now allude, we soon find^ perhaps after some vain specu- lations concerning the methods and degrees of inspiration, that the reality of inspiration is utterly denied. Prophets, Apostles, and even Christ himself are regarded simply as good men, in advance of their age, who la- boured with some measure of success for the enlightenment of the human race, by making a wise use of their natural powers ; but, ac- cording to this theory, there has been no LECTURE III. 85 knowledge of divine truth supernaturally communicated by the Holy Spirit, nor are the writers of Scripture to be regarded as the organs of any extraordinary message to the great family of man ; in short, there has been no inspiration, and therefore there is now no revelation whatever, in the proper acceptation of the term (83). Views such as these, though doubtless al- ways existing, belong, in a marked degree, more to a past age than to the present. But, while Rationalism appears to have lost much of its former reputation, there is another method of arriving at the same end which finds acceptance in the minds of many per- sons at the present day. These men are not rationalists ; they are so-called h-piritualists (84). They do not deny the great truths which lie on the very surface of the sacred record ; nor do they disavow the fact of a divine revelation, and so leave man entirely to the dictates of his reason and the conclu- sions of his understanding, with the addi- tional aid to be derived from his fellow crea- tures all uninspired like himself. But their theory is this. There is, say they, a revela- tion made from God to man, but it is only subjective, inward, to the already existing spiritual life or religious consciousness of 86 LECTURE III. humanity ; the inspiration by which this life or consciousness is awakened is common to every man who will wait and seek for it; and as to religious truth, it is simply that which individuals, or the mass of humanity, so far as their powers have been heightened by the divine afflatus, are able to apprehend. The prophets, apostles, and Christ himself, they admit to have been inspired, but only in a higher degree than Confucius or Plato, than Raphael or Columbus, or ariy other great teacher or benefactor of mankind. And the Bible is a revelation, that is, the record or representative of a revelation, because it contains an account of the lofty deeds, the noble thoughts, the pure imaginings of highly gifted men, which may be useful to other men who, being themselves inspired, know how to turn these records to a good account, just as we may also derive benefit from the musings of Homer and Shakspeare, from the philosophy of a Socrates or an Antoninus, or from the memoirs of philanthropists and he- roes. According to this system, we are not to suppose that the gospel announces posi- tive spiritual facts, such, for example, as that which is usually understood by the Atone- ment ; but it propounds ideas which may be differently received by different men, and LECTURE III. 87 will possess a power and value according to the spiritual mould into which they may be cast. The man who has listened aright to the voice of Nature, and has caught inspira- tion from its grandeur and its beauties, — whose soul has been elevated by contact with the productions of genius, has held high com- munings with the great men of all ages, has been enlightened by the discoveries of science and stored with the riches of advancing civi- lization,— this man is supposed to possess the faculty of deep insight into spiritual truth, and to possess the power of gazing, with pure and ennobling perception, upon the face of Deity. It is assumed, but unwarrantably and falsely assumed,— and here lies a capital fallacy of this unsubstantial theory, — that there exists in the soul of fallen man a spi- ritual perception, life, and consciousness, suf- ficient to carry him forward to perfection, independently of any direct influence of the Holy Spirit, and without the instrumentality of any objective truth, or any positive and su- pernatural declaration of the mind and will of God. And it is even pretended that, in this way, man may, of himself, advance be- yond the morality and the religion of the gospel. Now, in this Spiritualism, let it be observed, 88 LECTURE III. there is nothing original or new (85). This system is, in substance, only one of those phases of unbelief which have appeared and disappeared at intervals from the earliest age of Christianity, — but which, thanks be to God, have never yet succeeded in making the gospel obsolete, and in robbing mankind of the knowledge of salvation. It is, how- ever, fraught with danger ; and its power of mischief arises, in no small degree, from its capability of disguise. It can put on the semblance of Christian truth ; it can comply with any form of words, even the soundest form, in creeds and confessions drawn up with the greatest fidelity and care. Under this system, sin may be spoken of as a reality, — but then it is regarded as consisting only in the dominion of the senses over man's higher faculties, or only as the effect of out- ward conditions, a result of error, of prejudice, or of defective education ; and in like man- ner sin may be also denounced and branded as an evil thing, — but an evil, only on account of its unhealthy, withering, or disturbing in- fluence upon the subject mind which it af- fects. There is such a thing as a regenera- tion of human nature, not only possible, but to be earnestly expected and zealously pro- moted; — because there may be a develop- LECTURE III. 89 ment of all that is good and noble in man's spiritual being ; because learning may dispel his ignorance, science may enlarge his com- mand over the world of matter, social insti- tutions may be improved, or even placed on some new basis, so as to acquire a wondrous potency for the amelioration of the race : things which can be only instrumental and subordinate being wrongly exalted into the rank of agencies, or rather man himself being considered as the only agent, — the Holy Spirit, with the power of gospel truth, being wholly overlooked. Again, Christ is a Saviour, according to this theory; — because he is a model, oh how perfect and how pure, of patient suffering, and of a blameless, well- regulated life ; he taught much that, even in this enlightened age, we must still acknow- ledge to be wise and just and good ; he takes a high place among those heroic souls, those sages and men of noble mind, who have been, from time to time, the instructors, the bene- factors, the saviours and redeemers of man- kind. Christ is, moreover, divine ; for so is every man, especially in proportion to the development of his spiritual life. And the Saviour made an atonement for sin ; — for he taught man how to overcome it. Prayer is right and good, because it is a tranquillising 90 LECTURE III. and elevating exercise of our spiritual facul- ties. And as for the resurrection to eternal life, why should it be denied ? There will assuredly be a spiritual resuscitation of the whole mass of humanity at some future day, when science and civilization, and free insti- tutions in church and state, in trade and commerce, shall have fulfilled their task, and when men of high intellect shall have ac- complished their mission in the world ! — Alas, that we should have occasion to repeat such sentiments, even by way of exposure, and for the sake of warning ! But this form of Infi- delity, antiquated as it may have seemed to be, has again ventured to encounter the light of day ; it has been brought out anjd paraded forth with a kind of magnificent display ; appearing, however, to the eye of an intel- ligent observer, no better than the prepara- tions of funereal pomp, ready, if possible, to carry the gospel to the tomb. But we fear not the result. The gospel is not dead ; still, by the power of its Author, it is " spirit and life^" within the church; and to each indi- vidual, by faith and prayer, it may become the means of life within his heart. We fear not the general result of a renewed conflict with this form of unbelief; but at- the same b See John vi. 6^. LECTURE III. 91 time we well know that this system possesses its peculiar attractions, and is therefore dan- gerous to the minds of many. Its high- sounding expressions, — the compliments, hol- low indeed but often loud, which it pays to the Saviour and his gospel, — its imaginative and poetic elements, — its professedly lofty aims, — its apparently benevolent and expan- sive character, — all these things are adapted to win the attention, and to excite the ad- miration, of those who are unwilling or un- able to look beneath the surface of its claims. It is dangerous to the ardent, to the senti- mental, and to those who in their search after novelty fondly imagine that they find it here ; it is, in short, more or less dangerous to all who do not possess a vital conscious- ness of sin, — who do not know that the sepa- ration which sin has made between God and their own souls is a positive and fearful fact, — and that, as nothing short of a righteous and merciful act of the divine government can meet their wants, so nothing less than an objective divine revelation can certify them of that act, and can thus become a means of peace and blessing to their souls. To proceed. The doctrines of Christianity, or its spiritual facts, are closely interwoven with the substance of the gospel narrative, or 92 LECTURE III. its record of historical facts ; and, when once men have abandoned the teachings of the word, and have refused to acknowledge an inspired revelation, they are prepared, with logical consistency, to deny all that is super- natural in the alleged series of facts upon which the authority of revelation is greatly made to rest. The mind that revolts at mystery, or religious truth which we cannot know independently of a direct and outward revelation, is also shocked and repelled by miracle, that is, something which cannot take place without a supernatural interposition of Almighty power. And, as we have already asked, if there be no distinctive Christian truth, what need is there of the Christian re- velation ? so we may also inquire, if there be no occasion for a revelation, what occasion can there have been for any miraculous or supernatural interpositions on the part of the great Author of nature, who has so wisely appointed that the universe shall move in obedience to regular laws of matter and of mind ? Or if, according to the other theory, there has always been a subjective revelation in the mind of man, and the only inspiration to be expected is that which has been breath- ing upon him in all ages of the world, still the question may be raised, what likelihood LECTURE III. 93 is there of any special and extraordinary in- terference of the Creator at any given period of time, — what is needed, or to be desired, more than the regular development of that spiritual element which has been implanted in the minds of all, and which cannot take place otherwise than under certain condi- tions, and in compliance with established principles or laws ? Upon this hypothesis, miracles, prophecy, and the whole system of direct teaching by revelation and spiritual influence, instead of appearing to be neces- sary, or even beneficial, appear rather in the character of lawless forces, with sudden and disturbing movements, in the otherwise re- gular and beautiful evolution of humanity. And accordingly we find that Infidelity sometimes assumes the form of Naturalism, or an assault upon the Bible chiefly with re- ference to its supernatural historic elements. In the last century, the sophistry of Hume was employed to make it appear that mira- cles, as being contrary to our uniform expe- rience, are incapable of being proved by any evidence whatever ; and that we must rather conclude that such events are impossible, in- asmuch as the sequences of nature are in- variable, and never can be broken. This fallacy has been abundantly refuted ; and 94 LECTURE III. there are perhaps few men in the present day who rest their objections on the ground which Hume would have taught them to oc- cupy. Infidelity, however, still maintains, as one of its positions, that miracles, under any circumstances whatever, are impossible ; for the most part appealing, in support of its affirmation, to certain deep principles of error to which we shall have occasion here- after to refer. Apart also from this general objection to the more remarkable and salient portions of the evangelical history, and indeed even without appearing to deny the truth of the sacred narrative, there are other methods by which modern unbelievers have attempted to rob that narrative of all that is superna- tural and divine. — According to some, the miracles of Scripture were really wrought, and presented all the appearances described ija the sacred record ; but they were miracu- lous only to the apprehension of ignorant persons who did not understand how they were performed ; the workers of these mi- racles were scientifically in advance of their age, — they had a command over the powers of nature which was then extremely rare, although it is only such as many men possess in the present day, or such at all events as LECTURE III. 95 will be common in the course of time, — and, by the employment of their skill and ability, they produced eifects which were marvellous in the eyes of the multitude, and tended to give them an unbounded influence, which they wisely exercised for good. And thus an attempt is made to shew that what ap- peared to be miracles were really no miracles at all. — Still more common, however, has been the system of explaining away the mi- racles by resolving them into mere natural phenomena, or remarkable contingencies. In order to support this view, criticism has employed itself in softening down some ex- pressions and removing others, in rejecting as incredible what is too plain to be mis- interpreted, and in reducing, as far as pos- sible, the supernatural works recorded in Scripture, to the appearance of natural, but somewhat remarkable and felicitous, events. — Far more elaborate, and perhaps more plausible, has been an attempt of recent date, to exhibit all the miraculous and superna- tural features of the gospel history under the character of an aggregate of myths or legends. Such is the hypothesis of Strauss, — in accordance with a system which had been long since marked out bv an infidel writer of our own country (86). He supposes that, 96 LECTURE III. historically speaking, there was such a per- son as Jesus of Nazareth, whose life and ac- tions attracted attention in Judea, and made a lively impression on the minds of a certain body of Jewish admirers and disciples. After his decease, his sayings were cherished in the memory of his friends, and his actions were by degrees embellished and exaggerated ac- cording to the taste and temper of the age, and especially in harmony with certain Mes- sianic notions at that time prevalent. To the originally simple annals of this illustri- ous teacher, additions, marvellous in their character, and intended to do honour to the subject, were continually made ; Jesus him- self was represented as superhuman and divine ; and exploits supposed to be worthy of so transcendent a Being were ascribed to him by his devotees, — not indeed altogether arbitrarily or without foundation, but so con- trived as to picture or embody some great ideas which were attributed to Jesus himself, or which at all events found place in the minds of his followers. And the gospel nar- rative, as it has come down to us, is supposed to consist of a real account of some few events which belonged to the personal his- tory of Jesus, but overloaded and almost obscured by mythical drapery and adventi- LECTURE III. 97 tious ornament. By this process, the great body of the evangelical history is supposed to have been successfully dissolved into thin air, into mere fable, or at best into allegories embodying the conceptions of an ignorant and superstitious people. Upon examination, the whole of this unbelieving theory is found to rest on unwarranted assumption, and to be propped up by most fallacious reasoning ; the mind perceives that if in tins v,ay any thing has been proved, then the proi^f is valid against all history (87), and forbids our attaching credit to any testimony concerning past events ; an inquiry, too, arises as to the origin of those ideas which are set forth as the sources of the imagined myths, and it is felt that the difficulty, if such there be, in- stead of having been removed, has only been transferred to another portion of the sacred history; and, besides all this, it is remem- bered that the gospel life of Christ is no iso- lated narrative, but one that subsists in im- mediate and inevitable connection with the history of the church from the time of the apostles to the present day, — a connection which can be explained, if the Saviour were really such as the Evangelists have described, but which is utterly inexplicable, and is more marvellous than all legends and all myths, if IT 98 LECTURE III. He were no more than such as to meet the conceptions of the German speculatist. From Naturalism our thoughts may now turn to Deism, — a class of Anti-Christian principles well known as having prevailed in England chiefly in the last century (88). In- fidelity in this form no longer appears as mere philosophy, or speaks in the accents of calm or lofty speculation. It includes indeed some attempts at historical and verbal cri- ticism, and makes some show of wisdom suited to the age in which it flourished ; but for the most part it opens its mouth in blas- phemy, and proclaims aloud the sentiments of an evil and ungodly heart. Not content with arguing against the gospel, or explain- ing away its statements and its truths, this coarser form of unbelief denies the facts which it is unable to disprove, and inveighs against the person, the work, and the gospel of the Saviour, in terms of contempt or scorn, in the tone of profane and impious raillery. Marked, to a great extent, by a coarse illiterate ignorance of the evidence and history of the Christian religion, it is yet loud in its invectives against the claims which it puts forward, the restraints it imposes, and the principles it would establish. By turns rancorous and flippant, it openly derides the LECTURE III. 99 religion of the gospel as having been founded in imposture, and having been received and cherished only by the credulity of the super- stitious and the weak. At one time it re- jects its morality as a burden too heavy to be borne ; at another it proclaims the gospel itself immoral, denounces it as a mischief to society, adverse to the welfare and happiness of mankind, unworthy of the nature and character of Almighty God. And whether we consider the ignorant misrepresentations of Paine, the sneers of Gibbon, or the scofF- ings of Voltaire, it is impossible not to per- ceive that their opposition to the gospel is founded upon moral repugnance and dis- taste. Their writings are a clear echo of that rebellious sentiment, " We will not have this man to reign over us^" And so far as this school of infidelity continues to subsist, we find its adherents, for the most part, among men of depraved moral habits, of low taste and uncultivated intellect, revelling very often in the haunts of profligacy and vice, or filled with political rancour, and struggling against the restraints of all laws human and divine. It may be observed, that Infidelity, under all the phases which have been thus far con- '= Luke xix. 14. H 2 100 LECTURE III. sidered, professes to acknowledge the being and providence of a living and personal God. Scarcely, hov^^ever, is it to be expected that the mind of man can lose sight of its rela- tions to the Most High, and at the same time retain a just conception of tlie nature and attributes of the Supreme Being himself And therefore it is not surprising that there is an Infidelity which says, not only, There is no revelation, There is no Redeemer, but even, more or less boldly and distinctly. There is no God. Some men there are who, while they reject Christianity and know not the true God, have yet a lively conception of the order and harmony which pervade the Universe, with the traces of design and the manifestations of will and power which we find everywhere around us. Hence therefore they retain the impression of a presiding or universal Intel- lect ; but at the same time, that which they thus recognise as mental energy, or the di- vine essence, or even a divine being, they regard as more or less identical with nature — conceiving that, in some way or other, either God is the Universe, or the Universe is God. This is Pantheism (89), in its two- fold aspect. Throughout the material sys- tem, some suppose, there is Intelligence, LECTURE III. 101 putting forth its energy, and manifesting it- self in various appearances of design and sym- metry and life, such as matter alone, itself unconscious and inert, never could display ; but then this Intelligence is not distinct from the Universe which it animates and guides, — it has no independent existence, no personality, no moral attributes, — it is no one living and true God. Such is that form of Pantheism which says that the Universe is God. By others, with an appearance of greater spirituality, it is maintained that the great Intelligence is the original substratum of all matter and all mind, continually evolv- ing or developing itself in the forms of crea- tion, in life and thought and feeling, exist- ing in all things, upholding and quickening all things, and yet distinct from none ; working, or rather developing itself, according to cer- tain laws of its own appointment, from which, having once appointed them, it is itself un- able, as by miracles, to depart ; — an infinite substance, in which all things animate live and move and have their being, and into which, according to a regular and invariable process, all are again absorbed. Such is that Pantheism which affirms, in effect, that God is the Universe. Now the teachings of this theosophy pos- 102 LECTURE III. sess some charm for many persons who have not become disciples of the school of revela- tion, and who are therefore strangers to the higher attraction of the cross of Christ. To the reason which cannot be satisfied with supposing that all things are made, or pro- ceed, by chance, this theory professes to give an account of such matters apparently more consistent. To the imagination and the feel- ings, unenlightened and undisciplined, it speaks in captivating terms when it tells of God in everything, of his glory in the bright- ness of the firmament, of his voice in the breeze and in the stream, in the accents of the thunder and in the roaring of the deep, of his beauty in the landscape, and, above all, of his inspiration and his presence in the soul of genius, in the bosom of the hero, in all intellectual energy, in all strong affection, in all the earnestness of indomitable will. Not to the humble mind, but yet to minds of a certain order, there is in all this, taken in the pantheistic meaning, something plau- sible, however false. And there are other aspects of this doctrine, to men of a right mind still more fearful and revolting, but to some men still more welcome. Enough, that there is no living, personal, independent Being, the father of the Universe, the moral LECTURE III. 103 ruler and governor of the human race, — enough, to make good men shudder, and to administer something like comfort to the proud and self-willed, the licentious and pro- fane ! There is no God ; enough to make heaven mourn and to cause hell to triumph ! Or, if the patrons of this theory insist upon the language which themselves employ, and affirm that they teach us rather that there is a God, and that God is everywhere pre- sent, still, when they tell us what they mean by that which they call God, we know and feel that it is not the God in whom heaven can rejoice or before whom hell can tremble. According to the Pantheist, no relations can subsist between the Creator and the creature; in fact, man is no creature of God's hand, — he is himself a portion of the Deity, or de- veloped for a season out of the divine essence, not in any way distinct from the infinite and great First Cause, — and all his thoughts and feelings are only so many movements and pulsations of a life which is from first to last divine. Hence therefore evil can have no existence in the form of sin. And as for a future state of being, it is a state in which, according to this theory, all personality or dream of personality will have ceased, the in- dividual having been absorbed into the infi- 104 LECTURE III. nite, the drop having been swallowed up in the ocean, the soul, with all its former con- sciousness, having lapsed and disappeared for ever ! What a depth of unbelief, which, while it refuses to acknowledge the existence and agency of a personal God, an intelligent creator and moral governor of the Universe, ignores, at the same time, all creaturely de- pendence, all moral responsibility, and all personal existence in a future world ! There appears to be only one step lower to which even the boldest Infidelity can descend ; and that is Atheism, properly so called. — The Atheist is sometimes satisfied with taking a merely negative position (90). Without attempting to prove that there is no God, he simply affirms that, to his appre- hension, there is no sufficient proof of his existence, or that the evidences of his being and his operation, to which many men ap- peal, are to his mind no evidence whatever ; and therefore he holds himself excused from believing that there is a God, and from ac- cepting the consequences, which must follow from such admission, respecting the creation of the world, the responsibility of man, and the prospect of immortality hereafter. — But this position, dreary as it is, by no means forms a resting-place of this infidel LECTURE III. lOo philosophy. Atheism, even in the present day, is positive and dogmatic in its teaching. It professes to account for the absence of a Deity, and to prove that there is no God, or at least that there is none engaged in pre- sent operation on the Universe around us. The ancient hypothesis of the formation of the Universe by a fortuitous concurrence of atoms may now, perhaps, find few supporters; other theories, apparently more scientific, are commonly preferred. — One theory ad- mits indeed, or does not find it needful to deny, that at some period of time exceed- ingly remote, an intelligent creator laid as it were the foundations, or planted the first germs, of existing worlds and systems ; but that, having impressed upon certain ele- mentary monads the capacity of a regular process of development, with a tendency to- wards it, he then left all things to take their course without further interference or direc- tion ; and under these circumstances, after a series of imperfect formations, the present more orderly and beautiful system is sup- posed to have evolved itself. — Other athe- istical philosophers, wholly discarding the idea of a divine creator, trace all the deve- lopments and movements of the Universe to some inherent force that acts, as they ima- 106 LECTURE III. gine, by virtue of a primordial necessity. — While others, yet more boldly, refer every thing in the material Universe and in the domain of what is commonly called mind, to the spontaneous operation of simply mecha- nical laws. As man has no God above him, so neither does he possess a soul w^ithin ; he is no more than a fleeting, evanescent, com- bination or development of matter ; and when this material fabric is dissolved, his existence is for ever at an end ! — Here is a system of tremendous import ; and yet feeble beyond measure are the principles which are made to bear its weight. If we ask, what are the laws of nature or of matter, we can hear of nothing but the regular se- quence of causes and effects ; and if we in- quire for the power to which this connection may be traced, we receive no answer, or are left to believe, in contradiction to our con- sciousness, that power is an empty name, or that the power is inherent in the cause itself. If from the laws of matter we direct atten- tion to its manifold adaptations and arrange- ments, wholly distinct from the operation of its laws, — often necessary in order to their operation, — and as evidently traceable to some first cause as are the laws themselves, — again we obtain no adequate reply, and we LECTURE III. 107 are left to our own conviction that the won- ders around us are the product of an intelli- gent will, almighty and all-wise. And while, moreover, we behold on every side of us the presence of life, the indications of benevo- lence, and the manifestations of moral go- vernment and order, there are no assump- tions, no arguments, which can outweigh our own inward consciousness, that the hand that made the Universe, the power that sustains it, the will that rules and the love that blesses it, are divine. We have thus looked into an abyss that has engulfed thousands and ten thousands of immortal souls. Let this survey of the toss- ings and the wrecks of unbelief, in its mani- fold forms of Rationalism, Spiritualism, Natu- ralism, Deism, Pantheism, Atheism, lead us at least to desire and to pray that, by divine grace, we may ourselves be established, and may be made the means of establishing others, in the faith of Christ. At the same time, who is there among us that may not do well to listen to that sacred admonition, " Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God'^?" Especially let me address one word of earnest entreaty, on this head, to the younger portion of my hearers. It is a great ^ Heb iii. 12. 108 LECTURE III. object of my desire that, in the whole course of these Lectures, I may be enabled, from time to time, to speak that which shall be good and profitable unto you. It was chiefly with regard to your state and circumstances that, at the beginning of this discourse, I pointed out the danger of arbitrarily select- ing some portions or some features of re- vealed truth, to the disparagement or the neglect of others. But be assured that there is a state of mind, if at first sight less suspi- cious and alarming, yet perhaps more com- mon, and undoubtedly more insidious, and more fatal as an introduction to an unbeliev- ing rejection of the gospel, or even to the blasphemous denial of a God. I speak of reli- gious indifference, coldness of affection, care- lessness of thought, levity of judgment, with respect to those high and sacred verities which, as Christians, you professedly believe. If, amidst the fascinations that beset you, you have no real, deep, and reverent love to God your Saviour, — if, among all your labours, you are conscious of no earnest effort for the attainment of that one thing which is pre- eminently " needful," — if, together with your literary or scientific studies, there is no de- vout inquiry at the oracles of God, no prayer for heavenly illumination, strength, and guid- ance, no jealous watching^ over your own LECTURE III. 109 hearts, your motives and desires, your springs of thought and action, — then, what does all this testify ? Does it not, although you per- haps may not hitherto have thought so, yet does it not really bear witness to latent un- belief, already working in the inner man ? Does it not, to say the least, declare that your faith is so weak, so dormant, so much in peril of being stifled by corruption within, or of being crushed by the weight of the world and the power of temptation without, that it is high time for you to awake as out of a sleep that may soon become the sleep of death, and to cry mightily to God for help ? And surely that voice is a friendly one which now earnestly implores you to shrink from the contamina- tion of moral pollution, to turn a deaf ear to the voice of the seducer, to stand upon your guard against spiritual sloth, to dread self- conceit as practical idolatry, and to remember that your only security against the most fear- ful unbelief, as well as against the worst and most inveterate habits of ungodliness, con- sists in this, that you do now, in these your early days, by a practical reception of revealed truth into your hearts, with prayer, acquaint yourselves with God, as your Father and your Friend in Christ, and be at peace. LECTURE IV. THE CAUSES, OCCASIONS, AND EFFECTS OF INFIDELITY. John viii. 43. Whi/ do ye not understand my speech ? Even because ye cannot hear my ivord. J.N our last Lecture we took a survey of various forms or phases of speculative unbe- lief; we found that there are many diiFerent ways in which men refuse even to give cre- dence to that revealed truth which lies at the foundation of Christian faith. And now we ask, How are we to account for this? Whence comes it that man rejects a revela- tion from his Maker, on subjects of the deep- est importance, and commended to his ac- ceptance by sufficient evidence at once inter- nal and external, — by moral evidence arising from the subject-matter of the revelation, or its adaptation at once to the character of God and to the wants of man, and by histo- rical evidence consisting in adequate outward LECTURE IV. Ill attestations to the fact that such a revelation has indeed been made from heaven ? By the very form of this inquiry we designedly ex- clude all discussion concerning the nature and extent of Christian evidence; we assume, according to the language of our Saviour in the text, that the fault of unbelief lies, not in the gospel, but in the mind that rejects the gospel ; that unbelief exists, not because God has not made his revelation sufficiently clear, or has not duly impressed on it the stamp of divine authority, but because, for some subjective reasons, certain men can- not receive the revelation which has been fitly and adequately made to them. And our question is. What are those reasons ? How are we to explain the melancholy fact that the gospel evidence, although ample in itself, yet, in too many instances, fails to pro- duce conviction ? Here we must remark, in the first place, that the great and original seat of infidelity is in the heart. Often, if not always, the rejection of Christian truth, when that truth is fairly presented to the mind, may be traced to some perverse moral disposition, something which corresponds to the scriptural expres- sion, "an evil heart of unbelief %" and bears a Heb. iii. 12. 112 LECTURE IV. out the assertion that " men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were eviP." It cannot be doubted that the corrupt imJl is sometimes directly engaged in blinding men's eyes to the truth of Christianity ; a secret wish that the gospel may not be true making way for the persuasion that it is false (91). A man^ — perhaps a young man — yields, we w^ill suppose, to the impulse of passion ; he repeats his sinful indulgence ; and, having begun to fall into licentious ha- bits of life, his conscience is ill at ease : — free from some bonds of social restraint whereby he was once controlled, he yet finds himself harassed, if not impeded, in his course of sen- suality and self-gratification, by the voice of an unearthly monitor from without, which finds a response within the chambers of his soul, charging him with sin, and disturbing his enjoyment. But he is determined not to be checked in his career ; he wishes that this troublesome voice were silent ; — and there- fore, alas, weighty are those reasonings of his own mind, and welcome are those suggestions or arguments of some companion in sin, which in some way or other declare that the ter- rible word of God is less than it professes to '^ John iii. 79, LECTURE TV. 113 be,— that it is not at all what is pretended, — that it is a dead letter, — that it is a fable. More fearful than tongue can tell is the licen- tious wish that it could be clearly proved that the Bible is not the word of God. And may those warnings on this head, which are often uttered from this pulpit with all faithfulness and truth, never be unheeded ! May they be clothed with power, and carried home to the hearts of all who need them, by the Spirit of the living God ! But, do not the advocates of our religion sometimes dwell too exclusively upon this source of infidelity ? Are not the assertions which relate to it sometimes too broad and sweeping ? Surely there are limits in the statement of this matter which ought to be carefully observed. It is not always that the depraved heart is thus directly concerned in the work of forbidding access to the power of Christian evidence, or that a conscious wish or desire lies immediately at the found- ation of unbelief. And even when the proxi- mate cause of a rejection of the gospel is indeed to be found in the prevailing temper of the mind, still it is not invariably one and the same disposition to which this effect is to be ascribed ; it is not always the love of sensual pleasure that exerts this evil infiu- I 114 LECTURE IV. ence : and it is to be feared that a sense of injustice has been occasionally felt under charges which more or less plainly imply that every unbeliever — especially if he be a young man — is a profligate, revelling in de- bauchery, or at least ruled by the prevailing love of coarse sensual indulgence. The truth is, that the unbeliever may often be as far removed from this licentious disposition as his most vehement accuser ; and even when the perversion of his judgment is to be traced immediately to the state of his affections and the bias of his will, it may often happen that the sinister influence consists, not in com- mon sensuality, but in some of the more sober developments of self-exaltation and self-will. It is often sufficient for this result that the will is not duly influenced by the truth which the intellect apprehends, so that a man's practical volitions are not in accord- ance with his speculative belief; — a specu- lative belief, which by this want of energy not unfrequently conducts to speculative un- belief; truth, when imprisoned in the intel- lect, dying in its prison house (92). And it deserves to be well remembered that no state of mind or bad moral habit is more danger- ous as a direct conductor to unbelief than mere vanity, — the empty and idolatrous love LECTURE IV. 115 of approbation or applause, encouraging the affectation of superior knowledge, or of extra- ordinary acuteness, and leading to attempts at intellectual display. Deep is the meaning of those words of the Faithful and True Witness, " How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the ho- nour that Cometh from God only'' (93)?" But I desire now to call attention to the fact that the influence of the will, or the state of man's heart, in producing anti-Christian principles, is often — and perhaps even for the most part — indirect (94). The power of the will in relation to the intellect consists very much in fixing or withholding attention, — attention, which, with some degree of effort, is necessary for the due exercise of the men- tal powers. It is possible to shut our eyes upon a truth or fact which contradicts our will ; it is even easy to reject all means and appliances for the conveyance of unwelcome notices to our minds, just as a Brahmin is said to have destroyed a microscope which shewed living animalcula upon his vegetable food. And it is by withdrawing or detaining attention from the substance of revelation, or from its credentials, that the perverse will of man very frequently succeeds in producing c John V. 44. I 2 116 LECTURE IV. or fostering a mental decision adverse to the reception of the gospel. But infidelity is rarely, if ever, altogether negative ; the mind can hardly be a mere blank on the subject of religious truth ; from within and from v^^ithout it finds itself compelled to adopt some opinion, and to entertain some senti- ments, on this momentous matter ; and hence the man v^^ho does not believe the truth of God, believes something else which is repug- nant to that truth. Where then, in this respect, lies the danger ? Clearly, in those false maxims and those specious arguments relating to the surface of things which may be easily comprehended and lightly taken up, — which are fashionable, and readily ad- mitted, or never contradicted in certain cir- cles of society, — recommended perhaps by the charms of wit or the graces of poetry and song, or in some other way adapted to assist men in form.ing or maintaining their opinions, in constructing or defending their creed, with as Uttle attention as possible, — without any painful effort of the mind, — and without in- terference with more congenial subjects of re- flection. And here is, perhaps, the source of much of that infidelity which unhappily pre- vails among men of business, men of science, and the more decent votaries of pleasure. LECTURE IV. 117 This, however, is not the only source of unbelief which may justly be regarded as potent, although indirect. The natural his- tory of Infidelity can be but imperfectly understood unless it be remembered that gospel truth is to a great extent at variance with the dictates of an imenlightened consci- ence ; and that, even when it does not di- rectly disagree with its perceptions, still it is at least without force or meaning in its pre- sence. And then, — that for the establish- ment and preservation of this unmeaning system there should have been a direct in- tervention of Deity, — that, for what must appear to the man of unawakened conscience as no more than a republication of the law of nature, there should have been the ap- paratus of prophecy and miracle, and even the incarnation and death of the Son of God, — how can this be credible ? The occasion does not appear adequate to the effort that has been made, or to have called for the em- ployment of that wondrous instrumentality which is said to have been brought into such energetic operation. So that here is an intel- lectual difficulty, a difficulty for the logical understanding. But it is a difficulty arising from the unsoundness of a first principle which has been embraced by a conscience 118 LECTURE IV. not convinced of sin. As there is a prepa- ration for Christian faith in a conscience en- lightened and aroused by the law, under the power of the Holy Spirit, so there is a foun- dation for unbelief in a seared, hard, or blinded conscience, insensible to guilt, and more or less ignorant of the nature and ex- tent of a moral obligation to the heartfelt, spiritual, service of Almighty God. And while there are some cases in which an un- easy conscience seeks refuge in unbelief, it is likely that there are many more in which unbelief has its stronghold in a conscience that rejects the charge of sin, and therefore repudiates as false the gospel which pro- pounds its remedy (95). We proceed now to a consideration of those intellectual vices which must be re- garded as sources of unbelief: and these, I think, may be reduced to two, — namely, pride of iyitellect on the one hand, and mental sloth or negligence on the other (96). Man's intellect is proud when it, as it were, practically says. If I cannot master every subject, yet at all events no subject shall confound or baffle me (97). And there are various ways in which this mental pride becomes a fruitftd source of anti-Christian Infidelity (98). LECTURE IV. 119 We find one formidable development of this haughty spirit, fraught with incalculable mischief, in the claims of self-sufficient and imperious reason with reference to tlte source of religious knowledge. In the minds of many unbelievers, and in many a system of infidel philosophy, the root of the evil lies in an assumption or demand that all divine truth must be discovered from within ; that it must be originally perceived in the depths of man's own consciousness or intuitive reason (99). It is held that by an internal light or feeling man is competent to arrive at all needful knowledge concerning the nature and will of the Supreme, and the relations which we sustain towards Him ; — religious truth is made to rest upon a metaphysical or vspeculative basis ; — the mind asserts a power, not merely of making deductions from first principles, but of drawing up from its own depths, or as it were evolving out of itself, those first principles themselves : and it is regarded as derogatory to the dignity of hu- man nature that what is ultimately derived from any other source should be taught and received as a matter of religious knowledge or a guide to religious practice. According to this transcendental philosophy, all truth is ultimately subjective ; man is his own in- 120 LECTURE IV. structor, a fountain of light and wisdom to himself. Whatever cannot be shewn to be more or less identical with some original in- tuition is therefore to be at once rejected as untrue ; and it is supposed that the more completely our powers of intuition are brought into exercise, the higher and purer is the truth which we discover. In the view of this theory, all foreign elements of truth tend only to adulterate and debase our knowledge ; or rather, there are no foreign elements of truth ; all that does not spring- up from the human mind itself is error and delusion. It can be hardly needful to point out the sceptical and destructive tendency of a sys- tem such as this. Hereby all information from experience is at once repudiated ; — all regard to the historical past, and all due re- spect for its teachings, are made to disappear (100) : — indeed, according to this philosophy when pushed to its results, even our bodily senses are held to be no trustworthy inform- ants in matters pertaining to their own de- partment;— and, as for the gospel, — objective truth inseparably connected w^ith historical facts, and resting upon evidence, — truth which professes to be such as man could not of himself discover, and which he is required V LECTURE IV. 121 simply to discern and to receive by faith, — it is manifest that the very idea of such a reve- lation is utterly inconsistent with these arro- gant claims of self-sufficient, independent reason. Such inconsistency is, in fact, openly avovs^ed ; it has been boldly declared by the advocates of this philosophy, that an objec- tive revelation is impossible ; and here is the spirit which obviously pervades the ostensibly profound teaching of many of those schools of unbelief which have unhap- pily sprung up, of late, in Germany. It is a deep error upon which infidelity thus reposes. Rightly, wisely, and with pro- fit, as we have already seen, does the Christian recognise the fact that there is a vast amount of religious truth which reason is unable to discover, which none but God can declare to us, and such as, when presented from without, faith alone, by divine grace, is able to dis- cern, and, with the aid of an enlightened un- derstanding, to apply to its legitimate and salutary use. As a needful preparation for receiving the truth which has been sent down to us from heaven, we must humbly recognise the fact that the source of religious knowledge is not in ourselves. By a living faith, we must collect it from without, and then, by God's grace, work it up, so that it may be- 122 LECTURE IV. come the nourishment and comfort of our souls. Our mind, to refer to a well-known saying, ought to be, not like the ant which merely collects and accumulates her stores, and still less like the spider that spins her web out of her own substance, but it ought to be like the bee which gathers her sweets abroad, and then converts them into honey (101). Again, proud reason conducts to Infidelity while it spurns at the limits of our knowledge. God, in His wisdom and His love, has taught us enough for our salvation and our peace ; but there is a state of mind which reclaims against the amount of that truth which He has thus graciously revealed for the appre- hension of our faith, protesting that it is not enough. And by thus indulging a vain de- sire to be wise above what is written, men not unfrequently become wise (as they sup- pose) in opposition to the record. It is at best a dangerous exploit of the human mind to endeavour to gain new light, from some independent source, upon subjects concerning which God has spoken ; and it is no less than profane to seek to penetrate beyond that line at which sound reason may perceive that God himself has set up a barrier to our progress. Deep as man's mind may be, and vast as are LECTURE IV. 123 its powers, still it should be content, like the ocean, to listen to its Maker's voice, saying to it, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed''." But, when the intellect yields to sinful pride, it strives to overpass its limits. Hence the attempts which have been made to solve the mysteries of being, to pry into the essences of things and explain the phenomena of exist- ence (102) ; and hence again, by no very cir- cuitous process, the theories of Pantheism, and those speculations of a delusive spiri- tualism which, as we have seen, are in direct hostility to some of the fundamental truths of revealed religion. Let us beware of a rest- less craving after knowledge which the Most High has not placed within the reach of our attainment. Again, sometimes the proud mind takes offence, not directly at either the source of our religious knowledge, or at its limited ex- tent, but rather at the obscurity which attends that amount of it which we do possess. In every department of ordinary knowledge there are truths which we apprehend without being able to comprehend them, that is, to under- stand them fully (103); and, in those cases, the mind, from necessity, if not under a sense ^ .Job xxxviii. ii. 124 LECTURE IV. of duty, admits and acts upon recognised truth, notwithstanding the remaining obscu- rity in which it is involved. This obscurity attaches, in full measure, to many matters of religion ; and here especially it becomes a standing proof and token of our dependence, — the darkness which remains impenetrable being well adapted to remind us that the light which we enjoy has been vouchsafed to us by another and a higher Being, who im- parts it in measure, according to the counsel of his own will. To this sense of dependence on heavenly grace and illumination the hum- ble soul heartily gives welcome; that soul can even love spiritual twilight, because of its proceeding from the sun ; twilight, not rather than the clear shining of the sun in its meri- dian strength, but rather, far rather, than the glare of its own poor fires, or the most gaudy display of sparks which itself can kindle. And besides this, even apart from Christian humility, the sense of our condition simply as finite beings may well serve to reconcile us to the existence of that which is commonly, though improperly, called mystery, in matters of religion (104). To us, all things, even those which may at first appear simple and distinct, run up at length into mystery. The more we know, the more we are sensible of LECTURE IV. 125 ignorance. A cloud of obscurity always rests upon the horizon of even our most extensive field of vision ; and, as it has been truly said, "with every increase of diameter in the sphere of light, there is an increase of surface in the circumambient darkness (105)." But in this darkness, this obscurity, the proud intellect not unfrequently refuses to acquiesce ; and, choosing rather to give the reins to wanton and presumptuous speculation, it loses itself in a labyrinth of error (106). A claim is put forth by the logical understanding for entire satisfaction upon all points on which it finds itself capable of raising a question ; and the mind refuses to believe any truth which it cannot clearly understand. In the face of these logical demands, a whole mass of evi- dence goes for nothing as long as there re- mains room, or the semblance of room, for query or objection ; and truth is regarded as not proved until it is thoroughly explained (107). Hence flowed a large portion of those forms of unbelief, usually called heresies, which appeared in the second and third cen- turies (108). To this source we trace that infidelity of the middle ages which is well known to have been consequent upon the cultivation of the scholastic philosophy (109). Hence also, infidelity in its more modern ra- 126 LECTURE IV. tionalistic aspect : hence its arbitrary selec- tion of certain truths of revelation to be be- lieved while others are rejected, and its ac- ceptance of some truths only in its own modified or perverted sense of the terms in which they are conveyed. And hence too all unbelieving rejection of mystery, as though mystery were certainly, or probably, at va- riance with truth. Lastly, the human intellect, in its pride and folly, sometimes complains of want of certainty rather than of want of light ; in other words, it demands, not more truth, but greater evidence of truth, or evidence of some other kind than that which it possesses (110). It asks, in effect, for demonstration, even where demonstration never can be given (111). But, is it not presumption to demand that particular kind of proof which the Most High has not been pleased to grant,— espe- cially when that proof is wholly un suited to the subject ? And is it not worse than folly to overlook the fact that the evidence by which revelation is supported is the same in kind, and is equal, if not superior, in degree, to that upon the strength of which we are compelled to proceed in the ordinary affairs of life ? What answer has been given to the just remark that the trial of our faith, arising LECTURE IV. 127 from the nature of Christian evidence, is no greater than the trial of our moral princi- ples, arising from the presence of temptation (112) ? And is it not a fact that many men, who reject the Christian religion on the ground of want of certainty or defect in proof, do themselves believe some pro])osition at variance with Christian truth upon the authority of evidence incomparably less than that by which the claims of the Gospel are sustained ? — Surely, reflections such as these may convince us that the demands which we sometimes hear for greater evidence and stronger proof proceed, not from mental acuteness, but from intellectual pride. Distinct from pride of intellect, as a gene- ral cause of Infidelity, is mental sloth or neg- ligence (113). In other words, as one intel- lectual sin which produces this evil is the ar- rogant attempt of man's mind to discharge an office to which it has not been appointed, the other consists in a culpable neglect to fulfil the task to which it has been legitimately called. It is the office of the intellect to endeavour honestly, and with all due care and effort, to ascertain what is the truth which has been revealed, and what are tlie credentials by which the claims of revelation are sustained. As long as the question con- 128 LECTURE IV. cerning the value of this evidence may be undecided in the mind of an individual, so long there exists, to say the least, a demand for his diligent and candid attention to the proofs in favour of the gospel. There is no demand upon such a man for unhesitating, uninquiring, immediate assent ; but there is a demand, involved in the very nature and subject-matter of the pretension, for earnest inquiry, for impartial, sober, and diligent in- vestigation. The miracles recorded in Scrip- ture are a challenge to attention ; and per- haps this was from the first a chief part of their design, — the performance of a miracle being like the ringing of a bell in order to call attention to the spot from which the sound proceeds. Nor can we imagine any method of attestation to divine truth which should dispense with the necessity of a close and thoughtful examination of its value. Even if one should rise from the dead, in our own day and generation, with a commis- sion to preach the gospel, we should still be obliged to institute a searching inquiry as to his personal identity, and the circumstances of his departure and return. And if a voice should speak to us from heaven, we should be in duty bound to take great pains not only in listening to its communications, but LECTURE IV. 129 in distifiguishing it from a mere subjective impression, or from an effect produced by human agency in order to deceive. And in either case, the labour which vv^ould be re- quired for the due investigation of the fact would be, to say the least, as much as is now demanded for the weighing of Christian evi- dence. The demand then is, and must be, for attention, — attention minute and labo- rious in proportion to the powers and oppor- tunities of the observer, and especially in proportion to his ability and disposition to doubt or disbelieve ; for, be it carefully re- marked that the same power of mind which enables a man to raise or to entertain an objection, whether in the way of philosophic argument, of verbal criticism, or of historical research, enables him also to ascertain and to appreciate existing evidence by which that objection may be met and overcome. But, while attention is thus required, — while ear- nest and vigorous regard to the claims of reli- gious truth is imperatively and righteously demanded, — there is abundant proof that, by the advocates of Infidelity, it is often culpably withheld. Unbelief may frequently be traced to the want of intellectual earnestness and labour (114), or of intellectual honesty and candour, and sometimes even to the want of 130 LECTURE IV. intellectual power in the case of men who have rashly entered on the field of argument without adequate resources. Sometimes this mental sloth or carelessness displays itself in the result of blank and barren ignorance, — in the want of adequate acquaintance with the contents of the sacred volume, or with many of those facts of history which contri- bute to the sum of Christian evidence ; and it is even no rare case that men who are well informed on other points, — perhaps men of business or men of science, who are pro- foundly versed in matters appertaining to their own profession, — are yet most deplorably un- acquainted with the proofs and substance of the religion which they venture to reject. Sometimes again the want of mental earnest- ness and reverence on the part of unbelievers is betrayed by their shallow sophistry, and their habit of unfair or insufficient reasoning. In the writings of almost every school of in- fidelity we meet with unwarranted assump- tions,— one-sided or partial views of truth or evidence, — and specimens of hasty inference in all forms of illogical confusion : and if we need any further proofs of logical deficiency or carelessness among the advocates of un- belief, we may find them in those incon- sistencies and contradictions by which they LECTURE IV. 131 often overthrow their own arguments, or the arguments and systems of each other (115). I do not hesitate to say that it would be pos- sible to construct a Manual of Fallacies, in which all the examples, and those most co- pious, should consist of arguments which have been, at some time or other, employed by the opponents of the Christian religion. We have thus far considered the ultimate sources or primary causes of Infidelity, con- sisting in certain states or habits of mind on the part of those persons who reject the gos- pel. But we have not yet arrived at the whole answer to the question before us. It is impossible to read the history of unbelief aright without perceiving that there are many outward occasions, or secondai'y causes, to which its existence or growth must partly be referred. In this respect, as in many others, man, especially in a state of highly civilized society, is to a certain extent the creature of outward circumstances : — and this is a fact which ought not to overlooked. Only, let us not misapprehend this matter. Let us not perversely exalt an occasion into the rank of a primary or producing cause (HC); and, above all, let it be carefully remembered that the outward occasion cannot take effect independently of the subjective cause with- K 2 132 lp:cture IV. in; that the secondary cause has power only when the primary cause exists, and in co- operation with that cause ; that man is in no case the creature of circumstances, except so far as by an inward act or disposition of his mind he invites, consents, or yields to their influence; — and therefore that, what- ever may be the occasions of infidelity, by the fault of those who are around us, or of our social institutions, these things alone can never induce the habit of unbelief in any man whatever, and accordingly can never jus- tify, or even altogether account for, its pre- sence or its power. If we attach due weight to these remarks, we are prepared to consider the fact that there exist, in no scanty measure, certain outward or secondary causes to which we may partly attribute anti-Christian unbelief. One such occasion is clearly to be found in that spirit of persecution, and of overbear- ing and aggressive intolerance, which has too often attended the possession of ecclesiastical power, especially as developed amidst the usurpations of the papacy (117). In some cases, suspicion and jealousy arising from prohibitory measures too indiscriminating and too stringent, have tended to pave the way for an open revolt in the shape of infi- LECTURE IV. 133 clelity ; — in others, as, for example, with the schoohnen of the middle ages, fetters which have heen forged so as to preclude the legiti- mate and healthy exercise of the intellect, in the way of open investigation of religious truth, have been snapped asunder by the resistance of mind prepared, after escaping from its struggles, to run into the extreme of riot and excess : — and, as to the tendency of direct persecution and the tyrannical bondage of conscience, it is hard to estimate the amount of unbelief which has thus been unintentionally fostered. It can scarcely be doubted that some violent measures adopted for the suppression of heathenism under Constantino made way for a reaction under Julian. Who can recount the instances in which disaffection to the gospel has been produced or cherished by the lordly domina- tion of Rome, and the horrors of its ruthless Inquisition ? And even where Rome has ceased to afflict the consciences and minds of men, its oppressions may still be regarded as a secondary cause of unbelief, connected with the recoil of the human soul from the bondage under which it had been so long and so extensively detained. On the other hand, where greater freedom of thought and discussion has prevailed, we 134 LECTURE IV. cannot hesitate to reckon among the occa- sions of Infidelity those bitter co7itroversies, those fierce contentions and disputes on points of religious faith or discipline (11 8), in which Christian charity has been sunk beneath a flood of molten zeal, and the aspect of reli- gion has been made repulsive to those persons who are either unwilling or unable to dis- tinguish between the genius of the religion itself and the faults of its professors. It has been observed that infidelity has been espe- cially rampant at the conclusion of religious wars (119); and we may expect that its cause will always be promoted by that discord which may arise from a licentious abuse of the principles of the Reformation, no less than by that unholy pressure of ecclesiasti- cal despotism which made the Reformation needful (120). Among the occasions of Infidelity we must, I fear, reckon also certain weak and injudi- cious methods of defendi?ig t7'uth which have sometimes been adopted by Christian apolo- gists (121). A bad defence of gospel truth, as of any thing else, is more injurious than a fierce assault ; and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that, in this case, evil has ensued from weak arguments, apart from any dis- play of uncharitable temper, or any of those LECTURE IV. 135 illiberal and unjust accusations which are obviously and directly a means of doing harm. Among weak defences which have been attended with loss instead of profit we may reckon some kinds of a priori demon- stration of the being of a God; — and some arguments for the immortality of the soul on the ground of its immateriality; — together with apologies which insist only on minor points, overlooking or perhaps even contraven- ing the essential characteristics of the Christ- ian revelation. And it may deserve consider- ation, whether harm has not been done by a too exclusive attachment sometimes to the external or historical evidences of religion, and sometimes to the internal or moral. Has there not been an undue depreciation of each class of evidence in turn ? To say the least, we shall do well to beware of extreme views and statements on this matter ; and it would be a circumstance at once wrong in itself and damaging in its results, if unbe- lievers should be able to point first to one set of divines who pronounce one kind of evidence almost worthless, and then to an- other company who as loudly declaim against the value and cogency of the other. The truth is, that internal and external evidence go together and support each other ; they iSa LECTURE IV. are to be regarded not as rivals but as asso- ciates ; and their strength consists in union. It may be said also that these two kinds of evidence are severally adapted to convince different classes of men : but perhaps it -is still more vs^orthy of remark that they are addressed not so much to different men as to different faculties of the human mind, — the internal evidences speaking to the heart and conscience, the external to the logical under- standing ; and therefore each in its own de- partment may be needful to the same indi- vidual inquirer after truth. Certain, at all events, it is, that we act unwisely if we attach exclusive importance to either ; and especi- ally w^e may erect a stumbUng-block, if to a man of acute understanding we insist only or chiefly upon internal evidence, or to a man of deep feeling we dwell too largely upon the external. Nor is it only by our mode of defending Christianity that occasion may be ministered to the progress of unbelief. The same effect may follow from a wrong or defective me- thod of exhibiting religious truth, by an im- perfect or injudicious teaching or preaching of the gospel. If the public ministrations and the religious literature of an age be almost entirely occupied with the intellectual aspect LECTURE IV. 1^37 of Christianity, treating the substance of the gospel merely as a science, and sinking reli- gion in theology, the effect is spiritual stag- nation within the church, with a great ad- vantage to those who openly assail her from without, and a large accession to their ranks. And, on the other hand, if rehgion be exhi- bited as a matter of mere sentiment or feel- ing,— if all the efforts of its friends and min- isters are directed with a view to move the heart and stimulate the conscience, without due care to inform the judgment, and to make men acquainted with the grounds of a rational behef, — and, above all, if an age be marked by enthusiasm or fanaticism properly so called, — if there be a prevalence of false or fictitious sentiment, — if there be the cant of affected sanctity in the place of true reli- gious earnestness, and censoriousness in the place of zeai, — then we may too surely pre- dict that many a mind which is nurtured in this sickly atmosphere will pass into a state of speculative unbelief, and will openly de- clare against that gospel which it has never thoroughly believed, at the same time that it revolts against those excesses and abuses by which it has been inwardly disgusted. If, however, such mischief has ensued from defective or mistaken preaching of the gospel. 138 LECTURE IV. then who shall estimate the injui'y occasioned hy formal, insincere and heartless preaching ^^ Who shall describe the advantage given to the cause of infidelity by the teachings and ministrations of men who seem to speak as if great realities were only fables, or at least as if they were not themselves inwardly af- fected by a persuasion of their truth ? And more than this, must we not confess with sorrow that infidelity has been often nou- rished by the worldly spirit, — by the careless and sometimes even notoriously wicked lives of unworthy ministers ? Above all, — again with sorrow be it spoken, yes, with deep sorrow be it spoken, — while yet we thank God for bright examples of piety and virtue, for the lives of saints and even for the deaths of martyrs, among the higher orders of our clergy, — still, if we love the truth, we cannot but declare that infidelity has sometimes found its choicest pabulum in the sloth and apathy, the avarice and worldly craft, the duplicity and treachery, the spirit of self-aggrandisement and self- indulgence, or the jealous, haughty, over- bearing, and despotic temper, too frequently displayed by men who have been called to occupy commanding and conspicuous stations in the church. Not that the fault in this matter lies wholly with the clergy. Alas ! LECTURE IV. 139 the low standard of piety and virtue which has from time to time prevailed throughout the church, has given great occasion to the enemy to blaspheme (122) ; and fearful are the wounds which have been inflicted on the cause of truth by those who have been admit- ted into the fellowship of Christ's religion, but have not laboured to "eschew those things that are contrary to their profession, and fol- low all such things as are agreeable to the same^" Nor can it be denied that, in the often accidental and sometimes unavoidable intermixture of the affairs and ministrations of religion with political and social abuses or corruptions, unbelievers have found occasion of too successfully inveighing against the whole system of the gospel. And we may add, reserving a more full consideration of this subject for the future, that the supersti- tious corruptions of religion have largely con- tributed to the same result. Again, who can sufficiently estimate the strength which infidelity has derived from the bad, defective, and injudicious education of the young {l^S)? Not to speak of education in the full sense of the term, including as it does the capital consideration of moral disci- pline and training, who may not perceive that the bad cause has been unconsciously c Collect for the third Sunday after Easter. 140 LECTURE IV. advanced by the errors which have been com- mitted by Christian parents and teachers in the matter of literary and scientific instruc- tion ? — It is a bad education, tending to infi- dehty, when the young are instructed in arts and sciences, and are not adequately taught the grounds and substance of religion, and not led rightly to regard this branch of know- ledge as a matter of the first importance ; so that religion is at once dissociated from the ordinary affairs of life, and then, by no inex- plicable process, the minds of youth are ac- customed to regard an acquaintance with di- vine truth as no better than a mere appendage to their other acquisitions, which appear to be of far greater dignity and value. This is a sore evil ; nor must we be surprised at any inroads which infidelity may make as long as large numbers of young persons pertaining to the educated classes of the community are sent into the world prepared to confess with- out a blush that they are ignorant of the very first principles of religion, uninformed in sa- cred history, unread in the very letter of the Bible ! — Again, it is a bad education, likely to nurture unbelief, when the young are taught to acquire knowledge, or to value its posses- sion, solely or chiefly for the purpose of dis- play, as a source of profit, or in any other way that tends to lower or hinder their esteem of LECTURE IV. 141 it for its own sake, and for its legitimate pur- poses in life. — It is also a bad education, lead- ing to the same result, which, proceeding upon the want of a due acquaintance with the limits and extent of the human faculties, gives an undue preponderance to the specu- lative or the reasoning powers, or calls these powers into premature and unhealthy exer- cise ; as when a teacher proceeds upon the principle that children ought not to be en- couraged to believe religious truths which they cannot clearly comprehend. — And, once more, that is a bad education, under this point of view, which is wholly superficial, giving a smattering of many portions of hu- man knowledge without a deep insight into any. The habit of mind which proceeds from such a method of instruction is directly in favour of an impression that there are no deep grounds of belief, no real elements and principles of knowledge, nothing but second- hand, uncertain information, nothing but the mere semblance or shadow of truth, in reli- gion, as in every thing else. And how can a mind thus trained be expected to repel the plausible objections or arguments of unbe- lievers, which, superficial as they may be, are yet as solid as any other with which that mind has ever been in contact? True indeed it is 142 LECTURE IV. that much of our knowledge must be super- ficial to the last ; but if we have been real students in any one branch of learning or of science, we shall know how to estimate what is superficial at its true value ; and we shall be secured from the danger of many a flimsy argument, and many a shallow preten- sion, on the part of men who would shake our belief in Christianity, by declamation, sophis- try, or wit. At the same time, there can be no doubt that not only the defect, but the perversion and abuse of literary studies and of scientific research, have sometimes acted as occasions of unbelief. It has been made a subject of just complaint, that while men of one science do not intrude upon the provinces of other sciences, men of all sciences intrude upon theology (124). And it may be especially re- marked that much of that infidelity which exists in the form of materialism has found its occasion in the cultivation of physical science. The mind that is deeply engaged in researches concerning second causes, and especially the mind that is busily conversant with the practical application of scientific principles to mechanical purposes, or to the advancement of professional pursuits, hereby receives a training perhaps too much in LECTURE IV. 143 harmony with its original disposition to overlook the great First Cause, and to with- hold due attention from moral and spiritual truth. Such then are the principal sources from which it appears that the stream of Infidelity, from age to age, has flowed. Sometimes it proceeds, more or less directly, from sinful self-will, and the desires of a depraved heart, in union with a conscience either restless, or, more frequently, unawakened, blind, and dead: — sometimes it comes from pride of intellect, seeking all knowledge in itself — spurning the limits which have been assigned to it, — dis- daitiing obscurity where yet it is impossible that all can be clear, or demanding demon- sti-ation in cases where probability is the best and safest guide that has been vouchsafed to us : — sometimes, again, it may be traced to a ca?'€less and negligent understanding, mis- guided, misinformed, and losing itself too easily and too willingly in the labyrinths of error: — and lastly, these evil propensities and dispositions are too often favoui^ed and che- rished by external conditions and circum- stances which throng around the heart and mind already prepared for delusion. And therefore, — apart from a consideration of that judicial blindness which may be inflicted on 144 LECTURE IV. those who have grieved the Holy Spirit, — and of those temptations of Satan w^hich are specially adapted to produce a speculative rejection of the gospel, — having regard to no more than the purely human causes and oc- casions of this fearful state of mind, — surely there is reason why we should sincerely and fervently unite, from time to time, in that meek petition, " From hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and Commandment, good Lord, deliver us !" The same desire and deprecation may arise from a due reflection upon the effects and consequences w^hich Infidelity is adapted to produce (125), considered in relation either to personal character and happiness, or to the condition of society at large. When, from any cause whatever, speculative unbelief has taken possession of the mind, what is the result ? Truly we may answer, in the words of Scripture, " Their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah ; their grapes are grapes of gall ; their clusters are bitter ^" — Infidelity, according to its own profession, takes away all those principles of godliness, virtue, and consolation which the go- spel especially supplies ; — and, whatever may be its promises on this behalf, it really sub- ^ Deut. xxxii. 12. LECTURE IV. 145 stitutes nothing in their room. It overthrows the very foundations of morality and good- ness, withdrawing their strongest and most commanding motives, and destroying the sanctions by which their claims are most firmly supported. It lowers the standard of moral excellence even to the dust, and causes its very idea to pass under a terrible eclipse. It degrades human nature, in theory, to a level little higher than that of the brutes ; and, in its practical effect, it is known to have induced those habits of intemperate sensuality which sink their votaries far lower than that level. Depriving men of the sense of a friendly relation to Almighty God, and sometimes even of a sense of dependence on his providence and will, — and at the same time shutting out the prospect of an immor- tality to come, — it robs them of that true self-respect, that right sense of the worth and dignity of their own nature, and of the importance of this present condition of being, which, where it properly exists, may be made highly useful against the debasing influence of surrounding iniquity and vice. Infidelity cramps the best energies of the human soul, and at the same time cuts it off from that sacred alliance by which it might otherwise receive a perpetual accession of liberty and L 146 LECTURE IV. strength. — In its effects upon human happi- ness, the work of destruction is complete ; it takes away all ground of solid satisfaction and well- assured peace of mind ; compelling its adherents to declare that a long life of earthly prosperity has been to its unbelieving possessors no better than a long course of emptiness and weariness, of disappointment, vexation, and sorrow. — And, as for the pre- paration which it makes for that future state of being which it even refuses to acknow- ledge, how can it be expected but that the very entrance upon that state, face to face with that God whom it has denied or whose word it has rejected, will fill it with inde- scribable and incurable dismay ! If, lastly, from the effects of unbelief upon the well-being of individuals, we pass to its results upon society, how appalling is the scene which reveals itself! Mournfully does this world's history bear witness to the fact, that Infidelity, whatever be the form which it at any time assumes, saps the foundations of civil authority and of civilized society, destroys all true patriotism, and gives full course to the miseries which follow in the train of unbounded and lawless ambition ; and that, by its fierce democratic spirit, its contempt of marriage, and its hostility to all LECTURE IV. 147 the sacred ties and sympathies of domestic affection, — by its spirit of intolerance and impious fanaticism, with its instigation of the malignant passions of a people even to san- guinary violence and rage, — by its want of good faith and of all those principles of truth and honesty which contribute to bind man to man, — by its frequent encouragement of licentiousness, its low estimate of human life, and its want of all dread of future retribu- tion, leading to the unscrupulous commission of acts of cruelty without a shadow of com- punction, and to the perpetration of deeds of horror without the feeling of dismay, — by these attributes and tendencies which un- questionably belong to it, disclosing them- selves sometimes singly and sometimes in fearful combination, Infidelity can be re- garded in no other light than as the de- stroyer of public safety, — the promoter of tur- bulence, anarchy and confusion, — the most fiend-like enemy of the whole family of man. If we look to the close of the last century, w^e find that "outrage upon outrage, horror upon horror, falsehood upon falsehood, the annihilation of truth, order, justice and hu- manity, were the bitter fruits of that blas- phemy, to disseminate which had been the unceasing object of the professed advocates L 2 148 LECTURE IV. of liberty and reason (126)." And if we would be satisfied concerning the design and ten- dency of kindred infidelity in our own day and generation, it may be well for us to at- tach due weight to a fact which has been credibly reported to myself, that, a short time since, when an infidel emissary was asked. Why are you so active and laborious in spreading atheistical principles ? that ques- tion was met by the significant reply, 'Be- cause England can never be revolutionized so long as Christianity retains its hold upon the people !' How then can we duly estimate the mag- nitude and number of the evils which Infi- delity involves, and how can we thoroughly contrast them with the blessings of the go- spel ? We should only perplex our vision by an attempt to bring this whole subject under our review. Let us ask singly, in conclusion, what is the aspect of speculative unbelief upon human hope (127) ? Where are the hopes of Infidelity; and if any exist, what is their abundance, their richness, and their blessedness ? What is their brightness in the hour of sorrow, their radiance and glory in the valley of the shadow of death ? In the mind of one unbeliever there may exist some- thing like a hope of future happiness, — but, LECTURE IV. 149 alas, how vague, how uncertain, and how dim ; — a hope that may smile upon a man while reading a philosopher's treatise, but will expire when he lays it down again, — a hope that will mock its possessor in the day of trial, and when most needed will miserably perish. — Another tells us plainly that he has no hope at all, he has nothing but uncer- tainty at best. " I give my body to the dust, and my soul to the great Perhaps. I am going to take a leap in the dark (128)." — An- other hopes — if hope this may be called — for blank annihilation ; or, at best, he regales himself with bright prospects of the progress of the human race : — but if he be asked what he expects his own lot to be in the day of that glory which will cover the earth, his answer is, Just such as the lot of a wave that appears once for all upon the surface of the deep, and is then swallowed up, to appear in its own distinct form no more again for ever. How altogether different from the prospects of the gospel ! Here is indeed a future for humanity at large, more bright and glorious than any that has ever had place in the most glowing visions of the unbelieving mind ; — but here is also for every individual believer a " hope of eternal life V that " maketh not f Titus iii. 7. 150 LECTURE IV. ashamed^." The cross of the Redeemer stands at the gate of heaven. It is Faith that dis- cerns it there ; and then Hope looks up from this poor earth, from all its sorrows and from all its joys, and triumphantly exclaims, "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers !" There may be hope wherever there is faith ; but without it there can be none, — none that is worthy of the name, — none that will not eventually leave the soul desolate, friendless, and helpless, in the dark- ness of everlasting despair. g Rom. V. 5. LECTURE V. THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF SUPERSTITION. Romans i. 23. Professing themselves to be ivise, they became fools. JtiAVlNG considered the nature and the forms, the causes, occasions, and effects, of Infidelity or speculative unbelief, we proceed now to institute a similar inquiry concerning Superstition (129). And here we must ask, in the first place, What is Superstitmi ? It would be unprx)fit- able, on the present occasion, to make any remarks on the obscure etymology of the word (130); but it is of great importance that we endeavour to obtain a definite and correct idea of that habit of mind and con- sequent course of practice which the word may be rightly employed to signify. There are vague and imperfect descriptions of this evil, which merely remind us of some of its forms or developments, instead of telling us where the root of the matter lies : and it is 152 LECTURE V. not too much to say, that these inadequate statements are worse than unsatisfactory ; when accepted as propounding the whole truth, they are delusive and dangerous. — Su- perstition is imperfectly described when it is represented as consisting merely in a wrong or mystical view of the connection of causes and effects (131) ; or as being no more than an error of judgment by which we errone- ously ascribe certain things or events to a supernatural cause, or expect from them a supernatural effect. Defective also are the views of some Romish writers, who, following Augustin, make the essence of Superstition to consist in the worship of created objects, or in intercourse with evil spirits (132) ; con- fining their regard, in fact, to only one spe- cies of superstition, the idolatry of the hea- then world. — A better definition is that which may be found in Aquinas (133), whereby Su- perstition is made to consist in the offering of worship to an improper object, or in an improper manner. But, while we may accept this as a description of superstitious worship, still we are left to remember that worship is not the only thing which may be properly called superstitious; and the question remains. Why do men worship these unlawful objects, or adopt these unlawful modes of adoration ? LECTURE V. 153 In other words, we are still obliged to ask, What is Superstition itself? Now, the fundamental idea of Superstition, as of true religion, is Faith. Whether it re- late to the connection of causes and effects, to the agency of demons in human affairs, or to the object or mode of divine worship, the form of superstition is every where a de- velopment of faith. — And the idea of super- stition again coincides with that of religion, inasmuch as both alike have for their object God and the invisible world, considered in relation to ourselves (134). Hence it is that superstition and religion are so easily and so often confounded, sometimes wilfully, some- times as by oversight. They occupy, as it were, the same territory in the human mind, and have to do with the same class of expe- riences and the same kind of actions. The question then is. What is it that creates the difference ? What is that which distin- guishes superstition from religion ? There is a popular method of comparing Superstition with Infidelity which embodies, although not without some confusion, the true answer to this question. It is commonly said that Superstition consists in believing too much, and Infidelity in believing too little. This statement, however, is not pre- 154 LECTURE V. else and accurate. The question is not one of more or less ; but it relates to two different habits of mind, — the habit of not believing, and the habit of believing. Infidelity is the habit of not believing religious truth, suffici- ently declared and propounded ; Superstition is the habit of believing that M^hich seems to be religious truth, but is unsupported by sufficient evidence : and it often happens that the same mind which refuses to believe the gospel, is yet strong in its belief of that which is not the gospel. Subjectively speak- ing, and therefore most accurately on a point like this, Infidelity is a refusing to believe where there is reason for belief, Superstition is believing without reason ; and hence prac- tically, with reference to religious truth, In- fidelity is the habit of not religiously believ- ing what God has revealed, Superstition, the habit of religiously believing what He has not revealed (135). The difference lies not in the presence or absence of faith, but in the quality of that faith, whether as rea- sonable or unreasonable, as founded or not founded upon sufficient grounds, and as hav- ing for its object what is true or what is false. Religious faith is fundamentally a reasonable belief of revealed truth ; Infidelity is an unreasonable disbelief oi this truth and LECTURE V. 155 rejection of its evidence ; Superstition is an unreasonable belief oi that which is mistaken for truth concerning the nature of God and the invisible world, our relations to these un- seen objects, and the duties which spring out of those relations. In superstition there is faith unwarranted or misplaced ; and hence the heathen rites and ceremonies of worship were superstitious, not when they were observed by unbelieving men, but when they were ob- served in faith, without which, as one of the ancients says (136), they were utterly sapless and devoid of meaning. In Mahometanism there is superstition, because there is an unfounded belief of various falsehoods, all springing from the irpcorov y\revbo9 that Maho- met is the prophet of God. And the same may be said of Rabbinism, because it reli- giously believes many things as true upon the spurious authority of the Talmud. This therefore is the fundamental characteristic of Superstition ; that, in matters relating to religion and the unseen world, it believes fictions in the place of truth ; that its creed is adopted, and its observances are practised, without adequate authority (185). It matters not precisely what that creed and those ob- servances are, but what they are not. And accordingly, Tertullian may be said to have 156 LECTURE V. written with far greater insight into the na- ture of Superstition than Augustin, when he denounced certain observances as super- stitious, not on account of any direct con- formity with heathen idolatry, or as con- nected with any supposed intercourse with demons, but simply on the ground of a want of command or warrant by the Lord or his Apostles, and thus as tending to make their observers like the heathen (137). If we inquire concerning the forms ami de- velopments of Superstition {1S8), as they have appeared in different ages and countries of the world, we here find substantial similarity amidst great variety and even diversity of detail. Whether we look to the east or to the west, to the seats of superstition of earlier or of later date, we discover that, with due allowance for diversities of climate, race, and other outward conditions, superstition has every where borne substantially the same features, and has been uniform in its aspect upon human life and history. We may consider these acts and expres- sions of superstition as they have reference to the nature and attributes of the Divine Being, — to the methods of approaching Him in the way of worship or with other accept- able service, — or to the existence, works, and LECTURE V. 157 will of other supernatural beings supposed to exert an influence upon human weal and woe. With regard to the nature and attributes of God, we find that superstition, in some way or other, deifies the creature ; ascribing di- vine nature and quaUties sometimes to the heavenly bodies or to the earthly elements, either directly, or indirectly in the way of symbol or of image ; — sometimes to human beings, such as departed heroes, benefactors or rulers of mankind, or individuals in the ancestral line of the worshipper himself, re- presented as retaining, more or less, the attri- butes of human nature, human passions, and even human vices in their worst excess and under their most revolting aspects ; — some- times again to the abstract qualities of the human soul, or the ideal of human virtue or depravity ; — sometimes to powers of malig- nancy and mischief, gods of cruelty, blood- shed, and war; — and not unfrequently to the supposed unseen inhabitants and guardians of some particular locality. As to the kind of worship and service which superstition offers to its deities, this has been found usually to consist in external rites and ceremonies, formal observances, attended with pomp and splendour barbaric or refined, and almost always strongly marked either by fe- 158 LECTURE V. rocity or frivolity, by austerity on the one hand or licentiousness on the other, and not unfrequently by the combination of blood- stained rites with the indulgence of most voluptuous practices. Prominent among the rites of superstition have been certain de- based and perverted forms of sacrifice, — sa- crifice which degenerated from what we doubt not was originally a divine institution of high and blessed import, until it descended in practice even to the murderous rites of Mo- loch, after having embodied the wrong idea that the objects of false worship were de- lighted with the enjoyment of the offerings themselves, and that divine favour was pro- cured as the merited reward of the gratifica- tion thus presented, or as a return for the price thus paid. — With the offering of sacri- fice has been connected a sacrificing priest- hood; a body of persons regarded, not merely as ministers in religious worship, but as me- diators between the gods and men, without whose good will and services there could be no access for the worshipper, and no accept- ance of his offerings. — And lastly, the annals of superstition abound with records of the works of supposed personal merit ; the merit of doing or of suffering something by which the performers of these works might establish LECTURE V 159 for themselves a claim of right to the divine clemency or bounty. Works of merit are common to the superstition of the Hindoo from remote ages of antiquity, and to the Mahometan whose system is of more recent date : and the same may be affirmed with regard to meritorious sufferings or labours, — penances, pilgrimages, an endless variety of ascetic observances, and not unfrequently the prospect of some kind of purgatory after death. The same kind of uniformity marks the an- nals of superstition considered as including an unenlightened dread of natural objects or events, arising from mispersuasion concern- ing their origin and purport ; or as having regard to demons and other supernatural agents less than divine, or to occult opera- tions and influences supposed to have a bear- ing upon human destiny (139). Great is the variety of appliances which superstition has always had in store, in the shape of supposed supernatural means of procuring natural good, or of averting, and sometimes of inflict- ing, natural evil. Regarded under this point of view, and supposed to subserve this desir- able purpose, witchcraft and magic, charms and incantations, amulets, relics, and the like, are coextensive with mediating priests and 160 LECTURE V. other forms and appurtenances of supersti- tious worship. And to these things we may add a long catalogue of superstitious ways and methods of seeking acquaintance with futurity, and with other secrets as dark and mysterious to the mind of man as those which futurity involves. Astrology and di- vination, with their omens, portents, and ora- cles,— dreams, visions, and impressions on the mind, — vulgar predictions, and, again, the arts of witchcraft and magic, — have been held in high esteem by superstitious men as supposed to possess the august and supernatural power of uplifting the veil which overhangs the fu- ture, or of drawing aside the curtain that conceals from ordinary observation some pre- cious secret of the present. It is a fact not to be denied, although deeply to be deplored, that from an early period in the history of the Christian Church, superstition mingled itself with the purer elements of gospel truth and religious wor- ship; adhering to Christianity partly in the way of an adroit imitation of the gospel itself, and partly in the way of professed embellish- ment : — an imitation to be detected only by a real and practical acquaintance with the divine original ; — an embellishment which pos- sessed manifold attractions in the eyes of LECTURE V. 161 those who were not sufficiently acquainted with the beauty of the simple truth. The imposture was adapted to the age which gave it birth ; it gathered strength in still more gloomy times which followed ; and during many generations there were few men, if any, even among those to whom the gospel was " a savour of life unto life," who could wholly disengage their minds from the thraldom which had been prepared for them, or could even discern the nature and extent of their spiritual bondage. The leaven of supersti- tion pervaded the churches both of the east and of the west ; or rather, in all parts of the world, the leaven of gospel truth made slow progress, and sometimes appeared to be almost lost in the mass of human super- stition. To speak more particularly of the west ; it was a mournful spectacle which was here dis- played not long after the time in which Christianity became the religion of the em- pire. The fault was not, — and in fact this would have been no fault at all, — that due importance was attached to the externals of religion (140) ; that Christianity was regarded as something more than a divine philosophy; and that in the administration of the gospel and the celebration of divine offices regard M 162 LECTURE V. was had to the complex nature of man, as a creature endowed with bodily senses, in con- junction with the powers of his intellect, and the feelings of his heart. Superstition lies not here ; although here may indeed be one of its readiest points of contact with what is holy, pure, and good (141), But this evil has its roots, as we have said, in false belief; and it was under the influence of a false belief, — of a reception of falsehood in the guise of Christian truth, — that we find the churches of the west, as early as the time of Constantine, rapidly sinking into supersti- tion (142). The practical part of religion was corrupted before the theoretical (143); and it is worthy of remark that certain lead- ers of the church sometimes promoted, by their own personal influence, or by the gene- ral tone of their language, those very super- stitions against which they themselves made special protestations. In the actual progress of corruption, the first thing which strikes our observation is that multiplication of outward observances, that gorgeousness of ceremonial and pomp of circumstance attaching to religious offices, which it may be hard to denounce as un- christian and positively wrong, while yet we may instinctively feel that it involves an LECTURE V. 163 error of excess. Soon, however, it became evident that under this weight of decoration there was lurking a real and distinctive ele- ment of superstition (144), in that practical persuasion of men's minds whereby the form of worship was supposed to constitute the essence of religion, and hence outward cere- monies were in reality made to usurp the place of godliness and virtue. And soon did the practical Christianity of the age degenerate almost entirely into the performance of a cumbrous ceremonial, including a large num- ber of ritual observances which not only did not flow from the precepts or the spirit of the Christian religion, but were directly at variance with its first p?'inciples. This was already superstition ; it now became evident that a false faith was growing side by side with the true, if it had not already sup- pressed the growth of the heavenly plant, and occupied its place. In course of time, little less than the whole mass of superstitious error which had de- veloped itself in the heathen world was en- grafted on the religion of the gospel. Grave errors were admitted concerning the object of divine worship; for while prayer and praise were still addressed to Him to whom alone they can be due, adoration was concurrently M 2 164 LECTURE V. directed to the Virgin Mary, to angels, and to saints ; and, at length, to such a pitch was this form of demon- or hero-worship carried, that the worship of the true God was ob- scured and almost buried beneath the cere- monials of a new idolatry. — Great again were the errors that prevailed with regard to the mode of worship; for, while prayer and praise, and the administration of the Christian sa- craments, and even the public reading or preaching of God's word, were never totally suspended, yet were these acts of reasonable service partly sensualized and evacuated by the mode of their performance, and partly corrupted, overloaded, or distorted, in conse- quence of mistaken views of the divine require- ments, and through an unscriptural and per- verse attachment to externals as possessing a supposed intrinsic value or power,togetherwith the copious indulgence of arbitrarily contrived and self-pleasing worship, such as was neither acceptable to the Most High under the old dispensation, nor is permitted under the new. — At the same time full scope was given to a superstitious reliance on the agency of super- natural beings less than divine in the conduct of human affairs ; so that the tutelary saints of Christendom vied in number with the household gods of pagan antiquity ; — in the LECTURE V. 165 doctrine of the sacraments, which had lost its scriptural simplicity, large satisfaction was given to the mind that was craving for the operation of magical mca?itations, and mys- terious, but potetit, charms; — visions were ^een, prophecies uttered, and pretended mira- cles were wrought, not indeed by any express enactment, but under the immediate pa- tronage and approbation of the teachers and rulers of the church ; — the heathen doctrine of merit, of meritorious works or meritorious sufferings in this world, and purgatorial suf- ferings in a future state, was adopted to the full ; — and, worst of all, the doctrine of human mediation, — that "false system" which "as- sumes the great business of pardon and re- conciliation with God to be a transaction that belongs to priestly negotiation (145)," — this heathenish theory of the power of the priest was virtually exalted to the rank of a Christian doctrine; and it assumed continually greater prominence and importance, until at length it reached its culminating point when the papal supremacy was made an article of faith (146). Here, alas, are examples, only too copious and too strong, of erroneous practice founded on false belief in matters of religion, — that is to say, of Superstition, — rampant in the 166 LECTURE V. Christian church. And how can it be other- wise than that superstition must abound, whenever the poisonous maxim is suffered to prevail that the traditions of the church are to be treated with as reverent regard as the letter of God's word ? Here is at once a foundation laid for misbelief without limit and without restraint. This principle, — the principle of acknowledging human Tradition as of coordinate authority with the word of God, — this is of itself Superstition, properly so called, in its deepest, firmest, most vigorous, and most productive root. It is needless here to touch upon a con- troversy w^hich was once keenly agitated, whether or not, and if at all how far, Romish superstition is to be referred directly to a pagan origin (147). Certain it is that, so far as the one was not borrowed from the other, they are both to be traced to common sources in the mind and condition of man ; and the question which really deserves our notice, and which we must now proceed to consider, is this, What are those causes and occasions of supei'stition which exist in human nature and come to light on the surface of man's history (148)? Superstition takes its origin, sometimes, in a disturbed and restless conscience {\^^\ — the LECTURE V. 167 conscience of man in some measure desirous of being delivered from his guilt, while yet little, if at all, aware of the real nature of that evil which has brought him into a state of condemnation. There is a dread of pun- ishment or of other evil consequences, and therefore a desire to avert the impending calamity (150) ; but the dread is instinctive, and the desire is selfish ; superstition shrinks from the penalty of transgression, but only on the transgressor's own account, that he may escape from suffering. And here lies the difference between the ultimate subjec- tive source of superstition and that of Christ- ian faith. That faith has for its foundation an awakened conscience ; but it is a consci- ence that has been aroused to recognise the fact of sin by that perfect Law which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, has at the same time displayed to the moral sense the evil nature of transgression as contrary to the will of God, which is holy, just, and good. And the desire which has been kindled by this stimulated conscience and awakened mind is a desire, not merely to escape the bitter consequences of sin, but to be deliver- ed from sin itself. To this complex feeling the gospel addresses itself with an adequate provision. It comes, as we have seen, pro- 168 LECTURE V. claiming at once the gift of pardon, and the bestowment of spiritual life and vigour, through Jesus Christ : and it begins by paci- fying conscience; it causes love to God, which is spiritual life, to flow from a sense of God's pardoning love to us, with a hearty acquiescence in reconciliation by the blood of the atonement. The gospel, by the power of the Holy Spirit, meets all the wants of the soul that sincerely desires to be delivered at once from the guilt of sin and from its power ; and it is to this state of mind that its voice is specially directed. — But there are other conditions of man's soul which dispose him to listen rather to the voice of a stranger. Miserable man, whose conscience is dead to a sense of his own deep guilt in the sight of God, or who is so in love with sin, or so de- termined to persevere in the practice of in- iquity, that he will not endure the thought of guilt and condemnation as its sure accom- paniment ! He is an easy prey, as we have already seen, to that speculative unbelief which may confirm him in his ungodliness, and keep his soul at a distance from pardon and peace, from holiness and happiness, for ever. — Unhappy too the man whose consci- ence is alarmed, but who is willing to accept an opiate by which his terror may be allayed LECTURE V. 169 without the destruction of the evil that has brought guilt upon his soul ; — the man who is desirous to pacify conscience and at the same time to continue in sin. To such a state of feeling the gospel does not address itself; the man who entertains it is not pre- pared to become a disciple of Jesus, but he is prepared to become the victim of some de- lusive superstition — Or, there may, in some cases, exist a desire for purity together with a desire for pardon ; but then it is for purity in order to pardon : a desire which still betrays the want of a due sense of the real nature, the deep pollution and demerit of sin ; a desire too which implies the thought of man's becoming, more or less directly, a saviour to himself; or, to say the very least, which inverts that divinely established order of things whereby objective redemption pre- cedes the subjective, and even makes way for its accomplishment. And here again we have before our view a state of mind and heart, not met by gospel promise, but one for which superstition abundantly professes to provide. The gospel proclaims pardon in order to holi- ness ; penances, pilgrimages, and ascetic ob- servances without number, speak of holiness in order to pardon. So that we may say, in brief, that one great preparative for that mis- 170 LECTURE V. belief or false persuasion of the mind which is the fundamental element of superstition consists in a conscience awakened but not pacified, combined, more or less, with the want of heartfelt, active love to God. And without thus taking into account a disordered conscience and a perverted moral sense, we shall be utterly at a loss to assign an ade- quate cause for much of the superstition which has existed among mankind from the earliest ages to the present day. It must be traced, in a considerable measure, to the spirit of bondage and of guilty fear. By no means, however, would we affirm that an uneasy conscience, or a dread of God and of righteous retribution, is the only state of moral feeling which makes way for the rise of superstition in the human mind. Superstition, especially that which concerns itself with supposed supernatural agencies for the prevention of evil or for the attain- ment of good, may exist in the man of a thoroughly worldly mind (151), devoid of any anxiety concerning his relation to God, or even unconscious of that relation. Hope and fear may arise from the primary affections of love and hatred when directed solely to the possession or avoidance of this world's sen- sible good and evil. And in the covetous. LECTURE V. 171 eager, or tremulous desire of a heart over- powered by a love of the world we may find a basis for extreme credulity, misbelief, or unwarranted persuasion concerning the me- thods of obtaining possession of worldly goods, or of security against temporal loss and harm. The passion of fear, blindly shrinking from its object (152), or that of hope, blindly pursuing it, is always ready to pave the way for Superstition. — And in this work other passions may concur. Pride, or the vain ela- tion of the fleshly mind (153), when self de- mands to be the repairer of the breach which self has made, not unfrequently combines with a consciousness of guilt in giving rise to various forms of penance, and severities of an ascetic life. The pride of reason, which revolts at the idea of remaining ignorance, and the busy but morbid curiosity of the lo- gical understanding, may conduct to the un- warranted belief of superstition, no less than to the presumptuous speculations of anti- Christian unbelief; and even spurious hu- mility may lead to the same result. — The same may be affirmed of sensuous tendencies, unenlightened and uncontrolled (154), — of sensual prope?isities sinfully indulged (155), — of the vain love of novelty or a morbid craving after excitement, — of fnisguided zeal 172 LECTURE V. (156), — and of self-love seeking gratification in arbitrary additions to divine institutions or precepts (157). Even natural ajfection, un- disciplined and uncontrolled, may prepare the way for superstition ; as is manifest in those customs which have been founded upon inordinate affection towards the memory of the dead. Enthusiasm, properly so called, especially in some of its extreme develop- ments, when men are ready to mistake im- pressions of their own minds for the voice of God; and regard themselves as possessing an inward light independent of the Scripture, and raising them above it, is clearly to be re- garded as a predisposing cause of abandon- ment to the charms of superstition ; a fact which became manifest in the case of many of the English puritans, who eventually yielded to the appropriate attractions of the church of Rome. It has been found too that, in morbid sentiment and perverted feelings of even a more devout or sober cast, super- stition has found a vantage-ground for its assaults upon the mind, and has been able to overpower or entrap it, when in this un- healthy state, with those arguments or pre- tensions which would otherwise have been wisely rejected as altogether powerless and vain. And hence it is not without cause that LECTURE V. 173 danger of this kind has been ascribed to reli- gious emotion misplaced, when impulse takes undue precedence of reason, or when the ex- citement of mere feehng occupies the place of conviction and deep principle. There is always harm in the want of a due subordi- nation of the powers of the soul, or of their right position and influence with regard to each other ; and it is one capital fault of su- perstition that hope or fear or some other affection lies at the foundation of its faith. With the Christian, as we have seen, faith is at the foundation of hope and fear and all other religious affections, — at the foundation even of that love to God by which his other affections are controlled; but with the super- stitious man this order is inverted, and faith is made to follow in the train of the affec- tions,— in the train, it may be, of turbulent and domineering passion. And vvhen this restlessness of passion is combined with the workings of an uneasy conscience, we Iiave the groundwork of superstition in its most prevalent and most intense developments. " The two peculiar features of man's existing condition are evil passions and an evil con- science. No superstition can become popular which does not provide or admit something to meet the craving demands of both (158)." 174 LECTURE V. We have thus far discovered preparatives, tendencies, and predispositions to superstition, rather than its direct and immediate source. Superstition is, essentially, a form of misbe- lief, and our question now must be, whence does this 7yiisbe lief arise? Even in the case of infidelity, or the ab- sence of belief, the corrupt will and con- science must be regarded as causes indirect rather than direct ; and they operate chiefly by means of withholding attention to the ob- ject of a true belief. Much more must super- stition, which involves a positive belief, be traced directly to some intellectual source. In our inquiry concerning this source we may be again assisted by contrasting the na- ture of superstition with that of Christian faith. When the conscience has been rightly convinced of sin, and the heart has been led to desire deliverance at once from its guilt and from its power, the inquiry thus raised is met by positive objective truth, the truth of revelation preaching peace, by Jesus Christ, and holiness, to be wrought in the souls of believers by the power of his Spirit. And Christian faith consists in the simple and cordial reception of this truth. But, for the cravings which arise from a disordered con- science, and from tumultuous passions such LECTURE V. 175 as have been now described, there is no satis- factory provision within the whole compass of the Bible ; the demand, how loud and ur- gent soever it may be, obtains no answer from without. But then it does raise an echo within the chambers of the mind. Imagi- nation with its fictions supplies the place of revelation with its truth. In the absence of objective realities corresponding to its desires, the mind believes its own inventions ; it must believe something, and in this case it gives credit to its own vain thoughts, substituting that which might be, or that which might be wished, for that which is. In the super- stitious, imagination supplies the place of rea- son ; and its visions are substituted for the truths of such a revelation as reason alone is able to appreciate and to accept. Hence it is that men have been in all ages willing to worship gods of their own invention ; they have first imagined, or pictured to themselves, certain beings such as they desire, such as would be indulgent to their sins, or such as would accept their own satisfactions for sin, and the offerings of their self-willed service, — and then they have cheerfully done homage to the phantoms of their own devising. Not that the exercise of the imagination is itself an evil, or that it must necessarily lead 176 LECTURE V. the mind into the labyrinths of religious de- lusion and error; the evil arises only from the exorbitant or licentious indulgence of this power of the mind (159), without control from some of the legitimate sources of our know- ledge ; and especially it has place when the fictions of imagination are made to usurp the place of knowledge. According to the con- stitution of our nature, by the will of God, the imagination is subject to this control ; and therefore mischief ensues from its morbid and unlawful excitement, or from the work- ings of its caprice. And hence it is not sim- ply to the imagination that we must trace the presence and power of superstition in the mind, — not only to imagination even as ex- cited by the feelings and desires of the soul, — but to imaginafio7i at once eopcited and un- checked. In other words, another element of superstition is ignorance, or want of know- ledge, and of that mental discipline for which knowledge is absolutely needful. It sometimes happens that ignorance is de- scribed as the parent of superstition in too broad and indiscriminating terms ; either in language which might be taken to imply that all uneducated persons must be intensely su- perstitious, or in such manner as to lead us to infer that this noxious temper must be LECTURE V. 177 altogether strange to the more learned and scientific portion of mankind. There ought to be certain distinctions and limitations in our statements on this subject. It is true, as we have said, that ignorance is one ele- ment in superstition, — an element of a nega- tive kind, consisting in the want of a neces- sary check ; but it is not true that this is the only element ; nor is it true that super- stition always implies a general ignorance or want of intellectual culture. The case may perhaps be fairly stated thus. In default of the cultivation and use of the mental powers, and of the knowledge to be thus procured, man, in his present state, is almost unavoid- ably exposed to superstition more or less gross and universal (160). At the same time, the highest degree of culture, and the largest measure of attainment, if alone, must not be regarded as a sufficient barrier against this evil ; it may be, and in many cases it actually will be, enough to save from the grosser forms of superstition, but it may leave the mind a prey to others. And more than this ; there are cases in which the exercise of intellect itself may become a source of superstition ; — speculation and philosophy (as, for example, the Hindoo theosophy, pantheism, and Neo- Platonism) have often led to this result(l6l); 178 LECTURE V. — and the logical understanding may find a congenial employment in constructing or completing a superstitious system, in sup- porting or defending it by arguments most elaborate and subtle, and in adorning it with artificial decorations ; as we may perceive in the case of the schoolmen who modelled and embellished the dogma of Transubstantia- tion. The possession of common informa- tion may suffice to save us from the illusions of the senses, from extravagant, devotion to sensible objects, or from gross superstition as to the agency of supernatural causes in the di- rection of human affairs ; but there is need of a knowledge of God in Christ, a knowledge derived from the pure fountain of revelation, and displayed to the mind by the enlighten- ing power of the Holy Spirit, in order to preserve us from false belief, and therefore from superstitious notions and practices, con- cerning the method of approach to the Divine Being, and the nature of acceptable service, together with many other particulars con- cerning the powers of the unseen world. — And, once more, when we speak of ignorance as a source of superstition, it should be care- fully remembered, that there is a supersti- tious bias of the mind against which no mere culture or niformation of the intellect can I LECTURE V. 179 oppose an effectual resistance, but which will rather avail to press into its own service all advantages derived from the most liberal in- struction and the most diligent study. It is true, beyond all doubt, that those grosser forms of superstition which relate to worldly good and evil can hardly find place among men of ordinary information in the present day, because their knowledge of natural causes and events is enough to control or check the fictions of the mind in this direc- tion. But at the same time it is not less true that there exists a reason why men of large attainments in literature or science are accessible to superstition of a more refined and exalted character, concerning our rela- tions to the Deity and our eternal destiny. The vastness of their knowledge discloses to them the fact that their ignorance is almost infinite, and hence they are ready to distrust at once their reason and their experience when occasion may appear to call for such humi- lity ; — deep religious consciousness, with a sense of unsatisfied need, may easily appear to minister such occasions not a few ; — and when, from the depths of their inmost soul there arises a call for a certain combination or order of events, however strange, they are more ready to believe the occurrence of N 2 180 LECTURE V. such a state of things, according to the dic- tates of their hearts, than to decide upon its non-existence or impossibihty, according to the testimony of their senses, or the conclu- sions of their understanding. — And thus it is that superstition may be traced, not simply to mere ignorance, but partly to mental neglect, inactivity, and indolence, and partly also to the misdirection, perversion, and irre- gular or proud excesses of the human mind, in all instances alike omitting the due dis- charge of its appointed functions in restrain- ing the licentiousness of a busy and vain imagination. We must therefore not be surprised at any phenomena which superstition may present, as long as any portion of mankind are the subjects of a guilty fear or of a worldly mincl^ in union with a wild imagination, indulged in its excesses by ignorance, or the want of appropriate and commanding knowledge. Causes such as these, — prompted and aided, as they have continually been, by secondary causes, or occasions, from without, — by the artifices of designing men seeking to gratify their ambition through means of influence derived from false pretensions to unearthly authority and power, or to satiate their avarice by the gains of their imposture (162), LECTURE V. 181 — by the charms of poetry and music, the graces of eloquence, the beauties of sculpture, painting, and architectural design, — by tales of the marvellous in legends and traditions, supported by the claim of veneration for antiquity (163), — by the contagious influence of sympathy among a crowd of devotees, or the members of a religious community or class, — and in many cases, doubtless, by the special and powerful, though unseen, opera- tion of the great father of lies in his at- tempts to subjugate the soul of man, — these things, I say, if duly considered, — and espe- cially if regarded in the strength of their frequent combination, — may be found amply sufficient to account for the existence and for the potency of all the superstitions by which the church has been infested from the earliest ages to the present day. It will be my endeavour, in the next Lec- ture, to describe the evil effects and conse- quences of superstition, with regard to indi- viduals, and to society, especially that sacred society, the Christian church. For the pre- sent, I remark, in conclusion, that the evil of which we are now speaking is insidious in its approach, plausible in its efforts to obtain a hold upon the mind, and of imperceptible and stealthy growth. It is one of those 182 LECTURE V. subtle delusions from which we must not hope to deliver, or even to protect, ourselves, ex- cept in proportion as we keep our hearts with diligence, watching unto prayer, and living in lawful dependence on the enlightening and sanctifying grace of the Spirit of truth and holiness. I say lawful dependence ; and I would earnestly remind you that our de- pendence is not lawful, unless we look for divine grace and heavenly protection, not only in answer to prayer, but also in the way of a devout and faithful use of the written word of God ; — the written word, regarded as the only foundation of our faith, our shield against error, the appointed lamp unto our feet and light unto our path ^ the dictate of infinite wisdom, and the voice of a father's love, alone able to make us " wise unto sal- vation, through faith which is in Christ Je- sus b." Why should we be willing for a moment to follow the ignes fatui of weak and sinful ignorance, or to wander at the promptings of our own bewildered minds, when our path may be bright with heavenly radiance, and our every step may be illuminated by the truth and Spirit of Him who has been made a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory a See Ps. cxix. 105. '^ 2 Tim. iii. 15. I LECTURE V. 183 of his people Israel "^ ? Why should we build upon the sand of man's vain imaginations, while we are faithfully and lovingly invited to;repose in safety on the Rock of ages ? De- voutly let us listen to that message of salva- tion, " Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner- stone, elect, precious ; and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded''." With thankful hearts let us continually give heed to the admonition of the Holy Spirit by St. Jude, " Ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life*"." c See Luke ii. 32. ^ i Pet. ii. 6. e Jude 20, 21. LECTURE VI. THE EFFECTS OF SUPERSTITION. Jonah ii. 8. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. JllAVING considered the sources of Super- stition, we now direct our attention to its consequences and results. The issues of un- belief, as we have ah^eady seen, are disastrous in the extreme, — the very opposite of those peaceful and happy effects which flow from Christian faith. But of what character are the fruits of Superstition ? Are they also noxious? Are they not possibly harmless? Let us attentively examine this question, as a question of deep practical importance. It may probably be found that the evils of Su- perstition are in themselves less pernicious or deadly than those of unbelief; but it will also appear that, regarded in their ultimate results, they deserve to be no less sincerely LECTURE VI. 185 deprecated, and no less assiduously avoided by all those who, through divine mercy, have obtained access to the blessings of the gospel. Much has been said, and in some respects truly said, concerning, not the harm, but the benefits, which have accrued to mankind from the influence of superstition and the observ- ance of its practices. It can hardly be denied that, while superstition has been always at- tended with evil, yet, under certain circum- stances, it appears to have been also product- ive of some good. As a principle of restraint, and especially of restraint from crimes against society, it is better than unbelief with even its best and most- refined philosophy ; nor can there be room for doubt that, throughout the heathen world, both in ancient and in modern times, large contributions to the temporal welfare of society have been ex- tracted from superstitious fear. "A super- stitious terror," says a writer of the present day, "has been the means of restraining mul- titudes from crime, when love to God or to virtue would have been altogether ineffec- tual,"— he means, of course, in the absence of that love to God or to virtue which would have been effectual, if present. "Witches and fairies, ghosts and demons, gods and goddesses, the penances inflicted by the 186 LECTURE VI. priesthood, and the terrors brought from the invisible world, (we allude of course to super- stitious terrors), have all exercised a power in keeping back mankind from deeds which would have proved injurious to society. The peopling of the air, the streams, and the woods with supernatural beings, and of the darkness with ghosts, has deterred from the commission of crime multitudes who were not prepared to be awed by the thought of an ominipotent God. Every one knows how dangerous it is, so far as the peace of society is concerned, to remove even a false religion until such time as a true religion has taken its place ; for in rooting up the weed, the very grain may be torn up along with it." This statement may be admitted as contain- ing a full representation of the truth. But let us carefully observe how far the truth extends. The benefits of superstition have reference chiefly, if not wholly, to society ; that is, to human society, with all its cor- ruptions, and without its appropriate remedy, — society beyond the influence of true reli- gion, or refusing to admit that influence. Besides this, so far as any good effects pro- ceed from superstition, they flow, in fact, not from the false belief itself, but from those elements of truth and fragments of religion LECTURE VI. 187 which some superstitious system embodies or involves, — from those sacred embers which still glow beneath the rubbish of error and delusion (164). And further still, it should be well considered, that, whatever advantages may be supposed to proceed from the infe- rior principle, the same are also to be ascrib- ed, only in a far higher degree, to the influ- ence of puie religion. Evil may be held in check by superstition ; but by the gospel it is destroyed : — superstition may repress its outward development ; Christianity attacks it at its root. These things having been premised, we proceed to observe that, notwithstanding all considerations which can fairly be adduced in its favour, Superstition not only appears to fearful disadvantage in contrast with the true and elevating religion of the gospel, but it becomes plain that, while the religious principle is essentially a good thing, — a good of the highest order, the jewel of the soul, — superstition, on the contrary, is essentially an evil thing, — hurtful to our spiritual na- ture, at variance with human peace and hap- piness, and tending to eclipse the brightness and to impair the blessedness of any degree of Christian principle or spiritual goodness with which it may coexist. For it must be 188 LECTURE VI. freely admitted that superstition may to a certain extent have place in the mind of an individual, or among a people, together with some measure of Christian knowledge and of vital godliness ; while, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that so far as it does exist, it operates as an element of evil. Antece- dently to experience, we might expect, from the nature of the case, the following condi- tions and results. Superstition being funda- mentally a kind of religious faith, — although faith misplaced, faith on a wrong foundation, — it would seem likely that the superstitious mind may embrace some other habits of reli- gious faith, — and if so, why not some elements of Christian faith ? Still, however, we should not expect to find in such a soul the faith of the gospel in its integrity and the fulness of its power; because, so far as a man's religious faith or consciousness has found and acqui- esced in a false object, such object is likely to occupy some portion of that room which is rightfully and exclusively demanded for the object of a right faith, that is to say, the true God, the real Saviour, His precious pro- mises, and the whole compass of His holy word. Nor is this all : but, as the faith which superstition implies may thus be ex- pected to occupy some place which ought to LECTURE VI. 189 be better filled, so also the positive false- hoods which that perverse and misplaced faith brings into the soul cannot but exer- cise a deleterious influence upon the positive truths which a right faith is at the same time supplying. So that while, in some re- spects, superstition may be expected more or less readily to amalgamate with Christian faith, there are also other points of view under which we may foresee that it will con- tribute to corrupt and empoison, or even to neutralize and supplant, that faith. And there can never be any truth in a supposi- tion, which seems to be sometimes vaguely and inconsiderately indulged, that an infu- sion of superstition in the truly religious mind may contribute to make it none the worse, but rather in some degree the better ; — a supposition which, upon a moment's re- flection, may be discovered to imply that God's pure truth is not sufficient for its pur- pose,— that it needs the support of a vain imagination, the supplement of a spiritual lie, in order to work with full effect upon the soul of fallen man. As if the sun in the heavens should need the glare of some gor- geous picture to assist it in giving light unto the world ! The records of experience confirm, and 190 LECTURE VI. more than confirm, all the anticipations which I have thus ventured to express. Practically, superstition and its effects are variously mo- dified, especially when they exist in conjunc- tion with Christian faith and principle : but these modifications, countless in number and endless in their diversities, we do not here attempt to take under review ; nor do they properly belong to the subject now before us. Our inquiry is, What are the results and consequences of Superstition considered in itself; or, in other words, of what nature are the evils which follow in its train, so far as these evils actually ensue, not being counter- acted or overborne by some better principle (165)? As we stated on a former occasion the good effects of Christian Faith, without making deductions for the weakness of faith in particular instances, — and as we noticed the evil effects and tendencies of Infidelity in themselves, without taking into account the outward checks, restraints, and mitiga- tions by which its operation is affected, — so now likewise it will be our business to in- quire absolutely, what are the evils which Superstition is adapted, of itself, to cherish ? What are its own legitimate effects upon the mind, disposition, and happiness of individu- als, and upon the interests of human society? LECTURE VI. 191 It has been a matter of common observa- tion, that Superstition debases arid impairs the i7itellect{l66). And the charge is no less just than prevalent. This evil habit debili- tates the mind of man, sometimes by in- ducing indolence, while it withholds occasion for the exercise of thought and judgment ; sometimes by forbidding as presumptuous and vain the full play and exercise of the intellectual powers, contracting the opera- tions of the mind, and interfering with the development of its energies, through the want of a simple and fearless confidence in truth ; and, not unfrequently, by a kind of wasting process, in occupying the mind with the con- templation of frivolous or unworthy objects, or in mocking it with the presence of delu- sion when it had been seeking for the grasp of truth. Witness the obstructions which superstition has opposed to the cultivation of natural philosophy (167), and of many of the subjects of ordinary science and learning. More particularly still, observe its bad effects upon dogmatic theology, or the intellectual conception and embodiment of the facts and truths of the gospel (168) ; consider how the minds of superstitious men have been occu- pied with subtle reasonings, vain inventions, and false or frivolous theories, in connection 192 LECTURE VI. sometimes with obscure points of doctrine, and sometimes with matters of mere form and ceremony or some details of outward observances, instead of being more nobly and usefully employed in obtaining a deep, en- larged, and increasingly reverent and thank- ful apprehension of those great things which God our Saviour has done for our redemp- tion, and those which He is still ready to accomplish for the purification of our souls, and their advancement to perfection. Nor has this mischief been confined to the expe- rience of individuals in whom it has been at work. It has become, although unjustly, an occasion of discredit to Christianity itself. Again and again has the religion of the gospel been reproached with a tendency to pro- mote narrowness of mind, and to encourage a certain meanness or poverty of intellect ; whereas, in point of fact, these results have been attributable, not to religion, but to that superstition by which religion has been al- loyed. Here is, in truth, one point of con- trast between the effects of superstition and those of Christian faith. Faith, as we have already seen, directly tends to liberate, purify, and invigorate the human intellect ; super- stition affects it with feebleness, bondage, and restraint. LECTURE VI. 193 More striking and more fatal still are the ill effects of superstition on the moral and spi- ritual nature of mankind. — Contemplate the results which have flowed from misbelief concerning the Deity and the unseen world. Debasing, beyond measure, has been the effect of superstitious conceptions of the nature and attributes of God (169), and of the em})loy- ments and happiness of a future state, espe- cially as contrasted with the influence of divine truth on these momentous subjects, seen by the light of the gospel. When man creates a deity like himself, all the imperfec- tions and vices of that imaginary being are reflected back with increased intensity and with baneful power upon the soul of the in- ventor. This effect has been displayed with full force in the history of pagan antiquity, no less than in the systems and practical working of oriental mythology ; and, while we look at these dark chapters of human his- tory, we must remember that results of the same kind will always follow in proportion to the obscuration of the true scriptural idea of God in our minds, and to the admission into our hearts of any idol, the creature of superstitious fantasy or fear, in the place or by the side of God. The fabrication of fic- titious gods, and the ascription of strange o 194 LECTURE VI. doings to these imaginary beings, has been always a favourite employment of the super- stitious mind of man ; and has been con- stantly attended with its own reward. With reference to the ancient heathen, it has been truly said, "Depraved and insane invention took this direction with ardour. The mind threw a fictitious divinity into its own phan- toms, and into the objects of the visible world. The promiscuous numberless crowd of almost ail shapes of fancy and of matter became, as it were, instinct with ambition, and mounted into gods (170)." And if we ask, what result was produced by the apprehension of these vain and self-created gods upon the minds of their deluded worshippers, the answer is, that these idols were the very patrons of wicked- ness and vice. " They were alternately the toys and the tyrants of their miserable crea- tor. They appalled him often, and often he could make sport with them. For overawing him by their supposed power, they made him compensation by descending to a fellowship with his follies and vices. And to this intel- lectual obscuration, and this legion of pesti- lent fallacies, swarming like locusts from the smoke of the bottomless pit in the vision of St. John, the fatal effect on morality and hap- piness corresponded. Indeed, the mischief LECTURE VI. 195 done there perhaps even exceeded the pro- portion of the ignorance and the false the- ology; conformably to the rule that any thing wrong in the mind will be the most wrong where it comes nearest to its ultimate practi- cal effect, except when in this operation out- ward it is met and checked by some foreign counteraction (170)." The experience of man- kind is uniform in this respect ; alike do the mythologies of the east and of the west, the superstitions of Rome pagan and of Rome papal, bear witness to the fact that super- stitious misconceptions of the object of divine worship cannot but act with baneful influ- ence upon the mind and heart of the deluded worshipper. Nor must we overlook the fact that super- stition in the method of worship, no less than with reference to the object, is attended by its characteristic detriment and evil. In this respect, the demoralizing influence of superstition has been abundantly displayed, partly in the substitution of outward observ- ances for repentance, godliness, and virtue, — or the practical habit of making religion consist in positive rites, — and partly also, which is still worse, by the employment of those things as a fancied atonement or satis- faction for transgression (171) ; these observ- o 2 196 LECTURE VL ances becoming, in effect, a palliative to the consciences of ungodly men, and subserving the evil purpose of a licence for the com- mission of fresh crimes (172). In this way especially, the imagined intercession of saints, and the falsely conceived efficacy of the sup- posed mediation of a human priesthood, have tended most fearfully to minister encourage- ment to sin ; and, in like manner, the undue importance, or rather the supposititious value, which superstition has always been prone to attach to ascetic observances, has contributed, by way of necessary consequence, to the de- preciation of that true morality which con- sists in the spiritual love and service of Al- mighty God as our heavenly Father, in Christ. Bishop Van Mildert has truly said (173), in accordance with what all sound Protestants have constantly observed, that " tlie ordi- nances of the Romish Church, relative to fasting, confession, penance, celibacy, and monkish seclusion from the world, by imposing upon men burdens too grievous to be borne, and such as had no warrant from the holy Scriptures, tempted them either to rest in mere externals, or to assume an ap- pearance of sanctity, while they secretly in- dulged in the grossest lusts of the flesh, as well as in the most presumptuous specula- LECTURE VI. 197 tions of the understanding." And we may add, that these vain inventions and arbitrary observances are attended with mischief of another kind, inasmuch as they minister temptation to self-conceit and spiritual pride, continually promising to do much towards "the satisfying of the flesh %" or the gratifi- cation of carnal, corrupt nature. — In a word, superstition, even when it professes to labour for the subduing of sin, tends rather to in- crease its vigour and to promote its opera- tion. It removes and alienates the soul from God, even when it promises to introduce it to his presence and his favour. In the spirit of true Christian philosophy, it has been well said by one who has spoken in this place (174), " All that interposes between the living soul and the living God, save the divine Mediator, who himself is God as well as man, frustrates, more or less, God's revelation of himself, and the power of his Spirit upon us. It deadens the joys, it disarms the terrors, which the soul feels when in immediate contact with the living God. It is an evil thing to sub- stitute idolatrous or even logical personalities (for some personality, real or notional, the soul w^ill have) — as Ilome ])reeminently does — for the direct presence and living touch of a Col. ii. 23. 198 LECTURE VI. the Almighty ^" — And then, if to all these matters we add the weighty consideration that superstition, nourished in its native ele- ment of bondage and fear, is sadly insensible to the manifestations of God's love, and is a stranger to the constraining influence of that love upon the soul, — and if moreover we take into account the well-established fact that superstition perverts the moral sense by rea- dily confounding the distinction between right and wrong in connection with its own views on questions of religious discipline and worship (175), — how can we fail to perceive that its spirit is strikingly at variance with the spirit of the gospel, — that spirit of fervent love and of uncompromising holiness, — love kindled and ever gaining fresh intensity at the cross of Jesus, and holiness, always aim- ing at conformity to the Saviour's image, and so pressing forward to the perfection and purity of heaven ? To proceed. Superstition easily coalesces with impure sensuality (176), keeps it in coun- tenance, and assists its growth ;— an evil ten- dency which has become too manifest in the licentious character of ancient polytheism, in the gross impurities of the oriental sys- tems, in the immoralities which have found b Garbett, Sermon on the Personality of God, pp. 145, 146. V LECTURE VI. 199 shelter in the creed of Mahomet, and in the practices which have too often been tolerated or allowed within the walls of cloisters. Be assured that we greatly mistake the character of superstition if we suppose it to be incom- patible with the sinful indulgence of sensual passions. " His debaucheries," says an Eng- lish historian, speaking of a profligate French monarch, " formed an extraordinary contrast to the superstition of his character ; and both brought him into universal contempt (177)." But there was really no contrast in this case. Superstition and profligacy are no aliens to each other ; they belong to the same parent- age, and are often found in friendly associa- tion. The offspring of mere feeling in one direction is too much disposed to be indul- gent to the impulses of feeling in another ; the man who is impelled to the discharge of religious acts and offices under the mere in- fluence of excited sentiment is likely to be too easily swayed by irregular impulse seek- ing its gratification in the guilty indulgence of passion, — and that too especially while he vainly imagines that by some religious rites he has screened himself from punishment which he w^ould otherwise have reason to dread. Beware of the delusion that super- stition, under however plausible a guise, may 200 LECTURE VI. be made to act as a check upon sensuality. There is no safety except in the love of God ; and the power of that love will always be in proportion to the purity and simplicity of faith. The evil of w^hich we now speak, like others which attach to our fallen nature, is of a self- propagating character throughout. This cor- rupt tree spreads its roots while it extends its branches ; it tends to strengthen and ex- pand the principles from which it derives its origin. In its progress, no less than at its beginning, it is scrupulous and timid. It fos- ters the ignorance from which it springs. It has been perpetually found to encourage that spirit of fraud and imposture, to which, more or less remotely, it is indebted for its exist- ence. It is at once the offspring and the parent of a worldly mind. And especially it may be observed that, as mental indolence and apathy appear among the causes to which superstition may be traced, so also a dispo- sition to inertness and inactivity is not a little prominent among its ascertained results. It has been found to be ordinarily attended with that want of alacrity in warding off dan- ger, and that absence of industry and energy in the pursuit of attainable good, which at once constitute a defect in personal character, LECTURE VI. L>()1 and directly tend to social and political de- cay (178). Sometimes the timidity which clings to superstition leads men to sit down in despair when they ought to he resolutely employed in promoting their rightful in- terests, or in discharging a bounden duty ; and sometimes it causes them to shrink from an attempt at progress or improvement through a dread of doing harm. It appears highly probable that the superstition of Christians, — although certainly not (as Gib- bon would have us believe) the religion of Christ, — was one great cause of the decline and fall of the Roman empire (179). We are familiar with accounts of the sluggish and evil influences connected with a superstitious reception of the Mahometan doctrine of fate (180); and in the history of modern Europe it seems to have been established as a fact beyond all controversy, that the good order and well-sustained energy of protestant na- tions, together with the civilization and pros- perity which follow as legitimate results from the public adoption of sound religious prin- ciples, stand out in striking contrast with the languor, disorders, and decay of other coun- tries which continue to be oppressed by papal superstition (181). Nor is it only with regard to our material or temporal interests that 202 LECTURE VI. superstition tends to paralyse effort and to hinder advancement. It cherishes spiritual sloth ; and hence, in this way as well as in others, it contributes to spiritual backward- ness and decay. It says " there is a lion in the way, a lion is in the streets''," when there ought to be the Spirit of the Lion of Judah in the heart. It bids the sluggard fold his hands and take a little more sleep, when he ought rather to be aroused from his lethargy, and encouraged to be watchful against sin, to be active in his Master's service, or to be fight- ing the battles of the Lord. Not that super- stition is always and altogether torpid. On the contrary, it is often fitful and restless ; it is sometimes tossed in the tempest of violent hope or fear ; and not un frequently it is fierce and eager in the pursuit of mischief. Still however, in some way or other, either in its listlessness on the one hand or in its fe- verish excitement on the other, it nourishes a temper altogether different from that perse- vering spirit of beneficent industry and labour which we have reckoned among the charac- teristic results of Christian faith. " Supersti- tion," it has been truly said (182), "disposes men now to ecstatic action, now to prostrating helplessness." Its victim " vacillates between ^ Prov. xxvi. 13. LECTURE VI. 203 hot and cold, between hope and fear, between self-confidence and despondency. He is afraid to act, lest offence should be given to the God he fears, and afraid not to act for the same reason. He is ever restless, but his ac- tivity is more frequently exercised in spread- ing misery than in propagating good. It is faith in a living God, the Governor of nature, [and, we must add, the Saviour and friend of the believer,] that calls forth the energies of heaven-born souls, and sends them forth in the work of relieving misery, uprooting cor- ruption, stemming the tide of depravity, and helping on the amelioration of the race in knowledge and virtue." Superstition, like licentiousness, is, in itself, hard-hearted and unfeeling ; but, in the one case as well as in the other, this temper may be held in considerable check, and may even find little or no occasion of development. As the man of pleasure may exhibit nothing but hilarity and smiles, or may be distin- guished by gentleness and amenity of man- ner, so may the superstitious man, or even a superstitious system, be favourably marked by light-hearted gaiety, by a prevailing cha- racter of mirthfulness rather than of gloom, by a disposition to festivity rather than by a tone of severity or harshness. But, on the 204 LECTURE VI. other hand, when circumstances call for, or strongly favour, the development of this evil principle, when superstition exists in its grosser forms, amidst the night of barbaric ignorance, or when, even in its utmost refinement, it is confronted in its deepest principles by the opposing power of truth, and is compelled to struggle for its existence in the face of gospel day, then — think of our protestant martyrs ! — it becomes manifest that in the heart of su- perstition there is a demon of ferociousness and cruelty (183) in close companionship with the demon of guilt and fear. Witness, on this behalf, the horrid rites of oriental heathenism (184), of that paganism which so long pre- vailed in the north of Europe, and of that which reigns to the present day in the heart of Africa ; witness the temper of the Jewish Pharisees when excited in opposition to the gospel, the savage persecutions inflicted on Christians by adherents of the most smiling and apparently benignant forms of ancient polytheism, and, in more modern times, the deep atrocities of the dark and murderous Inquisition. Remarkable has been the influence of Su- perstition in producing controversies, divi- sions, and strife {185). In this respect again it stands opposed to the spirit of Christian LECTURE VI. 205 faith, which, in itself, and so far as it really prevails, is a spirit of harmony and unity, of brotherhood and peace. Truth, which lies at its foundation, is one ; and if this truth were received in its simplicity and power, by the members of a whole community, all would then love as brethren ; as there is to real Christians "but one body and one Spirit and one hope of our calHng, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all," so would all be " of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity," and would "with one mind and one mouth glorify God" (186). All that is at variance with this spirit indi- cates, not the presence or the effect of Christ- ian faith, but its weakness or its absence, or the existence and efficacy of some principle altogether different. And such a principle is that which we are now considering. Divi- sions, and controversies, and fierce conten- tions are not merely accidental to supersti- tion, or results chargeable only to corruptions which may have debased it, or to heteroge- neous elements which may have mingled themselves with its own native principles or its regular observances, but they are effects which follow naturally, and (unless checked by contravening circumstances) necessarily, 206 LECTURE VI. from its inmost essence. Superstition rests upon false faith, faith that fastens upon an object presented by the imagination and the feelings of individual men, or of certain classes of mankind, existing under peculiar conditions. But the figments of imagination, and the impulses of feeling, admit of, or ra- ther certainly involve, an endless diversity ; and, just as bitter controversies and foul asperities arise when men insist upon the universal admission of their owai opinions, so the same effect cannot but ensue when they claim an equal conformity to their own mere impulses, or to the products of their own imagination. If, in the licentious exercise of private judgn^ent, in the pride of reason and the vanity of thought, we find one source of disunion and discord, it is also no less certain that in the lawless claims of private feeling, and in the vagueness of mysticism, we find another. And more than this ; experience may tell us that controversies which have arisen on questions of men's own supersti- tion have been so distinguished by fierceness and rancour that they hold a bad preemi- nence among those things which have min- istered to hatred and prejudice, and have contributed to hinder men from godly union and concord. When dogmas or practices, LECTURE VI. 207 originally adopted from mere impulse, are upheld or insisted on as matters of consci- ence,— when men think that they are doing God service by forcing upon other men some arbitrary methods of supposed propitiation, or some private inventions in the mode or circumstances of divine worship, regarded as meritorious or as otherwise indispensable to salvation, — who does not perceive that resist- ance is as likely to ensue, and therefore a conflict is as certainly prepared, as when an attempt may be made to enforce uniformity of opinion or to lay fetters upon thought ? If thought be vague and uncertain, are not the feelings and the imagination still more iitful and capricious ? And when self-love mingles with the impetuosity of feeling, have we not reason to dread a more violent com- motion than when the same self-love exists in union with mere pride of reason ? I say mere pride of reason, because tbis pride, and especially pride of the logical understanding, may combine with warmth of feeling in the support of superstitious error. On all these grounds, we have reason to expect that Superstition will be found to be not only a cause, but a most prolific cause, of controversy and dissension. And experience declares the fact. On the face of history it 208 LECTURE VI. is abundantly proclaimed that if men have contended in unholy warfare concerning the principles of truth, they have fought with still greater bigotry and bitterness concern- ing some groundless tenets, or some arbi- trary practices, which have had their origin in their own imaginations. Bitter, for ex- ample, are the animosities which have raged between devotees of different religious Orders, each vainly confident of its own fancied stock of merit, or of the value of its own imaginary way of access to the favour and the blessings of heaven. And, — to adopt another instance of a still more painful kind, — fierce are the controversies that have arisen on supersti- tious questions, properly so called, in connect- ion with the doctrine of the holy Eucharist (187). We know full well how possible it is for a body of learned or scientific men to en- gage in hot dispute concerning the rationale of a certain supposed effect, while, in point of fact, no such effect exists. And thus, when once it has been admitted, as a prin- ciple, that some change takes place in the substance of the elements consecrated, or re- gularly and solemnly set apart for sacred use, in the Lord's Supper, a wide field for discus- sion is immediately opened ; room is afforded for the exercise of the logical understanding LECTURE VI. 209 in moulding this doctrine into some coherent system, or in defending one system against another ; and great battles may be fought by men of powerful intellect, and of devout and earnest minds, on the grave questions how, and how far, and why, and with what effect, the imaginary change takes place. Hence, for example, the violent dispute which raged between Dominicans and Franciscans at the Council of Trent concerning the manner in which the supposed Transubstantiation is effected ; a dispute which was found to be incapable of adjustment, and led only to the poor expedient of expressing the supersti- tious dogma in terms sufficiently vague to admit of a twofold interpretation, so as to suit the views of either section of the dis- putants (188). Alas, this philosophy of su- perstition continues, to the present day, not only to waste the energies of many a noble mind, but, what is still worse, to serve as an arena of idle and profitless debate, and even to engender strife within the borders of the church ! Nor have we reason to predict a speedy termination of this struggle. Rather, we may expect that it will continue as long as there are men whose hearts give welcome to the false first principles upon which su- perstition rests, and who are prepared to p 210 LECTURE VT. apply the powers of a vigorous understand- ing to the exposition and assertion of those principles. Superstition, in fact, provides it- self with refinements and subtleties, in ])ro- portion to the growing clearness and intens- ity of religious truth ; its pretences multiply, and become more plausible, according to the power of those assaults which threaten its destruction ; it knows how to avail itself of the progress of philosophy and science so as to call in new resources to its aid ; it knows even how to present itself as a subject of philosophical inquiry at once attractive and apparently profound, in order to combat the intellectual apprehension of that true religion w^hich is its constant, and eventually invincible, opponent. Closely allied to this contentious temper is that spif'it of intolerayice which has often followed in the train of Superstition (189) ; intolerance, leading in many cases to violent and even sanguinary persecution, and to the infliction of multiplied wrongs in the name of religion, with all the social and political evils which such enormities involve. The fanatical attempt to advocate the cause of religion by the sw^ord, whether in the case of the Mahometan who fought under the banner of the false prophet, or in that of the LECTURE Vr. 211 Christian who marched in the crusades, was founded in deep superstition (190) ; in both instances the warriors fought, in order, as they supposed, to obtain remission of their sins. And whether we look to the blood- stained annals of papal Rome, or to the more impotent attempts of those who breathe the spirit of Rome without possessing her power, we are compelled to conclude, as a matter of history and of painful observation, that super- stition can hardly exist in the mind of an individual, and certainly not in the bosom of a church, without producing the foul spirit of stern intolerance and relentless persecu- tion (191). Not unconnected with the manifestation of this contentious and overbearing spirit is the fact that Superstition has invariably appeared not only as the firm ally, but as the most productive source, of spiritual despotism^ pi'iestcraft, and priestly domination ( 1 92) . Add the figments of superstition to the truths and institutions of the gospel, and instantly the Christian presbyter is changed into a sacri- ficing priest, — a fancied intercessor or ap- pointed mediator between God and men ; he becomes a representative of Christ, instead of an ambassador for Him, — a delegate to exer- cise His power, instead of a minister whose p 2 212 LECTURE VI. office is to preach the gospel, and to rule and feed the flock committed to his care, com- mending himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. No sooner has this priestly transformation been effected, than the best friend of his brother men has been turned into the worst of tyrants. All history concurs to teach us that the greater is the de- gree of superstition embodied in any system of religion, the greater is the amount of power lodged in the hands of its ministers, — power of an absolute and despotic kind, entirely distinct from that wholesome influence which arises from the exercise of wisdom and bene- volence in connection with an orderly desig- nation and a position of lawful authority. In point of fact, these two things, the power of the mediating priest on the one hand, and the influence of the Christian presbyter on the other, bear to each other precisely the same relation as that which subsists between superstition and religion ; the one is false, the other is true ; the one is an unwarranted substitute for the other, or a kind of spurious imitation ; the fictitious priesthood springs from the corruption of human nature, — the corruption at once of the deceivers and of the deceived, — but the Christian ministry is the appointment of heavenly wisdom, and a LECTURE VT. 213 gift of the Saviour's love ; the priesthood of superstition, crafty and cruel, is powerful for evil, but the Christian ministry, so far as it maintains its character and is faithful to Him who has established it, is a channel of count- less blessings, an instrument of incalculable good. The priests of superstition, sometimes seeking their own individual advantage, or, perhaps more often, simply and faithfully subserving the interests of some monstrous system to which they devotedly belong, are devourers of the flock ; but the true ministers of Christ, replenishing continually their own emptiness out of the Saviour's fulness, repair- ing from their weakness to His strength, and thus receiving into earthen vessels the trea- sure of the gospel, rejoice in becoming, ac- cording to their measure, the real, though secondary, benefactors of all who are en- trusted to their care, — helpers of men's faith, abettors of their hope, and patterns of their charity, — heralds of salvation to the lost, and partakers in the joy of those who receive the glad tidings of the gospel, and are saved through faith which is in Christ Jesus. If the effects of superstition upon the minds and hearts of individuals and upon the condition of the church and the world at large are such as have been now described, — 214 LECTURE VT. if its expedients for re-establishing a friendly relation between man and his Maker are vain, and if, in its influence upon the soul of man, there is nothing to purify and elevate, but much rather which tends in the direction of still deeper degradation, — if also, we may add, superstition obstructs the progress of the gospel, and even, as will hereafter appear, paves the way for infidelity, — then no ques- tion can remain as to its unfavourable aspect upon human happiness, hi this world and in the neoft (193). Misery flows from sin, from a sense of guilt and from the power of an ungodly, worldly, mind; superstition seeks for some alleviation to this wretchedness, but its search is vain, and its proper fruit is dis- appointment ,the disappointment of a crav- ing spirit, in the midst of need, in the face of sorrow, and on the borders of the eternal world. It has its deep and ecstatic excite- ments, and its gratifications of taste more or less refined ; but it has nothing to give in answer to the demands of the human soul for peace, and rest, and solid satisfaction (194). It can mar religious peace, even in the Christ- ian's bosom, but it never can impart it ; per- plexing, obscuring, and exciting uneasiness in the hearts of even those in whom the ele- ment of a living faith predominates, but never I LECTURE VI. 215 fulfilling to them its favourite promise of adding strength to their confidence, and depth to their tranquillity. If infidelity for- bids hope, superstition mocks it ; and, so far as we yield to the power of misbelief, and are of the number of those who " observe lying vanities," we "forsake" our "own mercy." " My people," says God by the prophet Jere- miah, " have committed two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water**." And again it is written concerning the victim of misbelieving superstition, " He feedeth on ashes ; a de- ceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say. Is there not a lie in my right hand^?" Be assured that all peace with God, all spiritual life and blessedness, flow into the soul, through the channel of humble and lively faith, from Him who has said, in truth and love, " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest^ (195)." "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink "." " Let not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in me ''." " Peace be unto you'." Our wisdom and happiness con- ^ Jer. ii. 13. « Isa. xliv. 20. f Mat, xi. 28*. g John vii. '>^'j. ^ John xiv. i. i John xx. 19. 216 LECTURE VI. sist in thankfully receiving this message of the gospel with all simplicity of mind, and in yielding ourselves, with progressive de- votedness, to the living and loving Redeemer, to the influence of his Spirit, the force of his example, and the guidance of his word ; heartily reposing in the mercy of the Most High as declared in our redemption, and gladly connnitting ourselves, in the way of righteousness, to the care of that good Shep- herd, who will not suffer us to want, hut who gives to each individual member of his flock abundant reason to declare, " He maketli me to lie down in green pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul ; he leadeth me in the paths of right- eousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me^" ^ Pa. xxiii. 2-4. LECTURE VII INFIDELITY AND SUPERSTITION COMPARED. Jeremiah ii. 13. My people have committed two evils ; they have for- saken me, the fountain of living waters, and heived them out cisterns, hroken cisterns, that can hold no water. JLN the foregoing Lectures I have attempt- ed, not to conduct an argument, but to de- scribe a history, — the Natural History of In- fidelity and Superstition, in contrast with Christian Faith. This contrast with Christian faith I have found occasion to indicate, from time to time, while engaged in the separate consideration of the alleged evils, in their na- ture, sources, and results. In some respects also Infidelity and Superstition have been al- ready compared with each other ; but many observations on this head have been reserved for the ])resent Lecture, in which I now pro- ceed more particularly to institute this com- 218 LECTURE VII. parison, partly with reference to what has already been said, and partly also with regard to some new features of these evil habits, which can be most distinctly understood only when viewed in juxtaposition with each other. It has been shown, in general, that Faith, in its essence or its fundamental idea, is a ren.sonable belief. Infidelity is unreasonable disbelief, Superstition is unreasonable misbe- lief Hence therefore Infidelity appears as the direct contradictory of Christian faith, opposed to its existence ; while Superstition is rather the contrai^y of that faith, capable of coexisting with it, but in a state of an- tagonism, hindering its development, and opposing its beneficial operation (196). In- fidelity is anti-Christian, Superstition is un- Chinstian; the former is more directly opposed to the gospel, the latter more indirectly. In- fidelity, so far as it prevails, excludes Christian faith ; Superstition thwarts or counteracts it. With regard to the comparative sources of these two habits of mind, it may be observed, in accordance with what has been already said, that the deepest moral spring of Infi- delity is, for the most part, an unawakened conscience combined with sinful self-will and the indulgence of sinful habits ; but the in- LECTURE VII. 219 most cause of Superstition is usually an aroused or restless conscience desiring repose, the heart being still devoid of active love to God ; while in each case the same cause oc- casionally operates which may be considered as ordinarily belonging to the other. — With respect to intellectual sources, the difference is more strongly marked ; speculative Unbe- lief arising principally from the abuse or per- version of intuitive reason or of the logical understanding, to the neglect or the suppres- sion of faith, — Superstition rather from the irregular, hasty, or excessive exercise of the principle of belief, with a culpable neglect or contempt of the powers of reason and under- standing. In either case, there is the want of a due exercise or control of our moral and intellectual powers, with reference especially to that divine salvation which involves our recovery from the ruins of the fall, and is therefore of indispensable necessity to our present and everlasting welfare. If again we inquire, in general, concerning the comparative effects of Infidelity and Su- perstition upon individuals and upon society, we find that the former of these two evils leaves human passions and vices to prevail and to work out their results without control, while the latter, although sometimes indeed 220 LECTURE VII. it restrains them as with a bridle, is also capable of exciting them, and of adding, as it were, the impulse of a spur. — As to their influence on human happiness, apart from the misery common to both, which arises from the want of real reconciliation to God, and the power of sin unsubdued within the heart and more or less practised in the life, it ap- pears that, while it is the especial tendency of Infidelity to destroy or hinder hope, it is the work of Superstition rather to engender disappointment. — Perhaps also we may add, as another general feature of distinction, that Infidelity is peculiarly a principle of impiety, or want of reverent affection towards God, while Superstition is more directly a cause of ill-will and illiberal conduct towards man. Passing over thus briefly these general sub- jects of remark, which have reference to what has been already stated more at large, we now direct our attention to some more mi- nute points of comparison, a survey of which, it is hoped, will not be uninstructive in itself, while it may also tend to shed fresh light upon some other matters and to strengthen some of our previous conclusions. Especially we may be assisted in conceiving a just dread of Infidelity on the one hand and of Super- stition on the other, by observing how often LECTURE VII. 221 and how extensively they agree in those points wherein they "war against the soul^" The statements of Scripture leave no room to doubt that Infidelity and Superstition are alike indebted to the operation of Satanic agency. So far as the father of lies is permit- ted to tempt men to evil, or to minister occa- sion to the development and activity of that evil which is already in their hearts, it is plain that he works with equal success in pro- moting an unbelieving rejection of the gospel on the one hand, and a superstitious corrup- tion of it on the other. It was Satan who tempted to disbelief in Paradise ; and, if we receive the scriptural account of false belief, or superstitious error, we shall find that, in these "latter times," or under the Christian dispensation, men are led astray, and induced to "depart from the faith" by "giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils V i. e. doctrines concerning demons, or proceed- ing from their evil influence. It also appears evident that these seducing spirits employ the sin of some men, which exists in connec- tion sometimes with unbelief, and sometimes with superstition, as a means of promoting the opposite mischief in the minds of others. — And we may observe that these two evils a r Pet. ii. 1 1. ^ i Tim. iv. i. 222 LECTURE VII. bear equally upon their front the marks of their earthly origin in human wickedness and vice. In the one case no less than in the other, there are endless shades of variation ; in neither do we meet with one consistent set of principles uniformly carried out; the mutability and imperfection of man, — of man not merely as a creature, but as a fallen, maimed and weakened creature, — is every- where apparent. The varying, shifting, fitful forms of infidelity or of superstition are but a reflection of the restlessness of the empty, weary soul that has forsaken " the fountain of living waters," and has hewed out for itself "cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." And again we feel that in both cases we encounter human sin, when we ob- serve that each' of these evils flows, in fact, not from any inherent want of a needful faculty, a want such as could be traced only to the will of the Creator, but rather to the abuse or perversion of a faculty, or even to the corruption of a good principle, a princi- ple implanted for the best of purposes, and needful for the health and vigour of the soul. Between Infidelity and Superstition there exists a substantial agreement, as we have already seen, with regard to the deep moral LECTURE VII. 223 source from which they take their beginnings in the soul ; but there is also a circumstantial difference, which must not be overlooked. Both may be traced to the want of active love to God and devotion to his service ; both alike reveal the voluntary and sinful dis- tance, or alienation, of man from his Maker (197). According to his original constitution, man seeks after God ; in his fall, he, for the most part, desires not His presence, or the knowledge of His ways ; — or, if sometimes his heart be drawn towards the Most High, by sentiments of thankfulness or of praise for the w^onders of creation or the bounties of providence, by a sense of helplessness and danger leading him to seek protection, or by a consciousness of guilt impelling him to de- precate deserved punishment, — still this con- strained approach of the soul to the Supreme is most feeble and most transitory, and the occasional or temporary movement is met by a repulsive influence, the love of sin or the evil love of self and of the world so steadily and powerfully bearing the soul back again from God, that, on the whole, it willingly takes up its permanent and final abode amongst " lying vanities*'," forsaking its own mercy. It is this distance from God which infidelity ^ Jonah ii. 8. 224 LECTURE VII. and superstition alike contribute to keep up : only for the accomplishment of this same end the methods which they adopt are different ; the one interposing one set of objects between God and the soul, the other intruding another. Infidelity teaches men to escape (as it were) from the presence of the Most High by fixing their attention on the works of God, to the exclusion of the Author of them all, and by teaching them to deify their own intellect or feelings ; while superstition presents to their regard saints and angels, or fancied human mediators^ on whom the soul may practically rest, at the same time that it is afraid or otherwise indisposed to enter into the pre- sence-chamber of the Lord of heaven and earth. Again, with regard to their ultimate sources. Infidelity and Superstition agree in this, that in both cases man looks for knowledge and happiness to himself, after having refused to look to God ; the difference being that infi- delity looks to self under one aspect, super- stition under another (198). For knowledge or guidance, infidelity looks chiefly to reason, superstition to the imagination and the feel- ings ; for happiness, the former relies upon man's own moral strength and courage, and the perfectibihty of his nature, by its own LECTURE VII. 225 native effort, or its regular development, while the latter depends rather upon some external means of atoning for guilt, and of counter- acting or overcoming the power of sin, but means of its own devising or at its own com- mand, and more or less independent of the will and power of the Most High. There are also certain conditions of the in* tellectual powers, essentially the same, from which, only in different w^ays. Infidelity and Superstition severally take their rise. Such is the habit, whether indolent, careless, or hasty, whereby men draw their conclusions, or proceed to act, upon the strength of a mere impression on the mind, without duly exer- cising the judgment on the question of evi- dence or of facts. It is an intellectual duty to suspend our inferences until they may have received sufficient warrant; but hasty inferences, often incorrect and sometimes of most pernicious tendency, are continually drawn, partly under the influence of pride of intellect and presumptuous self-confidence, and partly under the influence of fear ; in the former case, the erroneous conclusions usually lead to infidelity, in the latter to superstition. The superstitious man "receives a fiction of the imagination, and rests upon its truth.'' The unbeliever, " acting upon some prejudice 29.6 LECTURE VII. or mental impression, which has probably no better foundation, puts away real and impor- tant truths without any examination of the evidence on which they are founded. The misapplication of the reasoning powers is the same in both. It consists in proceeding upon a mere impression w^ithout exercising the judgment on the question of its evidence, or on the facts and considerations which are op- posed to it. Two characters of a very oppo- site description thus meet in that mental condition, which draws them equally, though in different directions, astray from the truth (199)." Hence arise unbelief on the one hand, and credulity on the other. — In like manner, there is a mental sloth or negligence, leading to confusion of ideas, or to one-sided, partial, views of truth, which ministers equally, though in different ways, sometimes to infi- delity, and at other times to superstition. Sometimes we find men leaning exclusively to the objective in religion, whence arose many corruptions of the papacy ; and some- times as entirely to the subjective, whence especially infidelity in its spiritualistic phase (200) : sometimes there is an undue want of discrimination, at other times there is an un- healthy and false exclusiveness : and either of these mental conditions is unfavourable to LECTURE VII. 227 a reception of truth. " Superstition," it has been truly said (201), "mixes and confounds divine and human causes, natural and supra- natural, the instrument and the efficient prin- ciple, the objective and the subjective, one with another ; whilst unbelief, on the con- trary, recognises only the human, the natural, and the subjective ; both erring in this re- spect, that they do not properly separate and discriminate this twofold combination." — And once more, with respect to the use of the in- tellectual powers, it is obvious that, while both infidelity and superstition are correctly referred to ignorance as one of their pro- ducing causes (202), there must yet be some difference in that ignorance which leads to such opposite results. But how can this be ? We must remember that ignorance is not a pure negation ; its existence does not imply that the mind is a mere blank. Ignorance, rightly considered, will be found to consist, not in a mere vacuity of mind, or in the ab- sence of all ideas, but in the absence of cor- rect apprehensions, often if not always com- bined with the presence of other ideas en- tirely at variance with truth ; and hence it is that ignorance, involving the presence of one set of perverse ideas, leads to infidelity, and q2 228 LECTURE VII. ignorance, including another set of false views or sentiments, leads to superstition. Worthy of remark is the similarity of po- sition occupied by Infidelity and Superstition in relation to the gospel. We have already said that the former is to be regarded more precisely as contradictory, the latter as rather contrary, to Christian truth ; but both are in opposition to that truth ; and it is this agree- ment in practical opposition, in more parti- culars than one, to which I would now direct attention. This conflict of Infidelity and Superstition with the gospel may indeed be regarded as a mark of their common origin, so far as they proceed, in the way of sugges- tion, temptation, or influence, from the Spirit of Evil (203) ; and herein it may be not un- instructive to notice the fulfilment of that early prediction, " I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel*^." But, apart from this consideration, and regarding, as we propose to do, only the practical working of these two principles, it is useful to observe how, while they appear so different from each other, they yet have a bearing in the tl Gen. iii. 15. LECTURE VII. 229 same direction, and harmoniously contribute to work out the same result. — Sometimes we may observe that a speculative rejection of the gospel coexists in the same individual, or the same class of men, with a frame of mind manifestly superstitious ; as in the case of the modern Jews, who, while they vehe- mently reject some of the highest doctrines of the Christian religion as incompatible with reason, are yet obstinate in their belief of some of the most absurd fables of the Talmud. And it may be remembered that, in a somewhat similar manner, many of the philosophical heathen in ancient times com- bined an active opposition to the gospel with a firm adherence to the rites and tenets of their polytheistic superstition. — Again, while on the one hand the spirit of unbelief is ready to accept from the sacred record only that which it can fully comprehend, and that which agrees with what reason can of itself discover, and, on the other hand, it is the temper of superstition to catch very often at the form of words without seeking, or, as it would sometimes say, without presuming, to apprehend their meaning, — who does not perceive that in either case alike the effect produced is essentially the same, an effect which is no other than that of shutting out 230 LECTURE VII. the substance of truth from the mind ? In the one case, the mind receives nothing, be- cause it is full of its own conceits ; in the other it receives likevrise nothing, because it takes v^^ords vs^ithout meaning ; it bov^s, as it v^^ere, w^ith respect, before a mystery, but shuts its eyes upon the revelation of that mystery, w^hen God has graciously made that revelation, and has attached a blessing to the practical unfolding of the mystery to the ap- prehension of the believing, diligent, and in- quiring soul. So that, in each case, vs^hile the process is different, the result is, in fact, the same. — Again, how remarkable is the una- nimity which prevails between unbelief and superstition in decrying a reverent regard to the substance of the written word of God, the letter of the Bible with its due interpret- ation ! " Biblicism," says a modern unbe- liever, " is the scourge of the church" (204). And who does not know that Rome has a thousand times said in effect the same ? An adherence to the substance of the Scripture, in its letter and its meaning, with a conse- quent imbibing of its spirit, is, indeed, the scourge of superstition ; and there are forms of infidelity, as well as kinds of superstition, which are content to admire what they re- gard as the spirit of Scripture, apart from LECTURE VII. 231 the letter, herein however practically ac- knowledging only their own spirit under an- other name : but it is well for us to remem- ber, that, true as are the allegations that the letter without the spirit profiteth nothing, it is no less true that there is no value, as there can be no certainty, in the spirit without the letter. This disembodied spirit of the Scrip- ture is no better than a phantom which may be made to subserve alternately the purposes of infidelity and of superstition with like success. On the other hand, as we must not embrace the alleged spirit of Scripture with- out the warrant of the letter, so neither does the bare letter, taken by itself, suffice for our instruction. If we derive our creed from the mere letter of Scripture, and especially if we adopt it from only some fragments of the letter, without rightly employing the powers of our mind, under the teaching and influ- ence of the Holy Spirit obtained by prayer, for the due apprehension and appreciation of its sense and force, — in that case also we are preparing the way either for that false belief which, mingled with the product of our own imagination and feelings, or of those of other men, may develope itself into some form of superstition, or for that intellectual recoil as from something imperfect, erroneous, or ab- 232 LECTURE VII. surd, which tends in the direction of an un- believing, and perhaps contemptuous, rejec- tion of the sacred record. And hence it is that both infidelity and superstition have been found to array themselves, now against the spirit of Scripture, and now against the letter. — Once more, while these two prin- ciples are thus equally ranged against the letter of God's word with its real and life- giving signification, it is instructive to ob- serve how they have also learnt to combine their forces against the effectual publication and the free circulation of the sacred vo- lume ; and how instinctively they recognise their own most formidable opponents in those men who earnestly labour for the promotion of sound scriptural knowledge among the masses of mankind. Take the case of our Protestant Reformers. "It is most remark- able," says a Christian advocate, " that infidel writers seem to take peculiar pleasure in re- viling their characters and depreciating the value of their exertions" (205). And we need not stop to shew that this is the temper of the friends of Romish superstition, no less than of the patrons of infidelity. Never were unbelievers more ready to asperse the character of our venerable Reformers, to cavil at their judgment, or to cast out their names LECTURE VII. 233 with scorn, than are too many among those who would willingly see the scriptural faith of Protestants exchanged for the errors and su- perstitions of the papacy. — And thus it is that, in a variety of ways, the two evil principles of which we speak reveal themselves as la- bouring conjointly for the accomplishment of that great work of self-will and lawlessness, the abjuration of objective truth, the re- jection of the written word of God, the de- nial of its supremacy in matters of faith and conscience, and the abnegation of its authority as a direct and peerless communication from the great Author of truth and holiness. Hence the advocates of divine revelation find themselves always really, and often equally, arrayed against both these opposing systems at once ; a case which was strikingly exemplified at the era of the Reformation, when the labours of God's faithful servants were directed, not against the superstitions and corruptions of the papacy alone, but against Romish error on the one hand, and philosophical infidelity on the other. Against the infidel we find the Reformers declaring the insufficiency of unaided reason, and un- folding the sanctions and contents of the divine law; — against Romanism they an- nounced the scriptural doctrine of justifica- 234 LECTURE VII. tion by faith, and exhibited the true idea of the Christian church ; — while, in opposition to both kinds of error alike, they maintained the duty of a right use of reason, and the fact that even those portions of divine truth which are above reason, are yet not contrary to its intuitions, or at variance with its legi- timate conclusions, so far as religious truth lies within the compass of its apprehension. This is the battle which was fought at the time of the Reformation in the cause of God and of his truth (206) ; and the church will be at all times but inadequately furnished for the discharge of her duties in the defence of the gospel, if she be destitute of sons who may succour her by turns at all points of this extensive and formidable contest. If we inquire concerning the tactics of Infidelity and Superstition in their opposition to gospel truth, we shall here again find a remarkable similarity. By turns they are both openly aggressive, or silent and stealthy in their method of attack : each of them sometimes rears its head boldly against the truth, and against all systems which support the truth, and sometimes lurks out of sight, sapping the foundations of religion rather than avowedly aiming at its overthrow, and covering the church with a mist rather than LECTURE VII. 235 bursting upon it in a deluge. It is hard to say whether of the two can be the more violent or the more crafty. In the present day, the covert method of attack appears to have been adopted as the best and easiest policy by the patrons both of anti-Christian infidelity and of un-Christian superstition ; and we may say of each — as has been said of one of these opposing influences in particular — that it is seeking " quietly to insinuate itself like a liquid through certain appro- priate veins and channels of the body corpo- rate ;" it " is cowering and cunning, dealing much in inuendo and insinuation ; generally walking with soft and stealthy steps, satisfied with freedom from restraint and with its great indulgences ; and fearing nothing so much as an earnest and pure religion (207)." — If however we consider the manner in which Infidelity and Superstition work against reli- gion when once they have gained power in the soul of an individual or in the bosom of a church, we shall find that the destruction which proceeds from the former is the more violent and sudden, and that which ensues from the latter is the more gradual and slow. Infidelity comes upon the ground of religion as it were with fire and sword, devastating all around ; superstition rather covers the 236 LECTURE VIL soil with rank and noxious weeds, stifling and choking, and in this way eventually de- stroying, the sound faith and Christian prin- ciple to which it is opposed. Infidelity, when it has found its opportunity, destroys religion with a blow ; superstition eats it out with rust. It is impossible to pursue the comparison with which we are now engaged, and to con- sider the mutual relations of Infidelity and Superstition, without strongly perceiving that they produce and cherish each other (208) : that speculative unbelief tends to engender superstitious misbelief, either in the mind of the same individual or in the breasts of other men ; and that in the same way Superstition paves the way for Infidelity, or contributes to its prevalence and strength. Infidelity, we say, conducts to Superstition. According to the constitution of our minds, all uncertainty and doubt is attended with a sense of pain from which we would willingly escape ; and still more sensitively does the soul shrink back from a mere negation. In questions of religion, speculative unbelief, especially when it has proceeded to an ex- treme, occasions a void which the soul does not willingly endure. The heart and con- science rebel against the false intellectual LECTURE VII. 237 theory : there is an inward consciousness of Deity and of the divine presence, which athe- ism denies ; there is a sense of that need of divine favour and protection which infidelity refuses to admit ; there are times at which conscious helplessness instinctively turns to the apprehension of superhuman power, and when conscious guilt testifies to the existence of a sovereign Judge and asks the way to pardon. Sometimes a prospect of futurity bursts upon the hitherto unbelieving soul, and contradicts the arguments by which the grave had been made to appear as man's eternal home ; and sometimes, when men have been harassed by doubts, and especially when misgiving has succeeded to unbelief, the trembling soul is more than ready to yield itself blindly to the dictates of pre- tended authority, dreading to exercise reason in a right and needful way, and not ven- turing to think for itself at all, in remem- brance of those terrible results to which the abuse and perversion of its reasoning powers had formerly conducted it. In this state of mind, men are an easy prey to whatever ap- propriate superstition may present itself, and especially to whatever may be pressed upon their notice, and offered to their acceptance, by artful and designing patrons (209). We may 238 LECTURE VII. apply to infidelity and superstition the fol- lowing remarks of a modern writer concern- ing scepticism and mysticism considered un- der a philosophical point of view. " The ex- treme of scepticism is sure to lead into the central regions of mysticism, — the most sweep- ing unbelief into the very worst follies of credulity. The greatest unbeliever is of all men the most credulous ; he rejects perhaps a thousand truths which rest upon most solid and satisfactory evidence, but then is obliged to accept some crude system of his own into which none of these truths (to save his consistency) are permitted to enter. The sceptic, for example, who denies the divine origin of Christianity, may often appear, at first sight, rational in his objections, so long as he is engaged in pulling down the com- mon belief of Christendom ; but the moment he is called on to build up a system of his own, the moment he is required to account for the facts of the case upon some other hypothesis, he soon begins to draw far more largely than his opponents upon the very credulity which he has derided. And not only this, but the more universal the scep- ticism, the greater must be the credulity by which it is followed ; because exactly in pro- portion to the number of facts which are at LECTURE VII. 239 first rejected must be the paucity which are left behind on which to construct a new sys- tem. From these considerations therefore we can easily see how naturally, and almost ne- cessarily, in the march of intellectual philo- sophy, mysticism springs out of the spirit of scepticism (210)." The same line of observa- tion may account, to a considerable extent, for the progress of the human mind from speculative unbehef to the indulgence of su- perstition in matters of religion ; and if we carefully observe the tendencies of the pre- sent age in their relation to the infidel the- ories and speculations of the former portion of the century, we shall be painfully con- vinced that now again, as at other periods in the history of mankind, speculative unbelief has paved the way for superstitious extrava- gance and evil (211). " Nothing," it has been said, "is more observable in the history of modern philosophy than its downward ten- dency in this respect. It has started from its high transcendental ground, and has pro- mised to return from its supersensual flight laden with the richest treasures of wisdom. But it has ended with giving us an abstrac- tion in the place of a God, and with point- ing to the higher attributes of humanity as our highest objects of worship, inasmuch as 240 LECTURE VII. they constitute the highest object of our knowledge. Much has been done in this way towards facihtating the return of the popular mind to that polytheistic worship which has proved to be the most natural form of a simply natural religion (212)." And hence we may plainly perceive how philo- sophical unbelief may become a pioneer to Romish superstition : it makes a gap for that superstition to fill up ; it opens a breach by which its forces may enter in and take pos- session. And, as Infidelity thus makes way for Su- perstition, so, on the other hand. Superstition conducts to Infidelity (213). It would not be difficult to shew that the existence of superstition even involves that of infidelity, more or less latent, and in a greater or smaller degree (2 14). And its tendencies are obvious. — It promotes the opposite cause by that spirit of intolerance and persecution, with which, as we have already seen, it is more or less openly attended. — It promotes it also by the attempt to which it not unfrequently leads of disparaging the foundation of true belief in the effort to obtain credit for an alleged ground of false belief; the habit of depre- ciating Scripture and its authority in order to exalt the value of Tradition. — In itself. LECTURE VII. 241 and when flourishing in full vigour, Super- stition, by its frivolities, atrocities, or other indications of unsoundness, repels the more thoughtful and reflecting mind, and serves as an occasion of objection against all reli- gion ; a fact long since observed and stated by Plutarch (215), and existing, in full force, to the present day. — ^Perhaps, however, it is especially when a false religion grows old among a people, or when a superstition has become obsolete because it has been out- stripped by the learning or intelligence of a cultivated age, that its evil tendency in fur- nishing a pretext for unbelief, or in giving boldness to its pretensions, becomes most ap- parent (216). It is chiefly in the dead carcase of superstition that infidelity receives its hor- rid life. When the false system is no longer animated by its early spirit, and nothing re- mains to sustain its influence and vigour, "when the circumstances which first favoured its formation or introduction have changed, when in an age of reason it is tried and found unreasonable, — when in an age of learning it is found to be the product of the grossest ignorance, — when in an age of levity it is felt to be too stern, — then the infidel spirit takes courage, and with a zeal in which there is a strange mixture of scowling revenge with R 242 LECTURE VII. light-hearted wantonness, of deep-set hatred and laughing levity, it proceeds to level all existing temples and altars, and erects no others in their room (217)." From this reflection we may derive a prac- tical lesson of considerable value. We may learn from it not to regard the overthrow of existing superstitions in any part of the world as a sufficient introduction to the reception of the gospel. In India, for example, the principles which have now been enunciated would lead us to expect that the mere de- struction of idolatry would be succeeded by pantheism, atheism, or some other form of infidelity ; and that this state of things would of itself again make way, not for the recep- tion of the pure and unadulterated gospel, but either for Mahometanism, or for some superstitious corruption of Christianity ; most probably, for the delusions and errors of Rome (218). So also with reference to the modern Jews. It will not be sufficient to disabuse their minds only so far as to induce them to reject the spurious authority of the Talmud ; if we do this, without imparting to them an enlightened aj^prehension of the gospel, we shall, in all likelihood, commence a process in the Jewish mind from supersti- tion to infidelity, to be succeeded, at no very LECTURE Vir. 243 distant time, by a return to superstition under some other form. And so likewise, in deal- ing with our home population, it is clearly not enough to impart to the young such an education as will avail to raise them above popular prejudices and vulgar superstitions, nor will it suffice to impress upon their minds a general sentiment of respect for religion, or to win from them a vague acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity ; but we must make them really acquainted with the gospel, we must impart to them a sound knowledge of true religion in its facts and in its princi- ples : and then, but then only, by the aid of good discipline and with the influence of a good example, under the power of the Holy Spirit, we may hope to have fortified them against the assaults of manifold error, and to have sown that good seed which shall spring up abundantly to everlasting life. In these cases, and in all others, we do good, and effect a sure work of wisdom and benevolence, only so far as we promote an enlightened and practical acquaintance with the truth as it is " in Jesus ^" Superstition does indeed, at this moment, form an obstruction to religion in the minds of many men, perhaps espe- cially among the Jews ; but we must always e Ephes. iv. 21. R 2 244 LECTURE VII. remember that it is only one part of our task to throw down this barrier ; nothing can for a moment supersede the duty of the positive and faithful preaching of the gospel ; nothing but an admission of the simple truth must be regarded as the right foundation of pure and undefiled religion ; in all our efforts for the enlightenment and amelioration of man- kind this must be our motto, " I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith ; as it is written. The just shall live by faith^" We must not be satisfied with rooting up weeds, and clearing the ground of thorns and briars; we must also sow good seed. But yet we must not despise or shrink from the task of clearance and preparation by the removal of prejudice and error. We must fulfil both portions of the work that has been assigned to us ; and for this, as well as in many other respects, we have great need of wisdom from on high, and of the continual supply of the Spirit of Christ Jesus. When men have learnt to disbelieve what is false, they especially require to be set firmly upon their guard f Rom. i. 1 6, 17. LECTURE VII. 245 against disbelieving also what is true ; while they are made to understand the evil cha- racter and the baseless claims of superstition, they ought at the same time to be well in- structed in the nature and the foundations of Christian faith. In the present day, and under our existing circumstances of know- ledge and refinement, Romanism is chiefly dangerous as the handmaid and precursor of infidelity ; and there is danger attending even the confutation and overthrow of Romish superstition, lest, while we are engaged in the work of demolition, we should forget the ne- cessity which exists for the work of edifica- tion, the work of building men up on their most holy faith at the same time that we keep them clear of that which is contrary to faith. If we have the sword in one hand, we must have the trowel in the other (219). Whatever may be the special task in which a Christian minister may be at any time engaged, he should always act under the influence of this ruling thought, — the Lord hath " sent me" " to preach the gospel^." We need not here enter upon a detailed comparison of the effects produced by Infi- delity and Superstition on human character g See 1 Cor. i. 17 and ix. 16. 246 LECTURE VII. and happiness, a comparison already involved in what has been said concerning the results of each. Alike do these two evil habits keep fallen man at a distance from God, and hinder the restoration of the divine image on the soul ; alike they interfere with a right appre- hension of the divine attributes and character, and with a sense of our relation to the Most High : it may be said indeed that infidelity for the most part unduly exalts man, while superstition rather degrades our idea of God, but, in either case, the result is to a great extent practically the same. Both infidelity and superstition eventually fail to subdue those evil principles and passions which mar the happiness of individuals, and disturb the peace of society ; while both the one and the other tend to produce their own appropriate mischiefs, and both have left equal impres- sions of their unmercifulness and cruelty in the sanguinary annals of the world. And hence w^e have seen, without surprise, that neither the one nor the other of these perverse principles, how loud soever may be its preten- sions, and how alluring soever its promises, is able to impart true peace to the soul, and to sustain it with enduring comfort. Infidelity supplies no object to man's highest and best affections ; superstition supplies a false LECTURE VII. 247 one : and therefore both alike can but contri- bute to land him in despair and misery. For the most part, the great object of infidelity is only an abstraction, while the soul needs a personal object ; the objects of superstition are personal indeed, but the personality is fictitious, whereas the soul, in its necessities, calls for reality and truth. A real being, — a living person, — supreme over all others,— who knows neither beginning of years nor end of days, — and this Mighty One with a heart full of compassion and benevolence towards the individual soul, — a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, — a friend whose smile is in the sunshine that falls on our path, and the light of whose countenance will be the glory of our heaven when suns shall be no more, — a friend whose voice is in the storm, and the sweet accents of whose love will fill our souls with rapture when storms shall have been hushed for ever, — what philosophy, what dream of the imagin- ation, can shew us for a moment such a being, such a friend, as this ? Who is this but Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, the cru- cified, risen, and glorified Redeemer ? Who is it but He that can faithfully declare to the sin-stricken, drooping, sons of men, " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you ; 248 LECTURE VII. not as the world giveth, give I unto you^?" Whose voice but His can effectually call forth that prayer so full of hopeful faith, " O God the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great tri- umph unto thy kingdom in heaven, We be- seech thee leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before" (220) ? Bre- thren, be thoroughly assured that it is no- thing less than faith in this Almighty and most merciful Saviour that can become an instrument effectual to renew and sanctify, to comfort and to bless, our souls. Faith, as we have said, in its essence, is belief, — a rea- sonable belief of truth ; but Christian faith is the belief of gospel truth, of a word of promise, — a word which is no dead letter, but a living thing, — a promise which implies the personality, the presence, the power, the love, and faithfulness of Him who makes it ; so that it is impossible really to believe this word of promise without at the same time believing in its Author the living Redeemer, resting in His love, and yielding to the influence of that love by the power of His Spirit in the heart. This is the Christian's ^ John xiv. 27. LECTURE VII. 249 faith ; this is the reception which he gives to the gospel of the grace of God, " preaching peace by Jesus Christ'." Alas, that even where this gospel has been proclaimed in its freeness and its fulness, there should still be occasion to take up the prophet's lamenta- tion, " Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed*"?" Sad is the testimony which is borne by at- tentive observers of human nature to the fact that there are multitudes of men, in Christian lands, who continually oscillate be- tween bold infidelity on the one hand, and abject superstition on the other (221). In the interval there are various stages, but there is no real resting-place ; and much less is there any advancement towards a state of perfection and eternal bliss. We may be tempted to ask. When shall the end of these things be ? We know, from the word of God, that truth will eventually prevail, and that the kingdom of righteousness, and of the righteous One, the Almighty Redeemer, will be finally and for ever established. But, in the mean time, who can tell what will be the comparative prevalence of Infidelity at some periods in this world's history, or of Superstition at others ? Is it, as some say, ' Acts X. 36. k Isaiah liii. i. 250 LECTURE VII. that sceptical opinions, although once ex- ploded, may recover strength, but that an obsolete superstition can never be revived ? Or is it not rather true that infidelity is the more self-destroying system of the two, and that superstition possesses the greater mea- sure of vitality ? Who can tell what answer will be supplied to questions such as these by the experience of a future century ? Who can tell ? Perhaps not one. But, as to our- selves,— as to the duty which lies before us to be performed in our day and generation upon earth, — there is no uncertainty, no room for question or for doubt. That duty lies in the practical exercise of a living Christian faith, — faith which is no mean between in- fidelity on the one hand and superstition on the other, but is the opposite of both, — a lively faith in the living personal God, and in that Almighty and loving Redeemer who, by his work on our behalf, and by the operation of his Spirit in our hearts, restores the dis- turbed relation between God and ourselves, and renews the nature that had fallen into ruin ; — it is here, and here alone, that we discover the element of peace, the way of holiness, and the spring of our everlasting felicity. Let us thankfully accept the tidings of heavenly mercy, and look unto Him from LECTURE VII. 251 whom Cometh our help. Too wise to under- take the task of hewing out to ourselves " cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water," — or weary with having attempted it, — let us perpetually repair, by faith, to the fountain of living waters, ever-flowing, and all-sufficient for the life, the refreshment, and the comfort of our souls. " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money ; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk with- out money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread ? and your labour for that which satis- fieth not ? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness^" 1 Isaiah h. 1,2. LECTURE VIII. INFIDELITY AND SUPERSTITION HOW TO BE PREVENTED AND WITHSTOOD. Judges vi. 15, 16. And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel f behold, my family is poor in Ma- nasseh, and I am the least in my fathers house. And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Alidimiites as one man. JIN this concluding Lecture, I propose to point out those habits of mind and that course of action which may justly be recom- mended as likely to hinder or counteract the evils to which our attention has been directed. Our question is, How may Infidel- ity and Superstition be properly prevented and withstood ? And may the Spirit of truth and holiness give us, in this matter, a wise and understanding heart ! Here, in the first place, I remark that, from what has been said concerning the ob- LECTURE VIII. 253 jective nature of revealed truth, and the per- sonality of our God and Saviour, we may well learn to attach due importance to all sacred Institutions, or those outward and vis- ible means which have been graciously ap- pointed for our use in matters of religion. If Christianity were a mere philosophy, it might be embodied in the teachings of a school ; or, as a divine philosophy, it might be imparted and cherished solely by the in- ward illumination of the Spirit : but we can be at no loss to perceive that the establish- ment of external monuments, and the ob- servance of certain prescribed forms and actions, are in perfect harmony with the character of that spiritual life which flows from faith in objective truth, in facts, and hence in a personal Being to whom this truth and these facts refer. Well may this reflec- tion lead us to a devout admiration of the wisdom and compassion displayed in our re- demption by Him who knows what is in man, and who doeth all things well ! But besides this, we must consider how we ought to act with reference to that which we ad- mire. We must inquire what are our duties ; — and that not only in general, but what are our special duties, as members of a learned profession, and more particularly as Christian 254 LECTURE VIII. ministers (where the case is so) either in fact or in prospect ; — and again, what are our pre- sent duties, under the existing aspects of in- fidelity and superstition ; — with reference to those standing monuments, institutions, ordi- nances, which have so much to do with the preservation, purity, and efficiency of " the faith once delivered to the saints ^" Now, among these outward monuments or institutions we reckon, as second in import- ance to no other, the ivrifteti icord of God, — that historical record which conveys to us the declaration of God's good pleasure con- cerning our redemption. The Bible is not a mere code of doctrine or of precept ; it is, to a great extent, if not chiefly, a record of facts ; and the truths of revelation are re- lated to these facts as the soul of man bears relation to his body. Nor is it a mere acci- dental circumstance that this record is depo- sited in a written volume; but this is a matter of divine appointment. The Bible is there- fore a sacred institution, an ordinance of God; and while it were worse than vain to specu- late as to the possibility or expediency of a dispensation by which the gospel should have been lodged in oral tradition, it is right for us to remember that, as the case actually » Jude 3. LECTURE Vin. 255 stands according to the will of God, if you take away the Bible out of the world, or so far as you do virtually take it away, you take away Christianity itself. This consideration enforces upon all Christ- ians the duty of an enlightened reverence for the sacred volume, together with a devout and earnest study of its contents. But it imposes also some especial obligations upon those persons who may be appointed for the defence or exposition of the gospel. Here then let us learn in what spirit and in what manner it becomes any one to fulfil tlte office of a Chinstian apologist, or an assertor of the genumeness, authenticity/, and authority of holy Scripture. If the Bible be such as we have described it, then this office is one of high value and importance, for it involves in it the task of preserving the ark of God. Infi- delity would destroy this sacred vessel ; Su- perstition would hide it or defile it; and the task on which you enter is to maintain it in its existence, in its integrity, in its purity, and in its proper place. How will you ac- complish this ? Let me earnestly say to the champion of the Bible, Take good heed to the plans which you pursue and to the spirit in which you act. Let there be no unhal- lowed effi3rt in this sacred cause. Place little 256 LECTURE VIII. confidence in repressive measures ; and adopt none that are in any degree unjust, uncan- did, or unfair. Sometimes indeed we must " answer not a fool according to his folly," and must "stop the mouths'"' of gainsay ers; but sometimes also, and perhaps far more fre- quently, we must " answer a fool according to his folly *" ;" and must be found " in meek- ness instructing those that oppose them- selves''." And here we have need of wisdom, of wisdom from above. — Stand on your guard also against the adoption of extreme, or crude and erroneous, views concerning the relative offices and powers of Reason and Revelation ; lest, while you oppose the false infidel principle of rejecting as untrue or un- certain every thing which reason cannot com- prehend, you should be found or supposed to be setting yourselves against a really Christian effort to obtain a reasonable appre- hension and appreciation of revealed truth (222). Nor be ready to denounce even the attempt of the logical understanding to com- prehend the accordance of divine truth w^ith our intellectual perceptions, or to obtain a clear conviction of the fact that revelation is not contrary to reason ; remembering that it is rather to be desired that the truths of ^ See Titus i. i T-13. « Prov. xxxvi. 4, 5. '' 2 Tim. ii. 25. LECTURE VIII. 257 revelation, so far as possible, should be, as it were, taken up by our reason, pass over into it, and mingle with it, as a new principle of inherent light and life and energy (22S). — Again, be watchful against the employment of any weak, unsound, untenable methods of defence, the use of unstable arguments, or the application of vain and arbitrary theo- ries (224). Much that is plausible may not be useful ; and nothing can be really and permanently useful but what is true. It is also to be borne in mind that there are argu- ments which are only relatively true, and require to be employed accordingly ; — argu- ments which may tend to strengthen faith, but are not adapted to produce it or to de- mand its exercise. Take care therefore at once that your arguments are sound, and that they are in their proper place. Your task is, not to display your own ingenuity or the versatility of your mental powers, but to advocate the truth of God, and to uphold the honour of his word. — And, whilst you are careful to avoid weak defences, consider also that it is vain, or worse than vain, to refuse to grapple with substantial difficulties. Some things present serious difficulties to the minds of some men which occasion none at all to the minds of others ; and these things 258 LECTURE VIII. ought to be seriously met (225). It is wholly insufficient to declaim against certain objec- tions raised, for example, on scientific or his- torical grounds, and to denounce them as presumptuous, irreverent, or absurd. But these objections must be answered, — an- swered by some who can master and pene- trate the subject, and who have an advantage over the objectors in being able to perceive the harmony of science with Scripture, and being thus in a condition to expose the real unsoundness of the objections. Remember that a rash opposition to scientific conclu- sions upon religious grounds may even be- come an occasion of infidelity. "To deny evidence blindly is always a dangerous thing to venture upon ; for the right of denial ad- mitted in one case may soon be applied to another" (226). And it is clearly impossible to convince other men of the truth of what we ourselves believe, by merely denying the truth of something else which they have al- ready adopted, as on sufficient grounds, into the system of their belief. — Once more, place no undue reliance on merely argumentative and historical, or, as they are commonly called, external evidences (227). Do not de- spise them, — and be assured that, as was observed on a former occasion, they have LECTURE VIII. 259 their value and their place ; only let all that has been said concerning the deep primary sources of infidelity convince you that the great field of contest for the Christian apolo- gist is in the conscience and the heart. It is a matter of chief importance rightly to exhibit that moral truth, and duly to aim at that moral influence, which may be opposed to the fundamental error or fault of the ad- versary;— to undermine and destroy that dis- position or state of heart which is the great predisposing cause of infidelity, rather than to address arguments to the logical under- standing while under the perverse influence of an unholy will. Our best confutation of error lies in a disclosure and establishment of the opposite truth. We do well to search for the remote causes of error, rather than simply to combat or deny the error itself; — to exhibit and enforce that portion or aspect of truth which meets those unsatisfied wants, or corrects those fundamentally perverse prin- ciples, to which the error may be traced (228). This is true equally with regard to Unbelief and to Superstition. If we would repel the assaults of a vain philosophy which denies the authority of Scripture, we must esta- blish those first principles of truth to which that philosophy stands opposed ; and if we s2 260 LECTURE VIII. would arrest the progress of papal supersti- tion, which debases and corrodes the sub- stance of Scripture, we must assail that super- stition, not in its details merely, but chiefly in its primary principles, — we must affirm, expound, and establish those principles of Christian faith to which that superstition is adverse, — we must attach more importance to a full and energetic assertion of gospel truth than to the most powerful and damaging ex- posure of unchristian error. — Lastly, on this head, let any one who desires to contend successfully on behalf of the gospel see that his defence of the truth proceeds from an in- ward conviction and love of that truth, and be careful that his life at the same time dis- plays its power. There is a power which spiritual life possesses even with reference to knowledge and conviction ; and there is a blessing to be expected from on high upon the labours of godly men, which they have no right to look for whose hearts are not under the dominion of heavenly grace, and whose labours are not sincerely directed to the glory of God as their chief end. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts ^" The means and instruments to be employed are proof, argu- e Zech. iv. 6. LECTURE VIII. 261 ment, research, and all the appliances of learn- ing and of science (229) ; these are not to be dispensed with, not to be despised ; but the great point to be desired is that this instru- mentality be wielded by the hearts and pens and tongues of spiritual men, — men who are themselves the instruments of the Holy Spi- rit,— men who have felt the power of the truth, whose souls have been quickened and transformed into the Saviour's image, who themselves " know Him that is true, and are in Him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ^" But, while some men are called to defend the word of God, others, and perhaps the far larger number, find it their duty to interpret or expound it. I speak now of that scientific interpretation which constitutes Biblical Cri- ticism and Theology. Here what ample em- ployment still remains for the ablest and best disciples in the school of Christ ! How great the work in this department which is still left to be achieved, and how urgent the de- mand for its accomplishment (230) ! Fearful is the extent to which unsound and irreve- rent Criticism has lately been employed in the examination and pretended elucidation of the sacred record ; and this evil must be f I John V. 20. 262 LECTURE VIIL met, not by blindly and perversely depre- cating criticism altogether, but by opposing that which is sound to that which is un- sound, the deep to the shallow, the true to the false, the useful to the vain. Let us not shrink from a critical study of God's word. So far as the divine revelation is conveyed in human language, and is involved in human history, this vehicle, by its very selection, has been made subject to philological criticism and to antiquarian research ; and it is ours, by the aid of these appliances, earnestly and diligently to inquire what the record is, and what it means : the very faculty and oppor- tunities of sound critical investigation are to be regarded, and reverently employed, as an especial gift of God (231) ; and if, in this de- partment of inquiry, we are pressed with the existence of difficulties, either imaginary or real, it is our duty in this case, as well as in the case of evidence, to meet these diffi- culties, and to solve them, by the aid of the same faculty which gave them birth. In this way a large field now lies open before the friends of revelation for the exercise of skill and of patience, of faithfulness, labour, and prayer. — And the same may be said of true Biblical Theology. What is the substance, and what are the bearings, of that revelation LECTURE VIII. 263 which is conveyed to us in the word of God ? What is that inspiration under the influence of which these books were written, and this revelation was made to man ? Questions such as these have been long since raised ; and they have received answers sometimes substantially true, and sometimes substan- tially false. But these questions have not been set at rest ; it would even seem that, sooner or later, they will be canvassed again with vigour. And our divines must be pre- pared to take part in solid investigations of this kind, in order to rebut false theories which have been set afloat, — to maintain the truth on these subjects so far as it has al- ready been attained, — and to purify and ex- tend that truth. We must discriminate accu- rately between things divine and human ; and fix precisely the limits and domain of faith (2o2). What need of caution and care, of intelligent reverence, and of heaven-sent wisdom, have we here (233) ! And let me say that there is one leading principle, with- out due regard to which all labours in the- ology,— all attempts to grasp or to exhibit the substance or the purport of Scripture, — will be utterly unavailing and futile and wrong. That principle is the simple and un- questionable fact that all portions of divine 264 LECTURE VIII. revelation point to, or bear upon, Christ and his salvation (234) ; that, as has been truly said, the cross is the ground-plan of that magnificent structure which has been reared by means of Moses and the prophets, of Evan- gelists and Apostles (235) ; and that we can estimate none of its parts and details aright, unless we make due reference to this great comprehensive truth, that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself g." Theo- logy, without this clue, is hopelessly involved in a labyrinth of confusion and error. And it were a worthy task for the man of noblest powers, of largest opportunities, and of most devoted love to God, to shew solidly, con- vincingly, and fully, how all the lines of di- vine truth contained in the sacred volume converge towards this one point, and meet in Christ ; a worthy task, in answer at once to much of the spurious theology of an unbe- lieving age, — to many a superstitious dogma, — and to many a doubt, misgiving, or in- quiry, of earnest, but perplexed and wander- ing, souls. If the written word be an institution or ordinance divine and sacred, and as such to be reverently guarded and most carefully and wisely used, so also are the CJwistian s 2 Cor. V. 19. LECTURE VIII. 265 Sacraments^ — Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord. These were ordained by Christ him- self: and, as the word embodies truth to be received by faith, so the Sacraments point especially to the personality of God our Saviour, as the great and ultimate object of our believing confidence and love. Christian Baptism plainly sets forth to us the person- ality and agency of that Holy Spirit who purifies the souls of believers, as water washes the body : and in the Lord's Supper we have a striking representation of the personality and work of that adorable Redeemer whose body was crucified and whose blood was shed, as the bread is broken and the wine poured out on the holy table : nor do we doubt that, in the faithful use of these ap- pointed signs, the people of God are made partakers of the grace which is hereby sig- nified. And, if we take an intelligent view of this solemn exhibition of divine person- ality, and of the acts of God engaged in covenant for our redemption, surely we may discover herein a most wise and suitable an- tidote to speculative Unbelief and fruitless abstractions on the one hand, and to morbid, fantastic Superstition, on the other. The mind that would rest in mere philosophy is here directed to a personal agent and his 266 LECTURE VIII. work ; the mind that looks out for a personal object and for facts is here presented with the true, not mocked or deluded with the false. And therefore, on this account as well as on all others, we call for a reverent esteem, and for a devout and faithful use, of these appointed means of grace. — And we call espe- cially upon our divines, and the more learned members of the church, for a right treatment of the doctrine of the Sacraments. Be as- sured that here is a vital point in your com- bat with those two great evils to which our attention has been now so long directed. Beware of all rash statements, and of all undue speculation, on these matters. By a neglect of the Sacraments, or by understating the truth concerning these sacred ordinances, you prepare the way for Infidelity ; by un- duly exalting them, and attaching to them that kind of worth or influence which has not been lodged in them by the Saviour himself, or by overstating the truth which really relates to them, and especially by the unwarranted addition of human speculations and inventions, you bring in Superstition ; whereas, in the due use of them, and the right apprehension of their meaning and in- tent, we may find at once a support to true Faith, and a remedy against false belief. Be- LECTURE yill. 267 ware then how you propound mere human opinions concerning these sacred ordinances ; and listen to the voice of God proceeding from them, as once it spake to Moses out of the midst of the bush, " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground^'!" The force and value of these sacred rites is closely con- nected with their majestic scriptural simpli- city. Our wisdom is to celebrate them with all faithful and thankful reverence, — not be- cause we understand how or to what extent they are the means of conveying grace, or wherein lies the necessity of our using them, — but simply because the Lord has com- manded us so to do, and out of regard to the scriptural injunctions and commendations by which our use of them is enforced. And we shall only darken counsel by words without knowledge, — we shall open a door to error now of one kind and now of another, — if we proceed to overlay this good foundation with the wood, hay, and stubble of our own philo - sophy, or the phantoms of our own imagina- tion. Another institution of great importance with reference to the twofold subject now before us is the Church. That " congregation h Exod. iii. 5. 268 LECTURE VIII. of faithful men in the which the pure word of God is preached and the Sacraments be duly ministered {236),'" is itself no less than a distinct and special ordinance of Christ. To think or speak of the Church as a mere abstraction is at once to lose sight of a mat- ter of divine appointment, to let go a portion of gospel truth, and so to take a dangerous step in the direction of Infidelity. On the other hand, to conceive or speak of the Church as merely or primarily an outward and visible body, knit together only by the bonds of outward government and discipline, — a body, it may be, without a soul, capable of existing antecedently to faith, or inde- pendently of this living principle, — and then to attribute to such a corporation the dignity and privileges of the body of Christ, — this were to adopt an element of false belief, and in effect to lay the groundwork of most mis- chievous Superstition. We shall do much towards preventing both evils, by contributing to establish and to propagate the true doc- trine of the Church as it lies in Scripture, and by using our endeavours to increase a right and intelligent regard for this sacred institution. And we may boldly say that this is one great task which the circumstances and errors of the times impose upon the divines LECTURE VIII. 269 of our own day and generation. According to the definition of our Article, where there are no faithful men there is no church of Christ ; a society of such men, incorporated for Christian purposes as described in the article, constitutes a single church ; and the Church Catholic or Universal consists of the aggregate of such churches, — not merely as an aggregate, but also as being all and each united by faith to Christ as the one founda- tion and the one source of influence ; just as a number of grapes if merely placed toge- ther only form a heap, but, when united to a single stem, constitute a cluster. There is nothing mystical, vague, or illusory in affirm- ing that the church is a spiritual body ; as we speak of a literary or commercial body, mean- ing thereby a number of men associated for literary or commercial purposes, so we speak of a spiritual body, to denote a number of men associated on spiritual grounds, and for the purposes of the spiritual life, according to the institution of Christ. This body con- tains its own principles of life and preserva- tion, in virtue of the appointment and the watchful care of its head and founder. But just as the animal body gives temporary ad- mission to matter which it does not absorb or work into its own substance, as it wears ap- 270 LECTURE VIII. pendages, or is burdened with superfluities which it eventually rejects, so also the hete- rogeneous elements of unbelieving, worldly, ungodly men are for a time associated with those faithful ones who, in their corporate capacity, constitute Christ's holy church. In a word, the church is a dynamic spiritual body, which, in the progress of its growth, attracts to itself foreign substances, some of which it incorporates and transmutes into its own substance, and others it casts off. Let this matter be rightly understood; let the whole question of church polity be fully and fairly investigated ; let the principles of real church unity be rightly admitted, — essential, spiritual unity, arising from real union with Christ, and existing together with circum- stantial diversities of form and ceremonial (237), diversities adapted to different cli- mates and countries, different races or tribes of men, the different stages of the same peo- ple in intellectual or moral advancement, different individuals, and even the different degrees or phases of religious knowledge and spiritual life in the same individuals (238) ; let the rights and duties of separate churches among themselves and towards the whole body be duly recognised and heartily re- spected ; let the ecclesiastical spirit become LECTURE VIII. 271 thoroughly a spirit, not of latitudinarian in- difference, but of tolerance, gentleness, and moderation, combined with the diligent ob- servance of those fundamental laws of church polity promulgated by an inspired apostle, " Let all things be done unto edifying', — let all things be done decently and in order'^, — let all your things be done with charity';" — and then, when the Spirit of Christ shall thus manifestly dwell and work in his corporate body, it is not too much to say that a great and important progress will have been made towards the overthrow of infidelity, and a mighty barrier will have been reared against the inroads of superstition. And why should the existence of prejudice, the presence of difficulties, or the necessity for patient thought and persevering labour, deter fit men from the goodly task of defending and propagating that measure of truth on these matters to which Protestant churches have already at- tained,— of reestablishing those sound prin- ciples which perhaps they retain with but a feeble grasp, — and of bringing out into full view those portions of ecclesiastical truth which have either not been seen since the first ages of the church, or, at all events, are at present labouring under an eclipse ? How 1 I Cor. xiv. 26. '^ I Cor. xiv. 40. 1 i Cor. xvi. 14. 272 LECTURE VIII. noble an employment, — not indeed to mingle in questions such as these under the bias of party spirit, in the indulgence of hatred and prejudice, or for the advancement of any pri- vate ends, — but to labour in this department of God's truth, from love to Him w^ho has purchased to himself an universal church by the precious blood of his dear Son, from love to those for whom Christ died, and vi^ith a sincere desire to promote the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom upon earth ! Much might be said concerning the value of sound human institutions both in church and state, and the duty of not only contri- buting to uphold these ordinances by the force of our own example, but also of doing what in us lies to promote their efficiency in the present day and for ages yet to come. While we regard ancient and useful institu- tions almost with the love which a child bears towards a parent, we should also use our en- deavours to purify and improve them, so that at length we may love them as a parent loves a child. But I pass from this subject of in- stitutions, whether divine or human, to the consideration of another, which must be duly appreciated even with a view to the right understanding of what has been already ad- vanced. Laws, institutions, ordinances, how- I LECTURE VIII. 27S ever excellent or well-established, cannot of themselves produce any positive benefit apart from the personal character of those among whom they exist (239). We must not be sa- tisfied with possessing good institutions, or think that we have done enough when we have upheld them in their dignity, or brought them into efficient operation ; but we must labour also to produce good men, remember- ing that it is only so far as good institutions are brought to bear upon good men that we can expect them to be channels of real spi- ritual blessing. There may be good insti- tutions indeed for the purpose of reclaiming bad men ; but their very excellence consists in an attempt to improve men's personal character. All real excellence is individual and personal, and passes over from the pri- vate to the social life. And if we would up- hold or propagate true Christian faith, and check the growth of that which is opposed to it, our attention must be mainly directed to the spiritual retiewal and culture of individual souls. If we would really do good, — if we would see even sacred ordinances attain their proper end, — our duty is to use our efforts for imparting sound Christian knowledge, and for employing the principles of trueChristian faith in the formation of personal character (240). 274 LECTURE VIII. It is to the individual heart and conscience that the word of God primarily speaks ; it is to faithful men that the sacraments be- come channels of blessing ; and they are no other than faithful men who compose the vital portion of the church of Christ. Our great desire must therefore be, to be instru- ments in the hand of God of planting faith in men's private hearts ; and we should re- member too that it is greatly by means of individuals that God works upon the hearts of individuals. Let no one be satisfied with belonging to a sound religious body ; he must do good as a single member of that body. Let no one, however isolated, say that he can do nothing ; let him do what he can, and expect a blessing upon his personal efforts in the sphere in which God has placed him. Now, among all means directed towards the conversion and edification of individual souls, none can be deemed more important than that work of the Christian ministry which consists in the teaching and preaching of God's word. Let all who have been called to this office in the church consider seriously how mighty is the instrument which has been placed in their hands for the counter- action of Infidelity, and for repelling Super- stition ! It is an emphatic part of the apo- LECTURE VIII. 275 stolic commission, " Preach the word"" !" To omit this work, or to perform it negligently, unfaithfully, unskilfully, and badly, is at once to furnish advantage to the adversary in whatever way he may make his assault upon the church ; to do it faithfully, wisely, and well, is to oppose one of the most effectual of all barriers against him. — Preach with sincere aim at the glory of God and the salvation of men's souls ; not with a leading view to self, to your own reputation or profit, but seeking, as one says, to " make men in love with the lesson, and not with the teacher" (241). — Preach in the spirit of prayer, and in de- pendence on Him who alone can give power to the word ; for, as Augustin says, " He has his pulpit in heaven who preaches to the heart" (242). — Preach plainly and intelligibly, — not with affectation of rhetoric or of learn- ing,— not in elaborate and technical phrase- ology,— but in common-sense language, adapt- ed to the universal intelligence of society. — Preach to the whole man, to the intellect, to the affections, and chiefly to the conscience ; seeking to enlighten and arouse the consci- ence by the precepts and sanctions of the law, and to calm it by the promises and con- solations of the gospel. — Above all things, "» 2 Tim. iv. 2. T 2 276 LECTURE VIII. preach Christ, — Christ crucified, — Christ in all his offices as they are set before us in the Scripture ; not shunning to declare the whole counsel of God, and to proclaim the honest and free offer of salvation, without hesitation or reserve, to every child of man. — Preach Christian morals in all their purity and ful- ness ; but beware of exaggeration, of false colouring, of imposing unnecessary burdens, and of making the heart of the righteous sad ; and fail not to shew how all true mo- rality according to the gospel springs from the constraining love of Christ, — that love which makes hard things easy and bitter things most sweet, accompanied, as it always is, by the heavenly energy of God the Holy Ghost. — Preach with especial care all sea- sonable truth, directed against the prevailing sins or errors of the times ; as, for example, in the present day, the personality of God and of the incarnate Redeemer, — the nature and reality of sin and guilt, and the value of the atonement made for sin, — the resurrec- tion of the dead, in the Scriptural sense of the expression, — and the truth that we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. — Preach these things, having first learned them inwardly yourselves, by heavenly grace, from the pure record of the word, after a LECTURE VIII. 277 diligent search in the spirit of humility, of earnestness, of patience, and of prayer : — let your life and conversation be in harmony with your doctrine, that so the force of your own personal example may cooperate with the power of divine truth, and the lustre of your Christian virtues may adorn the doc- trine of God our Saviour in all things : — and then, whatever may be the efforts of anti- Christian Infidelity, or the boastings and parade of unchristian Superstition, in your day and generation, you, at least, may feel assured that the fault is not resting with yourselves ; and you will have no reason to doubt that, while some men seek to over- throw the gospel, and others to corrupt it, you, through divine mercy, are helpers of men's faith. With reference to the same evils, much lies before us to be accomplished by means of a sound and efficient education of the young. It is of the utmost importance that the children of the poor should be rescued from gross ignorance, and receive that amount of general instruction which may fit them for their stations in life ; and that all who are educated, to whatever class of society they belong, should be trained in accordance with sound Christian principle, as well as made 278 LECTURE VIII. acquainted with the letter of God's word. When ignorance on common subjects pre- vails among masses of people, those masses are often distinguished by a depraved mo- ral sense and a want of susceptibility to the influence and impressions of religion, and almost always by a readiness to imbibe the false principles of speculative Unbelief, or to adopt the notions and practices of some debasing Superstition, adapted to sink them below the miserable level at which it finds them (243). Hence the necessity for a reli- gious education of the people, if we would successfully weather the storm of unbelieving error and of superstitious delusion. Hence the necessity of making the young capable of religious instruction, and then of imparting it ; the necessity, too, of at once cultivating the habit of faith, and of presenting the great objects of religious faith intelligibly and correctly to the youthful mind. — Beware of a perverse culture of the intellect and of a vicious education of the conscience. Train up the young for both worlds ; remembering that among the occupations of this world that character is to be formed which will re- main with them in the world to come ; that the several stages of our existence are the steps of one continued life ; and that we LECTURE Vm. 279 cannot educate for this world rightly, unless at the same time we are training up a child in the way in which he ought to go in order to enter upon a state of endless felicity when this world shall be to him no more (244). Doubtless it is imperative upon us to in- struct children in those branches of know- ledge which are needful to employ their powers of body and mind properly, with com- fort to themselves and usefulness to those around them, in that state of life unto which it may please God to call them. But we should remember that these are only parts, and subordinate parts, of the knowledge which they need ; and we must give them to understand most clearly, that all human at- tainments, and even all human accomplish- ments, involve duties to be performed to God and man, — that they are in all respects the gifts of heavenly bounty to their possessors, — and are to be numbered among those mani- fold mercies, having their centre in the cross of Christ, which are designed to draw them, with the bands of love, into the spirit and practice of glad compliance with the will of their heavenly Father. It is possible, by God's blessing, to impart an education such as this ; for the mind and conscience of the young, especially of the very young, are almost 280 LECTURE VIII. always open to impressions of the truth : and, to say the very least, if we neglect the task of early moral and religious training, combined with the intellectual culture of the young, our prospect of bringing men to right views, right feelings, and right practice in after life is incalculably faint. Even the preaching of the word of God, to persons irreligiously and badly brought up in the midst of a professedly Christian society, is attended with obstacles to which the dark- ness of heathenism itself can scarcely present a parallel. And if these things be so, how can we doubt that the diffusion of Christian truth, and of all sound and useful knowledge, among the young, is a duty incumbent, not only on parents and teachers, to whom it primarily belongs, but also, in measure, and according to its opportunity, to the Church in its corporate capacity, — to that body of faithful men which is appointed to be at once " the salt of the earth" and " the light of the world ""?" Let the Church be thoroughly as- sured that if she be not faithfully employed in working with good moral effect upon the world, the world will operate with bad moral effect upon herself (245). There must be aggression, and successful aggression, on the ° Mat. V. 13, 14. LECTURE VIII. 281 one side or the other, — an aggression of light upon darkness, or of darkness upon light. And who are they who alone are worthy, or personally qualified, to take part in the championship of truth and faith and godli- ness? Who are they who are really in a position to repel the assaults of Infidelity and to escape the bewilderments of Superstition for themselves, and then to assist their bre- thren in the world against the power of the same delusions ? We answer, men whose own minds are enlightened and established in the truth, and whose whole souls have been quickened into spiritual life ; men of sound knowledge, of simple faith, and of earnest prayer ; men whose hearts are inflamed with love to Christ, and who are, individually, the humble, but voluntary and conscious, organs of the indwelling Spirit of God. And it is in harmony with many observations which have been made in the preceding Lectures that I now urge, as the last practical con- clusion to be presented to your notice, the obligation which lies upon all who profess and call themselves Christians, — and espe- cially upon the members of an University such as this, — to labour assiduously for the due cultivation of their own intellectual powers, and to cherish, with the utmost dili- 282 LECTURE VIII. gence, the principles and habits of personal piety, real in the sight of God, — earnest, active, and self-denying in the duties and intercourse of life. Our whole subject calls, we say, for diligent attention to the culture of the intellect. — We have seen how the neglect or misdirection of mental power leads men sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, opposite to Christian faith. Nor do we hesitate to regard the right control and use of the intel- lectual faculties as a part, and an important part, of Christian virtue. And on whom is the exercise of this virtue so bound, as on those who are nurtured, or established for life, in a place like this, filled with literary stores, abounding with means and appliances for calm and earnest study, honoured with recollections of ages past, the object of hope to good men for generations yet to come, and for which prayer is continually made that in it " whatsoever tends to the advance- ment of true religion and useful learning may for ever flourish and abound?" — Here, then, I say — and I would say it most directly and emphatically to the younger students whom I now address — here labour to attain the due force and expansion, together with the right direction, of those powers of reason LECTURE VIII. 283 and understanding with which you have been so wonderfully endowed ; — here seek to ac- quire, so far as may be, the information of your judgment, and to prepare yourselves for the rejection of what is worthless, and for the acquisition of large stores of useful know- ledge, in the course of future years ; — here make it your earnest endeavour to gain that perception of the fundamental principles of truth, whether physical or moral, and that power of sound and sober reasoning, which may enable you hereafter to combat the subtle errors of speculative Unbelief, and to strip off the mask from delusive Supersti- tions. Be assured that nothing can expand and exalt your own intellect so much as an increasing acquaintance with God's laws na- tural and spiritual, his wondrous works and ways in the regions of matter and of mind ; — nothing will so fortify your own minds against a dangerous tendency to suppose, when you see able and learned men wander- ing in the labyrinths of error, that it is by virtue of their superior ability and learning that they have arrived at the point at which they stand, and that they are worthy to be regarded as the objects of your admiration and to be adopted as your guides : — while, at the same time, before you enter upon any 284 LECTURE VIII. actual conflict with error and delusion, you will already have done good service to the cause of truth by a practical exhibition of the fact that the spirit of Christianity is not at variance with the enlargement of the in- tellect, the possession of learning, or the cul- tivation of science such as is in any measure worthy of the name ; and you may perhaps even open a way to the hearts of some mis- guided men by destroying their fondly che- rished conceit that none but men of weak or ill-furnished minds do cordially believe the gospel. — Above all, cultivate, now and always, an accurate knowledge of the facts and prin- ciples of religion, — a knowledge just, pro- found, and comprehensive. Take care that the errors which you reject are rejected, not from ignorance, but from knowledge (246). An ignorant repulse of either Infidelity or Superstition is likely to do more harm than good ; and ignorance is peculiarly baneful when it is found in those persons who have had opportunities of knowledge, and whose very profession avows or implies that they possess it. And, besides this, there is great danger lest an unenlightened rejection of un- belief should conduct your own minds to some form of superstitious misbelief; or lest a repudiation of superstitious dogmas or prac- LECTURE VIII. 285 tices on insufficient grounds should lead you to infidelity (247). Therefore, let religious knowledge, sound Christian philosophy, and the principles of true theology, never be de- spised or undervalued ; but be thoroughly assured of that deep truth, " That the soul be vs^ithout knowledge, it is not good"." But it is not by the intellect alone that the battle is to be fought, either in the inner chambers of the soul, or abroad upon the surface of society, in the Church or in the world. Far from it. In both cases we need something higher, holier, more commanding, more resistless ; we need the light of heaven and the breath of the Almighty. — As a se- curity to your own minds against the assaults of Infidelity and the delusions of Supersti- tion, as well as against every other form of destructive error, you can safely depend upon nothing less than the existence and ea?ercise of spiritual life, and the energy of practical personal piety awakened and kept alive by the indivelli?ig Spirit of God (248). All cultiva- tion and refinement of the intellect, and all acquisitions of knowledge, are mere appliances or instruments, which can be rightly and suc- cessfully employed only by the living soul, the soul that has been quickened into a state o Prov. xix. 2. 286 LECTURE VIII. of right spiritual apprehension, affection, and desire. There must be a habit of godliness as well as a study of religion, — a cherishing of the truth within the heart no less than a survey of its proofs and harmonies and beau- ties by the well-directed efforts of intelli- gence (249) ; there must be reality together with profession, and power together with the form ; and there must be all this, not in a state of dormancy, but in action, — not stag- nant or stationary, but progressive, growing, increasing in purity, intensity, and power (250) : or else, in proportion to the absence of these things, there is danger lest the in- tellect of other men, enlisted on the side of error, should contend with a terrible and even fatal advocacy against your own mere en- lightenment on the side of truth. So feeble is man's intellect for good, apart from the Spirit of God ; so acute and powerful for evil when prompted by the father of lies, and misled by the wiles of the devil. — Nor is it less than the vigour of spiritual life which will enable the Church to contend effectually against the invasions of error from without ; nothing less than this will finally make head against the assaults of the adversary, or carry forward a successful aggression upon the do- mains of darkness in the world. The mere LECTURE yill. 287 progress of knowledge, — even of religious knowledge, — will not of necessity stem the tide of Infidelity, or secure a future genera- tion against the inroads of Romish Supersti- tion. No. There is life in these things, and life alone can counteract them. Dead truth will not prevail against a living lie ; truth in the intellect is not a match for falsehood in the heart : but we must oppose this living falsehood by living truth, — truth that has its lodgment in souls that are alive to God, — souls to which that truth itself has been the instrument of imparting life, and which in this very way have been qualified to stand up in its defence. Be assured that barren orthodoxy can be no blessing to the Church ; if we possess no more than this, we shall soon find that our church is like a ship with a helm indeed, but without a pilot, ready to be driven before the storm, to be dashed in pieces, and scattered on the waves. Why did Protestant truth lose ground on the conti- nent after the period of the Reformation ? Why did it, in some quarters, yield to a re- turn of Romish error, and in others, give way to the influence of speculative unbelief? Con- sult the records of church history, and you will find that these defections succeeded a period of somnolent, dull, and heartless ortho- 288 LECTURE VIII. doxy; they followed upon a state of degeneracy which consisted, not in the obscuration of scriptural truth, but in the want of spiritual life, the want of faith and energy, and of high morality flowing from love to God and man, — a state of degeneracy in which the souls of professing Christians, instead of con- tinuing to obey the high call which had been given to communion with the living God, had sunk down into the world of sense, and instead of being governed by the influ- ence of those ultimate principles of truth and holiness which warm and invigorate the heart, had taken up their portion in those exercises of the logical understanding which, when alone, tend rather to enfeeble and to chill it. It is possible, — too possible, — that sound sentiments and phraseology on sub- jects of religion may consist with, and even minister to, coldness and deadness in the in- most soul ; and it is easy for men to become, almost unawares, more anxious for orthodox teaching than for holy living. And we de- precate this lifeless orthodoxy. Not that we desire that an active heterodoxy should spring up in its place ; not that we under- value or despise that intellectual apprehen- sion of the truth, or that high scientific cul- tivation of theology, which have already been LECTURE VIII. 289 commended : no ; we desire orthodoxy still, but we deprecate its lifelessness ; we call for the love of truth to be matched against the love of falsehood ; the love of God and man against the love of self, the world, and sin ; active wisdom against active subtlety ; all the true energy of godliness and virtue against the hosts and weapons and assaults of evil. And remember that, as we have already distinctly seen, this living energy must spring up and be cherished witidn the deepest recesses of the soul. Life begins, and finds its sanc- tuary, in the conscience and the heart ; — a conscience pacified and purified by faith in the adorable Redeemer, and a heart con- strained by the apprehension of His ines- timable love. It is the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, that alone can effectually keep guard ^ over your minds and hearts ; it is the love of God shed abroad within the soul by the Holy Spirit which alone can rightly animate and prosper your exertions in the cause of truth. Invigorated by this sanctifying principle, and carrying forward this principle into practical effect, see that you combine prayer with your ef- forts, and then be assured that your efforts cannot be in vain. You will do God's work, P See Phil. iv. 7. u 290 LECTURE VIII. and you will receive God's blessing. Again and again you may be ready to say, as it were, " Oh, my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel ? behold, my family is poor in Manas- seh, and I am the least in my father's house;" you may be sensible, as you ought to be, of your own insufficiency and weakness ; you may be called to labour in a narrow sphere, and be far removed from all prospect of ex- tensive usefulness ; — but, to the poorest in Manasseh and the least in his father's house, — to the student most diffident of his powers, — to the scholar most aware of his own ig- norance,— to the Christian minister most deeply sensible of his personal unworthiness, — to all who, how small soever their abilities and opportunities may be, yet, in the spirit which has now been recommended, at the call of God, and under a sense of duty, will do in the cause of truth and holiness what they can, and will commend their labours to the Almighty, — to them we do not hesitate to say that they are the men for whom the wants of the Church at this moment so powerfully call, — they are the men whom the Lord is ready to employ in the cause of the gospel and for the glory of his name, — they are, of all others, the men in whose favour the great Head of the Church is ready LECTURE VIII. 291 substantially to repeat that miracle of grace and of omnipotence which he wrought with Gideon of old, when " the Lord looked upon him, and said. Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee*i?" q Judges vi. 14. u 2 APPENDIX. NOTES TO LECTURE I. I.— p. 4. It is not imtlhout reason that I now call your attention to the nature and relations of those living poivers, intellectual and active, which we claim for the immortal part of man.] " So manifold are the adaptations between the subjective mind and the objective Christianity which is addressed to it, that we know not a better preparation than the study of the mental processes and laws, both for your philosophic- ally appreciating the internal evidences of our faith, and for your exploring, with the eye of a scientific observer, the depths and the recesses of experimental religion .... The direct experience of the advanced Christian, whether as verified in his own person, or as adverted to in Scrip- ture, is in striking coincidence with the discoveries of those who make the working of the human faculties the object of their reflex contemplation.'''' Dr. Chalmers, Principars Address, 1843. n.-p. 5. That individual self, which we denominate the sotil.] "There is an internal feeling in the human bosom which speaks of something more than merely animal life, and which by sceptical philosophers has been termed le moi. We receive this term with all thankfulness ; we care not for the term, but the admission of the thing is all important. The ad- mission that there exists within le moi, a principle of indi- vidual consciousness distinct from animal existence, is sufficient for the Christian philosopher, who well knows that Le Moi is neither more nor less than .... that which is theologically called The Soul.'''' Body and Mind, by W. Newnham, Esq., p. 139. 296 NOTES TO III.— p. 6. While we speak of the various faculties or powers of the soul, we must not conceive of our spiritual being as a mere col- lection or combination of independent forces ; and we should be careful lest, from our employment of separate terms, we slide into the conception of regions or portions of the soul really distinct from each other.] Since this Lecture was preached, I have met with the following passage in a work recently published, entitled The Eclipse of Faith, or a Visit to a Beligious Sceptic, — a work distinguished by acute and just reasoning, by great felicity of expression, and, above all, by its tone of enlightened and earnest piety. — " You do not sufficiently regard man as a complicated unity ; — you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities of his nature, the different parts of it, sensational, emo- tional, intellectual, moral, spiritual, — as set off from one another by a sharper boundary-line than nature acknow- ledges. They all work for immediate ends indeed ; but they also work for, with, and upon each other, for other ends than their own. Yet, as they all exist in one indi- visible mind, or rather constitute it, they form one most intricate machine : and it can rarely happen that the par- ticular phenomena of our interior nature we happen to be investigating do not involve many others. Throughout his book on " The Soul" we find Mr. Newman employing ex- pressions (though I admit there are others which contra- dict them) which imply that the phenomena of religion — of what he calls ' spiritual insighf — may be viewed in clearer distinction from those of the intellect than, as I conceive, they ever can be ; and that a much clearer separation can be effected between them than nature has made possible. To hear him sometimes speak, one would imagine that the logical, the moral, and the spiritual, are held together by no vital bond of connection ; nay, from some expressions, one would think that the ' logical' faculty had nothing to do with religion, if it is not to be supposed rather to stand in the way of it ; that the ' intellect"* and the ' spiritual faculty' may each retire to its 'vacant interlunar cave,' and never trouble its head about, what the other is doing. LECTURE I. 297 Thus he says, in one place, * all the grounds of Belief pro- posed to the mere understanding have nothing to do with Faith at all.' In another, ' The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul.' 'How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led V And accordingly you see he everywhere affirms that we ought not to have any better or worse opinion of any man for his ' intellectual creed ;" and that ' religious progress** cannot be ' anticipated,' until intellectual ' creeds are destroyed/ Here one would ima- gine that the intellectual, moral, and spiritual had even less to do with the production of each other's ' results,"" than matter and mind reciprocally have with theirs. These last, we see, in a thousand cases act and react upon one another ; and modify each other's peculiar products and operations in a most important manner. How much more reasonably may we infer that the elementary faculties of the same indivisible mind will not discharge their functions without important reciprocal action ; that in no case can we have the process pure and simple as the result of the operation of a single faculty ! . . . . What can be more obvious (and it must be admitted that the most fanatical 'spiritualist' employs expressions, and, what is more, uses methods which imply it) than that, whether we have a distinct religious faculty, or whether it be the result of the action of many faculties, the functions of our ' spiritual' nature are performed by the instrumentality, and involve the intervention, of the very same much-abused faculties which enable us to perform any other function. It is one and the same indivisible mind which is the subject of re- ligioiis thought and emotion, and of any other thought and emotion. Religious truth, like any other truth, is embraced by the understanding — as indeed it would be a queer kind of truth that is not ; is stated in propositions, yields in- ferences, is adorned by eloquence, is illustrated by the imagination, and is thus, as well as from its intrinsic claims, rendered powerful over the emotions, the affections, and the will. In brief, when the soul apprehends, reasons, remembers, rejoices, hopes, fears spiritually, it surely does 298 NOTES TO not pertbrni these functions by totally different faculties from those by which similar things are done on other oc- casions. All experience and consciousness are against the supposition. In religion, men's minds are employed on more sublime and elevated themes indeed, but the opera- tions themselves are essentially of the same nature as in other cases. Hence we see the dependence of the true development of religion on the just and harmonious action of all our faculties. They march together ; and it is the glorious prerogative of true religion that it makes them do SO; that all the elements of our nature, being indissolubly connected, and perpetually acting and reacting on one another, should aid one another, and attain a more just conjoint action. If there be acceptable faith^ it presup- poses belief of the tndh, as well as love of it in the heart ; if there be holy habit, it implies just knowledge of duty ; if there be spiritual emotion awakened, it will still be in ac- cordance with the laws which ordinarily produce it; that is, because that which should produce it is perceived by the senses or the intellect, is recalled by the memory, is vivified by the imagination. If faith and hope and love often kindle into activity, and hallow those instruments by which and through which they act, it is not the less true that, apart from these — as constituting the same indivisible mind — faith and hope and love cannot exist : and not only so ; but when faith is languid, and hope faint, and love expiring, these faculties themselves shall often in their turn initiate the process which shall revive them all ; some outward object, some incident of life, some ' magic word,"" some glorious image, some stalwart truth, suddenly and energetically stated, shall, through the medium of the senses, the imagination, or the intellect, set the soul once more in a blaze, and revive the emotion which it is at other times only their office to express. A sanctified in- tellect, a hallowed imagination, devout affections, have a reciprocal tendency to stimulate each other. In whatever faculty of our natm'e the stimulus may be felt, — in the in- tellect or the imagination, — it is thence propagated through the mysterious net-work of the ^soul to the emotions, the LECTURE I. 299 affections, the conscience, the will : or, conversely, these last may commence the movement and propagate it in the reverse order. Each may become in turn a centre of in- fluence ; but so indivisible is the soul and mind of man, so indissolubly bound together the elements which constitute them, that the influence once commenced never stops where it began, but acts upon them all. The ripple, as that of a stone dropped into still water, no matter where, may be fainter and fainter the further from the spot where the commotion began, but it will stop only with the bank. Ordinarily many functions of the mind are involved in each, and sometimes all in one." T'he Eclipse of Faith, sec- tion On a Prevailing Fallacy, pp. 307-309, ed. 1852. IV.— p. 8. Sensation^ hy iiihich we receive and recognise impressions from external objects, and perception^ or the spontaneous re- cognition of those objects themselves, and their attributes in relation to us.'\ On this subject see Sir William Hamilton's Notes on Reid, Note D.* v.— p. 8. With the ancient sophists and some modern philosophers.'] " With the exception of Heraclitus, the Epicureans, and the Sophists, none of the more important Grecian schools inculcated the absolute and undivided supremacy of sensa- tion. Plato, it is well known, threw aside sensation al- together, except as an instrument of conveying knowledge to the mind, and made the intellect all in all. Aristotle distinguished between their operations, and assigned to each their respective provinces." — As to the origin of our ideas, the opinions of metaphysicians may be divided into three classes. 1. Those who deny the senses to be anything more than instruments conveying objects to the mind, perception being active. (Plato and others.) 2. Those who attribute all our ideas to sense. (Hobbes, Gassendi, Condillac, the ancient sophists.) 3. Those who admit that the earliest notions proceed from the senses, yet maintain that they are not adequate to produce the 300 NOTES TO whole knowledge possessed by the human understanding. (Aristotle and Locke.) — Mills, Essays, ^c. pp. 314 — 321. " We may safely allow that sensation gives the first im- pulse ; we may agree with Bacon and Locke that know- ledge is built upon experience ; but it is the active and independent power of the understanding which regulates and fashions anew the information communicated by the feelings of sensation, and which ascends from the first les- sons of experience to the general and immutable principles of virtue and science. By the divine light of reason kindled in the soul^ man indicates his high original and his future destiny; developes the faculties and energies with which his Creator has endowed him; and, so far as a humble sense of his dependence on the Fountain of all Intelligence will permit, feels a just pride as he contemplates the moral and intellectual strength of Butler, Pascal, and Newton." Ibid. pp.347» 348. VI.— p. 9. Sensation is not the whole mind, in a rudimentary condi- tion, Sfc.^ " The theory which explains most completely and satisfactorily the facts of our own consciousness is, that the mind is a spiritual being enclosed in a material and living organization ; and that, for the education of the mind in this state of being, the impressions on the senses are as necessary as food, air, and exercise, are for the de- velopment of the bodily organization, — that the senses feed the mind, and excite the action of its own innate natural powers, but that they do not produce those powers."" Even- ing Thoughts, by a Physician ; section entitled The Whole Mind. — " The human mind is something independent of its circumstances ; it is a spontaneous, self-regulating existence, — a distinct personality, the very essence of which consists in activity. Accordingly, the fundamental error, as we think, of all systems of sensationalism, consists in taking for granted that 7nind, until the channels of sense convey to it life and feeling, is a nonentity, or at any rate a mere pas- sive entity ; whilst in fact we can no more conceive of it without thought and action than we can of matter with- out figure and extension." An Historical and Critical Vieic LECTURE I. 301 of the Speculatim Philosophi/ of Euroije in the nineteenth Cen- tury hy J. D. Morell, A. M., part ii. ch. 4. § i. " I shall simply take for granted that you are (as most philosophers are) an advocate of innate capacities, but not of ' innate ideas/ of innate susceptibilities, but not of ' in- nate sentiments ;' that is, I presume, you do not contend that the mind possesses more than the faculties — the laics of thought and feeling — which, under conditions of external development, actually give birth to thoughts and feelings. These faculties and susceptibilities are, no doubt, con- genital with the mind — or rather are the mind itself. But its actually manifested phenomena wait the touch of the external^ and they will be modified accordingly. It is ab- solutely dependent on experience in this sense, that it is only as it is operated upon by the outward world that the dormant faculties, whatever they are, and whatever their nature, be they few or many, — intellectual, moral, or spi- ritual,— are first awakened. If a mind were created (it is, at least, a conceivable case) with all the avenues to the external world closed, — in fact, we sometimes see approxi- mations to such a condition in certain unhappy individuals, — we do not doubt that such a mind, by the present laws of the human constitution, could not possess any thoughts, feelings, emotions ; in fact, could exhibit none of the phe- nomena, spiritual, intellectual, moral, or sensational, which now diversify it. In proportion as we see human beings approach this condition, — in fact, we sometimes see them approach it very nearly, — we see the ' potentialities' of the soul (I do not like the word, but it expresses my meaning better than any other I know) held in abeyance, and such an imperfectly awakened man does not, in some cases, ma- nifest the degree of sensibility or intelligence manifested in many animals. If the seclusion from sense and experience be quite complete, the life of such a soul would be wrapped up in the germ, and possess no more consciousness than a vegetable." The Eclipse of Faith, or, a Visit to a Religious Scepjtic^ section on The Analogies of an External Revela- tion with the Laws and Conditions of Human Develop- ment, pp. 286, 287. 302 NOTES TO VII.— p. 9. Nor can we assent to a proposition^ which has the sanction of high names, to the effect that all our knowledge is to he ascribed to sense and inspiration. 1 Bishop Van Mildert, in his Boyle Lectures, says, " The first question is, what are the inlets of knowledge ; what the channels through which the mind is to be suppUed with these necessary means of information ? Logicians speak of these as various ; namely, sense, consciousness, intelligence, reason, faith, and in- spiration. But all these seem reducible to the two general heads of sense and inspiration .... in other words, to man''s faculties instructed by what the visible world presents to his view, or by what God may be pleased to reveal to him." Serm. xiv. — And he supports this view by the fol- lowing quotation from Lord Bacon : " Knowledge is like waters ; some waters descend from the heavens, some spring from the earth. So the primary partition of sci- ences is to be derived from their fountains ; some are seated above ; some are here beneath. For all knowledge proceeds from a twofold information ; either from Divine inspiration, or from external sense." Advancement of Learn- ing, book iii. ch. i. — It is obvious how entirely I concur in the following remark made by one of my predecessors with reference to this passage in the Lectures of the learned prelate : " I need not point out how unsatisfactory is such a view to those who maintain the existence of moral per- ceptions entirely apart both from the powders of sense and the aids of inspiration, properly so called, and who studi- ously distinguish all its other acknowledged powers from the principle of faith, or the religious principle, in the ac- counts which they give of the structure and capabilities of the human soul." MichelFs Bampton Lectures, Serm. iii. VIII.— p. 9. As though we possessed, over and above the power of sen- sible perception, no more than the passive faculty of receiving knowledge directly imparted to us by the Father of our spirits.] It may be true that all the faculties of a finite mind are, and must be, to a certain exten^ passive ; but then it is no LECTURE I. 303 less true that in all cases the mind is also distinguished by the possession of spontaneous activity. Sensible perception is, in some measure, active ; and throughout the whole mind we discover, together with a wide field of susceptibility or capacity, a vast apparatus of power. — And the mind ought to be active in its use of what it has first received as a passive subject. God does nothing in vain ; and the very presence of a mental capacity implies the existence of an adequate complement, as the eye is provided with light, and is made for seeing. IX.— p. lo. The truth is, as we say, self-evident.'] " The main prin- ciples of reason are in themselves apparent [i. e. self- evident]. For to make nothing evident of itself unto man"'8 understanding were to take away all possibility of knowing anything. And herein that of Theophrastus is true, ' They that seek a reason of all things do utterly overthrow reason' [airavTcov (r]To{)VTes kdyov, avaipovcn \6yov).'''' Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i. 8, § 5. — " If all our knowledge depended merely upon custom and experience, in that case there would be no more certainty in mathematical than in moral evidence. We may have seen one circle and investigated its properties, but why, when our individual experience is so circumscribed, do we assume the same relations of all ? Simply because the understanding has the conviction intui- tively that similar objects will have similar properties ; it does not acquire this idea by sensation or custom; the mind developes it by its own intrinsic force ; it is a law of our faculties ultimate and universal, from which all reason- ing proceeds." Mills, Essays c§t., p. 337. X. — p. 10. The truth is, as we say, self-evident; that is, strictly speaking, the mind, of itself, knoivs that the projjosition is a true one.] " The very existence of reasoning must depend upon the previous acquiescence of the mind in some first and ultimate notions. We discover the same doctrine in the innate ideas of Des Cartes (untenable as his hypothesis may be), in the eternal truths of Leibnitz, in the common 304 NOTES TO sense of Dr. Reid. Kant makes it the foundation of his system by technically dividing the powers of the mind into reason and understanding ; and by assigning to the former the perception of the primary notions, and to the latter the syllogistic process. I would add that it is virtually acknowledged in the intuition of Locke, by which self- evident truth is asserted to be perceived. For when we speak of self-evident truth, we allow, in other words, that the understanding, by its own inherent powers, has the capacity of determining instantaneously some notions to be true ; the self-evidence of the truth not being in the thing perceived, but in the percipient mind."" Mills, Essai/s ^c, P- 345' 346. XI. — p. 10. Truth which is proved has for its foundation truth which cannot he proved^ — truth which cannot he proved, hut yet may he most certainly known hy intuition, hy the direct and simple act of mental consciousness.'] " Let us . . . view it [the mind] as acting when a proposition of a purely intellectual cha- racter is submitted to it, — any of the propositions, for in- stance, of geometry. " On any one of the propositions being brought under its notice, it pronounces a decision regarding it ; and the language in which we express the decision is ' it is true,' or ' it is false.' Now, in pronouncing this decision, the mind proceeds on its own laws or principles, — principles which are fundamental, and as incapable of analysis as the simple elements to which chemistry at last conducts us in the analysis of corporeal substances. " ' Considering this,' says Aristotle, ' that the beginning of demonstration cannot be demonstration, nor the begin- ning of science, science ; and since we have said there is no other kind of truth, intuition must be the beginning of science.' All reasoning then, it is acknowledged, carries us back to certain intuitive principles. In saying so, we mean that in the analogies of it we are conducted at last to truths which admit of no demonstration. Properly speaking, reason- ing does not carry us back to these axiomatic truths, — it proceeds upon them. It cannot-^ven be said to begin with LECTURE I. 305 them ; for, till reason begins, these axioms have no exist- ence in the mind. Nay, these principles have at no time a separate existence as notions in the mind, at least till it begins to form reflex metaphysical abstractions. The con- ception of them is one of the most refined and difficult exercises in which the mind can engage, and the correct expression of them is one of the most arduous works about which human language can be employed. The reason pro- ceeds on these axiomatic principles, just as the eye sees by means of rays of light, and neither takes cognizance of those media which are needful for its exercise. It is by a reflex act of the mind, and that a very subtle one, that the philosopher is led to discover what is the nature of the fundamental principles imposed upon, or rather forming part of, the very faculties of the human mind. They are roots or radicals supporting all visible truth, but them- selves unseen, and only to be discovered by artificially digging into the depths which they penetrate, and which cover them from the view. " All modern philosophers of authority have acknow- ledged that there are such fundamental principles. Kant speaks of them as the categories of the understanding and the ideas of pure reason. Reid calls them the principles of the communis sensus, very unhappily translated by a name usually differently applied — common sense. Stewart calls them the laws of human thought or belief. Brown speaks of them as the primary universal intuitions of direct belief. Cousin talks of them as simple mental apperceptions and primitive judgments. Mackintosh, in referring to them, says, — ' They seem to be accurately described as notions which cannot be conceived separately, but without which nothing can be conceived. They are not only necessary to reasoning and belief, but to thought itself." Mackintosh elsewhere represents them as ' the indispensable conditions of thought itself."* It is to them, as we apprehend, that Whewell refers under the phrase 'fundamental ideas' so often employed by him. Sir William Hamilton has com- pleted all past metaphysics on this subject, by shewing 306 NOTES TO that the argument from the principles of common sense is one strictly philosophic and scientific, and by a critical review of the nomenclature, all proceeding on the same principle which has been employed by upwards of one hun- dred of the profoundest thinkers in ancient and modern times. It is very interesting to observe how deep and earnest thinkers come at last to a wonderful agreement, even when they appear, to superficial observers, to have no one principle in common." The Method of the Divine Go- vermnent^ Physical and Moral, by Rev. James ]\rCosh, A.M. book iii. chap. i. § 4. — Sir William Hamilton, in his Dis- sertations appended to Reid's Essays, quotes and translates many passages from Aristotle in confirmation of the views here attributed to that philosopher, introducing his quota- tions by the following remarks. " Aristotle lays it down in general as the condition of the possibility of knowledge, that it do not regress to infinity, but depart from certain primary /acfe, belief s, or principles, — true, and whose truth commands assent, through themselves, and themselves alone. These, as the foundations, are not objects, of science ; as the elements of demonstration, they are them- selves indemonstrable. The fountains of certainty to all else, they are themselves preeminently certain ; and if de- nied in words, they are still always mentally admitted. The faculty of such principles is not Reason, the discursive or dianoetic faculty (Ao'yos, hiavoia)^ but Intellect or Intel- ligence proper, the noetic faculty, {vovs). Intellect, as an im- mediate apprehension of what is, may be viewed as a sense (aio-^rjo-is). Compare Analyt. Post. hb.i. cc. 2, 3, 10,32; lib.ii. cult. ; Top. lib. i. c. 1 ; Metaph. lib. i. c. 7; lib. ii. (A minor) c. 2; lib. ii. (iii. Duvallio) cc. 3,4, 6; lib. iii. (iv.) c. 6; Eth. Nic. lib. vi. cc. 6, 11 (12); Eth. Eud. lib. v. cc. 6, 8; lib.vii. c. 14 ; Mag. Mor. lib. i. c. '7,^^.'''' Sir W. Hamilton's Notes on Eeid, note A. § 6. — With respect to the terminology of the above extract, it will be seen that the faculty which in these Lectures is denominated Reason is here called Intel- lect or Intelligence proper, and that the term Reason is applied to the dianoetic faculty, or Understanding. LECTURE I. 307 XII.— p. 10. The source of our ideas of poicer and causation.'] On this subject the following passages from MorelFs History of Modern Philosophy/ are worthy of special attention in the present day. — " The most famous portions of Hume's scep- ticism were the conclusions which he drew from his em- pirical principles respecting the origin of our ideas. Every notion, according to these principles, which cannot shew some impression, i. e. some direct sensation from which it proceeds, is altogether delusive, and must be rejected as worthless by the true experimental philosopher. Amongst these merely imaginary notions, Hume places that ol poioer^ it being evident that we can learn from experience nothing more than the existence of certain changes, which take place under certain circumstances ; and that there is no perceptive faculty in man, by which the link that connects any two given effects can possibly be discovered.. Every inquiry on matters of fact., as Hume correctly shews, is based upon the notions of cause and effect ; the origin of which notions he discovers in experience, and entirely dis- owns the supposition that any idea of 'power or adaptatioii is connected with them. Here we conceive there is a double error ; for, first of all, we have the distinct idea of power (whether it be objectively valid or not), given in the per- ception of two phenomena succeeding each other ; neither can all the reasoning in the world dispossess us of it. And secondly, the notion of cause and effect cannot come from sensible experience, because the idea o^ power, which forms the very peculiarity in all those successions which stand related as cause and effect, is one which lies altogether beyond the reach of the senses. It is not experience which tells us, when a man is nmrdered, that there must be a murderer ; the law which refers such an effect to an efficient cause hes deeper in our nature than this, and has about it a necessity and a universality, which prior experience could never have strengthened, nor the want of it have prevented. A single act brings the law or judgment into operation as readily as a thousand. Reid and Kant both contested the empirical doctrine of Hume on this point. The former X 2 308 iNOTES TO appealed to common sense, and made the law of causality one of our intellectual instincts ; the latter argued that the idea of cause and effect is one of the a priori forms by which the human mind necessarily views the connection of external things, a doctrine which grounds Reid's instinct in a deeper principle or law of our inward nature." — Speaking of the 'Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind/ by James Mill, our author says, " In this depart- ment of his analysis, the peculiar theory which is main- tained, of cause and effect, lies at the foundation of almost all the other results. Mr. Mill considered it proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, nay, since the days of Brown, to have become almost axiomatic, that cause and effect imply nothing more than uniform precedence and conse- quence. This, however, must be regarded as far too bold and hasty an assumption, when we consider that the doc- trine referred to is denied almost universally by the Ger- man metaphysicians ; when we hear one of the greatest thinkers of our day calling it ' a fantastical theory which gives a denial to universal helief and to facts ; a theory destructive of all true metaphysics ,-' (See Victor Cousin, in his Preface to the ' Remains' of M. de Biran) ; and when we find even the first natural philosopher of the age de- scribing Brown's theory as one ' in which the whole train of argument is vitiated hy one enormous oversight^ the omission, namely, of a distinct and immediate personal consciousness of causation in his enumeration of that sequence of events, by which the volition of the mind is made to terminate in the motion of the material objects.'' (See Sir John HerscheFs Treatise on Astronomy). We contend ... that the con- scious effort of our own will gives us the distinct idea of power in causation, which then becomes to us the type of those vast ever-working powers of the universe by which we are surrounded, the foundation of our confidence in the uniformity of nature, and the basis of our belief in the great First Cause of all things." — Afterwards we read, with reference to the " System of Logic," by John Stuart Mill (a still more recent work, and one, as Morell truly says, of great and unquestiongible merit), — " Another LECTURE I. 309 very decisive proof of our author's sensational tendency is found in his support of Brown's theory of causation (vol. I. book iii. chap. 5). In no work with which we are acquainted is the law of causality so ingeniously and plaus- ibly traced to experience as in this, and in none is the whole theory put in a more forcible and unobjectionable light. Ingenuity, however, though it may mislead for a time, will never succeed eventually in carrying along with it the suffrages of mankind against the fundamental con- victions of human nature. Try as we will to sink all idea of a real connection between cause and effect, the belief will eternally recur ; and however plausibly the theory may be propounded, yet it will ever be found wanting so long as there is left out in the analysis the one important link to which we have before referred, that of a personal consciousness of 'poimr. Instead then of resting the evi- dence of the law of causality upon a simple induction of empirical facts, we should trace its establishment to a pro- cess of the following nature : — Every man, when he pro- duces change upon the outer world, is conscious of putting forth a power in voHtion, which power is exerted upon the external object. If the same power be again put forth in similar circumstances, he knows intuitively that the same change will take place. Hence the notion of power put forth by some cause is associated with the perception of emry effect ; and the force emanating from our own will becomes the type upon which we conceive of power, as universally exerted in the production of every other possible phenomenon. Thus the law of causation primarily ema- nates from our own volition, and being expanded by the aid of experience, at length assumes the form of a universal principle, applicable to all the phenomena of the universe." MorelPs History of Modern Philosophy^ part i. chap. 3. § 2 ; part ii. chap. 4. § i. XIII.— p. 12. An instinctive, original, moral faculty. '\ See Butler, Ser- mon i. Upon Human Nature. — A section in M'Oosh's 3Ie- thod of the Divine Government., entitled An Inquiry into the 310 NOTES TO Nature of Conscience, contains some valuable observations on conscience considered as a faculty, and considered as a law. The following passage relates to conscience considered as a faculty (moral judgment, moral reason): — "Present two sensations produced by external objects to the mind, and it perceives a resemblance or a difference between them, and it does so according to a law of our nature. Present the voluntary acts of an accountable being to the mind, and it decides regarding them that they are right or that they are wrong. We believe the one act of the mind to be as simple and unresolvable as the other. " Should any party insist on our resolving this intuitive principle, we remind him that in doing so we would only be resolving it back into a farther principle, and that he might on the same ground ask us to resolve that principle also, and, as he thus pushed us, we would at length be carried back to a principle which could not be resolved into any- thing simpler, and which we must therefore just assume. Now, we assert at once that it is by an unresolvable prin- ciple that the mind decides, when voluntary acts pass under its notice, that they are right or that they are wrong. It seems evident to us, on the one hand, that this principle cannot be resolved into any of those intellectual axioms on which the understanding proceeds in acquiring know- ledge ; — compound and decompound these as we please, they will never lead to the ideas of right and wrong : — nor, on the other hand, can it be resolved into those principles which are connected with the desire of pleasure or the aversion to pain. No composition of such ideas or feelings could produce the idea or feeling expressed in the words ' ought," ' duty,"" ' moral obligation," ' desert,' ' guilt." As well, in our view, might we talk of a combination of gases, or of any other corporeal substance, producing an idea, as of mere intellectual ideas, or mere emotions connected with the sensations of pleasure or pain, producing a . sense of moral obligation. Even as no composition of colours can produce sound, and no composition of odours produce co- lours, so, it appears to us, no possible combination of intel- lectual conceptions, or sensatior>e of pleasure and pain, or LECTURE I. 311 of the desires connected with these, can produce moral ap- probation and disapprobation. " We are thus brought to the conclusion that the mind declares that there is an indelible distinction between good and evil ; just as it declares that there is an indelible dis- tinction between truth and error. We believe that the mind, in the one case as in the other, proceeds on its own fundamental principles. Does some one insist on our making this moral idea patent to the reason, and justifying it to the understanding? We reply that the distinction does not come under the cognizance of the reason, any more than the diiference of sounds can be brought under the discernment of the eye, or the diiference of colours under that of the ear. If the objector become proud and presumptuous, and insist on our yielding to his demand, we ask him to begin with demonstrating the axiomatic principles on which reason proceeds, and, when he has done so, he may be the better prepared to try his skill upon an analysis of moral principle, or rather, after having made the attempt and failed, he will be the better prepared to acknowledge that there may be moral principles, the existence of which reason may discover, but cannot pos- sibly analyze. " Call them by what name you please, you come back in all inquiry after truth to principles which reason cannot demonstrate, but on which, on the contrary, all reasoning proceeds. To deny this is to involve ourselves in the ab- surdity of an infinite series of proofs, each hanging on the other, with nothing to support them or on which to rest, or in a circle of proofs in which there is connection, but no origin or foundation, and no progress. In like manner, in the inquiry into virtue and vice we come back to ulti- mate principles, on which all morality rests. Just as the former class of principles are anterior in the order of things to all exercise of the reasoning faculties, so the latter are anterior to every given exercise of the conscience." M'Cosh, Method of the Divine Government, book iii. chap. i. § 4. " The reason that the authority of these internal percep- tions of moral truth and good is often called in question is 312 NOTES TO this — that from the great diversity that is found in the opinions of men, and the different judgments that they seem to pass upon the same things, it is too hastily in- ferred that these original perceptions in various men are various, and cannot therefore be to any the test of univer- sal truth. A Christian, for example, imagines a natural impurity in sensual gratifications; a Mahometan is per- suaded that they will make part of the happiness of the righteous in a future state ; the Christian reverences his Bible because it prohibits these indulgences; the Maho- metan loves the Koran because it permits them. Whence, it is said, is this diversity of opinion, unless the mind of the Christian perceives those things as impure which the mind of the Mahometan equally perceives as innocent I From these equal but various perceptions they severally infer the probability of their various faith ; and who shall say that the one judges more reasonably than the other, if both judge from perceptions of which they are conscious ? Yet they judge differently; both therefore cannot judge aright, unless right judgment may be different from itself. Must it not then be granted, either that these perceptions are uncertain and fallacious, — or, which may seem more rea- sonable, since no man can have a higher certainty than that which arises from a consciousness of his own feelings, that every man hath his own private standard of moral truth and excellence, purity and turpitude ; that right and wrong are nothing in themselves, but are to every man what his particular conscience makes them ; and that the universal idea of moral beauty, of which some men have been affected to be so vehemently enamoured, and which is set up as the ultimate test of truth in the highest specula- tions, is a mere fiction of the imagination ? " It is not to be wondered that many have been carried away by the fair apjjearance of this argument, in which nothing seems to be alleged that is open to objection. Ne- vertheless the conclusion is false, and the whole reasoning is nothing better than a cheat and a lie ; the premises on which it is founded being a false fact, with much art tacitly taken for granted. Tlie whole proceeds on this assump- LECTURE I. 313 tion, — that men, in forming their judgments of things, do always refer to the original perception of their own minds, that is, to conscience. Deny this, and the diversity of opinions will no longer be a proof of a diversity of original perceptions ; from which supposed diversity the fallacioiis- ness of that perception was inferred. And is not this to be denied ? Is it not rather the truth that no man is at all times attentive to these perceptions ? that many men never attend to them at all l that in many they are stifled and overcome, — in some by education, fashion, or example ; in others, by the desperate wickedness of their own hearts ? Now, the mind in which this ruin hath been effected hath lost indeed its natural criterion of truth ; and judges not by its original feelings, but by opinions taken up at ran- dom. Nevertheless, the nature of things is not altered by the disorder of perverted minds; nor is the evidence of things the less to those who perceive them as they are, be- cause there are those who have not that perception. No man the less clearly sees the light, whose own eye is sound, because it is not seen by another who is blind ; nor are the distinctions of colour less to all mankind, because a disor- dered eye confounds them. The same reasoning may be applied to our mental perceptions : the Christiana's discern- ment of the purity of the gospel doctrine is not the less clear, — his veneration for it arising from that discernment not the less rational, — because a Mahometan may, with equal ardour, embrace a corrupt system, and may be insens- ible to the greater beauty of that which he rejects. In a word, every man implicitly trusts his bodily senses concern- ing external objects placed at a convenient distance ; and every man may, with as good a reason, put even a greater trust in the perceptions of which he is conscious in his own mind ; which indeed are nothing else than the first notices of truth and of Himself which the Father of spirits imparts to subordinate minds, and which are to them the first principles and seeds of intellect."" Bp. Horsley, Sermon on John XX. 29. XIV.— p. 14. We discover some truths or discern them tipon their simple 314 NOTES TO presentation.] It is to be distinctly borne in mind that there are many things which the mind cannot discover, which yet it is able to discern and recognise as true when duly presented for its acceptance. — " It would greatly serve to prepare you, not for being rightly operated upon by evi- dence, but which is truly a different thing, for rightly un- derstanding the method of its operation, did you make a just distinction between the power required for the discern- ment of a truth, and the power required for its discovery. There might be ten thousand minds capable of discerning what only one of the whole number are capable of discover- ing. Nay, what is more, there might be not one individual of our species who could have made the discovery of what, after that the discovery is made from some quarter foreign to the species, might not only be read but recognised of all men. In the former case, ^r when man is the discoverer, there is the homage ascribed to him of a sagacity or a genius which signalizes him above all his fel- lows ; in the latter case, or when the discovery breaks in upon the world from some other quarter, it is referred to a superhuman origin, — to a mind of a higher order, pos- sessed of faculties and powers transcendently above the reach, and beyond the compass, of the unaided faculties of man. And it might make no difference, whether the truth in question was at one time in the possession of mankind, but afterwards lost and obliterated in the process of their degeneracy from the light which they originally enjoyed, or whether it be altogether new to the species. Either to discover what before had been altogether unheard of within the limits of the human family, or to recover what was originally known but had at length been extinguished and is forgotten, might be an achievement utterly beyond the faculties of any man upon earth, and the revelation of which might require the letting in upon our world of a light and an intelligence from above. But what we affirm is that the need of such a discovery from without of a given truth, — and that owing to the want of power in man, — does not necessarily imply the want of power from within for the discernment of such truih, when once it is set be- LECTURE I. 315 fore us. A proposition which we could never have found our way to, we may nevertheless recognise as worthy of all credit and all acceptation, when stated and placed forward to our view. We have no light in ourselves which could lead to the disclosure of it ; but when disclosed ab extra, there may be a light in ourselves with which to invest it in the characters of truth, and so to constrain the homage of our deep-felt convictions, — not that light of evidence which could open up for us a pathway to the objective, but a light of evidence struck out between the objective and the subjective — requiring therefore the presentation of the object by another, after which it is acknowledged and ap- propi'iated by ourselves as an article of faith. Yet it is not, we contend, a faith without reason, but with a reason, which, though only stated and explained by few, may be felt, and most legitimately felt, by many : insomuch that the doctrine thus perceived, and thus admitted into their creed, may take its place amongst the clearest and most confident of all their reckonings." Chalmers, Institutes of Theology, book iii. chap. 6. XV.— p. 14. We are able and disposed to yield to evidence, in proportion to its nature and its strength.'] " La foi n''est pas la credulite; rhomme le plus credule n''est pas toujours celui qui croit le mieux ; une croyance se perd d'autant plus aisement qu'on Fa plus facilement adoptee ; et les convictions les plus fermes sont bien souvent celles qui ont le plus coute. La credulite n'est que la servile complaisance d'un esprit faible, tandis que la foi reclame tout le ressort, et toute la vigueur de Fame." Discours sur Quelques Sujets Religieux, par A. Vinet, — La Foi, premier Discours, {sur Jean xx. 2q.) — " The mind of man desireth evermore to know the truth according to the most infallible certainty which the nature of things can yield. The greatest assurance generally with all men is that which we have by plain aspect and intuitive beholding. Where we cannot attain unto this, there what appeareth to be true by strong and invincible demonstra- tion, such as wherein it is not by any way possible to be deceived, thereunto the mind doth necessarily assent, nei- 316 NOTES TO ther is it in the choice thereof to do otherwise. And in case these both do fail, then which way the greatest pro- babiUty leadeth, thither the mind doth evermore incline. Scripture with Christian men being received as the word of God ; that for which we have probable, yea, that which we have necessary reason for, yea, that which we see with our eyes, is not thought so sure as that which the Scrip- ture of God teacheth ; because we hold that his speech revealeth there what himself seeth, and therefore the strongest proof of all, and the most necessarily assented unto by us (which do thus receive the Scripture) is the Scripture. Now, it is not required nor can be exacted at our hands, that we should yield unto anything other assent than such as doth answer the evidence which is to be had of that we assent unto. For which cause, even in matters divine, concerning some things we may lawfully doubt and suspend our judgment, inclining neither to one side nor other; as namely, touching the time of the fall both of men and angels : of some things we may very well retain an opinion that they are probable and not unlikely to be true, as when we hold that men have their souls rather by creation than propagation, or that the mother of our Lord lived always in the state of virginity as well after his birth as before, (for of these two the one, her virginity before, is a thing which of necessity we nmst believe ; the other, her continuance in the same state always, hath more likelihood of truth than the contrary) : finally, in all things then are our consciences best resolved, and in a most agreeable sort unto God and nature settled, when they are so far per- suaded as those grounds of persuasion which are to be had will bear. " Which thing I do so much the rather set down, for that I see how a number of souls are for want of right in- formation in this point oftentimes grievously vexed. When bare and unbuilded conclusions are put into their minds, they, finding not themselves to have thereof any great cer- tainty, imagine that this proceedeth only from lack of faith, and that the Spirit of God doth not work in them aa it doth in true believers ; by ttis means their hearts are LECTURE I. 317 much troubled, they fall into anguish and perplexity : whereas the truth is, that, how bold and confident soever we may be in words, when it conieth to the point of trial, such as the evidence is which the truth hath either in itself or through proof, such is the heart's assent thereunto ; neither can it be stronger, being grounded as it should be." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. book ii. ch. 7. § 5. XVI.— p. 14. To assent to testimony concerning facts not present and ma- nifest.] " Facts are of the nature of first principles, inca- pable of being made more clear or certain by any attempt at demonstration. Their proof depends, in the first in- stance, upon the evidence of the senses, which, to those who are in possession of it, affords immediate and irresist- ible conviction. But to those who are removed, by distance of time or place, from the possibility of thus judging of them, they can be proved only by testimony ; and no other proof can reasonably be sought. Facts of a marvellous or extraordinary kind may indeed require a greater degree of evidence to render them credible; but still they are capable of evidence ; and, sufficient evidence being given, it is ir- rational to refuse our assent to them. In the case of re- vealed religion, we contend that such an extraordinary de- gree of evidence has been afforded as is fully proportioned to the nature of the facts to be proved ; and therefore that every man is morally obliged to give credit to it, unless he can adduce some real contradictory evidence, by which it may be refuted or at least rendered doubtful." "It has indeed generally been one of the chief objects among infidel writers to shake our belief in human testimony. But, in so doing, they run counter to the common senti- ments of mankind, as well as to the clear intentions of Providence, who hath ordained that we shall chiefly depend upon this most extensive source of information for the greater part of our knowledge, and especially for that which is essential to our well-being. The foundation of our reliance on testimony lies in the very nature and constitu- tion of man. He who so framed us that our faculties are 318 NOTES TO limited to certain narrow boundaries of time and space, evidently designed that we should mutually depend, in a great degree, upon the faculties of each other ; that we should trust, in many cases, to the senses, the memory, and the understanding of others, exercised as we ourselves exercise such faculties for the acquisition of knowledge." Bishop Van Mildert, Boyh Lectures, Sermon xix. " There are in the world many men, whose declaration concerning any fact which they have seen, and of which they are competent judges, would engage my belief as effectually as the credence of my own senses. A metaphysician may tell me that this implicit confidence in testimony is unworthy of a philosopher, and that my faith ought to be more rational. It may be so ; but I believe as before notwithstanding. And I find that all men have the same confidence in the testimony of certain persons ; and that if a man should refuse to think as other men do in this matter, he would be called obstinate, whimsical, narrow-minded, and a fool. If, after the experience of so many ages, men are still dis- posed to believe the word of an honest man, and find no inconvenience in doing so, I must conclude that it is not only natural, but rational, expedient, and manly, to credit such testimony ; and though I were to peruse volumes of metaphysic written in proof of the fallibility of testimony, I should still, like the rest of the world, believe credible testimony without fear of inconvenience. I know very well that testimony is not admitted in proof of any doctrine in mathematics, because the evidence of that science is of a different kind. But is truth to be found in mathematics only ? is the geometrician the only person who exercises a rational belief? do we never find conviction arise in our minds, except when we contemplate an intuitive axiom, or run over a mathematical demonstration ? In natural phi- losophy, a science not inferior to pure mathematics in the certainty of its conclusions, testimony is admitted as a suf- ficient proof of many facts. To believe testimony, there- fore, is agreeable to nature, to reason, and to sound philo- sophy." Beattie, Essay on Truths part i. chap. 2. § 8. " Dr. Chalmers entered upon the consideration of our LECTURE I. 319 faith in testimony, which he classed with those original and indestructible beliei's which can as little be weakened by assault as they can be fortified by foreign aid. The futility of all attempts to impose upon nature's own simple method of sustaining herself in her primary convictions was most philosophically exposed.'^ Life of Dr. Chalmers^ vol. III. pp. 61, 62. XVII.-p. 15. To submit to authority in the announcement or proposition of truths^ independently of any internal and direct perception of them by ourselves.'] "To beheve on sufficient authority is no less certain an indication of a sound understanding, than to believe on the evidence of sense or of abstract rea- soning; and,... since we can receive no knowledge of Di- vine Truths but from Divine Instruction, Faith, or a reli- ance on the authority of God, is the proper and the only medium through which such truths can be communicated to the understanding. God hath given us senses to con- vey to our minds ideas of the material world. He hath given us ability to discern (though not fully and com- pletely) the relations, fitnesses, forms, qualities, and other attributes, of whatever the visible world presents to our view. He hath also gifted us with an internal sense of consciousness, by which we make considerable progress in the study of ourselves, and deduce from the phenomena of the human mind, as from the phenomena of the external world, many useful truths, of a practical as well as of a speculative nature. From these and various other faculties of body and of mind we derive all our physical and meta- physical knowledge, every thing, indeed^ which properly con- stitutes human science. Moreover, it hath pleased God to bestow upon us such a measure of intellect as renders us capable of receiving whatever knowledge of a higher kind, relating to himself, and to the spiritual or invisible world. He shall see fit to superadd to the knowledge which we acquire through the medium of our senses, and the exer- cise of our reflecting powers. This simple theory of the human mind, while it leaves to man ample scope for ad- vancement in knowledge by the proper use of those powers, 320 NOTES TO reserves at the same time to the Almighty his inaHenable prerogative of being the direct Instructor of mankind in their highest and noblest concerns. When, therefore, it is said (as it sometimes is, with an evil intention of exalting man's dignity, to the disparagement of that of his Creator) that God hath endued us with natural faculties sufficient to enable us to fulfil all the purposes of our being, the position, though true, must be understood in a hmited and qualified sense , as denoting, not that our natural faculties are sufficient to guide us into all truth without His help and instruction, but that they render us capa- ble of receiving His instructions, and particularly of dis- tinguishing that which He communicates from that which is purely the result of our own investigation. To judge then accurately between matters of Science and matters of Faith, is one of the highest and most important functions of the human understanding : and to decide properly upon their respective weight, is one of the most certain charac- teristics of a sound and unperverted judgment." Bp. Van Mildert, Boyle Lectures^ Serm. xvi. (But see also NoteVH, supra.) xvni.— p. 15. In matters of common life^ from childhood to old age, v;e continually act, and are compelled to act, upon this principled] " Even in common life faith is the compass by which men steer their practice, and the main spring of action, setting all the wheels of our activity on going ; every man acteth with serious intention, and with vigour answerable to his persuasion of things, that they are worthy his pains, and attainable by his endeavours. \Vliat moveth the husband- man to employ so much care, toil, and expense in manuring his ground, in ploughing, in sowing, in weeding, in fencing it, but a persuasion that he shall reap a crop, which in benefit will answer all ? What stirreth up the merchant to undertake tedious voyages over vast and dangerous seas, adventuring his stock, abandoning his ease, exposing his life to the waves, to rocks and shelves, to storms and hurri- canes, to cruel pirates, to sweltry heats and piercing colds, but a persuasion that wealth is^ very desirable thing, and LECTURE I. 321 that hereby he may acquire it? What iiiduceth a man to conform to strictest rules, diet and abstinence, readily to swallow down the most unsavoury potions, patiently to en- dure cuttings and burnings, but a faith that he thereby shall recover or preserve health, that highly valuable good ? From the same principle are all the carking, all the plod- ding, all the drudging, all the daring, all the scuffling in the world easily derivable. In like manner is Faith the square and the source of our spiritual activity, disposing us seriously to undertake, — earnestly, resolutely, industri- ously, and constantly to pursue, — the designs of virtue and piety, brooking the pains and hardships, breaking through the difficulties and hazards, which occur in religious prac- tice ; engaging us to the performance of duty, deterring us from the commission of sin." Barrow, Sermons on (lie Apo- tles' Creed, Serra. iii. — See the same thought expanded in Archdeacon Hare's Victor^/ of Faith, Serm. iv. ; " Power of Faith in Man^s Natural Life." — See also Rogers's Essays, vol. 2. Essay 4, '■^Reason and Faith, their Claims and Con- flicts," pp. 255-257 : (pp. 6, 7 of the smaller ed.) XIX.— p. 16. Independently/ of the exercise of faith^ it is utterly heyond the reach of every man living.] We ought not to regard this as a defect in the constitution of the human mind, or even as indicating our inferiority compared with creatures, if such there are, of a more pure and piercing intelligence. On the contrary, it seems rather, upon a consideration of all the powers of the soul collectively surveyed, that the exer- cise of faith is a high and ennobling privilege, — that, to say the least, it serves an important purpose in our course of moral discipline, — and that it may even have place in the history of beings of a higher order than that in which man was placed at his creation. Nor can we have any reason to doubt that, even if man had continued in his originally upright and perfect condition, he would still have been obliged, in many instances, to trust to divine authority for information concerning many particulars of truth and duty. "On a coutume de poser la raison et la foi; il faudrait 322 NOTES TO dire plutot que Tune complete I'autre, et qu'elles sont deux piliers, dont un seul ne pourrait sans Tautre soutenir la vie. On plaint rhomrae de ce qu'il ne pent tout savoir, ou plu- tot tout voir, et de ce qu'encore il est oblige de croire : mais c'est le plaindre d'un de ses privileges. La connaissance dii-ecte ne met pas en requisition les forces vives de Tame ; elle est un etat passif qu'aucune spontaneite n'honore ; mais dans I'acte de la foi (car c'est un acte et non un etat) T^rae est en quel que sorte creatrice ; si elle ne cree pas la verite, elle la rapproche de soi, se I'approprie, la realise ; une idee devient un fait, un fait sans cesse present." Vinet, Dlscours, La Foi, Premier Disc. — See also Rogers's Essays, Essai/ on Reason atid Faith, vol.2, pp.260-267: (pp. 10-17 smaller ed.) " That God, when he created man, endued him with facul- ties sufficient for all the purposes of his existence, it were impious to doubt ; but to suppose that He gave him faculties by which he was to become independent of the divine aid or control, is a supposition without warrant or foundation. Nay, it is not only unsupported by authority or proof,but is contrary to what we might reasonably expect, from considering the relation that subsists between the creature and the Creator. Were man, indeed, destined only for this world_, then, to walk by sight, to concern himself only about the things here present to his view, and to be utterly regardless of what relates to the invisible world, might be his wisdom and his duty. But if the Almighty created him to be an heir of immortality and a partaker of his everlasting king- dom, is it not reasonable to suppose that he would afford him such instruction relative to that future and invisible world as the objects here before him are incompetent to supply ? Can it be imagined that a benevolent and all-wise Creator would suffer his creature, man, to remain in igno- rance of the divine will, or to fail, through want of due light and information, of attaining the great end of his being, and the most perfect happiness of which his nature is capable l From these and other similar considerations we are almost necessarily led to suppose that the Almighty would reserve in his hands such a direct autliority over us, and such means of interposing in our concerns, as LECTURE I. 323 should continually remind us of our subjection to Him, and convince us that we are dependent on His will for every thing we can hope for or enjoy." Bishop Van Mildert, Boyle Lectures, Serm. xvi. Hooker says that, from St. John viii. 44, " it may be very probably thought that the happi- ness even of angels depended chiefly upon their belief of a truth which God did reveal unto them."" Fragments of an Answer to the Letter of certain English Protestants^ Appendix to Book V. No. I, ed. Keble. XX.— p. i6. The discursive or logical faculty^ tohich has of late been often denomitiated the Understanding as distinguished from the Reason.^ This well known distinction, with its philosophical history, has been clearly stated by Morell, in his " Philoso2)hy of Religion,"'' chap. 2. On the distinction between the Logical and the Lniuitional Consciousness. — See Coleridge, Aids to Re- flection, On the difference in kind of Reason and the Under- standing.— Tholuck, Die Lehre von der Sunde, &c. Beilage 6, Ueber Vernunft und Verstand in ihr Verhdliniss zur Offen- XXI.— p. 17. The Understanding is, in short, a secondary or instrumental faculty.'] This instrumental faculty may be regarded as the handmaid of all the other powers of the intellect. Coexten- sive with the powers by which we obtain a knowledge of the primary elements or first principles of truth, is that in- telligence by which we deduce one truth from another, by which we abstract and generalize, compare our ideas and study their relations so as to obtain at once a connected and practical survey, together with a ready command, of all the riches of our minds. Hence our power of retaining ideas, in the way oi Memory; and of reproducing, review- ing, and combining, or, as it were, of embodying and group- ing them, in the way of Lmagination. Great practical im- portance attaches to the healthful exercise, and the due subordination and control, of these mental powers. — The office of the Imagination " is to be assistant both to the Understanding and to the Will... Its assistance to the Un- y2 324 NOTES TO derstanding is principally in matters of invention, readily to supply it with variety of objects whereon to work ; as also to quicken and raise the mind — with strong delight in its proper object The office to the Will is to quicken, allure, and sharpen its desire towards some convenient object. And therefore in that great work of men's con- version unto God, he is said to allure them, and to speak comfortably unto them, to beseech and to persuade them ; to set forth Christ to the soul as altogether lovely." Rey- nolds On the Soul, pp. 18-20. XXIL— p. 19. The objects of Faith are above this reason, hit not contrary to it.] The distinction between that which is above reason and that which is contrary to it, has been often clearly and amply stated. See a collection of extracts to this effect, from ancient and modern writers, in Tholuck, Lehre von der Sunde,hQ., Beilage 6 . The following passage from Neander's Church History may serve as a useful comment on the allusion which Tholuck there makes to the views of Tho- mas Aquinas on this matter. — " As Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, maintained that the doctrines of revelation are above reason, and, with a moderation the more to be admired because it proceeded from a mind so acute and profoundly speculative by nature, endeavoured to fix the boundaries of rational demonstration ; so, on the other hand, he stood forth the opponent of a party who held that an irreconcilable opposition existed between faith and rea- son. Those who affirmed this, were certainly not the ad- vocates of an abrupt supernaturalism, but rather of a pan- theistic and rationalistic infidelity, which came from Spain, having originated in the school of Averrhoes; and now, under the pretext of this irreconcilable opposition between revelation and reason, between theological and philosophi- cal truth, was endeavouring to propagate itself. Under such an opposition might be concealed a negative tendency ; negative, in that it afterwards bowed to the authority of the church, holding that from the church alone could be received those higher truths which contradicted natural LECTURE I. 325 reason. Thomas maintained, in opposition to this tendency, that the truths of faith could not possibly contradict the fundamental axioms recognised as necessary truths by na- tural reason ; for if they could, then, since God, the author of our nature, implanted these truths in that nature, it would follow that God contradicted himself. Besides, our minds would be hindered, by conflicting ideas, from making any progress in the knowledge of truth ; a condition of being such as could not possibly proceed from God. That which is natural cannot be altered, so long as nature remains the same. But contradicting convictions cannot subsist together. Therefore, it would be impossible for a conviction to be imparted to man by God, which contra- dicts natural knowledge. To confirm this, he cites, with a profound sense of the spirit of the passage, Rom. x. 8. That, however, which is above reason, is by many wrongly held to be contradictory to reason. From all this it follows that the objections brought against the truths of faith can possess only a shadow of truth ; they must be sophistical. And so reason, though she cannot, it is true, demonstrate the truths of faith which are above reason, may detect and expose the shallowness of the arguments brought against them. As grace does not destroy nature, but completes it, so natural reason must be subservient to faith, as also the natural inclinations should be subservient to Christian love." Neander's Church History, (Torrey's translation), vol. 8. sect. 4. " Philosophy and religion are neither of them absorbed by the other. They mutually nourish each other, without ever becoming converted the one into the other, or over- laying one the other as identical. If man had only reason, he would fall from negation to negation, into the last circle of nonentity. If he had only faith, he would be carried away without remedy beyond all reality, to the furthest realms of infinity. But from the conflict of these two op- posite forces results the regular movement of humanity, in like manner as from the two forces which act upon every star results the orbit which it describes in its annual revo- lutions." Quinet, On the State of Christianity/ in Germany. 326 NOTES TO To these extracts, I may be permitted to append, how- ever well known, Lord Bacon's Studetifs Prayer, — '■'•To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications ; that He, remem- bering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out days few and evil, would please to open to us new refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness, for the alleviating of our miseries. This also we humbly and earnestly beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are divine ; neither that from the un- locking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any thing of incredulity, or intellectual night, may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith^s. Amen.'"' XXIIL— p. 20. This faculty has been appointed to weigh and examine the evidence tohich claims the assent of faith.'] " It was a foul aspersion cast upon our religion by its ancient opposers that it did require x/AtAr/y kol akoyov iricrTiv, a mere belief void of reason ; challenging assent to its doctrines without any trial or proof. This suggestion, if true, were, I con- fess, a mighty prejudice against it, and no man indeed justly could be obliged to admit it upon such terms : but it is really a gross calumny ; such a proceeding being dis- claimed by the teachers and advocates of our religion, being repugnant to the nature and tenor thereof; being prejudicial to its interest and design ; being contrary to its use and practice. Never any religion was indeed so little liable to the censure of obtruding itself on men's credulity, none ever so freely exposed itself to a fair trial at the bar of reason ; none ever so earnestly invited men to scan and sift its pretences ; yea, provoked them for its own sake and their own, upon most important considera- tions (as the peril of their souls, as they tendered their own best advantage) to a fair, discreet, careful examination thereof. Other religions have Uj^ their justification in- LECTURE I. 3^7 sisted upon the examples of ancestors, customs and pre- scription of times, large extent and prevalence among crews of people, establishment by civil laws, and counte- nance of secular powers (arguments extrinsical, and of small validity in any case) declining all other test and ver- dict of reason : but our religion confideth in itself, and the pure merit of its cause ; and therefore warneth men, in a case of such moment, laying aside all prejudice, to employ their best understandings on an industrious and impartial search of the truth ; referring the decision and result, so far as concerneth each particular man, to the verdict of that reason and conscience, with which God, in order to such purposes, hath endued every person." Barrow, Sermons on the Apostles' Creed, Serm. ii, On the Virtue and Reason- ableness of Faith. — " It is, in the first instance, the part of reason to sit as supreme arbiter on the evidences of a professed message from heaven to earth ; it is, in the second instance, the part of reason to ascertain the sense of this alleged revelation, — but that, you will remember, on the same principles of grammar and criticism which deter- mine the sense of any ordinary author. After this, reason resigns her office ; but not till she has pronounced it to be most reasonable that after the bearer of an alleged com- munication from heaven has produced the satisfying cre- dentials of his mission, nothing remains for it but the unqualified submission of our faith to all the doctrine and all the information wherewith he is charged." Chalmers, Prelections <^c., Notes on Hill's Lectures in Divinity^ book iv. chap. 2. § I. XXIV.— p. 21. We must believe be/ore we can be logically acquainted with the objects of our belief] " Daher diirfen wir uns denn auch nicht berechtigt halten, zu verwerfen, was wir mit unserer Vernunft nicht haben erreichen konnen. Vielmehr miissen wir bestiindig eingedenk seyn, theils, dass iiberhaupt in der Rehgion nicht das Erkennen und Begreifen das Erste ist, sondern der Glaube und das Cefiihl, dass also der Begriff den Glauben voraussetzt (wie Anselm sagt, am Schlusse des ersten cap. seines Proslogiums, neque enira 328 NOTES TO quEero intelligere, ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam ; nam et hoc credo, quia, nisi credidero, non intelligam) ; theils, dass die religiose Erkenntniss sich nicht in reine Vernunft- erkenntniss auflosen lasst, sondern immer nach Grund und Wesen von ihr verschieden bleibt ; theils, dass es immer Granzen der wissenschaftlichen Aneignung giebt, mogen sie nun eine Folge seyn von der nur allmahlig fortschreit- enden Ausbildung der Wissenschaft, oder, was unserer Betrachtung hier am nachsten liegt, von unserm Verhalt- nisse zu Christo und zur Offenbarung." Twesten, Vorles- ungen uher die DogmatiJc, Erster Theil, § 31. XXV.— p. 24. These active living powers ive denominate the Will.] " Be- cause wishes, desires, and volitions presuppose intellectual conceptions and emotions, it is rashly concluded that they are nothing but intellectual conceptions or emotions. No doubt they are intimately connected with the intellectual states of mind on the one hand, and emotional attachments on the other, but they contain a something which can be resolved into neither the one nor the other, nor into both combined. — Appealing to consciousness, we assert that there is a class of mental states embracing wishes, desires, volitions, which cannot be analyzed into any thing else. These mental states or affections are very numerous, and occupy a place in the human mind second to no other. They differ from each other in degree, and possibly even in some minor qualities, but they all agree in other and more important respects, and so are capable of being arranged under one head We hold the Will to be a general attribute of the mind, and its operations mani- fested under various forms. It says of this object, it is good — I desire it; it is evil — I reject it. In its feeblest form, it is simply wish, or the opposite of wish ; and ac- cording as it fixes on the object as more or less good or evil, it rises till it may become the most intense desire or abhorrence. When inconsistent objects present themselves, and the mind would choose both if it could, there may for a time be a clashing or contest. Where there is no clash- ing of desires, or where one of the contending desires has LEOTURE I. 329 prevailed, and the object is declared to be better or best, and where it is also ascertained to be attainable, then the will assumes this form, — I choose this ; I resolve to obtain it. This, the consummating step, is commonly called vo- lition, to distinguish it from simple wish and desire. And we hold that it is the same attribute of the mind which says, this object is good, I wish it, and desire it; and which says, on there being no competing good, or no good esteemed as equal to it, I choose it. — It is of the utmost moment, even in a psychological point of view, to distin- guish between the emotions and the will . , . We stand up for the existence of a higher faculty in mind, and which, no doubt proceeding upon emotion, uses it all the while merely to rise to the exercise of its own independent func- tions." M'Oosh, Method of the Divine Government^ book iii. chap. I. § I. — " To speak of feelings or convictions creating the will is simply an absurdity. The Will is another name for that real but mysterious power of mind which, in a moment, can, at its bidding, emit an energy that leads to voluntary action or endurance. Feeling and convictions could never create this power, although it is quite true that they may influence the movements of it. This being premised, the fallacious conclusion intended to be drawn from such a representation becomes manifest. The argu- ment implied in it is this. Our feehngs and csmvictions create the will ; therefore the will, which is a creation of their own, cannot possibly have had any previous influence upon them. But, how does the case really stand ? The will is a mighty energy of a nature quite its own, which restrains or impels the whole man at its behest ; created, moreover, not by feelings and convictions, but by the Author itself of the human mind. Our feelings and con- victions act upon this power and set it in motion ; but then it at once reacts upon them, and, guided by intelli- gence, moulds them, to a vast extent, at its pleasure. Take a separate volition, and it is quite true that this is deter- mined by some feeling or emotion of the mind ; but we must be cautious not to confound an individual volition with the Will, viewed as the abiding fact or principle of our 330 NOTES TO spontaneity. A single volition is to the will, as a whole, what a single wave is to the ocean. Because the wind creates every wave that heaves upon the surface, is it therefore true that it created the ocean itself? And so, because a feeling or a conviction may occasion a separate volition, is it therefore true that it originates the voluntary power of which this volition is but a movement?" Morell, History of Modern Philosophy^ part ii. chap. 4. § i. XXVI.— p. 25. The Will is not the servant of necessity, that is, of any foreign restraint or force determining its choice.'] " Ligatus, non ferro alieno, sed mea ferrea voluntate. Velle meum tenebat inimicus, et inde mihi catenam fecerat et con- strinxerat me. Quippe ex voluntate perversa facta est libido ; et dum servitur libidini, facta est consuetudo ; et dum consuetudini non resistitur, facta est necessitas." Au- gustiuj Conf. 8, 5. — " This is the essential attribute of a will, and contained in the very idea, that whatever deter- mines the will acquires this power from a previous deter- mination of the will itself. The will is ultimately self- determined; or it is no longer a will under the law of perfect freedom, but a nature under the mechanism of cause and effect. And if by an act to which it had deter- mined itself it has subjected itself to the determination of natvu-e (in the language of St. Paul, to the law of the flesh), it receives a nature into itself, and so far it becomes a na- ture : and this is a corruption of the will and a corrupt nature." Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, On Spiritual Reli- gion.— "Augustin und Jacobi sind meine Lehrer, wenn ich als Zustand unterscheide die Wahlfreiheit, nach welcher Gutes und Boses dem Menschen vorgelegt ist und er da- nach sich entscheidet, die Freiheit der Kinder Gottes, nach welcher der Mensch, seiner Bestimmung gemass, olme zwischen gut und bose zu tcdJden, welches schon ein theil- weises Wohlgefallen an demselben voraussetzt ^, nur das Gute will, wie Gott. Das letztere war der Zustand des Menschen vor dem Falle, er kehrt wieder in den gefallenen ^ But surely we may say that a man chooses between good and evil without necessarily implying that he has any propensity to evil. LECTURE I. 331 Menschen, je nachdem derselbe in das Bild des Sohnes Gottes verklart wird. Dass ein solcher Zustand der Frei- heit der Kinder Gottes das endliche Ziel geschaffener Wesen seyn miisse, konnen nur beschriinkte Kantianer laugnen, die keine vollendete Seligkeit glauben konnen, sondern im ewigen Durste nach Licht ihr Leben finden. Dass ich dies aber rait Recht Freilwit nennen konne, dafiir will ich mieh nicht bloss auf die Bibelsprache berufen, sondern auf den allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch, nach vvel- chem jede freie Entwickehmg des Organismus Freiheit genannt wird. Der Baum ist frei, wenn nichts seine Wurzeln verletzt und seinen Wachsthiim hemrat ; das sittHche Wesen ist frei, wenn nicht die Siinde sein Leben in Gott unterbricht, was seine eigenthche Bestimmung ist. So war denn auch der Urmensch eben so frei als Gott, indem er, was seiner Bestimmung gemass war, nur das Gute, nur Gottes Willen wollte. So war er wirkHch wie Gott. Aber der Stimme der Versuchung wiess ihm auf einem andern Wege eine Gleichheit mit Gott nach, auf dem Wege der Autonomic, auf einem Wege, welcher bewiirkte, dass der Mensch gerade verier was er von Gottahnlichkeit hatte. Tiefsinnig ist es daher, und eine hohe Wahrheit, wenn Augustinus diese Wahlfreiheit, in die der Mensch sich begab, um zur Autonomic zu gelangen, ' noxia liber- tas"" nennt, und ' perversa imitatio Dei' (Aug. de Genesi ad literam, 1. viii. c. 14). Das Princip nun fiir die Zustande der Freiheit, nenne ich Selbstbestimmung, und was Jacobi dariiber sagt ist mein Glaube. ' Es besteht diese Selbst- bestimmung nicht in einem ungereimten Vermogen sich ohne griinde zu entscheiden ; eben so wenig in der Wahl des Bessern unter dem Niitzlichen, oder der verniinftigen Begierde ; denn eine solche Wahl, wenn sie auch nach den abgezogensten Begriffen geschieht, erfolgt doch immer nur mechanisch;— sondern es besteht diese Freiheit, dem Wesen nach, in der Unahhdngigkeit des Willens von der Begierde'' ( Jacobi's Werke, Th. 4, 8. s. 27.) Freilich habe ich hiemit nur eine negative Erklarung gegeben, allein diese Selbstbestimmung ist Leben und Kraft, und Leben und Kraft widerstreben jeder Erklarung ; hier ist der Begriff 38^ NOTES TO ohne die Anschauung ein Unding, und nur mit der An- schauung gegeben worden. Es ist diese Selbstbestim- mung das Vermogen in jedem Augenblick eine andre Richtung zu haben (absolute Spontaneitat), zwar bestimmt und geleitet werden zu konnen durch Griinde, die in der Aussenwelt liegen, nie aber von ihnen beherrsclit und ge- zwungen zu werden." Tholuck, Lehre von der Siinde,