JL J ij k^. 
 
 DT-;- PM ATT ID A 
 
 NATURAL 
 
 IN Christianit 
 
 Pb IN 01 PAL RAINY, D.D. 
 
 Professor JAMES ORff, D.D. 
 
 Professor MARCUS DODS, D.D, 
 
BT 1095 .R34 1894 
 Rainy, Robert, 1826-1906 
 The supernatural in 
 Christianity 
 
THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB 
 FOR 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED, 
 
 NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNEr'S SONS. 
 
 TORONTO : THE WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY. 
 
y The 
 
 Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO STATEMENTS 
 
 IN THE RECENT 
 
 GIFFORD LECTURES 
 
 PRINCIPAL RAINY, D.D, 
 PROFESSOR J, ORR, D.D, 
 
 AND 
 
 PROFESSOR MARCUS DODS, D.D. 
 
 With Prefatory Statement by 
 PROFESSOR A, H. CHARTERIS, D.D 
 
 Second Edition 
 
 CI 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, 2>^ GEORGE STREET 
 
 1894 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFATORY STATEMENT vii 
 
 By a. H, CHARTERIS, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University 
 of Edinburgh. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY— THE ISSUES AT STAKE . 
 
 By ROBERT RAINY, D.D., 
 
 Principal, and Professor of Church History, New 
 College, Edinburgh. 
 
 II. CAN PROFESSOR PFLEIDERER'S VIEW JUSTIFY 
 
 ITSELF? 35 
 
 By JAMES ORR, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Church History, United Presbyterian 
 College, Edinburgh. 
 
 III. THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE GOSPELS . .71 
 
 By MARCUS DODS, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Exegetical Theology, New College, 
 Edinburgh. 
 
EXPLANATORY NOTE 
 
 Dr. Pfleiderer's double Course of twenty Lectures, "Philosophy 
 and Development of Beligion," ended on the 27th February. 
 The three Lectures which follow were delivered on 5th, 8th, 
 and 13th of March. Professor Charteris, who was prevented, as 
 he explains, from taking part in the Course as a Lecturer, was 
 kind enough to take the chair at the first Lecture ; and his 
 opening remarks constitute the Prefatory Statement. 
 
PKEFATOEY STATEMENT' 
 
 Inasmuch as the kindly despotism of my medical 
 advisers has absolutely forbidden me to deliver one of 
 the Lectures of this Course, I ask permission of the 
 audience — I have already received that of the Lec- 
 turer — to say a few words before calling on Principal 
 Eainy to begin his Lecture. 
 
 Though this Course is occasioned by the recent Gifford 
 Lectures of Professor Pfleiderer, there is neither inten- 
 tion nor need of beginning a personal conflict between 
 present Lecturers and him. The mere fact that as yet 
 many only know Dr. Pfleiderer's views from newspaper 
 summaries, prevents a thorough discussion of them. 
 That may come by and by in detail. Enough is known 
 to make theologians aware of the general purpose and 
 tendency of those views, as every biblical student has 
 long been familiar with them in his published books. He 
 is well known to be a follower of Ferdinand Christian 
 Baur, making a gallant attempt to revive in Germany 
 his great master's theories against the now predominant 
 theology of Ptitschl. There will, I am quite sure, be 
 no attempt on the part of any Lecturer to belittle or 
 
 ^ Being the remarks made by me as Chairman on the occasion of 
 Dr. Rainy's Lecture. — A. H. C. 
 
viii Prefatory Statement 
 
 disparage the conscientious convictions of Dr. Pfleid- 
 erer, or the remarkable literary ability with which he 
 presents those convictions. In the sparkle of his 
 style he resembles and rivals Eenan, while in apprecia- 
 tion of the spiritual longings of men he leaves the 
 brilliant, but superficial, Frenchman far behind. Nay, 
 I will go further, and say for myself that he has 
 demanded of the Christian Church in our day some 
 functions and duties which we, who believe in the 
 Kedeemer's Incarnation and Eesurrection, may well 
 set ourselves with new purpose to fulfil and dis- 
 charge. 
 
 But there seems to many of us to be a call to say, 
 at the earliest possible moment, with all possible 
 personal respect for the Lecturer, that we object to 
 many things clearly stated in those Gifford Lectures. 
 Perhaps I may be allowed to speak for myself, and say 
 that I object to the Lecturer's presupposition that the 
 Incarnation is to be disbelieved because it is not accord- 
 ing to his conception of history, founded on our 
 experience. Further, I object to his assumption that 
 all the more marvellous incidents in the Gospel history 
 of Jesus Christ are of later invention than the others. 
 I object to his extraordinary assertion that St. Paul 
 believed in a merely spiritual Eesurrection of Jesus 
 Christ. I object to his almost as extraordinary asser- 
 tion in regard to Baur's view of the Fourth Gospel, 
 that " all further investigations have always only contri- 
 buted anew to confirm it in the main " (Lecture IL). 
 I believe it is not difficult to show that Baur's account 
 
Prefatory Statement ix 
 
 of the origin and date of the Fourth Gospel has been 
 proved to be historically inaccurate and critically and 
 philosophically impossible ; that the Gospel is explicitly 
 quoted and undeniably founded upon forty or fifty 
 years before Baur allowed that it was written ; 
 and that not one of Baur's followers, not even Dr. 
 Pfleiderer himself, ventures to maintain Baur's date. 
 Objection may well be taken to the Lecturer's attempt 
 to borrow all the ethics of the Christian revelation, 
 and to appropriate all its highest hopes, and to make 
 them parts of a speculative system which I know not 
 whether to call Deism or Pantheism, which seems to 
 deny any revelation except what may be found in 
 gathering the lessons of history and science, and yet 
 speaks of God as " the loving Father whose nature it 
 is to communicate Himself to His children " (Lecture 
 XIIL). We cannot recognise the faith in which our 
 fathers fell asleep in this system which, as I understand 
 it, leaves no place for expectant prayer, and no hope of 
 a resurrection, and makes no admission that life and 
 immortality are brought to light through the gospel. 
 
 Therefore I, for one, am glad that some men have 
 come forward to protest, in name of the Christian 
 Church in Scotland, against this attack upon their 
 faith. I know that some, whose opinions I value, 
 shake their heads and say that there is danger of these 
 Lectures begun to-night adding to the Gifford Lecturer's 
 prestige, and, as they say, fanning the flame ; but there 
 is a danger, on the other hand, of men's faith being 
 weakened if no one amongst us dares to take up the 
 
X Prefatory Statement 
 
 gage of battle which has been publicly thrown down. 
 And as to prestige, it is not easy to add to what the 
 Gifford Lecturer has received as the invited guest of 
 the University. It is needful that some trained theo- 
 logians should assure the Christian public that they 
 have long been familiar with the system which the 
 eloquent Berlin professor represents, and that they 
 believe it has lost its power in its native country, as it 
 will lose its power in Scotland when it is understood. 
 I should think that every member of the Senatus 
 which appointed him was surprised when he interpreted 
 his commission as giving him a right to attack the 
 Bible, for that appointment has lent importance — I 
 trust only a temporary importance — to those views in 
 the eyes of unlearned and generous youth. I hope 
 steps may be taken by the Senatus to prevent any 
 future Lecturer on Natural Theology — which is the 
 apparent subject that Lord Gifford's rather puzzled 
 bequest points to — from making an attack on the 
 records of the Christian faith ; and I hope and expect 
 that these Lectures here will meanwhile somewhat 
 counteract the attack which has been made. I venture, 
 in your name, to express by anticipation my gratitude 
 to the Lecturers for accepting the invitation to interrupt 
 their ordinary work so far as to come here and take 
 part in this special Course. 
 
 A. H. Charteris, D.D. 
 
THE ISSUES AT STAKE 
 
 By PKINCIPAL EAINY, D.D. 
 
I 
 
 THE ISSUES AT STAKE 
 
 I AM not here to prefer a complaint against Dr. 
 Pfleiderer. Those who heard his Lectures have pro- 
 bably received the same impression which readers 
 have gathered from his published works, viz., that he 
 is a sincere and serious thinker, and is entitled to be 
 met respectfully by those who differ from him most 
 widely. But I wish to point out the singular 
 position in which we find ourselves, if the constitution 
 of the Gifford Lecture is correctly interpreted by some 
 of the recent Lecturers. It was understood that the 
 foundation deed authorised the discussion of Theism 
 on grounds of Xatural Eeason, excluding arguments 
 from, or urged in favour of. Supernatural Revelation. 
 But, according to the view now proceeded on, a 
 Giftbrd Lecturer may apply himself to argue down 
 the supernatural aspects or elements of Christianity, 
 on the ground that he holds Christianity to be a 
 non-miraculous product of human reason ; while no 
 Lecturer shall have leave to argue for the things 
 believed amoniif us, because that would be to assert 
 
2 The Sitpernatural in Ckrislianity 
 
 supernatural revelation, which is excluded by the 
 deed. The interpretation of the deed is no business 
 of mine, and recent Lecturers may possibly be right 
 in their construction of it. But if so, I venture to 
 express my doubt whether Lord Gifford intended to 
 produce this state of things ; and still more, my doubt 
 whether the Universities, in accepting the administra- 
 tion of the Lecture, anticipated that the deed would 
 prove susceptible of this interpretation. At all events, 
 it is time to point out that, as far as we know at 
 present, we have a conspicuous and highly -paid 
 system of Lectures at all our Universities, under 
 which it is open to attack the faith of the Christian 
 Church deliberately, energetically, and in detail, while 
 so far as this Lecture is concerned the defence of that 
 faith is gagged. And by the faith of the Christian 
 Church in this connection I mean the main articles of 
 the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 Now this at all events justifies, if justification is 
 needed, a statement on the other side. And at the 
 same time, as far as I am concerned, it limits the 
 field which I feel called upon to traverse. In many 
 Lectures Dr. PHeiderer surveyed the course of the 
 history of religion, and discussed the general principles 
 which it is reasonable to apply to each of its successive 
 stages. He said much that was learned, suggestive, 
 and impressive — much that most of us will agree with, 
 and not a little also from which many of us dissent. 
 But that would not have led us to start Lectures to 
 controvert him. It is when he comes into collision 
 
Dr. Pfleiderer s Position 3 
 
 with the Christianity of the Gospels and the Epistles 
 that I, at least, find myself concerned to make a 
 counter - statement. As I have said, he may be 
 vviihin his right in making the attack : I am certainly 
 within mine in asking leave to meet it. 
 
 This brings us to the matter in hand. The business 
 of an Introductory Lecture is to survey the field. 
 And the first thing I take note of is the general 
 attitnde towards Christianity taken by Dr. Pfleiderer. 
 There is no need, and one can have no wish, to mis- 
 represent it. 
 
 Dr. Pfleiderer believes the world and man to be so 
 constituted that germs of religious truth have always 
 existed. Eeligious impressions grow into the minds 
 of men, and they are gradually purified in the furnace 
 of history. Then, from advanced stages like ours, a 
 reasonable criticism can distinguish the elements that 
 have been thrown together. It can separate what has 
 been permanent and valid from what has been tem- 
 porary and fanciful. It can recognise in the former 
 something that abides the tijal of reason, and should 
 be looked on, therefore, as sanctioned by the Supreme 
 lieason. He therefore strongly asserts what is called 
 Natural Peligion, — only, with him, it is not a fixed 
 quantity, as it used sometimes to be represented ; rather, 
 it grows into being by a gradual discernment of prin- 
 ciples, and clears itself by gradual disentanglement 
 from impurities. In this process, which stretches through 
 the whole history of the world, the influence of great 
 religious personalities — men of exceptional force and 
 
4 TJie Stipeiniahu^al in Chrisiianity 
 
 depth and warmth — counts, of course, for a great deal. 
 Generally, Dr. Pfleiderer's thinking on all this repro- 
 duces, with modifications, the ideas of Lessing's famous 
 tract upon the Education of the Human Race. 
 
 Now, Dr. rfleiderer has accepted the view that 
 i Christian religion must resign the claim to stand upon 
 special revelation, or to be attended with miraculous 
 sanctions. It remains, therefore, that it must be 
 explained from the same principles, the same sources, 
 as other religions. But yet, on this ground, he wants 
 to make the most of Christianity. Accordingly, if he 
 bases himself on philosophy, it is still a spiritualistic 
 philosophy, not a mechanical materialism. And, from 
 the point of view which it supplies, Dr. Pfleiderer 
 claims to be the friend and advocate of Christianity, 
 only — an enlightened friend. He wants to show us 
 the Christianity w^e can still have on these terms ; he 
 w^ants to show us it may still be valuable ; and he 
 means this quite sincerely. 
 
 His point of view is given. But, from his point of 
 view, he pleads for his right to stand in the Christian 
 succession, to enjoy the Christian inheritance, and to 
 breathe the Christian air. He emphasises the great- 
 ness of Christianity, at all events, as a fact or order of 
 facts in the religious history of man. For some 
 Christian thoughts and principles — especially the trust 
 in the divine Fatherhood and the duty and privilege 
 of merging our private will in the moral ends of the 
 universe, which express God's supreme purpose — he 
 asserts permanent worth : they are ever to be guarded 
 
Advocates a Sifted Christianity 5 
 
 as part of the moral and religious heritage of man. 
 And the outlines of the wonderful life of Christ, in 
 which these principles were first suitably singled out 
 and emphasised, are dear to him because invaluable to 
 the race. In short, when Christianity is sifted by criti- 
 cism, on the footing that it is the most perfect form 
 which the religion of human reason has yet assumed, 
 he believes it to retain all its elements of strength and 
 goodness ; and for Christianity so sifted he is an ardent 
 and eloquent advocate. 
 
 And, indeed, more than this may be said. iSTothing 
 strikes one more than the illustrations every day met 
 with of the singular strength of the Gospels, and of 
 the ima^e of Christ there set before us. Men start 
 with theories that lead to negative conclusions. But 
 if they are at the same time at all desirous to do 
 justice to Christianity and to Christ, the object that 
 rises before them begins to overpower them. 
 
 Schleiermacher refused to admit the supernatural ; 
 and yet the Christ of his system is really supernatural 
 to all intents and purposes, and brings an element of 
 the supernatural with Him wherever he comes. And 
 Ptleiderer (who will not think I do him injustice 
 when I say that nobody would put him in the same 
 rank with Schleiermacher), after laying down his 
 thesis that Christ is not, and could not be, more than 
 a remarkable religious genius, marking a most memor- 
 able stage in the history of human thought and 
 action, — from which one must conclude that not the 
 man but the principles which He illustrated and 
 
" 7 
 
 6 The Supernatm^al in Christianity 
 
 j signalised make the essential and permanent worth of 
 Christianity, — when he goes on to his theology, is found 
 
 I calmly laying down careful statements of the offices of 
 Christ — Prophet, Priest, and King — and of His redemp- 
 ^^ tion, satisfaction, substitution, and so on.^ Of course, 
 all these are carefully explained and qualified so as to 
 retain only a certain vague impressiveness. But why 
 on his principles, are they there at all ? Because 
 Christ is so strong. He must be allowed to fill the 
 religion which He founded. 
 
 But Christianity claims to be a supernatural religion, 
 
 and it has always claimed it, — not in some sense in 
 
 which every religion is supernatural, but in a sense 
 
 J I peculiar to itself. It has always claimed it. There 
 
 ( is not an hour of its history for which the contrary 
 could be established. Farther, it works and it always 
 
 -( has worked as a supernatural religion ; in that faith 
 it has fought its battles, endured its trials, and brought 
 forth its fruits. Here men have felt, God has spoken, 
 and has come and has made Himself, finally, ours. 
 "With this denied, some men and some circles of men 
 — especially for the first generation or two — may 
 carry on the tradition of much Christian goodness or 
 Christian fragrance ; but in general, and on the large 
 scale, such religion fades along the lines of religious 
 dilettantism into a final religious nullity. On Dr. i^ 
 Pfleiderer's principles, great parts of Christianity dropy 
 away ; and those that are left are transformed. 
 ^ Great parts drop away. The Incarnation is dis- 
 
 ^ Grund?'if>s, sec. 117 f. 
 
What Falls a 
 
 way 
 
 carded. What witnesses to us the personality of God 
 as no argument and no metaphysic ever can ; what 
 expresses conclusively the reach of God's thinking of 
 us and caring for us ; what stands as the unanswer- 
 able assurance that God so loves the world, that 
 behind all the mystery of being is a lieart seeking us 
 and rejoicing to do us good, — is to be dropped. What 
 appeals to us as the condescension and grace of the 
 Son of God, vanishes. Eedemption, too, passes away. 
 Jesus Christ is a redeemer in the same sense as 
 every one is a redeemer who exhibits in his own life 
 principles which, if adopted, might tend to retrieve 
 other lives. Christ, as a divine Friend, the object of 
 a present trust, who has Himself overcome death, and 
 lives to make us victorious, is gone. For He is dead ; 
 and He never rose again ; the Syrian stars look down 
 upon His grave. All faiths that depend upon an 
 authoritative declaration of God's mind through Christ, 
 all divine promises made sure in Him, all power in 
 Christ to comfort, to succour, and to save, have to 
 be resigned. To show how much is lost would be to 
 recite half the pages of the New Testament. 
 
 When all this is given up, then we turn to go our 
 way, making what we can of inferences about God 
 from the system of His world, which, to various 
 persons, have seemed acceptable. They have their 
 value. In particular, a wise and good man called 
 Jesus, who lived long ago, is said to have had wonder- 
 ful thoughts on this subject. Of these we shall do 
 well to take advantage. His thoughts cannot be 
 
8 The Super natural in CJunstianity 
 
 absolutely trusted, indeed ; for, according to all 
 accounts, He had some ideas about the importance or 
 significance of His own personality, which appear to 
 have been exaggerated and groundless. 
 
 But also the elements of Christianity which 
 in a certain sense are left, are transformed. Eor 
 some are left. There is, in general, the example of 
 Christ ; there are some great thoughts, — the Christian 
 conception of the Fatherhood of God, of the true ideal 
 of human duty. Yes ; but not as faiths set forth for 
 our comfort and guidance, emphasised for us to trust by 
 one divinely charged with our welfare. They remain, 
 but disassociated from the light and the heat derived 
 from God's gift of His Son, and from the grace of the 
 Son's incarnation and His death. 
 
 Now this brings us to the point. Christianity has 
 
 ^ always claimed to be the divine supernatural religion, 
 in virtue of the unique Person and mission of its 
 Founder. But those whom Dr. Pfleiderer represents 
 
 ^ \ rely on a philosophy of the world and of man. That 
 philosophy is to determine the right view of Chris- 
 tianity, the wise and worthy way of looking at it. 
 Accordingly, the Lecturer surveyed the progress of the 
 schools of thought. In particular, he adverted to the 
 way of thinking that was reckoned authentic in last 
 century, which goes now among Germans by the name 
 of the Vulgar Eationalism. That rationalism accepted 
 and inculcated certain ideas, superficial enough, about 
 
 1 God, virtue, and immortality. These they regarded 
 1 as having been from the beginning, and these they 
 
Progress of Philosophic Theories 9 
 
 considered must be to the end, the rational basis of 
 human reh'gion. Those ideas, therefore, afforded a 
 standard by which all religions of all ages should be 
 tried; and everything in Christianity that went beyond 
 tliis was dismissed, or was explained away. This 
 rationalism, in short, gloried in a poor scheme of 
 thought, and despised whatever did not correspond 
 with it. By and by dissatisfaction with this declared 
 itself, beginning with Kant, who was a rationalist in 
 religion, but also a severe and resolute thinker. New 
 systems of thought supervened, which far more fully 
 recognised and strove to theorise the wonder and the 
 glory of the world, and the destiny of man as a being 
 capable of duty and of religious aspiration. Those 
 systems did much more justice to Christianity than 
 the older rationalism had done. It began to be felt 
 and owned that Christianity embodied profound 
 thoughts about the relations of God and man, and 
 about the right ideal of human life. Those were 
 thoughts which Christianity had emphasised in a way 
 peculiar to itself ; yet they were thoughts which reason, 
 on due consideration, must approve, and which the 
 world could not dispense with. Any worthy system 
 of moral and religious truth must take them up into 
 itself as permanent good, and must credit Christianity 
 as the religion which had secured a due place for them 
 in the minds of men. 
 
 But these systems, at least as Dr. Pfleiderer and his 
 friends expound them, found no place for the super- 
 natural, nor for any view of Christ that made Him 
 
 l>^ 
 
lo The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 really unique and exceptional. Christianity was to count 
 for far more with the representatives of philosophy than 
 it did in last century. But it should do so on condition 
 that it took its place as only a happy birth, in a 
 favouring hour, of the labouring reason of man, — upon 
 the same basis and amenable to the same criteria as 
 the fruits of human reason generally. 
 
 Philosophy, then, had set itself so far to do justice to 
 Christianity, but found no means to admit for it the 
 character wliich itself claimed. That is a fact which 
 may be very unfortunate for Christianity ; or possibly it 
 may turn out a little unfortunate for philosophy itself. 
 But when we are called upon to accept this as the 
 criterion by which we shall be assured what in Chris- 
 tianity we are still to own, and what we may dismiss 
 as not central or essential, one can hardly help 
 remembering that there are philosophies and philo- 
 sophies ; and also that tlie time in which this 
 philosophy shall be supposed to have established its 
 infallibility is somewhat short, — being really, at most, 
 the time from Kant to Hegel. For Dr. Pfleiderer's 
 , philosophy is revised Hegelianism. And in this 
 department Hegelianism turns on one great thought, 
 viz., that all history — and for one thing in particular the 
 history of human religions (wilful and fortuitous as it 
 may seem) — is after all a reasoned process, by which the 
 Eternal Spirit is ripening — through all apparent con- 
 fusions — the gradual disclosure of His own thought, — 
 the thought which is the inner and immanent reason 
 of the world. That is Hegelianism, for our present 
 
Revised He^-elianism 1 1 
 
 "<b 
 
 purpose. And, having used the phrase "revised 
 Hegelianism," I may say that the revision stands 
 mainly in this. Hegel's God, or Eternal Spirit, was 
 conceived to reach His own thought, or certainly was 
 conceived to unfold it, only through the formal dialectic 
 process of the intellect ; that abstract order of steps is 
 conceived to guide and control the history which is the 
 history of the world, and is also all we have for the 
 history of God. But the revised conception admits 
 other principles to deepen and enrich the thought of God 
 and His working as disclosed in history. And whereas 
 Hegel's thinking was accused of being merely pan- 
 theistic, Pfleiderer follows a line of thought that seems 
 to imply a divine Personality, working consciously for 
 ends at which His providence aims. Whether this is 
 or is not consistent with some of his own positions, it 
 is welcome, at all events, as worthy in itself, and 
 notably in harmony with Christianity. For the rest, 
 Pfleiderer, who was a student of Baur's, stands very 
 much in his view of religion and of Christianity 
 where Baur stood when he died, more than thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 There is a great deal in this Hegelianism that is 
 very remarkable and very suggestive. No doubt it 
 marked a signal step in the history of thought. As it 
 reckoned with the history of the race, — including its 
 religions, — Hegelianism was on a track which was 
 surely fruitful, in recognising God at the heart of the 
 universe, or pervading its processes, as a principle 
 of progress. So Hegelianism set its face towards the 
 
^ 
 
 12 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 idea of development, whicli since then has become 
 so dominant in the thought of the age. In connection 
 with that principle of development, we all have, or 
 ought to have, learned and gained much. For the 
 present it is accepted, by all but all, as the key-prin- 
 ciple which is to explain everything. And indeed 
 there seems to be hardly any other way to test a 
 valuable new principle than to try it in every lock 
 without exception. By and by its limits will be 
 found ; and after a while it will be- antiquated, and 
 newer methods will intoxicate the world. Meanwhile 
 it represents a real gain to human thinking. 
 
 Philosophy says, then : Let us assume an order of 
 the world (with God at the heart of it), which order is 
 to proceed by steps of process that are in some high 
 sense necessary — dictated by the nature of the case or 
 by the nature of God — necessary, even if human wills 
 play their part in them. Let us assume this, and see 
 how the world can then explain itself. Let us refuse 
 to have the ideal process perplexed by the hypothesis 
 of any divine interpositions or interferences, — aside 
 from the law of the process. These interferences have 
 been often suggested by superstition, and they are 
 easily believed by superstition; let us waive them 
 aside ; and, I repeat, let us see how the order of the 
 world will explain itself. 
 
 Then, of course, as other religions and their 
 founders appear under the general rubric of the 
 religious capacities of man, so Jesus Christ can 
 be no more than one of those personalities. He may 
 
N'o I'cally Supernatural Element 1 3 
 
 be tlic most remarkable. Some one must be. But 
 He is essentially one of those who have attained, 
 within the human laws of intellectual and moral life, 
 to wonderful insight, and to a style of life wliich 
 their fellows felt to be impressively true and good. 
 Hence in Him, as in the case of some of them, — but 
 in His case more perhaps than in any other, — some 
 religious trutlis and aspirations, that always were 
 and will be true and valid, — germs of which were 
 always in the nature of man and in the nature of the 
 case, — shone out vividly to Him and shone out vividly 
 through Him. The world is conscious of them 
 now in a way which it will never cease to trace up 
 to Him. 
 
 This man left remarkable effects, as good men do ; 
 and wonderful things were asserted of Him. But our 
 theory (so this philosophy speaks) will account for as 
 much of this as one is bound to recognise. It will 
 account for the grand thoughts, — some, at any rate — 
 about God and life. And then, as to every apparent 
 evidence of more, there must be some mistake about it. 
 More is inadmissible. To admit more is to burst up 
 from the bottom, as Pfleiderer somewhere says, the 
 foundations of our thinking ; for we are thinking out 
 a divine method which works out an eternal process, 
 just because the process is worthy to be worked out, 
 and therefore is owned to be unworthy if it requires 
 to be disturbed. Any apparent evidence, therefore, 
 pointing in this direction, must be explained away. 
 In thus separating elements which in Christianity 
 
14 The Sitpernatural in Christianity 
 
 have been combined, — maintaining some and dropping 
 others, — we may be assured that we are only dis- 
 tinguishing the kernel from the husk. 
 
 I am far from denying that in historical Christianity 
 it is well to distinguish the vital from the accidental, 
 the more essential from the less. But I cannot but 
 , ask whether this philosophy, which cannot make room 
 \ for the supernatural in Christianity, supplies, after all, 
 1 a reliable criterion. We all know it is a temptation 
 which lies in the nature of philosophies, to trust to 
 single principles, and to refuse to contemplate ex- 
 ceptions. Here is this manifold and mysterious world 
 of ours, with Christianity seated in the heart of its 
 noblest history. Eevised Hegelianism says : " I will 
 open the door and admit what can pass as an elevated 
 form of natural religion, but what claims to be gospel 
 revelation or to involve special interposition — no. 
 Shut the door." Well, but what a long procession 
 of philosophies have passed down the stream of 
 time ! They have had meritorious lives, bat they 
 are ghosts now. They had their share of truth, but 
 they failed to solve the mystery of the world. Has 
 revised Hegelianism solved its own problems ? Is it 
 not also upon the march like the rest ? Will no day 
 come when those departed forms of thought — even the 
 vulgar rationalism itself — shall hail its advent among 
 them, saying, " Art thou also become one of us — art 
 thou become weak as we ? " Eevised Hegelianism has 
 no right to dictate. The business of a philosophy is to 
 recognise what can establish a right to be recognised. 
 
A I lege d Incongru ity i 5 
 
 If its principles disable it iii any case from doing so, 
 they must be widened. 
 
 In the sclieme of the Lecturer it is plain that 
 much turns on the alleged incongruity of super- 
 natural Christianity. A system of the world which 
 is to proceed mainly by development and growth, 
 ought not to be interfered with by an Incarnation, 
 and by a revealing process leading up to an Incarna- 
 tion. That, Dr. Pfleiderer says, is to undo the scheme 
 of thought from the bottom. We are here, then, in 
 presence of the question, whether a worthy con- 
 ception of the world can embrace the biblical 
 conception of the Incarnation, preluded and pre- 
 pared by the Jewish history which leads up to it. 
 It is a question on which perhaps our best thoughts, 
 on either side, are not conclusive. But I see no 
 reason why they should not be given. It depends 
 on the ends which God may reasonably be conceived 
 to provide lor. And as Dr. Ptleiderer does not 
 question the personal character of God as one who 
 contemplates ends, and by due means accomplishes 
 them, we are not embarrassed by any necessity of 
 debate upon that point. 
 
 We assume, then, that man's nature, having a 
 religious capacity, was destined to development, under 
 the discipline of life and experience. That was, we 
 know, to be Jn practice perplexed and marred by the 
 spiritual state of men ; but if not always progressive, 
 it was at least to admit of progress. The persuasions 
 of men about God were to be gathered, if we look to 
 
1 6 The Sttpernatin^al in CkrisiiaJiity 
 
 the prevailing aspects of human religions, not from 
 perpetual interferences and oracles, but from the un- 
 folding of the nature of man in the midst of the 
 process of the world, — both the evolution of man, and 
 the process of the world proceeding on principles 
 which imply a stable order. Under these conditions, 
 as a matter of fact, the history of the mass of the race 
 went on, whatever ground we take about primitive 
 revelations. Under these conditions, so far, human 
 religion has had its history. Human religion proved, 
 indeed, extremely prone to expect and believe all kinds 
 of supernatural agencies. But, in the more remarkable 
 examples of it, the tendency, as time went on, was to 
 grow into a more adequate sense of the laws of nature 
 and of the laws of mind. Men felt more and more 
 the pressure of the stable order. They learned so far 
 that God was not such an one as themselves, and that 
 the awful majesty of His will was not liable to be 
 warped, on all occasions, to the wantonness of theirs. 
 In the same proportion also they learned to feel as 
 though God — at least the highest God — was more 
 remote, or more hidden, than in earlier days had been 
 supposed, — far above, out of sight. And one knows 
 the fluctuations of opinion and belief whicli have 
 ensued. 
 
 All that being supposed, I ask, first. Is it beyond 
 belief that it mi^^ht be in the desi^-n of God to make a 
 worthy manifestation of Himself, which should be per- 
 sonal, — that is to say, should vividly bring out God in 
 the unity and concentration which belongs to per- 
 
Revelation of Divine Personality 1 7 
 
 sonalifcy — personality with intellectual and moral 
 features, with personal mind and will. That might 
 not be well, for it might lead to inevitable miscon- 
 struction, unless accompanied and prepared by the 
 great impression of the order of the world. And yet 
 this last also might surely be defective if it stood 
 alone. For in it God is manifested, as it were, on 
 impersonal lines ; and even if reason and conscience 
 augur a personality behind the veil, it is vaguely, 
 and with an unsatisfied sense of distance and dimness 
 and doubt. Certainly, also, this is what the human 
 heart has always craved for, when mythic fancies gave 
 way before the advance of thought or under the strain 
 of suffering, and when man felt himself face to face 
 with the inexorable movement of the mighty world. 
 " that I could find Thee." If God is in some high and 
 intense sense personal, — in possession of His own 
 thought and character and will, — is there no need that 
 somehow at some stage His revelation should take 
 personal character ? And if so, let us not deceive 
 ourselves. Personality expresses itself not by eternal 
 processes, but by individual words and deeds. If there 
 be personality in God at all, it means that He who is 
 behind me and beneath me and above me, who besets 
 me everywhere, who is in all nature, — the source of 
 forces, the measure of laws, the orderer of events, — 
 can also, can, as person with person, stand face to face 
 with me on the platform of His own world, to speak, 
 and to be answered. But can He do it loortliily ? 
 Can He do it, so as to complete, without fatally perplex- 
 
1 8 The Snpernahtral in Christianity 
 
 ing, the manifestation of Himself ? I point for answer 
 to Jesus Christ. Through Jewish reh'gion, which 
 developed in singular combination the consciousness of 
 God's majesty with that of His watchfulness over 
 men, we reach Jesus Christ. Whatever view you 
 take of the theology of His Person, no doubt His own 
 religion gave Him out as the singular manifestation 
 and expression of God. And, no doubt of it, it is this 
 that has decisively carried home to human minds the 
 impression of the Divine personality, associated with 
 worthy impressions of His mind and will. This, in 
 fact, has done it. Has it done wrong to the manifesta- 
 tion of God, given through the great universe in which 
 He is immanent, working evermore ? Do we not 
 rather feel that this form of lowly and gracious man- 
 hood enables us to harmonise both sides of the mani- 
 festation, each enriching each. True, many a Christian 
 has halted in one-sided thoughts of God, — all our 
 thoughts of God come short. Nevertheless, the mani- 
 festation itself is worthy in its completeness. It 
 would be incomplete without the presence which con- 
 fronts each of us in the pages of the gospel. For in 
 some world — here or hereafter — I, tlie personal man, 
 rightfully desire to find the personal God. In some 
 world ; but why not in this world ? 
 
 I say again, secondly, is it beyond belief that it may 
 be in the design of God to bestow upon men in con- 
 nection with religion — and most fitly in connection 
 with the special manifestation just described — that 
 form of evidence and assurance which arises when 
 
Mh'acles as Evidential 19 
 
 tokens of God's special working in the outward history 
 are associated with the inward evidence appealing to 
 reason and conscience ? This is the question of 
 Christian miracles. I suppose I need not explain that 
 I am not concerned with any question about vagrant 
 marvels scattered fortuitously up and down the world. 
 I deal with those which associate themselves with the 
 revelation in Christ. Here I deal with matter on 
 which modern prejudice is strong, I will grant, not 
 unnaturally strong. I may be allowed, therefore, a 
 few minutes to explain myself upon it. I am not 
 going to thresh out the dry straw about laws of nature 
 and that sort of thing, which, happily for the present, I 
 feel that I can let alone. 
 
 In asserting the supernatural in Christianity in 
 any form, and especially in this form, I do it with 
 a very lively sense indeed of the difficulty, the tempta- 
 tion or excuse for doubt and suspense, which arises 
 to many minds from the consideration of the masses 
 of superstition related to the asserted supernatural, 
 which have filled the history of the world. Men 
 have been notoriously prone to assert rashly and to 
 believe greedily in this department ; in fact, there 
 seems to be almost nothing some peop)le will not 
 believe. There has been such a complete proof of 
 the disastrous and misleading influence exerted by 
 all this, that a certain sceptical caution in relation 
 to it is certainly, beyond all question, an element in 
 sane thinking. There are whole categories of the 
 marvellous, which we every day of our lives dismiss 
 
20 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 without a thought ; we are not going to waste time in 
 examining them, because we perceive at a glance what 
 tribe they are of. They bear on their face the stamp 
 of outlaws of reason. I still think that even this 
 mass of now incredible assertion — some of it non- 
 Christian and much of it Christian — raises the ques- 
 tion, whether behind all the folly and poor thoughts 
 of God and His ways thus manifested, there is not 
 here the working of a craving which might have 
 legitimate expression, and might find a divine re- 
 sponse ? But, at all events, as I have no hesitation at 
 all in maintaining that the supernatural view of 
 Christ, instead of being something to be shut out as 
 incredible, is a congruous and necessary element of 
 the spiritual life of men, so also I maintain the fit- 
 ness of the miraculous in the manifestation of God 
 through Christ. And my present point is that, a 
 iniori, it should not be judged unsuitable to God. 
 
 I admit with Pfleiderer, and I may add with Dr. 
 Martineau, that the most appropriate, the most spiritual 
 evidence — that, therefore, which may be regarded as 
 most fundamental, constant, and vital — is the intrinsic 
 reasonableness and divineness of the truth believed 
 and embraced. Therefore spiritual Christianity has 
 always laid great stress on the witness of the Spirit, 
 as that in which a man may supremely and finally 
 rest. There is such a thing as a perception, that in 
 truths and facts God and I meet. And in this line 
 Dr. Martineau has eloquently taught us, that the 
 divine voice in the conscience of each man is the true 
 
Practical Difficulties for Faith 2 1 
 
 revelation, and for each man the only one, — because, 
 whatever gifted persons may have seen or experienced 
 more than I, their report is no evidence to me, till 
 countersigned by the oracle within myself. Well, 
 whether that be true or not, the peculiar place and 
 worth of this inner evidence is granted. And I have 
 great sympathy with those who, under certain diffi- 
 culties, say, " Well, let me, at all events, take the un- 
 deniable facts about Christ and His teaching ; let me 
 take them at their worth as facts, and make what I 
 can of them, and, at all events, do no less than justice 
 to them as they stand." I believe that often along 
 that line a mode of feeling and of thought establishes 
 itself, in which the peculiar and supernatural signifi- 
 cance of Christ is really felt ; and His appearance in the 
 world assumes its own decisive place. I only claim that 
 such a mood should not be hindered from expanding 
 farther. But then I am dealing with a theory which 
 does not bar expansion, which finds it necessary to 
 argue down both the essential elements and the proper 
 tokens of Christ's peculiarity. I say, then, that the 
 inner evidence I have spoken of is by no means 
 always so clear and conclusive in practice. It is not 
 true that every man is a prophet, who in these matters 
 can confidently say, " Thus saith the Lord." 
 
 The man, although he knows that such evidence is 
 desirable, and perhaps believes it to be attainable, yet 
 finds it hard to be sure of the accents of the divine 
 will. He may be dubious as to the range of truth he 
 ought to receive ; he may find it difficult to separate 
 
22 The SiipernatMral in Christianity 
 
 that to whicli the authentic evidence applies from that 
 which is mixed up with it in his own way of think- 
 ing. He may find his own confusions intensified by 
 the confusions in other minds. For men's minds are 
 confused, — obtuse and dull, — bewildered by the various 
 voices that make themselves heard within us. This 
 cannot be questioned. The existence and personal 
 character of God, providence, prayer, immortality, 
 are all of them debatable and debated. Many, also, 
 who have no wish to debate these articles, are yet un- 
 fixed and changeable in their thoughts about them. 
 The question returns : How do I know that I am not 
 misled by feelings and by wishes, that I am not mis- 
 taking the interpretation of nature and conscience ? 
 Moreover, the soul is dull, and cannot well trust its 
 own estimate of the worth of what it does believe. 
 That may be true, it may be good ; but is it able to 
 bear the weight if I throw my life upon it, and make 
 it my guiding principle, the light of all my seeing ? 
 It is here that the concurrence of the outward and 
 the inward has a peculiar effect of assurance. It is 
 a token that God is inviting to trust, is calling for 
 faith. The divine within me and the non-divine are 
 inextricably mixed, perhaps ; but the finger of God 
 without is wholly independent of me. God will not 
 give me such tokens on all occasions, nor on many. 
 But He may have given them to the world in connec- 
 tion with the mission of His Son. Further, in any 
 such personal manifestation of God as I spoke of, the 
 point in hand is not only the validity of unchanging 
 
]\Iiracles convruous to Christ 
 
 ^i:> 
 
 truths, but the significance of this present interposi- 
 tion, — the worth of this person, Jesus Christ. Now, 
 His worth lies indeed in His fulness of grace and 
 truth, — it lies first in what He is. But there may be 
 much human uncertainty and insensibility, which 
 receives its needed succour in the mighty works which 
 showed that God was with Him. 
 
 In this view it is very often overlooked that a 
 purpose of great value is secured by the mighty works 
 of the Gospels, quite antecedently to all discussion of 
 the evidence in detail ; and, indeed, the discussion of 
 that evidence in detail, however fitting, has a great 
 deal less to do with Christian faith than readers of 
 books on the subject might be led to suppose. At 
 least I judge so by my own case. As I have said 
 that the central evidence is that which opens in 
 the truth itself, so I hold that the life, works, and 
 teaching of Christ — the total Personality taken, if you 
 will, apart from miracles — establish the unique and 
 exceptional character of the Man. I find the super- 
 natural there. As they grow upon the mind, they 
 establish for Christ a place not with other men, but 
 far different. As Charles Lamb said : " If Shakespeare 
 came into the room just now, we would all rise up ; 
 but if He came in, we would all kneel down." Never 
 man spake like tliis Man. Truly this is the Son of 
 God. Yes ; but my own conclusions in such matters 
 are so hard to trust. Am I perhaps deceiving myself 
 in some fond idolatry — was this, after all, not a man 
 as other men, but one whose coming made the great 
 
24 The Super natural in Christianity 
 
 epoch of the world, one whom God calls me to trust 
 and follow ? Could He be deceived Himself about His 
 own powers and mission and claims ? If the decisive 
 manifestation of God was here, were there no 
 tokens of it ? Now I find that, as He stood in 
 the line of a great preparation going before, so 
 from the outset He claimed that works which man 
 cannot do betokened His exceptional relation to God. 
 The sick were healed, the dead were raised, the sea 
 was stilled. This is what I need. It is a congruous 
 part of that whole, of which our Lord's personal worth 
 is the greater part, but of which this part too is the 
 fitting complement. It comes home to me as a con- 
 sistent and credible whole. 
 
 I have one more point in this line, which needs the 
 least illustration just because it is the most obvious 
 and important. If great sin and need were to mark 
 the history of the human race, shall it be judged 
 unsuitable on the part of God to make manifestation 
 and expression of Himself, in such a sort that here we 
 should find divine remedy proportioned to our need, — 
 personal friendship for the lost, redemption, love that 
 saves ? On the other view, it is true, indeed, that 
 great personalities are rising and falling in the history 
 of our race, — religious personalities among the rest, — 
 who diversify our experience for better or worse. But 
 on that view there is no interruption of the silence of 
 God. He is present, — on reflection, He may be presumed 
 to be present, — but there is no movement, save the even 
 thrill of His great existence for ever on the spiritual 
 
Development and Immanence 2 5 
 
 natures in contact with it : no incarnation, no atone- 
 ment, no great promises, no covenant ordered in all 
 things and sure. Not on these terms did Christianity 
 conceive its messa2;e. Not under these conditions did 
 the great sayings fill with their immortal meaning : 
 " Hereby perceive we the love of God." " We have 
 believed the love that God hath to us. God is love." 
 
 On lines of thought like these a great deal could be 
 said. They have been adduced, not at present as 
 evidence, but as pleas for keeping the mind open to 
 evidence in favour of biblical Christianity. If the 
 mind be kept open, the evidence will pour in by many 
 avenues. The central conviction is one, but it will 
 thrill into our being along many a line of evidence 
 and many a chain of impressions. 
 
 The doctrine of development, then, as we see, is 
 the engine by which Christianity is to be reduced to 
 the same principle with earlier forms of religion. But 
 there is no need for us to take an attitude of suspicion 
 towards the doctrine of development, though we 
 contest a particular application of it. Nothing is more 
 remarkable in Christianity than the w^ay in which it 
 articulates itself into the process of the developing 
 world, takes up that process into itself, and submits 
 itself to the principle of growth and progress. We 
 have learned much of this ; we are willing to learn 
 more ; but not so as to forget that God was in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto Himself. 
 
 Now, as development is the engine by which Chris- 
 tianity in principle is levelled down, so the doctrine of the 
 
I 
 
 r 
 
 26 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 Divine Immanence is that by means of which it is after- 
 wards to be levelled up again. For while Dr. Ptleiderer 
 wants to disenchant Christianity of the miraculous and 
 of the true supernatural, he wants at the same time to 
 glorify the Christianity he retains. Christianity is still 
 to figure as something eminent, extraordinary, beneficent. 
 It is to be only a birth of human reason, but then reason 
 has resources which enable it to rise as high as there is 
 any need for. Indeed, as the next Lecturer will show, 
 Dr. Pfleiderer claims for his Christianity gifts and 
 attainments that are not consistent with his philosophy. 
 Now the doctrine of Divine Immanence is the means 
 by which he conveys the impression that this feat is 
 possible. Christianity must be conceived to take origin 
 and to abide within the order of the world, but 
 then immanence belongs to the order of the world. 
 So here, it is implied, we have divine influence, which 
 may impel men to any height of mental or moral 
 attainment that can reasonably be claimed. On this 
 principle all that the world has seen of great and good 
 can be accounted for, and yet can be kept within the 
 limits of philosophical theory. Immanence can replace, 
 for instance, the Incarnation, and leave us with no loss 
 of anything substantial. 
 
 But we have already seen how much is lost. And 
 I am persuaded that the impression that any important 
 help is to be found in this quarter depends upon con- 
 fused thinking. 
 
 The doctrine of the Divine Immanence means that 
 we ought not to think of God as setting up a universe, 
 
What to be ascribed to God as Immanent 2 7 
 
 endowing it with certain forces under certain laws, 
 and then standing by, as it were, to see it work as of 
 itself. Some such view it is usual to ascribe to the 
 rationalists of last century, and also to some schools of 
 Christian theology. At all events, immanence is the 
 opposite of all that. The doctrine contemplates God 
 as most inwardly present to His creatures, working 
 all in all. This doctrine has been strongly pressed by 
 philosophers during this century, including those in 
 whose genealogy Dr. Pfleiderer stands, and they have 
 done so sometimes in the form of Pantheism, identify- 
 ing the life of God with the life of the universe. But 
 this is not to be imputed to Dr. Pfleiderer, who 
 welcomes the thought of God as personal — as having 
 moral and intellectual features, and conscious designs 
 towards which the universe tends — eternally, as Dr. 
 Pfleiderer thinks, without beginning or end. Whether 
 or no this doctrine of Divine Immanence can be finally 
 settled on philosophical grounds, I willingly accept it 
 on Scripture grounds, in so far as it teaches that " in 
 Him we live and move and have our being." All that 
 I feel concerned about is that this should not be held 
 to be all that is to be said about God, or about His 
 relation to His universe. 
 
 But supposing God confessed to be immanent, the 
 question still remains : What range of meaning belongs 
 to the phrase, and what range of action is allow^ed to 
 God under it? Here, then, let it be remembered 
 what this notion is set against, according to the 
 philosophy of which it is a part. On the one hand, it 
 
28 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 is set against the notion of a world that goes on by 
 itself, with God, as it were, on the outside, looking at 
 it. But, on the other hand, it is set against the notion 
 of everything miraculous. That is, it is set against 
 the notion of any action of God in the world that is 
 not at the same time the action of the creatures, and 
 of the creatures according to their own nature, under 
 their own laws, and subject to all the conditions in 
 which they are placed at the time. God must confine 
 Himself strictly to that ; for if He goes beyond it, 
 however secretly or gently. He is out into the region 
 of the miraculous, which is prohibited. In short, His 
 presence is only, after all, the philosophical explana- 
 tion of the forces of nature, including of course the 
 forces and capacities of human souls. Those are the 
 facts of which we have cognisance. Certain views of 
 the structure of the world lead thinkers to postulate 
 God as the common ground of the existence of these 
 facts with their forces and laws. Their life is con- 
 ceived to refer itself back to His life. But, then, 
 He is not supposed in any case to add anything im- 
 mediately, exceptionally, or of Himself ; for that 
 would be supernatural interposition, and the thought 
 of it would burst up the true system from the bottom. 
 The forces and capacities of all creatures are con- 
 ceived to be invested with a new dignity and in- 
 terest, when they are viewed in their relation to 
 the divine sustaining and vitalising power. But 
 then they are not therefore to be supposed to re- 
 ceive a new inspiration, or to be carried beyond 
 
hnmanence within Limits 29 
 
 themselves. For what the divine immanence does is 
 to sustain them as they are, as in themselves they 
 were meant to be. 
 
 The immanence of God, assumed and granted, does ' 
 nothing to shed new light on the world of nature or 
 man, nor are the difficulties which have always beset 
 natural theology in the least alleviated by it. For 
 example, in this presence of His, God upholds all forces 
 and tendencies, alike the conservative and the destruct- 
 ive. He is immanent in the serpent and the tiger, as 
 much as in the dove and in the lamb. And, in regard 
 to man, He maintains our powers when we are using 
 them w^ell, and when we are using them ill, — both 
 alike as far as the doctrine of immanence is concerned, 
 — not less truly immanent in us in the time of our 
 errors and our sins, than at any other time. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that however we err, or however 
 we sin, man is so made — man's life is so conditioned 
 — that the great constants of truth and duty come 
 into view, and they claim to be regarded and embraced. 
 It is a sound conclusion that those great elements, 
 which thus maintain their ground amid the fluctuations 
 and infirmities of our minds and wills, have a divine 
 authority and reveal the divine character. That con- 
 clusion is sound, whether the doctrine of immanence, or 
 any other doctrine consistent with faith in God, is 
 embraced. But the divine immanence guarantees 
 nothing beyond the known lines and limits of creature 
 natures. In particular, it cannot ever guarantee us 
 in any particular case against mixed experiences of 
 
30 The Sttpernatural in Christianity 
 
 true and false, right and wrong. After we Lave 
 adopted the doctrine of Divine Immanence as 
 before, the question as to what is possible to human 
 nature has to be settled from our own consciousness 
 and from the experience of the race. 
 
 All this applies to the case of Christ. The doctrine 
 of Immanence supplies no fountain of revelation, and 
 offers no guarantee against mixtures or errors. Im- 
 manence could not produce sinlessness ; for that 
 would be the proper supernatural. Immanence leaves 
 the creature within his limits. Never could it justify 
 a man in saying, " I am the way, and the truth, 
 and the life." To carry the creature beyond itself, 
 to clothe it with authority, to guarantee it against 
 error or sin, may be very possible to God, — I believe 
 it. But it is a belief that contemplates the miraculous, 
 and does not limit God to development. 
 
 I shall be sorry if I am thought to cherish a 
 grudging spirit towards any who, unable in their 
 present mental atmosphere to receive the miraculous 
 and the supernatural as these appear in Christianity, 
 still strive to hold on, and do hold on, to the im- 
 pression derived from Christ as at least an incom- 
 parable Personality and an incomparable Teacher. 
 The truth is, I regard the position of many such 
 persons with a very peculiar feeling of respect. I 
 believe that not unfrequently their position represents 
 moral qualities not easily overrated. And while I 
 must think it symptomatic also of something that is 
 defective and one-sided, I am far from counting 
 
God in Christ 3 1 
 
 myself qualified to be their censor. But I must 
 express my belief that in the long-run, and for the 
 mass of men, the position is untenable. Christianity 
 does not hold men first by its ethical depth. It holds 
 men because God is in it ; because it is felt that 
 once God in Clirist has taken His self-revealing place 
 in the midst of the world, calling men to judgment 
 and to mercy. In Christ He has done it : " whereof 
 He has given assurance to all men, in that He has 
 raised Him from the dead." 
 
n 
 
 CAN PROFESSOR PFLEIDERER'S VIEW 
 JUSTIFY ITSELF? 
 
 By PEOFESSOE JAMES ORE, D.D. 
 
II 
 
 CAN PEOFESSOR PFLEIDEEEE'S VIEW 
 JUSTIFY ITSELF? 
 
 The task entrusted to me this evening is that of 
 surveying, and endeavouring to estimate on its merits, 
 the theory of religion presented to us by Professor 
 Pfleiderer with much persuasiveness, and in the name 
 of the highest theological science, in his recent Gifford 
 Lectures, and propounded by him as a substitute for, 
 or rather, as he would phrase it, the truth and kernel 
 of, supernatural Christianity. I need not say that in 
 any criticism I feel called upon to make on this 
 theory, nothing is intended personal or disrespectful 
 to the distinguished Lecturer himself. Professor 
 Pfleiderer's great abilities, and his remarkable breadth 
 of historical knowledge and philosophical culture, are 
 ungrudgingly admitted, and perhaps those of us who 
 have most to do with these things would be the first 
 to acknowledge, in its own place, our indebtedness to 
 him in many respects. All the same, it is impossible 
 not to recognise that these Lectures, delivered by a 
 thinker deservedly of such high repute, and under the 
 aegis of one of our great Scottish LTniversities, striking 
 
6 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 as they do directly at the foundations of liistorical 
 Christianity, and tearing up by the roots with 
 unsparing hand much that we have been accustomed, 
 at least, to regard as most vital to our faith, consti- 
 tute a challenge to the Christian Church which it 
 cannot io-nore. I do not think the Church will shrink 
 from taking up the gauntlet thus thrown down to 
 it ; at least, I am sure it need not. The challenge in 
 itself is not a new one. It has been heard before, 
 and supernatural Christianity survives. To those 
 acquainted with Professor Pfleiderer's works, the 
 views enunciated in the Gilford Lectures came in no 
 sense as a surprise. They have been before the world 
 any time for the last dozen years ; and they have been 
 discussed in Germany any time for the last forty or 
 fifty years. What is more important, they have not 
 found acceptance there, or at least have not been able 
 to hold the field. Indeed, the most remarkable thing 
 to my mind in connection with these Lectures is, 
 that it is precisely at the time when, as Professor 
 Pfleiderer frankly acknowledges in a recent published 
 utterance,^ the tide has receded from the school he 
 represents in Germany, and a reaction has set in in 
 the direction of belief in a positive historical revela- 
 tion in Christ — for this is the meaning of the 
 dominant Pdtschlian movement in that country — he 
 should be found enunciating these views in Scotland 
 as a new gospel, and should be hailed by many as the 
 prophet of a new age ! I do not, however, wish to 
 
 ^ lutroduction to Grundriss, 1893. 
 
Essence of the Theory 2,1 
 
 make too much of this. Professor Pileiderer's theories, 
 old or new, are entitled to be tried on their own 
 merits. He has stated his views to us ably, 
 reverently, undisguisedly ; has put them before us in 
 logically-reasoned form; and he is entitled to his 
 answer. I have no desire to play with details on the 
 surface of the system. What I would wish to do is 
 to get as soon as possible to the heart of things, and 
 deal with this theory in its fundamental presupposi- 
 tions. I would take this new philosophy of Chris- 
 tianity, not on its weakest and worst side, if there is 
 anything about it which can be so characterised, but 
 on its highest and best side, and would ask whether 
 the root out of which it is supposed to grow is 
 capable of sustaining it ; whether this rejection of the 
 supernatural has a justification in the postulates and 
 principles of Professor Pileiderer's own system; and 
 whether the religious convictions and moral idealism 
 he retains do not require us to admit more than 
 he allows. 
 
 Let us look, then, at this theory of Professor 
 Pfleiderer's — try to get to the essence of it. We have 
 seen from the Lectures he has given us how everything 
 of a supernatural or miraculous nature in the narra- 
 tives of the Gospels goes overboard ; how the divine 
 facts in the history of our Eedeemer, on the confession 
 of which every great historical Churcli in Christendom 
 up to the present hour, including Professor Pfleiderer's 
 own, is founded, are relegated to the realms of myth 
 and fiction — are interpreted as the fruit of "ideal 
 
38 The Stipernahtralin Christianity 
 
 figurative invention." The question which starts up 
 in every mind in the light of this treatment is : 
 When these foundations are knocked away, as Pro- 
 fessor Pfleiderer helps so vigorously in knocking them, 
 will the Christian Church, or will Christianity itself 
 in any form, survive, save as a pleasing (or, as some 
 may choose to think it, a baleful) dream and illusion 
 of the past ? Giving up supernatural Christianity, 
 are we, with so many in our age, to take the plunge 
 into Agnosticism or Nihilism or Pessimism ? This is 
 far from being Professor Pfleiderer's opinion. He is 
 never weary of assuring us that, if his theories are 
 accepted, religion, so far from being destroyed, will be 
 placed upon a firmer basis than ever. It is only the 
 accidents, the excrescences, the drapery and embellish- 
 ments of religious ideas that disappear : the essence, 
 the kernel, the rational, imperishable truth of the 
 matter remains, — and what could any reasonable mind 
 wish more ? A wonder-working word, as we shall see, 
 is this " kernel " in Professor Pfleiderer's system ; a 
 veritable enchanter's wand by which the most magical 
 transformations are accomplished ! By its aid nothing 
 vital is to perish. The Church is to go on ; Christianity 
 is to go on, though in a purified form ; faith in God 
 and in the moral goal of history is to go on ; labour 
 for the Kingdom of God is to go on. Now, what I 
 want to know is, whether this is a rational or tenable 
 expectation ? I want to know whether, in giving up 
 these supernatural aspects of Christianity, under 
 pretence of keeping everything, we are not really 
 
What of the Future? 39. 
 
 parting with all ? I believe for myself that we are, 
 and I think that nine-tenths of those who agree with 
 Professor Pfleiderer in his rejection of the principle of 
 the supernatural, and who are gleeful over his supposed 
 demolition of the historical groundworks of Chris- 
 tianity, are probably of the same opinion. We cannot 
 forget that this kind of language has been heard 
 befo-re. There was a time when Strauss also wrote : 
 " But we have no fear that we should lose Christ by 
 being obliged to give up a considerable part of what 
 has hitherto been called the Christian Creed ! He will 
 remain to all of us the more surely, the less anxiously 
 we cling to doctrines and opinions that might tempt 
 our reason to forsake Him. But if Christ remains to 
 us, and if He remains to us as the highest we know, 
 and are capable of imagining, within the sphere of 
 religion, as the Person without whose presence in the 
 mind no perfect piety is possible, we may fairly say 
 that in Him do we still possess the sum and substance 
 of the Christian faith." ^ But at a later period, in his 
 Old Faith and the New, Strauss faced the question, 
 " Are we still Christians ? " with a bolder look, and gave 
 it an uncompromising answer, "No." We want to 
 know whether it may not be the same here. 
 
 The difficulty, I imagine, which most people will 
 feel in dealing with Professor Pfleiderer is, that there 
 is so much in his religious philosophy which is in 
 itself good and true, — which has a Christian appear- 
 ance, or at least a Christian sound, — and to which the 
 ^ Colloquies (Eng. Trans.), p. 67. 
 
40 The Supernaturalin Christianity 
 
 Christian believer can cordially assent. The denial of 
 the miraculous in Christianity by a bold naturalism 
 we can readily understand, but here is something of a 
 subtler order which does not fit in with any of our 
 accepted categories. Huxley we know, and Spencer 
 we know ; but here is a thinker, not less pronounced 
 in his anti-supernaturalism than they, who clothes his 
 ideas in Christian garb, who uses continually the 
 Christian dialect, who professes to be giving us the 
 very essence and truth of the Christian religion, — 
 what are we to make of him ? Professor Pfleiderer 
 himself would not admit that his theory is fairly 
 described as a denial of the supernatural. His system, 
 he will tell you, is saturated with the idea of the 
 supernatural. He believes in a supernatural basis of 
 the world — God ; in a supernatural government of the 
 world, or, what is held to be the same thing, a divine 
 teleological system of the world ; in a divine purpose 
 and goal in history ; in the peculiar place of Israel in 
 the religious development ; in Jesus as the bearer of 
 the principle of the absolute religion ; in the victory 
 of good over evil, and the ultimate triumph of the 
 Kingdom of God on earth.^ Still less would Professor 
 Pfleiderer admit that he is fairly described as denying 
 revelation. It is the last thing in the world, he will 
 tell you, he would think of doing. All religion rests 
 on revelation. The foundation of his whole religious 
 philosophy is the idea of God as self-revealing. The 
 religious history of mankind is the history of revela- 
 ^ Lectures V., VI., IX., X. (First Course) : II. (Second Course), etc. 
 
Sttpernatttral biU not Mwaculoits 4 1 
 
 tion.^ Yet underneath all this, as we are compelled 
 to confess when we get to the bottom of his meaning, 
 — the limits of my Lecture will not allow me to put 
 too fine a point on it, — there lies nothing but the most 
 naked rationalism. The world may rest on a super- 
 natural basis, but it is a supernatural which expresses 
 itself only in the natural, never beyond it. Miracle, 
 in the strict sense, he tells us again and again, is 
 impossible ; nothing ever happens, or can happen, 
 outside the eternally established natural order ; of any 
 transcendence, or overstepping of the limits of that 
 order, whether in nature or in the human mind, it is 
 not permitted to the enlightened theologian to speak.^ 
 With this accords the idea of revelation. That 
 which, on the divine side, is viewed as revelation, is, 
 on the human side, simply the natural development of 
 man's spirit — the working out of the original potenti- 
 alities and capacities of his nature in contact with 
 the world and with history.^ Everything is there, 
 like a coiled-up spring, in man's constitution from 
 the beginning, waiting only the touch of external 
 events to cause it to unfold itself. This I take to be 
 the peculiarity of Professor Pfleiderer's system — its 
 combination of Christian elements and a high moral 
 and religious idealism with an essentially naturalistic 
 or rationalistic view of the world ; and it is the 
 legitimacy of this combination I am to test. The 
 
 ^ Lectures V., VI. (First Course), etc. 
 
 2 Lecture L (Second Course). 
 
 2 Cf. Philosophy of Edigion (Eug. Trans.), iv. pp. 70, 72, 75, 78. 
 
42- The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 difficulty is not in dealing with either of these con- 
 ceptions separately. We can perfectly understand a 
 man who maintains his faith in God, in His love, in 
 a providential government of the world, in progressive 
 revelation, and in an ultimate triumph of the Kingdom 
 of God, in connection with a general supernatural view 
 of the world ; and we can understand the agnostic or 
 the avowed naturalist who rejects the supernatural 
 altogether, and with it sweeps aside this whole load 
 of theological conceptions which Professor Pfleiderer 
 would carry with him. The peculiarity in Professor 
 Pfleiderer's philosophy is its attempt at the combina- 
 tion of these two commonly opposed sides. I do not 
 doubt that Professor Pfleiderer has made a synthesis 
 of these two sides which satisfies his own spirit ; the 
 question is, whether it is one which will hold good for 
 the mass of men, or can permanently justify itself at 
 the bar of reason ; whether a religious optimism can 
 maintain itself on this footing ; or whether we are not 
 brought back to the alternative of either going over 
 wholly to the side of Christianity, with its super- 
 natural basis, or else of accepting a view of the world 
 from which the supernatural is entirely excluded, and 
 surrendering the hopes and idealisms which spring from 
 faith in God and revelation ? It is this peculiarity in 
 Professor Pfleiderer's system which is, as I regard it, 
 at once its strength and its weakness. It is its 
 strength, for it falls in with a prepossession of the 
 times, fostered by many causes, adverse to the recogni- 
 tion of the supernatural, and creating a desire for just 
 
A Midway Position Untenable 43 
 
 such a combination as is here attempted. Even from 
 the evangelical side I can conceive that many, finding 
 so much that seems to them morally elevated and 
 genuinely Christian in Professor Pfleiderer's teaching, 
 hearing him speak, as they constantly do, of the love 
 of God and revelation and salvation and the com- 
 munication of the Holy Spirit, may think, " Well, if 
 this is not supernatural Christianity, it is at any rate 
 a very good substitute for it, and we can get on very 
 well without the other." But it is also its weakness ; 
 for this middle position of Professor Pfleiderer's can- 
 not long satisfy either the Christian believer or the 
 sceptic. The former will ask, with perfect justice, 
 whether these high religious convictions of Professor 
 Pfleiderer's would ever have been his, or can be 
 sustained, apart from the faith in supernatural revela- 
 tion from which they have sprung ; and the sceptic 
 will ask whether, renouncing such revelation, he has 
 any right to retain the fruit which grew upon its 
 tree ? This is a question we must now inquire into 
 further. 
 
 It is the anti-supernaturalism of Professor Pfleid- 
 erer's system which is its chief attraction in many 
 eyes, and with it, accordingly, I must begin. ISTothing, 
 we are told, can be allowed to have a place in the 
 system of the world outside the natural order. Not 
 only is it so, says Professor Pfleiderer, but it must be 
 so. It is impossible to think rationally or worthily of 
 God otherwise. A miracle is excluded on metaphysical 
 and on moral grounds ; and it is further, we are told, 
 
44 ^'^^ Sitpernatttral in Christianity 
 
 excluded on scientific grounds.^ This, e.g., is Professor 
 Pfleiderer's objection, or one of his objections, to 
 Augustine. The Christian salvation stood with him 
 in mere opposition to nature, and could only come to 
 it from without through a miracle.- I cannot help 
 remarking in passing that Professor Pfleiderer is not 
 always quite lair to his supernaturalistic opponents 
 in his statements of their views. He exalts distinc- 
 tions into contrasts, and throws them into an abrupt 
 and forbidding form which those whom he criticises 
 would not accept. I^o Christian (and least of all 
 Augustine) holds that because salvation comes to 
 humanity from a source above nature, therefore it is 
 " in mere opposition " to nature. Eather is it held 
 to be in deepest congruity with nature, — that which 
 redeems, restores, sanctifies, and perfects it. The same 
 exaggeration is seen in Professor Pfleiderer's treatment 
 of the idea of revelation, and indeed of the super- 
 natural generally. A view which refuses to recognise 
 the all-sufficiency of nature is invariably represented 
 as in harsh opposition to nature, and as taking no 
 account of psychological or other natural conditions.^ 
 
 ^ Cf. Philosophy of Religion, pp. 88, 89. 
 
 2 Lecture IX. (Second Course). 
 
 2 Thus the alternative is represented as lying between a view of 
 revelation which resolves it into a purely psychological product (with 
 God certainly as the ultimate creative ground) and "an entirely 
 divine operation, not indebted to the assistance, nor subject to the 
 conditions of the human mind." — Philosophy of Religion, iv. p. QQ. 
 So miracles are "isolated exceptions of a lawless divine freedom," and 
 are held to involve a view of God as "in general unliving, inactive, 
 and not free," — an activity which "shows itself alive by way of 
 exception merely." — Ibid. p. 88, etc. 
 
The Possibility of Miracle 45 
 
 It is this anti-supernaturalism which is the key of the 
 position in Professor Pfleiderer's, as in all similar 
 systems. It marks the contrast between two concep- 
 tions of the world and of Christianity fundamentally 
 distinct, and incapable of being reconciled. Here, then, 
 the issue must specially be faced. 
 
 There must be nothing, we are told, outside of the 
 natural order. But why must ? I can conceive of 
 some views of the nature of God and His relations 
 to the world which would necessitate this conclusion. 
 A Spinozistic view of God, e.g., in which everything 
 proceeds necessarily from the Divine Substance ; a 
 Hegelian view of God, in which nature and spirit 
 are again but the logical unfolding of the Immanent 
 Eeason of the universe ; a Deistical view of God, such 
 as that described by Professor Pfleiderer in words 
 quoted from Goethe — " What were a God which only 
 gave the world a push from without, or let it spin 
 round His finger ? " ^ Such views of God of necessity 
 exclude miracle ; but none of these is Professor 
 Pfleiderer's view of God, though he puts himself in 
 the rational succession to Spinoza and Hegel, and 
 serves himself heir to their denials of miracle, drawn 
 from such different premises. Professor Pfleiderer is 
 a theist. The God he believes in is a God of love and 
 power and wisdom — a personal God, not to be identi- 
 fied with the natural order, but distinguishing Himself 
 as a knowing, willing person from the totality of His 
 manifestations in the universe.^ With such a concep- 
 
 ^ Lecture IX. (First Course). ^ Lecture N. (First Course). 
 
46 The Super natural in Christianity 
 
 tion of God as that, however it may be on the view of 
 a Spinoza or Hegel or Spencer, the denial of the 
 possibility of miracle on metaphysical grounds is 
 plainly incompetent. ISTot less illegitimate is the 
 assertion of the a ^priori scientific impossibility of 
 miracle. Professor Huxley and J. S. Mill are probably 
 as good authorities on science as Professor Pfleiderer, 
 and both of them tell us that there is no scientific 
 impossibility in miracle — it is purely and solely a 
 question of evidence/ Nor is the denial tenable on 
 Professor Pfieiderer's own theory. God, as I under- 
 stand it, on Professor Pfleiderer's view, is Himself the 
 ■ultimate law of all connection of phenomena in the 
 universe, and the immanent and efficient cause of its 
 changes. No laws of nature, no secondary causes, 
 interpose themselves between the universe and Him. 
 He is Himself the ever-flowing fountain of all life and 
 power ; His presence, love, and will are through and 
 over all.^ 
 
 Yes, but from this very doctrine of the immanence 
 of God a new objection arises. Miracle may be 
 possible to God, but is it worthy of Him ? Is it not 
 a far higher conception of God to think of Him as 
 immanent in His universe, working along the lines of 
 an eternally-ordained order, and never needing, as He 
 can never desire, to depart from it ? Is it not a 
 reflection either on the wisdom or on the power of 
 
 1 Huxley's Controverted Questions, pp. 258, 259 ; Mill's Logic, 
 Bk. iii. chap. 25. 
 
 2 Lecture V. (First Course). 
 
Miracle and the Divine Immanence 47 
 
 God, a reflection on the perfection of the order He 
 has established, to suppose that all the ends He had 
 in view in His creation cannot be accomplished through 
 it — that it needs to be tampered and interfered with 
 to bring out yet higher and exceptional ends ? Is it 
 not enough, to quote Goethe again, to say, " I look 
 for a God who moves the world from within, who 
 fosters nature in Himself, Himself in nature ; so that 
 naught that in Him lives and moves and has its 
 being ever misses the force of His Spirit ; " and is 
 it not a kind of sacrileo-e, a desecration of this con- 
 ception, to imagine that God ever needs to depart 
 from this sublime path which His own infinite wisdom 
 has eternally marked out for its manifestation ? I 
 desire to state this objection as strongly as I can, for 
 it is here that the argument against miracle is at its 
 best. I wish, at the same time, I could be clearer 
 than I am as to what place after all Professor 
 Pfleiderer leaves in his scheme for something that to 
 the uninitiated mind looks very like " miracle." He 
 often enough uses language which, strictly interpreted, 
 would imply the appearance of something absolutely 
 new, springing creatively from the immanent divine 
 source, though prepared for by previous stages of 
 development. Such a new beginning, for example, 
 was the appearance of life upon the earth, which, he 
 appears to contend, in opposition to those who would 
 extend the Darwinian theory of development to include 
 this phenomenon, cannot be explained out of pre- 
 
48 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 existing physical causes.^ But this is what in ordinary 
 parlance would be called a miracle ; indeed, in this 
 sense, every higher stage of nature (vital, sentient, 
 rational) is a miracle to the stages below it. Language 
 of the same kind is frequently used in speaking of 
 " revelation," — giving liis expressions often a quite 
 supernaturalistic look, — though this is taken back 
 again by saying that every so-called revelation, if we 
 could only see into its depths, would be found to be 
 perfectly psychologically mediated, i.e. to be only a 
 stage or phase of the natural development of the 
 spirit.^ To take but one more instance, readers of 
 Professor Pfleiderer must often feel edified by the 
 earnest, almost warmly evangelical, references to the 
 " Holy Spirit " which abound in his writings, — to His 
 teaching, guiding, sanctifying influence, — but the glow 
 is rather chilled when we find this " Holy Spirit " 
 elsewhere ration alistically explained as simply " the 
 arrival of the divine reason (which is our own reason) 
 at supremacy in our hearts." ^ I take it, then, that 
 anything which looks like the admission of the 
 miraculous in Professor Pfieiderer's system is to be 
 interpreted in harmony with a curious phrase of his 
 own in one of his works, when speaking of the 
 transactions of Pentecost, — " miraculous, no doubt, 
 
 ^ Lecture IX. (First Course). 
 
 2 Cf. Philosophy of lleligion, iv. pp. 70-78 ; Gnindriss, p. 20. It 
 must be observed that on all subjects touching the border-line of the 
 natural and supernatural, Professor Plleiderer's language is exceedingly 
 loose and vague. 
 
 3 Ibid. iii. pp. 304-5. 
 
N'atinx and Personality 49 
 
 but not au absolutely supernatural miracle ; " ^ and 
 that his real view is, as I indicated, one of unbroken 
 natural causation, a causal order outside of which no 
 operation of Deity ever takes place. It is a fair 
 demand, then, when we are asked why this purely 
 immanent action of God in nature and in the 
 activities of the human spirit does not satisfy us, why 
 we contend for something more as both worthy of God 
 and necessary for the fulfilment of His purposes ? I 
 shall try to give some reasons, arguing the matter less 
 on abstract grounds than on the basis of ideas and 
 principles furnished by Professor Pfleiderer's own system. 
 And the first reason I would give why a purely 
 immanent action of God within the limits of the 
 natural order is not regarded by us as intellectually, 
 morally, or religiously satisfying, is this, — that the 
 end of the natural order itself is something higher 
 than a mere natural order, namely, a realm of free, 
 personal spirits, in which the law is not that of 
 impersonally mediated manifestations, but the direct 
 personal intercourse of love. Professor Pfleiderer is 
 the last who can reject this premiss of my argument, 
 for the idea is one on which he himself is continually 
 insisting. Nature is a means to humanity. The end 
 of the natural development is the spiritual being man; 
 the end of the historical development, that for which 
 both nature and history are constituted, is the King- 
 dom of God. 2 But see what this means. 'We are 
 
 ^ Urchristentlmm, p, 14. 
 
 2 Lectures V., VI. (First Course). 
 
50 The Siipernatitral in CJnHstianity 
 
 ourselves parts of nature, yet in a very true sense we 
 are above nature — higher than nature. We have the 
 attribute of personality which nature has not, and 
 through this attribute can enter into relations with 
 each other which are impossible to nature ; we have 
 modes of revelation to one another of which nature 
 knows nothing. We can form societies, spheres of 
 reciprocal love and communion ; can hold personal 
 converse with each other ; can act and react on each 
 other by the continual interchange of thought and 
 sentiment. We communicate with each other, not 
 merely by dumb show, or through some system of 
 automatic arrangements which go on unvaryingly from 
 day to day, but behind which we ourselves are never 
 visible, — which would be no satisfaction to the life of 
 personality (imagine it in the arrangements of a 
 household, or of a father with his chikh-en), — but by 
 direct articulate speech, through personal word and 
 look and deed, through all those subtle media by 
 which the contents of one soul are poured into another. 
 This is because, on the basis of nature, there has been 
 reared a kingdom of personality. Is it, then, to be 
 held that this direct personal form of communion is 
 possible to every class of finite spirits, but is only not 
 possible to, or cannot take place with, the Spirit of 
 spirits, — who, be it remembered, in Professor Pfleiderer's 
 view, as in our own, is a Personality, full of love, 
 fatherhood, and the desire of self-communication ? I 
 do not ask what is possible with other conceptions of 
 God, but can we hold tins conception, and yet consist- 
 
The Reality of Divine Coniimtnion 51 
 
 ently deny the possibility, need, and suitableness of 
 supernatural revelation ? The strangest thing of all 
 is, that Professor Pfieiderer himself affirms the actuality 
 of communion between the human and divine spirits 
 in as strong a form as can be desired. I quote only 
 one passage : " Why should it be less possible," he 
 says, " for God to enter into a loving fellowship with 
 us, than for men to do so with each other ? I should 
 be inclined to think that He is even more capable of 
 doing so. For as no man can altogether read the 
 soul of another, so no man can altogether live in the 
 soul of another ; hence all our human love is and 
 remains imperfect. But if we are shut off from one 
 another by the limits of individuality, in relation to 
 God it is not so : to Him our hearts are as open 
 as each man's heart is to himself; He sees through 
 and through them, and He desires to live in them, and 
 to fill them with His own sacred energy and blessed- 
 ness." 1 Verily, why not ? But will any one say that 
 when you have thus affirmed a perfect loving fellow- 
 ship of God with the soul, analogous to that into 
 which human beings enter with each other, the line 
 is not already crossed between the natural and the 
 supernatural ? or will any one say why, if the gates 
 of intercourse are thus open between the soul and 
 God, He should not enter into them, and give to man 
 a better light and aid than he can find in his own 
 dim gropings after Him ? Why ??iws^ God speak with 
 man only through these dumb symbols of nature, or 
 
 ^ Philosophy of RdUjion, vol. iii. p. 305. 
 
5 2 The Stipe 7^nat2cral in Christianity 
 
 through the inarticulate longings and aspirations of 
 liis spirit, to which no personal response is ever given, 
 and not through a " a more sure word " such as Plato 
 of old longed for, and these ancient Hebrew prophets 
 believed themselves to possess, and we Christians are 
 assured that we have in a yet diviner form in Jesus 
 Christ — the Word made flesh ? There is nothing here 
 which is not worthy of God, needed by man, consonant 
 with the nature of things, and in accordance with the 
 laws of the human spirit. Once grant, what lies in 
 Professor Pfleiderer's own philosophy, that spirit is 
 higher than nature, consciousness than unconsciousness, 
 personality than impersonality, and that the goal of 
 all God's workings and leadings alike in nature and 
 history is the realisation in humanity of a kingdom of 
 love,i — the production of a kingdom of free, personal 
 spirits, bound together by love, and finding their highest 
 good in fellowship with Himself, — and some direct, 
 immediate, articulate word of God to man is the 
 most natural and probable thing imaginable. 
 
 I have given one answer to the question why we 
 cannot rest satisfied with a view of God which con- 
 fines His activity purely within the bounds of the 
 natural order. I shall now give another. It is this : 
 If the goal of the divine purposes in nature and 
 history be the bringing in of that Kingdom of God 
 on earth of which Professor Pfleiderer speaks,^ there' is 
 needed for the attainment of this goal a better know- 
 
 ^ Lecture VI. (First Course). 
 
 2 Lectures VL and IX. (First Course). 
 
Philosophy and Theism 53 
 
 ledge of God than is possible on the hypothesis of 
 immanent development. Professor Pileiderer thinks 
 it quite easy — nay natural and inevitable — that, 
 given time and circumstances, the spirit of man 
 should unfold from its depths just such a knowledge 
 and certainty of God as we now have in the Christian 
 gospel. He will analyse the process, trace the steps 
 of the ascent, and put the whole result before you 
 — on paper. Yes, on paper ; but does the actual 
 history of mankind justify him in this view ? Grant 
 that the Christian idea of God, once we have got it, 
 can be shown to be in deepest accord with reason, 
 and to furnish the true key to the purpose of God in 
 history, — though this to many will be a very huge 
 assumption, — has human reason found it so easy in 
 practice to make a synthesis of these elements for 
 itself, and to construct a conception of God adequate 
 to the religious necessity ? I do not think the history 
 of philosophy or of religion will bear us out in saying 
 that it has. Will any one read the history of tlie 
 higher speculative systems, either ancient or modern, 
 and say that their trend has been naturally and 
 necessarily in the direction of that conception of a 
 living, loving, personal God, which Professor Pfleiderer, 
 with the Christianity from which he has borrowed it, 
 affirms to be the only true one ? Is the tendency of 
 our philosophies of the Absolute not quite in the 
 opposite direction — away from the idea of personality ? 
 Does the study of science any more than of philo- 
 sophy necessarily beget in men's minds this profound 
 
54 ^'/^<^' Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 faith in God as the ground at once of the moral ideal 
 and of the natural order ? 1 fear we have only to look 
 to the Agnosticism of many of our leading men of 
 science to get too conclusive an answer. No, so far as 
 history enables us to judge of the powers of reason, or 
 of the soul's intuitions, to rise to a clear, assured, con- 
 sistent, adequate conception of God, — of His character, 
 will, love, and purpose in the world, — it is not a 
 denial of, but an eloquent plea for, the necessity of a 
 supernatural revelation. Nor is this to be wondered 
 at. Each thinker had flashes, gleams, fitful appre- 
 hensions of tliis or the other side of the truth, — saw, 
 guessed, imagined, something of the ways of Him whom 
 Plato said it was hard to find, and when He was found, 
 impossible to make known to all, — but not the efforts 
 of any single mind, or of all together, could so combine 
 these scattered rays of truth, so purify them from 
 what was erroneous, or supply remaining defects, that 
 the full and true theistic conception was the result. 
 Still less could they bring the soul into living relation 
 and communion with the Being thus dimly sketched 
 by the intellect. 
 
 But there is another side of this subject from which 
 perliaps it may be more profitably approached. This 
 knowledge of God which is now in the world, and of 
 which Professor Pfleiderer avails himself, has come to 
 us in a very different way than througli philosophical 
 speculation. It is an heritage to us from the people 
 of Israel, and above all from Jesus Christ. How, 
 then, are we to explain this God - consciousness of 
 
The God- Consciousness of Israel 55 
 
 Israel, — this clearness, certainty, and power of their 
 convictions of the being, government, and holy, loving 
 purpose of the one living and true God, — the un- 
 shaken faith of psalmists and prophets in His righteous- 
 ness and goodness, and their triumphant confidence in 
 the future of His kingdom ? We know how they 
 themselves explained it, but let that pass for the 
 moment. To Professor PHeiderer it is but the highest 
 example of what the spirit of man can attain to in the 
 evolving of its innate religious endowment. But is 
 this reasonable ? Professor Pfleiderer is by no means 
 of the opinion of another Gifford Lecturer, at present 
 discoursing in a neighbouring city, who thinks that the 
 Old Testament has been an unfortunate inheritance for 
 Christianity. He does very considerable justice to the 
 uniqueness and moral elevation and purity and far- 
 sighted vision of the religion of Israel,^ though that 
 religion is even more unique and organically one in its 
 development from patriarchal promise, through law 
 and prophecy, to its ripened fruit in Jesus Christ, than 
 he, with his naturalistic presuppositions, can allow. 
 " In fact," he says, " if a religious revelation is to be 
 found anywhere, it is certainly to be found in the spirit 
 of the Hebrew prophets, who knew that God was 
 the soul of the morally good. . . . Israel knew such a 
 purpose of history, viz., the realisation of a kingdom of 
 God, of a human fellowship and community, correspond- 
 ing to the holy will of God, and thus did they become 
 the path-finders and leaders of our race upon its toil- 
 
 ^ Lecture YI. (First Course) : II. (Second Course). 
 
^ 
 
 56 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 some way to the moral ideal of humanity."^ Yes, but is 
 their path-finding intellectually comprehensible, except 
 through that factor of supernatural revelation to which 
 they themselves unhesitatingly referred it ? Try the 
 matter by Professor Pfleiderer's own account of the 
 origin of the idea of God. There are, it appears, two 
 roots of the idea of God, — the rational impulse and the 
 moral ideal.^ Israel did not get its idea of God from 
 rational and philosophical speculation, — that is clear. 
 There remains the path of the moral ideal. But the 
 mind in the forming of any of its ideals needs materials 
 to work upon, — it does not act in vacuo, — and the 
 materials at Israel's disposal here were nature and 
 history. Did Israel, then, get its idea of God from 
 nature ? To the inspired seers nature indeed was 
 full of the presence of God, — a perpetual revelation 
 of His wisdom, power, and goodness ; but every 
 one sees that they interpret nature through the 
 idea of God which they bring to it, rather than reach 
 God through the appearances of nature. When science 
 comes to nature without this presupposition of God in 
 its heart, it is often a far different account it has to 
 give of it. There remains history, experience, the 
 visible course of God's providence. Did Israel get its 
 idea of God from these ? Now, history does indeed 
 reveal God, — is an unfolding of His plan and purpose ; 
 but will any one say that in the course of events 
 as they actually fall out around us, — in this strange 
 
 ^ Lecture VI. (First Course). 
 ^ Lecture IV. (First Course). 
 
The Faith of the Prophets 57 
 
 riddle of a life of ours, as we are so often compelled 
 to regard it, — this plan of God is so clearly and un- 
 ambiguously revealed that the most gifted mind could 
 infallibly read in it God's purpose for the world, or 
 raise out of it that unfailing confidence of His wisdom, 
 righteousness, and all -compassionating mercy which 
 we find in the Hebrew prophets ? Given the Christian 
 key to history, and we can perhaps spell out the 
 meaning of God's purpose in parts of it ; but how 
 dark and confused, how enigmatical, tangled, and per- 
 plexed, how often a torturing problem to faith, does 
 the larger portion of it. still remain ? Optimist and 
 pessimist alike find grounds for their theories in 
 history, according to the attitude of mind with which 
 they approach it. It is here also less the action of 
 history upon the mind which creates the faith, than 
 the faith in God which determines how we shall read 
 the history. And this is conspicuously evident in 
 Israel. It is not when events are going well in their 
 nation, but precisely in those periods of darkness and 
 disaster, when God's providence is most adverse, and 
 to the eye of sense His purposes are breaking down in 
 utter failure, — it is then that the faith of these 
 prophets seems to draw new vigour from misfortune, 
 and plumes its wings for flight to yet unreached 
 heights of confidence and hope ! It is neither from 
 nature nor from history, therefore, that Israel derives 
 its idea of God. If it is the ideal that does it, it 
 must be an ideal unlike every other we have known, — 
 one, namely, which has power to lift itself up in 
 
58 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 its own naked strength clean above and out of its 
 environment, and sustain itself at this triumphant 
 height of confidence, not only without anything 
 objective to stay on, but in face of the most adverse 
 appearances, — which works, as I have said, in vacuo. 
 And this, I take it, is an inadmissible hypothesis. It 
 was a far different account which Israel itself had to 
 give of its faith and hope in God. They believed, 
 this people of Israel, in a God who had revealed Him- 
 self to them, not in Professor Pfieiderer's sense, but in 
 loving, saving deeds in their history, in which His 
 presence, power, and grace had been unequivocally 
 manifested; who had given them His sure word on 
 which to hope ; and who had opened to them by His 
 Spirit visions and hopes of a future salvation, and a 
 universal triumph of righteousness, which they knew 
 He would not allow to fail. And why should we not 
 accept this account as the truest and most reasonable, 
 — as, indeed, it is the only one which will perfectly 
 explain the facts ? If the end of all God's guidance 
 in nature and providence is, as Professor Pfleiderer 
 says, the realisation of this Kingdom of God in 
 humanity,^ and if man is designed to be a co-worker 
 with God in bringing in that kingdom, why should 
 God not give to him that knowledge of Himself and 
 of His will which is needful to enable him to enter 
 intelligently into His purposes, and to co-operate with 
 Him consciously and effectively ; instead of using him 
 only as an unconscious instrument of His plans, and 
 
 ^ Lectures VI., IX. (First Course). 
 
Sin demands a Revelation 59 
 
 leaving Iiim to his blind gropings after a Divinity 
 whom haply he may never find ? It will at least 
 hardly be disputed that a far higher class of results 
 are conceivable as reached on a system in which man 
 knows something of the ends he is pursuing, and freely 
 devotes himself to the realisation of these ends (the 
 hypothesis of supernatural revelation), than on another 
 in which he has no such knowledge, but is left to the 
 dim and uncertain light afforded by his natural reason 
 and conscience. 
 
 There is yet another answer wliich might be given 
 to this question, why we cannot be satisfied with a 
 merely natural revelation of God, but it was touched 
 on by the learned Principal in his opening Lecture, 
 and I shall dismiss it with a few words here. It is 
 that drawn from the fact of sin. Whatever know- 
 ledge of God w^e may suppose to be possible to man 
 if his faculties were pure and entire, and his conscience 
 an unsullied mirror reflecting the divine, it is surely 
 obvious that the case is altered when it is recognised 
 — as on any hypothesis it must be — that his mind is 
 darkened and beclouded, and his will held in bondage, 
 by sin. Did my limits permit, I might raise the 
 question whether Professor Pfleiderer's account of 
 the genesis and nature of sin does not evacuate that 
 which we so name of its essential evil, and rob it of 
 its awfulness and tragicalness under the government of 
 God, by representing it as a part of man's original 
 constitution and necessary stage in his development ; ^ 
 ^ Lecture YII. (First Course). 
 
6o The Stt-pernatural in Cludstianity 
 
 but at least he recognises the fact of universal sin and 
 guilt, and does homage to the Christian idea of Redemp- 
 tion, by granting that salvation from sin in some sense 
 is necessary. When, however, we come to inquire 
 what this salvation from sin is, we find, in accordance 
 with the genius of the whole system, that it is some- 
 thing which man has to accomplish entirely in and on 
 himself.^ The true Saviour is not Jesus, — though He 
 remains as a motive, — but the ideal man within our- 
 selves, our own reason or better self. The mystical 
 conception of Eedemption, as Professor Pfleiderer 
 expresses it, is changed into the corresponding ethical 
 conception of education.^ ' The sinner is saved through 
 faith in the ideal. The doctrine is simply that of 
 Kant in his Religion ivithin the Limits of Mere 
 Eeason, given to the world now fully a century ago, 
 — salvation through return to the better self, the new 
 man suffering vicariously for the sins of the old, etc.^ 
 It is very much as if a man were summoned to take 
 himself by his own waistband, and lift himself up out 
 of his sin and misery, — and this is called Eedemption ; 
 nay, is supposed to be the " kernel " of that doctrine 
 of salvation by grace which is founded on the 
 absolute inability of the sinner to help himself, and 
 on the need of a divine, supernatural interposition on 
 his behalf. Now, I submit that all experience is with 
 me when I say that the power of sin is not to be 
 broken in this way in the heart and life of the sinner. 
 
 ^ Cf. Philosophy of Religion, iv. pp. 12G-132. 
 2 Lecture VIII. (First Course). ^ Ibid. 
 
Sec nil Jig and Real Redemption 6 r 
 
 In Professor Pfleiderer's system there is no place for 
 forgiveness, in any proper sense of that word. There 
 is no act of God in forgiving; no change in His 
 thoughts or dispositions towards the sinner. The 
 sinner was formerly alienated from the ideal of his 
 being ; he has now come back to his true self ; the 
 whole drama is internal to his own spirit. For a change 
 like this, perhaps, no supernatural revelation is needed, 
 beyond, at least, an illuminative one; but for such a 
 salvation as I daresay most of us feel that we require, — a 
 true forgiveness, a real regeneration, a sanctifying power 
 brought to bear upon us from without ourselves, — there 
 is needed very much more : an actual redemptive 
 interposition of God in human history, provision for 
 the obliteration of guilt, the work of a divine, living 
 Spirit, — in short, a great moral dynamic such as the 
 Christian gospel yields, but for which Professor 
 Pfleiderer's system, however clamant might be the 
 necessity, affords no room. 
 
 These last remarks are already the answer to 
 another line of defence of Professor Pfleiderer's anti- 
 supernaturalistic conception of Christianity which 
 might plausibly be attempted, and may possibly have 
 occurred to your own thoughts. " Granted," it may 
 be said, " that there is a doubt as to how these ideas 
 have arisen, need that trouble us ? However originally 
 obtained, whether by natural or supernatural means, 
 these ideas of the Christian system are in the world 
 now, and are not likely soon again to be parted with. 
 The Christian idea of the fatherly love of God ; the 
 
62 The Szcpernattcral in Christianity 
 
 moral idealism of Jesus ; the thought of a Kingdom of 
 God for which all are to labour; the ethical view of 
 Eedemption as a dying to the old self that we may live 
 to the new, — are not these sufficient to constitute the 
 basis of a Aery elevated form of religion for mankind, 
 to which all questions of supernatural or non-super- 
 natural origin are indifferent ? " This brings us back 
 to the point from which the present Lecture started. 
 Purged of all supernatural elements, how long 
 would this quasi-Christianity of Professor Ptleiderer be 
 likely to maintain itself ? I cannot say that I regard 
 its prospects as very bright. Professor Piieiderer 
 thinks that he is able to establish these views of his 
 on God and the ethical purpose of the world on 
 philosophic grounds. But we have only to look at 
 the variety of opinion in the philosophic systems 
 around us, — at the Agnosticism, the Materialism, the 
 Pessimism of the day, not to speak of the diversity of 
 view even in the higher idealistic schools, — to see how 
 far Professor Pfleiderer is from being likely to gain 
 general acceptance for his metaphysical foundation ; 
 while, for the workaday mass of mankind, his 
 philosophical reasons are as good as non-existent, — 
 they produce no effect on their minds whatever. But 
 were the foundations even stronger than they are, 
 there are other glaring defects and weaknesses of the 
 system which would still prove fatal to it. In its 
 heart lies the great essential contradiction of a God 
 who is conceived of as living, loving, personal, yet who 
 never enters into real relations of revelation and fellow- 
 
The Non-Mii^aatloiLS Christ 6 
 
 J 
 
 ship with His creatures ; who, having the power to make 
 Himself known to them in direct, immediate ways, and 
 to bless them with His friendship, help, and grace, 
 never does so. This system, standing fixed within the 
 limits of natural law, brings no aid to those whose 
 need can only be met by supernatural remedy. It 
 cannot be preached as a gospel to the sick in heart 
 and sin-laden, for it has in it no power to pardon, re- 
 new, or save. It speaks of the Kingdom of God, but 
 it has no means to realise it. The theory lies under 
 the fatal defect that it wdll not work. It has no force 
 to make it go. 
 
 All these difficulties in Professor Pfleiderer's system, 
 I would now observe in closing, reach their acutest 
 stage when we come to deal with Jesus Christ. That 
 Professor Pfleiderer is filled with the sincerest 
 reverence for Jesus, and the highest admiration for 
 His character; that he exalts Him, ethically, 
 spiritually, religiously, to the highest pinnacle of 
 eminence compatible with his principles ; nay, that 
 he sometimes strains his principles almost to break- 
 ing point in the attempt to do Him yet greater 
 honour, — this must be evident to every reader of 
 his works. Professor Pfleiderer's face is not away 
 from, but towards, the grace and truth that are in 
 Jesus Christ. Yet, with all this exaltation of Jesus, 
 it is not difficult to see that Jesus is for him, so far 
 as historical reality is concerned, little else than a 
 figure to hang his idealisations upon. He is a great 
 religious genius, it is true, but still within the limits 
 
64 The Sitpernatitral in Cliristianity 
 
 of the merely natural. He has a young, fresh heart ; 
 is filled with a child-like love of God; has a wonder- 
 ful charm and sweetness as a preacher of the Kingdom 
 of God ; is the nearest approach to the ideal which 
 history can show.^ But He is not the i^rfcd ideal ; 
 He is not sinless. This would be to take a magical 
 view of His character ; would be to acknowledge Him 
 as miraculous ; and miracle is the one thing which 
 cannot be admitted.^ For the same reason, He did 
 not work real miracles in His ministry ; and when He 
 died His history on earth was ended. There was no 
 Eesurrection. But there happened something which 
 took the place of a Eesurrection for the Christian 
 Church. The stricken disciples, after the first blow, 
 pluck up courage, and begin to think their Master is 
 with them again. Then Peter has a vision, — sees a 
 bright light, or something of the sort, and fancies it 
 is Jesus ; and, by a mysterious telepathy, his faith 
 affects the Twelve, and they have visions ; and the 
 women have visions ; and the five hundred brethren 
 at once have visions ; and, last of all, Paul has a 
 vision. Out of these visions grew faith in the 
 Resurrection, the Ascension, the Godhead, the Incar- 
 nation, the Atonement of Christ, — the whole scheme 
 of Christian theology.^ Paul is peculiarly the creator 
 of this theology, and his scheme — though ingenuity 
 can do wonderful things in extracting " kernels " 
 
 ^ Lecture III. (Second Course). 
 
 - Lecture L (Second Course) ; cf. rhilosophy of Religion, i. p. 339. 
 
 2 Lecture IV. (Second Course) ; cf. his Urchristenthum, pp. 1-25. 
 
** Pichire- Language " and the Sceptic 65 
 
 from it ^ — is mainly a scheme in tlie air ! But treat 
 these illusions tenderly. Professor Pfleiderer is very 
 angry with the Patschlians for laying violent hands on 
 what he calls the "picture-language" of the Church,^ 
 i.e., the dogmas of the Miraculous Conception, Eesurrec- 
 tion, and the like. Let all he carefully preserved. 
 Let the Church he maintained, with its institutions, 
 its sacraments, its festivals, — its Christmas, and 
 Epiphany, and Easter, and Whitsuntide ; let the 
 old prayers be recited, the old hymns be sung, the 
 old Scripture lessons be read, the old service be gone 
 through. The philosopher knows its meaning, and it 
 edifies the people. Ah, but there are others to reckon 
 with ! The sceptic comes along, who has long since 
 parted with all this theological make-believe, — a 
 Strauss or a Hartmann, — and he draws aside the veil, 
 and points the finger at this which is going on, and 
 says, " What mockery ! " " In all ages," says Hart- 
 mann, " there has been one common mark of the 
 
 Christian religion — belief in Christ But the 
 
 liberal Protestant cannot believe in Christ as either 
 Luther, or Thomas Aquinas, or John, or Paul, or Peter, 
 believed in Christ, and least of all as Jesus believed 
 in Himself, for He believed Himself to be the Christ 
 — the Messiah." ^ And is the sceptic not right ? 
 
 Must we then give up all in which we have hitherto 
 believed ? Most certainly not, if only we are willing 
 
 1 Lecture Y. (Second Course). 
 
 2 Introduction to Grundriss (1893). 
 
 ^ Sclhstzcrsetzung des Christcnthums, pp. 54, 55. 
 
 5 
 
66 The SttpernatMral in Christianity 
 
 to fulfil the simple condition of allowing Christian 
 ideas and beliefs to grow upon their own root, and do 
 not attempt to put this artificial, non-natural meaning 
 upon them, and force them into a frame of anti- 
 supernaturalism with which they can never agree. 
 Go back to these Gospels again, — you will find a very 
 different Jesus in them from Him whom Professor 
 Pfleiderer has pictured. Professor Pfleiderer tells us 
 that Jesus was no enthusiast, yet he acknowledges 
 that He believed in His Messiahship, and in His own 
 future return to judge the v/orld.^ Think of One who, 
 without fanaticism, claimed to be the Judge of the 
 world — the arbiter of the everlasting destinies of 
 mankind, and ask by what standard you are to 
 measure Him ? Think of One who speaks habitually 
 of Himself as " Son of Man " and " Son of God," who 
 founds the Kingdom of God, who gives the law for a 
 new dispensation, who arrogates to Himself the power 
 on earth to forgive sins, who dispenses the Holy Ghost, 
 who ascribes an expiatory virtue to His death, who 
 predicts His Ptcsurrection and return in glory ! This is 
 no simple, trustful, religious genius, preaching a sweet 
 gospel of the love of God to the multitudes of Galilee, 
 but One vastly greater. I read these Gospels, and 
 find in them the most wonderful impress of historical 
 reality. But if the Christ of these Gospels was an 
 historical Person, He made claims, He did works, He 
 spoke from a consciousness of unity with God, He 
 asserted an authority, He wielded prerogatives, which 
 
 ^ Lecture III. (Second Course). 
 
The Faith which Overcomes 67 
 
 you cannot fit into a merely human — least of all 
 naturalistic — frame. To the life and death of such an 
 One as Jesus Himself claimed to be, the Eesurrection 
 was a natural sequel, — indeed, is implied in His own 
 announcements of a return after death. And it is 
 faith in such a Divine Christ, — One who liveth and 
 was dead, and, behold, is alive for evermore, — not 
 faith in a mere moral ideal, which is the victory that 
 overcomes the world.^ I do not pursue this subject 
 further, but leave the discussion of the historical 
 evidence to one more competent to deal with it than 
 I am. 
 
 ^ 1 John V. 4, 5 ; Rev. i. 18. I have not had opportunity to refer to 
 the remarkable silence on the hope of immortality in the Lectures, but 
 the fact is surely one full of significance. Can the Christian hope be 
 dissociated from the promise — "Because I live, ye shall live also" 
 (John xiv. 19) ? 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE 
 GOSPELS 
 
 By professor MARCUS DODS, D.D. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TPwUSTWOETHINESS OF THE GOSPELS 
 
 In" the first Lecture of this Course the ground was 
 cleared of some of the difficulties most commonly 
 alleged against the admission of the supernatural ; its 
 reasonableness and congruity were urged ; and the 
 genealogy and general character of Professor Pfleiderer's 
 scheme were indicated. The second Lecture exposed 
 the inconsistencies of that scheme, and of the philo- 
 sophy which so largely enters into it. It is my humbler 
 function to exhibit the unsatisfactory character of the 
 Gospel criticism which is an essential part or necessary 
 adjunct of this form of anti-supernaturalism. I am 
 not called to estimate the value of miracle, to discuss 
 its necessity, or to determine whether we can have a 
 religion without it, and what kind of religion that 
 must be ; I am not even to bring forward what might 
 be adduced as positive evidence in favour of the 
 miracles which lie at the foundation of Christianity : I 
 am merely to show the incompetence of that mode of 
 disposing of the miraculous which is adopted by 
 Professor Pfleiderer under the guise of criticism. But 
 if I must call you down from those heights of philo- 
 
 71 
 
72 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 sophy to which you have been carried, and invite you 
 to accompany me on lower levels and in more 
 pedestrian style, I have yet the advantage of being 
 able to lay before you issues that are sharply defined 
 and easily apprehended. 
 
 Let me once again remind you that the question 
 in debate is the all-important one : What is Christ ? 
 What is the truth about Him ; how is He to be 
 accounted for ; and what lies at the root of His 
 influence ? Is He a supernatural interpolation in the 
 history of our race, or is He the natural product of 
 antecedent persons and conditions ? Did He begin to 
 be when born in Judea, or did He come from a 
 previous existence ? Is He human, precisely as other 
 men are human, or has He a unique relationship to 
 the Father and to the Unseen ? Is Christ merely the 
 best of men, or is He the same who was with God and 
 was God, and by whom God made the worlds ? 
 
 To answer these questions, one naturally turns to 
 the Gospels. These narratives profess to give us an 
 account of what Jesus was and did and said in His 
 life on earth. Cannot we, then, at once settle all 
 debate by referring to these documents ? No, says the 
 theory in question, you cannot ; because it is axiomatic 
 that all miracle is impossible, and the Gospels are full 
 of miracle. In the words of Professor Pfleiderer : " To 
 investigate a history means to trace up the connections 
 of its causes and effects and to make it intelligible to 
 the understanding. This presupposes that in what 
 once happened there existed such a connection of 
 
Exclusion of Miracle 73 
 
 causes and effects as is analogous to our general 
 -'Experience and to what happens among men, and is 
 therefore intelligible to our understanding." This 
 postulate is an essential part of the philosophy ex- 
 pounded by Professor Pfleiderer. It cannot admit the 
 miraculous. One miracle explodes the whole system. 
 Now, unquestionably, any construction of Christianity 
 which can dispense with miracle has a 'primCt facie, 
 recommendation. Matthew Arnold stands by no 
 means alone when he says : " There is nothing one 
 would more desire for a person or a document one 
 greatly values, than to make them independent of 
 miracles." The smaller the claim, the larger will be 
 the number who admit it. Possibly ; possibly, also, 
 even religion may be so cheapened as to make it worth- 
 less. A religion without miracle may turn out to be 
 a religion without God. Take Christ, we are told, as 
 the revealer of God, and let miracles go. But we 
 may reasonably ask in reply. How has -Christ revealed 
 to us a God present with us, tender and helpful ? 
 How, but by and in those very miracles in which 
 divine compassion and divine help were manifested ? 
 Is it not precisely the miracles of Christ even 
 more than His teaching, and as much as His death, 
 which have imprinted indelibly on the heart of 
 Christendom the impression of God's love ? 
 
 Neither is it quite as easy as it seems to dismiss 
 miracle. For at once the question emerges, and a 
 most troublesome question it has proved itself to be. 
 What is to be done with the Gospels ? Here are four 
 
74 The Supemahtral in Christianity 
 
 narratives, indisputably written by truthful writers ; 
 and yet it is imperative to get rid of a large part of 
 what they tell. How is it to be done ? Observe that, 
 starting from the postulate that miracle is impossible, 
 criticism is impossible. The form of examining the 
 records may be gone through, but the conclusion is 
 foregone. No school of sound criticism can arise on 
 a basis of presuppositions so enormous. The problem 
 of criticism so-called, becomes the problem of finding 
 the most feasible mode of accounting for the presence 
 of the supernatural in the Gospels. No matter what 
 violence is done to the Gospels in the process, it is 
 imperative to form a theory of their origin which shall 
 account for the presence of the miraculous without 
 requiring us to accept it. 
 
 It is to this point I am asked to speak. I have 
 nothing to say directly of the underlying philosophy 
 — I am relieved from the extremely difficult task of 
 measuring the probable results of accepting or denying 
 this philosophy; but I have to call your attention 
 to this : that the philosophy under consideration 
 necessarily carries with it a certain explanation of 
 the Gospels, and if this explanation is demonstrably 
 erroneous, then plainly the philosophy itself must be 
 reconsidered. 
 
 In testing the worth of Professor Pfleiderer's criti- 
 cism of the Gospels, it will be convenient first of all to 
 consider the theory by which he accounts for the 
 presence of the miraculous, then to examine his 
 account of the crowning miracle, the Piesurrection 
 
Strauss revives in PJleiderer 75 
 
 of Christ, and, if time allows, to adduce some con- 
 siderations which corroborate the historicity of the 
 narrative as it stands. 
 
 On learning Professor Pfleiderer's theory of the origin 
 of the Gospels, the first feeling is one of disappointment. 
 Has criticism, then, actually not moved for sixty 
 years ? This is precisely nothing more nor less than 
 the theory of Strauss, given to the world so long ago, 
 and which was thought to have been slain and buried 
 a generation ago. May not conservative criticism be 
 excused if it exclaim, " This is John whom I be- 
 headed." In the battle of Inkermann, after every 
 repulse of the Ptussians, mass after mass of grey- 
 coated obedience and fearlessness was hurled against 
 the British position, but with no new disposition of 
 force, and no more adequate conception of the require- 
 ments of the attack. They did not know when they 
 were defeated. So in these reiterated critical assaults 
 without the slightest change of tactics, one sees stub- 
 bornness, gallantry, but also some bluntness of percep- 
 tion. " This is not war," we are tempted to say. 
 
 However, the fact is that the two most influential 
 living critics in Germany at this hour, Holtzmann and 
 Pfleiderer, merely reproduce the theory of Strauss, and 
 certainly have added nothing of any consequence to 
 his fascinatingly lucid and persuasive presentation 
 of the case. This theory accounts for the large 
 admixture of the miraculous in the Gospels by the 
 familiar fact that there always grow up round the 
 figure of popular favourites incredible stories of 
 
"j^ The Supemahu^al in Ckristianity 
 
 wonderful feats, marvellous escapes, and so forth. 
 The influence of this tendency in the human mind 
 had been quite perceptible in the early history of 
 Greece and Eome, and traditional stories had been 
 discounted and allowance made for the inevitable 
 incursion of the marvellous. The history of Jesus 
 was singularly liable to the influence of this myth- 
 forming propensity, because already in the Old Testa- 
 ment there abounded foreshadowings of what the 
 Messiah was to be, and the Jewish people cherished 
 in their minds an ideal to which the history must be 
 conformed. Those who had not known the actual 
 Jesus would necessarily ascribe to Him all that they 
 had expected the Messiah to be and to do. They would 
 unconsciously argue : " Such and such things must have 
 happened to the Messiah — Jesus was the Messiah : 
 therefore, such and such things happened to Him." 
 The Messiah was to be greater than Moses ; and as 
 Moses had given the people manna, Jesus must be 
 represented as feeding the hungry miraculously. 
 Elisha raised the dead ; Jesus therefore must also 
 raise the dead. Jesus must have gathered up and 
 surpassed in His own life and deeds everything that 
 the ancient prophets had done and experienced. This 
 weaving of a garland for the popular hero was not the 
 work of premeditating deceit or of cunning invention : 
 it was the inevitable growth of the feeling of the 
 community. 
 
 Another influence was also at work. This influence 
 Strauss exhibits in the following words : " Conceive a 
 
Mythical Theory of the Gospels yy 
 
 recently-established community, revering its founder 
 with all the more enthusiasm on his unexpected and 
 tragic removal from his work ; a community impreg- 
 nated with a mass of new ideas, which were destined 
 to transform the world ; a community of Orientals, 
 chiefly unlearned people, who therefore could not 
 appropriate and express those ideas in the abstract 
 conceptional forms of the understanding, but only as 
 symbols and stories in the concrete fashion of the 
 imagination. When all this is remembered, one can 
 perceive that, under these circumstances, there must 
 necessarily have arisen what actually did arise, ^dz., a 
 series of sacred narratives fitted to bring visibly before 
 the mind the whole mass of new ideas started by 
 Jesus, and of old ones applied to Him, cast in the 
 form of particular incidents in His life." According 
 to this theory, it is the idea not the related fact that 
 is true. The eternal truths of Christianity are 
 embodied by the popular imagination in concrete 
 incidents and actions. The reported resurrection of 
 Christ was the rendering visible to the imagination, 
 and sealing on the mind, of the great truth that man 
 lives by dying. The narrative of the turning of water 
 into wine, to continue the festivity of the wedding 
 feasts at Cana, was merely a way of saying that the 
 watery forms of Judaism were to be changed into the 
 strengthening wine of spiritual religion by Jesus. 
 Thus, although the fact disappears, the idea, the 
 eternal truth abides. And it is only the idea which 
 is of any acccount. 
 
78 The Siipernahiral in Christianity 
 
 ■ The difficulties in the way of accepting this theory 
 are enormous. First, It proceeds upon the idea that 
 the Messiah was expected to be a worker of miracles, 
 and therefore after the death of Jesus miracles were 
 freely ascribed to Him. But if during His life Jesus 
 had wrought no miracles, how did He come to be 
 acknowledged as the Messiah by persons who looked 
 for a miracle-working Messiah ? How was it possible 
 that men who were so persuaded the Messiah would 
 work miracles that they invented them for Him, should 
 recognise as the Messiah a person who wrought none ? 
 If without miracles the first step could be taken, and 
 they could be induced to believe in Him as the 
 Messiah, wdiy could not the easier subsequent steps be 
 taken without the ascription of miracles ? Something 
 originated the idea that He was a supernatural person, 
 what was it ? 
 
 Second, It is not denied that Jesus Himself claimed 
 to work miracles. This admission seems to me fatal 
 to the theory. To say that He was compelled to work 
 miracles against His inclination, is nothing to the 
 point. To say that He professed to work miracles, but 
 did not, is inadmissible. Whether a supernatural 
 person or not, He was sane and He was honest. But to 
 admit that He claimed to work miracles, and to main- 
 tain that He could not and did not, is to reduce the 
 purest, truest Being we know to the level of the 
 common charlatan. His own claim seems to me to 
 settle the question. 
 
 Third,The mythical theory must have been elaborated 
 
Diffiadties of the Mythical Theory 79 
 
 in forgetfulness of one of the most important factors in 
 the origin of Christianity — the Apostle Paul. Tiie 
 miracles ascribed to Jesus are accounted for by the 
 hero-worship of His followers : how are the miracles of 
 Paul accounted for? A mythical theory is here 
 impossible. If one is determined to exclude the 
 miraculous, he must have the hardihood to maintain 
 that Paul was again and again mistaken as to what 
 was happening under his own observation and in his 
 own experience. That, of course, does not deter those 
 whose postulate is the impossibility of the miraculous ; 
 but it should deter them from advancing the mythical 
 theory to account for the appearance of the miraculous 
 in primitive records, — for here are records, the Epistles 
 of Paul, to which the theory cannot be applied. 
 
 Fourth, The fourth difhculty which prevents our 
 acceptance of this theory is that, admittedly, the 
 formation of myths requires some time. Thus Strauss 
 himself says : " It would most unquestionably be an 
 argument of decisive weight in favour of the credibility 
 of the biblical history, could it indeed be shown that 
 it was written by eye-witnesses or even by persons 
 nearly contemporaneous with the events narrated." ^ 
 If it can be shown that the Gospels faithfully embody 
 the primitive tradition, the observation and conviction 
 of eye-witnesses, and that they are not the reflection of 
 the thoughts and fancies of the second generation, 
 then this theory falls to the ground. Hence the 
 efforts constantly put forth to bring the Gospels down 
 
 ^ Life of Jesus, p. 55. 
 
8o The S2tpernatural in Christianity 
 
 to a late date, and to deny to them the authority 
 attaching to the reports of eye-witnesses. It is usually 
 represented by tliis school of critics, that until the 
 year 70 the story of the life of Jesus was not written 
 down, but w^as at the mercy of oral tradition. But, 
 notoriously, oral tradition not only preserves, it creates : 
 each person that tells the story tries to tell it in a 
 sharper and more impressive form. And thus, as time 
 goes on, the story, in proportion to its popularity, 
 becomes distorted, and its last state is irreconcilable 
 with its original. 
 
 It is essential, therefore, that we know the facts 
 regarding the origin of the Gospels. Are they, as 
 represented, the embodiment of an oral tradition which, 
 for a full generation at least, had been at the mercy of 
 popular fancy ? If this description can apply to any 
 of our Gospels, it must be to Luke's. Now, Luke has 
 fortunately given us a few words of preface, in which 
 he himself tells us something of his opportunities for 
 arriving at the historical truth. In this preface he 
 implies that he himself had not been an eye-witness of 
 what he records. But are we therefore to conclude 
 that he merely gathered together the current oral 
 tradition, and that therefore we have little or no 
 security for the truth of his narration ? Are we 
 to think of Luke as a youth of twenty or thirty years 
 of age, sitting down in the year 80 or thereby to com- 
 pile, partly from uncertified documents, partly from 
 current and popular stories, what we now accept as the 
 Third Gospel ? That certainly is the impression left 
 
Origin of the Gospels 8 1 
 
 on the mind by the representations given by critics of 
 this school. Bat this is far from correct. Luke was 
 one of the most intimate of the companions of Paul — 
 the trusted, faithful, confidential friend of the men of the 
 first generation, and himself born certainly before the 
 year oO, probably before 20, and possibly much earlier. 
 He shows that he quite understood the value of the 
 testimony of eye-witnesses by the manner in which he 
 speaks of it ; he shows that he was aware that care- 
 fulness and accurate investigation were requisite in 
 narrating events which he himself had not witnessed ; 
 he tells us that he had carefully investigated all he 
 narrates, and he narrates it to impart assurance to 
 Theophilus. The accuracy of Luke is confirmed year 
 after year, by the discovery of inscriptions and of local 
 peculiarities by which his narrative in the Acts can be 
 checked, and it is now maintained by all who know 
 the subject at first hand that he is an accurate 
 historian. 
 
 One feature of this Gospel cannot escape observa- 
 tion. A full third of it, from the ninth to the 
 eighteenth chapter, is a solid block of narrative not 
 found in the other Gospels. This section of the Gospel 
 contains several of the most beautiful of our Lord's 
 parables and sayings, which, by their form as well as 
 their substance, are self-authenticating. So genuine a 
 record is this, that, not without plausibility, it has been 
 supposed to be the work of one who accompanied our 
 Lord at this period of His ministry. But embedded 
 
 in this genuine narrative are accounts of miracle. I 
 6 
 
82 The SitpernatiLral in Christianity 
 
 own to a feeling of disingenuousness if I propose to 
 accept the one part of the narrative and reject the 
 other. 
 
 Further, an examination of the Third Gospel reveals 
 the fact that the writer made use not only of oral 
 tradition but of written material. Is it an incredible 
 supposition that some at least of the " many " nar- 
 ratives already in circulation were ten years older 
 than Luke's own Gospel ? But if that is not only 
 credible, but most probable, then we are taken back to 
 a period when a considerable number of the con- 
 temporaries of Jesus were still alive and indeed in 
 their prime, and well able to contradict or to corroborate 
 accounts of what had taken place under their own 
 observation. 
 
 Criticism is not as yet in a position to declare with 
 certainty the date of Luke's Gospel. Lower than the 
 year 80 a.d. it can scarcely be brought, but the latest 
 German criticism of the Gospel, published two or 
 three months ago (Hahn), maintains that it was 
 written by a contemporary of our Lord. And indeed 
 it is as open to any one to suppose it was written in 
 the year 60 as in the year 80. The second work of 
 the author, the Book of Acts, terminates abruptly, and 
 the obvious and simple reason for that abrupt termina- 
 tion is that, when the book was written, there was no 
 more to tell, that he had written it up to date; in 
 other words, that he was writing in the year C3 or 
 G4. No other reason has been assigned for its abrupt 
 close. Strauss follows the easier course of saying, 
 
Composition of the Third Gospel 8 
 
 J 
 
 " The breaking off of Acts mifjlit have been the result of 
 many other causes." But he mentions none. 
 
 It is, therefore, a misrepresentation to say or to 
 imply that the Third Gospel is the mere embodiment 
 of an oral tradition which has been for a generation 
 at the mercy of popular fancy. It is the work of a 
 man who more than fulfils Strauss's requirement of 
 being " nearly contemporary," of a man who was the 
 companion of eye-witnesses, and who, as a careful 
 historian, knew the value of first-hand testimony. 
 That such a book, so composed, may have admitted 
 embellishments is likely enough ; that everything here 
 narrated occurred precisely as it stands it might be 
 hazardous to maintain : but that it is little more than 
 a mass of myths is incredible. 
 
 In the present state of criticism, it is impossible to 
 speak with certainty of the origin of the First Gospel. 
 That the apostle by whose name it is still called had 
 something to do with its composition is tolerably 
 certain, but it is also certain that it passed through 
 more hands than his before it reached its present 
 form. Certainly we cannot accept all that we find in 
 Matthew's Gospel as the testimony of Matthew, i.e. of 
 an eye-witness. If criticism can prove anything, it 
 can prove that much that is in this Gospel was not 
 written by an eye-witness. At the same time, critics 
 who have an instinctive taste for style, such as Eenan, 
 admit frankly that the sayings of Jesus recorded in 
 this Gospel bear upon them irresistible marks of 
 authenticity. But many of these sayings affirm the 
 
84 The SiiperiiaUtral in Chdstianity 
 
 miraculous, and arise out of discussions regarding the 
 miracles wrought by Jesus. We have, therefore, in 
 this Gospel incontrovertible evidence that Jesus Him- 
 self believed that miracles could be wrought and were 
 wrought by Himself. Through these sayings we are 
 brought into the very presence of Jesus Himself, 
 and we find that both He and His contemporaries, 
 friends and foes, believed that He worked miracles. 
 Xo room is found for a mythical theory, for a theory 
 which says that the belief that the Messiah must have 
 wrought miracles grew up in the second generation, 
 and the Gospels reflect that belief. That belief 
 existed in the first generation. 
 
 But have we not in the Fourth Gospel precisely 
 the testimony demanded — the testimony of one who 
 lived on familiar terms with Jesus, who was with Him 
 from day to day during His ministry, who saw all 
 that He did, who had liberty to question Him about 
 all that He did, and who at length records for behoof 
 of others the incidents and sayings which had produced 
 in himself the conviction that Jesus was the Christ, 
 the Son of God ? This is denied, and of course must 
 be denied, by critics who are resolved to exclude the 
 miraculous. If the Fourth Gospel is from the hand 
 of John, the apostle and friend of Jesus, then what 
 Strauss calls a decisive weight is thrown into the 
 scale of historicity. Deliberate falsification is out of 
 the question, and is not suggested ; ignorance plainly 
 cannot be pleaded, and is not pleaded. The easier 
 course is chosen, and it is affirmed that this Gospel is 
 
Authorship of the Fo2irth Gospel 85 
 
 not from the hand of that one only person to whom 
 it was ever ascribed in early times. Of course no one 
 now-a-days has so little regard to his reputation as to 
 ascribe it, as Baur did, to the year 170. That is no 
 longer possible. Every find of primitive literature 
 which has recently been made is a nail in the cofi&n 
 of these late dates, and forms one more link more 
 certainly binding this Gospel to the first century. 
 The current of criticism has set in strongly during 
 recent years towards the Johannine authorship. Still, 
 undaunted by the fact that the Gospel is quoted as 
 early as the year 125, Professor Ptleiderer bravely 
 holds the last post, and declares that the Gospel was 
 written about 140. But, one would say, a man of 
 learning and judgment, who knows all that has been 
 urged on the other side, must have some substantial 
 reason for declaring against the general voice. What 
 is his reason ? His reason is, that the governing 
 ideas of the Gospel belong to a system of thought 
 which only came into vogue in the third decade of 
 the second century. " In order to estimate correctly 
 the true value of this Gospel, we should not seek in 
 it a historical work, which it did not at all mean to 
 be, but it was a didactic way of writing which had 
 invested its theological thoughts in the form of a 
 life of Jesus." " The material of the evangelic tradi- 
 tion was only used to the extent that it was usable 
 for the didactic purpose of the theologian John ; the 
 discourses of the synoptic Jesus were completely re- 
 placed by dogmatic treatises which would have been 
 
86 The Supeiniattwal in Christianity 
 
 as incomprehensible for the companions of Jesus and 
 for His time and people as they were, in fact, 
 intelligible and useful for the apologetic theology of 
 the second century. Generally it was the experiences, 
 feelings, and interests of the Church of his time which 
 the evangelist saw typified in the life of Jesus." This 
 is as nearly as possible the reverse of the truth. 
 This Gospel could not have been written in the second 
 century. It is saturated with the atmosphere, the 
 thought, the mental movement of the first age. 
 
 ]Srow, of course, this mdliocl of criticism is sound : 
 that is to say, it is the task of criticism to show the 
 relevancy of the contents of any document to the 
 thought of the age to which it belongs. A document 
 that claims to belong to the year 1750, and speaks 
 of the independence of the United States, is thereby 
 condemned as spurious. A scientific treatise claiming 
 to belong to the sixteenth century is recognised as a 
 forgery belonging to a much later age, if it speaks of the 
 origin of man, of heredity and of evolution, in terms 
 which have only come into vogue in our own day. 
 The question is: Does John speak in a language more 
 appropriate to the second century than to the first ? 
 Is his mind occupied with the ideas, controversies, 
 prospects of the first or of the second century ? Two 
 main subjects occupied the thoughts of Christian 
 people in the second century, the relation of the State 
 to Christianity, and the relation of Christianity to the 
 current Gnostic philosophy. The Apologies which 
 remain from that period, those of Justin, Aristides, 
 
Liieratztre of the Second Century "^^j 
 
 Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, being addressed to 
 heathen rulers or inquirers, are of an entirely different 
 character from the Fourth Gospel. This Gospel was 
 also an Apology, but in its framework and conception, 
 its contents and its language, it is as far removed as 
 well could be from the typical second century Apology. 
 None of the later apologists attempts a life of 
 Christ, or puts into His mouth discourses not 
 found in the canonical Gospels ; they fill their pages 
 with explanations of Christian belief and Christian 
 practice, and they defend Christians against the mis- 
 conceptions and calumnies current among the heathen 
 populace. One glance at them is enough to show 
 that they could not have been written in the earliest 
 period. Already the Christians are so numerous as to 
 have attracted the attention of the State ; the Church 
 has become fixed in its creed and in its practices. 
 Already it has a history. Place the Fourth Gospel in 
 the midst of that literature, and the incongruity is at 
 once apparent. The dullest critic must perceive at 
 once that this Gospel belongs to a different class of 
 literature, springs out of another atmosphere. 
 
 But there were other writers in the second century 
 besides the apologists. There were semi-Christian 
 Gnostics, continually spinning out of their brain 
 philosophies more or less related to Christianity. 
 These writers produced works of a very different 
 character from the Apologies, but with as little 
 resemblance to the Fourth Gospel. They use the 
 material furnished by the Gospels, and hereby prove 
 
88 The Siipernahiral in Christianity 
 
 themselves to belong to an age lower than the primitive. 
 But with one of these, according to Professor Pfleiderer, 
 the Fourth Gospel holds an obvious relationship. It 
 is Basilides who is selected for the honour of inspiring 
 the writer of the Fourth Gospel. It is from Basilides 
 he borrows his dualistic opposition of light and dark- 
 ness, God and the devil. Occasionally, too, the errors 
 of Basilides are aimed at in the Gospel. John, e.g., 
 departs from the synoptic tradition, and makes no 
 mention of Simon bearing the cross. Why is this 
 significant omission made ? According to this lynx- 
 eyed German criticism, it was made because Basilides 
 held that Simon not only bore the cross but suffered 
 in place of Jesus, while Jesus, in the form of Simon, 
 stood by and laughed at His enemies. But, concludes 
 Professor Pfleiderer, since the Basilidian gnosis only 
 emerged in the third decade of the second century, 
 the Gospel cannot well have been written before the 
 fourth decade. 
 
 Unfortunately for this theory, Basilides did not 
 hold the docetic view of Christ's person ; the story of 
 Simon had no place in the theory of Basilides,^ who 
 explicitly admitted, unlike some other gnostics, that 
 the sufferings of Christ were real and indeed necessary. 
 And, still more unfortunately, instead of the Fourth 
 Gospel being indebted to Basilides, Basilides quotes 
 the Fourth Gospel, — quotes not words of our Lord, 
 
 1 Irenfeus and Tertullian, it is true, not to mention Epiplianius, 
 ascribe this belief to Basilides, but the much fuller and more accurate 
 account of Hippolytus, -which is confirmed by Clement of Alexandria, 
 excludes it. 
 
The Fo2trth Gospel belongs to First Century 89 
 
 which might have been handed down by tradition, 
 but quotes from the prologue written by the evangelist 
 himself. Instead, therefore, of the Fourth Gospel being 
 subsequent to Basilides, and belonging to the year 140, 
 it must have been earlier than he, that is, earlier than 
 the year 125, and therefore close upon, if not within, 
 the first century. Indeed, as Basilides certainly be- 
 longed to the third generation after Christ, that is, as 
 he certainly knew men and learned from men who 
 had themselves known Christ, it may reasonably be 
 concluded that he would not have quoted from an 
 unauthorised, fictitious Gospel, which had come into 
 existence in his own time. 
 
 Evidence of a similar kind has so rapidly multiplied 
 during recent years, that even the most cautious and 
 reluctant of critics have been compelled to push back 
 the date of the Fourth Gospel, until now it is wholly 
 exceptional for any one to deny that it may quite 
 well have originated during the lifetime of the 
 Apostle John. No scholar of the past or present 
 generation has been so familiar with the literature of 
 the second century as the late Bishop Lightfoot. But 
 he is decidedly of opinion that this Gospel is from the 
 hand of the apostle. Professor Sanday has spent 
 many laborious years in investigating with the most 
 unbiassed of judgments, and the most thoroughly 
 scholarly equipment, everything connected with the 
 origin of the Gospels ; he now stands alone, whether 
 in Germany or in England, as an authority on this 
 subject : it is his carefully-formed conviction that the 
 
90 The Supeimatural in Christianity 
 
 Gospel is no reflection of second century ideas, and 
 could not by any possibility be such.^ Add to this, 
 that the writer of the Gospel himself declares that he 
 was an eye-witness of what he relates : " He that saw 
 it hath borne record, and his record is true, and he 
 knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." 
 
 Besides all this, there are what may be called 
 watermarks in the Gospel itself, which witness to its 
 being a careful record of facts. It is maintained that 
 the Gospel is not a history but a doctrinal treatise in 
 the form of a history, and that the doctrine it is 
 intended to expound and inculcate is the doctrine of 
 the Logos, or the Word of God. Is it not strange, 
 then, that the writer never once puts this designation 
 into the lips of our Lord Himself, although manifestly 
 this would have given an authority to His teaching 
 which it does not otherwise possess ? Again, wdiy 
 does he uive the number of the fishes taken in the 
 miraculous draught ? Not, certainly, for any of the 
 absurd reasons of symbolism suggested by com- 
 mentators, but simply because he was a fisherman, 
 who must always count his take, and can never after 
 forget it or abstain from mentioning it. In the other 
 Gospels the same marks of historicity exist. The 
 favourite title by which our Lord designates Himself 
 is, " the Son of Man"; but this is a title never used by 
 His followers, and entirely displaced by the title " the 
 Christ " in the succeeding generation. Again, why, if 
 not from a regard to fact, do the Gospels put in the 
 
 ^ Similarly Harnack. 
 
Inadequacy of Mythical Theory g i 
 
 mouth of the demoniacs a designation of our Lord not 
 in common use, and represent them as calling Him 
 " Son of the Most High God " ? Instances of a similar 
 kind, which demonstrate that the Gospels are trust- 
 worthy records, may be multiplied ad libitum. 
 
 The theory, then, that the Gospels are rather the 
 reflection of the ideas of the second and third 
 generations after Christ, than trustworthy records of 
 what He actually said and did, finds no support in 
 what is known of the origin, date, and composition of 
 the narratives. The attempt to loosen faith in what 
 they report by attributing to them a late date, and an 
 admission of much that is entirely fanciful, will be 
 abandoned by any one who for a while turns from 
 philosophical presuppositions and studies questions of 
 criticism. AYe have, at least, one Gospel from the 
 hand of an eye-witness, who, knowing the difficulty of 
 finding credence for the strange things he relates, 
 emphatically declares that he saw what he records. 
 To reject such testimony is to put ourselves out of 
 court altogether, and to lose hold of all sound guiding 
 principles of criticism. In another Gospel, as is 
 admitted by critics of all schools, there are embedded 
 reports of our Lord's sayings written down by one 
 who heard them, and in these reports it is again and 
 again implied that our Lord and His contemporaries 
 believed He wrought miracles. In the Gospel of 
 Mark, again, we have the stories Peter used to tell, as 
 his friend Mark used to hear and interpret them. 
 And in Luke's Gospel we have, from the hand of one 
 
92 The Sitpernahcral in Christianity 
 
 who has elsewhere proved himself a careful historian, 
 and who had been the companion of those who knew 
 our Lord, a digest of His works and words, compiled 
 from their reports and from written records. In all 
 these competent authorities for the history of Christ 
 the miraculous is freely narrated. If these accounts 
 are untrue, it is strange that of such a life we should 
 not have one true narrative. That each is accurate 
 in every detail we have no concern to maintain ; that 
 all are inaccurate, in what they consider the core of the 
 history, it is impossible to believe. That the trans- 
 mission of the story in an unwritten form should 
 occasion considerable divergence in details of time, 
 place, and circumstance, was to be expected ; but that 
 the entire complexion and most striking characteristic 
 of the life should suffer such change as to become an 
 entirely different thing, is simply not credible. That 
 myth should be absolutely excluded, and that no one 
 of the incidents narrated is touched by it, may be an 
 extreme position to assume ; but that the bulk of the 
 narrative, or any considerable portion of it, is mythical, 
 has certainly not been made out ; and this method of 
 accounting for the appearance of the miraculous may 
 be dismissed as incompetent. 
 
 It may, however, be said that even granting that 
 the Gospels are in the main trustworthy, admitting 
 that they faithfully depict Christ's character, yet, 
 when they give us accounts of miracles, we must 
 draw the line at that point, and decline to follow 
 them, hccause not even the evidence of trustworthy 
 
Huxley on Impossibility 93 
 
 men can impart credibility to the miraculous. It is 
 here where cautious critics at present entrench 
 themselves. Professor Huxley, c/j., will not affirm the 
 impossibility, but only the incredibility of miracles, 
 llecently he has made a remarkable statement to this 
 effect : " Strictly speaking/' he says, " I am unaware 
 of anything that has a right to the title of an 
 * impossibility,' except a contradiction in terms. There 
 are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A 
 ' round square,' a ' present past,' ' two parallel lines 
 that intersect,' are impossibilities, because the ideas 
 denoted by the predicates, round, ijresent, intersect, are 
 contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, 
 square, past, 2^'^'>^<^^l^'^^' But walking on water, or 
 turning water into wine, or procreation without male 
 intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not 
 ' impossibilities ' in this sense." It might, he thinks, 
 be otherwise if our present knowledge of nature 
 exhausted the possibilities of nature, but it is, he 
 says, " sufficiently obvious, not only that we are at the 
 be2jinnini]f of our knowled2:e of nature, instead of 
 having arrived at the end of it, but that the limita- 
 tions of our faculties are such that we never can be in 
 a position to set bounds to the possibilities of nature." 
 And I own I cannot see why Professor Pfleiderer, or 
 any one else who holds a Theistic as distinguished 
 from a Pantheistic philosophy, is constrained to hold, or 
 can even consistently hold, the impossibility of miracle. 
 But Professor Huxley holds as strongly as Professor 
 Pfleiderer the incredibility of the miraculous. And 
 
94 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 with his accustomed perspicuity, if scarcely with his 
 wonted sagacity, he puts the whole argument in a 
 nutshell, when he asks if any testimony would make 
 it credible that a centaur had been seen trotting down 
 Eegent Street. Now this illustration brings out w^ith 
 precision the weakness of this position. 
 
 For (1) the centaur is itself a monstrosity. The 
 miracles of the New Testament are all on the plane 
 of nature. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, 
 raising the dead, — all these are removals of obstruc- 
 tions which hinder nature from being the expression 
 of God's goodwill to man. They are hints of an ideal 
 state which nature will one day reach, accelerations of 
 her slower processes. So far from the truth is 
 Matthew Arnold's dictum, that '' from the moment 
 that the comparative history of all miracles is a 
 conception entertained and a study admitted, the 
 conclusion is certain, that the reign of the Bible 
 miracles is doomed." So far is this from the truth, 
 that it is when you bring the miracles of Jesus into 
 comparison with the prodigies and portents of Greece 
 and Eome, that you more clearly than ever discern 
 the finger of God, and detect, perhaps for the first 
 time, the essential and distinctive character of the 
 works of Christ as truly revealing the God of the 
 nature we know. 
 
 (2) But, secondly and especially, the centaur is an 
 isolated phenomenon ; proceeding from nothing, going 
 no whither, accomplishing nothing, signifying nothing, 
 meaningless, irrelevant, incredible. The fact that a 
 
Are Miracles Incredible? 95 
 
 man of Huxley's sngacity should compare such an 
 appearance to the miracles of the New Testament is 
 another warning to us to examine for ourselves, 
 another demonstration that able men may often be 
 satisfied with but touching the surface of a subject. 
 The miracles of the IS^ew Testament were wrought by 
 a unique Person, by one who actually revealed God 
 and altered the world's conception of God ; they were 
 wrouglit as a part of that revelation, and they have 
 actually enabled men to think of God as merciful ; 
 they appear as the natural outcome of a manifesta- 
 tion, which had been prepared for and expected 
 through a long course of years. Between miracles 
 so embedded in the supernatural, so significant, so 
 congruous to the circumstances, and trailing such a 
 history behind them, — and a centaur trotting down 
 Eegent Street, where is the analogy ? 
 
 But it is precisely here where all assaults on the 
 credibility of the Christian miracles fail. The very 
 strongest evidence in their favour is their congruity 
 with the Person who wrought them, and with the 
 revelation in connection with which they were 
 wrought ; and this evidence is regularly left out of 
 account. In this respect, Matthew Arnold, who com- 
 pares them with the marvels recorded in Grecian 
 history, is as superficial as Huxley. Of course we 
 should find it difficult to believe in the resurrection 
 of Julius Caesar or of Trajan; but given a unique 
 person, a person already miraculous in His sinlessness, 
 and on whose resurrection the hope of the world de- 
 
96 The Supernahu^al in Clu^istianity 
 
 pended, and I find the incredibility immeasurably 
 diminished. Is it nothing in favour of the miracles, 
 that they were wrought for the accomplishment of 
 the greatest end that is to be served in this world? 
 Does it make them no more credible, that they were 
 relevant, significant, congruous, necessary ? The mir- 
 acles are Christ's miracles, and that makes precisely 
 all the difference. 
 
 But let us test the trustworthiness of the Gospel 
 narrative at its critical point. Each of the Gospels 
 tells us that after Jesus had been crucified, and His 
 actual death certified to Pilate, He was buried, but that, 
 after lying in the tomb two nights and a day, He rose 
 again, and was seen alive by many of His disciples, and 
 on several occasions. This, it is said, is incredible. 
 It is possible that He may have healed persons 
 afflicted with certain forms of nervous disease, much 
 may be believed of the impression He made by His per- 
 sonality, but that He appeared in a bodily form after 
 death is not to be believed. It is not doubted that His 
 followers thought they saw Him alive after He had 
 been buried, nor is it doubted that it was this belief 
 of theirs which carried their drooping faith in His 
 Messiahship, and produced the Christian Church. It 
 is admitted that the faith, the ideas, the institutions 
 of the Christian people, the faith which has brought the 
 most healthy influence the world has known, was based 
 on the Eesurrection. If the Eesurrection is a delusion, 
 then we must accept the consequence that what has 
 been best in human history is the result of a mistake. 
 
Belief in the Lords Resin^j^ection 97 
 
 That the disciples supposed they had seen the risen 
 Lord is admitted. It is admitted that " the astonish- 
 ing revohition, from the deep depression and utter 
 hopelessness of the disciples at the death of Jesus, to 
 the strong faith and enthusiasm with which they 
 proclaimed Him as the Messiah in the succeeding 
 Pentecost, would be inexplicable, unless something 
 extraordinarily encouraging had taken place, — some- 
 thing, in fact, which had convinced them of His 
 Eesurrection. But that this cause of conviction was 
 precisely a real appearance of the risen Jesus — that, 
 indeed, it was necessarily an external event at all — 
 is by no means proved." 
 
 Xow, we may at once put aside some explanations 
 of this belief which were current sixty years ago, — as 
 that Jesus w^as never truly dead, but, being taken down 
 from the cross in a swoon, the unguents of burial 
 healed and revived Him. We may trust the Eoman 
 soldier for knowing what a cowp de grace was ; and 
 we may also suppose that a pallid, almost dead, 
 scarcely recovered body, could not be mistaken by 
 the disciples for a risen, glorified Lord. Such ex- 
 planations have been put out of court by advanced 
 critics, because they are glaringly insufhcient, and 
 damage their cause. 
 
 But also we may put out of court the discrepancies 
 in the Gospel accounts of the appearance of Jesus after 
 His Resurrection. These discrepancies have been harped 
 upon to an extraordinary extent. What do they 
 amount to ? Do they discredit the narrative, so that 
 7 
 
98 The SitpernaUtral in Christianity 
 
 we cannot accept their testimony to the fact of the 
 llesurrection ? On these terms we can have no history 
 at all. It is impossible to reconcile the discrepant 
 accounts we have of the signal given by Nelson at 
 Trafalgar, or of the time at which the battle began. 
 Are we therefore to conclude that there was no signal 
 and no battle ? The conclusion is monstrous, and can 
 only be drawn by those whose views of inspiration 
 require that they should reconcile every discrepancy. 
 The accounts vary in many particulars, but as to the 
 central fact that the Lord had risen, and had been 
 seen over and over again, there is no variation, and 
 such variations as there are, are merely such as exist 
 in all similar accounts of one and the same event by 
 different authors. 
 
 The disciples, then, believed they had seen the Lord 
 risen ; but the Lord had not risen — whence the belief ? 
 Stated in its most plausible form, the theory is that 
 the disciples, who before the Lord's death had believed 
 Him to be the Messiah, found themselves after His 
 death compelled to solve the contradiction between 
 the ultimate fate of Jesus and their earlier opinion of 
 Him. This they did by turning to the Old Testament 
 Scriptures, and applying to the Messiah whatever was 
 said about the man of God being bowed down even 
 to death. But when once they could think of the 
 Messiah suffering ignominy in death, they recognised 
 that, through death, He had but passed to Messianic 
 glory. But how could He fail, out of this glory in 
 which He now lived, to give tidings of Himself to His 
 
Vision-theory of the Belief 99 
 
 followers ? And what more natural, when they read 
 the Scriptures, and found their hearts burn within 
 them as they gave them this Messianic interpretation, 
 than to conceive of this as the actual presence of 
 Christ conversing with them ? And how conceivable 
 is it that in individuals, especially women, these im- 
 pressions were heightened, in a purely subjective 
 manner, into actual vision.^ 
 
 This, then, is the theory which is supposed to account 
 for the belief in the Eesurrection, and for the foundation 
 of the Church. A few excited people, especially women, 
 thought they saw, because they wished to see, the 
 Lord. The belief created the Eesurrection, not the Ee- 
 surrection the belief. The theory fails at every point. 
 
 1. Take the narration of the Fourth Gospel. What 
 convinced the writer of that Gospel that there had 
 been a Eesurrection ? Not an appearance of the Lord 
 to an eagerly expectant disciple, — not an appearance 
 of the Lord at all to any one, but an examination of a 
 tomb by matter-of-fact fishermen. Peter and John 
 were convinced, by the very simple method of entering 
 the tomb and finding it empty. They had not as yet 
 seen anything which they could mistake for their 
 Master ; neither had their informant, Mary Magdalene. 
 She was so little expecting a Eesurrection, that when 
 she saw the stone rolled away she merely supposed 
 the body had been removed to be disposed of else- 
 where. They were certainly excited when they ran 
 out to the sepulchre, but their excitement did not 
 
 1 So Strauss. 
 
loo The Sttpernahu^al in Clnnstianity 
 
 create a vision of their risen Lord. All that they saw 
 was an empty tomb and deliberately folded grave-clothes. 
 Here, then, the vision-theory utterly fails. One or two 
 persons, in a peculiarly excitable state, might suppose 
 they had seen a figure they very much desired to see, 
 but how the belief that the tomb was empty could be 
 merely imagined by men who actually entered it, 
 passes comprehension. 
 
 2. If the belief in the Eesurrection was a delusion, 
 why was it not exposed at the time ? Hundreds of 
 persons must have visited the sepulchre during the 
 succeeding weeks. The apostles affirmed the Eesurrec- 
 tion when they were brought before the Sanhedrim. Why 
 did not the authorities at once explode this nascent 
 sect and dangerous heresy, by exposing the delusion on 
 which it was based ? ^N^othing was easier, if the body 
 of Jesus still lay in the tomb. Nothing was more 
 desirable or more desired. Is it credible that with 
 the means of quelling all disturbance and resistance 
 of their authority, with the means of justifying their 
 ov;n conduct in the eyes of the people, the Sanhedrim 
 should not have used the opportunity which the 
 affirmation of a Eesurrection put in their hands, and 
 at once and for ever have crushed this delusion ? 
 
 3. Although the vision-theory might explain how 
 one or two people believed in the Eesurrection, it is 
 wholly inadequate to explain the belief of the entire 
 body of disciples. It implies that in a couple of days 
 the belief of those who knew the Lord underwent an 
 entire change ; that there was not among them one 
 
The Vision-theory Inadeqicate i o i 
 
 hard-headed person who could distinguish fact from 
 fancy ; and that in the most important of causes, and 
 in a cause which imperilled their own lives, they 
 jauntily proceeded upon the delusion, and were never 
 thrown back on the fact, i'or it is remarkable that 
 the witness of the apostles w^as unanimous and con- 
 stant to the end. And yet this was all delusion. 
 These are the miracles, these are the incredibilities 
 which attach to this theory of the Gospel narrative. 
 
 It is, no doubt, possible that one or two persons 
 who were anxiously awaiting the Eesurrection of Jesus 
 might persuade themselves that a sudden gleam of 
 sunshine or a passing figure was the looked-for person. 
 But what sane person, in a matter of such moment, 
 would accept that as proof, and not take further steps 
 to reach surer ground of belief? Besides, w^hat we 
 have here to explain is how not one but several 
 persons, not together but in different places and at 
 different times, not all in one mood of mind but in 
 various moods, came to believe they had seen the risen 
 Lord. He w^as recognised, not by persons who ex- 
 pected to see Him alive, but by women who went to 
 anoint Him dead ; not by credulous persons, but by 
 men who would not believe till they had gone to and 
 into the sepulchre ; not by persons so enthusiastic and 
 creative of their own belief as to mistake any appear- 
 ance for Him they knew, but so slow to believe, so 
 scornfully incredulous of Picsurrection, so resolutely 
 sceptical, and so keenly alive to the fear of being 
 deluded, that they vowed nothing would satisfy them 
 
I02 The SupernatM7^al in Christianity 
 
 but the test of touch and sight. It was a belief pro- 
 duced not by one doubtful and momentary appearance, 
 but by repeated and prolonged appearances to those 
 who had every opportunity of applying what tests 
 they pleased to ascertain its reality. 
 
 It has been maintained by Strauss and his successors, 
 that the vision-theory receives strong confirmation from 
 the manner in which Paul speaks of the appearances 
 of Christ. In 1 Corinthians xv. he enumerates 
 the appearances of Christ after His Eesurrection, and 
 closes the enumeration by recording the fact that to 
 him also had been granted a manifestation of the 
 risen Lord. But, argue Strauss and Pfleiderer, when 
 he places all the earlier appearances in one and the 
 same line with that which he himself experienced, he 
 implies that they were similar in form to that closing 
 manifestation. But the manifestation to Paul was not 
 a bodily but a spiritual manifestation. The apostle 
 was convinced that he perceived a revelation of the 
 heavenly sinrit-nahtre of Christ, in the form of a 
 luminous appearance. Therefore, " beyond all contra- 
 diction," says Pfleiderer, Paul thought of the appear- 
 ances to the first disciples as appearances not of a 
 risen body but of the heavenly Spirit of Christ.-^ 
 
 Admitting that Paul considered that the appear- 
 ance to him was of the same nature as the appearance 
 to the rest, we precisely reverse the conclusion. 
 Pfleiderer's argument is : All these appearances were 
 of one kind ; but the appearance to Paul was purely 
 
 ^ Urchristenthum, p. 6. 
 
Paurs Belief in the Resttrj'ection 103 
 
 spiritual, therefore those to the first disciples were 
 spiritual also. According to the evidence, the argument 
 should stand : All these appearances were of one kind ; 
 but the appearance to Paul was of a risen body, there- 
 fore what the first disciples also saw was a risen body. 
 That Paul believed he saw the Lord in His risen 
 body, is easily proved. In the passage to which allu- 
 sion is made, and in which Paul enumerates these 
 appearances, his purpose is to prove not the continued 
 spiritual existence of the Christian, but his bodily 
 resurrection ; and only a reference to the bodily Eesur- 
 rection of our Lord would have been relevant ; (2) 
 Besides, why mention His hurial, unless it was His 
 bodily Ptesurrection he had in view ? His gospel, he 
 says, was that Christ died, and was buried and rose 
 again. Clearly it was a Eesurrection of that which 
 was buried that he had in view. (8) In arguing 
 (1 Cor. ix. 1) that he was an apostle, he claims to 
 have " SEEN Jesus Christ our Lord." The principal 
 apostolic function was to witness to the Eesurrection 
 of Christ, and in order to discharge this function it 
 was requisite that the apostle should, with his own 
 eyes, have seen the risen Lord. (4) In several parts 
 of his writings Paul lets us see that he considered the 
 body to be an essential part of human nature, that 
 redemption is not complete until the body shares with 
 the spirit in the renewing and perfecting work of 
 Christ's Spirit {vide Eom. viii. 23; Phil. iii. 10-21), 
 and that our Lord Himself only became perfect as our 
 Head, and the quickener of spiritual life in us, when 
 
I04 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 His body rose from the grave (Rom. i. 4 ; Col. i. 18). 
 It is quite incredible that Paul should have conceived 
 of the glorified Messiah as a disembodied spirit. In 
 this case he could not have spoken of Him as the 
 Head or Life-source of the Church, the First-born of 
 the dead, that in all things He might have the pre- 
 eminence ; nor could he have called Him " the first- 
 f raits of them that slept." Neither expression has any 
 meaning unless we suppose that Paul understood that by 
 His Resurrection our Lord had been declared the Son 
 of God with power, having completed the curriculum of 
 human experience, and perfect in body as in spirit. 
 
 But the more difficult question remains : Is Paul's 
 belief that he saw the Lord proof that Jesus had risen 
 from the dead ? Prom Paul's belief that he saw 
 Jesus, can we infer that he did actually see Him ? 
 This conclusion is rejected as incompetent by such 
 critics as Renan, Weizsacker, and Pfieiderer. They 
 construe the incident of Paul's conversion in some 
 such way as this : Paul's mind was deeply exercised 
 w4th the question whether Jesus was the Messiah or 
 not. The glorified face of Stephen, as he saw the Son 
 of Man waiting to receive him, haunted his spirit. 
 Some of Paul's own relatives were Christians, and he 
 knew from their conduct, as well as from the bearing 
 of the apostles and others, that some extraordinary 
 spiritual influence was breathing through Jewish 
 society. A righteousness higher and deeper than that 
 of the law was being produced in the very men he 
 knew ; and with one accord they referred this new 
 
The Conversion of Paid 105 
 
 life to Jesus Christ. The passages of Scripture which 
 they cited to prove that the Messiah must suffer, 
 gradually found entrance into his mind. To his great 
 alarm, he found his conviction that Jesus was a deceiver 
 gradually loosening. He struggled, he kicked against 
 the goad that was drivincj him into the Christian 
 camp. He sought to drown conviction by plunging 
 into fresh persecutions, and silencing the voices that 
 tormented him. In pursuit of this purpose he obtained 
 commission to follow the Christians to Damascus ; but 
 the quiet of the journey was too much for him. As 
 he drew near the city, the debate that had been, 
 consciously or unconsciously, agitating him reached a 
 crisis. The credibility of the Christian testimony 
 flashed upon him ; his spirit was illumined with a 
 blaze of light, which seemed to flow from the risen 
 body of the Lord. The vision was a projection from 
 his own mind, it was the embodiment of his own 
 slowly-won conviction that Jesus was risen aud was 
 therefore the Messiah. In a word, the vision was the 
 result, not the cause of his conversion. 
 
 Such a construction of the incident is only weakened 
 by Pfleiderer's introduction of epilepsy, or by Eenan's 
 allusion to the fatigue of the journey. If Paul was 
 an epileptic, then he had often had fits before, and 
 must have known what to make of any visions so 
 induced. Besides, the visions of epileptics are of a 
 different character. The " epileptic " idea should be 
 cancelled. 
 
 Such a construction of the vision is certainly 
 
io6 The Stipernattiral in Christianity 
 
 plausible ; and it is possible to account for Paul's 
 conversion in this manner, while yet it is believed 
 that it was due to a Divine guidance of his mind and 
 the influence of Christ's Spirit. But the immediate 
 question is, not whether such a construction is possible 
 and is consistent with belief in Christ, but whether it 
 is correct. 
 
 Now there are several difficulties in the way of 
 its acceptance : — First, on each of the three occasions 
 on which the incident is related — and two of these 
 are reports of Paul's own account — it is explicitly 
 stated that not only Paul was affected by the vision, 
 but also those that were with him. Their terror could 
 not be the result of a process of conviction in their 
 own mind, but only of some external manifestation. 
 Second, had this vision stood alone, one would have 
 been greatly inclined to listen to an interpretation of 
 the scene which would seem to reduce its miraculous 
 character. But it is only one of several manifestations 
 of the risen Lord. It does not stand alone. And 
 unless we reject all the accounts we have of our Lord 
 appearing to the disciples, walking with them and 
 talking with them, we cannot reject Paul's account. 
 
 But no doubt the question ultimately is : What 
 weight are we to give to Paul's testimony ? Are we 
 lightly to put it aside as that of a nervous, excitable, 
 probably epileptic individual ? That is impossible. 
 He had visions frequently, it is said. Yes ; and the 
 common-sense way in which he puts himself on his 
 guard against being carried away by such things 
 
Paters Testimony to be accepted 107 
 
 reflects a strong light on his sobriety of mind. In 
 fact, no quality is more striking in Paul than his 
 entire and perfect sanity. On every occasion when 
 coolness, self-command, promptitude, physical and 
 mental fitness were required, these qualities were 
 forthcoming. Living in a state of society in which 
 old ideas were being subverted, and speculations and 
 proposals of every variety were rife, his was the one 
 clear and steady judgment and firm hand that brought 
 tlie ship of the Church through the turmoil and 
 hazard. In ordinary circumstances, one would accept 
 the account such a man would give of his own change 
 of mind. He understood the influences usually 
 moving men. His knowledge of men was wide, 
 practical, and accurate ; and if any one quality is 
 discernible in his writings, it is a fearless frankness ; 
 and he never had but one account to give of his 
 conversion. He always maintained that he believed 
 Jesus was the Messiah, because he had seen Him 
 risen. He carried this belief through every kind of 
 circumstance that could compel him to test the reality 
 of it. He proclaimed it at once in Damascus, where 
 there were men to put him right if he was wrong. 
 He quietly reflected upon it for nearly three years in 
 Arabia, undisturbed and unexcited. Years made no 
 impression upon the brightness of that vision, nor upon 
 the depth of the conviction it had wrought in him. 
 He checked excitement in others, he rebuked the 
 tendency to be puffed up with visions and revelations ; 
 but not once did he apologise for his own conversion. 
 
io8 The Supernatural in Christianity 
 
 He threw away brilliant prospects, and accepted a life 
 of hardship, danger, and suffering, so sure was he of 
 the foundation on which he was build incj. He felt no 
 need of comparing notes with the older apostles and 
 the rest who had seen Jesus after His Eesurrection : 
 his own vision was enough for him. He felt no fear 
 in returning to Jerusalem, where the facts were 
 known. I must saj, I do not see how a mind so 
 sensitive to all reasonable appeal, so apprehensive of 
 truth, so quick to see the point of an argument, could 
 have withstood all that Gamaliel and his friends must 
 have plied him with, had he not gone over the ground 
 again and again in his own mind, and been quite sure 
 of his standing. Had they been able to prove to him 
 that Christ was not risen, had they been able to 
 dispel the illusion of a risen Christ, and to show him 
 that his vision was a dream of his own mind, no man, 
 I do believe, would have been quicker to see and to 
 own the point of what they urged than Paul. 
 
 But though all this went for nothing, the strongest 
 argument, the most convincing proof remains. There 
 lemains that which drew to Christ His earliest, 
 most convinced, and steadfast followers, — His own per- 
 sonality. It is in Him that we meet the highest we 
 know. In His person, speaking human language, 
 mingling freely in human society, the world saw that 
 which permanently raised its idea of God. Seeing 
 Christ, it was God men saw, and saw Him to be more 
 and better than they had thought. But for any man 
 to plan and carry through what might seem to be au 
 
Sinlessness of Jesus 109 
 
 incarnation of God, would prove itself to be an im- 
 possible audacity. To begin as a human child, to 
 carry this idea through boyhood and youth, to exhibit 
 a life congruous to this idea amidst all the tempta- 
 tions, excitements, and exigencies of manhood, is 
 so impossible, that any one who attempted it would 
 betray, in constant failure, that he had both inade- 
 quately conceived the part and could only inadequately 
 play it. Inconsistency, extravagance, grotesque as- 
 sumption, unjustified claims and unfulfilled pretensions, 
 would betray the would-be incarnate one at every 
 point. But in Jesus there is no such betrayal. In 
 the judgment of generation after generation of godly 
 souls, He has perfectly fulfilled the part. God is 
 revealed in Him, and our hope of knowing God better 
 is our hope of knowing Christ better. 
 
 For to escape from the admission of the super- 
 natural at this point, by denying the sinlessness of 
 Jesus, is a sorry shift. He says to us, as to His 
 contemporaries, ''Which of you convinceth Me of sin ?" 
 And this is the marvellous thing, that He, who by His 
 own purity most clearly detected the faintest taint of 
 evil, should Himself claim to be absolutely untainted. 
 All other testimony fades before this. We have the 
 honest Peter frankly owning that his Master was not 
 as other men. We have Pilate washing^ his hands to 
 clear himself of the guilt of condemning the innocent. 
 We have Judas, who had marked Him with the 
 keenest scrutiny, and who would have welcomed any 
 excuse for betraying Him, sinking under his awful 
 
no The Supernahiral in Christianity 
 
 guilt, unable to recall one act which might help to 
 justify him. We have his own brother James, who 
 himself was reverenced by all Jews as James the 
 Eighteous, and who had grown up with Him through 
 all His boyhood and early manhood — we have this man, 
 who judged by the severest standard, and with whom 
 nothing was a claim to homage which did not come in 
 righteousness, and who knew Jesus with the intimacy 
 of a brother, speaking of Him as the Lawgiver and 
 Judge of men. But more than all, we have the voice 
 of Jesus Himself. The holier any one is, the more 
 clearly does he see his own shortcomings ; but with 
 Jesus there is no sense of sin, no penitence, no prayer 
 for forgiveness, no need of a Eedeemer. This is 
 the crov/ning, or, it should rather be said, the funda- 
 mental miracle — a miracle continuous, innate, and 
 inseparable from His own person ; a miracle unique, 
 separating Him indubitably from all other men, and 
 which makes all other miracles conoruous and credible. 
 Is a miracle in the spiritual world less, or is it greater, 
 than a miracle in the physical ? Which is the more 
 divine, the turning water into wine, or the perfection 
 of character that is impervious to sinful thought or 
 desire ? The one thing is as unexampled as the 
 other, as truly beyond experience. 
 
 What, then, are we to make of this sustained 
 spiritual miracle, inseparable from the person of 
 Jesus? Here is one who stands alone in the history 
 of mankind, who has also introduced and maintained 
 a new life and the highest conceivable type of 
 
Miracle of Christ's Person 1 1 1 
 
 humanity. By His three years of manifestation, He 
 lifted the world once for all out of darkness into light, 
 and has become the source of life eternal to the race. 
 This, at any rate, is certain, that it is in His person 
 we most surely find God. It is here God speaks to 
 us most plainly, manifests Himself most indubitably. 
 Whatever ditficulties remain concerning Christ's Per- 
 son, concerning the nature of God and His relation 
 to the world and to Christ, it remains certain that 
 in Him we meet God, and a God whom we can 
 reverence, worship, and serve. Where the intellect 
 gropes, stumbles, and falters, conscience leads straight 
 on. Great harm may be done by misconceiving the 
 Person of Christ ; but the greatest harm, and the only 
 unmitigated harm, is done when we deny that some- 
 how God is in Him, and in Him most of all. 
 
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