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 BR 125 .S37 1873 
 
 Seelye, Julius Hawley, 1824 
 
 1895. 
 The way, the truth, and the 
 
 life 
 
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THE WAY, THE TRUTH, 
 AND THE LIFE. 
 
 LECTURES TO EDUCATED HINDUS, 
 
 DELIVERED ON HIS LATE VISIT TO INDIA, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JULIUS H. SEELYE, 
 
 Professor in Amherst College. 
 
 x^:rr^F 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, 
 
 Congregational House, 
 
 beacon street. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 The Congregational Publication Society, 
 In the OflSce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 C J. PETERS & SON, 
 
 STEREOTYPERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 
 
 S WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. 
 
INTKODUCTOEY NOTE. 
 
 These lectures are a part of those given before 
 educated Hindus, by Prof. Seelye, on his recent visit 
 to India. The four here published were written 
 out, and issued from the press in Bombay, at the 
 earnest request of native gentlemen, one of whom, 
 an eminent Brahmin scholar, offered to bear the 
 expense of publication. It was a matter of regret 
 that the author's brief stay, and the multiplicity of 
 his engagements, — lecturing, holding personal con- 
 ferences with inquirers, answering letters received 
 from others, — allowed him time to write out only 
 these ; but they will suffice to show the spirit and 
 general character of all. 
 
 The interest with which they were received, the 
 large and constantly-increasing audiences of the 
 higher classes, — educated Brahmins, Parsees, and 
 others, — that listened to them, were not more a 
 tribute to the lecturer than an illustration of the 
 power of the truths he presented over their minds 
 
 18067 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 and hearts. The interest was eminently suggestive in 
 its relations to the future religious history of India, 
 and was quite beyond the hopes of those who had en- 
 couraged the enterprise. The attempt to reach a class 
 hitherto almost wholly neglected, with all their native 
 prejudices against the gospel only intensified by a 
 high intellectual training from which all proper 
 Christian influence had for the most part been rigidly 
 excluded, was indeed an experiment, but one that, 
 whatever might be the issue, was eminently fit to be 
 made, — one worthy the Christian scholar and philan- 
 thropist, and one which a missionary body like the 
 American Board might well encourage. The manner 
 of Prof. Seelye's visit was especially favorable, — in 
 no formal connection with any missionary organiza- 
 tion, the Christian gentleman travelling at his own 
 charges, delaying a few weeks only in the course of 
 his journey before returning to his professional labors, 
 and staying longer than his personal convenience 
 permitted, because he could not refuse the earnest re- 
 quests to continue his lectures as long as possible, — 
 he had a rare vantage-ground, which he knew how to 
 turn to good account. Yet the secret of his success 
 lay yet more in the fundamental truths of the gospel 
 which he pressed with so much clearness and force 
 upon the moral nature of his hearers, commending 
 himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 
 
mTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 5 
 
 The attention given these lectures at Bombay and 
 Poona, is a striking illustration of the oneness of the 
 moral sentiment amid the most diverse races of men. 
 
 They are reprinted, and given to the American 
 public^ not simply to gratify a worthy curiosity on 
 the part of many who have felt an interest in the 
 success of Prof. Seelye's efforts, but as an earnest 
 presentation of first principles in morals and religion 
 that will be welcomed b}^ thoughtful men, especially 
 by students in our literary institutions. 
 
 Prof. Seelye found in circulation among English 
 readers in India, a printed lecture of his on miracles, 
 originally given as a part of a course * by different 
 gentlemen in Boston. It has been thought wise to 
 publish it with the others, that the volume may find 
 a larger audience, and, it is to be hoped, to make 
 his visit yet more effective for good. The subject- 
 matter of the lecture thus added, and the discussion 
 it receives, render its appearance here especially 
 appropriate. 
 
 N. G. Clark 
 Congregational House, "> 
 Boston, Aug, 14, 1873. ) 
 
 * Boston Lectures, 1870. 
 
PREFACE TO THE BOMBAY EDITION, 
 
 DuEiNG the present season, Prof. Seelye, visiting 
 Bombay on a journey around the world, was invited 
 to remain, and give some religious addresses to the 
 educated natives. He was heard attentively by large 
 and intelligent audiences, among whom a strong 
 desire was expressed that the addresses might be 
 published. They had not, however, been previously 
 written ; but Prof. Seelye was induced to prepare, 
 according to his recollection, the first four, which 
 are herewith presented, in the hope that they may 
 further the object for which they were given. 
 
 GEO. BOWEN. 
 Bombay, February, 1873. 
 
I. 
 
 THE DESIEABLE END OF lEOGRESS. 
 
 Gentlemen, — All the chief nations of the 
 world just now seem passing through a period 
 of extraordinary changes. In my own land, we 
 have lately experienced the most momentous 
 movement since our history began. You are 
 perhaps familiar with its outlines. A struggle 
 of opinion respecting human slavery grew into 
 a conflict of arms, terribly vast, which has ended 
 both in the overthrow of slavery and in its per- 
 petual prohibition. Passing westward, we find 
 unprecedented changes taking place in Japan. 
 It is scarcely ten yeai's since the first Japanese 
 student came, for an education, to the United 
 States ; but such was the opposition then to any 
 intercourse with the outside world, that he was 
 obliged to leave his country by stealth, and 
 would have lost his head had he been discovered. 
 Japan was then a feudal State, without a code 
 of laws, having an arbitrary despot at its head, 
 
10 LECTURE I. 
 
 and a host of petty princes owing him subjection, 
 but wielding also a tyrannical power over their 
 own territories and retainers. Within ten years 
 this has all been changed. Japan has now a 
 constitutional monarch, with an official cabinet 
 and parliament; and the feudal princes have 
 yielded up their rank, while nine-tenths of their 
 former revenue goes to the support of the new 
 order of things. Two hundred Japanese stu- 
 dents, sent and supported by the government 
 itself, are now pursuing their education in the 
 United States ; while others also, under the same 
 auspices, are in England and the Continental 
 States of Europe. China, though holding fast 
 her traditional dislike : — a mingled hatred and 
 contempt — of foreigners and their ways, finds 
 it impossible to preserve her isolation ; and the 
 Chinese government has the present year sent 
 to the United States thirty young men, to pur- 
 sue there a course of study for a term' of fifteen 
 years, and has also decreed that a similar num- 
 ber, for a similar course, should follow them 
 during each of the next ensuing four years. 
 You know the changes, and their vast signifi- 
 cance, which have recently occurred, and are 
 still transpiring, in European nations; ivhile in 
 India it requires no close observer to discover 
 underlying tendencies of thought and action 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PEOGEESS. 11 
 
 indicative of momentous movements among 
 yourselves. 
 
 Looking over the whole field, and bringing 
 the nations into one view, it would be interest- 
 ing to inquire whether all these currents, com- 
 prehensively examined, can be seen to set in 
 any one direction, which might indicate the 
 actual goal of human progress. But there is 
 another inquiry, preliminary to that : What is 
 the most desirable goal ? What sort of prog- 
 ress for mankind will be sought by the wisest 
 well-wisher of his race ? 
 
 To this question various answers can be given, 
 only one of which can be true. Advancement 
 in what may be termed the material arts of 
 civilization is sometimes claimed to be the most 
 desirable sort of progress. Let man subdue 
 nature, it is said. Let there be a great increase 
 of railroads and telegraph lines, and useful in- 
 ventions 5f all sorts. Multiply manufactures, 
 and increase commerce, and let the means of 
 sitisfying human wants grow as the wants them- 
 selves enlarge : thus you will strengthen men's 
 sense of dependence upon each other, wars will 
 cease, nations will be bound together in a 
 brotherhood of common interest, and, in this ad- 
 vancing growth, the highest advance of civiliza- 
 tion is to be reached. Thus y(e often hear, 
 
12 LECTURE T. 
 
 But tberc are two difficulties with all this, 
 which we may not wisely ignore. The first is, 
 that these arts of material progress have no 
 power of reproduction. They cannot perpetu- 
 ate themselves. There are instances innumera- 
 ble where these arts, with no power other than 
 their own to sustain them, have been left to die 
 and disappear. Where are the arts which built 
 the Great Pyramid, apparently the oldest mon- 
 ument of human workmanship now existing? 
 The Astronomer Royal of Scotland, who has spent 
 months in its careful measurements and study, 
 aided by the best mstruments which London 
 and Paris and Vienna could supply, declares 
 that the builders of this structure must have 
 had instruments exceeding in accuracy his own. 
 You have perhaps seen statements of recent re- 
 searches in your neighboring kingdom of Cam- 
 bodia, where ruins of extensive dwellings of 
 elaborate workmanshi23 appear, built long ago 
 by the ancestors of men who now live in the 
 tops of trees, to escape from tigers. The exqui- 
 site bronzes and lacquer-work made in earlier 
 times in Japan, the Japanese cannot now 
 equal; while the beautiful colors which the 
 Chinese formerly exhibited in their porcelains, 
 and . the bronzes inlaid with silver which they 
 formerly wrought so perfectly, they cannot now 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PEOGRESS. 13 
 
 produce. In the ruins of Philse and Karnak 
 and ancient Thebes, in Nineveh and Balbec, in 
 Yucatan and Mexico, are evidences abundant of 
 arts once possessed, but long since lost, because 
 their possessors had nothing but the arts them- 
 selves with which to preserve them. It is a 
 great mistake, based upon a very superficial 
 philosophy, and resting on a science falsely so 
 called, which supposes that there naturally 
 exists in human society an inherent power of 
 progress, capable, through its own evolution, 
 of perpetual growth. The deepest principles of 
 human nature, and all the facts of history, 
 declare exactly the reverse. We pride our- 
 selves upon our useful arts, u-pon the triumphs 
 of the industry and invention of the present 
 time, and there are enough who fancy these to 
 be the all-suf&cient good; but, if we seek to 
 perpetuate these by their own power alone, can 
 any one tell why they should not ultimately dis- 
 appear and perish, as has been done in so many 
 instances before? We do not avoid the force 
 of this by saying, that, if some arts disappear, 
 others arise whose sum equals or exceeds in 
 value those lost; for why do they arise? Out 
 of what source does the impulse to all this ad- 
 vancement actually spring? Our material warns 
 do not give birth to our material progress , 
 
14 LECTURE I. 
 
 rather does the progress itself evoke and en- 
 haro:e, and first make us conscious of oar wants. 
 The luxuries of one age have been called the 
 necessities of another. It is not the wants of the 
 savage — his need of food and shelter — which 
 start him on the track of civilization ; for we find 
 these wants among vast multitudes of men 
 without the faintest gleam of progress. As a 
 matter of fact, we always find that it is some 
 spiritual impulse which impels men in their ma- 
 terial progress ; and, unless this impulse is fur- 
 nished and kept alive, neither can arts be pre- 
 served, nor, if lost, can they be restored. 
 
 The other difficulty is thus indicated. This 
 material advancement can in no respect create 
 that spiritual impulse, of which it is altogether 
 the creature. The mental progress, of which it 
 is the sign and fruit, finds in it no sufficient 
 stimulus nor food, and, with nothing else to 
 support it, becomes exhausted. Moreover, as 
 all experience shows, the union of men in mate- 
 rial interest is helpless in securing their true 
 or lasting fellowship. The so-called arts of 
 peace have, by themselves, no power of averting 
 war. The history of the last ten years in Eu- 
 rope and America shows that the closest ties of 
 blood and common interest offer no restraint to 
 people whom other influences set on strife. A 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PROGEESS. . 15 
 
 few years ago it was said in tlie United States 
 that no conflict of arms between the North and 
 South need be apprehended, because, besides 
 our kinship, there were our railroads and tele- 
 graphs and postal communications, and the 
 myriad interdependences of trade, to bind us 
 indissolubly together ; but, when the thoughts 
 and sentiments of the two sections became irrec- 
 oncilable, all these material bonds were but as 
 the seven green withs upon the strong man, 
 which he brake with his strength, "even as a 
 thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the 
 fire." Bands of steel are fragile as threads of 
 gossamer in the presence of ideas, and under 
 the power of spiritual principles. The desir- 
 able goal of civilization, therefore, cannot be 
 reached by any material progress. 
 
 Shall we seek it, then, in something intellec- 
 tual ? Will education furnish us the true good ? 
 There are men enough who ask if ignorance be 
 not the source of all our trouble, for which 
 knowledge is the only and all-sufficient relief 
 Educate men therefore ! Open the gateways of 
 science, and bid the human race ascend on the 
 broad paths of knowledge to its high goal ! Of 
 course, nothing need be said against education, 
 in itself considered ; only ignorance despises 
 knowledge: but, when we set before us for 
 
16 LECTURE T. 
 
 attainment the true and highest good for men, 
 there are certain difficulties in our way, which 
 no amount of knowledge or of culture can 
 possibly remove. I will not dwell upon the fact, 
 shown by manifold illustrations, that culture has 
 no more power to perpetuate itself than has the 
 material progress we have just considered. 
 History is full of instances where sciences and 
 arts and literatures and civilizations have de- 
 clined. But, besides this, growth in knowledge, 
 or culture of the intellect, cannot be man's 
 highest good ; for, since this can only be secured 
 in the highest degree by the most exclusive de- 
 votion to its pursuit, it must, from the nature of 
 the case, be confined to a few, and can never be 
 enjoyed by the great mass of mankind. The 
 necessities of human life have always required, 
 as they must ever do, on the part of most men, 
 vastly other occupations than those which the 
 cultivated man must follow, if he pursues his 
 culture, while the true good should be one 
 which all men might attain. That good, which, 
 from its nature, can only be given to a small 
 portion of the race, is not wisely to be proposed 
 as the most desirable end of human progress. 
 
 But a graver difficulty remains. You will ac- 
 knowledge that there is no satisfactory condition 
 of human life without virtue, — that a social state 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PEOGRESS. 17 
 
 lacking in integrity and purity c ould be . no 
 proper model for imitation, whatever its degree 
 of culture or material progress. No good can 
 remain untainted in the midst of a prevailing 
 moral defilement. "No nation," said the great 
 historian Niebuhr, " ever died except by sui- 
 cide ; " and the suicidal poison is always engen- 
 dered by the nation's moral corruption. Now, 
 I affirm, and if you will note closely the facts in 
 the case you will not doubt the statement, that 
 culture fails in the highest requirement here ; for 
 it is powerless to secure virtue, or to interpose 
 any efficient obstacle against vice. I might 
 prove this from the universal principles of 
 human nature ; but this is unnecessary, since it is 
 declared, with such startling clearness, by the 
 facts of history. Conspicuous examples abound 
 of the failure of culture to produce any moral 
 improvement of men, or to resist the destructive 
 influence of a corrupt society. Take ancient 
 Athens. Perhaps no people ever attained so 
 refined or exalted a culture as the Athenians 
 possessed during the time of Pericles, — a cul- 
 ture so wide-reaching that even the common 
 people were students of philosophy and accom- 
 plished critics of art. In no city, surely, of the 
 present day, would an artist think of asking or 
 abiding by the judgment of the common people 
 
18 LECTURE I. 
 
 upon his productions ; but this was a matter of 
 every-daj occurrence at Athens. . Not only 
 smiths, tanners, and cobblers, as Xenophon ex- 
 presses it, gathered together to hear the 
 discussions of philosophers, but the same classes 
 came from their homes and their workshops to 
 the market-place, and pronounced their verdict 
 upon the highest works of art ever submitted to 
 any age ; and their verdict has been respected by 
 every age. But all this surprising culture, un- 
 paralleled in its perfection, left the soul of the 
 people dead. It showed not the slightest power 
 to purify. It brought forth no virtue, and 
 checked no vice. The evidence of Athenian 
 corruption in the most blooming period of Athe- 
 nian culture is overwhelming and appalling. A 
 strong argument might be constructed to show 
 that this enlightened centre of art and philoso- 
 phy was the most corrupt city of its time. In 
 one of Plato's dialogues, an intimate friend and 
 pupil of Socrates extols his master in a eulo- 
 gium which has been even called an apotheosis, 
 wherein it is put forth, as a matter equally of 
 wonder and of admiration, that Socrates alone, 
 one single man in all Athens, was not guilty of 
 a vice too revolting to be named ! The whole 
 atmosphere of Athens was surcharged with a 
 moral pestilence, whose ravages were most dire, 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PSOGEESS. 19 
 
 even wlien tlie results of cultuie were the most 
 splendid. The culture, unable to resist the 
 moral corruption, itself yielded and fell before 
 it, till the cradle of art and philosophy became 
 also its grave. Such a fact — to which your 
 own familiarity, gentlemen, with the records of 
 history will suggest copious parallels drawn from 
 individuals and communities — teaches us, that, 
 unless we have some end to attain higher than 
 culture, and some instrument more potent than 
 culture to employ, all our hopes of human prog- 
 ress and of the highest civilization are in vain. 
 
 Shall we seek, then, this higher end and more 
 potent instrument in virtue itself? Granted that 
 no result would be satisfactory in which moral 
 purity does not reign, shall we endeavor to 
 secure this purity by instructing men in its pre- 
 cepts? Alas, gentlemen, if you closely judge, 
 either from human nature or from history, you 
 will predict the inevitable failure of all such at- 
 tempts. Instruction in moral precepts gives no 
 inspiration to virtue, as facts abundantly show. 
 We are liable to a great mistake here, — a mistake 
 actually made by many men, who, from a false 
 theory of human nature, draw conclusions which 
 all the facts of human conduct deny. It is 
 judged, that, because men ought to act virtu- 
 ously, they would do so If they could only see 
 
20 LBCTUEE I 
 
 tliis duty with unmistakable clearness ; but the 
 simple fact is, that they do see it, and have always 
 seen it. No man needs to be told that he ought 
 to do right: he knows it without any telling ; 
 and oh, how feeble are all the instructions of 
 another, in comparison with the strength and the 
 majesty of that undying voice, which, in every 
 man's soul, has been proclaiming his duty ever 
 since he had a soul! The great trouble is, that 
 men will not do their duty when it is known ; 
 and how shall any increasing instruction reach 
 or remedy this ? 
 
 Socrates furnishes a conspicuous example of 
 the failure of this method. Of all the world's 
 great ethical teachers, no one seems to have had 
 as complete a conviction as he, that instruction 
 in virtue is sufficient to secure virtue. Virtue 
 is teachable, was his famous motto, on the basis 
 of which he went about for thirty years, 
 through the streets and workshops of Athens, 
 illustrating and expounding his favorite thenie, 
 seeking ever to make men virtuous by instruct- 
 ing them in the precepts of virtue. Does any 
 one doubt the matchless skill with which this 
 great master inculcated his lessons ? Is any one 
 likely to exaggerate the prodigious intellectual 
 results of his teaching? These abide still, and 
 are certain to far outlast our time ; but we have 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PBOGEESS. 21 
 
 no evidence of the slightest moral improvement 
 resulting from all the efforts of Socrates. Alci- 
 biades, one of his most intimate and attentive 
 pupils and friends, upon whom Socrates exerted 
 all his power of reformation, remained a licen- 
 tious and hopeless profligate; and it does not 
 appear, that, in any instance, this master of spir- 
 itual births, as he termed himself, was able to 
 bring forth one virtuous impulse to a virtuous 
 life. In all this, Socrates only illustrates the uni- 
 versal law. No preaching of morality, unat- 
 tended by any other influence, has ever sunk 
 deep into society, or spread widely in the 
 thoughts and actions of men. It has never 
 shown any power to mould society internally 
 and from the centre. It is a very narrow read- 
 ing of history, and a very shallow acquaintance 
 with the heart, which has not yet taught us that 
 something other than knowledge is necessary in 
 order to virtue, that something more than light 
 is needed in order to life. 
 
 But if instruction in virtue were all-sufficient 
 to secure virtuous conduct, yet if we look more 
 profoundly into such conduct, good and desir- 
 able as it is, we shall not find it the highest 
 object of a wise man's desire. For this concep- 
 tion of virtue never rises higher than the thought 
 of dutv — the thought of something which 
 
22 LECTUEE I. 
 
 Oil gilt to be done. It commands, it prohibits, 
 and we fulfil its mandates when we do what it 
 bids us do. But there is a great difference be- 
 tween doing righteously and being righteous, — 
 between obedience to a law and the inspiration 
 of a life. The constraint of moral precept can, 
 at the best, only mould our deeds: it cannot 
 shape our inclinations, nor furnish any inner and 
 living spring to moral action. You may teach 
 a blind man how to direct his steps, and by 
 some leading string he may follow your direc- 
 tions perfectly ; but oh, how much better when 
 he has his own eye, and walks in the light o'f 
 his own clear seeing! You may make a marble 
 statue, faultless in its beauty; but how much 
 better that breathing creation which God has 
 made, which is instinct with life, and which 
 moves as its free spirit guides it! And thus, 
 however perfectly you may regulate your con- 
 duct by the constraint of duty, it is a far higher 
 and nobler life, when your spirit needs no exter- 
 nal constraint to control it, but chooses truth 
 and righteousness in the exercise of its perfect 
 liberty and because of its perfect love. A foun- 
 tain of purity opened in the depth and centre 
 of the soul, and fed exhaustlessly with the spon- 
 taneous impulse of life, every one who intelli- 
 gently seeks, either his own good or the highest 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PEOGEESS. 23 
 
 welfare of society, will surely desire ; but this 
 perfect life is inconceivable, apart from a divine 
 quickening, and demands a religious source alike 
 to evoke and sustain it. Religion has, therefore, 
 in all time and by the great majority of men, 
 been felt to be indispensable to the highest 
 good. No material prosperity, nor culture, nor 
 virtue, however extended, refined, or sure, can 
 adequately bless men. 
 
 There are two kinds of religion, and only two. 
 The one begins with man, and seeks, by human 
 endeavors, after a divine fellowship. It has 
 various forms, — Paganism in all its branches, 
 Mohammedanism, besides various representatives 
 in nominal Christian lands ; but the one charac- 
 teristic in which they are all united is that they 
 seek after God in some way which the human in- 
 tellect has been able to devise, and by some prac- 
 tices which the human will is able to perform. 
 The God whom they seek may be called the 
 Absolute, or Infinite, or Allah, or Buddha, or 
 Brahm ; he may be dimly apprehended, or 
 worshipped as altogether unknown; he may 
 dwell in some high heavens above us, or, as we 
 are sometimes told, in some deep heavens with- 
 in ; but whatsoever he may be called, or what- 
 soever he may be, the human soul, perhaps by 
 penance, perhaps by prayer, perhaps by calm 
 
24 LECTUHE I. 
 
 and rapt contemplation, seeks if haply it might 
 feel after and find him. In this point Paganism 
 and Pantheism, the rudest systems of untutored 
 thought and the refined speculations of acute 
 and cultured minds, meet and agree. The spec- 
 tacle which these religions furnish is certainly 
 most impressive. Whatever we may say of the 
 forms in which the religious sentiment has been 
 exhibited, no one can smile, none can sneer, at 
 the sentiment itself 
 
 But what have all these efforts of man to find 
 some religion accomplished? Taking them all 
 together, they have never furnished any death- 
 less impulse to society nor any undying inspira- 
 tion to the soul* they have made men sometimes 
 calm with a stoical indifference, and sometimes 
 mute with a hopeless despair ; but they have 
 never checked nor changed the tendency of the 
 evil they were designed to destroy, while the 
 mysterious instinct, the importunate craving, out 
 of which the religion has its birth, the religion' 
 itself is equally unable to stifle or to satisfy. 
 
 I said there are two kinds of religion, and 
 only two. The one begins with man, and seeks, 
 by human endeavors, after God ; the other be- 
 gins with God, and, by a way wholly divine, 
 seeks after man. In this is the peculiarity of 
 the Christian, in distinction from all other sys- 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PROGRESS. 25 
 
 terns of religion ; and, in the revelation of this 
 doctrine, is the distinction of the Bible from all 
 other books. 
 
 I remember, in one of the Hymns of the Rig 
 Veda, a single expression like this: "He is 
 merciful even to him that committeth sin." 
 There is some uncertainty about the proper 
 interpretation of the passage ; but, granting that 
 here is a thought which sounds like the charac- 
 teristic doctrine of the Christian Scriptures, I 
 know of nothing similar to it, elsewhere, in 
 the records of the unchristian world. While the 
 thought of God's justice is universal, and the 
 idea of propitiation is everywhere found, only 
 in the Bible is the divine justice radiant with 
 love, and the sacrifice, on whose meritorious 
 ground rests the forgiveness of sins, represent- 
 ed as altogether the work of God himself 
 But this doctrine, which the Christian system 
 was the first to declare, reigns through every 
 portion of that system. The salvation which 
 the Christian religion announces is procured 
 wholly through a divine work, and is offered 
 to man, not in the least because his obedience 
 or service can merit it, but solely through the 
 free exercise of divine mercy. It comes to 
 men, first of all, in their disobedience, when 
 ruined by sin, and offers them forgiveness and 
 
26 LECTURE I. 
 
 life as a free gift. The Christian Scriptures 
 expressly declare that " God commendeth his 
 love to us, in that while we were yet sinners 
 Christ died for us ; " that Christ came '' to seek 
 and to save that which was lost; " and that, '' not 
 by works of righteousness which we have done, 
 but by his mercy he saved us." 
 
 Notice now the living inspiration which this 
 truth gives to men. God's love to man, thus 
 revealed, begets man's love to God; for " we love 
 him because he first loved us; " and man's love 
 to God kindles man's love to man, "for he that 
 loveth God will love his brother also." This 
 living germ is capable of evolving the perfect 
 life for the individual, and the perfect social 
 state. All the requirements of individual per- 
 fection are met in that soul where every duty 
 and every moral precept are revealed as the 
 righteous will of a loving Lord, in whoi^e love 
 the soul finds its life, and in whose service it 
 rejoices in the liberty of the perfect love which 
 casteth out fear. The perfect social state surely 
 exists when society, kindled by this divine in- 
 spiration, becomes knit together by that charity 
 which seeketh not her own, and where the new 
 life of love and purity in individual hearts works 
 everywhere in peace and good- will. These bless- 
 ings, which no other religion even proposes, 
 
THE DESIRABLE END OF PROGEESS. 27 
 
 and whicli surpass the ideal dreams of poetry or 
 philosophy, it is not only the actual aim of 
 Christianity to secure, but these are the actual 
 results of this religion, in exactly the degree in 
 which men have yielded to its sway. If it could 
 only be everywhere accepted, if all men were 
 true and loyal disciples of Jesus Christ, wars 
 would cease, oppression and slavery would be 
 no more, vice and crime of every sort would 
 disappear; there would be purity and love uni- 
 versal aniong men, and the spiritual life which 
 the Christian faith enkindles would furnish the 
 unfailing impulse to all intellectual growth and 
 all industrial activity. Not only righteousness, 
 but knowledge, should then flow through all the 
 earth, while the wilderness and the solitary place 
 should be glad thereof, and the desert should 
 rejoice and blossom as the rose. The wise man, 
 therefore, who loves his race, will be content 
 with nothing less than the effort to bring all 
 nations and every heart under the living sway 
 of Jesus Christ and his word. 
 
II. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION WOETHY OF EXAM- 
 INATION. 
 
 Gentlemen, — It is related in the New Testa- 
 ment that Philip, one of the earliest disciples 
 of Christ, went to a friend, Nathanael by name, 
 and said, "We have found him of whom Moses 
 in the Law, and the Prophets, did write, Jesus 
 of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Now, both the 
 Law and the Prophets had foretold that the 
 Messiah who was to come should descend from 
 David, and be born at Bethlehem. Nathan- 
 ael perfectly understood this, and therefore put 
 no faith in Philip's statement. With no attempt 
 to explain its seeming discrepancy from all he 
 had been taught to believe, with no inquiry 
 whether Jesus of Nazareth might not have been 
 born at Bethlehem, and the reputed son of 
 Joseph be of the real lineage of David, he em- 
 bodies his sceptical objections in the scornful 
 reply, " Can there aay good thing come out of 
 
LECTTJEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 29 
 
 Nazareth ? " Philip makes no reply to the ob- 
 jection by way of formal argument, but simply 
 invites Nathanael to come and see for himself 
 His words, in substance, were, This is all true 
 which I tell you. Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
 of Joseph, is the Messiah ; and, if you will but 
 come and see him as I have done, and know 
 him as I do, your doubts will disappear, and 
 your faith will be as firm as mine. Nathanael 
 consents. He goes. He finds Jesus. He hears 
 his words. He becomes acquainted with his 
 character. His examination satisfies him, and he 
 believes. "Rabbi," he exclaims, "thou art the 
 Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." 
 
 I refer to this incident, because it illustrates 
 two facts often found. When the claims of the 
 Christian religion are presented, they may seem 
 to contradict some preconceived opinion, and 
 are therefore scornfully set aside. One who has 
 tested these claims himself, however, and knows 
 their power, will not hesitate to challenge any 
 objector to come and see for himself Christian- 
 ity has nothing to conceal from friend or foe. 
 
 It is not only open for the examination of the 
 world, but it challenges the closest scrutiny, 
 and is not afraid of the result. Try me, it says 
 to all the. opposing thoughts and systems of 
 men. Examine my claims in whatever aspect 
 
30 LECTUKE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 and by whatever test yon pleavse ; the highest 
 flights of human thought, the profoundest re- 
 search, and the widest range of inquiry, shall 
 find me higher, broader, l<^nd deeper than they 
 have reached. 
 
 This claim of the Christian religion for exam- 
 ination is supported by considerations so numer- 
 ous and weighty, that I beg to press it upon 
 your attention. It is not my present purpose to 
 enter upon any formal presentation of the evi- 
 dences of Christianity, but only to refer you to 
 some of the more obvious and most indisputable 
 grounds upon which this religion claims the 
 thoughtful scrutiny of the world. 
 
 1. The Christian religion is a fact in the 
 world, and must have originated in some way. 
 And now there is the clearest certainty that it 
 was first known among men a little more than 
 eighteen hundred years ago, and that its author 
 was an individual who bore the name of Jesus. 
 This certainty has been established after so 
 searching a scrutiny, and in the face of so strong 
 an opposition, that it may be regarded as a fact 
 undisputed and indisputable. But more than 
 Ll is is true. The general points in the narrative 
 of the New Testament are now past contradic- 
 tion. One would not add to his reputation for 
 intelligence who should doubt or deny that Soc- 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 81 
 
 rates tauglit men in tlie streets of Athens, or 
 that Plato held his profound discussions in the 
 Academy, or that Aristotle walked to and fro 
 amid the shady groves of the lyceum discours- 
 ing with his disciples. Those persons who are 
 anxious to be called independent thinkers would 
 be called very independent indeed to dispute 
 such points as these. And yet none of these are 
 better authenticated than the general facts of 
 the gospel history. This history has been sub- 
 jected to a criticism of unparalleled rigor and 
 learning ; but it has stood the searching ordeal, 
 and has come forth from the furnace as gold 
 tried in the fire. By far the ablest work which 
 the present century has produced against the 
 acceptation in which the New Testament is com- 
 monly held by Christians, the work which shows 
 greater learning, and more philosophical power, 
 than almost any other, on that side of the ques- 
 tion, — I refer of course to Strauss's "Life of 
 Jesus," — admits that the large basis of historical 
 truth in the Gospels can no longer be denied. 
 The more brilliant, though far less profound, work 
 of Renan, recently attracting an attention which 
 it has already lost, re-affirms this admission as 
 positively as the most confident believer in 
 Christianity could desire. There are questions 
 still at issue respecting particular points in the 
 
32 LECTURE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 gospel narratives, — questions which advancing 
 discussion is steadily bringing to an issue more 
 and more accordant with the views of Christian 
 believers ; * but no question any longer exists 
 respecting their general truthfulness. We may 
 take it, therefore, as a fact no more to be denied, 
 that Jesus Christ actually lived and died, in all 
 general respects, as the New Testament says he 
 did. 
 
 Notice some of these facts. He belonged to 
 the humblest rank in society. His reputed 
 father was a carpenter. His mother was so 
 poor that she could bring to the temple only a 
 pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, — 
 the gift of the poorest (Lev. xii. 8, Luke ii. 24) 
 as her offering after his birth. Till he was 
 thirty years of age, Jesus lived with his parents, 
 poor, unnoticed, unknown. He had no rich and 
 powerful friends, nor any external means of in- 
 fluence. No patronage was shown him, no 
 earthly master gave him instruction. It is com 
 paratively easy to gain favor and credence for a 
 system, where the rich, the learned, the noble 
 
 * The strongest objections to the New Testament have lately been 
 urged to its miracles, wliich are declared to be impossible on scientific 
 grounds ; but the recent remarkable mathematical demonstrations, 
 which Clausius has applied to the mechanical theory of heat, prove 
 not only the entire possibility of miracles, on scientific grounds, but 
 their absolute necessity to account for the present condition of things. 
 
WOETHY OF EXAMINATION. 33 
 
 support it : Christ had none of these on his 
 side ; but they were all leagued against him. It 
 was no impossible thing for Mohammed to con- 
 quer nations with the sword; but Christ com- 
 menced his mission, and finished it, preaching 
 peace. If his nation had been expecting the 
 advent of such a person as he, it would not have 
 been difficult to impose upon such expectations ; 
 but the Jews were looking for the coming of a 
 very different Messiah ; and there was that in the 
 appearance of Jesus which made his claims to 
 be the Anointed of God the greatest absurdity 
 in their eyes: " Can there any good thing come 
 out of Nazareth? " " Is not this the carpenter's 
 son ? " And yet, with every thing to contend 
 with, and nothing to help him but himself, and 
 even his own rank and condition all apparently 
 against him, this poor, unlettered, and obscure 
 individual, at thirty years of age calmly pre- 
 sented himself to his nation and to the world as 
 their divine Teacher and Saviour and Lord. 
 Never before or since has any other man, what- 
 ever his power, uttered such pretensions. The 
 dreams of insanity do not surpass it; but the 
 dignity and calmness and self-possession of Jesus 
 are as unparalleled as his claims. His whole con- 
 duct shows that he knew himself, and had the 
 clearest consciousness of what he said and did. 
 
34 LECTDTIE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 He always continued poor. He never sought 
 wealth, nor applause, nor any other power than 
 his own. Without even a place which he could 
 call his own, where he could lay his head, de- 
 spised and rejected by the ruling classes, finding 
 his companions among the destitute and the out- 
 casts of society, he spent three years, teaching 
 and preaching the kingdom of God. They 
 were years of bitter toil and hardship ; but he 
 never complained, he never sought his own 
 ease, nor excused himself from any work for 
 another's good. At the end of three years he 
 was put to an ignominious death ; and yet this 
 poor, despised, and crucified person has been 
 loved and served and worshipped ever since, 
 by increasing multitudes, who, somehow or 
 other, have come to feel that all their hopes for 
 this life and the life to come centre in him. 
 The most interesting question, in the most en- 
 lightened portion of the world, exerting a wider 
 attention and more earnest thought to-day than 
 any other theme, relates to the person and work 
 of one, who, eighteen hundred years ago, was 
 ignominiously put to death as a malefactor. 
 How do you account for this ? It is, to say the 
 least, the most striking phenomenon in history : 
 what is its explanation? Come and see. A 
 wise man will not rest till he has solved, if he 
 can, such a problem as this. 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMIIJ^ATIOIT. 35 
 
 2. Whatever may be said of the Christian reli- 
 gion, it must certainly be confessed, that, from an 
 origin so humble, there have sprung effects in- 
 calculably exalted. The crucifixion of Christ 
 was an event which both astonished and terrified 
 the few, who, during his life, adhered to him. 
 All their fondest hopes were destroyed by his 
 death. Why were not the disciples themselves 
 disheartened and dispersed? Doubtless this is 
 what every one beforehand would have pre- 
 dicted. The disciples were a little band of rude 
 and illiterate men. They were destitute, in all 
 respects, of what the world calls power. They 
 had no remarkable gifts of reason or of speech. 
 They could wield neither the pen, the purse, nor 
 the sword. Not only were they the weakest 
 instruments, and their means the feeblest, but 
 the work of preaching the new religion de- 
 manded the strongest agencies in the hands of 
 the strongest men. If they were to go forward 
 and preach the doctrine of their Master, from 
 how many sources might they not expect a most 
 bitter opposition! Every government and 
 army, every school of learning, the literatures 
 and arts of the world, the institutions of society, 
 and the deep-seated tendencies of the soul, 
 would be all leagued against them. What could 
 they do? What did they do? They opened 
 
36 LECTURE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 their mouths boldly, and ceased not to teach and 
 to preach that Jesus is the Christ. They went 
 everywhere, declaring that this Jesus, who was 
 crucified, is the Lord and Saviour of mankind. 
 They were able — these few poor and illiterate 
 followers of a despised and crucified Master 
 were able — to convince others that their state- 
 ments were true. The Roman Empn'c, the 
 mightiest the world has known, made every 
 effort to suppress the new fiiith, but the faith 
 grew notwithstanding, till it took possession of 
 the very power which had been set for its de- 
 struction. How could this be? The astonishing 
 fact demands an explanation. 
 
 In only two other instances do we know the 
 history of the propagation of a new system of 
 religion; but the problem which the rise and 
 spread of Mohammedanism or of Buddhism 
 present is very simple in comparison with that 
 which belongs to the early extension of Chris- 
 tianity. The triumphs of Mohammedanism 
 were gained, as you well know, by physical 
 force. The ascendency of the Koran, in every 
 nation which accepted it, was accomplished by 
 the sword. In the case of Buddhism, the aban- 
 donment by the great Shakya-Muni of his 
 princely rank and inheritance, and his devotion 
 to a life of poverty and asceticism, was a most 
 
WOETHY OF EXAMINATIpy. 37 
 
 impressive spectacle ; and the ^-igor with which, 
 for so many years, he preached his doctrine of 
 the vanity of earthly things, could not fail to 
 draw around him a multitude of weary and 
 wretched souls, to whom relief from the miseiy 
 of a hopeless existence was welcome at any 
 price, even that of existence itself But you 
 are acquainted with the fact that Buddhism 
 gained no strong foothold, and maintained only 
 a precarious existence, until, two hundred years 
 after the death of its founder, Chandragupta, or 
 Sandracottas as he is called in the Western 
 world, gave it his patronage, thinking that he 
 could thus strem^then his throne asrainst the 
 hostile influence of Brahminism ; while it was 
 only through the power of Chandragupta's 
 grandson, Asoka, who conquered so large a por- 
 tion of India, that Buddhism became a dominant 
 religion in this land. You know, too, that when 
 this faith spread into the regions where it still 
 reigns, it was carried first of all through the 
 agencies of political power, and that it gained 
 no footing in any land except as it adopted and 
 wove into its own system the superstitions al- 
 ready existing there. But I need not tell you 
 the difference between all this and the early 
 spread of the Christian gospel. Christianity 
 had no armies, but it conquered armies. It 
 
38 LECTURE II. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 started with an obscure individual of mean par- 
 entage, in a despised city of a narrow province 
 of the Roman Empire, and was without the 
 slightest semblance of political power ; but the 
 strongest government of the world came to ac- 
 knowledge its supremacy. It entered into no 
 compromise with other systems of religion ; but 
 it simply overthrew them, and took their place 
 in the ascendency they had held. It never 
 yielded a whit to human passions. It was at war 
 with all pride and selfishness and sensuality ; but 
 it conquered human hearts, and changed them 
 accordins: to its will. The introduction and 
 early spread of Christianity are facts without a 
 parallel, and can be accounted for by none of 
 the ordinary principles which explain the con- 
 duct of men. 
 
 But the subsequent history of Christianity is no 
 less marvellous. It met and subdued the bar- 
 barous hordes who overran Europe and broke up 
 the Roman Empire, and, by its simple power, has 
 raised them to a height of social prosperity never 
 known before. It has entered, with a fresh and 
 living inspiration, into all the art and culture 
 which have succeeded its introduction. It has 
 given life to every genuine reform, and has proved 
 itself to be the only agency which has ever shown 
 itself able truly to educate and elevate the world. 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 39 
 
 Much is said, in our day, about freedom ; but 
 the world's knowledge and possession of liberty 
 are coincident with the rise and progress of 
 Christ's kingdom. The very idea of liberty was 
 wanting to men till it was made clear by the 
 Christian doctrine. There was no knowleds-e of 
 freedom in all this Oriental world. Take India 
 as an illustration, and find, if you can, in the 
 dreams of your poets, or the sayings of your phi- 
 losophers, or the doctrines of your religion, any 
 more than in the practices of the governments 
 which early reigned here, a recognition of the 
 thought that man is entitled to freedom. You 
 know very well that there was no liberty here ; 
 that the only person who was called free was a 
 despot, and he was not a free man. The same 
 was true elsewhere. We sometimes talk of the 
 notion of liberty as held by the ancient Greeks 
 and Romans ; but this notion differs radically from 
 that which men have since received from the 
 Christian doctrine. All that the Greeks and 
 Romans knew of liberty was liberty for a class, — 
 liberty for a few, and not for all mankind. The 
 Athenian knew that he himself was free, and the 
 native Roman citizen knew that he was free born ; 
 but that it constituted the true and proper being 
 of all men to be free, that man as man is free born, 
 this knew neither Plato nor Aristotle, neither 
 
40 LECTURE n. — TIIE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 
 
 Cicero nor the teacher of Iloman law. In the 
 great Christian principle that Christ is the Son of 
 God, and that he died for man, is contained the 
 thought that the individual soul, which has cost 
 such a redemption, is of infinite worth, — a 
 thought in whose light differences of rank disap- 
 pear, and all men, Greek and Barbarian, Jew and 
 Gentile, bond and free, are seen to stand on equal 
 terms before God. The blessings which men have 
 actually received from this doctrine of liberty 
 have been in exact proportion to the clearness 
 with which the Christian thought which contains 
 it has been apprehended. The Christian doctrine 
 that salvation is not acquired by our own works, 
 and does not depend upon any rank or righteous- 
 ness or merit of men, but is wrought out for us 
 and within us by Christ's all-perfect work, and is 
 received, in God's free grace, through a simple 
 faith in what Christ has done, — this doctrine was 
 set before the world as the true doctrine of the 
 Christian Scriptures, in the great Reformation of 
 the sixteenth century, with such a clearness and 
 power that it has been followed, in the three 
 hundred years succeeding, by a wider extension 
 of liberty, and a further increase of political and 
 social blessings, among those who have accepted 
 the Reformation, than had been attained by all 
 the world in all its history before. Nor let any 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATIOK. 41 
 
 one fancy that tins is an accidental connection, or 
 one only of time and space ; for every close stu- 
 dent will see the causal link which binds these 
 facts together. " The doctrine of Justification by 
 Faith," says Sir James Mackintosh, "is the basis 
 of civil freedom." Hume declares, and no intel- 
 ligent person will doubt, that it is to the preach- 
 ing of the Puritans, who were a true product 
 of the Reformation, that England owes her civil 
 liberties. The movement for the destruction 
 of the slave-trade and the abolition of slavery 
 sprang from the same source. Sir Fo well Buxton, 
 who made the first motion in the English Parlia- 
 ment for the abolition of slavery in the British 
 West Indies, has left on record that his first im- 
 pulse to this course was due to the Christian 
 preaching in the chapel he was wont to attend. 
 The movement, bitterly opposed by selfishness 
 and cupidity, was carried to a successful issue by 
 those who believed that Christ has died for all 
 men, and therefore that all have a right to free- 
 dom. It is the same belief, which would not 
 yield even in the face of arms, which has carried 
 forward the recent struggle in the United States 
 to the entire and perpetual abolition of slavery 
 there. Slavery has ceased in every Protestant 
 country, not because governments have conceded 
 freedom as a privilege, but because men have 
 
42 LECTur.E n. — the christian religion 
 
 claimed it as a right ; but the right has never been 
 seen and never maintained except as the Christian 
 doctrine has first revealed it to men, and then 
 inspired them with the hope of its possession. 
 
 Christianity has not only shown itself sufficient 
 to reform political institutions and improve the 
 social condition of men, but it has wrought reli- 
 gious changes still more extensive. It is the 
 only religion which has ever been able effectually 
 to root out and supplant another. To a certain 
 degree we find in different nations different sys- 
 tems of religion, each of which expresses some 
 national trait, and represents a certain phase of 
 national development. Resting so firmly in 
 national peculiarities, they hold a strong ground, 
 from which they are only with extreme difficulty 
 dislodged. And, as a matter of fact, no power 
 has been able to overcome this difficulty except 
 that of the Christian religion alone. In other 
 instances where two religions have come in con 
 tact, the result has been either their amalgama- 
 tion, or the temporary yielding of the one to the 
 other by the constraint of physical power. You 
 know how that Buddhism in India overbore and 
 crowded down for a time the prevailing Brah- 
 minism, which, however, it did not destroy ; but 
 which showed itself able, when the opportunity 
 came, to throw aside the later faith, and regain 
 
WOETHY OF EXAMmATION 43 
 
 its old ascendency. There is no longer any 
 Buddhism in the land of its earliest and exten- 
 sive triumphs ; while it maintains itself among 
 the millions where it is found in other lands only 
 in so far as it has availed itself of forces not 
 originally its own. Christianity is the only reli- 
 gion, which, by the simple might of its own 
 principles, has ever truly taken the place of 
 another. And can it have done this, unless it 
 has something which penetrates deeper suscep- 
 tibilities of the soul than are reached by the 
 feeliugs of a race, or the thoughts of a nation ? 
 
 And whatever this religion has done has been 
 always in face of an intense opposition. Its 
 victories, unparalleled and mighty as they are, 
 have never been achieved without a struf]:<2:le. 
 There have always been unbelievers outside the 
 Church, who have found fault with its evidences 
 and rejected its claims. There have sometimes 
 also been found men within the church content 
 to receive the emoluments and dignities of high 
 ecclesiastical office, while they have despised the 
 doctrines and derided the faith they were ex- 
 pected to teach. I enter here into no criticism 
 upon their conduct, and only allude to it to 
 make clear the fact that all the hold of the 
 Christian system, now or in the past, on the 
 thoughts of men, has been obtained by a triumph 
 
44 LECTUEE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 of its principles througli a sore conflict with 
 opposing thoughts. Moreover, this conflict of 
 thought but partly represents that deeper hostil- 
 ity of sentiment and will which this religion 
 necessarily excites in every breast. It is not 
 only a form of doctrine, but it demands a changed 
 purpose and a new life from all who receive it. 
 The words of Jesus to his original disciples are 
 the only terms in which his claims can be pre- 
 sented : " If any man will come after me, let him 
 deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
 me " (Matt. xvi. 24). " He that loveth father 
 or mother more than me is not worthy of me ; 
 and he that loveth son or daughter more than me 
 is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not 
 his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of 
 me" (Matt. x. 37, 38). 
 
 In this continued struggle with the thoughts 
 and sentiments and will of men, the Christian 
 religion has been continuously victorious. No 
 one can study its history without noting that 
 apparent reverses have revealed themselves, in 
 the course of time, to have been genuine steps 
 of progress ; and no one can study the history ot 
 the world without noting that its only line of 
 unfading light and growing splendor is that 
 traversed by the progress of the Christian faith. I 
 know, that, in Christian lands, there are evils still 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMTNATION. 45 
 
 unsubdued whicli Christianity aims to destroy ; 
 but the undoubted fact remains of their steady 
 diminution before the steady growth of Christian 
 influence. By the ancestors of the present 
 Christian nations, war was recognized as a 
 nation's normal state, and the same word desig- 
 nated a foreigner and a foe ; but surely all this 
 has changed, and the feeling grows in Christian 
 lands that nations should live together in peace. 
 In confirmation of this remark, I point to the way 
 in vfhich, during the present year, two of the 
 most prominent Christian nations have settled a 
 grave international dispute. England and the 
 United States agreed to refer to arbitration a 
 matter which formerly they would have sought 
 to settle with the sword; and that this agreement 
 has been secured by a growth, in both these 
 nations, of the Christian sentiment respecting 
 war and national friendship, will not be denied. 
 Christianity seeks the overthrow of all evil 
 among men. Its grand aim, which it unceasingly 
 puts forth, is to remove all war and oppression, 
 and vice and crime, to elevate and ennoble and 
 purify all the relations of man to his fellow-man, 
 and to bind all nations together in the organic 
 unity of a body wherein Christian love is the 
 in-dwelling soul, and Christ himself the ever- 
 living head. To its power of accomplishing all 
 
46 LECTURE II. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION" 
 
 this, the Christian religion fearlessly challenges 
 every scrutiny. It points to its principles, and to 
 what it has already done, as the evidence of its 
 aim, and of what it can do. Slowly, indeed, but 
 none^the less steadily and mightily, is its great 
 work moving on. Notwithstanding the difficulties 
 ever in its path, it holds a stronger power in the 
 world to-day than it has ever done before. 
 From the icy north, from the sunny south, from 
 the far-off isles of the sea, from the roving tribes 
 of the desert, from the savage wanderers of the 
 forest, from the cultivated circles of enlightened 
 life, from city and from hamlet, from rich and 
 poor, from learned and ignorant men, from every 
 class and clime, there come the trophies of its 
 victorious power. Look at the influence of the 
 Christian religion as it now actually exists, and 
 tell me what this marvel means, if that which 
 causes it be not of God. 
 
 3. Pass now from these general considera- 
 tions, and see what this religion does for the indi- 
 vidual character. It aims to change and reform 
 men; which it also has certainly done, in un- 
 numbered instances. It has entered the heart, 
 and tamed fierce passions, and transformed ob- 
 stinate prejudices, and rooted out deep-seated 
 desires, and given new hopes, a new purpose, 
 and a new life ; and it offers to do this in behalf 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 47 
 
 of every one who will follow its precepts. Look, 
 in illustration of its power, at the changes which 
 it wrought in such a man as Saul of Tarsus. No 
 one can doubt the general historical accuracy of 
 the narrative respecting him as given in the New 
 Testament ; and can any one fail to discern a su- 
 perhuman agency in the transformation wrought 
 in the character and life of this extraordinary 
 man ? You see the bold and haughty young 
 Pharisee, highly gifted and educated, profoundly 
 acquainted with the Mosaic law, profoundly 
 believing in all its requirements, and scrupulous- 
 ly rigid in their performance. He cannot brook 
 the doctrine taught by the disciples of the cruci- 
 fied Nazarene, that the morning and evening 
 sacrifice, and all the ordinances of the Jewish 
 ritual, are now meaningless observances. This 
 doctrine fills him with rage ; and, breathing out 
 threatenings and slaughter, he goes forth, armed 
 with lawful authority, to put it down ; but sud- 
 denly there is a change. The angry persecutor 
 is found meek, gentle, submissive, sitting at the 
 feet and receiving instruction of a humble dis- 
 ciple of the Crucified One. The Crucified One ! 
 Paul himself would have crucified him before, 
 but he would die for him now. There is now 
 nothing to his eye so glorious as this same Jesus 
 of Nazareth whom he had persecuted. He 
 
48 LECTURE II. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 enters upon his service. He gives up all his 
 former hopes and prospects in life. For the love 
 of Jesus he consents to a life of severe toil and 
 sore privation, and at length of cruel martyrdom. 
 But none of these things move him, neither 
 counts he his life dear unto himself, that he 
 might testify the gospel of the grace of God. 
 " What things were gain to me," he says, " those 
 I counted loss for Christ ; yea, doubtless, and I 
 count all things but loss for the excellency of 
 the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for 
 whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and 
 do count them but dung that I may win Christ, 
 and be found in him, not having mine own right- 
 eousness which is of the law, but that which is 
 through the faith of Christ, the righteousness 
 which is of God by faith " (Phil. iii. 7-9). How 
 do you explain, gentlemen, a fact like this, an 
 undoubted fact, which, however conspicuous, is 
 far from standing alone in the annals of Christian 
 history? Changes equally impressive abound 
 in lives less prominent than Paul's. To count- 
 less numbers who have hated the name of Jesus, 
 that name has become the dearest of all names, 
 in earth or heaven. Souls burdened with a sense 
 of sin, deeply conscious of that guilt which every 
 thoughtful soul, wherever found, sometimes feels, 
 have gained deliverance through their faith in 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 49 
 
 him, wliom they ever after love and praise, as 
 their Life and Lord and All-sufficient Saviour. 
 They testify to his ever-living power. Their 
 lives, as well as their words, bear witness that 
 this same Jesus that was crucified lives, and is 
 able and willing to save. Jesus saves. He does 
 SAVE. If you doubt it, come and see. Examine 
 the records of Christian biography with which 
 Christian literature abounds, take instances, 
 which I doubt not are found in your own city. 
 And if you say there is so much hypocrisy and 
 deceit that you know not what or whom to trust, 
 take the best of all courses, and test the matter 
 by your own experience. In that sense of sin, 
 which you, I know, sometimes have, and of 
 whose power your Hindu records furnish such 
 copious and such impressive illustrations, — a 
 sense which continually deepens in the thoughtful 
 soul, while the fact which it discloses becomes 
 more dark and terrible the more profoijndly it is 
 considered, — Jesus Christ offers to save you; 
 and you have the surest way to test his truth and 
 strength, by making application of his word. 
 
 4. Jesus Christ never fails to satisfy the soul 
 that trusts him. "If any man thirst, let him 
 come unto me and drink," he said; and a great 
 multitude, whom no man can number, have hied 
 to the fountain, and found joy and peace in its 
 
50 LECTUKE II. — THE CHIUSTIAIT RELIGION 
 
 living streams. It has been a source of coin 
 fort and strength, alike to the profoundest and 
 the simplest understanding. It satisfied the 
 great soul of Chalmers; and it satisfied the 
 poor and ignorant woman who applied to him for 
 admission to the Church, and who could only tell 
 him what she thought of Christ in these words: 
 "I cannot describe him, but I would die for 
 him." Lofty and low, learned and ignorant, have 
 alike found in the gospel all they could hope or 
 desire. Its gifts are unrestricted by any land. 
 They come to all people. It offers the richest 
 blessings, freely, to any heart that will receive 
 them ; and no one who has actually tested it has 
 found the offer vain. 
 
 Whether Christianity be divine or not, that 
 which it has actually done merits for it the most 
 earnest attention of every man. A religion 
 which can go about among the poor and lowly 
 and uneducated, and which can gladden and 
 strengthen and purify them wherever it goes, 
 and which at the same time can feed and fill and 
 satisfy the lofty intellects which, in every age, 
 have bowed to its power, may have in it some- 
 thing which every man needs, and into which 
 every man surely should inquire. 
 
 I do not suppose that any fair examination of 
 the evidences of the Christian religion ever led 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. -51 
 
 to their rejection. Such an examination has 
 never been given by those most prominent in 
 their denial of this faith ; for their utterances 
 indicate either an ignorance of its character and 
 claims, or a prejudice against them, — states of 
 mind which show that a fair examination has 
 not been made. Two men of fine intellect and 
 thorough scholarship, but disbelievers in Chris- 
 tianity, once set themselves to write treatises for 
 its overthrow. They took each a distinct theme ; 
 but each became converted to the Christian 
 faith by the investigations which his theme 
 required. They wrote their treatises, which we 
 still have, — Gilbert West's " Observations on the 
 Resurrection of Christ," and Lord Lyttleton's 
 '' Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul," 
 and which illustrate what I suppose would always 
 follow a thorough examination of Christianity, 
 even by an unbeliever. I might instance Nean- 
 der, the great church historian, bom a Jew, and 
 converted from Judaism because he saw that the 
 evidence of the gospel was irrefutable ; or Cole- 
 ridge and Schelling, who have exercised so 
 potent an influence upon the currents of philo- 
 sophic thought, and who, starting with an entire 
 unbelief in Christianity, were compelled to ac- 
 cept it by the requirements of the profoundest 
 speculation ; but enough already appears to 
 
52 LECTURE n. — THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 force the conviction that Christianity not only 
 ought to be examined by every man, but that 
 its examination is the most important work 
 which any man who doubts it can possibly 
 undertake. 
 
 Gentlemen, if Christianity be true, two things 
 are also true : you are saved by it, and you are 
 lost without it ; and these are also true of every 
 human soul. If Christianity be true, Jesus 
 Christ can save, and he is the only Saviour. If 
 this system has truly come from God, then God 
 has so loved the world that he gave his only- 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
 should not perish, but have everlasting life : and 
 then also is there salvation in no other ; for there 
 is none other name given under heaven among 
 men, whereby we can be saved. Is there any 
 other question, therefore, so momentous to you 
 as this? any other upon which your eternal 
 life or death hinges ? Remember that this ques- 
 tion is not, whether Christianity is the best of all 
 religions, but whether it is the only religion 
 which is truly good. It claims to be the only 
 scheme of salvation. It claims to be God's 
 method; and God's method must be one and 
 single. Am I not, then, justified in saying that 
 no question relating to power or enjoyment, or 
 even your bodily life, — no question that can be 
 
WORTHY OF EXAMINATION. 53 
 
 named, — has sucli interest for you, such undying 
 interest, as the question whether it is true that 
 Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Saviour of 
 the world ? 
 
III. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 
 
 Gentlemen, — On the walls of the famous 
 lighthouse of Eddystone is the inscription, '' To 
 give light and to save life." It tells the reason 
 why the lighthouse stands there. The benighted 
 mariner, approaching the Cornwall coast at a 
 point of peculiar peril, beholds the beacon, and 
 escapes the danger. Twice since a lighthouse 
 was first erected there, has it been destroyed; 
 and the wrecks of costly vessels, and the loss of 
 precious lives, which, in each instance, ensued, 
 furnish copious testimony to its value. No one 
 doubts, that, by giving light, it is also the means 
 of saving life. He who in full sight of the 
 danger would still press heedlessly upon it, 
 would be a madman. 
 
 Now, reasoning from analogy, it is very easy 
 to argue, that, if there were only some spiritual 
 lighthouse disclosing the perils of the soul, the 
 voyager of life would steer his course with 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 55 
 
 safety ; but the analogy does not hold. In the 
 spiritual world life is not saved by light : spir- 
 itual perils are not avoided, even though they 
 are seen. If light were sufficient for safety, 
 there would really be no danger of this sort ; 
 for spiritual light shines unceasingly and every- 
 where. The light of the natural sun, filling the 
 heavens and flooding the earth, is but the symbol 
 of that effulgence which fills the moral world 
 with a brightness outshining the sun. The 
 proof of this is seen in the striking uniformity 
 in the opinions of men respecting moral truth 
 and obligation. People the most diverse and 
 remote, with the most extraordinary differences 
 of government and religion and social usages, 
 are yet agreed upon the foundation questions of 
 right -and duty. Such men as Epictetus and 
 Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Socrates and 
 Shakya-Muni and Zoroaster and Confucius show 
 that the light of duty is original and univer- 
 sal in human nature, shining with different 
 degrees of clearness, but in every man sufficient- 
 ly to show him where his safety lies. Whether 
 these rays of light are so uniform because the 
 shinings of one divine Sun, or what their expla- 
 nation, I do not now inquire. I only wish to 
 point to their universal prevalence, and to make 
 prominent the truth, that they belong to a man 
 
56 LECTURE m. 
 
 just as his manhood does, and are as essential 
 to him, and as inseparable from him, as is his 
 human nature itself. 
 
 But we cannot contemplate this fact without 
 meeting also another, equally prominent and 
 universal. Clear as is the light, undoubted 
 as is the voice of duty, men do not follow it. 
 In this I only state a matter of actual fact, 
 apparent to yourselves and to every one. Is 
 it not true, that men in general do not live up 
 to their moral convictions? I do not care to 
 ask or argue the question whether there are any 
 exceptions to this rule ; for it suffices if you ac- 
 knowledge that there are some men who do not 
 d© what they know they ought to do. And is 
 it not indisputably true, that great multitudes, to 
 say the least, are justly liable to this charge ? 
 Can you name any virtue upon which men have 
 not turned their backs, in defiance of light not 
 only, but also of entreaty and expostulation ? 
 And is there any vice or crime or sin, in the 
 long catalogue of transgression, which men have 
 not actually chosen and continued in, notwith- 
 standing they saw the wrong which would thus 
 be done, and the ruin which would thus ensu(j ? 
 The voyager of life has a chart on which his 
 course is clearly traced. Every peril is dis- 
 tinctly noted. Lighthouses stand along every 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 5T 
 
 dangerous coast. Beacons blaze from every 
 cliff. He has a compass which never varies, and 
 the stars are shining where there is no sun; but 
 all this will not keep him from destruction. He 
 will steer upon the shoals, and be wrecked upon 
 the breakers, notwithstanding all his light and 
 warnings; for he has done it, and is doing it 
 still. Who has not read of such instances in 
 the past, and who does not see them all around 
 him at the present day ? And this, we should 
 remember, is not simply the case with unlettered 
 men, but is even more conspicuously true re- 
 specting persons of culture, in whom the light 
 shines clearest and farthest. Who are the 
 monsters of vice and crime, staining the bloody 
 pages of past history with the darkest dye, and 
 exceeding the prevailing wickedness of their 
 time by the depth of their own corruption, or 
 who to-day are the men upon whom your eye 
 fixes as the chief foes to law and liberty and 
 social order, but those whose clearness of intelli- 
 gence has only made their iniquity more clear ? 
 It was a Roman poet, and a pagan, who uttered 
 what every far-seeing observer echoes : "I see 
 and approve the better, but I follow the worse." 
 It is thus apparent that the trouble with 
 human nature relates to the inner source and 
 centre of a man's moral purposes and moral life. 
 
58 LECTUBE in. 
 
 It is not the intellect, but the will, whii^h is at 
 fault. I make no inquiry here about the origin 
 of this state of things. I simply deal with 
 actual facts, respecting which there can be no 
 dispute. However originating, there is actually 
 found, in the human will, a deep perverseness, 
 which the human intellect is abundantly able to 
 disclose, but not in the least able to destroy. If 
 we do not like this fact, it still remains inexor- 
 ably true ; and if we shut our eyes upon it, think- 
 ing thus it is not there, this is only as the 
 ostrich thrusts his head in the bushes, and deems 
 himself unseen by the hunter because pre- 
 vented from seeing him. The fact itself cannot 
 long be ignored. The conviction of a prevail- 
 ing lack of harmony between our moral conduct 
 and our moral insight is too clear and too prom- 
 inent to be hid. It forces itself to view, and no 
 one can see it unmoved to pain. Call it by 
 whatever name, — a sense of wrong or guilt or 
 sin, — it carries with it a consciousness of blame- 
 worthiness which contains both shame and fear, 
 and is the source of the deepest misery the soul 
 ever experiences. No torture of the rack or 
 the stake has equalled the agony which men 
 have found in the conviction that they are not 
 what they ought to be. Against this conviction 
 arguments are futile. To say that it is a phan- 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 59 
 
 tasm of a morbid consciousness meets the un- 
 doubted fact, that it grows with the increasing 
 knowledge of ourselves, and that it is not con- 
 fined to the weak and ignorant, but is sometimes 
 found with the strongest force in the strongest 
 minds. To suppose it occasioned by certain 
 peculiarities of endowment or early discipline 
 contradicts its exhibition by persons of the most 
 diverse traits, and of exactly opposite training. 
 It is not confined to Christian lands; but in- 
 stances are not wanting among the unchristian 
 nations, where the consciousness of guilt has 
 uttered itself in terms absolutely appalling. 
 Some of the most startling and pathetic exam- 
 ples of this consciousness are furnished by your 
 own Hindu records. The truth is, that, wherever 
 any clear insight into the actual condition of 
 human nature prevails, a blameworthiness, with 
 its attendant fear and shame, appears; and we 
 can neither ignore its presence nor destroy its 
 power. 
 
 You will agree with, me, gentlemen, that a 
 remedy for this condition would be an incalcu- 
 lable -blessing. If there could be something to 
 destroy this prevailing wretchedness by drying 
 up its source, — which could relieve from the 
 sense of evil by removing the evil itself, — ■ 
 would not this be the greatest boon which human 
 
60 LECTURE in. 
 
 nature could either receive or desire? Surely 
 no region ravaged by a pestilence, and crowded 
 thick with the dying and the dead, ever needed 
 relief so perishingly, as the world, with its undy- 
 ing consciousness of sin, — more destructive 
 and more fruitful of misery than any mortal 
 malady, — needs salvation. Do you not in this 
 agree wdth me ? Does not the world itself, 
 through all its systems of religion, express the 
 same? 
 
 It is clear, that if any true salvation be found, 
 it must reach the will, and not stop short with 
 any processes of the intellect. A man's intellect 
 would be well enough, if his will did not lead 
 him astray; but his deceived heart turns him 
 aside, and instils his intellect with falsehood, not- 
 withstanding its witness to the truth. There is 
 something exceedingly subtle in these processes 
 of the human mind, which, if we are wise, we 
 shall not overlook. It has become a proverb 
 that — 
 
 'f A man convinced against his will 
 Is of the same opinion still." 
 
 Men are generally unconscious, till they prooe 
 themselves, of the net-work of sophistries which 
 the will weaves around the intellect. It is not 
 uncommon for persons to learn thai they have 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 61 
 
 been strangely deceived, and that they held fast 
 to some false doctrine even while they thought 
 they were holding to the truth; and when 
 some clear truth, with overpowering conviction, 
 has penetrated and dispelled all delusions, and 
 has poured, its light in such full effulgence upon 
 the intellect that the will was no longer able to 
 cloak it, men have sometimes found that their 
 will has not yielded to the truth, but has turned 
 away from it in hatred, or set itself against it in 
 rage. I am not dealing now with speculations, 
 gentlemen, but with undoubted facts of human 
 nature, of which some of you may have been 
 conscious, and which all of you, as close observ- 
 ers, must have seen. The actual fact is before 
 us, — the darkest, saddest, and most terrible fact 
 which can be named, — that, when the will is no 
 longer able to blind the intellect, it still can and 
 does refuse to yield to the truth ; it can and does 
 set itself in opposition to the truth ; and the truth, 
 thus, which has deeply convinced, does not save. 
 The plant looks upwards spontaneously, and wel- 
 comes the sunlight which is to weave from its 
 tissues its perfection of beauty. The animal 
 runs without constraint to his food, and rejoices 
 in the sustenance which is to give him the com- 
 pleteness of his strength. But the human soul, 
 needing a perfect conformity to the truth for ita 
 
62 LECTURE ni. 
 
 beauty and strength, more than any natural 
 thing needs its natural support, is able to pervert, 
 and attempts to poison, the very source of its 
 purity and health. There can be no possible 
 remedy for this which does not, besides convin- 
 cing the intellect, also convert the will. Any salva- 
 tion for man which can bring true health and 
 gladness and purity of soul must possess, not sim- 
 ply a means of instruction, but have also power 
 of inspiration. It must be able to furnish to the 
 will a new principle of life and liberty. 
 
 But a deeply-interesting question here arises, 
 How could such a remedy ever be found ? If 
 the true remedy must work upon the will, what 
 sort of elements, to enable it thus to do, must it 
 possess? "Mere intellect," said the lynx-eyed 
 Aristotle, "mere intellect never moves any thing ;" 
 while it is not only movement, but a movement 
 in exact counteraction of another already existing, 
 that men must have in order to be saved. 
 Whence such a movement ? Plainly fronTno in- 
 creasing light of duty. In a French story, pop- 
 ular not long ago, there is a scene in which an 
 escaped convict finds himself in a crowded court- 
 room, where his own crime has been charged 
 upon another person then on trial for the same. 
 It is a case of mistaken identity ; but the evidence 
 is clear, and the unfortunate prisoner is likely to 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 6S 
 
 be condemned. The real offender, unknown to 
 any one present, but fully conscious of the mis- 
 take which has been made, and the wrong which 
 is likely to follow, is conscious also that he ought 
 to prevent the wrong by acknowledging him- 
 self to be the criminal. We are then treated to 
 an elaborately-drawn process of argumentation, 
 which the guilty man is supposed to hold with 
 himself, to determine whether he shall do what 
 his convictions of duty demand. The result of 
 the process is his coming forward, and declaring 
 to the astonished court that the prisoner ought 
 to be released, while he himself should rightfully 
 take his place. Such a scene may do for a 
 French novel ; but it is not high art, and does not 
 reveal the great artist, because it is not true to 
 actual life. Such a result could never be reached 
 in such a way. The moment a man begins to 
 argue with himself whether he will do his duty, 
 he has already secretly settled it in his will that 
 the duty shall not be done ; and, unless something 
 other than his argument comes in as a motive, the 
 end of it all will find him exactly where he stood 
 at the beginning. No man does his duty simply 
 from the knowledge of it. " Knowledge," said 
 one, who in far reaching insight was Aristotle's 
 peer, " knowledge puffeth up, but charity — love, 
 
64 LECTURE m. 
 
 the living root of freedom — buildeth up." ^' Un- 
 less a man loves righteousness, no knowledge can 
 make him righteous. Love alone has strength to 
 lead one to duty ; but love is not an inference. 
 You reach it by no process of argument. You 
 do not even choose to love. Love inspires your 
 choice, and is not its object. Love enters the 
 will with a living inspiration, and makes one 
 willing in the day of its power. 
 
 From all this it follows that no self-renovation is 
 possible. The enslaved will cannot emancipate 
 itself We need the power of another will to be 
 exercised upon our own. It is quite clear, if 
 closely scanned, that nothing can work upon a 
 will but a will itself, or something into which a 
 will enters. A thought may instruct us ; but we 
 can only be inspired by a person, or a sentiment 
 or deed which comes from, and carries with it, a 
 living personal agency. It is not light which 
 saves us, but only life. It is not the precepts of 
 life, but life itself, which alone can lead and lift us 
 into life. As in the world of organic existence, 
 life is only begotten and nourished by life ; so in 
 the moral and spiritual realm, all deep senti- 
 ments, all great deeds, are evoked and nourished 
 by something kindred to themselves. The first 
 
 * 1 Cor. viii. 1. 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 65 
 
 incitement and only support to any personal 
 activity come from what is itself personal. 
 
 If there be, therefore, any salvation for men, 
 it must, first of all and last of all, possess this ele- 
 ment of personal power ; it must be able to enter 
 the soul with a true inspiration, delivering the 
 enslaved will from its bondage, and giving it the 
 joy of a true liberty by infusing it with the 
 strength of a perfect life. And it can only do 
 this by presenting before us, in a form we can 
 apprehend, a living person, whose sentiments 
 and deeds can truly inspire us, whose will can 
 become truly dominant over our will, and who 
 thus becomes truly our King and Lord, to whom 
 we yield, and whom we follow in the joy of our 
 new-found freedom, and with the full strength of 
 our new-found life. Would not the knowledge 
 of such a person be most desirable? If there 
 could be found a teacher who is also a saviour, 
 — one who could both instruct us in duty and in- 
 spire us to a living obedience, might it not be 
 claimed for him that he should receive the hom- 
 age of the world ? 
 
 To these facts add another equally clear. 
 Among all the" personages of history, only One 
 has ever proposed for himself such a work ; and 
 only in behalf of One has it ever been claimed 
 that he has actually accomplished it. There 
 
66 LECTURE m. 
 
 have been many great teachers, to whose doc- 
 trines we yield our assent, and to whose livcjs we 
 give our admiration ; but only One among them 
 all claims to be a saviour. To a world dying for 
 want of a living, personal saviour, only One liv- 
 ing person has offered himself as all that the 
 world needs. You know to whom I refer. You 
 anticipate me when I say that Jesus Christ alone, 
 through all the ages, claims to be a saviour for 
 men. He is indeed a teacher. He stands con- 
 spicuous ; he stands peerless among all the sages 
 of the world. You yourselves will acknowledge 
 his pre-eminence here. But not on this account, 
 not simply because He is the greatest of teachers, 
 does he claim the allegiance of mankind. The 
 greatness of Jesus Christ is in his offer of sal- 
 vation and his fitness to save. 
 
 Any heroic deed carries with it some power 
 of inspiration. Any act of self-forgetfulness or 
 self-devotion has a tendency to kindle in other 
 souls the same. Love begets love. But as all 
 the light and warmth in the natural world come, 
 through various transmutations, only from the 
 sun ; so every loving and self-forgetting deed has 
 its source, through whatever medium transmitted, 
 in some shining of God's love. In him alone is 
 the fulness of love. From him alone can all love 
 spring; and only in the clear manifestation of 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 67 
 
 him and his love, in a form easy to discern and 
 impossible to deny, is there an exhaustless ener- 
 gy of inspiration sufficient to overcome all self- 
 seeking, and to kindle every selfish will with the 
 life and liberty of self-forgetting love. But such 
 a manifestation requires the personal appearance 
 of God, in a living embodiment of himself 
 among men. Only thus can we most truly and 
 fully receive the inspiration of his love. 
 
 Theism speaks of God as a living spirit, to 
 whom human souls may come and worship ; but 
 it presents no living motive thus to do. Much 
 as we might wish it otherwise, the lamentable 
 fact remains, that men do not spontaneously come 
 to God. Left to themselves, they seek their own 
 ends, and turn away from him. Simple theism 
 has nothing to reverse this tendency. Its thought 
 of God is too vague to have personal power over 
 men. As the sunlight, all glorious though it be, 
 does not warm the atmosphere through which it 
 passes till its beams have been reflected from 
 the earth ; so the light of the knowledge of God 
 may shine resplendent through all our thoughts, 
 without any vivifying warmth, till our thoughts 
 receive it through some living reflection of him. 
 Herein is the fitness of Jesus Christ to inspire 
 and save men. He appears before us as the liv- 
 ing God in human form. It is claimed of him 
 
68 LECTURE m. 
 
 that he is the eternal Word, which was in the 
 beginning with God, and which was God; by 
 whom all things were made, and without whom 
 there was not any thing made that was made.* 
 He repeatedly makes the same claim for him- 
 self, f He supports this claim by his own words 
 not only, but by a power over Nature which bore 
 witness to his words. He showed himself to be 
 the Lord of things created ; and thus he mani- 
 fested forth his glory, and his disciples believed 
 on him.t Nature appears as his servant, which 
 hears his voice, and does his will. He turns the 
 water into wine. He speaks to the winds and 
 waves, and they obey him. The trees of the field, 
 and the fish of the sea, do his bidding. He heals 
 diseases of every sort. He makes the blind to 
 see, and the deaf to hear, and the dead to live. 
 Through the three years in which his public life 
 was manifested, Nature is seen to move as re- 
 sponsive to his will as the pulse beats with the 
 throbbing of the heart; and, when he was cruci- 
 fied, dead, and buried, he rose from the sepulchre, 
 as the Lord of life, with power over death and 
 
 * John i. 
 
 t Matt. ix. 5, 6 ; xi. 27 ; xviii. 20 ; xxvi. 64 ; xxviii. 20. Mark ii. 
 9, 10. Luke V. 23, 24. John v. 19, 20, 23 ; viii. 58 ; ix. 36, 37 ; x. 15, 
 30, 38 ; xiv. 9, 13, 14 ; xv. 23 ; xvi. 15 ; xvii. 10, 21. 
 
 X John ii. 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 69 
 
 the grave. These facts are supported by so many 
 and such competent witnesses, that an unwilling 
 world has been forced to accept them; and they 
 stand out in the face of the most searching scru- 
 tiny ever directed towards any facts, with an 
 evidence unrefuted because irrefutable. 
 
 The significance of these facts is in the evi- 
 dence they furnish that the Creator and Lord of 
 Nature is man's Redeemer. God is manifest in 
 the flesh, that he might reconcile the world unto 
 himself In Jesus Christ, God comes nigh to 
 man, in order to lift him from his degradation 
 and sin unto the purity and the blessedness of a 
 divine fellowship. This is not because of man's 
 repentance or propitiation, or good works of 
 any sort, but solely because God loves him, and 
 seeks to save him. God commendeth his love 
 to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, i.e., be- 
 fore we had purchased his favor by any act of 
 obedience, Christ died for us."^ Here is not only 
 a work of God's free grace ; but whoever thinks 
 carefully will see that in no other imaginable 
 way could God's love to man be made known. 
 It is very clear that this love is revealed through 
 none of the processes of Nature. Not only have 
 men failed to find it there, — all religions from 
 
 * Rom. V. 8. 
 
70 LECTURE in. 
 
 • 
 
 the light of Nature giving no glimpse of God's 
 grace, — but Nature cannot give man any such 
 revelation, simply because Nature has not got it 
 to give. Nature reveals the Divine Existence. 
 The things made declare their Maker. Nature 
 gives vast proof of God's power and wisdom. 
 The earth and the heavens are resplendent with 
 these glories. Nature also teaches us his benef- 
 icent goodness. The infinite adaptations of 
 created things to living wants, and the boundless 
 provision of Nature for our sentient need, are 
 everywhere recognized, and are fitted to awaken 
 universal praise. So, also, when we look widely 
 into the course of history, and see the working 
 of a supreme Ruler, who putteth down kings and 
 setteth up kings, who enlargeth the nations and 
 straiteneth them again, we find witness of a 
 divine righteousness and justice, to which the 
 human conscience also clearly responds. But in 
 all this there is no evidence that God loves man, 
 or that he can forgive sin. His beneficent gifts, 
 doubtless, show that he desires our happiness; 
 but they contain no revelation of his love. 
 These gifts are but the products of his will. 
 They cost him nothing. He has but to speak, 
 and they are done. But love is the leaving of 
 one's self for another: love is the giving of one's 
 self to another. God's love to man cannot 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 71 
 
 be shown in any gifts of his creation, however 
 rich and numerous. It is the bestowal of him- 
 self, the gift of his uncreated fulness to needy- 
 souls, which alone can bring any revelation of 
 his love. Moreover, the gift truly expressive of 
 love must cost the giver something. Love is a 
 sacred and sacrificial fire, which can burn only on 
 an altar ; and God's love, when profoundly consid- 
 ered, is inseparable from the thought of a sacrifice. 
 God's incarnation, and the manifestation of him- 
 self to us in the person and life and death of 
 Jesus Christ, is a sacrifice from whose mysteri- 
 ous depths comes a declaration of grace and love 
 which Nature had no voice to utter, and which 
 man himself had otherwise no power to discern. 
 This love of God, thus revealed, has a power 
 to inspire men ; and the light of the knowledge 
 of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 is also life to the world. For, let one grasp the 
 full significance of the statement ; let him truly 
 see that the work which men have vainly sought 
 to accomplish by their sacrifices and rites, God 
 has wrought by the gift of himself in tlie person 
 of his Son ; let it clearly appear that God has 
 done all this for men, not because they deserved 
 it, but only because he loved them ; not because 
 he needed them, but because they stood in such 
 perishing need of him ; not because he should 
 
72 LECTUKE m. 
 
 be enriched by the returning allegiance which 
 his love should enkindle, but only that they 
 might be endowed with his unspeakable fulness: 
 let it but be known that God so loved the world that 
 he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life,* — and there is a power in this love 
 which enters the will with a living inspiration, 
 and kindle^ there a love, which shall render 
 obedience in liberty to the law of righteousness. 
 He who can stand against all the revelations of 
 law, who has resisted every commandment, and 
 refused obedience, must yield to the power of 
 the love of the Son of God. Does not love al- 
 ways seek and secure its counterpart ? Is it not 
 thus even with human love ? I have only to 
 know, that, among human hearts, there is one 
 which loves me, and though I have scorned and 
 hated and bitterly entreated it, yet its love shall 
 melt me, and bring me to penitence and grati- 
 tude and love. In like manner, if I can truly see 
 that God loves me, and has given himself in 
 Jesus Christ to me, — as truly and as fully to me 
 as though I stood alone in the great immensity, 
 the only object of his care and grace, — whatever 
 has been my attitude towards himself and hia 
 
 * John iii. 16. 
 
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 73 
 
 law hitherto, this knowledge of his love becomes 
 eternal life in whomsoever it is received. 
 
 I have heard of an artist who wished to make 
 a statue of Christ. The idea filled his soul ; but, 
 before attempting to express it in marble, he 
 sought to mould it in clay. To test his work, he 
 set the clay image upon a pedestal, and sum- 
 moned his little child to behold it. There was 
 no inscription upon the image ; none of the ordi- 
 nary accompaniments belonging to the represen- 
 tations of Christ — no cross, no crown of thorng 
 — were there ; but so perfectly had the artist rep- 
 resented his ideal in the clay form, that it is said 
 the child, as she gazed upon it, reverently folded 
 her hands, and exclaimed, " The Redeemer !" Id 
 like manner, I believe that the portraiture of 
 Jesus Christ and his work, as given in the New 
 Testament, needs only to be contemplated by the 
 childlike heart ready to receive its impressions, 
 and there will come to the soul a revelation of 
 the divine love, which carries its own witness to 
 its truth, and which is able to change any soul, 
 however selfish, into the likeness of God's love. 
 The life of Jesus Christ has a light which is also 
 the life of men. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE NEED OF A DIVINE WORK IN MAN'S 
 EEDEMPTION. 
 
 Gentlemen, — The universal prevalence of a 
 religious sentiment has been often remarked. 
 "Go over the world," says Plutarch, "and you 
 may find cities without walls, without theatres, 
 without money, without art ; but a city without a 
 temple or an altar, or some order of worship, no 
 man ever saw." There is, almost everywhere, 
 connected with this sentiment, the conviction that 
 God has revealed himself unto men in some 
 special way, in accordance with which alone a 
 union with him becomes possible. So deep and 
 wide-spread is this conviction, that attempts to 
 ignore it, or explain it away, have always failed ; 
 while the authors of these attempts have some- 
 times borne unwitting testimony to the power of 
 this conviction, even upon themselves. Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury, who has been called the 
 prince of English deists, in his autobiography, 
 
 74 
 
LECTUEE IV. 75 
 
 published by his family some years after his death, 
 relates, that having written his book, in which he 
 had sought to set aside the notion of a divine 
 revelation, and being in doubt as to the pro- 
 priety of its publication, he knelt before his open 
 window, and prayed the Supreme Ruler to re- 
 solve his doubts by an audible sign from heaven. 
 He goes on to declare, that the answer was actu- 
 ally received ; and on the strength of the sign, 
 which he supposed to be a revelation from God, 
 he publishes his book, in which he seeks to show 
 that any other revelation from God than that 
 which the original light of nature furnishes is 
 both unnecessary and impossible. Lord Herbert 
 pens the account, apparently unconscious of the 
 singular contradiction of his act to his doctrine ; 
 but the account illustrates how ineradicable is 
 the conviction that men need a divine revelation, 
 and that, -in some way, the need can be supplied. 
 And yet I meet the question very frequently 
 among yourselves, whether men have not suf- 
 ficient light of their own, and whether they need 
 any other way than their own repentance to gain 
 access to God. What need of a book and a 
 mediator? you say. Cannot we find God, and 
 approach unto him, directly of ourselves ? Such 
 a question is doubtless worth consideration ; and 
 yet, if you closely note it, you will see that the 
 
76 LECTURE rV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 very terms of the inquiry furnish its sufficient 
 reply. For who are we f and who is God f and 
 how can the finite find the Absolute ? or how 
 can we approach him ? The truth is, the finite 
 only finds itself through the Absolute, and we 
 only gain our own self-consciousness through our 
 consciousness of God ; for the partial, the in- 
 complete, has no power of self-revelation. The 
 partial is never disclosed save in the presence of 
 the Perfect, — the incomplete in the light of the 
 All-complete. As there is no standard of the ugly, 
 the false, and the wrong ; as these can only be 
 measured and manifested by the beautiful, the 
 true, and the good, — thus also the finite cannot 
 limit itself, and cannot make itself known even 
 as finite. It is brought to light, it is seen to be, 
 only in the presence of the Infinite. We there- 
 fore have no being nor power to find God, save 
 as he first finds us, and discloses ourselves to our- 
 selves in the light of his presence. 
 
 This point, correctly apprehended, is destruc- 
 tive of a notion current among yourselves that 
 our self-consciousness, inasmuch as it recognizes 
 the self as other than God, is the very sum and 
 substance of our sins. This surely cannot be, if 
 our consciousness of self is only possible through 
 our consciousness of God. Our personal being is 
 in this personal self-consciousness; and to call this 
 
WOEK IN man's EEDEMPTION. YT 
 
 sin obliterates all moral distinctions, and falsifies 
 the very ground of truth itself The fact of sin 
 is deeper, and far different from this. Not that 
 we are conscious of self as other than God ; but 
 that, being thus conscious, we have deter- 
 mined to centre the self upon itself rather than 
 upon him, — this is the secret of our sin. We 
 have sought self as an end, instead of God, and 
 have thus voluntarily subjected ourselves to self- 
 ishness as our law, instead of love ; and this is the 
 source of our shame and guilt and death. God has 
 not made us thus ; but we are the sole authors of 
 our own sin. The self-consciousness which he 
 gives is a reality, for it is founded in him ; and 
 it is a good, for it is fitted to find purity and 
 blessedness and life in him. Not in our self- con- 
 sciousness, but in our self-determination, is our 
 sin; and not in the self-determination, which, 
 abstractly considered, pertains to our freedom, and 
 is involved in self- consciousness, but in the de- 
 termination of the self, not simply by itself, but 
 to and for itself, — a determination thus which 
 chooses self, and prefers self, and serves self, rath- 
 er than God. Sin does not consist in any limi- 
 tation of our powers, of which God, in making us 
 finite, is the wise and righteous Author, but in a 
 direction of our powers, which, in our self- 
 determination, we have made and chosen for 
 
 7* 
 
78 LECTUEE IV. — NEED OF A DmNB 
 
 ourselves. We recognize this sin as a wrong, for 
 which we condemn ourselves, and which we 
 know, also, to be worthy the condemnation of 
 God. We suffer under this recognition, with a 
 suffering as peculiar in kind as it is unequalled 
 in degree. What consciousness does not testi- 
 fy to the difference between the suffering which 
 comes from a calamity uncaused by ourselves, and 
 that which arises from our own sin ? To suffer 
 wrong, and to do wrong ; to have regret for 
 what another has done to us, and to have remorse 
 for what we ourselves have done, — what a broad 
 gulf separates these two in every thoughtful 
 mind ! To seek our own self-end rather than 
 God, to make selfishness our motive and law rath- 
 er than love, is an act of folly so stupendous, that 
 a reasonable being must see its unreasonableness ; 
 and, when one recognizes such an act and state as 
 legitimately his own, he cannot but feel there- 
 with the keenest sense of degradation. But* the 
 unreasonable is seen to be such, only in the light 
 of the perfectly reasonable. It is the perfect 
 by which alone the imperfect is measured and 
 made manifest. God's revelation of himself 
 is the light in which our self-consciousness be- 
 comes disclosed; and it is in the knowledge of 
 his all-perfect holiness, that we come to know 
 our sin. In other words, sin becomes revealed to 
 
WORK m man's redemption. 79 
 
 us, as contrary to God's will ; and the clearer 
 view we have of him, the more abhorrent to him 
 does sin appear, and the more degrading to our- 
 selves. It is his will, as revealed in the original 
 light of our self-consciousness, that we should 
 love him. Such a command is both wise and 
 righteous, and calls for both our obedience and 
 praise. It is the highest privilege, and the 
 source of our only blessedness, to love God. To 
 turn away from him, and make ourselves our 
 centre, is the turning from life, and the choosing 
 of death. Selfishness is our curse and woe, 
 though we have chosen it for our delight. This 
 is no arbitrary arrangement ; for it only becomes 
 manifest to us in the light of the Eternal Reason. 
 We see it to be divinely reasonable and just that 
 selfishness should blight every hope and destroy 
 all joy. Self-seeking must ever be self-destruc- 
 tive, for life is only in love. We speak truly when 
 we say that God has ordained it thus ; but he has 
 ordained it only because he saw its reasonable- 
 ness, — only because it was worthy of him, as 
 Eternal Reason, thus to do. Whatever is reason- 
 able must ever be his will, not because any 
 nature of things makes it so, nor because the 
 reasonable is some external necessity which con- 
 strains his will, but because God himself is the 
 Absolute Reason. It is, therefore, most reasona- 
 
80 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIYDTE 
 
 able for the finite reason to love and worship 
 God. lie is our rightful Lord. He is the uni- 
 versal Sovereign ; and all the reasonable relations 
 of things are ordained of his almighty and eter- 
 nal will. The law which we should have obeyed, 
 but have broken, — the law of love, — is a divine 
 law. The consequences of obedience or disobe- 
 dience are divinely assigned. That the selfish- 
 ness which is our sin is a curse to us, the greatest 
 curse we can conceive ; that it brings with it ruin 
 and every woe, — is a divine decree, which only 
 expresses divine wisdom and all-perfect right- 
 eousness ; a truth which, when profoundly con- 
 sidered, becomes exceedingly terrible. Divine 
 wisdom does not change ; divine righteousness 
 is eternal. Is there, then, no change for the curse 
 of sin ? Must these consequences of death and 
 ruin be perpetual ? 
 
 Explain it as we may, this question has actu- 
 ally excited more earnest thought, and the an- 
 swer to it awakened a darker terror, than any 
 other inquiry that has ever engaged the human 
 mind. Neither the light of nature around us, 
 nor the original revelation of God within, has 
 been sufficient to indicate a reply of abiding 
 peace. How inexorable is law, and how certain 
 the penalty of transgression, as revealed in na- 
 ture ! Throughout the natural world, no viola- 
 
81 
 
 tion of law ever escapes its punisliment. No 
 skill nor industry, no compromise nor subter- 
 fuge, can, in the least, avail for a refuge. The 
 broken law vindicates its majesty, and shows its 
 power, in the exactest punishment. Why may 
 it not be thus also in ^ the spiritual world ? Is 
 there any thing in Nature to teach us otherwise ? 
 Neither can we gain any different result from 
 the light within. We know, from this light, that 
 the penalty of the holy law. we have broken 
 offers no escape without some justifying reason ; 
 but whence can such a reason come ? Can we 
 furnish it ? Our repentance for the past, and 
 our perfect obedience for the future, give, of 
 course, no justification of our previous wrong- 
 doing ; but can they give us any hope of God's 
 forgiveness ? Is it reasonable for him to for- 
 give sin because of any thing which the sinner 
 can do ? Have we any original knowledge of 
 him which contains the probability, or even the 
 possibility, of this ? Certainly, if such a reason 
 exists, it must be ultimately in him. The only 
 motive to himself must ever be himself It can 
 never be, therefore, because of our repentance 
 or good deeds, that he forgives us, but only 
 because he finds it worthy of himself thus to do. 
 But who shall tell us that it is thus worthy ? He 
 has already told us that sin is worthy of punish- 
 
82 LECTURE IV. — NEED OP A DIYINB 
 
 ment. All the light of his holiness bears wit- 
 ness, in the original insight of our consciences, 
 to this. When we bring him, therefore, our 
 oblations, — our penitence and prayers and 
 pui^oses of obedience, — what evidence have 
 we that he accepts the offering, and bids us go 
 in peace ? His justice may never be set aside : 
 he is, and must be, the eternally Just and Holy 
 One ; but when the justice of punishment is so 
 conspicuously revealed, how can we discern the 
 justice of pardon ? How is it possible for God 
 to be just, while he justifies the sinner ? 
 
 I believe the person who ponders this inquiry 
 most profoundly, with no other light than his 
 reason originally possesses, will hesitate longest 
 before propounding any other answer than that 
 which Nature constantly gives respecting the 
 violation of her laws. Punishment is the eter- 
 nally reasonable merit of sin, and God must be 
 eternally reasonable. How, then, can punishment 
 fail ? Arbitrarily to exchange punishment for 
 pardon is unreasonable, and thus impossible for 
 God. The exchange, if made at all, must be 
 for a reason, all-sufficient to himself; and what 
 can this be but himself? Only for his own sake, 
 because of his infinite excellence alone, would 
 it be right for him to pardon ; but it is in his 
 infinite excellence that the demand of punish- 
 
WOEK IN man's eedemption. 8S 
 
 ment is grounded. He punishes for his own 
 sake, because he abide th faithful, and cannot 
 deny himself Because he is the righteous 
 Lord, he loveth righteousness, and must ever 
 hate iniquity. I venture to say, that, with the 
 knowledge which God has already revealed to 
 us respecting punishment, no knowledge of par- 
 don would be possible except through some new 
 revelation from him. This revelation he could 
 doubtless make through his spiritual communi- 
 cations directly to each soul, just as he can 
 reveal the sunlight through the twilight of the 
 morning, before the sun has appeared ; but, if it 
 shall be clear and full and unmistakable, it will 
 be given in a sensible form, like the full rising of 
 the sun, to which all men can appeal, and in 
 which the simplest and the feeblest understand- 
 ing, alike with the strongest, may find inspira- 
 tion and hope. I believe you will agree with 
 me in this, and that here is the basis of the sen- 
 timent so universal, that men need a revelation 
 from God which their senses can cognize. More- 
 over, if God shall make known to us a way of 
 pardon, it must be seen to be reasonable in our 
 eyes as well as in his ; otherwise, we could not 
 believe it to be true. And as the reason satis- 
 factory to the Divine Mind can be nought other 
 than God himself; as God must find in himself 
 
84 LECTUKE rV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 alone his only and all-sufficient reason for par- 
 don, — so, if pardon shall be revealed to man, the 
 reason for it must be seen to be wholly divine. 
 It must be altogether a divine gift. To rest it, 
 in any degree, upon any thing human or finite, 
 would be unreasonable. To suppose that par- 
 don is possible, when we see that punishment is 
 divine, would be a mockery of God, and tantal- 
 izing to man, unless we can see that the reason 
 for pardon is also and only divine. Whether 
 pardon is possible or not, we can easily see that 
 our repentance cannot purchase it, and that the 
 hopes which ground it upon any work or merit 
 of man must be illusive. 
 
 The ground of pardon must be thus wholly 
 in God ; and, if it exist, it must be perfectly con- 
 sistent with God's eternal right of punishment. 
 But that these two can consist together is at 
 first view inconceivable to man ; they seem in 
 exact contradiction. How can God pardon, 
 unless he gives up his right to punish ? and how 
 can he give up a right which is itself eternal 
 and divine, and still be God ? Oh, question of 
 all questions this ! Men, in their perishing need, 
 have sought for an answer of hope, but have 
 found only despair. Superficial souls may hide 
 theii' convictions, and banish their fears, by 
 superficial observances, by their own repentance 
 
WOEK IN man's eedemption. 85 
 
 and offerings of devotion ; but over thoughtful 
 minds, who recognize the futility of any thing 
 the human or the finite can do, and to whom 
 no evidence of a divine work in their behalf 
 appears, there settles a darkness as impenetra- 
 ble as it is terrible. 
 
 But what is impossible to man is possible with 
 God. In the Christian scheme of redemption 
 the all-sufficient answer appears. Differing from 
 all other answers, here God is represented as 
 himself redeeming man from the punishment 
 of sin. 
 
 The punishment is not set aside without a rea- 
 son, without an all-sufficient reason ; for God him- 
 self appears, and offers himself, in his all-perfect 
 work, as the justifying reason for it. The Eternal 
 Reason or Word, which was in the beginning 
 with God, and which was God, became flesh, and 
 dwelt among men. He enters the nature which 
 had sinned. He becomes a living event in the 
 history of the fallen race. He is a true man, and 
 reveals the original capabilities of human nature 
 in all their perfection. He is among men, and 
 brings to light, by his witnessing presence, their 
 infirmity and guilt. But he is God with men, 
 truly human and truly divine. In him dwelt 
 all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. This 
 fulness he sought to give to needy souls. He 
 
SQ LECTUKE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 luimblecl himself that he might exalt them. lie 
 who was rich became poor, that we, through his 
 poverty, might become rich. He became obe- 
 dient unto death, even the death of the cross, 
 that he might save us from the curse of our dis- 
 obedience, and procure for us eternal life. The 
 obedience was freely rendered. The life which 
 he offered was altogether his own. " No man 
 taketh it from me," he says ; '^ but I lay it down of 
 myself. I have power to lay it down, and I 'have 
 power to take it again." Was the law of love 
 ever glorified as in the perfect obedience of this 
 perfect man, in his life and death of love ? What 
 an attractive power in this obedience ! what a 
 mighty influence it is fitted to have upon selfish 
 hearts, wherever it could be made known, — 
 drawing them from their selfishness to love 1 
 
 But what has this to do with pardon? Ref- 
 ormation of life will not remove the defilement 
 of guilt already incurred. We need something 
 more than new incentives to obedience, however 
 desirable these may be. Moreover these, how- 
 ever mighty, would be powerless to move us to 
 action, unless there were something also to in- 
 spire us with the hope of pardon. Does the per- 
 fect obedience of Jesus Christ give us any such 
 hope ? Does the offering of his life in the sacri- 
 fice of a perfect self-abnegation, wherein he 
 
"WORK IN man's redemption. 87 
 
 fulfilled the divinest requirement, furnish any 
 ground for pardon? 
 
 Remember that Jesus Christ, as truly man as 
 any one of us, bone of our bone and flesh of our 
 flesh, is also truly God over all, blessed forever, 
 the eternal Creator and Ruler of all things. It 
 is a divine obedience, therefore, which we have to 
 contemplate here. He who became thus obedi- 
 ent to the perfect law is himself the almighty 
 Sovereign. It was his right to reign. It be- 
 hooved him to be Lawgiver and Lord through all 
 his worlds. In the perfection of his sovereignty 
 over his creatures was their perfection and bless- 
 edness. The river of the water of their life could 
 proceed, clear as crystal, only from his throne. 
 When he becomes a subject, therefore, though it 
 is a human obedience which is rendered, it is also 
 infinitely more than this. It has a divine signifi- 
 cance and worth and glory. It possesses a merit 
 thus which no finite obedience could possess. In 
 the offering of Jesus Christ, in completest self- 
 abnegation, there is revealed to us a divine offer- 
 ing, a divine sacrifice, which divine justice may 
 not have required, but which divine love is all 
 able to accomplish. Justice may not have re- 
 quired it, but what may not it require of justice ? 
 When we say that the offering is divine, have we 
 any other terms wherein to measure its merit 
 
88 LECTURE lY. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 than to say that it is exhaustless ? And when 
 the Son of God, having finished his work, and 
 come off as a conqueror, and more than a con- 
 queror, demands the pardon of sin, — ■ demands 
 it of justice, — is this any thing more than justice 
 must grant ? In the immeasurable merits of his 
 priceless obedience and self-sacrifice, God can be 
 just, and yet justify the believer in Jesus. For 
 his own sake thus he pardons, even as it is for 
 his own sake he punishes. In the inscrutable 
 mystery of his wisdom, and in the infinite all- 
 sufficiency of his love, he has revealed to us a 
 divine harmony of grace and justice, wherein 
 mercy and truth have met together, and right- 
 eousness and peace have kissed each other. 
 
 You ask me, gentlemen, for the proof of all 
 this, — a proper inquiry ; but before answering it, 
 let me remind you, that, if it is true, it is not only 
 an all-perfect provision for pardon, but it is the 
 only perfect provision that has ever been pro- 
 posed. Examine other religions, and, at the best, 
 they ofier only some finite ground as the reason 
 of pardon. At the best, it is only the merits of 
 men which they propose as the means of obtain- 
 ing the divine favor. If they ever present us, 
 as some of them do, with theories and histories 
 of divine incarnations, they never hold up these 
 as the meritorious ground of pa]'don. Repent- 
 
89 
 
 ance, sacrifices, good works of men, are all that 
 any of these religions offer as the object of faith 
 or the ground of hope ; but for the sake of 
 these, can it be expected that God will remit 
 punishment and pardon sin ? What are these, at 
 the best, when judged by infinite righteousness ? 
 At the best, do they reach farther than duty ? 
 Are they more than ought to be done ? What 
 reason, therefore, can they offer why failures in 
 duty should be forgiven ? There is not one of 
 these systems of religion which will bear the 
 scrutiny of 'an honest thought. There is not a 
 believer in one of them who does not convict 
 himself of a groundless faith the moment it is 
 examined. But whether Christianity be actually 
 true or not, you must acknowledge that its pro- 
 vision of pardon is ideally perfect ; its ground 
 for forgiving sin accords with perfect righteous- 
 ness; it meets all the requirements of justice, 
 and all the needs of man; and, among all the 
 religions of the world, it is the only one not 
 defective on both these points. 
 
 That the Christian religion is actually true, as 
 well as ideally perfect, has one grand proof 
 The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 
 is the irrefragable confirmation of all that he 
 taught and suffered. He came as a Saviour. 
 The Son of man is come, he said, to seek and to 
 
 8* 
 
90 LECTUHE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 save that which was lost. He had declared that 
 the life which he ofiPered up was given as a ran- 
 som or redemption for men (Matt. xx. 28). 
 Through the shedding of his blood, he had 
 taught his disciples, was to come the remission 
 of sins (Matt. xxvi. 28). He had claimed, that, 
 to himself, belonged upon earth the power to 
 forgive sin, a power acknowledged as belonging 
 to God alone (Luke v. 20-26). He had repeat- 
 edly declared that eternal life for men came 
 through him, and through him alone (John iii. 
 4-18; V. 21-24; vi. 40-47). These claims are 
 attested and made valid for men everywhere, in 
 all ages, through his resurrection from the dead. 
 If he actually died upon the cross, and was 
 buried, and rose again from the tomb, as is 
 claimed, this is a divine seal upon his work, 
 Tvhich manifests its all-sufi5ciency in the divine 
 eye, and which enables it to be proclaimed as 
 glad-tidings of great joy to all people. The 
 central evidence of the Christian system is pre- 
 cisely here. Wise as are the words' of Christ, 
 mighty as are his works, grand as his life seems, 
 and sublime as was his death, the all-sufficient 
 evidence that he is the true Redeemer and Life 
 of the world, through whom and through whom 
 alone forgiveness of sins can be obtained, fails 
 without his resurrection. The ultimate proof of 
 
WORK IN MAJ^r'S EEDElSrPTION'. ^1 
 
 it all hinges here. This is the central and cardi- 
 nal doctrine of the Christian faith, without which 
 there is no such faith. If Christ be not risen, 
 said Paul, then is our preaching vain (1 Cor. xv.). 
 I cease, gentlemen, all my solicitations that you 
 accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, unless 
 it be literally true that he rose from the dead ; 
 but if this be true, then the Christian religion 
 stands before you, not at all as a suppliant, im- 
 ploring your assent, but as a sovereign which 
 commands the allegiance of the world, and must 
 compel it also. 
 
 The historical evidence for this fact is singu- 
 larly convincing. I believe that any one who 
 studies it for the first time will be surprised at its 
 fulness and clearness. The disciples of Christ 
 were not expecting any such event. What he 
 had told them beforehand respecting his death 
 and resurrection they had either imperfectly un- 
 derstood, or had wholly perverted. They were 
 saturated with the prevailing Jewish notion, that 
 the Messiah, or Christ, when he came, should be 
 a temporal prince, actually and visibly restoring 
 the kingdom of David. They were not pre- 
 pared for his death, much less for his resurrec- 
 tion. The first announcement that he had 
 actually risen seemed like an idle tale to the 
 disciples, and they believed it not (Luke xxiv. 
 
92 LECTURE lY. — ITEED OF A DIVTNE 
 
 11). After he had really appeared to them, and 
 they with united voice had told the fact to one 
 of their- number not present at the time, so in- 
 credulous was he, that he declared he could not 
 believe it without the most indubitable proof to 
 his own senses. " Except I shall see in his hands 
 the print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
 print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his 
 side, I will not believe " (John xx. 25). These 
 doubts of the disciples are very significant to us. 
 They prevent our doubts. They show us that 
 the important fact we are summoned to believe 
 was sufficiently scrutinized by those most compe- 
 tent to judge of its truth. 
 
 Notwithstanding these obstinate doubts, the 
 disciples all became convinced. They received 
 such palpable proof that their Master had risen 
 from the dead, that every doubt was dispelled. 
 Then followed a most wonderful revolution in 
 their views respecting him, and in the whole 
 procedure of their life. Few and feeble as they 
 were, and cast down through his death, they re- 
 ceived in the forty days after his death a hope 
 and courage and strength with which they faced 
 the world, whose submission they demanded to 
 their Lord. They rose now to a new view of 
 his kingdom. They entered into the meaning 
 of his death. They saw the fulness and power 
 
WOEK m mail's eedemption. 93 
 
 and glory of his redemption ; and they preached 
 repentance, and remission of sins through his 
 name. This revolution in their thoughts and life 
 they ascribe to the evidence they had received 
 of Christ's resurrection, through which they de- 
 clare they do not hesitate to preach him as the 
 Saviour of the world (Acts ii. 24-32, iii., 
 iv. 8-13, X., xiii. ; Eom. x. 9 ; 1 Cor. xv. 5- 
 20 ; 1 Pet. i. 21). 
 
 Now, that the disciples can have been mis- 
 taken respecting so palpable a fact is both 
 incredible and inconceivable. They knew well 
 the personal appearance of Jesus, and could not 
 have been imposed upon by any false represen- 
 tations, even if we could conceive of such having 
 been attempted. Nothing surely could have 
 made them believe that they had seen and felt 
 and handled the living body of their Master after 
 his death ; that they had heard his voice, and 
 that he had eaten before them, to convince them 
 that they saw not a mere shadowy representation 
 of him; and that these appearances had been 
 given at different times to numbers of men and 
 women, singly and collectively, — unless there 
 was a reality in the resurrection which put it be- 
 yond a doubt. They were not easily convinced, 
 as we have seen; and, if they really believed 
 what they so unanimously came to afiSrm, it can 
 
94 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 only have been because their affirmations were 
 true. 
 
 Did they not believe it ? They could not have 
 been deceived themselves ; but did they try to 
 deceive the world ? This is equally incredible. 
 For what motive to such a course ? What hope 
 could they have of success ? Was not the sepul- 
 chre in which the dead body of Jesus was laid, 
 sealed, and a Roman guard set to watch it ? and 
 could not the story of his resurrection be falsified 
 in a moment if it was not true ? Were not the 
 Jews who had plotted his death, and the Romans 
 who had permitted it, ready enough to dispute 
 such a fact unless it had been indisputable ? But 
 the disciples declare it everywhere. They make 
 it the basis of their preaching. They hold it up 
 as the irrefutable evidence of their doctrine, in 
 the very city where the event is declared to 
 have taken place, and among the people who 
 had every opportunity to test the fact, and from 
 whom innumerable witnesses could have proved 
 its falsity if it had not been true. And the 
 • proof is clear beyond all denial, that the resur- 
 rection of Christ was believed in Jerusalem 
 itself, by thousands who had seen his crucifixion, 
 and who, by the irresistible evidence of his 
 resurrection, were led to believe in him as their 
 divine Lord and only Saviour. 
 
WORK IN man's eedemption. 95 
 
 Moreover, the disciples gave every evidence 
 of being credible men. They speak soberly, as 
 of the things which they have both seen and 
 heard. They are not men likely to be led away 
 by their fancies. They are plain, matter-of-fact, 
 though so earnest men. They give every ap- 
 pearance of truthfulness. They are evidently seek- 
 ing no selfish end. Their whole life, after they 
 have begun to preach the resurrection, shows the 
 highest forgetfulness of self, and an absorbing de- 
 votion to the good of others. When Christ was 
 apprehended they were terror-stricken, and they 
 all forsook him and fled. When he was put to 
 death they were dismayed. But there was never 
 a bolder set of men than these same timid 
 disciples, after they began to speak of their 
 Master's resurrection. In defence of this doc- 
 trine they met opposition and persecution, and 
 faced death itself without shrinking. They laid 
 down their lives, rather than give up the doctrine 
 which they preached. There is no explanation 
 of their conduct unless their doctrine was trae. 
 
 The historical truth of the resurrection of 
 Christ has never been impugned. The witnesses 
 for it are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently 
 credible to compel any candid assent. It fal- 
 sifies every element of human nature, and con- 
 tradicts every principle of historical criticism, 
 
96 LECTUKE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINE 
 
 to suppose that the disciples were either deceiv- 
 ers or deceived. The statements and the con- 
 duct of these men render each of these supposi- 
 tions equally impossible. The doctrine which 
 they taught must be true ; and therefore God's 
 seal is set to the great truth of Christ's redemp- 
 tion, who was truly delivered for our offences, 
 and raised again for our justification, and who 
 is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours 
 only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 
 
 Gentlemen, there can be but one living and 
 true God, the Creator and Ruler of all things. 
 It is against him that the whole hurrian family 
 have sinned. By his original communications 
 to every soul, he has revealed the fact of sin 
 and of punishment. All races of men, in every 
 age, bear true and terrible witness to this. If, 
 in these original communications, there is also 
 seen any way of relief from sin and its just 
 doom, you will acknowledge, that, at the best, the 
 vision is exceedingly faint, and the wide-reaching 
 conviction that it needs to be enlarged by an ad- 
 ditional revelation testifies to its inadequacy ; but 
 if in any soul there be any sense, however faint, 
 that God can forgive sin, it is clear that . he can 
 do this only for his own sake. The reason for 
 forgiveness must be satisfactory to himself, and 
 can be thus only himself. The way of pardon 
 
WOEK IN man's eedemption. 97 
 
 can be only tlie one wliicli he provides; and 
 this implies that there can be only one such way. 
 God's method must be the best, and thus, single. 
 If he forgives and purifies in any case, it must 
 be for the same reason that he would in every 
 case. Diversities of religion, different ways of 
 pardon and of a divine fellowship, are intrinsi- 
 cally impossible. It is as absurd to suppose 
 that there can be different religions, equally 
 valid, as that there could be different sciences 
 equally true. Science, so far as it relates to the 
 same facts, is single. To suppose that different 
 people have different sciences of the same ob- 
 jects is to suppose that some of them at least 
 are holding to sciences falsely so called. What 
 would you say of me if I should hold up a sys- 
 tem of mathematics as suitable for me and my 
 race, but having no significance for you? Would 
 you not tell me that any science is worthless for 
 one unless it be valid for all ? And what shall 
 I say of you if you turn aside from Christianity 
 as being well enough for Christians, while you 
 cling to your Hinduism as the religion sepa- 
 rately adapted to you ? Does not the fact that 
 you talk of this religion as yours, and as sepa- 
 rately adapted to the Hindus, show that it is 
 not adapted even to yourselves, and that you 
 yourselves have no profound conviction of its 
 
98 LECTURE IV. — NEED OF A DIVINB 
 
 truth ? You make no effort to propagate your 
 faith. You send no missionaries abroad. You 
 do not believe that your religion has any appli- 
 cation to any other portion of the human family 
 than your own. Therefore, I say, you have no 
 right to believe that it has any beneficent appli- 
 cation to yourselves; and, in your heart of hearts,' 
 you do not and can not believe it. The very fact, 
 that, as a religion, it is not fitted for all, proves 
 that it is not fitted for any. I call upon you to 
 accept a religion which has no narrow claims. 
 The Christian religion does not admit for itself 
 any limited application. It demands universal 
 acceptance. It does not allow that its method 
 of salvation is one out of a number from which 
 men may safely choose. It claims to be the only 
 way. It holds itself up unfalteringly as the re- 
 ligion for every nation and every soul. Its ideal 
 position is perfect. It offers pardon, not upon 
 partial or finite grounds, but through a provision 
 of which God himself is the all-sufficient author 
 and finisher. That the perfect obedience of the 
 Son of God to the broken law, accomplished in 
 the incarnation and life and death of Jesus 
 Christ, opens a way for pardon acceptable to 
 God, is put beyond a question through Christ's 
 resurrection from the dead. Here is a religion, 
 therefore, which has all the elements of univer- 
 
WOEK m man's redemption. 99 
 
 sality and perpetuity. Do you wonder that it 
 does not decay, nor grow old nor weak nor 
 weary ? Do you wonder that it goes on, steadily 
 subduing the nations? Do you wonder that 
 you are called upon to accept this faith, and 
 yield your wills to Jesus Christ as your Lord 
 and Saviour? 
 
MIEACLES. 
 
 I TAKE up this book whicli we call the Bible; 
 and, whether or not I acknowledge its truth, I must 
 at least confess its power. No other book has 
 moved the world as this has done. I inquire into 
 the secret of this, to discover which I am obliged 
 to open the book to see what it contains ; and I 
 find in it really but one thought, — ^ a thought, 
 indeed, of incomparable grandeur and of innu- 
 merable relations, but which, itself, is as single 
 as it is sublime. All through the Bible, I dis- 
 cover only what is involved in the great thought 
 of redemption. Man's need of redemption, and 
 God's copious provision for it, furnish the won- 
 derful theme of this wonderful book. 
 
 Somehow or other, the Bible has convinced 
 men that this thought is true ; and it cannot be 
 doubted that here is the secret of its otherwise 
 inexplicable power. Men have been persuaded 
 that an all-sufficient redemption has been fi:eely 
 
 100 
 
MIEACLES. 101 
 
 provided by a sovereign and gracious act of God 
 himself; and the book which contains this an- 
 nouncement, and furnishes the evidence of its 
 truth, is, therefore, glad tidings of great joy unto 
 all people who receive it. Men prize it, and em- 
 brace it, and mould their lives according to its 
 precepts, because convinced that its story of 
 redeeming love is true. 
 
 What has wrought this conviction ? There 
 are two ways in which we become convinced of 
 the truth of any thing, and only two. In one, 
 our minds behold the truth in its own light. 
 The truth is then self-evident, and convinces us 
 by the simple manifestation of itself. We ex- 
 press this conviction when we say that we know 
 a statement to be true. Knowledge is this im- 
 mediate beholding of the truth ; and, when we 
 profess it, we rest in it with an unshaken con- 
 viction. 
 
 But there are many truths of which we are 
 convinced, but which we do not thus immediate- 
 ly see, and which we cannot be thus said to know. 
 We are convinced that there is such a city as 
 Peking, though we perhaps never saw it ; we 
 have no doubt that water is composed of oxygen 
 and hydrogen, though quite likely we never 
 made the experiment, and saw the truth for our- 
 selves; we are confident that the differential 
 
 9* 
 
102 MIRACLES. 
 
 calculus has solved vast and intricate questions 
 in science, and that the method of quaternions 
 is able to solve many more, though very possi- 
 bly not one of these problems has ever been 
 worked out by ourselves. These truths we ac- 
 cept, not because we behold them in their own 
 light, but because they are affirmed by the com- 
 petent testimony of those who have thus beheld 
 them. We express this conviction when we say 
 that we believe a statement to be true. 
 
 Knowledge and belief do not differ in that 
 the one is a stronger conviction than the other. 
 The conviction may be just as strong of the truth 
 we believe as of that which we know. We may 
 be no less certain of the existence of Peking, 
 which we, perhaps, never saw, than we are of 
 the existence of Boston, which we, perhaps, see 
 every day. The difference does not relate at all 
 to the strength of the conviction, but wholly to 
 the kind of evidence on which the conviction 
 rests. In knowledge, this evidence is the light 
 of the truth itself as it becomes directly disclosed 
 to the mind ; in belief, the evidence is the testi- 
 mony of another. 
 
 A belief may become changed into knowl- 
 edge. I may believe certain truths of science 
 because scientific men relate them, and I may 
 come to know these same truths through my 
 
MIEACLES. 103 
 
 own experiment or demonstration. The linman 
 mind has ever an impulse to know that in which 
 it has believed. The belief is the stepping- 
 stone and the constant stimulus to the increasing 
 knowledge. 
 
 In like manner, the knowledge becomes the 
 ground-work of a growing faith. The finite 
 mind can never know all things. Though the 
 sphere of its knowledge be constantly enlarging, 
 the sphere of the unknown appears to grow in 
 an equal degree ; as, with a candle in a dark 
 place, the farther the light reaches, the greater 
 the surrounding darkness seems. There will be 
 always, therefore, something for us to believe. 
 We shall always need a voice to come to us out 
 of the darkness, and tell us of the unknown. 
 
 Knowledge and belief may be indefinitely 
 blended ; but they are the basis of all our con- 
 victions. When, therefore, the Bible convinces 
 us of its truth, it must be, either because the 
 truth is known by us in its own light, or because 
 we believe it on the testimony which declares it. 
 Now, as a matter of fact, we find that the con- 
 viction which the Bible does induce is a belief 
 in its truth. It does not come before us, like a 
 book of geometry, with its theorems all demon- 
 strated, so that every principle which it utters 
 may be revealed in its own light to our knowl- 
 
104 MIEACLES. 
 
 edge ; but it is chiefly a system of faith. It ap- 
 peals to oiir belief Its prime evidence is the 
 testimony of another. 
 
 But what sort of testimony is necessary to 
 secure our belief? When one affirms to us a 
 statement which is beyond our knowledge, we 
 believe it just as far, and just as strongly, as 
 we know that he who affirms it is too wise to 
 be mistaken, and too honest to deceive. If we 
 know the perfect wisdom and perfect truthful- 
 ness of a person, we believe his word with as 
 strong a conviction as that of any knowledge. 
 The belief always implies some sort of knowledge 
 to rest upon, — some acquaintance with the truth 
 declared, or with him by whom it is declared; 
 but it conveys to us truths which our knowledge 
 at the time when we received them has no means 
 of reaching. 
 
 Now, the knowledge of God is the primal and 
 constant knowledge of any soul. " To know 
 God," says Jacobi, " and to possess reason, are 
 one and the same thing, — just as not to know 
 God, and be a brute, are the same thing." This 
 knowledge may be vague and indefinite and ob- 
 scure in many instances ; yet, in every instance, 
 is it the original possession and inalienable sub- 
 stance of the human mind: so that, as Cicero 
 says, " There is no one of all men so savage, that 
 
MIRACLES. 105 
 
 his mind is not tinctured by it ; " and, as tlie Jew 
 P'liilo says, " He who possesses this knowledge is 
 a man, and he who is destitute of it is no man." 
 
 We know that God is, and that he is all- wise, 
 and cannot lie; and the Bible assumes this 
 knowledge, and rests all its statements upon it, 
 expecting us to receive them because they come 
 from God, whom we know to be so wise that he 
 cannot be mistaken, and so truthful that he will 
 never deceive. Of course, if this foundation is 
 secure, whatever is built upon it must surely 
 stand. If we can only be convinced that God 
 has spoken to us, we can no more doubt the 
 word thus spoken than could the earth have 
 maintained its formlessness and darkness when 
 the Spirit of God brooded over the abyss, and 
 God said, " Let there be light." 
 
 The whole question, therefore, hinges exactly 
 here : What is the evidence that God has 
 spoken ? How shall we be convinced that the 
 Bible is his word ? The question is not, " How 
 shall God flash conviction upon the mind by 
 some self-evidencing statement ? " but, " How 
 shall he reveal his own testimony to the truth ? 
 Manifestly, this can only be through some 
 directly spiritual and internal communication, or 
 through some outward and sensible disclosure of 
 God's presence. But a communication wholly 
 
106 MraACLES. 
 
 internal, while it might be sufficient for the per- 
 son to whom it is immediately given, would 
 have no power to convince another, and would 
 be liable to the same difficulties as attach to a 
 conviction secured through external and sensible 
 means. These, therefore, must be the methods 
 employed. If God shall ever seek to convince 
 us of the truth by his testimony to it, he will 
 manifest his testimony in a way which the bodily 
 senses can perceive. But this is only to say that 
 he will do it by miracles ; for a miracle is noth- 
 ing more nor less than a manifestation, through 
 the senses, of God's testimony to the truth. A 
 miracle is a sensible event, wrought by God in 
 attestation of the truth. It, therefore, must 
 occur in Nature, and require for its production 
 that which Nature does not possess. It must 
 occur in Nature, otherwise it would not be 
 apprehensible to our senses ; and it must, at the 
 same time, be beyond the power of Nature to 
 produce, otherwise it would not disclose an 
 agency which belongs to the Author of Nature 
 alone. A miracle is not simply an extraordinary 
 event, like an eclipse or an earthquake, which, 
 however unfrequent, occurs through the regular 
 action of the same forces that produce the ordi- 
 nary events in Nature, and which might be fore- 
 known by one acquainted with its cause ; but it 
 
MIRACLES. 107 
 
 is ai3 event which Nature, by its own action, 
 never would have brought forth, and for which 
 the power of God alone is adequate. It is no 
 new birth from Nature's teeming womb, but a 
 new beginning, which rises at once from an 
 almighty fiat. It is not a development, but a 
 creation. It is an absolutely new force intro- 
 duced into Nature, by which Nature is checked 
 and changed. The simplest definition we can 
 give, therefore, of a miracle, is a counteraction 
 of Nature by the Author of Nature. 
 
 Whether such counteractions have ever been 
 wrought ; whether this vast and intricate mech- 
 anism, the exquisite adjustments and delicate 
 interdependence of all whose parts fill us with 
 unceasing wonder, has ever been changed in 
 any of its workings by a power outside itself, — 
 is the grave and dif&cult question we must next 
 consider. 
 
 In seeking the answer to this inquiry, let us 
 ask, in the first place, whether there can be a 
 suf&cient occasion for such an interference with 
 Nature as a miracle implies. Is such an inter- 
 ference needed to give us any further knowl- 
 edge of God than Nature discloses? Are not 
 the invisible things of him, from the creation of 
 the world, clearly seen, being understood by the 
 things that are made, so that men are without 
 
108 MIRACLES. 
 
 excuse ? and do we need any thing more ? We 
 need nothing more, certainly, to convince us of 
 our obligation and resi3onsibility ; for such a 
 conviction all men possess. But, in the actual 
 condition of human nature, what a terrible con- 
 viction this is ! To know that we ought to do 
 right, and that we have done wrong, and that 
 we are responsible for this to a tribunal of infi- 
 nite justice, is a knowledge in which the human 
 soul has found an irrepressible and yet unutter- 
 able agony. If we fancy that this is the result 
 of some dreadful delusion, and would disappear 
 if all men could only come to see that there is 
 no such thing as unmixed ill, and that " evil is 
 only good in the making ; " and that their so- 
 called sin is only a phase of their imperfect de- 
 velopment, which advancing thought and culture 
 are sufficient to remove, — we must at least ad- 
 mit that such a fancy contradicts the deepest and 
 most universal convictions of mankind, which we 
 may well be hopeless of attempting in any such 
 way to eradicate. The conviction of sin as a 
 dark and terrible reality occupies a place in the 
 actual human experience, of which it refuses to 
 be dispossessed by any process of argument. 
 The difference between suffering wrong and do- 
 ing wrong, between the regret for what another 
 has done to us and the remorse for what we our- 
 
MIRACLES. 109 
 
 selves have done, is a difference which no dia* 
 lectics can make to disappear, and which the 
 common consciousness of mankind recognizes as 
 a gulf broad and impassable forever. No sub- 
 tle discriminations . nor attempted subterfuges 
 have long cloaked or crowded down this convic- 
 tion; but it has disclosed itself, through every 
 contrivance to conceal it, as the deepest source 
 of woe which the human soul possesses. No 
 torture of the rack or the stake has equalled 
 the agony which men have actually experienced 
 froni the consciousness of sin. 
 
 This suffering can only be removed by removing 
 the sin in which it has its source. But how is this 
 possible ? To stop sinning causes neither the sin 
 nor the suffering to cease. It is not simply a the- 
 ory of human nature which justifies this assertion, 
 but the actual facts of human experience, — the 
 darkest, saddest, and yet the most undeniable 
 facts of our history. It is a simple truth of com- 
 mon experience, that a soul conscious of its 
 transgressions does not lose that consciousness 
 by any act of subsequent obedience. The con- 
 sciousness of sin, however vaguely it may appear 
 in some minds, always discloses a violated divine 
 authority, whose requirements of justice and ret- 
 ribution the understanding and the will can 
 neither stifle nor satisfy. If there be any relief 
 
 10 
 
110 MIRACLES. 
 
 from the misery of sin, it can only come from 
 this violated authority itself; but no knowledge 
 of God which the soul originally possesses, nor 
 any which Nature can furnish, is sufficient to 
 suggest even the possibility of any such -relief 
 Nature adds to that of the human conscience 
 her own testimony of the heinousness of sin. 
 She tells us of the righteousness of punishment, 
 and the inexorableness of law ; but, in the 
 myriad voices with which she speaks of duty 
 and of God, there is no" intimation of forgive- 
 ness or of love. That God is good, in the sense 
 of desiring the happiness of his creatures. Nature 
 abundantly discloses : but that he can do more 
 than confer upon them the benefits of creation, 
 satisfying one created object by another ; that 
 he has a heart which pities, and is willing to 
 pardon, and which yearns to communicate himself 
 — his uncreated and divine fulness — to needy 
 souls, the heavens which declare his glory, and 
 the firmament which showeth his handiwork, the 
 day unto day which utter eth speech, and the 
 night unto night which showeth knowledge of 
 him, nowhere disclose. If God's mercy to sin- 
 ners be a truth, it is a truth, not of Nature, but 
 of a supernatural world; and it leaches heights 
 of glory in the Supernatural which the human 
 intellect has, of itself, no power to ascend. 
 
MIEACLES. Ill 
 
 And the evidence of this, if the proof were 
 wanting, is found in the fact, that the soul, with 
 no other instruction than itself or Nature can 
 furnish, has never attained such knowledge. In 
 all the records of paganism, while the divine 
 power and wisdom and justice, and even benefi- 
 cence, are clearly declared, no mention is made 
 of the divine love. In the idolatrous sacrifices, 
 in the penances and prayers, of the heathen, 
 there is doubtless indicated some vague idea of 
 propitiation, — some undefined conviction, that, 
 in some such way, God may be approached and 
 pleased. But that God is a being who ap- 
 proaches us before we make any attempt to 
 draw nigh unto him ; that he regards us in 
 mercy because of his love, and not for the sake 
 of our good deeds ; that he is a God who par- 
 doneth iniquity because he delighteth in mercy, 
 — would seem to be a thought which the natural 
 heart, uninstructed by any special divine revela- 
 tion, is unable to attain. 
 
 I confess, therefore, to a kind of surprise, when 
 I find certain scholars and cultivated writers of 
 our own time and neighborhood classifying the 
 Bible with the Koran, and the Yedas, and the 
 Zendavesta, and the Five Volumes, to which 
 Confucius and the Chinese appeal. Such a clas- 
 sification, considered simply as a matter of liter- 
 
112 MIEACLES. 
 
 ary criticism, is very superficial, and is creditable 
 neither to the discrimination nor the culture of 
 the writers who make it. The Bible, certainly, 
 stands alone, and immeasurably distant from all 
 other books, in this one grand characteristic, — 
 that its religion is the religion where God is 
 yearning and seeking after man, and where man 
 is invited and entreated and commanded to draw 
 nigh unto God, solely on the ground that God 
 has already come nigh unto man. That God 
 takes the first step in religion, that he begins 
 the work of human restoration and deliverance, 
 nowhere appears till the Christian Scriptures 
 have announced it. What grand and awful 
 visions of divine justice did the old Greek dram- 
 atists behold! What terrors of righteousness 
 and retribution have been heard, in cries of an- 
 guish or groans of despair, all over the world! 
 But who has known that God is gracious, that 
 he can forgive sin, that he loves man, until the 
 Bible has first made the blessed announce- 
 ment? 
 
 But if this thought, which is the single and 
 peculiar theme of the Bible, be true, can any 
 thing be so important to man as its communica- 
 tion in a manner which shall show its truth to be 
 indisputable ? And if Nature cannot declare it, 
 and the human mind alone cannot reach it, how 
 
MIRACLES. 113 
 
 is this communication possible, unless directly 
 announced by God himself? And how shall this 
 announcement be proved to be from God, unless 
 he shall irrefutably manifest himself in connec- 
 tion with the utterance ? And how can this 
 manifestation be, except through that miracu- 
 lous interference with Nature already described? 
 If God's mercy to sinners be true, and if this 
 truth shall ever be declared to those who are 
 perishing for lack of it, we may expect the dec- 
 laration through a miracle. 
 
 And now we are to notice, that, while the 
 Bible announces this great doctrine of redemp- 
 tion as true, declaring that God has provided a 
 perfect remedy for sin, it also claims to be a 
 miraculous revelation. It professes to prove the 
 doctrine by miracles which furnish God's testi- 
 mony to its truth. In both the Old Testament 
 and the New, miracles are continually adduced 
 as a motive for faith. The Lord accompanied 
 the call of Moses to deliver his people with a 
 miracle ; and, when the faith of the chosen leader 
 was thus elicited and confirmed, miracles were 
 wrought, whose express design, as stated by the 
 Lord himself, was to attest to the children of Is- 
 rael the divine commission with which Moses was 
 furnished: " That they may believe that the Lord 
 God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the 
 
 10* 
 
114 MIRACLES. 
 
 God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hatli ap- 
 jieared unto thee."* 
 
 Miracles were still further wrought, not only 
 to establish the faith of the Israelites, but to con- 
 vince the Egyptians themselves: ^' And the Egyp- 
 tians shall know that I am the Lord, when I 
 stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring 
 out the children of Israel from among them." f 
 
 After the Israelites had been delivered by 
 miracles, and their faith still staggered, miracles 
 were continued for its confirmation. In an- 
 nouncing these before they took place, Moses 
 says, " Then ye shall know that the Lord hath 
 brought you out from the land of Egypt." J 
 
 When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled, a 
 signal miracle was wrought in special attestation 
 of the divine commission of Moses. The design 
 of the miracle Moses declares, when he says, 
 " Hereby ye shall know that the Lord hath sent 
 me to do all these works ; for I have not done 
 them of mine own mind."§ 
 
 When Moses had died, miracles bore witness 
 to the divine authority with which Joshua was 
 invested: "And the Lord said unto Joshua, This 
 day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of 
 
 * Exod. iv. 5 ; cf. 8, 9. t Exod. vii. 5 ; cf. ib. ix. 29, and xi. 7, 
 
 X Exod. xvi. 6 ; cf. 7, 8, 12. § Num. xvi. 8. 
 
MIRACLES. 115 
 
 all Israel, that they may know, that as I was with 
 Moses, so I will be with thee."* 
 
 When the people of Israel had forsaken the 
 worship of Jehovah, and had gone after the 
 priests of Baal, they were brought back to their 
 former faith by a miracle: "The God that an- 
 swereth by fire," said Elijah upon Mount Car- 
 mel, "let him be God." " Then the fire of the 
 Lord fell, and consumed the burnt-sacrifice, and 
 the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and 
 licked up the water that was in the trench. And 
 when all the people saw it they fell upon their 
 faces ; and they said. The Lord he is the God, 
 the Lord he is the God."f 
 
 A prime motive of the miracles of Christ was 
 to convince those who beheld them of his divine 
 authority. When John sent two of his disciples 
 to Christ to say unto him, " Art thou he that 
 should come, or do we look for another? Jesus 
 answered, and said unto them. Go and show 
 John again those things which ye do hear and 
 see, — the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
 walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, 
 the dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
 gospel preached to them." J Before healing the 
 sick of the palsy, he says to those around, "But 
 
 * Josh. iii. 7 ; cf. 10-13. t 1 Kings xviii. 24, 38, 39. 
 
 t Matt. xi. 3-5. 
 
116 MIRACLES. 
 
 that ye may know that the Son of man hath 
 power on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the 
 sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and 
 take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine 
 house."* At the raising of Lazarus, "Jesus 
 lifted up his eyes, and said. Father, I thank thee 
 that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou 
 hearest me always ; but, because of the people 
 which stand by, I said it, that they may believe 
 that thou hast sent me." f John bore witness unto 
 the truth: but Jesus says, " I have greater wit- 
 ness than that of John ; for the works which the 
 Father hath given me to finish, the same works 
 that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father 
 hath sent me." J " If I do not the works of my 
 Father, believe me not ; but if I do, though ye 
 believe not me, believe the works ; that ye may 
 know and believe that the Father is in me, and I 
 in him." § A recent writer says, " It does not 
 appear that Jesus aimed to force conviction by 
 miracles; " || but in simple fact, whether we take 
 his own words for it, or the actual impression 
 that his miracles gave, this is the very thing at 
 which he was aiming. " And many of the peo- 
 ple believed on him, and said. When Christ 
 Cometh, will he do more miracles than these 
 
 * Markii. 10, 11. f John xi. 41, 42. J John v. 36. 
 
 § John X. 37, 38. |1 Hedge, Reason in Religion, p. 264. 
 
MIEACLES. lYT 
 
 which this man hath done ? " "^ In other words, 
 could the true Messiah attest his claims in any 
 stronger way ? " Now, when he was in Jeru- 
 salem, at the passover, in the feast-day, many 
 believed in his name when they saw the miracles 
 which he did." f " Rabbi," said Nicodemus, " we 
 know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for 
 no man can do these miracles that thou doest, 
 except God be with him." J 
 
 The power to work miracles was given to the 
 apostles ; and they exercised it also as the proof 
 of their divine commission : " They went forth 
 and preached everywhere, the Lord working 
 with them, and confirming the word with signs 
 following;" § "God also beaiing them witness, 
 both with signs and wonders, and with divers 
 miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according 
 to his own will." || Though the miracles may 
 have ceased, they are recorded, that those who 
 did not see them may also find in them a source 
 of faith : "These are written that ye might be- 
 lieve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; 
 and that, believing, ye might have life through 
 his name."^ 
 
 We must admit, therefore, that the Bible 
 grounds its claim to our acceptance as a revela- 
 
 * John vii. 31. t John ii. 23. J John iii. 2. 
 § Mark xvi. 20. || Heb. ii. 4. H John xx. 31. 
 
 % 
 
118 MIRACLES. 
 
 tion from God upon its miraculous evidence. 
 And as we have seen that this book stands alone 
 in its theme, so we should also notice that it ia 
 also and equally peculiar in its miraculous claims. 
 No other book claiming to be a divine revelation 
 has professed to rest upon miracles. In the Ko- 
 ran, Mohammed expressly affirms that God's word 
 to him is, " Thou art commissioned to be a 
 preacher only, and not a worker of miracles."^' 
 Various threats and promises are uttered in the 
 Koran to unbelievers and believers ; but the mo- 
 tive to faith is declared to lie exclusively in the 
 revelation itself f Centuries after the death of 
 Mohammed, miracles were related of him; but 
 there is no evidence that he made any pretension 
 to the power of performing them. 
 
 Many have a vague notion, that the claim to 
 work miracles belongs to every rude age, and has 
 been urged in support of every superstition; but 
 this is not true. Unnumbered systems of pagan- 
 ism have, indeed, their unnumbered prodigies 
 and signs and miracles ; but the systems do not 
 depend upon these. They nowhere profess to 
 do so : on the other hand, the miracles hang 
 upon them. Instead of giving any support to 
 the system to which they belong, they receive 
 
 * Koran, Sura, xiii. 8. 
 
 t Ibid., vi. 33, 34 i x. 20 ; xiii. 28, 31, 38. 
 
MIRACLES. 119 
 
 all their support from it. Nowhere are they pre- 
 sented as the evidence of a doctrine ; but they 
 come forth as the result or appendage of a doc- 
 trine already believed. The Bible, however, 
 does not undertake so much to prove its miracles 
 by its doctrines ; but it seeks to prove its doc- 
 trines, in the first place, by them. Whether or 
 not this claim be valid, it is at least unique. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, exaggerate the impor- 
 tance of miracles in the Christian system. Our 
 belief in that system depends, at last, upon its 
 miraculous evidence. If miracles are impossible 
 or incredible, or cannot be actually proved, then 
 is the Christian system a delusion. The incar- 
 nation of Christ, if it ever took place, was a mir- 
 acle, without which our belief in redemption is 
 impossible. The resurrection of Christ, if it did 
 occur, was certainly a miracle of a stupendous 
 sort: "But if Christ be not risen, then is our 
 preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." "^ 
 
 Thus far, I take it, neither our facts can be 
 ignored, nor the deductions from them disputed. 
 Here is the fact of sin, and the burden of uni- 
 versal sorrow beneath which it buries men. Here 
 is the need of pardon and purity, which Nature 
 cannot give, which man cannot procure, which 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 14. 
 
120 MIRACLBS. 
 
 God alone can furnish, and whose announcement 
 he alone can make through means which shall 
 irrefutably disclose his presence. Here is the 
 Bible, which stands alone among all books in its 
 declaration of God's mercy, and in its adducing 
 of miracles to prove that its declarations are from 
 God, and are therefore true. All this is quite 
 remarkable ; but the question still remains, 
 whether the Bible actually gives us evidence 
 enough that its miracles did occur. The oc- 
 casion was momentous: the need was incalcu- 
 lable. Was the occasion met? Is the need 
 supplied ? 
 
 To this inquiry the answer is, that, if the mir- 
 acles did occur, no evidence of the fact could 
 be better than that which we actually possess. 
 No events in history have a wider and more un- 
 equivocal testimony than have these. The mira- 
 cles were not done in a corner. There was no 
 effort to conceal them. They challenged scrutiny. 
 Though always wrought in proof of the one truth 
 of redemption, they were done in many places, at 
 many times, by different persons, to whom it was 
 given to declare different points or applications 
 of the great theme. They were witnessed by 
 thousands. They were of such a nature, tha.t the 
 beholders could not be mistaken as to whether 
 they did take place. That Christ should walk 
 
MIKACLES. 121 
 
 upon the water ; that he should still the storm 
 by a word ; that he should raise the dead even 
 where the body had been buried four days ; that 
 he should heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the 
 ieper, with a touch, a look, a word; that he 
 should be crucified, dead, and buried, and then 
 rise from the dead, and be seen for forty days by 
 those who had known him most intimately before 
 his death, — can be explained by no jugglery nor 
 deception ; and these events must actually have 
 occurred as reported, or their reporters have 
 fabricated the stories, knowing them to be false. 
 But why should such a fabrication be attempted ? 
 and how was it possible to carry out the decep- 
 tion ? The apostles had nothing to gain, but 
 every thing to lose, by such an undertaking. To 
 affirm these stories of their Master was to brino* 
 
 o 
 
 npon them also their Master's fate. Because of 
 their report, the apostles did suffer obloquy, per- 
 secution, and death ; and, though they must have 
 foreseen this result, they continued their declara- 
 tion, ceasing not to teach and to preach that 
 Jesus is the Christ, and that these mighty works 
 were wrought of God through him. Does this 
 look like an attempt to deceive ? Is it possible 
 that in all this the apostles were only acting out 
 a lie ? Surely this would be only a miracle more 
 astounding than any which they declare. 
 11 
 
122 MIRACLES. 
 
 But more than this : the word of the apostles 
 was believed. It was believed on the very spot 
 where the miracles were declared to have taken 
 place, and by thousands who could have at once 
 disproved the story if it were not true. It was 
 believed by their enemies. The apostles fur- 
 nished proof of their statements, which no 
 amount of argument or persecution could rebut. 
 The recital found adherents everywhere. The 
 bigoted Jew, the scornful Greek, the proud Ro- 
 man, acknowledged its force. It won its way in 
 the largest cities of the world. It conquered the 
 chief seats of culture. It took possession of the 
 high places of power. Hardly three centuries 
 from the crucifixion, a disciple of Christ sat upon 
 the throne of the Csesars, and the world lay at his 
 feet. Now, as the miracles were continually put 
 forth by the early preachers of Christianity as the 
 evidence of its truth, it must have been believed 
 that they occurred. But when we remember 
 how manifest and how numerous and how mar 
 vellous the so-called miracles were, and how 
 boldly the apostles proclaimed them, and how 
 constantly they relied upon them, and that the 
 numbers who participated in the scenes de- 
 scribed, and who might have disproved the 
 miracles if they had not occurred, must have 
 exceeded the apostles by thousands to one, is it 
 
MIRACLES. 123 
 
 possible fhat it was all a mistake ? This, I say 
 again, would be the greatest miracle of all. 
 
 But still further : It does not appear that any- 
 one ever ventured to deny the miracles at the 
 time when the apostles were declaring them as 
 the reason why all the world should believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ. Christianity did not meet 
 with an easy reception, though it spread so rap- 
 idly. It was opposed on every hand. Per- 
 secution was not the only means employed for 
 its overthrow. Learning and philosophy set their 
 forces in array, and sought to demolish it on high 
 intellectual grounds. But, in all that was said in 
 opposition to it during its early history, not a 
 word appears to have been uttered against the 
 reality of its miracles. Every argument was 
 urged which the keenest hostility could suggest ; 
 but no one seems to have thought it possible to 
 deny that the miracles took place. But if there 
 had been, at the time, any room for the denial, 
 does any one doubt that it would have been ut- 
 tered? We must remember that the apostles 
 were preaching an exclusive religion. They were 
 continually declaring that there is no other way 
 of salvation. They set themselves against every 
 form of doctrine, however venerable or dear, 
 which was contrary to the name of Jesus of Naz- 
 areth ; and when, in proof of theii* doctrine, 
 
124 MIRACLES. 
 
 they hold up the miracles everywhere, and no 
 one anywhere attempts to deny them, is it not 
 clear that the evidence for them was felt to be 
 irrefutable ? 
 
 But there is yet a stronger point. Not only 
 did the opposers of Christianity fail to deny the 
 miracles ; they actually admitted them, and have 
 left their testimony to the fact of their occur- 
 rence: " He casteth out devils by Beelzebub," * 
 said the Jewish rulers, unable to deny the fact of 
 the wonderful work. In like manner, Celsus and 
 Hierocles, and Julian the apostate, and the Jew- 
 ish rabbis in the Talmud, — all of whom wrote 
 and argued even bitterly against Christianity, — • 
 have yet all left their acknowledgment, which 
 we still possess, of the actual occurrence of these 
 events, which they seek to account for by magi- 
 cal arts ; which Celsus af&rms Christ must have 
 learned in Egypt, and by which he was able to 
 deceive great multitudes. Are we not entitled 
 to say, therefore, that here is a certainty ? If any 
 thing can be certain, these facts thus reported 
 did occur. The great doctrine which the Bible 
 proclaims, it also proves. It is not unmeaning ; 
 it is no delusion ; it is the great truth of God, 
 that "he so loved the world, that he gave his 
 
 * Matt. ix. 34; Mark iii. 22; Lukexi. 15. 
 
MIRACLES. 125 
 
 only -begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." * " Therefore we ought to give the more 
 earnest heed to the things which we have heard, 
 lest at any time we should let them slip. For if 
 the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and 
 every transgression and disobedience received a 
 just recompense of reward, how shall we escape 
 if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first 
 began to be spoken by the Lord, and was con- 
 firmed unto us by them that heard him, God also 
 bearing them witness, both with signs and won- 
 ders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost according to his own will ? " f 
 
 I have thus far preferred to deal with the 
 question on its positive side, seeking only to 
 discover and declare the exact matter of fact, 
 without reference to any inquiry respecting the 
 antecedent impossibility and incredibility of these 
 events. If it be proved — as I claim must be 
 admitted from the evidence we possess — that 
 miracles have actually taken place, then they are 
 both possible and credible ; and any speculative 
 difficulties upon this point must be untenable. 
 But, if untenable, can they not be shown to be 
 thus on speculative grounds? and is this not de- 
 
 * John iii. 16. t Heb. il 1-4 
 
126 MIRACLES. 
 
 sirable? I answer affirmatively, and proceed, 
 without reluctance, to the task ; though, in doing 
 this, I do not admit that the positive argument in 
 favor of miracles needs ought further than its 
 own statement, clearly apprehended, to compel 
 assent. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to dwell upon the 
 objection, considerably urged in some quarters, 
 that a miracle is only a physical fact ; and is there- 
 fore, at the best, but an argument addressed to 
 the senses, and should not be put forth as a meth- 
 od of convincing the intellect. I am not sure 
 that I understand this objection ; for I cannot 
 look upon it from any standpoint which gives it 
 force, except as I shut my eyes to the most open 
 facts of every man's experience. Physical facts, 
 or arguments addressed to the senses, do con- 
 tinually move the intellect of every man. The 
 sunrise is a physical fact ; but does it convey noth- 
 ing more to the intellect of the man who beholds 
 it than it does to the ox ? The ocean, the clouds, 
 the stars, the human voice, the face of a friend, 
 the form of a statue, the colors of a painting or a 
 landscape, — all these are physical facts, — argu- 
 ments addressed to the senses, if one please ; but 
 is there no beauty nor truth disclosed through 
 them ? and could the disclosure come in any other 
 way? 
 
MIRACLES. 127 
 
 Neitlier does it seem necessary to tarry witli 
 the objection, that a miracle indicates caprice or 
 vacillation on the part of God. The miracle does 
 not contradict the grand statement of Scripture, 
 that the Lord is of one mind, and "known unto 
 God are all his works from the foundations of the 
 world." It may have been as truly a part of 
 his purpose to produce the miracle as that any 
 natural event should take place ; and there is no 
 more difficulty in supposing that something ab- 
 solutely new should be introduced into Nature, 
 than that Nature itself, as something new, should 
 be introduced, when, "in the beginning, God 
 created the heavens and the earth." 
 
 The first objection which I would more partic- 
 ularly consider has been most recently uttered 
 by Mr. Lecky, who, in his somewhat confused 
 " History of European Morals," deems that the 
 Christian miracles had very little to do with the 
 conversion of the Roman Empire, because every- 
 body in those days believed in miracles, and no 
 one attached any special importance to them. 
 They were af&xed to the Christian doctrine as a 
 matter of course, just as similar wonders accom- 
 panied other recitals ; but the inductive philos- 
 ophy of our time has substituted a critical spirit 
 for the credulity which then prevailed, and we 
 are able to see that the Christian and all other 
 miracles are equally untrue. 
 
128 MIRACLES. 
 
 Now, it may be that there was a readier ac- 
 ceptance of the supernatural at that period than 
 at the j)resent time ; and yet, if we subject this 
 notion to this same critical spirit of advanced 
 modern thought, we fail to find such evidence 
 of its truth as the confident assertion of it would 
 seem to imply. There were sceptics then as 
 well as now. There were railers at the current 
 notions of divine things, as numerous and as 
 self-confident, then as now. There were the 
 esoteric mysteries, not peculiar to the Greeks, 
 but probably learned by them from the Egyp- 
 tians, and found also with the Persian magi and 
 the ancient Druids, in which the initiated were 
 permitted to see the irrationalities of the common 
 faith. There were Gorgias and Protagoras and 
 Lucretius and Lucian, who would probably 
 match any of our modern deniers of the super- 
 natural ; besides Celsus and Porphyry and Hier- 
 ocles and Julian, whose earnestness of convic- 
 tion no modern unbeliever in Christianity will 
 be likely to outdo. Porphyry and Jamblichus 
 wrote lives of Pythagoras, adorned with won- 
 ders as marvellous, to say the least, as any re- 
 corded in the Gospels ; but the age was not 
 sufficiently inclined to the supernatural to receive 
 them with credit. Not every thing wonderful 
 was then believed. 
 
MIRACLES. 129 
 
 The trutli is, that, while the supernatural may 
 be denied by some in every age, it has always 
 proved itself the belief of the great mass of men, 
 and is, perhaps, as prominent at the present as 
 at any time. Counterfeits prove not only the 
 worth, but the currency, of the genuine coin ; 
 and the easy and wide spread of the so-called 
 Spiritualism — not to mention other errors illus- 
 trating the same — shows that very considerable 
 obstacles still resist the attempt to root out the 
 supernatural from the thoughts of common men. 
 
 Now, if there was no importance attached to 
 miracles in the days of the apostles, and if, as no 
 one disputes, Christianity won its way in the 
 face of every opposition, till it conquered a su- 
 preme place in the esteem of the entire civilized 
 world, then how is this latter fact to be account- 
 ed for, unless we bring in — though the objec- 
 tor has no thought of introducing it — some 
 superior intrinsic evidence in Christianity itself, by 
 which it was able to convince the world of its 
 truth ? Men do not give up cherished convic- 
 tions, and receive, instead, a doctrine which 
 contradicts all they have previously held, for no 
 cause. Nations do not change their customs 
 and belief suddenly, and without any reason. 
 Paganism, in the Roman Empire, did not die 
 without a struggle : how came it to die at all ? 
 
130 MIRACLES. 
 
 It employed both persecution and argument to 
 sustain itself: why did it not succeed? To say, 
 as Mr. Lecky does, that it was because of a 
 " disintegration of old religions, and a general 
 thirst for belief," shows neither the sagacious 
 historian nor philosopher; for the question at 
 once recurs, How did Christianity come to satis- 
 fy this general thirst for belief? and how, in this 
 disintegration of old religions, was the new re- 
 ligion able to stand, as though it was the word 
 of God, which liveth and abideth forever ? Say 
 what we will, the indisputable fact remains, that 
 paganism in the Eoman Empire died because it 
 was supplanted : it lost its sway because a might- 
 ier power wrenched the sceptre from its grasp ; 
 and, if historians choose to say that miracles 
 were no element of this mightier power, then they 
 are bound to tell us what the elements of it act- 
 ually were. What is the cause of these prodi- 
 gious effects ? That the fruit is ripe, and ready to 
 drop, does not explain its fall, unless there is some 
 power of gravity to bring it down. That the 
 nations were ready for the gospel ; that Christ 
 came, as the Scripture says, "in the fulness of 
 time," — does not account for the conversion of 
 the nations, unless they were convinced that he 
 was the living object of their desire. That they 
 were thus convinced is the indisputable fact; 
 
MIRACLES. 131 
 
 but, if his miracles had no cogency, how could thia 
 have been, unless he possessed other and superior 
 means of compelling assent to his claims ? The 
 denial that miracles had any force in the early 
 spread of Christianity obliges one to declare that 
 the gospel has such interior and self-evident 
 proof, that nothing is needful but its own state- 
 ments to show men that it is divine. I am willing 
 to leave the objector undisturbed in either of 
 these positions. Augustine long ago said, " If 
 you do not believe the miracles, you must then 
 believe that the world was converted without 
 miracles; and this would be a miracle." 
 
 Another phase of this same objection relates 
 to the test of a miracle. If we allow that mira- 
 cles are possible and credible, how shall we 
 distinguish the spurious from the genuine, — the 
 "lying wonders," which come "with all deceiv- 
 ableness of unrighteousness in them that perish," * 
 and the miracles which are wrought and recorded 
 that we might "believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
 the Son of God " ? If the magicians with their 
 enchantments f did such things as Moses did, 
 why should we not put faith in them as well as 
 in Moses ? And if Simon, the Samaritan • sor- 
 cerer, J was a man "to whom all of the city 
 
 ♦ 2 Thess. ii. 10. t Exod. vii., viii. { Acts. viii. 9, 10. 
 
132 MIEACLES. 
 
 gave heed, from the least unto the greatest, say- 
 ing, This man is the great power of God," why 
 does not he have as high claims to our regard as 
 does Peter, who denounced him to his face ? 
 
 To this there is*a double answer. In the first 
 place, the Bible makes a clear distinction be- 
 tween the two. While it relates the wonders of 
 the magicians and sorcerers, it also relates how 
 these men were confounded by a mightier power 
 than they could wield. Omnipotence is never at 
 their control, and they are furnished with no 
 divine attestation. On the other hand, they are 
 continually met and controlled by what is evi- 
 dently an almighty power. Still further : the Bible 
 records certain events, which demanded, beyond 
 dispute, God's special interposition. Such were 
 those connected with the deliverance of the 
 Hebrews from Egypt, by which they were con- 
 strained to say, " The Lord brought us forth out 
 of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an out- 
 stretched arm, and with great terribleness, and 
 with signs and wonders."^ On the basis of these 
 miracles, Moses might appeal, as the Bible says he 
 did, to the truth thus revealed, as the standard 
 by which all other doctrines might be tested : " If 
 there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer 
 
 f Deut. xxvi. 8. 
 
MIEACLES. 133 
 
 of dreams, and givetli thee a sign or a wonder, 
 and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof 
 he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other 
 gods which thou hast not known, and let us 
 serve them, thou shalt not hearken unto the 
 words of that prophet or that dreamer of 
 dreams."^ As though he had said, "God has 
 given, by his miracles, indisputable proof that he 
 is the Lord your God : let no sign nor wonder 
 contradict this ; for he never can contradict him- 
 self" In like manner, Paul, of whom Christ, 
 after hi^aresnrrection, was seen, "as of one born 
 out of due time," f might appeal to that resur- 
 rection as the all-sufficient voucher for the 
 doctrines which he declared ; and might say, as 
 he did to the Galatians, "Though we, or an 
 angel from heaven, preach any other gospel 
 unto you than that which we have preached 
 unto you, let him be accursed." J Whether we 
 explain the "lying wonders" as wrought by 
 jugglery, or by bringing into play forces of 
 Nature which only the performers knew, or by a 
 supernatural power of evil which has been able 
 to penetrate the natural world with its hostility 
 to the good, — in no case does the Bible fail to 
 furnish the means for a clear discrimination 
 
 * Deut. xiii. 1-3. f 1 Cor. xv. 8. | Gal. i. 8. 
 
 12 
 
134 MIRACLES. 
 
 between the two kinds of wonders which it 
 records. 
 
 Another answer to this question will also 
 reply to a still broader inquiry, — Why affirm 
 the miracles of the Bible, and deny those related 
 in other books ? Are not the healing of a blind 
 man and a cripple by Vespasian, and the print 
 of the nails upon St. Francis, and the wonders 
 performed at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, with 
 unnumbered other incidents of the same sort, 
 facts for which the testimony is clear and ample ? 
 and were not these as truly miracles as aiiy which 
 the Scripture records ? I do not care here to 
 scrutinize the evidence on which the reports of 
 these marvels rest ; though it must be confessed, 
 that, in the great majority of the instances ad- 
 duced, when the evidence is thoroughly sifted, it 
 falls to the ground. But supposing we admit 
 that a blind man was restored to sight, and a 
 cripple to strength, by the touch and word of 
 Vespasian, though Tacitus and Suetonius, the 
 only authorities for the story, differ in their 
 account to a degree, which, if found in the New- 
 Testament writers, would assuredly be said to in- 
 validate their testimony : but waiving this, and 
 supposing it also to be true that the stigmata 
 actually appeared upon the hands and feet of 
 St. Francis, and that extraordinary cures were 
 
MIRACLES. 135 
 
 WTOuglit at the tomb of the Abbe Paiis, and that 
 persons have been apparently cured of the scrof- 
 ula by the touch of a king, — the evidence of any 
 thing miraculous, or of a divine interposition for 
 the counteraction of Nature, is still wholly lack- 
 ing. The science of anthropology discloses many 
 and curious susceptibilities to bodily changes 
 through mental impressions; and, if these mar- 
 vels happened, they may be illustrations of forces 
 belonging wholly to Nature, and which we as yet 
 but partially apprehend. I deny any thing 
 miraculous in these events, and challenge the ob- 
 jector for his proof; but I affirm the miraculous 
 in those great events to which the Christian Scrip- 
 tures appeal, and I prove the affirmation by the 
 occasion, the results, and the quality of the 
 events themselves. These events took place, as 
 we have seen, in attestation of a doctrine of 
 incalculable importance for men to know, but 
 whose truth no other means were adequate to 
 disclose. They have, therefore, a sufficient oc- 
 casion ; while the other class has none. Give to 
 these pagan and papal marvels undisputed evi- 
 dence, and all the significance they claim, and 
 how far does this significance reach ? — simply to 
 this, that certain marvels were done which, 
 ended with their doing ; which had no results 
 beyond the persons upon whom they were 
 
136 MIRACLES. 
 
 wrought ; and wliich, so far as the pagan won- 
 ders are concerned, did not profess to have. 
 The miracles of the New Testament were not 
 done simply that certain individuals might be 
 saved from certain natural misfortunes ; but these 
 natural misfortunes are removed in a supernat- 
 ural way, in order that not only to these individ- 
 uals, but to all the world, there may be taught 
 the great doctrine, to wit, "that God was in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not 
 imputing their trespasses unto them."* In 
 reference to these other marvels, we may say of 
 them, as Origen did, "What came of them? In 
 what did they issue ? Where is the society which 
 has been founded by their help ? What is there 
 in the world's history which they have helped 
 forward, to show that they lay deep in the mind 
 and counsel of God? The miracles of Moses 
 issued in a Jewish polity ; those of the Lord in a 
 Christian Church : whole nations were knit 
 together through their help. What have your 
 boasted Apollonius or Esculapius to show as the 
 fruit of theirs ? What traces have they left be- 
 hind them ? " 
 
 But the character of the events, as well as 
 their occasion and results, determines their 
 
 * 2 Cor. V. 19. 
 
MIRACLES. 137 
 
 miraculous quality. Take suck instancefi as the 
 raising of Lazarus or the resurrection of Christ ; 
 and to what jugglery or deception, or force of 
 Nature, however hidden, can these events be re- 
 ferred? Nay, do not all our investigations of 
 Nature, all the results of modern science, instead 
 of pointing us to some hitherto undiscovered law 
 of Nature as the sufficient cause of such events, 
 put it beyond all question that no force of Nature 
 could have produced them? Modern science 
 has, at least, taught us that these events cannot 
 have been natural events; and we are forced, 
 therefore, to admit their supernatural origin, or, 
 in spite of the evidence in their support, to denj' 
 the possibility of their occurrence. 
 
 We come, then, to this denial, in which the 
 opposition to miracles, in our time, finds its last 
 stronghold. A miracle, it is said, is impossible ; 
 and, therefore, no amount of testimony, nor any 
 number of men who have believed it, can make 
 me believe it. Nature is fixed and orderly. To 
 change an atom would change all the worlds. 
 To increase or diminish, in the least degree, the 
 exact amount of forces now constituting the 
 universe, would destroy the universe. This in- 
 troduction of a new force in Nature, such as a 
 miracle presupposes, is impossible. Forces of 
 Nature may be dissolved, and recombined ; but 
 
 12* 
 
138 MIEACLES. 
 
 always their exact equivalence will remain. 
 Nothing new can be created, and nothing old 
 destroyed. Moreover, says the objector to the 
 Christian Theist, you prove the existence of your 
 Deity by an appeal to the orderly arrangement 
 of Nature ; but you can only prove your miracle 
 by denying this same orderly arrangement. You 
 build a stairway up to a certain landing-place, 
 and then you maintain this landing-place by de- 
 stroying the very process which led to it, and the 
 very basis on which it stands. If your faith can 
 rest on such a contradiction, much more may my 
 unbelief I justify, therefore, my denial of mir- 
 acles, because they are impossible, and because 
 the interposition of God, which they assume, 
 demands an argument which would destroy the 
 very proof that there is a God. 
 
 I have endeavored to state the argument fully 
 and fairly. We should not attempt to maintain 
 what cannot be defended against any and all 
 attacks. 
 
 Now, it is not a reply to this objection, to say 
 that a miracle only brings in a higher order of 
 Nature than we had known before, and thus the 
 miracle-worker is only he, who, knowing the 
 event which is going to take place, but of which 
 others are ignorant, takes advantage of his supe- 
 rior wisdom to secure an acknowledgment of 
 
MIRACLES. 139 
 
 liis superior power. But this would be no miracle. 
 It would be no communication of God to the soul. 
 Such a view would neither maintain the Christian 
 revelation, nor answer the objection against its 
 miraculous evidence. 
 
 Let us meet the objection face to face, and 
 look it in the eye. Stripped of its verbiage, it 
 amounts to this, — a miracle is unreasonable, and 
 therefore impossible. But what do we mean by 
 reasonable and unreasonable ? What is this 
 supreme potency, which determines so easily 
 whether aught be possible or impossible ? The 
 objector appeals to it most confidently ; and so 
 do we, and so do all men. What does it mean ? 
 Is it only a word without reality, and with which 
 our thoughts cheat themselves ? But, then, how 
 idle all appeals to it must be ! and how absurd 
 this very objection becomes ! If the reasonable 
 has no reality, the objector to miracles because 
 of their unreasonableness has no reality in the 
 very ground- work of his objection. 
 
 But supposing we admit that the reasonable 
 is real, and confine its reality to what an individ- 
 ual man perceives and judges. There is thus no 
 universal standard of reason to which all our 
 perceptions and judgments should conform ; but 
 the reasonable is in a man's consciousness alone, 
 and it is unmeaning to talk of it as elsewhere or 
 
140 MIRACLES. 
 
 otherwise. But, if this be so, what folly to talk 
 at all ! Why should a man ever say a word if 
 there is no universal standard of reason according 
 to which his words can be judged by another 
 mind as truly as his own? And how does all 
 argument, i. e. every attempt to make others 
 think as we do, fall to the ground, if there is not 
 above and beyond us a standard to which we 
 feel that not only our judgments, but those of 
 every man, should conform ! If the reasonable 
 be only what I fancy to be so, I may not, indeed, 
 ask the objector to miracles to relinquish his 
 objections ; but just as little may he require me 
 to admit their force. Each man thus stands 
 upon a ground which he can neither maintain 
 against another, nor be forced by another to 
 abandon ; and all argument between men is vain, 
 and all agreement among them hopeless. 
 
 But if we suppose the reasonable is something 
 real, and has also its reality in some nature of 
 things outside and independent of the individual 
 mind which perceives it, we should then have a 
 standard by which we could measure our indi- 
 vidual judgments, and which would enable us to 
 argue with some possibility of agreement. In 
 this view, the reasonable would mean the facts 
 of Nature just as we discover them. I thus go 
 to Nature, and observe what is occurring there ; 
 
MIEACLES. 141 
 
 and these occurrences give me all mj knowl- 
 edge. I know nothing about the supernatural: 
 the word has no meaning to me ; but Nature is 
 real, and Nature is reasonable ; and this is all the 
 reality and all the reasonableness I can know. I 
 find no miracles in Nature, but only an invariable 
 order, which makes the thought of a miracle 
 absurd, and the occurrence of a miracle impossi- 
 ble. 
 
 Now this view, in which the unreasonable and 
 the impossible mean only what is unnatural, 
 deserves a close inspection, that we may see its 
 exact quality, and to what results it leads us. If 
 there be nothing reasonable but the facts of 
 Nature, then, of course, nothing can be known 
 beyond these facts ; and therefore, whether be- 
 yond these, any thing be possible or impossible, 
 we have no right to say. If the only reason for 
 the order of Nature, as we find it, be, that we 
 actually do thus find it, then we have no right 
 to say that it could never be found otherwise, 
 nor that we ourselves may not find it altogether 
 different to-morrow from what we find it to-day. 
 That a certain fact occurs is, in itself, no reason 
 why it should occur again ; and, if it has oc- 
 curred a thousand times, this alone gives not the 
 slightest reason for its future repetition. If we 
 know nothing about the causes of the fact ; if, as 
 
142 MIRACLES. 
 
 the positive philosophy stoutly affirms, we only 
 know the flicts themselves, — then to affirm any 
 thing save what we or competent witnesses have 
 actually observed is a most unwarranted assump- 
 tion, which, if it be good natural science, is good- 
 for-nothing logic. We have no right to general- 
 ize upon such grounds : all that we may do is to 
 hold to the individual phenomena as we have ob- 
 served them ; and, if there are no miracles among 
 these, we can say so ; but to deny that miracles 
 are found elsewhere with other phenomena is as 
 idle as for the blind man to deny the existence 
 of colors which he never saw, or the deaf man 
 the harmony which he cannot hear. To talk 
 about universal laws, and an order of Nature 
 which requires this and requires that, is to re- 
 nounce the prime postulate of the positive 
 school ; and thus these natural philosophers, who 
 enter so confidently upon their task of mowing 
 down and clearing up the theological thistle-field, 
 dexterously contrive to cut oif their own legs with 
 the first movement of their scythe. 
 
 The fallacy of the objection might be illus- 
 trated, if we could suppose an observer to become 
 acquainted with the force of gravity before there 
 is any light or heat for him to know. Such an 
 observer might become very conversant with 
 Nature as then existing: he might go through 
 
MIEACLES. 14S 
 
 the universe, and find one unvarying order bind- 
 ing all things to their centre ; but he might not, 
 therefore, say that any change of this order is 
 impossible. The introduction of light is such a 
 change. Light is the antithesis, the direct op- 
 posite, of gravity ; but when the Spirit of God 
 brooded over the waters, and God said, "Let 
 there be light," there was light. 
 
 If we generalize at all about Nature, and de- 
 duce any thing further than the facts which have 
 been actually observed, it is because we recog- 
 nize that there is something reasonable beneath 
 the facts, which also reaches beyond them, and 
 which, instead of being made by the facts, has 
 itself determined how they shall be made. The 
 objector to miracles begins his objection by deny- 
 ing that there is any such reasonableness : but he 
 is obliged to affirm it before he gets through; 
 and thus his objection rests upon two grounds 
 which flatly contradict each other. In other 
 words, he denies a miracle because it is different 
 from Nature; but he can only maintain that 
 nothing different from Nature can be by affirm- 
 ing a principle which is itself different from Na- 
 ture. The objector is attempting to ride two 
 horses, which are proceeding in opposite direc- 
 tions, at the same time, — a feat of gymnastics 
 not easy, certainly, for the performer, however 
 
144 MIRACLES. 
 
 amazing to the lookers-on. His argument is 
 the old fallacy of the undistributed middle in 
 the syllogism. A principle which can form the 
 basis of a universal affirmation, and by which 
 alone one is justified in affirming what is possible 
 and what impossible, is not only beyond and 
 above Nature, and must control Nature, but is 
 recognized as such even by him who denies the 
 supernatural ; or else his denial has no more 
 meaning, even to himself, than the chatter of a 
 parrot or a monkey. '' We must philosophize," 
 said Aristotle ; " and if one says we must not 
 philosophize, still, in saying thus, he doth phil- 
 osophize, and must do so." We must have the 
 supernatural ; and it is alike the mystery and 
 majesty of the human soul that we cannot deny 
 the supernatural except in terms which abso- 
 lutely imply and affirm it. 
 
 We take our stand, therefore, on this position, 
 and declare — what the very denial of it implies 
 — that the reasonable is supernatural ; and, on 
 this ground, the objection to miracles we are 
 now considering instantly disappears. It does 
 not profess to have any force except as it denies 
 the supernatural ; and, if this denial fail, the ob- 
 jection fails at once. If there be a reasonable- 
 ness which is supernatural, then there must be a 
 supernatural Reason who has made Nature, and 
 
MIRACLES. 145 
 
 who is not only its Author, but its Finisher as 
 well, beginning it and consummating it out of 
 his own fulness, and for his own glory. Could 
 he make it ? and can he not control it ? And if 
 it be the sublime truth that God hath "created 
 all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent that now 
 unto the principalities and powers in heavenly 
 places might be known by the Church the mani- 
 fold wisdom of God, according to the eternal 
 purpose which he proposed in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord," then, what is to hinder such adjustments 
 and interferences with the order of Nature as he 
 may see fit to introduce for the full disclosure 
 and accomplishment of the wondrous plan? 
 
 "To many minds," said Plato, "there must 
 come a moral improvement before they can re- 
 ceive any intellectual enlightenment ; " and to 
 the minds immersed in Nature, and who boast of 
 their inability to look beyond it, how much need 
 there is of a spiritual insight and quickening ! A 
 man's intellect which has shut out the light of the 
 supernatural is like a man's senses which have 
 shut out the light of day. In either case, he walks 
 in darkness. He speculates, perhaps; he inquires 
 about the meaning of thiugs; he explores Na- 
 ture ; he gives us his sciences, which he calls the 
 only positive truth : but he is all the while like 
 a blind man, who feels over with his fingers the 
 
 13 
 
146 MIRACLES. 
 
 form of a statue, or the face of a man, in order 
 to discover thus the beauty and the living soul. 
 Oh for the light ! Oh for the opened eye ! What 
 a difference would they work at once in all his 
 inquiries and their results ! If the blind man 
 could only see, how insignificant would all his 
 discoveries by his fingers seem ! And, if the in- 
 tellect which seeks to shut out the supernatural 
 could only be illumined by its light, how mean- 
 ingless and dead would be all its movements 
 separate fi'om this ! 
 
 To a soul which has actually known Jesus 
 Christ as the Saviour of sinners, and found him 
 its light and hope of glory, and opened its eye 
 to the lofty view which he reveals of man, of 
 Nature, and of God, how meagre and unsatisfying 
 seem all speculations which he has not illumined 
 and inspired ! 
 
 '' The entrance of Thy words giveth light-; 
 IT giveth understanding unto the simple. My 
 
 LIPS SHALL UTTER PRAISE WHEN ThOU HAST TAUGHT 
 
 ME Thy STATUTES. The law or the Lord is per- 
 fect, CONVERTING THE SOUL ; THE TESTIMONY OF 
 
 THE Lord is sure, making wise the simple ; the 
 
 STATUTES OF THE LORD ARE RIGHT, REJOICING THE 
 HEART ; THE COMMANDMENT OF THE LORD IS PURE, 
 ENLIGHTENING THE EYES." 
 
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