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MENS CHRISTI 
 
 OTHER PROBLEMS 11 THEOLOGY 
 
 AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 JOHN STEIN FOET KEDNEY, D. D. 
 
 Professor OP Divinity in Seabury Divinity School; Author op "Hegel's 
 
 Esthetics," "Christian Doctrine Harmonized," "The 
 
 Beautiful and the Sublime," Etc. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 S. C. GEIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 1891. 
 
^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 Copyright, 1891, 
 By S. C GRIGGS & COMPANY. 
 
 PllESS OF KNIGHT, LEONARD & CO., CHICAGO. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The first five of the Lectures in this 
 volume were delivered in December, 1890, 
 before the students of the '' Episcopal Theo- 
 logical Seminary " at Cambridge, Massachu- 
 setts, and others, at the request of the 
 Trustees of that Institution. The topics were 
 selected as such in which it was thought 
 that Theology as a unified system was capable 
 of and might receiA^e development and ad- 
 vance ; or as touched practical questions of 
 moment, and under discussion at the present 
 day. 
 
 The sixth lecture was delivered in the year 
 1889 before the '' Summer School of Theology" 
 at Sewanee, Tennessee, and has been printed 
 in the '' Magazine of Christian Literature " for 
 November, 1890. It is here appended as 
 opening up a fruitful subject for further 
 treatment. 
 
 August, 1891. 
 
coNTE:r^TS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The question of Jesus' knowledge, and 
 of inspieation, as affected by the 
 doctrine of the kenosis . . . 1. 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 The doctrine of atonement . . .33 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The possibilities of the future, as de- 
 termining the mode of human moral 
 activity 66 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The functions of the christian ministry 105 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 The doctrine of ''A nature in God" . 140 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 The impotence and the right use of 
 imagination in dealing with chris- 
 tian doctrine 168 
 
LECTURE L 
 
 THE QUESTION OF JESVS' KNOWLEDGE, AND 
 OF INSPIRATION, AS AFFECTED BY THE 
 DOCTRINE OF THE KENOSIS.* 
 
 The question has arisen afresh in our day 
 of the extent of the knowledge of Jesus Christ 
 before his death ; or, as some minds state it 
 to themselves, the extent of his ignorance. 
 This is an old question, and on some occasion 
 or other, and in some shape or other, has 
 come up frequently in the history of Christian 
 thought. We are reminded of the controver- 
 sies and struggles of the early days, through 
 which the Christian church found itself, at 
 length, able and authorized to asseverate, in 
 terms, the doctrine of our Lord's true human- 
 
 * One reason why this was selected as the topic for a lecture was the stir 
 made among theologians by the appearance of the Rev. Mr. Gore's article on 
 Inspiration in the book entitled ''Lux Mioidi.'' But I wrote the lecture 
 before reading the article, that my own treatment might be more dispassion- 
 ate. I found in Mr. Gore's disquisition much to sympathize with, and some 
 things to criticise. Those who read both will see that I have gone into the 
 matter more deeply, and have attempted an analysis that it did not come 
 within his immediate design to make. The whole subject receives larger 
 treatment in chapters 18, 19, 20 and 23 of the second volume of my work 
 "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." in which last chapter, likewise, will be 
 found the true philosophy of Christian prayer and a vindication of the thesis 
 that the entire cosmic movement is ruled by the requirements of God's moral 
 government, in which alone is its final cause. 
 
 1 
 
Z MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 ity. The need which was first apparent in 
 those times to affirm against all impugners the 
 doctrine of his divinity had led many, in order 
 to maintain it, to ignore, or not to perceive, 
 what was essential in the definition of his 
 humanity ; and only step by step were those 
 forms of doctrine fenced off which virtually 
 denied his humanity by impairing the notion 
 of what essential humanity is. And the diffi- 
 culties for the mind which are found in the 
 entire problem, wherein contrasts have to be 
 reconciled, have always induced a predisposi- 
 tion to cut short the enquiry by emphasizing 
 the Divinity to such an extent as to lose sight 
 of the truth that there was and must have been 
 a kenosis, or limitation of the divine element 
 in Jesus' personality, or to pare away this latter 
 doctrine unduly. Thus, then and ever since, 
 there has been manifest a disposition to fall 
 back upon the monophysitic ground, and to 
 make assertions, if which are true, the doctrine 
 of his humanity has undergone degradation, 
 and thereby the definition of his divinity 
 itself has been impaired, as I shall presently 
 proceed to show. 
 
 But the conciliar decisions of the church are 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 with us in this statement. They will bear the 
 scrutiny of speculative thinking, and may on 
 this account be safely trusted, as well as because 
 they represent the clarified Christian con- 
 sciousness, and thus have objective authority. 
 These, in terms suited to the exigencies of their 
 times, declared the doctrine of our Lord's com- 
 plete humanity, and defined it against the 
 immediate impugners. But humanity cannot 
 be defined in few words, and new and subtle 
 enquiries still started up ; and as each age had 
 to do its own thinking to appropriate that of its 
 predecessors, the disposition still remained to 
 torture the definition of his humanity to fit the 
 supposed requirements of his divinity, and it 
 remains still. Not a year passes in which may 
 not be found in the religious periodicals utter- 
 ances, honestly meant to do honor to our Lord 
 Christ, which are only self-consistent on the 
 presuppositions of a monophysitic scheme of 
 doctrine, and, in some cases, those of the Nesto- 
 rian scheme. This question, then, of the 
 extent of Jesus' knowledge, or the extent of 
 his ignorance (since it has to be answered so far 
 as is needfuLto avoid the difficulties in the way 
 of reaching a harmonized theologic system), 
 
4 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 requires for its elucidation and sufficient reply 
 that we bring up for examination afresh the 
 doctrine of his humanity on the one side, and 
 on the other the doctrine of kenosis, or the 
 self-limitation required for the Incarnation. 
 
 Man is a spiritual soul — as soul related to 
 the material universe, as spiritual soul related 
 to pure spirit — thus related on the one side to 
 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as pure spirit, 
 and on the other side to the Divine Doxa, as 
 synthesized by spirit. As made in the image 
 of God, and his highest possible creature, he is 
 morally free, and comes, sooner or later, to 
 know himself to be all this. Allowing every- 
 thing else to determinism, he is his own creator 
 as to the moral form, and must come up to all 
 the requirements of a moral being. To attain 
 real freedom, and the perfect liberty required 
 for a permanent form of life, he must undergo 
 development, in which his own will is an effi- 
 cient. He rises out of the abyss of the uncon- 
 scious, quickened by a divine act, and is at the 
 start immortal, because he is moral, and has to 
 determine his moral status during his develop- 
 ment, which is both physical and mental as 
 well as moral, all these three elements of it 
 
MEXS CHRISTI. 5 
 
 conditioning each other. Thus his knowledge 
 is a gradual growth, conditioned by all these 
 relations. It follows and is graded by his 
 experience, and constitutes the light by which 
 he frames motives or ends which determine his 
 activity and hence his moral form. These deci- 
 sions of will affect immediately the content of 
 his consciousness, and remotely, and perhaps 
 immediately, too, his ph^^sical being. These, 
 then, as well as the parallel social changes, 
 become part of his environment, and thus make 
 more complex the conditions under which his 
 moral history proceeds. By the use of his 
 freedom the content of his intelligence is 
 affected. It would not be difficult to show that 
 by his moral recession, or wrong choice of ends, 
 his being is impoverished and narrowed, and 
 that by his right choice and moral advance it 
 is enriched and amplified. His knowledge, 
 then, must be affected accordingly. In the one 
 case, some springs or possibilities of knowledge 
 may dry up ; in the other case, they may be 
 loosened to flow more freely ; or new ones may 
 be started, and latent possibilities quickened to 
 become realities. In the case of the right 
 moral progress, the knowledge clarifies itself, 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 and becomes truer and truer. Retrogressions 
 become less and less likely or possible. The 
 avenues of his complex soul-structure, through 
 which any subtle, mystical influences may 
 reach him, become freer and freer. Thus he is 
 gradually enabled to hold all essential truth in 
 proper synthesis. The vibration between the 
 a priori evidence for the postulates of his moral 
 consciousness and history, for the '' things 
 unseen," on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 the a posteriori doubts which the sensuous 
 understanding presents (which vibration consti- 
 tutes his trial, and measures the degree of his 
 faith), still remains as the condition for its own 
 ultimate subsidence ; that is, the victory of faith 
 at length carries the subject beyond the need of 
 this trial and struggle, and the vibration slowly 
 subsides. Yet his trials, and the consequent 
 need of his interior vigor, may grow more 
 intense and require the uttermost exercise of 
 his persistence toward the end, and thus, by this 
 triumphing persistence, the final influx of vigor 
 is reached, as the condition for the removal of 
 all his doubts and trials. 
 
 If this be a definition of humanity, and so 
 far a description of the essential human career, 
 
MENS CHRISTI. l 
 
 and man's ideal destiny so far as the sojourn on 
 earth is concerned, the Son of God, in becoming 
 human, must have become, must have passed 
 through, all this. If he missed anywhat that 
 is to befall one whose moral development pro- 
 ceeds without retrogression, that is, is sinless, he 
 missed what is highest and finest in humanity, 
 and cannot • be thought to have been truly hu- 
 man. To suppose in him the full divine con- 
 sciousness at the start is to deny the fact of his 
 human development, or give it a Doketic form. 
 He no longer appears in what is the highest hu- 
 man characteristic, and our sense of fellowship 
 with him is lost. To suppose that the divine 
 element led along passively the human, is again 
 to degrade the latter, and loAver our conception 
 of the former. The Incarnation shows, in its 
 highest definition, as an exhibition of the di- 
 vine love, rather than as an exhibition of the 
 divine power. And this love is shown in his 
 self-limitation, which made his sacrifice of him- 
 self possible. Hence his knowledge, to be a 
 true human knowledge, must have been at- 
 tained, as ours is attained, through human or- 
 gans, and have been, as ours, a gradual growth. 
 He must have passed through every phase of 
 
O MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 human consciousness^ except as it has been 
 modified by the contradiction, — even the in- 
 fantile one, where empirical knowledge exists 
 not, — and all the stages whereby the results of 
 sensation, perception, conception and compre- 
 hension are wrought up into knowledge. Infor- 
 mation as to facts and events must have been 
 gained as ours is gained, and through the same 
 media. He was determined by heredity, through 
 his mother, and thus retains organic connec- 
 tion with the human race, and is a part of its 
 history. He was determined also by his en- 
 vironment, as we are, and showed the results of 
 it in his mode of speaking. His education and 
 experience were those of a Jew. 
 
 To think that all this was pretended, or a dis- 
 guise, and that the full divine consciousness 
 existed beneath, and that omnipotence was vol- 
 untarily refrained from exercise, is, again, either 
 Doketism or a form of Nestorianism. The hu- 
 man consciousness is either pretended, or exists 
 side by side with the divine one, and we have 
 a double personality and no true union. 
 
 If, then, his empirical knowledge was gained 
 as ours is, how rash is it for anyone to say that 
 it was unlimited, or to make any arbitrary limi- 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 9 
 
 tation ; as those do who declare that ignorance 
 can only be predicated of him as pertaining to 
 the few occasions when he confessed it. They 
 who do so cannot explain why it should have 
 been confined to these particulars alone ; and if 
 they fall back upon the a priori assumption that 
 his divinity must be thought as requiring in 
 him unlimited knowledge, then his divine con- 
 sciousness must have been willfullv darkened, 
 and the honesty of his declaration must under- 
 go suspicion. It would be just as valid an ar- 
 gument or assertion for one who declares the 
 contrary to fall back upon the <z priori ground 
 of his humanit}^, and ask to be shown how any 
 superhuman knoAvledge was possible unless by 
 dividing his consciousness and thinking him as 
 living a double life. It is as valid to assume 
 his human ignorance as it is to assume his 
 divine omniscience. Both assertions are shal- 
 low, and the profounder problem is to show 
 how far the divine consciousness has under- 
 gone limitation, and how far the human has 
 undergone modification, expansion and exal- 
 tation, and to reconcile these in a consistent 
 synthesis, if possible. 
 
 The endeavor may be well meant to do honor 
 
10 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 to our Lord as divine by all this insistence upon 
 the scantily limited extent of his knowledge ; 
 but it fails of its end, for, as before, his divinity 
 appears in a profounder definition and comes 
 nearer to our hearts by the limitation than by 
 the exhibition of omniscience. It is shown not 
 so clearly by the divine aloofness — for as omni- 
 potent God is still far off — as by his nearness, by 
 his lovingly submitting to human conditions, 
 for in this region man may meet him. Our 
 power is borrowed, and may shrink into non- 
 entity, but our love is immortal and may be 
 boundless, when called forth by the Divine 
 Love. Moreover, love in its perfection is creative. 
 It must go beyond itself As the mutual recog- 
 nition of the Father and the Son shows love for 
 the first, in thought, existing, it is at once, in 
 thought, active, whereby the Holy Spirit eter- 
 nally proceeds, and a universe may issue. So 
 when love in its purity and perfection in man, 
 responsive to the love of God, comes to be, it, 
 too, is creative ; which is what St. Peter meant 
 when he said that we should share the divine 
 
 But there is another side to all this argu- 
 ment concerning the knowledge of Jesus. While, 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 11 
 
 on the one hand, his knowledge was human and 
 gained through the same media as ours is, it 
 was more than simply human, was ideally hu- 
 man, and thus, in a sense, superhuman. It is 
 not to be denied that there is a Charybdis on 
 the other side of this Scylla, and that we may 
 contemplate in thought his humanity so ab- 
 stractly as not to see that it was modified at the 
 start by the entrance of divinity into human 
 development. Here now, and for the first, 
 occur any real difficulties in the endeavor to 
 reach satisfying conclusions. 
 
 There is no room here for the exhibition of 
 the grounds upon which it must be held as 
 axiomatic that the consciousness of the Eternal 
 Son, as such, Avas unbroken ; that the conscious- 
 ness of his relation to the Eternal Father, and 
 of himself as undergoing kenosis by the limi- 
 tation of the transcendent attributes of omni^ 
 science and omnipotence, was perennial, was a 
 thread of unbroken continuity. Hence that, 
 as such, it existed ab initio, and at the lowest 
 stage of human development. Nor is there 
 room for the elaboration of the thesis that in 
 the rudimentary consciousness of the quickened 
 human germ — in the primal sensations felt as 
 
12 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 internal change, yet soon discovered to be im- 
 parted ah extra — there is implicit the principle 
 of causality, afterward to be recognized as the 
 governing law in all mental activity and his- 
 tory, which cannot be escaped from, and which 
 is the substratum from which arises the knowl- 
 edge and thegrowing idea of God. 
 
 Postulating these, we find ourselves obliged 
 to think, or assume, the coalescence, in the 
 incarnation of the Eternal Son, of the divine 
 consciousness with the rudimentary human 
 one, thus conserving the unipersonality, — the 
 Divine being thus limited to the uttermost of 
 the possibility of its limitation. But from this 
 very coalescence the pure rudimentary con- 
 sciousness of the infant must receive modi- 
 fication. We may think, then, that the infantile 
 recognition of a power ah extra (for the sim- 
 plest sensation is not self-caused, and is there- 
 fore still ah extra), when thus affected by the 
 coalescence with it of the Divine, assumes the 
 form of felt and responsive love. Thus what is 
 most divine is retained, and there is no break 
 in its continuity, by the Eternal Son taking 
 human form. We may think, too, that even 
 though all empirical knowledge be wanting, 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 13 
 
 the impetus and the ruHng idea, and the final 
 cause of all creation, by means of wliich alone 
 all empirical knowledge is explained, and 
 has any permanent significance, is felt and is 
 an element in sucli consciousness. Here, in- 
 deed, understanding, or rather imagination, the 
 reproductive power, using the material of 
 empirical knowledge, is impotent, since we can- 
 not transport ourselves into the infantile con- 
 sciousness. But thus much remains for pure 
 thought, and of the consciousness of the child 
 Jesus we can think that the Eternal Son knows 
 himself as loved by and loving the Eternal 
 Father ; and since having from love undergone 
 limitation, and the obscuration of knowledge, 
 or rather the reduction of it to its primal form, 
 still knows himself as loving the universe, re- 
 garded in its fundamental meaning ; and as 
 love was the impetus of its creation, and real- 
 ized love its final cause, thus knows himself as 
 its upholding principle. To trace the illumi- 
 nation of the developing infantile conscious- 
 ness by this divine modification, in the preser- 
 vation of the unipersonality, must, as I have 
 said, elude comprehension or trustworthy imagi- 
 native reproduction, but it can be thought — 
 
14 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 yet it must be so thought as to involve no con- 
 tradiction, and still to retain Avhat is essential 
 to the idea of the human. Here we have the 
 ideally human as well as the actually human, 
 the latter coming before our vision, the former 
 held in pure thought. It is forbidden to think 
 that in the Incarnate One the powers of the 
 human were transcended. That is concealed 
 Monophytism, again. But the latent and possi- 
 ble powers of the human are availed of ; and it 
 is seen in Jesus of what humanity is capable, 
 and we have a unique form of consciousness, 
 which we call divine-human. The moment 
 one endeavors to ' make predications concerning 
 it at any point of his career, the temptation is 
 very great to trust to one's understanding, or 
 to follow a logical process, without the needful 
 dialectic ; and hence we may have dogmatic 
 assertions concerning our Lord's consciousness 
 which are entirely unauthorized. At the best, 
 he must seem to us something of an enigma, 
 but one finally to be solved, and the solution 
 will be gained step by step. 
 
 His knowledge, then, before his death, can- 
 not be thought as perfect, if it was attained, as 
 all human knowledge is, in the course of 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 15 
 
 human development. Hence his confession 
 that there is not present in his mind the in- 
 tended career through which his Father is 
 leading him, and he can pray that the cup 
 may pass from him ; and he cannot put in 
 chronological sequence and fill up the details 
 of what is to be passed through before the final 
 consummation. Had he had intuition of this, 
 his loving sacrifice and spiritual strength would 
 have been less, and we could not love him as 
 we do. Our very notion of his divinity would 
 be loAver than it is. 
 
 But while, like ours, his empirical knowl- 
 edge was a growth, and therefore deficient 
 until the last, there must also have been in him, 
 perennially, a form of knowledge deeper and 
 truer than our actual knowledge. His intui- 
 tion of the divine idea, the one purpose which 
 runs through and unifies all history, the inner 
 meaning of all change or development, and the 
 key to read it aright, was true, incessant and 
 infallible, and did not require anything to be 
 rethought. This would seem almost a corollary 
 from the fact of the sinless outook. The dis- 
 torting mists which arise out of the abyss of 
 unlovingness are not present here. He may 
 
16 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 not have known every event of the world's 
 history, but when it was understood, he knew 
 infalhbly its inner meaning ; and this not as 
 the absolute divine omniscience, but as knowl- 
 edge possible for human faculties when sancti- 
 fied and purified. In this wisdom, which is more 
 than knowledge, we have no warrant for saying 
 that it was ever deficient. His mind may have 
 been darkened so far as it was understanding, 
 as we learn by his utterances in Gethsemane 
 and on the cross, but so far as it was the pure 
 reason clarified by love, there is no evidence 
 that there was ever any defect. Hence we 
 refer to his words as the words of God in every- 
 thing pertaining to man's true essential life. 
 They are for us a refuge from all human obscu- 
 rations, and deeper than our excogitated phi- 
 losophies. We weary of what these say, but 
 never of what he said. They are the food 
 and the fountain of our spiritual strength. 
 
 This intuition of the idea which rules the de- 
 velopment of the universe, and which need not 
 be, in human progress, necessarily accompanied 
 by exhaustive or even far-extended empirical 
 knowledge, is a true philosophic attitude, 
 which, when clothing itself in language to satis- 
 
MENS CHRISTI. 17 
 
 fy one's own understanding or that of others, 
 and to gratify the imagination, becomes the po- 
 etic attitude. We see it illustrated in the mental 
 procedure of the world's great poets, and nota- 
 bly in the instance of Dante. Here we have all 
 the empirical knowledge of his time, ruled by 
 the categories of time and space, used as sym- 
 bolic of the abstract moral or religious con- 
 dition of man. It is the thought veiled beneath 
 events expressed in symbol. 
 
 Thus, too, Jesus' descriptions of the prospec- 
 tive ruin of Jerusalem, and, in the same con- 
 nection, of the events which are to occur at 
 the period of the final consummation, are used 
 as symbols of the idea or process of judgment, 
 or discrimination and separation. This is the 
 poetic attitude, which is so far identical with 
 the prophetic attitude, in whose utterance, gen- 
 erally, language breaks down and shows its in- 
 adequacy. Language is the offspring of the 
 material universe, so far as it has come within 
 our knowledge, and not until that knowledge 
 is perfect will language ever be an infallible 
 mode of expression, and enable for others the 
 full intuition of the idea. 
 
 When, concerning the knowledge or the in- 
 
18 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 tuitions of Jesus, we use the word inspired, if 
 we mean to adhere to the strict meaning of the 
 word, we do not mean by it the direct divine 
 omniscience, mechanically or otherwise im- 
 parted, but knowledge that is mediated by the 
 Holy Spirit acting upon the human organs of 
 knowledge ; and this suggests another effort of 
 thought to discover, if possible, the mode of 
 the Holy Spirit's mediation, and how human 
 knowledge is or may be affected thereby. If 
 we cannot reach full satisfaction here, we may, 
 at least, find what it is not, and therefore 
 within what limits we must think. 
 
 If Jesus passed through human development 
 it was moral and religious as well as mental 
 and physical. Postulating his innocence or 
 sinlessness, his moral development would con- 
 sist in the acquisition of spiritual strength, and 
 for this it would be needful that he should 
 undergo and resist temptation. And as moral 
 experience, on analysis, proves to have religious 
 implications, his development was also religious. 
 The motive spring of his moral obedience was a 
 religious one. It was love responding to the 
 love of the Father and proving that it was this 
 by overflowing upon the human race. That it 
 
IX8PIRATI0N. 19 
 
 was religious is proven b}^ his constant prayer- 
 ful attitude towards the Almighty Father. 
 What was in his mind during these frequent 
 communions with the Father we are not told. 
 His uttered prayers were such as his disciples 
 could understand, and we see that these, and 
 hence we may infer that all his prayers were 
 related both to the providential and to the mys- 
 tical processes of the divine government. He 
 could pray for relief from suffering, and he 
 could pray for the grace needful to sustain him 
 in bearing it. The gift of such grace is the ac- 
 tivity and influence of the Holy Spirit. His 
 disciples pray similarly for providential change, 
 and for mystical influence, for the light and aid 
 and comfort of the Holy Spirit. If this influ- 
 ence is mystical, i.e. beneath understanding, 
 through what media does it reach us, and what 
 is the limit possible for analysis here ? 
 
 We are accustomed, in our Christian theology, 
 to refer all exercise of energy in the movement 
 of the physical universe to the Holy Spirit. Its 
 mechanical, chemical and vital motions and 
 changes are all referable to the same source. In 
 the incoming of every new idea, superinduced 
 upon the antecedent ones, the new one avails 
 
20 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 of all former ones, and subdues them, and the 
 forces they display, to realize its own end or final 
 cause. Thus the chemical overrules the me- 
 chanical movement, and the vital movement 
 subdues or suspends for a time both the others. 
 We have valid ground for affirming that the 
 moral movement dominates all three, and con- 
 quers all the system of lower forces to its own 
 end. But I will not enter into that argument 
 now and here.* Slowly all these movements 
 and their correlations come before our appre- 
 hension and become knowledge. But the pri- 
 mal energy which starts and sustains them all, 
 dividing itself into forces, or modes of motion, 
 whose contests and equilibria make all con- 
 crete things and their changes, is one and 
 the same, can be traced back to nothing else 
 than to pure will and idea, and therefore can- 
 not come within the categories of the under- 
 standing. We see the activity of the Holy 
 Spirit by its result, from which we are obliged to 
 infer it ; but we can only imagine it by think- 
 ing the power to use or direct the forces, of 
 which we possess a little, and which is ruled by 
 our will, to be unlimited. What we have may 
 
 *See Chapter xxiii, Vol. 2, in my work ' Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 
 
INSPIRATION. 21 
 
 be lost, but the abstract power cannot be lost, 
 for this would be to think away all existence. 
 
 If, then, the energy ruling the motions of 
 the physical universe is thus mystical and 
 eludes the understanding, any exercise of it for 
 a higher end, to produce moral and religious 
 change, must be also mystical, and be only seen 
 in its results. All Christians declare that there 
 are such results, discoverable in their charac- 
 ters, their motives, their strength, their 
 emotions. And Christianity, and all it has 
 wrought in the world and for the individual 
 man, is such a result. The Holy Spirit, then, 
 must work upon the existing ground, the 
 complex of forces, which in a degree we know, 
 to accomplish the higher end. The intent and 
 purpose is to strengthen the moral and religious 
 will, and carry on the process which is to result 
 in moral or religious perfection. Through what 
 media is this influence wrought? Through 
 which of the constituents of humanity is the 
 end reached, — through the abstract physical, 
 or the abstract mental, or the abstract emo- 
 tional, or if through all three, in what order ? 
 What modification of the consciousness is pos- 
 sible to accomplish this required strength of 
 
22 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 will, and by what processes is it thus modified ? 
 Is it (1) something utterly apart from all pre- 
 vious modes of energy, superadded to them, 
 and hence entirely inexplicable ; or (2) does 
 it operate in and through these, and is so far 
 identified with them ; or (3) are the two 
 co-ordinated and together constitute the activ- 
 ity ? These questions may, perhaps, be better 
 understood by presenting a concrete case, which 
 will suggest these enquiries. If a Christian man 
 prays for light and strength, for ability to see 
 what his duty is, and for strength to adhere to 
 it, how is such a prayer answered ? We may 
 indeed conceive that light and strength may 
 reach him through providential means, by some 
 aid supplied ab extra, by which the mental 
 vision is clarified. But if this does not come, 
 and if any mystical influence is possible, how 
 does it reach him ? Is (1) the influence brought 
 to bear upon the will direct, imparting strength, 
 or (2) upon some feeling or emotion imparting 
 stimulus and intensity, or (3) upon the think- 
 ing principle, quickening its vivid action, 
 bringing into play powers ordinarily dormant, 
 and through this process giving to the ideal 
 end such attractiveness that it becomes a moral 
 
INSPIRATION. 23 
 
 force drawing toward itself, and thus elicits the 
 human response and activity by the exhibition 
 of the Divine Love? An extended critique 
 might be made of the two former hypotheses, 
 the result of which would show that we know 
 of no such thing as will abstracted from 
 thought and emotion, and which can be acted 
 upon directly ; nor do w^e know of any emotion 
 that can be abstracted from the thought which 
 has supplied its object. Dismissing these, then, 
 as untenable, we bring up for examination the 
 third , hypothesis, and ask, if the influence is 
 upon and through the thinking principle, how 
 is it reached ? But the mind itself is w^hat it is 
 by virtue of its relations bodyward, as well as 
 spiritward, and cannot be rightly thought if 
 neglecting these relations. Is the mind reached, 
 then, and the consciousness affected through 
 the medium of the physical relations solely, by 
 influence upon the body or the brain, by which 
 the abnormal physical proclivities are reached 
 and weakened, and the mental vision thus freed 
 from perturbation ; or is the mind reached from 
 the spirit side, by spirit communing or coales- 
 cing with spirit ? Scrutinizing carefully human 
 experience, it seems that all moral and religious 
 
24 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 advance comes by clarification of the pure 
 thought movement by which motives are 
 framed. From this it would seem to follow 
 that the mental is the mediating element in 
 human action connecting the physical and the 
 spiritual elements. Take a concrete case again. 
 It is no conquest over a perverted physical 
 appetite, which is reached through the weaken- 
 ing of that appetite by some mystical influence. 
 The moral worth is lost ; and this may show 
 that the influence of the Holy Spirit is not 
 upon our ph^^sical being as purely physical, but 
 only avails of this so far as is needful to 
 produce mental change. For it is a conquest 
 of a perverted physical appetite which is 
 reached through some vivification of an ideal 
 presentation having higher attractiveness, 
 whereby we draw away from and resist the per- 
 version of the physical appetite. The two 
 present moral alternatives, and the power of 
 good has overcome the power of evil. We 
 infer, then, that the Holy Spirit acts upon the 
 human will through an illumination made in 
 the realm of ideas. Moral and religious ideas 
 exist in all human souls, as such ; dim and 
 obscured it may be, but still there, and may, in 
 
INSPIRATION. 25 
 
 every degree, be clarified and made influential. 
 To accomplish this is not to add new powers to 
 the human being, but to bring out his latent 
 powers and capacities, to show of what he is 
 capable, and what is the right interpretation of 
 his aspirations. How, then, are these ideas of 
 God, of one's self as free and responsible, of the 
 ideal end, or one's normal destiny ; these, 
 which are the spring of all moral movement, 
 how are they to be illumined? Is (1) the 
 energy in activity through physical media, 
 freeing from clogs and perturbations the brain- 
 movement, quickening its activity, intensifying 
 its penetrative power, and enlarging its compre- 
 hension ; or (2) is it by direct action upon the 
 pure psychical consciousness existing beneath 
 the brain-movement, and which an enquiry 
 into the facts of human sleep and dreaming 
 may authorize us to infer is a continuous and 
 unbroken thread, which constitutes our per- 
 sonal identity? To adopt the first solution 
 would throw upon us the immense task of 
 accounting for all that occurs in man from 
 physical antecedents only ; an attempt which 
 has never been successful, and against which all 
 spiritual philosophy and the utterances of the 
 
26 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 Christian Scriptures are a protest ; which con- 
 tend or imply that man is a true universal, and 
 that existence is wider than our knowledge, 
 that man reflects what is unknown as well as 
 what is known. The moral idea itself disap- 
 pears, or is shown to be baseless, unless the 
 physical changes of the universe are for a 
 moral end, and are ruled by the purpose of the 
 latter. This is the contention of rival philoso- 
 phies, the one holding that physical changes 
 alone produce the (so called) moral results, the 
 other that a moral aim rules all physical 
 changes. Unless this latter were the truth, all 
 prayer would be illegitimate. 
 
 It may indeed be questioned whether spirit 
 ever does or can act direct upon spirit, and 
 without media, seeing that the divine glory is 
 God's own medium to accomplish all creaturely 
 existence and communication with the same. 
 But it cannot be thence inferred that the deter- 
 minations of the divine glory, which constitute 
 our known universe, exhaust its possibilities of 
 determination ; otherwise we should have to 
 think all angelic life, and the life of souls after 
 death, as under human physical conditions 
 still. We hold, then, that we may rightly 
 
INSPIRATION. 27 
 
 think determinations of the divine glory below 
 our knowledge, therefore mystical, and that 
 through these and by acting upon the human 
 sub-consciousness, beneath the brain-move- 
 ment, the Holy Spirit effects whatever change 
 is required : which conclusion is strictly scrip- 
 tural. 
 
 What degree of such influence, then, entitles 
 it to be, in its result, called Inspiration f In 
 the sense above given, all Christians are in- 
 spired, and upon this must be built whatever 
 further inspiration is possible. That the dis- 
 tinction is one of degree, and not of kind, is 
 shown by the fact that the results of such in- 
 spiration, as discovered in the utterances of 
 Jesus, and of the New Testament writers, can be 
 measurably, and by degrees entirely, followed, 
 apprehended, thought and made practical by 
 the Christian mind. If they could not be, 
 they would be inoperative, would be as words 
 in a foreign language, and could not be called 
 truths, till some correspondent thought or 
 meaning came to pass. But it does not follow 
 that the comprehension of the same can be at 
 once complete and exhaustive ; rather, that the 
 Christian mind must be stimulated, and beck- 
 
28 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 oned on step by step. Truth is uttered in lan- 
 guage always symbolic, more or less inadequate, 
 and is bit by bit appropriated. Nor does any 
 quickening of the sub-consciousness, whereby 
 new truth is seized and assimilated, take place 
 in man as purely passive. It respects and is 
 conditioned by his moral status and capacity, 
 and nowhere overrules his mental idiosyncrasy. 
 Yet moral and religious growth, developing this 
 idiosyncrasy, must enable one more and more 
 readily to detect the truth thus expressed by 
 symbols, whether language or vision. The 
 domination over language cannot be at its 
 uttermost unless the empirical knowledge, from 
 whose material language is constructed, is also 
 exhaustive. Any imperfection in one implies 
 imperfection in the other. And this shows that 
 language is never an absolutely adequate 
 vehicle for the communication of truth. Jesus' 
 language is accounted for by his historical an- 
 tecedents. If not perfect, it implies that his 
 empirical knowledge was not perfect, but both 
 were acquired gradually in the course of human 
 development. But of the absolute truth, which 
 underlies and explains all facts, we may hold, 
 as I have shown, that he had intuition. By 
 
INSPIRATION. 29 
 
 means of this he could see more and more 
 clearly the meaning of all human history, as 
 the facts of this history passed into his knowl- 
 edge, though still enough of darkness remained 
 to make possible his trials, his confession of 
 ignorance, his exclamations in Gethsemane and 
 upon the cross. 
 
 We may regard, then, the inspiration of the 
 Scripture-writers as similar to his. It was, thus, 
 an outlook from the same centre, but less ex- 
 tensive than his, since limited and determined 
 by the immediate providential purpose. The 
 action of the Holy Spirit upon them must have 
 respected this immediate purpose, and thus was 
 guiding and overruling. That they were thus 
 guided is shown as much by their reticence as 
 by their affirmations. That the authors of the 
 Synoptical Gospels, setting themselves to the 
 task of reminiscence, or of compilation from 
 existing memoranda, should have contented 
 themselves with these simple narratives, should 
 have refrained from all speculations, should 
 have given us no information or conjecture as 
 to the life of Jesus before he began to exercise 
 his ministry, except of the occurrence in the 
 Temple during his childhood (which occurrence 
 
30 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 has profound theologic significance), and that 
 they should have interspersed no comments 
 of their own upon the events they record, is 
 an instance of restraint that confirms our behef 
 of a providential or mystical overruling, and 
 that they were guided what not to say. On 
 this account, also, we may have confidence in 
 what they said, though there is always room 
 for the critical enquiry whether what they 
 wrote has been correctly transmitted. 
 
 Nor can it be maintained that inspiration, or 
 inward illumination of essential truth, is neces- 
 sarily accompanied by such domination over 
 language as infallibly to secure its correct ap- 
 preciation by others. The defect may be in the 
 vehicle as well as in the recipient; for the 
 vehicle is not the author as a passive organ, but 
 one having his own history and his own idio- 
 syncrasy. To detect a unified system of truth 
 in the utterances of such men is the after-work 
 of theology, or the meditative Christian con- 
 sciousness ; for which, too, the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit, or inspiration in a lower degree, is 
 still required. If so, and the difference between 
 these writers and the ordinary illumined Chris- 
 tian intelligence is one of degree and not of 
 
INSPIRATION. 31 
 
 kind, then we may think that the uhimate 
 result of Christian progress and mental attain- 
 ment will have slowly diminished this differ- 
 ence of degree, and that the intelligence of the 
 last generation will have appropriated all the 
 thought of these men, and be identical with 
 theirs. In the interval, that Christian intelli- 
 gence should sometimes err in the subjective 
 holding, follows as a matter of course. 
 
 These inspired men were divinely enabled to 
 think from a deeper centre, and so have a 
 wider range, though the clarity and extent of 
 their outlook must have been ruled by the im- 
 mediate providential purpose. The divine 
 guidance did not render them omniscient, but 
 respected the divine purpose only. We are by 
 no means authorized to think that the authors 
 of the Synoptical Gospels w^ere enabled to pene- 
 trate as deeply into the profound and far-reach- 
 ing words of Jesus as St. John was, whose 
 mind the Holy Spirit ruled for quite another 
 purpose. Thus the difference between the Sy- 
 noptical Gospels and that of St. John did not 
 depend simply and only upon difference of ex- 
 perience and culture, but as well upon the in- 
 fluence of the Holy Spirit for different pur- 
 
32 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 poses. In the case of the three evangeUsts, the 
 general Chrstian intelKgence had not been 
 developed far enough to make the language 
 possible for them a sufficient organ of transmis- 
 sion, as it came to be in the cases of St. Paul, 
 of the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, 
 and of St. John. Thus the Holy Spirit follows 
 and adapts his activity to human mental 
 growth, and does not anticipate and lead it 
 along passively. Man is not degraded but 
 elevated in our regard by this divine procedure. 
 Yet the fundamental truth which underlies the 
 utterances of these men is identical. They do 
 not contradict one another in their intuitions, 
 however they may differ in their mediated 
 knowledge, — which is another proof of a divine 
 overruling. This absolute internal harmony is 
 the most convincing proof of their inspiration. 
 
LECTURE 11. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Theology, in dealing with the doctrine of 
 Atonement (by which word is meant the 
 changed relation between God and man, accom- 
 plished as result by the sacrifice of Christ), has 
 made but slow advance. What has been gained 
 has been chiefly negative ; that is, the insuf- 
 ficiency of the many tentatives to incorporate 
 this doctrine into a self-coherent theologic sys- 
 tem has been made manifest. If satisfaction for 
 the co-ordinating mind is ever reached, no 
 doubt it will be seen that the true regard of it 
 has been unconsciously held and taken for 
 granted, or instinctively divined, all the while ; 
 and the evidence of this may be looked for in 
 Christian literature, and will be found quite as 
 much, or more, in the naive devotional or po- 
 etic utterances as in the more deliberate sys- 
 tematic effusions. 
 
 But something positive, also, has been gained 
 by the discovery, or the suspicion, that the 
 method pursued in the investigation has been a 
 
34 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 wrong one, or, at least, an incomplete one. The 
 problem has been taken up as an abstract one, 
 or an isolated one, disconnected from its proper 
 theologic antecedents. The various texts of 
 the New Testament directly referring to this 
 doctrine have been gathered together and a 
 system sought to be elicited from them ; to 
 make which sufficient, certain abstract pre- 
 suppositions have been quietly assumed with- 
 out examining or proving their validity ; or, 
 otherwise, some one of the scriptural expres- 
 sions denoting the result of the atoning sacrifice 
 has been taken and made the key by which to 
 explain all the others. Thus, redemption, rec- 
 onciliation, satisfaction, have been successively 
 taken as thoughts from which to evolve systems, 
 with results plausible and accepted for a time, 
 but whose unsatisfactoriness has been at length 
 made manifest. For illustration : we have 
 the old Patristic theory, that man was bought 
 out of his bondage to Satan by paying to the 
 Prince of Evil the price of the death of Christ, 
 this equivalent being given to make the scales 
 of justice even. This is the theory which, car- 
 ried to its extreme length, gave rise to utter- 
 ances that seem to us, now, absurd and almost 
 
ATONEMENT. 35 
 
 ridiculous. That this theory, in this and the 
 milder forms, had a basis of truth is not to be 
 denied ; but that as a form of the doctrine of 
 atonement it should have had vitality for so 
 many centuries, and at length be abandoned, 
 not without struggles, as untenable, shows that 
 the speed of human speculative thought was 
 very slow at first, and has since undergone 
 progressive acceleration. 
 
 Again : we have the Anselmic theory, in 
 which the death of Christ is supposed to have 
 special value over and above his life of sacri- 
 ficial obedience, and is, on this account, re- 
 garded as a tribute to the divine Justice, 
 needful to be paid that the divine Mercy 
 might flow forth. The offshoots from this 
 theory, in the earlier and later Calvinistic 
 schemes, and in many of the treatises of Roman 
 and Reformed theology, have been based upon 
 the assumed validity of this same abstract prin- 
 ciple of justice. Thus, the old Patristic theory, 
 on the one side, and the Anselmic theory and its 
 offshoots on the other, which at first regard seem 
 to be antagonistic, are found to be fundament- 
 ally in agreement, since based upon the same 
 notion of justice, as an absolute principle, whose 
 
36 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 requirements are imperious. The language of 
 this has all along been infecting, and is still 
 affecting, the utterances of Anglican theology. 
 
 There is another class of theories, which 
 deny the need of maintaining any transcend- 
 ent efficacy in the death of Christ for loosing 
 man from his bondage to sin and annulling 'its 
 penal results, and make its virtue consist solely 
 in the influence wrought thereby upon human 
 consciousness, either to terrify or to attract and 
 win him, — thus that it has simply moral fit- 
 ness and no ontological necessity. That there 
 is an element of truth in this all other systems 
 whatever are willing to admit ; but it is too 
 easy a solution, too superficial to meet the 
 scrutiny of profound thought. It has failed 
 to satisfy, chiefiy because it is manifest that 
 the Scripture-writers had in their minds some- 
 thing other and deeper than all this. 
 
 Still another class of thinkers, well repre- 
 sented by the Roman Catholic theologian 
 Pabst, acknowledging that the sacrifice of 
 Christ must be thought to have ontological 
 virtue and results, so emphasize the sacrificial 
 obedience pervading his life, tracing it back 
 to the divine self-limitation involved in the 
 
ATONEMENT. . 37 
 
 incipient Incarnation itself, as to leave for 
 thought no special significance or necessity for 
 his death, except as the culmination of his 
 moral or religious obedience. That it is, in- 
 deed, such a culmination is obvious ; but so 
 far as this theory enlightens us, the mind to 
 die would appear sufficient, and the actual 
 death not indispensably necessary. Its pro- 
 found significance as part of the human career 
 is not brought out, nor sufficient warrant given 
 for the scriptural expressions. We need still 
 to know why the actual death must ensue in 
 order that the intended result may be brought 
 about. 
 
 Others, again, maintaining the necessity 
 of his death, explain it from the assumed 
 validity of some physical principle, which 
 originated these ontological results — a scheme 
 which requires an inversion of every spiritual 
 philosophy, subordinates the moral to the 
 physical, and makes the relations of the latter 
 primal and paramount. 
 
 Turning away from all these theories, other 
 theologians pursue their enquiries by the his- 
 toric method, and study the sacrifices of the 
 older dispensation, to discover what they can 
 
38 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 from the same of the divine intent and mean- 
 ing, and carry this Kght with them to illumine 
 the enquiry into the meaning of the sacrifice 
 of Christ. These sacrificial rites are discovered 
 or assumed to have an educational or religious 
 value, intended to prepare the mind of the 
 chosen people for what was to be fully recog- 
 nized when the sacrifice of Christ should be 
 proclaimed as redemptive. Thus, these sacri- 
 fices and Christ's sacrifice likewise, are part of 
 an economic system, a part of the providential 
 treatment. Thus this view, as well as some of 
 the former ones, inspires a mental leaning 
 towards, and allies itself very readily with, 
 the notion so long and persistently held, that 
 there was no absolute necessity for the incar- 
 nation and the sacrifice of Christ, but only 
 moral fitness ; or that this method for human 
 recovery could be traced back no further than 
 to an arbitrary decree of God. Many of the 
 most eminent Patristic and medieval theo- 
 logians (Anselm being a notable exception) con- 
 tent themselves with regarding the method for 
 human recovery as only one of many possible 
 methods by which it could have been accom- 
 plished. Closely scrutinized, this notion either 
 
ATONEMENT. 39 
 
 refers human recovery ultimately rather to the 
 power than to the love of God, or ignores that 
 love is a moral necessity, and, by introducing 
 an element of arbitrariness into the divine 
 character, loAvers instead of exalting our idea 
 of the One Supreme. Thus, in speculating upon 
 the divine freedom, as in similar speculations 
 upon human freedom, the will is thought as 
 separate from the nature, and not as its neces- 
 sary expression. I hope that it will appear, in 
 what I shall say, that, given certain postulates, 
 namely, God being what he is, and man being 
 what he is, and their actual relations what they 
 are, no other mode of human recovery is think- 
 able, or was possible, than that by which it 
 was effected ; that it flows in due course from 
 the true idea of God and from the immutable 
 constitution of the universe. 
 
 This Avhole study of the older dispensation, 
 and of its sacrificial rites in particular, is very 
 well in its place, and must become a part of an 
 exhaustive treatment of the entire doctrine, but 
 I regard it, as availed of by many, as a reversal 
 of the true method. It is required to supple- 
 ment, and should not be used to be supple- 
 mented by, an encjuiry into the significance 
 
40 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 of the death of Christ himself, to discover 
 if it has not other necessity than its economical 
 fitness. The antitype can never be fully 
 understood by the study of the type. History 
 is only rightly understood when studied in 
 the light of its final cause. The immediate 
 intent of these prescribed sacrificial rites was 
 the removal of temporal disabilities and the 
 restoration of religious privileges, and they 
 were thus made indispensable for the promised 
 divine favor and blessing. The entire trans- 
 actions belong to the temporal sphere, though 
 they have the further and less immediate result 
 of sustaining and advancing the religious 
 education of the chosen people. They were 
 mediately and not immediately moral prescrip- 
 tions. But, as ritual, they prefigure, on a 
 lower plane, what was to take place on a higher 
 plane, with far other results. The final cause 
 of the sacrifice of Christ was an ontological 
 change. It was to reverse the movement of the 
 universe, so far as it can come within human 
 knowledge, or to introduce a harmonizing pro- 
 cess. It was to start the return current of 
 human history back to God. To study it one 
 has to look into the very depths of the divine 
 
ATONEMENT. 41 
 
 philosophy. Then, if we can find its place in 
 the whole scheme of the divine dealings with 
 humanity, we may look backward and see how 
 it was reflected by anticipation in these pre- 
 figurative rites. Then, too, we may make use 
 of the analogies suggested by these to throw 
 back the reflected light and increase the bright- 
 ness of that from which it was reflected. 
 
 This method, while a true and valuable 
 one, should occupy the second place, and not 
 the first place, in an exhaustive enquiry or 
 treatment. What should be done first is to see 
 what doctrine of sacrificial atonement must 
 flow out of its theological antecedents, e. g., to 
 study the incarnation itself in the form which 
 it took in consequence of human dereliction 
 (whereby it had to be redemptive and regen- 
 erative as well as elevating and beatiflc), so as 
 to see that the death of Christ is a necessary 
 moment in the process. This may be called 
 an a priori method, but the enquiry proceeds 
 from antecedents which facts, philosophy and 
 revelation unite in confirming, and is not a 
 process of deduction from any assumed and 
 abstract principle or proposition. 
 
 Such a principle is assumed in all those 
 
42 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 schemes of doctrine which make the death 
 of Christ a tribute to the divine justice. 
 This has been taken as an absolute principle, 
 having its own imperious requirements, with- 
 out establishing the validity of such an as- 
 sumption, without looking for the origin of 
 the conception in human thought. 
 
 If justice were an absolute principle, we 
 should be able to think it as belonging to 
 the Godhead itself, irrespective of any created 
 universe "(if this be thought as a free creation, 
 occurring in time) ; but there is no room 
 for such a conception in the doctrine of 
 the Trinity in Unity ; nor is there any 
 room for it when creation is superadded. 
 Not until intelligent life, human freedom, and 
 the possibility of moral distinctions appear in 
 the universe is there any room for such a prin- 
 ciple. If we can think man as not sinning, 
 as true to his moral allegiance, and as nor- 
 mally developed from his pristine innocence 
 till he should reach moral indefectibility, there 
 is still no room for it. The beneficence of God 
 in adapting man's environment to his pro- 
 gressive changes, with all its result of blessing, 
 the gift of a larger liberty, and the opening 
 
ATONEMENT. 43 
 
 of new sluices of enjoyment, is only Love. 
 But when the contradiction of sin comes to 
 be, then love itself becomes justice, and the 
 divine providential treatment divides itself 
 into two streams, blessing or punishing (but 
 still with regard to the ideal and organic 
 unity of the race), blessing or punishing ac- 
 cording as the human response is loving or 
 unloving, and faint or strong in either cate- 
 gory. Thus is revealed the immutable con- 
 stitution of the known universe, and that all 
 physical well-being and mental expansion 
 flow sooner or later, and by pathways not 
 entirely untraceable, in the train of moral 
 obedience, or responsive love ; and all ill- 
 being, suffering and impoverishment of re- 
 sources in the train of moral transgression — 
 this, too, partially visible as well as neces- 
 sarily thinkable. That in the onward flow 
 the innocent suffer for the sin of the guilty, is 
 not to be explained by any doctrine of sub- 
 stitution (a resort of the logical mind to rest 
 in a premature solution), in which justice is 
 made an unmoral attribute, a mathematical 
 principle, which by no ingenuity can be rec- 
 onciled with the divine love. If one ever 
 
44 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 voluntarily suffers for the fault of another, 
 in ordinary human experience, it is because 
 of the effect such substitution may have upon 
 the mind of that other, or upon the mind 
 of someone else having the power to inflict 
 suffering. It is an arbitrary assent, and has 
 no moral significance or fitness. There is no 
 possibility of making them equivalents, espe- 
 cially as the suffering cannot be judged and 
 graded by its objective form, but only by the 
 capacity of the sufferer. What would be 
 heavy for one would be light for another, and 
 thus, even in this superficial respect, the scale 
 is not balanced. We all know of the absurd 
 attempts to make the suffering of Christ an 
 equivalent for the suffering due to the elect — 
 a solution which was reached by the tyranny 
 of logic, or else was a confession of mental 
 impotence, and declined the enquiry into what 
 kind of suffering was not possible for Jesus, 
 and what was possible, and which thus ob- 
 scured our conception of his love. That one 
 does and should suffer on account of the sin 
 of another is a corollary from the doctrine 
 of the organic unity of the human race, a 
 scriptural doctrine to which science is yearly 
 
ATONEMENT. 45 
 
 adding new confirmations, and which, when 
 scrutinized, enlarges our conception of the 
 divine idea for man, and brings out new 
 richness and beauty. Thus justice, in the 
 human mind, appears as an a posteriori infer- 
 ence, and may be seen to be simply the form 
 which the divine love takes in consequence 
 of the dereliction. Even when it punishes 
 it is seen to be indirectly recuperative 
 in its intent, and when it chastises it is 
 seen to be directly remedial. No inference 
 drawn from God's treatment of his creatures 
 which carries us around to a contradiction of 
 his love is valid, any more than is any infer- 
 ence which contradicts man's moral inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 If there be valid speculative ground for 
 holding what is called '' The Scotist Doc- 
 trine of the Incarnation " (and we acknowl- 
 edge that there is not valid scriptural ground 
 to erect it into a dogma, yet that the New 
 Testament affords no contradiction), and that 
 it was the divine intent for man that he 
 should reach apotheosis, for Avhich a new act 
 of divine creative interference was needful, 
 
46 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 then it would follow that death was no part 
 of the divine intent for man — did not enter 
 into the essential idea of man. His very 
 spiritual relation, which made him more 
 than animal, implied that he should not be 
 bound by this law of all other animal life. 
 (But this ultimate elevation, when humanity 
 should have reached fitness for still another 
 step upward, could not be called a regeneration, 
 except in a secondary sense, the same as if the 
 irradiation of the animal soul by spirit ele- 
 ments should be called a regeneration^ The 
 moral and religious principle, having acquired 
 sufficient spiritual strength, having proved 
 itself adequate to triumph over the lower 
 forces, and having maintained itself in the 
 existing relation to the universe Avould at 
 length have become '' eternal life." Death is 
 an abnormality, and the result of the moral 
 defection. Then, when sin entered the world, 
 man began to die. The spiritual principle was 
 weakened, and human vitality must ulti- 
 mately succumb. The human career now be- 
 comes something other. A changed relation 
 to the environment becomes necessary and 
 actual. Thus man dies and assumes another 
 
ATONEMENT. 47 
 
 set of relations to the outlying universe. We 
 might, as an independent enterprise, show 
 that this new relation to the environment is 
 now a necessary moment in the process which 
 is carrying him on to his perfection, but there 
 is no room here for this.* 
 
 We cannot hold that the divine intent for 
 man has been changed by the incoming of the 
 contradiction. He is still to be enabled to 
 fulfill his idea. Hence, as needful for 
 this, the incarnation still occurs, but is 
 now changed in its form. It is still, mediately 
 and remotely, elevating and beatific, but im- 
 mediately redemptive and regenerative. It has 
 now to carry the w^eight of a redemptive pro- 
 cess to annul the negation ; to make, on the 
 one side, sin possible to be forgiven, i. e., to 
 ward oflP, attenuate and extinguish its conse- 
 quences, and, on the other, to strengthen the 
 principle of moral obedience or religious love, 
 and, pari passu with these, to work changes 
 in the other constituents of the complex 
 
 * In some form or other, what is called " The Fall of Man" cannot possi- 
 bly be declined by anyone who admits the absolute character of moral dis- 
 tinctions. An animal is innocent. Man is not innocent. That whereby he 
 became other than innocent constitutes his fall. If this was necessary, he 
 cannot be blameworthy. That he accuses himself shows that it was not 
 necessary. Historical enquiry will never either deny or confirm this a priori 
 conclusion. 
 
48 MENS CHRISTI, 
 
 human nature, to make it physically and 
 mentally correspondent to the ultimate moral 
 perfection ; in other words, to be regenerative. 
 
 Thus, to be the seed, or the progenitor of 
 the new human race, the Eternal Son must 
 enter human life in its actual conditions, in 
 order to transmute it. Besides, then, what- 
 ever else is required to fulfill the lot of man, 
 he must needs pass through suffering and 
 death. Now, the victor}^ over the lower 
 forces is not to be reached spontaneously, 
 but through effort and struggle. In other 
 words, the divine self-limitation has become 
 sacrificial. 
 
 We adopt here the Patristic sense of the 
 word ''satisfaction," and use it to denote not 
 a tribute to any abstract principle of justice, 
 but the complacency of the divine mind 
 over the perfect human love which is to 
 bring about the perfected human nature ; 
 which perfect human love now appears for 
 the first time in the dying Christ. If this new 
 germ can fructify, and show itself as a form 
 of life in man, it is thus shown to be regen- 
 erative. Ideally man is redeemed, and con- 
 cretely in the progenitor of the new race, 
 
ATONEMENT. 49 
 
 from whom all the consequences of the dere- 
 liction pass away. Thus the resurrection of 
 Jesus, and the passing away of all clouds 
 from his consciousness, occur not as the super- 
 induced or arbitrary reward for his moral 
 obedience, but necessarily, as the returning 
 flood of the divine creative activity, which 
 now can move through unobstructed channels. 
 How the results of the redemptive act, and 
 of the completion of the regenerative process, 
 are to reach and be manifested in others, in a 
 subjective and in an objective process, bringing 
 before us the doctrines of Christian faith, on 
 one side, and on the other of the Christian 
 church and sacraments, is an independent and 
 subsequent enquiry. What remains is to show 
 that in order to be redemptive and regenera- 
 tive the career of Jesus must needs carry him 
 through the article of death, — to exhibit this 
 as indispensable, so as to warrant the emphasis 
 laid upon it by the authors of the New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures, whereby will be seen that in 
 the true sense the divine justice is thereby 
 manifested rather than appeased. 
 
 We need, then, to know, first, what death 
 is, so far as is possible to know, i.e. to express 
 
50 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 it in such terms as will satisfy philosophic 
 thought. 
 
 There is no warrant to identify it (as has 
 been done) with the principle of moral evil, 
 as though it were brought about by the energy 
 of an evil spiritual entity ; for moral evil is a 
 contradiction rather than a negation, and 
 death, abstractly considered, is a negation and 
 no contradiction. There is no contradiction 
 to reason, or violation of the aesthetic sense, 
 in the fact that death occurs in vegetable or 
 in animal life ; rather, in the evolution of the 
 divine ideas, and in the perpetual changes 
 which have occurred in the plant and animal 
 forms of existence, there is food and high grati- 
 fication for the sesthetic requirements. The 
 contradiction shows itself, first, in animal pain 
 (which has its own explanation, though but a 
 partially satisfying one, since it carries us back 
 to the prior question of the connection of 
 physical with moral evil). Whatever machin- 
 ery be needed to prolong the existence of a 
 living organism, or to extinguish it, it is 
 simply reducible to the work and the play 
 of the known forces, vital, chemical, mechani- 
 cal. Disease, which combats vitality, or the 
 
ATONEMENT. 51 
 
 too weak vitality itself, in whatsoever concrete 
 ways this abstract contest proceeds, needs no 
 increment beyond these rival physical forces 
 to explain that death occurs. If it be true that 
 in all animal blood there is a contest between 
 two infinitesimal forms of life, we see that 
 either one of them may be extinguished, and 
 that in every case the chemical force resumes 
 its sway. And although (as is afiirmed in our 
 latest science) the primordial cells from which 
 originates animal life have persistent existence, 
 and do not perish by reproduction, as do the 
 clifFerentiated ones when the sexual distinction 
 appears, yet they are not immortal, since they 
 may suffer violence and extinction ; and thus 
 persistent existence is no part of their essential 
 idea. 
 
 Death is a fact, and follows all known forms 
 of life, without exception. It means for phi- 
 losophy that the idea which the divine energy 
 in actualizing is not one that requires immor- 
 tality as its essential condition. It is part of 
 the process of evolution, of the universal flow 
 which itself exhibits the fertility and the 
 inexhaustible content of the divine thought. 
 Not yet has been lodged in the physical uni- 
 
52 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 verse a mode offeree, a form of vitality, which 
 can maintain itself persistently against the 
 chemical and mechanical modes of motion ; 
 but that such a form of vitality should be 
 possible is the persistent craving of the con- 
 crete human being, which thinks and feels 
 that it, as an organism linked to the beau- 
 tiful universe, ought not to perish, that it 
 is capable of higher things than these. It has 
 aspirations which the fact of death seems to 
 contradict, to crush and extinguish, and thus 
 it appears to human consciousness as the 
 intensest of contradictions. It is for human 
 imagination the cutting loose the bonds which 
 tie the universe, with all its beauty, its re- 
 sources for knowledge, its gratifications for love, 
 to the soul of man, longing to retain them and 
 make more of them. Though the human soul 
 cannot imagine nor think its own extinction, 
 it can think and imagine its own reduction to 
 poverty by the withdrawal of these resources, 
 and that it may be left to its own memories 
 in a world of shadows, and be able to look 
 in upon itself, and understand itself, as it could 
 not before amid the enticements, the hos- 
 tilities and the perturbations of the existing 
 
ATONEMENT. 53 
 
 sphere of its experience. And if there remains 
 for thought still the abstract possibility or need 
 of such a relation to an unknown environment 
 as furnishes a medium for spiritual commu- 
 nion, this is still something unknown, a realm 
 where imagination has no food, and can only 
 disport itself therein by bringing back the very 
 relations which have ceased to^ be. If the 
 human soul has persistent consciousness, it 
 must either undergo this impoverishment of 
 being permanently, or it must, after this 
 stadium has fulfilled its purpose, resume its 
 richer and progressive life. This uncertainty 
 ever exists for the thinking soul of man, and 
 it has only been relieved by the one alleged 
 fact of the resurrection, or glorification, of Jesus 
 Christ. When this is taken as a fact, and all 
 doubts of it expire, the human soul starts 
 forw^ard with a new vigor, and shows a death- 
 less enthusiasm. This alone is sufficient to 
 remoA^e the haunting sense of contradiction 
 which has weighted the spiritual soul all along. 
 Just here we have the a irriori and the a 
 'posteriori grounds of Christian belief meeting 
 and coalescing. For the reason, we have the 
 conviction that a form of existence in which 
 
54 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 there is no contradiction, and in which the 
 aesthetic sense suffers no violence, is possible. 
 All instincts have objective purposes, and the 
 instinct of aspiration, as true as that of self- 
 preservation, has here its objective purpose. 
 For the understanding and reproductive imag- 
 ination, we have the actual thing exhibited, 
 that one has* triumphed over death, and the 
 whole of human aspiration been met. In this 
 concrete case, the supreme condition for this 
 lapsing, or upward flow, into a higher form of 
 life, is the attainment of moral perfection, the 
 growth from the primal innocence into inde- 
 fectible spiritual strength, the coming to pass 
 such human responsive love to the divine love 
 as can no more be solicited by the human in- 
 stincts which pertain to the present form of 
 life. Now domination over nature may ensue, 
 and does ensue. We learn the same lesson that 
 death itself teaches, namely, that God will not 
 allow the control of the forces, or the unlim- 
 ited use of the resources, of his created uni- 
 verse to any creature whose will is not identical 
 with his own, whose love is not strong to meet 
 all shocks, and is not beyond the possibility of 
 shock. Thus life, as a permanent relation, 
 
ATONEME^^T. 55 
 
 whose name is, therefore, " eternal life/' can 
 only be had by one who is morally perfect. 
 This shows, then, as the divine idea for man, 
 who was not intended to die, could he have 
 retained his moral innocence, and have allowed 
 the spiritual principle to reach its ideal strength. 
 But since this idea was not realized in the first 
 human creation, it has 66e?i. realized in the new 
 creation. When his career is finished, all power 
 in heaven and in earth is given to Jesus Christ. 
 Before going further, it may be well here to 
 refer to certain ambiguous uses of the word 
 '' death," which are neither scientific nor philo- 
 sophical, which are simply poetical. Theology 
 may avail herself of these only in the latter 
 sense. Death is a fact, made known by exper- 
 ience, which may be used as a figure to express 
 or illustrate abstract cessation of being, or the 
 cessation of any known set of relations what- 
 ever. For instance, the phrase '' spiritual 
 death " may be used to mean '^ a death unto 
 righteousness " : and we have the antithetical 
 one, ''a death unto sin." These expressions 
 are only figurative, in either case. In the for- 
 mer is denoted the possibility that the unlov- 
 ing soul may carry the contradiction so far as 
 
56 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 to fix itself irrevocably in the antagonistic 
 attitude : in the latter case is denoted that the 
 sinning propensity may have undergone extinc- 
 tion, or, at least, that the principle has been 
 lodged in the soul which will issue in this 
 result. 
 
 Or, again, the expression may have been 
 used as a synonym for annihilation, the pass- 
 ing into nonentity of a spiritual soul. In this 
 case it is a mere set of words which have no 
 meaning, for it is impossible to think the cessa- 
 tion of being of a spiritual soul. If it is self- 
 centred, and morally its own creator, its moral 
 characteristics belong to eternal relations, in 
 which we can think no possibility of change. 
 Even though it has come to be this by a 
 divine creative act, it is on this account an 
 independent entity, however its environment 
 may be narrowed. It determines its own re- 
 lation to whatever is beyond itself, so far as 
 any ideal end can be set for it, or manufac- 
 tured by it, out of existing material. Though 
 created, it is itself a creator. God has limited 
 himself to this extent that it has passed be- 
 yond his control as to the determination of 
 its moral form. In this is its dignity as the 
 
ATONEMENT. 57 
 
 highest thinkable result of the divine crea- 
 tive activity. If we speak of death in connec- 
 tion with it, we mean the cessation of the 
 known relations to the physical universe. 
 Death, strictly speaking, is always, and only, 
 physical ; and in the Scriptures, when not 
 used figuratively, it always needs, for the full 
 meaning, to be thought in such connection. 
 Good and evil men both die, but the former 
 have that within them which shall blossom 
 into full life again, and renew the activity 
 upon the physical environment which has 
 been temporarily withdrawn. The latter, too, 
 have been withdrawn from all known rela- 
 tions to the outlying universe. What un- 
 known relations remain or are still possible for 
 them is a question closed for our thought. 
 
 And now, to resume our main topic, the 
 question still recurs, why was the death of 
 Christ necessary ? If we abandon the thesis 
 that it was a tribute to an abstract princi- 
 ple of justice, or that it was made needful by 
 some physical law profounder than all known 
 laws, and to which moral changes are them- 
 selves subordinated, such as the misused text 
 " Without shedding of blood is no remission/' 
 
58 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 or that it was simply adding a climax of 
 meaning to the educational economy which 
 had prevailed hitherto in the divine dealings 
 with the selected people, — on what other 
 ground can it be held to have been a neces- 
 sary condition for the redemptive work? 
 
 If, as theologians generally have admitted, 
 the virtue of Christ's death did not arise from 
 the mere physical change, as such, but in the 
 spiritual strength, in the unswerving will and 
 the full responsive love, all these constituting 
 his moral triumph, why was not the actual 
 death spared him when this condition of the 
 soul-consciousness was reached? Since hu- 
 man perfection was attained, and the divine 
 satisfaction had thereby, why did he not blos- 
 som into complete being ? Why did he not 
 come down from the cross, and show himself 
 as glorified ? The imperfection of the type of 
 Abraham and Isaac is here manifest. The 
 resemblance is carried to a certain extent, but 
 then it ceases. Abraham was spared the real 
 sacrifice to which he had consented, even 
 though it violated his moral instincts, and 
 thus became a trial of faith. But Jesus is not 
 spared, and the intent of God the Father, 
 
ATONEMENT, 59 
 
 which he. had made his own, goes on to its 
 fulfiUment. No occurrence on a lower plane 
 could fully typify what was to occur on this 
 higher one. The triumph of Jesus had no 
 perfect and true image in any possible physical 
 act of man, nor could any human moral or 
 religious intent fully prefigure Avhat was pass- 
 ing in his consciousness. Be that as it may, 
 he is not spared, and we ask wdiy? 
 
 First, let us notice that the persistent purpose 
 to do and submit to the will of the Father 
 could not have been perfect had he not known 
 his death to be inevitable. In his sayings he 
 had previously alleged it to be so, but the 
 tempting understanding and the physical in- 
 stincts had suggested otherwise. Hence the 
 prayer ''Father, let this cup pass from me." 
 But this temptation is overcome. Death is not 
 declined. The consciousness of the seeming 
 withdrawal of the sustaining influence shows 
 itself in the utterance '' My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me?" This, and the after 
 one, " Father, into thy hands I commend my 
 spirit," show that his death was taken for 
 granted and submitted to. He knows now 
 the Father's will, and his own divine wdll in 
 
60 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 the form of his human will ; and thus God 
 and man meet in the profoundest depths of 
 our spiritual being. 
 
 Moreover, we may allege economical reasons 
 why his death should have been actual. His 
 intended followers would have missed the most 
 powerful motive-spring had they not seen that 
 his spiritual strength was sufficient to carry him 
 through the article of death. Had he indeed 
 come down from the cross and showed himself 
 then and there as glorified and omnipotent, it 
 would have been a display of divine power 
 rather than a proof of his love ; and the task 
 of faith would have been less. And there is 
 the further reason (which I will not stop to 
 explicate), that the recognition of glorified 
 humanity may be possible only for those who 
 themselves have been the subjects of incipient 
 glorification. Thus to the other bystanders 
 this would have been a disappearance, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 But it is one thing to hold his death to have 
 been required for these economical reasons, 
 and another to hold it to have been absolutely 
 necessary for his own spiritual triumph, and to 
 bring about the new relation to humankind. 
 
ATONEMENT. 61 
 
 Death is a part of human experience, about 
 which we know something when we look at it 
 from outside, but w^hich we cannot look at from 
 within. We cannot penetrate the conscious- 
 ness of a human soul when the bonds which 
 connect it with our known world undergo at- 
 tenuation beyond a certain length. We cannot 
 follow them to their severance. If there be a 
 sub-consciousness in the human being all the 
 while, and the brain-consciousness is made up 
 of this and the determinations of the outer 
 world, we cannot trace the subsidence of the 
 latter into the former and describe it in words. 
 Reproductive imagination is impotent here, but 
 something remains for pure thought. To un- 
 dergo death one must have passed through this 
 phase ; nor would Jesus have passed through 
 the human career, and known our lot in all 
 points, had he not also have passed through it. 
 If the soul-consciousness remains after death, 
 it must know then for the first time what this 
 mid-region contains — what death reall}^ is. 
 
 Here now, for still further explication, we 
 need to recall the doctrine, manifestly true, of 
 the organic unity of the human race. From 
 this it follows that the intent of the divine 
 
62 MENS CHRISTI, . 
 
 dispensation in Christ is not to perfect and 
 beatify individual human souls as such, but 
 only as members of an organism. The intent 
 is, either to regenerate the human race or else 
 to create from it a new organism, which shall 
 have ideal perfection and completeness. On 
 grounds needless, perhaps, to adduce here, we 
 hold God's intent for man to have been thus 
 universal ; that Christ died for all men ; that 
 the new organism will consist of all such as 
 do not willfully withhold themselves from it. 
 Thus it follows that the motive power of God's 
 self-limitation, taking the form of sacrificial 
 love, must be brought to bear upon all men ; 
 and that otherwise the possibility of their per- 
 fection is not supplied. If this be true, then the 
 knowledge of God's love in Christ must reach 
 those who have passed through death into 
 whatever possible environment. This is not 
 holding to any such notion as '' probation after 
 death," as might easily be shown. As Jesus' 
 knowledge was human, and attained through 
 human media, his knowledge, before his own 
 death, of the state of existence of human souls 
 after death must have been such as was gained 
 through human media. However modified by 
 
ATONEMENT. 63 
 
 the divine element in the hypostatic union, 
 and whatever prophetic vision may have been 
 possible and actual for him, it was human 
 knowledge stilL He must know thus, yet 
 otherwise than thus, and in the full sense of 
 knowledge, human existence in this form. 
 Hence the significance, and the need for a soul 
 under time-conditions, of the interval between 
 his death and his resurrection. He does not 
 know death, we may say, in the fullness of its 
 definition until the present mode of being and 
 that other mode of being stand in mental con- 
 trast. Thus his own physical glorification, or 
 instatement in the ideal and permanent rela- 
 tion to his own glory, is postponed until he is 
 brought into conscious connection with the 
 departed ones, whom, too, he came to save. 
 Thus, his death, and the subsequent conscious- 
 ness and activity, do not appear as part of an 
 arbitrary economy, but as necessary, as part of 
 the process required for the ontological change 
 which his redemptive work is to bring about.* 
 Certainly, in the Christian Scriptures, the 
 response of faith, in which human recovery 
 
 * As something more than the meagre treatment of this interesting topic, 
 alone possible in the dimensions of this lecture, I must be permitted to refer 
 to its ampler treatment in the concluding chapters of the first volume of my 
 work "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 
 
64 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 is begun, is alleged to be elicited by the knowl- 
 edge of Christ crucified, of the divine conde- 
 scending love transmuting itself into the human 
 responsive love. And this is, too, the descrip- 
 tion of Christian experience. One would think, 
 then, that the appreciation of this ought to be 
 of something simple, and easy to be brought 
 home to the simplest human capacity. And 
 further meditation upon this ought to intensify 
 one's conviction of this love, and not neces- 
 sarily carry one into doubts and questionings, 
 which are sure to arise if human ingenuity 
 here insists upon a residuum, and obtrudes 
 theories which sorely trouble the intellect. If 
 abstract questions are here raised and solutions 
 given which become weights to withhold the 
 soul from yielding to this, God's revelation 
 of himself, their untruth or insufficiency may 
 be suspected. Such seems to have been the 
 result of many theories of atonement which 
 have made it to conceal some new and unique 
 mystery. The attractiveness of Christianity 
 has been diminished, and many have been 
 repelled thereby. If the alleged mystery 
 weakens the attractive power of Christ's atone- 
 ment, it may be thought on that account to 
 be spurious. Whatever mystery there be must 
 
ATOXEMEXT. 65 
 
 be such as will enhance, and not hnpair, our 
 conception of the divine love. The real 
 mystery is for theologic reflection and not for 
 popular instruction to deal with. It lies in 
 the inability of the human mind to bring 
 within the sphere of understanding and imagi- 
 nation the divine self- limitation required for 
 the incarnation itself. This appears when we 
 endeavor to state it in terms, and it appears 
 again, in the seeming oblivion of the divine 
 consciousness indicated by Jesus' lament upon 
 the cross. These two are the magna opera 
 indeed, and difFerent aspects of the one 
 mystery, but beyond this there need be 
 none. And when brought up for reflection 
 this mystery does not weaken but enhances 
 our conception of the divine love, since it 
 appears as lowering itself for our sakes to the 
 greatest possible depth. 
 
 That in the history of theologies new 
 mysteries should have been superadded to this, 
 which have no moral nor religious power, 
 but suggest doubts, or keep the Christian 
 mind in perpetual agitation, we are only recon- 
 ciled to by regarding it as part of the dia- 
 lectic process through which theology has 
 made its advance. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 I^HE POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUEE, AS DETEEMIN- 
 ING THE MODE OF HUMAN MORAL ACTIVITY. 
 
 What is in the future? What is the pos- 
 sible and probable condition or set of relations 
 before us, immediate or remote ? 
 
 This is a question of surpassing interest for 
 the human soul. What will be the existing 
 state of things, according to our power of 
 prevision, on this our planet, as well as what 
 will be the issue in the realm of departed 
 souls, is a question whose answer determines 
 the aim and the mode of all moral activity. 
 We plan our life and direct our energies ac- 
 cordingly. Moral systems differ chiefly ac- 
 cording to the extent of this prevision, and are 
 either egoistic, and make the welfare and 
 amount of happiness for the individual the 
 guiding indication of present conduct ; or they 
 are altruistic, i. e, some aim is set regarding the 
 welfare and happiness of the human race, — an 
 aim which may be comparatively clear in its 
 outlook upon the immediate future, but which 
 
 6G 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. G7 
 
 is obscured in its imagination of that which 
 is remote ; or they are religious, both when 
 obedience to prescriptions is the rule, and the 
 effort to penetrate the result is abandoned, and 
 also when it is taken into the thought that 
 conscious existence after death is possible, or 
 probable, or certain, and when thus the fore- 
 casted condition of the human race under 
 another environment must have its influence 
 in determining the plan of life and the mode 
 of moral activity. 
 
 If the thread of human history, as it is 
 continued on this planet, and the thread of 
 human history as it is continued in the 
 conscious existence of human souls after death, 
 be not utterly distinct, — if they have connec- 
 tion, and are part of a unified system, — if 
 there are not two streams of divine govern- 
 ment, entirely separate, — then these, which 
 seem apparently two, but which are ideally 
 and in the divine mind one, must be interre- 
 lated ; and if any knowledge of this interre- 
 lation can be had, it must affect accordingly 
 human moral activity. And thus it becomes 
 manifest that a faulty abstraction may be made 
 on either side, and that life may be planned 
 
68 MENS CHRIST!. 
 
 with sole regard to the probability of the hap- 
 penings in this visible sphere, disregarding 
 the parallel and possibly converging current 
 of history for the departed and departing gen- 
 erations : or else the latter only may be held 
 in view, and one become comparatively care- 
 less and indifferent to any result of the actual 
 human history, and the welfare of the genera- 
 tions that are to succeed the existing one ; the 
 importance of this, in the subjective regard, 
 being swallowed up in the apparently superior 
 importance of the ultimate and permanent con- 
 dition of mankind. That these two are severed 
 in thought, and thus that the guide to moral 
 activity is partial or vacillating, can only come 
 from a superficial regard, from a lack of ability 
 or inclination to unify these two, or from the 
 failure of any attempt so to do. Hence, we 
 have accusations from either side. Christians 
 have been faulted for too exclusive attention 
 to the probable existence after death, and for 
 disregarding the present needs and claims of 
 the human race, and thus their morality has 
 become the subject of criticism. And the other 
 side has been faulted for blinding itself to the 
 claims upon thought of the future state of 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 69 
 
 existence, for planning the human career, 
 and directing its energies as if this earthly 
 experience were the only one. 
 
 There is historic explanation of the fact that 
 in the beginning of Christianity, when new 
 hopes were started for mankind, when an un- 
 wonted enthusiasm was aroused, when the 
 knowledge or belief of the resurrection of its 
 founder had entered the mind, when, too, it 
 was the prevailing impression that the final 
 consummation was nigh at hand, its adherents 
 should have become indifferent to this present 
 human existence. In their astonishment that 
 any should withhold themselves from these 
 comforting and inspiring thoughts and expec- 
 tations, they were inclined to withdraw them- 
 selves apart from the world and to deepen the 
 chasm of separation. Yet the history of Chris- 
 tianity shows that its adherents were constantly 
 struggling against this, and gradually recog- 
 nized, more or less extensively, that this 
 present world had its claims upon them, that 
 the intended reformation was larger than they 
 had imagined, and was a more difficult task. 
 The cardinal principle of Christian conduct, 
 love, was too living to be long fettered by this 
 
70 MENS CHKISTI, 
 
 blinding tendency, and it was forever breaking 
 through these superimposed bounds, and busy- 
 ing itself with the relief of human suffering, 
 and with tentative efforts (as yet with unde- 
 veloped intelligence as to methods) , to improve 
 man's physical and social condition. Its mis- 
 sionary enterprises, alas ! too often disregarded 
 the immediate human welfare, but this was 
 when a superstitious element had infected their 
 activity, and outward and mechanical conform- 
 ity was accepted instead of a spiritual allegiance. 
 But, while never, perhaps, entirely free from 
 this misapprehension of the intent of their 
 Master, these enterprises were graduall}^ puri- 
 fying themselves, and have always been a kind 
 of index of the strength and purity of the gov- 
 erning Christian motives. And in proportion 
 to their purity were the claims of humankind, 
 that its temporal welfare should not be dis- 
 regarded, met and gratified with such intelli- 
 gence as was had. 
 
 A careful study of the New Testament 
 shows that in the mind of Jesus Christ these 
 two aims were equally set forth, and illustrated 
 in his own conduct. Thus their unity was 
 implied, if not stated in terms. And hence 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 71 
 
 ideal Christianity is not chargeable with fault 
 from either side ; and actual Christianity 
 sooner or later endeavors to recover itself, if it 
 discover in itself a disproportionate leaning 
 either way. It is ever busy in attempts to 
 unify both. 
 
 But to return to our argument. It is 
 evident that the rule of conduct to determine 
 present activity, will undergo modification 
 according to the clearness and truth of our 
 prevision, and according as it extends but 
 little way or far into the remote. The whole 
 problem then, divides itself into two questions, 
 or rather into three. First : what state of 
 things, more or less satisfying the moral ideal, 
 can be or may be reached on this planet, 
 towards Avhich it is our duty to urge our 
 way ? Second : what is the meaning, in our 
 thought-system, of the state of being after 
 death ? And, third : how are these interre- 
 lated, and can they in combination furnish 
 the true aim of our conduct and guide for 
 our activity ? 
 
 First, as to the earthly probabilities. It 
 is certain that the mass of men, and ordinary 
 minds must be content with, and are only 
 
72 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 adequate now, for a very unextended outlook. 
 We may think, indeed, that in the days to 
 come a vision of the farther remote may be- 
 come more general, but just now they linger 
 still in the mists. They must be content 
 with such rules for moral conduct as present 
 themselves as the crystallized results of human 
 inquiry and experience. Unless they willfully 
 disregard all moral distinctions whatever, 
 they must still be truthful and benevolent. 
 They must be honest according to present 
 prescriptions until some other rule of justice 
 shall have legitimately replaced the present 
 ones. And if they are more than animals 
 they must be God-fearing and devout. They 
 still need to have the obligation to all this 
 brought home to them ; for even in this 
 stratum of humanity we witness constant 
 outbreaks of the selfish principle, though, it 
 may be, with more excuse than have the 
 inroads of the selfish principle in the strata 
 above them. For, for them it may be that 
 the intelligence and the motives have not yet 
 been supplied to keep them true to their own 
 subjective or objectified ideals of conduct. 
 But the more cultured and thoughtful 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUKE. 73 
 
 stratum of humanity, which always, either 
 directly or indirectly, leads the others, needs 
 and inclines to look deeper than all this, 
 and to ask what is the ideal state of humanity 
 on our planet, and how far can it be made 
 real. Not until all belonging to this grade 
 reach the same reply to these questions can 
 they be at one in their advice to those below 
 them, and agreed as to the mode of their 
 own activity. 
 
 This is a most profound problem, and 
 tasks the human mind to the uttermost. It 
 is the one which is now agitating the thought- 
 ful world, and which has roused it from its 
 mental repose to ask what remedy is possible 
 for the wrongs and imperfections in the social 
 state, and in human conditions in general. It 
 is certainly a great gain that the wrong is 
 seen and acknowledged. This is the first step 
 towards its repair. And that some who see 
 or feel this wrong are disposed to rush rashly, 
 and others to tread cautiously, are the two 
 forms now, of the progressive and conservative 
 tendencies. Some are so captivated by the 
 contemplation of a state of things which they 
 can imagine, that they leap forward and 
 
74 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 contend for its realization without seeing the 
 impediments in the way. And others, again, 
 seeing that human selfishness perennially 
 exists, and that to it can be traced all the 
 wrongs of the past, foresee, or think they do, 
 that it will continue to produce new wrongs, 
 or the same wrongs in new form, and so 
 they become despairing and inert. 
 
 But this latter, the resort of the extreme 
 conservative attitude or disposition, shows 
 but a superficial regard. It ignores the 
 fact that the condition of mankind has not 
 been stationary; that it has a history ; that 
 while the human motive-springs still remain 
 the same, they actualize themselves in dif- 
 ferent forms ; that there has been a growth 
 in moral knowledge ; and that knowledge 
 itself, by making the true ideal more evident 
 and attractive to what is deepest in the 
 human soul, reacts upon the motive-springs, 
 and either intensifies the motive force of the 
 good principle, or makes more diametrically 
 contrary, willful and spiritual any opposition 
 to it. The positive worth is in the progressive 
 spirit. The worth of the conservative attitude 
 is negative, and consists in weiQ'htino' and 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. ^O 
 
 holding back the confused or thoughtless 
 zeal of the former. 
 
 Christian people, in endeavoring to settle 
 these questions for themselves, have been ac- 
 customed to consult their sacred writings, 
 and some have professed to find in them 
 doctrinal vindication for the endeavor to 
 segregate the Christian community from the 
 world, and hence draw the line of clemark- 
 ation as sharply as possible. They have found 
 indeed, that the immediate aim and effort 
 of the divine mterference, and the consequent 
 human activit}^, has been to make an election 
 from the mass of mankind who should be 
 the bearers and propagators of the new re- 
 generating principle, and constitute, thus, a 
 '' peculiar people." These were the '' leaven " 
 of the world which was to assimilate to itself 
 whatever did not refuse to be assimilated. If 
 any did refuse to be thus assimilated, they, 
 the leavened portion, must still remain a 
 '' peculiar people." Hopeful and sanguine 
 as St. Paul was of the results of the Christian 
 principle, this distinction still remained in 
 his mind, and to him the antagonism seemed 
 likely to endure till the end of the dispensation. 
 
76 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 This conclusion had its germ and stimulus 
 in the words of Jesus Christ himself. He 
 prayed, indeed, for his disciples, and for all 
 who should helieve in him through their 
 word. But he by no means declared that 
 the distinction was to be effaced. '' They are 
 not of the world," said he, '' even as I am 
 not of the world." The '' world " was still 
 implied in his thought. He prayed that all 
 these, thus separate, might be one, as he and 
 the Father were one ; thus recognizing organic 
 completeness in the new human race; and left 
 untouched the question whether the completed 
 organism, covering or including the two states 
 of human existence, would be co-extensive 
 with the human race, and be the old organism 
 regenerated and reconstructed ; or, whether 
 the antagonism would permanently continue. 
 It cannot be argued, from a consensus of his 
 entire words, that he committed himself to 
 either alternative. And hence dogmatism is 
 out of place here, and we are thrown upon 
 our speculative ability. 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that to an 
 ordinary inspection the New Testament favors 
 this latter view, especially as St. Paul, with 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. i i 
 
 inspired intuition, or prophetic insight, seems 
 to see the evolution passing beneath the shows 
 of phenomena, and that the evil principle is 
 spiritualizing itself as well as the good prin- 
 ciple, assuming forms less gross and carnal, 
 and becoming more purely willful and de- 
 liberately antagonistic, till it should culmi- 
 nate and manifest itself in some visible anti- 
 christ. 
 
 It is on this account that Christianity has 
 been charged with admitting into its thought 
 a persistent dualism, with regarding the irra- 
 tional as unsolvable and unremovable, thus 
 also with a violation of the sesthetic sense, 
 which requires a removal of all contradiction. 
 The question is whether, for human thought, 
 there is any way of escaping this dualism. 
 
 To avoid this, human ingenuity has been 
 tasked to the uttermost, and various methods 
 have been resorted to. The New Testament 
 Scriptures have been studied, and isolated 
 texts discovered which seemed to promise a 
 universal restoration, or some earthly mil- 
 lenium. But they do not seem to the un- 
 prejudiced mind sufficient to bear the burden, 
 and were manifestly foreign to the habitual 
 
78 MEJ^S CHEISTI. 
 
 mode of thinking of the authors of these 
 Scriptures. Besides, the speculative validity 
 of this solution depends upon the validity of 
 a prior solution. For it is no more irrational 
 that the irrational should permanently endure 
 than that it should ever have existed. Hence 
 such as these need to show that the dualism 
 is but seeming, and that evil is not irrational, 
 (of which presently). 
 
 Again we have the notion, not Scriptural 
 but speculative, of conditional immortality, 
 about which we need only say that it assaults 
 the absolute character of moral distinctions, 
 and requires an ethic of expediency only, 
 hence that it affords a spurious sense of 
 obligation, and substitutes a selfish for a 
 loving motive-spring. 
 
 Again, there are the various philosophic 
 schemes which virtually deny the moral dis- 
 tinction altogether, by making man and his 
 determinations a moment or link in the inex- 
 orable physical nexus. 
 
 And for some, who have not been satisfied 
 with these superficial resorts, there has been 
 required an endeavor speculatively to discover 
 a possible mode of human universal recovery, 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTTTRE. 79 
 
 and thus to vindicate their emphasis upon the 
 above-mentioned isolated texts of Scripture ; — 
 an onerous task indeed, admitting the abso- 
 lute character of moral distinctions, and one 
 doomed to failure, and found at length to sub- 
 side upon the unintelligent feeling or emotion 
 of hope that God will in some way, undiscov- 
 erable, annul the contradiction, and restore the 
 human heart to its complacency. 
 
 It would require too long a critique here, to 
 deal with certain philosophic modes of treat- 
 ing this question. We may say, however, that 
 to make moral evil a necessary moment of the 
 process, and a needful dialectic in the evolu- 
 tion of the idea, again assaults the absolute 
 character of moral distinctions, and cannot 
 explain the form they take in human con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 None of these endeavors carry us out of the 
 mists created by this apparent dualism, into 
 the clear light beyond, of mental satisfaction. 
 The conclusion may be that the solution of 
 this problem eludes oiir mental insight, and by 
 creating the alternatives for faith, thus elicits 
 our moral strength, which is certainly needful 
 for permanent human recovery. 
 
80 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 A solution of the inquiry into the possible 
 and probable condition of the human race has 
 been sought after in another way. Recogni- 
 tion is made of the fact that human knowledge 
 is progressive, and that consequently the im- 
 provement and harmonization of its instincts, 
 or crystallized prudential habits, must be 
 also progressive. The principle of heredit}^ is 
 availed of and followed out to the utmost of 
 conjectured results.* And this is an imagina- 
 tion of a generation in the far future, with 
 rectified instincts, in which the altruistic and 
 egoistic tendencies shall have coalesced ; — a 
 fascinating ideal, indeed, which has an imper- 
 ishable element of truth, with which the Chris- 
 tian ideal has points of agreement ; but which, 
 in my regard, is not philosophically nor even 
 scientifically profound. 
 
 For, it is acknowledged that the egoistic 
 
 *We may note in this connection the effect upon this theory of Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer of the alleged discovery of Weisman, in his work on Heredity, 
 that acquired habits are not inherited, that the modifications of human pro- 
 clivity thus reached are only transitory, and are not included in the physical 
 nexus. I have my doubts whether this is not a hasty conclusion, and await 
 scientific testimony from a larger induction. A simple divergence from the 
 customary mode of action, may indeed, in the next generation, be weakened 
 and effaced. Bat if repeated in the generations which immediately follow, 
 may modify the involipitary proclivity. This whole allegation separates 
 into two streams the voluntary and involuntary modes of human activity 
 and tendency, and does not fully admit their interaction, and their modifi- 
 cation of each other. 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 81 
 
 proclivities have had their origin in the needs 
 derived from the environment, and been modi- 
 fied by tlie requirements made by the sur- 
 rounding nature, and, unless this too changes, 
 these also must continue, and will perpetually 
 bring assault upon the altruistic tendency. It 
 is required, to justify the imaginative picture 
 which this theory presents, that the obligation 
 of sacrifice, or, (more correctly according to 
 the requirements of the theory), the expedi- 
 ency of sacrifice, shall become so paramount 
 and universal a conviction as to annul, at the 
 birth, any egoistic proclivity asserting itself. 
 If such sacrifice shall continue to be difficult 
 and painful, it will still remain as a contradic- 
 tion nurturing again the egoistic proclivities. 
 If it can be transmuted into pleasure, and thus 
 be extinguished as sacrifice, this too must be 
 transitory, since it will be assaulted by the 
 despairing admission of its own transitoriness, 
 since it gives a picture having no absolute 
 worth, gratifying only momentarily the imag- 
 ination, and above all haunted by the knowl- 
 edge that it has been purchased at the fearful 
 expense of the failures and the agonies of the 
 past generations, of this holocaust of human 
 
82 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 victims ; a feeling sharp enough to wound its 
 complacency, to start a pessimistic fear that 
 the cycle may again revolve ; and vivid enough 
 to generate a new set of instincts more subtly 
 contradictory. 
 
 The only relief that can come to human 
 thought, when it occupies itself with these im- 
 aginative pictures of a possible state of things 
 here on earth, is derived from the admission 
 that the generations departed have, too, a his- 
 tory, and that carried on in a more than paral- 
 lel, in a converging current, which will at 
 length unite with the actual and visible hu- 
 man history, and thus display the unity and 
 the meaning of the whole, — to which conclu- 
 sion the Christian Scriptures supply their 
 Imprimatur. If there be grounds, metaphysi- 
 cal, moral, as well as revealed, for holding hu- 
 man immortality and responsibility, then these 
 two questions cannot be separated ; or if stud- 
 ied apart, it must be to see how they converge 
 into one. 
 
 Evidently humankind must go forward, 
 and plan for itself, and devise measures for its 
 own improvement, immediately or remotely, 
 amid this darkness and uncertainty as to the 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 83 
 
 ultimate results. No clear pathway for human 
 thought is discernible by which it can prove 
 for itself the removal of the contradiction of 
 moral evil. But its refusal to abide content 
 with the permanency of the irrational is per- 
 ennial. And thus it vibrates. This is the 
 intensest trial of its faith, — seduced, on the one 
 hand to rest in premature solutions, and drawn 
 by a profound mental requirement, on the 
 other, to rest in its idea of God as still su- 
 premely loving. Therefore perfect mental sat- 
 isfaction cannot be had here. At any former 
 period of the human story, at this period, at 
 any conjectured future period, we do not see 
 that this insight would have been or would be 
 a boon ; for if it were granted, this trial of our 
 spiritual fibre, — this despairing and hoping, 
 this believing and doubting experience, would 
 hardly have sufficient burden cast upon it to 
 call out the utmost human moral strength, and 
 thus elevate man to his true dignity. On the 
 one hand we refuse to think the dualism to be 
 necessary. On the other, we cannot deny that 
 it exists and is more than scJiein. In this per- 
 plexity and uncertainty mankind must go on, 
 and prepare itself for its coming experience on 
 
84 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 this planet, and for its future existence under 
 another set of relations. 
 
 These two currents of human progress do 
 not seem now to intermingle. On the one side 
 we have Christian prayers for the departed as in 
 organic unity with ourselves. As to the other, 
 we have only conjecture, but we cannot think 
 away sympathy and love, and that longing 
 which is prayer. There appears no bridge 
 upon which we can travel across from our side, 
 and return to report ; or if any have gone over 
 and returned, they have not been allowed to 
 report, or have been unable to report from the 
 inadequacy of language, or have refrained from 
 reporting from the conviction that it would be 
 no boon to those still surviving. That there is 
 any frequent passage from the other side to 
 ours, is a conclusion without evidence worthy 
 of respect. Each portion of the human race 
 moves on in its own light, and the ultimate 
 coalescence of these two streams of human 
 history must be as much a craving for one as 
 for the other. They, the departed ones, as well 
 as we, must still mentally cry, '' How long, 
 how long? " and show thus that they are our 
 brethren still. 
 
- POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 85 
 
 In our day the conviction is becoming 
 more and more strong and steady that we 
 must make more of this present world ; that 
 it is full of wrongs that may be righted ; that 
 it is possible so to modify or reconstruct the 
 social state as that comfort shall be more gen- 
 erally diffused, human intelligence be clari- 
 fied and enriched, the conditions and oppor- 
 tunities for dcA^elopment and elevation be 
 made more universal ; and, as a consequence, 
 that the loving spirit which ties together this 
 human brotherhood may revive or strengthen, 
 assert its ideal vigor, without artificial impedi- 
 ments and superinduced restraints. 
 
 Many are trying to devise means by which 
 all this can be measurably accomplished. 
 The difficulty, confusion and uncertainty arise 
 from our inability to gather all the facts 
 required for a trustworthy induction, and to 
 penetrate very far into the future. The 
 threads which make the web of human 
 history are too numerous, for any one to 
 weave this changing web into the unchanging 
 warp. Any anticipation must be scrutin- 
 ized carefully. Hence the lesson to move 
 cautiously, — not to uproot but to replace by 
 
86 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 development, — not to make efforts too abstract, 
 and regarding only the immediate in space 
 and time. The result that should never be 
 lost sight of in all such efforts must be uni- 
 versal and inclusive, and respect the entire 
 human race. The immediate result must, 
 indeed, be partial, and at first exclusive, and 
 respect the more advanced peoples ; but this 
 still with the view of the after result upon 
 the outlying sections of the human brother- 
 hood. Meanwhile, the two efforts may go 
 on, in some way, pari passu ; the one so to 
 improve the uncultured races on the earth 
 as to prepare them for their after elevation ; 
 the other to rectify, as we can, the social 
 state of the more intelligent peoples. 
 
 And along with all these efforts, let men 
 not forget that, beneath all this, the divine 
 energy is at work, and will surely accomplish 
 its purpose. That while it will not crush 
 human freedom, but will forever leave to man 
 to determine the moral form of his activity, 
 it still holds absolute control of the material 
 content of human action, that this is caught 
 up into the current of an irresistible wave that 
 sweeps securely to its shore. This may be 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 5^ 
 
 man's consolation for his own possible mis- 
 takes, and keep alive his faith and cheerful- 
 ness amid his own failures. That w^e are on 
 the threshold of a revolution, either to be 
 quiet or violent, that w^e are on the eve of 
 great social changes, becomes yearly more 
 and more probable. Insensibly almost, for 
 the general knowledge, w^e, have been led to 
 it ; and thus we recognize the divine mind, in 
 human history, as well as in the physical 
 evolution. 
 
 A millennium is not to be hoped for. Suf- 
 ficient Scriptural warrant for it is wanting, and 
 there is no speculative warrant. The true 
 interpretation of our mundane story, so far 
 as we can comprehend it, is, that in it and by 
 it moral good and evil are both being spirit- 
 ualized. It is all important to see that this 
 is true of the latter as well as the former. 
 When moral evil shall have become pure — if 
 we can think it, at length, to have become 
 willful, and be known as a conscious and 
 deliberate antagonism, — in the possibility 
 that when on the eve of this last result for 
 human thought, man may hesitate, and 
 decline it in this pure form, as a possible 
 
MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 mode of being, — in this alone is any specula- 
 tive ground for the removal in thought of the 
 contradiction. But this ground is still not 
 secure, since we fail to see how pure evil has 
 any power to make itself other than it is ; and 
 since we see that, even in the immediate ante- 
 cedent stage, the motive power of good, hav- 
 ing undergone constant abatement, seems on the 
 verge of extinguishment. External violence 
 is either annihilation, or the annulment of 
 human moral freedom; and means the re- 
 calling by God of his own creative acts. 
 
 But, on the other hand, that moral good 
 is spiritualizing itself is more and more mani- 
 fest. We are learning yearly, and with in- 
 creasing rapidity, by what kind of activity 
 human love, responding to the divine love 
 should manifest itself. The spirit of evil has 
 been found to be lurking in many an insti- 
 tution, or part of the social fabric, long estab- 
 lished, and primarily sprung from human 
 selfishness. The sympathy of the morally 
 good becomes, all the while, finer and more 
 exquisite, and respects not only the physical 
 needs of men and their requirements for 
 enjoyment, but the subtler psychic disorders 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 89 
 
 and diseased imaginations, — these needless 
 tortures which the human soul has been 
 inflicting upon itself and upon others. It 
 strives to reach and remedy even these and 
 is discovering methods by which to do it. 
 To difl^use this disposition and ability to 
 minister to the more recondite wants of man 
 is part of the duty of those who already, in 
 degree, possess it. Mankind will never be- 
 come a true brotherhood until it reaches the 
 ability as well as the disposition so to minister. 
 Thus men may be united by subtler and 
 stronger threads. 
 
 The great fault of our existing social state 
 is that it allows or furnishes too many fetters 
 and restrictions upon moral freedom — by 
 which term, here, we mean the ability to 
 choose for its own sake, and from its own 
 pure attractiveness moral good or evil. This 
 restriction exists even in the simplest social 
 conditions, where the external fetters seem 
 to have been reduced to a minimum. It 
 has been apparent in all actual attempts to 
 realize an Utopia. In all such the self- 
 seeking principle has sooner or later dis- 
 played itself, and for its own ends forged 
 
90 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 restrictions for others. Nay, it exists even 
 in the family itself. The parent has been 
 tempted to carry his control of his child too 
 far ; to seek to carry him his own way, as 
 though his subjective view were the absolute 
 truth ; to prolong authority beyond the period 
 when human manhood should be respected 
 and, allowed free self-assertion, be allowed to 
 act according to its own convictions. Hoav 
 parental control, absolutely needful at first, 
 should be allowed to lapse by degrees into 
 parental unrestraint is a most difficult concrete 
 moral problem. But the former w^as carried 
 by its own impetus too far in the primal 
 human efforts for social organization, and we 
 have had primogeniture, and the patriarchal 
 and tribal systems, upon which were built 
 national systems, which have only very slowly 
 been emancipating themselves from the re- 
 strictions laid upon them by the former ones ; 
 and we see this process of emancipation going 
 on in our own day. 
 
 Thus the progress, through Avhich man 
 has reached a larger personality, and succes- 
 sively come to regard himself as member of a 
 larger and still larger organism, first as mem- 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FT TT RE. 91 
 
 berof a family, next as eitken of a state, and 
 finally as member of a human brotherhood or 
 a church, has had its own dialectic ; and as 
 human society has improved itseK these re- 
 strictions have become more numerous, com- 
 phcated and subtle. Possibly, too, they have 
 become by this very separation and diffiision, 
 attenuated, weaker, and more removable. These 
 restrictions are both natural and artificial, or 
 conventional. The natural ones are founded 
 in the essential human nature itself. The 
 artificial ones grow out of the compHcations 
 of the social state. Since artificial, they are 
 removable bv the same voluntary- abihtv which 
 imposed them, and the remedy can be sought 
 and found. The former ones are profounder 
 and need a more radical remedy. PoHtical. 
 social, moral wisdom are needed for the first 
 task, while religious motive-springs and mo- 
 tives, alone can efiect the other. The one task 
 is for all Christians as included in the state. 
 The other is for them as members of the 
 church. The two lines of activity must needs 
 intermingle, and how to contrive or find the 
 right relation of the two ftimishes a constant 
 question of conscience for every Christian man. 
 
92 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 It would be a very easy matter to show at 
 length how these fetters upon human moral 
 freedom exist in the rude and rudest human 
 societies. It is enough, here, to instance the 
 defect in them of the requisite moral knowl- 
 edge. Moral alternatives, indeed, exist in 
 every conscious human soul, whether savage 
 or civilized, i. e., he selects one course of activ- 
 ity rather than another for other considera- 
 tions than the immediate consequence of well- 
 being or enjoyment to himself Unless the 
 innate ability so to decide existed as a sub- 
 stratum, further moral knowledge could not 
 be built upon it, nor could altruistic maxims 
 of conduct ever have come to be formulated. 
 All moral knowledge is potential in the 
 human soul as such. The sense of duty, how- 
 ever obscured or distorted, lies ineffaceabty 
 in the distinctively human structure, and 
 only awaits development. The very posses- 
 sion of language shows the possibility of ad- 
 vance ; and although the real advance may 
 have been too slow for exterior observation to 
 detect, nevertheless there must be movement, 
 either in advance or retreat. Nothing in 
 man's social history, or in his psychical his- 
 
POSiSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 93 
 
 tory, any more than in his physical history, 
 is stationary. And one result of this move- 
 ment is the discovery, by slow increments, 
 by what kind of activity the innate principle of 
 moral development should realize itself. Not 
 until human society has made many steps in 
 advance does the current of this moral history 
 become clearer, and patent for observation, but 
 it was all implicit before. All a 'posteriori ob- 
 servation, patiently conducted, validates this 
 a priori conclusion. 
 
 The races which have gone very far along 
 in this moral pathway can understand them- 
 selves, and see what is still defective, and thus 
 the speed of moral progress can be accelerated. 
 As they are in the forefront of the onward 
 movement, they do not need so much to un- 
 derstand how they have reached this position, 
 as to understand it fully, and to ask what is 
 to be done with their present light. They 
 find in their own condition too much igno- 
 rance still, too many defects to make it seem 
 a duty to thrust their political and social in- 
 stitutions upon the races which linger behind 
 them in the onward march. They must mend 
 and perfect their own condition, ere they can 
 sincerely advise it for others. 
 
94 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 The neglect of this accounts for the failure 
 of so many missionar}^ and civilizing efforts. 
 Into our intercourse with the less cultured 
 peoples we carry our vices in the fore-front, 
 and let them conceal our virtues, and this 
 causes these virtues to be suspected of insin- 
 cerity. ^'We ask for more real and winning 
 results of your Christianity," the heathen 
 say, '' before we are ready to adopt it ; or, if 
 we do adopt it, it is for political ends, rather 
 than because the results are such as to prove 
 the truth of the cardinal principle which is 
 recommended to us." 
 
 The reformation, then, must begin at home. 
 This is the burning need and longing which 
 is ijow stirring all minds who long for such 
 an Utopia as the religion of Christ suggests, 
 or their own reason approves. 
 
 In our highly complicated human society 
 the restrictions upon moral freedom have 
 become not only more numerous, but more 
 refined and subtle. The ignorant and poor 
 have been biassed by the pressure of physical 
 want, or by instinctive antagonism to the 
 pressure of the social exclusiveness of the 
 educated and the rich. And these, again, are 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 95 
 
 perpetually tempted to retain their privileges, 
 and to sophisticate away the instinctive 
 human craving for a more real brotherhood. 
 How can one be morally free in the pure sense 
 since the physical want is so imperious, and 
 demands immediate gratification? How can 
 one be morally free in the pure sense when 
 possessed by long sufferance of a monopoly of 
 earthly good things, and subtly tempted to 
 retain them? 
 
 The reform needed is vast and two-sided. 
 Can these two forms of human temptation be 
 made to neutralize each other and settle into 
 an eqidlihnum ? AVhat can be done to remove 
 either bias and bring the pure alternatives be- 
 fore human moral choice? What can enable 
 it to adopt the good, not for immediate self- 
 interest, but because it is rational, and the 
 alone form of an ideal state? And on the 
 other hand what can be done, that it may not 
 he forced into evil, but be free to identify itself 
 with it for its own sake, for the attractiveness 
 of spiritual independency ? Whether in such 
 an actual condition, evil will not have lost 
 its attractiveness is another question, but the 
 faith that it may is the motive-spring of all 
 
96 . MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 human moral effort. We must rescue all who 
 now ignorantly choose the evil, and bring 
 them to our side, and this we can do only by 
 making the good supremely attractive. If 
 any shall yet refuse, we can at least draw 
 such a line as that they can be disting- 
 uished on the one side, and not be, in our 
 observation, intermingled with the crowds on 
 the other. 
 
 The needed reformation cannot be accom- 
 plished by any one method. The web is too 
 complicated for any one to unravel, and to 
 eliminate what has confused the perfect pic- 
 ture. We can only, bit by bit, straighten its 
 distortions, and bring all to self-consistency 
 and harmony. But if simultaneous efforts are 
 made by many, each individual or group hav- 
 ing before it its own portion to be rectified, 
 w^e can bring about the conditions for its ulti- 
 mate, or, at least, comparative symmetrization. 
 Hence we can but remove one social excres- 
 cence at a time. But cautious effort is indi- 
 cated. What is needed is a reformation that 
 will bring about a revolution insensibly and 
 make every one content with it. Sudden revo- 
 lutions and wars are violent remedies, some- 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 97 
 
 times needful, but bring their own debris of 
 consequences to be removed ere the ground is 
 clear for onward progress. Human intelli- 
 gence, guided by love, not only will carry us 
 in a smoother career, but in one swifter, than 
 will any physical violence. The civilized na- 
 tions are coming to see that war is a needless 
 dialectic, and physical violence among the 
 needy classes in the civilized societies is by 
 many disavowed, or thought of only as a last 
 despairing resort. It behooves the educated 
 classes to see that they are not driven to this, 
 and to seek to destroy the inclination rather 
 than to crush the outbreak. 
 
 This is not the place nor time to discuss any 
 immediate proposed measures. I have only 
 sought to indicate what should be the aim, 
 and what the moving-spring in all individual 
 or concerted effort. 
 
 But, on the other hand, we must not forget 
 that all this human effort after a more satis- 
 fying social state, which sh^ll make men freer, 
 and the whole less irrational, should not be 
 made as an abstracted effort apart from the 
 question whether it can have any, and if any, 
 what effect upon the other stream of human 
 
98 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 history as it flows on in the realm of the de- 
 parted. These are members of the human race 
 as well as we. The final cause of all moral effort 
 must then be something more than the pro- 
 duction of a social state here on earth which 
 will satisfy the reason when realized in an 
 existing generation, or series of generations, 
 which are soon to pass away to the other side, 
 — but, besides, to produce an organism of 
 which they, as well as we, shall be constituent 
 members : 
 
 '' They, without us cannot be made perfect." 
 Is it then in our power to influence human 
 history as it proceeds under the environment 
 which is to ensue when these immortal beings 
 close their eyes to the immediate phenomenal 
 world? Were this last all in all, it seems 
 not much matter in what state we are, or into 
 what imagined immunity from present sorrows 
 we can urge the coming generations. To 
 know that we shall have gone over this tortur- 
 ing process for their problematical benefit 
 alone is a pessimistic conclusion, assaulting 
 our cheerfulness and deadening our energy. 
 But once arouse the hope or impart the con- 
 viction that our present improvement and 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 99 
 
 their future improvement can react upon the 
 foregone generations, and an optimistic feehng 
 is aroused, and we can be cheerful under any 
 sacrifices. 
 
 It is just here that Christian philosophy 
 shows itself profounder than the philosophy 
 which underlies many projected political and 
 social movements. It draws its conclusion 
 from a larger induction. It gives a more ex- 
 haustive definition of humanity, and thinks 
 of all his possible relations to the universe as 
 as well as of these present ones. It gives per- 
 manent and absolute value to human char- 
 acter, or rather to the human soul as possessing 
 this character, instead of regarding him as a 
 mere link in a physical or logical chain. It 
 is thus individualistic, as well as socialistic. It 
 regards the organism, not as an abstraction 
 having completeness for the aesthetic demand 
 only, but as made up of individual souls, each 
 a microcosm in itself, reflecting, as it endures, 
 more and more perfectly the macrocosm. It 
 thinks the highest in man, not that he can 
 feel and think and know, but that he can 
 love and enjoy. He who can love purely and 
 persistently is thereby congener to the Highest, 
 
100 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 and a grander creation than all these systems 
 of stars and nebulse that fill the illimitable 
 space ; and the present aim of Christianity is to 
 remove all obscurations from the vision of this 
 love, that its bliss may be secure. It recog- 
 nizes not only that physical sympathy exists 
 and binds together all human life, and all 
 animal life as well ; not only that mental sym- 
 pathy exists, and that the field of knowledge 
 is common property, but that moral sympathy 
 exists and should have its fetters removed, 
 and a truer development be made possible, and 
 thus a finer and more spiritual union come to 
 be. 
 
 If, then, in the realm of the departed, 
 human history still proceeds, it must be in- 
 fluenced by the streams which are continually 
 pouring into it from the living generations. 
 If a purer and stronger love, or an increasing 
 increment of spiritual strength shall character- 
 ize these successive inflowings, the principle of 
 good must be thereby strengthened, and the 
 speed of the entire moral progress be accele- 
 rated. 
 
 If human life here on earth have any 
 meaning other than physical for the in- 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 101 
 
 dividual, it is that it is the occasion, or the 
 condition for moral choice or probation, some- 
 times consciously made, and sometimes made 
 unconsciously and obscurely, and in depths 
 which exterior intelligence cannot penetrate. 
 And if the existence after death have any 
 significance, it must be in part that it fur- 
 nishes the conditions for the development of 
 the moral or loving principle, for the invigo- 
 ration of the moral status, and the possibility 
 of indefectibility for such as have on earth 
 committed themselves to this alternative. 
 That the knowledge of God, and of the divine 
 self-limitation, whereby the human race has 
 been morally reached, must be afforded to all 
 who have passed beyond the veil follows as a 
 corollary from the admission of the organic 
 unity of mankind. Not otherwise can the 
 utmost potentiality of the creature be elicited. 
 That the ignorant, degraded and seemingly 
 neglected ones shall be afforded this knowl- 
 edge, follows ; or else we divide mankind, or 
 even the morally good, into two organisms, 
 with an impassable wall of separation, and 
 we have another dualism with its attendant 
 difficulties. 
 
102 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 But, while ultimate assimilation shall thus 
 be reached by all having the quality of moral 
 good, and thus it be literally true that none 
 are saved but through the knowledge of Christ, 
 and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the obli- 
 gation is none the less to accelerate the speed 
 of the progress. Hence we are adding to the 
 strength of good by seeing to it that the 
 generations pass away from the earth as far 
 advanced in good as possible. It will not do 
 for love to slumber and be inactive. Thereby 
 it is weakened as love. The divine love itself 
 requires for its satisfaction that it be met by 
 human responsive love, as the divine glory 
 may be enriched by the glory of the creature. 
 When Christian love relaxes in its zeal, it is 
 in peril of extinguishment. Thereby the 
 moral force as it may display itself in duties to 
 the existing generations may undergo dimin- 
 ution, and thence will follow the very mental 
 ignorance and physical evils we are seeking to 
 modify. Thus Christian love may be indi- 
 rectly remedial by removing our social imper- 
 fections, and directly remedial by diffusing 
 itself, and strengthening the principle of 
 good. By the latter effort it reaches the de- 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTUKE. 103 
 
 parted generations, and thus hastens on the 
 consummation. 
 
 How to apportion one's activity to bring 
 about one result or the other is a question for 
 the individual soul, as such. But it is also 
 a question for concerted effort. Here the 
 doctrine of the Christian Church comes in, 
 as an institution enabling such concerted 
 effort. It must needs respect both purposes. 
 Very perplexing problems at once arise. How 
 far shall it identify itself with any movement 
 for social improvement originating beyond 
 itself? Under what restrictions, with due 
 regard to other divine institutions, shall it 
 originate such efforts ? And this again brings 
 up the prior questions : how it shall define 
 itself, and what is its function in the world ? 
 How far has it an unchangeable constitution ? 
 What are the possibilities, without sacrificing 
 or maiming this constitution, of its adapting 
 itself to existing circumstances? And as its 
 ministry must always be in the forefront of its 
 efforts, what are the duties and limitations of 
 this ministry ? 
 
 Any one of these questions might supply a 
 topic for an essay or a treatise. In the follow- 
 
104 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 ing lecture I shall touch them all, though 
 but lightly. Nevertheless I shall give an 
 outline of what ought to be the consecutive, 
 or logical treatment, and might be an exhaust- 
 ive treatment of the same, — the denomination 
 of which will be " the functions of the Chris- 
 tian ministry." 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE FUIv^CTIONS OF THE CHEISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 Man regarded as simply an individual is 
 but a poor being. He only rises in the 
 scale of our regard and becomes richer by 
 virtue of his relations to others, and through 
 these he is capable of an endless amplifica- 
 tion. In order to this physical, mental, so- 
 cial, moral and religious instincts, or involun- 
 tary proclivities are implanted in his structure. 
 These are elicited by an activity upon him 
 from or through his environment, or by more 
 direct and mystical influence, but there is 
 that in him which immediately responds, so 
 that he voluntarily acquiesces in the quick- 
 ening determination. It is a most interest- 
 ing enquiry, or branch of science, which 
 notes that there is a premonition of much 
 of this in the stratum of existence immedi- 
 ately below him ; — in the animal kingdom. 
 Even here, the individual rises to a higher 
 definition as member of a species, and some- 
 times of a commonwealth, and we have the 
 
 105 
 
106 MENS CHRISTI, 
 
 possibility of our own social, political and 
 moral conditions pre-imaged. 
 
 In consequence of these instincts in hu- 
 manity, the members of a human family 
 cling together. That they do so under modi- 
 fications, as other animals do not, to the end 
 of life, is because man is also, as they are 
 not, a religious animal, and therefore capable 
 of a finer and more permanent tie. Unknow- 
 ing why, the members of a family feel and 
 act as though they were in some sense one; 
 and the conflicting interests afterwards arising, 
 may weaken, but do not destroy the tie. The 
 opposing or centrifugal influences are superin- 
 duced, and change with the change of cir- 
 cumstances, while the centripetal drawing is 
 incessant, and never entirely unfelt. 
 
 In the social fabric, or the political state, 
 personality develops into still further impli- 
 cations. Here each individual has been limited 
 in order to be enlarged. He has parted with 
 something of his individuality, in order to 
 receive in return something of more value 
 to himself than that he has parted with. 
 He has lost something of his liberty, and 
 come to feel his dependence upon others, 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 107 
 
 but sees that others have also become de- 
 pendent upon him, and that the sphere of 
 his own activity has been widened rather 
 than narrowed, since it reaches flirther from 
 himself. This more compKcated inter-relation 
 is S3aiibolized by divers social, external and 
 visible aggregations, and by the created gov- 
 ernments. These are the symbols of the unity 
 and common interests of the individuals of 
 the same. 
 
 Men, possessed by similar ideas, or convic- 
 tions, feel this to be also a bond, and a finer one. 
 These convictions guide or rule their activity, 
 and they invariably invent some symbol which 
 shall indicate and keep fast this, their com- 
 mon possession. When any one becomes 
 absorbed in a thought, new or old, he seeks 
 sympathy to strengthen his own possession 
 of it, to confirm it as a true possession, to 
 aid him in the endeavor to extend it. 
 
 In proportion as the sympathy springs 
 from a more and more valuable possession, 
 does it more urgently seek to secure itself 
 in this by extending it. Eminently this is 
 true of the religious relation. This ever 
 seeks to fasten securely together its adherents. 
 
108 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 It combines often with the social and ethical 
 relations, and makes them to minister to its 
 uses and its aims. It seeks to gather into 
 its own unity whatever is needful* for its 
 own sustentation. That the religious bond 
 is token of a profounder tie, is shown by the 
 fact, that it survives amid the passing away 
 of political structures, and social integrations. 
 It fixes its own thoughts by symbols, and 
 the permanence of those symbols in the his- 
 tory of all religions is another proof that 
 this tie has reached to a profounder depth 
 in human nature than any other. When 
 conflict has come this has, in the main, been 
 found to be the victor. 
 
 If the cardinal principle of this religion is 
 love, it has the utmost increment of vitality, 
 and is, from its very definition, immortal. 
 Superadded to, and possibly coalescing with 
 other bonds, it becomes, concretely, the strong- 
 est possible tie to bind men together. And 
 if its sympathetic aim respects the whole 
 human race, through it is the largest develop- 
 ment and ultimate definition of personality 
 reached. For while all these other instincts 
 respect the transient, this alone respects the 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 109 
 
 permanent human relation. Families may 
 fall to pieces, states may crumble and dis- 
 appear, the subjective apprehension of truth 
 may deal with changing object-matter, — but 
 the bond of loving souls is indestructible. 
 
 As possessors of new thoughts, as having 
 new aims for activity and new emotions, 
 all unified by this immortal bond of love, 
 the follwvers of Jesus Christ were tied to- 
 gether by the deepest and strongest possible 
 sympathy. They saw that it need not con- 
 flict with other ties, but if it ever should, 
 these must give way. Here was an econom- 
 ical motive, added to the instinctive prompt- 
 ing, why they should consociate together, and 
 create some symbol of this, their unique 
 common possession; and this intended not 
 only to mark themselves to each other, and 
 to the alien ones, as a distinct people, to 
 keep them true to each other, and arrest 
 any propensity to wander away, or grow 
 weak in their allegiance, but to strengthen 
 the sympathetic bond itself. Of their own 
 impulse they would have done this. 
 
 Foreseeing this, and laying hold of these 
 indestructible propensities of human nature. 
 
110 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 their Master and Teacher gave them what 
 they needed, what they must have, and what 
 they . would have created for themselves, a 
 church. They were already an ecclesia, having 
 subjective fitness, though arising from exter- 
 nal selection, but at first, no objective bond 
 or symbol of their allegiance existed. They 
 could not be left to be bound together by 
 the conscious and subjective tie only. They 
 were not yet ripe for that. They still were 
 not morally and religiously strong enough to 
 be left to their own spontaneity. They needed 
 to be guarded from external assault and 
 internal temptation. Their imperfect wisdom 
 needed to be supplemented by a deeper, and 
 more far-seeing wisdom. They could not reach 
 the intended perfection by a leap, but must go 
 through a period of trial to bring out and in- 
 crease their strength. And so he gave them 
 beforehand what they would have invented 
 for themselves, external marks and symbols; 
 and, as coming from him, these should not 
 be changeable by any after caprice. And 
 these marks were so carefully chosen as to 
 be profoundly symbolic. In the full signifi- 
 cance of the rites of Baptism and the Holy 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. Ill 
 
 Supper we have all that is distinctive in the 
 new revelation from God, all the profound 
 truth now made known, appropriated and 
 felt, imaged, and discoverable. Thus they 
 have obligation not only as tokens of Christian 
 profession, but as having teaching power, as 
 preservatives of the truths they veil. Even 
 for these reasons alone they must be un- 
 changeable. And if, beside, there can be vindi- 
 cated the doctrine that they were made chan- 
 nels of divine grace, media for influences 
 mystical and beneath knowledge, this is still 
 another reason to secure their permanency. 
 If this new consociation is to exist as one, 
 there arises thus the utmost need and the 
 highest possible inducement to preserve these 
 marks, symbols, or sacraments in their in- 
 tegrity. 
 
 And besides, if this new society, this 
 ecclesia, is to exist not only to strengthen 
 the inner bond which ties its members to- 
 gether, but if by virtue of this very tie 
 they must long for further sympathy, and 
 gather new adherents and friends from the 
 outlying world, there emerges another reason 
 Avhy they should be bound by these visible and 
 
112 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 unchangeable marks. Thereby only can they 
 seek unitedly, as well as individually, to 
 extend their compass; and organized efforts 
 can become possible, of more power to work 
 changes in the exterior world than any num- 
 ber of smaller, less carefully meditated, or 
 individually impulsive efforts. 
 
 But, — on the other hand, — while these 
 marks, symbols, or sacraments of the new 
 society are needful for those yet on the path- 
 way towards, and not yet at the summit of 
 the intended perfection, it is in accordance 
 with the cardinal principle of the new re- 
 ligion itself that they should be as few as 
 possible, and not from their number consti- 
 tute a bondage. Other rites and observations 
 might thereafter be superimposed, arising from 
 new requirements, but these must be transi- 
 tory in their nature, and changeable or re- 
 movable by those who may have as much 
 wisdom as those who imposed them. The 
 very idea or conception of love, as in its 
 perfection pure spontaneity, requires that it 
 should gradually relax and remove its own 
 fetters. The weaker love, the more need of 
 laiv and external guidance. The stronger the 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 113 
 
 love, the less need of law ; and for perfect 
 love there is no law, for it is at one with 
 the divine love. Hence the profound wisdom 
 of Jesus Christ in creating only these two 
 marks of discipleship, and making them 
 obligatory. These must remain as means for 
 identification, because, till the end, as far as 
 we can see, there is to be antagonism, and 
 conflict with hostile influences. 
 
 In admitting, more or less intelligently, 
 all this, Christian people have been almost 
 universally agreed, and nearly every self- 
 formed association of professed followers of 
 Jesus Christ has retained the rites of Baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper. Anything else, in 
 external observance, they have concluded, 
 may be changed or abandoned, but these may 
 not be. 
 
 In the earliest Christian days, w^hen all 
 were rejoicing in their new possession, the 
 impulse was universal and irrepressible to 
 impart to others the knowledge of their own 
 riches. Hence all Christians were preachers 
 of the gospel. And it would seem, from the 
 historic evidence in our possession, that they 
 also, of their own individual impulse, or under 
 
114 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 guidance, administered, when their preaching 
 was successful, the initiatory Christian rite. 
 In this consists what is called the universal 
 Christian priesthood, from which any further 
 priesthood arises by limitation. They were 
 mediators between God and the world, and 
 their very love made this mediation watchful, 
 active and incessant. But it soon became ap- 
 parent, and it arises also from the nature of 
 the case, that the disposition and permission 
 to preach and teach and administer Baptism 
 might be unwisely used. And thus, on a priori 
 grounds, there appears the need, for the purity 
 of the society, of a limitation to this permis- 
 sion ; and so it came to pass, obviously or 
 insensibly, that these high privileges came to 
 be exercised by those thought best fitted to 
 use them wisely. The teaching of the more 
 competent came to be regarded as more trust- 
 worthy and authoritative, and their superior 
 discretion in bestowing the rite of initiation 
 to be admitted. But the inherent right, how- 
 ever limited for economical reasons, still 
 remained. All this might be amply illus- 
 trated from Christian history. 
 
 There is no historical evidence that the 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 115 
 
 administration of the other Christian rite or 
 sacrament was ever general or thrown open. 
 Here a more marked limitation seems to be 
 required from the necessity of the situation. 
 The discretion needed to distinguish those 
 who were fitted to share in this observance 
 was not the common Christian possession. 
 The benefit of this sacrament, and, indeed, 
 its ideal and perfect administration itself, 
 requires that those uniting in it should be 
 free from unrepented sin, and should be one 
 in the possession of the sacrificial mind, and 
 thus be competent, in the only profound and 
 true sense, to ''shew forth the Lord's death." 
 If this should be wanting in all those joining 
 in the observance, it would become a mere 
 mechanical performance. Therefore its ad- 
 ministration must be entrusted to the wisdom 
 of those competent to judge of the fitness of 
 those who propose to unite in it, and these 
 are supposed to have been trained for this 
 very purpose. Thus the profound significance 
 of the rite itself required that it should not 
 be thrown open to the general impulse. The 
 requirements of law as limiting spontaneity 
 are here most apparent. Thus we have a 
 
116 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 speculative vindication of the universal Chris- 
 tian practice of allowing the administration of 
 this rite only to a limited and specially fitted 
 priesthood. 
 
 Historically we learn that the universal 
 Christian priesthood was thus limited. On 
 these a priori grounds, for some minds quite 
 as convincing as the others, we learn why it 
 should have been so limited. The question 
 now arises how and when it became thus 
 limited. Can we trace back this limitation 
 to any authority not to be declined? Can 
 we connect it immediately or mediately to 
 any prescription of the Founder of the re- 
 ligion himself? Was its evolution, though 
 acknowledged to be gradual, presided over by 
 acknowledged authority? Did Jesus Christ, 
 in short, add a third requirement to the 
 economic dispensation, and create a ministry, 
 and did his inspired apostles guide its devel- 
 opment ? That his eleven disciples, and Paul, 
 claimed to possess authority, and a commission 
 delegated by Jesus Christ, seems apparent 
 enough from the New Testament narratives, 
 and other writings. Concretely, then, it 
 would seem that a ministry did exist before 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 117 
 
 the Christian sacraments. For these only 
 came to be, actually, on and after the day of 
 Pentecost. This body of men were held to be 
 the bearers of the trust in a higher sense than 
 were the common disciples. Tlie very defer- 
 ence paid them is evidence of this. If facts 
 are as good evidence as prescriptions, and 
 interpret the latter, it does seem that they 
 were left in possession of plenary powers, and 
 that the authority possessed by their Master 
 was delegated to them, and that for the wise 
 exercise of it they were promised the mystical 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit. And if this 
 mystical influence respected a particular 
 Divine purpose, if there be valid ground for 
 holding to the inspiration of any selected 
 ones in a higher sense, and for more special 
 aims, than the universal inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit, then this alone would give them 
 such authority and demand tlie corresponding 
 respect. If we admit more than ordinary in- 
 sight in their written words, we cannot confine 
 their inspiration to these, but must think it 
 to pervade their entire mental consciousness, 
 to guide them in their ordinary speech and 
 in their prescriptions. No separation, in the 
 
118 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 nature of the case seems possible. Whether 
 these prescriptions were for the immediate 
 situation only, or were permanent in their 
 intent and hence in their obligation, and, if 
 the latter, how far flexible, is a question that 
 may be profoundly argued, as to which Chris- 
 tian men seem now in hopeless disagreement, 
 but which will one day be satisfactorily 
 answered. 
 
 That what the apostles did, as well as what 
 they said, arose from the needs of the existing 
 situation is indubitable; They gave commis- 
 sions, and created offices according as the 
 need was apparent. There is no evidence that 
 they trusted to a prior prescription of Jesus 
 Christ. Rather, they followed the monitions 
 of their own consciousness, divinely illu- 
 mined. Some of these offices were transient 
 and passed away insensibly, and, as far as we 
 can learn, without remonstrance. But others 
 either met with no shocks, or withstood all 
 shocks and became permanent. When the 
 former ones had passed away, and the current 
 of history becomes clear, we find still sur- 
 viving some, the origin of whose prescription 
 is related in the New Testament. The ministry 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 119 
 
 separated itself naturally into a threefold 
 function. One set of activities after another 
 was parted with by the governing powers. 
 First, they disengaged from themselves the 
 care required for physical relief, and created 
 an order of deacons. Next, they abandoned 
 the work of education and edification, growing 
 all the while more urgent in its needs, to a 
 more carefully selected body of men, reserv- 
 ing to themselves still the oversight ; and 
 ultimately there came to exist, somehow, 
 sharers in the task of oversight, who became 
 in this respect, their successors. Thus natur- 
 ally grew up the Christian ministry. This 
 threefoldness of function perennially exists, 
 whether exercised by men alike in name and 
 office, or anyhow distinguished. What might 
 be confined to one ivas separated into three, 
 and what is exercised by three may conversely 
 be absorbed into one. Even when a threefold 
 order is continued, the functions necessarily 
 run into each other. Hence, from the first, the 
 deacons authoritatively preached and baptized, 
 and when thought to have sufficient wisdom 
 were elevated to another function, and en- 
 trusted with the right to administer the Holy 
 
120 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 Supper. This function, as we have seen, 
 required great wisdom, and a training in this 
 produced a fitness for the required oversight, 
 the need of which perennially exists, and is 
 always exercised by some. That with the 
 changing conditions of mankind new adap- 
 tations may be required, and thus that the 
 ministry must have a kind of flexibility, is 
 indubitable, and can be historically illustrated. 
 The separate functions may become less 
 strongly marked and be barely distinguishable. 
 Hence, comparing our present with the primi- 
 tive ministry, we find much modification, 
 and that, practically, the intermediate order 
 has absorbed into itself much that was at first 
 distinctive of the Diaconate and of the Episco- 
 pate. 
 
 On these grounds it may be held that a 
 ministry is a mark of the Christian church 
 as well as the two rites of Baptism, and the 
 Supper of the Lord. 
 
 Moreover as these two rites were symbolic, 
 so the apostles themselves devised a symbol, 
 but one less profound in significance, of the 
 separation for the uses of this ministry ; and 
 we have the rite of laying on of hands in 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 121 
 
 ordination. And if the Christian brotherhood 
 is to be kept bound together there seems no 
 reason why it should ever decline this any 
 more than it may the observance of the two 
 sacraments, although the authority for it is one 
 step farther removed from the source. Other- 
 wise, the bond of union is weakened, external 
 unity impaired, and there become divergent 
 threads of history that have to be caught up 
 and bound together again. 
 
 In all this, is the argument for the need, 
 the existence, and the mode of perpetuation 
 of the Christian ministry. I have sought thus 
 to state it on grounds, for the most part specu- 
 lative, or a priori, leaving to other hands the 
 ampler historical illustration of the same. 
 The argument is founded upon the needs of 
 the economy, and endeavors to show it as a 
 system of means entirely natural, truly rational, 
 and ideally fitted to accomplish a still ulterior 
 result, namely, the perfection of the Chris- 
 tian character as the condition for the process 
 of regeneration ; even though we admit that 
 that ulterior result may be reached through a 
 system less complete. God overrules men's 
 mistakes, and accomplishes his loving purposes, 
 
122 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 even though men misuse their freedom in not 
 following his true prescriptions, or are ignorant 
 of them. 
 
 And now, without further treatment of 
 these debated topics, let us ask what are 
 the functions of the Christian ministry such 
 as we have it. And I do not mean by this 
 how we shall distinguish the differing func- 
 tions of bishops, priests and deacons ; but 
 how, since they all have one end in view, 
 into what different sorts of activities their 
 common work is divisible. 
 
 And first, they are in our own day, the 
 administrators of the Christian sacraments, 
 and usually the conductors in Christian wor- 
 ship. The propensity exists in human nature 
 itself not to enter into the full religious 
 significance of these mediatorial observances, 
 and sometimes it may be lost sight of almost 
 entirely, and the administration or conduct 
 become a mere set of mechanical acts. We 
 need not think that they are invalid, in 
 consequence, or destitute of effect upon others ; 
 but if the performance has lost its inner soul, 
 their beneficial effect upon others is greatly 
 diminished. The people readily detect the 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTKY. 123 
 
 difference between a lifeless and heartless 
 utterance, and one in which the thought 
 and feeling of the utterer affect even the tone 
 of his voice, and produce an influence upon 
 others mystical and not easy to measure. 
 And the effect upon a Christian minister of 
 a superstitious view of his own functions, 
 by which he regards himself as a magical 
 medium between God and man (a notion 
 often the result of a shallow theory), is to 
 harden the utterance of such an one and 
 make it less sympathetic. He hurries over 
 his work in a perfunctory way, may not rule 
 his own thoughts meanwhile, and displays 
 no emotion, or may not feel it. That in 
 some a view so low as this of the function 
 of the Christian minister sometimes exists as 
 a justification of his methods, is probably 
 true. The propensity towards it always exists 
 in our poor human nature, which is never 
 entirely rid of superstition, from which the 
 extremest culture has never entirely emanci- 
 pated a single soul. This, which we cul- 
 tured ones fight against, in other monitions 
 of the same, requires especially to be struggled 
 with in the uses of the ministry, and can. 
 
124 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 perhaps, be most successfully supplanted by 
 displaying its higher ends and finer purposes, 
 which are ethical or religious. 
 
 An influence, somewhat counteracting to 
 this propensity, is supplied by the needs of 
 Christian preaching. Here the requirement 
 is obvious that the minister should come into 
 more immediate mental relation with his 
 auditors, and avail himself of whatever re- 
 sources he possesses. But here, too, the need- 
 ful thought processes, and whatever feeling 
 may have accompanied them, may have been 
 entirely expended in the composition of the 
 written sermon, and its delivery after all, 
 become a mere perfunctory performance, a 
 task to be got over, and excluded from the 
 mind. The vehicle of utterance may be dis- 
 regarded or undervalued, and the mystical 
 influence and effect of speech and sound be 
 entirely missed. In preaching, surely emotion 
 is to be called forth, as well as the thought 
 imparted. The purpose of it is such knowledge 
 as will determine activity, and as will make 
 the motive-spring of such activity warm 
 and strong. The power of sweet sound, when 
 guided by imagination, to sink into the very 
 
CHEISTIAX MI^'I^TEY. 125 
 
 dejDths of the human souL is seen in the 
 charm of music, and well-nnjdnlated speech 
 may have a similar cliarm. The nitntal 
 proposition is vtilt-d in the sensuous utter- 
 ance, and this last may pt-netrate more 
 deeply into the r«:>ots of being than the 
 other. A t<:>ne. sweet and tender, informed 
 by soul emotion, kindles often into a fire 
 the slumbering thought CA^en of the audi- 
 tor : and calls forth its own sympathetic 
 response. 
 
 According to his aljilitA^ it is incumbent 
 upon every Christian preacher to make use 
 of this power. And fjr this end jjhysical 
 culture is not to be despised, though it is 
 still required that this should be at the 
 service of Christian love. 
 
 And the thought which he is thus effect- 
 ively to utter ought to be his oirn. T<j be 
 able to enshrine the th':>ught of another in 
 this sensuous A'ehicle and make the latter 
 exquisitely symbolic, is a rare natural gift, 
 and the result of genius or ins|:»iration ; 
 though the ability in lesser degree may be 
 acquire-:! V»y art and training. A more than 
 ordinary vividness of imaginatio/i is required 
 
126 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 to enable one to infuse his own soul into 
 the words of another. The variant ability 
 to do this marks the different degrees of 
 excellence and effectiveness in the reading 
 of Holy Scripture. It is a good test, ceteris 
 paribus, of one's imaginative power. 
 
 But it is by no means a rare ability to 
 utter one's oiun thought effectively. In pro- 
 portion as its truth is recognized it may be 
 felt, and the mode of utterance be affected 
 accordingly. Almost every one can be elo- 
 quent when stirred by strong emotion, and 
 the spontaneous modulation is likely to be 
 true. Any thought then, to have this easy, 
 unartificial, and effective utterance should be 
 one's own possession, and not a borrowed 
 one. 
 
 I have no aoubt that one reason why 
 we have much poor preaching is because 
 many clergymen, in composing their sermons 
 in their seclusion, avail themselves of others' 
 thoughts rather than of their own. This 
 propensity is measurably qualified in extem- 
 pore, or rather, impromptu preaching, but even 
 here one's own repertory may be so poor 
 that he is obliged to reproduce what others 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 127 
 
 have said, in borrowed words or stereotyped 
 phrases, without having fused them in the 
 alembic of his own mind, and given them 
 subjective form, and hence new life, making 
 thus the human mind in its full definition 
 the medium. This method of preparation 
 may have become so habitual as to create 
 a distrust in the value of the preacher's own 
 thoughts ; and in consequence his sermons 
 are almost helplessly mechanical, and fail 
 of becoming truly spiritual modes of rela- 
 tion. 
 
 This propensity may have been created, 
 or fostered by the mode of the antece- 
 dent preparation, by the defects in the theo- 
 logical instruction. If this has consisted in 
 the mere offering and acceptance of cut and 
 dried propositions, coming from no mat- 
 ter what authority, which the recipient is 
 expected to take for granted and reproduce 
 as he can, with no effort to appropriate 
 them in thought — to test, to see, to feel their 
 meaning and their truth, it is not to be ex- 
 pected that every such one will readily break 
 over these bounds, and tell to his after con- 
 gregations, only what he knows and feels to 
 
128 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 be true. In this way a faulty mode of in- 
 struction degrades the function of the Chris- 
 tian ministry. If our preachers would simply 
 tell what they know, what thoughts have 
 been suggested and feelings aroused by their 
 own response to God's love in Christ, by their 
 contemplation of humanity and its needs, their 
 sermons would not fail to find adequate re- 
 ponse. 
 
 It follows, likewise that this vivid Chris- 
 tian experience, this love of Christ, this love 
 of man, and acquaintance with his ethical 
 and religious defects and wants, must in dif- 
 ferent grades affect the efficiency of the min- 
 ister in another one of his functions, viz : the 
 pastoral care. 
 
 The helplessness of many clergymen in 
 this respect is something mournful. They are 
 ready, in various degrees of readiness, and from 
 differing or mixed motives, to minister to the 
 physical wants of their human brethren, the 
 objects of their own pastoral charge in partic- 
 ular, but when called upon to minister to 
 mental and religious needs, to deal with the 
 disorders of the soul, they often draw back 
 with an inward consciousness of inadequacy. 
 
CHKISTIAN MINISTRY. 129 
 
 They hardly apply to themselves, as it might 
 be shown they have a right to do, their Lord's 
 promise, that it shall be given them what to 
 speak. They forget that the Holy Spirit is 
 theirs. But the Holy Spirit works through 
 human active agencies, and not through men 
 as passive machines. He still respects the na- 
 tive power, does not overcome it, though He 
 may stimulate it to the utmost of its exercise. 
 The personal equation, here, is susceptible of 
 all manner of degrees ; and for some the abil- 
 ity thus to minister must be confined to a 
 narrow range. Our own church has felt this 
 difficulty, and wisely allows the troubled soul 
 to go beyond its own pastor for relief. Finely 
 competent confessors are as rare as fine preach- 
 ers. But as a proper culture may have aided 
 in producing these, so a proper culture may 
 aid in the production of those, and enable a 
 greater ability than is usual in this line of 
 pastoral duty. This is a department of prep- 
 aration for ministerial work too much, hith- 
 erto, neglected. The Roman church has car- 
 ried it to an extreme. An imitation of her 
 method is not to be advised. A critique of it 
 might be made to show that it is based upon a 
 
130 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 wrong theory, and that its results are to be 
 deprecated. We, in our church, must, for this 
 end, start ah initio, and think out the method 
 from our own starting point, and under the 
 limitations of our own theology, which, as a 
 unified system, is not identical with that of 
 the Roman church. The difference between 
 two possible methods may be slightly indica- 
 ted from the very significance of the names 
 given to this branch of theological culture. 
 With the Roman church it is " Moral Theol- 
 ogy," i. e., theology so far as it is determined 
 by the received ethic of that church, which 
 can be shown to be practically, if not theoreti- 
 cally, a mere ethic of expediency, which has 
 such flexibility that it effaces at times the 
 absolute moral distinctions. With us the 
 name is, or should be ^' Theological Ethics," 
 i. e., moral distinctions are taken to be abso- 
 lute and immutable, recognized by human rea- 
 son, and furnishing ground for the exhibition 
 of the divine justice. And the inquiry is, 
 how the maxims for human conduct thence 
 deducible, are affected by the incoming of 
 Christian doctrine, by the revelation of God 
 and his purposes in Christ, in consequence of 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 131 
 
 which the whole Hfe-plan must be changed. 
 New maxnxLS spring up, changes are made in 
 the order and rank of those already received, 
 and thus, in some degree, the details of duty 
 are marked out, and reasons- given for all 
 this modification. 
 
 But for those of our clergy who are in any 
 degree competent, this ministration to the soul 
 wants of the troubled, perplexed, doubting or 
 despairing ones is the very finest part of the 
 ministerial ofiice, — a true spiritual mediation. 
 What wisdom and skill, what care and pa- 
 tience are needed to lead the struggling soul 
 out of any " Slough of Despond," or to tear 
 away the meshes of a false philosophy, and 
 enable an escape, to let in the light of divine 
 truth, b}^ degrees, into the darkness of doubt ! 
 When one is successful in this, there becomes 
 the greatest boon that one human being can 
 give to another, and it arouses in the recipient 
 the deepest feeling of gratitude, a sense of 
 obligation that lasts through life. This reali- 
 zation of the pastoral tie is, perhaps, the deep- 
 est and most enduring personal relation ever 
 existing here on the earth. The minister, to 
 be successful in accomplishing it, must not 
 
132 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 only be acutely sympathetic for ordinary men- 
 tal distress, but so wise as to enable sympathy 
 for subtler and acuter agony, must be able to 
 see symptoms of internal disorder, when un- 
 suspected by the sufferer himself. He must be 
 himself strong in the faith, and able to give a 
 reason for it, not by cutting off inquiry and 
 doubt, but by showing that the doubt leads 
 no whither, or into more impenetrable dark- 
 ness ; must be strong in his love, for love is 
 contagious in proportion to its strength, and 
 that is measured by its capability for sacrifice. 
 Christian love manifested sometimes wins and 
 cures, when all other remedies fail, and one is 
 drawn to meet it by a compulsion that is 
 divine. 
 
 But there is still another function of the 
 Christian ministry, — that to which I alluded in 
 my last lecture. These men are citizens of the 
 state, as well as ministers of the church. And 
 inasmuch as no change of moment, or great 
 improvement in human conditions, can be 
 effected but by concerted effort, or a wide- 
 spread consent, these men cannot, or should 
 not withhold themselves from co-operation 
 with their fellow-citizens in any aim intended 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 133 
 
 to move mankind one step further towards the 
 realization of its brotherhood. As a class, the 
 philanthropic impulse is probably as strong in 
 them, if not stronger, than in any other, 
 though it is often held back by conventional 
 restraints, by an iron-bound conservatism, or 
 by subtle temptations of self-interest. But 
 normally this impulse ought to be stronger 
 than in any other class, because the aim of 
 their office goes beyond the mere temporal 
 welfare of men, and respects their charac- 
 ters, as determining their permanent welfare. 
 Hence, more from this class, in proportion to 
 its numbers, than from any other, take the 
 lead in all effi^rts after social reform. The 
 ultra-progressive is nurtured here as well as 
 the ultra-conservative. Many, indeed, con- 
 fine themselves to their own pecidium, to the 
 narrow circle of their priestly and pastoral 
 relations, as though they had no ties nor 
 obligations beyond, and some strive to deepen 
 the line of separation between the clergy and 
 the laity, and exalt themselves into a caste^ 
 instead of gladly effiicing it when they can 
 legitimately do so. And others, from simple 
 distrust in their own power to influence men, 
 
134 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 console themselves by thinking that they have 
 no call of duty beyond their churchly rela- 
 tion. They resolve to do what is incumbent 
 upon them in this, and leave to God to take 
 care of ulterior results, and work out his 
 purposes upon human conditions. 
 
 This narrow view, thus variously held, very 
 often characterizes the procedure of young 
 men just beginning the ministerial life. This, 
 their self-imposed limitation, may come, indeed, 
 from diffidence, and be confirmed by habit, 
 but if so, it can be cured. But it may come 
 from a theory of their office — shallow, and not 
 fully honoring God and his methods of dealing 
 with his creatures ; a theory which implies 
 that the divine presence and the divine 
 efficiency are confined to the circle and the 
 prescribed rites of the church alone, and this 
 '' church " sometimes thought in a very narrow 
 definition. For if, indeed, the naive Christian 
 mind, unbiassed, rejects a notion so narrow, 
 and feels, as a corollary from the divine love 
 itself, that no human beings can be disregarded 
 in the divine mind, that God's plan respects 
 the human race as such, and that he is urging 
 a universal movement, that Christianity is 
 
CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 135 
 
 only a special movement as means towards a 
 universal one ; if religion is thought to belong 
 to human nature itself, and cannot be eradi- 
 cated therefrom, if its pre-suppositions are 
 never absent as determining human activity, — 
 then, since God works by known or providen- 
 tial means, as well as through mystical influ- 
 ences which human intelligence cannot follow, 
 it is incumbent upon even his selected ones 
 who constitute the '^ Ecdesia,'' to study this 
 providential movement, and throw themselves 
 into the current which God is urging to his own 
 end. And shall the guardians and guides of 
 the Christian people hold themselves back 
 from this? Shall they blind themselves to 
 these transcendent relations? It would seem 
 that the privilege and the duty was especially 
 theirs, not only to co-operate with any con- 
 certed eflbrt for the improvement of human 
 conditions, not only to acquiesce in and further 
 any effort initiated beyond themselves, or be- 
 yond even the church, — but, if they are indeed 
 wiser, and have a wider outlook and more per- 
 manent aims, to initiate such eflPort and to 
 draw others into it, rather than to be them- 
 selves drawn into efforts less profoundly 
 
136 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 meditated. But just here the knowledge of 
 many of our clergy is deficient. They know 
 so little beyond their particular line of activity, 
 that they stand passive and irresolute amid 
 the movements stirring around them. They 
 have accepted their propositional theology, but 
 know nothing or little of social facts, or 
 political situations and indications ; know 
 little of science — and some even foolishly 
 decry it — not seeing that science is the pur- 
 veyor to theology, and assists it in removing its 
 own unhealthy growths ; and some even decry 
 philosophy itself, not knowing that they have 
 already accepted in trust some philosophy, and 
 that a philosophy is implicit in all their theo- 
 logical attainments. They need a larger culture. 
 If the clergy are to hold their own in influencing 
 human action, if they are to entitle themselves 
 to respect in the coming times, our theological 
 curricula must be greatly enlarged ; our semi- 
 naries must be something more than mills 
 turning out products of a monotonous same- 
 ness, — rather, products of developed individu- 
 alities, and able, as any others whatever, to 
 cope with the practical questions becoming 
 yearly more urgent. 
 
christia:^ ministry. 137 
 
 We, in our own church, are so intensely 
 conservative, that the commoner tendency is 
 to linger beKincl in the onward progress. But 
 the need, growing more manifest, will meet 
 its supply in due time. They who shall urge a 
 change in our methods will meet with oppo- 
 sition. There is much debris to remove. We 
 older ones feel ourselves entangled in it, but, 
 since near our end, our energy is not sufficient. 
 The coming generation, growing up with the 
 sense of this need, as we did not, will venture 
 farther than we have done, beyond the track 
 so long beaten hard. But the old conservative 
 inertia still weighs upon the young mind to 
 keep it in the ruts, and our theological schools 
 only slowdy yield to the outer pressure. 
 
 The notion so long held, and still surviving, 
 that in the early Christian days the Holy Spirit 
 came once for all, and enlightened to the full 
 the existing generation, which created a cle- 
 positum of faith to be handed on through all 
 time, unchangeable and needing no develop- 
 ment, is slowly giving way before the pro- 
 founder notion that the Holy Spirit is a per- 
 ennial possession ; and that he is ours in every 
 sense that he was theirs ; that he has been busy 
 
138 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 in the intervening time, guiding the thread 
 of human history, in its spiritual and true 
 advance, and that we, in our own generation, 
 are wiser than any one that has preceded us, 
 since that one that had inspired men for 
 referees; — a thesis that can have ample specu- 
 lative, historical, scriptural vindication, but 
 whose antithesis dies hard. 
 
 The very doubts, Avhich spring more and 
 more abundantly as the years pass, furnish 
 occasion for the victories of faith, and should 
 never be shunned or dogmatically repressed. 
 We grow wiser only through this dialectic. 
 The victory over a doubt is a new illuminating 
 addidamentum to the Truth itself Till the 
 last the forms of error will grow more subtle, 
 and till the last the wisdom and the skill to 
 expose and vanquish them need to grow and 
 will grow more subtle. 
 
 Who, but the ministers, in the Church of 
 Christ, ought to be the leaders, and the 
 trusted ones, upholding the faith of the Chris- 
 tian body, amid assaults whose severity we 
 dream not of now? ''When the Son of Man 
 cometh will he find faith on the earth ? " He 
 will himself relieve the burden then, and put 
 
CHEISTIAN MINISTRY. 139 
 
 an end to the trial. And the ministers of his 
 church ought to be the ones to say : "We have 
 kept these souls true and steady. Here are 
 our ten talents." 
 
LECTUEE V. 
 
 THE DOCTEINE OF '' A NATUEE IN GOD." 
 
 Philosophers, as poets of the first order, 
 are born, not made. That which distin- 
 guishes them may be called a mental instinct, 
 — an imperious intellectual demand for 
 unity and self-coherence in all knowledge. 
 An hiatus, or a problem of difficult solu- 
 tion is an irritating spur which urges towards 
 the filling up of the one, or the satisf3dng 
 settlement of the other. The entirety of 
 knowledge must be Avoven into an harmonious 
 whole, the immanent relations of all whose 
 elements are clearly seen, or at least divined, 
 and hence the struggle after clear expression. 
 In the philosophic mind the principle or 
 category of causality, which rules all thought- 
 movement, is as manifest as it is in the 
 scientific mind. The difference is that the 
 latter, as purely such, deals with only par- 
 tial material. The craving for a unified sys- 
 tem is not so strong, but that it often wil- 
 fully shuts its eyes to other knowledge, which 
 
 140 
 
''a nature in god." 141 
 
 too must be incorporated for the full under- 
 standing of its own. When science extends its 
 view and takes in the entire field, it is 
 obliged to become philosophic. Here, in this 
 whole round or scope of knowledge, nothing 
 is unimportant. In the endeavor, then, to 
 weave into one piece, to unify all fact, all 
 consciousness, all movement or change, these 
 must be traced back to some antecedent 
 origin or cause, which must account for 
 their existence, their mutual relations, and 
 their changing relations, or development. 
 Something in the First Principle is not yet 
 apprehended if any fact, or phase of con- 
 sciousness refuses to march into line with 
 the rest. No problem must be slurred over ; 
 yet the temptation to do this is strong. 
 Even the most encyclopedic minds find them- 
 selves obliged to neglect something, or wil- 
 fully do it, seduced by the charm of some 
 solution which seems in other respects to 
 satisfy. And just the perception of this causes 
 others to reconsider the problem, and thus 
 philosophy takes its advance. Some fresher 
 intellect broods again over the dark spots, 
 with a sublime discontent. It is a pity that 
 
142 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 it often expresses itself too soon, and has after- 
 wards to undo its former work. It is a pity 
 that the impulse to rush into publication in the 
 earlier periods of the thought-history could 
 not have been restrained ; or, at least, that 
 the expression could not have been kept for 
 a longer period, simply for the private con- 
 venience. We see this illustrated in the his- 
 tory of many of our philosophers. Schelling 
 rushed into print early in life, and had after- 
 wards to undo much of his former work. 
 Even Fichte's thought can only be rightly 
 apprehended in his later writings. And 
 Hegel's was a constant growth, — though, in 
 his case, after a satisfying centre, or method, 
 was obtained, there was little afterwards to 
 be undone ; but even he neglected some 
 problems, or probed them not profoundly 
 enough to win satisfaction and compel ad- 
 herence. At the very best, in our conven- 
 tional, cultured life, the desire for reputation, 
 or even the purer craving for recognition, 
 becomes a bias, more or less strong, to de- 
 flect and trouble the pure thinking. 
 
 I have been led to these remarks by hav- 
 ing looked somewhat into the thought-sys- 
 
143 
 
 tern of Jacob Boehme, as interpreted by 
 Dr. Martensen. Here we have a native born 
 philosopher, with few advantages of educa- 
 tion and culture, in whose mind the great 
 problems of knowledge and existence were 
 seething and surging, and whose insights 
 were endeavoring to crystallize into shape 
 and symmetry. For lack of mastery over 
 the means of expression, such as have become 
 familiar to all cultured men, he was obliged 
 to invent a technique of his own. His thoughts 
 are so couched in symbols, that on this ac- 
 count chiefly, as is probable, he is usually 
 spoken of as a mystic. Xot referring here 
 to another and profounder definition of this 
 word, I may say that his constant use of 
 symbolic expressions shows rather the poetic 
 attitude, which too, in a different way, seeks 
 to express and ilkistrate the underlying har- 
 mony. But his thought is that of a philos- 
 opher, who, Avithout acquaintance with former 
 systems, or familiarity with solutions already 
 given, and unused to customary modes of 
 expression, found himself face to face with 
 these great problems. Courageously he chased 
 up all fact, all doctrine to its antecedent 
 
144 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 source or possibility, and would not leave 
 anything neglected. In his mind there was 
 no debris, left by former systems, to be cast 
 out. Thus his mental movement was unso- 
 phisticated and comparatively pure, and he 
 dealt with his problems at first hand, and 
 with the least conceivable mental bias. He 
 had not the advantage, which sometimes 
 becomes a disadvantage, of acquaintance with 
 the previous tentatives of human thought, 
 and in consequence of this made himself 
 liable to criticism. But the naive utterances 
 of one who had such marvelous insights, 
 such honest mental requirement of truth, 
 make him worthy of study. Some precious 
 riches are to be brought away from this 
 mine. What foregone bias there was came 
 from his education in the Christian Church, 
 whose doctrines he took for granted must be 
 true, and he sought to reconcile them with 
 the absolute truth, or rather to bring out 
 their meaning as expressions of the same. 
 But, indeed, no one reared in Christian 
 countries can escape this bias. Nor can 
 any one in countries not Christian escape 
 a similar bias. The received religion has 
 
145 
 
 entered into the mind before the life 
 of thought begins. And even where no 
 such objective influence exists, or exists 
 in least possible degree, the mind itself, be- 
 fore the philosophic impulse begins to stir, 
 has ah'eady formed and acted upon its nat- 
 ural religion. And this seeming disadvantage 
 of a previous mental bias, in the search for 
 truth may turn out to be an advantage. 
 The bias is native born, and may be sophis- 
 ticated by an imperfect religion, or corrected 
 by one wliich is perfect and true. If true, 
 it will coalesce more readily with the religion 
 which is implicit in the structure of the 
 human mind itself. 
 
 Boehme did not rest till he had vindicated 
 the truth of Christian doctrine to his satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to treat of 
 Boehme's philosophy in general, but only to 
 notice that his thinking brought him face to 
 face with a question which has troubled the 
 philosophers and theologians all along, and 
 which for himself he solved ; reaching the 
 conclusion, that there is in and for the Eter- 
 nal First Principle, a Nature. Not to mention 
 
146 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 that, in forms clear or obscure, this conception 
 may be found in all the previous ages, and is 
 notably present in the Christian Scriptures, — 
 in Boehme's mind it was subjected to a pro- 
 found speculative analysis. His thought has 
 been availed of by subsequent writers, notably 
 by Oetinger, by the Roman Catholic philoso- 
 pher, Baader, by Schelling, Rothe and Marten- 
 sen. The coincidence of these with Boehme 
 is great, if not strict, except in the case of 
 Schelling ; whose speculation allies itself read- 
 ily with a semi-pantheistic form of doctrine, a 
 kind of philosophic Sabellianism, which may 
 have its own critique.* 
 
 In this scheme creation is a metaphysical 
 necessity in and for the Divine Being, is that 
 whereby he reaches true personality, and other 
 personality becomes possible. Hence a deter- 
 mined universe is as eternal as the pure spirit- 
 ground, — i. e., thought and energy. 
 
 In the other scheme, which Boehme im- 
 plies, though his utterances are sometimes 
 ambiguous, and in which the other writers I 
 have named agree, creation is a free activity. 
 The First Principle is complete in itself, and 
 
 *This may be found, in brief form, ih appendix A, of the first volume of 
 my work, "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 
 
147 
 
 under no physical or metaphysical necessity to 
 create. What may be predicated is a moral 
 necessity, which however is only rightly 
 thought as love, self-consistent, whose idea 
 evaporates if freedom is denied. It presup- 
 poses an ideal end, and the impulse to find 
 reciprocation. Could all things be comprised 
 in a physical or logical nexus, love and free- 
 dom would have been impossible as truths, or 
 even as ideas. Their presence in the human 
 consciousness, if it could be, would be the 
 delusion of delusions. They would be abso- 
 lutely uncaused. But indeed they could not 
 be found there. 
 
 But the problem is, how, — this determined 
 universe being given, this peopled space, these 
 masses, with their laws and motions, the spir- 
 itual characteristics of the human beings on 
 this planet, human history and development, 
 the glimpses of an end and aim, all facts and 
 phases of consciousness whatever, — how to 
 account for it as thus determined ; whether 
 this can be done by assuming as its origin 
 and motive power a merely or purely spirit- 
 ual principle. The attempt so to do has met 
 with objection enough, and just here it is that 
 
148 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 materialism possesses what strength it has. It 
 contends that we cannot explain material ex- 
 istence and movement from merely spiritual 
 grounds. In this the materialists are as firm 
 as their opponents are, who contend that spir- 
 itual truths and results cannot be explained 
 from mere physical antecedents. The one 
 position seems as impregnable as the other. 
 The failure of this last endeavor has become 
 manifest, and is acknowledged ; while many 
 advocates of the former contention, while 
 right in their negation, have no positive 
 affirmation to supply instead, except the old 
 formula of creation out of nothing, which, 
 when scrutinized, proves to have no meaning, 
 and is simply a confession of mental impo- 
 tence. Moreover the Christian Scriptures 
 authorize the use of no such formula. On 
 the contrary, their authors seem by their care- 
 fulness in the use of words, expressly to guard 
 against it. 
 
 The need of reconciliation here was appar- 
 rent to the unsophisticated mind of Boehme, 
 and however unclear his expressions upon 
 other doctrines, just here his virgin thought 
 is found to have confirmation in that of some 
 
149 
 
 who went before, and has commended itself 
 to the eminent philosophic theologians whom 
 I have named above. But this doctrine, while 
 I acknowledge a valid ground for it, has not 
 been expressed in a manner so satisfying to 
 me, as to lift it above criticism. Its latest 
 advocate and interpreter. Dr. Martensen, may 
 be taken to have possessed whatever truth 
 may have been precipitated by the thinking 
 of his predecessors. 
 
 Just here it is necessary at once to remove 
 a misconception, and Martensen says rightly: 
 " When Nature is affirmed in God it is in 
 comparison with what we call nature, some- 
 thing infinitely subtle and supermaterial, — is 
 not matter at all, but rather a source for 
 matter, a plenitude of living forces and ener- 
 gies." This full sentence contains, in my view, 
 both truth and error, — or, at least, is inade- 
 quately expressed ; and, without treating of 
 the matter exhaustively, I shall accomplish 
 my immediate purpose, by criticising the 
 latter and elaborating the former. 
 
 The misconception to which he alludes is 
 commonplace enough. The doctrine of a 
 Nature in God is objected to as if it affirmed 
 
150 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 an eternal universe, a material entity outside 
 of God, which thus denies the old formula, 
 namely, a '' something out of nothing." This it 
 does, indeed, but it does not affirm an eternal 
 universe, for a universe means something 
 determined, and of which predications may 
 be made. The doctrine does not affirm this, 
 but declares the possibility of this. It would 
 trace back the known universe, so far as it has 
 spiritual characteristics to its ground in the 
 absolute spirit, but since the universe is also 
 material, it would discover the ground or pos- 
 sibility of this also. We owe to the deter- 
 mined universe the notion or idea of the 
 absolute spirit ; and we owe to it, likewise, 
 the discovery of something that must be syn- 
 thesized by spirit to become the known uni- 
 verse. In this pure ground there must be the 
 absence of all determinations, for if any exist, 
 it is identified at once with the known uni- 
 verse, and the universe appears as eternal. 
 Thus then, we must abstract whatever is 
 known of the universe, but we cannot abstract 
 that which has received the determinations, 
 which still remains for pure thought. The 
 only thing that can be said about it is that it 
 
151 
 
 is that which synthesized by spirit becomes 
 the universe. We do not know the absolute 
 ground of spirit, until it breaks into the dis- 
 tinctions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — 
 i. e., is determined ; but we assume it, or are 
 obliged to think it, nevertheless. But, as the 
 known universe is in movement and change, 
 and undergoes development, there must be 
 in the pure ground the possibility of such 
 movement. But all development occurs only 
 when the pure ground is synthesized by spirit, 
 for its movement always betrays the idea, and 
 thus thought and energy are its spiritual pre- 
 suppositions. 
 
 Here, now, may come in my critique of 
 Martensen. He says : '' This Nature is not 
 matter, but rather a source for matter." So 
 far right, but he adds : '' a plenitude of living 
 forces and energies." Here now I find myself 
 bewildered. ^' Forces." What are forces, but 
 energy dealing with existing material, and 
 causing movements for the realization of an 
 idea. And why add '' energies," unless to 
 amplify the notion of forces. These, ^'idea," 
 ^^ thought," '' abstract energy," belong to spirit 
 and have their ground in that. Energy be- 
 
152 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 comes '' force," only by virtue of this very 
 ''Nature," which is hypothecated. ''Forces," 
 can be understood and imagined. If there 
 were anything in this " Nature " which could 
 be understood and imagined, it would not be 
 undetermined. We have not clearly posited 
 it until, having removed all possibility for 
 understanding and imagination, it still re- 
 mains for pure thought and is a requirement 
 of reason, for the moment spirit enters it, it 
 becomes the object of knowledge. The prin- 
 ciple of causality still prevails as the law of 
 the reason and the fundamental category for 
 thinking ; and the ground for the material 
 required for the exhibition of force is just as 
 necessary and imperious a requirement for 
 thinking as the ground for the spiritual, 
 seeing that all force makes thought real or 
 manifests thought. The word " force," as an 
 abstract term may then be conveniently dis- 
 carded. " Forces " are the modes of the 
 Divine Energy, in their movement and play, 
 in their contests and equilibria, accomplishing 
 concrete existence and change. 
 
 This " Nature " in God means, then, the 
 possibility of the material. From pure spirit 
 
"a nature in god." 153 
 
 alone you can never deduce the material. In 
 the attempt to do so you simply postulate 
 energy and thought on the one side, and an 
 intelligible result in the other, with no copula, 
 no connection, no affirmation, nothing that 
 the mind caii think, between them. 
 
 What this felt, seen, perceived, conceived 
 matter is or was in its simplest or primal form, 
 science has not shown us, and will never 
 show us. It can simply carry us back by its 
 analysis to the point where we must part with 
 all exercise of understanding and imagination, 
 and there it leaves us. The pure thought- 
 faculty, in its demand for co-ordination, steps 
 in here and rescues the residuum, and that 
 which is in itself barren, becomes fruitful 
 when synthesized by spirit. The Christian 
 Scriptures have a name for this residuum, and 
 call it the '^ Divine Doxa." Thus the last 
 result of scientific painstaking and of philo- 
 sophic thought succeeding, has been antici- 
 pated in the Christian Scriptures. 
 
 The notion of the Divine Doxa has been 
 degraded by making it something dependent 
 upon human subjective estimation, or at least 
 the foresight of this in the divine mind. 
 
154 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 That is, it is nothing real, but only some- 
 thing that emerges when the real comes to 
 be. If, in this regard it is something eternal, 
 then transcendent existence and intelligence 
 outside of God must be thought as eternal, 
 and creation appears as a necessary thing ; 
 in which case, if development be needful, 
 we have the result of development without 
 its pre-conditions. We have either a stagnant 
 plenum already reached, or a cyclical move- 
 ment. The very notion of a free creation 
 implies an ideal end in the divine mind, 
 and therefore a beginning. 
 
 The Christian Scriptures do not speak of 
 the Divine Doxa in terms implying spiritual 
 categories. It is not anything needful for 
 the definition of pure spirit, but, indeed, 
 something to make the activity of the con- 
 crete spirit beyond itself possible. It is 
 spoken of rather by physical symbols or 
 analogies. Nay, it almost undergoes identi- 
 fication with the pure light, and as that in 
 which no darkness or contrast exists. Thus, 
 it has as yet no interior contrast, but is 
 itself a contrast to the pure spirit.* 
 
 * " But, not less wonderful are certain luminous spots or patches, which 
 discover themselves only by the Telescope, and appear to the na:ked eye like 
 
" A NATUKE IN GOD." 155 
 
 Boehme had this insight, that something 
 must be posited in the First Principle which 
 can make possible a determined universe, 
 and this shaped itself to him in the form 
 of a contrast; and he afhrms that the ever-exist- 
 
 small fixed stars, but in reality are nothing else but the Light coming from 
 an extraordinary great space in the ether ; through which a lucid medium is 
 diffused, that shines with its own proper Luster. This seems fully to recon- 
 cile that Difficulty which some have moved against the Description Moses 
 gives of the creation, alleging that Light could not be created without 
 the Sun. But in the following instances the contrary is manifest ; for some 
 of these bright spots discover no sign of a star in the middle of them ; and 
 the irregular form of those that have shOAVs them not to proceed from the 
 Illumination of a Central Body, since they have no annual parallax. They 
 cannot fail to occupy spaces immensely great, and perhaps not less than our 
 whole Solar System. In all these so vast spaces it should seem that there is a 
 perpetual uninterrupted Day, which may furnish matter for speculation as 
 well to the curious Naturalist, as to the Astronomer."— Edmund Halley. 
 Philosophical Transactions. Vol. 29, p. 392. 
 
 Mr. Lockyer, in quoting the above, remarks that Maupertius as well as 
 Halley laid great stress upon the possible luminosity of sparse masses of mat- 
 ter in space. 
 
 Aproj. OS to this, I have read somewhere an account of certain experi- 
 ments which went to show, that matter, when extremely attenuated, became 
 self-luminous ; but I have not seen since any repetition, or authentication of 
 the same. 
 
 All this falls in with my a priori suggestion just made, that Light was the 
 first determination of the Divine Doxa, hence the primal form of its manifest 
 ation, in which were the tokens of created existence. Thus this word, "light" 
 has both subjective and objective significance. Also that the next subse- 
 quent determination was the diremption of this light into the clear and 
 the obscure, in which is contrast and relation, and the possibility of all 
 future relations. Science has found the cosmic dust, and may have found 
 the contrasted light. But by what process the latter becomes the former, it 
 does not and cannot tell us. Only when synthesized by spirit, determined by 
 thought and pure energy, does it come within the domain of knowledge. We 
 may speculate here, and ask whether the obscure does not come from the re- 
 tardation or limitation of motion rather than by its acceleration. From 
 Avhich it would seem to follow that the Divine Doxa itself was not rest, but 
 infinite motion. Here, again, we have in the physical realm the dialectic, 
 which appears as the law of creative activity, as well as of the thought- 
 movement. 
 
 Thoughts like these, or visions of all this, seem to have been in the minds 
 of the Scripture writers, as they are dimly and incoherently in ours. We ac- 
 knowledge the inadequacy of language to express them, and they seem to 
 have felt the same difficulty. 
 
156 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 ing contrast in the known universe, between 
 the spiritual and the material, obtains in the 
 Primum itself. But Boehme falls into an 
 error, or at least renders himself liable to a 
 misconception, by confusing the notion of 
 contrast with that of contradiction, and thus 
 his expression sometimes seems to lay a 
 basis for the existence of evil as necessary. 
 On this account he has been accused of 
 Manicheeism. This vibration between the true 
 and false view of contrast confuses him, and 
 makes the expression of his thought unclear. 
 Martensen vindicates him, and probably justly, 
 from the charge of consciously holding the 
 necessity of evil, with which indeed other 
 parts of his works are inconsistent. 
 
 Contradiction- is that which is repugnant 
 to the essence of a thing, while contrast is 
 a necessary difference which emerges from 
 that idea or essence itself. Thus beneficence 
 and severity in the Ruler of mankind are 
 contrasts, yet they are both forms of the 
 same thing, the divine love taking one shape 
 or another, according as the recipient is 
 loving or unloving. But moral good and 
 evil are contradictory, for if the latter be 
 
"a nature in god." 157 
 
 thought as necessary, the conception of it 
 as violation of the absolute law obtaining 
 in the structure of the universe is lost. 
 In the history of human thinking the temp- 
 tation has been very great to regard evil 
 as part of a necessary process, in which 
 evil is the dialectic, and thus that it and 
 good are mere contrasts. The willingness to 
 abide in such a solution betrays a weakness 
 in many philosophers, and shows that the 
 gasping endeavor after a unity, in sheer 
 weariness, has allowed itself to be content 
 with a premature and too easy a solution. 
 It is humiliating, indeed, to find that there 
 is one dark abyss, which the human mind 
 has not, as yet, light enough to illumine, 
 and moral evil is that abyss. Its possibility, 
 its ideal attractiveness, may be admitted as 
 a requirement for spiritual development, 
 but its actuality can by no means be ad- 
 mitted as necessary. The whole edifice of spir- 
 itual thought, thereby undergoes a bouleverse- 
 ment. We hold then that in the First Prin- 
 ciple there is contrast, but no contradiction, 
 and that this contrast is furnished by the 
 Divine Doxa. 
 
158 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 This doctrine of a '^ Nature in God " does 
 not appear in Boehme or Martensen in pre- 
 cisely the form in which I have presented it.* 
 They both acknowledge that, quite independ- 
 ent of the created world, there is an internal 
 and external phenomenal manifestation in 
 God himself, — but in using this word '' phe- 
 nomenal " there is carried into the notion of 
 the Divine Doxa, determinations, derived from 
 human experience and analogies, and an ap- 
 peal is made to imagination. This wonderful 
 faculty of the human mind leaps into activity 
 at the slightest hint, but as it has no ma- 
 terial to deal with here, any results it may 
 reach and enjoy are not trustworthy for 
 pure thought. Also Martensen throws out 
 the conjecture whether angelic existence does 
 not belong to this sphere, before the deter- 
 minations which constitute the known uni- 
 verse came to be, and that angels communi- 
 cate with each other, and have communion 
 
 * I may be allowed to say that my own thought upon these questions has 
 been entirely independent, and that the conclusions I have reached were 
 before I had read anything of Jacob Boehme, or Martensen's critique of his 
 scheme. Those who are familiar with these latter will perceive that there 
 are points of agreement, and also points of entire disagreement. I cannot 
 in this lecture explicate these points, but must confine myself to the isolated 
 topic which is its title, and this, too, cannot be treated in an exhaustive 
 manner. It receives fuller treatment in the text, and in one of the append- 
 ices of the first volume of my work "Christian Doctrine Harmonized." 
 
159 
 
 with God through organs or media, which 
 imply determinations of the Divine Doxa. 
 This cannot be denied as possible, but it 
 cannot be made a matter of knowledge. 
 There is the same difficulty and obscurity 
 a,bout it that there is about the inquiry 
 how departed human souls communicate with 
 each other. 
 
 The Divine Doxa is spoken of in the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures as something in which they de- 
 light, and if so, it cannot be for Father, Son and 
 Holy Spirit, anything barren. But it passeth 
 knowledge. Wonderful as it is, it is to be 
 shared by the perfected creature, — but he, to 
 share it must pass through a prior obscuration. 
 We are in this obscuration, and if angels now, 
 or ever, shared the pure glory, they must have 
 passed through an obscuration. And the 
 inquiry emerges Avhether the whole question 
 of angelic existence would not have fewer 
 difficulties, if their creation is regarded as 
 subsequent and not anterior to the determi- 
 nations which constitute our universe. There 
 are difficulties in the way of thinking that 
 they could have shared ah initio the pure 
 glory. That which God did not ever bestow 
 
160 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 is self -existence. Since he eternally bestows 
 self-existence, that which he bestows is also 
 God, and thus we have the generation of the 
 Son from the Father. Now, in our thought, 
 the Godhead becomes fructifying, and love is 
 an eternal act, whereby is the Holy Spirit. But 
 that which is not eternally self-existent, must 
 have a beginning. The highest exhibition or 
 act of love, when it transcends the self-existent, 
 is the bringing into being that which can re- 
 ciprocate it. To be made perfect by the divine 
 fiat is a lower effort of divine love, than if 
 the created spirit is to create himself as to his 
 moral form. Therefore he must undergo 
 development in the sphere that is set him, 
 and arise out of the nature ground. For him 
 the Divine Glory must be obscured that he by 
 his own effort may become fit for the removal 
 . of the obscuration. And angels cannot be free 
 from this need. Otherwise they are a far 
 lower order of created spirits than man him- 
 self, and moral evil could never be predicated 
 as possible or actual for them. 
 
 Thus the determinations of the Divine Glory 
 appear as a ^process. How wonderfully this 
 unfolds itself to our vision ! Here science fur- 
 
^^A NATURE IN GOD." 161 
 
 nishes constantly new food for our imagination 
 and delight. How poor would our existence 
 be were it only spiritual ! The reality of the 
 Divine love is shown by the existence and the 
 movement of the material. This constitutes 
 God's organ of communication with all pos- 
 sible spirits, and is the means for the enrich- 
 ment of their being. In this wealthy field 
 the soul, as imagination, may play unchecked, 
 and how wonderful are the results it achieves ! 
 Man's victories over it and comprehension of 
 it have been incessant, and the desire for 
 further knowledge and power grows more 
 intense, and has an ever-deepening hope or 
 conviction that it will be forever gratified. 
 And if God is infinite in resource, is transcen- 
 dent as well as immanent, his thoughts can 
 never be exhausted, and illimitable time will 
 bring no weariness nor cessation of growth and 
 activity. 
 
 When thought as pure spirit, as trans- 
 cendent only, and aloof from his glory, and 
 its possibilities, the Divine Being appears as 
 cold, self-sufficient, unapproachable. The uni- 
 verse shows that he can be approached, and 
 be an object for the heart, as well as for the 
 
162 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 mind. How the infinite space is, through 
 astronomic efforts, becoming filled with won- 
 ders ! What a harvest is here for human 
 intelligence, what possibilities of delight ! 
 And all this too, must enter into the divine 
 delight. And now, if we ask, if the divine 
 delight existed anterior to these determinations 
 which make the universe known to us as 
 possible to furnish delight, — if Jesus could 
 say: 'Glorify thou me with the glory which 
 I had with thee before the world was," let us 
 remember that while about the Divine Doxa, 
 before the determinations which make it an 
 object for our knowledge, we can make no 
 positive affirmations, we are authorized to 
 make no negative ones. We are not obliged to 
 think the divine love, under time conditions, 
 as inactive, and that the Divine Being can 
 be affirmed as not forever transcending himself 
 for thereby the very notion of the divine 
 love is put to risk. But at the same time no 
 one can affirm that God transcended himself 
 in any form that can come within the scope 
 of our present knowledge. And this mys- 
 terious reserve of possibilities is only an af- 
 firmation of the divine infinity. 
 
"a nature in god." 163 
 
 It is an axiom that no concrete existence 
 is simple ; for, if you affirm any thing what- 
 ever of it, you imply relations to something- 
 else. Thus the Godhead, to be a sufficient 
 first principle, can not be thought as a simple. 
 Hence the absolute need for our thought that 
 we should discover the immanent relations 
 which constitute the definition of pure spirit. 
 Herein too is displayed on one side the possi- 
 bility of its transcending itself, and if the 
 possibility, then the actuality. Here occurs 
 the Doxa as furnishing the possibility of this 
 on the other side, and thus it is assumed as eter- 
 nal, or out of time, but not in any determined 
 form in time. To find in the Doxa itself eter- 
 nal immanent relations would seem to promise 
 to render easier the explanation of the actual 
 universe. And hence Boehme thought that 
 he had discovered in it such relations as 
 could make possible the form of the actual 
 determination. The success of this and the 
 need of this we have questioned, declaring 
 that the synthesizing of the pure glory by spirit 
 is all that is required. But this does not deny 
 the possibility of determinations before our 
 known determinations. The Christian Scrip- 
 
164 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 tures afford us no help for our thought here, 
 yet they do speak of the Divine Doxa in such 
 terms, as to startle the human mind and 
 awaken its hope and aspirations. Human 
 longings are as much physical as spiritual. In 
 this is the explanation of the emotion of the 
 beautiful, and if this have an objective ground, 
 then beauty is .^eternal, and God shares to 
 the full the delight we have in it, and it is 
 for us the most captivating and entrancing 
 characteristic of all his works. The flowers 
 that bloom in the recesses of the wilderness, 
 the bright colors in the ocean depths, the 
 whirling spirals of the nebulae, all form, color, 
 motion is accompanied by the divine delight, 
 and such as even we can reproduce in our- 
 selves. Thus no one can aflirm that a per- 
 petual outpouring of the beautiful has not 
 existed from all eternity, or that there is any 
 limit to its possible variety or change. 
 
 The coincidence of the intimations of the 
 Christian Scriptures with the finest results of 
 human thinking in all its branches (aesthetics 
 here included as illustration), is for us an 
 evidence that there is a divine element in 
 them, anticipating the last human mental 
 
" A NATURE IN GOD." 165 
 
 achievements, and keeps alive the belief that 
 they are more profound than all science and 
 do really contain the ultimate philosophy. 
 If so, they cannot have been, as yet, exhausted 
 as to their meaning ; and the progress of 
 human knowledge in other pathways must 
 continually bring out new meanings and 
 correct all foregone misapprehensions. It does 
 not follow that they need to be always co- 
 incident with our empirical knowledge, seeing 
 that this is in perpetual flux ; but that the 
 essential thought, the developing idea which 
 underlies all phenomenal changes, has been 
 intuited more clearly by their authors than by 
 the rest of us. The deepest thought must 
 elude the possibilities of language, which has 
 grown up from mere superficial knowledge, 
 and hence can only express itself by symbols. 
 And here one can recall the numerous expres- 
 sions in the Scriptures concerning the divine 
 glory, as though it were something that could 
 be made apparent to human vision. Moses' 
 burning bush, the transfigured garments on 
 the mount, St. Stephen's shining face, the 
 vague images of the Apocalypse — all these 
 show the profound conviction in the minds 
 
166 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 of those who recorded these things of the 
 presence of something wonderful that could 
 only be expressed by symbol. 
 
 Holding this notion of the Divine Doxa in 
 our thought, gives fixedness and perpetuity 
 to the existing universe. It is not to ^' pass 
 away as a dream when one awaketh.'' Ac- 
 cording to the old formula that which sprang 
 out of the absolute nothing may return to the 
 absolute nothing. There is no contradiction 
 involved. But if the ground of the material 
 universe is itself eternal, and the divine glory 
 is needful for the divine delight (which is 
 something more than self-contemplation, or 
 imaginative reproduction of the infinite 
 resources of the Logos), if the divine thoughts 
 are acts, and their spring is love, and their 
 final cause reciprocal love, extending forever 
 in space and time, then we have warrant to 
 think the perpetuity of the material universe, 
 and that we have not prized it and cannot 
 prize it too highly. Out of its capacities are 
 to come our own growth and enrichment in 
 knowledge, and a sphere for our own activity. 
 God is richer and fuller for our conception. 
 The doctrine of resurrection, or physical glori- 
 
'' A NATURE IN GOD. 167 
 
 fication, receives new confirmation. They who 
 deny it have not valued enough the material 
 universe, and give us but an impoverished 
 field upon which to indulge our imagination. 
 Philosophy may value chiefly the thought 
 which the analysis of the material universe 
 reveals, but the emotion accompanying this 
 is too cold. The poetic attitude is warmer, 
 regards the symbols of thought as living 
 things, and thus its scope is wider and so truer 
 than that of philosophy itself. Thus the alle- 
 gation that poets hold truth and fact in the 
 most consistent synthesis, and thus that they 
 are the nearest to the secret of the universe, 
 receives even speculative confirmation. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE IMPOTENCE AND THE RIGHT USE OF IM- 
 AGINATION IN DEALING WITH CHRISTIAN 
 DOCTRINE. 
 
 In the lecture which follows I endeavor to 
 point out the source of many of the untenable 
 or incoherent views of Christian doctrine 
 which have been hindrances in the way of 
 advance in theologic science. 
 
 I give only a specimen, for to treat the 
 topic exhaustively would require the com- 
 position of a treatise, which I may at some 
 day undertake. There would thus be furnished 
 another evidence that the solution of all 
 problems, whether of physical science, psy- 
 chology, or theology, depends upon the phi- 
 losophy or ideal construction of the whole 
 fabric of knowledge, which is implicit in the 
 mind of one who attempts it. He who 
 endeavors to build up his system upon 
 exegetical or historic grounds solely is quite 
 as much dominated by his philosophy as he 
 who pursues any other method. 
 
 168 
 
IMPOTENCE OE IMAGINATION. 169 
 
 Imagination is commonly spoken or written 
 of as the representative faculty — that which 
 takes up the impressions derived through the 
 senses, and which have become perceptions 
 by falling into the moulds supplied by the 
 understanding, and reproduces them in con- 
 sciousness as accurately as possible, or recom- 
 bines them into a new result having apparent 
 unity, so as to present them thus to the mind 
 for its work or its play. 
 
 The linking together the material supplied 
 by memory, in a loose or arbitrary way, is 
 sometimes called Fancy ; while the unifying 
 of this content so as to produce a self- 
 consistent whole has been spoken of as the 
 work of imagination proper, thus distin- 
 guished. Both mental movements are partly 
 spontaneous and partly deliberate. The 
 passivity is only seeming. The activity is 
 actual even in the most apparent spontaneity, 
 and may consist in its lowest degree merely 
 in the will's refraining from any interference 
 with the play of association, and holding the 
 mind steady during this riot of images. But 
 a more manifestly willful procedure is when 
 the mind yields to the attraction to pass be- 
 
170 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 yond itself, to infuse itself into the image, and 
 reproduce itself in its life ; when it becomes, as 
 it were, for the time being that which it con- 
 templates. This activity is always accom- 
 panied by emotion, a kind of melting of the 
 individual life into the universal life, or that 
 of some of its concretions. Thus imagination 
 comes to be called the creative faculty. 
 
 Manifestly in all these procedures the 
 mind deals only with the concrete, with ideas 
 or thoughts which have been made real and 
 sensible. When by pure thinking the abstract 
 idea has been disengaged, it becomes matter 
 for thought solely ; and imagination is robbed 
 of its material. It can do nothing with the 
 naked ideas except by clothing them again 
 with the body which has been abstracted. 
 But so habitual and constant in every human 
 being has become its exercise, that it vainly 
 or revengefully still continues to intrude into 
 the region of the pure ideas, annuls the ab- 
 straction, blinds itself to the fact that it has 
 done so, engaging the mind, meanwhile, to 
 draw inferences only valid if the abstraction 
 has not been made, and thus beclouds or 
 distorts the ideas themselves. All which has 
 
i 
 
 IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 171 
 
 been the source of constant mistake or con- 
 fusion in man}^ mental endeavors, as well as 
 in the meditation upon distinctively religious 
 truth. Thus imagination is a faculty which, 
 more than any other, needs restraining and 
 regulating, and to have its proper function 
 clearly defined. 
 
 It would be interesting, in this connection, 
 to make a comparison, so far as it can be 
 made, between this faculty in the brute (which 
 manifestly possesses and uses it) and in the 
 human being ; between its exercise when deal- 
 ing wdth material undetermined by spirit- 
 relations, and wuth that so determined. But 
 this would be an independent and a large 
 topic. 
 
 The faculty of imagination is a universal 
 human possession, yet exists in individuals in 
 different degrees of activity. Probably its 
 degrees are ruled by physical or physiological 
 conditions rather than by spiritual ones. On 
 account of these it varies in quickness and 
 vividness, and in the extent of its range ; yet 
 in every one it is in constant activity, mediates 
 the whole passage from abstract consciousness 
 to any act of will, presents the immediate or 
 
172 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 remote result which gives end and impetus to 
 action. It sometimes carries the mind out of 
 itself so completely as to reduce the pure 
 thought power almost to passivity, to make the 
 man the victim of some image or ideal presen- 
 tation which alone he sees, to the exclusion 
 of everything else. This fact must affect his 
 actual responsibility, and teaches us that to 
 judge of the absolute moral worth of a man 
 or his actions is no superficial problem, but 
 one requiring no less than the divine insight. 
 
 The errors, delusions, superstitions, impure 
 or incoherent philosophies which have been so 
 rife in human history, all probably owe their 
 origin largely to the misuse of imagination. 
 
 To exhibit some of the unfortunate results 
 of its dealing with theological doctrines, or 
 problems related thereto, to show thus its 
 impotence, and then to point out and limit 
 its true function in dealing with such matter, 
 is my present design. 
 
 All the object-matter with which imagi- 
 nation may successfully deal is contained in 
 space. These bounded spaces, made real by 
 the senses of sight and touch, are its proper 
 material. But imagination tries to compass 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 173 
 
 the absolute space itself, to try its wing in the 
 illimitable. It projects the self-consciousness 
 into the infinite abyss, passes beyond the 
 planets and stars and systems, to which it must 
 give relative location, passes beyond them 
 to find itself in pure vacancy, with an inter- 
 minable distance before it, rendered no less 
 by any speed or any duration of time. It 
 must abandon the endeavor, and confess its 
 impotence, in dealing with absolute space. 
 Instead of concluding, then, that pure space 
 is not for imagination, but for pure thought 
 only, the mind, as represented by this faculty, 
 still abides in its delusion, and supplies further 
 objects on which it may rest, and after the 
 exhaustion of its known objects supplies an 
 attenuated ether, or locates a far-distant 
 heaven or paradise or hell ; all which in- 
 ventions may become delusions, not neces- 
 sarily mischievous, but certainly troubling 
 and misleading the thinking faculty in its 
 search after the truth. 
 
 This, the mind's impotence to compass the 
 infinite space, has been noted and so dealt 
 with by Sir William Hamilton and by Dean 
 Mansel, as to lead them to deny or misinter- 
 
174 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 pret the mind's idea of the infinite, making it 
 but a negation of the finite, and the result of 
 the limitation of the human intellect, they not 
 perceiving that the finite and infinite are 
 correlatives ; that one implies the other ; that 
 one is as positive as the other ; that they are 
 pure thoughts only, though necessary ones, 
 and apprehended by a mental movement in 
 which imagination takes no part. 
 
 Yet this endeavor to compass the infinite 
 need not be repressed, and has its own high 
 reward. It brings about the emotion of the 
 sublime. Though ending in failure, the mind 
 has been expanded, has attempted a larger life 
 than its customary one, and thus is hinted 
 that we are intended and fitted for a larger 
 life, that our career is to be an endless growth, 
 a projection toward an ever-receding circum- 
 ference — a life that will grow richer and richer 
 forever and forever as it meets and appropri- 
 ates the ever-during outgushings from the 
 supernal and inexhaustible fountain. 
 
 Imagination may and does rightly deal 
 much with human beings as concretes, with 
 human souls as related to and determined by 
 the physical organization and environment. 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 175 
 
 But it has not restrained itself from attempt- 
 ing to deal with the spiritual "psyche, with the 
 human soul aloof from its bodily organ- 
 ization. It follo^vs it beyond the article of 
 death, and fills that whole region with delu- 
 sions. 
 
 For our present knowledge, death is the 
 severance of the existing bond connecting the 
 human being with the physical universe, as 
 IV e know it. Though by pure thinking we 
 may find ourselves obliged to acknowledge 
 that we cannot regard the spiritual soul after 
 death as entirely out of relation to the physical 
 universe, as without an environment, without 
 organs or media of communication ; yet this 
 relation is an abstract one for thought, and 
 cannot be described in the terms of our present 
 knowledge. Hence imagination is without its 
 proper material, and if it attempts to disport 
 itself here, it can only do so by covertly im- 
 porting back the body and its physical re- 
 lations, which, according to our present 
 knowledge, have been abandoned, or changed 
 into something which defies conjecture. With 
 what material imagination may deal legiti- 
 mately here needs to be carefully defined ; and 
 
176 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 we shall see, later on, that it is not entirely 
 without function. 
 
 In these, its vagaries, it dilutes the material 
 which it brings back to suit its purpose. It 
 deals with matter still, but with matter attenu- 
 ated more and deprived of some of its proper- 
 ties. Thus we have stories of ghosts, of spirit- 
 ual souls, which can be seen and heard, and 
 are either without gravity, or which might be 
 touched were our senses fine enough. Thus 
 the human soul is still figured as a material 
 entity, located or moving in the absolute space. 
 The world of our knowledge and the body of 
 our mundane consciousness are thus resup- 
 plied, and the mind's endeavor to make the 
 proper abstractions and draw the proper in- 
 ferences is clogged and troubled. We need 
 hardly here refer to the delusions and super- 
 stitions which have arisen from this source. 
 
 Thus, too, we have Heaven and Paradise 
 and Gehenna, figured as having locality in 
 space, fixed or relatively moving ; and all the 
 characteristics of our home planet carried into 
 them ; all which need not be necessarily harm- 
 ful, and may have, when regulated, some prac- 
 tical use, but which again troubles our pure 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 177 
 
 thinking, and beclouds the clearness of our 
 doctrines. This has been a perpetual mass of 
 debris for theology to clear away in its en- 
 deavored advance. 
 
 Modern science has been very helpful to 
 theology in removing these delusions. It has 
 taught us that the whole material universe is 
 in flux and movement ; that no '' thing "is at 
 any moment what it was the moment before ; 
 that the universe has been, is, and is to be an 
 evolution, moving steadily on to an end, which 
 it is our endeavor to forecast and interpret ; 
 that the human body is no fixed aggregation 
 of material particles ; that its identity is not 
 material, but ideal, a synthesis of the fixed and 
 the changeable. In this way, through our 
 advancing knowledge of ourselves and the 
 world we live in, have many false notions held 
 in the human mind, and in the Christian mind 
 as well, been dissipated. The doctrine of the 
 resurrection, or physical glorification, has been 
 thus thought out more profoundly and satis- 
 factorily, and all knowledge moved many steps 
 toward harmonization. 
 
 All this corrected knowledge has weakened 
 greatl}^ the propensity to intolerance w^hich 
 
178 MENS CHEISTI. 
 
 besets the natural man, and out of which 
 Christianity is intended progressively to lead 
 him. We have less than once of superstition, 
 of idolatry, of bigotry and cruelty ; though, 
 alas ! the tension of the elastic cord by which 
 Christianity draws man away from these, and 
 which is not yet severed, is relaxed, and he 
 subsides back into them too often. 
 
 In another respect likewise imagination has 
 proven to be a dead-weight to thought, and has 
 caused the mind to sink back into the obscure 
 w^hen it was about to mount into the light ; 
 has caused it to deny or be blind, when it was 
 about to welcome the truth. And here, now, 
 I must ask thoughtful attention, for the argu- 
 ment is very subtle. 
 
 Science endeavors, by abstraction, to analyze 
 the material universe. It thinks away vitality 
 and chemistry, and tries unsuccessfully to 
 think away mechanical laws, and finding that 
 it cannot do that, simplifies them. In all this 
 process imagination has been active and useful. 
 It brings us at length from the manifestly 
 heterogeneous to the apparently homogeneous. 
 It gives us the nebular hypothesis, figures an 
 immense aggregation of similar particles, ex- 
 
IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 179 
 
 tremely attenuated, removed from all possi- 
 bility of relation to our present senses, and 
 these in motion — motion according to an idea, 
 however, and whose result is our present 
 universe. If thought abstracts motion from 
 this mass, it is left dead and alien, and these 
 particles are out of all relation, except relative 
 location in space. To make it living and 
 productive motion must be resupplied from 
 the spirit realm, which furnishes the pure 
 energy, the idea, and the final cause. As long, 
 however, as size, shape, and relative location 
 are left to the particles of this attenuated 
 matter, imagination may still deal with these, 
 though not fruitfully. Philosophic thinking 
 must either assume this stadium as permanent 
 or eternal, or must account for it. To assume it 
 as permanent or eternal gives us the Platonic 
 Duality, which so lowers our conception of the 
 divine that the mind refuses to rest in it. 
 Besides, absolute rest is a pure hypothesis, with 
 no philosophic need for it, and no a posteriori 
 evidence to support it or even for more than a 
 moment suggest it. Thus philosophy takes up 
 the problem w^here science leaves it, and en- 
 deavors to account for the existence of matter, 
 
180 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 reduced by science to its simplest form. But 
 it is evident that at this stage of the mental 
 procedure imagination is left without a foot- 
 hold. If size, shape, and relative locality are 
 abstracted, it has no longer any material with 
 which to deal. The philosophic procedure 
 noAV retires to the contemplation of spirit. It 
 finds there only the immanent relations of 
 the Godhead, required to think personality, 
 thought and love. What has been called the 
 actus purus is only a timeless relation. Activ- 
 ity, in the sense of energy producing change, 
 is a time conception, and carries us at once 
 beyond the compass of pure spirit. There 
 must be a somewhat upon which it is exer- 
 cised. Ex-hypothese it is not something alien, 
 limiting the divine activity ; therefore it must 
 be somewhat eternal and essential to the con- 
 stitution of the first principle itself 
 
 If the attempt is made to think activity 
 within the circle of pure spirit, it evaporates 
 into the conception of relation solely, and 
 out of this no universe can ever come. 
 That there is a somewhat belonging to the 
 eternal constitution of the Godhead which 
 cannot be spoken of in the terms of pure 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 181 
 
 spirit the Scriptures everywhere assert or 
 imply ; and they call it the Divine Doxa, 
 speak of it as shared by Father, Son, and 
 Spirit before all creation. Hence creation 
 itself is but the determination of this by 
 the divine thought and energy. Thus 
 science, philosophy, and revelation, all lead 
 us by their several pathways to this, and 
 in this way find their desired reconcilia- 
 tion. 
 
 But now occurs the obscuration and con- 
 fusion wrought by imagination. The mind, 
 instead of resting content with the recogni- 
 tion of this to which it has been led by 
 pure thinking, yields to the impulse of 
 imagination, and attempts to deal with this 
 abstract divine glory, which it can only do by 
 bringing back the very relations which have 
 been abstracted, and dealing with it as if 
 determined. Thus the very duality which 
 thought had avoided is brought back by 
 imagination. 
 
 When thus presented, revelation and 
 philosophy present their objections to this 
 duality, and rightly ; yet the ordinary mind, 
 and even the theological mind, still fet- 
 
182 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 tered by the imaginative delusion, comes to 
 deny or fail to apprehend the divine glory 
 as anything objective, and degrades it into 
 a mere subjective something, to which no 
 meaning whatever can be attached except 
 by presupposing the possible regard of 
 created intelligence ; and thus it is lost to 
 the mind as anything eternal or divine. 
 It is commonly regarded as the divine 
 wealth of ideas merely, for which we have 
 another word, the divine Logos, or the 
 divine complacency or love, not seeing that 
 this can undergo no suspension or diminu- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet the Scriptures interpose many safe- 
 guards against this tendency. They nowhere 
 identify the divine glory with pure being, 
 or thought, or love. They make it the 
 property of neither Father, Son, nor Holy 
 Spirit, except through mutual possession. 
 They speak of it as something shared by 
 them, as something by virtue of which the 
 universe may become and has become, and 
 which the universe declares and shows forth. 
 They connect it rather with the material 
 than the spiritual ; never speak of it in the 
 
IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 183 
 
 terms of spirit, but rather as that from 
 which the material in its first form came. 
 Its first determination, according to these 
 writings, was the creation of Light, which 
 to be known as light by those yet to be, 
 and for whom was the creative fiat, must 
 be contrasted with the obscure. God only 
 lives in the pure glory. All created intel- 
 ligence must live in the determined light, 
 and from this contrast of the clear and the 
 obscure all the boundless richness and the 
 varied beauty of the universe have become. 
 
 Thus the interference of imagination has 
 so presented this doctrine to the mind as 
 to make it objectionable, and has led to 
 the denial or the oblivion of an essential 
 truth. It has brought about this prolonged 
 discord between revelation, philosophy, and 
 science, and hindered the work of unifica- 
 tion. That which ought to be, and is, a 
 mere negative attitude of the mind halting, 
 as imagination, before that to which it has 
 been led by abstraction, yet, as the pure 
 thought power, availing itself of it to unify 
 its content, is contorted into a positive atti- 
 tude asserting something, which, if any pre- 
 
184 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 dications whatever are made concerning it, 
 must be regarded as 'still material. Thus 
 to the naked idea which thought requires 
 as essential to unification, Imagination has 
 given body and content ; has thus hung a 
 weight upon thought, and confused and 
 postponed the attempted clarification of 
 Christian doctrine. 
 
 As the positive result of what has been 
 said thus far it follows that '' creation " and 
 '' evolution " are the same thing, and that 
 the former is only rightly thought as the 
 latter. But this doctrine of the divine im- 
 manence is rescued from the charge of pan- 
 theism only by holding at the same time 
 the divine transcendence, i. e. that the uni- 
 verse as we know it, or may ever know it, 
 does not exhaust the sum of the divine 
 capacities. Rather, the conception of the 
 Godhead which we have reached, as essential 
 love, by which only it is an adequate First 
 Principle, implies an eternal activity, and a 
 persistent transcendence. And God is imma- 
 nent in every such out-going. But the re- 
 sults of the divine activity exclusive of the 
 result which has come, and is coming within 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 185 
 
 our knowledge, are closed for our present 
 thought. The universe of our possible knowl- 
 edge does not meet the requirements of our 
 aspiration. 
 
 Also, in dealing with the Godhead in its im- 
 manent relations, with it as pure spirit, 
 imagination has led into incoherent views, 
 not necessarily harmful, but also into errors 
 which are mischievous and have caused 
 many of the strifes and divisions of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 The declarations of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures authorize the ascription of personality 
 to what is called the Father, as well as to 
 that which is called the Son, and to the Holy 
 Spirit ; and also the ascription to each of 
 these of essential divinity. To reconcile 
 these statements is a problem for pure 
 thinking, in which the Christian mind re- 
 gards itself as having succeeded. But im- 
 agination here likewise interferes, and as- 
 cribes to each of these the characteristics of 
 human personality. It figures three several 
 consciousnesses (if this word can be rightly 
 pluralized), each in itself independent, and 
 neither necessary to the thought of the 
 
186 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 other ; hence three wills, or possible activi- 
 ties, only arbitrarily in accord, or in accord 
 from the moral necessity of love. Thus we 
 have a virtual Tritheism, with its attendant 
 difficulties. The doubting mind relucts 
 from this, and divisions in Christendom 
 have arisen in consequence. The expressed 
 mind of the Church in its conciliar decisions 
 has guarded against this, but the propensity 
 still persists. No doubt the common Chris- 
 tian mind, ever victimized by imagination, 
 thinks the Christian doctrine of the Trin- 
 ity in this tritheistic way, which may not 
 necessarily be harmful to its devotional or 
 practical life, but also may and has been. 
 No doubt this has helped along the propen- 
 sity to multiply the objects of worship, and 
 has encouraged the cultus of the Blessed 
 Virgin and other saints. It is then need- 
 ful that theology should so rule the public 
 Christian instruction as to obviate this pro- 
 pensity, and render needless the assaults of 
 unbelief or misbelief. 
 
 The Christian Scriptures have guarded 
 against this propensity likewise, — give no en- 
 couragement to it. They furnish material 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 187 
 
 for imagination in thinking the last mani- 
 festation of the divine in the incarnate Son ; 
 stimulate it in setting forth so clearly and 
 minutely and amply Jesus Christ . and his 
 career. Here imagination cannot be too 
 busy or do too much. But they furnish 
 no suggestion, help, or stimulus to imagina- 
 tion in dealing with the Father or the Holy 
 Spirit. These only manifest themselves to 
 human apprehension in symbols, in the 
 voice, or the tongues of flame, or other- 
 wise ; in symbols variable, and which give no 
 hint whatever of the essential being of what 
 they symbolize, and are only media of commu- 
 nication. 
 
 Again, at the time of the celebration of 
 the Lord's Supper, imagination is very apt 
 to busy itself in a manner not indicated by 
 the requirements and significance of this 
 ordinance. As when it creates a mental 
 image of Jesus' concrete divine-human person, 
 and connects it with the transaction then 
 ensuing. This here has no special signifi- 
 cance, and is no whit difierent from Avhat 
 may be done at any other time. It is a 
 mere arbitrary juxtaposition, is not required 
 
188 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 at the time, and rather diverts the mind 
 from its proper work. Also, when certain 
 views of this sacrament are held, imagina- 
 tion endeavors to present some indetermi- 
 nate, vague, and shadowy image of our 
 Lord's flesh and blood beneath the shews 
 of the bread and the wine, — to imagine 
 a miracle, in short — in which attempt fail- 
 ure is inevitable, and the effort has been 
 wasted. This impotent effort, which is ab- 
 solutely without result, has even been 
 called an act of faith, and this significant 
 word, with its profound ethical and relig- 
 ious implications, has thus been applied 
 to a mere mental eflbrt, which, even if it could 
 be successful, could have no reaction upon the 
 character. 
 
 As a final illustration, we may note that 
 in dealing with the problems of Escha- 
 tology the vagaries of imagination have been 
 markedly mischievous. In dealing with the 
 condition of souls after death, and drawing 
 inferences, the mind, in the imaginative 
 eflbrt, overpasses the bound where pure 
 thought has left the doctrine of the Inter- 
 mediate State, and carries into it still the 
 
IMPOTENCE OF IMAGINATION. 189 
 
 universe as determined according to our 
 present knowledge. It carries the material 
 elements, with all their properties (however 
 refined, still material), it carries the human 
 body, with its possible enjoyments and 
 sufferings, into this abstract realm, and 
 gives us purgatorial fires, or some other 
 forms of physical pain or enjoyment. Even 
 in dealing with the resurrected bodies, 
 whether glorified or not, it still regards 
 them as fixed aggregations of matter, and 
 gives them spatial or dynamic determina- 
 tions similar to our present ones. All which 
 may not be necessarily harmful in the prac- 
 tical life, but which is certainly misleading 
 in the endeavor to express the truth. In 
 dealing with the fate of evil souls it has 
 run riot, and the symbolic language of Holy 
 Scripture, of fire, and brimstone, and the un- 
 dying worm, has been taken literally. Thus 
 the language intended to inspire moral dread 
 of sin has been made to produce merely 
 physical shrinking from apprehended pain. 
 Imagination has also given occupations to 
 Satan for which there is no scriptural war- 
 rant, and thus has been thrown into disre- 
 
190 - MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 pute and met with denial the profound yet 
 difficult doctrine of spiritual evil. Indeed, 
 for imagination the future life is our pres- 
 ent life still, with changes only arbitrarily 
 introduced ; while, in truth/ the fate of the 
 evil ones is for thought only, and no imagi- 
 native presentation is trustworthy. 
 
 The endeavor has been made to interpret 
 the Divine Comedia of Dante as symbolical, 
 on the ground that a mind so keen and 
 capacious as his could not be content with 
 views so crass of the future life, if the poem 
 were intended to be literally interpreted. 
 There is probably truth in this, and the 
 poem must not be taken to express Dante's 
 deliberate theologic opinion. But his scien- 
 tific knowledge was so meagre that it is 
 questionable whether he was able to eman- 
 cipate himself from the erroneous views of 
 his time, and these must necessarily have 
 affected his philosophic system. It is doubt- 
 ful, then, whether the poem was intended 
 to symbolize any system of thought or to do 
 more than illustrate and emphasize certain 
 truths of the divine moral government. 
 Milton, too, in dealing with similar ob- 
 
IMPOTEXCE OF IMAGIXATIOX. 191 
 
 ject matter, uses imagination very freely. 
 His poem would not l:»u interesting had he 
 not done so. But it is questionaljle whether 
 we are right in inferring his theologic opin- 
 ion from this — that, for instance, he thought 
 Satan what he here presents him. full of the 
 possibilities of good. He would not have 
 been interesting had he been made purely 
 evil. It is doubtful, too. for the same rea- 
 son, whether we can rightly infer from the 
 poem alone. Milton's alleged Arianism. The 
 conception of the Eternal Son is modified 
 for the needs of the poem, to affect its pic- 
 torial power. 
 
 Poets, as such, can deal only with the 
 concrete. Verse ceases to be poetry when 
 it deals with the abstract. Therefore poets 
 claim the right to abandon themselves very 
 freely to imagination, and their philosophic 
 thought cannot be accurately inferred from 
 their poetic works. I have A'ery little con- 
 fidence in the attemjjts so often made of late 
 to read into the lines of Dante, Shakespeare, 
 Milton, or Goethe laliored and reasoned 
 systems of philosophy. The whole naive 
 movement of the poetic mind is diverse 
 
192 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 from this, and it has to do some violence to 
 itself to throw itself into the philosophic 
 attitude. One power is weakened by the 
 exercise of the other, and poets love their 
 own the best, and cease to be poets when 
 they become philosophers. Some minds, in 
 which both tendencies have been in strug- 
 gle, might doubtless have accomplished 
 grander work had they yielded themselves 
 entirely to one propensity or the other. 
 Truth cannot be made explicit for thought 
 by imagery, by symbolization. But sym- 
 bolization may give delight, and strengthen 
 faith by hinting of the noumenon veiled in 
 the beautiful phenomena, and thus carry 
 the mind down into the depths, so that a 
 unified system comes to be divined rather 
 than thought out, and one, too, in which 
 the concrete still remains in all its warmth. 
 Philosophy proper brings no emotion, while 
 poetry brings it to the full. The one is 
 cold, the other is warm ; and this heat 
 sometimes dissolves error, precipitates it, 
 and leaves the purer light. In this work 
 imagination is the dearest and most satisfy- 
 ing power that the human being possesses. 
 
RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 193 
 
 Let me now speak, and with necessaiy 
 brevity, yet with reluctance to decline a 
 subject so fascinating, of some of its uses. 
 
 Much has been said from time to time of 
 the use of imagination in scientific investi- 
 gation, and I remember to have read years 
 ago an article by Professor Tyndall upon 
 this very thesis. I am inclined to think, 
 however, that to maintain this position the 
 word may have been used wrongly or ap- 
 plied too extensively. 
 
 In accumulating the facts concerning the 
 material universe which are to be explained, 
 memory and imagination have, of course, 
 been busy, and by the latter power they 
 are held and retained in their aggregation 
 or apparent integrity. But in the endeavor 
 to discover their fundamental law, or to 
 unify them, a provisional or conjectural 
 theory is supplied by the mind, which may 
 prove inadequate to explain the whole, or 
 may do so partially. This is not drawn 
 directly from the special facts themselves, 
 but is suggested spontaneously, or possibly 
 from a larger induction, whose extent over- 
 laps the present material, yet which does 
 
194 MENS CHKISTI. 
 
 not come at the time into distinct mental 
 vision. An illustration of this is the Atomic 
 theory, which serves provisionally to connect 
 the facts, and enables many useful conclusions 
 to be drawn, making of chemistry a pro- 
 gressive, comparatively clear, and practical 
 science ; yet whose failure to account for 
 other facts throws again the theory into 
 suspicion, and forbids mental rest ; and thus 
 it is not held as the absolute truth. But 
 indeed the interposition of this or any other 
 theory is not the work of imagination, 
 which deals only with the actual concrete, 
 or with ideal recombinations of the same. 
 It is rather the work of pure thought, in 
 which the scientific mind becomes phil- 
 sophic in spite of itself. It is a tenta- 
 tive movement toward the discovery of a 
 First Principle. It is derived rather from 
 the mystical elements of our complex be- 
 ing, — springs from its predispositions, and a 
 more or less profound sinking into their 
 depths. It comes up thus from the depths 
 so spontaneously as to seem an intuition or 
 a revelation. But no sooner has this law 
 been supplied by pure thought than im- 
 
RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 195 
 
 agination seizes it at once, and busies 
 itself with its application and constructs 
 its universe accordingly. It magnifies the 
 invisible, intangible atoms into something, 
 which the senses, were they sharp enough, 
 might lay hold of, and thus only follows 
 the guidance of pure thought, which again 
 has only followed the innate predispositions 
 implied in the creative idea. 
 
 All the concretes in the universe, in 
 their integrity, or their elements, are the 
 proper food for imagination. It may deal 
 with the material as determined by the 
 spiritual, although with the abstract spir- 
 itual it can do nothing. The mind only 
 possesses all that comes within the compass 
 of the intuitions of the senses, for all its 
 uses, its truth, and its beaut}^, by virtue of 
 imagination. This is the mediating pas- 
 sagev/ay between these and all human activ- 
 ity. Every human being of necessity uses 
 it, though with greatly variant degrees of 
 power or vividness. Its activity is alwa3^s 
 emotion, sometimes distressing, but ordi- 
 narily delightful. The emotions of beauty 
 and sublimity are simply its activity — the 
 
196 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 soul thus rejoicing in its power to infuse 
 itself into, to live in the life of that which 
 it contemplates — wherein is the coalescence 
 of its own freedom with the divine liberty. 
 The emotion of the beautiful is simply the 
 recognition that the movement of the uni- 
 verse is free and not necessitated, except by 
 the self-necessitation of love. In human 
 experience all enthusiasm and its resultant 
 activity come from the unusual power and 
 vividness of this faculty. Thus it enlarges 
 and enriches the whole sphere of life, 
 which, on the other hand, is narrowed and 
 impoverished by its feebleness. 
 
 Into the religious life, into the contem- 
 plation of Christian truth, its activity may 
 be legitimately carried. Heaven, as a com- 
 monwealth of holy souls, of glorified bodies, 
 with a fluent and subservient environment, 
 is a field into which it may safely venture 
 and expatiate. By dwelling upon the 
 rational satisfaction, the supreme beauty of 
 this presentation, it may strengthen the 
 loving and sacrificial disposition and harden 
 the spiritual fibre. 
 
 Into Gehenna it is dangerous for it to 
 
RIGHT USE OF IMAGINxiTION. 197 
 
 venture. There are no materials there for 
 it to combine. It is the region of poverty, 
 where there is no beauty nor satisfaction, 
 no variety nor expansion. Imagination must 
 fail here, as it fails to compass the in- 
 finitely little in space, which yet the think- 
 ing mind cannot deny. And even into 
 Hades imagination must cautiously venture, 
 for, as I have said, it is almost sure to carry 
 this present world with it in such an en- 
 terprise, and the result of its contemplation 
 is untrustworthy. But so far as Paradise 
 has any characteristics of the ultimate 
 Heaven, in the loving soul and the expand- 
 ing intelligence, it may furnish material 
 with which imagination may profitably 
 deal. Thus those who mourn departed 
 ones are not forbidden to think of them 
 under these limitations, and to think of 
 them as the interceding heart requires. 
 
 And especially may imagination find its 
 dearest and most precious use in recalling 
 for contemplation the image of Jesus 
 Christ, as displayed in his career, his 
 deeds, and his words. This is our human 
 brother, the tender, sympathetic one, the 
 
198 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 suffering and yet the majestic one. This is 
 God's manifestation of himself as loving 
 and benignant, as beneficent yet severe. 
 Imagination can do no better thing than to 
 fasten securely in the mind, to weave this 
 image into the soul's own structure. 
 
 They ''builded better than they knew," 
 perhaps, these evangelists, who so recorded 
 the events of that wonderful career as to 
 display so clearly that mind and heart, now 
 thought as human, and now again as divine, 
 but rightly, though mystically, in the union 
 and coalescence of the divine and human, 
 as to exhibit that character to which human 
 history furnishes nothing like, and with 
 such attractiveness that the deepest abyss 
 of our nature is reached, and we feel our- 
 selves drawn irresistibly by the tender com- 
 pulsion of love, to meet this divine-human 
 heart, hardly knowing, when we yield, that 
 we are entering upon a pathway that leads 
 endlessly upward. 
 
 In the yielding to this supreme attraction 
 the will represents, not the transient phase 
 of the character, but the original constitu- 
 ents of human nature, the profound pre- 
 
RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 199 
 
 dispositions toward the good with which 
 God created us, and which through evil 
 had been turned inward upon themselves, 
 into discord and confusion. Imagination 
 has thus enabled this easy victory of the 
 divine love. And if those in whom this 
 faculty is less active do still, from moral 
 and mental needs, yield to the truth of 
 Christ, making more of a sacrifice and put- 
 ting forth more spiritual strength — this 
 shows that the providence of God and the 
 supplemented activity of the Holy Spirit 
 have recognized these differences in human 
 structure, and proportioned their environ- 
 ment and their influence accordingly. These 
 differences and degrees in imaginative power 
 are dependent probably upon the degrees of 
 fineness in the physical structure, upon 
 brain-conditions merely. When the souls 
 are emancipated from tliese, and subside 
 into a purer consciousness, such differences 
 will be equalized ; and all will be alike in 
 possessing the immediate intuition. 
 
 Yet the differences in soul structure, en- 
 abling an endless variety and not a monot- 
 onous sameness in the company of the holy 
 
200 MENS CHRISTI. 
 
 ones, must be prolonged into the heavenly 
 life itself. How to explain these and ex- 
 hibit as possible different modes of activity, 
 is a speculative enquiry into which I will 
 not now enter. But to our present think- 
 ing imagination will still be exercised, and 
 acording to subjective needs, in the heav- 
 enly state. The spiritual soul will still con- 
 stantly objectify itself, and infuse itself 
 into that which it contemplates or creates, 
 into the endless concretions of the divine 
 thought, or its own recombinations of the 
 same, into the spiritual souls which will not 
 forbid, which will freely fuse themselves 
 together. 
 
 Thus we see that hu-man imagination is 
 a reflection of the divine, inasmuch as it 
 is the ability of the creature to do, under 
 limitations progressively removed, what God 
 does — to live in and enjoy that which it 
 creates. Its activity is one element of the 
 evidence that man is God's image. From 
 the reward of delight which its normal ac- 
 tivity brings we infer that the sights and 
 sounds of the material universe which bring 
 this joy are not dead and passsive phenom- 
 
RIGHT USE OF IMAGINATION. 201 
 
 ena, are not transitory things, but living 
 and everlasting ; that God is in them, and 
 his complacency in them, that they are 
 his free movement and not necessitated from 
 any alien source ; that their blossoming 
 into that wonderful characteristic of beauty, 
 which we seize and appropriate with such 
 transport, is one aspect of the coalescence of 
 God with his human creature ; that we, 
 too, shall have unfettered power and un- 
 limited resources, and that for this we were 
 created. 
 
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