MODERN DOUBT
AND
S H it IIS of Tpologetic tecturte abbtatteb to
Zarnmat Sefters after Erutt.
BY
THEODORE     CHRISTIIEB, D.D.,
UNIVERSITY PREACHER AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT BONN.
TRA'SLATED, WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION, CHIEFLY BY
THE REV. H. U. WEITBEECHT, PH.D.
AND EDITED BY
THE REV. T.,L. KINGSBURY, M.A.,
VICAR OF EASTON ROYAL, AND RURAL DEAN.
NEW YORK:
Scribn'r, Armstrong &         Co.,
1874.




EDITOR'S NOTE.
THE following translation is in part the work of Mr. G.
H. VENABLES (translator of Schmid's Biblical Theology of the
New Testament), and in greater measure that of the REV.
IH. U. WEITBRECHT-the four last Lectures, and the last
section (B) of Lecture IV. (from page 266), having been
translated by him. Mr. WEITBRECHT, who has just received
Deacon's orders in the diocese of Chester, studied for some
years in Germany, and being the author's brother-in-law
and former pupil, has throughout been favored with PROFESSOR CHRISTLIEB'S special sanction and assistance, which
have also been extended to other parts of the work. For
the objects mainly kept in view in successive portions of
this important Treatise, and for some changes made in the
present translation, which may almost be regarded as a
third edition of the original work, the reader is referred to
the author's own account of them in the following Preface.
In addition to what is there said, the reader's attention may
also be invited to the valuable Exposition of the Scriptural
Doctrine of the Trinity in Section A (pages 244-265) of the
Fourth Lecture.                           T. L K.




PREFACE.
SOON after the appearance of the Second Edition (considerably enlarged) of the German original of these Lectures,1
I received inquiries from various quarters, both in the United
Kingdom and in America, as to my intention to promote their
translation into English. These inquiries convinced me that,
though calculated in the first instance to meet the special
needs of thinking people in Germany, my work might yet
prove useful, and supply a want that was sensibly felt elsewhere.  Nothing, indeed, can be more evident than that there
is everywhere in the present day a certain community of interests in the ranks both of Christianity and Unbelief,-no
noteworthy production appearing anywhere now on either side
without soon being made, by means of translations, the commnon property of like-minded readers in all languages.  We
all know too well how much injury German Rationalism and
Infidelity have done to the cause of Christ in other lands. It
seems, therefore, to be a special obligation resting on faithful
orthodox theologians in Germany to endeavour to extend their
influence beyond the limits of their own Fatherland, and to
show to Christian students in other countries what weapons
and tactics they have found most useful in repelling the
assaults of Unbelief among themselves.  In the present instance I had, moreover, peculiar motives for encouraging and
aiding an English translation of my book. It is now ten
years ago (the winter of 1863-4), that, being then pastor of
the German congregation in Islington, I delivered (at the
Albion Hall, London Wall) my first series of public lectures
in defence of Christianity.  These lectures were addressed to
the educated Germans of London generally, and a portion of
the groundwork of the present series was laid in that early
I Moderne Zweifel am Christlichen Glatiben. Bonn: A. Marcus, 1870.




vii                      PRSEFACE.
effort to set forth a systematic plan of Christian apologetics.
I may say, therefore, that this translation does in a certain
way carry back to England a production whose first beginnings
took their rise in that country.
The three main sources of Modern Doubt in respect to the
chief points of Christian belief and verity, may be found in
some of the vaunted principles and assumed results of metaphysical philosophy, historical criticism, and natural science.
With the first (Lect. I.-V.), and in part with the second of
these sources (e.g. the modern critical theories of the gospel
history and the Origines of early Christianity, Lect. VI.-VIII.),
I have dealt in such a way that the whole argument is made
to turn on one main central point, the Scriptural and Christian conceptions of the Divine Nature. It has been my chief
endeavour, by treating first of the fundamental relations between Reason and Revelation (in Lect. II.), and discussing the
non-scriptural conceptions of modern Speculative Theology
(Lect. III.), to lead on the inquirer's mind to this one great
central idea (as carefully developed in Lect. IV.), and then to
avail mysel f of the positions so obtained in dealing with the
question of miraculous agency (Lect. V.), and other points
made matters of dispute by our modern negative historical
criticism.  In the lecture on Reason and Revelation I have
purposely avoided entering on the subject of the Inspiration
of Scripture.  My motive for such abstinence was this. I
believe the decided separation (and not mere distinction) now
established between the idea of Revelation on the one hand,
and that of Scriptural Inspiration on the other, to be a real
gain for modern Dogmatic Theology, though by the popular
mind the terms are still regarded as almost identical in meaning.  Another motive for such omission was, that I have long,
determined, and still hope to be able, to deal with the general
question of the Inspiration of Scripture and special points
therewith connected (e.g. the genesis and credibility of particular books), as well as with the objections raised by the
votaries of natural science to Scripture teaching on such
points as the Creation, the Deluge, the Descent of Man, etc., in
a second series of Apologetic Lectures.  The preparation of
such a course I have already undertaken, and its completion
as soon as may be, in the midst ot other arduous professional




PREFACE.                     ix
duties, I shall endeavour constantly to keep in view.  The
present English translation of this my first series differs fiom
the second German edition of 18 70, partly by the curtailment
of various passages which seemed likely to be of less interest
for English and American readers, and partly by some minor
additions, and the mention of important works which have
since appeared on either side.
It is now becoming more and more evident every day that
Christian faith stands in need of a more extended line of
defence, addressed in various suitable forms to the different
sections of modern society.  Whereas, when in former times
objections were raised to the truths and facts of Christianity,first in England, then in France, and finally in the German
fatherland, —it was generally assumed that the challengers of
Revelation ought to bear the burden of proof, the tables are
now turned, and those who still believe anything are called on to
justify their presumption in doing so. Experience, moreover,
amply shows that countless as are the smaller apologetic writings
composed for some special purpose or occasion, they are almost
invariably short-lived, while more comprehensive works covering the whole ground are as yet by no means numerous.
Popular works, moreover, in defence of Christianity, calculated
to me t the needs of uncultured readers, however much good
they may do in their own sphere, cannot satisfy the wants of
the thoroughly educated, who, more intimately acquainted
with the arguments on the other side, feel that a victory too
easily won really leaves the battle unfought.
It is true that professed apologists, like Luthardt (whose
lectures are well known by translations both in England and
America), have addressed themselves in some respects to these
higher needs.  Still I have found many intelligent laymen
who were far from being satisfied by a few remarks on certain
cardinal questions, such as the relations between Reason and
Revelation, the pantheistic and other philosophical conceptions
of God, the possibility of the miraculous, etc., much to the
point as those remarks might be; and from this I have been
led to conclude that in some quarters a need was still felt of
something beyond what had hitherto been effected by Christian
apologists. This need I would fain meet by my treatment of
these fundamental questions in the present work. Inclinations




X                       PREFACE.
and wants differ greatly. Some-and these form the majority
-wish to have everything compressed into the smallest possible
compass, and their wants are already well attended to.  But
others-if not, perhaps, very many amongst the laity-are
willing to expend time and trouble in studying the disputed
points. To such I trust these lectures may prove of some
service. They are not, it will be seen, intended to be " popular"
in the broadest meaning of the word.  They are primarily
addressed, not to the great body of uncultured or half-cultured
readers, but to earnest-minded inquirers among the really
cultivated, who are accustomed- to think logically, and whose
mental powers I have accordingly in some passages pretty
severely taxed. I have, however, throughout endeavoured to
make myself widely intelligible, as well as to preserve the
scientific character of the work; and I venture to hope that it
may be of some use to students of divinity and other younger
men at our universities generally, by conducting them to at
least a preliminary acquaintance with the most important
theological questions of the day.  Infidelity is now, both in
Germany and elsewhere, especially fond of vaunting itself as
being " science " par excellence; and the influence exercised by
the deluge of anti-Christian literature and journalism threatens
to lead many from among our educated circles to ignore the
fact that a Christian science and philosophy still exists to do
battle for the claims of Christian faith. At such a time it is
both our duty and our privilege to witness more particularly
to men of thought and culture among us, and to give them
clear and thorough proofs that in CHRIST are indeed " hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge;" that unbelief,
in fighting against Christ, rejects the truth, and that in rejecting the truth it contradicts science.  Doubly necessary must
this be in an age which evinces more and more clearly that
all the great intellectual, political, and social " questions"
by which society is agitated, must finally be resolved into the
one great problem ot the truth of Christianity.
Towards the fulfilment of this ennobling apologetic task, I
would fain contribute my own humble efforts. I have everywhere endeavoured to acknowledge what is true in the views of
my opponents; and that the more, because I not unfrequently
missed such acknowledgment in other apologetic works. Error




PREFAtCE.                      Xi
is always assuredly a mixture of truth and falsehood, nor can
be overcome so long as the elements of truth which it contains
are unacknowledged, and not carefully separated from what is
false.  On the other hand, I have sought strictly to avoid
unreal compromises-such as those attempted by a certain
school in Germany-between Christianity and modern thought,
believing, as I do, that they must invariably result in. detiiment to both sides; nor have I ever knowingly allowed myself
to polish off the sharp angles of the One Corner-stone. Everywhere have I found it necessary fearlessly to indicate the
fundamental conditions, both moral and religious, for the reception of our faith, and at the same time to maintain in its fall
force the distinction between "believers and unbelievers,"
which our opponents have of late attacked more boldly than
ever.  It is a sad token of religious laxity and indefiniteness
that men should try to efface the clear line of demarcation
here drawn by Scripture, and to change the decided colours
into mere shades.  If there be no essential difference in this
matter, then there is none at all, and the whole strife has been
waged in vain!
No genuine apologetic science can neglect this distinction;
but for that very reason it cannot expect to succeed in bringing
back at once the world as a whole to a belief in Christianity.
Things moral and spiritual cannot be mathematically demonstrated, still less can divine truths.  He who said, "My
thoughts are not as your thoughts," has embodied in His
words and actions a far higher logic than that whose principles Aristotle laid down. The acceptance of His truths
cannot be forced on any by mere reasoning; least of all on
those who have not the will to believe, and who therefore
~have never inquired earnestly as to the way. Even oral lectures in defence of Christianity, as far as my experience goes,
are but rarely visited by persons of the latter class.  The
greater part by far of those who attend such lectures consists
of professed believers and church-goers; and they, too, are the
chief readers of apologetic works. In them they seek for
armour against the attacks of infidelity, or for instruction
which shall enable them  to attain a clearer insight into the
grounds of their belief.  But even if such works should
pass comparatively unnoticed by confirmed sceptics, yet should




xii                     PREFACE.
faucnish weapons to those who still hold to their faith, strengthening their courage and enabling them to fight the good fight;
this would be a full reward for the labour expended on them,
and a good service rendered to the Church of Christ.
In conclusion, therefore, I would in all humility commend
these feeble efforts to the Lord, that He would accompany
them in their workings, both among friends and enemies, with
His benediction.  If what I have written should not avail to
bring back many doubters to the faith, it may, nevertheless,
instruct believers as to the certainty of the convictions which
they have embraced, the stedfastness of the foundation on
which they stand, and'assure them of a complete and final
victory. The Lord needs not us or our efforts in His cause.
He who in His own person is the Truth itself, is at once Faith's
argument, Faith's object, and Faith's pledge of ultimate triumph.
Only His people must believe in that triumph it they would
one day share in it, and that the more confidently when the
course of this world seems to render it most improbable.
Their faith, indeed, in Truth's final victory is already that
Victory's inauguration!
THEODORE CHRISTLIE&
BoN,. January 187&




CONTENTS.
FIRST LECTURE.
THE EXISTING BREACH BETWEEN MODERN CULTURE AND
CHRISTIANITY.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION,....~  ~    ~   ~   ~.   ~       1-3
I. CAUSES OF THE BREACH,.....                         3-27
Causes Historical, 3-9; Philosophical, 9-12; Ecclesiastical, 12-22;
Political, 22-25; Social and Ethical, 25-27.
II. PRESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH,...... 27-34
In Church and School, 27-30; in Literature and Journalism, 30-33;
Infidelity in England, 33, 34.
III. CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?.... 34-67
Nature of Christianity as the source and exponent of all true Culture,
34-39; Unity of Culture and Christianity proved from the true nature
of the former, 39-43; General historical proof of this Unity, 4348; Special historical proof in respect of the German nation, 48-53;
Practical result, 53-55; Our present task-wrong and right method
of its accomplishment, 55-59; Need and special vocation of the
Teutonic races to reconcile this great antithesis, 59-63; Prospects
of success, 63-67.
SECOND LECTURE.
REASON       AND     REVELATION.
WHENCE DO WE DERIVE OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD?... 68, 69
I. NATURAL THEOLOGY, OR THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD DERIVED FROM
NATURE AND REASON,.... 70-94
Reason: its Rights, its Nature, its Limitation according to Philosophy
and Scripture, its Present Condition-is it a material source of know



Xiv                           CONTENTS.
PAGI
ledge, or merely a perceptive faculty? 70-76; Historical achievements of Reason in Religion and Philosophy as a proof of its
insufficiency, 76-81; Natural Science, 81-83; Conscience: its
Nature and its Purport, 83-86; Necessity of Revelation proved from
the historical aberrations of Conscience, 86-89; Moral and Religious
need of Man-His feeling of Guilt and moral Dualism, 89-94.
II. SUPERNATURAL THEOLOGY, OR TIlE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD DERIVED
FROM REVELATION,....                      94-123
Revelation: its Nature and Object-its Inner Laws, 94-99; Objections: to the specific value of Revelation, 99-100; to its Necessity
(Lessing and the Education of the Human Race)-impossibility of a
Religion more perfect than Christianity, 100-109; Positive arguments
for the possibility of a Revelation, 109-112; Objections raised by
Strauss, Grimm, Schenkel, Rousseau, 112-116; Can a Revelation be
recognised as such? (against the objections of Kant, Fichte, and
Lessing), 116-121; Revelation as a manifest Reality, 121-123.
III. RELATION BETWEEN REVEALED RELIGION AND NATURAL TIIEOLOGY,........... 124-135
Falsity of the antithesis between Faith and Knowledge-all Knowledge
conditioned by Faith, 124-127; Impossibility of a contradiction
between Reason and Revelation-Necessity that Reason should be
guided, regulated, and supplemented by Revelation-Faith the
highest act of Reason, 127-129; Subordination of Reason to Revela.
tion-Revelation as the Lamp which must regulate ConscienceIllustrated by the Magi in Bethlehem, 129-135.
THIRD LECTURE.
MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.
PRESENT CONDITION OF TIIE CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE IDEA OF
GOD,.... 136-138
I. ATHEISM,.........       138-144
Historical manifestations —Goddess of Reason-German Atheists, 138140; Universal prevalence and psychological necessity of the Idea
of God-Intuitive certainty of the Divine existence, 140-143; Impossibility of proving the non-existence of God-Arrogance and
futility of Atheism, 143, 144.
II. MATERIALISM,.......... 145-161
Principles and History-Scientific Impotence, 145-148; Examination
of the main propositions of Materialism: (a) Is Sensuous Perception
the only source of Knowledge?-Case of Laura Brl dgmlan, 148-151;
(b) Is Mind merely an activity and effect of matter?-Relation




CONTENTS.                            XV
PAGbetween brain and thought-Specific distinction between mental
life in man and that of beasts-Why animals can form no distinct
general conceptions-Moral and religious disposition of man-Selfconsciousness of the human spirit, 151-156; Consequences of
materialistic principles-Destructive influence on religion and education-Denial of Free-will annihilates morality-Elements of truth
in Materialism, 156-161.
IlI.. PANTHEISM,......... 161-190
Principles and connection with Polytheism, 161, 162; Spinoza and
Hegel, 162-164. Scientific untenableness of Pantheism: (a) Shown
by Philosophy and Logic-Unproved assumptions and internal contradictions in Spinoza and Hegel's conceptions of God, 164-168;
Whence our Personality?-Personality no Limitation, but a Necessity for the Absolute, 168-171;-(b) Shown by contemplation of the
visible universe-Cosm.ological and teleological proof of the existence of God, 171-174; Corroborations furnished by modern Natural
Science —Unconscious wisdom  a contradiction in terms-Animal
instinct-Witness of History, 174-181; —(c) Shown by the history
of all Religions-Universal tendency to form personal conceptions
of their Deities, 181-183;-(d) Shown by first principles of Ethics
and Religion-Whence our conscience, sense of moral obligation,
religious consciousness?-Necessity of a personal God for the moral
order of the universe, 183-185; Pantheism denies the freedom of
the Will, undermines Morality, and destroys the Personal Responsibility of Man, 185-188; Results-Elements of Truth in Pantheism,
188-190.
IV. DEISMr AND RATIONALISM,... 190-209
Principles and history, 190-193. Scientific untenableness-Conflicting
Elements, 193, 194. Counter Arguments: (a) Theological-Deism
deprives God of His Divinity, 194-197; (b) Cosmological-Creation
no longer dependent upon God-The creatures limit the CreatorApparent support afforded to Deism by Natural Science, 197-203;
(c) Ethical-Deism  deprives the moral world of its centre and
main support-Worthlessness of the Deist's God-Irrationality of
Rationalism, 203- 208; Elements of truth in Deism and Rationalism,
208, 209.
FOURTH LECTURE.
THE TIEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE AND OF TIIE CHURCH.
1. BIBLICAL THEISM,....... 210-210
Exclusion of the errors of Athessm, Materialism, Pantheism, Deism,
and Rationalism, 210-213; The Divine names Elohim and Jehovah,




xvi                          CONTENTS.
PAGE
213-216; Union of all elements of Truth contained in the nonbiblical conceptions of God, 216-219. Biblical Idea of God: (a) Its
intrinsic truth-God as Spirit, Love, Father, 219-225; (b) Its consonance with Reason, 225-227; (c) Its beauty-Jehovah SabaothHoly Love, 227-232;' Anthropomorphic and other difficulties in the
Old Testament, 232-240.
II. TRINITARIAN CONCEPTION OF THE DIVINE NATURE,... 240-284
Deficiencies in certain ecclesiastical definitions of the dogma-Unity and
manifoldness of the Divine Nature according to Scripture, 240-244.
(A) Scripture testimonies, 244-(a) Respecting the Father, 245;-(b)
The Son-Christ's witness to His own consubstantiality and filial
subordination, 246-248; Apostolic testimonies to the Divine personal
pre-existence, and filial subordination of the Son, 248-251;-(c) The
Holy Ghost-Indication of personality in attributes and activities,
not identical with the human spirit, consubstantial with the Father
and the Son, 251-254;-(d) The Trinity as a whole-The Baptismal
formula, etc.-Ontological or economical Trinity? 254-257; Indications of the Trinity in the Old Testament, 257-261; Combined operation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-Tritheism excluded-Results
and retrospect, 261-265. (B) Collateral supports of the doctrine derived from Science: (a) From the history of other religions-A Trinity
of Deities in the religions of heathendom, 266-268; Lifelessness of
Abstract Monotheism, 268, 269;-(b) Theological and Cosmological
advantages of the Trinitarian Conception, 269-271;-(c) Arguments
drawn from Speculative Theology, 271-275;-(d) Analogies from
Human Nature, the laws of thought, and the visible universe, 275278;-(e) The Trinitarian Idea in Modern Philosophy as a key to its
ultimate problems, 278-280;.Moral necessity for the acceptance.of
this Doctrine, and final appeal to Conscience, 280-284.
FIFTH LECTURE.
TIIE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.
Miracles the greatest stumbling-block to the spirit of our Age-the consequences of their Negation: Annihilation of all Religions, and of the
Moral Personality of Man-Fundamental importance of the question,
285-290.
I. NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES,... 290-312
(a) Nature of Miracles-Wider and narrower senses of the termEssential points in the Conception, 290-294; (b) Origin of the Negation of Miracles, 294-298; (c) Theoretical presupposition and fundamental error in this Negation, 298-300; (d) Possibility of the Miraculous-Is it a "rent iu Nature's harmony "?-Laws of Nature not




CONTENTS.                          Xvii
P\GE
suspended by Miracles, 300-309; Miracles often an intensification
of natural forces -Power and freedom of God —Are Miracles an
" after-help " in the government of the Universe? 309-312.
II. NECESSITY AND HISTOIICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE MIIRACULOUS,....... 312-330
Internal aim of Miracles a redemptive one —Miracles not an unnatural
breach in Nature, but a supernatural interruption of the unnaturalTheir necessity for the redemption and consummation of the World,
312-316; Domain of the Miraculous-its educational purpose in the
scheme oi Redemption as an accompaniment and confirmation of
Revelation, 316-318; Gradual historical manifestations of the
Miraculous-Christ the Centre of Development, and the Second Great
Miracle after the Creation-History of the Miraculous —Its strict
subjection to Divine laws, 318-323; Distinguishing marks of
genuine Miracles-Reality of the Scriptural Miracles, 323-326;
Objections raised by Spinoza and Hume-Result, 326-330.
III. ARE MIrACULOUS MANIFESTATIONS STILL VOUCHSAFED?.. 330-339
Reasons for their discontinuance-Distinction to be made between the
period of the Church's foundation and that of her continued existence, 330-332; Instances of the Miraculous in the history of
Modern Missions, 332-335; Miraculous cures and answers to Prayer,
335-337; The denial of the Miraculous involves a belief in greater
prodigies, 337-339.
SIXTH LECTURE.
MODERN ANTI-MIRACULOUS ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST
The Christological Problem, the great Theological question of the present
day-Variety in the Rationalistic methods of treating the life of Christ
-All combine in the denial of the Miraculous-Rationalism and Mythicism, 340-345.
I. OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST,.. 345-353
Principles-Panlus-Gleanings from Rationalistic exegesis, 345-348;
Futile attempts at natural explanation-Impossibility of eliminating
the supernatural from the Gospel history, 348-353.
II. SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST,".. 353-379
Treatment of the Gospel records-Self-contradictory caprice therein
displayed, 353-358; Denial of the Godhead of Christ-Attempt to
b




XViii                         CONTENTS.
PAQGI
describe our Lord's human development, 358-362; Half rationalistic, half mythical explanation of the miracles of Christ, 362-366;
Arbitrary treatment of our Lord's discourses-Ill success in solving
the enigma of Christ's Messianic consciousness, 366-371; Mania
for discovering traces of development in the character of Christ,
371-374; Keim's History of "Jesus of Nazara" (Note), 373-375;
How Schenkel degrades our Lord's moral character- Deceptive use
of the term "Redeemer," 374-379.
Ill. STAUSS' " LIFE OF CIEIST,"....... 379-425
Origin of the mythical theory-Grohmann (1799) the forerunner of
Strauss, 379-381; First edition of 1835-Origin of the Myths-Principles and Method-Replies, 381-385; The edition of 1864-Fundamental tendency and arrangement, 385-387; Historical residuum
of the Life of Christ, 387-391; Formation of Myths, 391-393; S'yle
of the Book-Critique of Gospel narratives, 393-396; Examination
of the work-Pantheistic principles and assumption that the Supernatural is impossible, 396-399; The Myth a mere means for getting
rid of the Miraculous-Arbitrary and unhistorical procedure-Examination of his method, 399-402; Question as to the possibility of
the formation of Myths, 402-406; Impossibility of the invention of
the portrait of Christ, 406, 407; Historical difficulties of the mythical theory-Behaviour of the first opponents, and of the primitive
Churches, 407-409; St. Paul's confirmation of the Gospel Miracles
-Their modest character, 409-411; Strauss' view of the Person of
Christ-Pantheistic incarnation of the Godhead-The ideal Christ
substituted for the historical, and perversely subordinated to
humanity as a whole, 411-415; Whence the belief in the Messiahship of Christ without miracles?-How could Myths form around
a merely human teacher?-Whence the higher view    found in
Christ's testimony respecting His own Person? 415-419; Strauss'
attack on the Sinlessness of Christ-Weak point of his construction
cf history-Optical illusion of the mythical theory, 419-422;
Origin of the Christian Church left unexplained, 422-425.
IV. REXAN'S " VIE DE JESUS,"....... 425-440
Origin and character of the Book, 425-428; Sketch of the public life
of Christ in three periods, 428-433; Examination of Renan's pictureDenial of our Lord's Sinlessness-Perversion of the history, 433-436;
Fanciful interpolations-Incapacity for historical research-Obscuration of moral consciousness, 436-440.
Conclusion, 440-447:-Accusation brought against us by the antimiraculists-Their profession of belief in Christ compared with that
of the Church-Their surrender of Christianity, 440-443; Scientific
weakness and untenableness of our opponents' position-Something
yet to be learned from them-The Church's need of further Christological development, 443-447.




CONTENTS.                            XiX
SEVENTH LECTURE.
MODERN DENIALS OF THE RESURRECTION.
PAGC
I. ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES,.... 448-467
Resurrection refers to the body, not to the spirit-Importance of the
body in the plan of salvation, 448-452; Strauss accepts this as the
crucial question-Baur evades it, 452-455; Rationalistic hypothesis
of apparent death,' 455-457; The visionary hypothesis-Schenkel's
wavering treatment, 457-460; Renan's explanation, 460-463;
Strauss-how he invalidates the witness of the New Testament
-Origin of the " Resurrection Myths," 463-467.
II. THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES,.....      467-400
The Revelation of St. John-The Gospel narratives-Their discrepancies-Their mutual supplementation-Ten appearances of the
risen Saviour, 467-469; Essential agreement between the narratives, 469-474; Nature of the resurrection-body, 474-476; The
testimony of St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv., 476-478; Appearance of Christ
to St. Paul before Damascus, as related in the Acts, 478-481; Exegetical arguments (from the Epistles) and psychological Objections
against the theory (of Baur, Holsten, and Strauss), that this was a
merely inward occurrence, 481-487; St. Paul neither a visionary
nor an epileptic, 487-490.
III. COLLAPSE OF THE "VISIONARY HYPOTHESIS,"... 490-503
St. Paul's conversion and history-Belief of the Disciples in Christ's
bodily resurrection-Novelty of the idea of an individual resurrection in a glorified body, 490-492; Possibility of a visionary illusion
affecting five hundred Disciples at once not to be assumed-Great
difference between the appearances of the risen Saviour and mere
visions as related in the New Testament-Why did these appearances continue for only so short a time? 492-495; "The Third
Day " too early a date for the development of visionary illusionsDisappearance of our Saviour's body, 495-498; Effects of the Resurrection on the Disciples and the world-Sudden revolution on
the Disciples' frame of mind-A moral regeneration of the world
not the effect of visionary'self-deception, 498-500; Result-The
visionary hypothesis overthrown by difficulties exegetical, psychological, dogmatical, chronological, topographical, historical, and
moral, 500-502; Positive counterproofs for the necessity of the Resurrection, 502, 503.
EIGHTH LECTURE.
THE MODERN CRITICAL THEORY OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.
THEF TUEBINGEN SCHOOL, AND ITS FOUNDER F. C. BAUR,... 504-506
I. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL,.... 506-517
Influence of Hegel-Baur's anti-miraculous conception of history



XX                           CONTENTS,
PAGI
Naturalistic explanation of the Origines of Christianity, 506-509;
Demonstration of historical analogies-Christianity merely the combination of pre-Christian elements of truth-Its purely spiritual
character, 509-514; Primitive Christianity an Ebionitic development of Judaism-Separation from this of a Universalist schism
under St. Paul-Antithesis of Petrinism and Paulinism-Critical
treatment of the New Testament writings, 514-517.
II. CRITIQUE AND REFUTATION OF THIS THEORY,..      517-547
Its pretended freedom  from dogmatical presuppositions-Its philosophical assumptions-Onesided conception of the nature of Christianity-True specific difference between Christianity and all previous
religious developments, 517-519; Its supernatural origin-Elements
of truth in Baur's deductions, 519-524; Their historical deficiencies: Person and self-consciousness of Christ, Belief of the Disciples,
St. Paul's conversion, all left unexplained-What is Paul without
Christ? 524-528; Antithesis in the apostolic age not fundamental,
and solved by the Apostles themselves, 529-532; Three stages of
development in primitive Christianity-The principle of universalism extant from the very first-Later divisions, 533-536; Baur's
critique of the New Testament books-Belief of primitive Christianity in the Godhead of Christ-Impossibility of transferring the
Books of the New Testament into the Second Century-Relation of
the Fourth to the Three First Gospels, 536-541; Confusions resulting from  Baur's theory-Analogy between him    and DarwinAccumulation of difficulties through dislike of the Miraculous-Substitution of philosophical criticism for historical-Dissolution of the
Tiibingen School, 541-547.
CONCLUSION,. *        ~    ~             ~    ~      ~  47-49




MODERN DOUBT AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF.
FIRST     LECTURE.
THE EXISTING BREACH BETWEEN MODERN CULTURE
AND CHRISTIANITY.
O)UR German forefathers had a grand old legend connected
with the terrific battle of Chalons, at which, in the
middle of the fifth century, the combined forces of Visigoths
and Romans obtained a sanguinary triumph over the invading
hordes of Attila. The bloody work of the sword was done,
and the vast plain strewed with countless heaps of dead. But
for three nights following-so ran the tale-the spirits of the
slain might be discovered hovering over the scene of their
late encounters, and continuing their ruthless conflicts in the air.
The like has been the case with the age-long war still waged
against the gospel, which, if at first conducted mainly with the
sword, has now resolved itself into endless conflicts of opposing
spirits. To give you some insight into the present condition
of this world-wide struggle, more enduring and more significant
than any material conflict, and lead you by the hand, as it
were, to those parts of the battle-field where the hottest strife
is raging, will be my endeavour in the following Lectures.
And first, we must take a survey of the mighty field itself, or,
in other words, make ourselves acquainted, so far as may be
in a single view, with the full extent of the existing breach
between our modern culture and,Christianity.
That such a breach exists, needs surely no proof from me.
Thousands of educated persons now feel themselves compelled,
as by an essential requirement of modern intellectual culture,
to assume a critical position towards the whole of Christianity,
so far as it transcends the sphere of merely natural or rational
religion, regarding it as an indubitable sign of defective cultiA




2           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
vation or narrow-minded partisanship, when any one professes
an unreserved adherence to all the articles of the Christian
faith. Great masses of so-called " cultivated " persons in Germany may be said, indeed, to entertain a deep-seated mistrust of
all that is positive in Christian faith, even though still acknowledging the truth and obligation of Christian morals.  Such
doctrines of the gospel as, for instance, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, are quietly demurred to by these
people, or put aside as mere anachronisms, about which the
present generation hardly needs to trouble itself. Have they
not read in numerous popular books and novels, papers and
periodicals, and heard asserted in every educated circle, by how
many social authorities these and the like doctrines are now
openly impugned?    The first discovery that it was so, and
the assurance with which it was proclaimed, may indeed have
startled some a little.  But by degrees they got used to the
current expression of sceptical opinions, and to appeals on their
behalf to the imposing authority of great scientific and philosophic names, so as in the sequel, from fear of being laughed
at in educated circles for their childlike credulity, to be found
ready to surrender bit by bit the whole religious faith of their
fathers. The first thing given up would of course be the personal existence of the Evil One; then (for the sake of Balaam's
ass, or Joshua's address to the sun and moon, or the Mosaic history of creation) the authority of the Old Testament; then,
one after another, single miracles of the New Testament; and
finally, the doctrine of our Lord's divinity, His resurrection
and ascension, and all the other revealed foundations on which
Christian faith is built.
Serious and alarming as such a condition of things must be
for every one who regards it in the light of past history and
of the prophetic word, it will avail nothing to make these
phenomena a mere subject of lamentation. We must have
the courage to look them in the face, and endeavour to comprehend their true significance.  Spinoza's word applies here:
"Human things are neither to be laughed at nor wept over;
our duty is to understand them."    But this can only be
accomplished in the present case by a careful investigation of
the historical and other causes which have conspired to produce
the present alienation of modern society from Christian faith.




LECT. I.],        CAUSES OF THE BREACH.                 3
We must inquire, therefore, first, What may be the historical and ethical factors by which the existing breach between
Culture and Christianity has been gradually formed? and
secondly, How wide and how deep this breach at present may
be? A summary answer to these questions, which of course
is all that could be attempted here, may nevertheless enable
us, with our knowledge of the nature of Christianity and of
Modern Culture, to suggest an answer to a third question,
Whether at all, and how far, this breach can be closed?. —CAUSES OF TIIE BREACI.
These may be classed under the following heads: Historical, Scientific, Ecclesiastical, Political, Social and Ethical, to
each of which we must now devote a brief attention.
a. And first, the Historical.  Modern unbelief is only in
part a new phenomenon.   It stands in the closest connection
with similar movements in all past times, of which it is the
natural outcome and result. Christianity has never existed in
the world without experiencing opposition, nor deceived itself
by expecting it to be otherwise.  " This same is set for a sign
that shall be spoken against," cried aged Simeon at the first
contemplation of the child Jesus.  And the history of the
Acts of the Apostles closes with the witness of the Jews
in Rome: " Concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is
spoken against."  To what a height the contradiction rose in
the period embraced by this twofold testimony, may be seen in
the histories of the Lord's passion, and of the persecutions of
the early Church and His first disciples. Each apostle enters
on his mission prepared for the extremest conflicts.  " We
preach Christ crucified," exclaims St. Paul, "to the Jews a
stumbling - block, and to the Greeks foolishness."  The first
encounter between Christian truth and heathen culture is
recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts, which tells
how fearlessly St. Paul proclaimed strange and unwelcome
truths in the metropolis of classical refinement, and in the
hearing of the leaders of the old systems of philosophy. From
that moment the gospel was assailed, not only by the fanatical
hatred of the Jew and the unscrupulous violence of Roman




4           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY., LECT. I.
statecraft, but also by the intellectual weapons of Hellenic
literature and science.
Cynics, Epicureans, and Neo-Platonists produce elaborate
treatises in disproof of Christianity.  Celsus atbtcks it with
considerable acumen as an imposition.  Lucian, a thorough
unbeliever in all religious systems, pours out his scorn on
Christianity as "the latest folly in the world's great madhouse," and ridicules its martyrs. Christian writers find it
necessary to give their treatises in defence of the gospel a
scientific shape, and a valuable apologetic literature is gradually
formed among the Greek and Latin Fathers.
After three centuries of conflict, victory finally declares
herself on the side of the new religion. Christianity triumphs
in the Roman Empire, and gradually absorbing the remains of
the old classic culture, derives therefrom a powerful impulse
towards the production of a new Christian form of civilisation
in the west. And even here the first beginnings of an occidental Christian philosophy are found to generate or foster
doubts as to the proofs or evidences of some of the verities of
Christian faith.  The subtle doctors of medieval scholasticism
are seen to move uneasily in the fetters of ecclesiastical dogma,
and it ofttimes taxes the most strenuous efforts of a powerful
hierarchy to conceal or cover over the yawning gulf between
faith and science.  The antagonists of revealed truth are
henceforth to be found within the Christian camp itself, and
their attacks become in consequence the more formidable.
The great Protestant Reformation, with all its added strength
to the cause of faith, will be likewise found to have introduced
fresh elements of danger. We now see the great religious
principle of man's personal responsibility, though maintained
by the Reformers in the strictest subordination to the supreme
authority of the divine word, aiming more and more, under
humanistic and other influences, at unlimited self-assertion,
and gradually emancipating itself from every kind of authority,
even upon fundamental articles of faith. The conditions of
the conflict are now changed.  Whereas in former times the
various elements of the old classical culture and philosophy
had opposed themselves to Christianity as something young
and new, so now henceforth Christianity and its articles of
faith are regarded as old and obsolescent by the advocates of




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACH.               5
modern cultivation and science. It is the children rising up
in strife against an aged mother.
It was not, however, till towards the end of the seventeenth
century that free modes of thought began to obtain any sensible
influence with the common people. But now, the more cold
and lifeless Church orthodoxy had become, and the more all
sound theological inquiry was again degenerating into scholastic
subtleties, the greater was the impulse felt to proceed with
rapid strides from freedom of conscience to unrestrained freethinking.  Such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza, Pufendorf,
Thomasius, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Wolf, proceeded with more or
less temerity to unsettle all traditional religious convictions,
and in some cases to destroy their very foundations; while
a new presumptuous popular philosophy of sound common
sense (so called) began to develope an almost open hostility to
the revealed doctrines of all churches.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italy had taken the
lead in the development of free thought; in the seventeenth
and eighteenth, England and France are the first to show the
way. In England, from the middle of the seventeenth to that
of the eighteenth century, one portion after another of the
great body of Christian faith is dissolved in the crucible of
a Hobbes or a Ilume, or under the attacks of the long
series of the English deists,-Herbert of Cherbury, Toland,
Collins, Woolston, Shaftesbury, Tindal, Chubb, Bolingbroke,
and others.  Unitarians having begun with the denial of the
Trinity and the Incarnation, these deists soon follow, first with
the rejection of the prophecies and miracles of the Old Testament, and then of those of the New. as opposed to reason and
the laws of nature; and finally, with the denial of a special
Providence, or any possibility of a divine revelation.  From
about the year 1690 to the rise of Methodism, and the consequent revival of evangelical religion in the Church of England
and among Protestant Dissenters, it might be said that in
many a circle of English society the denial of all that was
specifically Christian, or in excess of the axioms of natural
religion, had come to be regarded as a sign of superior intelligence, and the maintenance of contrary opinions as a proof of
being quite behind the progress of the times, as one so often
hears remarked in a similar spirit in German circles now.




6           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
These results of English free-thinking were speedily introduced into France by Condillac and others. Jesuitism had in
that country been slowly but surely undermining all the foundations of true religion and morality. Pascal, the man of
conscience (a Protestant without knowing it), and Malebranche,
were the last philosophers in France who reverenced Christianity.  The Grand Monarque, whose influence formed the
character of the whole century, based his supremacy in Europe
on a culture which consciously derived its forms and principles,
not from the spirit of the gospel, but from that of Greek and
Roman civilisation. The general apostasy from Christian faith
thus induced was for a time concealed (under the prevailing
Jesuit influence) by the outward forms of a ceremonial religion,
while secretly diffusing itself among the polished circles of
Parisian society. Political interests, and not religious, were
henceforth the motive powers in the public life of Europe,
which became more and more secular and humanistic.    Religious indifferentism, rapidly degenerating into selfish pleasureseeking and grosser forms of immorality, became the prevalent
temper in French social circles,-a phenomenon which is not
wanting among those characteristic of our own time.
It was not, however, till the middle of the eighteenth
century that all reverence for the teaching and witness of the
Church was openly abandoned. Voltaire now appears upon
the scene.  Exercising almost absolute control, through the
force of genius, over the intellect of Europe, and from the first
directing inexhaustible stores of wit and raillery against religion, he did more than any other man of his age to promote
the spread of unbelief among the people.  The annihilation of
positive Christianity Voltaire regarded as his great object in
life.  The heroes of the Bible were for him mere knaves and
fools, and the Gospel history a tissue of fables, fit only for
" cobblers and tailors." Luther, the Augustinian monk, opposed
indulgences out of mere partisanship.  "Had only Leo x.
committed the sale to him and his order instead of the Dominicans, we should have had no Protestants!"  Morality and
progressive civilisation were to be regarded as much more
indebted to classic paganism than to Christianity; and it is to
ignorance of the gospel in the Chinese Empire tlat we may
attribute the superiority of that people to ourselves in morals,




LECT. I.]          CAUSES OF THE BREACH.                  7
philosophy, and general culture!   Could only the Chinese
religion of pure deism be adopted throughout Europe, it would
put a speedy termination to all our miseries and disputes.'
Notwithstanding all this wretched superficiality and perfidious
perversion of historic truth, Voltaire succeeded in carrying the
whole mind and spirit of his age along with him.    Matters
reached such a pass at length, that the most frivolous assailant
of Christianity was more honoured and listened to than the
most intelligent of its advocates.   Doubts and arguments
against the gospel were accepted without examination, while
aught urged in its defence was condemned unheard: phenomena of which we have again a repetition in our own time.
Take, for instance, among many other examples, the French
Encyclopsedists and Materialists; a Diderot with his axiom,
" True religion is to have none at all;" a La Mettrie announcing to the world that it will never be happy till atheism
becomes universal; the Systeqne de la Nature, according to
which man is no longer composed of body and spirit, but of
mere material substances; and finally, the fatal convulsion of
the French Revolution (the after-shocks of which are still felt
in France and Europe), with its impudent assaults on the
whole fabric of Christian. faith and morals, down to the very
existence of the Christian calendar,-take only these examples,
and you will see how unbelief in the last century passed
through the same stages and arrived at the same results as
now: beginning with doubts and difficulties about Christian
miracles and gospel mysteries, it ended with complete negation
of the divine and spiritual, the very existence of God Himself,
and of any moral and spiritual life in man. The laws of
historical development are inexorable.  The seed sown was
Jesuitical morality and superstition: the harvest reaped was
materialism and infidelity.
In Germany, the general influences of the spirit of the
time were most profoundly felt. The mere name of Frederick
the Great, "the philosopher of Sans Souci," friend and patron
1 Compare especially, Voltaire et son temps, Etudes sur le 18ieme siecle, par
L. F. Bungener. Roman Catholics often complain that unbelief is a mere product of Protestantism. Quite lately Bishop Dupanloup, in his book Atheism
and the Social Danger, says: "Protestantism began the work of unbelief in
Europe." A comparison between the piety of Luther and the frivolity of Pope
Leo, or the mere name of Voltaire, is enough for a refutation of this silly charge.




8           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
of Voltaire, is enough to indicate how great the influence must
have been of French intellectual culture in our own land.
And what the French literature of unbelief did for the general
public, English literature accomplished among the learned.
Rationalism, however, properly so called, i.e. the denial of all
dogmas which seem incredible to the ordinary understanding,
is an outgrowth of our own soil. The Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy; which laid the foundation for a mechanical superficial
treatment of Christian doctrines, contributed largely to the
general alienation from Christian faith. A sort of natural
religion began to be taught both in upper and lower schools, in
which it was endeavoured to demonstrate the principles of
Christian faith entirely by those of natural reason. Revealed
religion, under this process, soon appeared to become a superfluity, and whatever in it could not be demonstrated by reason
was quietly abandoned.
The most powerful attacks in Germany on the faith of the
Church were made during the second half of the last century,
when Rationalism had already gained the upper hand. The socalled Wolfenbilttel Fragments, published by Lessing, shook the
faith of many in the truth of revelation, and especially in the
cardinal doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, representing
the whole of our Lord's life and teaching as mere human
phenomena. The notorious Bahrdt, of sottish memory, first
professor and finally publican (t1792), endeavoured, by an
admixture of vulgar sentimentality, to convert our Lord's life
into a kind of romance somewhat after the fashion of Renan.
And finally, Nicolai, in his Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliotheic, the
most popular literary periodical of the time (176 5-1805), made
it his business to cast a reproach of superstition or suspicion of
crypto-Jesuitism on all that went beyond the very baldest
rationalistic morality. At such a time, when even ministers
of the Church, conforming to the general taste, chose for the
subjects of their sermons points of general morality or natural
science, the pursuits of agriculture, or the benefits of vaccination, we cannot wonder at its becoming the general conviction
that the breach between modern culture and Christianity was
complete and final.
Such was the inheritance which the present century received from its predecessor. Can we wonder at its prevailing




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACH.                9
unbelief, even without the accession of other fresh causes of
such alienation?  Among these we proceed to mentionb. Secondly, The Mlodern Scientcfic or Philosophical.
Several branches of modern science have received since the
early years of the present century a very rapid and brilliant
development, which has largely contributed to widen the
breach between Modern Culture and Christianity. Of these
we may mention Mental Science or Metaphysical Philosophy,
the Historical Criticism of Scripture, and several branches of
Natural Science.
The general, but at first indefinite, aim of the eighteenth
century to resolve revealed religion into mere morality, and
the cardinal articles of Christian faith into abstract ideas,-as
of God, of freedom, of immortality, and the like,-received
towards its close a definite expression and scientific form from
one whose speculations constituted a fresh epoch in the history
of philosophy-Immanuel Kant.    This earnest thinker always
spoke of the Bible and Christianity with the deepest reverence
and respect.  It was his honest endeavour to hold fast the
faith in God, in freedom, and in immortality as indispensable
requirements of " practical reason," and to limit the excesses of
philosophical speculation by denying to "pure reason" (reason
proper) the right or power of making positive determinations
in things divine.  Yet this notwithstanding, it cannot be
denied that he contributed a powerful impulse to religious
doubt, by laying down, and endeavouring with great force and
subtlety to prove (in his Critique of Pure Reason), that those
ideas, when practically applied, would lead only to erroneous
and illogical consequences: that the idea of God, for instance,
depends upon a chain of illogical conclusions, and that all
received arguments for the existence of God are untenable.
You will easily see what encouragement such speculations
must have given to any floating, doubts on the truth and
certainty of positive religion.
With Kant's successors, Fichte and Schelling, these efforts
of speculative reason were under much less restraint; and
even the sacred triad of God, freedom, and immortality, which
Kant had endeavoured to maintain by appeals to practical
reason, was absorbed, along with the idea ot Divine Personality,
in an all-confounding idealistic Pantheism. This last received




10          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. L
from Hegel its final development, who maintained that the
development of the universe consists in the inner logical process by which thought proceeds from consciousness to selfconsciousness,-pure absolute unqualified Being having first
to be developed into Nature before it can pass into its higher
form of self-conscious Spirit.
But such metaphysical speculations, utterly unintelligible
without profound study, would have had small influence on
the general public, but for their reproduction in more genial
and comprehensible forms in our classical literature.  From
Schiller, ardent student as he was of the Kantian philosophy,
onwards to Heine (long an enthusiastic adherent of Hegelianism) and his English and American compeers, Carlyle and
Emerson, we find innumerable views and utterances in the
works of poets, orators, and historians which owe their origin
to those philosophical systems. Hence in the present day we
meet so many educated persons whose faith in the personal
Deity has resolved itself into a belief in "the moral order of
the universe," or in some universal "law" or "principle,"
from which there may not indeed be much to hope, but also
-and that is something-very little to fear.  Many who
know nothing more of Kant or Fichte than one or two muchabused phrases, consider themselves raised by their philosophic
insight above any necessity of submission to the dogmas of
revealed religion.
But it is not so much philosophical speculation as historical criticism from which the present generation derives its
unbelief.  Truths which rest on plain facts of history are not
in the long run to be successfully impugned by mere speculations. But assaults which threaten to shake the historical
foundation on which they stand are much more formidable.
And such have been those most frequently undertaken in our
own times.  The conflict is now removed from the field of
mere speculative reasoning to that of historical criticism of the
Oriyines of Christianity.  Two Swabian celebrities, Strauss
fand Baur, here lead the way.  Strauss, proceeding from a
pantheistic point of view, and an absolute denial of the possibility of miracles, represented in his Life of Jesus (first
published more than thirty years ago) the whole Gospel history as in all its essential portions a mere chain of myths,




LECT. I.]          CAUSES OF THE BREACH.               11
products of the inventive fancies of the first disciples and the
early Church, and made special efforts to annihilate in detail
the various miraculous accounts by a skilful combination of
minute discrepancies in the Gospel narratives. A fresh revision, or rather the reproduction of the original work in a
popular form, is that which has more recently appeared under
the title of D7ie Life of Jesus for the German People.  Baur,
on the other hand, starting from similar Hegelian views of the
nature of historical developments, endeavoured in a series of
acute and profoundly learned treatises to divest Christianity
of its claims to any supernatural origin, by representing it as
the natural product and combination of innumerable preChristian forms of thought, belief, and expectation.  In his
historical investigations concerning the New Testament, he
arrived at the result that all its books, excepting only four
epistles of St. Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and
Galatians), with the Revelation of St. John, are spurious productions of an age about a century later than that of the
apostles and evangelists to whom  they are assigned.  The
strenuous efforts now  everywhere made to popularize such
matters has brought at any rate the names of these and
similar works by disciples of Strauss and Baur to the knowledge of almost every educated person in Germany; while
Renan's (the French Strauss) Vie de Jesus, translated, as it has
been, into all the languages of Europe, and everywhere disseminated in forms ridiculously cheap, has found hundreds of
thousands of readers in the lowest grades of society.
Of the thorough and searching examination to which these
works have been subjected in the replies of Neander, Tholuck,
Ullmann, Ebrard, and many others, few except professed theologians seem to have even heard, and fewer still have given
themselves the trouble to investigate the matter for themselves.
Hence the assumption now so common among educated and
half-educated people in Germany, that the mythical character
of the Gospel narration, and the spuriousness of most of the
books of the New Testament, are points no longer admitting
of any serious question.  Very few, indeed, in ordinary social
circles would seem to be aware that the monstrously arbitrary
assumptions of Strauss in his Leben Jesu, the weakness of
his critical assaults on the historical sources of the Gospel




12          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. L
narrative, and the scientifically untenable character of his muchvaunted results, have long ago been thoroughly exposed, and that
the same work has been satisfactorily accomplished for Baur's
elaborate theories of the nature and origin of primitive Christianity by a long series of orthodox historians and expositors.
But this is not all.  To the afore-mentioned causes of our
present unbelief you must add, further, the enormous influence
of modern forms of that natural science to which, in preference to all others, the materiistc spirit of our age is so much
inclined, the serious doubts raised by geology as to the truth
of the scriptural narrative in reference to the Creation and
Deluge, as well as to the age of.the world and that of the
human race; the objections raised on the score of astronomy
to biblical representations of the creation of the heavenly bodies
and the position of our earth in the starry universe; and the
doubts, for which appeal is made to physiology and cognate
sciences, as to the truth of the scriptural teaching concerning
the derivation of all human races from a single pair.  Putting
all these doubts, objections, and assumptions together, and
bearing in mind the boldness and assurance with which they
are maintained, and the attitude assumed by modern science
generally, with its claim  even in its latest most infantine
forms to summon all other teachers of truth before its bar,
you will have a comprehensive though superficial view of the
principal historical and scientific causes which have led to the
existing breach between Modern Culture and Christianity.
But even these are not all.  We must add to themc. Thirdly, Causes Ecclesiastical.-This deplorable breach,
alas, is widened by the unhallowed labours, past and present,
of the Church herself. And here you must suffer me awhile
to pause and make a series of honest though painful confessions.
It is a phenomenon that meets us in the earliest history of
the Christian Church, that the outbreak of heresies goes hand
in hand with the loss of spiritual life in the Church at large;
that the rise of doubts has often coincided with the prevalence
of fruitless controversies; and that open opposition to, or separation from, the Church universal, has been the consequence of
abuses and neglects in practice, or of one-sidedness and exagge.
ration in dogmatic teaching.  How has the Church commonly




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACH.              13
acted in reference to such opposition, brought upon her so
frequently by her own fault? Has she not, both in earlier
and later times, been all too ready to condemn those who
differed from her with stern anathemas, and to call in the aid
of the secular arm to enforce obedience from the unconvinced
and unwilling?  And yet how much better would it have
become her to have inquired, when opposition rose, what fault
of her own might have given it occasion, and even some
measure of right I How well would she have done in endeavouring to lay down from the very first a broad line of
demarcation between undoubted and unchangeable Scripture
truth and the human forms of ecclesiastical practice, which
oftentimes not only admit of, but require modification, and in
seeking to establish a clear distinction between what is the
nucleus and centre of all Christian faith, the free grace of God
in Christ, and doctrines which, belonging more to the circumference, do not immediately affect the foundations of the faith!
How much distrust and painful doubt, how many a breach
between progressive culture and retrogressive theology, between new discoveries of science and one-sided assertions of
misapplied dogma, might have been thus avoided!
What was it in the middle ages that led so many nobler
spirits into doubt as to the truth of Christianity itself, as well
as to contempt of the existing Church system?  Was it not,
on the one hand, the growing moral corruptions of the Church,
and on the other the enslavement of men's minds in the
bondage of the letter? And so it came to pass that, under the
shadow of an iron scholasticism, a scarcely disguised infidelity
had gradually developed itself; and in the very metropolis of
medieval Christianity, Rome itself, broke out occasionally into
open mockery. I would on this point remind you merely of
the characteristic saying attributed to Leo x. (1513-1521),'All men know how much we and ours are indebted to the
Christian fable " (showing that Straussianer existed long before
Strauss), and of the decree of the Lateran Council, under the
same Pope, that one must really believe in the immortality of
the soul! So thoroughly at that time, in what was regarded
as the very heart of Christendom, was the edifice of Christian
faith shaken to its very foundations. The Church having lost
all sense of spiritual freedom, her intellectual servitude was




14          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.     [LECT. I.
avenging itself by the rejection of every kind of restraint, and
the surrender of all, even divine authority. Unbelief is often
a mere reaction from superstition; and for the existence of the
latter the Church itself is, in the first place, responsible.
Similar causes are still at work in the Roman Catholic
Church in widening the breach between Culture and Christianity. On the one hand is the moral corruption of many
priests and the practical abuses of the convent and the confessional; on the other, the retention of many points of
medieval superstition, exposure of spurious relics on the
Rhine, and periodical repetitions of miracles in Italy which no
educated person can any longer seriously believe in.  These
things tend to make not only the Roman Catholic Church
itself, but also our common Christianity, appear to many both
odious and ludicrous, and a mere institute of obscurantism.
All this illustrates the important observation, that doubt
and unbelief assail for the most part, not the pure essence,
but the corrupted forms of Christianity. The corruptions of
the Church and her dogmatic errors supply these enemies
with their most formidable weapons of offence against her.
They commit, indeed, lerror of confounding the Church
with Christianity; but this is one for which the Church herself must be held in large measure responsible, identifying, as
she often does, herself, her institutions, and her customs with
the very fundamentals of Christianity, so making it difficult
for superficial observers to distinguish between the one and the
other.
If from the Catholic Church we turn our eyes on the developments of Protestantism, we meet with the like phenomena,
though in a less degree. What was it that in the last century
prepared the way among ourselves for the prevalence of Ration-.alism?  Was it not the petrification of evangelical faith in
the dry forms of a dead orthodoxy, accompanied by an almost
total cessation of all further efforts for the diffusion of the
gospel? The sermons of that period were for the most part
dry expositions of particular doctrines, accompanied by vehement attacks not only on other churches, but also on many
in one's own church who happened to differ on some one point
or other from the confessional standards, e.g. on Crypto-Calvinists, Syncretists, Synergists, Majorists, Antinomians, Osian



LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF TIIE BREACII.            15
drians, Veigelians, and Arminians, etc. etc., making one's head
swim with the bare enumeration of the various "isms " which
the preacher felt himself called upon to denounce. At such
a time, when a cold orthodoxy was almost everywhere being
substituted for living faith, when slavish adherence to the
Church's standards was put in the place of that free inquiry
into the sense of Scripture which the first Reformers had
pursued, and a fresh bondage of the letter was introduced, it
became a simple necessity for energetic minds, like Lessing,
to come to an open breach with traditional Protestantism,
"which, however painful in the making, must nevertheless be
regarded as providentially ordained." Rationalism was in a
certain degree right in contending for simple morality in opposition to theoretic orthodoxy.  Truth itself was divided;
the orthodox retained one portion, their assailants another.
The claims of "humanism," too long neglected on the one
side, were now opposed by the other to those of "positive
Christianity."  Morality, too long unduly depreciated, was
now exalted as unduly at the expense of faith. One extreme
begat the other.
It must then be confessed that the Church theology of the
last century deserves the chief blame for the general apostasy
which then began from the ancient faith.  And this defection
was not only occasioned by the Church's own one-sidedness; it
was adopted, cherished, and promoted by the Church itself.
From the middle of the eighteenth to the end of the first third
of the nineteenth century, the chief authorities in pulpit and
university were promoters of Rationalism. If we have now
so much reason to deplore the prevalence of this spirit in the
educated circles of our town populations, and its spread among
the lower ranks too, we have only ourselves to thank for it;
we theologians reap that which ourselves have sown.
We often complain of our great poets, and our classical
literature in general, that they exhibit such indifference, not to
say hostility, to positive Christianity.  Who is to blame for
this? Once more-the Protestant Church amongst ourselves.
How could it be otherwise, than that those great and leading
spirits should, one after another, turn aside and separate themselves from her?  What was it but the cold and stiff morality,
the absence of all spiritual life and fervour, and the hard,




16           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. L
unsympathetic deism of our preachers and theologians, which
repelled ardent and poetic minds like Schiller, and made them
turn, as he does in the Gods of Greece, to the beautiful forms
of ancient paganism, in preference to the days of a degenerate
Christianity? Such men are not to be regarded as the enemies
of Christianity, but only of its rationalistic form as then presented to them. Schiller, in the poem referred to, is assailing
not the religion of the gospel, but the vulgar Rationalism by
which it was defaced. Perthes is perfectly right when he
says: " It is the longing of a noble human heart which there
finds utterance, pouring out its righteous indignation against
formalists and mammon-worshippers, and striving after living
communion with a real self-manifesting God.    He only can
mistake Schiller's true meaning who has no conception of the
angry feelings which inspire the man who, never cheered by
any true teaching as to the faith of Christians, cries out for
help, and finds it denied him; desires intercourse with the
living God, but receives from his age no other revelation
than that of a dumb mechanical idol of the understanding,
enthroned in mere astronomical sublimity above the subject
world." Let us acknowledge, then, that true poetry thirsts
for religion; that if our own great poets do occasionally
seem  to be in any measure cognisant and receptive of the
spirit of the gospel, it is because they learned to find behind
the mask of a degenerate Church the nucleus of life and truth
which there lay hidden; and that such was indeed the case
from Schiller onwards, with his profoundly Christian poem
The Song of the Bell, to the pious Uhland, who thus pours forth
the longings of his soul for "the Lost Church:":" I wander through the wood alone,
No trodden path before me lies;
The world I leave is cold and dumb,
To God I lift my longing eyes.
I listen in the silent wild,
Till notes from heaven I seem to hear;
And as my longing swells, those notes
Seem to ring out more full and clear."
But all the heavier responsibility falls on the Church for
having had no answer to such longings as these; all the more
must we lament the misfortune that the development of our
greatest poets and thinkers should belong to an age in which




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACH.               17
the Church had nothing to tell them of a true and living
Christianity, and could only present them with its cold and
lifeless skeleton.
But to come nearer to our own time, the Church of the
present is also in this respect not free from blame.  Even
now in England, where for ages past faith has struck its
strongest roots in the very heart of the common people, and
still retains in great measure its hold upon them, doubts and
sceptical theories are rapidly spreading.  Resting on the socalled "evidences of Christianity," the Church of England in
the last century had fallen, as we all know, into a deep
slumber. From that slumber she has indeed long awakened,
but it is now to contemplate with alarm her own impotence
to withstand assaults from which the old " evidences " afford no
longer adequate protection. She finds now that theological
training has been too long neglected in her great universities,
and the vast majority of her clergy quite inadequately furnished
for encountering the attacks of modern criticism.  Many will
not acknowledge this to themselves, while others of a nobler
temper rush in hot haste to translations from the German, in
order to make themselves au fait in questions stirred by the
Colenso and other " Broad Church" controversies.  The want
of experienced leaders through the thickest labyrinths of
modern criticism is painfully felt; and many, in consequence,
are seen heedlessly rushing on towards the most dangerous
precipices of critical scepticism.  Others, starting back in
terror, seek in the communion of Rome a refuge from
infidelity.  Others, again,- and these naturally form  the
great majority, - still thoughtlessly cleave to the bare
letter of Scripture and their Church formularies, and think
to entrench themselves behind these paper fortifications in
a vain security from the importations of German theology
and critical science. By such persons a grossly exaggerated
and thoroughly unevangelical view of the nature of inspiration
is often made use of to decide off-hand on critical or scientific
questions, which ought to be discussed on their own merits,
and by no means interfere with the foundations of Christian
faith. And so also, needless appeals to legal tribunals to
decide on points where spiritual and intellectual weapons
ought rather to be used, are calculated not to heal, but only
B




18'    MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
to widen, the breach between Science and Christianity. To
raise, moreover, mere questions of detail in the present controversies between natural science and theology into articles of
faith, and give them an importance which is by no means
assigned to them in Holy Scripture, is surely the very way to
excite in many minds a not inexcusable indignation at such
attempts at intellectual tyranny, but which is too apt itself to
degenerate into total indifference towards any claims of divine
revelation. The Church itself, and her one-sidedness, is here
chiefly to blame.
Things are somewhat better in Germany. The Church here
has certainly avoided some of these mistakes.  She has not
set herself in opposition to theological and scientific inquiry,
perhaps has rather been too lax in duly limiting it.  She has.
on the whole, followed the maxim of meeting opponents on
their own ground, and withstanding them with merely scientific weapons; and this course has resulted in a victorious
advance of evangelical theology, despite the most formidable
opposition, to a firmer, closer hold of the fundamental principles
of the ancient faith. But here our commendation stops. The
German Protestant Church has fallen into other faults and
errors not less injurious than those of her English sister. She
has favoured the advance of unbelief among her own people,
by quietly looking on when she ought to have been up and
doing. In the eyes of many, she has seemed to regard her
own cause as lost.  She has too long neglected a duty much
better attended to in England,-that of encountering the sceptical popular literature of the day by popular religious journals,
tracts, and magazines, in which assaults on Christianity were
duly met and answered. It is only quite recently that our
Church has seriously set herself, by a revived apologetic literature, to recover the ground thus lost.
The internal condition of our Church, moreover, in the last
few decades affords in many respects a melancholy spectacle.
How do we see her torn by endless strife about questions connected with the legal rights of the Prussian Unionl  How
much ill-blood has been made among the laity, by the excessive
and quite un-Lutheran and unevangelical claims put forth on
behalf of the Church and the ministerial office! How much
precious time wasted by theologians in useless controversies!




LECT. I.]        CAUSES OF THE BREACH.               19
How much power and influence has the Church thereby been
losing with the common people! With what bitterness do the
three great parties into which we are now divided turn the
one against the other!-the Extreme Left, on the one hand,
inclining again to Rationalism, and the extreme Lutheran
Right on the other, both equally hostile to the Evangelical
Centre and its evangelical Church Congress; those of the
Left summoning against it the Congress of German Protestants,
and those of the Right the Lutheran Church Congress! Is it
not enough to destroy the confidence of thousands in a Church
which they see thus torn asunder by internal strife? And
let me add one thing more: How many of our clergy are still
addicted to the evil habit of using, parrot-like, a round of
religious phrases which have lost for the most part their
original force and meaning!-a habit than which nothing is
more fitted to steel men's consciences against reception of the
truth, and alienate all persons of thought and education.
Still greater is the hostility now excited in the minds of
many against both Church and Christianity, by the position so
perversely taken by some of our friends on questions of politics.
The true position of the Church with regard to such questions
is surely this: to exhort each one fearlessly and impartially
to the performance of his duties to God and man; to bear
witness before high and low alike on behalf of truth and right,
and against all manner of wrong and injustice; and so to constitute herself the conscience, as it were, both of Government
and people. How much real gratitude would the Church
have earned from all right-thinking men had she really done
this! But the contrary has too often been the case. Men of
both the extreme parties have in several instances given just
offence by one-sided and partisan action in politics, while the
inactivity and seeming indifference of others has donle hardly
less harm.  We cannot here, of course, enter into details, or
presume to judge in individual cases; but one thing we may
remark, that nothing is more likely to alienate popular confidence from the Church as a body, than when its representatives
are seen to be wanting in impartiality in dealing with different
ranks in the social system: when clergymen, for instance, are
found bold and uncompromising in rebuking the sins of the
common people, but timid or reticent with the great and




20          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
powerful; and prepared to defend or advocate through thick
and thin the line assumed by Government, whatever it may
be.  How often has it been remarked, with truth, that the
feudal party in Prussia are only too ready to identify their
cause with that of the gospel, and to range their own party
principles under the sacred banner of the Cross! And have
they not been greatly aided in this confusion of flesh and
spirit by that portion of the clergy who, instead of maintaining the genuine impartiality which ought to characterize all
teachers of truth, suffer themselves to be degraded into mere
servants of a faction, and advocates of its prejudices?  Christianity and the Christian Church cannot be incorporated with
a.single party, without subjecting itself to the liability of
sharing all the odium and mortifications which in any political
conflict that party may have to endure. Nor can we wonder
that, under existing circumstances, the whole democratic section should be animated with a fanatical hatred to the Church,
whose cause they see identified with that of the feudal aristocracy.  Nothing has more powerfully contributed, since 1848,
to the gradual and increasing alienation of the laity of the
middle classes from the Church and its interests, than the
belief that the clergy have entirely taken part with the upper
classes against the interests of the people at large, and have no
longer any heart for or sympathy with them in their endeavours to obtain redress even of the most crying abuses.
The other extreme party, that of the " Protestant" Congress,
has fallen into the opposite mistake.  Endeavouring to swim
with the stream of political Liberalism, they not only oppose
their brethren of the Conservative Church party with the
utmost bitterness, but incur as much danger of truckling to
the powers beneath as the others to those above them.. Putting in the foreground the evangelical maxim of the universal
priesthood of all Christians, they are apt to turn it into the
mainteni-ace of an ecclesiastical democracy, and an application
to the Church of the theory of manhood suffrage. Proclaiming
the great mass of the people just as it is to be truly Christian,
and so, in fact, to constitute the Church; they remind one of
the old watchword in the wilderness by which it was sought
to overturn the government of Moses,-" You make too much
of yourselves: the whole congregation is holy, and the Lord is




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BRIEACH.             21
among them,"-and seem quite to forget that it is not birth
in a nominally Christian country, but the possession of Christ's
spirit, which constitutes the Christian; and finally, by making
common cause with the unscrupulous leaders of the party of
progress, they give to their efforts a sort of ecclesiastical
sanction, and drag down the Church as effectually as their
opponents into the miry slough of political party warfare.
The consequence of this is, that notwithstanding all their
efforts to reconcile Christianity with modern culture and progress, inscribing as they do upon their banner, " Renovation of
the Evangelical Church in unison with the general development of culture in our time," this so-called "Protestant" party
does really contribute to the widening of the breach between
such development and any positive form of Christianity. It
works towards this end from the side of intellectual and social
culture, even as the opposite extreme party from the side of a
narrow-minded form of Christianity. It alienates the orthodox
and devout portion of the community from the national cause
and liberal interests, quite as surely as its opponents have
alienated by their mistakes the national party from the cause
of the Church. Adopting the tenets of the old rationalistic
schools, it only confirms the already anti-religious liberalism
of the time in its renunciation of all positive faith, betraying
more and more clearly that the only reconciliation between
the gospel and modern culture for which it has any heart,
would consist in basing all the foundations of faith (so-called)
on the dicta of that modern "consciousness" which aims as
much as possible to dispense with any supernatural revelation.
The natural consequence is, that many religious persons are
rendered more and more mistrustful of anything calling itself
culture or progress, and more opposed than ever to even the
most moderate liberalism  in Church or State; while not a
few theologians, who in many principles might be inclined
to coalesce with the members of the " Protestant Union," are
deterred and disgusted by the excesses of their democratic
radicalism.
Thousands also, it must be confessed, are alienated from
the Church by the conduct of some so-called "pietists."  To
say that such are mere hypocrites is a crying injustice; but it
must be allowed that one-sidedness of judgment and general




22          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I
narrowness of views does in many cases help to alienate men
of culture from Christianity thus caricatured. When men see
how shy and unfriendly our pietists (unlike so many good
evangelical Christians in England and America) show themselves towards all national aspirations and endeavours; when
they observe their narrow-minded withdrawal from what they
call the world and all secular interests and pursuits; when
they remark that, instead of being, as the Lord enjoins, a light
to the world, and therefore especially to their own fellowcitizens, they prefer to let their light shine in the narrow
bounds of a conventicle; when they hear them passing ignorant
judgments on matters of art and science, or condemning everything as antichristian which does not wear the colour of their
particular section, harping always on one string-the sinfulness
and impotence of the natural man, or the prophetic announcements of the glory of the latter day,-as if these or the like
were the whole of Christianity,-it is not to be wondered at
that such narrowness of views in professed Christians should
make Christianity itself an object of dislike or suspicion. The
man of general cultivation is led to imagine that he must give
up his clearer insight,-the patriot, that he must renounce his
political aspirations,-if he would become what these people
would alone recognise as an orthodox Christian; and this he is
naturally not inclined to do.
What has been already said will be enough to show, that
in our enumeration of the causes of the present breach between Culture and Christianity, we must add to those strictly
ecclesiastical and found within the Church itself —
d. Fourthly, Causes Political.-Our modern political development and aspirations are largely felt to be antagonistic
to, or at least to lie outside, the sphere of Christianity.  And
this constitutes what has been truly called " a profound internal
discord in our life as a state and as a nation,"-namely, that
the Christian and Church element on the one hand, the
national and freedom-loving element on the other, should be
so violently opposed, some regarding Christianity as in itself
a reactionary principle opposed to all modern progress, and
others fearing all advances towards political freedom and independence as necessarily inimical to Christianity, whereas all
history teaches that freedom comes and perishes with religion,




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACIL                23
with faith, and that faith can only grow and flourish in conjunction with liberty. The two are, in the long run, inseparable.
"In many cases," says an English writer, " the true source
of a man's irreligion will be found in his politics."  With
none is this more the case than with the German people.
Whenever the Church sinks to a mere engine of the State, and
advocate even of its errors and abuses, then the natural result
is, that the opposition originally directed against the State is
now turned against the Church and Christianity.    Again,
whenever the Church shows herself cold and indifferent, or
even hostile to the legitimate aims and aspirations of the
people, then also it will soon come' to be generally regarded as
a reactionary institution, and political dislike soon developes
into infidelity. A striking example of this is now exhibited
in the present relations of Italy and the Papacy. From the
very beginning the latter has been wont to confound ecclesiastical and political interests, ofttimes making morality and
religion subservient to its politics. The bitter fruits of these
unhallowed confusions are now   being reaped.   The great
spread of infidelity in Italy during the last decade is due
to the hatred felt for the anti-national policy of the Papal
See.
Experience shows that some systems of government are
specially favourable to the growth of infidelity. Among these
we may reckon especially despotism and bureaucracy. Church
history proves clearly that the more freedom is granted to
Christianity, the more it developes, the stronger it grows; the
more the State interferes with its organization, and endeavours
to direct its movements, the more sickly it becomes. It is not
in the atmosphere of genuine freedom, but in the close and
sultry air of bureaucratic government, that infidelity will be
found to flourish most luxuriantly. The close atmosphere of
red-tapist administration is for unbelief what a hothouse is for
a plant.  Look at France under the old regime.   The despotism of Louis xiv. and xv. was a perfect hotbed of infidelity
and free-thinking. Look at Germany. Nothing like the old
bureaucratic system to produce and foster rationalism, which
in the fresh air of the War of Independence began to wither.
Patriotic, liberal, and religious impulses were then for a time
harmoniously united, and the irresistible force of that great




24          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.     [LECT. I.
national movement grew out of that union, albeit an incomplete and immature one. But no sooner was the bureaucratic
system re-established after the Congress of Vienna, than infidelity again raised its head and began to develope fresh
energies. Since then, how many there have been and are who
have sought to make up for cringing servility to the meanest
representative of the State, by impudent self-assertion against
God and religion! From that epoch onwards all political
changes took a more and more unchristian character, till in
1848 the alienation of the German people from Christianity
broke forth all at once and came to the light of day.  And to
what must we attribute this? Chiefly to that reaction, of
which the secret poison slowly corrupted the whole spiritual
life-blood of our people.  " Rudely driven back from the
threshold of political existence, and restricted to merely literary
efforts," says a modern historian, " and deprived of every opportunity of exercising its energies in a public sphere of action,
the younger generation has specially addicted itself to theological inquiries, and looks for triumphs in that sphere which are
denied it in the field of action." This alone would go far to
account for the spread of infidelity and rationalism among the
masses of our population. The German Catholics and Friends
of Light who made so great- a stir in the fifth decade of this
century, with their total rejection of all positive Christianity,
were in many instances Liberal politicians driven from their
natural sphere to wander after false lights of fancied liberty
in the bypaths of rationalism.
The present generation has likewise been passing through a
similar experience. The conservative reaction which speedily
followed the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 evoked in many
quarters a spirit of yet more embittered and pronounced
scepticism.  Vogt, Moleschott, Buchner, and others came
forward as the advocates of an impudent antichristian materialism, which hitherto had been unknown in Germany, but
soon became popular in the circles of the opposition. Nor
can we wonder at the vehement animosity of many Liberals
to a Church which, starting back from the precipice before her,
carried all her forces into the camp of their political adversaries.  Conscience assured them that their aim to make a
strong and united Germany was right and noble, and could not




LECT. I.]         CAUSES OF THE BREACH                 25
in itself be displeasing to God; while yet many were misled
by this conviction to confound a carnal aversion from the
truths of the gospel with zeal for liberal enlightenment and
progress.  It is now encouraging to note, that since the reawakening of political life, the popular favour towards materialistic theories seems to have sensibly diminished.
e. But to these political we must add, Fifthly, various social
and ethical causes for the present tendencies to scepticism and
unbelief. Some of these we now see actively at work, especially in the artisan and labouring classes. What has Christianity
done-what can it do for us? are questions frequently put
among them, as they chafe under the inequalities of our social
arrangements. And communism stands ready to give the
answer, with its violent disruptions of existing ties and redistribution of land and property as the basis of a new political
system.  Our German sense of right and conscience still keeps
these principles in check among us, but in'many of our larger
towns we find them already taking root, as likewise in England. In France, as we all know, communism prevails in
large masses of the population, combined with the coarsest
antichristian and atheistic materialism.
But, after all, it is to moral causes that we must assign a
main influence in the present prevalence of unbelief.  "Our
systems of philosophy," said Fichte, "are very often but the
reflex of our hearts and lives." You will, I am confident,
accept this axiom as specially applicable to the subject now
before us. Each man's position towards Christianity is ultimately determined by the inward condition of his heart and
will. The gospel has from the first proclaimed that the only
way of access to faith is by the path of practical obedience,
combined with the ready ear that is ever open to the voice of
truth.  "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God."  "He that is of the truth
heareth my voice."  Action must go before knowledge, and a
certain inward condition prepare the way for the gospel
message. To understand the truth, we must first stand in it,
or at least be willing to enter and submit to it.
Wherever there is a real alienation from the gospel, ethical
causes have much to do with it. There is something humiliating in the first aspect of all Christian truth.  It reminds us




26          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. L
of personal responsibility, of personal shortcomings. It wounds
our natural pride and self-sufficiency. And oh, how hard it is
to many great and aspiring spirits to come down from their
high estate and confess to guilt and error! For others, Christianity has too much that is alarming. It makes of human
life so serious a thing; it warns so solemnly of the nearness of
eternity and the certainty of future judgment; its sign of the
Cross reminds us so awfully of the divine holiness and the
hatefulness of sin.  Too many, alas, are not prepared to fight
their way through all these terrors to real and solid peace, and
catch at the idlest doubts and shallowest surmises to escape
from the pressure of unwelcome truths. What pride does for
the former class, fear does for these, in deterring them from
embracing the faith of the gospel.  And as for both these
classes the entrance of the way of life is found too strait, so
for many others the way itself has proved too narrow.  Their
love of ease refuses to engage in the striving after holiness;
their love of gain and worldly honour shrinks from the thorny
path of humility and self-denial.  With many, alas, sins of
sensuality are either parents or offspring of unbelief; nay,
every sin may be regarded as a step in that direction. The
apostolic word is true of thousands in our day, as on the first
preaching of the gospel: " The natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God."
Ignorance with many is a cause of unbelief, superficiality
with others. Many are so absorbed in the cares and turmoils
of their earthly life, as to have neither time nor inclination to
inquire into the grounds of Christian faith, and so fall an easy
prey to the assaults of the shallowest scepticism.  Ars. non
haabet osorem nisi ignorantem  is most true here.  The most
vehement opponents of gospel truth are ofttimes those who
know least about it, and are not ashamed to exhibit the most
astounding ignorance of both Catechism and Bible.   Every
close observer of the spirit of our times must be aware of its
deep-seated aversion to any thorough inquiry as to the grounds
or significance of any religious dogma. It would be a marvel
in any age but ours that shallow pretentious books like Penan's
Vie de J6sus, which set all sound criticism and historical
investigation at defiance, should be so immensely popular, and
go through so many editions.    Who can wonder that an




LECT. I.]     PRESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH.          27
age so constituted should be driven about by every wind of
doctrine, —
" On its own axis turning restlessly,
And never find the healing light of truth "?
And if there be so many various causes of alienation from
Christian faith in the prevailing tendencies of our time, there
are not a few which render the assumption of a sceptical
temper pleasant and easy. Unbelief appeals mainly to the
intellect, and lays no restraint on the waywaidness of the
heart. It flatters one of the favourite inclinations of the
natural man to embrace and cherish doubt as to his own
responsibility to any spiritual power placed above him. The
first note of interrogation found in the Bible follows a doubtinjecting word of the demon-serpent to our first parents: Hath
God said? and then came the flattering announcement which
modern philosophy is so ready to repeat: Ye shall be as gods;
of which the present improved version runs thus: Ye are
yourselves God; that absolute Being whom ye once thought
to be above you is in you and of you-your own spirit. What
a welcome word to an unquiet conscience! There is no more
eternity or judgment to come! How charming to the earthly
mind of the votary of pleasure is the announcement that this
world is everything and the future nothing!
Let us ask our own consciences: Have we not here in these
moral causes the deepest ground of our present unbelief, the
fullest explanation of its ready acceptance? In divine and
spiritual things, no one errs entirely without his own fault.
A due consideration of all these causes, old and new, which
have co-operated in the production of our present forms of
unbelief, will make intelligible the serious extent of the breach
thus made between modern culture and Christianity. To this
I must now invite your attention.
II.-THE PRESENT EXTENT OF THIS BREACH.
A look into our town churches shows at once the estrangement of the great majority of our educated classes from the
Christian faith.  Modern culture concentrates itself in our
larger towns, and it is just there we find our emptiest churches,




28           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.     [LECT. I.
and, in comparison with the growing population, the fewest of
them. Formerly the sceptic might say, with Faust,
"I hear the doctrine,-what I want is faith;"
now, alas, too often the doctrine itself is no more heard. There
are large parishes in Berlin and Hamburg where, according to
recent statistics, only from one to two per cent. of the population are regular church-goers.  Elsewhere it is somewhat
better. But speaking of Germany in general, we may say
that in our larger towns the proportion seldom exceeds nine or
ten per cent., and in the majority of cases is far lower.  And
yet, in comparison with the days in which rationalism had
possession of our pulpits, there is, in the matter of church
attendance on the part of educated persons, considerable improvement.   In country places things look far better.  There,
Christianity has still much greater hold on the mass of the
population. But of these we do not now speak. Our agriculturists cannot yet boast of any high degree of culture.  But
in the towns, whether you visit the lecture-rooms of professors, or the council chambers of the municipality, or the
barracks of the soldier, or the workshop of the artisan,-everywhere, in all places of private or public social gathering, you
hear the same tale: The old faith is now obsolete; modern
science renders all genuine belief in it now impossible; only
ignoramuses and hypocrites profess to adhere to it any longer.
Still more is this the case among the educated and halfeducated classes, i.e. among the town populations in Roman
Catholic countries. France, the greatest of them, has never
recovered from her radical breach with Christianity in 1793,
when bishops and priests united in the abjuration of their
former faith. It is well known that in Upper and Central
Italy (in Naples the case is different) the great majority of
educated persons have not only silently broken with their
Church, but openly avow their unbelief.  In Roman Catholic
communities, infidel publications enjoy much more splendid
triumphs than any which await them in the domains of Protestantism. For hundreds who read Strauss in Germany, tens
of thousands in France and Italy have beein seen devouring
Renan. In Spain and Portugal the breach is not yet made so
openly; but signs are not wanting that the hearts of a large




LECT. I.]     PRESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH.            29
number of the cultivated classes are alienated from their professed faith; that the hatred to the priests in many quarters
is intense, especially since the last revolution; and that the
religion of very many is limited to an occasional appearance
in some processions. Even in Catholic Belgium there are
many indications of a strong reaction against the Church,
initiated by such societies as those of the AffranchMs, the Solidaires, and the Libres-Pensezurs.'The members of the lastnamed society bind themselves to resist to the utmost all
interference of the priesthood in the affairs of social and
family life, and therefore (1) not to permit the visit of a priest
in case of death, or his officiating at a funeral; (2) to take
part in none but civil marriages; and (3) not to allow their
children to be baptized, or go to first communion, or be confirmed. And tendencies of the same kind are manifesting
themselves even in such thoroughly Romanized communities
as the Spanish Republics of South America. Who, then, will
deny that in Roman Catholic countries the breach between
Culture and Christianity is already a very wide one? And it
is one that is increasing every day.
But alas, all the factors of our modern intellectual life are
largely influenced by a prevailing spirit of unbelief!  Take
first our universities and schools.  Whereas amongst our
theologians the old spirit of rationalism is in great measure
overcome, it is quite otherwise among the teachers in our
upper schools, and especially our mathematicians, whose training in the exact sciences disposes them to demand a proof for
everything, to be strongly prejudiced in favour of "rational
religion," to be too ready to forget how many incommensurable
magnitudes exist in the moral world, and to seek for clearness
of ideas at the expense of truth and life (Bengel). And so,
also, the semi-cultured teachers in our popular schools are
even more prone to succumb to the temptation of thinking
themselves too enlightened and advanced to share the simple
faith of the common people, or submit to its restraints. Hence
the general outcry for the emancipation of the school from the
control of the Church, the.endeavour to abridge as much as
possible the time given to religious instruction, and to banish
it from the central position which it has hitherto occupied in
popular education; while in many places, notwithstanding




30          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    ELECT. I.
such frequent failures, the attempt is again and again renewed
to establish undenominational schools, in which Catholics and
Protestants may be educated together.
In our gymnasia and other grammar schools, religious instruction is, with some praiseworthy exceptions, relegated to
a very inferior position. Boys and youths are often found to
possess a remarkably good acquaintance with the details of
other subjects, whose knowledge of Scripture history and
Christian doctrine is of the most meagre description.  Not
long ago, it was discovered in a Prussian gymnasium that a
secret society existed among the boys of from thirteen to
fifteen years of age, with rules of a purely atheistic character,
the first paragraph commencing with, "Any one believing in
a God is thereby excluded from this society."
Such being the condition of our grammar schools, who can
wonder that at the university few students but those reading
theology should go to Church, while many lecturers allow
themselves to hold such language on the subject as to lead
their youthful audience to regard attendance on public worship
as something quite beneath their dignity? The natural consequence is, that the large class of Government officials are for
the most part indifferent, and in many cases even hostile, to
Christianity, and that the mutual estrangement between Church
and State increases every day.
A further glance at our modern literature will exhibit the
almost abysmal profundity of the chasm which in this respect
divides our present culture from our Christianity. Not many
years ago, German infidelity was contented to appear in the
courtly guise and with the aristocratic exclusiveness of science
and philosophy; she now endeavours to clothe herself in forms
in which every one may give her welcome. Unbelief is no
longer a guarded secret among wits and scholars, or uttered in
a language " not understanded of the people;" it is now commended in innumerable publications, tracts, novels, illustrated
newspapers, to the attention of the working classes, and even
of the peasantry.
The tendency to popularize all results of scientific investigation, which is so marked a feature of our time, is seen specially
at work in this department, widening more and more the
breach between modern popular thought and Christianity. A




LECT. I.]     PRESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH.           31
few decades back, the study of German philosophy required
very severe application. Few then even read Hegel, and still
fewer understood him. But the atheistic consequences drawn
by Feuerbach and others from his speculations are found by
many very piquant and agreeable reading now. Such philosophy every carpenter's apprentice can too readily understand.
And so with Strauss. What thirty years ago he addressed to
theologians, is now hashed up again and fitted to the palates of
"the German people." Every writer now wishes to be popular.
The old deductions of Hegelian philosophy paraded by Feuerbach and his compeers, that God is nothing more than one's
own inward being made the object of self-contemplation, that
prayer and adoration are in reality but forms of self-worship,
" signs," to use Emerson's language, "of infirmity of will:"
these are now thrown broadcast by the labours of a hundred
pens over the whole field of the popular mind; religion is to
be no longer a seeking after God, but a resting on nature's
bosom; no longer an obedience to a higher will, but the carrying out of one's own self-discovered system of morality. And
hence, besides the general disbelief in the supernatural and
miraculous characteristic of the popular mind in the present
day, the multitude of empty unmeaning phrases which one
hears in every social circle expressive of philosophical notions
and deductions half understood, e.g. " the worship of genius,"
" religion of humanity," " moral order of the universe," "progress of the human race," etc. etc., while the use of any scriptural phrase or expression is regarded as a sign of narrowmindedness or bad taste.
The same rationalistic, pantheistic, and materialistic influences pervade our modern Aesthetic literature. Many of our
would-be fine writers have come to regard Christianity as a
direct hindrance to true Culture.  So, for instance, Arnold
Ruge, who will no longer call it by its name, but speaks of it
as "Asiatismus," or Judaism: "This'Asiatismus' lies like a
dead weight on all the departments of modern life, and holds
us in the bondage of a refined (or unrefined) barbarism." Even
Voltaire, Lessing, Gothe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel,
with all their liberality, were unable to free themselves entirely from the yoke. And for such ludicrous outbursts of
fanatical infidelity he is praised in a modern journal (the




32          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. L
Gartenlaube) as the ideal of a true German! Another sings the
triumphs of natural science in such strains as these: " Brahma,
Buddha, Jupiter, and Jehovah must now yield to worthier successors in reason and philanthropy." 1  A third, having weighed
both Catholicism and Protestantism in the balances, and found
them wanting, proceeds to instal the modern drama as the
best teacher of true religion: "A great lie pervades the whole
of modern society. Priests and laymen alike are liars against
their will, and often without knowing it. When we let our
children learn the Catechism without believing it ourselves,
are we not making ourselves liars?  What we want is a new
Church. I am for a free stage. The theatre is my temple,
where I would see inaugurated a new form of worship. The
theatre should be regarded as a house, of God, as it was among
the ancient Greeks. Religion and the drama I would fain see
identified." (Eckardt.)
To these signs of a literary and aesthetical alienation from
Christianity we must add those of a more directly political
character. Our daily press in far the largest number of instances takes up a perfectly indifferent, if not openly hostile,
position. Witness the unmeasured scorn poured by a hundred
of its organs on the efforts to promote home and foreign
missions, and even on charitable associations if worked in a
Christian spirit; and so likewise our political clubs and
unions, nay, even those of a merely social character,-singing
rifle-shooting, athletic clubs, and trades-unions, such as that of
the shawl weavers in Berlin,-often go out of their way to
parade religious indifference and unbelief; and is it not in the
memory of many of us how the great popular movements, some
twenty years ago, for the political regeneration of our country
were conducted in the spirit of the motto of the last named
association:
" Consider, man, how great thou artThy will is thy Redeemer;"
how the proposal to implore the divine blessing and assistance
on the deliberations of the Frankfort Parliament was received
with shouts of derisive laughter; and how in so many educationist meetings in later years the watchword most in favour'Compare Wichern, Die Verpflichtung der Kirche zum Kamnpf'egen die
Widersacher des Glaubens, p. 7 sq.




LECT. I.]     PRESENT EXTENT OF THE BREACH.            33
has been: The undenominational "Christianity of humanitarianism must henceforth be the religion of Germany"? Are
not all these signs of the times, which exhibit the breach
between our present Culture and true Christianity as most
deplorably deep and wide?
It may then, I fear, be affirmed with truth, that the great
mnass of our educated, and yet more of our half-educated,
classes in this our German Fatherland is alienated from all
positive definite Christianity: our diplomatists almost without
exception, and the great majority of our officers in the army,
our Government officials, lawyers, doctors, teachers of all kinds
but professed theologians, artists, manufacturers, merchants,
shopkeepers, and artisans, stand on the basis of a merely
rationalistic and nominal Christianity; while the lower middle
class (always excepting the agriculturists and peasantry), carried
away by the materialistic tendencies of the time, assume a more
or less hostile position towards it.
But is not the condition of some other countries better
than ours in this respect? It is so in England and America.
There the mass of the people, especially the middle classes,
still rest their faith on the old foundations; and England
more especially still recognises with practical gratitude the
inestimable blessings for which she is indebted to the gospel.
But alas! the following statements are enough to show that
even there the breach is of lamentable extent. It has been
calculated that in the year 1851 more than 12,000,000 copies
of infidel publications of various kinds issued from the London
press,-640,000 purely atheistic, small pamphlets included,
but without reckoning newspapers. These publications have
an immense circulation among the working classes. To these
must be added the enormous mass of immoral publications
issued, according to a previous statement in the Edinburgh
Review, at the rate of 29,000,000 copies a year,-making a
larger aggregate than all the publications of the Bible, Tract,
and many other religious societies put together.  (Comp. The
Power of the Press, published 1847, and Pcarson's prize essay,
On Infidelity, published in 1863.)   The perusal of these
works, and of the wretched penny papers dispersed in hundreds
of thousands, must powerfully contribute to spread infidelity
and immorality among the masses of the population. Turning
c




34          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
to the upper classes, it must be noticed that the ardent pursuit of natural science has led many distinguished men' to
views widely different from those commonly received on the
inspiration of Holy Scripture, or leading to the total rejection
of its authority, and that these have been combated with considerable ability.  The controversy is still proceeding.
" Secularism " so called,-the doctrine that the Fresent life
and world is everything, that men have only to live and care
for what they see around them or in the immediate future,a doctrine founded on the positivism of Auguste Comte,-has
great attractions for the practical and somewhat materialistic
English mind.' Its apostle in England was H1olyoake.  If he
has already of professed disciples not a few, the practical
adherents of his system are everywhere multitudinous.
It is also well known that assaults more or less covert have
been made on faith in England by professed theologians, nay,
even by some who hold high places in the National Church.
When we remember the eagerness with which the Essays and
Reviews, and Bishop Colenso's attacks on the Pentateuch, were
sought for and read by all classes of the English-speaking race,
and even in its remotest colonies, we cannot but be sensible
that the breach between culture and Christianity is for them
likewise beginning seriously to widen.
So great and universal is the chasm which more or less in
all countries of the civilised world is now dividing the spirit
of the age and its most characteristic products from the faith,
aspirations, and convictions of the Christian Church.  That
chasm is wider than most of us would willingly allow. Perhaps some of the statements, necessarily brief and superficial,
which I have laid before you, may have astonished some of my
most intelligent hearers.  But being so, the duty is the more
incumbent on us seriously to put the question, Is a reconciliation still possible?  We must devote a somewhat careful
investigation to our reply.
III.-CAN TIIIS BREACH BE FILLED UP?
If we are inclined to answer this question in the affirmative, we shall be very far from denying that between modern




LECT. I.]     CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           35
culture and Christianity there exist, in many respects, irreconcilable internal contradictions, and that it is no use for us
to attempt to reconcile them.  But there is another question:
whether true culture and genilLne Christianity mutually exclude one another; or whether, on the contrary, the latter does
not naturally produce, or at any rate promote, the former; and
whether the present time and our own countrymen are not
peculiarly fitted to illustrate the real inward connection between the two, and so called upon to do their best in filling up
this breach? In what follows, we desire to make an attempt
to maintain this latter proposition.
However painful it may be to contemplate the assault
which at the present day is made by innumerable adversaries
with increasing bitterness on the structure of Christian faith,
it nevertheless has, in some respects, a favourable aspect.'If
Christianity is that which from the very beginning it has
professed to be, that is, absolute truth, which must prevail in
the end, all these attacks upon it can only assist in advancing
its ultimate victory, because they contribute to a deeper
investigation of truth, and to a constant exhibition of fresh
aspects of it. If it is true, as Christians believe, that all
things, even the attacks of their enemies, take place under
some higher guidance, then these attacks are never merely
detrimental to Christianity, but from another point of view
tend to further it.  The open, honourable antagonism of an
opponent, to say nothing of the victory over an error, always
tends to intensify and enrich the treasure of truth possessed
by the Church. The louder, therefore, the opposition of the
present day, and the warmer the contest on all sides, the
greater, after all, is the gain to be derived therefrom, and the
nearer becomes the final, complete, and permanent victory.
Nay, the numerous attacks made on Christian belief are even
now a proof that Christianity is again beginning to become
an important power in the life of nations. From all antiquity
downwards, history tells us that the more powerful the development of Christianity, the stronger became the opposition
to it. Unquestionably, at the present day, the opposition is
great, and consequently Christianity must again have presented
itself in a powerful form.  Where there is much conflict,
there is also much life. And perhaps the present time is just




36           MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. L
the very period when there is the least ground for despairing
of the victory of the genuine Christian theory of the universe.
If we survey the manifold bridges which are now being constructed, in order to facilitate the return of educated persons
to Christian belief, and the increasing numbers of those who
are beginning to find out this way of return, we are bound to
say that, in the case of any one who examines the matter
without prejudice, it is more easy now than in many previous
periods to bring himself to a thorough reconciliation between
culture and Christianity.  Let us now more closely look into
the main path to this end.
Who, then, are the chief exponents of modern culture?
Are they not the Christian nations, and very especially those
among whom the Holy Scriptures have free course, that is,
Protestant nations? Is this fact to be taken as a mere accident?
Does it not point to some internal connection between culture
and Christianity? When, in the case of all other nations, we
see civilisation, after flourishing for a brief period, decline
and fall into complete decay, whilst in the case of Christian
nations we see it, although amid interruptions, constantly increasing, is not the supposition a very obvious one, that just
in their Christianity, and especially in the gospel, nations possess an inexhaustible source of culture, and a constant impulse
and stimulus to progress? Nay, may we not entertain the
supposition that, after all, Christianity and culture are so intimately connected, that they must increase or decay, stand or
fall, together?  This leads us to the perception that Christianity is the source and exponent of all true clture.  And on
this perception is based the possibility of putting an end to the
dissension between modern culture and Christian belief, and of
reconciling the two. This proposition may be proved to be in
consonance both with reason and history.  Allow me to state
a few points with regard to both these sides of the question.
What, then, is the true idea, the peculiar nature, of Christianity, and what is the true idea of culture?  On. this point
I must forthwith come into contact with many errors, some
perhaps prevailing even among ourselves.
It is of the essence of Christianity not to be a mere complex of new doctrines; it is not, for instance, as Lessing asserted, "a practical teaching of personal immortality;" it began




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           37
with facts, and its doctrines are only to be comprehended in
connection with them.    Immediately after its first word,
"Repent I" attention is directed to a divine fact, "For the
kingdom of heaven is at hand," which is rather a subject of
spiritual than of intellectual apprehension.  Christ therefore
represents Himself to us in the gospel, not as a mere teacher,
but rather as salvation and life made manifest; not as one
who merely enunciates truths, but is Himself the truth.  " I
am the Truth and the Life."
Christianity is not, moreover, as Kant would have it, "the
religion of a good life." To this many wise men have attained
long before Christ preached, although not in so perfect a
form.  It is not a sum-total of moral precepts, as rationalists
both of older and more recent times suppose, who assume that
the main points in Christian faith are the general ideas of
reverence, for the Divine, honesty, charity, virtue, etc. etc.
These ideas and moral precepts did not specifically constitute
the new  message which was delivered by Christ and the
apostles: they were of course placed by Christianity in a new
alght, deepened, intensified, and widened; but they all had a
previous existence, more especially in the Old Testament.
(Compare the command of perfect love to God and our neighbour, )Deut. vi. 5, Lev. xix. 2 and 18; and of love to our
enemies, Ex. xxiii. 4, 5, et al.)
Let us cast a glance at the writings of the apostles.  Do
they put forward certain moral rules of life as the essence of
their new doctrine?  No; their exhortations to holiness, love,
etc., appear everywhere as accessory to the chief matter which
had been previously set forth, the gospel of JesuLs Christ-His
death, His resurrection, and the great salvation obtained
through Him, and now proffered to the world.  In the first
place, they always preach and pray for grace and peace with
God through Jesus Christ; and all the special exhortations and
precepts that are subsequently added, are required by them
to be fulfilled only as a consequence which at once results
from this new revelation, and from the new relation of man to
God which is thereby constituted; that is, they require these
things as a fruit which is to grow out of the faith in Jesus
Christ.  Even John, the preacher of love, to whom some are
very fond of appealing, sets forth, as the essential and new




38          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
matter in his teaching, certainly not moral maxims, but that
"the Life was manifested "-the Word which was from the
beginning; "and we," he goes on to say, "have seen it, and
bear witness, and show it unto you." He also, and he particularly, announces his message, not as a mere aggregate of truths
and moral rules, but as a vital power, and as the revelation of
a divinely established matter of history.  And to what end?
Is it merely in order that our moral conduct should be imnproved?  No; something far more is intended.   "That ye
also may have fellowship with the Father, and His Son Jesus
Christ" (1 John i. 3). Christianity has in view not merely
to make man righteous, but also to reconcile and unite him with
God, in the way opened out by the new revelation of Himself
in Christ-" the Life made manifest."  Unless the writings of
the apostles are distorted to the very uttermost, taking as last
that which is first, and as first that which is last, it is simply
impossible to maintain that they set forth certain moral precepts as the essentials in their teaching.
But in favour of this view, may we not also appeal to the
original teaching of Christ Himself?  This is done, for instance by Baur, when, in allusion to the Sermon on the Mount,
the parables, etc., he says, " The essence of Christianity is the
doctrine of the kingdom of God, and the conditions requisite
for a participation in this, so as to place man in a genuine
moral relation to God;" also that the specific pre-eminence of
Christianity over other religions is " its universally human and
comprehensive nature,-the purely ethical character of its
facts and doctrines."  We have here, as a result from the same
grounds, something too indefinite and one-sided.  Christianity
is concerned, not merely in bringing about a "genuine moral
relation of man to God," but in effecting a newz relation through
a distinct person,-that is, Christ.  Those discourses of Jesus
formed only the starting-point of His teaching, the general
ground-plan as it were, with which He sought, in the first
place, to lay hold of the consciences of His hearers.  But
from this point He proceeds to further developments, gradually unveiling the significance of His own personality in.reference to the kingdom of God, and His own position as the
central point in the economy of salvation (for instance, that
He gave His life as a ransom for many," etc.; cf. Matt. xx




LECT. L]       CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           39
28, and our Lord's discourses in the Gospel of St. John).  It
is therefore a perverse proceeding to confine attention to the
mere starting-point; Baur himself being subsequently driven
to confess that, after all, it is " the personality of its Founder on
which depends the whole importance of Christianity in the
history of the world."
We therefore arrive at the conclusion, that the essential in
Christianity is objectively Christ Himself, and the redeeming
work which has its source in His Person; subjectively, fait/b
in Him as redemption manifested,-that is, the experience
of this redeeming work in one's own heart.   The object of
Christianity is to lead men back to God and to their true
destination, on the basis of the redemption and atonement
which has taken place through Christ.   This is the specific
novelty in the teaching of Christ and the apostles.  In every
religion, man seeks in some way or other to draw nigh to God,
to become well-pleasing to God, or to propitiate Him.  But
the means employed for this end are very various.  In heathen
religions, indeed in all religions not genuinely Christian, these
means are some personal performances on the part of men,sacrifices, penances, good works, and the like; or also, as
rationalism and modern enlightenment maintain, moral principles and righteous living. Christianity stands out in opposition to all this: it denies that the goodwill of the holy God,
whose desire is to see His children not merely outwardly
righteous, but perfect as He is perfect (Matt. v. 48), can be
attained by man without grace, or that the honour which men
should have before God, and the righteousness which is of avail
in God's sight, can be attained to by man without fellowship with
Him   who is alone perfectly righteous,-that is, with Christ.
And it is therefore declared, that there is only one way which
leads to the desired end, and that this way is Christ. "I am
the way." The proper essence, therefore, of Christianity is the
bringing back men to God, and their reunion with Him, by
tlhe one only way which is called, and is, Christ.
In respect to no idea is it more necessary to distinguish
between the true and the false; no word is so mischievously
misunderstood and misapplied, as this high-sounding watchword
of our time-culture.  Indeed, our century, before all others,
seems to aspire to be the age of "culture."  Nothing in the




40          MODERN CULTURE AND CHIIISTIANITY.   [LECT. I.
present day is so derogatory as to be considered " uneducated;"
so that not a few even of our shoeblacks consider themselves
"educated."  How many are there, however, in our time, who
are conscious of the points on which true culture really
depends? Is it not a matter of fact, that a certain superficial
refinement of manners, some acquaintance with the forms of
good society, a little stock of ordinary phrases, and the fact of
having seen or heard something of the best known products of
literature, together with a fashionable style of dress, form, in the
opinion of most persons, a sufficient claim to the possession of
"culture"?  But is that enough?   Is it not then possible
that a man, sunk in the lowest depths of moral rudeness and
degradation, may appropriate some of this outward varnish of
" culture," with very little reformation of his essential barbarism?
Can we then, on this account, consider him as a really cultured
man?   We feel at once that true cultivation consists in real
refinement of mind and spirit, and not in mere intellectual
acquirements or outward accomplishments.
According to the sense of the word " Bildung" (culture), we
call a thing "gebildet" (formed) when it is perfectly shaped,
ready, and complete; when it is that which it is intended to
be, and consequently completely fitted for its purpose.  So,
also, the truly formed or cultured man is he in whom all
natural faculties are thoroughly developed, so as to enable him
to fulfil the purpose for which he was created.  The next
question would therefore be, what this purpose is; and what
the nature, extent, and destination of the faculties implanted in
each individual, and what the end he has to aim at reaching.
It is clear that, just as any one places a higher or lower estimate on this task,-that is, on the whole end and purpose of
human life,-his ideas of culture must take either a higher or
a lower form.  But, in truth, what is this end and purpose?
Nothing less than God Himself.  God is the eternal prototype,
in harmony with which man is to form himself; and likeness
to God is the aim for which he is to strive, by perfectly cultivating and shaping all the powers implanted in him. His
divine, psychico-moral faculties point him to nothing less than
God.  And so it stands in the fore-front of divine revelation,
"God created man in His own image, in the image of God
created He him." No poet who ever sang of the dignity of man,




LECT. I.]     CAN THE BEEACH BE FILLED UP?          41
has conceived an idea of him more magnificent than this; and
no sage ever before placed the destination of man on so immeasurably high a stage as is done by Christ, when He says,
" Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect."  Classical antiquity never attained to the sublimity
of this view: in its ideas as to the destination of man, it had
no one conception worthy of man; for it was without the idea
of man's perfection and likeness to God. In the doctrine that
man is created after God's image, and therefore for God, the
Toly Scriptures alone have given back to mnen the full idea of
their own dignity, and have set forth the highest principle and
aimn of culture, beyond which it is alike impossible either for
philosophy or religion to pass.  He who falls short of this,
and is content with some lower aim, does an injury to his own
dignity, and never becomes cultivated in the highest sense of
the word.
This aim will likewise never be attained by him who, in
respect to everything that belongs to the Divine image, and
all the spiritual and moral capabilities implanted in him, fails
to cultivate them equally, in harmony with God's purposes,that is, by all the means which God has provided, and in
conformity with the final aim which He has set before us. In
an infinite number of cases, one capacity is thoroughly cultivated at the cost of others, especially the intellect at the expense
of heart and will.  The understanding and the memory are
stored with all kinds of knowledge; and the external deportment is thus polished and refined, without any effort to
render the heart and the conscience more tender and sensitive,
the will more disciplined, alid to lead it onwards by the path
of obedience to true freedom and self-government.  Hence
it is that we frequently find inward rudeness combined with
external polish.
And thus we get at the root of all false culture, and of all
inferior culture.  Man falls into this by a neglect of moral
self-discipline; and even in Paradise had fallen into it. The
first sin, as the Scriptures narrate its origin, was nothing more
than an attempt to cultivate knowledge in a one-sided way,
at the cost of the faculties of the heart and will. Man desired
"to know good and evil," to increase in knowledge, without
inquiring whether heart and will would be raised thereby to a




42          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
higher stage of cultivation.  Man desired to be "as God," but
without endeavouring to approach God in the divinely prescribed path of obedience and moral self-discipline.  Thus
the new stage of cultivation was, in fact, a false development,
which was increased by every sin that followed.  For every
sin tends to develope in a wrong direction the moral, and
thereby also the intellectual, faculties of man.  We are
taught this plainly by experience, as well as by the word of
God.  This mis-development has through the universality of
sin become a prevailing power, and henceforth man is no
longer able to attain to God-likeness by the direct path, but
only by a return, from the false to the true course of development; that which the Scriptures understand by " conversion"
being in reality nothing else than this return from mis-development, which makes us more and more unlike God, to a
true, genuine, ethical, and religious culture, through which we
once more attain to the Divine likeness.
We thus arrive at the result, that true moral culture,
culture in the highest sense of the word, is nothing more than
reversion to the Divine intage.  And how is this to be accomplished?  Since the original character of man as the image
of God has once for all been obscured in various ways by the
misguiding power of sin, and, on the other hand, our eternal
prototype-God —is invisible, it became necessary that God
should again place before our eyes His holy image in a perfect
shape, as a pattern and ideal, from which we might be able
to recognise both Him and ourselves,-our true nature and
destination, viz. to return to the Divine image.  This was and
is no longer possible without Christ, who is "the image of
the invisible God" (Col. i. 15), and at the same time the pure,
sinless, perfect Son of man, in whom, therefore, humanity was
manifested in its most perfect likeness to God. Now, therefore,
all true culture depends upon man forming himself anew,
or rather allowing himself to be formed according to this
pattern.  He only who puts on the likeness of the Allperfect One, and on whom it is distinctly stamped, is, and
will be more and more, completely educated, made like to God,
and perfect; he alone will fulfil the purpose of his creation,
and accomplish his true destiny.
Let us now see what we have ascertained.  The aim of




LECT. I.]     CAN THIE PREACH BE FILLED UP?            43
Christianity is to lead man back -to God by the Way which is
called Christ; and culture in the highest sense is nothing else
than a re-educating back to God, and to that Divine image
which can only be attained through Christ. Where is there,
then, any disagreement between culture and Christianity?
The breach between them is filled up, and a bond of union
formed: aim and end are the same in both; both desire to lead
man back to God, and thus to the attainment of his destination. Christianity is itself culture-the trite, moral, and highest
form of culture; and culture in the highest sense of the word
is impossible without Christianity.
Only look at a simple-minded man, not possessing much
outward culture, but animated by the Spirit of Christ and by
sound piety: what a sense of moral fitness, what correct tact,
what sound judgment, especially as to the ethical value of any
person or action, do we find gradually produced in him! In
such a case, the educating influence of Christianity is frequently
shown in a most surprising way.
Only a false, merely external, religionless, and Christless culture, unworthy of the name, because nothing more than mere
outward training, is irreconcilably opposed to Christianity;
just as it is only a false, one-sided Christianity which comes
into conflict with genuine culture and science.  When recognised in their true nature, both are seen to have a profound,
internal unity; for, as Michael Angelo forcibly says, "Art is
the imitation of God." All true culture and science has one
tendency, to make human life more Godlike; and this is the
very task of Christianity.  Therefore, as regards the whole
sphere of ancient and modern culture, all that truly cultivates
and improves man, brings him nearer to truth and to God, and
so far from opposing Christianity, prepares the way for it;
whilst all that is genuinely Christian in Christian belief, all
that is divinely. true, so far from being a hindrance to true
culture, is, on the contrary, its purest and richest source and
worthiest exponent.
We may thus come to recognise the unity of culture and
Christianity from the nature of both.  But this point may be
also proved historically.
Even in that first encounter between Christian truth and
classical culture, when the Apostle Paul preached in the Areo



44          MODERN CULTURE AND CIHRISTIANITY.     [LECT. I.
pagus at Athens (Acts xvii.), we see how the one points to the
other. The apostle, in his discourse, quotes one of the Greek
poets: " As certain also of your own poets have said,' For we
are also His offspring:'" taking it as a text for his argument.
Compare also the quotation from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33),
and the hexameter of Epimenides (Tit. i. 12), both evincing
St. Paul's acquaintance with classical literature. And we find
the same thing occurring elsewhere. Wherever aught of Divine
light and truth appears in Greek culture, we find points of
connection for the preaching of the gospel; and Christianity,
far from despising these elements of truth springing up on
other ground, willingly adopted, amplified, deepened, and
glorified them, and in this way proved its affinity to all that
was true, and tended to real culture.  All the real treasures
of classical civilisation the Christian Church was enabled
gradually to appropriate, and so to realize the innumerable
helps afforded her by art and science for her own internal
development, the deeper grounding of her faith, and its outward extension; whilst, on the other hand, a series of attempts
was undertaken —though with much less success-by many
cultivated heathen, to infuse new life into the timeworn
Greek philosophies by the adoption of the substance of the
Christian religion.
And truly this classical culture required the support of
living exponents, if it was to be preserved from  entire destruction.  Wherever civilisation is not made to rest on the
basis of moral and religious truth, it cannot attain to any permanent existence, and is incapable of preserving the nations
possessed of it from spiritual starvation, to say nothing of
political death.  Greece and Rome were never more civilised,
in the modern sense of the word, their culture had never
become the common property of the people to so great an
extent as when they began to decay. These are facts worthy
of consideration by all who are of opinion that culture, that is,
the public pursuit of art and science, can of itself afford an
adequate guarantee for the future of a people, and who, alas,
endeavour to persuade the German nation that their future
depends on exchanging positive Christian religion for a culture
and religion of mere humanity  What the fate of the German
people would be in this case, we see clearly written upon the




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?             45
ruins of Greece.  The polite culture of classical antiquity was
deficient in any truly moral and religious basis.  The whole
system of life, all political, civil, and social duties, and all
family relations, were in the last resort based on selfishness.l
In consequence of this, those nations came to ruin.  And for
the same reason, all non-Christian civilised nations are even
at the present day coming to ruin, caused by this fundamental
error which their culture is unable to neutralize or overcome.
For the preservation of society, as well as of its culture,
some new and counteracting basis of life was necessary,-that
of unselfish love. And what else was there which could introduce this new principle into the world, save that religion,
whose vital point is the belief in the love which sacrificed
itself even unto death in behalf of man-the love of the Son
of God and Man? Christianity alone could fulfil this great
mission, and has in a measure fulfilled it, so that the heathen
world has sometimes wonderingly exclaimed, " See how these
Christians love one another!!"  But by the introduction of
this principle, Christianity has for ever ensured the preservation of the genuine sentiment of humanity, and has thus
become for all ages the only sure and certain exponent, and the
only inexhaustible source, of all true moral culture.
It is already a matter of history that Christianity has in
part fulfilled this vocation by absorbing into itself, on the
breaking up of the system of ancient culture, all the valuable
elements therein contained. When the irruption of the barbarian nations threatened the whole system of Graeco-Roman
culture with destruction, the Christian Church became the
guardian and nurse of this culture, and carried the treasures
of its genius through the storm into the middle ages.  Christianity, in the next place, kindled in the nations of the West,
one after another, the light of religious truth, and of a more
elevated and permanent civilisation.  How could it be otherwise, when the Church was teaching them to think of God as a
Spirit, as the Father of man, as One who is love, and to regard
mankind in the light of God's purpose of salvation in Christ,
and of the moral duties thence resulting?' And does it not at
1 For the more precise proof of this, see C. Schmidt, Die biirgerliche
Gesellschaft in der altr6mischen Welt tud ihre Umqestaltung durch das Christen.
thum, Leipzig 1857.




46          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I
once become evident to us what germs and powers of culture
for personal, domestic, civil, and political life were contained
in this fundamental principle of Christianity, if, on the other
hand, we compare the misguiding influence exercised by perverted views of God and man on the whole life of the heathen?
From that time forward, most of these western nations began
to take their place on the stage of history; they consequently
owe the whole of their significance to having come in.contact
with Christianity.  Now for the first time their languages
become written languages, and new literatures begin to spring
up.  It is now that, on a Christian basis, under the fostering
guidance of the Church, a new occidental civilisation is constructed, to which even the ancient classical culture is allowed
to contribute many a useful stone. This new culture gradually
assumed a somewhat different stamp in various lands, according to the varying national peculiarities which, as involving
special powers of culture and special destinies, true Christianity
seeks not to destroy, but only, with forbearing hand, to purify
and refine. When the Church, by suffering the obscuration of
God's Word, bid fair to lose the genuine principle of culture,
and when the spirit of selfishness, with the immorality inseparable from it, was once more menacing the world with a
relapse into heathen rudeness, then it was that the "Reformation," that is, the Christian conscience, recurred to the
gospel, finding in it the solid basis of all true culture, the
worship of God in spirit and in truth, and at the same time
its strongest motive, the principle of liberty of conscience, and
the right of free inquiry. And this principle, which could rest
only on the ground of the gospel, has become the mainspring
of the whole system of modern culture. Since its universal
acknowledgment, it has not only given a fresh impulse to
investigation in all fields of knowledge, so that the true age
of civilisation seems to be but now beginning, but has also
in the largest measure contributed to the diffusion of spiritual
and moral culture among the people.  The most comprehensive
educational institution of modern times, the National or Elementary school, may be called the daughter of the Evangelical
Church; and if on no other account, every philanthropist is
bound to confess that, for the Christian education of the German
people, no one acted more grandly and more vigorously than




LECT. I.]     CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?          47
Luther. The fact that in the present day we no longer have
merely to speak of individuals or classes, but of peoples in the
mass as educated, is pre-eminently due to these universal
channels of education created by the Reformation.   That
since that era the breach between the learned and the lower
classes has more and more vanished, that gradually the whole
life of the people, public and civil, with the whole system of
legislation, has assumed more and more the character of genuine
humanity, is in the last instance a result of the giving back of
the Holy Scriptures into the hands of the people; of the removal of the chasm once existing between priests and laity;
of the restoration of the universal priesthood (1 Pet. ii. 9);
and of the recognition (attained through the gospel) of the
spiritual freedom and independence of each individual man.
Can it be supposed that all this should of a sudden have
been changed?  Can Christianity, after having been through
whole centuries the exponent of all genuine educational development, suddenly have placed itself in hostile opposition to
the culture which grew out of it, and for the most part sprang
from its own impulses?  Can it, then, have ceased to diffuse,
along with the pulsations of its own inner life, the spirit of
true culture and genuine humanity? What is it that at the
present day, more now than at any former time, sheds the
light of moral and religious culture into the darkness of
heathen barbarism?  Is it modern culture by itself, apart
from Christianity? Is it the wandering natural philosopher
or savant, who goes forth to make discoveries in distant lands
in order to increase knowledge at home, but who gives neither
time nor trouble to the object of contributing something lasting
towards the moral elevation of the aborigines?  Or is it the
European merchant in the heathen world, whose main object
has for the most part been to make a profit out of these
lands, and who not only does not morally elevate the people
that come in contact with him, but frequently leads them on
to a still swifter ruin?  Have there not existed for centuries
mercantile settlements on many coasts, without any kind of
educational institution on behalf of the aborigines having
been established by the traders? The nearer to the coast,
and the more the natives come in contact with the trade of
the Christian wprld, the more degraded for the most part do




48          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
we find the heathen,-a fact which affords a clear proof that
culture in the mere service of selfishness, is nothing less than
the greatest hindrance in the way of elevating the mental
condition of any people.
No; it is not merely the contact with external culture,
but contact with the gospel which clears the path for civilisation among the heathen. The Christian Church in modern
times has again recognised and energetically taken up her
missionary task: her emissaries, wherever they can find a
footing, not only combat the darkness of heathenism by
preaching and education-at the same time often rendering
themselves the advocates of the oppressed heathen against
the avarice and tyranny of the colonists (I only call attention
to the names of a Thomas Coke, a Burchell, and a Knibb in
the West Indies, a Van-der-Kemp at the Cape, etc.); but by
the communication of more exact information as to lands,
peoples, manners, traditions, and languages, hitherto little or
not at all known, open out even for home circles new sources
of culture, and enrich science in many branches.  It is by
their labours and the increasingly important progress of Christianity among the heathen, that we now see a number of
barbarous peoples being gradually converted into cultivated
nations, and beginning to make their appearance on the stage
of the world's history. By Imeans of the gospel their languages
are reduced to writing; the commencement of their literature
is the translation of the Bible.  Through the influence of
Christian morals and freedom, of Christian order and activity,
all the resources of a land become available, its prosperity is
raised, and all civil and social relations are ennobled.
If we confine our attention to our own German culture and
science, it must certainly be confessed that for a long time
past the Church has no longer been the exclusive exponent of
them; we have indeed seen above in how many ways our
modern culture has placed itself in direct opposition to
Christianity. Nevertheless, it must be but a very superficial
consideration of history which can fail to perceive that even
oer German culture and science-and in many branches they
unquestionably take the lead of all-are in all essential points
a product of Christianity and of the gospel; indeed that, even in
those branches which manifest the greatest antagonism to




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH-BE FILLED UP?            49
Christianity, they are involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, indirectly or directly, assisted by the spirit of
Christianity, and are to some extent either ruled or strongly
influenced by Christian views.
At the very outset we find our written language shaped by
the gospel, and its better elements interpenetrated by it. At
the head of German literature, as its most ancient monument,
we confessedly place the Gothic translation of the Bible by
Bishop Ulfilas as "a prophecy of the vocation and tendency
of the whole people."  At the commencement of the New
High German we have, as its nucleus and groundwork, the
translation of the Bible by Luther, who thereby almost recreated our language, and that in a degree seldom reached
by any other literary work.l  This New High German which
we still speak-for we have deviated but little, and that to
the detriment of force and expression, from Luther's language
-is both in body and spirit the Protestant dialect, mainly
indebted to Luther and the gospel for its "freedom-breathing nature," its force, opulence, and beauty, as well as for its
naturalization as the written language of the educated and
learned classes (who previously always wrote in Latin).
Moreover, our German poetical literature does not disown the
Christian soil from which it grew. In the works which mark
the boundr-ies of the different periods of poetry, we see products of the Christian spirit which give a colour to the following literature.  In our ancient German poetry, that grand
Christian epic the Old-Saxon "Heliand" (Heiland, Saviour)
stands prominently out as a remarkable proof how quickly
and deeply Christianity made its way into the German blood
and life.  The first classical period of our literature, the time
of our national epic poetry and minstrelsy in the middle ages,
when it reached its acme and purest expression, bore the
impress of "the most intimate blending of German nationality and Christian faith."  At the beginning of the New
High German, we find the hymns of the Evangelical Church
laying hold with a sudden power on the hearts of the German
people; and these hymns have ever since remained the living
i On this point, cf. Liibker, Vortrage iiber Bildunlg und Christenthum, Hamburg 1863, p. 202 if., 267 ff.; R. v. Raumer, Die Einwirkung des Christenthurms auf die althoclkdeutsche Sprdche, Berlin 1845.
D




50         MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. I.
expression of their religious thought and feeling.  How much
have they contributed to the improvement and, in a Christian
point of view, the refinement of popular song! And who was
it that in the last century ushered in the day of our modern
classical literature, not indeed as a sun, but as a bright morning
star?  Was it not Klopstock, who in his " Messiah " and his
Odes blended ancient classical with German Christian elements,
and thereby struck the key-note of all our modern poetry
and art, which, however far they may in individual cases
have severed themselves from specific Christian ideas, still,
in their most beautiful and elevated creations, do not disown
the influence of Christian views of the world and human life,
and could never have become what they are, except amongst a
christianly educated people?  Or would it have been possible
for an Euripides to have written an " Iphigenia" (to say
nothing of a "Faust") such as that of Goethe?
The case is similar with regard to our other arts and sciences.
It is true that in modern times they take their own course,
frequently in opposition to Christianity.  But if from German
music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and from the most
important branches of German science, we take away that
which owes its origin and development to the influence of
Christian ideas, we shall soon find that we have deprived
them of their best, most spiritual, most ideal elements, which
most tend to education and elevation; and we shall immediately recognise the impossibility of any such separation, just
because Christianity is most intimately intertwined with our
whole culture.
Or if, in the next place, we consider our civilised life in
other points, both public and private, whence proceeds that
earnest assiduity in labour which distinguishes us Germans
beyond most other nations?  It is an inestimable fruit of the
gospel.  Labour was considered by our heathen forefathers as
a dishonour. And even in the present day, where the gospel
has not free course, the stirring disposition, the assiduity, and
the spirit of enterprise of the people is disproportionately less.
The important difference between Protestant and Romanist
countries in this respect affords everywhere, but especially in
Germany and Switzerland, a whole series of irrefutable proofs
of this fact,




LECT. I.]     CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?          51
Whence, again, come our views of right and order, of
freedom and law; whence comes the humane spirit of our
jurisprudence and of our civil institutions?  For the most
part, from what the gospel has taught us of the dignity of
man, of true philanthropy, and of human rights and obligations.  On merely heathen ground, no certain barrier can be
raised against the most heartless despotism, or against the
most shameful oppression and slavery.  Even an Aristotle,
the most cultivated heathen philosopher, thought that only a
portion of mankind possessed a rational soul, and that the
others had merely a higher kind of animal soul, and were
therefore created for slavery! The only sure guarantee for
spiritual and ultimately for civil freedom is contained in
the gospel.  Modern civilised states are indebted to the gospel
for their liberal institutions.
Lastly, on what are founded the views we entertain at the
present day as to marriage and family life?  What is it that
has aided the female sex in attaining the free and dignified
position which it assumes among us? What is it that has
taught us to treat children as if they were " little majesties "?
It was and is the influence of the gospel, which teaches the
equality of all men before God, and pays regard to every individual man on account of the Divine image in him, and his
own eternal destiny.  Allow me, at this point, to state to you,
my lady hearers; that as regards position in society, none
are so much indebted to Christianity as you. No one has so
much to fear as you from any complete surrender of Christianity, and from the prevalence of unbelief. Your freedom and
dignity stand and fall with Christianity.  One glance at the
civilised heathen nations, both of ancient and modern times,
*and the position that your sex assumes among them, will show
you how little a culture without Christianity and without Christ
is able to guard you against the most disgraceful servitude.
In fact, regarding our own civilised life at the present day
from whatever side we please, we everywhere come in contact
with Christianity as the spiritual power which supports and
penetrates it.  Even a Fichte, who certainly took up a very
free position in regard to Christianity, was bound to confess,
" We and our whole age are rooted in the soil of Christianity,
and have sprung from it; it has exercised its influence in the




52          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
most manifold ways on the whole of our culture, and we
should be absolutely nothing of all that we are, if this mighty
principle had not preceded us " (Anweisung zum seligen Leben).
These considerations apply to us Germans in a very special
measure.  No other nation has from the very first yielded
itself so heartily to the influence of the gospel; no other
possessed in its original purity of manners and force of character so great a predisposition to Christianity; no other nation
in the world's history has become so deeply imbued with the
Christian spirit or made itself to so great an extent its exponent.  No nation, therefore, is less able to divorce itself and
its culture from Christianity.  It may be thought grand to disown or to decry the veritable sources of our present culture, but
it certainly is not grateful.  Even the most sceptical cannot
withdraw himself from the influence of Christianity: he must
derive his intellectual nourishment from the fruits of a culture
which Christianity created; indeed, even in assailing it, he
is compelled for the most part to derive his weapons from it,
just as he who seeks to discover spots in the sun must for
this purpose borrow the light of the sun itself.
Having thus recognised the historical unity of Christianity and culture, and the way in which they inwardly pervade and blend with one another, especially in our own
nationality, it will be perfectly clear to us that nothing can be
more perverse than to rend asunder things which both ideally
and.historically are so intimately connected.  The fact already
observed, that so many are labouring hard to widen this breach,
and that the orthodox themselves have often been found
working towards the same end, is the greatest misfortune of
our time. "The deeply tragical contrast," as has been strikingly
observed, "which pervades the whole of modern history, is
that the idea of humanity, born and nurtured in the bosom
of Christianity by the influence of the gospel for a thousand
years, has been torn away from the root on which it grew,
and should now be placed in conflict with Christianity as a
power hostile to, and seeking to destroy it.  It is desired to
cherish culture without true culture, and civilisation without
the root of all true morality; it is desired to have the system
of laws built upon the idea of humanity without acknowledging the obligation of love and self-denial, in the absence of




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACI BE FILLED UP?             53
which, the free and joyous recognition of the rights of others,
and also of society as a whole, cannot possibly last long.  Let
us openly confess the fact, that this contradiction constitutes
the main root of all the conflicts and crises pregnant with evil,
by which our time is agitated" (Fabri, as above).
If, in the face of this unhappy tendency, you still maintain
the internal unity of culture and Christianity; if you are just
enough not to forget all that we, either the so-called or really
educated classes, owe as a matter of history to Christianity;
then, as far as you are concerned, the great, although in point
of fact unnatural and artificial, breach between culture and
Christianity is filled up, or at least the way is made clear for
their union.
And now, to bring the foregoing remarks to a practical result,
before believing in any alleged contradiction between culture
and Christianity, ask whether it be truie culture and triue
Christianity, or distorted, falsified forms of either which are
thus opposed. No truth, when dealt with by man, is safe
against disfigurement, not even Christian truth; no mental
possession safe against misuse.   In every case, instead of
regarding the form, in which these opposing elements are made
to appear, look to their true inward nature, and you will find
affinity instead of contradiction.  Is your attention drawn to
some results of scientific inquiry, apparently irreconcilable
with Scripture? first ask the question-Are these real results,
or, despite the confidence with which especially in popular
works they are represented as perfectly reliable, are not the
views of really scientific men so divided that the best course
is to suspend your judgment; or even if this be not the case,
might not after all a correct understanding and explanation of
Scripture obviate all serious difficulties?  Do the divisions and
schisms of the Church offend you? then ask the question-Am
I to lay this to the charge of Christianity, that is, to the charge
of Christ Himself, His Word and Spirit?   Was it not His
dying prayer, " that they may be one "?  Has not the primitive time left us as a testament the special article of faith,
"I believe in One Holy Catholic Church"?    You will then
be less ready to find fault with Christianity itself, though you
may perceive much imperfection, and hence many differences,
in the various Churches.




54          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. I.
If you take offence at the ecclesiastical onesidedness and
prejudice of many, who are of opinion that outside the limits
of their own Church there is little else but error, you must
recollect that true Christianity, that is, Christ Himself, says in
opposition to these opinions, "Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold," and promises that "there shall be one fold
and one shepherd."  If ybu take offence at the intolerance of
many over-zealous representatives of orthodoxy, just inquire
whether the rationalists of ancient and modern times were
any better in this respect (the Swiss and Baden schools,
for instance); and next, call to mind that Christianity, because it does not assert itself to be a truth, but the truth,
the absolute truth, must come in conflict with, and denounce
as error, everything which contradicts its spirit; but that
in this conflict it admits of no kind of carnal weapons (2
Cor. x. 4); it is intolerant in the most tolerant way; it
merely witnesses against everything antichristian in life and
doctrine, but neither wishes nor is able to use compulsion.
He who is the Truth is also the great Patience of the world,
and once said to His disciples, when hastily refusing to tolerate
one who was virtually if not formally associated with them:
"Forbid him not; for he that is not against us is on our side;"
and on another occasion, when they wished to rain down fire
from  heaven on   those who rejected them, put them     to
shame by the inquiry, " Know ye not what manner of spirit
ye are of?"    Let us not then lay to the charge of Christ
Himself, or of Christianity, the faults of His short-sighted,
narrow-minded, or passionate disciples.
Or, if you are disgusted by the onesided illiberal judgment
passed by many Christians on matters of art and science, do not
ascribe this to the spirit of Christianity itself; but rather recollect how the apostle, casting a kingly glance at the immeasurable,
possessions of the Christian man, says, "All things are yours,
both present and future;" and that into the Holy City "shall
be brought the glory and honour of the nations."  Or, when
disposed to take offence at churchmen who timidly resist any
freer political development, do not forget that the true Church
maintains, in the words of the apostle, that " where the Spirit
of the Lord is, there is liberty," and that Christianity furthers
the cause of freedom everywhere on the one foundation of the




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           55
Truth which maketh free.  So soon as you recognise the fact
that the imperfection of the Church and of individual Christians is not a consequence but a contradiction of the genuine
spirit of Christianity, and therefore is not by any means to be
laid to its charge; that the obstructions often placed in the
way of genuine culture and true progress are produced by
those imperfections, and not by the nature of Christianity
itself; that the tendency of both, when rightly understood, is
essentially the same, viz. to help man to attain his divine
destination; and that Christianity has proved itself to be even
historically the richest source and the surest exponent of true
culture,-then our scruples vanish, and the true method of
reconciliation is discovered.
If we go on to inquire what, in the face of this position,
is oar present task, and especially that of our Theology and
our Church, in endeavouring to facilitate the return to belief
of our educated classes, it is first and foremost, not to
under-estimate the depth of the yet existing breach, and
not to proceed too rashly in bridging it over-a course
which would result in rendering bad service to both sides.
We may well rejoice if our theology, more now than at
any previous time, aspires to a "reconciliation with the developments of modern culture," the very motto which the
leaders of the "Protestant Union" inscribe on their banner.
We wish for all this, and we are bound to wish for it.  Faith,
so far as it assumed a scientific character, has in all times
been compelled to come to an understanding with the developments of culture, and to put itself in accord with them.  But
neither formerly nor now is this breach to be closed by any
rationalistic methods, such as would tend to efface the essential
difference between many views now in vogue and the fundamental doctrines of Christianity; surrendering, for instance,
thl miraculous element and other points of Christian faith
which modern culture thinks itself to have outgrown, whilst
the fundamental principle of Christianity, the belief in a
supernatural revelation, is still unrecognised by the spirit of
our age. A union on such terms can only be sought for by
him who makes a merely secondary matter of the main point
of all, the belief in Christ as the only-begotten Son of God,
and as God incarnate, and utterly fails to recognise the true




56          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.     [LECT. I.
nature of Christianity as we have previously defined it. In
such alliance, the culture of the present day would become a
dangerous parasite, clinging round the great tree of Christianity, nourished on its juices, growing with its growth, but
at the same time exhausting its vitality until it ceases to
exist!
But neither does it help the matter to adhere to the forms
in which the old faith has crystallized, and to try to force
the intellectual convictions of them upon our time, in total
disregard of the progress of science.  By this course the
breach can only be made wider. Our duty is rather to
endeavour to penetrate more deeply into, and present more
comprehensively, the old truths of faith by the aid of the
growing light of science, especially that of scriptural investigation.  It is better at once honourably to acknowledge
as faulty anything which is evidently shown to be faulty in
the mode in which it is comprehended or familiarized, firmly
maintaining, however, entire and undiminished, the fundamental points of belief, which (as we shall subsequently see)
neither science nor criticism can everthrow-for they come out
of every contest more firmly and surely established,-I mean
the great facts connected with our redemption through Christ.
It cannot tend to peace if all the ideas which are moving
society at the present day - those of freedom, progress,
humanity, civilisation, etc.-are straightway branded by the
Church as antichristian, as has recently been done by Rome:
let the Church, rather, lovingly receive and acknowledge all
the elements of truth contained therein; but let her, on the
other hand, seek to purify and clear them from all that is false.
If the dissension is to be radically overcome, we must allow
to freedom that which belongs to freedom, and must leave to faith
that which belongs to faith. Let us at length learn, to look
beyond the many secondary matters dividing us in belief and
practice; let us not bind the conscience where Christ has not
bound it, and let us make a distinction between the essential
and the non-essential.  But, on the other hand, let us not
treat main points, such as the divinity of Christ, Itis atoning
death, His resurrection, etc., as secondary matters; let us not
turn freedom into licence, nor ignore the doctrinal limits of
our faith that are laid down in the Holy Scriptures by Christ




LECT. I.]       CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?             57
and the apostles, limits without which faith must cease to
exist.  Let us not resolve historical, fundamental matters of
fact (as, for instance, the resurrection of Christ) into mere
mental conceptions and general vague ideas, whereby unspeakable confusion is produced, and absolutely no internal reconciliation between faith and the culture of the time is brought
about; faith, on the contrary, being sacrificed to the repugnance to miracles exhibited in our time.      So soon as we
eliminate the cross of Christ from our belief, and thus chip off
the angles of our corner-stone, throwing overboard all that
comes in conflict with natural sense and.understanding, there
is no doubt that the union between faith and the spirit of
the present day is easy enough: the offence of the cross ceases,
but Christian faith as such is at the same time annihilated.
If any true reconciliation is to be effected, it must rather
be accomplished: First, by a genuine apprehension of Christianity in this its "divine foolishness, which is wiser than
men," its divine nucleus and centre, Christ Himself the eternal
Son; and in its perfect purity, beauty, and truth, bearing
its own witness to every human heart, and faithfully presented
to the world: Secondly, by a genuine apprehension of the
true nature and value of culture and science, their ennobling
moral tendency in the formation of heart and character, and
not merely of the intellect; and Thirdly, by the bringing home
to the consciousness of men in general, the inward affinity
of this tendency with that of true Chrstianity.  The gospel,
freed from the disfigurements inflicted upon it by the prejudice
of friends and the misunderstanding of opponents, must again
be brought home to the mind and conscience of our age as the
only sure basis of all true popular culture, and once more
made intelligible to the genius of the nineteenth century, so as to
impart to the educated classes of the present day, with all
their perverted and over-stimulated tastes, a feeling and an
interest for divine truth. This result will not be effected by
a paring down or total rejection of the germ of gospel truth,
but by developing this germ, and by disclosing to men's hearts
its inward spring of life.l  Only let the Church hold. fast
1 It was one of Vinet's latest utterances, that, in the defence of Christian truth,
" we must revert to the elementary, fundamental, and eternally unshaken points,
if we desire that the new generation should again be fed with the bread of life."




58          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
Him who is her foundation and her end, Christ; only let her
proclaim Him not with the old merely, but also with new tongues.
Let her be mindful to present Him to the present age, with its
needs of culture, not merely in His divine glory, but also in His
human beauty and moral purity; and to exhibit the free grace'
and love of God manifested in Him not merely as indispensable,
but also as all-sufficient, to a world feverishly agitated, and in
every sphere of knowledge and action wearily excited, and as
the only true source of peace and the only power which can
permanently satisfy the deepest needs of human nature. These
vital characteristics of the gospel have for many centuries
wonderfully attracted hearts and minds, and the more purely
and plainly it was set forth the greater was the power it
exercised; and this attraction it will retain until the end of
time.
The ultimate answer to all questions, the solution of all
doubts, is contained in Him who is the mystery of all mysteries, the revelation of all revelations, that is, in Christ the
Light of the world.  If Christendom, now in so many ways
Christless, is brought back to a contemplation of Christ, false
prejudices will soon vanish, and the contradictions between
knowledge and faith will begin to be solved, and from this
light, beams will issue which will gradually illuminate even
the darkest mysteries, or ensure the certainty of a future
enlightenment.  When that is the case, the inward schism of
which we have spoken is already overcome, and the breach
closes of itself.
We cannot, indeed, expect, and more especially if we accept
the testimony of Holy Scripture, that the breach will speedily
be healed in regard to all.  No one, indeed, will wish to
deny that in our modern culture there is much that is false,
egotistic, and selfish; much that is misleading and exaggerated,
and consequently opposed to true culture.   Against these
untrue elements of culture, Christianity will and must always
take the field; it must not oppose progress, although it is at
all times bound to show itself hostile to the sins of progress,
just as from its very commencement it has always testified
and striven against such sins.  Between Christless culture and
Christianity, a bridge of accommnnodatibn can no more be built than
between ligqht and darkness; and woe to him who undertakes




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           59
this! But whatever in our modern culture is thoroughly
CAristless, and therefore Godless, is unworthy of the name,
and can therefore claim from us no further consideration,
it is mere naked   rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised
by the gaudy rags of outward decency; a mere cherishing
of the sensual nature, which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already see
many indications.  See, for instance, how fearfully the thirst
for gold unchristianizes and demoralizes men, and how much
internal rudeness and want of moral discipline are thereby
fostered in the face of all external and apparent culture!
With moral failings of this kind, which are, alas! closely
blended with the culture of the present day, the spirit of
Christianity can never be reconciled.  To overcome these
failings, we need, as we have previously recognised, a high
degree of moral resolution; and he who is not capable of this,
will never be able to embrace even the purest form of Christianity; indeed, the more purely Christianity presents itself to
such a one, the more direct will be the antagonism in which
he finds himself placed towards it.
If, however, it is anywhere high time to undertake with
earnest diligence the work of filling up this great breach in
our modern civilised life, that duty methinks is incumbent
upon us.  The Teutonic races have a special need and a special
vocation to overcome this deep-seated contradiction from which
our age, and most of all we Germans, so greatly suffer. No
nation has learnt to feel its internal disruptions so painfully
as we.  We are more truly than any other " a nation of contrarieties." Down to the latest period, in which, since the
events of 1866, the German spirit has manifested itself as
more and more essentially Protestant in church and school,
science and politics, the opposing parties were very evenly
balanced. This continuous tension of opposing forces of equal
strength has been the cause of the paralysis of German power.
The difference, however, which in truth has been and is the
greatest of all others, and before all others has laid hold of the
heart and marrow of our people, is a religious one.  Other
countries are tinged with one prevailing colour in a religious
point of view; they are either Protestant or Romanist. Down
to a very recent period we were divided into two nearly equal




60          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
parts; and this religious and ecclesiastical dualism has contributed and still contributes the greatest share to political division between North and South. Lately, indeed, in consequence
of the mastery obtained by Jesuitism in the Roman Catholic
Church, the breach between the two Churches has become more
and more irreconcilable; and this growing breach is nowhere
more painfully felt than among our people. Both camps are
pervaded by this internal dissension between believers and unbelievers, between Christianity and modern ideas, and in public
life neither tendency has hitherto held unlimited sway, while
both parties are active and powerfil. Elsewhere, a country
developes either a predominant energy of faith, as, in a practical
point of view, England, which is still on the whole Christian
and evangelical, or a special energy of unbelief, as France,
which perhaps to a greater degree than any other nation has
been disintegrated by infidelity from the days of Voltaire down
to the Comtes, Renans, Michelets, etb. Germany (and in a less
measure Switzerland also) furthers, in a way peculiar to herself, both belief and unbelief in almost equal proportions.  The
believing Protestant theology of Germany, from the Reformers
down to Schleiermacher, Neander, Tholuck, Dorner, etc., has
rendered the greatest assistance towards the more profound
comprehension, the scientific confirmation and vindication of
our faith  by its intellectual products the Protestant theology
of the whole world is still nourished. The Roman Catholic
faith, likewise, as regards its scientific vindication, has found its
chief supports in Germany, where alone any scientific Poman
Catholic theology can be said really to exist, although latterly more and more oppressive fetters have been imposed
upon it.
On the other hand, the negative and destructive productions of German theology have formed the groundwork in
other countries of opinions hostile to Christian faith.  Among
all our opponents, it is German philosophers, critics, and.
theologians, who have made the most dangerous attacks on
the framework of our Christian faith; and we find our foreign
assailants standing shoulder to shoulder with our domestic
enemies.
Thus among us, more than in other countries, we see the
deepest antitheses maintaining a nearly equal balance.  We




LECT. I.]      CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           61
are indeed a people of contrarieties, and our need of reconciliation is consequently the greater.  The words which follow
apply well to our time: "So long as a reconciliation between
our religious and scientific culture is not attained by the
greater number among us, that is, is not brought about in
every sphere of our national education, in churches and schools,
in our teaching and life, our age will be debilitated by this
internal opposition, as by a secret ailment which threatens our
moral and spiritual development with distortion and decay"
(Gelzer). And all this is specially applicable to the German
people.  Its many internal differences will never be truly
adjusted so long as the main cause of dissension, the religious
difference, remains; and the matter still stands as it was put
by a well-known historian in 1851: "Any one who desires
to have a German empire must, in the first place, have a
united and firmly-established German Church: German history
for more than six centuries has taught this lesson!"
But for this very reason, the work of reconcilement is our
special vocation.  It is certainly the problem of our century,
in the solution of which all are bound to join; but the
"People of contrarieties" is called upon more than all others
to do this for itself and for the world in general.  It is fitted
for this vocation both by internal gifts and also by its past
history.  Amid all its weaknesses and faults, the Teutonic
genius more than any other combines a deep religious tendency with a peculiar power of speculative thought; high
moral earnestness with the deepest and most comprehensive
thirst for knowledge; peculiar energy for the most protracted
and profound investigation, with humble submission to what
is sacred and divine; an honest and enduring inspiration for
all that is high and ideal, with peculiar sobriety, clearness,
and acuteness of criticism.  "The Nation of thinkers" is
evidently at the same time a nation fitted for the service of
Christ. And in many bitter trials it has maintained its public
conscience more purely than has been the case with most other
nations, and, in spite of all mortifications, has "never bartered
away its ideal." By this moral attitude, and with the universality peculiar to it, it has been capable of containing within
itself for so long a time, and even up to the present day, the
above-mentioned  evenly-balanced  antitheses, for the mere




62          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.    [LECT. I.
toleration of which such an infinite tension and spiritual elasticity is requisite, that other nations would long ago have
broken down in the attempt. It is this mental and moral
tendency and attitude which capacitates the German people
before all others for effecting the reconciliation of faith and
science.
The genius of Germany has, however, already shown historically that it has recognised, and has begun to fulfil, this its
vocation.  When, at the close of the middle ages, in consequence of the degeneracy of the Church, culture and Christianity fell into a state of antagonism, it was the mind and
conscience of the Teutonic races which sought and found the
right way to unity.  Together with the work of the Reformation, classical studies began to revive.  In the Reformation
we have Luther, the most German of Germans, the man of
faith, standing side by side and hand in hand with the most
profound adept in classical culture, Melancthon the Teacher
of Germany,-a living and speaking proof how little faith and
genuine science contradict, how nobly they supplement and
further one another,-and Jboth together showing to the world
in the newly acquired gospel the way to escape out of the
profound contradictions of the time, and to bring Christian
faith once more into harmony with knowledge and conscience.
In later times the German people has indeed so powerfully furthered the unbelief which it received from others,
that it bears a considerable share of the guilt incurred in its
extension at the present day.  For a long time past, the
breach which it was their vocation to heal has been deepened
and widened by them. But, however deeply entangled in
unbelief, the German people is now beginning to make good
the wrong committed against itself and others, and to direct
its attention, both practically and scientifically, to the great
religious task incumbent on it.  German inquirers pre-eminently have followed out all doubts into their innermost
grounds; and just as they have gone into them the more
deeply, they have the more recognised the absolute irrefutableness of the fundamental articles of Christian faith, and
shown anew to the world that belief and really thorough
culture and science can exist together in the noblest union.
And if in the future the breach is to be thoroughly healed,




LECT. I.]     CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?           63
recourse must be had to all that German industry and German
mental labour has done, and is still doing, in promoting the
reconciliation of faith and knowledge.  In these dissensions.
we have suffered, and are still suffering, not merely for ourselves, but, in a measure, for all; and some day others will be
compelled to come to us-and many are now already coming
-to ask us for the use of our weapons, and for the fruits
of our victory.
As yet, this victory has been gained for a small number
only.  The greater proportion of educated persons still view
the Christian faith with doubt and distrust.  But must we
therefore renounce all hope that this yawning breach will one
day be filled up for the great body of our people?  I think
not. During the war of liberation, Christianity and German
nationality solemnized an alliance, deficient indeed in depth
and clearness (genuine Christianity being still obscured by the
fog of rationalism), but from which, nevertheless, proceeded a
new religious and moral impetus, which at the present day is
still operative in various ways in our National Church. Many
brave and earnest men are even now working at the bridgingover of this great gulf. For the last thirty years, in spite of
all hostilities, a truly Christian science has. begun victoriously
to lead the way: by new and deeper exegetical researches; by
historical investigation; by pointing out the remarkable harmony existing between many new archeological, ethnological,
and even many scientific discoveries, and the utterances of
Holy Scripture, it has vindicated the truth of the latter, and
has confirmed the faith of many individuals. In the pulpits
of by far the greater number of the German churches, and in
the theological faculties of most of the universities, it has so
completely driven unbelief out of the field, that the latter has
been compelled to retire in a great measure into the divinity
schools of adjacent countries (Switzerland, France, Holland,
Hungary).  When compared with these and other countries,
Germany shows in various ways that unbelief has a greater
tendency to insinuate itself into, and to make its permanent
abode among, half-educated rather than thoroughly educated
communities.
A great portion of the Church, moreover, has already turned
away from fruitless controversies, and addressed itself to the




64          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. I.
practical work of Home and Foreign Missions, so as to exhibit
to the world by dint of action what Christian faith and Christian love are able to effect; thus silencing many a scoffer.
The commencement of a new apologetic and popular Christian
literature, the interest of the people in Missions,-an interest
increasing in spite of all invectives,-better attendance on
the services of the Church, the highly necessary co-operation
of the laity in Church organization, which has again begun,
are all most significant intimations that even in German
society Christianity and nationality may be brought to a
more and more general approximation. We will not, therefore,
be deprived of the hope that"The light will once again appear
To all our brethren, pure and clear,
Turning in penitence and love,
To the One Source which springs above! "
We may therefore be allowed, in view of these phenomena,
to affirm that, our Christianity being such as it is, so deeply
rooted in the popular life, and supported by an earnest and
believing science, eliciting great respect even from abroad,with an intellectual and moral power whose influence pervades the globe,-it will no longer do to pass by it with a
supercilious shrug; the irresistible demand is laid upon every
one who is desirous to escape the reproach of indifference,
superficiality, or onesided partiality, and especially, therefore,
on all" cultivated persons," that they should at least earnestly
examine these claims.
The history of our people, both in ancient and modern
times, proclaims the fact that the prosperity of its fiture
depends on the energetic prosecution of this work of reconciliation between Christianity and culture. From the era of
the middle ages, when our great German emperors appeared
contemporaneously with the erection of our mighty cathedrals,
down to the time of the wars of liberation, indeed down to
the present day, it is clearly written on the face of our history
that the periods of our national splendour were our periods of
faith; that apostasy from faith renders us weak and despised;
return to it, strong and invincible!  If the former cost us
an Austerlitz and a Jena, the latter gained a Leipsic and a
Waterloo! Just as in former days, when Israel apostatized




LECT. I.]     CAN TIE BREACH BE FILLED UP             tO
from the living God, it fell into political ignominy and bondage;
so have we, on account of our scientific and religious vocation
among nations, been compelled more palpably than others both
to feel and suffer for it when we have fallen away from the
faith of our fathers, and have become a prey to superstition
and unbelief.  To any one who has eyes to see it, our history
will everywhere bring clearly before him the fact that belief
in truth is the power and stronghold of our people, the inward
moving spring of all its really great actions, the ultimate
and surest means of protection against all our dangers both
from within and without, and the crown of glory of our
noblest heroes both in peace and war. And, although not in
like measure, still in a similar way, the history of other
nations confirms the fact that "all epochs in which faith prevailed have been the most heart-stirring and fruitful, both as
regards contemporaries and posterity; whereas, on the other
hand, all epochs in which unbelief obtains its miserable
triumphs, even when they boast of some apparent brilliancy,
are not less surely doomed to speedy oblivion."  (Goethe,
Abhandlungen zuvn westostlichen -Divan.)
If, in the recognition of these facts, parties desire to be
made one in the genuine inheritance of their forefathers, and
on the ground of the faith which includes and does not exclude culture; if, on the one hand, liberals and men of progress, now so commonly unbelievers, will only recognise with
the ancient statesman, that " to obey God is freedom" (Seneca),
and that "a nation that desires to be free must believe, and a
nation that will not believe must be in servitude; that only
despotism can dispense with faith, but not liberty;" if they
would recognise the fact, that no institution, no idea, not even
the humanitarianism so much bepraised, is a certain guarantee
for the preservation of freedom, and that such guarantee is
only to be found in the spirit of the gospel; if they would
recognise the fact, that the bond of fellowship, so nece&sary
between the various classes of the people and their different
stages of culture, can only be restored by means of religion,
and that, consequently, in all liberal and national tendencies,
resort must be had to Christianity; and if, on the other hand,
their opponents would be willing to comprehend that Christianity is not intended to hinder any free national developE




66          MODERN CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. I.
ment, but only to restrain and purify it, and that freedom
does not hinder faith, which indeed springs up most vigorously
in the free air of liberty; if both parties would but recognise
the fact, that their interests rightly understood do not sever, but
really unite themn, and in this recognition would hold out to
one another a helping hand: then would the breach which now
separates us be already healed, and the main cause of our
present paralysis be removed; no longer would one be hindering another in the reconstruction of Church or Commonwealth,
all would joyously be working together; blessing and salvation would again descend from heaven; our protracted yearnings would be satisfied, our hope fulfilled, and seeking first the
kingdom of God, we should find all other things added to us!
And so at last would come the time of which one sings:
"Take down thy harp from the willow-tree,
Thou nation of toil, thou nation of gloom;
Out of scorn and of cruel misery
Shall eternal golden blessings bloom:The nations of the ransomed
With joy approach Thy shrine;
Thyself our God's own heirdom,
And all for ever Thine "
In a public place in ancient Rome, there once opened, in
consequence of an earthquake, a deep chasm, which no amount
of rubbish could fill up. The soothsayers were consulted, and
answered, that "the most precious thing in Rome" must be
cast into it. This was interpreted by a young hero as applying to manly energy and weapons; and courageous to the death
and fully accoutred, he sprang into the yawning abyss, which
immediately closed over him. I, too, have to lead you on to
a deep gulf, which has been gradually formed by all kinds of
storms and earthquakes in Church and State, Schools and
Science. Nowhere else does it yawn so. widely as among
ourselves. Much has been already cast into it, but it will not
close. Nor do I believe that this will happen, until that
wherein we are strongest shall offer itself willingly for the
glorious enterprise; until German science and German faith,
arrayed in their respective panoplies of intellect and prayerthe former clad in its full equipment of critical acumen and
the sense of truth, the latter in all the might derived from a




LECT. I.]    CAN THE BREACH BE FILLED UP?        67
heavenly presence and communion-step down into the depth,
and there begin to build. No single man or generation will
complete this work. It will be the work of many champions
and of many years.  But oh might it be granted me in the
present lecture, to have cast into the gulf at least one stone 




68               SEASON AND REVELATION.        [LECT. 1).
SECOND LECTURE.
REASON AND REVELATION.
IN   the great conflict between faith and unbelief, it is
always the idea conceived of God that forms the inmost
core and centre of every question, and in the case of each
individual gives norm and shape to the whole of his religion,
his theoretical convictions, and his practical rules of conduct.
He who firmly holds that belief in the triune Deity, which
from apostolic times has been recognised as constituting the
basis of our Christian profession, has no longer any rational
motive for impugning any essential portion of Christian truth,
while one who has renounced such belief might find it
difficult to maintain his adherence to a single dogma.  Our
entire position towards Christianity depends from first to
last on this, whether we accept the scriptural and Christian
idea of God or no.
Hence arises the necessity for our considering first among
modern doubts respecting the articles of Christian faith, those
which concern the fundamental Christian idea of God. And
here starts up the preliminary question —Whence is our kcnowledge of God derived? Do we obtain it by the mere exertion of
our natural faculties of reason from the contemplation of the
world around us and its history, and of our own inward being and
conscience? Are the foot-tracks of Deity thus laid down, and
discoverable by us, adequate to enable us to form a just conception of what God is, and of the problem of our moral and
religious being? Or do we need for this purpose a supernatural revelation on the part of God Himself, as to IHis
own nature, will, and modes of dealing with us, such as is




LECT. II.]       REASON AND REVELATION.                69
recorded in Holy Scripture?  And if so, what relation does
the Scripture Record bear to our knowledge of God obtained
by the process of natural reason?  Is reason in accord with
revelation or not? or in the case of any discrepancy between
them, must reason, as Deism and Rationalism maintain, take
precedence of revelation as chief judge in questions of religious
truth, so that nothing is to be received on the testimony of
Scripture except that which is capable of rational demonstration?  Or, on the other hand, is reason, as the orthodox
view maintains, to be subordinated to revelation as to the
highest and only certain source of divine knowledge, and that
by which the intuitions of reason must be shaped and developed?
Such are the questions with which, in the first place, we
have to deal.  In attempting their solution, we must direct
attention first to the rights, nature, and limits of reason, and
to the witness of history as to its performances in comparison with the requirements of our religious nature, and more
especially with reference to the contributions made by conscience to natural theology.  Having done this, we must
next examine the inner nature and laws of divine revelation,
and attempt to ascertain its true worth, necessity, possibility,
and recognisability by us, so as in the last place to draw
conclusions as to the relation in which the one stands to the
other.
Among these are certainly some rather dry and unattractive
questions, in respect of which we must arm ourselves with
patience; but they are all of the greatest practical importance.
You meet a thousand times in life with those who in dealing with
any religious question make at once their appeal to reason, and
insist on forthwith rejecting aught that lies beyond its sphere,
without however being able to render any clear account of the
nature and proper limits of the knowledge thus derived, or of
the relation in which such knowledge stands to the religious
needs of man.  I would invite you, therefore, to inquire seriously whether such persons are not really bowing down before
an idol of the mind, which, while itself of very questionable
worth, demands as much implicit faith from. its worshippers as
divine revelation itself.
We shall first, therefore, turn our attention to




70                REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. 11.
L —NATURAL THEOLOGY, OR THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD DERIVED
FROM NATURE AND REASON.
It is a reproach not seldom laid upon the faith of Christians
by those who have ever on their lips"Science and Reason highest powers in man,"that it fails to recognise the rights and powers of reason and
conscience as organs of divine knowledge, or at least does so
very imperfectly; that it treats reason as an unformed, sickly
child, and, subjecting it to an unbearable yoke, deprives it, in
that crushed and slavish condition, of any healthy use of its
faculties.  Let us see whether there be any truth in this
allegation.
And first as to the prerogatives which rightly belong to
reason, it must be acknowledged that its incapacity has often
been so grossly exaggerated by certain orthodox writers as to
give some colour to this accusation.  But here a distinction
must be made between the exaggerations of individuals and the
true doctrine of the Church and Holy Scripture. So little does
the Bible demand a mere blind faith, that on the contrary it
requires a spirit of examination in all things (1 Thess. v. 21;
1 Cor. x. 15; 1 John iv. 1 ff.). It often exhorts us to follow
the Divine footsteps in the works of creation (Ps. civ.; Is. xl.
26 et passim); it affirms it to be the duty of all men, even of
the heathen, to seek the Lord'if haply they might feel after HIim,
and find Him; because He is not far froom any one of us, and we
also are His offspring (Acts xvii. 27-29, xiv. 17); it recognises the existence in man of a spiritual eye, by means of
which he obtains and possesses light in respect to his relation
to God (Matt. vi. 22, 23; Luke xi. 34-36); and it ascribes
to the very heathen, and consequently to the human intellect
per se, independently of the revelation contained in Scripture,
a capacity for obtaining from creation and from conscience a
certain amount of real knowledge as to the nature and will of
God.   On this point I would merely call your attention to
Rom. i. 19, 20: that which may be known of God is manifest
in them (the Gentiles); for God (Himself) hath manifested it to
them; since from the creation of the world His invisible attributes
have through His works suffered themselves to be seen in the con



LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY                     71
templation of reason, even His eternal power and Godhead; so
that they are without excuse;-and to Rom. ii. 14, 15 (comp.
Rom. i. 32): these, having not the law (once given to Israel), are
unto themselves a law; as showing the work of the law (the
conduct required by the law and will of God) written in
their hearts (as for Israel it was written on the tables of stone),
their conscience bearing witness to it, etc.
There is, therefore, according to Scripture, first, a natural
knowledge of God which, since the creation, has been obtainable by man through a rational contemplation of His works,
and which so obtrudes itself on man as to deprive of all means
of exculpation those who reject it.  Just as the outer world
presents itself to the senses for external recognition, so God in
and by the world presents Himself to reason for internal recognition.  And this doctrine of the apostle of the Gentiles is not
only almost literally repeated in so many words by Gentile
philosophers,-as e.g. by Aristotle (de 3Mundo, c. 6): " Although
invisible to every mortal nature, God is yet manifested by His
works;" and by Cicero (Tusc. i. 29): " Thou seest not God, and
yet thou knowest Him from     His works,"-but also has its
truth practically demonstrated by the various forms of religion,
however imperfect, of all heathen nations.' And so again as to
conscience: the law and will of God respecting human conduct,
manifesting itself as a moral law and divine revelation in the
hearts of all men, was equally well known to those who spoke
of the conscience as, on the one hand, " irrefragable and immutable, recompensing every good action," and on the other,
as " arrows of the gods penetrating the heart of the ungodly"
(Cicero), who "night and day bear about within, their own
accuser " (Juvenal); and again, as " a holy spirit settled in the
inmost heart and watching over all actions, whether good or
evil" (Seneca and the Laws of.Menu).
It is then in accordance with the general conviction among
all nations that Holy Scripture has thus assigned to reason a
definite province in the domain of theology; a capacity, nay, an
inward necessity for independent search after God, and the
traces of His presence both in the material world without and.
the spiritual world within. The impulse towards and capacity
1 On this and what follows, comp. Delitzsch's excellent work, System der
Christl. Apologetik, Leipzig 1869, p. 63 ff.




72               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
for this search is the divine patent of nobility in the human
spirit, and the Christian nmust not forego his inalienable right
to claim it.
Even the Reformers, who so strongly (especially Luther)
insisted at times on the incapacity of natural reason, by no
means called this right in question.  So, for instance, Luther
himself in the Disputation vom leseenschen: It is a settled point
that reason is among all things in the life of man the chiefest
and the best, nay, something divine-a sun, and as it were a god
placed over the government of things in this life. And this
glory God has not withdrawn from reason since the Fall, but
rather confirmed her in it." And in another place (the tract
Von den KIlostergeliibden) he also writes: " Whatever is opposed
to reason is certainly much more opposed to God.     How
should not that be contrary to truth divine which is opposed
to human truth and right reason?"  It cannot therefore be
maintained that the Christian Church thinks lightly of
reason.
But still the question remains, how far the province of
reason extends.  What are the limitations of that knowledge
of which reason is the source?  Or is there any such knowledge at all? To elucidate this question, we must first come to
some understanding in respect to the difficult preliminary
question, variously answered by the profoundest thinkers both
in ancient and modern times, as to the nature and idea of
reason itself.  The attempt has constantly been made to
elucidate the idea of reason by comparison or contrast with
that of the understanding.  But here we can hardly rest satisfied with Kant's mode of distinguishing the two, when he
makes the understanding to be the faculty which contains the
categories or logical forms of thought and judgment, and reason
the faculty containing ideas or forms of conclusion.  The distinction between these two activities of thought seems to us
much too subtle for us to assign them to two distinct mental
faculties.  But the other distinction, which regards the understanding as the organ of logical notions, and reason that of
ideas, is probably correct, and is generally accepted.  The
former gathers from the outer world of sense perceptions and
presentments, which it proceeds to combine in general categories.  The latter pursues the material presented to it by the




LECT. II.].NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  73
senses and the understanding to its ultimate basis, in order, if
possible, to apprehend it in its innermost ground and unity of
being.  Just then as notions are products of formal logical
processes of thought, so are ideas the products of "real radical
apprehension."  Kant, however, in assuming that (excepting
only the appetitive faculty with its categorical imperative) there
is no proof of there being any real existence corresponding to
the ideas of reason, seems to have overlooked the fact that the
very (German) word Vernehmen (perceive or apprehend), from
which Vermnnft (reason) is derived, points to something real
and actual, which presents itself to the apprehension of the
reason; and that such apprehension may therefore be like the
contemplation of the world of sense by the understanding, a
genuine source of experimental certainty.  This "real something" is the Szpersensuous.  Jacobi, therefore, was right in
vindicating against Kant the true significance of the ideaconstructing activity of reason, and defining it as the faculty
which apprehends the supersensuous.   Only, we must remember, that the activities of reason are not exclusively
directed towards the supersensuous, but in general towards the
central unity and essence of the object contemplated: the last
basis or ground of each phenomenon. This impulse to seek
after and discover the substantial unity in everything which
is made an object of thought is characteristic of all the operations of this faculty.  It is at once analytical, resolving
phenomena into their ultimate grounds, and synthetical, combining these grounds so discovered into ideal unities.
And now, supposing reason by a like impulse to endeavour
to combine all these ideas into one yet deeper absolute idea,
and to pursue in thought the ultimate ground of all being, i.e.
God; can it (we must ask) by its own innate power, and
through contemplation of the external world and the witness
of conscience, arrive at such knowledge and apprehension as to
be able permanently to satisfy man's religious needs? Or must
it for that end be stimulated and guided in its search after the
only One and the True by supernatural revelations?
These questions bring us to the great fundamental antithesis
between Holy Scripture and modern philosophy.    Whereas
Kant himself frankly denied the existence in reason of any
power to arrive at certain knowledge in divine things, his




74               REASON AND REVELATION.          LLECT. II.
successors maintained her absolute authority even in the highest
sphere. Reason, they asserted, was able of herself, even without appeal to the testimony of the external universe and the
witness of history, and a fortiori without the aid of revelation
or Scripture, to solve by her own unaided faculties the world's
enigma; to penetrate to the ground of all being, i.e. God
Himself; and so to answer all moral and religious questions in
respect to man's ultimate destiny and purpose.  In this way
all limitations being removed, the power of reason to attain
to the knowledge of God was asserted in the most absolute
terms.
Scripture, on the contrary, teaches thus: Reason, like every
other faculty and every other talent, needs culture and education, such as God from the beginning has vouchsafed it;
first, through the medium of the outer world (Gen. i. 28-30,
ii. 15, 19, 20); and, secondly, by the imposition of a moral
commandment.    By the transgression of the latter, mankind
entered on a perverted course of development, a mis-culture; so that their moral, and thereby also their intellectual
faculties, experienced such a weakening and disturbance, that
henceforth, for the knowledge of truth and of salvation, a special
revelation of God to man became infinitely more a necessity
than before; just as a sick child needs help much more than a
healthy one (Matt. vi. 22, 23; John ix. 39-41).  It is true,
as we have been previously told by St. Paul, that reason, even
in its present condition, possesses the power of apprehending
in the conscience something of God; but this fragmentary
natural knowledge of God has not had the practical effect
of preventing those deprived of further supernatural revelation, that is, the heathen, from fundamental mistakes as to
their moral and religious duty, and, from seeking God in a
perverted way (cf. Rom. i. 21-32).  According to the Scriptures, therefore, natural reason is insufficient for obtaining a
right knowledge of God; and a supernatural revelation of the
nature and will of God is absolutely necessary as a light to
the darkened reason and the weakened conscience, to prevent
their falling into various aberrations.
We have here presented to us yet another important
difference, which is closely connected with the previous one
Scripture distinguishes between reason in itself, as it was in



LECT. II.]           NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  75
tended to be, and its present condition, as disturbed by sin.
Philosophy and rationalism  recognise no substantial importance in this distinction. They pronounce reason as it now is,
adequate for obtaining a speculative and religious knowledge
of God, and therefore subject all dogmas to its judgment;
whereas Scripture not only lays down the necessity of the
submission of finite reason to the infinite, but also pronounces
the necessity of its enlightenment and correction by means of
revelation (e.g. Ps. xviii. 29; Isa. xxv. 7, liii. 6; Luke ii. 32;
John i. 9; Eph. i. 17, 18, et al.).
To this must be added, as a further difference, that philosophy assumes the absolute cognizability of God, and believes
itself able to penetrate to the ultimate ground of things, and
to place itself in the full possession of all truth; whereas
Scripture teaches, "God dwelleth in a light that no man can
approach unto; whom no man hath seen nor can see."      It
maintains, therefore, only a partial cognizability of God;
teaching that in this life, even with the aid of revelation, we
can attain only to "a knowing in part" in divine things, and
not to anything whole and complete. According to Scripture,
therefore, this rational knowledge has defined limits, drawn
partly by the nature of reason itself, partly by the deteriorating influence of sin, and again by the infinite nature of the
Object; philosophy, on the contrary, aims at demolishing all
these restraining limits, and looks upon reason as self-sufficing for the recognition of truth. For which party shall we
decide?
In order to support these claims of reason, some would
ascribe to it innate ideas existing anterior to all experienceby means of which it can generate conceptions of every kind
of existence. This view has recently and with good right been
abandoned.   It has been shown that there is, psychologically
considered, nothing contained in reason which could become
the property of man in any other way than by means of
experience; 1 that reason is purely a mental faculty, without
concrete contents; and that the logical and mathematical laws
which we must assume to exist for all minds with which we
hold intercourse, do not extend further than the production of
1 Cf. also Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, p. 474 ff., and Krauss and
Delitzsch, ut supra.




76                REASON AND REVELATION.           [LECT. IL
general forms of thought.  It has been recoonised that the
human mind is so constituted, that whenever it is set in
action certain ideas develope themselves, to which it is from
its nature predisposed; but that every concrete truth so
arrived at is not a product of reason as an abstract faculty,
but a result of its contact with the outward world, and consequently a product of the individual reason practically developed.
This preliminary question is therefore already decided, on
philosophical grounds, against the claims of the older and later
idealistic philosophy.
For our purpose we need not enter further into this question, but merely ask, whether reason is to be regarded as a
material source of knowledge, or as a nere faculty?  Evidently
the latter, and the former only so far as, from the spiritual
powers and qualities of human nature, a retrospective conclusion as to the divine Archetype is allowable and even
necessary.  But in general it must be regarded as a mere
faculty of perception, by which the divine and supersensuous
element in things is discerned.  Is not reason essentially a
receptive organ, whose function is to hear, to learn, and to
embrace truths which come to it either from without or from
above?  Is it not, therefore, naturally predisposed to receive
revelations, the word being taken in the most general sense?
If then, according to the later idealistic philosophy, reason
assumes to be able to comprehend by means of its innate
notions and ideas the divine ground of all things, and to solve
the enigma of the universe and its destinies, is it claiming
more than to comprehend itself, and solve its own self-constituted enigmas?  And is not this an internal contradiction?
With equal truth and simplicity it has been objected against
these claims: Philosophy has ever desired to solve the questions, What am I? Whence am I? and, Whither am I and the
world going?  But who is it puts these questions?  Reason.
But reason, we are told, is able to answer them.  Is it able?
Would it persist in asking questions of which it knew the
answer?   If reason, the organ of perception, refuses to perceive, it becomes thereby itself irrational.
But now arises a further question, whether reason, in order
to attain to a right knowledge in divine things, has to exercise




LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  77
its perceptive function merely on the world without and
conscience within-God's natural revelation of Himself,or whether a supernatural revelation of God is also necessary? On these points, let the impartial judgment of history
decide.  Let us inquire of the history of religion and the
history of philosophy how far natural reason apart from revelation has succeeded in its efforts.  First, let us turn to those
races of classical antiquity who were destitute of a special
revelation. God suffered them "to follow their own ways,"
but He gave them   the most intelligent minds, surrounded
them with the noblest objects of nature, gave them a history
full of the most illustrious proofs that He judges with a holy
arm, and a period of several thousand years in which "they
should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and
find Him."   With all these advantages, what knowledge of
God did they attain to? To an obscure presentiment, breaking forth here and there, but not to the clear knowledge, much
less to the practical assertion of the simplest truth of all;
namely, that God is and can be only One! Neither in ancient
nor in modern times has it been possible to find in the whole
earth a nation which, without the revelation recorded in Scripture, and by its own powers of thought, has arrived at definite
belief in one living personal God! Perhaps you will adduce
India against me.  "One God, and beside Him none other"
(Ek Brumho, dittyo nashti), is an utterance which is in fact,
even in the present day, to be heard from the lips of every
Brahmin.   Brahminism, at least in its most ancient elements,
shows clear traces of a monotheism. But if even the thoughts
of the old Hindoos did sometimes rise from the contemplation
of various deified natural phenomena, such as the dawn, the
lightnings, and the storms, etc., to that of the one primal cause
of all things, this cause was regarded not as the One God, but
as an impersonal undefined existence, of which all that could
be said was, that it is not zuhat it is; with which, therefore,
any personal communion in prayer would be impossible.
Monotheism in this case was attained by the surrender of the
living character and personality of God, and so was essentially
pantheistic; whilst the popular view, adhering to belief in
personifications of divine power, lost thereby the divine unity
in millions of gods derived from nature. The same thing




78               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
occurred subsequently in Greece;1 and Mahomet himself arrived at monotheism, not by means of his own reason, but
thro.ugh the influence of Judaism and Christianity.
Moreover, notwithstanding all the witness of conscience and
history, the reason of the heathen world, when left to itself,
never attained to those other fundamental truths, that God is
and must be an absolutely good and holy being. It occasionally
assigned to its heaven its own human beauty, but with it
also its human shame. The gods of even the most cultivated
heathen, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, etc., suffer under the very
same moral infirmities, indeed gross vices, as men.  Truly,
reason cannot boast much of her performances in a religious
point of view; for can any genuine, moral, and religious
knowledge of God be imagined, devoid of the two fundamental
truths above-named? Are we then to conclude from this that
revelation is, or is not needed as a guide to erring reason? But
let us rot be too precipitate!
The objection might be urged, that the Greek philosophers,
for instance, did not share in the popular conceptions concerning the gods. This is quite correct. Some of them have
emphatically opposed those immoral conceptions, and so approached nearer to the idea of monotheism. But not one completely attained to this idea. For them, the Divine Being was
always losing Himself in nature, or some general idea. Even
Plato did not make his way up to the idea of a divine, selfconscious, personal Being; nor ever distinctly propounded the
question of the personality of God. It is true that Aristotle
maintained more definitely than Plato that the Deity must be
a personal Being.  But even for him, it was not an absolute,
free, creative power, but one limited by primordial matter;
not the world's Creator, but only One who gave shape to the
rude material, and so not truly absolute.
But now let us look more closely into the history of philosophy in general, and question the results of reason's efforts
extending over thousands of years. Where are they? I could
call your attention to many an honest confession on the part
of philosophers,-to the complaint of Plato how hard it is
to discover the Father of the Universe; to the utterances of
Cf. also Gess and Riggenbach, Apologetische Beitrage, p. 50 if., and Sup.
plement No. 9.




LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  79
Socrates, that he held it to be the greatest happiness to know
the will of the gods, but did not believe this could be discovered by the conclusions of reason, and therefore recommended an appeal to the science of divination,-utterances
which reveal to us what a profound longing after some special,
divine revelation existed in the greatest philosophers of antiquity,-or to some of the impressive songs of the Indian
ligveda, in which the longing for a knowledge of the original
source of life, and the pain of uncertainty on the part of the
seeker, is expressed in the ever-recurring refrain,"Who is the God to whom our gifts belong?"
or to the way in which Fichte, after first combating revelation,
confessed later on that reason stood in need of its assistance:
"A Higher Being undertook the charge of the first members of
our race, just as an old and venerable document containing the
deepest and sublimest truths, represents Him to have done;
and to this testimony all philosophy must revert in the end."
Instead of further calling your attention to all this, I
would only point out to you a single noteworthy matter of
fact, that up to the present day, no one has been able to
show to the world what the outcome of so long-continued
a process of thought on the part of so many minds, and the
certain gain in respect to moral and religious knowledge,
actually amount to; in short, what the generally acknowledged
results of philosophy are.  In other sciences, after some time,
certain truths can be collected as fixed results, from which
advances can be made to further investigations.  Why, then,
has no one succeeded in finding and establishing such results
of the long process of philosophical developments? (For what
Schelling attempted in his Positive Philosophy remained an
attempt which received only partial acceptance; and all he
did beyond this was founded on the Christian view of things,
and so became, what we are not here concerned with, a " Philosophy of Revelation.")  Whence arises this surprising phenomenon?   Simply from the fact, that philosophy has arrived at
no definite results in theology properly so called, and never laid
down any principle as to the nature of God, which has not in its
turn been assailed and upset.
In saying all this, it is not our intention to deny absolutely




80               REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. II.
the value of philosophy.  The present generation, intoxicated
by triumphs in the domain of natural science, must be summoned to rather than deterred from the study of philosophy
(but it should be a thorough study). Most of the sciences, and
theology above all, have very much to thank it for; without
philosophy they would not be what they now are. But we
maintain that no philosophy, which entirely rejected the aid
of revelation, and sought to comprehend the world and God
by mere efforts of reason, ever succeeded in attaining to any
positive, lasting results. From Thales and Pythagoras, onward
to Hegel and Herbart, not only has one system taken the
place in due time of another, but also by its criticism has
demolished the earlier one. In criticism and in negation,
then, philosophy has made mighty strides; men have grown
wiser in pulling down, but not in building up. The former is
no doubt much the easier of the two. Down to our time,
philosophers have come to no agreement even as to the basis
from which philosophical speculation has to proceed; whether
from some general principle or idea, or from matter; whether
from the idea of pure being, or from human consciousness, etc.;
-they are not yet agreed as to the relation between the real
and the ideal, whether the former or the latter is that which
truly is;-not yet agreed as to the idea and nature of God and
His relation to the world, nor as to that of man, his reason,
and his spirit;-they are not yet agreed as to the relation
existing between body, soul, and spirit; nor as to our freedom
of will and our accountability; nor, in short, as to any one
fundamental question in speculative knowledge, morals, or
religion.  Tn whatever direction we turn, we find ourselves
confronted by " open questions," unsolved problems, and views
either diametrically opposed or importantly divergent.
We may therefore justly affirm, that philosophy in itself, i.e.
abstract rational speculation, has not yet attained to positive
results. When, as in modern times, it has pretended, without
the guidance of experience, and by means of mere reflection,
to attain to some positive result, and to construct reality out
of its own ideas, the results have always had to be corrected
by experience, and not seldom laid themselves open to ridicule
or. contempt.  Hegel, for instance, believed that he had philosophically proved that there could not be more than eleven




LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY.                   81
planets; and in his time there were not more than eleven
known.    Subsequently, however, more exact astronomical investigation has added several dozens to this number.
If, then, reason without experience thus fares in the province of nature, will it not meet with a similar fate, when,
without the aid of revelation, it seeks to attain to a real knowledge of God, and to positive religious truth?  Is not the
Greek poet right when he says:
"Except the gods themselves to thee unveil,
Search as thou wilt the world, thou seek'st in vain"?
In fact, no great objection can be raised, if, in opposition
to this boundless and yet ever changing assumption of reason,
Christianity steps in and says: Philosophy is condemned by
its own history: always imagining that in some particular
system it has arrived at a conclusion; whilst nevertheless
reason, both in individuals and in the whole race of man, is
subjected to a continuous process of development; it is ever
falling into the error of looking upon reason as absolutely free,
and failing to recognise the disturbing inflzence of sin.  No
wonder, then, if, with these defects, philosophy never attains by
its own powers to any absolute certainty or any complete knowledge of the truth, and the apostolic witness remains unshaken:
"The world by its wisdom knew not God in His " (1 Cor. i.
21). Is not this witness confirmed by history? And if this
be the case, we arrive at the conclusion, that reason by itself
does not suffice for attaining to a true knowledge of God; that
in fact it needs a light, to which it must be subordinate, a
corrective against error; that is, it needs the help of revelation.
"In Thy light shall we see light " (Ps. xxxvi. 9); we remain
in darkness and uncertainty, so long as we are illuminated
by nothing but the dim lamp of our own reason.    This has
been confessed by some even of the greatest philosophers,
such as Fichte and Schelling, who, after manifold voyages
and wanderings over the sea of rational speculation and contemplation of nature, have at last steered a more and more
decided course for the haven which is found in a belief in
revelation.
This conclusion will hardly be weakened by an appeal to
the results of natural science in the present day, which, in
direct antithesis to metaphysical philosophy, assigns to senF




82               REASON AND REVELATION.           [LECT. II.
sible experience as a source of knowledge the place which
the other claims for reason. We will only ask: What has
modern natural science, apart from revelation, done for moral
and religious knowledge? It also has sought, in its own way,
to solve the problem of the world's origin and of the life upon
it; but in that attempt has involved itself in such absurdities,
that, now-a-days, all sober naturalists, one after another, are
openly proclaiming that their science can adopt no other
basis than the proposition, " In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth," without involving itself in a cloud of
windy hypotheses, so soon as it attempts in other ways to
solve the riddle of the world's beginning.  Can, then, natural
science make any progress in its endeavours to explain the
origin and formation of the outward universe, " without tacitly
assuming the activity of some originating, adapting, and
arranging power, indicated in those first words of Holy
Scripture? "1  In this case, also, we see the need of revelation.
Natural science has also sought, by means of its own investigations, to solve the question as to the origin of man, and
has arrived in the end at a total denial of the spiritual part in
man, the destruction of his ethical personality, a doing away
with all morality and religion, and the annihilation of all
moral freedom in subjection to an absolute natural necessity.
The materialism of the present day shows more clearly than
any previous phenomenon, that nature does not merely reveal
but also conceals God.  Minute observations of natural phenomena have been brought to an unprecedented degree of perfection, and thereby unveiled more clearly than ever the
depths of divine wisdom to the believers in revelation. But
he who rejects the lamp of revelation, and stops short at
mere material results, fails thereby to recognise the'connection of the whole, and through the material, loses the sense
of the immaterial, the spiritual, and the divine.
It happens, as Goethe predicts:
"Who of the living seeks to know and tell,
Strives first the living spirit to expel;
He has in hand the separate parts alone,
But lacks the spirit-bond that makes them one! 
1 ee the proof of this in Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, pp. 341-422  We
revert to this again in Lect. III.




LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  83
Let who will call this progress-any man with a just sense
will soon note, that moral and religious knowledge (for we are
not speaking here of what is gained by the separate branches
of natural science as such) can only lose thereby and gain
nothing; whilst, on the other hand, splendid results are obtained
in favour of the deeper knowledge of the divine wisdom and
love by an investigation of nature, so soon as it permits revelation to intensify its view of the " spiritual bond of union,"
of the One in the many, the eternal Cause and the eternal end
and aim of the world.
Some have attempted lately to make of conscience, as the
third factor of natural theology, the highest source of religious
knowledge, and to represent revelation as dependent upon it.
So they follow one after another.  Reason having wearied
herself in the attempt to solve the mysteries of God and the
universe, nature tried her hand at the same problem; and now
that a onesided contemplation of nature has led inquirers into
the slough of materialism, they begin to interrogate conscience.
In things divine it would seem as if men would question and
attend to any witness rather than God Himself.
Of these three factors, conscience would certainly appear to
be the most reliable.  Nevertheless, the numerous researches
which have been recently instituted by different theologians
into the nature of conscience, are in their results just as
divergent as the researches of philosophers into the nature of
reason. On this point also we need not go beyond what is
Generally agreed on.  That the word " conscience" is used in
different senses, sometimes for a definite subjective knowledge,
sometimes for that which is objectively known; that we speak
not only of a religious and moral, but also of an ecclesiastical,
a Christian, a scientific, an aesthetic, indeed even of a public
conscience, etc., need not disturb us here, for all we are now
inquiring after is the common fundamental notion represented
by the word in all these uses of it.
Now conscience is confessedly that consciousness which
testifies to the law of God implanted in us; that moral faculty
whereby man discerns with inward certainty what is right and
what is wrong in the sight of God (Rom. i. 32), and is conscious that the eye of God is turned upon him.  It is "the
moral heart-throb in man, testifying to the existence of a




84               REASON AND REVELATION.           [LECT. IL
higher will by which it is implanted, and seeking to control,
awakening, guiding, judging, all the movements of human life,
so far as it pertains to the province of free-will."  Therefore,
mnoral convictions only are directly derived from the action of
conscience.  As being man's knowledge of the law written in
his heart (avveltr&o-t), it produces, indirectly, a certain knowledge of the Lawgiver and His will, that is, of God, as a holy
and righteous being, the moral consciousness being here identified with the religious.  So far, in fact, conscience is, from
a humanitarian point of view, a genuine source of natural
theology.
Scripture, as we have already seen, not only recognises this,
but also affirms that even with the heathen, conscience has not
wholly lost its efficacy (Rom. ii. 14, 15).  Even fallen man
possesses in conscience a certain sense and moral appreciation
of truth, which, if he follow, he is " of the truth," susceptible
for higher divine truth (John xviii. 37).  On the other hand,
Scripture by no means supports the position " that conscience
is the source and judge of the whole complex of Christian
doctrine; that no dogma is to find place therein which cannot
be referred to an utterance of conscience; that conscience must
decide without appeal as to the divinity of Scripture as a
whole or in detail."1 According to this, conscience would
be the chief if not the only source and highest rule of
faith, as of our religion generally. And this is more or less
the view of those who may often in the present day be heard
~to say, that in everything man need only follow his conscience;
and that that is the best, nay, the only true religion.  In all
this, the assumption evidently is, that conscience is an ever reliable witness for the truth, a constant and immutable' source of
moral and religious knowledge. Scripture teaches otherwise,
namely, that conscience may err, be defiled, become impure and
weak (Tit. i. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 7-10, 12; 1 Tim. iv. 2); that as
a matter of fact it has become weakened and confused by sin;
that, in order to attain to perfect clearness and power, it needs
enlightenment through God's word and Spirit (e.g. Rom. ix. 1),
purification (Heb. ix. 14), and awakening by the revealed will
of God.   The oftentimes confused, though never perfectly
extinguished, subjective revelation of God's will in the con1 Cf. Schenke], Christliche Dogmatik vom Standpunkt des Gewissens, 1858-59.




LECT. II.]           NATURAL THEOLOGY.                     85
science, needs for its complement the pure and only constantly
reliable objective revelation of God in His Word.    It is not,
therefore, revelation which is to be determined and ruled by
conscience, but the latter by revelation, as its necessary
accompaniment and indispensable guide.
Here also, therefore, we have essentially the same controversy as in the case of reason: are we to acknowledge, or not,
that the conscience has been darkened and confused by sin?
This question is practically answered in the negative, when
conscience is made the source and arbiter of the whole body of
faith.  Which view is the right one?     Whether conscience
is the judge of revelation, is a point we cannot decide until we
have considered what revelation itself is. On the other hand,
the question we are dealing with is, whether conscience, either
by itself or combined with reason      and nature, is not an
adequate source for attaining the knowledge of God-a source
which renders revelation superfluous?
Is it so?  We do not here go beyond the question as to
what conscience objectively lays down.     Is this always the
same?    By no means.     We find, of course, in all men a
conscience, and make the further observation that neither its
witness nor its nature is dependent on human caprice.       It
bears its testimony with an authority independent of our will,
and this is an essential characteristic of conscience as it exists
in all men. But it is just as universally the case that conscience
differs partially in  each individual.1  It bids and forbids,
decides and judges of right and wrong, according to the insight
in each individual, which is not absolutely common to all men,
but in part at least very changeable and various.  Hence the
difference in the utterances of conscience in the case of men of
different degrees of culture and of different religions, side by
side with a certain fundamental similarity. Hence the peculiar
deficiencies and lacunce in the consciences of so many men.
Evidently, therefore, conscience, like reason, is, "on the one
hand, something which has become, on the other hand, something which is becoming."
1 Cf. Giider, Erorterungen iiber die Lehre vom Gewissen nach der Schrift,
Krauss ut supr., p. 134 ff., who, on account of its dissimilar purport, defines conscience as "the innate compulsion to have an ideal and to acknowledge it as
judge over oneself." Besides also cf. R. Hofmann, die Lehre vom Gewissen, 1866;
Kahler, Lehre vom Gewissen, 1864, and Delitzsch ut supr., 71 ff., 161 ff.




86               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. Ii.
What follows from all this?  First of all, that Scripture
is right when it speaks of the variations and confusions of
conscience; that it is, therefore, a most questionable step, to
make of the changeful utterances of conscience a main source
of Christian dogma; nay, that it is no longer possible to derive
a natural religion with truths universally valid, from the utterances of conscience taken by itself, apart from the influences
which help to determine it.  Not with truth universally valid,
for every conscience, on account of its individual character, has
real moral weight for its possessor only (cf. 1 Cor. x. 29);
not from the utterances of conscience by itself, for every
separate utterance of each individual conscience has its source
in special circumstances, and is most commonly determined by
the influence of some positive religion.
If all this already renders us somewhat cautious in the use
of the conscience as a source' of the knowledge of God, the
testimony of history will make us still more cautious.  Here
also history, not abstract researches, must be suffered to decide.
What, according to its testimony, has conscience accomplished
for true theology apart from revelation?  We have already
heard the answer to this question: The heathen, notwithstanding all their listening to the voice of conscience, as it spoke in
the very noblest spirits among them, did not attain to the
knowledge of God as the personal, absolutely Holy One, but
"changed the glory of the unchangeable God into an image
like to perishable man and beasts " (Rom. i. 23).
Let us take a glance at the heathen world. One man aims
at deliverance from sin by means of a bath; another (e.g. the
North American Indians) thinks to purify his heart by the
aid of an emetic; here another sets prayer mills in motion at
the caprice of the wind; another pours out libations of wine
or tea, sheds human blood, or offers his only child as the most
acceptable sacrifice. Here a man can take no rest, until he
has accomplished sanguinary vengeance on the man-slayer;
there a fanatical Mussulman seeks to purchase paradise for
himself by destroying as many Christians as possible, and the
like.  Are not all these just so many examples of an erring
conscience, which is strong enough to insist on some kind of
sacrifice or expiation, but is still too dark to apprehend the
perversity of these ways and means?    What a mistakeu




LECT. II.]         NATURAL THEOLOGY.                 87
idea of God and the moral duty of man is presupposed in
all this!
Is this mere spark of moral and religious knowledge to be
supposed sufficient to enable men to solve the problem of
moral duty? The fall of the noblest nations of antiquity —the
moral corruption of heathen nations of the present day adding
ever fresh confirmation to the fearful description of heathen vices
in Rom. i. 21-32 -answers with a thousand-tongued voice, No!
Even the knowledge of God derived from conscience was not
and is not sufficient to guard men against the most grievous
moral errors and the wickedest religious abominations; nor
has it been able to save any heathen, nations from moral and
religious, and, finally, even from material destruction.
But is it so?  Must it not be allowed that the natural
religion of conscience goes further than this?  May we not
turn from the dry tree of popular error to the green tree of
philosophical speculation?  Well, then, let us take one philosopher who approached more nearly than many others to a
true knowledge of God, ascribing to Him goodness as His
most essential attribute, - let us glance, for instance,' at
Plato's Republic.  What do we find there?  In his commonwealth, he desires to see introduced a community both of
goods and wives; he desires that parents should not even
know their children, to say nothing of educating them;. that
a man should look upon all children as his own, which, according to the time of their birth, might possibly have been
his; that the mother should nourish sometimes one child and
sometimes another, and among these children, only incidentally
those which were born from her; that the rulers of the State
should be permitted, without further question, to put to death
weakly and unhealthy persons, and should prescribe for every
one his vocation, etc.; in short, he sacrifices-and this, indeed,
fully in conformity with the ancient idea of a commonwealththe right, the freedom, and. the property of individuals, in the
very harshest way, to the good of the State.  I now askAccording to all these details, have philosophers been able to
keep themselves free from the clouded moral consciousness
and erring conscience of their time? And what, then, is in
this case the fundamental deficiency? The want here, as in
the whole of heathenism, is the recognition of the worth of




88               REASON AND REVELATION.          FLECT. IL
each human personality. This man only begins to see, when he
knows the God of love, that is, by means of revelation. But
if the heathen is deficient in a right knowledge of his own
moral worth, and thus also of his moral duty, with his whole
life bound up in the worship of the impulses of nature-a
mere life of selfishness, how is it possible for his mind to rise
to any clear knowledge and apprehension of God, as an absolutely holy and loving Will? But neglect of the divine law
in the conscience must, the longer it exists, lead more and
more to a misapprehension and neglect of the Lawgiver. The
loss of the living God must then be made good by the creation
of false gods of one's own. And as the.creator, so his creatures.
A people sunk in sensuality and cruelty, creates for itself sensual and cruel gods, and worships them with corresponding rites.
In fact, the history of heathenism  is the history of the
aberrations of conscience, and one long proof of the need of
revealed religion for its enlightenment and purification.  But
this history is likewise a proof that conscience is never
completely extinguished, and that it absolutely is not, as certain materialists seek to make us believe, a matter of arbitrary agreement and of conventional manners and customs,
but is an original revelation of God in man, which forms a
part of universal human essence and of our moral nature.
For no sooner is God's true will as revealed in His word
presented to the heathen mind, than conscience is awakened
even in the cannibal, who reverting to his higher instincts,
feels shame for his present conduct as inconsistent with them;
and this alone were enough to prove that conscience, as a
source of natural religion, has still a potential existence in
every human mind, however much obscured by error and sin.
And is not the history of Christendom also replete with
proofs that without the continual guidance and stimulus of
revelation, the conscience soon becomes darkened?  What,
for instance, has brought so many to the stake?    Very
frequently nothing but the erring conscience which thought
that thereby "it did God service" (John xvi. 2). Whence
the darkening of the Christian conscience, such as that exhibited in so many ways in the moral history of the middle
ages? The light of revelation was placed " under a bushel!"
And what is it that has subsequently awakened the Christian




LECT. II.]           NATURAL THEOLOGY.                    89
conscience, so that it has again reverted to the worship of God
in spirit and in truth?   The light of God's word!     Thus,
therefore, as in the case of reason and nature, we again arrive
at the old conclusion, that this factor of natural theology also
stands in need of revelation; that conscience is practically
exposed to such violent fluctuations, and so readily errs and
is perplexed, that it cannot dispense with the continual enlightenment and fixed rule of the revealed word.
These facts are overlooked by many of those who now
regard conscience as an adequate guide in matters of faith and
religion, and believe that they can dispense with revelation.1
Besides this, they disregard the fact, that Christian conscience
can no longer be entirely dissevered from revelation; that its
witness is a priori influenced by the spirit of Christianity, of
which the strongest rationalists cannot wholly divest themselves, so that, although they desire to adopt a mere natural
religion, they are, nevertheless, unable to dispense with the
assistance of supernatural revelation.   Finally, they overestimate the force and range of conscience and reason, in
respect to the satisfaction of our moral and religious need.
An old mystic says somewhere, " God is an unutterable sigh
in the innermost depths of the soul."  With still greater justice,
we may well reverse the proposition and say, the soul is a
never-ending sigh after God; because she is from Him, she is
also for Him, and tends to Him. In her deepest recesses there
lives or slumbers, however hidden, an inextinguishable longing
after God.   She knows herself, by an inward sentiment, not
merely to be dependent on Him, but at the same time drawn
towards Him, and destined for a union with Him.        Being
essentially "reasonable," she reads God everywhere, both in
and without herself, so that.she is unable to free herself from
His presence, however far removed from Him, as the voice of
conscience shows. But the more she seeks and apprehends,
the greater is her longing after Him. And the more we consider the nature of this longing, the more we discern that
what it aims at, is not a mere intellectual apprehension of
God, but a vital experience, enjoyment, and communion. The
1 As F. Pecaut, in his late work Le Christ et la conscience, repeats with
innumerable terms of expression, that the religious and moral life has merely
God and individual conscience as its two factors.




90               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
religious need is essentially of a practical nature; it-is an
impulse to draw nigh to God, and to place one's self in personal fellowship with Him, proceeding from the presentiment
that our spirit can find its abiding rest and satisfaction in
nothing but this fellowship, and in the enjoyment of the love
and peace of God.   The question then stands finally thus:
Whether natural religion, besides imparting a true knowledge,
succeeds likewise in conducting the soul to a living communion with God, and so, in satisfying its deepest need?
But how completely incompetent in this respect is it shown
to be if we seek God in nature?  How little can we discern
what He truly is, let alone the failure in revealing the personal relations between Him and us, which are required by
our religious need! We feel that there is an infinite Being
above us, by whose almighty power we are encompassed; but
just when we feel the nearness of the Eternal One, the words
and ideas are wanting, which might, as it were, clinch the impression made and fix it in the form of clear conceptions.
Again and again, the Inexpressible One eludes our imagination,
or, we only too readily confound Him with natural powers and
phenomena, and so thrust into a dark and vanishing distance
the Father of our spirits who is indeed so nigh!
Or if we seek God in the realm of thought, how little falls
from the barren heights of speculation to cheer the longing
heart and its burning spirit of inquiry  We look in vain even
from. those who are most advanced in such inquiries for testimony as to any real satisfaction derived therefrom.  Socrates
and Plato attained perhaps to a sense of the Divine, but still
think of God as one who remains far from them. Prophets
and apostles, on the other hand, speak of Him as One who is
very nigh them, and whom to approach is their highest good
(Ps. lxxiii. 28). The former deduce the notion of God in
acute syllogisms; the latter are learning to know Him as
He is, as the true Shepherd of their souls, as "the strength
of their hearts, and their portion for ever." In the one case
a religious need is satisfied, in the other it is not.  In order
to estimate the whole extent of this difference, compare,
for instance, the 23d or the 73d Psalm with any one of
Plato's dialogues.  In the latter, there is perhaps an approximately correct answer given to the question of reason, What




LECT. II.]            NATURAL THEOLOGY.                     91
is God in Himself?     But in the former we find a solution to
the question of the heart, What is God for me?    How can I
pjrsonally become a partaker in Him? Nor till these questions
are solved can the religious need be satisfied.
I am well aware that many will here object, that they feel
their religious need  to be fully satisfied by their rational
religion, so that, in this case, natural religion does all that is
required.  They will further appeal to their own "good"
conscience in proof of the inward satisfaction of their heart.
But is there not here a fatal self-deception?   I should like
to ask these "good" consciences whether they can honestly
maintain that their moral convictions and their practical
conduct never disagree, and whether the former are actually
sufficient to enable them to resist evil and to do good. As
being the moral impulse in man, conscience should do both
these things, and produce the knowledge of good and the
power of doing it. But what are we taught by history and
experience as to the relation between these two? Answer:
Action always falls short of knowledge-even that is not done
which man knows from     his own conscience to be the will of
God.   So it was with the heathen.    "When they knew God,
they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful" (Rom.
i. 21). We see the truth of this in the confession of Marcus
Aurelius, "I should have lived better than I have done, had
I always followed the monitions of the gods."
The k.nowledge of the heathen, therefore, in divine things was
greater and better than its practical result.  Hence their sense
of guilt, turning their good conscience into an evil, self-condemning one; or, in time, into a conscience which is erring
and seared.   Attention paid to conscience, so far from leading
to the satisfaction of our religious needs, conducts to a kind of
moral dualism, of which we find virtuous heathen making the
same complaint' which Paul, in Rom. vii. 7-25, so impressively
describes.  Just as prophecy was the incorporated conscience
1 Cf., for instance, the passage in Xenophon, Cyr. vi. 1-41: " I certainly have
two souls, for if there were only one, it surely could not be at the same time
good and bad, nor could it at the same time love good and base actions, and also
at the same time wish the very same thing and not desire to put the wish into
action; but evidently there are two souls, and if the good soul gets the upper
hand, then good will be done, and if the evil, then shameful actions will be perpetrated" (Delitzsch ut supr.).




92                 REASON AND REVELATION.             [LECT. IL
of Israel, so the conscience was " the prophet of the heathen,"
which was intended to awaken the longing for a divine redemption, by means of the sorrowful recognition of its own impotence.
And hat it ever been otherwise, in the case of any one who
has rejected the aid of revealed religion in his moral conflicts?
Is not the saying of St. Paul again and again confirmed by
every day's experience, " For to will is present with me; but
how to perform that which is good I find not: for the good
that I would I do not"? (Rom. vii. 18, 19.)     Does not the
practical conduct often fall short of the better knowledge and
will?  If we all are more or less compelled to acknowledge
this,1 what follows?  Why, that our power for good, derived
from conscience and natural religion, is so impaired that we can
never keep ourselves wholly free from   evil, nor get beyond a
feeling of guilt which, in consequence of the contradiction
existing between our knowledge and our actions, is ever
asserting itself; and if we then seek a way of escape from
such condemnation, and inquire how we may be reconciled
with God, what further counsel can reason or conscience now
afford us?  None, or at least none that is satisfactory.  Into
what follies have the heathen fallen upon this point!     This
is the juncture at which natural religion either fails most
miserably or utterly misleads; it knows no way to peace or
expiation of our guilt.  The more profoundly the knowledge of
the Holy One penetrates the conscience, the purer is the heart's
desire after atonement; but the more a man seeks to find
comfort in false means of expiation, the more confused and
darkened does his conscience become.      If, with nothing but
the religion of reason and the conscience, man cannot place
himself in a right, normal, and peaceful relation to God; if
experience teaches him that this religion cannot help him to
get over the moral dualism, it follows that it is also absolutely
inadequate to the satisfaction of his religious needs.
Here also the decisive question is, whether or not evil be
l That so much is allowed even by the most "free-thinking" theologians, we
see e.g. from the Precdigten aus der Gegenwart, by Dr. Schwarz of Gotha, III.
Samml.: "Oh, do not tell me that to act uprightly, and to do one's duty, and to
have a good conscience, are sufficient. I ask you, ye virtuous ones, who among
us does his duty and has a good conscience in the highest sense of the word?
Not one among us all. We all are, and remain, striving and struggling ones,
who in manifold ways err, and stumble, and fall short."




LECT. II.]          NATURAL THEOLOGY.                  93
acknowledged as an actually disturbing power, which darkens
the conscience, separates us from God, and therefore requires
an atonement.  But if a man resolves sin into a mere venial
weakness, and the divine precept of perfection into that of a
mere external honesty and righteousness,-that is, if conscience
be so weakened in him as no longer to produce any real selfcondemnation (though, perhaps, retaining some measure of
influence on his outward life), if a tendency of mind has been
given him which no longer attacks sin in its innermost centre,
-then he may readily consider his natural religion as adequate
to the satisfaction of his inmost needs, and thereby assure us
of his good conscience.  But there is in this case a darkened
and enfeebled conscience, and not a really good and pure one.
The world is full of " good" consciences of this kind. Do not
allow yourselves to be deceived by supposing that revelation
can be dispensed with in attaining true peace with God.
There is such a thing as a delusive peace, and a delusive satisfaction of one's religious need.
In contrast to these delusions, keep firmly to this view;-if
natural religion is really to satisfy our spiritual need, it must
be able to confer strength adequate to the resistance of evil
and the performance of good; and, inasmuch as evil already
exists, to indicate the way to real reconciliation with a righteous
God. But experience teaches that natural religion, together with
conscience, is not able to do either the one or the other; its
inadequacy hence is evident. We are therefore, from the bare
consideration of our religious need, driven to the necessity
of some supernatural revelation. And this revelation must
not only purify, enlighten, and regulate, but also supplement
our religious knowledge, communicating newz truths, to the
assistance of natural religion, and attesting its special divine
character by its redemptive energy in breaking down the power
of evil.  Does Christian revelation do this?
We have previously seen that its aim is to bring fallen man
back to God, in the way which is called and is Christ. Its
pith and centre is the doctrine of the Atonement.  It therefore
points out to our religious need a new mode of attaining satisfaction, Christ.  And further still; it also confers the power
of embracing it.  It enlightens and enlarges knowledge, but
not without first becoming a power in the heart, and an energy




94               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
in the will; it becomes, indeed, a man's own possession, not
intellectually, but in a moral way, by the self-surrender of the
heart and will.  It can therefore once more reconcile knowledge and action by a restoration of the moral faculty and reinvigoration of the power for good. Hence it accomplishes
both ends, shows the way of reconciliation, and imparts strength
for future righteousness.  And this is confirmed by the daily
experience of all true-hearted Christians. Ask of them whether,
in the salvation revealed, they do not find life and full satisfaction for their religious need?
After all this, we can understand the statement of Scripture, that there can be no true insight in divine things without
regeneration, without a new, higher life being implanted in
us from above.:Not until we are reconciled to Him can we
again truly love the Divine Being, from whom we have been
separated by sin, and be so intimately united with Him in love,
that His glory shall be ever increasingly revealed to us. And
we shall also be compelled to acknowledge the truth of that
prophecy which represents all Gentile nations as shrouded in
ignorance and error, till the true divine and saving knowledge
manifests itself in the new covenant of the latter day: "The
Lord of Hosts will destroy in this mountain the face of the
covering cast over all peoples, and the veil that is spread over
all nations" (Isa. xxv. 7).
This will appear still more clear to us, if we give a closer
consideration to
II.-SUPERNATURAL THEOLOGY, OR THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
DERIVED FROM REVELATION.
We take this last word in its narrower sense.  In its more
comprehensive sense, it signifies in general the whole divine
energy of self-communication in creation, in the conscience,
and in providence. In this revelation, as we have seen, even
the heathen have a share.  In the narrower sense, revelation
denotes a supernatural manifestation of divine grace influencing human knowledge for man's eternal good; an unveiling
of mysteries which lie beyond the province of reason, and
may therefore stand in a certain contrast to it. When, for




LECT. II.]           REVEALED RELIGION.                  95
instance, Christ says to Peter, "Flesh and blood hath not
revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven;"
or when St. Paul testifies that he had not received his gospel
from any man, but " through the revelation of Jesus Christ,"
-these are revelations in this special sense.  To the same
category belongs all that Scripture tells us of God's selfcommunications, under both the old and the new covenant,
whether made by immediate theophanies or through angelic
and human instrumentality, through outward miracles or
through inward spiritual manifestation, vision, and inspiration.
In respect to revelation, a distinction must be drawn
between the divine action in itself and its influence on man,
that is, between the outward objective self-manifestation of God,
and the inward subjective illumination of the human intellect.
Whatever manifestation of Himself God vouchsafes, He seeks
at the same time to interpret to man by the Spirit, even as the
manifestation of the divine glory in the universe is supplemented by the voice of the Divine Spirit in the conscience.
Both together constitute revelation, properly so called.  The
crown and ultimate goal of all divine revelation is He
in whom alone, according to the Scriptures, the perfection of
divine knowledge dwelt, who alone on earth declared perfectly the divine will — the only-begotten Son, who could
truly say of Himself: "He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father" (John i. 18, vi. 46, xiv. 6-9). In Christ, therefore,
both factors of revelation meet: He is at once the perfect
manifestation of God, and the perfectly enlightened or inspired
Man.
The object of divine revelation is God Himseof, historically
manifesting Himself in the character of Saviour; and Man
needs no other object of revelation.  God's self-revelation,
therefore, is at the same time a special form of His work of
redemption, and has human salvation for its end. The great
miracle of revelation is historically developed in a threefold
form: sometimes God appears, sometimes He speaks, sometimes He works miracles.  These forms are closely allied, and
therefore, in the historical developments of revelation, often
1 Cf. also in H. von der Goltz, Gottes Offenbarung durch heilige Geschichte,
Basle 1868, the excellent section as to "the mode and form of divine revelation," pp. 84-107.




96               REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. 11.
found together; the revelations being made either externally
through the senses, as in angelic appearances, or internally
through the workings of the human spirit, as in prophetic
dreams or visions.
The announcement of this revelation, which, up to the
"time of fulfilment," was confined to a particular branch of
the human race, and, after Christ, became a common property
of mankind, is contained in Scripture; and that which was
previously communicated to special persons, in an extraordinary way, now comes to us all in an ordinary way, by the
written or spoken word of human agents, along with the
inward operation of the Holy Spirit; but even thus it presents itself to us as supernatural and divine truth.  This, in
all brevity, is the scriptural- and Christian idea of revelation.
Incomprehensible as it may at first appear, wie must not
overlook that revelation, despite its essentially supernatural
character, has, and must have, a naturcal side also.  In
all divine manifestations, created existences are the media
through which the presence and glory of God are revealed to
men (Isa. vi.; Ezek. i., ix.; ReV. iv.). In all divine utterances,
God condescends to the limits of human understanding, and
adapts His revelation to the mental condition of its recipients;
giving first milk, then strong meat (John xvi. 12; 1 Cor. iii.
1, 2; Heb. v. 12-14). And even divine miracles, as we shall
see further on, have not unfrequently a natural basis. Revelation is never given without some previous preparation, in
the historical developments of human thought and human
needs.
Nor is this done in any irregular or arbitrary way: the
developments of revelation follow fixed internal laws and a
certain order, and are confined within definite limits; both
Old and New Testament making manifest the divine purpose
in the fourfold development of electing, calling, blessing, and
taking into covenant.  Even the superficial observer cannot
fail to note the progressive developments of divine communications with man from the simple intercourse of a primeval
time to the world- covenant made with Noah, and from
thence onward to the covenant of promise established with
Abraham, the covenant of the law made with Israel, and
finally the covenant of grace in Christ with the whole world.




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.                97
There is therefore a continuous progress-an ever clearer
manifestation of the Divine Nature, and of its purposes of
love for man, concluding with the mission of Christ and the
Comforter (Heb. i. 1, 2).
There is also a certain progress in the form of revelation.
At first, God revealed Himself in sensible manifestations,
which were an inevitable accommodation to the needs of
humanity while still in pupilage, just as every tutor has
now to condescend to the capacity of the child.   With
Moses He spake "face to face, as a man talketh with his
friend" (Ex. xxxiii. 11; Num. xii. 8).  Then came miracles
wrought by divine power, through human instrumentality;
and in these we may note a certain internal educational
progress from the material to the spiritual; the miracles of
inspiration becoming gradually the more prevailing forms of
divine manifestation, until, in the miracle of miracles, the
person of Christ, the deepest spiritual mysteries of redemption were unfolded, and finally, through the outpouring of
the Spirit and the inspired gospel records, revelation became
abidingly an inward thing conveyed to us by the Word and
Spirit.
Further, Scripture miracles are sparingly distributed, and
after an ordered plan among various periods, and in very
different measures, according to their differences of character.
The most significant make their appearance at decisive
turning-points in sacred history, e.g. the election of fresh
agents of revelation, and the constitution of new forms of
covenant.  It was thus in the patriarchal age, and in those
of Moses, of David, and of Christ and the Apostolic Church.
In the periods between these epochs, miracles are not so
frequent.  When the point in question was more to maintain
that which existed than to found something new, the Word,
the most inward mode of revelation, remains the only form
of it. We everywhere see a progressive preparation for the
complete revelation of God in Christ; we see the sequel
constantly linked on to that which precedes, and further
developing it; we see also in Christ Himself a wise tutorial
progress in making known the secret things of God down to
the last and most profound, the doctrine of the Trinity, which
not until He had His departure in view did He fully make
VW




98               REASON AND REVELATION.           [LECT. II.
known (Matt. xxviii. 19).    Further, the lower forms of
revelation, in which the chief point is some manifestation of
Deity, always prepare the way for the more perfect forms of
inward inspiration; and these, again, point onward further
still to a final, all-completing manifestation in the second
advent of Christ.   Finally, we see the Divine Revealer
keeping always one and the same end in view-man's eternal
good, and thereby always adapting His revelations to the
particular needs and capacity of their recipients.
But, more especially, divine revelation is something quite
different in its mode of operation from what is called magic,
and addresses itself to man in his ethical capacity; the moral
condition of the recipient determines in the main its measure
and its limitations.  Although under special circumstances
God may allow some sordid person like Balaam to be the
medium of revelation, the rule nevertheless holds good, that
God adopts as His instruments those who, through their
moral and religious character, were peculiarly capable of
appreciating divine things, such as Abraham, Moses, David,
the prophets, the apostles, and, above all, Christ (Matt.
xi. 25; Acts vii. 22, x. 35; Jas. iv. 8; Jer. xxix. 13).
Everywhere we find that revelation is met on the part of
man by a heart-seeking after God, after truth, and after
sanctification.  " If ye seek me with your whole heart, ye
shall surely find  me."   This  practical piety was, from
Abraham to Christ, the constant medium of existing and
progressive revelation, which varied in the clearness of its
manifestations with the varying religious character of its
exponents.
And so still the divine revelation contained in Scripture
communicates itself as a full personal possession only to that
heart which meets it with an honest seeking after truth. By
indifference, or opposition to truth, the susceptibility for
divine things is lost, and thus also the possibility of receiving
any further revelations. In Nazareth, Christ " doeth not many
miracles, on account of their unbelief."  In revelation, as in
other things, God deals with us as free, responsible creatures.
His supernatural revelation is no more irregular and arbitrary
than that through nature.  On the contrary, everywhere we
see measure, order, well-planned gradation, organic connectior




LECT. II,]          REVEALED RELIGION.
well-defined limits, and the operation of its own inward laws
in all its self-impartations to man.
If we keep this in view, many rationalistic objections will
refute themselves, raised as they are against the specific worth,
necessity, possibility, and intelligibility of a supernatural revelation.
What Scripture tells of divine appearances, spiritual manifestations, visions, etc., is often compared with similar phenomena in heathen religions, and, consequently, the specific value
of Christian revelation is denied.
Without comparing its moral and religious character with
the pretended communications of heathen deities, it will here
suffice us to point out the profound difference between the
biblical and the whole heathen idea of revelation.  The revelations of heathen gods invariably have reference to something
isolated, external, and fortuitous; and even when they impart
moral precepts, these have no real internal connection. In
Scripture, on the other hand, revelation is one grand systematic,
progressive organism, which from its very commencement goes
on expanding, and so as to exhibit its smallest details in living
connection with the whole, and its one great end, the moral
and religious good of man.
We find nowhere else, in the whole course of the history
of religion, a like conception of the end and purpose of divine
revelations.  The biblical view of revelation, apart from its
sacred purport, is unique in its nature, and it is therefore
a priori a mistake to force it down to the level of the heathen
view. We must also note the important distinction, that in
heathen legends it is always the most ancient times which
abound in miracles, and that subsequently miracles gradually
decrease; whereas in Scripture the grandest revelations and
most striking miracles occur at different times, and, indeed,
always at particular crises of sacred history, and without disappearing in the course of a history extending over four thousand years.
But if from the fact, that not Christianity and Judaism
only, but many other religions also, advance a claim to revelation, any one is tempted to conclude that this claim is in no
case trustworthy, and that we cannot know which is the true
religion, seeing the " revealed" religions all contradict one




100              REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. I.
another, and that therefore it is best to reject them en masse,
he is excellently answered by A. Monod, in his Lucile: " If
twenty persons at once set up along with you a claim to the
inheritance of your cousin, could a just judgment nonsuiting
you and all the rest be based on the assumption that there is
no legal heir?  A lie is only credible when it makes use of
truth to back it up.  Spurious money is not coined except
where good money exists. Quack doctors obtain patronage
only because there are true physicians and real remedies. Instead of conclzding that there is no true revelation because there
are so many false ones, we should on the contrary conclude, that
there are only so many false because there is one true."  The
other inference cannot be drawn, except by that indolent spirit
which shirks the trouble of examining into the different claims
of religious systems, a task which, at the present day, can
hardly be very irksome. That can only be the true and
perfect religion, which exercises the most wholesome influence
on the moral life of individuals and of nations.  " By their
fruits ye shall know them."  And who at the present day can
stand in doubt on this point, if he compares Christian nations
with heathen and Turks, or even with the Jews?
Against the necessity of revelation, the objection is generally
made, from a rationalistic point of view, that if God was compelled from time to time to manifest Himself, then creation
must have stood in need, as it were, of continuous " afterhelp."  If animals can attain to their prescribed destiny by
means of their natural powers, man can do the same by means
of his reason. In opposition to these views, the rejoinder has
justly been made, that if man and beast differ by means of
reason, and consequently in their destination'and in their
means of attaining it, they may also well differ in the mode,
and way in which they realize their destiny.
But this whole theory of " after-help," by which God's
original plan of creation is made to appear as having been
incomplete, is absolutely inadmissible.  Scripture represents
the counsel of redemption as having been from the first coexistent in the Divine Mind with that of creation (Eph. i. 4;
1 Pet. i. 20). The fact of revelation, therefore, does not imply
that God has been compelled by intervening circumstances,
to wit, the genesis of sin, to resolve on affording such "after



LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               101
help" to His own work; on the contrary, from   the very
beginning, due provision was made in the divine plan for
such eventuality; and God's own free love is only carrying
into effect, by means of revelation, that which from eternity
He had determined and prepared for, in order to conduct the
rational universe, spite of all disturbing influences, to its ultimate and glorious consummation. The very idea of any afterthought and alteration of the divine work or plan, is absolutely
excluded by the very terms of the Scripture doctrine of revelation.
It is indeed the doctrine of Scripture, that man stands in
need of divine assistance.  A special revelation from God is
a necessity for us, and that for two reasons: first, by reason
of our natural helplessness; and secondly, on account of the
Fall, and man's consequent degeneracy. For does not every
child which is brought into the world need some "afterhelp"?  And is it to be supposed that the first members of
our race required no education?  And who but God could
have been their Educator?  If their only teachers were the
animals, whence came their gift of speech? Whence the
development of their moral and spiritual faculties?  Whence
those purer religious ideas which are continually cropping up
among the fragments of the oldest heathen religions?  How
can things of this kind be explained without presupposing a
divine interposition and assistance? None but he who denies
the necessity of any such education, can deny the necessity of
some special intercourse between the first man and his Maker,
or be offended at that paternal and quasi-human relation in
which the first chapters of the Bible represent God as putting
Himself with man.  Our own little ones, feeling themselves
their need of education, look for and submit to it. In doing
this they exhibit more understanding than many adults.
But no sooner had sin entered the world, and with it an
increasing radical disturbance of the very foundations of
natural theology, and of the proper exercise of reason and
conscience, than the necessity became manifest of further
revelations on the part of God of Himself and of His plan for
human redemption.  When the unbelief of the natural man
had developed into the various forms of pagan superstition,
how was it any longer possible for man to find out for him



102              REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
self the highest absolute Good, the living and true personal
God, without the aid of a new supernatural revelation?
Here again our former position holds good: only he who
denies the existence and power of sin can deny or dispute the
necessity of some special revelation; but then let him also ask
himself what he can make of the main facts of man's religious
history, and of the clear proofs they give of the thorough
incapacity of reason when left to itself?  How natural and
reasonable on the other hand, how   conformable with the
results of history and daily experience, is the teaching of
Scripture as to the educating processes and progressive developments of divine revelation! For the first members of
our race, regarded as children, revelation was a nurse who
taught them to walk in leading-strings; for fallen man it
became a task-master, as in the law of Moses; and finally, for
those who had learned the need of redemption, it manifested
itself as a freedom-giving law of the spirit of Christ and the
gospel. Appeal, indeed, is often made to the perfection of the
natural universe and its arrangements as not admitting of,
much less requiring, any such divine manifestation or interference; but this is a point to which we shall have to recur
when we come to a critique of Deism and to the question of
miracles.
Of late, however, an attempt has been made, starting from
this very assumption that there has been such a gradual
progressive spiritual development of the human race, to deny
the necessity of divine revelation, at least for us in our present
stage of enlightenment. However necessary such revelation
may have been at an earlier period, it is now maintained that
"reason educated by Christianity, like a son who has attained
his majority, can shift for itself." So speaks the spirit of
our age, with its feverish longing for emancipation in every
department of thought and action. The emancipation here,
however, could be only a partial one. Reason by itself would
be still inadequate for the task assigned it.  Formed at first
by Christian influences, it remains subject to such influences
still. Previous revelations could not fail to operate still, and
to exert at any rate an indirect influence on future developments.
How, we ask in the first place, is this result, the maturity




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               103
of reason, to be maintained when divorced from its cause 1
Are those factors no longer in action which formerly rendered
a revelation necessary? Does sin, then, no longer exist, whose
power of obscuration in reason and conscience cannot, as we
know from history and experience, be abidingly broken except
by the redeeming influence of divine revelation? What other
ultimate defence than Christian revelation have we against an
immediate relapse into heathen barbarism-what that has not
already historically shown itself to be a completely insufficient
protection against moral, social, and national corruption?  Is
it our modern culture or our science? The main object of the
theory under discussion is certainly to place these in opposition to Christianity, as the guiding stars of our future progress. But we have already in our former Lecture recognised
the fact, that culture and science, apart from Christianity, have
no abiding, moral, and spiritual efficiency.  Modern civilisation is in every department dependent upon Christianity, and
a severance from  that which constitutes its groundwork
would be nothing less than the initiative of a relapse into
barbarism. Or has then reason, we would further ask, so
manifestly attained her complete majority as to be now fully
capable of "shifting for herself"?  How many objections
may be urged against such a position? The glance we lately
took at philosophy showed us how little ground modern reason has to boast of its performances.  On this point we would
only ask one question: Are there not still many revealed
truths (for instance, the doctrine of the atonement) indispensable for our religious needs, and yet not capable of
rational demonstration? Finally, if we are now to believe
that reason has outgrown the need of revelation, let it at
least be shown that revelation, as a source of culture, is exhausted and used up, and can impart no more instruction.
According to the Bible, God's revelation of Himself in Christ
is perfect, inexhaustibly rich, sufficing for all ages and all
needs, down to the consummation of all things.  Is this so
or not?  On this point, one of our chief counter-authorities is
Lessing, the great antagonist of revelation.
In his work die Erziehung des 2fenschengeschlechts (" The
Education of the Human Race "), Lessing had the merit of reintroducing into modern religious philosophy the idea of a




104               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
divine education of man, referring to the Epistle to the Galatians, chap. iii. and iv., but without sounding the full depth of
the scriptural idea of such education.   Starting from this
idea, he endeavoured to show that while the religion of the
Old Testament was the childhood, and Christianity the youth,
of mankind, a step was now to be made beyond them into full
manhood; belief in revealed truths as motives of moral conduct being henceforth superseded by the spontaneous action
of the human mind, following after goodness for its own sake,
and without reference to the doctrine of future rewards and
punishments.
We hear this thought reiterated on all sides in the present
day, and in every possible form.   Not long ago a literary
journal in the Grand Duchy of Baden, discussing the propriety of teaching the ten commandments, propounded the
opinion, that the fifth commandment was immoral because of
the sanction attached to it, " that thy days may be long in
the land, etc.," seeing that here a reward is held out as an
inducement to obedience.   So then, the " full age" to which
humanity is now supposed to have attained consists in man's
doing good purely for goodness' sake.    Who sees not the
hollowness of this bombastic talk?  That man has yet to be
born whose practice will be regulated by a theory so insipid.'
For what is the idea of goodness per se? It must have something actually good as its substance.  The attainment of some
end morally good, either for himself or for others, must float
before the mental vision of the man who acts morally-that
is, he must have certain aims in view, which, again, react
upon him   as motives.  And these aims must be distinctly
conceived. The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual
motive for well-doing.   An idea like this can only work
effectually, and with living power, when prototypically realized
in some actual personality, whereby it may lay hold of the
heart of the individual man. No such perfectly good person1The original German is dieser grauen Theorie-" this grey theory," the
reference being to Gothe's well-known words in Faust:"Grau, liebster Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und griin des Lebens goldener Baum."
All theory, dearest friend, is pallid grey,
%While life's fair golden tree is fresh and green.




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               105
ality is anywhere presented to us but by revelation; and in
the person of Christ.  Revelation, therefore, and the divine
personality disclosed by it, remain a necessity so long as men
are to do good as well as dream of goodness.
It is, moreover, a fundamental error to regard Christianity as
in its essence a doctrine of rewards andpunishments.  This has
long since been proved in reply to Lessing, and results from
our own previous delineation of the true nature of Christianity.
Neither Lessing himself, nor the later developments of rationalistic philosophy, have been able to reconcile or identify the
actual, historical, supernatural basis of Christian revelation with
that which they maintain to be its true and original substance.
So both are driven to try to get beyond Christianity altogether,
and to deny the continuous necessity of any revealed religion.
And that is just what we might expect. For, if we eliminate
fiom Christian faith its supernatural elements, the residuum will
be so dry and soulless a skeleton, that, in fact, no reason will
appear for tying down the spiritual development of humanity
to such lifeless companionship. The only question, therefore,
is, whether we recognise as matter of fact any supernatural
element in Christianity; whether we allow or not the possibility of miracles-both points which we shall have to investigate more closely further on.  If it be denied that God
exercises any direct influence on human life, there can be no
such thing as a divine education of mankind: man must have
educated himself, because left to himself by God.  But then
comes the question: Could God, in accordance with His own
nature, have thus treated man? and the answer depends on
our conception of the idea itself of God.  But if it be
conceded that God did once begin to educate humanity, a
twofold question thence arises: First, Can this educating
agency cease to operate so long as God continues to be Ruler
of the Universe, and before the final consummation of all
things has set in?-can He leave man to himself, as having
attained his " full age," so long as the continuing presence of
sin puts him in constant danger of failing to attain his destination, in accordance with the divine idea?  And next,
Are the revelations made in past times by God, for the purpose
of furthering our education, already exhausted?-is none of
them any longer adequate to our present stage of culture?




106              REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
We may as pupils get beyond a human teacher, but surely
not a divine.  Is there any one, for instance, who has but in
some degree entered into a perception of the infinite beauty
and glory of the character of Christ, and is yet bold enough to
say that he has no more to learn concerning it? Where is
the interpreter of Scripture to be found, worthy of the name,
who would maintain that the interpretation of Scripture is
now exhausted? We are, indeed, now further advanced than
ever in this work of interpretation; but the more perfection
we give to our exegetical appliances, the more plentifully,
clearly, and transparently do the sources of divine knowledge
flow, the more inexhaustible is their well-spring in the Scriptures shown to be.  But the more profound the treasures of
truth thus brought to light, the more full of blessing ought
their influence to be on the moral and intellectual life of the
present day, whether as regards the mass or the individual.
Divine revelation, though culminating in Christ, is, even in this
its last form, not quiescent, but progressive; unfolding itself more
and more richly in word and spirit, and constantly exercising,
by ever fresh developments, a progressively educating influence
on the humanity to which it has been given.  This truth was
overlooked by Lessing.  He who does not acknowledge the
supernatural element, the' deep things of God enshrined in
revelation, must likewise fail to apprehend the inexhaustible
fulness of the germs of human culture which are also contained
within it.
Revelation, like mankind, has run its course of childhood
and youth.  The former, when God condescended to personal
converse with Adam and the patriarchs; the latter, when
He encompassed with the thorny hedge of the Law of Sinai
the vigorous and aspiring but sensual and unruly people of
Israel (or, looking at the heathen side, when the Greek world,
from Achilles to Alexander, was stamping all its creations,
both material and mental, with the impress of its youthful,
cheerful, and ideal character).  But the manhood of the humnan
race did not begin after the rise of Christianity, but together
with it.  If riper knowledge and experience, more earnest and
effective work, greater independence and firmness in will and
action, constitute the pre-eminence of the man over the youth,
these are the very characteristics which the influence of Chris



LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.                107
tianity brought to maturity, both in nations and individuals.
It was only through the gospel that men attained to a deeper
knowledge of their moral and religious duty, and learned to
make a pure unselfish love, self-renunciation, and self-denial the
bases of their new and nobler life: it was the gospel that first
taught men to strive and to suffer, with the manlike weapons of
intellect and patience, for a more and more complete apprehension of truth, and to be more and more strenuous in
labours for its propagation: it was not till the advent of
Christianity that men became spiritually free and independent,
and conscious of their individual and personal dignity.  In
fact, Christianity has ever been, in a way that no other agency
has been able to approach, a nursing-school for true men, for
heroes in thought, in action, and in suffering; and that because it presents to the world, and to every man's spiritual
apprehension, the Hero of all heroes, the Sufferer of all
sufferers, as leader and example. In view of what Christianity has done for individuals and the race during well-nigh
two thousand years, we may confidently say: He whom the
school of Christ does not make into a man will never learn
true manliness in any other!  If nations and individuals are
to retain any power of further spiritual development, they can
only do it by retaining a living sense of the truth and efficacy
of the Christian revelation; once eliminate or weaken this
source of strength, the freshness of spiritual life will soon
wither away. Any step taken in supposed advance of Christianity would prove a transition, not from youth to manhood,
but from manhood to senility,-i.e. to a mental condition of
absolute indifference or doubt, a temper of the idlest, most
self-sufficient hypercriticism, the shallowest subjectivity, and
an all-disintegrating egotistical selfishness. Offensive practical
proofs are no longer wanting of what the condition of things
would be were mankind once to turn their backs on all positive Christian belief. And such facts afford, we think, the
strongest arguments for the continuous necessity of revelation.
So long, however, as the ennobling influence of revealed
Christian truth continues to operate, no one has a right to say
that its mission has ended, or that the present generation has
outgrown it.  It is not that we are in advance of revelation,
but that revelation ever keeps, and has kept, in advance of us;




108              REASON AND REVELATION.        [LECT. II.
raising men by just degrees to purer heights in the knowing and
doing of goodness and truth, and imparting to all who honestly
seek to apprehend it, the enjoyment of ever larger manifestations of its divine light. Our human apprehension of Christian
truth, both the scientific and the practical, is not only susceptible of, but of necessity requires, constant enlargement; but this
cannot be said of God's own revelation of Himself in Christ,
which by its very idea must from the first have been absolutely
perfect. Whatsoever the Spirit of Truth may have vouchsafed
since the Lord's ascension to reveal, or shall still reveal to men,
"He will take," says Christ, "of mine and will show it unto
you;" thereby indicating that all true progress in religious
knowledge has its only source in Christ, and that there is no possibility of a perfecting of religion beyond Christianity. It follows,
therefore-and that is the element of truth in the abovementioned objection-that no fresh revelation will be needed
till the consummation of God's kingdom. But for that very
reason the revelation already vouchsafed is not to be set aside,
but remains for all time equally valid and necessary. And
this must be remembered in all discussions of the views of
the many who, in the present day, would retain Christianity
as a general groundwork while desiring to dispense with its
positive dogmas, who speak of " a religion of the future," or a
"religion of humanity developed from the religion of Christ"
(Strauss), and so destroy the very foundations on which they
pretend to build.  The very notion of a "religion of humanity"
is a product of revelation;-what is it, indeed, but a mere
abstract term expressing the fact that God has revealed to
mankind things concerning their own nature of which they had
themselves become oblivious?
One word more. Revelation must continue to be a necessity
for human nature as long as the mind and heart of man
remain in their created dependence upon God, and that even
apart from the existence of sin.  The inner life of the soul of
man is, as we have seen, "an infinite longing after God." We
find tokens of the existence of this longing everywhere, even
among the heathen.  They too seek to make approaches to
what they believe to be divine; they neither can nor desire to
get rid of the conviction that their divinities draw nigh, appear
to, and communicate with them.  And has this deep universal




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.                109
longing been implanted in man, never to be satisfied by a special
revelation on the part of Him who implanted it; whereas both
experience and history teach that his spiritual thirst can never
more be stilled by draughts of a mere natural theology? Even
though the fact of God's existence were made certain to us in
other ways, should we not still, in the absence of a direct revelation, "feel astonishment and take offence at such complete
immobility in a Being who is life itself, and such a hard and
stubborn silence in Him who is infinite Wisdom and Love?"
(Rougemont.)  To questions like these, which ground the
necessity of a divine revelation alike on the nature of God
Himself and our own human needs, the only answer our opponents have to give, is found in a deistical conception which
completely isolates Him from His own universe,-a conception
which, further on, we shall have to consider more closely.
But we proceed to ask, is such a revelation of Himself by
God possible? The answer to this question must ultimately
depend on the conception we have formed of God and of man.
He who believes in a living personal God, and in the existence in.
man's nature of the divine image, a capacity for perceiving God
by reason and for recognising Him in the conscience, together
with an inward longing for communications from Him, cannot
but maintain from both these points of view the possibility of
revelation.  For all revelation is but the highest expression on
the part of God Himself, of His actual personal relations to
man as His creature and His child.  If this our fundamental
position be granted, the refutation of all objections made by
opponents is easy.  But if any dispute it, the argument must
revert to a discussion of the fundamental conception of God, and
of the possibility of miracles.  Every act of divine revelation is
indeed a miracle; and the acknowledgment of its possibility
concedes the principle that miracles are possible.  This part
of the question we defer to a future lecture (Lect. v.). Here
we take in view some special difficulties, by which the acceptance of the possibility of a supernatural revelation appears to
be encumbered.
How —that is our first query-may the infinite distance
betzCecn God and man be so bridged over that a personal communication between them shall become possible?  Let us see
what help we may find in Scripture towards answering this




110             REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. IL
question. And in order not to anticipate what will have to
be said in a future lecture on the doctrine of the Trinity,
you will allow me to touch but briefly on the main points.
First of all, the distinction must be observed which exists
in the Divine Nature itself, an aspect of self-concealment and
one of self-manifestation. The latter is called in Scripture the
Word, or Logos, which "in the beginning " "was with God,"
and by whom " all things were made;" " the only-begotten Son
in the bosom of the Father," who alone has " declared Him."
All revelations from creation to Pentecost, and from Pentecost
to the end, have been and can be made only through Him.
He is the eternal, hypostatic self-manifestation of God, and
therefore called " the Light of the World."  In Him, as in His
other self, God can draw nigh to other beings also, having in
Him, as it were, already become another.  It is in the internal
distinctions of the Divine Essence that the possibility lies of divine
external mnanifestation.  The second (and third) "Persons" in
the Godhead form, so to speak, the bridge between God and
creation.  In Christ, as "the everlasting life and light of
men," there has existed from eternity a bond between man
and God.   In Christ, God can draw nigh to us and hold
communication with us. And here we may already see, what
further on will be made more evident, that one who believes
not in the Eternal Son of God can hardly recognise the possibility of any special divine revelation; the infinite exaltation
of the Divine Being above all created things may well seem to
such an one to interpose a gulf that nothing can bridge over.
The only bridge possible, exists not for tlim.
Further, we find in all divine revelations recorded in
Scripture a certain self-limitation on the part of God, either
hiding His divine glory in angelic or human shape, or in
that of some physical phenomenon-wind, cloud, or fire; or
else only partially disclosing it so as even, while revealing
Himself, to remain still the hidden, supramundane, and invisible One.  So Moses, with whom   the Almighty speaks
" mouth to mouth," can only see Him from behind, and receives the admonition, "My face shall not be seen" (Ex.
xxxiii. 18-23).  And even when He appears in whom "the
fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily," the Father still remains
the supramundane and invisible One. The Infinite cannot




LECT. II.]          REVEALED RELIGION.               111
communicate itself to the finite, except in a limited manner;
the whole cannot possibly come into manifestation.  Scripture, therefore, draws a distinction between "that which may
be known of God" (Rom. i. 19), on the one hand, and His
hidden, incomprehensible essence on the other; whereof it is
said, "God dwelleth in the light which no man can approach,
whom no man hath seen, nor can see" (1 Tim. vi. 16).  And
therefore in all revelations, God puts, as it were, a restraint
upon Himself, communicates to man only so much light as he
is able to bear, and with the wonted condescension of true love
submits for our sakes to self-limitation.
So much, in brief, concerning the divine end of the bridge
formed by revelation between God and man.    Now for the
other, the human end of it. And here we observe, that a peculiar
fitness is predicated in Scripture of the recipients of revelation.
They are all, as we have seen above, men endowed beforehand
with a special capability and susceptibility in relation to the
Divine, they are the elect ones of mankind,-an Abraham, a
Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a Peter, a John,-men already
standing by their personal faith in a closer relation to God than
others. And even these men, in receiving revelations, experience an emancipation from creaturely limitations corresponding to the voluntary condescension and self-limitation on the
part of God.  They are raised above their ordinary consciousness in a greater or a less degree; they are "in the Spirit,"
or a visionary trance, at the time when spiritual revelations are
afforded them. This at least would seem to be more especially
the case with the prophets and apostles; whilst in that of
Moses, God's condescending limitation of Himself is made
more prominent. The transfiguration of our Lord was a temporary emancipation of the same nature; and in the world to
come we may anticipate that such liberation from the present
condition of human intelligence will be fully vouchsafed to all
saints: on it, indeed, depends the possibility of our knowing
God hereafter, "even as also we ourselves are known " (1 Cor.
xiii. 12).
Finally, yet another agency of mediation between God and
man is found in the angels, who appear as heaven- sent
messengers (and especially in manifestations of the divine
glory), not only to Abraham and Moses (Acts vii. 30, 35,




112              REASON AND EEVELATION.         [LECT. I.
53), to David and Zechariah under the Old Testament, but
also in attendance on our blessed Lord (John i. 51), and in the
New Testament generally. These glorious beings are represented as, on the one hand, allied by their creaturely nature
to man, and, on the other, by their higher, spiritual, and sinless
condition, as standing in closer affinity to God, and therefore
as more capable than we of receiving direct communication
from Him, and of being His ambassadors and representatives
in the world.  On this difficult question of angelic agency
there remains, no doubt, as on that of miracles generally, many
a knotty problem to be solved; but so much we fearlessly
assert ourselves to have established, that there is no sufficient
a priori ground in reason for precipitate rejection of the possibility, ay, and the necessity too, of a supernatural revelation
of God to man.
For surely the considerations which we have now been
urging get rid at once of some of the most common objections
to the possibility of revelation. The objection, for instance, so
often made, that the Absolute and Infinite cannot communicate
itself to the finite, just because the latter is incapable of comprehending it, is perfectly correct.  But where is it taught in
Scripture that God, in any of His revelations, has made a
complete communication of Himself to us?  The above-named
scriptural distinction between the self-revealing side of the
divine nature and the hidden and incomprehensible one is in
this objection entirely overlooked.  God still remains the
supramundane and the infinite, even while communicating
Himself in revelation to man.  We do not comprehend Him
fully, but only perceive "that which may be known of God,"
that which for salvation it is needful to know.  The best knowledge is but imperfect here (1 Cor. xiii. 9); the perfect is
reserved for the world to come.
This scriptural distinction is also overlooked by Strauss
((hristl. Glaubcnsl.) when urging the imtmutability of the divine
nature as rendering any special revelation impossible; because
the assumption of such "an isolated act of God in time contradicts the idea of His unchangeableness:" an objection this
somewhat unbecoming in a representative of Pantheism; for
where is God represented as more subject to change than in
the process of " becoming " to which the Pantheist would con



LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.                113
demn Him? In like manner argues the otherwise very Ineritorious philologer Jacob Grimm; that the fact of God's once
having spoken to a man would imply that He has subjected
Himself to an historical process which the Uncreated and
Immutable cannot do. Our answer is, that it is only in His
self-revealing aspect that God appears under the conditions of
time and historical development; in His inner nature He still
remains the supramundane and immutable One. Revelation
is a development, but not one to which the Divine Nature is
itself subjected. In whatever measure God condescends to
work upon and rule the world, He sets in motion there a
course of gradual historical processes, pre-arranged in harmony
with the needs and conduct of man; but His own eternal
nature is never drawn into the ebb and flow of these developments.  The Absolute and Eternal One cannot become anything other than Himself, but can only be and continue from
everlasting to everlasting what He is.  And so Scripture
speaks of "becoming" or "happening," or of any distinctions
of time, in reference only to creatures; of God it simply says
that "He is what He is," "the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever" (Ex. iii. 14; Ps. cii. 28; Heb. xiii. 8).  We may,
indeed, turn the point of their own'argument against our
opponents and say: The divine immutability is realized and
secured by divine acts of revelation. If God is to remain in
Himself immutable, and, despite the abuse of human freedom
of will, is to accomplish His own eternal counsels concerning
the world and man, He must conduct by special act of revelation the universe of His creatures towards its eternally predetermined end and aim. God's immutability in essence and
in purpose on the one hand, and special revelations of His
purposes to man on the other, are necessary correlatives. He
only who substitutes for the scriptural idea of a living personal
God an abstract impersonal Order of the universe, is precluded from recognising the possibility of such special acts of
divine self-manifestation, and loses at the same time the very
idea of a moral order in the world around him.
Grimm's strange objection, that the notion of God speaking
to man at all implies His possession of "a body and teeth,"
loses all force and application when we bear in mind the
Scripture doctrine that His chief revelation is made in Christ
Il




114              REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. II.
the Incarnate Logos, and many others through angelic spirits,
with their etherial corporeity.  And in any other cases of
apparent anthropomorphism we may surely apply the Scripture argument, "He that made the eye, shall He not see?"
He that made the mouth, shall He not speak? i.e. shall He
fail in methods for making known to us His will?
A like fear of seeming to degrade and materialize the idea
of God, by admitting the possibility of special acts of selfmanifestation, determines many minds in the present day to
deny all revelation except by inward mental processes, and to
relegate all external manifestations of the divine into the
realm of fable.  This sounds grand, and flatters the conceit of
modern enlightenment.  So, for instance, writes the rationalistic Schenkel: "When, in accordance with traditional theology,
God is supposed to have revealed Himself through external
natural phenomena, angelic agencies, and the like, men forget
that God is a Spirit, and that every conception which degrades
His self-manifestations, by mixing them up with the alternations of material phenomena, is radically untheological, and
destructive of the true idea of God."  But we have just seen
that this is by no means the case; not the inner nature and
essence, but only the self-revealing aspect of Deity, enters into
any connection with material phenomena.  And why should
it not be able to do this? God is indeed a Spirit; but is the
world then mere lifeless matter which the Spirit can never
employ as its organ?  Is it not rather upheld and pervaded
in all its parts by divine powers, ideas, and purposes, by
means of which it becomes a cosmos, an harmoniously articulated organism, wherein, as in a mirror, we discern the workings
of the Divine Spirit?  And if the world be already in itself
a revelation of God, why should not He have been able to
make it yet more so by means of special acts and manifestations?  The consequences, moreover, in reference to the
person of Christ, which are involved in the doctrine of a
merely spiritual revelation, are not a little serious.  Either
the incarnation of the Divine Logos is impossible, or with
that conceded, the self-manifestation of God in a material
form is conceded also.  But once degrade our Lord to a mere
man, with whatever pretended illumination of the Spirit, you
thereby deny all internal distinctions in the Divine Nature, and




LECT. II.]          REVEALED RELIGION.                115
may as well at the same time deny the possibility of any kind
of revelation. The bridge connecting God and His creatures
is finally broken down.
Another argument against the possibility of revelation is
sometimes drawn from the divine attributes of goodness and
righteousness.  How, it is argued, can the infinitely good and
righteous One have attached salvation to the reception of
revealed verities, of which the majority of mankind are ignorant without any fault of their own, and others are cognizant
without deservings? This argument, strongly urged in former
times by J. J. Rousseau, in his Profession de foi du vicaire
Savoyard, is warmly echoed by many in the present day, and
derives some countenance from the harshness and onesidedness of many Christian theologians.  But Scripture nowhere
teaches, that all who die without knowledge of the revelation
of God in Christ are irretrievably and eternally lost.  It is
one thing innocently not to know; it is quite another wilfully
to'reject.  The express doctrine of Scripture is that men will
be judged hereafter " according to their works," and that the
measure of such judgment will be the degree of revelation,
supernatural or natural, vouchsafed them in the present life;
and that hence from one man more, fiom another less, will be
required, and that even among the lost it will go harder with
some and be. more tolerable for others (Matt. xi. 20-24,
xii. 38-42; Luke xii. 47, 48; Rom. ii. 5, 12, v. 13).  Nor
are the Scriptures altogether without traces of the thought
that the gospel was proffered, even after death, to those who
had died in ignorance of the way of salvation (1 Pet. iii.
18-20, iv. 6).  But to demand now, at once, an explanation
why the divine counsels determine that some nations should
receive the gospel earlier and others later, is a great act of
presumption.   It will not be till the final development and
end of the world that it will be possible to survey the whole
course of God's dealings with man, and so determine whether
the way in which the knowledge of salvation has been spread
among nations, and moulded their history, resulted from
an absolutely wise and just and holy plan, or not.  Finally,
the divine attribute of goodness can be alleged as an argument
against the probability of a special revelation only by one who
will not see to how much nobler a degree of moral and




116              REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. II.
spiritual elevation nations have attained with a revealed religion than without one, a fact the truth of which no reasonable
persons ought to call in question.
But here another objection meets us from quite a different
point of view.  Granted the possibility of revelation in the
abstract, how can we know for certain that it has been vouchsafed? how are we to learn to distinguish between an objective
divine communication on the one hand, and the merely subjective operation of our own intellect on the other?  This is the
argument of Kant and Fichte., They allowed the possibility
of a supernatural revelation, but denied that any one could
determine with absolute certainty whether what seemed to him
to be such was really divine, or merely the product of his
own reason and conscience.  Lessing (compare the " Dialogue
between Lessing and Jacobi about Spinoza" in the Letters
to Mendelssohn, and The Christianity of Reason) gave this objection a somewhat different turn, thus: Revealed truths must,
he argued, translate themselves in due course into truths of pure
reason. By a law of development proper to the human mind,
the first form assumed by all religious convictions is that of
an extraordinary divine revelation; it is only by degrees that
man attains the consciousness that what has seemed to him a
gift from without was really the product of his own mental
powers.  According to this, belief in any supernatural revelation is but a piece of self-deception on the part of the
undeveloped human consciousness, which, on reaching maturity,
recognises the sources of such supposed revelation as derived
from within and not from without itself.
What is our answer to all this?  In the irst place, it may
readily be observed that this objection proceeds from those
whose views are narrowed by the assumptions of mere intellectualism, who decline to accept any religious truth, except by
such a process of rational induction as we have already proved
to be quite inadequate.  Hence their efforts to make out that
revelation must be strictly spiritual, the product of the internal
workings of a man's own spirit. And this is the first untenable assumption.  For Scripture plainly testifies that revelations were oftentimes vouchsafed of old externally, i.e. by
appeals to the senses of sight and hearing, as in divine and
angelic appearances.  In such cases the revelation was not




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               117
in the first place a new idea which presented itself to the
consciousness, but a real external event.  Are, then, all such
narratives to be accounted a priori as myths and fables?  If
not, these external miraculous events were in themselves the
most certain proof that, in each case of their occurrence, a
supernatural communication from above had been vouchsafed.
The miraculous element was in each revelation the most direct
token of its divine character.  The first recipients of such
manifestations, under the forcible impression made by the
accompanying phenomena, which in sundry cases smote them
in terror to the earth, could not remain in doubt that it was
an outward objective power that thus encountered them, and
that the awful words so suddenly sounding in their ears could
not be mere ideal products of their own minds; they must
therefore have been well able to distinguish between their
human consciousness on the one hand, and the divine revelation vouchsafed them on the other.
But if, diverting our attention from these outward manifestations, we direct it exclusively to those-internal ones in
which the element of inspiration prevails, we shall find that
even with respect to these it cannot in every case be said
that what was revealed were " mere rational conceptions
concerning divine things;" an assumption which forms a
second untenable hypothesis.  How frequently, for instance,
must the prophets have announced revelations, the depth of
which they could not fathom, and delivered predictions whose
range of application was still for them a veiled secret! Their
own oracles were oftentimes as much objects of faith to themselves as to others.  How often did they hear things which
seemed to run counter to their own natural reason, and about
which they ventured to interpose the liveliest expressions of
doubt and remonstrance (e.g. Gen. xvii. 17; Jer. i. 6; Luke i.
18, 34; Acts x. 14) -instances in which we clearly see that
the rational ]knowledge of the recipients was by no means always
in accord with the revelation vouchsafed; that the latter very
often surpassed the former, and that the recipients were well
aware of this distinction.  But between the conclusions of
their own reason and the truths revealed, what they could not
even "rationally appropriate" could hardly have been a
product of their own rational faculties.  Only observe, for




118               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. IL
instance, how " the prophets inquired and searched diligently"
(with their own natural faculties of reason) "what, or what
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did
signify" (1 Pet. i. 10, 11); and how clearly St. Paul had
learned to distinguish between his own human knowledge and
divine revelation when he wrote (1 Cor. vii. 12), "But to the
rest speak I, not the Lord;" and afterwards (xi. 23), "I have
received of the Lord."  Just as in the case of external manifestations, so also in the interior modes of revelation, we
everywhere see it laid down in Scripture that the seers, in
some way or other which doubtless imparted certainty to their
own minds, were conscious of the fact that what was inwardly
perceived or heard by them was not a figment of their own
fancy, but a real revelation from God.
Furthermore, prophecy, which, both in its wider and its
narrower sense, is revelation in the form of word, as contrasted
with miracle, which is revelation in the form of divine action,
is a second proof of the divine reality of revelation.  Many
prophecies, for instance, of the Old Testament give practical
proof, by their punctual fulfilment centuries afterwards, that
they were indeed revelations vouchsafed by God, far transcending the powers of any human calculation.     This is more
especially the case with some of the Messianic prophecies,
which even the presumptuous criticism of the present day
finds a difficulty in referring simply to historical events of the
prophets' own time.   So much at least may be said here,
without at present going into further details; to which must
be added, as a third argument, the testimony of the recipients
of inspiration themselves to the reality of the communications
vouchsafed them. Doubtless-and this is part of our reply
to Lessing-that which in the first instance is a divine gift,
received by faith, becomes by degrees the subject of rational
apprehension (" Credo ut intelligam-I believe, and so come
to understand").   Revelation has a constant tendency to
become nature, that is, to transmute itself, as it were, into
our human flesh and blood, and become part of our ordinary
human intelligence.  But even in this intellectual apprehension of revealed truth,-an apprehension, however, which is
by no means merely intellectual, but far more practical and
moral,-reason is so far from ignoring the supernatural origin




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               119
of revelation, or from confounding it with aly subjective
products of its own, that, on the contrary, the longer it is
exercised in this field, the more clearly does reason recognise
the divine and transcendent character of revealed truth, as
something supernaturally communicated to our human intelligence, and not self-produced; as something to be gradually
appropriated, and not as an original possession.  Belief, therefore, in the divine character of revelation is not a standpoint
which reason has gradually to overcome, but one which, on
the contrary, every increase of spiritual and moral insight has
a constant tendency to illumine and corroborate.
These remarks apply equally to the intellectual apprehension of the original recipients of extraordinary revelations, and
to our present knowledge of revealed truth as derived from
Holy Scripture.  With the preliminary question, whether the
Bible really contains the records of a divine revelation, or is a
mere product of human intelligence, we are not at present
concerned. The only question we have to deal with here is,
whether what we call the witness of the Spirit in our heartsi.e. an inward consciousness of grace, of peace, and divine
communion-may not after all be merely subjective, and have
no producing cause beyond the operations of our own minds?
" Whence canst thou know "-is the question now put to the
Christian man —" that thine inward experiences and enlightenment are, in fact, the operations of the Divine Spirit, and so far
supernatural revelations, and not merely derived from thine
own mind?    Is not thy whole faith, after all, nothing but
self-deception?"
In answer to all this we reply, that Christian Pevelation is
ultimately based on external matters of fact and an objective
history, and not on mere doctrinal truths. Christ Himself, as
a historical personality, is the great fact and substance of His
own revelation. But Facts, with which I become acquainted
by testimony from without, as by hearing and reading, are quite
different sources of knowledge from the workings of my own
mind; and I can readily distinguish between the impression
made by thei former on my heart, and the effect of self-inspired
ideas. My own reflection is sufficient to teach me that I
need and long for something which shall make me inwardly
free and happy. But the sense of this longing, and a conscious.




120               EEASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
ness of its satisfaction, are two very different things: in the one
case, I have an idea; in the other, a fact of experience. If, now,
I feel my longings satisfied by the facts of the Christian
Religion, whereas hitherto my heart has been kept in restless
suspense, in spite of, nay, by reason of, all my meditation on
the inherent ideas of the Good and the True, and if I suddenly
receive from certain spiritual experiences a pledge of freedom
and inward peace which no rational investigation could give
me, then surely I must conclude that this new condition
has been brought about by a Power from   above, and is no
mere creation of my own fancy.     I have, consequently, a
right to make a distinction between an objective divine
revelation and the subjective action of my own mind.
If any one has once become conscious of revelation as a
divine matter of fact in his own heart, he can but smile at
the efforts of reason to deprive him  of that fact.   Any
naturalist who, with hundreds of others, had long observed
some phenomenon, would certainly laugh at the notion of any
one proving to him   dialectically that he had really seen
nothing.  We Christians claim to avail ourselves of the same
right; for quite as groundless are the objections raised against
the facts of our religious consciousness.
Nor shall we be disturbed in our position by the wellknown objection raised by Lessing, primarily against the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. ii. 4), but
in fact against the possibility of proof in the case of any
special revelation whatsoever, arguing that "if no historical
truth can be (absolutely) demonstrated, nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truth," and as a corollary, that
"incidental historical truths can never serve as a proof of
necessary truths of reason."  We do not desire to hold any
long argument as to the doubtful sense and ambiguous wording of this often cited dictum,l nor will we inquire what may
be the nature of these necessary truths of abstract reason,
limitations of reason in the concrete. We would only point
out that at the present day far more importance is attached to
historical proof than was the case in Lessing's age of abstract
philosophy. Everything must now be first demonstrated as
historical reality, before it can put in a claim to be accepted
I Refer to the copious refutation of this in Krauss, ut supr. pp. 95-100.




LECT. II.]          REVEALED RELIGION.                121
as necessary truth.  This is an axiom of all modern science,
natural science especially establishing all its general principles by means of particular empirical facts. Why should
not the same be permitted in the sphere of religion? Carefully examined, Lessing's utterance comes simply to this, that
the Incidental cannot be alleged in proof of the Eternal. WVe
submit that this argument, however incontestable, does not in
the least affect the point here at issue, viz. the proof from
history and inward experiences.  For where will you find a
Christian who considers God's revelations in history and the
facts of his own spiritual experience as merely incidental, and
not rather as the carrying out of eternal purposes?  "Are
not all His works known to God from the beginning of the
world?"   If, however, as is usually the case, the sense
attributed to Lessing's words is, that no particular historical
events can, in preference to any others, be regarded as the
revelation of eternal truths; that God equally reveals Himself
in all that happens according to eternal and immutable laws,
which render any special interference a thing unimaginable,
and that, consequently, single events are only of incidental importance,-we reply that this is simply the rationalistic view,
the untenableness of which we shall presently exhibit in detail.
As in the experience of individuals, so in the entire history
of the race, Revelation is most clearly known by its fruits.
The final and surest proof of the actuality and divine origin
of revelation, is its manifestation in individuals and nations,
as a healing, sin-constraining power, diffusing everywhere
light and life. This is in truth the case, and so evidently do
the representatives of revealed religion excel all their contemporaries in moral and religious force and insight, as to furnish
a weighty and indisputable argument against the rejecters of
revelation. Let them explain to us how, without revelation,
amidst the general obscuration of religious life, an Abraham
could arise and shed abroad his light of faith; or the people of
Israel, in the midst of heathen degradation, and surrounded
by lascivious and cruel idolatries, discover and preserve such
pure ideas of God, and so holy a moral law.  Let them  show
further, how, in a period of universal corruption among both
Jews and Gentiles, and without any supernatural interposition, Christ could arise as the Light of the world and give its




122              REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. IL
whole development a new direction, even down to the present
day, in the path of light and life! All, even the most painstaking recent attempts to prove a natural and human origin
of these phenomena, have, as we shall see further on, turned
out completely inadequate.  The wondrous uniqueness of the
facts themselves, and the blessings which have issued from
them, will ever constitute an irrefragable proof of the divine
origin of revelation.
Bearing this in mind, what shall we say to the bold assertion of Kant and his successors, that any revealed divine
legislation, in addition to the law already recognised by reason
and conscience, would be not merely unnecessary and, psychologically speaking, unverifiable, but even positively injurious;
that free men, whose whole life should be guided by reason
and conscience, would be reduced to moral slavery if "burdened" with a new law in addition to that already received?
That this assertion contains nearly as many errors as words, is
evident, we trust, from what has been already said as to the
insufficiency of Natural Theology and the true character and
need of Revelation. Only those who do not acknowledge the
power of sin can thus speak.  But how grievously, likewise,
is the inner nature of Revelation here misunderstood? Why,
it belongs to the very nature of Revelation not to appear as a
compulsory law, but ever to appeal to human freedom! And
is not its effect, when inwardly experienced, a liberation from
bondage rather than the imposition of a fresh yoke?  Revelation aids, purifies, and supplements Natural Theology, does not,
as an alien element, hinder and oppose it, but rather links
itself on to the whole circle of our other ideas.  As it is, the
Moral Law taken alone is found insufficient by Kant himself,
who is fain to call in the aid of conceptions concerning God
and His government of the world in order to its maintenance.
How can he regard the influence of the divine Will on man as
a burdening of the conscience, whilst elsewhere he makes it
appear as a help?  He confounds-a mistake that cannot be
too strongly deprecated-certain ecclesiastical forms of Christianity with its living spirit and essence. The former may
frequently be a burden, but not so the Spirit of the Lord,
which is indeed a Spirit of liberty (2 Cor. iii. 17). He
forgets that this Lord communicates and reveals Himself, not




LECT. II.]         REVEALED RELIGION.               123
mechanically, or as a Lawgiver of the letter, but through the
Spirit, which operates in our souls, liberating purifying, enlightening, and stimulating all that is good in us, especially
in the faculties of reason and conscience, but burdening and
restricting only what is evil.
And thus, also, is refuted the objection made by Strauss,
that Revelation, as "a direct action of God upon the human
spirit, would leave the latter in a position of absolute passivity,
God being, by His own nature, absolutely active; but the
essence of the human spirit consisting in activity, it is not
capable of becoming absolutely passive, and that, consequently,
the very idea of revelation is impossible." This conclusion,
too, is based on entirely false premises.  In the first place,
the above-named definition by no means exhaustively describes
the essence of revelation.  And where do we find taught in
the Scriptures that there is any such direct influence of
the divine activity on the recipient of revelation as would
thus put a stop to his own, and merge it in absolute
passivity?  According to Scripture (as we have seen), God is
not wont to work directly on man, but through some kind of
medium.   The recipients of revelation are of course receptive,
but not absolutely passive.  On the contrary, the very reception of divine communications, requiring a certain amount
of activity, stimulates all their mental and moral energies to
the highest degree. God, in drawing nigh to any individual
man, has no desire to crush, but rather to awaken and carry
onward him, and through him, others. Even divine commissions are not to be accepted and executed in a spirit of
absolute passivity; and in the recipients of revelation (cf.
Jer. i. 6 and Jonah i. 2, 3) their human freedom remains
unfettered.  How  many opponents of revelation are still
fighting against an idea which is not that of the Scriptures
themselves!
The groundlessness of the various objections to Revelation
having been thus shown, it remains for us now to take in
review



124               REASON AND REVELATION.          [LECT. II.
III.-THE RELATION BETWEEN REVEALED RELIGION AND
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
Does the knowledge of God derived from Revelation stand
in any way in contradiction to Natural Theology, so that one
excludes the other? And if we allow that they agree, and
indeed postulate each other, for which of these -two factors
must we claim precedence?
Reason and revelation have of late very often been placed
in opposition to each other, because the existence of a corresponding antithesis between faith and knowledge1 is taken for
granted. The assumption of this antithesis is now so general,
that there are. not a few even among Christians who accept it.
"With the head a heathen, at heart a Christian," as Jacobi has
put it-this is the conclusion at which they would wish to
stop, allotting to faith the feelings, to knowledge the understanding and reason, as their exclusive domain.  It is high
time that this fundamental error, the consequences of which
are for the most part good-naturedly overlooked, should at last
be recognised as such.   In the first place, it is certainly
psychologically impossible to sever feeling and understanding
as opposed to one another.  No one faculty of the soul can
be brought into action separately without the others being at
the same time exercised.  In every act of the understanding,
feeling and will are more or less involved; and feeling itself
when perfected is one with understanding.   We may well
distinguish between the different functions of the soul, but
we must not sever them from each other.
The same relation exists between faith and knowledge. The
severance of the two, as mutually excluding opposites, indicates a superficial tone of thought.  For all knowledge. is, in
the last instance, conditioned by faith; and faith (i.c. an act of
belief) is the preliminary and the medium of every act of intelligence.  Are you surprised at this proposition? The usual
rationalistic axiom is certainly the reverse of it,-namely, that
everything must first be proved and known before it can be
believed. The superficiality of this axiom may, however, be
1 On the following, cf. the excellent elucidation of the question in Fabri's
Briefe gegen den Materialismus, 2d ed. pp. 164-190.




LECT. II.J       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.               125
readily perceived. Is not every act of knowledge based upon
an act of faith,-namely, the belief that we are, and that we
think?  This fact is always presupposed.  But on what does
its certainty depend? On our thinking?  Can this possibly
prove its own actuality? Would not this be to move in a
circle, and presuppose that which is to be proved?. The
certainty of our thinking depends simply on an act of belief.
Just as the eye never sees itself, but only the outward form
of itself, so also the self-knowing of the mind is not a selfbeholding, but " an ideal cognizance, a radical though mediated
knowledge, i.e. scire credendo" (Delitzsch), a knowledge mediated
by faith. It is by the direct testimony of our own minds that
we are convinced of the fact that we exist, think, wake, and
dream; and this fact neither needs nor is capable of proof; we
merely believe it.
Or what is the case with learning?    In every act of
learning, must not a believing be presupposed, some belief in
the authority of the teacher, and in the truth of that which
is taught?  He who does not start with this belief will never
learn anything. And does not all philosophizing depend on
faith? If a philosopher does not believe in the wisdom with
which the world is filled, he cannot be a lover of wisdom.
When a philosopher presumes to look down on faith, it is a
proof that he does not know on what ground he himself is
standing.  And in every single act of cognition, does not
belief form a connecting link necessary to its completion? In
every cognition of a sensible object, the first decisive step is
the sensuous perception; the second, often so momentary as to
be scarcely perceptible, is the inward affirmation of this perception, the belief in, and acknowledgment of, the testimony
of the senses; then, and not till then, follows the logical conclusion.  It is just so with intellectual cognitions directed to
the supersensuous.  In this, also, the first point is an inward
intellectual perception, the second an assent to or affirmation
of it; whereupon follows the cognition properly so-called.
From this you see that faith is really a preliminary and a
medium of all cognizance, and that all knowing is conditioned
by an act of believing.  He who believes nothing, knows nothing.
"As its ultimate basis, even the most radical unbelief has one
and the same principle of knowledge with Christianity and




126              REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. II.
every other positive religion,-the principle of belief in given
matters of fact, on the ground of the original and direct testimony of the human mind" (Fabri).  He who believes thisand every one must do so-will find it a contradiction to
reject the testimony of Christian and religious consciousness
to the existence and the inward experience of some supersensuous world. The existence of this, as of the material
world, can never be proved by mere reasoning; to this must
be added an experience based on belief. If such testimony is
allowed to be valid as regards the material world, why not as
regards the supersensuous?
Our former remarks as to the certainty of an inwardly
experienced fact of revelation are thus afresh corroborated.
He who experiences in his own mind God's testimony of
Himself as the living, holy, and gracious One, may take his
stand upon this as a matter of fact, with as good a right as
the naturalist on his experimental observations.  For both
attain their experimental knowledge on the same principle of
belief.
A like view of the relation between faith and knowledge'
is found in Holy Scripture, which recognises no true knowledge
except such as is grounded on belief. True faith, according
to Scripture, conducts the human soul not only to peace and
joy, but also to light and truth.  It is the apprehension of
divine truth which depends on one suffering himself to be
apprehended; it is the saying "Yea and Amen" thereto, and
is accomplished and perfected in the most intimate surrender of
the heart, resulting, as does all perception and experience, in real
knowledge.  Peter says (John vi. 69), " We have believed and
are sure:".faith leads on to knowledge, of which it is itself the
first beginning.  As an undoubting and assured conviction of
the unseen (Heb. xi. 1), it is the organ for the immaterial
world, and for our knowledge of it.  It is not therefore knowledge but unbelief which is opposed to faith; that is, the resolve
neither to accept nor to be convinced of the reality of the
supersensuous and its influence on the world. For this postulate, the reality of the Invisible is the ultimate point at which
faiti and unbelief part company, and at which there is no
alternative except either belief or unbelief.  In religious
things, therefore, the antithesis is not that of faith and know.




LECT. II.]       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.              127
ledge, but that of faith and unbelief, or of religious knowledge
and religious ignorance; or again, yet more often of religious
belief and knowledge on the one hand, and irreligious belief
and knowledge on the other.
From all this, we may now gather the right view of the
relation between Revealed Religion and Natural Theology.
Revelation and reason, no more than faith and knowledge, can
in principle contradict one another.  Reason cannot object if
we derive our knowledge of God in a supernatural way, since,
as we have seen, faith is the principle of knowledge in both
cases.  As far, however, as regards the substance of the
knowledge thus arrived at, whether by means of Natural or
Revealed Theology, we find as the result that the one postulates the other, and for this reason the two theologies cannot
be considered as opposed. Reason, especially when under
the influence of sin, shows, by the imperfection of its ideal
products as exhibited in history, how much it stands in need
of the guidance, regulation, and assistance of Divine Revelation.
Reason and faith are, in the divine order of things, destined
as it were to a spiritual wedlock, in which faith shall be the
masculine and productive, reason the feminine and receptive
power. Faith, from the invisible world in which it lives,
must bring the truths unattainable by reason and impart
them to her; while reason, thus fructified and invigorated, is
enabled to search into the ultimate grounds and inner essence
of the objects of religious knowledge, to connect, systematize,
and duly arrange them. But if, without the aid of her lord
and master, she endeavour to obtain for herself the materials
of religious thought, we must, in view of all the independent
efforts of merely rational theology in ancient and modern
times, agree with the utterance of Matthias Claudius, that he
"found it much more difficult to vindicate the wisdom of
reason against faith, than that of faith against reason," or with
the Scotch sceptic, when he says, that "the ultimate fruit of
all philosophy is the observation of human ignorance and
weakness" (Hume).    In fine, might we not almost express
the result of our investigation in the words of Hamann,-that
"dark philosopher of the North," Kant's contemporary and
fellow-townsman,-" As the law was given to the Jews, not
to make them righteous, but to convict them of unrighteous



128               REASON AND REVELATION.           [LECT. II.
ness, so in the same way reason was given to our race, not to
make us wise, but to convict us of our own ignorance; so
that errors might thereby be multiplied as sin was strengthened
by the law"?1
But, on the other hand, Revelation no less requires the
co-operation of reason and conscience, with which, by its own
inherent ethical laws and purposes, it is necessarily connected.
Every particular revelation is based upon and fits into the
universal and natural, the religious and moral elements of
which it receives and adapts in order to give them further
development, and impart to them  a higher substance.  If, for
instance, Conscience. is able of itself in some measure to
recognise the justice of God, Revelation leads it to a comprehension of His absolute holiness. If in nature and in history
we find some traces of a ruling providence, the observation is
amplified by Revelation into the assurance that such a providence extends to all, even the most trivial-seeming circumstances of each individual life.  When a consideration of the
world and of ourselves has brought home to us the necessity
of some divine assistance against the universal corruption of
death, Revelation steps in and tells us of redemption accomplished, and of the way to salvation. By no means does it
set aside Natural Theology as useless, nor does it desire-no
matter how often the reproach may be made-either to restrict
or to suppress the operations of reason and conscience, but only,
on the contrary, to elevate, enlarge, and render them more acute.
Revelation, it is true, would have reason "made captive to
the obedience of Christ;" not, however, in order to render it
blind, but to enable it to see more clearly, and to make it
really serviceable and efficacious by liberating it from the bondage of error (John viii. 32). This submission only takes place
to be followed by an exaltation; it is nothing but the transition to a knowledge all the higher and purer, and a use of reason
all the more powerful.  Hence the words of St. Paul, "When
I am weak, then am   I strong."  The act of submission brings
with it the reception of light, and the communication of a filler
moral and religious knowledge, thus producing sound and
1 Collected Works, i. p. 405 ff. On the details of this, cf. the talented and
instructive lecture of Grau, " Ueber den Glauben als die hochste Vernunft"
(Beweis des Glaubens, 1865, p. 110 ff.).




LECT. IT.]       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.              129
enlightened views on all fundamental points, such as the doctrine of God, the world, the destination of man, sin and its
cure; —views which must lead to a sound practical judgment,
and a conformable course of life.  So far, therefore, from faith
being unreason, it is in truth the highest form of reason, and the
only way to progressive perfection of the intellect. Innumerable instances might be adduced to prove this power of faith
in thoroughly cultivating and infinitely raising our moral
intuitions. The fact that the opponents of revelation so often
reproach its defenders with " obscurantism," only goes to prove
that they completely misapprehend the nature and the effects
of faith.
And, as in the case of individuals, so also in that of the
whole race and its Natural Theology, Revelation merely steps
in to its aid, setting up, as it were, landmarks for necessary
guidance in the region of moral and religious thought, and
supplying a support for human infirmity in a few fundamental facts and truths; its purpose being to indicate to men,
by a few master-strokes, their divine destiny and the way to
its fulfilment; and that not in order to perplex, but to enlighten; not to bring into bondage, but to lead aright, to save
from wandering in endless aimless labyrinths, and at the same
time guide investigation of the traces of Divine Revelation in
the world, in history, and in Scripture, and, in a word, assist
the search after their underlying unity.  Nor, in good sooth,
does Reason forfeit aught of her dignity in thankfully accepting such assistance.  If this assistance came from an inferior,
Reason might find some excuse for despising it.  But surely
no creature need to be ashamed of help from its Creator; it
does but honour itself in accepting it.  "True Christianity,"
says Pascal, "consists in the submission as well as in the use
of reason.  It is Reason's last step to acknowledge that there
is an infinity of things which transcend her powers. She
remains weak till she comes to the acknowledgment of this
her own insufficiency.  Doubt and assert we all must at
times, but must learn at proper times to submit also.  He
who cannot do this, knows not yet the true strength of
Reason."
And that brings us to the right point of view from which to
decide the last question,-To which of the two must we conI




130               REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. IL
cede the superiority when Reason and Revelation diverge
from one another? Although they are not, as we have seen,
opposed in principle, still in certain cases the teachings of
Revelation frequently lie so far beyond the scope of Reason as
to make her slow to accept them.  In this case, rationalism
would make Reason the superior judge, and accept only that
which can be logically demonstrated. Here we see a growing
faculty that is ever changing, and constantly requires fresh
material, without ever coming to maturity, put forward claims
which would presuppose it complete and perfect.  Instead of
this, we gather from the preceding that the only true view is
that which subordinates reason to revelation. Not, First understand and then accept, is the maxim to be adopted in seeking
religious truth, but, First submit and accept the truth, then
you will be able to obtain a thorough intellectual knowledge
of it. Finite reason must submit itself to infinite; the never
fully educated human understanding, limited as it is by time,
matter, and individuality, must yield to the perfect truth
which proceeds from God; a judgment which is subject to
vacillations and disturbances, to one that is ever settled and
abiding.  "To improve religion by means of reason," exclaims
Claudius on one occasion, " appears to me just as if I were to
try to set the sun by my old wooden clock."
Let Reason ever remain mindful of her own limitations.
Let her not summon everything before her judgment-seat
alone, especially questions, the final decision of which belongs
to the moral feelings and the will. Let her especially cease to
confound that which is above reason with that which is against
reason: an error fraught with evil consequences for so many.
Those parts of revelation which it is beyond the power of
Reason fully to comprehend-such as miraculous facts and
the mysteries of faith-are presented to her not as absurdities
to be laughed at and rejected, as is often done by intellectually
slothful and superficial Unbelief, but as deep and earnest problems, which it is our solemn duty to investigate, although to
master them a whole life-time, yea, eternities, were requisite.
Mysteries like these, which in this life we cannot fully comprehend, need by no means fill us with mistrust of faith
For "if all life has its mysteries, how much more the highest
life! It all turns upon the question whether Reason recognises




LECT. II.]       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.               131
faith as life, and, indeed, the highest form of life," and has
learnt to see that everywhere the higher life transcends the
laws of the lower, and, so that no higher form of being can be
comprehended by the laws which regulate those beneath it (see
Lect. v., on Miracles).  Let Reason therefore seek in herself,
and not in faith or in revelation, as such, the cause of what
is obscure and incomprehensible; and let her conclude, from
that which she has learnt to see of revelation, as to the truth
and excellence of that which still seems dark to her.  Let
her endeavour to bring light into this obscurity as far as possible, not, however, in a merely intellectual way, but first of
all in that which revelation itself indicates as indispensable,
the way of moral action and obedience (John v. 17). If,
without pursuing this course, she seeks to appropriate supernatural truths, she will never attain her end.  Only, let her
not say that these truths are incredible and irrational, since
she will not take the one possible way to understand and
appropriate them.
If, on the contrary, Reason would only seek in the right
way to penetrate into the mysteries of revelation, she would,
with regard to much that might be new to her, and which
she never could deduce from her own premises, be enabled,
as it were, to follow the divine thought and sympathize with
the divine intention; to recognise what was at first incomprehensible to her more and more in its wisdom and fitness, and,
indeed, as the expression of the highest Reason, as the most
certainly and absolutely True.  In this way the objective facts
of revelation would be ever growing more subjectively certain,
and the original difference between the two would be tending
more and more to disappear.
But what, in all conscience, gives Reason a right to reject
historically attested matters of fact, merely because she is
unable to derive and prove them  directly from her own consciousness, or because she cannot forthwith understand them,
while there are millions who testify that, in their case, the
conviction of their truth only gradually dawned upon them?
The same is the case with Conscience. Let him who would
make conscience the criterion of revelation show us first of
all-a much more difficult task than is generally supposedwhat there is in the witness of conscience that is so special,




132               REASON AND REVELATION.         [LECT. II.
independent, and immutable as to constitute it the measure of
the truth of revelation.  Let him show us, further, that those
portions of revelation which conscience would reject are really
of immoral tendency, and run counter to our inherent sense of
right.  If our previous delineation of the character of revelation has shown that this is impossible, and if history irrefutably proves that conscience in itself has no adequate
guarantee against constant vacillations and errors, then surely
it is sufficiently clear that conscience mu.st be subordinate to the
revealed Word as its fixed rule and guiding-star.  Do we not
perceive this in ourselves?  Honestly speaking! must we
not confess that our conscience is always clearer, tenderer,
and more acute when we open it to the influence of revelation; and, on the other hand, that it is always duller, laxer,
and more obscure when we withdraw it from that influence?
Is not this again a proof that conscience must be guided
and enlightened by revelation, and not vice versa?   But
clearly, whatever a thing is guided by, to that it must be
subordinate.
True enough, it has been maintained, in order to claim for
conscience greater fixedness of character, that it is the conscience of the whole body of Christians, and not that of
individuals, which is to be the rule and measure of revelation.
But who will show    us this collective conscience?  What
differences would not present themselves on inquiry between
the collective consciences of various Christian churches?
And would not whatever they might hold in common be the
fruit of the one revelation?  Is the Christian conscience to
sit in judgment on that from which it has virtually sprung?
The truth is, that the conscience even of whole nations and
churches is subject to great obscurations and disturbances, as
we have previously hinted. How blinded, for instance, was
the collective Christian conscience of the Southern States of
North America with regard to the question of slavery?  If
revelation did not form. the criterion of our belief, we should
have no firm ground to stand upon. To make conscience
the measure of our faith, is simply "to degrade the greatness of divine thoughts to the narrowness and smallness of
human."
Revelation is for our theology what the telescope is for




LECT. IT.]       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.              133
our knowledge of the stars, and bears the same relation to
reason and conscience as the telescope does to the naked eye.
One in either case requires the other. The telescope enhances,
sharpens, and extends the powers of the natural eye, but
demands at the same time its full activity.  Any one who
should study astronomy without the use of the telescope
would attain some slight degree of knowledge, but many
thousand stars and beauties of the heavens would escape his
observation.  So he who would know God without the aid of
revelation must suffer from the same poverty and insecurity
in his religious knowledge.  But just as the uncertain testimony of the naked eye is subordinate to the clearer testimony
of the assisted vision, so should it be with natural knowledge
in comparison with the witness of revelation. And if, on
account of the imperfection of our thoughts as well as of our
belief, the combined testimony of both leaves many lacunae
unfilled, yet these lacunae are by no means contradictions.
And even if Natural and Revealed Theology are now found
in several respects to diverge from one another, yet a day is
certainly coming when their union will be complete.  Revelation
and nature are developing towards one great goal at which
they will coalesce.  The perfecting of the one is that of the
other.  The fixed tendency of revelation to become nature, to
make itself more and more a citizen on earth, in order to
make earth the chosen place of divine revelation, this tendency is one day to be completely realized; the consummated
kingdom q/ God will combine both elements-the highest degree
of revelation and the highest development of nature.
It appears to me that the Holy Scriptures themselves
explain very beautifully and profoundly the relation which
natural and revealed religion bear to each other, and their
close affinity in principle and purpose, in the story of the Wise
Men from the East.  They came to the Holy Land led by a
supernatural revelation granted to them in connection with
astronomy, the branch of natural learning which they
pursued,-a comforting indication that every earnest, honest
search after liqht and truth leads to its discovery.  The lower
revelation, when rigqhtly tsed, prepares for a higher one.  Not
the law of Moses alone, but also the heathen philosophy and
investigation of nature, was a preparation for the clear light




134              REASON AND REVELATION.       [LECT. IL.
of Truth which was to shine forth in Christ. It is only when
superficially tasted —as Bacon well says —that philosophy
leads us away from God; deeper draughts of a thorough and
real philosophy bring us back to Him. And, we add, with a
more modern natural philosopher (Oerstedt), " every thorough
knowledge of nature leads to a knowledge of God." The true
spirit of science, the only aim of which is truth, ever points
and impels us towards the Centre of all knowledge and all
truth; the One "in whom are hidden all the treasures of
wisdom and of knowledge."  To Him, not only the Scriptures
with the ever-waxing light of their revelation, but heathen
wisdom, too, amid its gropings for truth in the starry heavens,
still point us; to attain to its salvation all history in its
ruins, nature in her pangs, the heart in its grief, and the whole
creation in its groaning and travailing for freedom (Rom. viii.
19-23) are ever striving.
The wise men come to Jerusalem; but they do not find
the path to Bethlehem till enlightened by the prophetical word,
-a hint that the light of Natural Revelation needs to be
supplemented by that of Scripture.  Their heathen knowledge,
when aided even by the clearest light of Natural Revelation,
brings them at best only into the immediate neighbourhood of
salvation; fully attain to it they cannot, unless the Divine
Word be vouchsafed as a key to the understanding of the
Divine Works.
Lastly, they go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, guided by
the harmoniously blended light of the prophetic utterance and
of the Star, which, through its means, has once more appeared
to them,-a sign that no real contradictions exist between the
two revelations in the Word and in nature, but that they are
one both in their divine origin and in the end to which they
point. We men may, perhaps, by our own fault, and owing
to the imperfection of our knowledge, lose for a time the trace
of a connection between the two; but he who deals faithfully
with the measure of knowledge and revelation entrusted to
him, and is obedient to the heavenly guidance, will be led
step by step to the full knowledge of the truth. Such an one
shall be more and more clearly and harmoniously enlightened
by the different forms of God's revelation, until at last he sees
how all their manifold beams converge in, and radiate from,




LECT. II.]       RELATION BETWEEN THEM.              135
the one Sun, which is the Brightness and the Heart of the
Holy Scriptures, as well as the Light of the world and the
Centre of its history,-from  Him  who, as the everlasting
Word, unites in Himself at once eternal Reason and eternal
Revelation.




136   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III
THIRD LECTURE.
MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.
IT has been justly said, that religion is the first power upon
earth.  Any one who attentively considers the history
of the world and its culture, in the light, not merely of surface
events, but of the internal motives which determine its development, cannot fail to apprehend this truth.
Even Goethe, in his Abhandlungen zum westostlichen Divan,
acknowledges that "the only real and the deepest theme of
the world's and of man's history, to which all other subjects
are subordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief."
As long as the religious question remains unsolved, there
will always be plenty of external "questions" on the Tiber
or the Rhine, in Constantinople or in Washington.  Since
the great French Revolution, however, the religious question
has entered upon a fresh, and, if I am not mistaken, upon the
last stage of its development.  The issue, taken as a whole,
no longer lies in isolated dogmatical differences between the
various churches; even the controversy between Protestantism
and Romanism has in public life become a secondary question.  The question now is, 7whether shall continue to exist at all
-Christian belief. The battle of centuries between belief
and unbelief is in our days nearly tending to the point where
the decisive question must be put, whether the Christian
religion shall continue to be maintained as the basis and rule
of our civilisation, or whether it must be wholly abandoned.
"To be, or not to be; that is the question " now-a-days for the
Christian faith; and this question, if any, must be the last,
just as two thousand years ago it was the first.
Nothing shows this so clearly as the present position of the
controversy about the idea of God. We have already remarked that, in the conflict between belief and unbelief, it is
the idea of God which always forms the heart's core of the




LECT. III.]  MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  137
matter, the vital question, and which decides as to our view
of Christianity generally, and of all particular dogmas.  The
present contest, too, as to the person of Christ, the gospel
history, and the entire origin of Christianity, resolves itself
into certain fundamental differences in the conception of God.
The efforts of Strauss, Renan, and all the negative critics of
this class, are, as we shall see, based upon a non-biblicalviz. the pantheistic-idea of God, and this they are seeking
to introduce into the world.  It is a non-biblical idea of God,
the deistical, rationalistic idea, on which the "free-thinking" theology-that is, the theology which denies all that is
supernatural-and all its products are based.  Hegel's conception of God it really is which makes Baur and his school
attempt to derive the entire origin of Christianity from merely
natural sources.  We shall therefore dwell rather longer on
this cardinal point. For when we have once established the
untenableness of these fundamental views, it will be all the
easier to understand how weak is the criticism based upon
them.
The controversy as to the idea of God is no longer the same
as it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. At that time,
if we except a few pantheists, the existence of a personal God
was not generally called in question; and hence the only
disputable point was God's action in the world, whether He
could work miracles, whether His providence extended to all
things, whether Christ was truly divine, and the like. In
the present day, however, it is not merely this that is called
in question, but also the existence of God at all, and consequently the existence of the human spirit as a distinct
essence. Formerly the issue lay between Biblical Christianity
and Deism: now it lies between Christianity and-nothing;
between belief in God as the personal Spirit who is Love,
and the denial of God, which must be the annihilation of
man's spiritual and moral being. This you will see in the
consideration of our next subject-Atheism and Materialism.
It would be an unprofitable and thankless undertaking
were we to attempt in due order to refute all the non-biblical
ideas of God which have ever presented themselves.  Their
number is incalculable. Almost every idea of reason, almost
every imaginable conception of the universe, has, one time or




138   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. HI.
another in the history of philosophy, been maintained as an
idea of God. Reason restlessly moves from one fundamental
principle to another, and, in its hasty progress towards something new, ultimately returns to that which is old, as in the
present day Materialism has reverted to the principles of the
older Ionic and Atomistic Philosophy. Under these circumstances, it is better to take in review only the fundamental
forms under which all the non-biblical, philosophical, and
scientific conceptions of God may be included; and in so doing,
we shall, of course, give special attention to the ideas which
prevail in our own time. We find that they diverge into
three main tendencies, regarding the Absolute either as a universal Material Substance, or as an impersonal, unconsciously
working Anima Mundi, or as the Creator of the world-personal
indeed, but not exercising any direct influence on its present
life.  These are the distinguishing marks of the systems of
MATERIALISM, PANTHEISM, and DEISM; but before considering
them, we will first take a glance at ATHEISM as forming the
most direct contrast to the biblical doctrine of God.
L-ATHEISM.
This is the absolute denial of any kind of 9eo&, that is, of
any Divine Being, and therefore cannot be classed among the
ideas of God above mentioned.  This view, that there is absolutely no God at all, was so much detested by the ancient
Greeks, that they considered Atheism synonymous with wickedness; and those who had the reputation of holding this opinion
were more than once banished, and their names (as that of a
Diagoras, a Bion, or a Lucian) stigmatized by history. We
also find the principle of Atheism-although not strictly carried out-in Buddhism, inasmuch as it acknowledges as the
Absolute, only the absolute Nothing from which everything
springs and to which everything returns.
This view, after having for ages appeared only quite sporadically, first assumed the character of a system-it indeed it be
worthy of the name-in the train of French Materialism. La
Mettrie, for instance, pronounced the belief in the existence of a
God to be as groundless as it was unprofitable. This tendency, as




LECT. III.]              ATHEISM.                      139
is well known, penetrated the mass of the French people during
the " reign of terror" under the Convention, when the " Hebertists" laid it down as a principle, "that the King of Heaven
must be dethroned just as the kings of the earth." Encouraged
by the abjuration of Christianity on the part of the Bishop of Paris
and his priests, they came before the Convention with a petition,for the abrogation of Christianity, and the institution of a
worship of Reason, presenting the wife of one of their colleagues
as the Goddess of Reason.  Clad in white garments and a skyblue mantle, with the red cap on her head and a pike in her
hand, they placed her on a fantastically ornamented car, and
conducted her, surrounded by crowds of bacchanalian dancers,
to the " Temple of Reason," as they were pleased to rename
the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. There she was seated on the
high altar, and, amidst profound obeisances, frantic speeches,
and frivolous songs, divine honours were paid to her,-a
scandal which was immediately imitated in several thousand
churches in the country.  Who does not see from this what
abysses are opened before a nation when Atheism once gains
ground in it!
Let no one imagine that such scenes cannot be repeated.
Not many years ago, at a students' congress in Liege, some of
the speakers declared, amidst universal applause, that " their
aim was to do away with all religions, to destroy all churches,
and to eradicate every thought of God from the consciousness
of their fellow-men; and that in their opinion Atheism was the
ultimate aim of all human science."  Even amidst the bombastic perorations of a Geneva "Peace Congress," sentiments
of this kind may now and then be distinctly recognised.
Quite recently all doubt as to the growing power of Atheism
has been removed by the'blasphemous "Manifestos" of the
Communel and the " International," as well as by the openly
avowed tendency of many of our Socialist Unions.
Of late, too, some of our own literati and poets have been
un-German enough to try to transplant this tendency into our
1 Cf. what Gustave Flourens, the late leader of the Red Republican party in
Paris, writes in his journal, La libre Pensee, for October 1870 -" Our enemy
is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If mankind would make
true progress, it must be in the basis of Atheism. Every trace of religion must
be banished from the education of our children," etc. etc.




140    IODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
German soil. Ay, a well-known representative of the people
has laid it down, as the task to be carried out, and to a great extent accomplished by the present age, " to educate in Atheism
personal enemies of a personal God, especially amongst the class
of German artisans."  And was not, about twenty-five years
since, Atheism publicly toasted at the banquet of a literary
society? But philosophers also come forward as its advocates.
Feuerbach pronounces, " There is no God; it is as clear as the
sun and as evident as the day that there is no God, and still
more, that there can be none.  For if there were a God, then
there must be one; He would be necessary. But now if there
is no God, then there can be no God; therefore there is no
God.   There is no God, because there cannot be any."  A
pretty kind of logic, which saves us the trouble of any refutation! In a similar way, only in a more philosophical garb,
another follower of Hegel, in his work, Christenthum  und
Hlmanismus, introduces his Atheism   to the world by endeavouring to show that " because there is no God, there can
also be no objective belief.  Man has placed himself, in the
shape of the ideal after which he strives, as a religious subject,
outside and above his own consciousness, and worships the
God whom he has thus set up." In fact the world, as one of
his critics remarks, "is a great madhouse; by some inexplicable
bewitchment man sees above him his own shadow, and takes
it to be the real author of his existence."
If Atheism takes its stand on such arguments as these, we
may fairly ask whether those who proclaim it were themselves
convinced of it?  It has been said, not without good reason,
that Atheism never really existed as a full conviction in any
human breast, and that there is always an underlying selfdeception whenever any one professes to be a pure atheist.
That one, in a fanatical over-estimation of reason, should
imagine himself able to know and investigate everything, and
curtly deny whatever is beyond his knowledge; or that, in the
pride which declines to acknowledge either sin or its Avenger,
he should believe himself all-sufficient, in base dependence on
the world of sense, denying everything that does not belong
to it, and thus persuading himself that no God exists,-this,
after all, is conceivable enough.  But that he should, consciously and conscientiously, make this idle notion his per



LECT. III.]              ATHEISM.                     141
manent conviction, and that he should not, when denying the
Christin's God, venerate aught else as the Divine Power,
this is difficult to believe, even apart from the fact that, notwithstanding all the trouble which atheists have taken to discover but one nation utterly devoid of religious consciousness,
we have found, down to the present day, in all nations, even
the most degraded, some conception or other of a Higher Being,
and a feeling of dependence on supernatural powers, and consequently some kind of religious exercise.  Cicero's question
(De Nat. Deorum, i. 16) still holds good —" What people is
there, or what race of men, which has not, even without
traditional teaching, some presentiment of the existence of
Gods?".Does not this indicate that the belief in some higher
and more powerful Being by which he is conditioned, is both a
logical and a moral necessity for man? Or must not that in
which not merely many (which would prove nothing), but all
agree, be grounded in the nature and essence of man himself?
Yes, human thought must recognise God just as certainly
as itself and the world. As a modern apologist says: " We
cannot, in any way, get rid of the idea."'    We do not
merely believe that there is a God, but we know it in
virtue of an ideal cognition consisting in an immediate
act of faith in human consciousness. And this very fact,
that a direct certainty of God exists in our minds per se,
is the most simple refutation of Atheism.  It is not as if the
idea of God were in its complete shape innate in our minds.
We have seen above that there is no such thing as full-grown
innate ideas. Rather, the idea of God developes itself (along,
with those of our own personality and the Cosmos) through
contact with the outer world, of necessity, from the inward predisposition of our mental and moral constitution. Man, in
becoming conscious of his own personality, becomes at the
same time conscious of his state as a conditioned and limited
being; from which follows, as a necessary corollary, the acknowledgment that there must be a Being who is absolute and unconditioned.  " The perception of his own relativity leads man
to the idea of some higher Being on whom his own existence
I Cf. the well-known and excellent Apologetic Lectures by Luthardt, of which
a translation has been published by Messrs. Clark. Also, for what follows,
Delitzsch ut supr., pp. 66, 67.




142    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.          [LECT. In.
depends, and this Being he can only conceive as one that is
absolute-above himself and above nature-that is, God."1
Whether this higher Being must also be conceived as
personal, we shall presently have to investigate, when considering the impersonal (pantheistic) idea of God.      Here we have
only to do with the idea of God as a necessary postulate of
thought.    And we see that the atheist can give no          clear
account of the inner elements and the extent of his own
consciousness.
Even heathen thinkers have recognised the importance of
this universal fact of ethnology and psychology as telling in
favour of belief in God.     That that "wherein all by nature
agree must be true," is a conclusion rightly drawn by Cicero.
Or could a man in his senses venture to tax the whole of
mankind with an error in their consciousness?         No lie can
last for ever; only truth is eternal.    If the consciousness of
God were an error, it would, like any other error, have long
ago vanished. But instead of this, we see it propagating
itself with growing power through all the ages.
If, then, the existence of God be an inward necessity of
thought, the denial of it can be nothing but an arbitrary act
of our will; it is that we will not acknowledge this inward
certainty. As an element of our consciousness, as a divine
gift implanted in the heart, the idea of God precedes all other
thought, and the only question is, whether we are willing to
let it stand as truth or not.   If we acknowledge it, the heart
convinces the understanding, and not vice versa.       Hence the
belief in God is " not a science, but a virtue." If, however,
1 Deltzsch ut supr. Taking this into consideration, we cannot deny that some
weight is to be attached to the much reviled ontological argument for the existence
of God. The way in which it is usually put is this-that the idea of the Most
Perfect Being includes reality as one of His perfections, and that, consequently,
the Most Perfect Being necessarily exists, which has been clearly shown by Kant
to be a false conclusion. But is it not " an immediate certainty that the greatest,
most beautiful, and most valuable object must be a reality, and not a mere matter
of thought; for it would be utterly intolerable to believe our highest Ideal to be
a mere conception of our intellect, without actual existence, power, or validity "
Even if we cannot, from the perfection of the absolutely Perfect, logically infer
its actual existence, still we distinctlyfeel the impossibility of its non-existence.
"If the Greatest did not exist, there would be no Greatest; and it is surely
impossible that the Greatest of all imaginable beings should not exist. " Lotze,'Mikrokosmus, iii. p. 557




LECT. III.]             ATHEISM.                    143
we will not allow the idea of God, it is because the understanding is unwilling to be thus convinced by the heart, and
this is an arbitrary act. It was therefore a perfectly correct
instinct which led the Greeks to look upon Atheism as a
moral fault.  And every moral fault avenges itself. The
refusal to acknowledge that which is, and absolutely is, and is
directly certain to every heart, leads to the acceptance of that
which is nothing but a deceptive shadow.  Man must have a
God.  If he rejects the true God, he must make a God for
himself, and this is of necessity a false one.  " Man must believe in something. If he does not believe in the Eternal
Reason, he believes in unreason; if he does not accept as the
truth the living God, he believes in the idol of inanimate
matter."
The pretensions of Atheism would seem to be supported by
the rejection in modern times of the old arguments which had
long obtained in favour of the existence of a God.  We reserve the most important of these for our consideration of
Pantheism, merely remarking that they are not, it is true, cogent.
To one who does not believe in the foundation of all religion,
that is, the reality of the supersensuous, they prove nothing;
for the existence of the supersensuous can never be demonstrated by mere reasoning.  But for one who has this belief,
they do possess a certain force: they have the value of a
subjective assurance," since they make the existence of God
in the highest degree probable to reason.
Granted, however, that the existence of a God cannot be proved,
still less can His non-existence.  This can be shown without
difficulty. The denial of the existence of God involves a
perfectly monstrous hypothesis; it is, when looked at more
closely, an unconscionable assumption. Before one can say
that the world is without a God, he must first have become
thoroughly conversant with the whole world. He must have
searched through the universe of suns and stars, as well as
the history of all ages; he must have wandered through the
whole realm of space and time in order to be able to assert
with truth, "Nowhere has a trace of God been found!"  He
must be acquainted with every force in the whole universe;
for should but one escape him, that very one might be God.
He must be able to count up with certainty all the causes




144   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   [LECT. III.
of existence; for were there one that he did not know, that
one might be God. He must be in absolute possession of all
the elements of truth, which form the whole body of our
knowledge; for else the one factor which he did not possess
might be just the very truth that there is a God.  If he does
not know and cannot explain everything that has happened
in the course of ages, just the very point which he does not
know, and is unable to explain, may involve the instrumentality of a God.  In short, to be able to affirm authoritatively
that no God exists, a man must be omniscient and omnipresent,
that is, he himself must be God; and then after all there would
be one.  You see in this the monstrosity of the atheistic
hypothesis, that it is possible to prove the non-existence of
God. Atheism depends as much, and more, than Theism on
faith, that is, on assumptions which cannot be proved.
Finally, we would ask, What advantage accrues to the
solution of the world's enigma if we assume the non-existence
of a God? None at all can we see. The atheist, just as the
materialist and the pantheist, must suppose the world to
be eternal. Is its existence in any way thus explained? It
may, at the present day, be physically proved with tolerable
certainty, that the first fact of which any trace is extant in
the world's history is the appearance of light. This brings us,
as a scientific naturalist remarks, "to the limit of our physical
knowledge, and to the very end of what we can discover as
regards the material world."  If we inquire further, Whence
this principle of light? Holy Scripture at once gives the
answer: "God said, Let there be light;"-the atheist, the
materialist, and the pantheist have no answer to give; they
say that light, or the matter and force from which light is
derived, has existed from everlasting. What does this explain? These sceptics may pronounce the idea of a God
existing from all eternity incomprehensible, but they forget
that their idea of eternal matter is at least equally unexplained. Where, then, is the advantage?  For the rest, the
arguments to be adduced against Materialism and Pantheism,
especially those of a moral nature, apply also to Atheism.




LECT. III.]             MATERIALISM.                 145
II. —MATERTALISI.
Materialism is the twin brother of Atheism.  They must
necessarily be simultaneous; for he who denies the existence
of God, is unable, as we shall see, to maintain the spiritual
personality of man.  Historically it invariably either proceeds
or closely follows Atheism. The two play into one another's
hands, and, in fact, amount to the same thing. For Atheism
must ultimately believe in the eternity of matter, and, just
like Materialism, must make it its God. Between Materialism
and Pantheism, however, a distinction must be drawn. Pantheism considers God as the Soul of the world, and material
nature as His body only.  Materialism merges God in matter;
for, according to it, nothing at all exists but matter,-there is no
such thing as a separate spiritual substance.  All that exists is
material; and that which is called spirit, or spiritual life, is
nothing but a function of the life of the body, a necessary
product of sensuous perception, and of the nutritive natter
absorbed by us, but pre-eminently of the action of the cerebral
muscles. Materialism may well be called the gospel of the
flesh; it is the absolute deification of matter and of the
creature, traces of which pervade the whole history of mankind from  Babel and Sodom onwards; nay, from the tasting
of the forbidden fruit in Paradise down to our own days.
Every false belief, and every act of unbelief, like that of
Thomas, involves a disposition to sensualism and materialism.
Every apostasy from the living God, who is a Spirit, necessitates a tendency in the opposite direction to the deification of
the flesh, though it may not always go so far.
Hence unbelief has constantly from time to time landed in
Materialism. We find it in the Buddhism of ancient India;
in Greece, among the Atomists and the Sophists, the Epicureans and the Sceptics; we find it in the middle ages,
when the Roman Church clearly betrayed her tendency to
the worship of matter, and even at times among the occupants
of the Papal throne, of whom, for instance, John xxII. (d.
1419) and Paul II. (d. 1549) publicly denied the immortality of the soul; we find it in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, as the ultimate result of the long-protracted doubts
K




146   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.     [LECT. II.
as to revelation; and everywhere do we see it exercising the
same pernicious effect on nations, everywhere rushing through
the same circle till it attains its climax in despair of all
knowledge of truth, giving the rein to all evil desires, and
finally destroying its own existence.
In our days, the materialistic view has obtained a widespread acceptation, owing to the fact, that many natural
philosophers assume the entirely material descent of mankind,
and make out that the ancestors of our race, just like other
mammals, especially apes, originally sprang from the primeval
slime.  In Germany, too, the influence of this school has been
no slight one during the last decades.  L. Feuerbach, C. Vogt,
J. Moleschott, Biichner, Czolbe, and others, were, and still are,
the chief heralds of this wisdom.  "The soul," exclaims Vogt
(Physiologische Brirfe, 1846), " does not enter into the human
loetus like an evil spirit into one possessed, but is the product
of the brain's development, just as muscular action is produced
by the development of the muscles, and secretion by that of
the glands.-To assume the existence of a soul which uses
the brain as an instrument with which to work as it pleases,
is utter nonsense.  Physiology distinctly and categorically
pronounces against any individual immortality, and against
all ideas which are connected with the figment of a separate
existence of the soul."  "Man," says Moleschott (der Kreislazf
des Lebens, physioloqische Antizorten   avf Liebig's chemische
Briefe, 4th Ed. 1863), "is produced from wind and ashes.
The action of vegetable life called him into existence.  Man
is the sum of his parents and his wet-nurse, of time and place,
of wind and weather, of sound and light, of food and clothing;
his will is the necessary consequence of all these causes,
governed by the laws of nature, just as the planet in its orbit,
and the vegetable in its soil.  Thought consists in the motion
of matter, it is a translocation of the cerebral substance;
without phosphorus there can be no thought; and consciousness itself is nothing but an attribute of matter."  The watchword of this school is, in short, fWe are wv;hat we eat (Feuerbach); in fact, man is nothing but a retort in which certain
elements are chemically decomposed and combined, and certain
gases generated; or as Czolbe expresses it (tEntstchzeng des
Selbstbewzsstseins, 1856), "nothing more than a mosaic figure




LECT. III.]             MATERIALISM.                     147
made up of different atoms and mechanically combined in an
elaborate shape."
We need not delay to prove that this gospel of the flesh,
the moral of which is to produce plenty of phosphorus by
means of good eating and drinking, is diametrically opposed
to the Holy Scriptures, which teach us to worship God as a
Spirit, and in the spirit, and bid man, as the spiritual image
of God, approach his Creator in the way of sanctification and
subjection of the flesh to the spirit; which, from beginning to
end, so often warn us against any deification of the creature,
against the worship of the visible and the transient, against
those "whose god is their belly," who say, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die."  Surely this is a view Munworthy
of refutatio; for oh! is it not a grievous and shameful thing
that one should have to prove to men that they are something
better than beasts?  In opposition to such theories, an appeal
to the self-consciousness of the soul and to its moral feelings
should suffice.  But since in our days Materialism, disguised
under the garb of science, has impressed with the idea of its
importance many who have not as yet gone so far as to adopt
it in theory, but who do so all the more in practice, by exclusively directing all their energy towards gain and pleasure, it
becomes a matter of necessity briefly to point out the scientific
weakness and groundlessness of this stand-point.1
We might at once dismiss the " phosphorus theory" by
simply denying the existence of phosphorus in the brain.
And for a corroboration, we might appeal to the celebrated
J. v. Liebig, who says: "The honour of the discovery that
phosphorus exists in the brain belongs, not to me, but to Dr.
Moleschott; and in my'Chemical Letters' I have declared it
to be a mistaken idea, not based on a single fact,"-an utterance which shows, at all events, how uncertain is the hypothesis
upon which this theory is based.   But it is not our business
to pronounce an opinion on this controversy.  We might ask
1 Cf. on this subject, Fabri, BriPfe gegen den Materialismus, 2d ed.; Ruete,
On the Existence of the Soul from the Stand-point of Natural Science, Leipzig
1863; the History of Materialism in Bohner's Natuiforschung und Culturleben,
2d ed. p. 101 f.; and the works of Rud. Wagner, Menschensclhpftung u.
Seelensubstanz, 1854; der Kampf umn die Seele, 1857; Vorstudien zu einer
wissezsch. Morphlologie u. Physiologie des menschlicen Gehirns als Seelenorgan,
1862.




148    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   [LECT. III.
those gentlemen who assert that thought is derived merely
from the nerves and convolutions of the brain, to explain to
us what is the specific organ or acting medium of nervous
activity, and should thus not a little perplex them.  For on
this point physiologists are still most divided in their views.
According to one, the nerves are like the strings of an instrument, the vibrations of which act upon the brain, and thence
are reflected to the periphery.  Another seeks to determine
nervous action after the manner of the mechanical propagation
of motion, i.e. as a concussion of minute globules.  Others
assume the presence in the nerves of an albuminous, or an
acrid, or a sulphurous fluid, which, by means of a pressure at
one end, produces a similar pressure at the other; and this
nervous fluid is sometimes thought to be ether, sometimes
luminous matter, sometimes caloric.  Others, again, are of
opinion that electricity and galvanism are the active principle
of the nerves, etc.  Whilst thus, as we see, nothing certain has
yet been ascertained as to the material of the nervous functions, these people dare to attribute the mental functions,
hitherto held by the whole world to be immaterial, to the
nervous activity of the brain,-a totally unknown quantity,
about which, forsooth, they claim to be able to set up hypotheses!
Let us, however, submit their main propositions to a closer
examination.  In order to eliminate the spirit from our nature,
Materialism, both ancient and modern, adduces two propositions:
first, That sensuous perception is the source of all knowledge; and
second, That all mental action is nothing more than the activity
of matter, and therefore the soul itself is material and mortal.
Let us now consider the first proposition.
(a) Is it then a fact, that everything in the nature of
thoughts, notions, and ideas which can be conceived by our
understanding, our reason, or our memory, reaches us merely
through the senses?  Can it be that every idea of ours may
be reduced to an original act of seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.?
What right have we at all to assert the existence of a necessary mechanical relation between the perception of the senses
and thought?   The one process is separated from the other
both temporally and locally; for, according to materialistic
principles, thought is evolved by an irritation of the brain, and




LECT. III.]           MATERIALISM.                    149
material perception by a function of the senses.  Now Materialism, either thoughtlessly or sophistically, straightway
asserts that there is a mechanically necessary mutual relation
between the two,-an assertion what is contradicted by all
experience.  For is it not frequently a matter of fact, that one
and the same material perception excites diftfrent thoughts
even in the same individual, to say nothing of different persons?  How, then, can we say with Vogt, "like causes, like
results "?  According to Vogt's law, similar sounds should
produce similar thoughts. The two propositions, "There is a
God," and "There is no God," sound very much alike, and
differ only in two letters; how is it, then, that they call forth
in us opposite and not similar thoughts?
Is it not further a matter of fact, that a perception of the
senses does not by ally means necessarily and in all cases
call forth a thought? Cannot a man under the influence of
violent irritation of the senses pursue a line of thought which
stands in no kind of connection therewith?  And are there
not innumerable thoughts which arise completely independent
of any external sensuous,perception?   Cannot I imagine
something which I neither hear, see, nor smell, etc.?  And
how can the materialist explain dream-life, in which the
functions of the five senses cease? Are dreams caused by
nervous excitement; and if so, whence the excitement without
any irritation of the senses?  Or how can memory be explained?  Since the substance of the body is being constantly
renewed, the influence, for instance, of the journeys which we
have taken in your youth ought gradually to fade away after
about twelve years, because then the substance of the brain
which originally received them has completely disappeared.
Instead, however, of this, we find that many impressions and
recollections lose nothing of their vividness even after the
lapse of many decades.  And then, to put isolated intellectual
functions out of the question, we inquire: Whence the laws
of thought themselves? And finally: Whence the idea of
God, and all the moral ideas?
Material perception is therefore very far frorn forming the
whole substance of our intellectual life, and hence cannot be the
sole source of our knowledge.  Indeed, the external influence
does not even form the full substance of the material sensa



150    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.        [LECT: III.
tion that we are conscious of, but is only the outward incitement thereto.   The individual acts of sensation are one thing,
and the capability of perceiving light, colour, etc. is another.
The capability itself cannot be looked upon as evolved in us
solely by the exciting influences of waves of light and sound.
Instead of all this, we might inquire, if all thoughts arise
merely from    impressions which the     senses are pleased to
impart, why does not sensuous perception produce rational
thought in beasts also?  The fact that the latter do not really
think, whilst their material perceptions are exceedingly acute,
is a sufficient proof that a distinction must be drawn between
thinking and material sensation, and that the former is something new and special as compared with the latter.1      On the
other hand, there are plenty of examples of human beings
who are almost entirely deficient in the faculties of material
perception, and who, nevertheless, exhibit a perfectly developed
life of thought, and considerable mental acquirements.    Laura
[Bridgman, born the 20th of I)ecember 1829, at Hanover, in
New Hampshire, U.S., suffered up to the twentieth month of
her age from    convulsive fits; she then completely lost the
senses of sight, hearing, and smell, and almost entirely that of
taste,-the sense of touch being the only one left to her, without any recollection of the former possession of other faculties.
Nevertheless, under the instruction of a skilful teacher of the
deaf and dumb, she has succeeded in attaining an incredibly
high development both in a physical, moral, and intellectual
point of view: her understanding has developed just as in
one possessed of all his senses; and, although four classes of
material impressions are denied to her, still she is in perfect
possession of all the elements of human reason.      She is still
(1863) living, and is happy and contented        (see Ruete ut
stpra).   In the face of facts like these, how can any one assert
1 Cf. also the remarks which Liebig (Clhemische Briefe, 1865, p. 38) makes,
from a chemical stand-point, against the materialistic theory: "The strangest
thing is, that many look upon the peculiarities of the self-conscious, thinking,
and perceptive being in this habitation (the human body) as a simple consequence of its internal structure and the arrangemcnt of its smallest particles,
although chemistry supplies the indubitable proof that, as regards this extremely
delicate combination which is almost beyond the perception of the senses, man
is identical with the lowest animals." There is, therefore, every reason for the
latter also being able to think.




LECT. III.]            MATERIIALISMI.                 151
that all rational knowledge is nothing but a product of the
organs of sense?
(b) And how fares it with the second axiom of Materialism,
that minld is mercly an activity and eCfect oq matter?  This
question turns upon the relation existing between the brain
and thought.  Hitherto the brain has been considered as the
organ to which indeed thought was necessarily bound, but
which the mind freely controlled.  In order to subvert this
view, the materialist must prove that a mechanical law governs
the relation between a certain irritation of the brain and the
excitation of a certain thought.  All attempts, however, to
supply this proof, lead only to the conclusion that a mutual
relation subsists between the brain and thought, but do not
demonstrate that this relation is a mechanically binding one.
Many facts, indeed, directly contradict this.  How does it
come to pass that in many cases a morbid alteration of the
brain, nay, even a partial loss of brain-matter (by wounds),
does not weaken the mental life; or, conversely, that after
long and vehement mental aberrations no alteration of the
brain can be demonstrated? W'hence, moreover, the absolutely
inexhaustible fertility of the brain in the formation of thoughts,
since a material structure of this sort, limited as to space,
affords only a definite number of possibilities, and also since
material perception is always of a limited nature?  Besides,
if thought be identical with the brain, and the soul with the
body, it cannot rightly be understood why man should'first
have to make himself acquainted with his own body, a fact
which is perfectly clear in the case of children.  Does not the
circumstance, that man must find out the locality of his own
limbs by experience, indicate that the body is merely an instrument of the soul?
These are then indications of a dualism existing between
nervous or cerebral activity and mental life; and this dualism
is rendered still more probable by the comparison —so much
in vogue at the present day-between our brain and that of
the anthropoid apes.  Modern anatomy has taught us that
the brain, for instance, of the orang-outang only differs from
that of man in an inferior intricacy of the convolutions, a somewhat greater protuberance of the cerebellum, as well as in a less
delicate molecular composition (cf. the investigations of Perty,




152     MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III
Rougemont, and others).   On the whole, however, tile difference is not very important; in external size and weight, the two
brains are pretty much alike. Anatomists have thus unwittingly
supplied us with an excellent weapon for the vindication of
the biblical view of man. The argument intended to support
Materialism  in fact refutes it.  For we again ask, as in the
case ot sensuous perfections, if the organ, or, as materialists
would say, the substance of thought, and to some extent the
nourishment, are so similar in man and beast, why are not the
products of thinking, that is, the ideas, also similar?  Why
is it that the beast, with nearly the same development of brain as
man, cannot succeed in producing nearly the same conceptions
and ideas? If this question cannot be answered satisfactorily,
evidently the higher character of thought in man cannot depend
on the structure of his organs alone,1 and is not the product of
merely material causes.   For "the greater the number of
organic similarities which are discovered between man and
beast, the more evident is the different nature of the treasure
which God has implanted in us" (G. Saint Hilaire), and has
concealed under similar forms. It is thus perfectly clear that
there is a dualism  between the brain and the operations of
thought, and that there must be a new factor which constitutes the latter in man.
In order to elude this simple conclusion, materialists have
drawn special attention to the various phenomena in animal
life which are analogous to the operations of the soul in man,such as their prudence, their constructiveness, their memory,
their expressions of joy, thankfulness, love, etc.,-as a proof that
there is no specific difference, but only one of degree, between
the mental life of man and that of beasts.  Vogt, indeed, has
but lately discovered " an ursine and feline morality," because
bear cubs and kittens are growled at and cuffed by their
parents, "just as our own dear little ones are when they make
light of filial obedience."  We do not object to consider such
phenomena as analogies to the workings of the human soul.
We would even go so far as to remind our opponents, if they
have overlooked it, as a further argument in their favour, of
1 For this reason, Moleschott has tacitly withdrawn, in the second edition of
his above-named work, the attempt to prove the capability of thought in man
from the structure of his brain.




LECT. III.]           MATERIALISM.                  153
the masterpiece of instinct in the case of the elephant, who
at night-time escaped from his cage, and was found in the
open fields, practising by moonlight the lesson which his
keeper had been teaching him in the daytime.
But what do all such examples prove?  Nothing but this:
that animals possess, often in a high degree, the capability of
sensuous cognition, and of making a judicious choice among
the possible courses of action, as well as the faculty of memory.
But what a wide difference there still remains between this
lower form of consciousness in the beast, this mere force of
impulse and instinct, and the self-conscious intellect of man,
which forms conceptions and ideas! If these animal feats
really indicated a tendency to rational thought, how could we
explain the entire want of progress in the brute world?  The
swallow builds her nest, and the beaver his dam, exactly as
they did in the time of Abraham.  As they build, so they
must build, and they neither need nor are able to learn their
art from any one.  Man must laboriously learn how to shape
the creations of his industry; but he is compensated for this
by the capability of infinite improvement, showing that the
constitution of his mind is an infinite one given him by God.
There is not much difference between the hands of men and
apes. How is it, then, that man has made the whole of nature
subject to him by means of this instrument, whilst the ape
has not yet been able to make even a stone axe?  The beast
shows a certain gift of observation and memory; it can distinguish the succession of certain phenomena.  But can it
ever find out the law which governs these events? The beast
has perceptions of pain and pleasure which are conveyed to it
by the outward senses. But can it call up these feelings
without a direct sensuous impression?  Hence the beast has
no lacnguage. The gorilla, for instance, is not deficient in the
organs of voice. But why is it that, with a throat similar to
that of man, he can only howl and whine, and that man, with
a throat like the ape's, can speak and sing so delightfully? 
The answer is, that the beast cannot form an objective notion of
his sensations and feelings, and therefore is unable to reproduce them  in language; it cannot distinguish between a
personal Ego and the momentary sensation.  It is the power
Cf. also Rougemont, Der Mensch und der Affe, p. 47.




154   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   [LECT. Ill.
to do this, and not his organs of voice (for even the deaf and
dumb make a language for themselves), which gives man the
faculty of speech.  It is this, the self-conscious spirit, in virtue
of which he involuntarily feels himself, as compared with any
other created being, of infinitely greater dignity and value.
And what shall we say of man's distinctive moral and
religious disposition, and its development! Who can seriously
speak of the moral attributes of beasts?  Could any training
ever bring a beast to a moral perception of good and evil?
The dog is ashamed when he is caught thieving, that is, he is
afraid of blows; the man is ashamed of himself.  The beast
sees and feels nothing but nature, the world of finite things.
It has no knowledge of God; it perceives nothing of the
divine government of the world; it sees and feels nothing of
any higher purposes, aims, or ideals.
Does all this constitute merely a difference in point of
degree, and not rather an immeasurable specific difference
between the thoughts, feelings, and desires of men and those
of beasts? In the latter, we see the consciousness of a soul
unenlightened by any beam of the spirit, obscure and incapable of forming the conception of an Ego; in the former, real
self-consciousness.  In the latter, we have mere natural impulses, directed towards the satisfaction of material wants,
and serving no other purpose than the maintenance of the
gSnuCs, for which reason the individual beast as such has no
value; in the former, we have the moral consciousness of a
person who possesses in himself the purpose of his existence,
and is therefore of infinite value and eternal significance.  In
short, in one case there is a living but irrational soul; in the
other, the rational, God-like spirit.  All these higher achievements on the part of beasts belong to the soul-life as distinguished from the spirit; because the illuminating centre of
self-consciousness is wanting in them.  The Holy Scriptures
themselves attribute to beasts a soul as the vital principle of
the corporal organism.  The phenomena in the life of man,
on the contrary, all point to some higher power, a substance
that marks him as superior to all mere animal life, and gives
to his intellect'the self-conscious clearness and power, and to
his actions a moral value; and this is the God-descended
spirit, which is not only distinct from the soul, but can even




LECT. III.]            MATERIALISM.                   155
be practically opposed to its inclinations, in virtue of its own
higher law. Hence the scriptural doctrine, that man consists
of body, soul, and spirit. (1 Thess. v. 23; Heb. iv. 12, et al.)
This Materialism completely ignores; hence its incapability
to explain the fundamental difference between the merely
animal and the human soul-life.  If, however, this difference
consists essentially in self-consciousness, there now arises a
fresh and insuperable objection to the substantial unity of
brain and thought, viz. that no explanation can then be givrcn
as to the origin of self-consciousness in mana.  Granted that the
individual acts of our soul-life all resulted from nothing but
chemico-physical causes, it can never be denied that these
acts are all rooted in a certain fixed, permanent centre, in
"the idea of the Ego as the basis of all thought;" that is, in
self-consciousness.  Whlence then is this?  This centre is not
identical with the individual acts of thozught; for it is not an
isolated act, but a continuous condition.  Materialism, it is
true, would fain make it identical with thought, but again
in opposition to all experience.  For do we not clearly distinguish ourselves in self-consciousness from any definite act
of thouht?   Are there not conditions in which correct
reasoning is coexistent with perturbed consciousness?  And
vice versa, is there not sometimes a continuance of consciousness notwithstanding the cessation of intellectual activity?
The materialist, who will hear of no operative factor except
the individual agencies,-brain, muscles, nerves, etc.,-and
who denies as an empty abstraction the bond which unites
these separate agents, and preserves its own unity amid all
the changes of thought and perception,-that is, the selfconsciousness, or the personality as such,-makes out man
to be a "purely mechanical lay-figure," or as Czolbe openly
admits, "a piece of mosaic, mechanically constructed fiom
various atoms,"-a theory which explains absolutely nothing
of the practical phenomena of soul-life.
The whole foundation of materialism is thus shown to be
simply an audacious sophism, the most arbitrary, because
unproved and absolutely unprovable, of assumptions, which is
contradicted at every turn by our own consciousness.  "I do
not wish," says Schleiden, in opposition to Materialism, "to
puzzle these gentlemen with the task of unfolding to me in




156   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. IIL
detail the process whereby, for instance, the feeling for beauty
is actually secreted in the brain.  All I want them to do is
to prove to me the possibility that, some day at least, we may
be able to recognise the very simplest idea, as for instance,
tree, law, etc., as a chemical element present in the brain,
or as a combination of such.  But a haturalist who judges
and decides as to the nature of things, the possibility of which
(to say nothing of their reality) he is not in a position to
demonstrate, appears in this respect not an exact investigator
of nature, but merely a superficial talker." And these people,
in their opposition to Christianity, are fond of talking of
"ploughman's faith," although in truth more faith in authority
is needed for the acceptance of their hypothesis than for
believing all the miracles of the Bible!
We might conclude with this; but let us first glance at
the consequences of the materialistic principles.  First and
foremost, it is clear that they do away with the immortality
of the soul and all belief in another world. For he who does
not acknowledge any immaterial principles in man, will not
allow the existence of an absolute Spirit, i.e. of God, either in
or above the world.  The ideas of God as a Spirit and of the
human spirit as a distinct substance are inseparable, and for
this reason we were obliged carefully to investigate the latter
question.  Every one sees what questionable results follow
from the negation of our immortality, even as regards this life,
and the moral order of the present world. We will not now
enter into the details of the well-known arguments for the
immortality of the soul, the main purport of which is that
God is a Spirit, and that man's soul is a breath of this Spirit,
proceeding therefore from above and not from below; that it
is an entity absolutely incomposite, indivisible, and immaterial;
and that its immateriality becomes more and more evident the
longer it is exposed to the impotent attempts made to degrade
it to the level of mere matter.  We would, however, point
out in passing, that it is precisely the most exact modern
research which increasingly tends to enhance and perfect the
ancient arguments lor immortality derived from nature, from
the analogy of the spring, the grub, and butterfly, etc.  Here
is an example. It has been observed that the larva of the
male stag-beetle, when it becomes a chrysalis, constructs a




LECT. III.]           MATERIALISML                   157
larger case than it needs to contain its curled-up body, in
order that the horns, which will presently grow, may also find
room.  What does the larva know of its future form of existence? and yet it arranges its house with a view to it! Is it
then to be supposed that the same Power, which created both
the beetle and the man, " instilled into the beetle a true instinct,
and into man a lying faith, which makes him   arrange his
present life with a view to a future one otherwise than he
would were this not the case,-a faith which arises as naturally, and is as necessary for the development of mankind, as
instinct in the larva?" (Ruete ut supra).
If there is no such thing as a soul, not only would a future
life be done away with, and all religion be merged in the
worship of this world,-we pastors becoming the most useless
of all creatures,-but you will also perceive what revolutions
must follow in the whole mode which has hitherto obtained
of conducting our life, most of all in education. If thought is
a secretion of the brain, produced from our nourishment by
means of a kind of fermentation or filtration, or in some other
way, we can breed youths at our pleasure to be warriors, philosophers, musicians, and the like; and the most important question for a teacher would always be, whether to feed his pupil
to-day on roast veal or roast beef, on this or that kind of food
and drink.  Those who are slow of understanding ought to eat
large quantities of peas, fish, eggs, and other phosphoric food,
in order to increase and accelerate their powers of thought.
But we are left in no doubt whatever on the point, that
everything which has hitherto been cherished and cultivated,
as manners and morality, as freedom of the spirit and of the
will, must sink into the grave of a fatalistic necessity.  We
see clearly how thoroughly and with uwhat shameless audacity
Mllaterialism would destroy all the moral faculties of our life,for instance, in the words of Moleschott, that "sin lies in
the Unnatural, and not in the will to do evil.  Speech and
style, good and bad actions, courage, half-heartedness, and
treachery, are all natural phenomena, and all of them stand
in a direct relation to indispensable causes as their natural
consequences, just as much as the revolutions of the globe."
"The brain alters with the ages; and with the brain, custom,
which is the standard of morals, is altered also."  "Wicked



158   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
ness in individuals, like the whole man himself, is therefore
only a natural phenomenon.  And as the words,'Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself,' form the pith of Christian
morals, so the first maxim of the modern gospel should be,' To understand everythin  i t tlrt     hing is to tolerate everything'" (t sr.
p. 466).  At the end of his book Moleschott vouchsafes to
the world the sapient and delicate-minded advice, that the
stationary churchyards, in which so much excellent manure
remains useless, should be changed into moveable churchyards,
in order that the dead may attain the only immortality which
now remains open to them, and have the privilege of impregnating barren ground with ammonia, carbonic acid, etc., to
help towards the production and nourishment of fresh men!
Paine, one of the latest French materialists, pronounces man
to be a beast in human (sic) shape, which is led by humour
and instinct.  " Humour and instinct proceed from the blood.
Hence arises habit; necessity brandishes the whip, and the
beast goes forward.  But being full of pride and conceit, the
beast fancies that it moves in accordance with its own will,
and that there is no whip urging it forward.  We fancy that
we govern our passions, but in reality they govern us; and we
ascribe to ourselves the actions which they have produced."
Vogt, however, has, as he always does, expressed himself on
this point most unequivocally and unconcernedly of all.  "It
is indeed true.  Freewill does not exist, neither does any
amenability or responsibility, such as morals and penal justice,
and Heaven knows what else would impose upon us. At no
moment are we our own masters any more than we can decree
as to the secretions of our kidneys. The organism cannot
govern itself; it is governed by the law of its material combination.  It is impossible to demonstrate the admissibility of
punishment, or to prove that there is any such thing as amenability or responsibility," etc.
Jurists, therefore, do not fare any better than we theologians.
It is evident that there is no room for them in the world now.
There is no right to punish, for there is no responsibility;
everything takes place under an iron necessity. The man who
robs and murders is no worse than the falling stone which
crushes a man, nor, of course, any more valuable; both are
involuntary slaves of the law of nature.  Criminals should be




LECT. III.]           MATERIALISIM.                  159
sent into hospitals and asylums, not to prison.  The judge
must yield up his place to the physician! Who would not
then begin to tremble for the safety of society?  Who does
not perceive the moral danger involved in Materialism, according to which all human action, even that of the mind and
spirit, is subordinate to the law of nature, and man no longer
does what he otught to do, but what he mutst do,-according to
which, therefore, all the great and noble acts performed in the
world's history are nothing but the necessary products of certain
bodily impulses and conditions? But the whole matter assumes
an exceedingly tragico-comical aspect when we find these
people desirous to be thought the "squatters of advancing
civilisation," without observing that they are its gravediggers;
and see them swaggering as the heralds of freedom and humanity,
whilst it does not occur to them that they are the caostles of
the most brutal tyranny, and that the practical aim of their
theory is that the best-organized beast, called man, should sit
alone on the throne of unfettered self-deification and unchecked
self-gratification.  For if man is nothing but a beast without
a future, and organized merely for the full enjoyment of his
present existence, then all that we have hitherto stupidly considered to be virtue is only a sin against our destiny! Justice, duty, honour, self-sacrifice, compassion, etc., are morbid
secretions of certain deranged lobes of the brain! What good
is my fellow-man to me?  To subject and tyrannize all others
is the only aim which reasonable man can pursue! Such
maxims carried into practice would render society a mere congeries of atoms.
In good sooth, the materialists are the most dangerous enemies
of progress that the world has ever seen.  For all progress in
the last resort depends on the ideal of an Infinite Perfection,
to which the God-derived spirit of man aspires.  He who
destroys this ideal destroys progress also. But this ideal is
destroyed when health and sensual enjoyments are held up to
our race as the sole aim of life, within which we are to move
in an eternal circle!
In the face of these apparent consequences, we are in this
case, too, really led to doubt whether these gentlemen themselves believe what they are trying to palm off upon us.  Why
do they seek to work upon the people by means of lectures




160   MODERN NON-BIBL1CAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   [LECT. III.
and books? The proper way, to convert people to their opinions
would be to make them eat the same food as they do I Just
imagine a soulless professor, with the utmost ingenuity, demonstrating to soulless students from his professorial chair that
they have no souls! Is not the wiseacre contradicted out of
his own mouth by every word he utters, since every one of his
words is addressed to the souls of his audience?  In fact, my
honoured hearers, if any one among you has brought with him
flesh, blood, bone, some phosphorus, and nothing else, I would
make bold to intimate to him in a friendly way that all arguments, as far as he is concerned, are but lost time.
Doubtless, however, there is something triue and justifiable
in Materialism.  All that exists has some right to its existence.
We would not deny this.     Materialism  calls our attention
more closely than in former days to the profound interpenetration of our soul-life and our bodily condition, and to
the fact that the activity of our mind and will is partly determined by bodily functions,-the circulation of the blood, the
action of the nerves, etc.; in a word, to the unquestionably
very important influence exercised by material agents, both
within and without us, on our mental condition.  Materialism
may thus teach a lesson, especially to those one-sided. idealists
whom we were before compelled to blame for looking upon
their reason as something always absolutely'free in its nature,
without believing in their dependence on material influences.
This one-sided spiritualism  of necessity degenerates in time
into its opposite, that is, into Materialism.  The latter, then,
forms a wholesome counterbalance to that system of philosophy
in which the " idea" was all in all, and in which the inquirer
was so taken up by speculations of pure reason as not to have
time for any consideration of nature. Any future sound system of natural philosophy Will have to seek the right course
between these two extremes.
The Holy Scriptures, on the other hand, which observe an
equal distance between these extremes, fully recognise this
truth of the interpenetration of our soul-life with our bodily
condition.  They point out, with much emphasis, the predominance which, by means of sin, the flesh has attained over
the spirit, the constant bondage and danger which the soul
incurs from sensual inclinations,-in a word, "the law of sin




LECT. III.]            PANTHEISM.                   161
in the members" (Rom. vii.); and in teaching our natural subjection to the power of sensuality, they bring clearly before our
eyes the truth which is involved in the materialistic denial
of freewill.  But the Holy Scriptures do not lead us into a
comfortless fatalism, but show us the way in which the spirit
may again attain to predominance and freedom.  But it is
one thing to acknowledge these bodily influences and another
to identify the soul with them,-to deny its separate existence,
and thus to tread into the dust man's crown, the basis of all
that is truly great and hanourable, all that is high and God-like,
in and above the world.
If theories of this kind appeared only among morally fickle
and degraded nations, whose whole development, or rather misdevelopment, would naturally lead to them, we might, though
with deep compassion, look on quietly.  But the busy efforts of
many, in modern times, to naturalize a materialistic popular
philosophy, even-on our German soil, must be characterized by
every one who is aware of the profound ideality of the German
mind, and of German Christian science and education, and who
knows how for the last ten centuries Germans have done battle
for the highest moral and spiritual treasures of life, as an act of
treason against the original and true nature of German research
and science! To similar opponents in his own time, Plato
gave the counsel, "first to reform, so that then they might be
capable of being taught."  The Christian spirit of Germany,
inheriting as it does the ideal impulses of the mind of ancient
Greece, should give the same answer to the theories we have
been considering.
III.-PANTHEISM.
Pantheism derives its name from the motto, ev ica Trav, i.e.
One and All, which was first brought into'ogue by the Greek
philosopher Xenophanes.  According to this view, God is the
universe itself; beyond and outside the world He does not exist,
but only in the world.  He is the Soul, the Reason and the
Spirit of the world, and all nature is His body.  In reality,
God is everything, and beside him there is nothing.  Thus,
making God the Soul of the world, Pantheism is distinguished,
L




162   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.      [LECT. III.
on the one hand, from   Materialism, according to which God
and nature are immediately identical; and, on the other hand,
from Theism, that is, from the belief in a self-conscious, personal God, who created the world and guides even its most
minute details. For the main point of pantheistic belief is
that this Soul of the world is not a personal, self-conscious
Being, who appears in his totality in any one phenomenon or
at any one moment, so as to comprehend himself or become
comprehensible for us, but that it is only the One ever same
Essence which, filling everything and shaping everything, lives
and moves in all existing things, and is revealed in all that is
visible, yet is Itself never seen. Goethe has depicted it in the
oft-quoted words:"I rise and fall on the waves of life,
I move to and fro in action's strife;
Birth and the grave,-an eternal sea,A web that changes alternately,A life which must ever glow and burn,On the whirring loom of life, in turn
All these I weave, and the Godhead see
Clad in a robe of vitality."
The fact that this view of the world is first met with among
nations with polytheistic religions, such as the Hindus and
Greeks, points to an internal relationship between Polytheism
and Pantheism which is often overlooked. The two seem opposed;
but, when accurately considered, they are in principle the same.
Just as, e.g., the ordinary Greeks believed that there was a
nymph or a naiad in every tree and in every fountain, and,
in addition to the Olympian gods, peopled all nature with
innumerable demi-gods; so also, in every being and in every
phenomenon the Greek pantheistic philosopher saw a manifestation of the Deity. Pantheism and Polytheism are but a
higher and a lower form   of one and the same view of the
world.  The former is the refined, the latter the vulgar mode
of deifying nature; the former seeks after unity amid the
individual phenomena, the latter stops short at and personifies
them.
We have previously alluded to the fact that this One, Allinspiring, yet Unconscious, is characterized by Pantheism in
various ways, as the Soul of the world, as universal Substance,




LECT. III.]               PANTHEISM.                        163
as the Moral Order of the world, as Absolute Spirit, etc.1 The
father of occidental Pantheism   in modern times was the Jew
Spinoza (1632-1677).      "I have," says he, "opinions as to
God and nature entirely different from     those which modern
Christians are wont to vindicate. To my mind God is the
immanent (that is, the intramundane), and not the transcendent
(that is, the supramundane) Cause of all things; that is, the
totality of finite objects is posited in the Essence of God, and not
in His Will. Nature, considered per se, is one with the essence
of God." According to Spinoza, God is the one universal Substance, in which all distinctions and all isolated qualifications
are resolved into unity, to which per se we cannot therefore
ascribe either understanding or will. He ridicules those who
make out that God acts according to a purpose, and look upon
the world as a product of the divine will or intellect.   "God
does not act in pursuance of a purpose, but only according to
the necessity of His nature.   Everything follows from    nature
with the same logical necessity as that by which the attributes
of a thing follow from its idea, or from the nature of a triangle
that its three angles are equal to two right angles."       This
expresses the fundamental view of every form of Pantheism.
Even Hegel's conception of God, as the absolute Idea or the
absolute Spirit which, in eternal self-movement, proceeds from
itself and becomes nature, and then again reverting to Itself,
becomes a self-conscious spirit, is, in truth, only another name
for the same thing. For Spinoza himself distinguishes between nature "begetting" and "begotten" (natura natumtrans
et natcrata).  The latter is the ever-varying phenomenal world,
the "former" the intermittent bourne from which these phenomena take their rise, and into which they sink again.
From this we can already see how much falls to the ground
if the personality of God be given up. In the first place, we
can no longer acknowledge a creation of the world as a free
1 There is even a form of Pantheism, or rather of semi-Pantheism, in which
the personality of God is to some extent preserved, which looks upon the world
as an efflux from the Deity, and hence as being of His essence, but not coextensive with Him. Thus, for instance, the doctrine of emanations in the Indian
Vedas. But here, too, the personality of God is dangerously compromised by
the necessity of the natural process in which these emanations take place. Since,
however, this view has no representatives of importance in modern times, we
shall confine our attention to the above-mentioned form of Pantheism.




164   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.    [LECT. III.
act of the divine Will; since things are "posited in the
nature of God, not in His will." Miracles and providence must
fare in like manner, and especially the incarnation of God in
Christ is left without any basis.  It can no longer be looked
upon as a fact which took place in this particular Individual,
but only as a universal, everlasting and daily-renewed process.
There is no longer any place for the freewill of man, and for
the ordinary distinction between good and evil.  If God has
no liberty of action, but works "in accordance with the mere
necessity of His nature," man fares no better; he is, indeed,
nothing but one form of manifestation of the universal Soul;
and the necessity under which the whole universe is developed
must also be the standard for every individual thing. Everything is borne along by the one immutable stream of development; all that takes place is the consequence of an absolute
necessity; and that which appears to be evil is only a necessary
point of transition in the development of good, and therefore
is not really evil at all. Finally, it is patent that the immortality of man, and the continuance of personal existence after
death, are ideas which must henceforth be rejected. All personal life mnzst again resolve itself into the impersonal primal
Cause.  Religion itself can no longer be considered a reality.
For I can no more stand in any personal relation to this God
than He can to me; I cannot address Him as " thou" for He
is no personal I; I can neither pray to Him nor can I love
and trust in Him, for He is only the One, the inflexible and
unfeeling power of fate, in which I myself must one day be
merged.
Clearly, we may call this an unbiblical idea of God. In
the Scriptures God appears from the beginning as One who
acts with self-consciousness, who creates and guides the world
with definite purposes, whose essence, therefore, is clearly to
be distinguished from His creation.  He communicates Himself in special revelations, speaks of Himself in the first
person, carries out an eternal counsel of love, and therefore cannot be imagined as any other than a personal Being.
(Cf. Lect. iv.)
Pantheism is, however, not merely unbiblical, but, like every
idea of God which denies His personality, also scientifically
untenable.  Allow me to prove this to you, by exhibiting its




LECT. III.]             PANTHEISM.                    165
chief weaknesses from four different points of view, viz.: (a)
from  logic, (b) from  a consideration of the world, (c) from the
history of religions, and (d) from moral and religious consciousness and life.
(a) Let us first ask philosophy and logic.  Just as Atheism
depends on the monstrous assumption that we are acquainted
with all the forces in the world; just as Materialism? presupposes that the matter of cwhich the world is constituted is
eternal and has always existed;-so also Pantheism depends
on assumptions which are unprovd and incapable of proof. Let
us take up Spinoza's Ethics, the classical text-book of modern
pantheists, which to some extent forms the groundwork of all
their systems.  Its fundamental assumption is the existence
of a universal substance. This substance, with its attributes —
i.e., in fact, this idea of God-is presupposed as a thing of
course, and from this the further conclusions are deduced with
mathematical precision.  The thing itself is, however, simply
presupposed or assumed to exist, and its acceptance therefore
requires as much faith as the utterances of the Scriptures about
God.   Spinoza does not attempt to investigate whether this
idea of God is in itself correct and true.  Had he done so, he
might have discovered that this universal substance, beside
which nothing at all exists, which includes all actual objects
as its individual qualifications, is in truth nothing but the
highest logical conception of universality, in which all individual
notions are blended into an undivided unity, and hence that-it
is merely a subjective idea, but not a real objective existence.
But our philosopher immediately assumes, in the most uncritical manner, that this merely subjective idea is an oljective
reality, and that the merely imagined unity of notions in
our consciousness is the actually existing unity of all things.
Here, then, we see the same confusion of thought with existence
which we meet with almost at every turn in modern philosophy.
"Spinoza's whole system," says a modern critic, "depends on
the postulate, that the logic form of the notion and its attributes is identical with the objective form of real existence."
Both Spinoza and all other pantheists are greatly at a loss
how to answer the question as to the origin of cosmical matter;
and on this point it is clearly evident that they ultimately
depend on mere assumptions, and those illogical ones. They




166   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.    [LECT. III.
all of them reject the biblical doctrine, that God created the
world, that is, from His own free, loving will called it into
existence out of nothing.  For, since they cannot conceive of
God except in conjunction with the world, they cannot believe
that He called it into existence out of its former nothingness;
His activity is limited to shaping and organizing matter already existing.  But if we go on to ask, whence this matter?
we are either met with the reply, "it just exists," and are
thus required to accept without demur their unproved assumption as a matter of fact; or, in the attempt to explain the
origin of the actual world, we are expected to imagine such
extraordinary things, that the biblical miracle of creation must
appear to every unprejudiced person far more reasonable and
conceivable.  According to Spinoza, everything actual proceeds
from the " begetting nature," which from eternity is incessantly
begetting the mundane phenomena. But whence, then, its
inexhaustible fulness of force and life?  From what source is
this vitality constantly renewed? The only reply is to this
effect, that the forces of "begotten nature," by the mutual
reaction in which they play upon one another, may effect
reciprocal renewal; that the forces exhausted in begetting
and bringing forth are constantly restored by the reactionary
influence of that which is produced.  But thus we make
"begotten nature" the mother as well as the daughter of
"begetting nature," and so are moving in a complete circle.
If we demand the origin of the actual world, that is, of the
"begotten nature," we are told that " begetting nature"' is the
ultimate cause; and if we demand the origin of the latter, we
are again referred to the "begotten nature," that is, to the
very fact of which we seek an explanation.' Granted, however, that these forces are constantly renewed by their harmonious mutual action, must not this harmony be planned by
some intelligence?  Is it to be supposed that unconscious
nature working by blind necessity could have made a computation of this kind?  Can our intellect feel satisfied with
the idea, that from all eternity there exists a combined play of
forces mutually exciting and renovating one another, blind
indeed, yet computed with perfect wisdom? The absurdity ot
Cf. here also Zur Verantwortung des christl. Glaubens, No. II., iatlur
oder Gott and Gess, apologet. Beitrdge.




LECT. III.]            PANTHEISM.                   167
the assumption of an impersonal unconscious God here becomes clearly evident.  That by which everything else is
realized with absolute wisdom is supposed to be unable to
realize itself in conscious thought  What a contradiction 
We do not fare much better under the guidance of Hegel.
He teaches us to regard God as the absolute Idea which, from
endless ages, realizes, inspires, and orders the whole phenomenal world: in other words, as the system of those conceptions on which all thought is necessarily based (e.g. being and
becoming, force and effect, etc.), and which are supposed to
possess reality, since without them all our thought would be
null and void.  But whence proceeds this absolute Idea?  It
is not conceived by a personal God, for none such exists.
Neither can it conceive itself; for if it did, it would become
self-conscious, and thus God would again become personal.
How does Hegel get out of the difficulty?  He says that the
absolute Idea posits itself by means of the eternal position and
organization of the world. If we inquire, Whence proceeds
the world? we are met by the reply, It exists, and is
continuously posited by the absolute Idea. And if we ask,
Whence comes the absolute Idea, from what is it derived, and
in what does its actuality consist? we are told, It is posited
in and with the world, and has none but a mundane actuality.
Do you see how we are being mocked with a shadow?  The
world is supposed to be posited by the absolute Idea, and yet
the absolute Idea itself has an actual existence only in the
world.  How, then, can this absolute Idea posit itselt? and
how can it be looked upon as the principle which posits the
world if itself attains actuality only in the world?
Pantheism desires to realize the Infinite; but because the
Infinite always has its actuality only in the Finite, the result
is, that Pantheism  constantly denies it in its endeavours to
realize it.  A close examination of this "self-positing" Idea
clearly shows that the pantheistic conception of God is one which
destroys itself; for that only wZhich is conscious of itself can
posit itself; but a being which is possessed of self-consciousness
must also be possessed of personality. The impersonal idea of
God, in fact, depends upon a hypothesis which on a more
thorough consideration will be found to point beyond itself.
The way, too, in which Hegel makes the Absolute develope




168    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.     [LECT. III.
itself is thoroughly illogical.  First of all, in its existence
per se it is a purely immaterial idea; next it emerges into
existence as distinct from itself, and, distorting itself in time and
space, becomes nature; then, from this self-alienation it reverts
to itself, and in man attains to self-existence, and becomes selfknowing thought, or self-conscious spirit.  In this process it
is only the existence per se, and the existence as distinct from
itself, in which the Idea is absolutely: in its self-existence, on
the contrary, it is only in a finite, human-psychological form,
although evidently the Absolute should include all three
forms; that is, God, as a Spirit, must be His own cause, His
own object, and the subject which comprehends, knows, and wills
Himself.
Besides this, the pantheistic idea of God labours under two
other great difficulties.  In the first place, it cannot be understood how personality can proceed from an impersonal principle. We ourselves are persons, that is, we can conceive and
determine ourselves; for in this personality consists.  And
although Spinoza denies the self-determination and freewill of
man, still he does not deny his self-consciousness.  Whence,
then, is this self-consciousness supposed to proceed if the soul
of the world, from which we ourselves have emanated, has no
consciousness?  Can God communicate that which He does
not Himself possess, and create forms of existence which
transcend His own?     Can the effect contain anything which
does not exist in the cause?   To this one simple question
no pantheist has as yet been able to give a satisfactory
answer.   Moreover, the idea of an endless and aimless process
of development is illogical and self-contradictory.  An endless
development, an infinite process, which is for ever approaching its aim, but eternally remains infinitely far from  it, is a
contradiction with which our intellect cannot be satisfied.
The chief argument which pantheists bring forward against
the existence of a personal God is, that personality cannot be
conceived without finite limitations.  Personality, they say,
consists in the contraposition of self to another object, a nonego which forms an insuperable limit to the ego; and hence
the conception of absolute, limitless personality inrolves a
direct contradiction.  In short, the infinite greatness of God
is supposed to be incompatible with His.personality.  To this




LECT. III.] MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   169
we first reply by a question: Is it in our own case the
limitation of self by the cosmical non-ego which is the cause
of our consciousness reflecting upon itself, and thus becoming
self-conscious or personal, so that without the non-ego our
personality would cease to exist? No, this limitation is
merely the occasion; the original cause of the self-reflection
consists in the peculiar constitution of the human subject as
a spirit, which points to a primal Spirit-subject as its
Creator.
The root of personality in the ego lies in its nature before
any contraposition to other objects.  This contraposition,
therefore, does not form the essence of the personality, but is
only a consequence of its inherent nature.  Personality," says
a well-known modern philosopher,1 who has very tellingly
answered this objection to the personality of God, " does not
depend upon a past or present contraposition of the ego to
the non-ego; but, conversely, it consists in an immediate esse
per se, forms the necessary prius of this contraposition wherever it takes place."  If, then, even in the finite subject
self-consciousness is the result of its own action, based upon
an esse per se which is not dependent on the world, how much
less can the absolute Subject, God, by reason of His personality,
be considered to be entirely dependent upon, and limited by,
externals?  Doubtless, in the case of the finite spirit as such,
the development of personal consciousness can only take place
under external influences proceeding from the non-ego; not,
however, because it needed the contraposition to an alien
object in order to be self-existent, but simply because it does
not in this nor in any other respect possess in itself the
conditions of its existence.  But we do not meet with this
limitation in the nature of the Infinite.  "It alone, therefore,
is capable of a self-existence, which needs neither initiation
nor continuous development by means of anything which is
alien to it, but maintains itself in an eternal movement within
its own essence." And if we designate the inner personal
life of the personal God, the current of His thought, feeling,
and will, as one that is eternal and without beginning, never
resting, and hence never excited into movement from any
state of quiescence, " we do not impose a more difficult task
l Lotze, Mikrokososms, i. p. 270 ff.; iii. pp. 565-576.




170                     PANTHEISM.               [LECT. III.
on the powers of imagination than does any pantheistic or
materialistic theory."
And why should the idea of an eternal, absolute Personality
be self-contradictory? For the very reason that we are finite,
our personality is imperfect.  To none but the Infinite can
we ascribe perfect personality.  But more than this, we are
compelled to do so.  Or is not a personality superior to an
impersonal object? Is it not a matter of fact, that the greater
and higher a being is, the more perfect is his personality?
Do we not see the creation struggling towards personality,
and mounting step by step through the preliminary stages of
the vegetable and animal world, until in man it actually
attains to individual personality, and becomes a self-conscious
mind?   "Whence this universal tendency of all that lives
towards personality, if it be not the law of the world; and
whence this law, if the Principle of the world is an impersonal
one?"  And if personality constitutes the pre-eminence of
man over the inferior creation, can this pre-eminence be
wanting in the highest Being of all? can God, the most perfect Being imaginable, be devoid of personality, the most
perfect form  of being?  Is God indeed the absolute and
entirely perfect One, if He be wanting in any one excellence?
We do not assert that the most perfect Being as such necessarily exists (which was, as we saw, the false conclusion of the
ontological argument. But we maintain that personality must
belong to perfect existence as such (for the existence of God is
acknowledged by Pantheism), because otherwise the most perfect, form of existence would not have been attained. So little,
therefore, is the idea of God's personality contradicted by His
infinite greatness and perfection, that, on the contrary, it is precisely by reason of them that He must be personal.  In fact, the
Absolute can only be imagined as the absolute Subject, i.e.
as the absolute Personality.  If the Absolute is to be mere
substance, its idea remains incomplete; because then the subjective spirit and the finite personality of man appear as something higher.
In support of this we can again appeal to the self-know.
ledge of man. We have already seen, in our arguments
against Atheism, that, from the consciousness of his own
conditionality and limitation, man derives the idea of an




LECT. III.] MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   171
unconditioned absolute Being.  If we now go a step further,
and assert that this absolute Being must necessarily be conceived as a personal one, we are justified in so doing by the
fact, that if man perceives that even a conditioned, relative
being like himself is by its self-consciousness raised high
above the level of mere nature, he cannot imagine the absolute Being, whom he regards as the creative Cause of himself
and all conditioned existence, to be otherwise than possessed
of absolute self-consciousness and freedom, i.e. as absolute
Personality (Delitzsch ut suTpra, p. 69).  That which man
recognises in himself in a conditioned form, he must ascribe
to his original Cause absolutely.
We here perceive the fundamental weakness of Pantheism,its absolute Being is not absolute at all, just because It is deficient in the point of personality.  The latter is not in the
case of God, any more than of other beings, a defect, a
restrictive limitation; but, on the contrary, a pre-eminence,
a perfection, and consequently in the most perfect Being a
necessity.  Only we must not exaggerate the infinity of God,
so as to make Him out to be something entirely colourless,
abstract, and utterly devoid of attributes; but we must, notwithstanding all infinity, imagine Him at the same time as a
definite Quantity, determined by Himself and not by others,
whose self-posited unity is His own act, and in whom personality is the necessary form and determination (but not the
limitation) of the infinite being.  I say the necessary form;
for how should that which has in itself no definite centre, and
cannot even posit itself in thought and will, have power and
stability to posit a world as distinct from itself, and to become
the motive power of the universe?  Indeed, how can that
which in itself lacks all precision and definiteness ever be
capable of shaping given cosmical matter into definite forms?
Lastly, the pantheist may object that a self-consciousness
cannot most assuredly have an object; it requires two distinct
subjects, such as are in fact presented to us in the Scriptures,
in Father and Son.   And further, it is clear that if two are
required, God and the world cannot be one. Thus the abovementioned objection, after all, recoils against its authors.
(b) The next set of arguments to show untenableness of
the pantheistic conception of God are taken from a cosmo



172                      PANTHEISM.               [LECT. III.
logical point of view; that is, from a consideration of the world.
The well-known cosmological proof for the existence of a God
is simply enough indicated in Scripture, viz. Heb. iii. 4:
"For every house is builded by some man; but He that built
all things is God."  (Cf. Rom. i. 19-21.)  It is sometimes
argued from the effect to the cause, thus: All existence is the
effect of some cause, which, in its turn, is the effect of another
cause; and so on till we arrive at some first cause, which is
not the effect of any other, but is itself the cause of its own
existence (cf. the Aristotelian expression, "first mover," rpWrTov
KLVOvV).  At other times it is argued from the accidental to
the necessary, thus: That there is no accidental-that is,
what can be otherwise or not-without a corresponding
necessary (used in this form by the school of Leibnitz and
Wolff).  Since the time of Kant it has been justly held that
this argument only proves the existence of an unconditioned
essence, eternal and self-subsisting, which forms the groundwork of everything else; but not that this essence must be
an unique and personal Being.
Nevertheless, this argument should not be unconditionally
rejected.  That great man    Sir Isaac Newton has     said:
"Although no actual step in this argumentation brings us
directly to the knowledge of the First Cause, yet each one
carries us constantly nearer to it." And how is this? Because
the human spirit can believe of none but the Spirit, that it is
a self-positing, unconditioned eternal Being.  Of every other,
that is, of every material existence, the mind asks, and must
ask, Whence is it? and cannot rest satisfied with the mere
thought that it has always existed.  "We are no more able
to believe of cosmical substance than, for instance, of the sun,
that it is per se a necessary eternal being; for this cosmical
substance possesses no understanding; it is not spirit" (Gess,
Avologet. Beitrige, p. 190).  If it be an assumption necessary
to our intellectual being, that only the Spirit can posit itself
and possesses eternal necessary being, it follows that we can
only imagine as a Spirit that unconditioned Cause of all
things, that absolute One, to whom we are led by the cosmological argument. That which is self-existent must also be
self-conscious.
But the necessity of postulating self-consciousness as in



LECT. III.] MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  173
herent in the Divine Nature is still more evident, if we
consider the world not merely as matter, but as the Cosmos;
that is, as a harmoniously proportioned and well-arranged
organism.  This brings us to the teleological argument, based
upon the purpose or aim manifested in the universe, an argument which the results of modern science are rendering more
and more important. It is based upon an idea of the creation,
as a judiciously arranged whole, tending to a certain aim; and
from the regularity and conformity to purpose exhibited in
the universe, it argues that there must be an Intelligence
which has ordered it according to a set purpose, and thus
points us to a self-conscious, personal Spirit. In vain have
endeavours been made to dispute the material premise of this
argument, viz. that the world's course is arranged after a set
purpose. It has been said that we know only a small portion
of the universe, and must not therefore presuppose as a matter
of course that the same order and wisdom prevail in all its
spheres; and moreover, that the conformity to purpose shown
in the earthly creation is by no means perfect, but that on the
contrary there are many things in it which are purposeless or
contrary to their true aim; for the world, human life, and
history, form an exhibition of incompleteness and unsuitableness, as is proved by the many evils which exist.  But, in the
first place, if only a portion of the world be indubitably shown
to be full of wisdom, the whole universe must be so also;
because otherwise this portion would not for one moment be
safe from being destroyed by the want of order in the remainder.  And does not the fact that we need to meditate
upon the world, and cannot help doing so, at once presuppose
that the object of our thought must be a Reality full of
wisdom?  "A world of accident could not be an object of
cogitation. If the world around us be not a system of thought,
whence comes the need we feel for thinking about it?  Why
is not man satisfied with the use that beasts make of the
world?" The very fact that we are compelled to think about
this world is a proof that thoughts are inwrought in it.
With regard to the evil that is in the world, and the want
of conformity to purpose shown in certain phenomena, we
must first ask whether these incongruities form an intrinsic
element of creation, or whether they are a later introduction.




174                       PANTHEISM.                 [LECT. III.
According to Scripture, they are everywhere connected with
sin, the destructive effects of which extend even to nature.
This, however, by no means does away with the conformity to
purpose which marks the universe as a whole. Indeed, the
manner in which these temporary disturbances of the moral
and physical order of the world are ultimately made serviceable to the divine aims is, the longer we consider it, the clearer
proof of the greatest wisdom and conformity to plan. Thus
the fundamental premise of the teleological argument for the
existence of God remains unshaken.1
It may be said with more reason, that this argument has
something incomplete about it, inasmuch as this conformity
to purpose affects only the form   and not the matter of the
world, and that therefore we can derive from it only the idea
of an Architect, not that of a Creator.   But let us combine
the result of this argument-that there must be a worldorganizing intelligence-with that of the cosmological argument, that there must be an absolute Substance, which, on
account of its eternity, we can imagine only as a Spirit, and
we then have the cause in the one of the matter, in the other
of the form of the world.   If, then, the latter argument shows
us the self-existent, all-creating nature of God, and the former
His thinking   intelligence which   makes infinite plans and
wisely carries them   out, is there so very much wanting to
constitute the idea of a personal Creator of the world?   The
only question that remains is, whether it is not in any way
possible to derive the wisdom   prevailing in the world from
the agency of some blindly operating cause, some unconscious
soul of the world?
In our inquiry after traces of the wisdom which so plentifully dwells and operates in creation, modern science furnishes
us with a constantly increasing number of direct proofs, that
every-where a foreseeing Wisdom, which must as such be conscious
of itself and of its action, rules the world.  Indeed, these proofs
1 The materialistic opponents of the "theory of adaptation to purpose"
(Biichner, and others) frequently argue on the erroneous supposition, that
theologians who believe in the Bible look upon the world in its present condition as absolutely perfect; and they seek, by various examples, to prove the
contrary. If they would take the trouble to turn to Rom. viii. 19 ff., they
might see that, long before their arguments, the imperfection of the world in
its present condition was taught by Scripture.




LECT. IlI.] MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.   175
have rendered Pantheism  and Materialism, considered as hypotheses of natural science, simply absurd, and save us the trouble
of refuting them  from  S(ripture.l  Listen, for instance, to
what the great chemist, Liebig, says in opposition to these
views: "There is no phenomenon in chemistry more wonderful, and none which so effectually strikes all human wisdom
dumb, than that which is presented by the processes taking
place in the soil of a field adapted for vegetable growth.
During the filtration of rain-water through the soil, the earth
does not surrender one particle of all the nutritive matter
which it contains available for vegetable growth (such as
potash, silicic acid, ammonia, etc.); the most unintermittent
rain is unable to abstract from it (except by the mechanical
action of floods) any of the chief requisites for its fertility.
The particles of mould not only firmly retain all matter nutritive to vegetable growth, but also immediately absorb such as
are contained in the rain-water (ammonia, potash, etc.). But
only such substances are completely absorbed from the water
as are indispensable requisites for vegetable growth; others
remain either entirely or for the most part in a state of solution." 2 Thus every drop of rain is in its operation a miracle
of conformity to purpose. No less wonderful are the wellknown proportions in which oxygen and nitrogen are combined
in the air, their continuous production and consumption, and
the constant restoration of the due proportions amidst perpetual oscillations. And just as in these matters we see a
previously unthought of "great scheme for the harmonious
blending of forces," so, too, in modern astronomy.  Here it
has been demonstrated that those phenomena which were
formerly called "disturbances" in the planetary orbits, and
consequently appeared to point to some want of order, some
little error on the part of the intelligence which arranged the
universe, are in reality reciprocally compensating forces, and
balance one another according to fixed laws,-thanks to a distribution of masses in our solar system, such as could only be
contrived by the piercing mind of a heavenly Arithmetician,
whose reckonings even a Lagrange was scarce able to follow.
And how many other facts are there in the world, in re-' Cf. for what follows, Ulrici, Gott und die Natur.
2 Chemische Brieje, 1865, p. 387 if.




176                     PANTHEISM.               [LECT. IlI.
Ppect of which the truly profound natural philosopher must
confess that they absolutely cannot be derived from blindly
ruling forces of nature, but must point to some intelligence
which guides everything according to wise and good purposes!
How is it, for instance, that drift-wood is cast up on the coasts
of Greenland-which stand in, such need of it-and not upon
those of England and France?  How is it that the planets
nearest to the sun have no moons, whilst those that are farther
removed, and stand in more, need of light, have several? How
is it that iron is the metal which is found more frequently
than any other?  How is it that the trade-winds carry the
clouds past one portion of America, so that they may gather
round the summits of the Andes, and thence descend and
moisten by mists and storms those provinces which would
otherwise be arid? If it is said that these things are caused
by certain natural laws which are hitherto unknown to us,
the question still arises, whether every law does not presuppose a lawgiver?
In organic nature we meet with still clearer traces of intelligent forethought.  Here we see each form of animal and
vegetable life with a special function allotted to it, and provided with the requisite structure, but very often in such a
way that the organs make their a2ppearance long before they are
needed to exercise their functions.  Thus the leaf attached to
the stamen of the lime-blossom remains motionless for months,
until the pistil with the fruit, which has in the meantime
ripened, becomes disengaged from the bough, and then by the
help of this its leafy wing does not descend perpendicularly
to the earth, but is carried in graceful spiral curves beyond
the spreading roots of the parent trunk.  The feathery crowns
of the dandelion and the thistle, the teeth of the mammalia,
and the wings of birds, all illustrate the same law. And the
further we descend amongst the genera of the inferior animal
creation, the more frequently are we confronted by phenomena
which, to use the words of a Professor of Botany, "can
scarcely be described otherwise than as the predestined _preparation for predestined future functions."  Soo, too, with all
the higher animals; the organs of the lungs, the eyes, and the
ears are formed in the womb or in the egg long before there
is any contact with the outer air, or any affection of the




LECT. III.]             PANTIIEISM.                   177
optical or aural. nerves.  (Notice, too, the complete refutation
of Materialisim involved in these facts.)  And how exactly
are these organs formed in respect of the purposes which they
will have to fulfil! The eye of the fish is constructed in
precise conformity with the laws that govern the refraction
of light through water, whilst its gills are perfectly adapted
to the nature of its vital element.  The sole of the human
foot and the palm of the hand are clothed, even in the womb,
with a thicker skin than the remainder of the body.  Indeed,
the wise construction of the human hand has been not inaptly
adduced as an irrefutable proof of the existence of God (by
Sir Charles Bell in his Bridgewater Treatise).
And with what wonderful conformity to purpose is the life
of the body carried on?  It can only subsist by means of the
continuous action of the blood, which in every limb absorbs
and carries away all useless or noxious matter; and, on the
other hand, brings to it all that is serviceable, by depositing
phosphate of lime in the bones, nitrogen in the muscles, carbonic acid in the lungs, etc.,-every kind of matter in the right
place, at the right time, and in the correct chemical proportions. Surely, in the face of such clear facts, it is only the
blindness of prejudice which can deny that a conformity to
plan and purpose governs the various forces.  The -birth of
all animals which live on any sort of food that is not always
obtainable, takes place just at those periods of the year in
which the food necessary for their young is to be had.  Insects, too, do not emerge from the grub until the means of
their subsistence are at hand; indeed, they conform to the
irregularity of the seasons if the growth of the plants requisite
for their food is delayed by bad weather.
How incomprehensible is all this, unless we assume the
existence of Him "to whom all His works are known from
the beginning of the world!" (Acts xv. 18).  Is it not clear
that the infinitely rich and yet united system of laws inherent
in the whole of natural life-from  the harmoniously circling
heavenly bodies to the drops of dew upon the field, from the
human body to the smallest blade of grass-can only be the
work of a foreseeing and therefore self-conscious intelligence?
If, however, from the systematic co-operation of all isolated
natural forces towards one great vworlcl-harmony, the necessary




178     MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. IIL
deduction be the existence of some all-conditioning, all-governing and spiritual primal Power, then the utter untenableness
of Pantheism is clearly evident.  Logic proves that it cannot
explain the origin of cosmical matter; and natural science
reduces it to the utmost perplexity, by demanding an explanation of the cosmic harmony, and of the wondrously beautiful
disposition of the component parts in the world's organism.
In this matter its'perplexity is twofold.  First, it cannot
point out the origin of the indivicdzal forms of life in the world.
The origin of our own personality from the impersonal mundane Soul remains, as we showed above, a mystery; but the
same remark applies to the origin of organic life generally.
The natural science of the present day shows that at the
earliest period nothing but inorganic life existed, and confesses its inability to conceive how organic life can be developed from  inorganic matter.  The pantheist, however, is,
in accordance with his principles, compelled to maintain that
this did take place. For if nature is the ultimate cause of
everything, if everything is developed by necessity in    an
eternal circle, then no individual form of life can be isolated
from all other entities by a special act of creation,. or produced by a miracle; on the contrary, everything must form
part of one firmly-linked chain of cause and effect. Therefore,
the organic must take its origin spontaneously from the inorganic, and man must descend from some species of ape.
Thus Pantheism stands in complete contradiction.to all sound
investigations of natural science.l
In the next place, Pantheism cannot explain the connection
existing between the individual cosmical beings, i.e. the laws
that govern them   and combine them    into a Cosmos.   This
marvel of wisdom and conformity to purpose, these predestined
preparations for future activity, this magnificent scheme of
harmonious adaptation of forces both in animated and inanimate
nature,-all this has been produced, according to Pantheism,
by an unconscious Wisdom, by a Soul of the world infinitely
intelligent, it is true (for even Spinoza attributes thought to
1 According to the latest observations of Pasteur, which are confirmed by the
French Academy of Science, the assumption of a generatio spontanea or cequivoca,
i.e. that organic life' should spontaneously spring from inorganic matter, must
henceforth be considered as scientifically disproved




LECT. III.]                 PANTHEISM.                         179
the universal Substance), but still impersonal. An unconscious
Wisdom!     An infinite Intelligence devoid of self-consciousness!
Grasp who may such an idea! It is a self-contradicting conception, just as much as a wooden iron, or a quadrangular
circle!1   For if, as infinite Intelligence, God knows everything, He must also know Himself, and must be a Person,
since " the conception of the Ego is the root of all knowing."
The objection may, however, be raised, that the possibility
of a wisdom   devoid of consciousness is evident from the workings of animal instinct and the origin of human          language.
Many animals, such as the spider, the bee, the beaver, etc., do,
indeed, without any clear consciousness, make structures eminently adapted to their purpose, and the genius of a people
produces its own language, without any         preconceived   plan
and any clear intention, and yet languages are replete with
well-defined rules and laws. This objection is very plausible;
nevertheless it proves nothing in favour of an absence of consciousness on the part of the mundane Soul.       It cannot prove
this, unless these wisely planned workings of animal instinct
really proceed primarily from the beast itself. But this is not the
case.   On the contrary, instinct is implanted in the beast as a
result of its organization, as e.g. the faculty of singing in the
singing bird; and faculties of this kind are not produced by
the animal itself, but are derived from       some other source,
In like manner, the peculiar features of a language arise fron
1 Hence, also, the contradictions in which pantheistic naturalists entangle
themselves when endeavouring to explain the process of creation. Burmeister,
for instance, has shown with praiseworthy pains that the creation of the various
animal species always began with a type of the whole genus, which united in
itself the qualities subsequently distributed among the different species. Hence
he, too, acknowledges a "united plan, a definite law unalterably observed
in the development of the animal world;" but at the same time he maintains
that this law is only the result of the forces working in matter, and that as they
altered, that which was produced by them assumed another form. But if these
forces not only work, but also " alter" in conformity with " a united plan," so
that they do not constantly produce similar formations, but such as are progressively more and more perfect; and if all this appears to be based upon some distinct universal conception, does it not evidently follow that it is not a number
of forces blindly acting upon the matter with which they fortuitously meet, but
only an intelligent and conscious Power operating according to plan and conception, which, by means of these natural forces and materials, has called forth the
succession of animal species, and has guided the whole process of creation?
Pantheism is here convicted from its own lips!




180     MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
the bodily or mental constitution which the people has by
nature; and this, too, is a gift conferred upon it.  Hence, in
reality, the wisdom which manifests itself in animal instinct
and in the construction of languages is not derived from the
beast itself, nor from the genius of the nation, "but from that
Power to which both animals and men owe their organization.
It is therefore impossible to argue, from the deficiency of selfconsciousness in animal instinct, that the ultimate Cause which
organizes every kind of life can operate unconsciously." A
cleverly- constructed machine works well by itself, and produces
things serviceable for the purpose intended; but this is a
merit due, not to the machine, but to him who constructed it
wisely, with a certain end in view. It works only with borrowed wisdom and forces implanted in it by man.  Thus God
implants in organic nature certain instincts and faculties,
which then produce unconsciously things wondrously adapted
for their purpose. But from this it by no means follows that
the Creator, who conferred these gifts on animals or men, did
so unconsciously.
No, it is a proposition clear and irrefutable as the axioms in
mathematics, that the primal Reason, from  which all that is
rational in the world proceeds, cannot be blind, but must be
self-conscious.  "So long," says a prominent philosopher of
the present day, " as the position of natural science allowed us
to consider original matter to be a continuous substance extending into infinity, it was possible to take a pantheistic view of
the spiritual Power governing it, as though this were inherent
in matter, and formed it continually into the shapes which
nature exhibits, i.e. as though it were merely the Soul or
Spirit of the world. But since natural science has demonstrated that matter consists of an infinity of separate and different atoms, it is scientifically impossible to cling to Pantheism
as a theory of the world without betraying an utter want of
reflection."  If I shuffle promiscuously a thousand letters of
the alphabet, is it likely that some happy accident will group
them into a glorious poem, teeming in every line with intellect and beauty?   You cannot believe this.   Neither can
you, then, believe that a Cosmos, such as presents itself to our
eye, with more wisdom and beauty the longer we consider it,
is the product of matter, of forces and atoms unconsciously




LECT. III.]            IANTHEISM.                    181
meeting and combining with one another! At the present
day the only choice left to us is between this extreme
Materialism, which declares the origin of the world to be an
accidentally fortunate combination of atoms, and the belief in
the creative action of a spiritual, self-conscious, original Being,
who governs according to purposes and ideas, that is, in the
personal God. This, my honoured hearers, is the final dilemma
put to you also: you must believe either in an accident which
explains nothing at all, and puts a stop to all scientific investigations, or in a personal Creator 
The very same alternative is laid before you in respect to
the whole history of the world.  Its wonderful course is as
much a proof for the existence of a wise and holy God who
guides everything according to conscious aims and ends, as is
the creation, for the existence of a wise and omnipotent God.
" The wisely ordered march of history," says a modern apologist, "through the midst of all the turmoil brought about by
the arbitrary conduct of so many millions of free men, can
only be explained as resulting from the all-ruling providence
of a personal God.  It would be impossible, in the face of
human freewill, for the unconscious wisdom  of nature to
retain the mastery over the course of events." Every individual
personal being would possess in his freedom a power greater than
all that of the impersonal mundane Soul, and could, by a single
action, confound all the operations of the latter.  Nothing but
a person can rule over and guide persons.  The rule of an impersonal power over personal beings is just as impossible for the
one as it is tznworthy for the other. We need not pursue this
further, for it will suffice to refer each one to his own history.
If God exists, then man, the being formed in His image, may
demand that He should make Himself personally felt. And
has He not already done so in our individual experience?
With one who denies this, we cannot of course dispute further;
but such an one will find his whole life one great unsolved
enigma!
(c) This brings us to.the historical arguments against Pantheism. These we will touch very shortly, and only from one
point of view, viz. that of the history of religions.  It is a
matter of fact that, even in polytheistic religions, the presentiment of the One personal God has not entirely faded




182      MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
away.   Only to take one instance, we should scarcely find
even a Negro in Africa who denies the one God, the Creator
of heaven and earth.    The history of religions is making it
more and more evident at the present day, that in the most
ancient traditions of all nations there are to be found scattered
traces and features, distorted but still recognisable, of a primitive revelation of the One personal God.   But more than this,
traces are not wanting that the growing darkness of superstition is sometimes painfully felt by the heathen as a state of
degradation from  the more elevated stage of that primitive
revelation.l  We do not consider this as a direct argument
against Pantheism, but we take note of the fact that the testimony of Scripture respecting the original revelation of the
One personal God is increasingly confirmed by the history of
religion.  But if Polytheism is shown to be an obscuration of
the original revelation of God, then Pantheism, its reverse,
must be the same.     But the history of religions supplies us
with a direct argument against Pantheism, in the fact that all
religions show an involuntary impulse towards forming a personal idea of their gods.  Nations cannot imagine their gods
otherwise than as persons; and this is what Cicero means
when he says: " All of us of every nation, following a necessity
implanted in our nature, cannot ascribe to the gods any other
shape than that of man." This religious feature is universal
in the most ancient as well as in the most modern forms of
heathenism. Even in the religions of nature the deified natural
forces are invariably personified.   The hymns and prayers
addressed to them (cf. those of the Indian Vedas) presuppose
their personality.  Even the sacrifice intended to propitiate
the fetish gives to it "a background of personality."  So, too,
the supreme God of the Chinese, who was subsequently worshipped by their philosophers as merely the impersonal soul of
the world, was, according to modern investigations, not merely
1 Cf. for instance (in Burckhardt's Missionsbibliothek, II. B., South Africa,
p. 12), the confession of the Hottentots at the beginning of the 18th century,
"that it had been related to them by their fathers how their ancestors had
sinned so dreadfully against the great God that He had hardened the hearts of
them and of their posterity, so that they could no longer know nor honour nor
serve Him rightly." Also Erganzungsheft, ii. 1868, p. 10. For what follows,
cf. also Plath, Die Relig. der alten Chinesen, 1863, and Delitzsch ut supra,
p. 53 ff.




LECT. III.]             PANTHEISM.                    183
originally imagined as a person, but is even at the present day
practically personified as the Higher Emperor, Shang-Ti.  All
mythologies are based on the idea of personal historical intercourse between gods and men.   Is not the conclusion a fair
one, " that man is inwardly compelled to think of the Godhead
as a personal Being, and that he cannot, at any stage of religious
progress, get rid of this idea?"  The objection that "it is a
form of thought peculiar to the human mind to represent as
persons all the unknown, secret causes of natural phenomena,"
in no way lessens the importance of this unique fact.  For we
clearly see that, following a necessary internal law which has
been universally confirmed by history, man cannot look upon
any of the beings which he ranks above himself, and with
whom he stands in some religious connection, except as personal beings; because otherwise they would rank under him,
and could not enter into reciprocal intercourse with him.
From these facts we draw the conclusion that, according
to the unanimous testimony of religious history, Pantheism is
nothing but an artificial system of philosophical abstractions,
which keeps back, subtilizes, and generalizes the original and
ever-recurring instinct that leads man to yearn after a personal God, and personal intercourse with Him.    We now
proceed to show that this internal law cannot be slighted
without the infliction of a heavy injury on our moral and
religious consciousness.
(d) This we do by means of the moral and religious arguments against the pantheistic idea of God.    In the first
place, we ask the pantheist, TVWhence procceds the conscience,
the moral law impllanted in us?  Whence this " categorical
imperative" which makes itself directly felt and recognised in
our soul? Does it not point to some absolute law-giving
Will operating in us?  Surely the moral law is something
entirely different from the natural law.  The latter is unconsciously carried out by nature; that is, it fulfils itself.  But
the law which lives in the conscience is not fulfilled until
man has become conscious of it.  And whilst the former law
must be fulfilled, the latter, though requiring its fulfilment on
the part of man, yet allows him free self-decision.  The moral
law cannot, therefore, be derived from nature; and if man
discovers this law inherent in him, he cannot be a mere pro



184     MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
duct of natural life. (This argument likewise holds good against
Materialism.)  Indeed this law may even contradict the natural
law; for in some cases we feel ourselves bound to obey the
moral law in the teeth of all our natural inclinations.  If a man
is hungry, and sees bread before him, the impulses of nature bid
him appropriate it; but the moral law says, "Thou shalt not
steal "  And if he disobeys the latter, he cannot avoid the
painful feeling that he has thereby degraded himself.  How
is this? Why is this moral law permitted so frequently to
contradict the laws of nature?  And, lastly, whence proceeds
our religious consciousness, which, as we have already seen
[under the head (c)], demands fellowship with the personal
God, and which, if the pantheistic idea of God were correct,
would be mere self-contradiction, a lie, a mockery, and an
eternally unappeased longing?  No pantheist has as yet been
able to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.
We are probably met with the reply, that "all this is
connected with the moral order of the world;" which is
supposed to be the origin, support, and end of moral consciousness in man.  But this is a mere phrase, and does not explain
anything. Whence does the moral order of the world proceed?
Does it not, as much or still more than the conformity to
law in external nature, presuppose a thinking, self-conscious
Lawgiver, a free and holy Will, and a personal Creator and
Ruler of the universe?  Is our intellect again to acquiesce
in the idea, that this moral order has arisen spontaneously, or
has always existed?  Supposing even it existed without any
ordainer or lawgiver, would it by itself be able to implant the
moral law in us, and to maintain its authority?  We have
already seen that the mere abstract idea of Goodness is no
effective motive for doing good, and that it cannot operate
with vital power unless it is seen realized in some personality,
and thus takes hold of the heart.  We ask: Is it possible
that a mere law or universal order, an utter abstraction which
it is difficult even to express, should draw forth a love from
man which would prove an adequate motive for moral conduct,
even in cases where such would require painful self-denial?
Indeed, can such a law even exact the necessary respect fiom
man's freewill?  Practical experience answers this inquiry
with a dear and unanimous-No.      It teaches us that these




LECT. III.]            PANTHEISM.                     185
effects can only follow when the law proceeds from, and is
represented by, concrete personal beings.  If, therefore, the
moral ideas which man detects in his conscience are not to
remain powerless and without effect; they must be derived
from a personal Will; a living God must be their source and
exponent, not a mere law.  Where in all the world will a
mere law obtain the respect due to it, unless it is supported
by persons endowed with authority?  And, in like manner,
nobody would care for the moral law if it were supported by
nothing but the " order of the universe," and not by the personality of a holy God.  The same rule, as above, holds good
here also, that only a personal will can rule persons; a freewill does not submit to the mere framework of a spontaneously generated mundane order.
We see that the pantheistic idea of God cannot afford any
support to our moral life, inasmuch as it is unable either to
explain the moral law or eforce it.  It may, however, be
shown still more simply that it must lead even to the destruction of all morality; and this is the last and heaviest charge
which we bring forward against it.
The reason is this, that Pantheism (just as Materialism) is
at last compelled, if consistent with its own principles, to deny
the freedom of man, his responsibility, and even the distinction
between good and evil, by which means all morality is done
away with. According to the pantheistic view, the world is
moving in a circle formed by an inexorably firm chain of
cause and effects, one thing resulting from another with iron
necessity.  Man is no exception to this rule.  He stands,
according to Spinoza, as a link in the endless series of determining causes.  In his spirit there is no such thing as freewill; for each act of his will is predetermined by some
other cause, and this again by another, and so on ad infinitum.
WVhatever the will does, it cannot help doing. " Men believe
that they are free agents, simply because they are conscious
of their actions only, and not of the causes by which these
actions are determined."  The ideas of the distinction between
good and evil are based upon an error.  Nothing is in itself
either good or evil; these are purely relative and subjective
ideas, "mere prejudices, which arise from  arbitrary conceptions formed by men of the standards at which things and




186    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
actions are to aim, whilst in nature nothing really takes place
which can be imputed to her as a fault."   As soon as we
turn our glance away from details and direct it towards the
whole, we recognise that everything, even so-called evil,
works together for the perfection and beauty of the whole.
Truly, these utterances of Spinoza in his Practical Philosophy
leave nothing to be desired as regards perspicuity. They
completely destroy all morality.  Whatever I do, I do it of
necessity, and so it is right, seemly, and profitable for the
whole!
Other pantheists, it is true, may not have admitted these
awful conclusions quite so bluntly as Spinoza; but if they
wish to be consistent with their principles, they are all
inexorably compelled to do so, and hence in the case of each
one of them  they are more or less openly manifest.  Theologians of the pantheistic school cannot do otherwise than
represent the fall of man as a necessity, and with human freedom they must deny human guilt.     Statesmen and national
jurists of pantheistic opinions, if they remain faithful to their
principles, must constantly allow the freedom of the individual
to be merged in the mechanism   of the commonwealth as a
whole.  The rights of the individual person can never be duly
recognised by those who hold such opinions.  Take e.g. Hegel's
teachings as to law and government, and see how he utterly
sacrifices the will of the individual to that of the commonwealth.  The outcome of such doctrines is best described in
Hegel's own words, when he says that "the world's history
is the Golgotha of the Absolute Spirit; the fearfully tragic
slaughter-house in which all individual life and happiness is
sacrificed, in order that the universal ideal of humanity may
progress."  Under the dominion of a blindly ruling Soul of
the universe, which is but another name for necessity itself,
there is no room left for any being in the world to exercise
freedom.  Everything is swallowed up in the universal substance, and is ruled by the law of its development.   The
course of the world necessarily involves the life and death of
all that we see.  Everything has existed long since, and will
again exist; everything remains as it always was, unaltered
amidst all changes.  Aimless and colourless, the current of
the world's life eternally sweeps onward, and only to our




LECT. III.]             PANTHEISM.                    187
short-sighted vision does it appear bright with different hues.
And we, ourselves, mere specks that of necessity emerge only
again to subside below this current, cannot in truth, either
by our best or our worst actions, tinge the world's development by any difference or peculiarity of character, nor by any
deed of abiding merit or demerit.  What a comfortless view of
the world is this; how unworthy of man, how paralyzing, nay,
destructive to all his moral powers  Not only does it deprive
us of any personal immortality, since the spirit after death is
to be absorbed into the universal soul of the world, but, even
in this life, when it deprives man of his freedom, it robs him
of all joyfulness in action, of his responsibility, and hence of
all moral value! This is the last and the heaviest accusation
that we must bring against Pantheism, just as above against
Materialism, that it destroys the whole ethical and spiritual
dignity of man, and does away with all morality and all religion.  Not only is it unable to satisfy the inmost need of our
hearts, which long after personal intercourse with God, but it
also robs our moral action of its last support.  Pantheism,
therefore, harmonizes neither with the world nor with ourselves;
neither with the cosmical order nor with our reason; neither
with the history of the world and religion nor with our conscience and the religious need implanted in our hearts.  It is
an evident contradiction of all these things.
Here, too, we see the great truth, that the personality of God
and the moral personality of man must stand or fall together.
If personality is not essential to the nature of God, it cannot
be acknowledged in its full dignity in man; it is not a complete truth, for it is everywhere only transient in its character.
Lessing says most justly, "If I am, God is also; He may be
separated from me, but not I from Him."   But for this very
reason the converse holds good also.  If God is not, then I
am not; if He is no person, I can no longer maintain my personality. The man who denies the personality of God undermines the foundation of his own. Pantheism, in doing this,
swallows up God in man and man in God.     Well and truly
may a modern philosopher say, " It is clearly evident that
pantheistic and atheistical philosophy are alike based upon
principles which are irrational and unphilosophical." A pious
man, three thousand years ago, well knew this, though ho




188    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
expressed it somewhat more simply.  "The fool hath said in
his heart, There is no God" (Ps. xiv. 1).
Let me compress the result of all that I have said into a
few words of advice. If you meet one who denies the personality of God, ask him the following questions: (1.) Whence
does the cosmical substance proceed which you suppose to be
shaped by the Soul of the universe? How can God produce
this substance if He Himself is only produced and realized by
it? Is not, therefore, its existence an unproved assumption?
How is it possible that personality should proceed from the
impersonal, and that God should create something which He
Himself is devoid of?  In fact, can the most perfect Being
be deficient in anything that we His creatures possess?  (2.)
How is it conceivable that the Soul,of the universe, which
orders and guides everything with astonishing wisdom and
according to evidently preconceived purposes, should form
conceptions of everything else, but not of Itself?  (3.) Why
do all nations, both in ancient and. modern times, always
imagine their God or gods to be personal? (4.) If everything
be a product of nature and the laws of nature, whence come
our conscience, the moral law, and religious consciousness?
And where is there aly room left for my freedom of will and
responsibility —for the dignity of my moral personality-if all
things follow one another in an endless circle under the pressure of an internal necessity, and are connected in one firmlylinked chain of cause and effect?  Until a pantheist can give
you satisfactory answers to these questions-and you need not
fear that this will be very readily done-you are perfectly
justified in calling his stand-point scientifically untenable.
Unquestionably, however, there is something true even in
Pantheism.  There is something grand in the idea of the unity
oj all being, and of the connection of our life with the whole
life of the universe. And this fundamental view is by no
means entirely unjustifiable.  The affinity between spirit and
nature is a deeply seated one, and the laws of the two realms
correspond to each other. They have one origin, and tend
towards one goal of consummation. In man, too, the dualism
between nature and spirit is to be done away with when he
arrives at the condition of perfection.  Hence a oneness of
feature runs through the whole development of the physical




LECT. III.]            PANTHEISM.                   189
and moral world, and the spirit in a thousand ways recognises
itself and its laws in the objective reason which it meets with
in nature.  But the wrong lies in stopping short at this one
universal life, just as if it were the origin of all things, that is,
God Himself, instead of raising our minds to the recognition
of that absolute Reason which must at the same time be
absolute Will and Self-consciousness, i.e. tow the One to whom
this unity of being and becoming in the world directly points
us as the origin and the goal of everything.
Further, it is the special effort of Pantheism to refer everything which exists and occurs to the direct agency of God, and
to show its dependence on Him. It cannot imagine anything
which is not an efflux of divine power, and therefore finds
God in everything.  And this, too, contains a great truth, viz.,
that it is utterly impossible to imagine the life of the world,
its origin and continuance, both as a whole and in its smallest
details, as severed from God, seeing that He must needs be
omnipresent and everywhere active.  This much may be learned
from Pantheism by deists, rationalists, and all those who at the
present day would attribute to the world a life and self-development independent of God's direct influence.  But the will,
the activity of God, is one thing, and His very essence is another.
Although the world, down to its very smallest particle, may be
entirely dependent on the former, it does not follow that the
latter should be merged in and coextensive with the world.
On the contrary, true and rational as is the first proposition, it
is just as irrational to make out that God, the first Cause of
the world, is Himself dependent on it, and only exists in the
totality of the world's being; in other words, to deny His
supramundane existence, and therefore His personality, just as
if the Being who is the Cause of all things must not for this
very reason be something different from the things caused!
Another truth expressed by Pantheism is this, that even
evil is not to be thought of as entirely without the pale of
God's government. There can be no power whatever which
is not subject to Him or entirely independent of His control
and guidance.  He foresees evil and allows it; indeed, when
it is once in existence, He makes use of it for His own purposes in the government of the world.' But it is an error on
this account to attribute the authorship of evil to the will of




190    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
God, as if the absolutely existent and eternal Being must not
at the same time be the absolutely good and holy One. It is
also wrong, by thus referring the origin of evil to the Divine
Will, to do away with the freedom of man and to efface the
distinction between good and evil, just as if the indelible selfcertainty of man in respect to his moral freedom and responsibility, as well as his feeling of guilt, could be a lie.
Finally, there is something true in the pantheistic view, that
the conception of personality is too limited and finite to be
applied to God; for we cannot conceive of God only as a single
Person. The fulness of His Being overflows the limits of this
conception.  But it is wrong, on this account, entirely to give
up the idea of personality. There is a conception of God
which leaves room for the infinite fulness of life in Him, and
yet maintains the infinite prerogative of personality. This,
as we shall see, is accomplished by the'Christian doctrine of
the triune personality of God.  The true conception of God
must as decidedly acknowledge and embrace these elements of
truth as exclude the false inferences drawn from them. And
such we shall show to be the case with the teaching of the
Christian faith.
There now remains for our consideration one more conception of God which acknowledges His personality, and yet,
from a scriptural point of view, must be rejected.
IV.-DEISM AND RATIONALISM.
This is in many respects the antithesis of Pantheism.
According to Pantheism, God exists only in the world as its
soul; according to Deism, He exists only above the world as a
personal Spirit: by Pantheism, God and the world are regarded as absolutely inseparable; by Deism, as absolutely
severed, and as not merely different, but divided one from the
other.  God is for the deist a personal Being, who, after
creating the world by His will, now acts towards it like an
artificer with a finished machine, which mechanically pursues
its natural course according to the laws laid down for it, and
no longer requires the immediate assistance or interference of
its maker. The master shipbuilder has completed and launched




LECT. III.]         DEISAM AND RATIONALISM.               191
his ship, and now leaves her to herself and her own crew.
The clockmaker has completed and wound up his clock, which
now goes of itself without any more need of him.
The being, personality, and supramundane nature of the
Deity (hence the vague and awkward term " Deism"), and the
creation of the world by Him, are thus acknowledged; while,
on the other hand, any continuous active presence of God in the
world, and any living interposition in its affairs, are denied.
The world has outgrown its leading-strings, and, emancipated
from divine control, is now left to itself.  There is no special
providence: miracles are an impossibility.   Everything takes
place in harmony with natural laws which are implanted in thb
universe, and suffer no alteration whatsoever.  This is the chief
characteristic of the deistical theory.  For the pantheist, God
is too near to seem to be above him; for the deist, too far off to
be recognised as exercising any direct rule over the world which
He has made.    Relegating God, as it were, to the outermost
confines of being, he seeks to keep Him as far off as possible, in
order to follow the light of natural reason, unmolested by the
cross-lights of a higher revelation.  The first and immediate
consequence of this is, that every special manifestation of God,
no matter what, must be denied, all supernatural elements in
the Christian belief, even those involved in the Person and
Work of Christ, must be excluded, and anything in Scripture
bearing on these points must be explained away by a reference
to natural causes.
In all essentials, then, Deism coincides entirely with that
*which was formerly denominated NVaturalism;1 for it pronounces the laws of nature to be adequate to the continuous
existence of the world, and natural religion to be the only
essential form of belief, even in connection with Christianity.
It likewise agrees in principle with what is called Rationalism,
the essence of which consists in the position that Reason is
not merely the formal, but also the material, principle of
1 At the present day, in Germany, "Naturalism" and "Materialism" are
used almost as synonymous terms for the theory which derives from the
operation of the laws of nature only, not merely the continuance, but the very
existence and even the origin of the world; whilst in England, for instance,
"Naturalism" still retains its original meaning, and is defined as "the denial
of any divine rule and providence extending to individuals " (cf., for instance,
Pearson on Infidelity).




192   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.    [LECT. II.
religion,.and supreme arbiter over the whole substance of the
Christian faith (cf. Lect. II. sec. 1 and 3).
This theory is, however, by no means new.  We meet with
something like it even in Greek philosophy, both in the
mechanical interpretations of nature given by the atomists
and Anaxagoras' notion of a world-forming intelligence absolutely separated from all matter, as well as in the teaching of
Epicurus, that the gods can take no interest in human affairs.
But it was first reduced to a real system in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries by the English (and Dutch) "freethinkers," "minute philosophers," and "deists," whose common
principle might be described as the elevation of natural
religion, on the basis of free thought and inquiry, to the position of supreme arbiter of all religion that claimed to be
positive, as a denial of any special divine providence, of
miracles, and generally of every direct interposition by God in
the course of the world.  Thus, for instance, Chubb taught
that God held Himself aloof from human concerns; and that
whatever happens to man is only the dependent result of
second causes.  In like manner, Bolingbroke maintained that
God regards the universe as a whole, and not its individual
parts; and that there is no divine intervention as to details
either in nature or. morals.  In the Germany of the last
generation, these rationalistic tendencies were prevalent among
theologians and educated persons generally; but in such
various shades and modifications as to the views taken of
Divine Providence, and the chief of all miracles, the Person of
our Lord, that we must be on our guard against comprehending them all in one category. ~While some of those speculations were not far removed from the Christian and scriptural
ideas ot God and Providence, others approximated very closely
to Pantheism.  But in general, it is a characteristic principle
of Rationalism not to recognise any special divine interposition
in the course of this world or the concerns of men, to explain
in a manner comprehensible to natural reason everything in
Scripture which implies such interposition, all miracles and
special revelations, and so to  eliminate the supernatural
element generally.
At the present time, both in German and English theology,
this principle has but few representatives, but reckons a pro



LECT. III.]       DEISM AND RATIONALISMU              193
portionately larger number among Swiss (Zurich), French
(Strasburg), and Dutch (Leyden and Groningen) theologians,
while the great body of educated laymen, and especially of the
students of modern natural science, are confessedly under its
influence. In spite of all the attempts which Rationalism has
made, and is still making, to find for its theories a scriptural
basis, we scarcely need any justification if we class its theological conceptions among the non-biblical.  In every page,
indeed, the Bible teaches a direct divine agency in the world,
a providence extending to the minutest details (the very hairs
of our head being all numbered), and a constant dependence
of the world on God for its existence and guidance; points
which, in the next lecture on the Scriptural Idea of God, will
come before us in more detail.
But we affirm that this rationalistic conception of God is
not merely unscriptural, but also impossible and false; and
we maintain the untenableness of its positions front a scicntfic
point of view,-in a word, the irrationality of Rationalism.  In
proof of these assertions, we may pursue a like course to that
we followed in the case of Pantheism, and consider in succession the main arguments which can be adduced from a consideration of the nature of God, the zorld, and man's vnoral
condition, against the fundamental positions of Deism and
Rationalism.  Having previously become acquainted to some
extent with the weakness of Rationalism   in its denial of
revelation as such, and having also to submit hereafter the
general question as to the possibility of miracles to a separate
discussion, we need not now do more than take a brief view
of its general principle as to the position it assigns to God in
the world.
Deism, falsely named as it is, is also in its principle an
unnatural combination of conflicting clemcnts, adopting some
things even from Atheism, when it regards the world, as now
constituted, as existing without God or any divine influence,
others from Materialism and Pantheism, when it seeks to derive
all that takes place in the world from natural causes inherent
in it, and to exclude all exercise of supernatural power on the
part of God.   So far, Deism shares in and suffers from the
fundamental faults of the three other systems.  But it is itself
more inconsistent than they, attempting to make an essential
N




194   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
distinction between the creation and that which followed it.
During the creative process, the world, according to Deism,
was not without God, but completely dependent on Iim as its
creating and shaping Principle; but ever since it has been left
alone and independent. While creation was going on, God was
interested in the work down to its smallest details, but has
since withdrawn Himself into His own solitude, and has
henceforth had an eye for the whole only, and not for any of
its parts. During creation, God wrought miracle after miracle,
creation itself being the greatest of all miracles; but no
sooner was creation finished, than He tied, as it were, His own
hand, and made any subsequent act of miraculous power a
thing impossible.  He who could once call worlds into being
cannot now, by an act of miraculous healing, restore to health
the life of a single invalid. What do we gain by these evident
inconsistencies?  Only this, that the world's enigma assumes
now for us three forms, each more puzzling than the other.
We no longer ask merely, as in respect to the God of Holy
Scripture, How was creation possible? but we have to put the
further question, How was it possible that God, haviz g created,
should leave the world thus created alone?  How is its present
independent continuance possible?  And, lastly, how is it
possible that God should maintain towards the world now an
attitude so entirely different from that which He took in the
beginning?  At this point the greatest difficulties arise, in
respect both to the nature and action of God Himself and the
world's position towards Him.
(a) Let us, in the first place, consider for a moment the
difficulties connected with the nature of God Himself.  Our
main objection to Deism on this ground is, that God is thereby
made to forfeit His own divinity.  Is He not, we ask, as the
most perfect Being, necessarily the one Being who is ever
consistent with Himself?  How can I assume in Him  a distinction between action and rest, such as would divide His
conduct towards the world into two contradictory positions?
How could this harmonize with the doctrine of His eternal
unity and perfection? Labour with Him is rest, and rest
labour; that which to us is sundered, is in God one and the.
same.  Even in the rest of the seventh day His action goes
on, for "God," we read, "blessed the seventh day, and




LECT. III.]      DEISM AND RATIONALISM.              195
hallowed it." The whole of Scripture is pervaded by the
view that God the Creator is still continuously at work (John
v. 17). Any one who makes an absolute severance between
the divine action and the divine rest, draws down the infinite
Godhead into the changing revolutions of the finite!
How much is this the case in the system we are considering! How unworthy and how degrading in this respect are
the conceptions which Deism and Rationalism form of God's
relation to the world! After only " six days'" work, He gives
Himself up to a state of rest, and so remains, without giving
Himself any further trouble about its details, content to take
an occasional glance, as if from a shrine on the confines of the
universe, at that universe as a whole! Where else will you
find an artificer who conducts himself with so much indifference towards his own finished work?    It will hardly be
objected that, as it is unworthy of a great ruler to trouble
himself about the insignificant details of government, so it is
unworthy of God to extend His direct guidance and providence to smaller matters. Just the contrary! A great ruler
is in nothing greater than in his power of dealing with details
that appear most trifling.  It is only inferior magnates who
affect importance by looking down upon small matters; the
truly great neither despise nor are indifferent to anything.
If, however, it be asserted that God troubles Himself only
with moral and not with physical details, it is forgotten surely
that the two are most closely connected. How often does the
most trivial matter, the most insignificant event in the natural
world, become either the occasion or the means of bringing
about something morally good or evil! If God regards the
latter, He cannot fail to pay attention to the former; if He
looks to the result, He cannot be indifferent to every factor
which helps to accomplish it. And does not, then, all nature
ultimately tend towards some moral aim?  Was it not moral
motives which moved God to frame the world exactly as He
did, and not in any other way, and to assign to everything its
proper place?  In a true cosmos, that is, in an harmoniously
developed organism, the smallest portion has a direct significance in the arrangement of the whole.  If, then, the world,
in the divine idea of it, is arranged on moral principles, as
Rationalism is never weary of maintaining, then everything




196   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
that takes place therein is of moral significance, and claims
and needs some attention from God.
And this attention must be not merely passive, but active
and lively. Are there now operating in the world not merely
natural powers, but creatures endowed with moral freedom,
who, through their action, may every moment disturb, and
actually do disturb, the divine order and harmony of the
whole, at least in isolated points, and can it be supposed that
God should quietly look on without any counteraction on His
part?  If, as the Holy One, He must be conducting the world
towards some kind of holiness as its consummation, and yet
man is allowed the freedom of opposing this consummation
with all his powers, if every moment it is being counteracted
in some way by sin in the case of numberless individuals, can
it be supposed that God is to remain unsympathetic and inactive?  Does He not owe it to Himself and to the world to
suffer nothing to remain exempt from His guidance, or to occur
without His permission, by a holy rule of providence to set
some limits to the misuse of human freedom, and to neutralize
some of its pernicious workings by a wholesome counteraction? And will not such a providential government come
in contact in a thousand ways with the processes of the
physical universe, and necessarily react upon them, as indeed
is the case with all human activity?
Human freedom and its correlative, the holiness of the
divine will and law, render necessary a continual and active
interposition on the part of Divine Providence in the course of
the world's development. It may be said that, in the laws of
the world's "moral order," we have an adequate security for
the due maintenance of that order, and the gradual conducting
of the universe to its final consummation.  But that is the
same error that we have previously censured in Pantheism,
assuming that mere law, i.e. something impersonal, can control
persons and counteract free-will.  Either this law, this moral
order, is so inflexible in its nature that it cannot be broken, in
which case it is all up with human freedom and with the whole
distinction between right and wrong, that is, with morality
itself; or this moral order can be broken, and is, in fact, constantly threatened and opposed by the operation of creaturely
free-will: iu that case, how can it be maintained, except by




LECT. III.]       DEISM AND RATIONALISM.                197
constant interpositions on the part of God restoring it when
impaired, or making preparations for the future removal of the
disturbances introduced by sin?  In other words, so far from
a " moral order of the world" rendering the living activity of
God in the world superfluous, some such interference is, on
the contrary, rendered necessary by its very existence.
We see that the most fundamentally essential attribute of
God, His holiness, is not compatible with the denial of a
divine providence actively extended to every individual.  But
God would lose in like manner all His other attributes too, if
condemned to a repose so unworthy of Him, in the face of the
continuous developments of the universe. There lies the world
with all its sins and sorrows, and God Himself may not stir a
finger to come to its help! Where, in this case, are His
goocdness and faithfulness, His mercy and pity?  How   am I
still to look on IHim as love, when this love has long since
ceased to reveal itself to its creatures? What is to become
of His omnipresence, if He can never actively manifest it within
the sphere of creation?  What does His wisdom profit me, and
how  should His omniscience inspire me with dread, if my
human life remains unaffected by either?  In short, the God
of the rationalists ceases to be God; in ceasing to be truly good
and living, He has divested Himself generally of all divine
attributes.  For all life is activity, and the highest life is the
highest activity.  Hence, a God who reposes in inaction ceases
to be a source of life-ceases, in fact, to be God.
(b) Objections of no less importance to deistical theology
arise from the consideration of the tuorld in its relation to God.
Our second class of objections to Deism rest on the following
position: Just as God loses his Godheac, so also the crecature
loses its creatlrely character, when the deistical conception is
received! The world did not create itself, and yet is supposed
able to maintain itself without its Creator.   This view is
based upon a twofold hypothesis: first, that the world, by means
of inherent laws, ccn, as it were, from its own resourices, proceed
to further developmen1Cts; and next, that its organism, just as it
is, is absolutely perfect, rendering unnecessary any further
interference on the part of its Originator.      Both these
assumptions are but half truths.  It is, of course, true that
God has implanted in things themselves the laws of their




198   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. [LECT. III.
nature and natural operation; but is complete repose thereby
enforced upon Him? Does any reasonable man adjust his
work in such a way that he completely binds his hands in
futurb, and condemns himself to become a mere looker-on?
What is that which men call " the play (f accident," but an
exercise of divine freedom within the settled course of nature?
If God has subjected the powers of nature to the laws of
nature, it does not follow that He subjects Himself to His
own creation. How can God possibly be placed in opposition
to His own laws?  What are these laws? Are they things
existing by themselves, and independent of the will of God?
A law taken by itself is nothing more than a particular way
or rule, in or by which a power works or a movement runs its
course. Without this impelling power the law can effect and
is nothing.  Hence, it is an incorrect use of language when a
mere law is described as a motive cause. And so the laws of
nature, if devoid of any power and intelligence working in
them and through them, are mere abstractions, which we
gather from a series of observations resembling one another,
but which are not in themselves enduring realities.  But if,
as Deism confesses, God made all things as they are in the
world, then the power and the intelligence which operate in
the laws of nature must be a divine power and a divine intelligence. How, then, can they be opposed to the divine will
and action as independent and exclusive energies?
It is true that modern natural science, as a rule, maintains
this doctrine. It talks so much about the laws of nature, that
at the present time the latter, in the view of numberless laymen, are become independent divinities, each absolute lord in
its own special domain, and repudiating all interference even
from God Himself.  The old heathen personified the forces of
nature and made them demi-gods; we do the same, and call
them laws.  The heathen, however, were rational enough to
place these individual lesser gods in subjection to the Most
High; while we invest our laws of nature with sovereign
power, in whose august presence the very hands of God Himself are tied and bound!  In our time, therefore, natural
science has become the main support of the separation made by
Deismv between God and the world.  It has followed out all the
processes of development in both organic and inorganic nature




LECT. III.]       EISM AND RATIONALISM.              199
so much more profoundly than was ever done before, and in
that way brought to light so many fresh laws of natural
change, and it has so succeeded in reducing almost the whole
world of phenomena to its registers and categories, that, in
fact, the temptation is a very natural one to recognise nothing
else but these laws themselves, and to regard any constantly
operating or spontaneous intervention on the part of God as
not merely useless but disturbing.  But that when the law of
any phenomenon has been discovered, the real mystery of its
being is stillfar from being cleared up, and nothing thereby
really explained, but only some assistance afforded to future
observations; and that, therefore, every law should be traced
back to its lawgiver, and to the motives that guided him, are
points for the most part overlooked by the advocates of
natural science.
And so it came to pass that the further discoveries were
pushed in natural science, the smaller became the province which
was Ifrft remaining for the creative action of God.  Whilst the
old Deism and Naturalism assigned to God a " six days' work,"
and not until the process of creation had come to an end
sought to make the world independent of Him, our modern
systems claim His services for nothing more than the mere
production of the original matter.  With the words, "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the Bible
of modern science begins and ends.    Any further special
divine action or revelation is unnecessary.   And  why?
Modern natural science has taught Deism that the world is
not only able to maintain itself in the state in which it was
created, but that the forces and laws inherent in the original
matter are also perfectly adequate to infinite development.
First formed itself, in virtue of some internal necessary development, a primary cell or bladder; and this became the germ of
the first organism; from this were developed, in the next
place, forms of life more and more complete, species of vegetables and animals ever higher in their grade, until at last,
from the most perfect specimen of ape, proceeded.man! All
this is supposed to have happened without any special operation on the part of God, and merely through the laws
immanent in nature.
Any closer consideration of these theories, which supply so




200    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPT1ONS OF GOD. [LECT. III,
much assistance to Rationalism, would enter on the question
of the origin of man, which we cannot dwell upon now.  All
we can do here is to remind ourselves that, as already shown,
the assumption that organic life can be produced by the inorganic, is rejected as untenable by science; and further, that
the new Darwinian theory of the origin of species, finds its
most important positions impugned on the basis of undeniable
matters of fact. Why are not new species continually starting
up in the present day?  Why is it that individuals bred by
an artificial system of crossing can never prolong their species
for any length of time?  Why does nature herself in every
case place such limits to her various species, as clearly and
sharply to divide the one from the other? Why do not the
lower plants and animals at the present day gradually improve
themselves into higher forms of life, and ultimately rise into
man?   How can so many of the very lowest organisms, in
spite of their imperfection, maintain their position against
those which are so much further advanced?  Why, amongst
the fossil vegetables and animals which we discover in the
geological strata of the earth, do we never find those intermediate stages which once formed the transition between the
species which now often differ so widely from  one another?
The geological strata show most clearly that new species arose
and disappeared without any internal connection in respect to
their origin.  Would not any formation of separate species, by
means of constant fresh alterations and combinations of
unlimited progression, be an impossibility, and would not the
world become a chaotic confusion of forms?  And how does
Darwin's theory consist with the teleology which governs
nature, and with the impulse of formation which is directed
towards something future and still invisible? Generally speaking, does not " the struggle for existence" leave innumerable
peculiarities unexplained.  Of what nature might " the struggle
for existence" be in which the violet became blue and the rose
red?
With these and other weighty arguments the most enlightened natural philosophers repel these theories.1 If, however,
1 Among the opponents of the transmutation theory it is here only necessary to
mention Pictet, Buckland, Sedgwick, Owen, Hitchcock (The Religion of Geology), Agassiz(Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, III.),




LECT. III.]        DEISM AND RATIONALISM.                 201
the various species and families did not proceed spontaneously
one from  the other, it is clear that some kind of intervening creative activity on the part of God was necessary for the
formation of species.  "That new systems should arise out of
old ones without the intervention of God's power is absurd"
(Newton).
But here we must leave these questions.     At the present
day, on the ground of natural science only, the first hypothesis,
that the. world has inherent powers of self-development, is no
longer found acceptable.
But next, how stands the case with the second hypothesis:
that the constitution of the world, just as it is, is so absolutely
perfect, that any interposition on the part of God would only
disturb it? The older systems of Rationalism laid it down, that
to maintain the imperfection of nature is to'bring a charge
against the Creator.  But in this view, the distinction between
the world per se, as it proceeded from the hand of God, and its
present condition, is entirely overlooked.  May there not in
the latter be disturbances which arise from   the fault of the
creature, and, consequently, are not chargeable on the Creator?
Is it not a truth that death was a consequence of sin?     Is
not this confirmed by experience? Are there not in the
natural world perfect masses of physical evil?  Have we not
seen some professors of natural science taking pains to particularize the imperfections of nature, with a view, indeed, of
denying the idea of divine providence? How strange it is to
see maintained, on the one hand, the absolute perfection of
the world's organism, and, on the other, its faultiness asserted
as zealously! only both in like opposition to the idea of God
authorized in Holy Scripture.     Evidently in this case the
truth lies between the two extremes; and that truth is, that
the world is now only on the way to perfection, and therefore
cannot as yet be perfected.       Unquestionably   an infinite
wisdom   is manifested  in the general arrangements of the
Forbes, Falconer, Quatrefagues, Rougemont, Andreas, and Rnd. Wagner
(Agassiz' Principien der Classifik. der organ. Kirper-mit Riucksicht auf
Darwin's Ansichten, 1860; Zoologisch-anthropolog. Untersuchungen, 1861, and
others), Joh. Miiller, Goppert, Heer, Roper, Czolbe, Giebel (Der jensch, sein
Korperbau, etc., 1868, in which Darwin's theory is designated "a chaos of
incredibilities and foolhardy assumptions") among older authorities, Cuvier,
etc.




202    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.       [LECT. III.
cosmos as a whole.     But this does not exclude the possibility of disturbances and evils finding an entry into it.
Such disturbances are plain matters of fact; and in the face
of them to speak of the world's absolute perfection, is truly
to make an idol of nature.
But apart from   these disturbances of moral order, which
render divine interpositions doubly necessary, let us only
realize the position in which the world would stand in regard
to God, if His continuous agency therein were henceforth to
be considered unnecessary and impossible. A world so independent of its Creator would cease to be a creature, and become
itself a part of the Absolute, a manifestation of Deity!  But
God never can release any created thing, however perfect,
from its condition of creaturely dependence; how much less
this present world of sorrow and imperfection! Self-maintaining and self-perfecting on the part of the world are just as impossible as its self-creation.  Either the world is a created thing,
and in that case is and remains dependent on God, and subject
to His rule and action; or it is independent and self-developing, and in that case, must have been so from all eternity, and
therefore the idea of God as its personal Creator must be
given up.   You see the self-contradictions of Deism: a living
personal God is assumed who yet has no authority over His
creatures; a world is supposed to have been created by Him,
and yet to remain entirely independent!       Science is compelled to press forwards beyond these contradictions, and
either to accept a living God standing in a relation of continuous activity to the world of creatures (Theism), or, in order
to maintain consistently the world's independence, to surrender
the doctrine of the Divine Personality (Pantheism). Hence,
even in the first years of the present century, philosophy began
to turn her back on her former allies Deism and Rationalism,
and in some cases somewhat rudely,l as now in our own time
Strauss ridicules with trenchant criticism  "the half-and-half
ones," who stop short of his conclusions.  The conflict hence1 Cf., for instance, what Hegel says in his treatise Glanben und Wissen, in the
Critical Journal of Schelling and Hegel, ii. p. 1:- "Since stupidity and
meanness have presumed to call themselves sound human understanding and
morality, there are no longer any limits to their worthlessness and shamelessness, and we cannot help considering this mere skin of morality as the very
worst cloak in which conceited ignorance ever hid itself."




LECT. III.]      DEISM AND RATIONALISM.              203
forth must turn almost exclusively on the question whether
we are to believe in the God of the Bible, or acquiesce in the
theories of a pantheistic Materialism.
(c) A single glance at the third aspect in which we proposed to contemplate Deism, its influence on human morals,
will make this yet more evident.  Our third objection to that
system may be stated thus: As Deism deprives God of His
divinity and the world of its creaturely character, so does it
in like proportion tend to deprive morality of its main support
and standing-ground, religion of its mainspring and lever, and
the history of mankind of the one key required to disclose its
enigmas. And all this simply because the God of Deism has
ceased, as we have seen, to be the All-Holy and the All-Good,
the living, self-revealing, and self-communicating Love, and
the all-wise Providence which directs all things.  What is to
maintain order in the moral world, and to dispose and rule
over creatures endowed with freedom, if God has ceased to
concern Himself about individual acts and persons? One
who believes in moral order at all must also believe in a
Providence which interests itself in the smallest matters of
detail.  A very sparrow falling to the ground,-how much
more any action on the part of a moral free agent! —might
produce disorder in the whole, if it could take place without
the cognizance of the Father in heaven.
And if you say it is unworthy of man as a free agent to be
in everything so strictly watched, and limited on all sides by
the hand of God, you say what no doubt is very natural; in
the desire to emancipate oneself from the inconvenient supervision and guidance of the Just and Holy One, lies probably
the deepest and most influential motive of Deism, though I
would not say that such must be the case in every instance.
But, from another point of view, we may surely notice what
comfortless results, as regards the whole of our moral and
religious strivings, are involved in the denial of a special
providence! Everything that takes place around us has some
influence on our life.  If God does not trouble Himself about
everything, our wellbeing is but little dear to Him.  In the
eyes of a human father, even the pebble with which his child
is playing is not without its importance; and yet God is supposed to remain unsympathetic in regard to anything which




204   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. IL.
has reference to the life of His children! And if such a constantly attentive sympathy is not due to Himself and to His
absolute perfection, still it is due to us, and to the special needs
of our immortal spirit.  Whosoever asserts that God looks on
indifferently at the course of the world, can have no real conception of the infinite woorth of a humana soul, and of the importance which attaches to it and its actions in the sight of
God.
But further, if God does not trouble Himself about me as
regards anything that I do or suffer, the inference seems a
just one, that He cannot require me to trouble myself much
about Iim in like respects.  In other words, the inmost mainspring is removed from my moral and religious life and consciousness.  For if God be no longer the ever-near One whose
eyes watch over me, and whose love illumines my life, but
infinitely far away, then the thought of Him can no longer be
any encouragement in good, any comfort in affliction, any guard
against evil, or any refuge in the hour of need; and so, neither
fear of God, nor confidence in Him, can remain in any measure
the guiding principle of my life. Then I no longer know
whether He hears my prayers and heeds my aspirations; I no
longer make my complaints to Him.; I can no longer demand
anything of Him; indeed, I cannot even justly hope for any
future reward, for this would presuppose that God pays strict
attention to minute details.  Of what profit to me is a God
of this kind?  I cannot make any use of Him! For, as
Luther says, "A God is One from whom we expect to receive
every good thing, and in whom we may find a shelter in every
hour of distress."  If I cannot place this confidence in God,
He is of little help to me, and the inmost impulse of my
religious feeling must be stunted'!
In fact, he who believes that prayer is heard, must also
believe in a special Providence. But is not all history full of
instances of particular answers to prayer, of deliverances out
of trouble, vouchsafed to God's children by means of special
dispensations of Providence, and of special judicial visitations
for particular acts of wickedness?  After all, is not the
existence of the Christian Church on earth, and.the maintenance of its position amid a thousand storms, a sufficient
proof of a special Providence?  Even at the present day, does




LECT. III.]      DEISM AND RATIONALISM.             205
not the daily life of the Christian afford a sufficient practical
proof of God's merciful and judicial rule, not only over, but in,
the world, that is, in the midst of men? Could not even some
from among you, my honoured hearers, stand forth as living
witnesses of this? Will it be desired to relegate to the realms
of fancy, as a matter of course, all the most precious experiences of the children of God of His nearness and help, and,
in the face of the moral grandeur of the ancient heroes of the
faith, to hold it to be possible, that, as regards this point,
fanciful conceptions and continuous self-deceptions should
exist together with the clear light of their spiritual knowledge?
Well, if it be so, we shall soon enough have to recognise the
fact, that we have lost the key which would enable us to
understand the world and its history, and the conduct of life
in every individual! Without the providence of God guiding
everything, and with a holy arm leading on the course of the
world to its ultimate aim, the world and its history, both as a
whole and in detail, presents itself, both to the pantheist (as
before remarked), and also to the deist and the rationalist, as
one great unsolved enigma, which the longer it is pondered
over, becomes the more dark and perplexed! But even then,
in dealing with him who would sever God from the world, we
might at least refer him to his conscience, and say: In it thou
hearest God's warning voice, in it God's will is laid downthe will of a God not infinitely distant, as thou thinlest, but
dwelling in the midst of the world, and of that which is
taking place in it, and in the inmost recesses of thine own
heart! For " He is not far from every one of us: for in Him
we live, and move, and have our being."
Nor is there, finally, much gain for Rationalism, when, in its
latest form, it seeks to extend and diversify the possibility of
divine influence in the world by teaching that God works
upon us through the threefold agencies of'the economy. of
nature, the moral order of the world, and the spiritual order
of His kingdom, but through these only.' For, after all, it
makes no great difference whether God's action is confined
within the narrow scheme of'one or three immutable ordinances.  His own divine life and freedom, and with them the
1 Cf. particularly, A. Schweizer, Christl. Glauzbenslelhre nach protestant.
Grzudsuitzen.




206   MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.    [LECT. III.
moral and religious life of man, are, in any case, limited and
endangered to the uttermost. What does it profit to allow
God the free use of these three fingers-the Economy of
Nature, of Moral Order, and of His own Spiritual Kingdom —
by which to touch us, if, as to the rest, His hands are to continue bound? What does it profit to show that, in the great
musical clock, so to speak, of the world's course, not one or
two, but three different cylinders are fixed, if in the movement of even these three no alteration is henceforth to be
made in time and harmony? No; if God is the living, the
holy, the merciial, and the faithful One, He must have reserved,
to Himself free and unencumbered movement in the world IHe
has created. If God be Master in His own house, He cannot,
as it were, have walled in Himself within immutable ordinances,
by which His action as regards every detail of the world's
development has been prescribed from all eternity. Nay, we
must believe that He rules the world according to men's moral
conduct, and constantly adapts the course of nature to exprcess His
jnudgment concerning that conduct.  Were it not the case, man
himself would not be really free, and all his actions, his good
as well as his evil conduct, would, form but items in a predetermined order; his very fall and all his acts of sin being
included in it, as, indeed, some rationalists are very apt to
allow.  We are thus landed in an inflexible determinism,
which destroys the worth or worthlessness of all our actions.
Nor does it fare better, on this theory, with our religious
than with our moral life   If God be connected with man
through those three Economies alone, then must they also
be the only bridge whereby man can reach to God. But such
provision would be inadequate to his religious need. Man needs
a personal immediate union with God, and not merely that
effected by these inflexible Economies. In religion, especially
in the Christian form of it-childlike communion with the
Father of spirits-man makes a personal and immediate
surrender of himself, and desires therefore also to receive, no
less immediately front God Himself, that which he requires for
his personal needs. His "soul is athirst for God, for the
living God," who works and communicates Himself in living,
unlettered action, in accordance with laws not outside Himself,
but inherent in His own nature.




LECT. III.]      DEISM AND RATIONALISM.            207
In brief, this system assumes that God is a living Person,
and yet unable to move or give any signs of free life; that
God is love, and yet unable to communicate His love; that
He is holy, and yet unable to act against evil either as a
whole or in detail; that we must believe in some future and
eternal retribution, and yet deny that everything takes place
under God's immediate supervision and guidance; that the
world was made by Him, but is now independent, and gets
on, well without Him; that God created man in His own
image, but cannot conduct his education by any immediate
action from Himself; that He has given to man desires after
personal communion which He cannot meet half-way or assist;
that I am to pray to God though He cannot hear me, or at
least can vouchsafe me no special answer; that, because the
harmonious interworking of God's universal operation and of
His special action in regard to individuals involves, as undoubtedly it does, a yet unfathomed mystery, I am simply to
deny the latter, though all history and my own personal experience are full of its traces, and perfectly unintelligible without
the assumption of some special interpositions; that, in order
therefore to evade one enigma, we are to create a thousand
others; that the mighty miracle of the world's creation is
never to be followed by any others; that we men are no
longer to believe in ought miraculous, though man himself
be a miracle, of which no interpretation can be found in the
mere laws of nature! Is not all this the very irrationality of
Rationalism, the unreason of the faith of reason?
In fact, honoured hearers, I need only ask you which of
the two stands higher, and must do so in our innermost convictions,-which of the two thinks and feels more nobly, more
truly, more religiously: the man who seats the Creator outside the doors of His own house, and will not suffer Him to
exercise any kind of special intervention therein; or he whose
soul is so deeply pervaded by a sense of the divine nearness and
ever-present activity, that he sees or feels the finger of God in
everything that happens, and traces his hand of love in every
gift and blessing, and, overcome by the thought of such
infinite condescension to each individual soul, cries out, "What
is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, tlat
Thou visitest him?"  "Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle;




208    MODERN NON-BIBLICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.  [LECT. III.
are they not all numbered in Thy book?"  "Behold, He that
keepeth Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth"?  Compare
these two together, and let your hearts decide the controversy.
There is, however, after all, some amount of truth even in
the deistic and rationalist theory. We must not deny this.
It acknowledges the Divine Personality, and God as the
Creator; it insists, in opposition to Pantheism, on His supramundane character. Only it overstrains the separation be.
tween the world and God, and makes it a complete severance,
whereby God ceases to be a living God, and the world ceases
to be a creature dependent on Hilm.
Nor must we ignore the points of truth contained even in
the deistical denial of any Divine Interpositions.  In the first
place, no divine interposition can ever be a merely arbitrary
one. God ever works by plan and rule, and in accordance
with His own internal laws.  But these laws are internal, selfimposed by the necessity of His own divine nature and all-holy
will, not imposed upon Him as limitations from without. He
remains therefore always, these laws notwithstanding, free and
unfettered.
Moreover, it is true that, in His rule and operation, God
ieither can nor will disturb the sacred Economies which IIe
las Himself established.  Nor does Holy Scripture ever make
Him do this. The God of the Bible is, and continues to be,
a God of order.  But precisely because He is this, He cannot
persevere in the quiescence of indifference, but is compelled
to interpose; not to break the world's order, but to repair its
disorder by His own holy and curative influence. This will
be shown more fully in our consideration of miracles. It is,
moreover, true that, as a rule, God exercises His rule and
providence, not in extraordinary ways, by means of constant
miraculous interpositions, but through the laws and forces
implanted in His creatures, and that in doing this He makes
use of both circumstances and men.  But for that very reason
His omnipresence and universal activity and His special
providence are all the more necessary.  Nor does it follow
that He is restricted to these inferior agencies from employing
other ways and means of exercising influence on the world.
Lastly, it is true that God has vouchsafed a certain relative
independence to the various spheres of created existence




LECT. III.]      DEISM AND R&TIONALISIL             209
through the laws and forces implanted in them, in accordance
with which they pursue their constant course; but these forces
and laws are nevertheless nothing but a constant otftlowz of the
divine will, and cease as soon as the latter is altered; hence
the subsistence of the world is every moment unconditionally
dependent upon God. It is likewise true, in respect to the
rational creation, that God has imposed upon His operations a
limitation of His powers, so as duly to maintain the freedom
of man, and therefore that, in fact, for a long while He does
not interpose, but quiescently looks on and waits, allowing us
to dispose of matters just as if we were completely " our own
masters."  But all this is nothing more than His patience and
long-suffering, His wise remission, in which, however, He is
never inactive, but is only making His preparations in secret for
a subsequent intervention. But from this attribute of God it
does not follow that He does not trouble Himself about us, or
that there is no special providence on His part, but only that
our freedom is a fact, and not a sham!
Hence, when Deism one-sidedly overstrains the points of
truth contained in it, by condemning God to inaction as
regards the world, and by utterly severing the world from
God, Pantheism, on the other hand, maintains against it its
special truth, that God is omnipresent, and constantly active
everywhere in the world; just as, conversely, against the onesidedness of Pantheism, which would blend Him entirely with
the world, Deism justly maintains its theory of a separation of
God, as a personal Being and Will, from the world. Pantheism
and Deism bear, therefore, such a relation to one another, that
what is false and one-sided in either system is annihilated by
the other, and what is true has its deficiencies supplied. Let
us abandon the false and cleave to the true. If we adopt
from Pantheism the doctrine of the divine activity and
immanence within the world, and from Deism that of God's
supramundane position and separate Personality, we shall have
a near approach to the teaching of Holy Scripture.
a




LECTURE IV.
THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE AND OF THE CHURCH.
ITHERTO we have followed out one by one the various
non-scriptural conceptions of the divine nature, and
endeavoured to exhibit their untenableness from a scientific
point of view, without at the same time closing our eyes
to the scattered elements of truth which are nevertheless
enshrined within them. We now turn to the Biblico-Christian
conception as to that which alone is fundamentally true and
scientifically tenable.  In order to present it, we have only
to gather up the various threads of our previous argument.
The truth of the scriptural conception of the nature of God is
evident from this, that while it excludes all that in tho-e other
conceptions we have recognised as false and negative, it combines
in a living unity all their scattered elements of positive truth.
In doing this we shall have to solve a twofold problem: first,
to exhibit in general terms the fundamental scriptural conception of the divine nature, i.e. Biblical Theism, and establish
the truth of its various Principles; and then to justify its full
development in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as the
deepest, highest, perfectest presentation of the Idea of God.
L —BIBLICAL THEISM.
The teaching of Scripture concerning God is based on the
theistic conception, that, namely, which holds fast at once His
supramundane and His intramundane character; the one in
virtue of His nature and essence, the other of His will and
power.  For while Theism, on the one hand, regards the Theos
(God) as a personal Being, and so as essentially distinct from
the whole created universe and from man, it is no less careful,
on the other hand, to present Him as the ever-living and
210




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISM.                211
working One in His immediate personal relationship to man
and the universe by the doctrine of a universal Divine Providence. This view of the divine nature is virtually expressed
in the first verse of the Bible: In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth, and in the fundamental article of
the Apostles' Creed: I believe in God, the Father -Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.  Let me now briefly endeavour to
show you how this and other definitions of Holy Scripture
exclude what is false in those conceptions of God and the
universe which we have been examining.
And first, against Atheism, which we need scarcely mention,
Scripture here, as everywhere, teaches an eternally existing
unbeginning God, from whose creative activity heaven and
earth and time itself took their beginning, -an absolute selfexistent One, who saith, I AM THAT I AM, having in Himself
the ground of His own being,-the unchangeable, ever-living
One, who "hath life in Himself, and therefore hath given to
the Son to have life in Himself" (St. John v. 26); "who ic,
and who was, and who is to come" (Rev. i. 4, 8).
Against Materialism we find a protest in the first sentence
of the Bible.  Matter is not eternal.  It had a beginning along
with time; heaven and earth were created in that beginning.
Matter, therefore, cannot itself be God, but came into existence through an act of His will.  And He is distinguished
from it not only by priority of existence, but difference of
nature. " God is a Spirit" (St. John iv. 24), that is, a thinking Being: e.g. " Thty thoughts are very deep" (Ps. xcii. 6);
and "of His wise thinking there is no end" (literal rendering
of Ps. cxlvii. 5).
In like manner we find in those first words of Scripture a
protest against Pantheism, with its confusion of God and
world, and its assumption of the identity of essence in both.
God is both antemundane and supramundane, and as to His
essence distinct and separate from the world, and existing
independently of it: " In the beginning God created-heaven
and earth."  God IS-is absolutely and without beginning;
the world is brought into existence, and is dependent on
its Creator, not He on it. Moreover, it comes into existence
throvgh Him, but not from Him.  Every theory of emanation
which would make the world, in whatever form, old Indian




212            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
or modern pantheistic, an efflux from the Divine Essence, is
from the first excluded by the word "created," which simply
expresses the fact that the world's origin is derived not from
the essence, but from the will of its Creator; that its production was not a necessity, but a free act on God's part, who is
therefore to be distinguished and separated from the world as
a living, thinking, willing, and personal Being. Throughout
Scripture God speaks as a person-I-who does not, as Hegel
thought, attain to self-consciousness in the human spirit, but
has possessed it independently from the beginning.  So little,
according to Scripture, is God from us, that we are rather
from Him.   He is not a mere Idea, but Personality itself,
absolute Freedom, and the highest Self-consciousness,-the prototype of all other Self-consciousness, all other Personality,that which alone and eternally is, which we are always becoming, who is before and above all, and from whom our own personality is derived (Gen. ii. 7; Eph. iv. 6).  Whereas modern
Pantheism affirms, in words which a well-known professor
inscribed under his own portrait, " Our God is an immanent
God, and His true spirit is the human spirit," the God of
Holy Scripture says of Himself, " My thoughts are not as your
thoughts" (Isa. lv. S): His Spirit, therefore, is not our spirit.
His Spirit searches out our spirit, His thoughts comprehend
our thoughts: Thtou searchest me out and knowest me: Thouo
understandest my thoughts afar off (Ps. cxxxix.).  The Lord
knoweth the thoughts of man (Ps. xciv. 11 et passim).  He is
fully conscious of all His own thoughts and works: "I know
the thoughts wuhich I think toward you," saith the Lord (Jer.
xxix.  1).  " Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world" (Acts xv. 18). Even in holding communion with man through His Spirit, He does not confound
His Consciousness with ours: " The Spirit (of God) beareth
witness to our spirit" (Rom. viii. 16).
Finally, against the false deistic and rationalistic separation
between God and world, Holy Scripture makes like protest in
that same opening sentence, which declares the dependence of
the world in both its parts (heaven and earth) on the will of
Him who called it into being.  The same is also indicated in
the divine names most commonly used in Scripture, expressive
of divine power and might (Elohim, El, Eloah), as well as of




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 21 
lordship and dominion (Adon, Adonai), and indicating at once
the essential unity of God in opposition to Polytheism (Deut.
vi. 4) and His fulness of living energies: hence the plural
form of the divine name Elohiln, used ordinarily when reference is made to the Divine Activity in the creation, preservation, and providential government of the world in general
God (it tells us) makes Himself seen and felt by us, both in
the universe as a whole and in its smallest details, as the
absolutely simple and yet complex Life. He is, therefore, in
the highest sense the living One and the living Agency, which
not only created the world, but also continuously upholds and
maintains it: who, "upholding all things by the word of
His power" (Heb. i. 3), and in His omnipresence pervading
everything, "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things"
(Acts xvii. 25).  So much, too, is He needed by the world at
every moment of its existence, that all life would cease were
His influence withdrawn: "Thou hidest Thy face, they are
troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return
to their dust" (Ps. civ. 29).  Whereas Deism asserts that the
Creator has withdrawn Himself from His work, and is now far
removed from the world; the Scriptures say: " He is not far
from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and
have our being" (Acts xvii. 27, 28).  He is not merely the
Creator of ourselves, but also, in one point of view, of our
actions (Is. cxxxix. 5): lie is the Ruler of hearts, who
"worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure"
(Phil. ii. 13). Whereas the deist is of opinion that the providence of God extends to the world only as a whole, and to
matters great and universal, the God of the Holy Scriptures,
on the contrary, "beholdeth all the sons of men and considereth all their works" (Ps. xxxiii. 13, 15); He is the
keeper of men, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, who marks
every sigh, and numbers the hairs of our heads; nor permits
even a sparrow to fall to the ground without the will of Him
whose providence extends to the smallest things.
All these attributes follow still more clearly from the name
" Jehovah."1  Just as the general activity of God in the world'In the Authorized Version, almost invariably rendered by "the LORD."
The capitals serve to distinguish the translation of "Jehovah" from that of
"Adonai," which is also rendered " Lord," but printed small.




214            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
is referred to Elohim, so almost without exception every divine
action which relates to the theocratic revelation is ascribed to
Jehovah.  He is the covenant-God of Israel who reveals Himself specially to His people.  In Ex. iii. 13-15, the name is
explained: "I AM THAT I AM,"-the absolutely independent
and self-existing One, who progressively shows and reveals
Himself as God, in the constancy of His being, knowledge,
will, and power,-who is the First and the Last throughout
all epochs of revelation,-who was, and is, and is to come. He
is, therefore, not merely the One who without beginning or
end is all-sufficient in Himself, the cazsa sui who acts from
His own freewill, and is absolutely self-controlled; but He
also continues to be for His people that which from the beginning He showed Himself to be, and fulfils everything which
He either promises or threatens.  Hence He is the faithful
and true God (Ps. xxxiii. 4; Num. xxiii. 19), who is a firm
Defence and Rock to all that put their trust in Him (Ps. xviii.
2, 3; Isa. xxvi. 3, 4; Deut. vii. 9, 10; Josh. xxiii. 14, 16;
1 Kings viii. 56; 2 Kings x. 10).  This eternally living, one
Lord, though as'the Holy One of Israel" (Ps. lxxi. 22,
lxxxix. 19; Isa. i. 4) He must necessarily be separate from all
that is finite and impure, yet cannot and may not, in this very
capacity, hold aloof from human affairs, or look on without
concern at the development of the world.  On the contrary,
He guides it, both as a whole and in detail, according to His
holy aims and purposes, and under the revealing aspect of His
nature Himself enters into the growing development of things,
in order to lead it on, by a free and independent, but ever
consistent guidance, to the destiny which He has marked
out.
Thus the mere name of Jehovah is in itself a refutation of
Deism.  The latter asserts that God worked on one occasion
only,-in the creation,-and that since then the world has
spontaneously followed its own course; but Christ says, " My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work: the Son can do nothing
of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things
soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (John v.
17, 19). Deism asserts in regard to its God, that miracles are
a matter of impossibility to him; but the Scriptures say of the
Christian's God, "With God nothing shall be impossible"




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISMI.              215
(Luke i. 37). Deism affirms that God cannot manifest and
communicate Himself in special, supernatural modes; but the
Scriptures, on the contrary, teach us that " God, who at sundry
times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us
by His Son " (IIeb. i. 1 f.). The Scriptures represent God as
One who is love, and must therefore continuously communicate
Himself; who also has gradually revealed Himself more and
more clearly and completely, till at length in Christ His entire
fulness appeared; and who even now, by means of His Spirit,
makes Himself recognised, felt, and enjoyed. In short, they
tell of Him as One who in a thousand ways every moment
places Himself in mutual relationship and active communication with man; who lives and rules not merely above, but in the
world; from whose throne the current of life flows down to all
creation, and lightnings, thunders, and voices go forth in every
direction (Rev. iv. 5, xi. 19).
This is the living, personal, all-working God of the Holy
Scriptures, whose active influence is omnipresent in the world,
and yet, as the one free and independent Being, is enthroned
in eternal majesty above it. From beginning to end-that is,
from its origin in England in the 17th century down to its
rationalistic scions of the present day-the whole tendency of
Deism has been directed towards a severance between God and
the world; in the Holy Scriptures, on the other hand, from
first to last the holy God is represented as taking care to connect Himself in mercy and judgment more and more profoundly,
pervadingly, and condescendingly, with the world and with
man (Hos. ii. 19, 20).  From the movement of the Spirit of
God on the face of the primeval waters (Gen. i. 2), down to
the dwelling of God amongst men in the new Jerusalem (Rev.
xxi. 3 ff.), the life from God seeks to naturalize itself more and
more completely on earth, and this is done through Him in
whom an eternal, indissoluble, and personal bond of union
between God and man has been cemented through Christ and
His Holy Spirit.
From the foregoing it will be evident that we were
thoroughly justified in applying the term non-biblical to those
other conceptions of God; and likewise, that the false elements
which we reconised in Pantheism and Deism,-viz. in the one,




216            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
the blending together of God and the world; and in the other,
their entire separation,-are excluded by the biblical conception of God.
Let us, however, now observe how the scattered sparks of
truth which scintillate amid the darkness of the other ideas cf
Cod, shine forth together as one clear light in the view taken of
Him in the Bible.
Atheism, which certainly is falsehood itself, and therefore
does not contain one single spark of truth, rests upon the
argument that nothing is to be seen of God. According to
the Scriptures, God is really the invisible One (1 Tim. i. 17
John i. 18).  So far, however, from this attribute diminishing the reality of His being, it is precisely that which certifies
to His true, eternal existence; "for the things which are
seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are
eternal" (2 Cor. iv. 18).  The invisibility of God is not a
defect, but a prerogative.  For, in respect of His essence,
God is so absolutely exalted above everything that is created
and visible, that He cannot manifest Himself directly to the
creature, but only in some shape which has a certain affinity
to it.
Materialisn, identifies God with nature and with matter. It
lays stress, as we saw above, not altogether unjustly, on the
element in the being and working of the Spirit which is allied
to, and interwoven with, nature.  This aspect of the truth also
receives its full due in the biblical view of God. According
to it, although God is Spirit, He has nevertheless a nature,
which we may term substantial, but not material. It is designated as light and fire: "We declare unto you, that God is
light;" " Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment,"
etc. (1 John i. 5; Rev. xxi. 23; Ps. civ. 2; 1 Tim. vi. 16);
"Our God is a consuming fire;" "a fire goeth before Him," etc.
(Deut. iv. 24, ix. 3; Heb. xii. 29; Isa x. 17; Ps. xcvii. 3; cf.
ldso the visions of the prophets).  However, this element of
light in God's nature does not exclude its spirituality, but
plainly indicates it.
The truth in Pantheism is the assertion that God is omnipresent and universally active in the world.  We have already
seen that these attributes are assigned to God by the Holy
Scriptures everywhere, and with full emphasis. They entirely




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 217
separate God from the world as regards His nature, but most
closely connect Him with it as regards His will and His
action.  The Scriptures cannot at all imagine the life of the
world without the animating presence of God in it. As an
infinite Being, far exalted above all limits either of time or
space, God is near to every being in every place, and that not
as a mere idle looker-on, but quickening and maintaining,
helping and directing it with His full power and activity (1
Kings viii. 27; Amos ix. 6; Isa. lxvi. 1; Jer. xxiii. 24; Ps.
cxxxix. 7, 10, cv. 7; Matt. xxviii. 20; Eph. i. 23).  But
although pervadinq everything, and in everything, yet at the
same time He is above everything (Eph. iv. 6). Biblical
Monotheism does not, therefore, at all require the aid of
Pantheism in order to maintain a constant, living relation
between God and the world.   The Bible teaches that God is
the fulness of all life, and therefore recognises a veritable presence of God in all forms of the world's life; so that as
regards the fulness, multifariousness, and intimacy of the
divine presence, it falls short neither of Pantheism nor of
Polytheism.  Further, Pantheism fears lest the idea of personality should involve a restriction in the being of God; and,
as we have previously seen, there is truth in this idea to the
extent that God cannot be conceived as a single Person.  He
would thus be degraded to the level of other personalities.
But Holy Scripture also considers Him not as a single Person,
but as absolute Personality, which is neither limited nor
restricted by anything else; which is not a numerical One
beside other single beings, but is both Unity and Plurality at
once, i.e. a triune Being. Thus, as we shall subsequently see,
room is left for the infinite fulness of life in God: and yet the
great prerogative of personality is firmly maintained. Thus,
moreover, full justice is done to the truth involved in
Polytheism, viz. that plurality is an elementary form of being,
and therefore must be derivable from God.  Pantheism likewise demands, not without reason, that a self-conscious God
must from all eternity have had an object which might reflect
His consciousness back into itself; but according to the
biblico-Christian view, God has an object of this kind, existing from all eternity, in the distinction between the Persons
of the Trinity in His own being, —an object which renders it




218             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
superfluous to suppose that the world existed from everlasting.
Because He is absolute Personality, He does not exist, or come
into existence, in or through anything else, nor does He only
receive His self-consciousness through something which encounters Him, and causes Him to revert upon Himself; but
He derives it from Himself, and it flows to Him  out of His
own essence.  For He is not merely I, but also constitutes
Himself as He; hence He can say of Himself, "I am He "
(Deut. xxxii. 39; Isa. xli. 4, xliii. 10, 13, 25, xlviii. 12). He
is in Himself both subject and object.
The elements of truth contained in Deism and Rationalism
we found to be that God is a personal Being, and, as the
Creator of the world, must be coniceived as separate from it;
further, that His interposition in the world is not. of an
arbitrary character calculated to disturb its order, but avails
itself of the forces and laws implanted therein; also, that God,
in His holy patience, even imposes upon Himself a certain
self-limitation in respect of human freedom. These truths,
likewise, have due importance accorded to them in the Holy
Scriptures.  For the all-guiding and all-watching God of the
Bible, and none other, is a God of order (1 Cor. xiv. 33). The
entire history of His holy rule over the world, as related to us
in Scripture, is a proof of this. But this order not only does
not render the providence of God in individual cases superfluous, but directly requires it. Again, even when Deism goes
too far in exalting God above the world, in order not to
degrade Him by mixing Him up with the finite and with the
changes and chances of the world, this idea contains a twofold element of truth;-first, the separation of God from all
that is impure, His holiness and incorparableness; and next,
His eternal immutability and constant conformity with Himself.
But what can set forth these attributes of God more prominently than do the Scriptures?  According to them, God is in
His inmost nature the only holy One, who, being strictly
severed from all that is impure, and unaffected by all the
infirmities of finite beings, is supernaturally exalted above all
their limitations.  He is purity itself, and keeps far from Him
everything that is opposed to His nature (Lev. xi. 44, 45,
xix. 2; Ps. xxii. 4; Isa. vi. 3, liv. 5; John xvii. 11; Rev.
xv. 4), because He is the incomparable One (Isa. xL 25,




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISM.                219
xlvi. 5).  And so, too, He is the immutable One.     For
whereas all the gods of polytheistic religions have a history
full of personal events, changes, metamorphoses, and adventures, and the sacred writings of the heathen are mere collections of divine biographies, the God of the Bible has no
biography and no personal adventures whatever, He is ever
and unchangeably the same, because He is the only veritable
self-existent Being, and not a being brought into existence.  His
peculiar nature also defines His relation to the world-" I am
that I am;" "Thou art the same" (Ps. cii. 27); " I am the
Lord; I change not" (Mal. iii.* 6); "With whom     is no
variableness" (Jas. i. 17; cf. Heb. xiii. 8).
Thus, in the biblico-Christian conception of God, all the
separate sparks of truth are concentrated, as it wrere, in a
focus. It combines God's personality and independence, His
connection with nature and capability of being known, His
omnipresence and omnipotence, His invisibility, incomparableness, and immutability, His supramundane and yet intramundane existence; and, we may also add, everything which
reason and conscience can, by means of natural knowledge,
unveil of God's omnipotence, goodness, wisdom, and holiness,,
indeed, even all the true elements which are contained in the
heathen conceptions of God, of His miracles and manifestations, His inspirations and incarnations. If one-sidedly maintained, these several elements of truth lead to a distorted and
mistaken view of God; but if united, each, one checks any
undue promninence of the other, and so all contribute towards
the perfect truth, rationality, and beauty of the biblical conception of God.
Allow me to lay this before you more in detail.
(a) The intrinsic truth of the biblical idea of God is shown
by the fact that it alone affords the possibility of conceiving
God as the entirely perfect, the trly absolute Being.  No conception of God can be the true one which does not include
every perfection.  But in all the other ideas of God there is
something essential wanting; at one time His spirituality
(Materialism), or even His existence (Atheism), so again His
consciousness (Pantheism), or His constant living activity
(Deism).  From the biblical point of view, however, God is
made to possess all these attributes, and to possess them in




220            TIHE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
the very highest degree-being and life, spirituality and
omnipotence, consciousness and thought, will and freedom,
and, in addition, a constant living and holy activity in the
entire universe. Here alone He possesses both Himself and
the world, and is absolutely the Lord, who rules everything
according to His holy aims, and guides free spirits according
to free moral laws; here alone does He possess every physical
and moral perfection, and become " God," that is, entirely and
thoroughly good, as our Teutonic speech strikingly points out.
Therefore in this view only is the conception of the Absolute completely realized.  For God must needs determine and condition
everything.  But for this end it is necessary that He should be
absolutely good and absolutely free.  These two attributes are
combined only in the God of Scripture,-the holy, and therefore also the free God, who does what pleases Him, whose
will no one can gainsay (Rom. ix. 19); whereas the God of
Pantheism is neither good nor free, and the God of Deism is
at all events not free, and in reality not perfectly good.
Moreover, the true principle of all being can evidently be
only that from zwhich everything that is may be derived.  Apart
from the moral sphere, God must be the unity of all antitheses.
This He is only according to the Christian conception, because
this alone makes Him truly absolute.  We can trace back to
the almighty One all that is created, to the living One all
that lives, to the self-conscious Spirit all the spiritually
rational and personal life in the world.  Here we see God as
one, and yet containing in Himself the principle of multiplicity; pervading everything, and yet above all; capable of
being known, and yet unsearchable; condescending to the
lowest depths, and yet enthroned in unattainable sublimity;
eternally near, and yet eternally far off.
Again, must not that be the truest idea of God which
aftords the deepest satisfaction to the religious ned of man 
This, as we have seen, tends to a complete union of the
God-seeking soul with its Creator, and to its being pervaded,
filled, and blessed by Him.  This, according to Scripture, is
the aim and conclusion of the whole revelation and world
government of God and Christ, "that God may be all in
all" (1 Cor. xv. 28).  Once more, we must aver that this
consummation of the vworld's development is unattainable




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 221
except under the presupposition of the biblical idea of God.
Neither the impersonal mundane soul of Pantheism, which
destroys the higher self-conscious life as soon as it takes it
back again into itself; nor yet the deistical God who abides
outside the life of the world, and therefore does not communicate Himself to individual souls, can ever be " all in all," and
thus fully satisfy the religious need of man. Only the God
of Scripture can do this. And why? Because He is the
perfect Spirit and perfect love, or, combining both attributes
in one, the Father.
Here we have before us the most profound definition of
Scripture as to the nature of God, per se definitions to the
sublimity of which the presentiments and longings of no
heathen people ever rose, although the truth of them directly
forces itself on the reason and the conscience.  God is spirit
(Job iv. 24, not "a spirit").  Man has spirit, God is spirit.
In Him the spirit does not form merely a portion of His
being; but the whole substance of His nature, His peculiar
self, is spirit. Here we have the idea of God in His inner
perfection, just as the names Elohim and Jehovah tell us
mainly His external position. As spirit, God is the eternal,
self-dependent brightness and truth, absolute knowledge, the
intelligent principle of all forces whose glance penetrates into
everything, and produces light and truth. in all directions.
Spirit! how much food for thought does this one word give!
Do we not feel as though it would cut asunder the hard knot
which philosophy has placed before us with its conceptions of
God, so laboriously wrought out, so artificially combined, and
therefore often so difficult to understand?  "God is spirit."
Placing these simple words side by side with all the definitions
of ancient and modern philosophers,-e.g. that God is the universal relative measure of the world's becoming (Heraclitus), or the
indifference of the real and ideal (Schilling), etc.,-have we not
even in the profound simplicity of the biblical doctrine a proof
of its truth? The greatest truths are always those very ones
which are the most surprisingly simple in their nature, whilst
that which is artificial, contorted, and complicated, is in most
cases only half true or entirely false.
How clear and intelligible, too, do all the other attributes
ascribed to God in Scripture become, when:Considered in




222            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
the light of this fundamental definition of spirituality! When
once I know that God is spirit, I can much more readily conceive that He is the eternally living and personal One, and I
can even forecast that this spiritual nature of fire and light
may be the basis of His omnipresence, omniscience, and omnisapience, as well as of His omnipotence and glory. Nay, I
can more readily comprehend those attributes, for it is only
as spirit that they can appertain to Him. And conversely,
when once the point is settled that He, as the most perfect Being, must possess all these, it follows that He must be
spirit.  This definition, therefore, is not merely a truth, but a
necessity, which spontaneously results from the conception of
the Absolute.
The same is made clear to us in the fundamental tenet of
Scripture as to the moral nature of God, viz. that He is holy
love. As spirituality is the vital foundation of His physical
and intellectual perfections, so holy love is the internal basis
of all His moral perfections, and a necessary deduction from
the true idea of the Absolute.   Benign, gracious, merciful,
long-suffering, patient, faithful, true, just, and whatever other
moral beauty may be ascribed to God in the Scriptures, all
this He can only be because He is holy (cf. the passages above
quoted), and because He is love (1 John iv. 8, 16).  For the
same reason He is also light, in which there is no darkness at
all (1 John i. 5).  Light is only the necessary effulgence of
His intrinsically holy nature; for the moral and the natural
are in God individually one.  Truly has one said: "Holiness
is the hidden glory, and glory the manifested holiness of God."
As holy love, God has two attributes: He is distinctly sep2a9rated, as we have seen, from all that is either internally or
externally impure and base (the fundamental conception of
holiness), and is therefore higher, more glorious, and more
majestic than any creature; at the same time, He is full of
the most tender condescension and-if I may so say-selfsacrifice; in infinite compassion imparting Himself to the world
in order to eradicate from it sin and all impurity, and to render
it a partaker in His perfect life and glory.' I am the Lord thy
God," He exclaims to His people, "the holy One of Israel, thy
Saviour" (Isa. xliii. 3, xlv. 15, liv. 5; John iii. 16; 1 Tim,
iv. 10), etc.




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 223
What teaching about God can be more sublime or more
adapted to the yearnings of our heart than this?  Where do
we find an idea of God which satisfies our religious need so
abundantly as the truth that God is love? Does not every
heart led by an involuntary bias say "Yea and amen" to
this? Does not this idea force itself directly as the truth
upon all, even unbelievers? Any man who, even in the
smallest degree, acknowledges his deepest need, will lay hold
on this truth with both hands, and cry out, " Yea, this is God;
and He must be this, not merely on His own behalf, on behalf
of His moral perfection and beauty, but forn my sake also, if
there is to be any hope for me; the God of love is the only
God who can satisfy my needs."
No less comforting is the name of Father, as applied to
God; and following from the twofold conception of spirit and,
love, God is thus called, sometimes in His character of universal originator (e.g. 1 Cor. viii. 6), sometimes in the special
sense of begetting, as in the case of Christ (e.g. Ps. ii. 7) and
the regenerate (e.g. Jas. i. 18), but specially because He exercises loving care, education, and providence.  The former
universal relationship is the groundwork of the latter more
special one.  This, however, we do not find only in the
New Testament, but also in the Old (Deut. xxxii. 6; Ps. ciii.
13; Isa. lxiii. 16, lxiv. 8; Jer. iii. 4, 19, xxxi. 9'; Mal. i. 6,
ii. 10); although, it is true, the full depths of the divine
Fatherhood are first revealed to us in the former, because
the relation of God to men as Father was perfectly realized
in Christ alone, and through Him   was brought about for
the whole world. This name points out His dignity no less
than His accessibility and condescension, His holy prefiguration of us no less than His love and care, our own needy
condition no less than our honour and dignity, as children
created in our Father's image. What an encouragement and
stimulus for a human heart,-how much that excites confidence,
imposes awe, stimulates the conscience, and inspires love and
hope,-what a sea of joy and bliss there is in that one name
Father    "All our other knowledge of God contains nothing
more than isolated letters and syllables of this one Name"
(Tholuck).  We Christians possess it and enjoy it in its fullest
extent.  In the whole range of heathen piety we find nothing




224            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
but distant and obscure presentiments of the heart's-joy which
overwhelms each- one who, in the fulness of his soul, can cry,
"Doubtless Thou art our Father and our Redeemer, from
everlasting this is Thy name" (Isa. lxiii. 16); who can call
upon his God by all the glorious names which the Scriptures
apply to Him, —  Physician, Stronghold, Rock of salvation,
Refuge and Confidence, Shield and Buckler, Light and Consolation, Shepherd and Helper, Redeemer and Saviour.
Again, I ask, is there any idea of God which can more
thoroughly satisfy the religious need of a human heart?  Indeed, in view of this name of God, I may well venture to ask
every one who rejects the biblical idea of Him, Hast thou
ever earnestly considered its depths, in devout contemplation
and active appropriation, without finding full satisfaction in it?
Only we must never forget that the truth of the biblical idea of
God must be recognised principally by personal experience. The
true God must be found by a moral search.  "The desire to
attain to God, without God," says a philosopher, "is just such
another feat as the tempter promised to teach our first parents 
how, in opposition to God, and without Him, they might make
themselves equal to Him" (Baader).
Or must not that be the true idea of God by which I, as a
sinful being, am at once bowed down and raised up; by which
I am made to feel the whole weight of my guilt, and yet not
to despair, but to hope; by which I am shown the wide gulf
which separates me from God, and also the way to a restoration of unity with Him? And what else in this respect can
compare with the God of the Holy Scriptures, who in one
breath says of Himself, " I dwell in the high and holy place,
and with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit " (Isa. lvii.
15; comp. Ps. cxvii. 5-7), so as to make us feel at once His
holy distance and His comforting nearness; or again, who, whilst
asking sin-burdened Israel whether He ought not justly to
make them like unto Sodom, immediately adds, "Mine heart
is turned within me: my repentings are kindled together"
(Hos. xi. 8)? And where shall we find the way to a restoration of union with God brought so lovingly before the fallen
world as by Him who proclaims, " God so loved the world
that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life "?




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.               225
And finally, must not that be the true idea of God which
does the most to elevate man morally, to ennoble, to spiritualize
him, and to render him like God?  And from an historical
point of view we ask, Where has there been any conception of
God and religion which has so much elevated, educated, and
enlightened both individuals and nations as the biblicoChristian conception?  Whence may we expect a more
powerful moral influence than from the worship of the God
who, as spirit, desires to be worshipped only in spirit and in
truth?  Where is there a more forcible stimulus to purity,
both of heart and life, than is found in the worship of Him of
whom it is written, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;"
and, "Be ye holy, for I am holy "?  And place side by side
the fact, that other nations, who were acquainted with none
but unholy gods, have, through their worship, sunk into an
ever-deepening moral degradation, which could not be averted
even through the influence of philosophy. "By their fruits
ye shall know them." And indeed the truth of this conception of God is witnessed not merely by the Holy Scriptures,
but also by our own heart and conscience, and the testimony of
innumerable Christians, who have recognised it in their personal
experience, and have given incontestable evidence of its moral
fruits in their hearts and lives; and the whole history of the
world and its civilisation confirms it!
(b) Nor does reason itself bear a less decided witness in
favour ot this view. Some one, perhaps, will say: It is all very
well to heap together the greatest possible number of beautiful
attributes; but the question is, whether it is rational to predicate all these together of God?  Yes, I reply, the biblical
conception of God is also the most rational, and the one that
recommends itself most strongly to our understanding. It
is true that His sublimities far transcend all the perceptions
of reason.  But they are not unreasonable because they are
beyond the scope of reason.  No reasonable man can expect
that he as a finite being should entirely and perfectly comprehend the infinite God; to do this, he must himself be God.
And it is therefore perfectly comprehensible to any discreet,
temperate mind, which remains conscious of its limitations,
that the Scriptures should reserve the perfect knowledge of
God for the intuition of another life (1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2 Cor.
P




226            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
v. 7; 1 John iii. 2).  The only question therefore is, whether
this preliminary knowledge of God with which the Holy Scriptures furnish us, on the express understanding of its fragmentary nature, really recommends itself to our reason, and
not merely to our hearts. And this it does infinitely more
than any other conception.
Is it not, I ask in the first place, the most reasonable thing
we can do to adopt that conception of God which renders the
necessary divine perfections, and also the mystery of the world
and our own being, more intelligible than does any other?
Our idea of God fulfils all these requirements. We have
already seen that the attributes of eternal vitality and personality, of omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, etc., which
we are bound to attribute to the Absolute as such, are unintelligible, unless with the Bible we presuppose God to be spirit.
Moreover, it is no longer a mystery to me that God should
create worlds, notwithstanding the perfect self-sufficiency of
His Being, if I know that He is Love, whose nature is to desire
that other beings outside itself should rejoice in their existence.
It is no longer a matter of wonder to me that, in every grain
of dust and in every drop of water, traces of infinite wisdom
obtrude themselves on my notice, when I think of.God as the
highest self-conscious Intelligence. I am no longer at a loss to
account for the requirements of a law in my conscience which
is altogether different to that which rules in nature, when I
know that the holy God is thereby teaching me His holy
will. Again, it appears to me in the highest degree reasonable that God should reveal Himself in the Scriptures step by
step, gradually disclosing to man the depths of His own nature:
first His power, goodness, and wisdom; then His holiness and
justice; and last of all, in Christ, His world-subduing love. So
soon as I form the idea that He is a Father who is educating
man, I see why He communicates Himself to him in a special
manner during childhood, and then places the earlier periods
of man's existence under a law somewhat different from that
which rules the later ones. Yes, in view of the moral freedom
of man, it no longer seems inexplicable that God should have
allowed him to sin, and thereby to bring such unutterable woes
upon our race, if I can believe that the purpose and counsel of
God from all eternity was to redeem man through Christ, and to




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                227
bring him back into blessed fellowship with Himself. It no
longer seems a strange chance that, in the course of the world's
history, I should perceive so many traces of righteous justice
and holy laws never to be infringed with impunity, when I
know that a righteous God is in the seat of government,
guiding everything according to His holy purposes.  Nay, do
not the mysteries of my own life's experience become closer
and clearer when I illumine them with the light of the utterance, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore
with loving-kindness have I drawn thee' (Jer. xxxi. 3); that
is, with the belief in God as a Father, who in everything, be it
love or be it severity, seeks to draw me to Himself?  The
inmost yearning of my soul after God only becomes intelligible
to me, and is satisfied in its profoundest depths, when I know
that God in His compassion meets me half way and imparts
Himself to me, because He is love.
Once more I ask, is it not consonant with reason to accept
an idea of God which furnishes me with a key to the most important questions connected with the world and with my life?
If the other conceptions of God lead me only to an inexplicable
something, at which my thoughts are to rest; and if, on the
other hand, the biblical conception of God affords me, in
respect to the ultimate cause of things, at least a notion, the
substance of which I can in some measure comprehend, and
which-even in practical life-solves many enigmas which
must else remain.unsolved; then surely the rationality of this
conception of God must be greater than that of all others, and
the words hold good, " The fear of the Lord," that is, the theoretical and practical observance of this idea, "is the beginning
of wisdom."
(c) Finally, the biblical conception of God recommends
itself by its beauty no less than in other ways; for in this
respect, too, it far surpasses all other cognate ideas.
For the most part it would be hard to discover an aspect
of beauty in the non-biblical conceptions of God.  Philosophical definitions of the divine nature may tickle our intellectual palate; but abstract ideas of this kind will not touch
our sense of beauty. And yet the God who formed the world,
as a beautiful expression of His own mind (Gen. i. 31), and
then made it over to man as His beautiful image, to impress




2'28           THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
upon it the divine brightness of His Spirit, and glorify it into His
own likeness,-surely this God who is the most perfect Being
must also be the most beautiful, and must, therefore, most
forcibly arouse and attract to Himself the sense of beauty felt
by His image-man.    Both in His physical, His intellectual,
and moral attributes, the God of the Holy Scriptures is a God
of surpassing beauty.  Not, indeed, His formless and invisible
essence, but His overt action and self-manifestation, especially
in Christ, have for this reason at all times been an inexhaustible mine of wealth for representative art, and have
inspired it to its sublimest and most ideal productions.
All true beauty is the outward expression of something
good.  That which is perfectly good can only appear in perfect beauty. Hence the biblical doctrine as to the glory of
God, and in connection with it the future transformation of the
world.  The holy and living God stands in the most effective
relationship to His world. He is the glorious One, whose
glory extends' to the utmost limits of the universe, and is
manifested by the creation, His own handiwork, in which He
is all-present, and all-guiding.  Even now "the heavens declare the glory of God," and "the whole earth is full of His
glory" (Ps. xix. 2, xcvii. 6, cxiii. 4; Isa. vi. 3, et al.); and
one day it shall be still more so when God's kingdom is
consummated (Num. xiv. 21; Ps. lxxii. 19; Isa. xl. 5; Ezek.
xxxviii. 23; Hab. ii. 14; Tit. ii. 13, et al.).
If we more closely consider the intrinsic substance and the
apparent form of this divine glory, we find that the secret of
God's beauty is primarily involved in His nature as light,
which reflects the purity, holiness, grace, and gladness of His
inner being, and radiates around Him this intrinsic beauty.
Is there in nature anything more beautiful than light, and
is there in the moral world anything more beautiful than
holiness? He is incomparable, both in His essence and in
His actions (Ex. xv. 11; Ps. xxxv. 10, lxxi. 19, lxxxvi. 3,
lxxxix. 9; Deut. iii. 24, etc.). What can we imagine more
grand and majestic than the outward demonstrations of the
glories of God, which are occasionally described in Scripture,
from the manifestation on Sinai down to the glorious second
advent of Christ?  What brilliant pictures are spread before
us by the prophetic seers, describing the heavenly glories of




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM                229
God and of Christ (Isa. vi.; Ezek. i.; Rev. i., iv.), and of the
new world that is to come glorified in the light of God (Rev.
xxi., xxii.; Isa. lxv. 17 ff.)! How plainly does the struggle for
language show that words and figures were alike inadequate to
express that which they intuitively perceived! Two names in
particular which the Old Testament applies to God point to
His majestic beauty and glory. The one is: " Jehovah that
dwelleth between the cherubim" (1 Sam. iv. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 2;
Ps. xcix. 1; Isa. xxxvii. 16); for the latter are simply the
exponents of His glory and of his active presence in the world.
The other name is still more frequently applied to God, viz.
" Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts," that is, not only of the
heavenly bodies, but especially of the heavenly spirits.  Being
the messengers of God and the instruments of His will (Ps.
ciii. 20, and frequently), also the witnesses accompanying
Jehovah when He Himself appears in His kingly and judicial
glory (Deut. xxxiii. 2; Ps. lviii. 18), these spirits constitute, as
it were, the " celestial Church," which heads " the antiphony of
the universe" (Ps. cxlii. 2, cl. 1), offering adoration to God
in the heavenly sanctuary, and celebrating both His mighty
rule in nature (Ps. xxix. 19), and His miracles of mercy (Ps.
lxxxix. 6 ff.).  How grandly beautiful, how solely worthy of
God are these views, and, in conjunction with them, how
blessed the promise, "Thine eyes shall see the King in His
beauty" (Isa. xxxiii. 17)!
But above all, what unique moral beauty is exhibited to us
in " the Fairest among the children of men" (Ps. xlv. 3), who
could say of Himself, " He that hath seen me, hath seen my
Father also!"  His countenance full of grace and truth, His
actions full of infinite compassion, gentleness, and holy zeal,
His sufferings full of priestly majesty, all place before our
eyes a picture of perfect spiritual beauty and moral sublimity
so absolutely harmonious and spotless, that the whole race of
man has nothing which can be compared to it. And yet all
this was nothing more than the reflection of the Father's glory
shaded by an earthly and human incarnation (John i. 14;
1 Cor. ii. 8), in One who had divested Himself of His divine
fulness, and had taken on Him the shape of a servant.
In the next place, if we transfer our attention from the
revealed aspect of God to His internal nature, how beautiful is




230            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE       [LECT. IV.
the intrinsic harmony of His Being, in all His attributes, both
intellectual and moral  With what beautiful harmony do the
fundamental principles of His nature flow one from the other
-spirit, light, life, love! Or, if we distinguish these attributes one from another, how beautiful is their mutual correspondence! We may, for instance, distinguish, as above,
between the attributes of God resulting from His vitality, and
those flowing from His nature as light. On the one hand, there
appertain to His vitality, His absence of beginning and allsufficiency, His eternity and immutability, His omnipotence
and omnipresence; on the other hand, to His nature as light,
belong His invisibility, omnisapience, omniscience, love, justice,
and holiness. How beautifully these two series of attributes
correspond to and supplement each other!-in one, the allsufficiency of God; in the other, His intrinsic life of love: in
one, eternity and immutability; in the other, spirituality and
invisibility: in one, omnipotence; in the other, omnisapience:
in one, omnipresence; in the other, omniscience. Can there
be a harmony more beautiful?
The beauty of God, as regards His action, further depends
on the harmonious development of all His attributes in His
overt manifestations.  And with what perfect beauty does the
God of the Bible unfold these attributes as holy love, in which
idea the whole fulness of His essence and action is expressed!
Can anything produce a more harmonious development than
love?  How   beautifully does it unite such contrasts as
sublimity and gentleness, as majesty and condescension!
How beautifully does the fatherly guidance of God exhibit
to us His holy wisdom and discipline, combined with a constant respect for our human freedom! With what wondrous
and soothing beauty does God balance the awe with which His
physical attributes inspire us by the trust and self-surrender
which His moral attributes awaken in us-as, e.g., in the text
already quoted, "I dwell in the high and holy place, and
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit 1"  How
beautiful it is that His action ever awakens both veneration
and love! And in what unequalled beauty shall this holy
love stand before us at the end of the world's course, when old
things have been done away with, and all things have become
new! Then this love shall wipe away all tears from the eyes




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISM.               231
of the redeemed, and guide the thirsty to fountains of living
water, and its pure beams shall illumine the heavenly city of
God, in which He will dwell among His glorified people
enthroned in everlasting glory (Rev. xxi., xxii.).
The poet might well complain of the deist's god, that under
his sceptre life became so gloomy, and " the world deprived of
deities" so soulless.  When the world, "her leading-strings
at length outgrown, free hovers and upholds herself,"-that
is to say, when we accept the rationalist's idea of God,-this
complaint is completely justified.  But if, instead of this, the
biblical idea of God, so glorious and yet so soothing, had been
presented to the poet's eye, assuredly his soul would have
embraced its living beauty with fervid aspirations.
Let us just for a moment compare the other conceptions of
God with that of the Bible in point of beauty.  In the one
case we have an unconscious mundane soul, whose rule, in a
moral point of view, is no better than that of animal instinct;
in the other, a self-conscious, holy, all-wise intelligence: in the
one case, a universal substance under the iron law of necessity,
first begetting a world, and then again swallowing it up; in the
other, a free, creative will which, in love to men, places itself
in relation to them as free beings according to the moral laws:
or again, in the one case, a Being who was once a Creator, but
now rests in slothful inactivity, not troubling Himself about
His creatures individually; in the other, a Father who
"openeth His hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness," who also "clothes the lilies and the grass of the
field," and "feeds the fowls of the air:" in the one case, a
mere indifferent looker-on, who leaves the world entirely to
itself, or at best observes it from some astronomical distance;
in the,other, " One who keepeth Israel, and. neither slumbereth
nor sleepeth," and guideth His people like a faithful shepherd.
Listen, on the one hand, to a Lalande, who presumptuously
exclaims; " For sixty years I have surveyed the heavens, and
never as yet have I seen Him!" or to a La Place, who says,
" In my heaven I can find no God;" and hear, on the other,
the king of Israel, who, in holy awe, ejaculates, "Whither
shall I flee from Thy presence?"  "Behold, the heaven of
heavens cannot contain Thee:" listen, on the one hand, to
a Hegel, who looks upon the starry world as nothing better




232             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
than " a luminous eruption, no more worthy of wonder than
an eruption in man, or a swarm of flies;" and, on the other,
to the pious psalmist, to whom " the heavens declare the glory
of God."   Compare, I pray you, these antagonistic views of
God and the world, and then tell me candidly which is the
more beautiful, the more sublime, and the more worthy of
God and man?
On this point, however, the objection is very frequently
raised, that, side by side with many exalted ideas of God,
there are in the Bible, at least in the Old Testament, many
views unworthy of Himl.   This widely-spread notion is in
innumerable cases not merely a main item, but also the source
of modern doubts as to the Christian faith.  The Old Testament is not in harmony with the taste of the present day.
Thus, for instance, a recent publicationl expresses its opinion
as to the God of the Old Testament in the following disgracefully blasphemous language: "The covenant of Jehovah is
directed towards distinctly material and immoral aims. His
agreement goes into the very smallest details, just as would
any Jewish tradesman. He has to be incessantly reminded
of His obligations; and in order to save His credit, He is
ou1pelled to icmmr considerable expense in furnishing manna
and quails.  The God of Moses is just such a person as the
Jew  likes to do business with.  In paradise he takes His
walk; travels to Sodom for the purpose of inspecting the
property; dines with Abraham off roast veal and cakes; has
a tussle with Jacob!!!" etc.  Voices such as these might
well be left to their own ignominy. But if we set aside the
scurrility of expression, we find that they give vent to objections which go far to render the Old Testament repulsive to
many.   The chief stumbling-blocks in this case are the nature
and mode of God's intercourse with iman, His too human-like
appearances and feelings, His wrath, vengeance, repentance,
and the like.  In the face of these objections,2 of which we
can here only consider the most important, I would recommend you to keep in view two things: first, the gradual progress of revelation, in which God must educate mankind
I Die Juden tzcd der dczttsclie St'.et, 5th ed., 1862.
2 For further details, see HIeintzeler die Anstisse in der heil. Schrift, Stuttgrt,
1864.




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISM.                233
(Deut. viii. 5), dealing therefore with them at first as children,
and condescending to them in a way different from His bearing towards men; and, second, the circumstance that God
Himself and the instruments of His manifestation, such as
the angels in the case of Abraham and Jacob, are not to be
considered as absolutely identical. In this way very many of
the situations which are supposed to be unworthy of God lose
their apparently offensive character.
God approaches the first sinners in Paradise "in the cool of
the day," just as a father and tutor might do in a human or
human-like shape.  But if He sought to gain their confidence,
could He converse with them in any other than human shape?
Having once given a bodily form to the image of Himself in
man, He manifests Himself so as to be recognised by his
bodily senses.  Man has now cut himself off from God; but
Gcd approaches man because He cannot and will not leave
him. And for this purpose He chooses the evening, which
in the east is the most pleasant hour, not in order to avoid
being molested by the sun, but in order to give to the sinners
one day more in which to present themselves to Him as
penitent.  "When the sun for the last time gilded with its
rays the glory of Paradise," as Spurgeon exclaims, " when the
evening dews dropped a tear over the sin of man, when all
was so still that man was more easily led to think about
himself and his offence, and the heaven above was resplendent
with its lights, in order that man in now approaching darkness might still have hope," then the right moment had
arrived, then He lets the guilty ones hear the rustling of His
footsteps, so as to show them that man cannot hide himself
from the face of God. And yet shallow mockers talk about
"promenading in the cool of the evening!"  This necessity
for a human form of the divine manifestation, which has its
true cause in His condescension to mankind, and its climax
in the incarnation of God in Christ, it is not to be understood
as if bodily shape formed part of the nature of God; for it is
well known how strictly all images of God are forbidden in
the Old Testament.  But it explains to us what we read of
divine communications and manifestations in the lives of our
first parents and the patriarchs.
No words need be wasted on the scurrile objection to God's




234            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
covenant with Israel, as being an immoral Jewish business
transaction.  It is probably intended for a jez d' esprit,
but betrays a superficiality and triviality which are truly
astounding. For where is there any human code of laws, or
even any moral precept of a heathen philosopher, which can
compare with the Mosaic law as regards the strictest requirements of the sublimest morality,-in other words, of holiness,or in respect of the severe persecution and condemnation of
sin, down to its. innermost source in evil desire?
We may deal in a similar way with the objection that has
also often been raised, that it is unworthy of God for Him to
appear, as He often does in the Old Testament, as " the particular God of a special nation," because He is often called
"the Lord thy God," or because, e.g. in Ex. ix. 1, in speaking
to Pharaoh, He calls Himself "the God of the Hebrews."
But all this is mere superficial talk. For is not Monotheism,i.e. the belief that there is only one true and living God in
the whole world, and that this is the God of Israel,-is not
this, I say, the groundwork of the Mosaic religion?  The
phrase, "the Lord thy God," refers only to the special covenant
of God with Israel; why should it be unworthy of God so
to call Himself, thus reminding Israel of their covenant
duties? Surely none will attempt to deny that it was exceedingly wise, and even necessary, that the knowledge of the
true divine revelation should be entrusted to one branch of
the human race, and be continued in it until the time of fulfilment, when it might become a benefit common to all mankind!  Even in this "particularism," have we not innumerable intimations of the fact, that the God of Israel was at the
same time the God of the whole world, and that the gods of
all other nations were but vain idols?  (Ps. xlvi. 5, xlv. 3,
lxxxvi. 8, cxxxv. 5; Isa. ii. 18, xli. 29, xlv. 21, and
frequently.)  What can there be more universal than the
one Creator and Lord of heaven and earth? Or if the point
of the objection is supposed to be, that the " special God of
the Israelites," as such, ignored other nations, then we askmust ask-Was it not God's purpose, in calling Abraham, in
his seed to bless all the nations of the earth, although for a
long time "He suffered all nations to walk in their own
ways "? (Acts xvi 16.) Does, then, the Old Covenant contain




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 23 
no promises from the heathen? (cf. Isa. xix. 25, xlix. 6,
lx. 3 ff.; Ps. lxxii. 10 ff., xcviii. 2 ff., and frequently.)  How
often is the cwhole world called upon to praise God! (Ps. xcvi.,
xcvii., xcviii., c., etc.)  Or does the Old Testament, generally
speaking, pay less consideration than it ought to other nations?
What can we find more universal in its character than the history of mankind contained in the first ten chapters of the Bible?
No people of antiquity ever attained even to the idea of an
universal history of mankind; it is only possible bn the ground
of revelation; and there, it exists from the very beginning.
But did not the. God of the Old Testament on one occasion
incite to robbery?  So we hear many indignantly ask, in view
of the passage Ex. iii. 21, 22 (cf. xi. 2 ff., xii. 35 ff.).  This
reproach is based simply on a misunderstanding of the passage.
Before its departure, Israel is told to demand from the Egyptians golden and silver vessels, and thus to "spoil the Egyptians" (as to the signification of the word, cf. 2 Chron. xx.
25).  This command was subsequently carried out.  But this
"spoiling" is very different from secret theft, or from ostensibly borrowing (cf. xii. 36) without the intention to return.
The Israelites from the outset ask for or demand these ornaments, without any intention of restoring them; and the Egyptians give (not " lend ") them without hope of receiving them
back.  They were so overcome with terror, that they were glad
enough to get rid of Israel on these terms.  These gifts to
which God inclined the hearts of the Egyptians were carried
away by Israel as a booty, in token of the victory which
God's omnipotence had granted to His weak people. The
whole took place openly and fairly, and assuredly it was
nothing more than equitable.  How much valuable property
in the shape of houses, lands, and utensils, must Israel have
left behind in Egypt! And for how many centuries had
Israel been robbed by the Egyptians, through unjust enslavement    The righteous God now takes care that Israel shall
not remain unrewarded, or go away empty, after so long a
period of severe labour; and so Israel is permitted to despoil
his oppressors, but at the same time with their knowledge and
consent,-" a prelude of the victory which the people of God,
in their contest with the power of the world, shall always
obtain" (Zech. xiv. 14).




236            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
Another stumbling-block for many lies in the divine command for the extirpation of the Canaanites (Deut. vii. 1 ff.,
xx. 16-18, etc.).  Strange to say!  For when we read elsewhere in history that a morally decrepit and enervated nation
has been destroyed by some fresher people, then we talk
about a Nemesis, a just fate, and the like.  But in the present
case, as soon as Jehovah steps forth in the place of this
undefined power, these sentimentalists begin to shriek out
about a bloodthirsty God. Nevertheless, not only in this, but
in all similar cases, it is the same God who passes the sentence of extirpation, and makes use of certain nations as a
scourge for others.  Judgments of this kind are a universal
law of history.  The only distinction is this, that that which
is accomplished by other nations unconsciously, though according to God's counsel, is to be done by Israel consciously and
in name of his God.  And can it be said that this condemnation was not a just one?  Centuries before, God had said that
He would allow the inhabitants of Canaan a respite until
"their iniquity was full" (Gen. xv. 16). Now that measure
of iniquity has been fulfilled. Not only the usual crimes of
the heathen, but also special moral abominations, idolatry in
its most frightful degeneracy, accompanied  by the most
unnatural sins of the flesh (Lev. xviii. 24 ff.; Deut. ix. 4,
xii. 31, xviii. 12), were now to be judged, and, in addition
to this, their hostile attitude towards Israel (Ex. xviii.;
Num. xxi. 1 ff.; )eut. ii. and iii.) was to be punished.  Just
as the body forcibly ejects food which it cannot assimilate,
so the land, defiled by the unnatural abominations of its inhabitants, forcibly vomited forth the Canaanites (Lev. xviii.
24, 25). In the world before the flood it was the water that
carried out God's judgments, in Sodom it was fire, but now it
was to be the sword of Israel (not, however, without exceptions; cf. Josh. vi. 25, Matt. i. 5, Josh. ix. 19 ff.).  This
visitation of divine wrath is not to be justified-as some have
attempted to do-by bringing forward ancient rights of property dating from the patriarchal age, which Israel had the
right to assert against the Canaanites (for this is contrary to
Gen. xii. 6, xiii. 7).  According to the Old Testament, the
only ground on which Israel might take possession of the land
of Canaan was the favour of God to whom the land belonged,




LECT. IV.]           BIBLICAL THEISM.                 237
who also conferred it upon His people; and the only ground
for the extirpation of the Canaanitish tribes was the justice of
God, whose long-suffering was at length exhausted, and who
threatened Israel itself, in case it were guilty of the same
sins, with the very same punishment (Lev. xviii. 28; Deut.
viii. 19, 20; Josh. xxiii. 15, 16).  But this sentence of extirpation was not merely a holy act of divine penal justice, it
was also an act of divine wisdom.  For by rooting out these
tribes and their idolatry (Ex. xxxiv. 13 ff.), God desired to
hold up to Israel and the surrounding nations which were
spared a warning example; and especially by isolating Israel,
to guard it from the danger of intermingling with the heathen
(Ex. xxiii. 32 ff.; Lev. xx. 22-26).  The fact that Israel did
not fully carry out the divine command, but suffered many
remnants of the Canaanites to remain in the land, which
remnants soon became strong again, and were a snare to
Israel, is an intimation to these sentimentalists that there is
such a thing as a false tolerance. On the other hand, it is in a
measure the prelude of that disobedience and fall of Israel, out
of which, according to the wondrously wise and gracious providence of God, salvation was to accrue to the heathen world
(R.om. xi. 11, 12).
After all, however, we must bear in mind that a certain
distinction does exist between the avenging Judge of the Old
Covenant and the God of mercy and love of the New Covenant.  Not that God alters in His nature; He ever was and
is unalterably holy in all His actions.  But times and men
certainly do alter. Hence in God's educatory dealings with
man, everything has its wisely prescribed season.  The truth
that God is love could not be revealed in its full depth, until
the law, by its penalties, had brought about the consciousness
of sin and a longing for entire release from it.
These points should also be kept in view when considering
those Psalms which contain curses or prayers for vengeance (cf.
xxxv., lix., lxix., cix., cxxxvii.).  Even believers in the Bible
are sometimes offended by the manner in which the God of
the Old Testament is appealed to in these psalms as a God of
vengeance, and also, generally speaking, by the whole spirit
expressed in those passages in which the poet invokes destruction on his enemies.  Many look upon these passages as out



238            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
bursts of a base thirst for vengeance, and as indicating that
vindictive feelings, to a certain extent at least, are sanctioned
by the Old Testament.  This error ought to have been averted
by a glance at the divine precept of love to one's enemies as
contained in the Old Testament (Ex. xxiii. 4, 5; Prov. xxv.
21), also the divine prohibition of vindictive feeling (Lev.
xix. 18), and the oft-expressed abhorrence of revenge and
malignant pleasure in the misfortunes of others (e.g. Job xxxi.
29, 30; Ps. vii. 5; Prov. xx. 22, xxiv. 17, 18, 29; Ezek.
xxxv. 15).  Moreover, as regards David, the author of most
of these psalms, objectors should first consider the generosity
which he so often evinced towards his personal enemies, and
also the fact that in moments of the highest religious inspiration, such as those in which the Psalms were composed, the
impure fire of personal emotion could scarcely mingle with the
holy fervour of love to God.  The key to the right understanding of these psalms is contained in Ps. cxxxix. 19-21:
"Surely Thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from
me, therefore, ye bloody men.  For they speak against Thee
wickedly, and Thine enemies take Thy name in vain. Do not
I hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee? and am not I grieved
with those that rise up against Thee?"  According to this, the
suffering servants of God see in their own enemies the enemies of
God Himself, and their curses are directed against the latter.
Hence they are not the expression of any private vengeance,
on account of personal wrong experienced by them, but they
are the outflow of a zealous wrath against the injury inflicted
on the honour of God and the concerns of His kingdom.
David, more especially in the face of his persecutors, feels
himself to be the anointed of the Lord, and knows that on his
fate hangs the future of Israel. Whoever persecutes him, sins
also against Christ in him. "In this focus of self-contemplation, as an essential link in the history of redemption, the fire
of his wrath is kindled." Frequently, too, the enemy whom
the psalmist has in view, as well as the unjust persecutor, are
not concrete, historical persons, but poetical.personifications,
pointing to the future victory over His enemies which the
perfectly righteous One shall gain by His sufferings,-the curse
in this case being addressed in general against the feeling of
hostility to God. Where, however, the psalmist clearly refers




LECT. IV.]          BIBLICAL THEISM.                239
to definite persons, it must be remembered that the vengeance
of God on obstinate sinners is an act as necessary to His justice
as wholesome for the consummation of the divine kingdom.
Hence, even in the New Testament there are passages in
which a curse is pronounced on irreclaimable enemies of God,
and divine punishment is invoked upon them (Matt. xi. 20 ff.,
xxiii. 13 ff.; Acts viii. 20, xxiii. 3).
But at the same time we must acknowledge the imnperfection of. the Old Testament standpoint occupied by the sacred
poets.  The lively impatience of their longing for divine judgments on their enemies probably arose, in part, from a feeling
of human weakness unable to cope with tribulation, and which
is therefore in Rev. vi. 10, 11 exhorted to wait patiently. At
that time, moreover, a dark veil permitted but dim glimpses
of eternity, with heaven and hell; so that denunciations such
as those in Ps. lxix. 28 could not have been understood by the
poet in all their infinite depth.  And finally, there had not
yet been accomplished that world-embracing scheme of redemption ordained by divine love, from which alone could flow
the love that would fain help all men, even her enemies.
hence the spirit of the New Covenant is in this respect a
relatively different and a higher spirit.  Not only were such
utterances as sprang from the language and spirit of Sinai
unsuited for the lips of Jesus, the meek Lamb of God, but
even His disciples are not to emulate the spirit of wrath
which inspired Elias (Luke ix. 54 et ss.), and which sometimes actuates the utterances of David (Ps. cix.). They are
not permitted to wish that even their deadliest enemies should
be everlastingly lost. Therefore when, in exceptional cases,
the holy zeal of the New Testament seems to touch upon that
of the Old, there is this barrier between them,-that the
anathemas of the apostles apply only to the correction and
temporal expulsion of enemies from the community, and not
to their everlasting perdition (Acts viii. 22, cf. with ver. 20;
1 Cor. xvi. 22; Gal. i. 9, v. 12; 2 Tim. iv. 14).  No one
who believes in the necessity of a gradually progressive revelation can take offence at the form in which Old Testament
piety occasionally presents itself to us,-a form which is incomplete enough when viewed from a Christian standpoint,
although justifiable at its own peculiar stage.  Indeed, it has




240            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
been asserted, not without justice, that these psalms contain
a very wholesome antidote against the mawkish religious
sentimentality of our own days, which, in the case of many,
is the chief source of all these difficulties, since they are alike
incapable either of fervent love to that which is good, and of
holy ardent hatred against that which is evil.
Having thus endeavoured to vindicate before the forum of
modern consciousness the eternal truth of the general conception of God-that is, of His personality and special providence
-as laid down in the Bible, we still feel that we have only
accomplished the easier portion of our task.  For the number
of those who reject the general system of biblical Theism is, on
the whole-and'probably among my readers also-far less than
that of those who entertain doubts as to the specific Christian,
that is, the Trinitarian, conception of God.  Now, therefore,
we must give a closer consideration to the Christian doctrine
of the Trinity.  The subject, however, is so wide a one, that
in respect of many questions which converge in this central
point, we shall not be able to give more than mere hints,
which may tend to remove the manifold offences that attach
to this doctrine in particular.
II.-THE TRINITARIAN CONCEPTION OF THE DIVINE NATURE.
The doctrine of the Trinity set forth in its simplest form in
the Apostles' (and Nicene) Creed, may be assumed as universally known. The so-called Apostles' Creed is, of course, not
strictly speaking of apostolic authorship.  Founded on our
Lord's own baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19), it grew by
degrees into its present shape in the midst of the controversies of the first centuries of primitive Christianity.  In
accordance with this its origin, this Creed presents the doctrine of the Trinity in the simple form of a confession of
personal faith in God the Father, in Jesus Christ His onlybegotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit.  But in the so-called
Creed of St. Athanasius, which, in addition to the Apostles'
and Nicene, is generally received in all divisions, Protestant
as well as Roman Catholic, of the Western Church, we have
the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the school of St.




LECT. IV.      THIE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          241
Augustine in a much more developed shape.    " The Catholic
faith," according to this formula, " is, that wze worship one God
in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons
nor dividing the substance."  The Persons, it proceeds to teach,
are different, the substance one. Each of these divine Persons
is uncreate, each is eternal, each almighty, etc.  And yet
there are not three Almighties or three Eternals, but one
Almighty and one Eternal, etc.; and not three Gods or three
Lords, but one Lord and one God.    The Father is' uncreate
and unbegotten; the Son uncreate, but begotten of the Father;
the Holy Ghost uncreate, but proceeding from the Father and
the Son. And in this Trinity of divine Persons there is none
before and none after, none higher and none less, but all
three co-equal, etc.
This the faith of the Church universal, in respect to the
divine nature, is regarded by many in the present day as an
"Aber:glcaube," i.e. an "ultra-faith" or superstition; while
others, without directly impugning the doctrine of the Trinity
per se, regard this particular form in which it is enshrined as
of doubtful validity, and some of its definitions as objectionable; whereas the Athanasian Creed itself declares with the
utmost stringency, that "hle who would be saved moust thus
think of the Trinity," and, indeed, rightly insists upon the
doctrine as the necessary foundation of all Christian teaching
We will now, taking the definitions of this symbol as our
starting-point, inquire as to the scriptural character of the
doctrine thus formulated, and, faithful to our general principle, will endeavour frankly to acknowledge and concede
where concession and acknowledgment may seem right and
necessary.
And our first confession is this: That the scientific theology of the present day, and, indeed, that branch of it which
most closely adheres to the teaching of Holy Scripture, professes to find (and not, I tlink, without some reason) sundry
defects in the Athanasian definitions. The more closely one
examines into what the Bible itself teaches concerning the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the more readily will
he acknowledge that true and precious as the nucleus of its
doctrine remains, there are nevertheless some points in the
teaching of this Creed, concerning the relations of the divine




242.            TIE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE        [LECT. IV.
Persons, which are not in full accord with that of Scripture.
And still less do they satisfy the questions and requirements
of- speculative theology. We confess with Nitzsch, that while
the received doctrine of the Church enshrines the inestimable
treasure of the truth itself, it does not always put it in a forni
acceptable or satisfactory to the philosophical inquirer. There
is in the Athanasian formula, for instance, much that is hard
and unnecessarily offensive, and even provocative of doubt
and objection; nor can we be surprised if such olbjections are
continually cropping up and appearing on the surface throughout the chequered course of Church History.
The Athanasian Creed is evidently too stiffly arithmetical in
some of its definitions and antitheses, without attempt to reconcile their obvious contradictions. Thus each divine Person
is said to be eternal, each uncreate, etc., and yet there are not
three Eternals nor three uncreate, but one uncreate and one
Eternal, etc. To these statements the objection is obvious, that
they either destroy the Unity for the sake of the Trinity, or the
Trinity in the interest of the Unity; nor is it quite easy with
the doctrine so stated to rebut the charge alleged, not by Jews
and Mahometans only, but also by many Christians, that
Trinitarianism contradicts the fundamental article of all true
religion, that there is only One living and true God. Hence
the numerous attempts in ancient and modern times to remove
this stumbling-block of the understanding, now in one way,
now in another,-attempts in which the Trinity was naturally
more frequently sacrificed than the Unity; as, for instance, by
Socinians and Unitarians since the Reformation, who argue
that inasmuch as Monotheism is evidently the fundamental
doctrine of the Bible, it cannot teach the divinity of our Lord,
and that Christ must be therefore a mere man, and the Holy
Spirit merely a divine influence.  Hence also the similar objections of modern Rationalism, that it contradicts the laws
of thought, that a part should be equal to the whole, or a
whole to its several parts,-that, for instance, 1 =-3,-an
objection the superficial character of which is obvious, and the
answer to it easy.  Mathematical axioms are out of place in
metaphysical and ethical inquiries. Our minds must be carried
into a higher sphere.  Mathematically speaking, no doubt two
persons are distinct entities. But of the persons of the Trinity,




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF TIIE TRINITY.          243
the Church has always taught their unity of substance and
their absolute inseparability, and so lifted up the whole question into a region of transcendent thought and feeling, of which
mathematical science is wholly ignorant.  We must not confound the respective spheres.
The Church herself, however, is not quite free from blame
in this respect, on account of the arithmetical character of
some parts of her chief formulary.  The objections stirred by
these might have been avoided by anticipation, had a firm
hold been taken from  the first of the truth indiated by the
Hebrew form   of the divine name ELOHIM (as will be more
fully shown presently), that in God unity and plurality consist as correlatives which mutually require one another; that,
as we have already indicated, it is the essential characteristic
of the true doctrine of the divine nature, in contradistinction
to Polytheism on the one hand, and an abstract Monotheism
on the other, that both elements of true Being, unicity and
multiplicity, do in God meet and interpenetrate one another
in a perfectly unique and transcendental way.
But now to come to the doctrine itself, and its basis in
Holy Scripture. You are all aware that no such sentence as
God is a triune God is to be found in the Bible.  The wellknown text, 1 John v. 7, There are three that bear record
in heacven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these
three are one, is now universally recognised as an interpolation.
The terms trinity, triunity, threefold personality, and even
the word person itself, are not derived immediately from
Scripture. It fares with these as with all attempts to express
human conceptions concerning the Divine and Infinite-they
are but imperfect, inadequate expressions which we accept and
use for the want of better.  The very term persons has something objectionable in it, suggesting at first the notion of
distinct and separate individualities, which is perfectly inapplicable to the consubstantial, and therefore inseparable, hypostases of which the Bible speaks as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.
Our Church formularies are undoubtedly right in laying
stress on the unity of substance in these divine Persons; but
it may be questioned whether they are also right in seeming
to speak of the divine substance as if it were, in the first




244             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
instance, something indefinite and universal, which was then
resolved into three distinct hypostases.  When we speak of
"three persons in one divine, substance," we use an expression which apparently implies that the substance is regarded
as something abstract and impersonal, which assumes a threefold personality in the concrete forms of God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Many earnest inquirers
are sensible of a certain incongruity between this mode of
speaking and the teaching of Scripture, and, we may add, the
teaching also of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, as well as of
the best and most authoritative Fathers of the Oriental Church.
Holy Scripture and primitive theology undoubtedly regard the
Divine Essence as in itself personal, naming it at once God
and Father.  They agree in speaking of the heavenly Father
as (not the first member in a series of divine evolutions, but)
Itimself God, holding the fulness of the Godhead in Himself,
Funs totius Deitatis, the spring and fountainhead of the whole
Deity from which Son and Holy Spirit are evermore derived.
This point is one of decisive significance in determining the
relations between the divine Persons, and leads us at once
into the midst of our present inquiry.
We propose therefore (A.) to examine the chief Scripture
testimonies to the doctrine of the Trinity in general, viz. those
concerning (a) The divine Father, (b) The Son, (c) The Holy
Ghost, and (cl) The mutual relations of the divine Persons.
This done, we propose further (B.) to examine the results thas
obtained by the light derived from the history of religious
thought and from  modern philosophical speculation, and to
inquire as to what extraneous supports and testimonies may be
thus afforded them.
A. Scripture Testimonies to the Doctrine of the Trinity.Are then, according to the witness of Scripture, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost so one in essence that Son and Spirit are
also God?   And are they, notwithstanding this essential
unity, three distinct though not separated subjects (or persons),
having each His own knowledge and will? These are our
first questions.  The former point, the unity of the Son's
essence with the Father, was denied by Paul of Samosata in
the third, by the Arians in the fourth and following centuries,
and in later times by Unitarians and Rationalists.  The latter,




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         245
the personal distinctions of the three divine hypostases, were
disputed by the Sabellians as early as the third century. They
taught that the one God, while manifestingr Himself in a
threefold relation to the world, now as Father, now as Son, and
now as Holy Spirit, had nevertheless remained within Himself
always one and the same; and that so, what we call the Persons of the Trinity were but different forms of divine manifestation;-a view which has often reappeared in various
shapes in modern theology. The doctrine of Scripture stands
in the midst between these two parties: it holds fast, on the
one hand, the unity of substance, the consubstantiality of Son
and Holy Spirit with the heavenly Father, and on the other,
their personal distinctness: it combines, in reference to the
doctrine of the Trinity (as we have seen to be the case il
reference to other theories concerning the divine nature), all
the various elements of truth which human systems are so
prone to separate.
(c) And first, with regard to God the Father, He is the
ultimate cause of all creation (1 Cor. viii. 6; Rom. xi. 36);
to Him the whole development of the universe is due-He
w/orketl7 all in all (1 Cor. xii. 6), and the goal toward which it
is all tending-that God ncay be all in all (1 Cor. xi. 28).
He is, therefore, the only Potentate and Lord of all (1 Tim. vi.
15); He is also the Author of all redemption, which, in accordance with His will, was determined from all eternity (Eph. i.
4; 2 Tim. i. 9, 10), and evolved in time.  He is therefore
designated simply by the title Saviour (Luke i. 47; 1 Tim.
i. 1); by Him the Son is sent, and from Him the Paraclete
proceeds (John iii. 16, xiv. 16).  This divine Father, while
not disdaining to enter His own world and make His dwelling
in His saints (John xiv. 23; Acts xvii. 27), yet remains
eternally unchangeable, in light unapproachable, the only
deathless One (1 Tim. vi. 16)4 the only Wise, overruling and
disposing all events by His holy will and providence (Rom.
xvi. 27; Matt. xxiv. 36). No one disputes, indeed no one can
deny, that deity and divine honour are in Scripture assigned
to the Father. But how is it with the Son and the Spirit?
Here the variety of teaching and opinion is manifold. We
must consider the Scripture testimonies more in detail. And
first let us examine: (b) The Scripture testimony to the con



246            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
substantiality of the Son with the Father.  The very title
which our Lord applies to Himself (John iii. 16, 18)-Son,
and only-begotten Son of God-compared with the many passages in which He speaks of the Father in heaven as His
Father, indicates a claim to stand in a peculiar filial relation
to the Father such as no mere creature can aspire to.  All
attempts to deny this, and to make out that the Sonship claimed
by our Lord is nothing more than the childlike relation which
belongs to all believers (against which, compare John i. 12
with iv. 14 and 18), are plainly refuted by the observation,
that He always makes a clear distinction in speaking to His
disciples between your Father and my Father, your God and
my God; that He never places Himself, so to speak, on the
same line with them-never speaks of OUR Father (Matt. vi.
8, 32, xviii. 10, xvi. 17, xxvi. 53; John xx. 17)-(the first
words of the Lord's Prayer are not in point (Matt. vi. 9), for
Christ is there teaching His disciples to pray, and does not
include Himself with them). Moreover, this specific filial
relation to the Father is indicated in those places where our
Lord speaks of Himself as sent by the Father, and coming into
the world, as having come down from heaven, and as the Son
of man who is in heaven (John iii. 13, comp. iv. 31, 32, vi.
33, 50, 58, viii. 23). He limits at the same time His own preexistence: compare especially John viii. 58, Before Abraham
was, I am; which is not, as we shall see more fully hereafter,
to be understood in an ideal and impersonal, but in a strictly
personal and realistic sense.
In accordance with this claim to a divine origin, we find
our Lord assuming divine authority-(But I say unto you)abrogating not merely Rabbinical but Sinaitic precepts (Matt.
v. 19, 9)-declaring Himself greater than the temple, Lord of
the Sabbath, more than Jonas and Solomon, and the dispenser
of forgiveness (Matt. ix. 2, 6).  It is only in virtue of His
self-consciousness as God that He can regard Himself as a
creditor to whom the sinner is indebted, and who, in His own
name, vouchsafes remission (Luke vii. 41-50). God alone has
the right to judge or to forgive the violation of His image in
man by sin: were Christ not one with God, He would be
guilty of blasphemy in assuming such power (Matt. ix. 2, 3).
It is in virtue of the same claim to a divine character that our




LECT. IV.]     THE 1OCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         247
Lord subordinates love to one's neighbour in His disciples to
love towards Himself-He that loveth father or mother more
than me, etc. (Matt. x. 37, which is virtually the same as John
x. 30). And it is as being omniscient and pre-existent that He
declares that He will hereafter come again as Judge (Matt. vii.
21-23, xxiv. 30, xxv. 31, etc.).  It is as one with the omnipresent Father that He promises to be with His disciples
everywhere and always to the world's'end (Matt. xxviii. 20
compared with John xiv. 18).  It will be observed that these
proofs are in the first instance taken from the earlier Gospels,
which modern criticism would fain separate by a wide gulf
from that of St. John.  How impossible it is to do so is
evident from one example.  Our Lord, in St. Matt. xi. 27,
claims to stand in a position so unique to the heavenly Father 
that none can.know the Father but Himself, or through His
mediation, and none know Him but the Father only.   The
whole Gospel of St. John may be regarded as an illustration of
this one utterance (cf. John iii. 35, xiv. 6, xvii. 25).
It is only like that knows like.  It is only in virtue of
unity of essence that the Son thus knows the Father, and is
known only of Him. We need not, therefore, wonder to hear
Him saying in the fourth Gospel: I and mny Father are one;
I am in the Father, and the Father in me (John x. 30, xiv.
11, 20, x. 38); He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;
and claiming with the Father one undivided dignity, that they
all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father (John
v. 23, xiv. 13)-a claim refuting in the most complete way
those who would deny adoration to be due to our Lord (compare Luke xxiv. 52).  There is ONE WILL and ONE WORK
(John v. 30, 19-21, xi. 41, etc.), as there is ONE LOVE (xiv.
21, xvii. 26) of the Father.and the Son.  And, therefore, the
Son's return to the glory which He had zwith the Father before
the iworld was (John xvii. 5), is a glorification wzith the Father
such as no creature can attain to (John iii. 13, viii. 21, 23,
xiii. 32, 33).  He returns to a state in which He is the sender
of the Spirit, even as the Father is (John xiv. 26, xv. 26;
Luke xxiv. 49),-that Spirit who will take the substance of
His witness from the things of the Son, and will glorify the
Son (John xvi. 13-15) on earth, even as the Son once glorified
the Father (xvii. 4) in His life here.




248            THE THEOLOGY OF SCPRIPURE.       [LECT. IV.
But if this witness of our Lord concerning Himself, and,
indeed, the very terms Son of God and Only-begotten, justify
the inference of His consubstantiality with the Father, they no
less teach His derivation from, dependence on, and subordination to, the Father, albeit in co-equal Godhead.  The Father
hath, indeed, committed to the Son all that He hath; but one
thing He could not impart, His own paternity, otherwise the
Son would have ceased to be Son.  The Father is the eternal
unbeginning archetype, the Son the co-eternal perfect image of
the Father.  When it is said that "the Father hath given to
the Son to have life in Himself," the meaning is, that the life
of Godhead which the Son possesses is, as compared with the
highest life among the creatures, original, creative, and archetypal; but as compared with the Father, it is still something
given and received: " The Son can do nothing.of Himself but
what He seeth the Father do" (John v. 19); "My Father is
greater than I" (John xiv. 28); "I ascend to my God and
your God" (John xx. 17).    Even in the heavenly glory the
Father is still His God.
The apostolic testimonies in other parts of the New Testament conduct us to the same result as these utterances of our
Lord contained in the Gospel.  They establish both Iis consubstantiality with the Father and His filial subordination.
We will refer to only one'or two of the most important passages.  First, then, our Lord's personal pre-existence is clearly
taught by St. Paul (Col. i. 16, 17), "He is before all things"
(compare His own I AM in John viii. 58); and His consubstantial dignity by the same apostle (Phil. ii. 6), Beinlg in the
forrn of God; where the reference is not to any manifestation
of the Godhead in the days of His flesh (when "the form"
7which He took upon Him was that "of a servant"), but His
position from eternity.  And as a consequence of this, we find
that even in His human nature God is immanent, that in
Him "dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. ii. 9;
2 Cor. v. 19; 1 Tim. iii. 16).
This unique and pre-existent unity of essence between the
Father and the Son is wonderfully taught by St. John in the
prologue of His Gospel: In the beqinning (compare i. 1), i.e.
before all created things, and when creation itself began, wts
the WVord, the LOGOS, i.e. divine utterance or speech, and not




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          249
merely divine inward thought or reason (X\oyo 7rpo0opL069
as well as Xo5yo? evvaOeroI).  This Word was God's selfmanifestation by which He was preparing to. hold communion
with His creatures.  But before any of these came into existence this WORD was WITH God, or, more accurately, was towards God, i.e. resting in and clinging to Him  by a natural
tendency (compare the like remarkable expression in ver. 18,
the Only-begotten in, or rather INTO, the bosom of the Father).
From this it is evident that the Son in His pre-existent state
was personally or hypostatically distinct from  the Father.
What follows shows not less clearly that He was consubstantial with Him: An    the Word e  as God, i.e. of nature
equal and one with the Father.  And that explains how St.
Paul could speak of Christ as not only more than man (Gal.
i. 1), but also (as the best interpreters of Rom. ix. 5 allow)
as "God over all" (comp. Tit. ii. 13, Heb. i. 8. 9, Eph. v. 5,
John xx. 28, Luke xxiv. 52, and the adoration of the Lamb,
Rev. v. 11, 12).
But the apostles no less clearly teach the filial subordination of the Son to the Father, both in His pre-existence before
creation and in His glorification now (cf. Heb. i. 3, Acts
vii. 55, Rom. viii. 34, Heb. x. 12), yea, and even in the consummation of an after eternity (1 Cor. xv. 28).
All this teaching is of great importance, from its bearing on
the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity.  Christ, it tells us, has
occupied from  eternity a relation of medintorship between
God and the universe.  The very expression "only-begotten"
indicates this.  For if'"begotten" refers to a transcendent
process within the Godhead before all worlds, the "only"
refers to the world of creatures which was to follow.  The
divine Word or Logos had not only an inward tendency (as
explained above) towards the Godhead, but also an outward
one towards the universe and the work of creation.  Therefore St. John in his prologue goes on to say, "All things were
made through Him, and without Him     was made nothing"
(thap. i. 4).  The full apostolic teaching is, that creation
is a work of the Father done throrgh the Son (1 Cor. viii. 6;
2 Pet. iii. 5; Col. i. 16).  The Son is not, as such, the final
Cause, but the Divine co-equal Instrument of creation.  He
is also its Motive-the Heir of all things, because all things




250            TIE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
were made for Him, under whom, as its Head, the All is finally
to be gathered (Heb. i. 2, 3; Eph. i. 10).  As the immediate
support of all life in the world of creatures, He is not Himself
a creature, but yet "the First-born of all creation " (Col. i. 15,
cf. Rev. iii. 14).  This last expression-" First-born of" (or
"before ") " all creation," or " every creature "-teaches three
things: His derivation from the Father, His essential unlikeness to all creatures (born, not made), and at the same time
His mediatorial relation towards them.  And so we see how,
in the scriptural idea of the divine generation, it forms as it
were a bridge to the work of creation.  The eternal Son goes
forth from the Father's bosom as the archetype of the world
that is to be, and specially as the future Life and Light of
man (John i. 4, viii. 12).
Moreover all these witnesses of Christ and the apostles
prove no less clearly the distinct PERSONALITY of the Son of
God.   Unity with the Father is not identity with Him.  The
very word " with God " implies personal distinction.  And it
needs hardly to notice how in His earthly life our Lord, when
most strongly asserting His oneness with the Father, yet
never puts this personal distinction out of view: "I and my
Father are one;" and yet, " My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work."  From His first utterance in the temple to His last
upon the cross, IHe always speaks of the Father as a distinct
person from Himself.  And so also He speaks of the Holy
Spirit as another Comforter, as His future representative in
the world (John xiv. 16, xvi. 14, etc.), as sent by Him from
the Father, and therefore as again a distinct person from
Himself. And it is evident from every page of the Acts of
the Apostles that these personal distinctions were not effaced
by His return to glory.
One important result at which we arrive is plainly this:
So surely as our Lord describes Himself as one with the
Father, though yet personally distinct and derived from Him,
so surely as He speaks of Himself as not only the teacher and
pattern of divine love, but also as the Lord and Master of the
hearts of all men,-so surely must His equality and unity with
the Father, along with any personal distinction, be of an infinitely closer and more intimate kind than that between any
creaturely offspring and its earthly parent. (Gess.)




LECT. IV.]     TIlE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          251
And another result is, that if the well-known definition of
the Athanasian Creed, "In this Trinity there is none before
or after, nothing greater or less," must be regarded as a onesided and inadequate statement of the truth, ignoring as it
seems to do the filial subordination, so much more must we
pronounce the teaching of Unitarianism  and Rationalism as
altogether antiscriptural in its denial of His co-equal consubstantial Godhead.
(c) A similar result would also follow from an investigation of the doctrine of Scripture concerning the Holy Spirit.
Some ancient heretics regarded the Holy Spirit, as Rationalism
does now, as a mere impersonal energy or virtue of the divine
nature; others (like the Arians), as a created Being; some
modern rationalists apply the term to the religious instinct
of the existing Christian community.  The Church teaches
that the Holy Spirit is a divine person. To which of these
forms of doctrine does Holy Scripture bear witness as the
true?
None can deny that Scripture assigns to the Holy Ghost
attributes and operations which are simply divine-omniscience
(1 Cor. ii. 10), omnipresence (Ps. cxxxix. 7), creative energy
(Ps. xxxiii. 6; Gen. i. 2). In Heb. ix. 2, He is called simply
"the eternal Spirit;" in 1 Pet. iv. 14, "Spirit of God," and
"Spirit of glory;" in 1 Cor. ii. 10, He is said to " search the
deeps of God." There can be no doubt as to Scripture testimony to His Godhead, but how does the case stand as to
Scripture teaching concerning His personality?
Now here it must be first observed, that as in the natural
world the Spirit of God is represented as the quickening
energy which imparts life and form and power of development to what before was dead and formless matter, so in the
spiritual world He is the life-giving influence for the soul of
man, and the imparter to it of spiritual lite and true personality (Gen. ii. 7). This life He can at all times quicken and
renew, and through Him it is that the believer becomes first
a person and then a child of God.  Is it not a priori probable
that He from whom the principle of personality comes should
be Himself a person?
Further, personal attributes are constantly assigned in Holy
Scripture to the Holy Spirit-self-consciousness, knowledge




252            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
will, self-determination, speech, and action.  So, when the
Spirit is spoken of as " searching all things," as "only knowing
what is in God" (1 Cor. ii. 11), as the "other Comforter"
who " convinces," "teaches," "brings to remembrance," "leads
into all truth," " takes of the things of Jesus and shows them
to believers," and so "glorifies Christ in them" (John xiv.
16, 28, xvi. 7, 8, 13-15); when it is said of Him that He
tids our prayers by " making intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered" (Rom. viii. 26),-all this is unintelligible without assuming personal self-consciousness in the
divine agent.  And again, when He is said to be grieved
(Eph. iv. 30), lied to (Acts v. 3), blasphemed (Matt. xii. 31),
to be the Lord and Distributer of heavenly gifts, imparting to
each man severally as He will (1 Cor. xii. 11), to speak and
witness in the disciples (Matt. x. 20; Rom. viii. 16), and
even to speak to them   in the first person (Acts xiii. 2:
"Separate me Barnabas and Saul "), personal feeling, will,
and action are evidently attributed to Him.
It is, indeed, often noticed that the Holy Spirit is spoken of
as a gift (Acts ii. 38; Heb. vi. 4), as "power from on high"
(Luke xxiv. 49) with which the first disciples were to be
endowed; and this, it is argued, is incompatible with personalitv.  But so Christ Himself, we reply, is spoken of as the
gift of God (John iii. 16, iv. 10); and the Distributer of
heavenly gifts cannot Himself be a gift in a neutral or material,
but only in a personal sense.  It is only as being the personal principle of all the powers of the kingdom of God, and
not merely as a single power or divine property, that the
Spirit can be co-ordinated, as in 1 Cor. xii. 4-6, with the
Father and the Son. It is only as a person distinct from the
Father that He can make intercession in the hearts of believers (Rom. viii. 26).
A question is sometimes asked: If the Holy Spirit is
poured out upon and imparted to so many thousands of believers, can it, in this distribution and manifold division, be
one and the same person?   The solution is found in the
divine omnipresence of the Spirit. Is not our Lord Himself
spoken of as dwelling in individual saints (2 Cor. xiii. 5; Gal.
ii. 20), without any thought of denying His distinct personality? And when we consider that it belongs to the very




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         253
idea of the Holy Spirit that He should be the principle of
unity in the divine attributes, and that it is, as it were, the
law of His being that He should be self-distributing and selfimparting, we see at once how natural it is for Him to dwell
in a multitude of spiritual homes. And therefore He is
represented, in this self-division and innate disposition to selfimpartation, as "the seven Spirits before the throne of God,"
"sent out into all the earth" (Rev. i. 4, iv. 5).  These
"seven Spirits" are further said (Isa. xi. 1, 2) to "rest upon"
"the rod of the stem of Jesse," as manifold and yet as Onethe   oly S  it the  he New Testament which comes to us
from Him as the Spirit of Jesus, through one and the same
with the personal and consubstantial Spirit of the Father.
In heaven, then, the Holy Spirit appears as a person, the
personal principle or unity of the divine powers; on earth
He is manifested to us as a multiplicity of gifts (Acts ii. 38).
But even these "gifts" have something "personal" in them.
They dwell in us without being lost or confounded with our
personality. The Spirit speaks to the heart of the believer,
" bears witness with our spirit," and even speaks from us to
the world without (Matt. x. 20).
But at the same time He is and remains very God, consubstantial with the Father and the Son.  This is evident not
only from what was said above, but also from tle numerous
passages of ScrMpture in which He is spoken of as the principle
of the new birth and source of our sanctification (cf. 1 Thess.
i. 5; 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5; John iii. 5 foll.; aom. ii. 29, viii. 9,
v. 5, xiv. 17; 1 Cor. xii. 3, 13; 1 John ii. 27, iii. 24; Acts
vii. 51, xix. 2-5), even as the same is said of the Father and
the Son. Those who are born of the Spirit are also born of
God; those who lie to the Holy Ghost, lie also to God. Christ,
too, identifies His own operation with that of the Spirit. The
coming of the Paraclete is His coming likewise (John xiv.
16-18).  That blasphemy against the Holy Ghost should be
the only unpardonable sin is a clear proof that He cannot in
dignity be less than God.
And thus we arrive at the like result with regard to the
Holy Spirit to that which appeared to us the doctrine of
Scripture in regard to the Son.  Consubstantial with the
Father and the Son, He is yet personally distinct from them,




254            THIE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.     [LECT. IV.
and in a certain way subordinate, from  being from  Both
derived and from Both proceeding.  "He speaks not of Himself; but that which He hears;" He takes of the fulness of
Christ to impart to us (John xvi. 13, 14). His coming to us
is dependent on the Lord's completion of the Lord's redeeming
work and His entrance into glory (John vii. 39, xvi. 7). He
is sent by Him from the Father.  And as in the kingdom of
grace, so in the natural and moral world He is the principle
of communication between the Creator and the creatures-the
breath of life from God in the world.
(d) We conclude this investigation with a brief review of a
few passages of Scripture, in which the doctrine of the Trinity
is contained as a whole, in which Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost are spoken of together.
The received dogmatic theology of the Church distinguishes
between an essential (immanent Ontological) Trinity of persons in the Godhead and an ECONOMICAL Trinity, i.e. a threefold manifestation or self-revelation of the one God to us.
The Church believes in and affirms both.  But many theologians in the present day, and among them not a few sincere
believers in revelation, deny the scriptural authority of the
former, while all receive and acknowledge the latter.
Leaving on one side for the present this point of controversy, we will first inquire how far the testimony of Scripture
supports the essential features in the doctrine of the Church
concerning the personal distinctness and yet real unity and consubstantiality of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The fundamental scriptural authority for the whole doctrine
is the formula of baptism  (Matt. xxviii. 19): "Baptizing
them in (or into) the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost." That what is here spoken of is a baptism
into communion with Father, Son, and Spirit, all sound exegesis
must allow.  And therefrom must follow, in the first place,
that by these terms cannot be meant three successive phases
of development (Sabellianism), but three contemporaneous
distinctions in the divine nature.  And further, we are
warranted in drawing a threefold conclusion: (1) That these
three distinct manifestations must be personal. There is no
instance in Scripture of an action being performed in the
name of any abstra(t thing, but only of a personal subject.




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         255
Moreover, it would be impossible to enter into communion
with any but a person.   (2) That these three persons are.co-equal and divine.  They are named together on equal
terms, and the same divine honour is accorded to each of
them.  (Especially significant is here the co-equal divine personality assigned to the Holy Spirit.  No one will deny that
Father and Son are terms properly applied only to distinct
persons; but how with such could an impersonal power or
virtue be associated in the way in which the Holy Spirit is
here?)  And (3) the singular term "in the name" indicates
that these three persons are yet essentially one, not three
different beings or separate individuals.  The same divine
name manifests itself as Father in the Father, as Son in the
Son, as Holy Ghost in the Holy Spirit.  Then is unity without singularity, consubstantiality along with personal distinctions, distinction without separation.
Another Trinitarian passage is 2 Cor. xiii. 13: "The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God ("the God," i.e.
God the Father), and the communion of the Holy Ghost be
with you all." Compare this with 1 Cor. xii. 4-6, where
manifold "gifts" are associated with "one Spirit," manifold
"ministrations" with "one Lord" Christ (Eph. iv., 11), and
manifold "operations" with " one God" (the Father) who
worketh all in all; and with Eph. iv. 4-6, which speaks of
one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.  These
passages compared together prove what we have already established by other considerations, that in the doctrine of Scripture
God the Father is the source and well-spring of the whole
Godhead (Fons totius Deitatis), of that of the Son, and of that of
the Spirit, who are not separate existences, but in the Father
and from Him.   Compare also 1 Pet. i. 1, 2, where the foreknowledge and predetermination of the Father is represented
as the source and mainspring of the whole work of grace.
The same thing is taught in our original passage, 2 Cor.
xiii. 13. The love of God the Father is the source of all
grace, which manifests itself in the Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ; and the product of this grace and love is the communion of the Holy Spirit.
And if with these and other Trinitarian passages of Scripture (such as Rev. i. 4, 5 and Rom. xi. 36) we compare the




256            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
Gospel narratives which have a specially Trinitarian character,
-such as the Annunciation (Luke i. 35),and the Lord's Baptism,
in which the sinless one, who had placed Himself in fellowship with sinners for their salvation, is raised, as it were, by
the Father's voice, and introduced by the illapse of the Spirit
into the " communion" of the Trinity,-we shall be in a condition to form a judgment in the controversy between those who
regard the doctrine of the Trinity as expressing eternal and
essential distinctions in the divine nature, and those who
regard the divine persons as mere economical manifestations
of the Holy One in His relation to ourselves.
Now, first of all, it is clear, and allowed on all sides, that
the doctrine of the Trinity rests upon, and is derived from,
great fccts of divine revelation.  It is because God has
revealed Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that
we believe in a triune God.  The very form of the Apostles'
and Nicene Creed proves this.    The divine name in the
baptismal formula is a threefold name of revelation as to
God's relation to us.  And so the love of God (the Father) in
2 Cor. xiii. 13, in connection with the grace (of the Son) and
the communion of the Spirit which follow, points in the first
instance to the relation in which He reveals Himself as
standing to the world. In all these ways we have undoubtedly
a trinity of rvevelation (an economical trinity).
But it cannot, on the other hand, be denied that in Holy
Scripture some passages may be found which point to the
existence of real internal distinctions in the divine nature,
that is, to a trinity of hypostatic existence (an Ontological
Trinity).  The uncreated Word or Logos is before all worlds
"with" or " towards" (irp6) God, and sinking as it were into
(e'?) the Father's bosom. And the same inwardly directed
tendency towards " the deeps of the Godhead " is predicated of
the divine Spirit (1 Cor. ii. 10).  The very names of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, though in the first instance names of a
trinity of revelation, do, if expressive of a real revelation,
indicate real internal distinctions in the divine nature.  And
so also in our Lord's Baptism  we have not only a divine
revelation made to us, and a link in the chain of the works
of redeeming love, but we also see the divine persons acting
and reacting one on the other.




LECT. IV.]      THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          257
The conclusion at which we arrive is this: If the teaching
of Scripture is in the main concerned with the divine relations
to us, and its Trinity is therefore in the main a Trinity of
revelation, it is yet going much too far to say that it does
not contain expressive hints of a real internal ontological
Trinity.  And this latter has a very deep interest for Speculative Theology.
But we may surely ask further, Is it then necessary, or
even rational, to make so broad a distinction between this
external and this internal Trinity?  If God reveal Himself to
the world as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is it not because He
IS what'He reveals Himself as being? The Trinity of revelation points to a Trinity of inward being which it thus makes
manifest. The one implies and presupposes the other.  The
eternal generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit
involve a divine impulse from eternity to creation and redemption. And in like manner the Trinity of revelation has
ontological elements. If love be the essence of the divine
nature, the impulse to revelation is inherent in it.  In other
words: God's actions without imply inward workings and
relations, and His inward actions and relations are the necessary premises and preparations for His outward working.
In revelation God reveals Himself, and the impulse of selfmanifestation belongs to His inmost being.
The comparative silence of Holy Scripture as to the ontological code of Trinitarian doctrine is easily accounted for by
the considerations already offered, as to the self-hiding as well
as the self-revealing characteristics of the divine nature.  It
is naturally the latter which are prominently presented to us
in Holy Scripture.
But before we proceed to the final result of what has been
said on this subject, we must briefly consider an objection
which has seemed to many to militate against the doctrine of
the Trinity. Why is nothing said, they ask, with regard to
this truth in the Old Testament?  Why did God withhold
for 4000 years a self-revelation which is assumed to be so
essential to the spiritual good of His creatures? And if this
were indeed the case, if in the Old Testament, which professes
to be a revelation of the true and living God, there were no
traces of this truth, we might indeed be seriously shaken as
R




253            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
to the very groundwork of Christian doctrine.  But a closer
examination shows that it is not so.  If for good reasons God
was pleased to withhold under the Old Covenant a full revelation of His triune nature, He gave at least manifold hints
of it in the names and words and facts of the ancient Scriptures.  We can only briefly hint at some of these.
Many passages of the Old Testament, for instance, teach
the divinity of the future Messiah, as when He is called the
Son of God (Ps. ii. 7; Prov. xxx. 4), the Branch of the Lord
(Isa. iv. 2; Zech. iii. 8), the Lord (Ps. cx. compared with
Matt. xxii. 44), God (Ps. xlv. 8), Mighty God (Isa. ix. 6
comp. x. 21); His pre-existence is hinted at (Mic. v. 1 comp.
with Isa. xlviii. 16), and an eternal post-existence promised
Him   (Dan. vii. 14), an eternal kingdom  and an eternal
priesthood (Ps. cx. 4). And if with regard to the Holy
Spirit many passages of the Old Testament do not go beyond
the notion of a divine energy or influence, it cannot surely be
denied that in others, activities are ascribed to Him which
imply personal subsistence, as His striving (Gen. vi. 3),
speaking (2 Sam. xxiii. 2), leading (Ps. cxliii. 10), His being
made grieved and made angry (Isa. lxiii. 10), to which we
have so many parallels in the New Testament.  The Spirit of
God, moreover, is represented in the Old Testament as resting
on Messiah in His sevenfold eradiation (Isa. xi. 2), and as not
only imparting Himself to individuals (Num. xi. 25-29; 1
Sam. xix. 23; 2 Kings ii. 9-15), but as outpoured on the
whole people of the redeemed in Messianic times (Isa. xliv.
3); as the Spirit of vision and prophecy (Joel ii. 28), of
inward renewal and sanctification (Ezek. xxxvi. 27, xxxix.
29), of grace and prayer (Zech. xii. 10).
These are only hints, but they are enough to show that the
Old Testament attributes to the Messiah predicates which
belong to no mere creature, and so teaches His true Godhead,
while it ascribes a real independent activity to the Holy
Spirit. And there are also numerous indications in the Old
Testament of a certain plurality in the divine nature, an
organized and complex unity, a mutual indwelling and cooperation ot the three divine hypostases.
Such an indication'may be found in in the Hebrew name
for God, Elohin. The plural (as is well known) is commonly




LECT. IV.]     TIlE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          259
used with a singular verb.  So in the very first words of
Scripture (Gen. i. 1), which may be said to contain the first
trace of the doctrine'of the Trinity: "In the beginning
Elohim" (plural) "created" (singular) "heaven and earth."
This is hardly to be accounted for by the hypothesis of a
pluralis zcajestatis, of the use of which there is no other clear
evidence in Scripture.  But even if it were so, the plural might
still be regarded as indicating an internal divine plurality of
powers and forms of being. The same may be said of the "Us"
in Gen. i. 26 and iii. 22 (comp. Gen. xi. 7 and Isa. vi. 8).
The hypothesis that God is here speaking of the angels as
associated with Himself, is perfectly inadmissible, so far, at any
rate, as the first two passages are concerned. It would contradict all other teachings of Scripture, which clearly ascribe
to God the creation of mankind without any intervention of
angelic agencies (Gen. ii. 7-22; Isa. xl. 13 foll., xliv. 24).
AVe may say indeed of Gen. i. 1, that we have here an intimation of the divine plurality in unity, and unity in plurality;
that all subsequent Trinitarian developments are but unfoldings of what is here presented in the germ.
Again, consider what is said in Scripture of God's creating
all things by His Word (cf. John i. 1-3), and by His Spirit
moving on the face of the waters (Gen. i. 2). Comp. Ps. xxxiii.
6, " The heavens were made by the Word of Jehovah, and all
the host of them by the Spirit of His mouth;" to which " Word"
and " Spirit" the " Us" of Gen. i. 26 must be referred, and
not to an association of angels.  An interpretation to which
we are the more entitled, inasmuch as several places in the
Old Testament refer unmistakeably to twofold and threefold
self-distinctions in the divine essence, e.g.: "The Lord caused
it to rain from the Lord out oi heaven" (Gen. xix. 24); "I
have filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God" (Ex. xxxi. 3),
where the Lord who speaks distinguishes between Himself and
God (the Father) as well as (the Holy) Spirit; " The Lord"
(God the Father) "said unto my Lord" (Messiah, son of
David, who at the same time is David's Lord, Ps. cx. 1); "0
God, hear for the Lord's sake" (Dan. ix. 17); and especially
Isa. xlviii. 16: "From the time that it took place there am I
(Messiah, the servant of the Lord), and now the Lord God
hath sent me, and His Spirit."    Compare also the Lord's




260            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
(Jehovah's) proclamation concerning the name of the Lord
(Ex. xxxiv. 5-7).
Moreover the WORD is, in the Old Testament, Mediator in
the Lord's redeeming work as well as in that of creation.  " He
sent forth His Word and healed them" (Ps. cvii. 20). To
which, if we add the fore-cited passages wherein the future
Messiah is designated as the Son of God, we have the New
Testament doctrine of the WTorcd made flesh in germ  and
early development.  And this will be confirmed by observation of the divine agency in the history of the Exodus, the
type of the redemption under the New Testament. There we
see the Angel of Jehovah, sent by God, the Father of His
people (Deut. xxxii. 6), to lead them through the wilderness,
as the angelic and quasi-human organ of His presence (Ex.
xxiii. 20, 21, xxxiii. 14); and His Spirit poured out upon
their leaders, Moses, Aaron, the seventy elders, Joshua (Num.
xi, 25, xxvii. 18; Neh. ix. 20). So that in after times Isaiah
could describe the redemption from Egypt as the work of
Jehovah, of His Angel, and His Spirit (Isa. lxiii. 8-10). This
is the trinity of the Old Testament.  "These three forms of
divine manifestation dominate the whole of its history."
(Delitzsch, Apolocgtic, pp. 314 foll., 411, 420.)
And further, these observations enable us to trace Trinitarian doctrine in the Levitical blessing (Num. vi. 24-27),
the putting of the threefold sacred name on the children of
Israel: " The Lord bless thee and keep thee " (God the Father,
Maker, and Preserver); the Lord make His face to shine upon
thee, and be gracious unto. thee (God the Son, the Light of
the world, full of grace and truth); the Lord lift up His
countenance unto thee and give thee peace (God the Holy
Ghost, who brings nearer and appropriates to us the divine
grace and peace).  You will observe how here we have an
essential unity in the thrice repeated Lord (Jehovah) with
diversity of operations.l  And to this threefold name of blessing
here on earth, corresponds the thrice-repeated Holy of the
seraphim in the heavenly sanctuary (Isa. vi. 3).  When
throughout the Old Testament we find God calling Himself
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,-Abraham, the father
This point has been more fully treated in the author's Sermons, entitled Der
Segen des Herrn. London, 1860.




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.           261
who was willing to offer up his only son; Isaac, the son who
carried the wood of his sacrifice, and suffered himself to be laid
thereon; and Jacob, the founder and prototype of a spiritual
Israel,-have we not here a prophetic type of that divine
manifestation in which God gives up His Son as a sacrifice
for all, and sends forth His Spirit to form a spiritual people,
and so reveals the sacred name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost?
After all this, we surely cannot deny that Holy Scripture
from the very beginning exhibits germs of Trinitarian doctrine.
But these germs are not the unfolded flower.      A  clear
developed dogma of the Trinity is not to be found in the Old
Testament, and that for good reasons.  It was all-important
under that dispensation, that, in the face of heathen Polytheism,
the great fundamental truth of the divine unity should be
impressed on the religious consciousness of God's ancient
people: "Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord."
Too plain an utterance of Trinitarian doctrine would in such
times have obscured the truth of the divine unity, and misled
into Tritheism. And for the like pcedagoqic reasons our Lord
did not at first reveal the triunity of the divine nature to
His disciples.  It was not till they had learned to believe in
His divine Sonship, and in some measure to apprehend His
unity with the Father and pre-existence, that He could speak
to them of the divine person of the Second Comforter; nay,
it was not till He had proved Himself to be the Fountain of
eternal life by His own resurrection, and by His breathing on
the apostles had kindled in their hearts the fire of the Holy
Spirit, that He found them capable of receiving the divinest
of mysteries, and therefore could leave behind Him as a precious heirloom to His Church-as the deepest revelation of
the divine nature, as the one foundation of Christian faith,
knowledge, and practice, and as the final seal and crown of all
His teaching while here on earth-the great commission: " Go
into all the world, and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost."
The objection, therefore, so often raised, that the doctrine
of the Trinity, is not even founded on Scripture, is itself baseless. From the first of its pages to the last, Scripture is full




262            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.      [LECT. IV.
of indications of this mystery; from the description of {he
work of creation in Gen. i. to that of the New Jerusalem in
the last chapter of the Apocalypse, where the livig water
(symbol of the Spirit, John vii. 38, 39) is seen issufing from
the throne of God and of the Lamb. Everywhere we hear
hints both of the personal distinctions and the unity of
essence. A striking indication may be found of this in the
observation, that whereas each divine hypostasis has a special
work and mode of revelation assigned Him, the other two
are throughout associated with Him in its discharge.  The
creation and preservation of the universe is, for instance, the
special work and revelation of God the Father. But it is by
the Word of His power that He makes and upholds all things,
and by His Spirit that life and form are given to chaos, and
the face of the earth continually renewed.  The special work
of the Son is redemption. But here, too, the Father sends
and constantly co-operates and finally receives the finished
sacrifice; and here, likewise, the Spirit is co-worker. It is by
the Spirit that the eternal Word takes upon Him our nature,
that the man Christ Jesus is anointed at His baptism and
prepared for His ministry, that He offers Himself without
spot to God the Father, and rises again from the dead; and
finally, it is by the Spirit taking of the things of Christ that
His redemption is applied to each believer.  The special
work of the Spirit is sanctification; but He is sent forth to
that work by the Father and by the Son, and it is the Father's
will and the Son's redemption by which He accomplishes it.
No communion with one divine person is possible for man,
without a like fellowship with the others.  He that hath not
the Spirit of Christ is none of His; he that denieth the Son
hath not the Father (Rom. viii. 9; 1 John ii. 2:3). We might
perhaps venture to express this unity and distinctness of the
divine persons in their work and manifestations by three cognate predicates of our own Teutonic speech, and that almost
as neatly in English as in German: The Father is hcili/, the
Holy One; the Son, heileznd, the Healing One; the Spirit,
hciligenl, the Hallowing One.
And here we see-a remark of great importance in respect
to the reproach of Tritheism so often brought against Trinitarian doctrine-that what we necessarily represent to our




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         263
own minds, and to. others, as a Trinitarian process, is really in
its divine eternal ground the simultaneous co-working of three
co-eternal divine hypostases. Speculatively overstepping the
lines actually drawn in Scripture, we recognise the necessity of
the conclusion that God could never have been Father without
the Son, and that, therefore, the generation of the Son is not
only before time, but co-eternal with the Godhead of the
Father; and in the same way, that the procession of the Spirit
is co-eternal too.  We recognise also, that as there is but one
God who manifests in one work the one eternal counsel of Iis
love, and that by revealing Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit;
so these three factors constitute by their mutual indwelling
and co-working the self-consciousness of the Godhead, which
is not to be thought of as a fourth producing them.  The
teaching of the Church has always insisted on the unity of
the Godhead, and maintained that the Father is not only God,
but the source also of the Godhead, of the Son and Holy Spirit
(Fons Deitatis), and thereby has cut off all possible basis for a
charge of Tritheism.
And now, to gather up the threads of the whole inquiry,
the Trinitarian doctrine of Scripture is briefly this: The
Father is simply God, the God, the divine subject, the
source and well-spring of the Godhead of both Son and Holy
Spirit; the Son is God, true God, in hypostatic distinction,
though derived from the Father; and the Spirit is also truly
God in a form which is predicated of the whole divine nature
(for God is a Spirit, John iv. 24; and the Lord is the Spirit,
2 Cor. iii. 17), but also in hypostatic distinction from the
Father and the Son, by whom He is sent, and from whom le
proceeds. There is therefore at once the most essential unity
and a threefold hypostatic distinction.  The divine nature
remains undivided; the whole Godhead (OeOr79?) is in the Son
and in the Holy Spirit-in the Son (Logos) as God's own selfutterance, in the Spirit as the divine self-consciousness. And
as the Son is the uttered thought of the Father concerning
Himself, so it is again His office to speak out into the world
the Father's thoughts of creation and redemption, and thus
to stand to the creatures generally, and especially to mankind,
in an original archetypal relation (John i. 4). And finally, as
the Son is thus the archetypal and ideal principle of media



264:       THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
tion between God and the world, of creation and of redemption, so the Holy Spirit is the real or efficient principle,
effecting and individualizing all the creative and redeeming
energies of the Father and the Son, applying, for instance, to
each individual believer the justification ideally (i.e. in the
idea or thought of God) accomplished by the Son, and so
effecting a real sanctification and regeneration (Eph. ii. 18;
1 Cor. xii. 3): in which process He takes, indeed, everything
from the Son, the real and actual having always the ideal and
transcendent for its ultimate ground and condition.
And if from this point we now look back on those dogmatic statements of the Athanasian Creed from which we
started, we shall find them confirmed in essentials by Holy
Scripture; the Son and the Holy Spirit are with their immanence in the Father yet distinct persons, and with their
distinct personality they continue immanent.   Therefore,
neither may we confound the three persons nor divide the
one substance.  And if the definitions of that formulary go
somewhat beyond the teaching of Scripture and of the earlier
Church, in the absolute equalization of the divine persons
(none before or after, none greater or less), to the partial
obscuration of the truth of the derivation and subordination of
the Son and Holy Spirit in the co-equal Godhead, it must
nevertheless be acknowledged that the Church possesses and
guards in the Athanasian Creed an invaluable restraint and
bulwark against speculative errors, whether of a tritheistic or
deistic or pantheistic tendency.
At the same time, it must further be acknowledged that
these definitions and distinctions are not sufficient to bridge
over the chasm which still yawns between Faith and Reason.
The old question is evermore recurring: How can the unity of
one being or substance admit of a threefold self-consciousness?
How can there be one substance in three distinct persons,
and with three distinct personal activities? Eighteen centuries
of toilsome thought have not succeeded in solving this enigma.
The most recent efforts of Speculative Theology make us only
feel more acutely that here we stand in presence of the
mystery of all mysteries, and see only darkly as throvrgh a
mirror of obscure reflection.  "It is a truth " (to use the noble
words of Hilary of Poitiers) "which lies beyond the domain




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.           265
of human language, beyond the scope of sense, beyond the comprehension of reason.  The archangels know it not, the angels
understand it not, the ages do not comprehend it, no prophet
has discovered it, no apostle explored it, the Son Himself has
not made it fully known."  Divine mysteries cannot, and were
never intended to be made perfectly plausible to human reason;
they are, and must be, in the first instance, matters of faith.
On the other hand, it is no less certain that they must also
present points of contact for our apprehension; the believing
inquirer seeks for a reason for the faith that is in him, and to
penetrate more and more with intelligent understanding into
its depths (see above, Lect. II. 3). It is given to him not
only to believe, but also to know the mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven (Matt. xiii. 11). And this is the case with the
fundamental doctrine of the holy Trinity. The revelations of
Scripture on this subject, however inadequate may be the
forms given to them in the systems of earlier and later
theology, are not only of the last importance for our knowledge
of God, of man, and of the universe; but also present so many
aids to fruitful meditation, and are themselves in so many
ways confirmed by the witness of history and the soundest
results of rational speculation, that only the most indolent
superficiality would pretend to reject them unexamined. So
much has been effected in our own day for the illustration of
this doctrine, in the departments of scriptural exegesis and
philosophical speculation, as well as in that of dogmatic and
historical theology, that we have already sufficient grounds of
reason for our adherence to this the apostolic faith; which,
not having its source in mere reason, is above but not against
it. Only, he who would enter into this as into any other
truth, must have his standing in it before he can qunderstand.
But whosoever, not in the carping, one-sided spirit of mere
intellectual exercise, but in the practical way of both moral
and intellectual self-surrender to the quickening and illuminating influences of the triune Godhead, seeks to apprehend
this truth of the divine nature, to him an ever-wideninc field
of rational inquiry will be revealed, and he will learn more and
more to find in this mystery a key to the understanding of the
deepest enigmas of his own nature and that of the world around
him. This will be clear to us if, in conclusion, we proceed



266             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.         [LECT. IV.
B. To examine the results just arrived at by the light of
our present advances in thought and knowledge.     We shall
see how many collateral supports may be derived fiom history
and philosophy in support of this truth.  Supports they must
be, not positive proofs; for such can never be alleged in respect
of a divine mystery.  We shall proceed to ask: (a) Whether
the history of religious thought and development does not bear
witness to our Trinitarian faith, and that both positively and
negatively?  (b) What advantages the Trinitarian conception
affords in respect of our theological and cosmological knowledge?  And then, what arguments of a speculative character
in favour of the doctrine may be drawn (c) from a consideration of the divine nature; (d) from a study of hutman nature
and the visible universe; and (e) from the testimony of modern
philosophy?
(a) The history of the chief religions of the world itself
affords so many collateral supports to our Trinitarian conception of God, as to have given rise to the assertion that primeval
humanity must in some shape or other have possessed the
knowledge of the triune God, which thence was transmitted
in a distorted form to the heathen religions.  For we find
traces of it, not only here and there, but in the mythologie.3
of all nations.  In any case, it is certain that in a very early
age men learned to look upon three as the perfect number,
expressing absolute harmony, and uniting in itself beginning,
middle, and end.  Hence a trinity of deities in, common to all
nations.1  We give a few instances.  The Emperor of China
offers once every year a sacrifice to the Spirit of Trinity
and Unity.    Lao-tse the great philosopher, to whom    the
Chinese pay almost divine honours (600 B.c.), says: Tao
(i.e. the intelligent principle of all being) is by nature one:
the first begat the second; both together brought forth the
third; these three made all things.   We are more familiar
with the Indian Trimurti (Trinity), Brahma, Vishnu, and
Shiva, who are also represented and worshipped as three
persons, though the original divine principle, Brahm, is but
one.  One of the Purannas (their eacred writings) plainly
declares that the great unity is to be distinctly recognised as
1 Passages in verification of the statements here made, are quoted by Keerl in
his work Die Schopfung u. die Lehre vom Paradies, p, 159 et ss.




LECT. IV.]    THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.        267
three Gods in one person.  In a commentary on the Eigveda
(a book of sacred hymns collected between 1300 and 600
B.C.) it is said: There are three Deities, but there is only one
Godhead, the great soul. The so-called Chdldcean Oracle says:
"The Unity brought forth the Duality which dwells with it
and shines in intellectual light; from these proceeded the
Trinity which shines through the whole world. The names
of the Chaldean Trinity are Anos, Illinos, Aos.  In like
manner we find a Divine Trinity among the Babylonians
(witness the three images in the temple of Belus), the
Phoemicians (Ulomus, Ulosuros, Eliun), and the Etqyptians
(Kneph or Ammun, Phthas, and Osiris).  The divinities of
Greece were grouped by mythologers both in a successive
(Uranos, Chronos, Zeus) and a simultaneous Trinity (Zeus,
Poseidon, Aidoneus).  The coinage of the Dalai Lama (in
Thibet) is stamped with a representation of a threefold
divinity. A coin, supposed to be Tatarian, and preserved in
the Imperial collection at St. Petersburg, bears the impress of
a human figure with three heads, and on the reverse the
inscription: "Glorious and holy picture of the Godhead, to be
contemplated in three forms."
So, too, in the Keltic, Germanic, and Slavic mythology we
find the same idea of a Divine Trinity; amongst the Irish
(Kriosan, Biosena, Siva), the Scandinavians (Thor, Woden,
Fricco), the ancient Prussians (Petrimpos, Perkunos, Pikullos),
and the Pomeranians and Wends (whose God was named
Triglav, i.e. the three-headed).  The Edda teaches that the
earth was created by Odin, Vile, and Ve, or by Odin, Thor,
and Freya. And, finally, the ancient Americans worshipped
the sun under three images, which they called Father, Son,
and Brother Sun. One of their great idols was called Tangalanga, i.e. One in Three and Three in One. The three Gods
wvho emanated from the original Spirit they called Trinimaaka,
i.e. Trinity.
Do not all these coincidences serve as an indirect proof
that we are justified in holding that Elohim, the oldest divine
name in Scripture, contains an indication of the Trinity in its
plural form? And does not this strange agreement compel
us to acknowledge that Schelling was right when he said:
"The philosophy of mythology proves that a Trinity of Divine




268             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
Potentialities is the root from which7 have grown the religious ideas
of all nations of any importance that are known to us"?  In
a former passage we confronted Atheism with the fact, noticed
even by heathens themselves, that all nations are agreed in
worshipping some higher Being; and we regarded this as a
proof that our consciousness of God does not deceive us.
Now we may point those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity
to this general agreement of all nations, as a proof for the truth
of our Christian conception of God; while, by the pre-Christian
origin of these mythologies, we are guarded against the objection that these Trinitarian ideas might have proceeded from the
influence of Christian ideas upon the heathen legends.  "This
idea does not exist because there is such a thing as Christianity; on the contrary, Christianity exists because this idea
is the most original of all" (Schelling).
But in addition to this positive argument in favour of
Trinitarianism, the history of religions furnishes us with a no
less important negative support in the example of those
nations whose creed has remained an abstract llonotheism-the
Jews and the Mohammedans.      Here we see that the mere
abstract unity of the Godhead, which does not include a
multiplicity, soon leads to a cold and lifeless Deism; and as
soon as it has reached this point, is forced to seek refreshment from the pantheistic religions of nature.  After the Jews
and Mohammedans had rejected the idea of a Son who is of
the same divine essence with His Father as idolatry, they
were fated to find their absolutely monotheistic conception of God
utterly empty and lifeless, so that they yearned after the warm
vitality of Pantheism. This is a phenomenon which is clearly
evident from the history of the Jewish philosophers (especially
Spinoza), as well as of the Indian and Persian pantheists. And
so, too, it could not but happen that philosophical Pantheism
should tread on the heels of German Deism and Rationalism.
As long as Theism distinguishes only between God and the
world, and not between God and God, it will always have a
tendency to Pantheism, or to some other denial of absolute
Being.  "The abstract and absolutely monotheistic philosophers underwent just that fate which Schiller describes in
The Gods of Greece. Fulness and vitality vanished with revelation; One has taken to Himself all life, and neutralizes all




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.             269
the vital fulness of nature. We no longer feel love or joy.
There is but One, around whom all things move, and He is a
cold, mathematical quantity, a point of pure abstraction.  This,
assuredly, is the meaning of Schiller's poem" (Nitzsch). Hence
we can well understand his plaintive lament:" A desert chill around us lies,
Devoid of life and warmth divine;
Dim shadows flit before our eyes,
Where once a world of grace did shine.
" The blooms of ancient faiths must flit
Before a northern blast, that One,
Enriched by all their spoils, may sit
High on a barren, cheerless throne."
But if a Christian poet could thus sing, it is still more
natural that non-Christian monotheists of this class should
yearn after the freshness and fulness of nature's life. Backwards they could not go to the polytheistic religion of nature,
since they had already attained to the conception of the
divine unity, and hence they had no choice but to sink this
unity in matter, and turn to Pantheism.
If, then, we put the question, How is Monotheism to be preserved from sinking back again into the deification of nature?
the answer will be, Only through belief in the Trinity.  Polytheism contains a bare contradiction (for the god who has
other gods beside him is for that very reason not god, not
the highest being, not almighty, etc.).  The untenableness of
Pantheism we have already seen. Abstract Monotheism has
too little life-blood to offer an enduring resistance to the pantheistic deification of nature.  What remains open to us but
the doctrine of the Trinity? In it we have a Unity; not,
however, unloving and lifeless, a cold numerical One, but a
complex of living and loving energies,-a living Unity embracing a Plurality, and bearing the sacred name of Father,
Son, and Spirit.
(b) This brings us to the great advantages derived from the
Trinitarian conception, in respect to the knowledge of God in
general, and His relation to the world and to man.
We have already remarked, that the fulness of God's being
cannot be contained in an abstract Unity, and yet that His
absolute personality must have unity for its fundamental




270             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.         [LECT. IV.
attribute.  Here we find both of these in vital interpenetration.  God is -One it is true, but at the same time He is the
Living One, the organic fulness of power and love, and thus
alone is the conception of a truly living God actually realized.
Furthermore, the conception of the triune God furnishes us
with the sole bridge that can fill up the breach betzeen God and
the world.  None but this can fill up the void which separates
the transcendent unity of God from   the rich and manifold
organization of natural life.  Here we see the possibility of
the world's creation by the premundane Word of God and
His Spirit, whose work it is to realize the divine thoughts.
The Word is the image of the invisible God, and the firstborn before all creatures, in which God sees as it were His
alter ego, and stands in relation to Himself, and through
which also He can place Himself in relation to other beings.
This Word, which finally becomes incarnate in order to do
and suffer for mankind, and the Spirit who by His power
begets fresh life, both stand between God and the world
as mediate causes, which not only render the creation of the
world a possibility, but also guarantee the divine presence
in it, and its return to God. Here, then, we have all the
fulness and freshness of Pantheism  combined with the truth
of Monotheism, whilst the element in which the latter is
wanting, viz. a real connecting link between God and the
world, is here supplied to us.  Philosophy has not been slow
to recognise these advantages, and to turn them to account in
her speculations, a3 we shall see hereafter.
Here, first of all, we have a connecting link between God
and man in the person of the Incarnate Logos, who is the
eternal Archetype of the whole creation, and especially of
man,1 and who, for all future eons, will be the head of the
whole body. Here, too, the spiritual chasm which yawns
between sinful man and the absolutely sinless God-man, is
filled up by the regenerating and sanctifying influences of the
Holy Spirit.  Hence the doctrine of the Trinity affords the
most important aids in determining our practical relation to
God. We have seen that our religious need can only be fully
By this we do not mean to affirm that the incarnation of the Logos was
necessary per se, apart from the sin of man; since, on the contrary, Scripture
always represents it as ordained by the free mercy of God on account of sin.




LECT. IV.]      THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.          271
satisfied by the idea of God as the eternal and all-holy love.
The belief in this love must revert to the idea of the love
which the Father bears to His only-begotten Son, and it can
only be perfected practically as well as theoretically by a
knowledge of the perfect and eternal object of the divine selfknowledge and self-love.  So, too, a real belief in the selfcommunication of this love can only be vitalized and preserved
from error by the Trinitarian doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
From all this it follows, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the
consummation and the only perfect protection of Theism.  WVe
have already shown that the theistic conception of God is the
only true one; and we may now add, that if this theistic
conception is to be effectually guarded   against Atheism,
Polytheism, Pantheism, Dualism, and Deism, it must be expanded into the Trinitarian idea. No true Theism without the
Trinity.  The One absolute Personality as such can only be
the triune God.  Trinitarianism is no less true and necessary
than Theism; and what we adduced as proofs for the latter,
are mediate arguments for the former, also.
(c) In addition to this, Speculative Theology furnishes us with
many collateral arguments in favour of the truth and the
intrinsic necessity of the Trinitarian doctrine. Many attempts
have been made by modern theologians to derive the Trinitarian
view of God from a consideration of the Divine essence itself.
Of course, they are but attempts, and not perfectly' successful
or adequate explanations.  In all such speculations it behoves
us to take great care that we do not pass from the difficult to
the unintelligible; bearing this in mind, I would lay before
you some of the most important of these tentative theories.
They start partly from the self-consciousness of God, partly from
the idea of the Absolute Love.
Nitzsch remarks that the Divine Ego, in order to have a
really living personality, must not only view its second other
self as an object, but also revert to itself by a further act as a
third subject, as that it comprehends its alter ego as the real
image of itself.  "If God be conceived as the primal Ego, and
from  this basis begets an objective alter Ego, this thesis and
antithesis still remain severed or incomplete until a third Ego
proceeds from the Divine essence through the medium of the
sei;ond, and thus the personality is fully consummated."




272             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.         [LECT. IV.
Modern religious philosophers have often reasoned thus:
God must be personal, since He is the presupposition of our
personality. The essence of personality is to comprehend itself, or to distinguish in itself the comprehending and the
comprehended.    The equality of these two elements must be
developed into unity, but in such a way that they shall not
coincide in absolute identity.   This can only be brought
about by their mutual union in a third factor.   Hence three
persons, I, thou, and he, are indispensable to self-comprehension.
Thus the Three Persons of the Godhead presuppose each
other; they are in one another, and yet distinct (not separate),
so that each of the three Persons is I, Thou, and He, because
personality includes the possibility and reality of self-transposition.'
Others argue thus: The Divine nature must be primarily
conceived of as Being, as Necessity (Father), but at the same
time as Action, as Freedom (Son); the mediation of both these
factors being effected by Love (the Holy Spirit).
The interpretations drawn by Liebner, Sartorius, and others
from the idea of love are clearer.  The Trinity in Unity and
absolute Personality, replete with truly moral and actually
wrought out personal life, pertains to God, because He is Love,
not because He is a self-conscious Spirit.  For absolute Love
demands a process of self-communication, which in its highest
perfection must be trinitarian.  Love is the transposition of
one's self into another person as his second sel (alter ego).  God,
who is Love, must therefore transpose Himself into His second
Self, which as such is of the same Divine nature, since otherwise the act of self-transposition would not be perfect.  No
less necessary, however, is the conception of a third homogeneous Self, by which the infinite equality is mediated so as
to produce harmonious unity in distinctions.   This act it is
which permanently fixes the divine personality; for mere selftransposition would be equal to infinite restlessness.  Thus
God is one person in three persons, each of which is only in
and throutgh the others; and this apparent contradiction, that
several persons should be one, and have their full personality' Cf. Mehring, " Die philosophisch-kritischen Grundsitze der Sclbstvoriiusserung, oder die Religionsphilosophie," p. 91 et ss.; also the passage above
quoted: "I am He."




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         273
only in this unity, is solved only by the principle of love
(Liebner).
This idea is very beautifully worked out by Sartorius.
"God is love-personal, primal love.  What can He more
delight to say than "My beloved "?  God is the Father, the
eternal Father. What is the Father's eternal and dearest
Word other than Son, beloved Son (Matt. iii. 17)? Through
the eternal Son, God is the eternal Father, the eternally loving
and eternally loved One; the eternal I and the eternal Thou,
as Christ addresses His Father in loving converse (John xvii.
24).  And this Love is as ready to impart itself, as perfect
and as great as God whose essence it is; and therefore the Son
is not less than the Father, nor does He differ from Him either
in essence or in origin. How small would be the Fatherhood
were the Son but half God! We must distinguish between
the love which begets the Son and that which blesses Him,the love of the well-pleased Father, and again, the answering
love on the Son's part.  The breath of that blessing and
answering love is the Spirit. But were He only breath, and
not a person, the glorification of the Father and Son through
the Spirit would be egoistical.  This egoistical element is
removed only if the Spirit who glorifies the Father and the
Son is Himself a person."
The meaning of this sentiment is as follows: Love always
includes delight in the object loved.  If this object be an
entirely separate person, the purity of my love is not sullied
by my delight. But this is not the case with God. The
object of His love is not a person outside of Him, but His
second Self. Here, therefore, the delight in another is at the
same time delight in Himself.  In order, therefore, that this
delight may not appear as self-seeking egotism, God has committed this delight in Himself to a third Person, which represents the mutual delight of Father and Son in each other;
and this Person is the Holy Spirit. When the Father uttered
Himself, He begat the Son, the eternal Word.  But no speech
can take place without breathing, and the breath of that
spoken Word was hypostatized in the Spirit, which represents
the delight of the Divine Love.
In a similar manner, Delitzsch has recently attempted to
reconcile the trinitarian passages of Holy Scripture with the
S




274             THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
idea of God as contained in our reason. The triune God is1. Absolute Life, the impulse of whose development is an act
of will; in Him existence and will, necessity and freedom,
interpenetrate each other.  This Life is unfolded within the
Divine Being without coun'eraction from the world; it is selffilled and self-consummated.  But being such, it cannot be
otherwise conceived than as a life of love.  Hence the triune
God is-2. Absolute Love. The object of this love cannot be
the world, —since, then, God would not be love in Himself,but only His alter ego, the Son; whereas the Holy Ghost consummates the mutual relationship between the Father and the
Son, as it were, in a perfect circle of divine love.  But both
these conceptions of life and love point only to the personality
of the Father and the Son, not to that of the Holy Ghost.
Hence, finally, the triune God must be conceived of-3. As
Absolute Organism, which unites in itself the essential characteristics of nature (substantial objectivity without self-consciousness) and spirit (self-consciousness without substantial
objectivity).  As the highest identity, it must combine these
two factors, which in the world are separated; the latter
raises it above created nature, the former above created spirit,
so that it embraces both.-Delitzsch, Apologetik, p. 277 et ss.
Whatever objections may be raised against the force of
such arguments, especially as regards the personality of the
Spirit, yet thus much, at least, is clear and certain: Because
God is love, therefore there must he distinctions in Him, which,
however, by love are again brozught into unity. The object of this
(intra-divine) love can be nothing less important than God
Himself else this love would not be fully justified; nor can it
be anything outside of God, else God's intrinsic nature would
not be love.   For both reasons this object cannot be the
transitory world, but only the eternal Son, who is of the same
essence with the Father.  How this love preserves its equilibrium, or its unselfishness and purity through the Holy Ghost
as the third Person, this must remain to us a mystery so
long as the spirit of selfishness and sin is not overcome, and
hinders even our self-knowledge, to say nothing of our knowledge of God, which is brought about by the surrender of ourselves to Him. The practical gist of this doctrine is simply
this, to proclaim that God is eternal and perfect love, and that the




LECT. IV.]     TIIE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         275
historical revelation of. His love in Christ corresponds to
His eternal essence, in whose everlasting sell-distinction and.
self-comprehension into unity the divine life is changelessly
evolved.
(d) Another and more obvious series of collateral supports
for the doctrine of the Trinity, may be found in a consideration
of His image as reflected in our own human nature, and in
creation generally. For if God be indeed Trinity in Unity,
then there is every reason to suppose that the works of His
hands should, in some degree at least, reflect His nature, and
especially that man, who is created in the image of God
should evince in His nature certain analogies which indicate a
triune Creator.
And what an abundance of such indications meets our eye,
so long as we do not forget that we cannot expect to find
within the limits of created life analogies perfectly corresponding with that which is incomparable and unique! Christian
thinkers, even in olden times, discovered traces of the Trinity
in the life of the human spirit; and hence Augustine and
others speak of a human trinity, consisting in the threefold
function of feeling, thought, and will.  And, indeed, these
principal faculties of the spirit present us, as it were, with a
threefold cord, the threads of which are distinct and yet one,
and they give us some idea of the united and harmonious
co-operation of the three Divine Persons.  No single one
of these three functions of feeling, thought, and will can be
exercised without the simultaneous activity of the others.
"Thus the spiritual life of man is, in fact, always a m.ltiplicity of intermingling actions.  In this intermingled action I
see a picture of the threefold divine life, showing how every
vital act of one Person calls forth and is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding act of both the others; so that the
vital movements of any one Person posit those of the others"
(Gess), just as we have seen in the work of creation, redemption, and sanctification.  But just as with the soul, its three
functions may be distinguished, but not separated, so, too, in
the case of the three Persons who form the one Divine Being.
In like manner, the process of our thought will explain to
us in some degree the pre-existence of the Son as the Logos
or Word of the Father. In our human consciousness a certain




276            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV.
thought always simultaneously produces the corresponding
word; we can only think in conceptions and words, for our
thought is inward speech.  So, too, God's thought of Himself
necessitates the utterance of the Word which represents this
primal Thought; but the divine utterance is at the same time
a real act, and hence this inner Word in God is a Being equal
to Him. True, in our human self-consciousness we do not, by
conceiving ourselves, produce a second self; we all the time
have only one ego.   But we are only creatures, not the
creative source of life; and even our human consciousness is
still imperfect. But the case is different with God, who is
the eternal and almighty source of life and power.  His selfconsciousness is absolutely perfect, and hence the intellectual
image of Himself, which He has conceived, may become a real
substantial antitype of the Father. In any case, we have an
analogy to the Trinity in the thought, its product the word,
and the unity of both, the spirit. In addition to this argument
for the personality of the Divine Word as drawn from our
intellectual consciousness, we find that a similar argument for
the personality of the Spirit may be'drawn from our religious
consciousness.  Faith tells us that the Spirit is giving us true
personality in the sight of God, and that without Him we
cannot in any way attain to full, firm, Godlike personality.
But, as we have already remarked, that which tends to promote true personality cannot in itself be impersonal.
-Moreover, let us remember that thle fndcaental form of all
syntax, which governs our thought and our speech, is a triplicity
which contains a unity, or a unity which- developes into triplicity.  For every sentence consists of subject, predicate,
and copula-three parts, which together express one thought.
Indeed, every conception "has something of the trinity,"
since in it is the union of subject and predicate, which does
away with their distinction.  The fundamental schema of all
spiritual development is always position, contraposition, higher
unity of both (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). Everywhere three
is the fundamental number of the ~elf-reverting process.
As in the human spirit, so, too, in the outward world of nature,
there are certain indications and reflections of the Trinity.
This truth is not only revealed in Scripture, and confirmed by
history and intellectual speculation, but it is, so to speak,




LECT. IV.]         THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.                 277
omnipresent throughout the world.         We constantly see one
life in  various members; in      each one it acts in a special
manner, yet in all it is one and the same.         In the one sun
we see light and warmth as different, and yet intermingling
and co-operating forces.     We have the one space divided into
three dimensions of length, breadth, and height; time, similarly,
into past, present, and future; all bodies into solid, liquid,
and gaseous.     In  analogy with     the three parts required    to
form a sentence, we find that the kingdom of sound is governed
by the triad, as the basis of all chords; nor does this destroy
the original unity of the key-note, but, on the contrary, makes
it an organized unity embracing multiplicity. What remarkable analogies are shown by the laws of colour and of light!
The three fundamental colours, red, yellow, and blue, dissolve into the unity of white light, so that an English naturalist
(C. Woodward) might well call this white light a trinity in
unity.   But they coalesce in such a manner, " that each of the
three rays preserves its distinctive attribute. Red is the caloric,
yellow the luminous, blue the chemical (activic) ray."1 God
1 Cf. C. Woodward, Familiar Introduction to the Study of Light. If it is permissible to follow this analogy out further, we should say that the caloric ray
evidently corresponds to the Father, the warm Source of life; the luminous ray
to the Son, the Light of the world; and the chemical ray to the Spirit, which
pierces into the innermost recesses of the heart, and imbues it with peculiar
qualities and forces. One of the instances given by Woodward is very suggestive. Some plants (cucumbers and melons) were put under a glass which
was so coloured as to absorb the blue (chemical) rays of light. The consequence
was, that the plants grew with the greatest rapidity, and put forth luxuriant
blossoms, but just as quickly they faded away again, without bringing fruit.
Does not this look like a physical reflection of the Christian precept, " Quench
not the Spirit," because without Him no real fruit can ripen? (1 Thess. v. 19;
Gal. v. 22.) How mightily did men multiply before the flood! but because
they utterly withdrew themselves from the influence of the Spirit, they only
ripened, without fruit, for a sudden death. True, from a strictly scientific point
of view. we cannot attach much weight to such theosophical indications. Yet
thus much we may affirm respecting certain fundamental principles (such as
light, life, etc.) which occur in the region of intellect, physics, and morals,that in them the whole enigma of the world and its history lies hid, and that by
means of them we must endeavour to ascend from our discursive rational knowledge to a central intuition of the ultimate and universal Cause of all being.
The man who has no presentiment of this is incapable of entering into any profound speculative philosophy. In this there lies a clne to the temple of know.
ledge, lost to man since his banishment from paradise, but of which scattered
fragments at least may be found. To collect these, is the ultimate task of all
science.




278            THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [IECT. IV.
is Light; and, verily, natural light, the first of His creatures,
bears the immediate impress of His triune Being!
No less does the number three govern the arrangement of
Nature's forces; whether we adopt the classification of Ohm,1
who divides the fundamental forces into those of " attraction,
tension, and polarity," or the more general enumeration, attraction, repulsion, equilibrium.  The whole of nature is ruled by
the law of polarity, with its two magnetic poles and their
equipoise.  Positive and negative electricity are balanced by
the electric spark.  The entire development of the vegetable
world takes place in a process of three degrees. First, the
self-enclosed potential unity (seed, germinal cell, root), then
the self-development into multiplicity (inward dilation and
ramification of the germ, stem), and, finally, conclusion of the
multiplicity in organized unity (leaf, fruit, return to the seed
and germinal cell).
Is not the eternal Origin of life visible in all these things
in a thousand pictures? Were we not right in saying that
the idea of the Trinity was omnilresent?  Not only do we bear
it in our own spirit as the ruling law of all its vital functions;
not only do we see it shine forth in the religions of all nations
as a dark presentiment common to all: Nature herself reflects
this truth "as in a thousand mirrors; everywhere we hear its
harmony, we see its brightness, and feel it looking at us
through a thousand eyes" (Delitzsch, uzbi svp. pp. 282-286).
(e) No wonder that philosophy too-and that not only the
old mystic theosophical speculation, but also modern idealism,
with all the acuteness of its dialectics-has taken up the idea
of a triune God, and endeavoured to comprehend and to prove
it. True, they have often ended in proving the truth of an
utterance once made by a profound divine in respect of the
doctrine of the Trinity, and which I would beg my readers to
lay to heart. " If we go too deeply, and yet not deeply enough
into this matter, we shall be blinded by this sun." They have
also confirmed our remarks as to the achievements of independent
reason, which, with haughty self-sufficiency, despises the light
of revelation, and therefore can attain to no sure and positive
results.  But still their efforts show us that modern philosophy
(from Jacob Bohme onwards) feels that this doctrine is the trte
Die Dreieinigkeit der Kraft, Nnirnberg, 1856.




LECT. IV.]     THIE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.        279
solution of the world's enigma.  Moreover, these philosophical
investigations cast a strong light on the unconscionable superficiality and short-sightedness of those who most reject this
fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith untested, without
a notion of its deep religious, philosophical, and historical
import.
Hegel calls the idea of the Trinity " the pivot of the world."
A- cording to him, the Father is God as self-existent, or as
it wvere self-enclosed; He discloses Himself as the Son, and
in this form takes upon Him the form of individual being,
thereby compensating the contrariety between the Absolute
ard the Individual. The latter, however, is not the adequate
form of absolute being; therefore it undergoes death, and rises
again as the Spirit;-or, in other words, the Father is God
in the abstract, mere universality; the Son is infinite particularity; the Spirit is phenomenality or individuality as such
(Religionsphilos. iii.).  True, the entire groundwork of this
view is pantheistic, and the difference between it and the
biblical doctrine is evident.  For acccording to Hegel, Father,
Son, and Spirit successively change into each other, whereas
Scripture teaches that they exist simultaneously with and in
each other.  But in any case we see how deeply the conception of the Trinity is interwoven with Hegel's system.
Schelling has followed out this idea far more fully, and in
his Philosophie der Offenbarung he approaches very closely
to the Christian view.  God is the perfect Spirit in three
forms; proceeding from Himself, existing by Himself, and
reverting to Himself.  The Father is the Author of matter,
the Son the Author of form, and the Spirit the ultimate Cause
of the world as the unity of both.  Hence the world is created
by the Father, through the Son, to the Holy Ghost. A still
greater affinity to the Christian doctrine is shown by the speculations of Baader (according to whom the divinity of the three
Persons proceeds from the Father, their personality from the
Son, and their spirituality from the Holy Spirit) and J. H.
Fichte, who distinguishes between a real objective and an ideal
subjective aspect of the Divine essence, combined in a third
and higher principle, viz. that of volition or of love.
These instances will suffice to make us comprehend what a
philosopher some years ago most truly remarked:' The con



280O           THE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.        [LECT. IV,
ceptions of speculative philosophy, where they are most profound,
come nearest to the Christian doctrine; nor need we be anxious
lest speculative philosophy should ever reach a height from
which it may look down and say that the Christian element
is left behind.  No thought can transcend the Christian idea,
for it is truth in itself" (Braniss).
Thus we are from all quarters forcibly referred to the idea
of the Trinity; and should we ever be tempted to sacrifice the
Trinity to the Unity, it will be well to remember that the
scriptural and Christian conception of God is justified and
proved, as far as a mystery can be, by history and science, by
nature and philosophy.
We may apply to the doctrine of the Trinity the beautiful
words uttered by Vinet, when speaking of love: "It is a
mystery, the greatest of all mysteries, and the key of all
mysteries, but itself has no key."  The collateral arguments
which we have adduced are by no means keys that can open
this mystery, but they are handles for our intellect and
imagination, which give us sufficient cause not to reject this
doctrine as irrational.  Indeed, they show that the idea of the
Trinity is really the key to a comprehension of the ultimate worldeniqmas; of the world's eternal pre-condition in God; of
its creation, redemption, and consummation.   Without this
doctrine, Scripture is to us a sealed book; without it, we ourselves and the world's history are a dark riddle.  For these
reasons we ought thankfully to accept the revelation of this
truth.  True, this is a problem, the rational solution of which
in this life is and must remain mere patchwork; but even
this patchwork is far deeper and more valuable for our knowledge as a whole (to say nothing of our practical religion)
than all that the cheap wisdom of the street can bring forward
in objection.  And so, too, the mere struggle to solve this
problem, even though it should be without results, is of infinitely greater value than the ready rejection which we so
often hear from the intellectual slothfulness of unbelief.
The conclusion already arrived at (Lect. II.) with regard
to the relationship between reason and revelation, has there
been perfectly confirmed, and that in the case of that very
article of our belief which is most difficult for the intellect.  We have seen that philosophy and faith, reason and




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         281
revelation, are by no means natural enemies; on the contrary,
if rightly used, they demand, they support, they supplement
each other. More than this.  We have seen that the darker
the revelation the greater is the reward, both for faith and
knowledge, which awaits those who gradually penetrate into
it.  Just because the doctrine of the Trinity is the most
obscure and enigmatic revelation of God, therefore to him who
penetrates into it with earnest searchings the profoundest
depths of knowledge will be opened, and what is apparently
self-contradictory will appear more and more in grand harmony
and intrinsic necessity.  At first it appears to be quite contrary to reason, afterwards reason is more and more in favour
of it, and finally it cannot give it up, it becomes indispensable
for her entire knowledge of God and the world.
We have seen that just the contrary is the case with the
false non-biblical conceptions of God.  At first they please
our reason, and look as if they could give a simple solution of
all enigmas. But the more deeply reason goes to work with
them, the less satisfactory do they become; the more do
enigmas, obscurities, aye, contradictions appear, till at length
it is evident that the whole fabric rests on unproven and
untenable assumptions, and that those conceptions really give
none of those explanations which they at first promised.
But if by reason of this profound agreement between the
testimony of Holy Scripture and the demands and discoveries
of science, any one should adopt the Christian conception of
God, let him not forget that in and with it he has essentially
accepted the entire Christian faith.  The Apostles' Creed shows
that the Christian doctrines of creation, redemption, and sanctification, Christian faith and Christian morals, all centre in our
belief in the triune God.
Does the choice still embarrass you? Then allow me, after
the intellectual exertions which I could not dispense with, to put
a question to your conscience.  Supposing that eternity should
show us that we were mistaken in our scriptural and Christian
view of God, what harm would it have done to us?  In this
life, none at all. For our faith in the holy, personal and living
God has proved to us a constant source of moral strength, and
an enduring impulse to all that is good. Which of us would
deny that, as often as we rose fiom our knees, or had been




282           THE TIEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
otherwise absorbed in this divine faith, we felt more capable
and willing to do all that was good, more disinclined to all
evil —more strong, more pure, and more divine?  Nor could
we hardly suffer harm in another life.  For if we found no
living, personal God there, our own personal existence would
be at an end, and we could not even become conscious of our
deception.  But supposing, on the other hand, that we nourish
our doubts, adopt a non-biblical conception of God, and then
in another world find all that realized which here we had
denied, what wouldl lave been our gain even in this life were
our doubts able to inspire us with strength to do or to
suffer?  Did they not rather, in the depths of our soul, make
us timid and undecided? Did they not exercise a paralyzing influence on our spiritual and moral life? For this life
we should have gained nothing; but for the other life, when
we have to meet the disregarded and dishonoured God, the
Eternal King who is a consuming fire, how then?
"Give me great thoughts!" cried Herder on his death-bed.
Yes; in death we all need great thoughts.  This at least you
will not deny.  The greatest minds, princes in the realm of
thought, grasp after them in their dying hour, and cling to
them as a support amidst the great shipwreck in which the
entire visible world is sinking before their eyes.  But the
greatest of all thoughts is God; the eternal, personal, holy
God who is love. And in such moments He is the only great
and enduring thought.  All others vanish and dissolve before
Him.   Woe be to him who at that crisis lacks the eternal
support of this thought; who only grasps it in earnest when
he himself is being grasped by it!
See this exemplified in the case of a sceptic of the first
rank during the last century, who was equalled by few in his
persistent and life-long opposition to Christianity, by none in
the endless floods of biting satire with which he deluged all
scriptural belief; who gradually sank from Deism to Atheism,
till at length he worshipped "the will of his sacred majesty,
Chance:" I mean    Voltaire.  "All things considered," he
writes to a lady who was in fear of death, "I am of opinion
that one ought never to think of death.  This thought is of
no use whatever, save to embitter life.  Death is a mere
nothing. Those people who solemnly proclaim it are enemies




LECT. IV.]     THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.         283
of the human race; one must endeavour always to keep them
off. Death is as like to sleep as one drop of water to another.
It is merely the idea that we shall not wake up again which
gives us pain."  But when death, this despicable nothing,
approached the man who thought that by his writings he had
steeled himself, and half Europe besides, against the fear of
another world, how did he then show himself? A reliable
informant, Voltaire's own physician, writes to a friend as
follows: "When I compare the death of a righteous man,
which is like the close of a beautiful day, with that of Voltaire,
I see the difference between bright, serene weather and a black
thunderstorm. It was my lot that this man should die under
my hands.  Often did I tell him the truth, but, unhappily
for him, I was the only person who did so.' Yes, my friend,'
he would often say to me,'you are the only one who has
given me good advice. Had I but followed it, I should not
be in the horrible condition in which I now am.  I have
swallowed nothing but smo7e; I have intoxicated myself with
the incense that turned my head.  You can do nothing more
for me. Send me a mad-doctor! Have compassion on me,
I am mad! I cannot think of it without shuddering.'. 
As soon as he saw that all the means which he had employed
to increase his strength had just the opposite effect, death was
constantly before his eyes.  From this moment madness took
possession of his soul. Think of the ravings of Orestes.  He
expired under the torments of the furies." 1
Thus dies an apostle of unbelief!  Worshipped by half the
world, yet helpless and despairing; stupefied by the incense
clouds of flattery, yet raving mad; beforehand mocking at
death, now so convulsively clinging to life that he actually
offers great sums of money (100 francs) for every minute of
its prolongation; beforehand luxuriating in the sensation of
having gained all his wishes, and triumphing over everything,
now exclaiming in horror, "Nothing more can help me!"
Compare with such an one a witness for God and for
Christ, e.g. a St. Paul, as he sees death approaching. See him
then; not enveloped in clouds of incense, nor overwhelmed
with marks of honour, but bearing in his body the scars of
many wounds inflicted on him by the hatred of the world,
1 Bungener, Voltaire et son temps.




284           TIlE THEOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE.       [LECT. IV.
the marks which he has received in the service of the Lord
Jesus; in chains and degradation, under sentence of death,
yet free and strong, quiet and joyful; not clningin  to this
poor life, but " forgetting the things that are behind, and
pressing forward;" not in a condition of horrible agony, but
desiring to depart and to be with Christ; looking backward
in sweet peace on the past, and forward with blessed hope to
the future.  Hear his words in the Second Epistle to Timothy,
his last legacy to the Church: "I am ready to be offered up,
and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness;"
not begging for help, but offering help to the world; witnessing for Christ till his last breath, and sealing his testimony
with his blood;-thus it is that an apostle of faith dies!
"Choose you, therefore, this day whom ye will serve;..,
but as for me, and my house, we will serve the LORD."




LECTURE V.
THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.
SCARCELY require a preliminary apology for still devoting a special discussion to the modern negation of
miracles, after the examination of the objectionsto the biblical
conception of God. True, when we have once proved the personality and freedom of God, and the necessity of His continued
rule and operation in the world, we have also proved that
miracles are possible.  To this extent our present inquiry
rests entirely on the previous one.  But since miracles are the
greatest stumbling-block to the spirit of our age,' the question of
their possibility requires a special consideration.  One of the
first among its articles of faith is this: There is no such thing
as a miracle, and never has been, since the supernatural is
impossible.  This unproved assertion, which is boldly put
forward as a self-evident axiom, is the basis of the rationalistic
dismemberment of the gospel history, and of those notorious
attempts of Strauss and Renan to do away with the central
miracle of history-the life of Jesus Christ-by reducing it to
legend and poetry,-attempts which have made the question
one of intense interest, especially among the laity.  Upon the
same axiom   are based the efforts of Baur, to prove that
Christianity is only the sum of the previously existing scattered germs of culture, and that it is merely a link in the
universal development of the world. The same presupposition,
moreover, is the basis of the most important modern philosophical systems, as well as a maxim of most naturalists at the
present day.
However much in other respects our opponents may differ,
they all agree in the denial of miracles, and unitedly storm'The chief offence which the old system of religion necessarily gives to the
spirit of our age, is its superstitious belief in miracles.-STRAUss, Leben Jesu,
1864, p. xviii.
285




286          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.       [LECT. V.
this bulwark of the Christian faith; and in its defence we
have to combat them all at once. But whence this unanimity?
Because with the trutht of mniracles the entire citadel of Christianity
stands or falls.  For its beginning is a miracle, its Author is
a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, and they will
hereafter be its consummation.  If the principle of miracles
be set aside, then all the heights of Christianity will be
levelled with one stroke, and naught will remain but a heap
of ruins.  If we banish the supernatural from the Bible, there
is nothing left us but the covers!
A glance at the consequences of the negation of miracles will
at once reveal to us the momentous significance of the question.
Th/e negation of miracles leads to the annihilation not mnerely
of the Christian faith, but of all religion. As a rule, antimiraculists will not admit this.  They imagine that miracles,
and the doctrines resting upon them, merely belong to the outworks of Christianity, and that even if these fall, the essential,
i.e. the moral, truths of Christianity will still remain.  I have
already sought to show   how   perverted *this conception  of
Christianity is. Christianity, in its real essence, is not a definite
quantity of moral truths or teachings, but a series of facts: it
is Christ Himself, His person and work, the religion of the
incarnation of God in Christ, and the redemption of the world
therefrom  resulting.  In other words, Christianity is essentially miraculous: its Founder, in His personality as the Godman, is the nmiracle of all miracles, the miraculous goal towards
which all foregoing miracles were tending, and of which all
that follow are only an echo. Our Saviour's earthly life and
work, from His sinless birth to His resurrection and ascensionall the chief facts of redemption-are nothing but miracles, and
His entire teaching, as well as the law and the prophecies of
the Old Testament, must be taken as the declaration of divine
truths-as a supernatural revelation (John vii. 16; 2 Pet. i.
21), or in other words, as a miracle.
The Christian religion, however, does not show its miraculous character only in the facts and doctrines which constitute
its beginnings, but it is to a certain extent a continuous and
ever-present miracle in the supernatural effects which it produces on nations as well as on individuals, in its constant
victories over the kingdoms of this world, and its experience




LECT. V.]    THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.          287
in the heart of the believer.  Whoever, therefore, seeks to
exclude from Christianity all that is miraculous and supernatural, denies the entire Christian faith; he not merely plucks
from the tree a few loose leaves, but fells the entire trunk, and
cuts away all the roots.  And if after this he still desires to
retain the system of Christian morality, he is just as unreasonable as one who should first fell a tree, and then hope'to
continue in the enjoyment of its fruit.
But the denial of miracles leads to the annihilation, not only
of Christianity, but also of all religions whatever.  For every
religion is based upon the supposition that certain superhuman
powers extend their influence into the sphere 1 of our life. He
who denies this immediate action of higher powers in the
world, i.e. who does not believe in miracles, need no longer
care for those powers.  To him every religion, every divine
service in which man with offerings and prayers, or by other
means, approaches his deities and seeks their favour, must
appear folly, since they can exert no special influence either
for or against their suppliant.  That this is the case with
those who entertain pantheistic conceptions of God, as having
no personal existence, is plainly evident.  But even if, with
the Deists, we grant Him    personal existence, yet entirely
separate Him from the world, and abandon the latter to its
own laws, the same result follows.  We need not care much
for God, for neither does He care specially for us; nor have we
much need of divine service and prayer, for God cannot really
interfere with our life.  He has no freedom of action in opposition to the course of nature, no true vitality, no continuous
activity: He is only a sleeping, inactive, listless Something
above the world, but without communication with it, like the
dot over the i. Is such a Being a God worthy of worship, or
indeed a God at all?
You see here the truth of the proposition uttered long since
by Nitzsch, that the denial of miracles involves the denial of
the free, living, personal God. Those who, like the Rationalists, 
deny the former and seek to maintain the latter, are guilty of
illogical reasoning.
1 An enemy of religion, at the Peace Congress in Berne, Aug. 1865, said very
truly, " All religions, however diverse their creeds may be, have the miraculous
element in common with each other."




288         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.   [LECT. V.
The denial of the personality and living activity of God
subverts not only all religion, but also the moral personality
of man; for both these, as we have seen, stand or fall together.
By completely severing this world from a higher one, the
denial of miracles confines us entirely to our present temporal
existence, and leaves us without any safeguard against the
worst Materialism. Only consider what an effect the extermination of miracles would have on our personal life! With
regard to this, a recent advocate of miracles1 strikingly says:
"Didst thou believe that thou couldst trace the guiding hand
of thy God at many a turning-point of thy history-fancies,
pure junctures of nature, which neither know of thee nor
inquire after thee? Thou beseechest God for the recovery of
a child at the point of death-unnecessary trouble I from a
blind, deaf process of nature thy trembling heart must await
its destiny! Thou feelest at the coffin of a father, or a husband, that the bands of love cannot be sundered for everdreams! there is no resurrection.  Thou sighest after divine
help for the conquest of evil-in vain! the new birth itself
would be an unnatural interruption of thy naturally sinful
development. Sayest thou, that thou hast experienced this
very miracle?  They answer, Self-deception! Proud man,
who hast dreamed of becoming perfect as thy Father in heaven
is perfect, of a glory which was destined for thee before the
world was, why wilt thou aspire to be something better than
the entire universe? why wilt thou become holy and happy?' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!'  Such is the
logical consequence of the denial of miracles. The same grave
in which modern heathenism buries the miraculous, swallows
up everything which gives to human existence an ideal
character, a true value: the soul made in the divine image,
faith and prayer, the holy person of the' Redeemer, the entire
system of Christian truth, the future world, the living God!"
But, perchance, the world might be found too small, as well
as the arm of the grave-diggers too weak, to bury all these
together.
When we thus see how great the victory would be if our
adversaries were able to banish miracles, and why they concentrate their attacks upon this point, we cannot wonder that
1 Beyschlag, Ueber die Bedeutung des Wunders im Christenthum.




LECT. V.]   THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.        289
here the believing Christian should be determined not to yield
an inch.  To him there is nothing so firmly established as the
miraculous; because, in the first place, faith itself is a miracle.
What Hamann says is true: " Miracles cannot even be believed
without a miracle."  And so, to one who has experienced in
his own heart through the power of Christ and His Spirit the
miracle of regeneration, this miraculous power is the most
certain of all things.  Here, then, for more than two hundred
years the contest has been hottest, against this foundation the
universal assault has been directed, and from it all defence
proceeds.  Therefore this question deserves an especially careful consideration.
Such of you, my respected hearers, as still adhere to the
biblical faith have now and then been somewhat perplexed at
hearing everywhere, in the street and in the daily papers,
attacks upon the miracles related in Holy Scripture. Against
you stood the close phalanx of your adversaries: on the one
side, the authority of the Scriptures, and a certain premonition
that with the surrender of this article of our faith all would be
lost; and on the other, so many distinguished scientific
names! If, then, the judgment of many a one began to
tremble, and still trembles in the balance, I would seek according to my ability to help him to attain a firm conviction, and
will first afford him the consolation that, though the adversaries are many, there are not a few scientific defenders of the
miraculous. If many rationalists, philosophers, critics, and naturalists are on the other side, there are on ours-to say nothing
of the Prophets and Apostles-great philosophers and theosophists, from Jacob B6hme and Leibnitz down to Schelling in
his later period; great naturalists, from Copernicus, Newton,
and Kepler, to von Haller, Schubert, Cuvier, Marrel de Serres,
Rougemont, Hugh Miller, Rudolphus, and Andrew Wagner,
etc.; and besides these, the great majority of the representatives
of our present scientific German Theology, among whom the
contest is considered as essentially de(cidd in favour of the
faith, not only on dogmatical, but also on exegetical, historical,
and speculative grounds.
We divide the questions which meet us here as follows:
(1) After an exposition of the true nature of miracles, we shall
consider the origin of their negation, and the presuppositions
T




290           THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.            [LECT. V.
on which this negation is founded, so that we may be able to
oppose to it a closer examination and proof of the possibility
of the miraculous.     Thence we proceed (2) to the        positive
counter-evidence for the necessity of miracles.    To this end we
must exhibit their internal aim, their indispensableness in the
plan of redemption and the education of man, their historical
manifestation and laws, the     possibility  of discerning    their
genuineness, and their foundation on fact.     (3) In conclusion,
we must briefly discuss the question of the continuance          of
miracles in our own times, in order to meet those objectors
who ask why miracles are no longer performed.
I.-THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.
(a) Nature of Miracles.-In the use of the word miracle, as
in that of revelation, we must discriminate between a wider
and a narrower sense.     In the wider sense, we often use it of
all that is incomprehensible and extraordinary in nature and
history, of which the origin is still concealed from us, or the
existence of which excites our astonishment.    So it occurs in the
Holy Scriptures, where mention is made of God's miracles (or
wonders) upon the sea, in the creation and guidance of man,
and where man himself is called a wonder (Ps. cxxxix. 14).
But in the narrower sense, miracles are (with the exception of
the demoniacal miracles 1 occasionally mentioned in Scripture)
unique and extraordinary manifestations of divine power, which
influence nature in a manner incomprehensible to our empirical
On this dark question, mostly disregarded by the apologists of the day, we
will only remark, that the opinion held by many, that these are only to be considered as lying, or delusively imitated, but not as real miracles, is scarcely conformable to the sense of the passages, 2 Thess. ii. 9, Matt. xxiv. 24, Rev. xiii.
13. To be sure, St. Paulspeaks of them as "lying wonders;" but if this were to
be understood only in the sense of jugglery, could they in other passages properly
be called " great signs and wonders"? They are lying, because they serve a lie,
they proceed from a lie, and a lie is their goal, since their object is to obliterate
the impression of the witnesses for the truth (Ex. vii. 12-22, viii. 7; 2 Tim. iii.
8);-"because they appear to attest the so-called gods as true gods; because the
powers which their originators use are only stolen and abused; because they are
the means of promoting error, falsehood, and destruction; because they pretend
to be something else than they are, and to work good, while they further and
promote evil" (Kurtz). It cannot be denied that heathenism, besides much
fraud and superstition, has also exhibited facts which can only be explained at




LECT. V.j   TIHE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.          291
knowledge, but always in accordance with some moral or
spiritual end.   Or, more exactly, they are creative acts of God,
i.e. supernatural exertions of power upon certain points of
Nature's domain, through which, by virtue of His own might
already working in the course of nature, God, for the furtherance of His kingdom, brings forth some new thing which
natural substances or causalities could not have produced by
themselves, but which,-and this must not be overlooked,-as
soon as they have taken place, range themselves in the natural
course of things, without any disturbance arising on their
account.
The essential points in the conception of miracles, strictly so
called, are these:
1. They are effects of God's power in the domain of Nahture.
Miracles, in every case, are only performed through         divine
might: "Who alone doeth great wonders" (Ps. cxxxvi. 14).
Man only performs them through God, and in unison with Him,
i.e. he is permittted by divine authority, in the name of God
(cf. the miracles of Moses) or of Christ (Acts iii. 6, iv. 10),
to summon God's power, which pervades the creation, to a
concentrated and intensified action at some definite point, and
thus to bring forth extraordinary effects for definite holy ends.
Christ, on account of His unique oneness with the Father,
possessed this divine power in an extraordinary degree, not
merely transiently like the prophets and apostles, but continually. Hence, although, on the one hand, He can " do
nothing of Himself," but only the works "which the Father
hath given Him " (John v. 19, 20, 36, x. 25, xi. 41), yet, on
the result of demoniacal influences. Hence the severity of the Mosaic enactments against all heathen magic, which cannot well be explained on the
supposition that the whole was only an illusion. Demoniacal miracles are
indeed servile imitations of the divine working, and thence they receive their
seductive appearance and influence. But their full power to captivate the judgment lies in the fact that they are really supernatural, although their working
is not above the power of the creature. But at the same time we maintain that
even these miracles, and especially those still impending as the culminating
point of Satanic working in the last decisive struggle between light and darkness
(according to the previous passages), are, like all the powers of darkness, under
God's direction and control. They are regulated and restricted by the divine
government of the world, they appertain to the revelation of divine wrath, are
not immediately decreed, but permitted and judicially inflicted in punishment
lor human frivolity and unbeliei, 2 Thess. ii. 10-12; lMatt. xxiv. 24. CL. below,
remarks on the discernibility of miracles.




292          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.        [LECT. V.
the other, He reveals therein not only God's glory, but at the
same time His own (John ii. 11 comp. with xi. 40), because
His oneness with the Father extends to His power also (John
v. 21, x. 28, 29).    Not as if during His earthly course He
were to be considered as " walking Omnipotence;" on the contrary, He was to unfold and work out the divine life dwelling
within Him in growing communion with the Father, and ther efore He regarded His miraculous acts as something done in
virtue of a command received from the Father (John xi. 41,
42).   But through the personal union of the world-creating
Word with His human nature, through the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily (Col. ii. 9), as well as through His
perfect sinlessness, His dynamic relation to nature was entirely
different to that of other men, so that He possessed an indwelling causality of working miracles, which needed only to be
evoked from above.   For this reason also He manifested His
own glory in His miracles (comp. John ix. 33, x. 37).  This is
our stand-point in opposition not only to those who consider
Him as pure Omnipotence, but also to those who would place
Him   on the same footing with      other human workers of
mniracles.  As operations of divine power, miracles are2. Saperncdural p7henomena, the effective causes of which
cannot be found in the usual course of nature, nor in the
spirit of man, but only in the immediate interposition of higher
divine powers.  Here, therefore, all analogical concepltion ceases;
we cannot connect the miracle with our natural experience,
but we can only say, " This is the finger of God" (Ex. viii.
19).   So far the conception of miracles belongs to the critique of our knowledge.'    We call that a miracle for which
we can find no analogy whatever in that which has previ
ously existed, i.e. in the established system  of our empirical
knowledge. 2   For the miracle isl Hence it has been truly said, " The word miracle is a critical designation,
and a sign of the critically active spirit which measures that which now happens by that which has already happened."-MEhRLNG, eReli(/ionspltilosophie,
S. 197 ff.
2 By this I mean the totality of knowledge attainable by us as creatures. I
do not refer merely to a lower degree of knowledge, according to which many
things might seem to be miracles which on closer examination would prove to
be natural events, for this would render the nature of miracles merely relative
and subjective.




LECT. V.] TIFE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.    293
3. Always a beginning of something ntew (Ex. xxxiv. 10;
Num. xvi. 30; Isa. lxv. 17; Jer. xxxi. 32), a creative act;
partly an absolute calling into existence of new substances
(as at the creation), partly a supernatural transformation,
intensification, or increase of an already existing material.
Miracles in the narrower sense belong, with the exception of
the miracle of creation,
4. To the preservation and government of the world.  They
have become necessary because corruption has entered the
world; they not only attest God's creative, but especially His
redeeming power.
5. For this reason, finally, the object of miracles is one of
moral holiness in mercy and judgment —a redemptive object.
They tend to the furtherance of the divine kingdom, to the
salvation and consummation of the world. In the present
material creation, they are isolated manifestations of a higher
order of things, effected by a special power from above.
The different expressions-" wonders, signs, mighty deeds"
(or " powers")-which are used in the Old and New Testaments
already indicate this.  The miracle or wonder (Tepas, OavLa),
in the first place, is meant to astonish; it is intended, as something striking and extraordinary, to work upon the moral
consciousness, and to draw attention to itself. Further, it is
intended to make us reflect; we are to perceive in it something of what God is doing, and is about to do. Thus it becomes a " sign " (or7velov) to direct us in the knowledge of the
ways of God, and a pledge of His truth and faithfulness-an
earnest of the future consummation of His kingdom. Through
such reflections we finally arrive at the recognition of the
higher supernatural "powers " (8vvatzetS), and of the "mighty
deeds " of God, which are revealed in miracles; or if men work
them, we recognise their divine mission.  For miracles must
everywhere reveal something of the omnipotent, just, and holy
God, but especially of the merciful God, and of His work of
redemption upon earth. Hence, although the miracle cannot
be comprehended, because it is God's most especial act, yet it
should be apprehended in its divine intention, as a sign for
our faith.
The " spiritual miracles," i.e. the mighty workings of God and
of His Spirit in the depths of the human soul, occupy, as it




294         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.      [LE(T. V.
were, a middle position between miracles in the wider and those
in the narrower sense.  Here, too, God places Himself in immediate relation to a human creature, and brings forth in him
effects which never could have been produced through natural
forces or influences; effects such as spiritual enlightenment,
conversion, regeneration, consolation, peace, etc.  These may
rightly be called miracles, for faith is always a kind of miracle;
and these spiritual miracles are the necessary pre-condition of
a genuine development of the Christian life-a pre-condition
which is demanded by the very idea of religion. lBut they
are not miracles in the strict sense, i.e. effects of God's working upon definite points of Nature's domain.  As distinct from
the latter, we must finally mention the special miracles of
inspiration.  By this we understand those peculiar workings
of God upon individual men, through which He imparts to
them, in an especial excitement of their spiritual and mental
life, new  religious truths, allows them  to have a concrete and immediate vision of future developments in the
plan of the world and of the divine kingdom, in order that
under the influence of the Spirit they may testify of this
before others. These miracles of inspiration and prophecy, as
extraordinary spiritual processes, correspond still more directly
than the last-named class to the conception of miracles, and
will therefore be considered by many a separate kind, in
which God partly works something new (manifestation), partly
says something new (inspiration; comp. Isa. xlii. 9, xlviii. 6,
1 Cor. ii. 9, 10). We find both kinds, the external miraculous
acts, and the internal miracles of inspiration, combined in the
chief instruments of revelation, such as Moses, some of the
Prophets, the Apostles, and to the highest degree in Christ.
The modern aversion to miracles, therefore, also extends to
both kinds.  We endeavoured to refute the objections against
the miracles of inspiration in the chapter on Revelation; we
now have to do with the attacks upon external miracles of
manifestation, as- miracles in the stricter sense. Whence their
negation?
(b) Origin of the Negation of Miracles.-The negation of
miracles is almost as old as miracles themselves. Moses, the
first human worker of miracles mentioned in Scripture, is
opposed by Pharaoh, the first denier of miracles, who, with his




LECT. V.]  THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIIRACLES.   295
inward repugnance to the recognition of immediate divine
working, stands before us as a prophecy and a warning.
The generation, too, before the flood was one which denied
miracles, which, while it resisted the inner striving of God's
Spirit (Gen. vi. 3), was driven to consider God's mighty working in external nature as impossible.  This points us to the
true source of the negation of miracles, viz. that as a rule
it rests not so much on external as on internal and moral
grounds, from which, indeed, all estrangement from our faith
usually proceeds.  How hard it was even in the time of
Christ for the learned Israelites to believe in His most manifest miracles, is plainly shown in the history of the man who
was born blind (John ix.).  Nevertheless the opposition at
that time, as well as during the first centuries of Christianity, was not directed against the, possibility of effects
produced by supernatural causes.  Jews and Gentiles both
believed in this. Even the enemies of Christ did not deny
His miracles (Matt. xxvii. 42; John xi. 47, 48; Acts iv. 16).
It was rather the moral value and the divine origin of these
mighty works which was doubted; the unbelieving Jews
ascribing them to demoniacal powers (" He casteth out devils
through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils "), and the heathen
afterwards placing Christ in the same category as their pagan
sorcerers and wonder-workers.
For the last two hundred years, however, men have begun
absolutely to deny the possibility of miracles, and to reject
every supernatural manifestation, from whatever quarter it may
come, as being unhistorical, because impossible. This was first
done by the English Deists. They gradually advanced from
the negation of the Old Testament miracles to the denial of
those in the New, and from the quest for historical impossibilities and internal contradictions in their narration to an
utterly frivolous explanation of them. Chubb, e.g., observes
that if these miracles are to be considered as historical, they
must have been base impositions. Renan has lately maintained substantially the same opinion in respect of the resurrection of Lazarus; but it had long since been pushed to the
extreme by Voltaire, who pronounced the heroes of the Bible
to be knaves and fools, and the gospel history in general a lie
and a deception. Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, undertook




2 6         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRIACLES.   [LECT. V.
a systematic refutation of their possibility, endeavouring to
show that miracles are violations of the laws of nature, and that
the doubtful testimony of a few for their authenticity cannot
avail against the universal experience of the inviolability of
these laws. We shall recur to this again. Before Hume,
Spinoza had sought to get rid of miracles by appealing to
the laws of nature.  " The laws of nature," said he, " are the
only realization of the divine will; if anything in nature
could happen to contradict them,. God would    contradict
Himself."
Notwithstanding the endeavours of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff to defend the possibility of miracles, -Rationalism continued to oppose them on the same grounds. In
this particular our modern philosophy in general follows the
lead of Spinoza and Hume; but it is now assisted in its
attack on miracles especially by New  Testament Criticism
and the Natural Sciences.  Each in its own way seeks to
carry out the principle of the natural explanation of all
phenomena in nature and history. All of them, especially the
natural sciences, have already cleared up so many hitherto
dark processes, and have made such progress in the knowledge
of the universal laws of nature, that we must not be surprised
to find them too hastily trying to establish the boundaries of
the possible and the impossible, and utterly denying the incomprehensible, which must elude our natural understanding.
In these endeavours opponents of the miraculous are supported
by the universal tendency of our age, not to endure any kind
of monopoly.  This age is a universal leveller; it seeks everywhere to obliterate differences as much as possible, and has
even proceeded, as we know, to the insane attempt to bridge
over the gulf between man and beast.  It endeavours to confine everything to universal fixed laws, and brooks no exceptions.  But miracles are a kind of monopoly which the
supernatural world has reserved for itself and its instruments.
It is by virtue of an exception to the general rule that Christianity and Judaism occupy so prominent a position in history.
He who attempts to degrade them from this peculiar position
to the ordinary and natural course of things, and to deprive
them of the monopoly of their divine origin, is doubtless consciously or unconsciously led by this universal impulse of our




LECT. V.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.    297
age to reduce everything to the same level.  This impulse
easily leads to the denial of the difference of dispensations in
the divine methods of revelation and in the education of
mankind, and finally, to the statement that what does not
happen in these days never can have happened.
Many are averse to the miraculous through fear of superstitioe. They think that if they accept the miracles of Scripture,
they cannot withhold their assent to a multitude of apocryphal
miracles, nor, indeed, to the pretensions of all sorts of necromancers and wizards.   In this, however, they overlook the
sharp discrimination of Scripture between belief and superstition, between miraculous power and witchcraft.  Whereas the
heathen sorcerer pretends to make the supernatural powers subservient to his person, the prophet or apostle, if he performs a
miracle, accounts himself only the instrm7ent of God.  Thus
Peter says to the Jews (Acts iii.), after the healing of a lame
man, "Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own
power or holiness we had made this man to walk?   By the
name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth doth this man stand before
you whole" (Acts iv. 10).  Whereas the sorcerer or magician
seeks his own honour (e.g. Acts viii. 9) by means of his art,
the workers of miracles in Holy Scripture ascribe all the glory
to God, because it is not they who perform the miracles by
virtue of any natural or artificial power of their own, nor by
any secret charm  or spell containing such power, but it is
God alone who works.   The Son Himself seeks, through His
works, not His own honour, but that of the Father (John
viii. 50, 54).  Hence these God-sent workers cannot use the
divine power arbitrarily, but only by virtue of the highest
personal and spiritual communion with God, according to the
teachings and purposes of His will.  Only notice the noiseless
unobtrusiveness of miracles in Holy Scripture, the chastity
with which Christ sharply repels the vain curiosity and vulgar
thirst of His age for wonders, and His frequent prohibition of
their publication (Matt. xvi. 1-4, xii. 38-39; Mark viii.
11-13; Matt. ix. 30, xii. 16, xvi. 20; Mark i. 44, iii. 12,
etc.).  Compare with these features the sensational miracles
in the Romish and Oriental churches,-images of saints who
sweat blood, who nod the head, who roll the eyes,-or the
Whitsuntide miracles among the Greeks and Armenians at




298         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.     [LECT. V.
Jerusalem, when the Holy Ghost lights up candles, (but not
hearts); and you will confess that such feats of legerdemain
and jugglery betray, in their external pomp and straining after
effect, anything but a divine origin. A glance at the internal
evidences of truth in miracles, at their moral and religious
character, which reflects and serves not only the: power of
God, but also His truth and holiness, and must prove preeminently their divine origin, will show that it is not a very
difficult task for one to defend his belief in the biblical
miracles against the charge of superstition.
It is a remarkable fact, however, that not the believers in
miracles, but their deniers, fall most easily into superstition.
How often one can observe their "half fearful, half prurient
listening for the supposed higher powers of nature!"  If there
is a spiritual medium, a clairvoyante, or a fortune-teller, they
are the first to consult this oracle.  For unbelief and superstition are most intimately connected.   "When men no
longer believe in God, they begin to believe in ghosts.  In
truth, there has scarcely ever been an age in which men have
snatched more greedily after the extravagant than our own,
which derides the supernatural:" a proof that only faith,
and not unbelief, can fully overcome superstition.
And here we observe, that in the negative of miracles
internal causes must co-operate with all the assumed historic
or scientific reasons.  As in the time of Moses, so in these
times, there are many who have never confessed to the workings of divine power in their own hearts, and. who are therefore inwardly compelled to dispute the external working of
God in nature and history.  And this the more, inasmuch as
the divine miracles appeal far less to our merely logical sense
than to our moral judgment.  Only he who experiences and
admits the spiritual miracles wrought by the finger of God
in his own experience, can readily raise his mind to the idea
of an especial working of God's power in external nature.
Only that man can believe in miracles (which are throughout
designed for the moral and religious training of mankind) who
can testify from the depths of his own experience the reality
of such a training.
c. The Theoretical Presupposition in the negation of the
1 Schenkel, Was ist Wahrheit? S. 22.




LECT. V.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.     299
miraculous, is partly a false naturalistic conception of God,
partly a mechanical conception of the world. The former of
these conceptions impels Pantheism, the latter impels Deism
and Rationalism, to deny the possibility of miracles.  If God
has no personal existence apart from nature, and if He is
merely the unconscious fettered Soul of the Universe, then He
is entirely bound by the laws of nature, and nothing remains
but to adopt Spinoza's principle. This one-sided conception
of the divine immanence in the world must annihilate all
miracles.  On the other hand, we may start with the supposition that God is actually separated from the world; that the
world, having been left to itself after the creation, has become
independent, and continues its course mechanically; nor does
it need the special providence of God, since its laws and
regulations are perfectly adequate for its further development.
From  this we must infer that no miraculous interference of
God in the course of nature is possible, since only a disturbance of the universal order would result.  In this case the
one-sided conception of the divine transcendence, and the complete emancipation of the world from God's power, makes the
miraculous impossible.  These two hypotheses are, it is true,
opposed to each other; for in the one God is entirely lost in
nature, in the other He is absolutely separated from it.  But
they both agree in maintaining that the world, as it now
exists, no longer needs a special divine influence, and that it
must continue to develope itself unassisted according to its
indwelling laws.
In addition to this, it is further presupposed that these
mundane laws are absolutely perfect, that the present condition
of the world is a normal one, and that therefore every interference, from whatever source it may come, can only occasion a
disturbanlce.
In these presuppositions there lies a threefold fundamental
error. First, the relation in which God is placed to the world is
false and untenable.  God is neither identical with the world,
nor is He completely separated from it. We have recognised
the former as the error of Pantheism, the latter as that of Deism.
On the other hand, we have recognised this as the truth, that
God works by His will in the world no less than He possesses
His essence as distinct from it; that He is actually, vitally




300         TIIE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.     [LECT. V.
present in it no less than He is personally free from it.  In
the union of these two elements, the supramundane personality and freedom of God on the one hand, and His intramundane working on the other, we have the possibility of
miracles.  He who believes in God as a free, personal Will, has
settled for himself the possibility of miracles.  Our opponents,
too, acknowledge that "if God be once conceived of as an
extramnundane Will, a manifestation of this Will in the world
must also be admitted; but this manifestation, as the encroachment of a transcendental principle in the course of the
world, can only be a supernatural fact, i.e. a miracle." (Zeller.)
The second fundamental error lies in a false conception of the
world, as though it were normal and perfect, and therefore had
no further need of God's interference.  But we see that, on
the contrary, the development of the world is in many ways
so abnormal, so disturbed, that just on account of this abnormity, caused by the breaking in of sin, a healing and restoring
interference on the part of God evidently becomes necessary.
This shows us the root of the third futndamental error, viz.
the opinion that the supernatural inteiference of God mnust
derange and break up the established order of nature.  We
hold the reverse, that it is the means of healing and restoring
the order which has been destroyed through sin and death.
This is the position which we take up as against all the
adversaries of miracles, and which we now proceed to justify
in detail.
This we do by means of a closer examination into the
possibility of the miraculoues, and an enumeration of the positive
arguments in favour of it.
Let me here begin, as I have throughout sought to do, with
the recognition of that which is just in the objections of our
opponents.  The old supranaturalistic theology was decidedly
defective in its conception and treatment of miracles, and is
now severely punished by their universal negation.  It considered miracles singly, instead of as forming coherent parts
of a whole.  Its followers valued every miracle per se, as a
means of proving Christianity and the divine mission of the
wonder-worker, whilst it really proved nothing; because its
own veracity rested on that which it was supposed to prove,
namely, the divinity of Christ, or the divine mission and




LECT. V.]  THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.  301
mighty gifts of other wonder-workers, or on the divine truthfulness of the Scriptures. Thus the fact was overlooked, that
single miracles were only accompaniments of the divine
message; that they were intended to work as a whole in the
entire organism of Revelation, in which each part mutually
supports and is sustained by the others.
In addition to this, that school of theology took pleasure in
pointing out the antagonism of miracles to the order of nature,
and in the most trenchant manner maintained the interference
of God's mighty will in the world, according to His own
pleasure, in defiance of the laws of nature, and without reference either to the unchangeable and holy ends which exclude
all arbitrariness, or to the internal conformity to law which
appears in the miraculous.  Such a procedure could not fail
to provoke contradiction, and lend force to an emphatic enunciation of the claims of nature's law. It is legitimate that in
opposition to such a one-sided view, the modern consciousness
of our age should again insist above all things on the internal
agreement of all the works and ways of God,-on the harmony
of the moral and natural laws,-and should interdict all inner
contradiction in the preservation and government of the world.
In this we are agreed. We admit, what we have already
previously recognised as a truth of Deism, that the created
world, although upheld by God's mighty will, yet has a
separate existence and a measure of independence.  We find
a hint of this in the repose of God after the creation, which
indicates that from that time forward an independent existence
of the world was possible. We do not, therefore, maintain
that the law of nature is only the will of God, free to change
at any time; but we acknowledge that He has established
fixed laws and rules in the creation, which He employs in
His ordinary administration of the world, and which are
sufficient for that purpose.  We even acknowledge that God
employs these laws to such an extent, that to the perception
of many He is entirely concealed behind events which seem
merely natural, so that such men cease to perceive Him and
His working in the special dispensations of providence.
But we do not admit the complete independence of these laws
as sovereign powers existing separately, and as absolutely incapable of modification, which would form an absolute barrier




302         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.    [LECT. V.
for God if He willed to do anything extraordinary, and therefore we do not relinquish the possibility of miracles.  Nor do
we admit that the laws of nature are deranged by miracles.
On the contrary, we maintain with the modern biblical theologians, who are now defending the miraculous with increasing
confidence, the united harmonious working of God in nature.
At the same time, we undertake the task of showing, in the
midst of the apparent contradiction between miracles and the
order of nature, the deeper harmony, in the breaking through
of the usual course, the higher order of the ways of God, and
the conformity to law which manifests itself therein, excluding all that is abnormal and arbitrary.  And therefore we do
not consider miracles as detached apologetic proofs, but "we
place them all in the great historical organism of redemption,
of which Christ is the living heart."  We consider them only
as effective vehicles of one and the same redemption, as radiations from one and the same central miracle, Christ; i.e. we no
longer believe in Christ for the sake of miracles, but in miracles
for the sake of Christ. Still, the inverted order has never yet
lost, and never will lose, its significance for certain times and
circumstances (John ix. 16, 32, and especially xiv. 11).
From a theistic conception of God, i.e. from the knowledge
that He is a personal, free Being, and that He is omnipotent
and continually active in the world, the objective possibility
of the miraculous necessarily follows.  "The question whether
a miracle is possible, amounts to the query, whether there is a
living God who has created the world,"' and who preserves
it. He who believes in a living God must logically believe
in miracles; for God is the miracle of all miracles.  As
soon as we understand the declaration, " My Father worketh
hitherto," and recognise that the world depends for its very
existence upon the mighty will of God; that the living God,
who "rolls up the heavens" and " renews the earth," rules in the
whole world; when we remember that He has not withdrawn
fiom His work, but continually directs it; that He thus has
kept opem an entrance for Himself to every point of nature's
harmony; then we have in this intramtndane working qjo God
a basis for the vossibility of the miraculous.  The objection that
miracles are beyond the powzer of God, at once falls to the ground.
1 Auberlen.




LECT. V.]  THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.    303
If God could perform miracle upon miracle at the creation of
the world, why not afterwards? There can be nothing more
illogical than to admit, as Rationalism  does, the miracle of
creation, and at the same time to deny the possibility of other
miracles. What God has once done He must always be able
to do, otherwise He would cease to be God.
But here we are met by the objection that miracles are an
outrage upon the degree of independent life due to the worlda violation of the laws of nature.  They are said to be a breach
of that fixed order, the irreversible authority of which is the
only guarantee for the continual existence of the world,-that
order which coheres so closely, that the slightest derangement
must occasion confusion in the whole; in short, a miracle, as
Strauss has lately expressed it, is a "rent in the uzorld," or,
more exactly, a "rent in nature's harmony."  Let us dwell
somewhat on this chief objection.
First of all, we cannot admit that in the whole creation
there exists, and always has existed, an uninterrupted chain,of communication, or a fixed and universally binding connection of cause and effect.  Where is the naturalist who could
demonstrate its existence?  This chain, the indestructibility
of which is the ever-recurring premise in the negation of
miracles, in reality often enough breaks off in Nature's own
domain.  The "rents" exist in the very nature of the creation.  If we do not believe in the eternity of matter, but
in the creation of the world by God, i.e. in its being called
forth from non-existence into existence, the connecting chain
is broken off at the very beginning. From the laws of the
created world, the genesis of creation itself can never be
deduced. The existence of the world, then, is a miracle, as
well as the existence of God Himself. But putting this
entirely aside, we meet with phenomena in the genetic process of nature itself at which that chain breaks off, with
events which natural science never can explain from the laws
and forces known to us.    The original entrance of higher
forms of life into the sphere hitherto filled up by lower ones,
is one of the most striking phenomena of this kind.  How
did the first livinq organism  originate?  Modern natural
science has unquestionably demonstrated that life did not
always exist on the earth.   Long ago, Cuvier confidently




304           THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.             [LECT. V.
maintained    this to be the case, and      that we could     easily
indicate the point of time when life began;1 and it is confirmed by Liebig, who says:" Some philosophers have affirmed
that life has existed from   eternity.   Natural science, however,
has proved that at a certain period the earth's temperature
was such that no organic life could exist, and that, therefore,
it must have had a beginning." 2       In addition to this, natural
science has of late years increasingly confirmed the position,
that it is impossible to demonstrate the natural evolution of
organic   life  from  inorganic   matter, even    in  the   smallest
degree.   What Miller once said still remains true, " Only a
miraculous interruption     of the natural laws can       form   the
living organism   out of lifeless matter."3     Here, at all events,
we have a beginning, which we can only explain through a
creative  act, i.e. through a miracle.        And how     did Spirit
first enter the world? how man, with the law of conscience
which transcends all the laws of nature?       With him, too, the
chain breaks off.    He appears as a new beginning, as a third
miracle, which retains its miraculous character even to this
day. For what is every new-born man, with his peculiar
individuality, his special talents and       powers, but a never
fully explicable miracle?4       There   is not merely     poetical
imagery, but real truth, in the words of the poet Riickert:
1 Discours sur les revolutions du globe, p. 24.
2 Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitinmg, 1856, Nr. 24.
3 It is instructive to witness the desperate efforts of Strauss in his last
work, The Old and the New Faith, 1873, p. 169 et seq., to show that modern
natural scientists have discovered the missing link between the organic and
unorganic kingdom. In the face of the express opinion of a scientific man like
Virchow, who certainly does not favour positive Christianity, but declares
"that all known facts go to disprove the truth of spontaneous generation
during the present era," he can only quote the hypotleses built by Huxley on
his discovery of the " Bathybius," and by Hkckel on the existence of what he
styles "M oneren."
4 It is therefore only logical for deniers of the miraculous, like Strauss, to
banish it from nature, in order thoroughly to get rid of it; and for this reason,
above all, to seek a natural explanation for the origin of man. Thus Strauss
(in his Christl. Glanbenslehre, i. p. 206 ff.) once gave vent to the desperate conjecture, that if it were possible for the tape-worm to grow from heterogeneous
matter to a considerable length in the human intestines, witlout having been
sexually generated, he did not see why man should not at some time or other,
when the earth was far richer in generative forces than now, have been formed
out of some sort of terrestrial matter, however foreign to his present being. At
the present day, after the impossibility of a generatio ceqivoca has been demon



LECT. V.]   TIlE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.               305
"Man is a miracle begotten and conceived,
A miracle, he lives, is born and nursed,
A miracle, he grows, and sees, and feels,
A miracle, he thinks, and what he thinks,
A miracle, he stands, miracles environing,
Miracles precede and follow all his steps;
To them is he so gradually, unconsciously
Inured, that they appear to him quite natural,
And unaccustom'd only seems miraculous to him,
Who Nature's wonders unastonish'd sees."
We thus see that there are divers " rents,"         not, it is true,
in the world, but in the connection of Nature, supposed to be
perfect-rents which can only be filled up by the miraculous
power of God.      Not Nature herself, but the false conception
of Nature from     which the denial of the miraculous proceeds,
is violated by these facts.
And do not a multitude of analogies go to show that God
can interfere supernaturally at any time in all natural existstrated, Strauss would scarcely venture to make such assertions. IMany years
ago, Alexander v. Humboldt remarked on these tendencies of his: " What I do
not like in Strauss, is the scientific frivolity with which he finds no difficulty in
accepting the generation of organic matter from unorganic; or even the formation of man from some primeval Chaldoean slime" (Letters to Varnhagen, 4th
ed. p. 117). We see from this, that whoever believes in the superiority of man's
nature, must believe in miracles also.
Renan, too (in his work on the Apostles), is obliged, in order to get rid of the
miraculous, to abandon the supernatural origin of man.  " Nothing can be more
offensive," he says, "nothing more senseless, than the formation of mankind, if
we regard it as a sudden, momentary act. It enters the region of universal
analogies, if we regard it as the result of a slow progress going on through
incalculable periods."  So the divine origin of man is "offensive," but his
derivation from the primal egg or cell of some first organism,-through the
medium, probably, of the monkey tribe,-or, to use Renan's euphemism, from
"universal analogies," is not only inoffensive, but the only reasonable view!
What an utter perversion of ideas!!
And not only does the entrance of higher forms of life interrupt the chain of
natural causes: for within the different grades of existence themselves, we see
the universal laws broken by excelptions in certain poilts. The only exception to
the law, that heat expands and cold contracts, is water, which is most dense and
heavy at a temperature of 4~ (Cent.), but expands and becomes lighter below
this mark. For this reason, the heavy water of the temperature above mentioned remains below, otherwise a few cold days would turn all our waters into
ice, and our countries would have the climate of the frigid zones.  "Thus we
see in the case of water how God breaks through an otherwise universal law of
nature, in order to make a greater part of the earth's surface habitable."  This
speaks at the same time against the unconscious mundane soul of the pantheist;
for the laws of such a being would allow of no exceptions in favour of a higher
aim.
U




306         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.     [LECT. V.
ence?  Each higher form of life has its peculiar laws, which
transcend those of the lower forms, and cannot be explained by
them.  Therefore each in a certain sense can perform miracles
in the inferior grades of existence, that is to say, it can interfere as a higher will, and bring forth results which could not
proceed from the laws and forces of the lower orders, and yet
this takes place without disturbing them in their continued
existence.  How wonderfully, e.g., an animal can interfere in
the vegetable kingdom, by his sudden ravages! Think how
the human will can interfere in the lower orders of nature.
The sum of human activity is almost solely expended in
seeking to realize that which Nature of herself cannot produce.
Why, then, should it not be possible for God to interfere with
His higher Will in earthly nature and the human world? If
He has granted to human freedom an influence on the world,
He must have reserved the same right for Himself.  When
man works upon nature and transforms it, or when the mind
controls and directs the organs of the body, the power of the
will is manifest.  The spiritual works upon the sensuous, and
produces that which Nature alone could not produce without
in some way disturbing the simultaneous working of her
forces and laws. For the mind rules the body, and through
the power of the will moves the limbs innumerable times, in
opposition to the law of gravitation.  This very law   of
gravitation-the corner-stone upon which the naturalistic
view of the world is based —is in a special sense the law of
death, because it reigns entirely and absolutely only where
there is death; and it is interrupted continually by every
motion of life, from the germ bursting its shell to the flying
bird or the working man.   And yet its validity is always
unimpaired.  Why, then, should not divine power also act
immediately upon certain points in the domain of creation,
and be able to produce in it something which the resources
of Nature could never produce, and that without disturbing
the continuously operating forces and laws of the world, or
permanently " rending " them asunder?
Moreover, we often see things in nature, merely by contact
with other natural forces, enter into processes and conditions
which we could not at all have inferred fronm the powers and
laws hitherto observed in them; as when, e.g., iron, which




LECT. V.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.     307
before lay on the ground through the force of gravitation, is
lifted by the magnet.  Why should not earthly creatures also,
by contact with divine power, be enabled to pass into conditions or develope forces Which we were unable to infer from
their former nature per se?
From this we make two deductions: First, that the interference of the higher forces is not excluded by the operation
of the lower, and, therefore, that the interference of God is
not excluded by the operation of the laws of nature.  The man
who endeavours to malce the laws of nature a ground of proof
against miracles, simply begs the question, for he always presupposes what he desires to prove.  If he say that the existence
of these laws renders a higher influence impossible, he clearly
presupposes that these laws alone are valid always and everywhere, and that is precisely what must first be proved.
Second, we see that by the interference of the higher orders
with the lower, the laws of the latter are in no way disturbed or abolished, but still continue in force.  The same
also is true of the interference of God in the course of the
world.  The laws of nature are in no way suspended thereby,
but continue to retain their validity.  And why?   Because
the forces of nature, strictly speaking, do not participate at
all in the actual miracles, and because the products of the
ziracle, with all their consequences, immediately take their
place in the ordinary course of nature.
I say the forces of nature do not participate at all in the
act itself. Not they, but a higher divine power performs the
miracle.  But we must here discriminate between miracles in
the absolute sense of the word, which exclude all mediation of
the creature, and those which are accomplished through an
enhancement of the forces of nature, and are thus connected
with the legitimate activity of the latter.  To the first belong,
e.g., the conception of Christ, and the miracles of the loaves
and fishes. Here we have a process similar to the creation
of the world. God by His own immediate activity places
something in the course of nature which did not exist there
before. What He once did for the universe, He is surely
able to do for an individual part of it. But the forces of
nature are not partakers in this immediate act of God. The
miraculous act in these instances lies entirely beyond the




308          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.       [LECT. V.
laws of nature.   They merely receive its product, which
directly subordinates itself to them. The miraculous act itself
can never be perceived by the senses, only its effect.  How
can any one in such a case speak of a disturbance or a breach
in the laws of nature?    And how    can men say that the
object thus   introduced  into the course of nature must
necessarily produce endless changes in the world?  As soon
as it enters the world, it becomes subject to the laws of nature,
and obeys them    in its further existence.  Apart from  its
origin, it ceases with its entrance into the world to be a
miracle, and becomes part of the natural and the actual.
The same thing occurs here as in grafting a noble scion
upon a wild stock. It is something foreign to the nature of the
latter, but is dependent for its future existence upon all the
conditions of that nature. So Christ is the noble scion grafted
upon the human stock, not by the will of man, but through a
creative act of God (John i. 13).  The order of creation in
nature and history, which is indeed the divine order, is so far
from being interrupted, that it is throughout respected as sacred.
Thus the law of historical development is respected.    The
Destroyer of the Serpent does not appear before the specifically
religious as well as the general human pre-conditions are fulfilled, and thus the human race is ready to receive Him.
"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His
Son," Gal. iv. 4. The order of nature, too, is respected.  We
do not see a fantastic descent from heaven of one apparently
thirty years of age, whose human form is a mere phantom;
but from the moment when the seed of the woman is roused
to conception by a creative act of God, He is subject to
all the natural conditions of birth and individual life in
its gradual development.   And, finally, the moral law as
well as the national law of Judaism is respected. Jesus is
"made under the law," fulfils all righteousness, is subject to
His parents. He proves His morality in the course of His
life under constant temptation and trial: in obedience to His
Father even unto death.     I ask, "Can the glory of God
accommodate itself more humbly to human nature and history
than it has done in the life and death of Christ? "
1 Cf. Die Tiibinger historische Schule in the Zeitschrift fur Protestantismu
und Kirche, Apr. 1861, p. 223 et seq., and Beyschlag, ubi sztpra.




LECT. V.]  THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MII:ACLES.  3 09
What reasonable man can speak of a rent in the laws of
nature, in a sphere where she originally had neither anything
to do nor to szffer?  The same is true of other absolute
miracles or new creations. "The already existing harmony
of nature is as little annihilated by the appearance of an absolute creative act of God in the world, as is humanity itself
by the entrance of a new personality.'
But in those miracles in which God produces supernatural
effects through an intensification of the legitimate activity of
nature (e.g. in the deluge and several of the Mosaic miracles,
which were connected with certain natural phenomena of those
regions), the natural order is preserved. The miracle is here
connected with the existing life of nature, the slow process of
which is but temporarily suspended while the divine power
substitutes a concentrated and potential plastic energy.  In
these cases, as we have already hinted, God does the same as
man, though in an infinitely higher manner and sphere. By controlling and intensifying the forces of nature in art and industry,
we produce effects which the course of nature left to itself
would never bring about.  But what man can do, God can also
do, and that without limitation.  He who has created nature
and determined its course, to whom it is perfectly clear and
transparent in all its parts, must surely best understand how
to play on that gigantic instrument upon which we, in spite
of all our progress in the natural sciences, are still but clumsy
performers.  And even though whole countries and nations
should be dashed to the ground by its most powerful chords,
not one of the many strings would break so as to disorder the
framework of His laws.    Is He not the skilful Master to
whom all His works are known from the foundation of the
world?  He does not intermeddle with them like the novice
who stops the harmonious working of a watch; but with holy
wisdom for the salvation of the world, and at the right hour,
He exerts His supernatural power.   To this day the world
quietly moves on in its course, and the laws of nature exist and
work in full force; therefore they have not been rent asunder;
and still less annulled, by previous miracles. And, therefore,
the power which performed them   cannot be one which distu:led order, but its interference must have maintained it.
1 Schenkel, Christl. Doymat. p. 258.




310         TIlE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.  [LECT. V.
Those who find it difficult to believe in anything which
surpasses the ordinary course of nature, ought to determine foi
us precisely how much is included in the natural, and show
us the boutdary beyond which natural forces cannot be intensified
by the splernatutral. Or, if they maintain that su3h an intensification can never take place at all, let them show us why the
natural, which originally proceeds from the supernatural, should
not always continue to be open to its influence. If the laws
of nature originally proceed from God, is He to be the only
one who is not Master in His own house? Are these laws
to be, as it were, prison walls, within which God has confined
Himself?   "Shall we-to adopt the language of a natural
philosopher-dare to allow no freedom to the primitive source
of all freedom, and make a strait-waistcoat for Him of His
own laws, which we, moreover, but imperfectly understand?"
The course of God in the government of the world and of
man is, and always has been, one of freedom; His is the free
election of grace. He will not, and cannot, allow His hands to
be bound by anything. Why should He not have reserved to
Himself the power to interfere in special cases and in special
extraordinary ways? just as in every household, in spite of
the strictest rules which continue both before and after, special
regulations are required for special cases. 
Whence arises the proverb, "There is no rule without an
exception"?  Does it not come from a true feeling that the
rules which we have discovered or made are not immutably
and absolutely valid, but that they admit of modifications?
Nothing can ever limit the Infinite and Boundless.  If He as
the Absolute has His limitations only in Himself, and not in
anything outside of Him, then no order of nature can stop
Him, be it never so fixed in its working.   As Matthias
Claudius strikingly says to the learned men who are always
appealing to the "nexus rerum," i.e. the strict connection of
all things, "The gates of Gaza with their two posts had a
strong connection with the stone archway and the bolts.  Yet
Samson came, and, taking them out of this beautiful'nexus,'
carried them to the top of the hill before Hebron,-a violent
proceeding which certainly no professor of natural history in
Gaza would have considered possible."  And must not su(ch
an absolutely free and sometimes extraordinary divine inter



LECT. V.] THE NATURE AND POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES.     311
ference be all the more necessary in a world where God not
only has to do with inanimate things and mechanical laws,
but with free beings who can thwart His moral order every
moment?    Could we under such circumstances imagine a
government of the world, in which God had not the freedom
to interfere in details, in order to realize His holy will in the
history of the world, amid the action and reaction of the
struggle with His free creatures?  From all this we see clearly
that no valid objection against miracles can result either from
the contemplation of God or from that of the laws of nature;
and the talk about a "rent in the world " is shown to emanate
from a great rent in the logic of those who invent such
empty catchwords, which are unfortunately adopted by many
without judgment or examination.
But here a new objection meets us. If it cannot be denied
that miracles are consistent with the power of God, yet at
least they seem to be incompatible with His omniscience, which
must have foreseen and suitably arranged everything, and which,
therefore, renders an extraordinary interference in the course
of the world superfluous.  Such after-help, in special cases, can
only be necessary where the original regulations are imperfect,
but not in God's perfect universe.  Eienan, amongst others,
appeals to this trivial argument.  "Miracles," says he, "are
special interpositions like those of a watchmaker, who, though
he has made a very fine watch, yet is compelled to regulate it
fiom time to time in order to compensate for the insufficiency
of the mechanism."  We have already seen how ill this conception of a compensating assistance corresponds to God's
special government in the world.  Not God's order, but we
men, and especially fallen men, require divine aid for our
entire condition, and above all for our perception of the being
and power of God, which has been darkened through sin.
Hence this objection rests entirely upon the indiscrimination
of those men who overlook the moral aigm of miracles.  Renan
does so.  He entirely waives the main question, whether
it is not possible that a disturbance has really entered the
mechanism of our existence. He has no idea of the moral
1 Compare with this p. 196 et seq., where the fact of man's freedom was shown
to be an argument against the deistic conception of the divine government of
the world.




.312         TIIE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.      [LECT. V.
aspect of our question, and cannot have, because the ethical
element is entirely wanting in his view of the world.
If we fix our attention upon this side of the question, we
shall find that the miraculous is justified from another point
of view.  We now recognise in the condition of the world as
vitiated by sin, not only the possibility, but also the necessity
of miracles, and can proceed to enter upon the line of positive
counter-proofs in opposition to their negation.
II. —NECESSITY AND HISTORICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF THE
MIRACULOUS.
It has rightly been observed, that miracles are necessary if
it were only for the development of history.  For whilst the
process of natural life is a mere repetition,' the historical
process is a continuous onward march, in which the new must
ever have a place.  The life of the spirit in history requires
the new, and lives by it. " History is nourished by the new,
i.e. by the miraculous; it would become stagnant without it."2
Here, however, the reference is to miracles in the wider sense.
But as the miraculous in general is necessary to history, so
miracles properly so called are necessary, in consequence of
the moral condition of the world after the entrance of sin.
We, too, are well aware of a rent' in the world and a disturbance of its original laws, not caused, however, by God,
but by man; not provolked by miracles, but rather to be
remtedied by them.  Our opponents say that the world would
go to ruin if God through His interference were to violate the
order of nature. To this we reply, that, on the contrary, since
sin has entered the world, it would immediately go to ruin if
left to itself, and therefore it only exists to this day because
God in every age has graciously interfered in its self-inflicted
disorder. We shall easily be convinced of this if we fix our
attention upon the internal aim? of miracles, and compare it
with the end and aim of the world. And here the objection of
those who talk of a " rent in the world " appears in all its folly.
As Lessing remarked, that he had already seen the earth put on its green
dress thirty-eight times, and now for oncehe should like to see it in a red one.
2 Mehring, Religionsphilosophie, p. 199.




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF TIIE MIRACULOUS           313
As God is the Creator of the world, so He is also the End
for which it was created.   He Himself is the aim   of its
development.   Therefore, although it was "very good," as
created by Him, yet from the beginning it was destined for a
still higher consummation.  Above the visible order of things
there existed a higher supernatural sphere of glorious spirits.
To this the natural world was to become gradually conformed.
But what happened?   Did the world move in a direct path
towards this her destiny by faithfully preserving the original
divine order?  Let us look around.  Evil meets us at every
step. We see all life springing only from death, and hastening
thither again.  Strife and murder stalk throughout the entire
creation.  We see the elements raging against the works of
man's hands, and rising in rebellion against their divinely
ordained master, often to his destruction.  Is that the original
order which God beheld, and, lo, " it was very good"? Natural
science may affirm this as often as it pleases, since it knows"
no better.  The Christian, who believes in an infinitely benevolent and holy Creator, will always deny it. He is compelled
to recognise that a far-reaching disturbance has entered into
the originally divine order-a disturbance from which all evil
proceeds, in consequence of which the curse of death rests
upon every creature, and the world is checked in its development towards its eternal goal, aye, which threatens the loss of
that goal,-and this disturbance is sin.  If, then, the divine
aim? in the creation of the world was ever to be attained, God
must needs interfere in order to nullify the disturbance which
had entered, and to realize the consummation, which wals intended
by Hini; He must immediately overcome the powers of sin and
death with new creative energy, in order to deliver that which
was in bondage to them, i.e. He must perform a miracle. And
this interference could not take place only in the spiritual and
moral sphere, but it must also touch upon the domain of
nature, since, as every one can trace in his own body, corruption has also penetrated the material world.  Hence there is
a necessity for miracles in the strict sense of the word.
Here we see the necessity and the aim of the miraculous.
The whole question turns upon this, whether men set out with
the supposition that the world in its present state is normal and
perfect, or whether they admit that a disturbance has entered its




314         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.     [LECT. V.
development through sin.  Only in the latter case can men
arrive at a belief in the miraculous, as in general they only
attain to faith at all when they first see their misery, and
look not at their good, but at their evil.  He only who
believes in the fatal ruin of man as a consequence of sin, and
at the same time in a holy God, who is love, and as such
cannot forsake His creatures although they have forsaken
Him, will also consider a divine interference necessary for the
removal of the ruin which has entered the world. We therefore maintain that the first breach in the divine order which
entails infinitely important consequences was made by sin,sin has made a "rent" in the world; but miracles only enter
in for the removal of the already existing disturbance.1 The
abnormal sinful course of our free development not only can
bear God's saving interference, but imperatively demands it as a
zwork of mercy.  Hence we read, "Who alone doeth great
wonders (or miracles): for His zmercy endureth for ever " (Ps.
cxxxvi. 4).
If men call the salvation wrought by Christ a violent
interference in our natural development, they should also
consider the grafting of wild trees and the healing of the sick
as contrary to nature.  "Miracles do not unnaturally break
th7rough nature, but supernaturally through/ the unnatural."  For
surely it is plainly contrary to the laws of nature, and of a
truth most unnatural, that one should have eyes and not see,
ears and not hear, organs of speech and not speak, or limbs
without the power to use them; but not that a Saviour should
come and loose his fetters! Assuredly it is unnatural that
there should be so much misery in the world, but not that a
Saviour should seek to remove it! It is unnatural that one
people should be most cruelly enslaved and abused by another,
but not that God should regard them and lead them out of
the land of bondage "by signs and wonders, by a mighty
hand and a stretched-out arm" (Deut. vii. 19)! It is unnatural that the wind and the waves should rise against a
good human action, but not that the Lord should command
them! It were indeed unnatural that the five thousand who
had gone after the Word of life should starve in the wilderness, but not that the bountiful hand of God should open and
I At present we are putting the miracle of the creation out of the question.




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.           315
make much out of little, as it once made the universe out
of nothing! It was contrary to nature that ruthless death
should sever the bands of love, which God Himself has knit,
between mother and son, between brother and sister; but not
that a young man of Nain, or a Lazarus, should be released
from the fetters of death through a mighty word! And that
was the climax of the unnatural, that the world should nail
the only righteous One to the cross; but not that the holy
Bearer of that cross should conquer undeserved death, should
rise and victoriously enter into His glory!1
In every one of these cases the unnatural is removed by
means of the miraculous, and the original laws of nature are
re-established. Here the suptrnatural is shown to be truly in
accordance with nature.  That which takces place here is so far
fromn being a disturbance or a breach in real nature, that it is
rather a healing ansd re-establishing of the original and genuine
order.  The laws of nature, instead of being abolished, are
confirmed and set up again in their full force. In the same
way the healing of the sick is not a violation but a re-establishment of the laws of nature; and when the laws of the
natural life of the soul are interrupted by the new birth, one
does not feel in any wise a violation of the mind and spirit,
but rather a replacement of the same in their sound, normal,
and vigorous condition.
After having thus recognised the aim  of miracles, their
entire significance becomes clear to us. They presuppose man
estranged from God, and a depraved course of nature, and they
aim at the restoration, salvation, and consummation of the world.
They only break through the laws of nature in order to raise
her from her imperfection and bondage to the freedom and
glory which was her original aim. They are isolated manifestations of a new creative activity of the divine will, infusions
of a reorganizing power into the life of nature, whereby it is
agitated and excited.  This holy purpose lies, without exception, at the foundation of all true miracles, and in this especially
consists the difference between the scriptural and apocryphal
miracles. Hence miracles in Scripture are so often called
signs, as we saw above. They are always signs of the divine
intention which aims at the salvation of the worldi tokens
l Beyschlag.




316         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIIRACLES.    [LECT. V.
that God has not abandoned the high destiny for which He
created it; pledges that He is bringing it nearer and nearer to
this destiny in spite of all hindrances, and that He will at
length redeem His word, "Behold, I make all things new"
(Rev. xxi. 5).  They are the first strokes of God's hammer,
which is to break the great prison of nature and of the human
world, and to loose the chains of corruption and death.  Like
single beams of the ruddy morn, they prophesy the day of the
final cotnsugmmation, when Christ will crown the deliverance of
the soul by that of the body; they are the first-fruits of that
future order of things wherein there is to be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor any more pain-no further contradiction
between spirit and matter.  They point to that consummation
of the world in wzhich glorified nature shall immediately obey the
spirit, and therefore miracles will no longer be the exception,
but the rule. For " miracles upon earth are nature in heaven,"
as Jean Paul Richter has truly said.
But, it may be asked, is all this true of miracles in general,
and not merely of the miracles of healing?  Let us consider
how far the domacin of the miraculous extends. It embraces
the whole region of the moral and religious life, and of the
special providence of God.   It is the domain of biblical
history, the theatre of the divine. Miracles are the inseparable attendants of revelation, and are therefore manifested in
a certain portion of humanity to which God has placed Himself in a special historical relation, and whose history without
such special divine activity is entirely incomprehensible.
Miracles can only be understood if considered in connection
with the history of redemption. And in this their holy aim
appears.  "It is God's will, by means of the miraculous, to
reveal Himself to men who are blinded by their sins."  So
He did to Pharaoh and to the children of Israel in the time
of Moses and the prophets, and subsequently in the time of
Christ.  The revelation for which the course of nature no
longer sufficed, must take place through facts which lie outside of the course of nature.  While miracles make the incredible visible, they serve to make the invisible credible.
In them God always causes His holy being to shine forth in
goodness and judgment.  From the deluge and the destruction
Rothe.




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF TIE MIIRACULOUS.        317
of Sodom to the future conflagration of the world, all the
judicial miracles are designed perceptibly and palpably to
reveal the holy justice of God to men, who otherwise could
not be aroused.  And from   the deliverance out of Egypt,
and the manna in the wilderness, down to the healing
miracles of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit in the
New Testament, all the miracles of grace make the endless
love of God to man no less palpably evident. Hence their
purpose in the scheme of redemption is likewise an educational
one.
Miracles are also intended to confirm the divine mission
of those who perform them, and to add to the weight of their
testimony. Christ Himself appeals to His miracles as tokens
of His Messianic destiny (Matt. xi. 4-6; Isa. xxxv. 5, 6), of
His divine mission and Sonship (John v. 36, x. 25, 37,
xx. 31). And lastly, they serve (especially the healings recorded in the New Testament) to illustrate the internal miracles
which take place in the souls of those who are spiritually
blind, deaf, dumb, lame, and dead. Yet their evidence or inherent power of conviction is not irresistible (John xii. 37).
It is not so great that contradiction is impossible; nor should
it be. Faith in Jesus must never be made so easy that it
would cease to be a matter of free determination, and become
a necessity in which no other choice were possible. Therefore the proof from miracles is not sufficient in itself, but
should always be united with the still more powerful proof
from the entire substance and spirit of the teaching of Christ.
His miracles should only work in harmony with the impression of His entire personality. Hence our Lord always refused the demand prompted by the fleshly lust of that age
for wonders, and even rebuked those who attached too great
importance to His miracles. Hence, too, His caution against
their dissemination by those who did not comprehend the
entire significance of His work, and who would thereby only
have given an impetus to the carnal Messianic expectation
of the people (Matt. ix. 30, xii. 16, xvi. 20; Mark i. 44,
iii. 12, etc.).  " The Lord prefers a faith which believes without seeing signs and wonders.  But on account of the dull
perception of man, which cleaves to the sensuous, God quickens
and arouses him by sensuous means, in order to lead him to a




318         TIE MODERN NEGATION OE MIJIACLES.     [LECT. V.
faith which sees not and yet believes."1   In the life and
works of the apostles, miracles likewise appear only as accompaniments of their preaching, never as of primary importance.
The Lord "confirming the word, with signs following" (Mark
xvi. 20).
Hence, too, the modest proportion of the miracles performed
by Christ and His apostles as compared with the deeds which
a wonder-seeking fancy might imagine, or with the " signs from
heaven" which the Jews expected of the Messiah (Matt. xvi.
1 ff., xii. 38 ff.). They did not even regard the acts of Jesus as
proper miracles or Messianic signs.  Although the Scriptures
abound in miracles, yet the proportion of the miraculous for
which they demand belief is really less than in any other
religion.  How much more incredible things, e.g., does the
Koran 2'record, to say nothing of pagan myths!
Miraculous manifestations occur throughout, only so far as
is necessary in order to make God's love or righteousness
more palpably evident through sensuous impressions upon the
perception of man, which has been blunted by sin.  Or they
are intended to prepare him for a spiritual influence, to arouse
his attention, and to facilitate his believing acceptance of the
truths of salvation. The entire series of miracles perceptible
to the senses, from the time of Abraham and Moses down to
that of Christ, has accompanied every step of the divine revelation, in order either to confirm it or to prepare the way for it.
Whenever revelation takes a step in advance, it is preceded
by specially powerful miracles. They are only the reflections
in nature of the progressive spiritual development, which have
their legitimate foundation in the connection between nature
and spirit.  And in each case they are necessary from   an
educational point of view, in order to open men's eyes by
means of sensuous signs to the spiritual revelation of salvation, and to the greater spiritual miracles which accompany
them.   Moses could not have made the power, truth, and
majesty of God evident to the rude, sensual people whom he
led out of Egypt, if God had not Himself done it in His
1 Kostlin.
2 E.g. when Mahomet is said to have caused darkness at noon, whereupon the
moon flew to him, bowed before him, and slipped into his right sleeve, coming
out again at his left, etc.-Comp. Tholuck, Verm. Schr. i. 1-27.




LECT. V.]     NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.          319
savingo miracles in the sea and the wilderness, and in His
thunderings and lightnings from  Sinai.  Elijah, the sole
champion of Jehovah, could not have held out against an
entiie apostate kingdom and people, had he not been able to
summon miraculous divine power to his aid, when the nation
was to choose between Baal and Jehovah.  And could Christ,
when He became one of a race which felt its external far
more than its internal misery, have opened the hearts of men
for the divine love and grace, if He had not caused its beams
to fall sensibly and palpably upon earthly distress, sickness,
and death?
Every miracle, therefore, serves the purpose of salvation;
on the one hand, in a subjective educational way, by preparing
the heart for greater spiritual wonders, and affording a tangible proof of the divine love and righteousness; on the other
hand, by counteracting sin and the ruin caused by death, and
by preparing the way for the future consummation.   God
could not, and would not, magically obtrude redemption upon
us. It was His will in manifold ways through a miraculous
history to work gradually towards the goal of the world's
renewal.
If we fix our attention more closely upon the gradual
historical manifestations of the miracuc.lous, we shall see that
Christ is the centre of this derelolpment, and the second great
miracle after the creation.  With Him the beginning of a new
era is inaugurated, which will attain its consummation when
" all things have become new."  In Him the power exists
for the regeneration of the world, and from Him it goes forth
to every creature; in His acts He appears as the divine
Liberator of all physical and spiritual life from the thraldom
of sin; His resurrection is the foundation and beginning of
the glorified world, of that new order of things to which the
creation is at length destined to be raised.  He is the divine
Miracle of love, which was demanded on the one hand by the
redeeming love of God, and on the other by the actual condition and the destiny of man.  But this takes place in such
wise, that in Him " the miraculous appears as His true nature,
as a human life of love, leading us through itself to its internal
divine source." x Hence the resurrection, the greatest miracle
l Dorner.




320         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.     [LECT. V.
which was accomplished in the person of Jesus, appears entirely natural, and is plainly demanded by His own being;
it was not possible that this Holy One should see corruption
(Acts ii. 27 ff.).  And that which in consequence of His
natural moral being is worked in Him through the power of
God, is at the same time the object of His own will, which is
one with, and mighty through, God.  He Himself takes His
own life again as He had laid it down (John x. 17, 18).
The entire history of miracles is grouped around this central
miracle, and stands in internal connection with it, either as a
prophecy or as an echo of that which is begun in Him.  A
glance at this confirms the result just before attained respecting the aim and significance of the miraculous, which we had
hinted at in our remarks on the gradual progress of revelation
(see p. 97).  Before the time of Moses, God performs many
miracles, but as yet without human agency.  The patriarchs
are endowed with the gift of inspiration, but not with that of
miracles; on the other hand, visions and theophanies are
frequent during this period.  Moses is the first who has not
only the gift of inspiration, but that of miracles, as a manifestation of his divine mission.  Under him, and immediately
after him, miracles are frequent, but the theophanies gradually
disappear.  Again, the judges appear under the influence of
inspiration as prophets in deeds, though not in words.  Ifi
Samuel, David, and Solomon, we see inspiration progressing
towards the actual realization of the theocratic Church. With
the encroaching sway of heathenism, miracles again appear
more conspicuously.  They are as necessary for the re-establishment of the law as they were at its foundation. Elijah
often inflicts destructive blows; Elisha works in a milder, more
beneficent manner. The later prophets are pre-eminently men
of words, of inspiration, until finally both the gift of miracles
and that of inspiration cease. Again, the forerunner of Christ,
John the Baptist, appears as inspired, but without miraculous
power, so that the miracles of Christ might make a deeper
impression (John x. 41).  The miracles of Christ, which are
almost without exception beneficent miracles of grace, break
forth with unparalleled splendour, yet in such a way that on
some occasions He performs many signs, which at other times
He omits, as we have seen before, because of unbelief, or




LECT. V.]       NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.                321
because He foresees that they will be without result, and
wishes to   check the fleshly desire     for wonders.    To'the
apostles it is given to work " the signs of an apostle."   Then
this gift gradually disappears, and a free course is left for the
Spirit of Christianity during a period characterized by spiritual
miracles.1
Miracles, therefore, like revelation in general, belong to those
crises in which the divine kingcdom   is to mncCe an iimportant
advance.  They are connected with certain periods and persons,
namely, with the chief promoters of God's kingdom. The time
of the foundation and re-establishment of the law     by Moses
and Elijah, the time of the founding and the first promulgation
of the gospel by Christ and His apostles, were decisive epochs
of this kind.  In the intermediate ages miracles fall into the
background.    With this the prediction of Scripture exactly
agrees, that at the end of time, when the last decisive struggle
is being waged between the kingdom       of God and the antichristian power of this world, and when Christ returns, there
will again be a period of miracles (Luke xxi. 25 ff.).
We need not be surprised that extraordinary forces work in
such crises.  Analogies from natural life sufficiently show that
the moments in which a new creature is born into the world
are not subject to the ordinary laws of development, but evince
a plenitude of peculiar impulses, forces, and forms, which, after
the fully accomplished birth, give place to the customary activity of the usual laws of life. It is known, e.g., that the organic
functions in the formation of the foetus proceed according
to other laws than those of the perfect organism.     The same
is true of the birth-hour of the Christian Church.      This, as
well as every other birth-hour, is subject to other laws than
those of the ordinary course.   The man who makes ordinary
human development the standard for the extraordinary fulness
of the Spirit, which appears in that most important epoch of
human history, in order to exclude the miraculous, falls into
the same error as he who makes the laws of the present
1 With regard to the continuance of miracles after the apostolic age, we have
testimonies not only from Tertullian and Origen, who tell us that many in their
time were convinced against their will of the truth of Christianity by miraculous
visions, but also much later from Theodore of Mopsueste (t 429),  The latter
says: " Many heathen amongst us are being healed by Christians from whatever
sicknesses they may have; so abundant are miracles in our midst."
X




22          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.        [LECT. V.
course of nature a standard for the period of the creation.
He is guilty of a iorTepov rpoTepov: he places that which is
later before that which is earlier, and forgets that the laws of
primary development are altogether different from those working in that which already exists.
From this history of the miraculous, and the holy purpose
constantly manifested in it, we see in how strict a manner it is
governed by divine laws, which render the mere thought of an
arbitrary interference impossible. Miracles never have an
anomalous disconnected 1 character.  They are connected with
each other, and with the central miracle, Christ; and they
belong as necessary members to the entire organism    of revelation, working together towards one great end, the salvation
and consummation of the world. We neither see the boy
Jesus play at miracles with childish caprice, as several of the
apocryphal gospels relate, nor does the man Jesus ever arbitrarily or selfishly exert His miraculous power on His own
behalf (comp. the history of the temptation). He employs it
throughout only in the service of God, as proof of His divine
mission, to relieve human need, and for redemptive ends.  We
may therefore expect miracles to a greater or less extent,
according as they are needful, where the cofdition of the
world and of God's kingdom demands them, and where
unbelief sets no limits to the divine working (Matt. xiii. 58).
A farther rule for the operation of the miraculous is this,
that as it is often connected with natural phenomena, so its product takes its place in the existing order of nature without any
disturbance of the laws hitherto obtaining; and as respects
the form of its appearance, that it is as quiet as possible, without noise or pomp.    The internal law for the human workers
of miracles is this: their external miraculous power must be
connected with inward and spiritual miracles taking place
in their hearts. By means of the latter they must be raised
into a specially close communion with God, and they may n,t
seek their own honour, but only that of God and Christ. The
1 Strauss (Leben Jesu, S. 148) is of opinion that a God who should now and
then work a miracle, sometimes exerting, sometimes discontinuing a certain kind
of activity, would be subject to the succession of events in time, and consequently no absolute Being. This purely external and superficial objection completely overlooks the internal connection of miracles with revelation, and the
historical development of the divine kingdom




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.         323
internal law for men, in whom the miracles of salvation take
place, is faith. Faith is the medium of the divine operation;
through it man surrenders himself to its effects.  On this
account such miracles can never be considered as unnatural,
nor as contrary to nature. And so it is, too, with the internal
miracles of conversion and regeneration. For the recipients
of revelation, who are spectators of the miraculous, the law
obtains, that though it may facilitate their faith, yet it must
never absolutely compel them to believe.  Here, also, God
respects human freedom. Therefore He never intensifies His
miraculous working to such a degree that all objections of a
hardened heart would be for ever destroyed. He who wilt
doubt, always can doubt.   And finally, for the historical
development of the miraculous the law is generally binding,
that in proportion as the divine revelation dispenses with
sensuous media, its miracles become more spiritual.
Strauss says, " If the friends of the miraculous would explain
to us its working laws as clearly as we know the laws'which
govern the action of steam, we should then consider their
arguments as something more than mere talk."  So our opponents wish to know the laws which govern the miraculous.
Well, its internal moral laws are those which we have just
stated, and they exactly correspond to what we before ascertained to be the internal laws of revelation.  But if Strauss
means to demand a demonstration of the physical laws which
govern the actions of miraculous forces, we answer that this is
simply a contradiction in itself.  For precisely that which
gives the miracle its distinctive character is, that we cannot
point out the natural laws and forces working in it, because
they are not of a physical or mathematical kind, but supernatural. To exhibit the physical laws of the working of
miracles would be to divest them of their miraculous character.
This confirms to us what we have already hinted to be the
true distinguishing mark of genuine miracles from those which
are either fictitious and apocryphal, or demoniacal.  The
divine origin of any miracle is apparent, not so much from the
extraordinary power manifested in it, as from its moral and
religious character,-from the spiritual power and moral truth
which are reflected in it and promoted by it. Truly divine
miracles appeal not merely to our logical faculty, but to our




324          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.      [LECT. V.
moral judgment, to our recognition of the divine in its supramundane character, to our transcendental knowledge, not to
our physical acquaintance with the forces of nature.  Therefore it has very rightly been said that it requires much more
intelligence to believe miracles, than understanding to deny
them  (Schenkel).  Miracles approve themselves to our moral
sense of truth through their connection with the plan of redemption and their relation to Christ.  They are performed
in confirmation of a divine testimony.  They must either be
accomplished through the believing invocation of the name of
God or of Christ (Acts iii. 16), or they must serve to awaken
and confirm  belief in Him  (John ii. 11, xx. 31).   A true
miracle, further, should either make a new disclosure as to
some saving truth, or it should tend to the deliverance of man,
or finally, should contribute in some way to the furtherance of
God's kingdom, and to the destruction of the powers of darkness. When such a purpose and connection cannot be traced,
then it is not only our right, but our duty, to be distrustful
and reserved.
Vulgar infidelity completely overlooks the existence of this
moral tribunal in the soul, before which alone the miraculous
and the laws of its manifestation are to be judged.  For this
reason we so often hear men say that they cannot believe in
the possibility of a miracle until one has been authenticated by
competent judges, such as professors of medicine or physics,
etc. Renan, too, is superficial enough to fall into the same
strain: "Miracles are not performed in the places where they
ought to be.   One single miracle performed in Paris before
competent judges 1 would for ever settle so many doubts! But
alas! none has ever taken place.  No miracle was ever performed before the people who need to be converted,-I mean,
betore unbelievers.  The conditio sine qua non of the miraculous is the credulity of the witnesses.  No miracle was ever
performed before those who could thoroughly discuss the
matter, and decide in regard to it" ("Les Apotres:" Introduction).  If Renan would lay to heart why "not many mighty
1 Perhaps before the French Academy? We would remind those who felt
inclined to submit to its decision as infallible, that this body in former times
rejected (1) the use of quinine, (2) vaccination, (3) lightning conductors, (4)
the existence of meteorolites, (5) the steam engine.




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.         325
works" were done in Nazareth (Matt. xiii. 58), perhaps he might
soon find out why now-a-days still fewer are done in Paris.
Certainly no miracle has ever yet been performed, nor ever will
be, in order to tickle the curiosity of a professor, or to remind
him of the limits of human knowledge. He who thinks that
God ought to condescend to perform miracles before "competent judges," in order to prove His omnipotence, and for ever
to silence all doubts, has no idea of the saving purpose of
miracles, nor of the inviolable laws of the divine-government,
which, if faith is to remain faith, must ever leave a possibility
for doubt.  But difficult indeed it is to understand how one
who has read, e.g., the history of Christ healing the man who
was born blind (John ix.), one who has observed what investigations the really not very credulous Pharisees instituted, can
assert that a miracle was never performed before unbelievers,
but always before credulous witnesses. The man who calmly
affirms that no miracle has appeared before those who were
capable of criticising it, and who thus declares the entire Jewish
and Roman world, with all their learned and wise men,.
amongst whom Christ and the apostles did so many signs, to
have been utterly incapable of forming a true judgment in
regard to them,-such a man simply gives vent to the presumptuous self-esteem of the nineteenth century, which in so
many questions arrogates to itself the monopoly of "competent " criticism.
Leaning upon these hollow arguments, Renan proceeds to
contest the actuality of all the scriptural miracles, maintaining
that no miracle has ever been established as such, and that
"all supposed miraculous facts which we have been in a
position to examine, have proved to be delusions or deceptions."
This result, of course, is attained in a most facile manner, by
simply changing the facts, which are too stubborn to evaporate
into delusions, into myths and legends. Further on we shall
see how M. Renan and the other deniers of the miraculous
conduct their business. We will not here enter into a closer
examination of the gospel histories.  Every unprejudiced
person can perceive that the source of these temperate, artless,
true-hearted narrations, is neither unbridled oriental fancy nor
intentional poetical invention, but simply historic events.
Why, we ask, were no miracles attributed to John the Baptist,




326          THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.       [LECT. V.
whom all men, even the adversaries of Jesus, considered to b.e
a prophet?   Simply because none were performed by him.
Does it not follow that miracles were ascribed to Jesus because they were done by Him?     One point more we would
urge with confidence against our opponents, in favour of the
reality and actuality of the scriptural miracles (as before in
favour of Revelation): I mean the unique appearance of
Israel and of the Christian Chulrch in religious history.  Look
at Israel, with its pure conception of God in the midst of the
deep degradation of heathenism,-with its ancient prophecies
and their wonderful fulfilment, which, in spite of all the
attempted deductions of historic criticism, cannot be explained
away,-with its stern moral and religious spirit aroused in
opposition to the natural propensity of the people, and yet
sustained with wondrous clearness and vigour, because constantly quickened from above. Surely such a nation is and
remains an inexplicable phenomenon, unless supernatural divine
revelations were vouchsafed to it, i.e. unless miracles sometimes
interfered in its history! 1  Once more: look at the Christian
Church, founded and built upon the belief in the resurrection
of Christ, arising and making its way in the midst of universal
darkness and corruption, with new   powers of truth for the
conquest of the world, and new powers of life for its renewal.
This Church is and remains in its origin and victorious development an utterly inexplicable riddle, if we take away Christ the
central miracle, or the miraculous facts of His divine Sonship
and resurrection! The actual existence of the Christian
Church and of the Christian faith is the simplest and most
irrefutable proof for the actuality of the New Testament
miracles.
The results of these investigations leave little more to be
said in answer to the philosophical objections against the miraculous to which we before alluded.   Those foundation-stones
for the denial of all miracles which were laid by Spinoza and
Hume, and on which the critics of the present day still take a
1 Diestel (among others) has very clearly shown that the Monotheism, as well
as the entire moral and religious spirit of Israel, can by no means be derived
from a universal tendency of the Semitic race in that direction, as Renan would
have us believe (cf. Jahrb. fur deutsche Theol. 1860, iv., "der Monotheismus
des altesten Heidenthums ").




LECT. V.]      NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.           327
defiant stand, have crumbled away piecemeal before our eyes.
Spinoza's axiom, that " the laws of nature are the only realization of the divine will," stands or falls with his pantheistic
conception of the Deity-a conception which is not only unworthy of God and of man, but also contrary to reason.  The
Source of all freedom is supposed to have no freedom, but to
be immured in His own laws! And to this Spinoza adds the
conclusion: " If anything could take place in nature contrary
to its laws, God would thereby contradict Himself."  We have
seen that just the converse is true, namely, that if God
performed no miracles, and left the world to itself, He zoztld
contradict Himself; that He must perform miracles in order to
maintain the end for which the world was created, and to
bring it to the destiny which was originally intended.  His
miraculous action contradicts, not nature and its laws, but
the unnatural which has entered the world through sin, and
counteracts its destructive consequences in order to restore the
life of the world to holy order.  Only those who, like Spinoza,
deny the reality of sin, and its destructive power, can question
the necessity of the miraculous.  The present condition not
only of the human world, but also of nature, gives such opinions
the lie at every step!
Hume, in like manner, bases his attack against the miraculous on a series of false assumptions: First, "Miracles are
violations of the laws of nature."  This is false, since miracles,
far from violating, serve to re-establish the already violated
order of the world, and do not injure the laws of nature.
Second, "But we learn from experience that the laws of
nature are never violated." This is false, because we ourselves immediately interfere with our higher will in the laws
of nature, and interrupt them without their being violated.
Third, " For miracles we have the questionable testimony of
a few persons."  This is false, because the entire Scriptures
are full of miracles; and the historical testimony for them
is unquestionable, since the appearance of Israel and of
the Christian Church is perfectly incomprehensible without
miracles. "But," he goes on, " against them we have universal
experience; therefore this stronger testimony nullifies the
weaker and more questionable."  The pith of Hume's argument, then, is simply this: Because according to universal




328         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MI1RACLES.   [LECT. V.
experience no miracles now take place, therefore none can ever
have occurred. This proposition, in the first place, involves a
begging of the question, since it is not at all certain that no
miracles are performed now-a-days (on which point we are soon
to speak); and second, it ignores the fact that different periods
are subject to different laws, and with their very varied wants
may demand varied kinds of revelatory action on the part of
God. Certainly the negro who should affirm that there is no
snow, because in his country according to " universal experience " it never snows, would be committing an absurdity.
And no less illegitimate is it to measure all time by the
universal (?) experience or non-experience of some particular
period. Finally, Hume goes on to demand as a condition for
the credibility of miracles, that they must be attested by an
adequate number of sufficiently educated and honest persons,
who could not be suspected of intentional deception, and that
they should be done in so frequented a spot that the detection
of the illusion would be inevitable.  We shall see further on
(in Lects. VI. and VII.) that these conditions were all essentially fulfilled in the case of the New Testament miracles.
And yet, in spite of the evident weakness of Hume's argument,
Strauss would have us believe that " Hume's Essay on Miracles
is so universally convincing, that he may be said to have
settled the question" (Leben Jesu, p. 148)! The author of
The Life of Christ forgets to mention that Hume has long since
been refuted in detail by the earlier and later English apologists,l to say nothing of the Germans; but then he knows
that a very small proportion of his readers is aware of this fact.
To these objections not even our most modern philosophers
have been able to add really new,ones; and as against
them all we may confidently maintain the following truths as
the result of our investigation. The possibility of the miraculous rests upon the uninterrupted activity of a living God in
the world.  Its necessity arises on the one hand from the
divine end and aim of the world, and on the other from the
disturbance introduced into its development through sin.
Therefore, although miracles are supernatural, they are not
unnatural. Far from violating the conditions of life, of nature,
1 E.g. by Campbell, Adam, Hey Price, Douglass, Paley, Whately, Dwight
Alexander, Wardlaw, and Pearson.




LECT. V.]     NECESSITY OF THE MIRACULOUS.          329
or of humanity, they re-establish the life of the world which
has already been deranged, and initiate the higher order of
things for which the universe was created.  "Thus the natural
and spiritual miracles of the sacred narrative are only the
notes of a higher harmony which resound throughout the
discords of earthly history. To our dull sense, indeed, they
may seem disconnected; but the more we listen the more we
perceive a connected law of higher euphony now presaging,
and finally bringing about, the solution of all dissonance into
an eternal harmony. Surely, then, a believer may look down
with pity upon the spirit of the age, and its declaration that
the harmony of the Kosmos is destroyed by the miracles
of the Bible" (Beyschlag), as well as on its blind belief in
the immutability of natural laws.  The old truth remains:
" Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than
your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts!"
Even a free-thinker like Rousseau says: " Seriously to
raise this question (whether God can perform miracles) would
be impious, if it were not absurd; and we should be doing the
man who answered it in the negative too much honour by
punishing him for it; it would be sufficient to keep him in
custody" (Lettres de la Montagne, iii.).  And Richard Rothe,
a no less acute than liberal thinker of our times, remarks: " I
will frankly confess that up to this hour I have never been
able to discover any stumbling-block for my intellect in the
conception of a miracle."
He wh6 denies the miraculous, denies God and His revelation, since revelation is miraculous.  All that we before
adduced in proof of the possibility and necessity of a supernatural revelation, and of the existence of a personal God
(vide Lects. II. and III.), thus turns into a justification of
miracles. We have already demanded of those who deny the
existence of a God (p. 144), and we now demand of those who
reject the miraculous, that they should explain to us from natural
causes all phenomena in nature and history. If they cannot do
this, they have no right to contest the possibility and the historical nature of the miraculous.  And we shall show more
fully in the following lectures that in numberless cases unbelief
has yet to find a satisfactory explanation for the most important




330         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLE3       [LECT. V.
facts in history. The more thoroughly it investigates, the
less it can conceal this.  It meets with phenomena in the
sacred history for which even a Baur can find no sufficient
ground of explanation (e.g. the belief in the resurrection of
Christ, the conversion of Paul, etc.). And what is then the
last resort for the deniers of the miraculous?  When the
connecting links in nature no longer suffice, they are fain to
recur to chance, and (e.g. in the restorative miracles of Christ)
to speak of "good luck," as Rationalism often does. But to
take refuge in chance, is the death of all scientific investigation. Here again we see that the boasted scientific method
very often results in an unscientific abandonment of the
attempt to solve the riddle. As in the case of Pantheism
(p. 181), so in that of the miraculous, we finally see ourselves
placed before the dilemma of believing either in miracles or in
chance.
But we must not close without considering one other very
obvious objection frequently raised against miracles: Why are
miraculous manifestations no longer vouchsafed at the present
day? and this question we would now proceed briefly to
discuss.
III. —ARE MIRACULOUS MANIFESTATIONS STILL VOUCHSAFED?
If miracles are directed, as we have seen, not against the
world's order, but against its disorder, why do we not find
them happening in every place where misery and death still
prevail? Sin and evil exist to this day; misery and disorder
still abound in the world; why should not God continue
miraculously to interfere for the removal of all these, and for
the re-establishment of the original order?
To this we answer, first of all: Are miracles (strictly so
called) the only means through which God counteracts sin
and evil? Does He not first employ the internal influences
of His Word and Spirit? And this has not ceased as yet.
Sin, it is true, still exists; but so does Christ, the great Physician for the maladies of the whole world, and His influence is
ever becoming more powerful and more extended. Are new
miracles then required, while the old ones are still in activd




LECT. V.]        DO THEY STILL OCCUR?               331
oper7ation? Let us beware of an idle longing after the miraculous. Luther's remarks on this subject are no less humble tlhan
true  " The world continually gapes after prodigies; it maly
a time mistakes chalk for cheese, and gladly believes in apparitions; believers keep to the Word, and follow it.  I have very
often prayed my God that I might not see any vision or
miracle, nor be informed in dreams, since I have enough to
learn in His Word."
We have seen that the great mass of those who are averse
to the miraculous usually argue thus: Miracles do not happen
now-a-days; therefore, they never happened at all.  This is
in'the first place a flagrant transgression of the logical rule,
that one cannot argue from the majority to the whole. But
we, on our part, cannot even admit the assumption that no
miracles are now performed, without further consideration, and
must therefore proceed to investigate the question, whether
miraculous manifestatzons are still vozcchsafed.
First of all, we must admit that miracles in these days
have fallen into the background, having either almost or else
entirely ceased. We do not live in a miraculous period such
as that of Moses or of our Lord.  But can we find no reasons
for this?  We have already recognised that miracles belong
to the divine education of the human race.  Now it is selfevident that a means of education must be differently applied
at different times.  The schoolmaster's ferule is as little
adapted to every age as the miraculous rod in the hand of
Moses. But we can by no means argue that because a certain
means of education is not required at a definite period, it can
never be needed. We have already seen from the history of
the miraculous, that according to the Holy Scriptures miracles
are more prominent in some periods and less so in others, and
that the former periods are always crises in which the eyes
of men are to be opened to the fact that the kingdom of God
is on the eve of a momentous advance.  If, then, our modern
times are comparatively inferior in this respect to many of the
earlier ages; if they have more of an intermediate character,
as preparatory for great events which may be expected in the
divine kingdom, it is simply in accordance with the laws hitherto recognised, that few or no miracles should occur in them.
The apostolic age required miracles, because it was the




332          EHE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.    [LECT. V.
epoch in which the Church was first fomnded; the present period,
during which the Church is only maintained, no longer requires
them to the same extent.  If that period had miracles as the
means of supporting its faith, ours has the testimony of history:
we have before us the effects of the words and acts of Christ
in the history of the world and its renewal; we see the
Christian Church overcome the world and survive it, and
thereby fulfil a great part of the predictions of Christ and the
prophets.  All this, together with the constant inner working
of the Word and the Spirit of Christ, is a sufficient external
support for our faith.  In the last epoch of the consummation
of the Church, however, she will again require for her final
decisive struggle with the powers of darkness, the miraculous
interference of her risen Lord, and hence the Scriptures lead
us to expect miracles once more for this period.
Our age, however, is still characterized by the establishment of new churches.  The work of missions is, outwardly
at least, more extended than it ever was before.  In this
region, therefore, according to our former rule, miracles should
not be entirely wanting.  Nor are they.  We cannot, therefore, fully admit the proposition that no more miracles are
performed in our day.  In the history of modern umissions we
find many wonderful occurrences which unmistakeably remind
us of the apostolic age.  In both periods there are similar
hindrances to be overcome in the heathen world, and similar
palpable confirmations of the Word are needed to convince the
dull sense of men.  We may, therefore, expect miracles in this
case. And now read, e.g., the history of Hans Egede, the first
evangelical missionary in Greenland.   He had given the
Esquimaux a pictorial representation of the miracles of Christ
before he had mastered their language.  His hearers, who, like
many in the time of Christ, had a perception only for bodily
relief, urge him to prove the power of this Redeemer of the
world upon their sick people. With many sighs and prayers
he ventures to lay his hands upon several, prays over them,
and, lo, he makes them whole in the name of Jesus Christ!
The Lord could not reveal Himself plainly enough to this
mentally blunted and degraded race by merely spiritual means,
and therefore bodily signs were needed. In such cases, and
in dealing with such men, miracles may not have been entirely




LECT. V.]         DO THEY STILL OCCUR                333
wanting in the work of evangelization amongst other nations
and in other ages, and we should not, therefore, absolutely
reject all that is miraculous in the old legends as mere fables,
though their statements must be received with great caution.
Let me mention another incident from the life of the
Moravian missionaries Spangenberg and Zeisberger.  On their
way to the Indian tribes in the endless forests and wilds of
North America, tormented with hunger, weary and exhausted,
they came to a brook.  Here Spangenberg begged his companion to bring out the fishing tackle.  He did so without
hope, since the water was clear and shallow, and at that time
of the year the fish were known to remain in the deep water.
But, encouraged by Spangenberg's faith, he obediently cast the
net, and in a few moments Peter's miraculous draught of
fishes was repeated.
The history of Missions at the present time affords many
similar instances. At a Rhenish mission station in South
Africa in 1858, an earnest native Christian saw an old friend
who had become lame in both legs. Impressed with a peculiar
sense of believing confidence, he went into the bushes to pray,
and then came straight up to the cripple, and said, "The same
Jesus who made the lame to walk can do so still; I say to
thee, in the name of Jesus, Rise up and walk!" The lame
man, with kindred faith, raised himself on his staff and walked,
to the astonishment of all who knew him (vide the Mlemoir
of Kleinschmidt, Barmen 1866; p. 58 ff).
In view of the temperate and conscientious character of
such messengers of the gospel, we have no right to doubt these
reports of theirs, to which many similar ones could be added.
But those who nevertheless persist in doubting them, we would
point to the people of Israel as a perennial living historical
miracle. The continued existence of this nation up to the
present day, the preservation of its national peculiarities
throughout thousands of years in spite of all dispersion and
oppression, remains so unparalleled a phenomenon, that without
the special providential preparation of God, and His constant
interference and protection, it would be impossible for us to
explain it. For where else is there a people over whom such
judgments have passed, and yet not ended in destruction?
But even in modern times parallels are not entirely wanting




334           THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.            [LECT. V.
to some of the miraculous deliverances of Israel.         Compare
with theirs the history of the Waldenses, the Israel of the Alps.
Read the history of the siege of the mountain fortress La
Balsille; how the little band, having been surrounded by a
French and Sardinian army throughout an entire summer, at
length had to face the prospect of death by starvation, since
the enemy was guarding every outlet of the valley. In midwinter they are driven by hunger to visit the snow-clad fields
which they have been unable to harvest, and there under the
deep snow they find the entire harvest still uninjured.        Part
of this was housed in good condition eighteen months after it
had been sown.     Read how in the following spring one breastwork   of the   small fortress after another sank       under the
enemy's cannonade, until finally the last intrenchment was
demolished; how they then stood defenceless, at the mercy of
a cruel foe, and could only cry to the Lord of Hosts; and how
in their extremity a cloud of fog suddenly rolled down upon
the valley, and enveloped it in so dense a darkness, that,
although in the midst of their enemies, they were able to
climb down the rocks unseen and effect their escape. This
occurred on the 13th of May 1690.          Does it not remind us
of the God who once fed Israel so miraculously, and who
covered them with the pillar of cloud as a defence against
Pharaoh's army? 1
Again, what a wonderful deliverance was experienced by
1 Almost more wonderful deliverances are related in the history of the South
African Missions. In one case "the terror of the Lord" suddenly fell on a
triumphantly advancing enemy, who was about to set fire to the mission-house,
so that the victory was turned into a sudden flight, and both friends.nd foes
were compelled to confess that God had fought for His people. (Vide Kleinschmidt, ubi supra, pp. 73, 77; cf. Ps. xxxiv. 8, and 2 Kings vii. 6 ff.)
Another most remarkable instance occurred in the case of a missionary of the
Rhenish Society, named Nommensen, working in Sumatra. On one occasion
a heathen who had designs on his life managed secretly to mix a deadly poison
in the rice which Nommensen was preparing for his dinner. Without suspicion
the missionary ate the rice, and the heathen watched for him to fall down dead.
Instead of this, however, the promise contained in Mark xvi. 18 was fulfilled,
and he did not experience the slightest inconvenience. The heathen, by this
palpable miraculous proof of the Christian God's power, became convinced of
the truth, and was eventually converted: but not until his conscience had impelled him to confess his guilt to Nommensen, did the latter know from what
danger he had been preserved. This incident is well attested (cf. V. Rohden,
Geschichte der rhein. 1Missionsgeslllschaft, 2d ed., p. 324), and the missionary
still lives (1873).




LECT. V.]           DO THEY STILL OCCUR?                 335
the crew   of the missionary   ship  Hctarmony, which   every
year visits the Moravian stations on the coast of Labrador,
and supplies them with provisions   Some years ago an iceberg
was one day perceived drifting rapidly towards the vessel.
A moment more, and it would have inevitably been dashed to
pieces.  At a distance of only one foot from    the ship, the
monster suddenly stopped in its course, and drifted away
again.  I myself have heard the captain of the tHarmony
attest the truth of this incident, which the entire crew declared
to be a miracle.  Cases of this sort, especially as regards the
marvellous deliverances of children, could be multiplied indefinitely, but they belong to miracles in the wider sense.
But even apart from the history of Missions, especially in
the healing of the sick and in miraculous answers to prayer,
our times offer resemblances at least to the apostolic age.
You all know    with   what victorious faith Luther once
wrestled with God in prayer at the bedside of the dying
Melanchthon, and how he then with firm confidence went up to
the sick man, who felt that his last hour had come, and taking
him by the hand, said, "Be of good'cheer, Philip, you shall
not die;" and howfirov that houzr Melanchthon revived. Johann
Albrecht Bengel, famous as the best interpreter of Holy Scripture in the last century, relates that a girl in a little town of
South Germany,l who had been paralysed for twenty years,
was suddenly healed by the prayer of faith.    The case was
examined and pliblicly certified to be a miracle.  And surely
the veracity of an informant like Bengel cannot be questioned.
Most of us are aware that wonderful things are related of
the healing of the sick at the present day.    Yet these are
but weak analogies of that divine power of healing in the
New   Testament history, through which the severest and most
chronic cases were instantly cured by a word. Our age, it is
true, can show   more cases of wonderful answers to prayer
than many previous ones;2 and assuredly all history as well
as the present period abounds in wonders of the divine govern-.
1 Leonberg, near Stuttgart.
2 I need only remind you of the humble origin and the grand development of
so many Christian institutions and societies as related in the memoirs of A. H.
Franke, J. Falk, Jung Stilling, J. Gossner, George lMiller of Bristol, Theodor
Fliedner, L. Harms, J. Wichern, and others, whom Spurgeon designates "modern
workers of miracles."




336           THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.             [LECT. V.
ment, and in sudden divine interpositions which are no less
the workings of God's providence         for being often brought
about by circumstances or men, and thus concealed from us
through the dimness of our spiritual vision.        But these signs
and wonders do not possess the same force and clearness as
the biblical miracles.
On the other hand, we see the sceptics of the present day
reject with scorn the appeal to the lives of God's children, and
the clear proofs afforded by them, for every one who is not
wilfully blind, of a special divine providence; and we find
them  presuming to derive from      merely natural sources all the
answers to    prayer, and   all the   dearest experiences of the
children of God, or representing them as self-deceptions.1
This shows us clearly that it is the want of faith in our age
which is the greatest hindrance to the stronger and more
marked appearance of that miraculous power which is working
here and there in quiet concealment. Unbelief is the final and
the most important reason for the retrogression of miracles.
1 We often see unbelievers greatly embarrassed by the countless and undeniable
answers to prayer in the lives of many children of God; answers which it is
ridiculous to attribute to chance. An instance of this may be seen in the
desperate explanation attempted by Perty (in his work, Die mystischen
Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur, 1861).  According to him, those
results proceed, not from the influence of the suppliant upon God, but from the
mystic working of one human soul upon another. The spiritual energy of the
suppliant occasions disquietude in other souls until they have satisfied his needs.
If this be so, then men and not God hear prayer. What a wild fancy is this!
Indeed, it is an incomparably greater miracle than that God should answer
prayer! In many cases help comes from a person whom the suppliant did not
know-of whose existence he was unconscious; or it does not come through
persons at all, but through things and circumstances. How, in these cases, is a
psychical influence conceivable? We see how unbelief in its despair prefers to
accept the purest impossibility rather than the simple truth of Scripture. In
this respect it is still true that "professing themselves to be wise, they become
fools!"  (Cf. Apologet. Beitrdige von Gess und Riggenbach, p. 187.)  The
Gartenlaube remarks in a similar strain with regard to George Muiller's wonderful work: "The'Lord' who went before Miller was merely another form
for his own German energy, his simple, feeling heart, etc.,-a form dear to him
and imposing to the English public." Whoever takes the pains to read in
The Lord's dealings with G. Miiller (1860, 6th ed.), and to learn how, zvitlhout
ever applying to any one for a gift, he received the means to build those great
palaces near Bristol, in which he provides for 2000 orphans, only throut gh prayer,
will immediately realize the folly of such a judgment. If it is always men who
do such things, and not God, why do not these enlightened gentlemen make use
of their own "simple, feeling hearts," and some " imposing form," say that of
Materialism, in order to perform like wonders?




LECT. V.]         DO THEY STILL OCCUR?             337
But though these facts-being miracles in a wider sense
only-may be no direct proof for the miraculous, strictly so
called, still they plainly prove that the omnipotent God is
everywhere present and active in the natural as well as in
the spiritual world.  But when this fact is once admitted, it
follows that the miraculous is constantly possible, and that
God need not disturb nor destroy anything when He performs
a miracle properly so called, of which we have at least single
examples in our own days.
These alone may not be sufficient to lead one to a belief in
the truth of the biblical miracles.  But there is a still more
cogent consideration which I would finally seek to impress
upon you, viz. that by a denial of the nmiraculous we do not
in the least escape miracles, but only have to believe in greater
prodigies.
We have already seen that he who believes in God must
also believe in the miraculous. Though one may not believe in
God, yet he must believe in the miracle of the world, which,
through a miracle, must have existed from eternity, and must
have developed and preserved itself up to its present condition
by means of still greater miracles and riddles.  If one does not
believe in the miraculous creation of man, he must believe in
his descent from the monkey, and further back in his generation, from the original slime-a wild supposition which is
contradicted by all experience and moral consciousness.  He
who does not believe in the miraculous revelation of God in
history, especially in Christ, must assume that a people like
Israel, and a phenomenon like Christianity, could have arisen of
their own accord; he must assume that the preaching of a few
poor Galilean fishermen could have overcome the world, and
have ruled it spiritually until now, without the co-operation of
divine power. And would that not be a far greater miracle?
He who does not believe in the continual government of God's
providence has lost the key for understanding the entire
history of the world, of the divine kingdom, and of his own
life, and has no longer any safeguard against the thoughtless
belief in chance, which explains nothing.
As the Bible is much more inexplicable if we suppose it
uninspired than if we grant its inspiration, so, too, the natural
and the moral world are infinitely more full of riddles without
y




338         THE MODERN NEGATION OF MIRACLES.    [LECT. V.
the belief in miracles than with it.  Though the latter may
still leave much that is incomprehensible, yet the many comprehensible things which we find in Holy. Scripture should
induce us to believe the incomprehensible too. This is how
children learn. For the sake of what they already understand,
they accept that which for a long time is still beyond their
powers of comprehension; and this is precisely the way to
make progress in learning.  In this respect we have much to
learn from children, and especially do we see in them  the
simple beauty and naturalness of the belief in miracles.  Since
they have no doubt whatever of the existence of a higher
world with its heavenly powers of love, miracles seem just as
natural to them as to the angels; since their hearts are still
open, and their consciences but little burdened, they joyously
believe in the influence and interference of these divine
powers in our lives. Were our children to find in some quiet
meadow a ladder reaching up to heaven, they would not be so
greatly astonished, but would straightway ascend it, while we
older people still stood below, engrossed in critical considerations.  And which would be the wiser?
There are in our day many doubtful souls, who, if they meet
with a miracle in the Holy Scriptures, swallow it as a bitter
pill, or even allow it to spoil their delight in the Word of
God. And why? Because they would fain measure the great
ways of God by their own small ideas, which are not even
adequate to the understanding of that which daily takes place
around them.1 Because they think far too highly of our
human wisdom and knowledge, they have far too small conceptions of God and of His mighty power. This view must
be reversed in order to lead us to a belief in the miraculous.
Think very highly, I pray you, of the infinite God, and make
a very lowly estimate of all human knowledge and actions,
and then, my respected hearers, the Scripture miracles will
prove to you no longer a cross, but a comfort; a source no
longer of timid doubts, but of heartfelt joy and of stronger
faith!
As is Christ Himself, so certainly are all miracles, a sign
which may be spoken against (Luke ii. 34); clear and unmisl Lord Bacon truly says: "Animus ad amplitudinem mysteriorum pro modulo
suo dilatetur, non mysteria ad angustias animi constringantur."




LECT. V.]         DO THEY STILL OCCUR?             339
takeable enough for him who is willing to believe, but dark
and uncertain enough for him who means to doubt. Nor
should it be otherwise. For only those can or may penetrate
into the secrets of the divine government who have experienced the miraculous spiritual power of God in their own
hearts. To him only who sustains a living relation to Christ,
the miracle of all miracles, and who recognises himself as a
miracle,-not merely.as a man, but still more as a child of
God,-and to such an oneassuredly, the miraculous operation
of God in the world, as well as in his own experience, will
appear intelligible and necessary; and the,supernatural will
seem natural, because it is shaping his inmost life. The
longer his experience, the more profoundly and clearly will
he trace the finger of God even in a thousand small events,
where the blind world sees only natural laws and chance,
because he discerns that finger continually in himself in grace
and discipline. And therefore no one can dispute his right to
continue in that faith which the angel invited in his announcement of the greatest miracle, that "with God nothing shlall be
impossible " (Luke i. 3 7).




SIXTH LECTURE.
MODERN ANTI-MIRACULOUS ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF
CHRIST.
"If they shall say that no miracles have been wrought, they will thereby
only turn the edge of their weapons against themselves. For that were the
greatest miracle, that without signs and wonders twelve poor and unlearned men
should have drawn the whole world into their net."-CHRYSOSTOMUS (in Act.
Ap. Hom. I.).
CC W    HAT think ye of Christ? whose Son is He?" This
question it is which once more agitates the world
most deeply in our own day. Thus did our Lord in a decisive
hour address the assembled Pharisees in one of His last public
discourses.  And whenever this question is addressed to a
whole people or generation, it is a sign that the times are
pregnant with solemn issues, and that a turning-point in its
history is at hand.  It is not a question, but the question, the
innermost vital issue, the decision of which by individuals or
nations now, as then in the case of Israel, pronounces the
sentence of judgment on their future destiny.
The answer to this question touches the centre of our faith.
And surely the fact that the assault upon Christian belief. is
now being concentrated more and more upon this its central
bulwark, is a proof that our age is pressing on to a decision,
and that the battle of well-nigh two thousand years, which the
Christian faith has been waging with science and with life, is
at length nearing its final issue. The spirit of our age, weary
-and that not without good reason-of mere speculation,
is in every department asking for realities and facts.  The
study of dogma has had to yield to that of history.  Men no
longer look to authoritative statements of Church doctrines
or dogmatic treatises, but to historical investigations of the
Gospel narratives and of primeval Christianity, for an answer
to the question, Who was and is Jesus Christ 2
340




LECT. VI.]  MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.   341
This question, so decisive for our whole faith, is forced
upon us, not only by the spirit of our age, but also by the
progressive development of modern theology.  As formerly
the Ieformers appealed from the Church to the Scriptures,
so now our modern critics appeal "from the Scriptures to the
actual history upon which they are based,"  and claim to
make a distinction between the biblical narration of facts
and the facts themselves.  In order to attain to an historical
comprehension of the origin of Christianity, modern criticism
first began to investigate the apostolic and post-apostolic ages,
seeking in the struggles which agitated these periods to discover the growing germs of the Church and her faith. For a time
the critics hovered round the person of Christ with a cautious
reserve. But soon it became evident that all criticism must
eventually have recourse to this as the only reasonable way to
account for the origin of Christianity.  Thus investigations
into the latter made way for inquiries after the person of
Christ. As thiswas the chief religious problem for the scribes
in Israel and the wise men of heathendom, so, too, it is once
more the great question that occupies the theology of the
day, and has attracted more general interest than any other.
This question is addressed to us also. We may not evade it,
and therefore we must seek a clear and concise answer.  No
one may remain undecided in the face of this issue; for on it
depends our whole future, as individuals, as churches, and
(witness the example of Israel) as nations.
If we inquire after the inner motives which have led our
modern theology back to this old question, it is not difficult to
see that chief among them is the aversion to the miraculous
which characterizes the spirit of our age. We have seen that
Jesus Christ is the central miracle of history. He who denies
the miraculous cannot accept this chief miracle.  For this
reason the deists and the old school of rationalists exerted
themselves to get rid of one miracle after another; but they
soon discovered that all this was labour lost, so long as the
supernatural, in the person of Christ, was bodily present in
the world and its history.  Since then our opponents have become wiser, and have transferred the conflict to the person of
Christ. The foundations of all supernatural revelation cannot
1 Cf. Lthardt, Die modernen Darstelllngen des Lebens Jesu.




342    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIPRIST.   [LECT. VI.
be considered as destroyed until this Jesus of Nazareth, with
His unique life,-until all His doings and sayings, and even
His peculiar religious consciousness, are naturally explained as
the result of a merely human development.   Here we have
the reason for the most recent attempts at a purely natural
solution of this enigma.
But there is another alternative. The result of our investigations may show that all these attempts, even the most
unbridled and arbitrary of them, still leave an inexplicable
something, which the most desperate efforts to divest the
life of Christ of its divinity cannot do away with; and that
they arrive at this something only by means of an abrupt leap,
i.e. by giving up all natural connecting links,-a proceeding
which must lead us to the conclusion that it was a supernatural
agency which here interfered. Our investigations may show
that the old Stone of stumbling, the person of the Crucified,
still lies before us to this day,as a Rock of offence which the
stormy floods of human criticism can neither wash away nor
crumble into ordinary shingle; nay, a Stone from which all
the learned human masons cannot even grind away the sharp
corners, which they must needs let alone in the unique grandeur
of its origin and its effects.' If such be the case, then we
have a fresh argument for the possibility of miracles in
addition to those already adduced, viz. the impossibility of
removing the miraculous from the Bible, and from history in
general, since its opponents are fain to let it stand in its
central manifestation-Christ.
Not a device has been left untried in order to divest the
life of our Lord of its supernatural character.  The most
clumsy method was, to accuse either Himself or the gospel
writers of lying and fraud. This was the main point in the
well-known Wolfenlbittel Fragments, by Reimarus (t1 768), and
long before, in the writings of Celsus, that heathen adversary
of the Christian faith in the second century. The same method,
too, was partially carried out by some of the English deists,
but especially by Voltaire and the French illuminati.  In our
day there is no longer any difference ot opinion as to this
frivolous and morally revolting theory. It is condemned by a
single question: How can He from whom the moral regeneration of the world proceeded have been an immoral deceiver?




LECT. VI.]  MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.  343
Or how can it be conceived as possible that a number of
fraudulent men should be able to invent the purest, grandest,
and most exalted character, the mere idea of which far transcends
the loveliest visions of poets, and the noblest speculations of
philosophers?
For this reason the accusation of conscious fraud soon fell
to the ground, and others set up the theory that Christ was
the victim of self-deception and enthusiasm.  We shall find
that this supposition is, partially at least, accepted by Strauss
and Renan, who, in their explanation of our Saviour's words
and deeds towards the close of His life, are compelled to make
use of it. But neither does this theory explain anything; on
the contrary, it only multiplies enigmas.  For all the sayings
and doings of Christ which are recorded in the Gospels give
an unprejudiced reader the impression of the most sober clearness of spirit, the calmest dignity, and the most prudent selfcommand, ever wondrously the same in all situations; and
this accompanied by the glance of profound knowledge which
penetrates through all outward show to the real essence, and
the sure judgment which is never deceived, but constantly
hits the nail upon the head.  Is not all this directly opposed
to enthusiastic imagination and self-deception?
Others, therefore, have attributed the errors and the selfdeception to the disciples, whom they suppose to have formed
a false conception of the deeds of Christ, in their superstitious
prejudice making purely natural events into supernatural ones,
and converting an extraordinary human being into a God-man.
This is the creed of vulgar Rationalism. We are to believe
that the fabrications and dreams of a few Galilean fishermen,
imposed upon Jews and Greeks, conquered the world, morally
regenerated it, and have since proved to be a ruling spiritual
power and an inexhaustible source of culture and education!
And is this the pass at which exalted reason has arrived?
Since this theory has been undermined, in part by the historical contradictions which it provoked, but especially by the
intolerably arbitrary exegesis which it necessitated, a final and
most recent attempt has been made to show that the miraculous
history and the " deification" of Christ originated in the (unconscious) legendary invention of the first Christian communities,
which surrounded and darkened the original history with an




344     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIIRIST.    [LECT. VI.
ever-thickening cloud of myths and legends.     This is the
standpoint of Strauss and Renan.    In it they were greatly
strengthened by the attempt made in another quarter to remove
the Gospels and the Acts, as well as most of the Epistles, into
a period subsequent to the apostolic.age,-attempts which, if
successful, would leave the time necessary for the gradual
formation of these mythical legends.
From this we see that every possible method has been tried
in order to eliminate the miraculous from the gospel history.
For it is easy to see that all these hypotheses are only set up
as a means of getting rid of the miraculous at cny cost; and,
indeed, as much is openly confessed. Take, for instance, what
Strauss says: 1 " The miraculous is a foreign element in the
gospel narratives of Christ which defies all historical treatment, and the conception of the mnyt is the means zwhich we shall
use in order to eliminate this element from our suiject."  This
" mythical hypothesis," then, belongs to the same class as all
other attempts of ancient or modern Rationalism   to explain
away the miraculous.    They are all one in their aim, and
therefore we comprise them   all under the one category of
" anti-qmiraculous accounts of the life of Christ."
From what we have already said, it is evident that all these
theories exhibit one and the same tendency in two fundamental
torms, the rationalistic and the mythical.  Under the former
aspect the Gospels are real, but merely natural history, in
which all seemingly miraculous events are to be naturally
accounted for.  According to the latter view, they do not, for
the most part, contain history at all, but merely fictions or
legends.  Schenkel's Sketch of the Character of Christ we consider to belong to the former of these two classes: the chief
representatives of the latter are, as is well known, Strauss and
Penan.   The works of these three men-in addition to the
writings of Baur, which we reserve for future considerationare doubtless the great authorities for the negative gospel
criticism of the present day.  It will therefore be our duty,
after a short sketch and consideration of the old rationalistic
view of the life of Christ, to subject the writings of these three
men to a closer investigation and critique.
Before so doing, I would remark, that the attacks on the
1 In his Leben Jesilfiur das deutsche Volk, 1864, p. 146.




LECT. VI.]     OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS.          345
resurrection (as constituting the chief miracle in the life of our
Lord) will be considered separately in Lect. VII., and will therefore remain unnoticed in this chapter. The important question,
too, as to the origin of the Gospels cannot be treated merely
en passant, and I must therefore reserve its consideration to a
later occasion, when I hope to treat, in connection, of the doctrine of Scripture, its inspiration, the canon of both Testaments,
and the origin of the individual books.  At present we are
only considering the principles involved in the modern accounts
of our Saviour's life, both rationalistic and mythical. So well,
however, have the Gospels been defended in our days by many
learned divines, that we cannot pretend to handle the subject
in a new or original manner.  We therefore simply confine
ourselves to gleaning from those who have gone before.
I.-OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
According to the rationalistic school, the miraculous element
in the life of Christ originated, not from the facts themselves,
but from the superstitious light in which the biblical narrators
viewed them.   In their simplicity, they looked upon extraordinary medical cures as supernatural wonders, although they
were perfectly natural occurrences; and that extraordinary man,
Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in word and in deed before God and all the people, they believed to be God, though
he was really nothing but a man. We find this same practice
of reducing all that is divine to merely natural and human
proportions, many centuries back, in some Greek philosophers
-Euhemerus and others-who made their national gods into
men, saying that Zeus, Apollo, and the rest had, indeed,
actually existed, but only as men, whom their station, or their
deeds, or their knowledge had rendered famous, and caused
them to be worshipped by their posterity as superhuman beings.
The very principle of this heathen school is applied by our
rationalists to the Christian faith. They say, Jesus Christ
is a real historical character, but nothing more than a man,
who, for the sake of his extraordinary doings and sayings,
gradually came to be adored as divine. Thus unbelief constantly retreads the old worn-out paths, affording a specially




.346     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
striking illustration of the truth that " there is nothing new
under the sun."
After Eichhorn's application of these principles chiefly to
the Old Testament, they were carried out to their full extent
by Dr. Paulus of Heidelberg in his Commentary on the Gospels
(1800) and his Life of Christ (1828).  He declares that the
occurrences related in the Gospels are facts, but merely natural
ones. How can this be?   Dr. Paulus tells us that the historical critic must distinguish between facts and opinions, between the actual occurrence and its mistaken acceptance as
miraculous by the narrator or the actor.  In the tradition of
the first churches, facts and opinions had been promiscuously
propagated and identified.  This obscuration of real facts, by
attributing them  to unreal miraculous causes, is to be done
away with; the natural kernel of the matter is to be separated
from its supernatural shell, and thus the actual historical truth
to be arrived at. By means of this operation the life of Christ
is transformed into the life of a wise Rabbi, who did not, it is
true, perform any miracles, but instead of that, from love to
man, executed innumerable works of charity, with the help of
medical skill and good fortune.
I cannot better illustrate the violence done to Scripture by
the rationalistic school, in reducing all miraculous occurrences
to merely natural events, than by giving some gleanings from
the rationalistic exegesis.  The bright light shining around the
shepherds in the night of our Lord's birth was " probably a
meteor," or perhaps "the rays of a lantern that happened to
pass by." The changing of the water into wine at Cana was
a " harmless wedding joke;" the disciples had got the wine
beforehand, and the twilight helped to deceive the guests.
That Christ walked on the lake is simply a misapprehension
on the part of the reader or expositor; he really walked " on
the shores of the lake," or above it, on " one of its high banks."
The stilling of the storm on the lake is resolved into the fact
that Jesus, through his calm and dignified bearing, quieted the
frightened disciples, and that by a "happy coincidence" the
raging elements ceased their fury just at the same time. The
healing of the blind was accomplished by means of an " efficacious eye-salve," which little circumstance was overlooked by
the wonder-seeking narrator.  The direction of Christ to the




LECT. VI.]     OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS.          347
blind man, "Go to the pool of Siloam and wash," refers only
to " taking the waters " at some neighbouring medicinal springs.
St. John did not intend this for a miracle at all.  The great
miracle of the loaves and fishes, which made such an impression upon the people that they said, "Surely this is the
Prophet which should come into the world" (John vi. 14), was
accomplished by means of secret stores which were in the
neighbourhood, and through the provisions which the people
had brought with them; Christ, by His words, producing so
great an effect upon the more wealthy among the multitude,
who were well supplied with food, that they forthwith shared
their stores with the poorer.  The daughter of Jairus, the
young man of Nain, and Lazarus, were raised-from a deathlike trance.  The transfiguration of our Saviour on the mountain, and His converse with Moses and Elias, are equally
easy to explain.  The disciples saw Jesus in a morning mist
on the mountain speaking with two men, and as the sun broke
forth at the moment, they thought that Moses and Elias were
standing with their Master, and that He was shining with
celestial light. The struggle in Gethsemane is an " unexpected
indisposition caused by the damp night air of the valley;" in
fact, a sudden cold. The resurrection of Christ is the return
to life, not of a dead man, but of one who was apparently
dead, having been laid in the grave swooning from the effects
of the crucifixion. The angels in the grave were "the white
linen cloths," which were taken by the women for celestial
beings.  Other angelic appearances are reduced to lightnings
or storms. Dr. Paulus especially makes the lightning " fly in
a hundred forked flashes around the heads of the Jews, without singeing a hair of them."  The ascension of our Lord,
finally, was merely His disappearance in a mountain cloud
which happened to come between Him and His disciples; or,
according to Bahrdt's account, Christ disappeared behind a
hill, and withdrew into the circle of His more intimate disciples, until later on, according to a pre-arranged plan, He
suddenly appeared from behind a bush to St. Paul on his way
to Damascus!!
You see that the miracle-fearing rationalists accomplish
perfectly miraculous feats by means of exegetical devices. Of
such interpreters Gothe (in his Faust) says:



3o8      MODEIRN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
Slavish fidelity is out of date;
When exposition fails, interpolate.
Assuredly such attempts are not exposition, but imposition.
They need but be mentioned to be condemned by every unprejudiced mind as utterly desperate courps de force.  The whole
method is one of boundless arbitractiness, which turns and
twists, clips and maims the historical documents, until they
say no more than they are wanted to say, i.e. nothing supernatural.  One does not listen to the narrators in order to
learn what has taken place, but he knows beforehand that
events cannot have happened in the manner in which they are
described.  One does not want to be taught by them, but
rather to teach these simple, superstitious narrators by taking
the bandage from their eyes and showing them what they did
and what they did not really see and hear.  The fruits of
this arrogance consist not only in boundless caprice, but also
in positive vulgarity which utterly disgusts us.  The finesounding term, "natural explanation," turns to bitter irony
when we see that it is most utnnatural in its efforts to do away
with the supernatural.  I have'already pointed out the irrationality of "rational belief."  Here you have the clearest
proofs of it.
In order to make this naturalization of the supernatural
more acceptable, especiall aas regards the miracles of healing,
recourse has often been had to cmagncetism, and similar mysterious though natural forces.  Christ Himself and the other
workers of miracles are supposed to have possessed a special
magnetic power; and their laying of hands on the sick was
the same manipulation as that performed by mesmerists in our
own days.  The rationalists and semi-rationalists even of the
present day do not despise this expedient, as, e.g., Weisse and
Hase.  But what is gained thereby? Did not the cures often
take place without any personal contact, and even in some
cases, at a distance (e.g. the centurion's servant and the
daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman)? Recently, however,
this expedient has been annihilated, for natural science has
taught that these supposed effects of animal magnetism are
for the most part fictitious.. It cannot be denied that magnetic stroking often produces peculiar effects on the nervous
system, and, through it, on adjacent parts of the human frame.




LECT. VI.]      OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS.          349
But it is a great question whether these effects are produced
by any distinct and special force; and the most learned physicians assure us that sudden cures of any bodily ailment or
infirmity are never effected by it.  Still more is the healing
by this means of such diseases as leprosy out of the question.
The critical deniers of the miraculous are not then so very
critical in this case. Having been critical where they should
have believed, they are now fain to believe implicitly where
criticism would be most fitting.
Others recognise that no person in his senses could find
accounts of modern magnetic cures in the Gospels or the Acts,
and therefore have recourse to psychology:  They suppose that
the immense psychological influence which Christ exerted on
the souls of men, the faith and the confidence with which He
knew how to inspire them, were sufficient to effect His
miracles. And true it is that Christ demands faith of the
sick who look for help. But if the faith alone, without any
special exertion of power on the part of Christ, could perform
miracles then, why not now? According to this view of the
matter, a physician need but inspire his patient with the firm
belief that he is or immediately will be well, and he would
straightway become so! And what is gained by such explanations in the case of other miracles, which had nothing to do
with healing?
But it is not only that these expository arts do not stand
the test of isolated cases: they are unsound in principle.  It
is supposed that the Gospels confound facts and opinions, and
that the kernel of facts must be extracted from the shell of
the narrators' false apprehension.  All this is simply an arbitrary supposition, proceeding from an aversion to the miraculous. The man who reads the Gospels in an unprejudiced
spirit, will find in them nothing but the most simple, artless,
and true-hearted collation of facts, with scarcely anywhere an
opinion of the narrator about them.  Indeed, we may say that
there probably never were historians who gave so little of their
own opinions in the course of their accounts as the evangelists,
and the sacred writers in general. Never has any one written
in such a terse style of pregnant shortness as they.  What
with others would have filled thick volumes, is by them
related in a few pages.  And this could only be accomplished




350      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
by a plain enumeration of facts without many subjective views;
a delineation of their main features in a few bold strokes. Dr.
Paulus need not take so much trouble to get at the kernel of
the matter; it stands before us clearer, more transparent and
unadorned, than was ever fact related by any writer. This
grand, though simple style, passes by in silence a thousand
questions, which our curiosity were fain to ask: "And He
entered into a ship; and He saw a man sitting at the receipt
of custom; and the disciples of John came unto Him."  Any
unbiassed reader will see here a simple and often abrupt
collation of facts, the chief object of which always is to give
a short account of the main points; a style such as even taxgatherers and fishermen could attain.  It is only when the
reader puts on the erroneous and misleading glasses of a determined aversion to the miraculous, that he sees in the gospel
narrative no longer the simple substance of real events, but a
history overlaid with myths and legends.
And according to what standard are we to distinguish
between the husk and the kernel of a narrative?  Are we to
take for our canon the rule that the laws of nature and of
general human development are the limits of historical possibility and of critical allowableness? This is nothing but the
principle from which proceeds the denial of the miracllous,a principle already shown by us to be false.  It is merely an
extraneous presupposition brought to bear on the investigation
of these historical records; an axiom which does not result
from them, but stands in direct contradiction to them.  For
by means of it anti-miraculous critics make that appear to be
the husk which, in the estimation of the evangelists themselves, is the true cernel of the narrative, i.e. the miraculous
element. This they seek to peel off by their criticism, in
order that a merely natural occurrence may be left as the
historical kernel.  But why does an evangelist relate a miraculous event?  Clearly for the sakce of the miracle. This is to
him the root and centre of the matter, the important part for the
sake of which the event appears to him worthy of commemoration. If this be taken away, it is not the husk which has been
separated from the fruit, but the true kernel which has disap'
peared, leaving in most casesa shell not worth preserving.
This arbitrary procedure, which acknowledges as historical




LECT. VI.]      OLD RATIONALISTIC ACCOUNTS.           351
only what does not contradict our anti-miraculous prejudices,
and throws all else overboard, is evidently not the method of
objective science, but only that of subjective inclination.  As
against such arbitrariness Strauss is quite right when he says:
" Either the Gospels are really historical records, and miracles
cannot be banished from the life of Christ; or the miraculous
is incompatible with true history, and then the Gospels cannot
be historical records" (Leben Jesu, p. 1 ).
This is true not only of isolated narratives, but of the life
of Christ, depicted in the Gospels, as a whole. Whoever wishes
to retain the historical character of the Gospels cannot cut out
the miracles without losing all.  It is labour lost to chip and
pare down isolated miracles, and to give them a natural instead
of a supernatural purport.  Not merely this or that occurrence,
but the whole foundation of the Gospel history, i.e. the person of
Christ itself, is intrinsically miraculous from beginning to end.
His words and deeds are likewise miraculous: so, too, is that
in Him which rationalists acknowledge as historical; for His
is a more than human development, inexplicable without the
influence of supernatural powers and revelations.  In short,
the miraculous is not a mere outward appendage, which as
such might be separated from the gospel history; on the contrary, it is the indispensable basis on which the latter rests,
and one of its most essential elements.  We should therefore
gain nothing even did we succeed in a natural explanation of
all the individual miracles, and the whole rationalistic undertaking-apart from the falsity of its anti-miraculous basiscannot lead to any real results. For what use is it to prune
away the miraculous from the twigs and branches if the whole
tree be supernatural?
If the miraculous be once denied, it is far more logical and
honest no longer to regard the Gospels as historical, but, as
Strauss does, to consider them a chain of legends and fictions,
and then to abjure Christianity openly. For the elimination
of the miraculous element fromn the gospel history can never
take place without a deeply penetrating injury, or even a total
and destructive alteration of the entire substance of the Christian
religion. What good is it to us to know all about the linen
of the swaddling clothes which the rationalistic exegete will
describe so learnedly and vividly, if it is no longer a divine




352      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
Child that was wrapped in them?     What is the use of depicting to us the cross, if it is merely an apparently dead man
who is being lifted down from it; or of describing the grave,
if the Prince of life do not come forth from it?  The whole
foundation of our Christian life is shattered.
Take away the miraculous element from the Gospels, and
what remains?   The threadbare story of a wise and virtuous
Rabbi, who preached pure morality,1 and, having resolved to
make his appearance as the Messiah, managed by the help of
a natural power of healing, which he employed with good
luck, to persuade a small portion of the people that he was
such.  He would appear to have been persecuted by the
Pharisees, because he chastised their hypocrisy, and finally to
have suffered death,-that is to say, apparent death, from
which, after a swoon of many hours on the cross, he recovered; " only daring, however, to show himself to a few,
and afterwards in all probability slowly languishing away in
some remote part of Galilee from the effects of his sufferings."
And to this poverty-stricken story the development of humanity
is supposed to be attached! These commonplace occurrences,
which might similarly take place in the case of any man who
should excel his age in knowledge and moral power, and then,
opposing himself to its spirit, should die as a martyr to his
noble efforts-these are supposed to have unhinged the world's
history, and marked out for it a fresh path.  These exceedingly clumsy and simple narrators, who in their fanaticism
took such simple events for one series of miracles, who were
not even gifted with ordinary common sense, were yet able to
depict for the benefit of mankind a character the moral beauty
and profound spirituality of which has for centuries irresistibly
fascinated the noblest minds, and become their richest source
of culture: they could succeed in "writing a history which
puts to shame the productions of the proudest historians!"
What a miracle do anti-miraculous critics expect us to believe!
Nay, more than a miracle, an utter absurdity.
So pure, indeed, that it is perfectly unique, and, if taken together with the
religious consciousness of the man who could preach it, still points to a supernatural origin. Further on we shall recur more fully to this "divine remnant"
in the life of Christ which is still left after all the subtractions of critics have
been made.




LECT. VI.]         SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."                353
These monstrosities and inner weaknesses soon brought discredit on the "natural" explanation of the gospel history.
We have already1 heard the hard sentence of Hegel on the
" stupidity and meanness which arrogates to itself the title of
common sense and morality."     Schelling, too,2 condemns it,
saying that "nothing is more doleful than the occupation of
all rationalists, who strive to make that rational which declares
itself to be above all reason."  For the scientific annihilation
of this standpoint, however, we have to thank Strauss, who in
this way has done us real service. Not only did he in his
former Life of Christ confute Dr. Paulus step by step, but in
his latest writings, and most of all in the pamphlet entitled
Die JHalben und die Ganczen, he chastises the rationalists of the
present day, especially the Baden school, with a bitter irony,
and often with a scathing sarcasm    nearly approaching to
abuse.  Thus it is that one of our opponents often confutes
the other.
All the more does it give us cause for wonder that a wellknown theologian of the present day, notwithstanding the
undoubted bankruptcy of Rationalism, and in contradiction to
his own past history, should have fallen back to the old rationalistic standpoint.  I mean Dr. Schenkel in his Sketch of the
Character of Christ, a book which scarcely corresponds to its
title, as it is in reality nothing but a life of Christ.
II. —D. SCHENKEL'S " SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST."
We shall soon see that we have a right to place Schenkel
in the immediate vicinity of the rationalists, although much
that is in his book reminds us of Strauss and Eenan, and still
more of the " Ttibingen school," so that in fact his book is
varied with almost every hue of thought.   Before doing so,
however, let us cast' a glance at his treatment of the Gospels
with respect to their historical vahle.
Schenkel agrees with several others of the most modern
critics in considering the Gospel of St. Mark to be the oldest
1 In the critique of Deism in Lect. III., p. 202.
2 S&,zmmtliche Werke, Bd. ii., Abth. iv. p. 23.
3 Charakterbild Jesu. We quote in the following from the 3d ed., 1864.
zo




354      MODERN.ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
and most original, and he lays a stress upon the fact that his
book "gives the first delineation of Christ from the standpoint of the second evangelist." This preference for the second
Gospel may be the result of critical investigations, the correctness of which we cannot stop to examine here: certainly,
however, it is connected with Dr. Schenkel's aversion for
miracles; for, as he observes, " the second Gospel contains no
trace of the' Legend of the Infancy,' nor of the appearances
of Christ after His resurrection;" and also, "many of its incidents are less embellished with miraculous paraphernalia than
the corresponding ones in the first and    third Gospels"
(pp. 239, 240). But since even Mark relates much that is
miraculous, Schenkel is forced to confess that the "miracle
legends" had attained the preponderance even in this Gospel,
notwithstanding its intimate connection with the reports of
Peter, whose disciple Mark was. How, then, did the miraculous element penetrate into this comparatively trustworthy
historical record? In the first place, " Peter himself, under
the influence of Old Testament precedents, probably represented some of the gospel incidents in the light of miraculous
workings;" second, " Mark treated the reports of Peter in a
free manner, and doubtless wrote his Gospel under the influence of [other] oral tradition, and of the craving for the
miraculous which was characteristic of the early churches;"
and finally, we may suppose that the reviser of the "original
Mark" (for the present Gospel is a revision of the original
one) now and then imported later ideas into the older records.
Thus, in order to explain the miraculous element in this
Gospel, we are referred from Peter to Mark, from Mark to the
oral tradition and the craving of the early churches for the
miraculous, and thence to some later reviser of the original
record; and all this evidently because Schenkel feels that none
of these grounds of explanation really suffices. He who can
represent purely natural occurrences "in the light of miraculous workings" places himself in a very doubtful light, even
though he be an apostle.  And the man who for the sake of
his readers can make miracles out of events which were related to him by his teacher as perfectly natural, is surely ill
fitted to be a credible narrator.  More than this: how does
this very free treatment of the records agree with what Dr.




LECT. VI.]         SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."               355
Schenkel before stated, viz. that Mark wrote down the narrations of his teacher with great exactitude?
In whatever manner the miraculous element became introduced into this Gospel, the favoured record has to endure a
very arbitrary treatment for its sake.  At one time its clear
testimony must go for nothing, e.g. in the healing of the palsied
man (Mark ii. 10, 11), because, as Schenkcl confesses, it contradicts his view of the case; at another time, the clear, unmistakeable sense of the words is arbitrarily distorted,-e.g.
when Christ speaks of His coming again " in the glory of the
Father with the holy angels" (Mark viii. 38), this is to be
understood "figuratively of the Master's spiritual reappearance" (just as if a single one of our Lord's hearers would
have thus received it). In chap. xiii. the second advent of
Christ only means the epoch " at which the universal Christian
Church began to exist;" but on account of His disciples' weak
comprehension, Christ calls it the day of His second coming!
In chap. xiv. 62, likewise, our Lord merely made use of " the
figurative language familiar to the theocratic mind" (pp. 145,
259, 294).  Probably it was because he was well acquainted
with this figure of speech that the high priest rent his clothes,
and condemned it as blasphemy!!
If the chief record is thus treated, it is not to be expected
that the others should fare better. The whole history of the
childhood of our Lord, as related by St. Luke, must of course
be mythical, with the exception, however, of the story of
Jesus at the age of twelve years in the temple.  Why should
this part merely be historical? Because in the other there is
too much of the supernatural, which would not suit Schenkel's
human picture of Jesus; this event is seemingly more natural
(though, in truth, it points to a more than human development
of the inquiring boy). The Sermon on the Mount appears to
Schenkel suitable. It must, therefore, be brought over from
St. Matthew's Gospel, with the excuse that in the present
revision of St. Mark it was doubtless " overlooked," not " intentionally omitted" (p. 70). But our critic is not pleased
with all that is contained in it; thus the declaration (Matt.
v. 17), that heaven and earth shall pass away rather than the
smallest fraction of the law remain unfulfilled, is an entire
misunderstanding: this was really a saying of the Pharisees




356      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
which was controverted by Jesus, and put into His mouth by
some strange mistake (p. 271).
The worst treatment; however, is accorded to the fourth
Gospel; and here we see the most flagrant instances of
arbitrary treatment of the records. According to Schenkel,
St. John occupies the last place among the gospel narrators,
because, in his record, "there is no trace of a gradual
development of the religious and Messianic consciousness in
Christ, no perceptible growth or progress of his inner life"
(p. 17); but, on the contrary, his earthly work is placed in
connection with a pre-existent condition. We cannot help remembering that, six years before the publication of his Sketch,
Schenkel conceded to St. John the first place amongst the evangelical historians, just "because he testifies most decidedly to the
immediate and unconditional agreement of the self-consciousness
of Christ with that of God."  But since the substance of this
Gospel is " not directly historical," there can be no hesitation,
if necessary, in doing away with its testimony.  St. John may
tell us that Jesus, when hanging on the cross, committed His
mother to the care of His beloved disciple; but Schenkel
knows better, that Mary was not able "to bear the sight even
from a distance."  St. John, therefore, invented the circumstance in order to represent "this admirable endurance of
motherly love, as an expiation for her former strange coldness
towards the gospel;" although, in another place, he tells us
that Mary exlpected a miracle at the wedding in Cana, and was
therefore by no means indifferent to the gospel.  Elsewhere,
too, in the history of the passion, St. John shows himself to be
an undependable narrator: he purposely omits to mention the
institution of the Lord's Supper, and brings his farewell repast into connection with the washing of the disciples' feet,
an ordinance " which was as plainly calculated to humble all
priestly pride, as afterwards the Lord's Supper became the
chief support of this sentiment."  For this reason, therefore,
it must be historically correct that Christ washed His disciples'
feet, because this anti-hierarchical incident is excellently
adapted to the purpose of Schenkel's Sketch.  In the conversation of Christ with the woman of Samaria, St. John has
misstated time and place, and has erroneously represented
him as omniscient; nevertheless, the narrative must be based




LECI. VI.]         SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."              357
on some historical event, in order that "the grandest of all
speeches in defence of tolerance," the "exalted wide-heartedness" shown in what Jesus says about the nature of worship,
may not be wanting to the Sketch of Christ's character.
Indeed, such genuinely human features in the character of
Christ are frequently recurring in the fourth Gospel. Schenkel
is often fain to give the preference to this unhistorical, speculative record, as against the other Gospels, and even to correct
his favourite St. Mark according to its statements.  The discourse on the bread from heaven in chap. vi. betrays to us the
origin of the legend of the loaves and fishes, and is therefore
more credible than what the other evangelists relate in respect
of this. The discourses of Christ as to His coming again, are
more faithfully reproduced by St. John (chap. xiii.-xvii.) than
in the three first Gospels.  St. John alone is the true narrator
in this case, although Schenkel informs us that Jesus could
not possibly have held such long discourses on the last evening.
And why?    Because the reference to the Comforter whom
He would send shows that, when Jesus spoke of His second
coming, He did not refer to a personal and bodily reappearance, but only to an advent " in spirit" (186 et seq.).
From  this you see in what an arbitrary spirit Schenkel
handles the gospel records.  His method is far more self-contradictory than even that of the old rationalists.  Whatever
can be explained as opposition to "High Churchism" or
"orthodoxy," whatever may be strained to serve his wellknown democratic church tendencies, whatever is calculated
to make Jesus appear as a natural man, bounded by human
limitations and imperfection,-all this is always a "genuine
historical trait" (pp. 40, 149, 208, etc. etc.), whether it
come from the Synoptics or from the fourth Gospel.    But
wherever the Gospels speak of the necessity of church discipline, and above all of the superhuman dignity and power
of Christ, of His divine nature and self-consciousness, be their
language never'so distinct, and the occurrence of such sentiments never so frequent, this is not history, but some
misunderstanding of a later reviser, or a legendary addition,
no matter in which Gospel the passage occurs. Whoever
pleases, may call this science and historical criticism; in
truth, it is nothing but subjective inclination.  Hence the




358       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
best critics have already shown his self-contradictory treatment of the historical records to be a fault which vitiates the
whole of Dr. Schenkel's work.1
We can easily guess of what description the sketch of
Christ's character will be, which is produced by such a procedure.   Let us look at it more closely.
Like the rationalists with their denial of the miraculous,
so, too, Schenkel approaches the gospel history with a presupposition   that decides   everything   beforehand, viz. the
denial of the Godhead of Christ.     On the first page of his
book he declares that the teaching of the Church as to the
person of Christ is an ancient absurdity, a remnant of Roman
Catholicism in the Protestant Church; a doctrine imported
into the Church by the Gentile Christian party, for the Jewish
Christians always considered Christ to be a mere man.     "The
statement, that Jesus once lived among men, and still lives as
very man and very God, must necessarily call forth the most
weighty scruples" (p. 2).     He was rather "a child of the
people," the real son of Joseph and Mary; "his father was
a nan of the people, one who belonged to the working class,
a carpenter" (p. 26).2    The lad of twelve years old "calls
God his Father, as any pious Jewish child might do" (pp.
2 5 9, 27).  Jesus experienced an early " development of strong
feeling, which temporarily repressed his filial piety" (p. 28).
He doubtless "learned from    the book of Nature, beneath the
smiling skies of Galilee "3 (p. 28).  He was baptized by John,
but there was never any intimate relationship between them,
far less a declaration of Christ's divine sonship on the part of
John (p. 30 et seq.).   In baptism   Jesus receives divine enlichtenment "like a silver glance " from above, teaching him
that henceforth not the law, but "the mild and gentle spirit
of humility and love, symbolized by the dove, is to effect a
moral regeneration of the people " (p. 35).
1 Cf. Weiss: "Dr. Schenkel's Charakterbild Jesu, besonders von Seiten der
Quellenbenutznng u. geschichtlichen Behandlungsweise beleuchtet;" in Studien
u. Kritiken for 1865, Heft ii. p. 277 et seq. Also, Uhlhorn's valuable little
book, Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu, p. 39 et seq.
2 And yet Dr. Schenkel denied this at the General Synod for Baden (18th May
1867), stating that his book merely contained a reference "to the parents of
Jesus," but not that Jesus was the son of the carpenter! Cf. this statement
with the above cited page of his book.
3 Cf. further on, the description by Renan.




LECT. VT.]       SCIIENKEL'S "SKETCH."             359
It is certain that Christ attributed to Himself an unexampled clearness in His consciousness of God, and, in consequence of it, a most intimate and indissoluble communion
with God; also, that He designated this personal character of
His as an inexhaustible source of revelation and life for the
whole of humanity. But it does not follow that He attributed
to Himself divine power or dignity, nor did He co-equalize
the " Son" as the second person of the Godhead, with the
"Father" as the first (pp. 121, 175).  Schenkel actually
endeavours to prove this by quoting Matt. xi. 29, where Christ
calls Himself "meek and lowly;" indicating that He " sometimes had to struggle, with anger" (p. 122)! Is not this
genuine Rationalism, importing a meaning into the text instead
of extracting one from it? for in the passage quoted our Lord
says, if anything, directly the contrary to what Schenkel infers.
Christ applies to Himself the designation "Son of God," in no
other sense than " that in which the people of Israel or the
theocratic king might be so called" (p. 177).  "The fourth
Gospel even, if we examine it, closely, contains nothing about
the God-equal dignity of Christ" (pp. 178, 150). But how
about the many passages which indubitably apply to the
divine power and dignity of the Son,-e.g., "Whatsoever the
Father doeth, that doeth the Son likewise;" "that they all
may honour the Son even as they honour the Father;" the
co-ordination of Father and Son in the baptismal command,
and many others? These are partly passed over in silence,
probably because they appear unnecessary (and at all events
unsuitable) for the Sketch of Christ's character; partly they
are disposed of-as e.g. the declaration, "All things are given
unto me by my Father "-with a remark such as this, that
"without the necessary limitation these words would be
meaningless" (p. 120). When Jesus said, " I and the Father
are one," He referred not to oneness of essence, but to oneness
of will (p. 150). We have already shown that these oftrenewed attempts to deprive our Lord of His personal and
conscious divinity are exegetically untenable.
"From His earliest youth a partaker in the sorrows and
joys of the people," Christ soon felt "that His work must be
devoted to them" (pp. 33, 41).  " Men from the people were
the men of the future Christian Church" (pp. 60, 44),-from




360      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF TIE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
amongst their number He chose His apostles. At the time of
His first public appearance Jesus was not yet fully clear as to
His calling, far less did He at once claim to be the Messiah.
After the temptation in the wilderness " He is gifted with a
preliminary insight into His vocation" (p. 40). He had seen
from the example of John the Baptist that the old Jewish
theocracy was possessed of no specific for the moral regeneration of the people, and that a new path must be struck out in
order to attain to this end.  Thence proceeded His proclamation: The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is come near
-i.e. "the old age of ceremonial minority and traditional
schooling of the people" has passed away. At that time,
therefore, Christ did not make His appearance " as the Messiah
promised by the prophets, but only as the founder of a new
age, of a fresh communion of pious Israelites with God, which
should be independent of theocratic conditions" (p. 43), which
communion He sought to realize in the circle of His first disciples.  It was the healing, i.e. quieting, by means of a consolatory assurance, of one whom the people thought possessed,
which gave the first impulse to the spread of the opinion that
Jesus worked miracles.
The opposition of the hierarchical party, the "orthodox
school-theologians," the "High-Churchmen," alias the Scribes
and Pharisees, who took violent offence especially at His
breach of the Sabbath, convinced Jesus "with ever-increasing
clearness, that it was the aim of His life to remove the yoke of
the dead letter from His tormented people, to put bounds to
the empty scholasticism and arrogant rule of the priesthood,
and to elevate the neglected and forsaken community of laymen to moral and religious freedom" (p. 64).  Henceforth He
represents "the true dignity and the eternal rights of man"
as against the school-theology of the priests and the spiritkilling letter of their traditions (pp. 64 et s., pp. 36 et s.),
and seeks "to liberate the consciousness of God from all forms
and limits" (p. 121).  He proclaims the freedom of worship;
for, in truth, " liberty of conscience and of faith were the starting-point as well as the leading ideas in His whole purpose and
work" (p. 127).   He wishes to introduce the religion of a
universal love of man; that is to say, "of a universal charity,
purified from all prejudices of confession, of social standing or




LECT. VI.]        SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."               361
of nationality: this He distinctly testifies to be the way to
everlasting life" (p. 127).  This "religion of unqualified
humanity " He pronounced sacred in the parable of the good
Samaritan (p. 127).
In virtue of these ideas, Jesus wished to proclaim Himself,
not yet as Messiah, but as the Saviour of His people.  He
seeks to spread them by sending out the twelve, and thus to
make the original nucleus of God-fearing Israelites outgrow its
dimensions.  He even makes a practical use of these ideas in
the regions of Tyre and Zidon, etc., i.e. at the boundary of the
Gentile world, in order to test the readiness of the heathen to
receive the new doctrine.
When Peter, on His return from thence, solemnly confessed,
"Thou art the Messiah," this was. "a motto to hold His
followers together; thus He unfolded His banner, and took up
a definite position against the hierarchy. It would seem as if
Jesus scarcely expected the decisive word to issue from the
mouth of a disciple" (p. 99).  Well knowing that, according
to the Old Testament, the office of Messiah was one quite
different from the work He had set before Himself, He did not
approve of this opinion. But He could not help Himself; He
must of necessity lay claim to be the Messiah, since this " was
the sole means by which He could penetrate a portion at least
of the nation with His ideas, and thus attain the object of His
vocation" (p. 98).
It was, however, necessary that His Messiahship should
be consecrated by suffering.  His entry into Jerusalem, an
open avowal of His claims, and the subsequent cleansing of
the temple-a symbol of the approaching destruction of the
outward temple-service-supplied His opponents with the
weapons necessary for His accusation and sentence of death.
He was amenable to the letter of the law. He " sacrifices Himself to the killing commandment, in order by His death to
destroy it in principle for ever, as the most fearful hindrance
of true religion and morality " (p. 199). His death was " the
victory of liberty and love."  The heartless law was accused
by compassionate love; the hierarchy was condemned, and
thenceforth became the object of detestation. This was the
substance of Christ's redemption and reconciliation. Through
the belief in His resurrection, arising "from a condition of




362       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL
ecstasy, the effect of deeply shaken feminine soul-life" (p.
226), the deceased Messiah was glorified as the ever-living
One.   He lives in all to whom His words are spirit and life.
"The living Christ is the Spirit of the Church" (p. 234).
These are the salient points in the picture of Christ as
drawn by Schenkel.   The first thing that strikes us is the
facile and matter-of-course way in which le (in common with
all other anti-miraculous writers on the life of Christ) passes
over the question as to the descent of our Lord; just as if the
whole foundation of our faith were not destroyed by changing
the " only-begotten Son of God, conceived of the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary," into the (illegitimate?) son of
Joseph and Mary! In this and in other respects we recognise
in the Sketch the same old, scrupulous, highly enlightened
people's friend of the rationalistic age.  Dr. Schenkel has
only trimmed his garments after a more modern fashion, in
order, for his own reasons, to set Him up in opposition to all
true Churchmanship, either new or old.  We need waste no
words in proving that the Christ of the Sketch does not
correspond in the remotest degree to Him  whom St. Mark
portrays.  But we cannot help feeling surprised that Dr.
Schenkel should reproach others, e.g. Renan, with "repeating
in many respects the mistakes of the old rationalists."  That
he himself does this more than any one is especially evident
from the manner in which he treats the miracles of C]hrist.
Schenkel distinguishes between two classes of miracles in
the gospel history.  First, the miracles of healing, which " are
still approximately explicable by the laws of psychology, as
the influence of a personality gifted with the highest spiritual
talents and the rarest moral powers, met by an unqualified
confidence on the part of those who sought help from him."
Second, "the works of absolute omnipotence," occurring during
the latter part of Christ's ministry, "in which all the laws of
nature are simply suspended" (e.g. quieting of the storm,
feeding the multitude, raising the dead). Since these latter
break through the bounds of human finity, within which
Christ is supposed to be confined throughout the first three
Gospels, they are to be accounted as the products of legends
and fancies.  They reveal the "unconscious worship of an
enthusiastic religious fancy, proceeding from the deeply excited




LECT. VI.]        SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."               363
consciences and hearts of the first disciples and churches, who
thus gave a hyperbolical expression to the glow of their pious
feelings, and to their admiration, love, and reverence for the
departed hero,-an expression which, naturally enough, was
scarcely in accordance with the standards of sober historical
criticism " (pp. 15, 16). Dr. Schenkel appeals to the thoroughly
rationalistic maxim, "that we must keep not to the shell but
to the kernel of the gospel history;" and he lays stress on the
absence of "an undisturbed power of perception, in the case
even of the most immediate witnesses," who for that reason
could not form a correct judgment (p. 105).  Here we have
the same distinction between facts and opinions as in the case
of the rationalists. The only difference between them and
Schenkel is, that the latter finds far more of legend in the
miracles.  For "the picture of the Pedeemer's life, soon after
His earthly departure, was surrounded by a rich stream of
legends " (p. 16).
Dr. Schenkel is thus possessed of two means to get rid of
the supernatural: the enthusiastic, exaggerating fancy of the
disciples, and the legendary element. True, he himself speaks
of a miraculous gift possessed by Christ, but only in the
sence of a specially "intensified gift of human nature."  For
" if we were to consider the miraculous gift of Christ as the
result of indwelling omnipotence, or as the shining forth of
His divine nature, we should no longer be able to apply any
human standards to His operation" (p. 48).  As if miracleworkers before the time of Jesus had, as such, ceased to be
men! But Schenkel's picture of Christ must not at any price
exceed the limits of the purely natural.
"During His retirement in the desert, Jesus began to feel
within Himself the workings of that. mysterious power which
we must believe to be the source of His miracles" (p. 39).
And in what did it consist?  Jesus had the " psychical power
of calming troubled souls."  His assurance, e.g., of the forgiveness of sins, could thrill through the soul like an electric
current, and communicate itself to the paralysed nerves of the
sick man, thus producing bodily effects (p. 57). This was the
case with the palsied man in Mark ii. 1-12.  If so, however,
why did not the sick man spring up immediately after the
assurance, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," instead of waiting to




364      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF TIE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
hear the words, " Rise up and take thy bed," etc.?  In the
synagogue at Capernaum (Mark i. 21 et s.), Christ merely
quieted the convulsive fit of a highly excited madman
(48, 49)-who, however, according to ver. 26, is most of all
convulsed by the first words of the Saviour. Other sick people
were cured "in consequence of undergoing spiritual suspense,
and through passing incitements" (p. 89).  The healing of
the woman with an issue of blood is effected by " religious
excitement in her soul" (p. 82), though the evangelist tells us
that she was healed before Jesus turned round and spoke to
her (Mark v. 30).  In the case of the centurion's servant,
" the chief cause of his recovery was the extraordinary spiritual
excitement of the sick man, and his invincible faith in the
healing power of Christ" (p. 74): yet the passage in question
says not a word about the faith of the servant, but only about
that of the centurion! Those who were sick of fever, Jesus
quieted by a "loving grasp of the hand, probably accompanied
by comforting and refreshing assurances " (p. 49).  The leper
"was probably cured in the main before he came to Christ"
(p. 53) 
The miraculous power of Christ did not extend beyond (at
best doubtful) results of this kind.
Are these not the old worn-out paths and threadbare arts
of natural explanation? is not this the same old rationalistic
caprice which clips and pares the historical matter, till it
no longer belies the axiom that there is no such thing as a
miracle? According to Isaiah (iv. 6), Christ's name is "Wonderful;" according to MIessrs. Schenkel & Co., "an entirely
natural man."  And yet this same Dr. Schenkel some twelve
years since most truly remarked, "Few men only are wise
enough to perceive that much more intellect is necessary to
the believing of a miracle than cleverness to its denial!"
Yet we may find even in the'" historical" remains left us
by this violent exegesis enough to shatter the natural explanation of these incidents.  When, e.g., we read that the inhabitants of Capernaum bring all their sick folk to Jesus (p. 49), we
should like Dr. Schenkel to explain how it was that the people
expected this Rabbi, on His first appearance, to heal the sick?
Surely more must have happened than merely the quieting of
a woman sick of fever, for the people to think Him a man of




LECT. VI.]         SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."                 365
miracles who would heal all their sick. Indeed we may put
the question in a general form: If no miracles ever tookl place,
how came the people constantly to expect them?     Schenkel,
Strauss, and Renan all confess that that generation did expect
them; indeed they employ this fact in support of their negation of the miraculous, arguing that the miracle-seeking propensities of that age were the chief source of miraculous
narratives.'  In the last resort this weapon may be used
against our adversaries.  It is perfectly true that an inordinate
craving for the miraculous may invent miracles; and that
later on it did so, is sufficiently proved by the apocryphal
Gospels.  But just as in later ages a " miracle-mania" created
false miracles, so in the first instance real and true miracles
created the miracle-mania of later times.  It would never have
occurred to men to coin false money, if there had not first
been real money (cf. p. 112)! How, we ask, did mankind ever
arrive at the conception of a miracle, if not through witnessing
workings of the Divine Omnipotence, which were utterly beyond
the reach of human comprehension?   We are still waiting for
an answer to this question from the critics who deny the
miraculous.
Hitherto we have been considering Dr. Schenkel's treatment
of the first class of miracles-those of healing.  The second
class, our Saviour's works of omnipotence, are disposed of either
by similar violence, or else by their transposition into the
realm of fable.  The feeding of five thousand in the wilderness dwindles down to the fact that Christ satisfied them
"with the heavenly bread of life," by "reverently consecrating
the provisions which they had brought with them, or which
they hastily procured in the neighbourhood," and then distributing them through His disciples (p. 86). The daughter
of Jairus was still alive; for Christ Himself says, " She is not
dead, but sleepeth."   The narrative of the transfiguration
"underwent a legendary transformation in the subsequent
tradition" (p. 105).  In like manner the legends of both the
miracles on the lake arose from the simple fact, that during a
storm Christ exhibited greater courage than frightened though
experienced mariners, notwithstanding the despair of the helms1 We shall see, however, in our consideration of Strauss' work, that the Jewish
nation, as such, by no means had a proclivity for the miraculous.




366       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL
man, and that He thereby inspirited all surrounders.  This
Dr. Schenkel considers to be "much grander and more stirring" than the quieting of the storm    as related by the
evangelists (pp. 79, 80)! On the other occasion Jesus walked
in the dark of night, not on the water, but "along the shore,"
and this appeared to the disciples like a threatening apparition (p. 88). The raising of Lazarus is a myth which perhaps
originated from the parable of Lazarus the beggar (p. 277).
The later legends in general were not satisfied with the unadorned simplicity'of the original narratives.  The additions
made by them   give us many an instructive insight into the
formation of miraculous narratives (p. 208).  So, e.g., with the
bloody sweat in Gethsemane, which is "an unmistakeable
exaggeration." 1
Thus Dr. Schenkel, in contradistinction to the former
attempts to explain away the miracles of Christ, which were
either simply rationalistic or purely mythical, combines all
methods-the natural, the mythical, the allegorical, the prosaic
or sentimental rationalistic-to suit his own convenience.2
Just as much violence is done to the discourses of Christ when
they do not fit into Schenkel's portrait of Him, even though
they may occur in the Gospel by St. Mark.  Thus it is with
the prophecies of Christ in regard to His second coming. These
were all meant by Jesus to be taken impersonally; but the
misapprehension of a later age converted them into predictions
of a personal advent (p. 104).  If we ask how such a misunderstanding was possible, we are told that Jesus spoke
figuratively, because His disciples could not yet raise their
minds to the idea of an impersonal advent; and these figures
of speech originated the idea that Christ would appear again
personally (p. 184 et s.).  The mere inner grounds against
such a view show it to be utterly impossible that Christ
should have predicted of Himself a personal and corporal
second advent in the splendour of heavenly glory, and accompanied by the angelic hosts for the purpose of erecting an
earthly kingdom.  He who came to found a spiritual kingdom
of truth, justice, and love, could not possibly have designated
1 The possibility of the formation of myths will be more closely examined in
the consideration of Strauss' book.
2 Cf. in Lecture VII. his theory as to the resurrection of Christ.




LECT. VI.]        SCHENKEL'S " SKETCH."             367
outward splendour, earthly power, and dazzling glory as the
last aim of it (p. 104).  We ask in amazement: Has the idea
never dawned upon Dr. Schenkel that "corporality is the end
of God's ways," and must be so? Does he not see that the
kingdom of truth and justice, which in this world is being
built up invisibly and in quiet concealment, must, in order to
celebrate its full triumph, one day appear visibly; and that
therefore Christ might point out bothl aspects of His kingdom
-its present inward nature, and its future outward and visible
incorporation? The deeper reason why Dr. Schenkel will not
acknowledge these discourses as genuine, is simply his aversion
to confess the Godhead of Him who is King of heaven and
earth, and the future Judge of the world; who, therefore, in
these discourses places His person far above all merely natural
humanity.
The clearest view of the insufficiency and futility of this
whole attempt to explain the life and person of Christ will
accrue if we consider its central point, and ask for an answer
to the question, how the man Jesus arrived at His Aessianic
consciousness? According to Schenkel, this came on Him
gradually against His will, and indeed, in the first instance,
against His better knowledge.   We have already heard
Schenkel tell us that Jesus was "not yet fully clear" as to
His Redeemer's vocation on the occasion of His first public
appearance at Nazareth. Even at the time that He preached
in Nazareth (Luke iv. 16 et s.) He "was not convinced that,
as a'prophet' in a new and higher sense, He was to be the
fulfiller of the still imperfect Old Testament prophecies of the
Messiah" (pp. 14, 40, et s.). " Still imperfect?"  Yes; because they aimed only at a restoration of Israel's ancient
power and dominion, and at the extension of an outward
theocracy over the whole earth, and that not only according
to the then condition of Messianic expectations, but also
according to the true meaning of the prophetical writings
themselves (?). For this reason Christ was at first " unwilling
to undertake the task assigned to the Messiah by the prophets"
(p. 9 7). He only wished to become the Saviour of His nation
-the founder of a new God-fearing community.  But how if
the nation expected its salvation and regeneration from none
else than the Messiah?  In this case He could not attain




368      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
His ends without laying claim to the Messiahship. He therefore "assumed the title and dignity of Messiah only in consequence of an unavoidable accommodation to the ideas and
expectations of His contemporaries and co-patriots" (p. 199),
because this was "the only means to attain the object of His
vocation." And so when Peter had, to the surprise of Christ
Himself, uttered the decisive "watchword," He could no
longer help Himself, but was obliged to " permit" the application of Messianic ideas to His work and person.
But how could He in this case assume to be the Fulfiller
of the Messianic prophecies, if they represented the Messiah
as acting quite differently to what He had, according to His
better knowledge, resolved to do? " He probably looked on
these promises as a series of figurative representations of the
future, which were indispensable to a spiritually backward
nation, and served the purpose of a bridge leading in later
times to a purer and deeper comprehension of God's selfrevelation to man" (p. 98).  So Christ endeavoured to purify
the Messianic prophecies from the spurious elements contained
in them, and thus to fulfil their true substance. Only from
this point of view could He suffer them to be applied to His
person.  True, He must not "for a moment conceal from
Himself, that every appeal to Old Testament passages would
be open to the gravest misunderstandings and wrong interpretations " (ibid.). But not only in this respect did Christ
put another interpretation on the Messianic prophecies; for
He soon became aware of the necessity that He should become
a suffering Messiah, "an idea which to the Jews was selfcontradictory, and unknown to the Old Testament" (notwithstanding Isaiah liii.?). This converted the difference between
His purer idea of the Messiah and the expectations of His
nation into a positive contradiction. Dr. Schenkel is forced
to confess that " the fulfilment of the Old Testament in His
person, was the non-fulfilment of all theocratic expectations.
There was no longer anything in common between the hopes
of His fellow-countrymen and His own conviction" (pp. 101,
102).
Here once more we ask in amazement: To whose Messianic
ideas did Christ " accommodate " Himself? Clearly neither to
those of the old prophets nor to those of the people.  And




LECT. YI.]        SCHENKEL'S " SKETCH."             369
what would be the object of allowing the people to apply to
Him the title of Messiah, if He did not fulfil their expectations? How could Christ conscientiously accept a title which
to His own mind conveyed a meaning precisely opposed to
that which the people attached to it,-a title which was not
the substance formerly concealed by spurious wrappings, but
simply the deceptive veil of a new idea, used by Him in order
to secure more easy access to the affections of the people? If
Jesus ought not, on account of false Messianic expectations,
to have appealed to the Old Testament with its imperfect
promises, how is it that He constantly does so, and represents
Himself as the Fulfiller of the old economy? (Cf. the Sermon
on the Mount, the discourse at Nazareth, etc.)  Were this
the case, Christ would have been guilty of an apparent acquiescence in the Old Testament, while neglecting to fulfil its
most important part, and secretly transmuting it into something entirely different.  And would not this have betrayed
a want of sincerity? or would not a serious lack of clearness,
firmness, and consistency be evident from the original reluctancy to become the Messiah, followed so soon by the resolution to claim this office? If Christ from the time of His
baptism and His sojourn in the wilderness clearly saw that
there was no way open to Him other than "an inner rupture
with the theocracy, and a preparation to fight for life or death,"
why could He not from the very beginning recognise that He
must needs take up a definite position as against the current
ideas about Messiah? Why should Peter have been the first
to give Him a clear view as to His future course?  How
piteously dependent on His disciple does the Master thus
appear, though Schenkel says, with truth, that "Jesus grew
rather from within than from without!"  And yet, on the
other hand, how blind are these disciples! They stamp their
Master as the Messiah, but they do not see that the fulfilment
of the Old Testament in His person was " the non-fulfilment
of all theocratic hopes," and continue to cleave to them with
their whole soul (Acts i. 8).
We see from these, and many other questions and contradictions, how ill Dr. Schenkel has succeeded in solving the enigma
of Christ's Ifessianic consciousness. Instead of bringing light into
the question, he has confused it on all hands. With unbounded
2A




370      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIIRIST. [LECT. VI.
caprice he treats the prophecies of the old Testament as intended to be fulfilled, but as incapable of fulfilment on account
of their imperfection.  He places Christ in a thoroughly false
position as regards both the ancient prophets, His nation, and
His disciples; thus heaping up one exegetical, psychological, or
historical riddle on another. But this always will and must be
the case when men will not listen to the plain voice of Scripture.
Of a truth, no! The Messianic consciousness of Christ was
not gradtally developed amid constant fluctuations.  It was
not after half His career was past that He at length forced
Himself to appear as the Messiah under the pressure of outward circumstances and human ideas. Fron0 the very bcginning
of His public mininstry He knezo that He was the Messiah, and
that from His Own deepest convictions, which long preceded
any confession by the disciples.  All the Gospels clearly
testify to this. They tell us that the Messianic consciousness
of Christ, of which there was a presentiment in the lad of
twelve, who lived in such close communion with His Father,
broke forth at the baptism in Jordan.  What a series of testimonies in word and deed to this effect do we find long before
the confession of Peter! The history of the temptation; the
first sermon in Nazareth, representing the Messianic passage
(Isa. lxi. 1) as fulfilled in Himself; His first miracle in Capernaum, where the demon, without any contradiction on His
part, declares Him to be the Holy One of God; the first
adoration on the part of the disciples (John i. 45), who rejoice
that they have found the Messiah; the Sermon on the Mount,
in which He lays claim to be the Fulfiller of the law and the
prophets (Matt. v.' 1), and attributes to Himself the power of
excluding from or admitting into the Messianic kingdom (vii.
21-23); the question of the Baptist, "Art Thou He that
should come? aye, even the designations, "Son of man" and
Bridegroom," which the most recent investigations have
proved to have a Messianic import; the series of parables in
which He represents the kingdom of God as come through
Him;-are not all these direct proofs of His distinct Messianic
consciousness?  We can very well understand why, for selfevident educational purposes, our Saviour endeavoured to rouse
the faith of the people by His doings and sayings, instead of
at once declaring, "I am the Messiah."   The confession of




LECT. VI.]          SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."                    371
Peter is pleasing to Him,-not so much because it contains the
acknowledgment of His Messiahship, as because it shows that
the same "hard sayings" which had offended the mass of the
people had only produced a firmer faith, and one born from
inward experience, in the hearts of His disciples.      This is
clearly shown by John vi. 66-69.
Even Keim, in his History of Jesuzs of Nazara, acknowledges that He was " convinced of His Messianic vocation from
His very first public appearance;" and in the face of this
strong conviction, as well as of many other facts, he is "forced
decidedly to reject the theories of Strauss and Schenkel, who
hold that the Messianic idea was not formed until later on." 1
It should never be forgotten "that thirty years of tranquil
development preceded this ministry of scarce three years, and
that He who made His appearance so late, and yet so decidedly,
must have formed a clear opinion as to Himself and His work;
and finally, let all objectors remember, that no transitional
turning-point in the life of Christ, no breaking forth of His Messianic consciousness, such as the Gospels describe at th G pels  ri  he opening
of His ministry, can be either pointed out or imagined later on."2
Another defect, extending not only to this portion, but to
the whole of Dr. Schenkel's Sketch, is the mania, which of late
years has become perfectly morbid, for discovering signs of
development in the character of Christ.  We have already seen
how this tendency sacrifices the Godhead of our Lord to His
manhood, and misinterprets or rejects as spurious all the passages which testify to the former. True, if we accept the false
axiom on which these attempts are based, there is something
justifiable in them. Every real man must develope; and we
confess the true manhood of Christ, as the Church in all ages
has done, though it may not always have had its due rights
conceded.   But the question is, during which period did this
1 Keim, Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, vol. i. pp. 453, 454. He goes on to
remark, "At first, it is true, Jesus concealed this dignity, and did not make
use of the terms,' Messiah,'' Christ,' or'Son of God,' until a later period.
Still there can be no doubt that from the very beginning He laid claim to the
highest authority. In His opening discourses He proclaims His Messiahship in
terms more or less distinct; but apart from these, all the Gospels agree that
during the first period of His ministry He bore the title of the' Son of man,'
which was confessedly and indubitably indicative of the Messianic dignity."
2 Cf. Beyschlag, Die Christologie des neuen Testaments, p. 37.




372       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
inner development of Christ take place? The anti-miraculous
accounts of His life invariably date it too late, since they suppose it to result from the appearance of John the Baptist and
the religious excitement thereby produced.     The religious
development of our Lord did not begin so late as this, for we
find traces of it even in the child Jesus; and when the
religious excitement broke out amongst His people, the purposes of Christ were nearly matured.   In other words, His
inner develoImnent essentially took place, not during the period
of His public ministryj, bunt during the quiet of tle preceding
thirty years. Whoever will consider the beginnings of Christ's
ministry, as related in the Gospels, with an unbiassed mind,
will at once be struck with the admirable certainty and firmness of His conduct, and will receive the impression that the
new Prophet was perfectly clear as to His redemptory vocation,
and His entire relation to the past, present, and future of Isracl,
the world, and the kingdom of God. Do not the purity, truth,
and holy chastity of His intellect and will, which shine with
such overpowering beauty in all His deeds and words,-do not
these demand of us the belief that He never could have presented
Himself to His own nation and to all mankind as their Redeemer, before, in virtue of His constant communion with God,
becoming perfectly certain that " the fulness of time was come?
After this epoch, we must contemplate His life not so much
under the aspect of inward development (though, of course, this
is not to be excluded), as under that of a moral testing of what
He had inwardly attained by means of a struggle with the
world and obedience to His heavenly Father even unto death.
In the main, it is not Christ but His contemporaries who develope.  As He offers them the fruits of His mature spiritual
growth in word and deed, so they are forced to take up a more
and more decided position towards this new divine Revelation;
and this necessitates a corresponding behaviour on His part.
Apart from  His Messianic consciousness, it is not easy to
give proofs of development in Christ analogous to that of
ordinary men during the time of His public ministry.   Sup1 Cf., e.g., Luke ix. 31 with xii. 59. Still there are distinct traces of a recognition that it was needful for Him to suffer even during the earliest period of
His ministry. Cf. Luke ix. 22, Matt. x. 16-25, v. 10, 11, Luke vii. 22 ff., and
ii. 34, 35.




LECT. VI.]             SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."                       373
pose, e.g., that we consider Him     as an orator.    Even the most
gifted  of human orators gradually attain the climax of their
eloquence; but so soon as Christ opens His lips, we hear the
perfect 2laster of divine speech. Do not the very first sentences
of the Sermon on the Mount show the absolute incomparableness of the most gracious yet most thrilling Preacher?           The
same is the case with His actions, from the outset so holy and
decided; with His look, which pierces the depth of the heart;
with His ever sure and correct judgment; with His perfect
wisdom in dealing with all men, combining a majesty which
must command respect with a condescension that should win
the hearts of all men.l
This mania for everywhere pointing out development in the
life of Christ, is often rightly punished by an inability to discover any true development whatever.          This is the case with
Schenkel.     In  his book everything      turns on the opposition
to the "orthodox" Pharisees.         This appears to be the mainspring which moves the drama of Christ's life, and brings about
1 On the grounds above enumerated, we take exception to the above-quoted
work of Keim's, Geschichte Jesu von Nazara (as well as to his previously published
lectures on "the human development of Christ," "the historical dignity of
Christ," and "the historical Christ"), because, in the constant endeavour -o
attain a historical comprehension of everything, he leaves no room for the
divinity of our Saviour. This book far excels the work of Schenkel in wellconceived delineations, in scientific value, in purity of language, in real historical perception, and especially in a warm respect for all that is holy, On
account, however, of its being written for the theological world, and not for the
public at large, we have not taken it into consideration above. Keim's earlier
writings we cannot reckon directly amongst the number of the anti-miraculous
accounts of the life of Christ, especially as he emphatically defends the bodily
resurrection of our Lord. Still, all these writings are closely allied to the
rationalistic and mythical accounts; for Keim considers Christ to be only a man,
although at the same time he calls Him a "'mystery," and acknowledges that
He applied to Himself " overwhelming names and titles, before which all human
categories seem to sink into silence " (Historical Dignity, pp. 26 and 29). We
would just devote a few words to one aspect of these writings.
According to Keim, Jesus "resolved" to be the Messiah.  "Amidst conflicts
and struggles, there was developed the wondrous world-transforming, primary
thought of His life, to be the Son of God, and as such the Saviour of the world.
Yes, this was the deed of His life, to offer Himself to the world as the true
Messiah sent by God; yea, as the obedient Son of God Himself." " The greatest
spiritual acquisition of His life was His resoiution to be the Messiah" (Historical
Christ, 3d ed. pp. 27, 76, et s.; cf. Hist. Dignity, pp. 12 et s.; Jesu von Naz.,
pp. 543 et s.). Granted the premise that Jesus was a mere man, there is no
escaping the conclusion that His Messiahship was a free inward resolve, whether




374        MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHILIST. [LECT. VI.
one important decision after another.       But according to Dr.
Schenkel, Christ is from the very commencement quite decided
as to His behaviour towards the Pharisees; as early as His baptism, He sees that "they are possessed of no specific for the
regeneration of their nation."     In the wilderness He sees that
there is no way open to Him       but to "declare enmity against
the Pharisees, and wage war to the knife."        He " purposely"
makes His disciples " break the Sabbath."        In the Sermon on
the Mount He abjures "all connection with the Jewish hierarchy and    theocracy," etc. etc.    But whence, then, is any
further " development" to proceed?      How can Schenkel afterwards say that " now the breach was inevitable," that Jesus
was now "assuming        the offensive," since all this had taken
place from the very beginning?
True, there is one sacrifice by means of which we may purchase a purely human development in the life of Christ,-we
mean the surrender of His sinlessness, as in Ienan's work.
This, however, to his honour be it said, is studiously avoided
it resulted from "the process of a lifetime" (ubi sup.) or was first formed at
the baptism in Jordan, up to which Jesus " had by no means attained to a certainty as to His vocation, or a conviction of His Messiahship " (Jesu von Naz.,
p. 543). But how could Christ, if He were a mere man, present Himself to the
people as the " God-sent, true Messiah;" whereas the true Messiah, i.e. He who
was promised in the Old Testament, was to be no mere man, but " the Branch of
the Lord," whose "goings out are from everlasting to everlasting"? We have
here a plain dilemma. Either Jesus was the true Messiah, and that according
to the preparation and foreknowledge of God, in which case He had no need to
" resolve " to be so, but only to acknowledge and fulfl the task asszed to Him
by God; or He was nothing of the kind, in which case no resolve, were it never so
heroic, could make Him Messiah,-at most it could but enable Him to play the
part. Is it, indeed, in any way possible to resolve to be one thing or another?
But even though this might be meant in the sense of becoming (or voluntarily
undertaking the office of) Messiah, we must remember that such a "becoming"
is, according to Scripture, only possible in consequence of a divinely-granted
" Being," i.e. the divine Sonship, which cannot be dependent on the good
pleasure of a man. A resolution cannot originate a new existence; it can only
carry out the work belonging to that existence. True it is that the whole of
Christ's work for our redemption, from His first appearance to the acceptance of
the cup of suffering, was voluntary, and took place amid unceasing conflicts
and assaults. Indeed, we believe that the free resolve of Christ extended still
farther than Keim would allow,-even His coming into the world was subject
to it. Thus His "resolution to be the Messiah" was made, not in this world,
at Jordan, but in a pre-existent life. But when He had once appeared in the
flesh, it no longer depended upon His free will whether to be the Messiah or
not; He could not act otherwise, according to the necessity of His nature. As,
in the actions of God, liberty and necessity coalesce in a highe? unity, so, too,




LECT. VI.]            SCHENKEL'S "SKETCI."                      375
by Dr. Schenkel as far as may be.          Nevertheless, this same
mania fbr development compels even him         every now and then
to place the moral dignity of Christ in a dubious light.    Accordingly, in such passages he generally speaks with an indecision
and vagueness which must of itself arouse suspicion.        He does
not look upon the baptism     of Christ as His Messianic consecration, but as a ceremonial purification. Jesus being seized
by the force of the great religious and moral movement of the
people, " places Himself in their ranks " without pride. or selfrighteoushess, but yet without "classing         Himself amongst
common sinners" (pp. 33, 35).         He classed Himself "with
the better portion of the people." Thus He prayed with His
disciples: " Forgive us our debts " (p. 29), as if our Lord had
not put this prayer into the mouths of His disciples, and thus
spoken, placing Himself in their position; " After this manner,
therefore, pray ye " (Matt. vi.. 9); "When ye pray, say " (Luke
xi. 2).  Further, Christ allows Himself to be proclaimed as the
Messiah for the sake of the people, and in order to attain His
in the work of Christ we may not separate huzman liberty from divine necessity.
The latter, and, in fact, the entire divine aspect of Christ's redeeming work clecrly
does not receive its due importance, if we accept the theory of a' resolution to be
Messiah and Son of God." However delicate may be the historical and psycholo
gical analysis by means of which Keim seeks to explain to us this process, and
however much moral praise he may bestow on "thd noble achievement of the
Messianic resolve" (Hist. Dign. pp. 12 et. s.), nevertheless his whole theory
detracts far too seriously from the divine preparation and execution of the redemption. Although Keim declares that divine Providence so ordered circumstances
to work together that this resolve was suggested to our Lord, yet surely it would
never have been consonant with the almighty rule of divine love and mercy to
trust the most important turning-point in the history of mankind to the subjective decision of any mere human being, were he never so excellent. Where there
is a world to be renewed, God is far more actively present than it would appear
from Keim's theory. Keim himself seems to feel this, for his historical conscience compels him presently to confess that " the fibres of the spiritual process
taking place in the Baptist and in Jesus did not run merely through the circuit
of an earthly consciousness; they were connected with a higher world. They
/'ould not have dared to believe what they did, without being sure of the divine
will. All their discourses, especially those of Jesus, constantly recur to this
divine Counsellor and Helper. Our historical conscience forces us to confess
that divine dispensations and instructions were introduced into the world on the
banks of Jordan, and that the influence of the divine government must have
accompanied the greatest deed and the greatest turning-point in the history of
man" (Jesu von Naz., p. 549). If Keim would but trace out those fibres, con.
necting with a higher world One "before whom all human categories sink into
silence," surely he would see in Him, no longer a mere man, but the only.
begotten Son of God.




376        MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI
object. What shall we say to this? If Christ really were
" He that should come," then the title of Messiah ought nol,to have been repugnant to His feelings, notwithstanding an)
popular fallacies as to the idea; but if He was not that pro.
mised One, it was wrong in Him to let Himself be proclaimed
as such without a standing protest.      And the same with His
healing works.    If they were not miraculous, and yet Chrisl
saw that they were held to be so, He ought to have loudly
witnessed to the contrary; otherwise His sincerity would b(
open to suspicion.
Furthermore, Christ was liable to err; He made a mistake
in His estimate of Judas, although this mistake         proceeded
from  the purest motives (p. 194).       He had often felt the
allurements of temptation, and was well acquainted with the
sinful inward emotions of flesh and blood (pp. 150, 207)
For "only a man who has to struggle with anger can call himself'meek,' and only a man who has been tempted by pride
can call himself'humble'" (p. 122)!      Therefore He rejected
the title " good" when applied to Himself, and this rejectior
" is a most valid testimony to His deep and earnest convictior
that He was not in any way entitled to this attribute" (pp
140-150).1     Keeping in mind His own natural weakness, He
judged the moral corruption of men much more mildly thai
does the dogmatic theology of any age; indeed the great fail.
This passage, so fondly quoted by all deniers of the Godhead of Christ, it
differently given in the first Gospel and in the two following. In Matt. xix
16 ff., the true reading is not "Good Master," but simply "Master;" an(
further on, not "Why callest thou me good?" but "Why askest thou mn
about that which is good? none is good, save One," etc.,-i.e. God is the onln
source of goodness; and if thou wilt attain to Him as goodness in unity, thoi
must first be in earnest in keeping His commandments as goodness in multipli
city. This passage, therefore, does not apply to the person of Christ, an
cannot be used by Schenkel. The two other Synoptics, however, have th,
reading to which Schenkel appeals (Mark x. 17 et s.; Luke xviii. 18 et s.); stil
they do not bear out his views. They show, in the first place, that our Lore
wished to humble the questioner who used the word "good" so lightly, an
who had too high an opinion of himself, by reminding him what true goodnes
was. Second, we see that Jesus, who was still being made "perfect throug]
sufferings" (Heb. ii. 10), points out to the scribe the absolute meaning of th
predicate "good," which He reserves for His Father only, since He Himself i
still in the midst of His humiliation. But Christ could never have mean
"that He was not in any way entitled to this attribute," else how could H
have invited one who was inquiring after perfection to follow Him? (Ver. 21.)




LECT. VI.]            SCHENKEL'S "SKETCH."                    377
ing of mankind in general, He found to be merely their natural
weakness (208 et.s.).
These are some of the shadows which Dr. Schenkel cannot
help introducing into his Sketch of Christ's Character, because
the denial of our Saviour's Godhead ever impels men to deny
His sinlessness.   But if this latter be denied, or only made
uncertain, it follows of necessity that the moral corruption
of mankind, as a whole, will appear in a more favourable
light as mere "natural weakness."       If the divine dignity of
Christ be lost sight of, our own human nature will be unduly exalted.    The school of Arius mostly lies hard by that
of Pelagius.
But how can one who no longer thoroughly acknowledges
the sinlessness of Christ, still see in Him the " Saviour" and
"Redeemer"?      True, Schenkel remarks that those who hold
his views are perfectly justified in calling Jesus the
"Redeemer," because He "released mankind from           the errors
of Judaism    and heathenism."     Against this evasion    Strauss
well remarks: "When was a man ever called'Redeemer'
because he released those who lived with and after him       fiom
certain errors?  This expression proceeds from the idea of the
sin-offering; it could never have resulted from Schenkel's
rationalistic theory, and if he employs it notwithstanding,
he is guilty of double-dealing in the use of words.1   Most true 
If Jesus was in truth the Redeemer, He could only be so in
virtue of His sacrifice for the sin of humanity; but this He
could only present if He were perfectly sinless. On the other
hand, if we     consider Schenkel's persistent, though      futile,
endeavour to represent Christ as sinless, th6 question at once
arises, How could He be sinless if He were a mere man?      Why
should absolutely no one else have been so? We here stand
1 Die Halben u. die Ganzen, pp. 48, 49. This is not the only instance in
which Schenkel has done so. E.g., in speaking of the satisfaction of God's
justice through the sacrifice of love, he says that reconciliation with God consists in the recognition of His forgiving love, ind that the follower of Jesus
shows himself to be worthy of this love by 3acrificing himself (pp. 88, 114, 198
et s., 218 et s.); and again (in the Allgemeine Kirchl. Zeitschrift, vol. vi., part
4, p. 234), that Christ "revealed the sternal essence of the Godhead, Its holy
love, by means of the greatest sacrifice recorded in history." Here again, under
cover of the term "sacrifice," he smuggles in 1 conception luite foreign to that
of the Scripturcs,-a conception in which the central truth of the biblical doctrine,
the vicarious atonement of Christ, is quite ignored.




378     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.   [LECT. VI.
before the simple, incontrovertible conclusion, that if Jesus
was a mere man, He was subjected to all the limitations of
human nature and development, and by universal analogy
could not have been sinless; if He was not sinless, He was
not- fitted to be the Redeemer of the world; if He was not
fitted to be the Redeemer, He cannot have been or become
such.  But now, if He was not the Redeemer, in the name of
fairness, let our opponents be open and honourable enough to
drop the title since they have repudiated the true idea, instead
of continuing to adulterate biblical conceptions, by using the
same words while substituting an utterly different meaning!
The same remarks apply to other predicates which Schenkel
in his Sketch applies to Christ.  If Jesus was a mere man,
how could He be the "great Pattern" for all ages, or the
"Light of the world "?  In this case, however prominent, He
could not be more than one amongst others, and not unique for
all ages.  If He was entirely borne along by the current of
human development, He might " still mark a great epoch in
our history, but not its climax and culminating point," 1 as
Strauss has clearly shown.
Finally, we ask, how can any man with so doubtful a view
of Christ's moral dignity give us any conception of His unique
religious consciousness,-that clear unsullied mirror of the purest
union and communion with God, into which the astonished
world has been gazing for eighteen centuries, but never without feeling how great the contrast between itself and Hini?
What other key have we to the explanation of this phenomenon,
than the belief that in Christ there lived an original higher
consciousness, which sprang from His unique relation to God,
and was continually strengthened by perfect and sinless
obedience to His Father?
This is the most important element (to speak figuratively) of
that sediment which no critical solution of the life of Christ has
ever yet been able to dissolve, and which will baffle all such efforts
to the end of time.  The fundamental hypothesis of Schenkel's
whole sketch-that Jesus was a mere man-is here seen to
be false, because it will not suffice to explain the facts of
history; above all, it leaves in darkness the central feature of
Christ's character, His peculiar consciousness.
I Uhlhorn, ubi supra, p. 58. The details of Strauss' argument, see below.




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           379
Before closing this notice of Dr. Schenkel's work, we cannot
help alluding to one feature of it, which is particularly repulsive,-we mean the ultra-radical pcrty spirit so glaringly
manifested in its intemperate language and in its whole
tendency. This is painfully evident to the German reader on
nearly every page; but those of our English readers who wish
to verify our remarks, we would refer to such passages as pp.
33, 41, 44, 58 et s., 76, 77, 92, 202, 234.  All these and
many others give this book the character of a violent party
attack on all orthodox Christian belief and Church government,-an attack which invidiously imports descriptions and
even epithets of ecclesiastical phenomena from the present
day into the history of the past, thus taking away well-nigh
all its value as a historical work.  We cannot wonder that
these defects, combined with its undecided, semi-rationalistic,
semi-mythical character, have procured for the book a condemnation from critics of well-nigh all shades; 1 and we may
safely predict, that ere long its influence will have died
away.
These remarks do not apply to the book which it is now
our turn to consider,-a book which is to a considerable extent
the pattern of Dr. Schenkel's work, but which greatly excels
it in strictness of logic and delicacy of delineation,-we mean
lTe Life of Christ by Strauss.  The name of David Friedrich Strauss brings us to the mythical theory, and, as this is
one of the chief defences of modern scepticism, we must devote
a little more time to it than to the others.
III.-STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."
First of all, let us see what was the origin of this standpoint.
Long before Strauss, men had begun to compare heathen
mythologies with biblical narratives, and to conjecture that
there might be some truths contained in the mythological
fables, and some fables in the biblical history.  Schelling
discovered that all primitive history, proceeding from a time
when writing was as yet unknown, especially if it contain
Cf. Luthardt, Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu, p. 46; and
Uhlhorn, ubi sup., p. 67.




380     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.   [LECT. VI.
miraculous elements, must be a myth, i.e. a legend or fiction.
It was especially De Wette who proceeded to apply this
principle to the Old Testament, and who promulgated the
genera] rule, that where any record relates inconceivable things
in good faith, it is to be considered not as historical, but as
mythical. Others soon began by the light of this maxim to
investigate New Testament history, impelled, too, by newlyarisen critical doubts as to the genuineness of the Gospels.
The inward motive of these researches was the rationalistic
axiom  that the miraculous is impossible.  This was accompanied by the influence of recent philosophy, which dissolved
the person of our Lord into a universal principle, and evaporated His incarnation, death, and resurrection into a number of
universal, eternal, and spiritual truths.  Thus, in their subjective idealistic view of the world, these systems calmly sail
away over all historical testimonies, and regard the biblical
history as a sacred mythology sprung from active religious
fancy.
This is the view represented by Grohmann, who wrote in
1799 on " Revelation and Mythology."    He maintains that
the ideas current among the Jews had long beforehand settled
what Christ, i.e. the Messiah, was to do.  But Jesus Christ,
as a historical individual, did not correspond to the expectations of the Jews. Not even that, in which all accounts
agree, is a matter of fact; the people's contributions formed
a popular idea of His life, and from this popular idea His
history was made.  Here we have the whole theory of Strauss
and his followers enunciated thirty-six years before the first
edition of Strauss' Life of Christ appeared.
The principle of these critics is, that the Gospels in the main
consist of unintentional fictions as to the person of Christ, produced by the imagination of the first Christian churches, mostly
in accordance with former Jewish predictions and expectations
of the 2Vessiah.  Christ Himself, they say, gave people the
impression of His Messiahship through the power of His word
and spirit only, without yielding to their craving for miracles.
And thus the apostles and the primitive Church regarded and
preached Him. It was not until His life lay far behind them
that the following generations, from a want of historical feeling, though on the whole in good faith, began involuntarily to




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           38s
form legends, relating such outward wonders as were expected'
of Messiah, and to apply them to Christ.  These legends were
received without suspicion by our evangelists, who were men
of the second century, and by them incorporated in the
gospel narrative.
We now    see the distinction between the principle of
Rationalism  and that of Mythicism.    The former left a
historical remainder after eliminating the miraculous element
from the gospel narratives.  This remainder is, for the most
part, given up by the mythical treatment, and the Gospels are
considered as productions of the religious imagination, clothing
religious ideas in a quasi-historical, though really legendary
garb.  Of course, a certain amount of original fact is conceded
even by this theory, and in this respect there is only a
difference of degree between it and Rationalism, since its
negations go a step further.  Both agree entirely as regards
the denial of the miraculous.  But the mythical theory does
not labour to give a natural explanation of the miracles.  It
acknowledges that no straightforward exposition can remove
them from the gospel history, because the New Testament
writers themselves believed in them; therefore it simply
relegates them to the realm  of legend; as Strauss1 puts it:
"We leave the writers in undisturbed enjoyment of their
miracles; but we ourselves regard them as mere myths."
The first edition of Strauss' Life of Christ appeared in
1835 in 2 vols., and was written for the learned world.  Its
novelty consisted in the universal application of the mythical
principle to the whole gospel history, and not merely the
miracles of Christ, thus giving the finishing stroke to this
theory by carrying it out to its last consequences.
We will now follow Strauss in his explanation of the origin
of these myths.   Without further inquiry, he states that
during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberias certain lfessianic
expectaticns were rife amongst the people of Israel, who
imagined that their Messiah would be a political liberator, and
expected Him to perform still greater miracles than those
related in the Old Testament. And what happened? In the
reign of Tiberias there appeared an ascetic named John, who
preached repentance, and baptized those who professed it
l Leben Jesu, edition of 1864, p. 146; cf. p. 23.




382      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.  [I,ECT. VL
(sec. 45).  Amongst his disciples there was a Galilean Jew,
named Jesus, who was baptized amongst the rest (sec. 49);
and when John had been put into prison, this man continued
and developed his xlork. He conceived the idea of effecting
a moral regeneration of the people by means of his teaching,
and hoped for a supernatural interference on the part of God,
by means of which the old kingdom of David should be again
restored (i. 520).  This perfectly corresponded to the longcherished Messianic ideas of the people (p. 521), and thus it
occurred to his followers, that he himself was probably the
Messiah. At first he was alarmed at this idea (p. 497), but
he gradually raised himself to believe it (p. 503).  The hatred
of the ruling priestly party, however, brought him to the
cross.
This is, in short, the historical account of the life of Christ,
as Strauss gives it in his book of 1835.  This was the nucleus
which was gradually encrusted by the present mass of legends
and fictions in the following manner. After the first shock of
Christ's death had passed away, the disciples felt the psychological need of reconciling the contradiction between the last
fate of their master and their former Messianic hopes.  On
searching in the Old Testament, they found many passages
which spoke of servants of God who were tormented to death,
and these, by dint of their bad exegesis, they applied to the
sufferings of Messiah.  Thus the belief gained ground in them,
that Jesus was fore-ordained to suffer and die in this very
capacity of Messiah/; they were enabled to retain their former
opinion of him, and " the shamefully killed Christ was not
lost, but left to them " (ii. p. 638).  Christ, according to their
idea, had now entered into his glory.  "But how could he
neglect to send thence a message to his followers?  How well
can we conceive that in the case of certain individuals, and
especially of women, these feelings should have been subjectively
excited so as to produce real visions; or, on the other hand, in
the case of whole assemblies, that some visible or audible
object, perchance the aspect of an unknown person, should
produce the impression of an appearance of Christ!"  Thus
originated the legend of Christ's resqrrection.
This war the impulse for the formation of further myths.
Since the disciples preached that Christ had risen from the




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           383
dead, the Jews asked whether he had done any nmiraccles, as
this was a necessary attribute of the Messiah. The more the
disciples became convinced of this necessity, the more they
made themselves believe that Jesus must have performed
miracles, only they could not have seen them rightly.  And
so, in their enthusiastic fancy, without intending to deceive,
they began to adorn the simple picture of Christ with a rich
garland of miraculous tales, especially applying to him all the
characteristics of the Messiah who was predicted and hoped
for, till at length the real history was entirely covered, and, in
fact, destroyed by these "parasitic plants " (second edit., p. 621).
Many sayings of Christ were converted into miracles.  "There
was no rest for a word or a figure of speech in primitive
Christian tradition, until, if possible, it had been developed
into the story of a miracle " (p. 514).  When Jesus said that
he would make his disciples fishers of men, tradition transformed this into the miraculous draught of fishes (sec. 70
et ss.).  When he declared that an unfruitful tree should be
cut down, this became in course of tradition the story of the
withered fig-tree (sec. 104).  Especially did this restlessly
inventive tradition apply all the miraculous features which
could be discovered in L2oses and the prophets in a magnified
form to the life of Christ. Because the hand of Moses and
likewise his sister Miriam had been leprous and become clean
again, and because Elisha had healed a leper, therefore Christ
must also have healed lepers (ii. 52).  Because Moses changed
water into blood, Christ must improve it into wine (i. 220).
Because the former fed the people with manna in the wilderness, Jesus must have fed the people in the wilderness too;
and because Elisha fed one hundred people with twenty
loaves (1 Kings iv. 42-44), the proportion must be enhanced
in the case of Christ, and hence five loaves for five thousand
people (ii. 205). Because Elisha made one man see, and
many others blind (2 Kings vi.), it was thought probable that
Christ should have healed the blind (ii. 2). Because Elisha
healed Naaman without being present at his washing, it was
necessary that the Messiah should not do less (ii. 111 et
ss.): hence the legends about the centurion of Capernaum,
and the Syro-Phcenician woman, both of them cures effected
at a distance.  The Jews believed in a co-operation of the




384     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
Holy Ghost in the begetting of important men, and the first
Christians literally interpreted Psalm ii. 7: "Thou art my
Son: this day have I begotten Thee," as well as a number of
passages in Isaiah: hence the myth that Christ was the Son
of God, supernaturally conceived without sin.  This is very
similar to the belief of the heathen, that their great men were
sons of the gods; as, too, their legends relate miraculous stories
about the birth of Romulus, Hercules, and other of their
heroes.
When the analogies of Jewish tradition are insufficient,
such instances from heathen mythology are often appealed to.
Thus, e.g., to explain the darkening of the sun at the death of
Christ, Strauss says: " This was in fashion then; did not the
sun do the same, in the Roman legend, when Caesar was murdered, and before Augustus died?" (p. 587.)
In this manner Strauss goes through every feature of the
life of Christ, and explains them one after another as the products of tradition, which was taken either from Old Testament
miracles by combining their different traits, or from Messianic
hopes then current, or from analogous heathen legends.  All
these myths, however, are supposed to have been formed
unconsciously and involuntarily.  But we see at once that
Strauss must presuppose a great deal of reflective mental action
in the formation of each single myth, and hence that this
could only take place intentionally; for this reason Strauss of
late years has spoken more of " invention with a purpose "
(Te cenzerfindtcng). From the rich material of these legends,
which were often very different in different places, our four
Gospels were composed, not, however, by the apostles, but in
the second century.
So much for the principles and the method of Strauss' Life
of Christ, a work which doubtless owes its world-wide fame
in great measure to its polished style and aesthetic finish.
When this work appeared in 1835, it seemed as though
the last balance had been struck in the criticism of the gospel
history, and the result was-bankruptcy. An electric shock
vibrated through the whole German theology. The theological
world had not been in such excitement since the days of the
Wolfenbiittel Fracgments.  Soon, however, the most notable
divines came forward against Strauss, among them  Steudel,




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."          385
Tholuck, Neander, Ullmann, Dorner, and Ebrard; whilst others,
such as Weisse, Gfrirer, Bruno Baur, endeavoured to carry
out the mythical hypothesis in their own way.  For a time,
Strauss defended himself; but after some years he seemed to
have spoken his last word, and the controversy was apparently
settled. Ullmann, especially, had in his mild but clear way
exposed Strauss' weak points.
Buis in 1864 the book once more appeared; this time, however, with a new address: "For the German People."I   The
times were changed. The principle of publicity had obtained
more and more in every department. The public at large was
beginning to demand an insight into the doings of the learned
world.  Formerly Strauss might boast, " Did I try to deprive
the people of their faith by means of a popular book?" 2 Now,
on the contrary, he thought himself justified in doing this.
And why?   "Since the great majority of theologians will not
hear us, we must speak to the people " (Preface, p. xii). Here,
then, he must speak more openly, and we are obliged to him
for doing so.
Hc does not for a moment leave us in doubt as to the
fundamental tendency of this new edition.  "If we wish," says
he, "to make progress in religious matters, then those theologians who stand above the prejudices and interests of the
profession must go hand in hand with the thinking laymen
in the Church. As soon as ever the best among the people
have made progress enough to refuse what the clergy still for
the most part offer them, these latter will think better of
it.  When Christianity has ceased to be miraculous, they
will cease to be the miracle-men which they have hitherto
set themselves up for.  They will no longer be able to pronounce blessings, but only to impart instruction; but it is
well known that the latter of these occupations is as difficult
and thankless as the former is easy and profitable" (p. xii).
Therefore, "a pressure must be brought to bear on them by
public opinion.  But (and this is the only italicised sentence
in the whole book) zhoever wishes to do away with parsons
in the chtrch, must first do away witth e miracles in religion"
(p. xix).
1 We quote from the first edition of 1864.' Streitschri/t gegen Steudel, i. p. 20.
2.B




3S6    IMODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
So this work, also, is but the means to a demagogue's ends,
though not quite in the same manner as that of Schenkel.
"Our ultimate aim is not to.ascertain the history of the past,
but rather to help the human spirit in future to liberate itself
from an oppressive yoke of belief" (p. xiv). Strauss' aim is "not
in the past, but in'the future" (p. xv).  He lays the axe at
the root of the miraculous New Testament -history, in order
that, when this is done away with, the parsons may be
abolished too.  It is his wish to establish a free Church
commonwealth, and to dissolve the different confessions into
one great religion of humanity. We scarcely need to point
out that this is only the effect of his old grudge against the
theologians, who formerly, by their unanimous verdict against
him, spoilt his career, and reduced him to the occupation of a
literary man (cf. p. xiii). We see that this grudge has rather
increased than decreased from the select names, such as " fieldmice," "rabble," " vermin," which he bestows upon us biblical
theologians (p. 162).  Moreover, he declares that it is not
worth his while " to fight with such a rabble" as the recent
apologists, because " the conservative theology of the present
day is wearying itself with the strangest contortions and the
most venturesome caprioles," and "its paper battlements do
not deserve a real siege;" but yet he promises, " for the sake of
the joke, not entirely to give up doing so."  In all this, however, he forgets that haughty contempt for the opponents is
everywhere the worst way to victory.
Attacks of this kind are probably intended as a piquant.kind of spice to make the book more popular.     But for
all this, it is not popular. There will be but few readers
who are able to peruse it without great omissions. Notwithstanding his promise to leave out learned details (p. xiii),
Strauss' book still contains a mass of these details, which are
fatiguing enough to go into.  Strauss does not possess the
same art of writing for the people as his French colleague.
He gives too much and too little; too much for the people,
even those who are educated, and too little for the professional
theologian. 
Moreover, the arrangement of the matter in this second
edition is far too prolix to be interesting, going as it does
twice through the whole subject.  In the first edition, Strauss,




LECT. VI.]         STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."                387
after dissolving the life of Christ into a series of myths, merely
gave a few positive hints as to what remained of Christianity
according to his view; in the second edition, he begins with a
positive account of the probable historical nucleus of the life
of Christ.   Thus the first part contains "a historical sketch of
the life of Christ," and the second part, "origin and development of the mythical history of Christ;" first the tree, and
then the creepers.   But since both are followed out from end
to end, there are of necessity many repetitions and constant
references backwards and forwards, whilst numerous portions
which belong together are separated.
The first part rests upon the axiom, that " we now know for
certain at least what Jesus was not and did not do, viz. nothing
superhuman nor supernatural.       We shall thus probably be
enabled to follow out the hints given in the Gospels as to his
natural and human characteristics far enough to obtain an
approximately correct outline of what he was and what he
wanted" (p. 160 et s.).    Strauss leaves as historical only what
is in accordance with the course of nature at the present day,
what would seem     necessarily to result from   the relations of
Jewish and Gentile humanity at that time, and that in which
all the evangelists strictly agree.  All else is rejected, or at
least impugned.    Thus negations form    the chief element even
of this "positive " part.   It can easily be imagined how little
remains that is historical; much the same as in the former
edition.  Jesus, the son of a carpenter, was born in Nazareth,
and not in Bethlehem, whither Luke transports him by means
of "special machinery." 1     "He was induced       by what he
I Pp. 323, 335, et ss.,-meaning, of course, the taxation in Luke ii. 1 et ss. It
was an absolute necessity for the son of David somehow to be born in Bethlehem.
As the writer of St. Luke's Gospel " was cudgelling his brains for an expedient
which should bring the parents of Christ to Bethlehem, in order that he might
be born there, this taxation occurred to him " (p. 336). But in adding, "When
Cyrenius (i.e. Quirinus) was governor of Syria," he made a blunder of some six
or seven years, for Quirinus did not become proconsul till so many years later
on; and thus the unhistorical character of his narrative is betrayed. Strauss
assures us that since 1835 he has "corrected and supplemented his results, according to the fruits of further investigations both by himself and by others " (p.
xiii).  Does he, then, know nothing of the fact that the investigations made
as to this imperial taxation under Augustus have proved that Quirinus was
twice proconsul? As early as 1854, Dr. Zumpt (in his work Commentationum
epigraphic. ad antiquit. Rom. pertinentiumr, vol. ii.) showed from profane
sources that Quirinus was proconsul in Syria not only from the year 6 A.D., but




388       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.         [LECT. VI.
heard of the Baptist to resort to Jordan, for he, too, was dissatisfied with the existing religious institutions" (p. 195); and
he probably remained for some time amongst the followers of
John. The silence of the Gospels is no proof against this (!),
since they sought to avoid even a transitory subordination of
Christ to the Baptist for dogmatic reasons.       " Both of them
aimed at the moral elevation of their people, and at the creation of a people's church, which should be worthy to receive
the coming Messiah in its midst" (p. 196).         John, however,
"chiefly employed sharp denunciation and threats of divine
judgment," whilst Jesus used only love.         "For the highest
religious sentiment which existed in his consciousness was
that love which embraces all, and overcomes evil itself only
with good, and this he transferred to God as the chief attribute
of His Being " (p. 207).     Hence His precepts in the Sermon
on the Mount respecting tolerance, love to brethren and to
enemies.    "If any saying of the New       Testament proceeded
from  the mouth of Christ, assuredly Matt. v. 45 did so ('He
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,' etc.).
This is a fundamental trait in the piety of Christ: he felt and
conceived his heavenly Father as indiscriminate Goodness"
(p. 206).   Inasmuch as Christ, in this temper of humane love,
felt Himself to be united with His heavenly Father, all His
happiness sprang therefrom.      "By developing in himself this
cheerful frame of soul, at peace with God and in love with all
men as brothers, Christ had realized the prophetic ideal of the
also once before, from the year 4 B.c. (It is well known that the precise year
of our Lord's birth is uncertain; probably it is really some years earlier than our
account makes it.) The last work of Zumpt (das Geburtsjahr Christi; geschichtl.
chronolog. Untersuchungen, 1869) is a brilliant testimony to his learning, and
arrives at the same conclusion as historically indubitable (pp. 43, 71). St.
Luke himself only says that Christ was born at the time of that taxation, which
was thefirst under Quirinus, in contradistinction to other similar ones; and he
gives us the occasion of it, which consisted in an imperial edict issued long
before. "The record of Lute gains full historical probability from the fact that
the second taxation (of which Josephus tells) applied only to property, which
according to Jewish law should necessarily be completed by a taxation of persons
(or poll-tax), and that no fitter time can be fixed upon for this than the first
proconsulate of Quirinus." The murder of the innocents at Bethlehem is also
historical (p. 227 ff.). In Luke iii. 1, "the fifteenth year of Tiberius" is reckoned
from his appointment to the co-regency of the provinces and armies, as was
often done. "Thus all contradictions between the data of St. Luke and other
writers are removed."




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           389
new covenant, with the law of God written in the heart; he
had received the Deity into his will, and therefore for him
the Deity had descended from Its eternal throne. This cheerful and unbroken spirit, acting out of the gladness and joy of
a beautiful soul, we may call the Hellenic element in Christ.
The pure spirituality and strict morality of his own heart's
impulses, and of his idea of God, was a legacy of the Jewish
national spirit; the result of his bringing up in the law, and
his education in the prophets" (pp. 207, 208).
Strauss rightly rejects the opinion that Jesus merely accommodated Himself to the Messianic idea of the Jews.   "In
this case there can be no question of accommodation or of
playing a part; in such a person every inch must have been
conviction."  For this reason he approves of Schleiermacher's
saying, that " Christ must have been convinced from the depths
of his inward consciousness that no one else but he was
referred to in the Messianic prophecies contained in the sacred
writings of his people" (p. 229).  But Christ never represented himself to be the son of God in a unique superhuman
sense.1 In contradistinction to the Messiah as Son of God,
Christ especially loved to call himself the son of man, a term
which pointed to his natural humanity (p. 228).  The fourth
Gospel contains the fewest genuine traces of the religious consciousness of Christ.  For "no man with a sound head and
heart, whoever he were, could have spoken of himself in the
way that does the Jesus of this Gospel" (p. 201).   It is,
however, certain that Christ connected the epoch of the world's
consummation with a miraculous change to be produced by
God, and that He spoke of His second coming in glory to
judge the world. But in this respect "he appears to us not
only as an enthusiast, but as guilty of undue self-exaltation"
(pp. 241, 242).
As for mniracles, not only did Christ never perform any, but
neither did He ever say that He had. In Matt. xi. 5 only
the spiritually blind and lame, etc. are referred to (p. 265;
and yet even Strauss confesses that "the works of Christ,"
ver. 2, refer to His miracles).  "However, it was little use
for Jesus to refuse to do corporal miracles: according to the
idea of his contemporaries and co-patriots, he must needs per1 Cf. our refutation of this statement in Lect. IV. pp. 245-251.




390      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
form them nolens volens."  As a prophet, He was expected to
possess miraculous power.   When sufferers everywhere (?)
tried to touch His garments, because they expected healing
from Him, "it would have been strange if there had not been
some cases of real cure or momentary alleviation, resulting
from  the intense impression, partly sensuous and   partly
spiritual, on an excited imagination; and these cures were: of
course, ascribed to the miraculous power of Christ" (p. 226)..
Cures of this kind, through excitement of the imagination,
were especially possible in the case of a sickness " which itselt
greatly depended on the imagination, and which was fashionable amongst the Jews at that time, viz. demoniacal possession."  Relapses, of course, could not fail to appear in
"fancy cures" such as these.    At these miracles Strauss
draws the boundary line of the historical region, and entirely
banishes all the greater miracles, such as increasing the bread,
changing the water into wine, raising the dead, into the realm of
legend; because here " all conceivableness according to the laws
of nature is at an end" (p. 267).  Clearly this is a distinction
between miracles of healing (as naturally explicable doings)
and works of absolute omnipotence, similar to that of Schenkel
(p. 362).  Yet Strauss says (p. 33): "It is not permissible
to make a distinction amongst miracles, and to accept those
which show an analogy with natural occurrences, while rejecting others as magical, for every miracle is magical."  How
can he speak so, seeing that those who thus distinguish,
like Strauss himself, do not consider the former class as
miracles strictly speaking?  What right has he to be so indignant at the rationalistic explanation of miracles practised by
Schenkel and others, when he himself uses the old rationalistic arts of explaining away miracles by means of "excited
imagination," and so forth?
Strauss has a very poor opinion of the disciples.  Their
dreams about a restoration of the kingdom  of Israel (Luke
xxiv. 21 and Acts i. 6) "give us a very small idea of their
powers of comprehension."  Their stubborn prejudice against
the admission of Gentiles into the Messianic kingdom, shows
us "that they were incapable of drawing conclusions from
their master's principles."  The one genuine writing of a
disciple in the New Testament, the Revelation of St. John,




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           391
"gives us a melancholy impression of the imperfect way in
which Christ was understood by his most intimate disciple..... The importance given to the.subsequent appearance
of Paul proves that there was no one amongst the immediate
disciples of Christ who was fitted to be his representative,
and capable of further developing the ideas of his master in
accordance with the wants of the age" (p. 276).
Accompanied by His Galilean followers, Jesus goes to
Jerusalem, cleanses the temple, attacks the ruling priestly
party most sharply in public speeches, and exhorts the people
to turn away from them. Of course all these steps could not
but arouse the anxiety of the hierarchs, and move them to get
rid of so dangerous an opponent by any means (p. 279).
The scene in Gethsemane is certainly "strongly adorned with
mythical traits."  We cannot imagine that Jesus knew of His
death beforehand with exactitude and certainty.  Nevertheless
during His last days, the thought of a violent end probably
became more and more familiar to Him, and cast dark shadows
on His soul. His death on the cross was real, and not merely
apparent (p. 283 ff.).  His burial by Joseph of Arimathea is
uncertain on account of differences in the narratives; possibly
he "was hastily interred in some dishonourable buryingplace " (p. 287). According to traditional Jewish ideas, Christ
had lost all claim to the title of Messiah by His death upon
the cross. Now, however, "the disciples altered their old
Jewish ideas in accordance with this fact, by including the
attribute of a vicarious suffering, and of violent death as a
redeeming sacrifice, in their conception of the Messiah"
(p. 575).  We have no testimonies of an eye-witness as to an
appearance of the risen Christ (p. 291).  Both the appearance
of Christ to Saul on his way to Damascus, and all others,
" were simply inward occurrences which might well affect the
persons in question as outward and objective perceptions, but
which we have to conceive of as visions produced by an
excited condition of the mind" (cf. Lect. VII.).
This is the'" historical kernel" of the life of Christ which
Strauss leaves us.  We should prefer to call it the, shell from
which the kernel has been extracted.
The second part of his book shows us how the various
myths, as it were, crystallize around this nucleus. Along with




392      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
the belief in the resurrection of Christ, we see the idea of
Him "placed in a temperature which could not but result in
a luxuriant growth, producing numerous unhistorical shoots,
each one more miraculous than the last. The divinely inspired son of David now becomes the son of God, begotten
without a father; the son of God developes into the incarnate creative Logos. The philanthropic miraculous physician
becomes a raiser of the dead, the unlimited Lord of nature
and her laws.   The wise teacher of the people, the prophet
who saw    into men's hearts, now   becomes the omniscient
alter Ego of God. He who after his resurrection returned to
God, came from Him before his birth" (p. 161). Thus one
layer formed on another, each one being, as it were, the precipitate of the ideas current at a certain time, and in certain
circles, till at length the fourth Gospel reached the climax
of Christ's deification and spiritualization.  Strauss then goes
through the whole history of Christ in all its features, representing each one (just as in his former work) as the product
of inventive legends.  These he supposes to have gathered
their materials from  the histories of David, Moses, Samuel,
and others, or from  the writings of the prophets, many of
whose sayings they uncritically applied to Christ, or even
from  the heathen mythology.'   One cannot help wondering
how so stunted a historical shrub could nourish so many
mythological parasites.
Thus we see that the standpoint of this edition of the Life
of Christ is essentially the same as that of the first one, only
that now Strauss supposes far more intentional invention than
formerly in place of the unconscious fabrication of myths.
He himself says: "In this new work, I have, chiefly in consequence of Baur's investigations, used the supposition of
conscious and intentional invention far more freely than
before" (p. 159).    At the same time he applies the term
" myth " equally to the products of conscious and unconscious
invention.  And yet the theories of Strauss and -Baur do eviE.g. Strauss can find no parallel in the Old Testament to the visit of Jesus
as a boy in the temple. He therefore proceeds to drag in by the head and
shoulders a legend mentioned by Suetonius, that Augustus when a little child
was once suddenly missed from his cradle, and found lying in the highest part
of the house. And this he considers an analogy to Jesus remaining in the
temple! t




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."             393
dently exclude each other.1  Strauss originally proceeds on the
supposition of a simple inventive tradition, whilst Baur takes
his stand on the relation of parties as at that day, and looks
upon the writings of the New Testament as products of a
distinct purpose.  Strauss' theory assumes the utmost naivete
in the writers of the Gospel, Baur's the self-conscious purpose
of the resolute partisan.  It must make an exceedingly unpleasant impression on every impartial reader, to see how
Strauss employs this art which he has learned from Baur by
fathering upon narrators so simple and true-hearted as our
evangelists such dogmatic presuppositions, conscious fictions,
crafty intentions, ay, finely calculated lies.
The whole style of this book, except that of the preface,
will disappoint the reader who considered Strauss to be a
master of the art of delineation.  Nowhere is there a life-like
development, or an exciting progress, not even so much as in
Schenkel's work. The various sections have no vital connection, even in the "positive" part; they stand side by side
like abstract heads.  They read like so many critical treatises,
but not as a life-like delineation. The narrative is like a
stuffed figure without flesh and blood: instead of being full
of life, it is replete with marks of interrogation; instead of
presenting a vivid and concrete reality, it merely leaves a few
probabilities.  Nowhere do we see-to say nothing of the Son
of God-even the man Jesus, the Prophet of Nazareth as He
walked and lived amongst men.    A constant and wearisome
sifting of the records only leaves us detached fragments of
His person, His consciousness, His life, and His work.  No
sooner is a step made towards a description of actual history,
no sooner have we entered on the oasis of some living reality,
than straightway the ground beneath our feet again begins to
rock, and we once more see before us the sad and sandy wastes
of the mythical desert. Surely at that time, if ever, when the
central figure of all history was walking upon earth, the pulse
of history must have beat strongly.  But instead of the fresh air
of a world-renewing history, which breathes so sensibly in the
Gospels, we have in this book the odours of a grave.  Instead
of the mighty hammers of an age that is being built up afresh,
1 Though Zeller (in Vortrage u. Abhandlungen geschichtl. Inhalfs, 1865)
endeavours to combine them.




394    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VI.
we hear only the monotonous creaking of the critical windmill, which, for the smallest differences, is grinding the gospel
narratives into pieces against each other.  We need not expect
anything else, for the writer himself confesses that " the
negative element is of primary importance." So that when
we read a treatise on the "scene and duration of the ministry
of Christ," the matter itself is described in a few sentences
only; or when we read about " Christ's manner of teaching,"
we are told almost nothing about the doctrine itself, for even
the parables of the first three Gospels are almost without
exception crumbled away by criticism. Were we to eliminate
the whole of the critical apparatus, there would be but few
leaves of this thick volume left.  And yet this is supposed
to be a historical sketch "for the German nation!"
Strauss prefaces his work with a critique of the Gospels as
records of the life of Christ, in which he comes to the conclusion that all our four Gospels are sptrious.  He makes a
lengthy effort to support this assertion, but without doing
justice to the present standpoint of criticism, for which reason
our best authorities now condemn this performance as behind
the age. Strauss simply accepts and argues from the positions
of the Tiibingen school. Unlike Schenkel, he considers the
Gospel of St. Matthew, not indeed as the work of the apostle,
but yet as the " most original and relatively credible " (p. 115)
of the four, although it has probably undergone many revisions. St. Mark " made up" his Gospel from extracts taken
out of Matthew and Luke, putting in here and there some fresh
and vivid additions as a kind of "beauty spots" (p. 132).
The Gospel of Luke was written between those of Matthew
and Mark, i.e. before the year 135, but at a time " when it
was scarcely possible that a companion of St. Paul should
have been living and writing books."  It only received Luke's
name for the sake of the Acts (itself an unhistorical partisan
fiction) (pp. 126, 127). The Gospel of John was composed far
later in the course of the second century, and this in accordance with the conclusions of Baur, who regards it as a party
production, without the slightest historical credibility. Strauss
makes no secret of his contempt for this Gospel, nor indeed
for the three others.  He criticises them all, and especially
the Gospel of St. John, with the most profane levity.




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."               395
But with all this assumption of superiority, Strauss is some
twenty-five years behindhand in his critical standpoint, and
seems to feel this himself.   He is so for this simple reason,
that the " Tiibingen school," whose old theories he desperately
clings to, has in that time been compelled to make some very larqe
concessions. Baur himself first placed the Gospel of St. Matthew
between the years 130 and 134, then in the year 115, and
at last 105-110.     According to C. R. Kostlin, this Gospel,
in its present form, originated between 90 and 100; in its
original form, between 70 and 80. According to Hilgenfeld,
probably the most distinguished of Baur's disciples, it was
composed in its present form certainly before the year 80;
according to Holtzmann'and Keim, before the destruction of
Jerusalem, i.e. cir. A.D. 66.  You see how the critical school
has drawn back from its earlier positions.  The Gospel of St.
Mark has these various dates assigned to it: Kostlin, before
110; Keim, 100; Hilgenfeld, before 100; Volkmar, 73;
Schenkel (in its original form), between 45 and 58. The
Gospel of St Luke: Baur, 150; Zeller, 130; Hilgenfeld,
before 120; Volkmar, 100; Kostlin (vide above), shortly before
Matthew; Keim, 90; Holtzmann (with Mark), 75-80.         Even
as regards the Gospel of St. John, the critical school has had
to retire step for step from  Baur's calculation (160) to the
beginning of the second century,l at which time John was
probably still living. Amongst other distinguished men, Ewald
sharply criticises the Tiibingen school.    He considers that
Mark wrote soon after the death of Peter; the Gospel by
Matthew   was written before the destruction of Jerusalem
(70); the Gospel by St. Luke, between 75 and 80.        These
are the results of criticism up to the present day.  We would
only stop to take exception to the statement made by Zeller
and others, that the first churches would not feel the need of
written records until after the apostolic generation had died
out.   Surely it is far more likely that this want should be
felt while the apostles were still living, because they could
1 Keim (Jesu von Nazara, p. 146) dates it from 100-117. Cf. against Keim
and Scholten the excellent Commentary on St. John by Godet; also his work,
Priufung der wichtigsten Kritischen Streitfragen iiber das vierte Evangelium
(1866); also Riggenbach, Die Zeugnisse fir das Ev. Johannis (1866); van
Oosterzee, Das Johannisevangelium (1867); and Leuischner, Das Lvang. St.
Johannis u. seine neuesten Widersacher (1873).




396    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VI.
not be in all the churches at once to watch over the purity of
tradition.  But in the case of gospel records being written by
others, we must always suppose them to have been directed
and controlled by the apostles.
Thus we see that Strauss stands very much alone in his
critical position, and that even the most negative portion of
the critical school is shaking the ground under his feet.  It is
becoming more and more difficult for Strauss to maintain that
his " myths" were formed during the post-apostolic age, since
even the critical school itself acknowledges the existence of
gospels, i.e. of extensive miraculous records, in the apostolic
age, so that their writers, whoever they were, must have been
contemporaries of friends and disciples of Jesus. In our day
there is scarcely a single notable critic who would dare to
deny that there were not numerous narratives of miracles
performed by our Lord in circulation amongst the first Christians, which formed the basis of their testimony for His
Messiahship, and that without contradiction from the apostles.
Let us take note of this for the present.  A hundred years
after a man's death a legend about him may easily originate;
but how, ii his contemporaries relate it?
Having thus become acquainted with the work of Strauss
in its general outlines, we will now proceed to investigate it:
first, its principles, presuppositions, and method; then the
historical possibility of the formation of myths; and last, its
view of the person and the self-testimony of Christ.
In a recent pamphlet,1 as in his former Life of Christ, Strauss
has confessed with praiseworthy candour that his "former
standpoint was that of the Hegelian philosophy."  Nor is this
otherwise now. The principle which governs the whole work
is that of Pantheism.  Strauss plainly enough indicates that
he believes neither in a personal God, nor in the immortality
of the soul, nor, o1 course, in retribution after death.  To him
the words apply, that " whosoever denieth the Son, the same
hath not the Father" (1 John ii. 23). In the dedication at
the beginning, he praises a deceased friend because he " never
yielded to the temptation of deceiving himself by borrowing
from another world" (p. 10).  For his own pait he renounces
the hope of dying " happy," and only hopes to die " quietly"
Die Halben u. die Ganzen, p. 42




LECT. VI.]       STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."              397
(ubi sup.).  For God is that " indiscriminate Goodness" which
"rains upon the just and upon the unjust ". (p. 206), before
which the small distinctions that we make between good and
evil are dissolved into one-all true signs of Pantheism.'
Hence the pleasure which Strauss takes in those sayings of
Christ which can be explained in this sense (p. 206 et s.),
whilst he abhors the numerous passages which speak of a
future retribution, or of Christ as Judge of the world (pp.
242, 276, 513, et s.). The former class of passages may stand
as genuine and true; the latter must be either later additions
springing from dogmatic presuppositions, or else serious tokens
of fanaticism  and self-exaltation in Christ.  Thus Strauss explains the beatitudes which Christ promises for a future world,
as applying to this life.  In "transferring the realization of
this blessedness to heaven, Jesus speaks according to the
notions of his age and of his nation."  In truth this blessedness simply means, that the new spiritual life which has been
awakened in mankind is to shape the outward world in unison
with itself, and this takes place naturally and little by little,
though never perfectly, in this world, and is expected in the
next as a wonderful compensation only by religious fancy
(p. 205).   The salvation of man is, "in more intelligible
language, the possibility that he should fulfil his destiny,
develope the powers implanted in him, and thus enjoy the
corresponding measure of happiness" (p. 624). These sentiments will confirm what I have already remarked (p. 137), that
the entire conflict in the present day as to the person of Christ
springs from  certain fundamental differences in the idea of
God, and that the negative critics of the gospel history have
in reality no other aim than to introduce into the Christian
Church a new pantheistic conception of God. This is the
" forward aim" of Strauss' book (p. xv).   At the same time
it is also evident that we were perfectly justified (p. 287) in
representing the denial of the miraculous as leacling to the
destruction of all religion.  For what profit is there in religion
1 Compare the blasphemous way in which Strauss excuses the sins of Israel
against Jehovah (p. 168): "After both of them had entered into a covenant,
either side soon had cause for complaint against the other; there was not much
to be felt of the special protection which Jehovah had promised to His Israel! "
etc. etc.




398    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VI.
if there be no personal God, and no other world? This view
of the world, it is true, would fain give itself the appearance
of rendering man truly energetic by making him depend only
on himself. But this is a lie. By depriving him of all supernatural help, it paralyses his powers and takes away his moral
energy.  Goethe truly says, " they who expect no other life, are
for this life already dead."
The first consequence of these pantheistic principles of
Strauss, is the pre-established negation of all that is supernatural
either in the person or in the work of Christ.  The sentiment
above quoted, that " we know for certain at least what Christ
was not and did not do, viz. nothing superhuman nor supernatural," decides the whole question, and settles the method
of investigation beforehand. War is declared against everything in the works or words of Christ, which betrays a trace
of God's special influence, or of His higher nature; all such
elements must be got rid of at any price.     This is the
assumption with which Strauss sets to work.   He so often
speaks slightingly of " dogmatic presuppositions," and he himself approaches his task with the largest presupposition of all,
with an axiom which decides the result of all his investigations beforehand.  What is the real pivot of the entire controversy, if it be not the Godhead of Christ?  If a man claim
to write a life of Christ, the reader, and especially the " German
people," may well demand that he should closely investigate
this cardinal question.  But what does Strauss do?     He
simply cuts short the whole matter by a bold assertion! Just
the most important point which ought to have been investigated
and established is not examined into, but simply taken for
granted.  Strauss knows for certain that it is so, and that is
enough! And are we to accept this as criticism, as unbiassed
historical investigation?  " We know for certain that there was
nothing supernatural in Christ:"-Strauss utters these words
with an assurance which reminds us of the language of those
who, when Christ was upon earth, thought they "knew for
certain" that He was not from God.    "We know that this
man is a sinner."    Strange, Strauss is especially fond of
abusing the " priestly caste;" but it does not occur to him
that in this self-contented "we know," he is speaking the
language of the proudest " caste" that ever existed!




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            399
Strauss does make an effort, though an utterly unsuccessful
one, to verify his opinion as to the spuriousness of our Gospels.
But in no place does he make a serious attempt to justif;y his
denial of the supernatural or his aversion to the miraculous.
From the very beginning he professes his adherence to that
view of the world which, "renouncing all supernatural sources
of help, throws men on their own resources, and those of the
natural order of things" (p. ix.).  He proclaims his intention "to remove the delusive belief in miracles as the chief
stumbling-block in the antique forms of religion " (p. xviii).
When we inquire on what grounds he considers himself
justified in so doing, we are merely told that one can "soon
discover thus much about our Gospels, that neither one nor all
of them possess sufficient historical certainty to compel our
reason to give up its liberty so far as to believe in miracles"
(p. xv.).  "All philosophical systems which deserve the name,
agree in one conclusion" [i.e. the negation of the miraculous
(p. 147)].  This he boldly asserts, though surely well aware
that many great philosophers and naturalists have defended,
and still are defending, miracles (cf. p. 289). But Strauss is
satisfied with his own assertions, and considers himself exempt
from the trouble of further examining into his principles.
For if, he urges, we allow of miracles in the times of primitive
Christianity, we must concede that they are possible in any
other religious region. Just as if there were not an immense
intrinsic distinction between the two. Thus one problem only
remains for Strauss, how the miraculous, this " foreign element
which repels all historical treatment," may be removed from
the gospel narratives? The only solution offered is the
mythical hypothesis.
This therefore is merely a means for getting rid of the
miraculous; as Strauss himself expresses it, "an apparatus
for evaporating miracles into myths" (p. 159).    All the
labour expended on it becomes aimless and worthless, if the
miraculous be-as we have seen in the last lecture-well
grounded.   All the more should this question have been
thoroughly examined into by Strauss, instead of which he
expects us simply to presuppose its impossibility.
We now see how Strauss' whole hypothesis, like all other
pantheistic systems, begs the question, and postulates what most




400    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF TIIE LIFE OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VI.
requires proof.  This was the case, as we have seen, with
Spinoza, and with those deniers of the miraculous who, like
Strauss, have made the laws of nature an argument against the
possibility of miracles.  The fact that the Gospels contain so
much that is miraculous, is for Strauss the fundamental proof
of their mythical character.  He is not driven to this conclusion by historical investigations, but simply by a naturalistic
presupposition.  He asks whether the Christian religion and
its historical records are in agreement with our modern philosophy, or whether they are not rather proved to be unhistorical
by their contradiction to it.  It was the standpoint of the
old world to regard as miraculous any unusual alterations iir
the world of nature and of man; but our modern age knows
that all things are connected in one great chain of cause and
effect, and that this chain cannot be broken without being
destroyed.  This it is which we have shown to be a complete
delusion. The Jews are supposed to have had no historical
consciousness, because they believed in the miraculous. Either,
true historical perception, and no miracles; or, an acceptance
of the miraculous, and unhistorical, simply dogmatic positionthis is the fundamental dilemma which Strauss places before
his readers. But what gives him any right to do so? Nothing
but his own presupposition, his naturalistic bias which makes
our ordinary everyday life the criterion of all reality! For
in the last resort the cardinal question may prove to be,
iwhether the miracles themselves are not historical, and their
denial utterly unhistorical-a mere philosophical delusion.
Is it, we ask, a sign of " historical consciousness' for a man
not to give the old records a thorough and unbiassed examination according to their inward and outward credibility, but
to approach them with the settled axiom, that there can be no
such thing as a miracle: thus condemning beforehand all that
does not agree with this axiom? By so doing, Strauss plainly
shows that he is no true historian, which, indeed, no thoroughgoing disciple of Hegel ever can be.  He searches the records,
not in order to find out what they are and what they contain,
but in order to extract proofs from their miraculous narratives
and individual discrepancies, that they are not what they profess
to be, viz. not history, but mnyths; in other words, he goes to work
in order to get proofs for his assumlption.  On such a method




LECT. V1.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            401
even a critic like Schwegler remarks: The attempt to solve
historical problems by means of philosophical categories must
always fail; Strauss has sullied the purity of historical research
by importing into the critique of the Gospels his presupposition as to the impossibility of the miraculous under the guise
of a philosophical postulate. Hence it is that in the works
both of Strauss and Schenkel we find the same subjective
caprice in eliminating the spurious from the genuine, only
that Strauss makes a more consistent use of the myth, as
being the means which he has selected for this purpose.
This extreme caprice is palpably evident, as soon as we
look at the method more closely.   In the most paltry and
exaggerated manner he scrapes together differences in the
narratives of the evangelists, in order to show their legendary
character, apparently proceeding from the assumption that the
Gospels were intended to be exact chronological biographies,
which is far from  being the case.   Small differences and
omissions are magnified into great contradictions.  E.g. the
statement of St. John, that Nicodemus brings about 100 pounds
of myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Christ, and of the
Synoptics, that the women buy spices, is held up as a great
discrepancy and proof of the unhistorical nature of both
accounts (p. 598 ff.), because the former quantity would have
been more than enough.    Just as if love would reckon in
this strict way in the case of a dear one who was departed!
On the other hand, great differences, which clearly show that
two distinct events are referred to, are toned down into small
shadings, in order to prove that the legend is relating the
same matter in two different forms.  Thus, for instance (in
imitation of the feat first performed by Zeller), Lazarus of
Bethany is identical with Lazarus in the parable, Luke xvi.
(p. 479 et ss.); the anointing of Christ in Bethany (John xii.)
is one with that in the house of Simon, Luke vii. (pp. 429
et ss.); so, too, the stilling of the storm and the walking on the
sea (pp. 489 et ss.), and the two miracles of feeding (pp. 499
et ss.), etc.
In truth, Strauss is a master in the art of straining out
gnats and swallowing camels.   Repetitions of words are as
suspicious to him as those of works, just as if it were not
often necessary to repeat certain important truths several
a 0




402   IMODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.  [LECT. VI.
times, in order to impress them on the weak and slow comprehension of man.  If an evangelist omits to mention some
particular, he is put down as not knowing it, and this is
adduced as proof of a myth. If one of them describes an
incident exactly, this is a progress in the growth of the legend.
If a narrative is simple and short, it is "entirely in conformity with the spirit of the original popular legend;" ifit
goes into details, this exactitude is the clearest proof of a
mythical tendency. Poor evangelists! whatever they do is
wrong!
The way in which an intention is scented out in the invention of the smallest and most trifling features of a story is
often perfectly ridiculous.  Thus, in the circumstance that
John outruns Peter while both are hastening to the grave Ai
Christ, Strauss detects an artfully contrived preferment of
John to Peter, an exaltation of the spiritual Johannean Christianity above the Petrine carnality!! (p. 605.)  We cannot
be surprised at frivolity when a man looks through the spectacles of intentional invention in this manner.  In several
places Strauss has been unable to resist this temptation, as, e.g.,
at p. 380, where, in connection with the flight of our Saviour
into Egypt, he remarks, "Once more a correct impression as
to the origin of the gospel narrative has led the ecclesiastical
legend to bring in the ass from the Mosaic myth " (cf. pp. 409,
449, 455, 476, 513, 610).
It may be quite true that the events of the New Testament contain a reflection of what had gone before in the Old.
But for all that, this constant derivation of the New Testament
narratives, down to their smallest details, from incidents in the
lives of Old Testament worthies, is simply a monstrous misapprehension of the wise and holy plan of the divine kingdom.
Why should what is later have been invented or copied from
what is earlier because it bears some resemblance to it? Why
should not God be able to carry on His kingdom towards its
consummation in a kind of rhythmic historical movement, in
which certain events happening at different times and under
different laws should yet distinctly correspond?  It is just in
this that we see the beauty and wisdom of His government,
of which, it is true, Pantheism neither has nor can have any
notion.




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            403
We now come to the principal question as to the possibility of the formation of,myths.  In this respect it is not
difficult to point out a number of historical and psychological
impossibilities and internal contradictions in Strauss' positions.
He will scarcely deny that the soil in which myths grow
is the childhood of nations.  How come myths to spring
up so luxuriantly among the Jews at the time of Christ,
destitute as their nationality was of all that is childlike,
and well-nigh arrived at the hoary goal of its development?
Are we to believe that after prophecy had so long been
silent, and at a time when the chosen people and the world
in general were in a state of spiritless languor, the poetic
fancy of a few poor Jews should suddenly have made this
mighty effort? The possibility of this is only conceivable on
the supposition that there did exist some such personage as
the Christ of the Gospels.  But we will pursue the inquiry a
little further.  The childhood of nations is their prehistoric age,
and this age it is in which the formation of myths invariably
takes place.l It is before the contrast has been realized between
the ideal and the actual worlds, when the spirit of man is still
engrossed in the unconscious life of nature,-in a word, in its
childhood,-that a nation dreams out its mythology.  But as
soon as reflection, reason, and conscience awake, the mythical
world begins to vanish. See, e.g., how Plato rejects or spiritualizes the Greek myths.   In the clear daylight of historical
consciousness the formation of myths comes to an end. Some
fictitious anecdotes and legends may still attach themselves to
the persons of a few great men, but the formation of a whole
system of myths is inconceivable in a historic age.  And if
we contemplate the age in which our Gospels were composed,
here assuredly we find ourselves in a historic, and not a prehistoric period.  Reflection has long since awakened.  Indeed,
it is an age of great intellectual activity, and even of scepticism
(cf. Pilate).  Men have long since come to regard the Greek
myths as the playful products of a poetic fancy.  Is this a
period favourable to the formation of myths?
Livy calls writing " the faithful guardian of history."  And
accordingly, we find myths only amongst nations unacquainted
with the art of writing, and conseqncttly wtithot either history
1 Cf. Hetiingcr, Apologie des Clristenthulms, i. 2, p. 236 ff.




404     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CI-JIST.    [LECT. VI.
or chronology. How different was the case in the apostolic
age! Not only had Greece and Rome long possessed their
great historians, and Egypt its Manetho, but even Palestine
had its Flavius Josephus.   Everywhere there was a lively
historical, and literary activity, and a quick historical consciousness. How come myths to be formed in an age like this?
The improbability increases when we compare the character
of the gospel narratives with that of myths in other quarters.
Consider "the myths of Greece and Egypt, hovering as they
do between memory and invention, between heaven and earth,
between God and matter, between the natural and unnatural;
consider the gigantic, bloody, monstrous fables concerning
the fantastic gods of India; consider the dark, mist-woven
forms of the old Germanic and Scandinavian mythology,
without fixed outlines or clearly-defined personalities;" and
contrast with these the clear, calm, holy, self-contained, selfconsistent, and well-defined figure of Christ in the Gospels,
and say wherein lies the slightest resemblance between them?
There, we have the shadowy maze of prehistoric times; here,
palpable bright reality on historical soil;-there, heathen
deification of nature; here, a revelation of the one personal
God;-there, the instinctive action of natural religion and
natural life; here, holy and solemn works and words proceeding
from a personal mind and will.
Moreover, as being a reflection of the life of nature, myths
everywhere bear a local and national impress. According to
the characteristics of people and country, they are differently
developed in gladsome Greece, in arid India, and in the inhospitable North. The purport of the Gospels, on the other
hand, is universally human; it is adaptable to every nation,
every clime, every stage of time or cultivation.  So little is it
exclusively Jewish, that it constantly contradicts the prejudices
of the nation from which it has originated.   The portrait of
Christ in the Gospels, instead of being that of a typical Jewish
teacher, is entirely opposed to what such an one was considered
to be.'
1 Cf. Wiseman, Zusammenhiang zwischen rWissensc7iaft u. Offenbarung, p. 228
(Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, London 1836, Leut. IV.,
pp. 255 et ss.). For a description of wise teachers in Israel at that time, vide
Sepp, Leben Chlristi, ii. p. 47.




LECT. VI.]     STRAUSS' " LIFE OF CHRIST."          405
Further, it has been objected with truth, that myths know
nothing of chronology; they are prone to mix up times, places,
and persons. In the Gospels, on the contrary, from Luke i.
5 onwards, we find a series of exact data as to times, places,
and persons, and a continuous reference to contemporaneous
Eoman and Jewish history.   In the face of these historical
relations, and of the inward opposition between mythical and
gospel narratives, must it not, from the very beginning, be a
vain undertaking to " evaporate" the latter into myths?  But
Strauss quietly passes by this important intrinsic distinction,
with the remark that " the formation of Christian myths must
be put on the same footing with the corresponding process in
all other religions" (p. 153).
To all this we add another difficulty of considerable weight,
viz. that the formation of myths is always a lengthy process,
requiring considerable time.  Homer's mythical account of the
fall of Troy did not appear till some 200 years after the event.
But the oldest of our Gospels appeared, as we have seen, before
the fall of Jerusalem, i.e. hardly a generation after the death
of Christ.  Therefore a portion of these myths at least must
have taken their rise amongst the disciples themselves; nor
does Strauss deny that " the resurrection myth" in particular
was believed and preached by the apostles themselves. Were
these good people so utterly destitute of all historical sense
and feeling?  Had they not been taught by Christ Himself,
in the Sermon on the Mount, in the discourses which Strauss
acknowledges as genuine, to distinguish clearly between divine
revelation in the law and the subsequent human additions,between what had been said by them of old time and what
is written as the truth of God? Was not this calculated
to implant some historical feeling in the disciples, and to
sharpen their perception of the difference between firmly established truths and human fictions?  Or if the disciples were
so simple and superstitious as not to be able to understand
their Master, is it not incomprehensible how He came to
choose such inefficient men, " who would have spoilt His work
entirely if it had not luckily been saved by the unexpected
conversion and activity of the Apostle Paul"? But what an
unworthy idea does this give us of the progress of man's hiAtory, "if Christianity, the most powerful factor in the world's




406     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIIHRIST.     [LECT. VI,
history, is made to depend on an unforeseen and incidental
fact!" 
Or are we to suppose that the later evangelists are the chief
culprits in this mythical and unhistorical introduction, or,
in plain English, this lying cheat?    To this we reply     by
the old question which we have already put to the rationalists,
How can these biblical records, with their truthful spirit and
pure morality, and the glorious ideal which they present to us,
have their origin in mere lies? And how could these foolish
writers, "who were so strongly biassed by their Jewish prejudices, draw a picture containing none of the traditional
features common to great Jewish rabbis, but revealing a moral
dignity and purity so great that centuries upon centuries have
bowed down before it, and from     its Original received their
life?"  " ly friend," even Rousseau cried, full of admiration
for the portrait of Christ in the Gospels, "such things cannot
be invented!    Never could Jewish writers have fabricated
discourses and moral teachings such as these.     The Gospel
contains so great, so astonishing and perfectly inimitable traits
of truth, that its inventor would be even more wonderful than
its Hero." 1 Assuredly, I appeal with confidence to the unbiassed judgment of my readers.   Is it possible or conceivable
that sinful and imperfect men should beget the thought of so
majestic and stainless a personage, of so holy and Godlike a
life, and should carry it out in this vivid and lifelike manner,
not having received it as an impression from without?    This
would be a miracle more perplexing and unheard of than any
of those which Strauss rejects, and the whole issue would only
be transferred from the person of Christ to that of His historian; in other words, we should by no means escape the miraculous. The old truth still stands; " the portrait of Christ which
is dchlzcred to us; the faultlessly perfect Original of God-filled
humanity cannot have been invented, since that which has never
1 Cf. Luthardt, ubi sip. p. 19.
2 Rousseau, Emile, 1. iv. pp. 109-111. Goethe, too, in his Gesprdclie mit;Eckermann (iii. p. 371), says: " I consider the Gospels decidedly genuine, for
they are penetrated by the reflection of a majesty which proceeded from the person of Christ; and this is divine, if ever divinity appeared upon the earth."
Cf. also Schaff, Die Pcrson Jesu Christi (new edit., p. 302), and especially the
remarkalle series of testimonies fiomn sceptics and opponents for the rll:hracter of
Christ, pp. 245-336 [English edition (Boston, 1865), pp. 251 et ss ].




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            407
entered into the heart of man as an impression cannot proceed
from it as a lifelike fancy picture."1  And does not the fragmentary character of the gospel records give us the impression
that the narratives themselves were not capable of delineating this sublime Personage in an adequate manner, and that
the reality must have gone far beyond what is told us? (ci.
John xxi. 25.)
If the primitive Christian Church invented most of Christ's
miracles, and made Him something quite different from what He
really was, why did not unbelievers on every hand protest against
this?  Why did they not appeal to the surviving contemporaries of Jesus, or at least to their own immediate ancestors,
many of whom must have seen Him, in disproof of all these
miracles?  Not even the most fanatical opponents of Christianity, such as the Pharisees, or later on, Celsus, Porphyry,
Julian, and others, ever impugned the truth of the miracles
related in the Gospels. Strauss tries to evade this very evident
objection by asking how the unbelief of Israel is to be accounted
for if Christ really did so many miracles? But he entirely
overlooks the moral obstacles to faith.  No miracles, nor any
other works of God, ever absolutely compel man to believe;
they are and they will be like our Lord Himself,-a sign which
may be spoken against, clear enough for him who is willing
to see, but dark enough for him who will not see nor believe.
Else faith would cease to be a moral act,-a taking hold of
the invisible: it would cease to be faith.
Again, we ask, is it not probable that those who joined the
new doctrine, before they took this step, made some examination into these miraculous narratives?  How  could a man
break.off all connection with his past Judaism or heathenism,
without having in some degree satisfied himself that he was
not grasping after a shadow, but after living truth and historical reality?  Was it not in the interest of faith itself to know
something certain about Christ, in order to be able to say, " I
know in whom I have believed'? (2 Tim. i. 12; cf. Luke i. 4,
John xx. 31, 1 Cor. xi. 23, xv. 14-32.)  And was not there
a possibility of this, because the Christian Church gradually
developed from a certain point without essential interruptions,
Cf. Beyschlag, Christologie, p. 15; also Weiss, Sechs Vortrdge iiber die
Person Christi.




40S    MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VI.
and thus it was easy to trace the narratives of Christ to their
source and test them there? How could the Messiahship of
Christ be proved to any one without first proving what He had
done? The first thing in the vocation of the apostles surely
was to testify of the works of Christ. Where, then,-unless the
apostles were intentional deceivers, is there room for the formation of myths?
And supposing that some myths had formed in the Church,
must they not soon have been rejected by the apostles or their
disciples, if we take account of the intimate connection which
the Acts and the Epistles proved to have existed amoongst
the primitive Churches?  Strauss prudently ignores this connection, and speaks as though every Church had remained
isolated, and had continued to adorn the tradition of Christ in
whatever way it pleased.
Strauss is constantly invoking the enthusiastic superstition
of the primitive age as the source of myths. But why did not
this enthusiastic superstition adorn other persons-e.g. the
highly-esteemed Baptist-with miraculous garlands? It is by
no means permissible to place the apostolic age on a level
in this respect with the following period, which stands most
palpably below it in spiritual, moral, and intellectual power.
But that later Judaism as such-kand Jewish Christians were
the writers of the New Testament —was not fond of miracles,
is.clearly shown by their rare occurrence in the lives of the
great prophets from Isaiah downwards. Only where Creator
and creature are commingled-as in the case of heathenism —
do we find a fertile soil for miracle mania.  But where both
are kept so entirely distinct as in Judaism, and " the human
subject is penetrated with the feeling of God's greatness and
its own nothingness, it cannot expect that miracles should
take place every instant.  It will look on them as something
extraordinary, and expect them seldom to occur."
This is confirmed by the gospel history. Was not, e.g., the
strict examination of witnesses in the judicial inquiry respecting the man who was born blind (John ix.) a token of hi;torical sense and sober inquiry?  The age cannot, after all, have
been so utterly destitute of these qualities; and should the
Christian Church alone, of all other bodies, have been without
members who were capable of such examination? Not even




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            409
the Churches of the second century were entirely void of
critical perception.  Where there was a question as to the
genuineness of certain writings, they could make very exact
inquiries.  Certain Fathers of the   second century  made
journeys on purpose to get exact information from churches
founded by the apostles about some disputed writings, in
order afterwards to appeal confidently to this information in
their discussions with heretics. A presbyter in Asia Minor
who had composed an apocryphal book entitled, Histories of
Paul and Thekla, was convicted, and confessed his fraud. The
Church in Philippi wished to make a collection of the letters
of Ignatius (t 10S), and for this purpose they wrote to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, begging for his assistance, in order
that the matter might be more certain.'  Are not these proofs
for the existence of a sober historical investigation in that age,
and do they not at the same time witness favourably to the
genuineness of our Gospels? And shall we not suppose that
this spirit of critical investigation and inquiry was active as
regards the oral tradition of the words and works of Christ in
the Churches, especially in those of the first century, where
such inquiry was considerably easier?
But the historical difficulty changes into a still greater
psychological obstacle. Must not the enthusiastic fancies of these
primitive Christians, we ask, have been someZwhat cooled down
and sobered when the persecutions began?  What mnotive could
they have for holding to their delusion in the face of tribulation
and death, and in exposing themselves to contumely, qnockcry, and
h:tred fromn Jews and Gentiles for the sake of their imaginary
dreams?  But this supposition of extravagant enthusiasm
amongst the primitive Christians is entirely incorrect.  Beside
the Old Testament, they received edification from certain of the
apostolic epistles, especially those of St. Paul.  But do these
or any other of the New Testament epistles give us the impression that their writers were extravagant enthusiasts, or
sharp-witted forgers? Does not the clear, simple, temperate,
humble style of these writings make just the opposite impression on every unbiassed mind?    Does the reading of them
have an intoxicating or a sobering effect?
And what do these apostolical writings tell us? Let us look
1 Cf. Stirm, Apologie des Clahistenlthums, 2d ed., p. 25.




410      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
at some of them upon whose genuineness there has never
rested the shadow of a doubt: the Epistles of St. Paul to the
Romans and Corinthians. Does not St. Paul here speak of
miraculous powers in the Church (1 Cor. xii. 10-30)? Does
he not say of himself, that he brought the heathen into the
obedience of faith "through mighty signs and wonders"
RPom. xv. 19), and that amongst the Corinthians he accomplished the "signs of an apostle" with " wonders and mighty
deeds " (2 Cor. xii. 12; cf. Gal. iii. 5 and Heb. ii. 4),-doubtless, that is, miracles, especially of healing?  These passages
are a sore perplexity for the deniers of the miraculous, for
here there is no time for the formation of myths intervening
between the facts themselves and their confessedly genuine
records; seeing that the miracles themselves are held up to
the original witnesses of them at Corinth! The only resource
left to Strauss is to touch on these important historical data as
lightly as possible, and then to take a leaf out of the rationalist's book,l by reducing these miracles to " merely psychical,
or even imaginary cures, which were the natural result of
religious excitement in this circle" (p. 268).  The visions of
a man like St. Paul, who was in perfect spiritual health, and
possessed of bodily vigour which could endure the greatest
hardships, he accounts for by " convulsive, perhaps epileptic
fits" (p. 302)!  Such are the shifts to which anti-miraculous
delineators of primitive Christianity are put.
We now see how greatly the miraculous narratives in the
Gospels are confirmed by these sayings of an apostle.  If signs
and wonders were performed by an apostle in Corinth, may
we not, nay, must we not, conclude that similar mighty deeds
were likewise done by Christ, or rather that His life and work
were accompanied by still greater and more numerous miracles?
For the disciple is not above his Master; and as by the evangelists (Matt. x. 1, Luke ix. 1), so, too, by St. Paul (Rom.
xv. 18), the apostolic authority and power is always traced
back to Christ as its source.  Even the belief of the apostles
themselves, that they performed miracles, is utterly incomprehensible, unless they-' and not only the later Churches-were
1 So, too, does Baur; but still he confesses that even though Paul may have had
an ecstatic element in his nature, yet this was kept so strictly in subicction by the
clear rationalityof his self-consciousness, that it could neverpass into extravagance.




LECT. VI.]        STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."              411
persuaded that He, the infinitely greater One, had preceded
them in so doing.
Another important argument against the mythical hypothesis
and its constant reference to the extravagant spirit of the
primitive Christian age, lies in the simple, unadorned, and
chaste character of the miracles themselves.  If the spirit of
extravagant enthusiasm had woven a garland of myths around
the life of Christ, it would have made Him perform miracles
quite different from those which the Gospels relate of Him. There
would have appeared " signs from heaven " (Matt. xvi. 1 et ss.),
changes in the heavenly bodies, and all other kinds of fantastic
and extravagant portents, and in the end we should have had
a picture of Christ quite different to that which the Gospels
give.  The case would have been the same as in some of the
later apocryphal gospels, which really do make Christ, as a
child, perform  so many    aimless and   ridiculous  miracles.
Instead of this, look at the modest measure of the miracles
performed by Christ and the apostles (mostly miracles of
healing), their constant holy purpose, their earnest and sober
character.  This is not the impress of an extravagant fancy.
Strauss is prudent enough from   the very beginning to place
the biblical miracles on a level with those of heathen mythology, magic, and jugglery1 (pp. 147, 455, etc.), thus making
the former fall before the same criticism as the latter.  But
this is (as we have already shown, cf. pp. 318 and 323) simply
an act of violence which entirely ignores the deep internal
distinction between the biblical and the apocryphal miracles.
And how are the difficulties multiplied when we consider
the external and internal contradictions contained in Strauss'
portrait of the Person of Christ!  Here we are utterly at a loss
to account for the formation of myths.    Strauss' view of the
incarnation of God in Christ is, as before, the pantheistic
Hegelian.   Accordilng to Scripture, "in Christ dwelleth all
th'e fulness of the Godhead bodily " (Col. ii. 9); but according
to Ilegel, God, i.e. the " Absolute Idea," can never appear in
1 Thus Strauss compares the healing of blind men by Christ with a juggling
miracle performed by Vespasian before the populace in Alexandria (pp. 269,
429). But it has been proved by P. Cassel (in his pamphlet, Le roi te touche,
1864), that this performance of Vespasian's is to be attributed to his contact
with Jewish thought; in other words, that it is an echo of Christ's miracles, and
a striking proof of the then wide-spread belief in the miracles of Christ.




412      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIIHIST. [LECT. VI,
its entire fulness in a single individual, but only in the whole
race.  Therefore the incarnaLion of God does not take place
in a single individual called Christ, but universally and continuously in Humanity as a whole. In a treatise with which
he closed his former Life of Christ, Strauss characteristically
remarks, " As the subject of the predicates which the Church
applies to Christ we must posit an idea, but a real one, viz.
the idea of the human race." This shows that he denies the
specific divine Sonship of Christ.  His teaching and His consciousness were but natural products of the preceding ages,
the Hellenic and Jewish inheritance of which concentrated
themselves in Him. The latter accounts for the purely spiritual
and moral tendency of His religious views; the former, for His
"spirit of humane love,"-the "-cheerful, unbroken action proceeding from the joyous delight of a beautiful soul" (p. 207
ff.). We shall see in Lect. VIII. that these factors are by no
means sufficient to explain the whole character of Christianity
and its immense effects.   But they are not even correctly
stated.  For the fundamental feature of His life and teaching
is not the mild and cheerful Hellenic view of the world, but
rather "a perfect concentration on the one highest aim, and
an intense conviction that He was called to be a revealer of
truth."1  But according to Strauss, no unique position can be
claimed for Christ. As a member in the development of the
race, He only marks a special progress in the knowledge of
the ideal man.    "Every great moral character, every great
thinker, has helped to develope the idea of human perfection."
Christ stands in the first rank of those who have so done.
"He introduced features into the ideal of humanity which
before were wanting, or at least had remained undeveloped,
the features of toleration, ot charity, and of love to man"
(p. 625 et ss.); but, on the other hand, his single life, his
"merely passive relation to the state," his "visible repugnance" to all trade, his entire neglect of all " that belongs to
art and the refinements of life," were "features which remained
undeveloped in Christ, and leave marked deficiencies" (p. 626).2
1 Cf. Weizsicker, Unterstchlmgnen iiber die evangelische Geschichte (p. 347).
2 This is contradicted on p. 228, where Strauss says that "Jesus presented
himself as the friend of men, who thought nothing human beneath his notice,
nothing human foreign to him, who did not despise harmless human joys," eta.




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."           413
Against this theory of a universal incarnation of God instead
of the individual one, Ullmann (ubi sup.) has well argued that
although the Revelation of God may progress through all
nations and all ages, yet it must strive towards a centre and
climax, such as appeared in Christ; and that the Church, in
order to be an organism, must have a living Head. Furthermore, in the realm of art great geniuses from time to time
appear, in whom the power and beauty of their art is concentrated, such as Homer, Raphael, Mozart. In them the fulness
of the idea is to a great extent centred in one person, and so
it must be still more entirely with the Godhead in Christ.
And this is simply a necessity; for if God indeed be love, then
a perfect self-revelation and self-communication on His part
must take place within the human race which was created in
His own image, and this can only be accomplished through
Him who is at once the image and Son of God, the Redeemer,
and Head of mankind. Only in such an One can the holy love
of God be satisfied; only in Him can mankind have been the
object of eternal predestination and future self-communication.
"The idea and the reality of the Holy Son of God and man
thus contains the exact opposite of that deprivation for the
remainder of mankind, which Strauss and others make it out
to be.  The whole fulness of God is imparted to others only
through Him." 
Here we see the fundamental deficiency in Strauss' view of
the world; it ignores the importance of a personality in the life
of history. In Hegel's philosophy all personalities are merely
points at which the "ideas" converge, or masks through
which the universal spirit looks. And so, too, in Strauss'
view, mankind is but a mass of powerless atoms, which
together make up a divine-human whole; but not a living
organism, which, as such, has and must have its climax and
its central organ.
Strauss wishes to substitute "the ideal Christ-i.e. the original
type of man as he should be contained in our reason-for the
historical" (p. 625); a proof, by the way, how little he cares
for historical results from a religious point of view, and that
his so-called historical criticism is only a means for the intro1 Compare the article on "The Sinlessness of Christ," in Herzog's Realency.
clopddie, vol. xxI,p. 210.




414      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
duction of his pantheistic principles. This is the way with all
speculative philosophy; it invariably treats real history as a
secondary matter.  So, then, our " saving faith is to be transferred" from a palpable, living historical Person, to an intellectual conception.  This is precisely the same fundamental
error which we rejected in the case of Pantheism, as if an
abstract idea which is not typically realized in some personality
could of itself gain a hold on men's hearts; as if a mere principle, or even a moral law, could make itself respected and
realize itself, unless certain persons endowed with power stood
forth as its exponents. These are mere dreams, belied by the
civil and religious history of all, and especially of Christian
nations. The moral process going on in humanity is surely
essentially calculated to develope personality, and is therefore
also essentially dependent on the influence of notable moral
personages.  If the indispensable postulate, that moral goodness should be realized in this sinful world, is not to be given
up, this realization must "proceed from an individual in whom
goodness itself has become a human person." Our divine
sonship can only proceed from the divine Son Himself.
As for what Strauss says in connection with this about a
"development of Christ's religion into the religion of humanity,"
we can only repeat what we have already shown to be the
case, that Christ and His gospel alone is the one sure and firm
exponent, the only inexhaustible source of all true culture and
humanity; this, and nothing else, not even Hellenicism.  We
repeat, that to go beyond Christ in the perfection of religion is
an utter impossibility; and that to tear the idea of humanity
away from the root which has borne it, would be-in spite of
any outward varnish-not progress, but the surest retrogression into barbarism, into a dotage of scepticism, of entire subjectivity and selfishness.  Christ is not one amongst others of
those who have perfected the ideal of humanity; for what a
spiritual and moral gulf is there between Him and even such
men as Socrates or Moses! He is Himself this Ideal; for why
else have centuries bowed down before His spiritual and moral
dignity and stainless beauty, as before an ever-flowing spring
of truth and holiness? That man only can discover " essential deficiencies in this portrait," who has from the beginning
taken Him for a mere man instead of the divine Redeemer,




LECT. VI.]      STRIUSS' " LIFE OF CIIRIST."          415.
and has thus made a false estimate of His character, His life's
work, and His whole position in regard to human affairs.
Whereas Scripture subordinates the whole of humanity to
Christ, Strauss subordinates Christ to humanity as a whole.
According to Scripture, all humanity is gathered together under
one Head, even Christ (Eph. i. 10, JvaecefaXatco'ao-Oat 7a
7ravlra ev'ro XptaTrj; cf. ver. 22 and Col. ii. 10); according to
Strauss, this body remains ever headless, and over the unhappy
trunk there hovers eternally' distant-an ideal! I shall endeavour to show more at length in the last lecture, how all
history is turned upside down by such attempts as these to
derive Christianity from natural sources.
This entire view, then, runs counter to the representations
of Scripture, which make Christ, not the almost accidental
point of union for the previously existing germs of religious
culture, but the creative centre of Christianity; and we cannot wonder if the picture of Christ drawn by its author is
confused and insufficient.  Hence the peculiar complaint of
Strauss: "About few great men have we such insufficient
information as about Christ; the figure of Socrates, though 400
years older, is incomparably more distinct" (p. 621). Indeed,
this were passing strange. "No one ever made so great an
impression upon mankind as he did; no one has ever left
behind, him such traces of his work as he; and yet of no man
should we know so little as of him, though he belongs not to
the dark days of hoary antiquity, but to the clear and open
age of history!" (Luthardt, tbi sup.)  To Strauss, only that
which is purely human and imperfect appears clear.  Because
this evidently appears in the case of Socrates, therefore his
figure is clear; but since it does not appear thus in Christ,
His shape is indistinct.
In truth it cannot but become so, when men like Strauss
and Schenkel are constantly making historical difficultics, and
importing them  into the narratives. According to Strauss,
Christ performed no miracles.  But in this case how could the
opinion take rise that He was the Messiah?  We are told that,
as being a prophet, men attributed to Him miraculous power,
and magnified natural cures or alleviations into miracles. But
can this have been sufficient to produce that belief?  Men
expected the Messiah to perform the most extravagant things,
VILIIVI  IV~~V~Vp —~  r-~I- -V-~~IVII1C~




416      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL
-works at least as great as those of Moses,-indeed, special
"signs from heaven;" why, then, did they not rather attribute
to Him Messianic signs of this description?   And how is it
that Jesus invariably refuses to show signs of this kind, when
demanded from Him, in proof of His Messiahship (Matt. xvi.
1 et ss.; Mark viii. 11 et ss.; Luke xi. 16; John vi. 30 et ss.),
and that He noiselessly performs signs of quite a different
sort, and miracles of far more modest dimensions;' and yet
this belief arises?  How   is it that He combats the carnal
Messianic expectations of His disciples and hearers, and gives
offence to them by declaring " the kingdom of God cometh not
with outward show-it is within you;" and yet this opinion
gains ground?
Furthermore, according    to  Strauss, certain  prophetical
designations of the Messiah, as "Son of David" and "Son of
God," were then current.     The first of these designations,
however, Jesus never applied to Himself, and the second but
seldom, and not without restriction (p. 224 et ss.); He preferred to call Himself by the humble title, " Son of man."
Does not this make it all the more difficult to understand
whence the belief in His Messiahship could arise, unless those
greater miracles (loaves and fishes, raising of the dead, etc.)
actually took place? These, we are told, were only gradually
invented after the death of Christ, and it was not till then
that the belief in His Messiahship began to spread in wider
circles.  But how did it arise in the disciples?  If Jesus did
no miracles, and yet was " evidently glad " when the belief in
His Messiahship sprang up in the minds of Peter and His
most intimate disciples, why did He not honestly disabuse
them of the notion that the Messiah must do miracles?     Or
if He did so, how could the disciples after His death so soon
fall back into their old miraculous delusion as to surround His
life with such a garland of myths, and that in contradiction to
their real experience?  Or if they were obliged to do so in
order to obtain a hearing from the people, why did they not
1 According to the most recent investigations, the purport of the Messianic
expectations of that age (which Strauss only examines superficially) consisted of
miracles such as those of Moses. Iow far must the miracles or Christ have
fallen short of such hopes! Witness, e.g., the disproportion between the feeding
of the five thousand and the manna in the wilderness, John vi. 30 et ss.




LECT. VI.]         STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."                 417
rather impute to their Master the tremendous miracles expected by the excited fancy of those times, and thus convince
the mass of the unbelieving Jewish world of His Messiahship? On every hand this mythical hypothesis entangles us
in enigmas.
One thing is perfectly clear, that Christ Himself must in
some way or other have given an impulse to the fabrication of
myths. Now, we have already seen how much is left of the
historical Christ after all the myths are removed.       We thus
stand before the question, How is it possible that the mere personal appearance of this simple Galilean Rabbi should have given
so great an impulse?    The greatest enigma of all is, that this
poor skeleton of a life of Christ should ever have been enveloped
in such a wealth of nyths, and that Christ, in contradiction to
the universal belief in a miracle-working Messiah, should ever
have been able to attain this dignity without performing a
single miracle.'
The higher view     of Jesus as the incarnate Son and the
eternal Word of God, is, we are told, the " last layer in the
process of the deification of Christ," and was not developed till
the second century.     But in the Book of Revelation, which
Strauss acknowledges to have been written by St. John, we
find Jesus already designated as "the Word of God" (xix. 13);
as "the Alpha and Omega..... the Lord which is, and
which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (i. 8).        Can
we conceive of a higher view of Christ's majesty and glory
than that given in the descriptions of the Book of Revelation
from  beginning to end?       If we search the Epistles of St.
1 Schelling says: "As regards the hypothesis, that the life of Christ was
adorned by myths, I suppose every one will admit that only such a life is glorified
by myths or legends as has been already in some manner distinguished and
moved into a higher region. Now the question is, Ilow did this Jewish country
rabbi Jesus become the object of such glorification? Was it in virtue of His
teaching! The stones which they took up show how the Jews received this.
What, then, is the presupposition which may render so extraordinary a glorification probable? Only if we grant that Christ passed for what we have recognised
Ilim to be, is it conceivable that in consequence of this opinion certain'myths'
may have arisen. But if we grant this, we must presuppose the entire dignity
of Christ, quite independently oi the Gospels. It is not the Gospels which are
necessary in order that we may recognise the majesty of Christ, but it is the
dignity of Christ which is necessary in order that we may be able to comprehend
these Gospel narratives." (" Philosophie der Of'enbarung," Sdmmtliche Werke,
Part II. vol. iv. p. 233.)
2D




41S.     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
Paul, which Strauss himself accepts as genuine, we find that
Christ is " the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. ii. 8), " the Lord from
heaven" (1 Cor. xv. 47), "by whom are all things" (1 Cor.
viii. 6), "the image of God" (2 Cor. iv. 4), who existed before
His incarnation (1 Cor. x. 4). This higher view of Christ,
then, dates from the first century, and from the apostolic
circle.  How did the apostles arrive at this view, if Christ was
a gmere man?
More than this. That higher view is found in Christ's testimony respecting His own Person.  Strauss cannot help himself
by drawing a line between the discourses of Christ in the
fourth Gospel and those in the Synoptics.    However much
he may critically reject of the sayings of Christ, there will
always be enough remaining even in the first three Gospels
to confute his view. There will be passages where Christ calls
God His Father in a perfectly unique sense; where He pronounces Himself to be greater than the temple, greater than
Solomon, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of the angels;
where He makes Himself the Mediator and Dispenser of the
forgiveness of sins; where He strictly distinguishes between
His own undefiled conscience and our consciousness of sin;
where He attaches to His own work and Person the highest,
eternally valid authority in all matters of morals and religion;
where He attributes to Himself, and His return in heavenly
glory, the last judgment and the consummation of the world.'
Do not such indubitable signs of Christ point to a higher view
of His Person contained in His own consciousness?  We cannot
evade this conclusion by general phrases, such as that He
called Himself Son of God "only in the acceptation of a
purified Messianic idea," etc.  No; He gave Himself, as Keim
says, " overwhelming names and titles, before which all human
categories must sink into silence."  What gave Christ the right
to think thus oj Himself if He was not truly the Son of God?
If we accept this self-testimony of Christ, then His Person
stands so high above the world and the remainder of humanity,
1 Cf. the proofs of this, pp. 245-249. With respect to Matt. xi. 27, "All
things are delivered unto me of my Father," etc., Strauss confesses that the man
who so speaks must place himself in an entirely unique relation to God, and that
" this is the same as when the Johannean Christ says to his Father,'All mine
are Thine, and Thine are mine' (xvii. 10)."




LECT. VI.]      STrrAUSS' " LIFE OF CHRIST."        419
that neither can His works be measured according to mere hzuman
and creature standards. But if we do not accept this testimony,
we must necessarily accuse Christ of extravagance and undue
self-exaltation; and then the crushing task remains, to reconcile
these glaring defects with the light of truth and moral majesty,
which otherwise shines so brightly in His words and works,
and with the world-redeeming and regenerating influences that
proceeded from Him.
And, in fact, Strauss finds himself compelled thus to
reproach Christ.  Considering Him as a mere man, and therefore imperfect, he does and must undermine His sinlessness.
This is the worst, the fatal feature in his theory. " The notion
that Christ was sirless, must be a death-blow to any historical
treatment of his person" (i.e. any which denies His Godhead),
" for even the best of men has constantly to accuse himself of
some faults " (p. 19 5). " Humanity alone is sinless, inasmuch
as its development is blameless, and impurity cleaves only to
the individual!" Who that has an eye for the fearful corruption which is in the world through sin, can speak of a " sinless
humanity"? Thus it is that the pantheistic creed turns everything upside down.  Hitherto mankind was believed to be
sinful and Christ sinless; now the former is supposed to be
sinless, and the latter, because He is a mere individual, to be
polluted, or at least imperfect. Mankind, however, gains little
enough by the exchange.  For if a sinless man be an impossibility, then sinfulness, moral weakness, and imperfection belong to the idea of man as an individual.  Thus the idea of
man is degraded by one who claims to have apprehended it
more clearly.  We see that to deny the sinlessness of Christ
is to degrade the human race, because proceeding from too
low an idea of man.
True, Strauss cannot conceal from himself the fact that the
nature of Christ-" unlike those of a Paul, an Augustine, or
a Luther, which were purified by means of a struggle and a
violent rupture, and retained the scars of it ever after " —-was
uninterrupted and harmoniously unfolded, and that His " inner
development took place without violent crises" (p. 208). This
is, in point of fact, as much as to concede His sinlessness; for
"the specific purport of the Old Testament is the recognition
of God's holiness and man's sin; and on this soil an unbroken,




420      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF ChRIST. [LECT. VI.
harmonious nature could grow, only if the breach of God's will
and the disharmony of sin were entirely foreign to it."1 But
Strauss contradicts himself by demanding that this unbroken
development of Christ should be understood so as "not to
exclude isolated fluctuations and faults which would necessitate
continuous and earnest efforts for self-government" (ubi sup.).
These faults are supposed actually to have showed themselves towards the close of our Lord's life. At this period we
see the depths of His divinity manifested more clearly than
ever. All the more levers must be applied by anti-miraculous
critics to obscure them; and when all other efforts fail, then
they cast a moral slur on the only sinless One. Help what
may; only His divinity must not be conceded! We will leave
Strauss' frivolous remarks on the prayer of Christ at the grave
of Lazarus2 out of the question, because he considers the
Christ of the fourth Gospel to be a fiction, and the whole
narrative "an unhistorical creature of the primitive Christian
imagination."  But the remarks of Strauss on Christ's discourses
respecting His second coming (e.g. Matt. xxv. 31 et ss.) leave no
room for doubt.  "Here we stand at a decisive point.    For
us, Christ exists either as a man only, or not at all.  Such
things as he predicts of himself here cannot be said of any
man.   If, notwithstanding, he did predict and expect these
things, we must consider him a visionary, just as, had he
said them without the full conviction of their truth, he would
have been a bragging deceiver."  So Strauss decides in favour
of considering Him  a visionary.  "What offends us in all
these discourses is only the one point, that Christ should have
attached that miraculous change, the appearance of that ideal
day of retribution, to his own person, and that he should have
designated himself as the judge who would come in the clouds
of heaven, accompanied by angels, to raise the dead and judge
the world. The man who expects such things of himself is
not only a visionary, he is guilty of undue self-exaltation in
presuming to except himself from all others so far as to place
himself above them as their future judge. In so doing, Jesus
1 Beyschlag, ubi supra, p. 47.
2 P. 476: "The Christ of this Gospel, thus praying out of accommodation
(' because of the people'), looks like an actor, and, moreover, a clumsy actor,
when he confesses that his prayer is a mere accommodation."




LECT. VI.]        STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CIIPIST.                421
seems entirely to have forgotten how once he refused the predicate' good' as belonging to God alone " 1 (p. 242).
In  such sayings, then, we have extravagance and sellexaltation, spiritual and   moral error.    But what of the
"beautiful nature," with the joyous Hellenic clearness of
spirit, of which Strauss before spoke?    He breaks off here,
as though conscious that this is the most self-evidently weak
2point of his whole historical construction.  Christ did speak
those words. No criticism can remove from our Gospels the
absolute divine consciousness which is expressed in the universal judicial function thus claimed by Him.      Strauss himself acknowledges that these discourses are historical; and,
indeed, they do form   "a decisive point."   In no part of his
Life of Christ does he so twist and turn to get out of the
difficulty, and in no part can he so ill hide the embarrassment
of his " criticism."  For either Christ uttered these sentiments
wrongly, in extravagance and self-exaltation,-and then let any
man reconcile them with His otherwise perfect moral majesty;
let him explain how from this haughty enthusiast, from this
religious leader who himself was subject to sin or error, there
could proceed the religion of humility and love, and the
kingdom of truth with its world-regenerating effects;-or, on
the other hand, Christ was right in speaking these words, and
did so with full clearness and truth; but then He was more
than a mere man.    From   this we see that though all the works
of Christ should vanish into myths, yet His words remain as an
irrefutable proof of His Mlessiahship and Godhecd; and so does
His consciousness, with the views resulting therefrom of His
person and dignity, as something incompatible with all mere
human standards.     This firm   rock is to' Strauss a stone oj
sttumbling which shatters his whole theory in, pieces.    He is
indignant that Jesus Christ should dare to bind the whole
course of the world to His person, and should call all men,
even Dr. Strauss, before His judgment throne;2 and rather
1 Cf. Beyschlag, ubi sup. p. 54. He rightly remarks, that by this last clause
l' Strauss reprehends his own abuse of the passage Mark x. 8 (cf. p. 376, note).
Would not the simplest rule of interpretation have bound him to interpret this
isolated passage so that it should not contradict so many indubitable sayings of
Christ?"
2 To show that we are not saying too much, it may be mentioned that Bruno
Bauer, one of those who have developed the mythical hypothesis, feels himself




422      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
would he grasp after the crown of His sinlessness and freedom
from  error, to trample it in the dust, than bow down before
His perfect and unique grandeur, and acknowledge before
this holy mystery what poor piecework all our learning and
investigation is.  It is the old objection: "We will not have
this man to reign over us" (Luke xix. 14; Ps. ii. 2 et ss.).
Thence come mistakes which cannot be corrected by the best
logic, theories whose upholders are not to be confuted by the
clearest arguments.
The optical illusion of mythicism lies in the train of argument, that because in the Church herself the higher knowledge
of Christ was gradually attained, therefore this higher knowledge was invented from the imagination of these primitive
Christians, though, at the same time, we cannot understand
how this idea should have occurred to them.      From  the
angels' song in the first Christmas night, down to the words,
" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" coming from the lips
of the risen One, the gospel history contains a series of
pictures so beautiful and grand, so perfumed with heavenly
grace, that innumerable features in it must be recognised as
zlninventable.  Doubtless there is a poetry in them; but it is
not that of arbitrary fiction, it is the result of holy and
divinely ordered facts.  Why should legends only invent
what is beautiful? Why should not the finger of God in
history trace out an objective beauty of facts which exceeds
all that human fancy can invent?  Instead of saying that it
is too beautiful to be true, each man who believes in something more than our common everyday life should say, when
looking at this page of history, " It is too beautiful to be mere
fiction," so beautiful that it must be true.  There is an ideal
perfection of beauty which is itself the highest reality; or,
to use the words of Gdthe,
"The unattainable
Is here accomplished;"
and this beauty it is which shines in the Gospels, above all,
in the delineation which they give us of Christ.
Only if Christ really was what He was taken for, can we
"injured, offended, and angered" by the prominent dignity of Christ; "be.
cause one man is always set up as a model against the wickedness and stupidity
of all the others! " (in his Kritik- cler ccvag. Geschiclde, Preface.)




LECT. VI.]      STRAUSS' "LIFE OF CHRIST."            423
solve the enigqma of primitive Christian faith, of the fonclcttion,
the spread, and the world-renewing power of the Christian Church.
Christ could only live as the God-man in the hearts of His
followers if He really was so.  How else was it possible that
so many Jews should have believed in One who was shamefully crucified (only think what a stumbling-block a crucified
Messiah must have been to them!), and so many heathen
should have accepted a crucified Jew as the Son of God?
How is it conceivable that on this sandy, mythical foundation
a Church should have been built up which possessed such
vitality and power of growth?   Whence did the Church,
wvhich is a Christian Church solely in virtue of her belief in
Jesus as the' only-begotten Son of God; —whence did the
Church take her rise, if she were not formed by Christ in
that capacity?  A myth cannot form, cannot produce; it is
itself only a product, a reflection of the popular mind, and that
in prehistoric times: it cannot, therefore, have begotten the
Christian Church; nay, it cannot even have helped to beget it.
The establishment of the Church, this immense achievement,
demands a personal Will, a creative power of the greatest
energy; it cannot be accounted for by the empty pictures of
imagination.  And where else do we find this power, what
else is a sufficient explanation, but the divine power of the
crucified and risen One?
We look at the enormous revolution in the world accomplished through Christianity; we look at the joyful heroism of
its confessors, braving death; and at the purity of the primitive
Christian Church, which is born, grows, spreads, and finally
conquers the world, though placed between a thoroughly
corrupted Judaism on the one hand, and a no less thoroughly
vitiated heathenism  on the other; and having done so, we
consider the attempt made to explain all this from the fact
that a certain Jew became convinced that he was the Messiah,
whereupon his disciples after his death attributed to him  all
sorts of miracles, which they drew from their imagination; and
our final conclusion is, that this explanation, involves such an
utter disproportion between cause and effect, that it is in itself
the most inconceivable miracle, a pure historical impossibility.
Strauss shares the fate of all anti-miraculists.  Denying
miracles, they are forced to substitute still greater enigmas




424      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL
for them, and yet are unable to explain real history. There
stands Christ in the unique consciousness of His Godhead,
His redeeming vocation, and His universal Kingship.    There
is the Church, there is Christianity with its world-regenerating effects,-all undeniable facts.  All these Strauss cannot
explain' by referring them to one who was not free from sin
and error, or to the inventive, ay, deceptive, imagination of
his followers.  Here we see the immense, residuum  which even
Strauss cannot get rid of, and which shows his whole hypothesis to be insufficient and wrong.
His hypothesis does not suit the clearness of that age,
which was a historical and not a prehistoric one; it does not
accord with the truth-breathing spirit of the Goypels, nor with
their simple, clear, and temperate style; it does not accord
with the personal greatness, the moral perfection, nor the
self-consciousness and the self-testimony of Christ, for whom
all human standards are insufficient; it suits neither the
spiritual, conscientious, and honourable character of the
primitive Church, nor the behaviour of its opponents, who raise
no contradiction; it does not accord with the immense and
ever beneficial moral efcts of the Gospel, which cannot have
proceeded from beautiful though unconscious fancies, nor from
intentional deceptions; and finally, we boldly say, it does not
accord with the present age, in which the Christ of the Gospels
is still approving Himself to many thousand hearts and consciences as living power and truth, and not as legend.
It all comes to the dilemma: Did Christ create the Church,
or did the Church invent Christ?   The former of these propositions is supported by the entire analogy of history; the
latter, as we have seen, is abnormal and inconceivable.  The
Christ of Strauss first called this wonderful Church into
existence in a perfectly natural manner, and was then born
again as a creature of her fancy.   Is not this the old trick
which Iegel tried to play, treating the world as posited by
the " absolute Idea," whilst this "absolute Idea" is only
realized in the world (vide p. 167)? No wonder that Nemesis
appeared in the person of Bruno Bauer (not to be confounded
1 Cf. Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, p. 838 (English edit., vol. ii.
p. 372), and Schaff, Die Person Jesu Christi (Gotha, 1865), p. 110 et ss.,
English edition (Boston, 1865), pp. 187 et ss.




LECT. VI.]        RENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS."            425
with Dr. Ferdinand Christian von Baur), who carried Strauss'
hypothesis to its extreme, and said in effect: You derive
everything from the idea of the Messiah which you suppose
to have been already in existence; but, my friend, the existence of this idea itself is likewise a myth: neither Christ
made the Church nor the Church Him, the Church made
itself!!  I will spare you any further delineation of this
utter nonsense, which would make everything exist before it
exists, and would engulf all historical development in an
eternal progress from nothing to nothing.
"Simplex veri sigillum"-Simplicity is the seal of the truth.
This wise motto of a great physician is applicable in all
matters of history and of faith.  Compare, my honoured
hearers, this artificially invented, this laboriously and violently
applied mythical hypothesis as to the life of Christ, with the
simple and artless statements of the Gospels.  Can you any
longer doubt which bears the impress of truth?
IV.-R-ENAN'S " VIE DE JESUS."
After having thus fully discussed the mythical theory, it
will suffice to give the French Strauss a shorter consideration
than his German colleague. The standpoint of Ernest Renan
in his Vie de Jesus 1 is essentially the same as that of Strauss,
and is shattered to pieces on the same rock.
Goethe says somewhere: "A book which should explain to
us Christ as a man glorified by the pure divine charm which
surrounded him, would exercise an immense influence on
Christianity."  If the success of a book were any criterion of
its intrinsic value, we might imagine that Renan had succeeded in solving this problem, and that Goethe's prophecy
was fulfilled in him; although, to be sure, there is not much
of the "pure divine charm" left us in his portrait of Christ.
But we have every reason to believe that the unparalleled
success of this book, which has been circulated by hundreds of
thousands, especially in the Roman Catholic world (Franco
and Italy), is primarily due to its graceful form.
l We quote from the edition of 1863.




426      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CIRIIST. [LECT. VI.
Renan's work is an embodiment of the spirit of modern
French infidelity.  We see it here gracefully floating along in
all its seductive elegance, labouring hard to compress much into
brilliant and short sentences, yet withal pleasantly entertaining,
and using all those arts which for centuries have made it such
a favourite in the polite society of Europe.  But, at the same
time, we mark its boundless, well-nigh incomprehensible capriciousness, its superficial frivolity, which only calculates on
sensations suited to the times, and gracefully waives the most
difficult problems; we mark its entire want of earnest moral
consciousness, of real scientific perception, of thorough and
conscientious historical investigation, and, worse than all,' the
piquant flippancy (pleasing, alas! to too many) which does
not hesitate to clothe the most holy Figure in history in the
garb of a social democrat of modern France, nor to change the
most sacred life into-a novel.
This book is the first part of a larger work; 1 it was written
on the occasion of a journey to Phoenicia and the Holy Land.
"I wrote down a sketch of it hurriedly enough in a Maronite
hut, with five or six books around me.... The striking
agreement between the descriptions of the New   Testament
and the places which lay around me; the wonderful harmony
between the ideal portrait of the Gospels and the landscape
which served as its frame-all these things were a kind of
revelation to me.  I seemed to have a fifth gospel before me,
mutilated and torn, but still legible; and from that hour,
under the guidance of Matthew and Mark, I saw, instead of
that abstract being whose existence one can scarce help
questioning, a genuine but wondrously beautiful human
figure fall of life and motion.... I fixed this picture, which
appeared to my spirit, with a few hasty strokes, and what
grew from it is this story " (vide Introduction).
This explains to us the whole character of the book.  On a
well-drawn background of Syrian landscapes, Ienan sketches
the picture of Christ, not in philosophical abstractions, but
with the fresh colours of life; not floating in mythical mists,
but with sharply defined features.  Unlike the figure drawn
by Strauss, which is constantly shrinking up under the mono1 "Histoire des origines du Christianisme." Since then there have appeared
the second part,." Les Apotres," and the third, "St. Paul."




LECT. VI.]        IENAN'S " VIE DE JESUS."            427
tonous action of the critical dissecting knife, till at last the
operator complains that of few great men do we know so little
as of Christ:-unlike this, here we see flesh and blood, life and
development.   Indeed, there is a certain warmth of feeling
for the beauties of the King whom yet he seeks to dethrone.
Nowhere do we breathe the close air of the study, but always
the fresh breezes of an inspiriting journey.  But then this
vivid freshness is so dearly bought, that we could wish the
lamp of study had not been wanting in that Maronite hut
(and afterwards too!), and that the clever Frenchman had not
so often tried to cover his want of thorough investigation by
fanciful ideas and brilliant superficiality.  For the "fifth
gospel" from which he borrows is (as we shall soon see) not
only the ocular instruction obtained on the scene of the
occurrences, but to a considerably greater extent his imagination, which appears to have blossomed so luxuriantly under
the rays of the Eastern sun, that it plays its possessor one
trick after another, and finally changes him from a historian
into a novelist.
Renan, too, sees in Jesus nothing more than a man.   He
intends to draw  a "wondrously beautiful," yet "genuinely
human," portrait, to the exclusion of all supernatural factors.
We shall see whether he succeeds in both these respects, or
whether the all too great humanity does not spoil the wondrous
beauty, and make ugly stains in it.  As Strauss makes use of
the myth to get rid of the supernatural, so Renan uses the
cognate conception of the legend.  His views are expressed in
the sentence, that " the life of Christ, as the evangelists relate
it, is essentially historical, but in no way supernaturzal."  The
Gospels are "essentially" genuine writings, composed by
apostles or their disciples in the course of the first century.
Even the Gospel of St. John Renan supposes probably to have
been written by an intimate disciple of his, and qiAte in his
spirit. But for all that, in them the real history of Christ is
throughout distorted by leqends, and adorned by the traditions
of the wonder-loving disciples. Moreover, these four "legendary
biographers flagrantly contradict each other" (Introduction, p.
xliv); "they are full of errors and of nonsense" (p. 450).
The questions which we asked above,-whether the fabrication of such legends is in accordance with the otherwise




428     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
conscientious and sober character of the disciples, and with
the behaviour of their opponents who do not dispute the
miracles, —none of them trouble Renan; his historical conscience is far above such scruples.  We are merely told that
tradition at that time was utterly unconcerned as to an exact
record of what had happened; since "the spirit was everything, the letter nothing" to these primitive historians,-just
as though no one could have had any interest in obtaining
certain and exact information about the words and works of
Christ (cf: Luke i. 4).
But from this mass of legends and apocryphal miracles the
real history of Christ may still be extracted by means of a
bold historical criticism. How, then, does it now appear?
Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, was born in Nazareth,
not in Bethlehem, nor of the lineage of David. He grew up
in poor circumstances, and notwithstanding his unusually rich
gifts, he remained under the influence of the narrow views
common to his people.    Thus he believed in Satan, in
demons, in miracles, and had no knowledge whatever of the
"inflexibility of all nature's laws" (ride Introduction). In
his youth he even showed some inclination to the uncouth
and narrow-minded fanaticism of the Pharisees. " Probably,"
however, he learned from the mild Rabbi Hillel (who lived
from 110 B.C. to 10 A.D.). In addition to the Old Testament,
he "probably" read many of the apocryphal writings; and
the visions of Daniel especially fixed themselves in his mind.
This constant "probability" at the very outset shows that
Renan is writing history only in hypotheses.
Renan divides the public life of Christ into three periods.1
The first and most beautiful was " the period of pure moral
teaching," of the tranquil Galilean life.  There, from  the
blue skies of Galilee, from the beauties of nature, and from
his own heart, Jesus extracts a consciousness of God such as
no one before or after him has ever had, and he begins to
preach about the heavenly Father whom he has found.  "God
is our Father, and all men are brethren." This was at that
time the purport of his preaching. He announced a kingdom
of God "which we must create in ourselves through uprightness of the will and poetry of the heart."  In the Sermon on
1 Cf. Luthardt, ubi sup. p. 25 et ss.; Uhlhorn, ubi sup. p. 15 et ss.




LECT. VI.]         RENAN S "VIE DE JESUS."              429
the Mount, "that most beautiful code of a perfect life which
ever moralist drew up," we may recognise the main features
of this divine kingdom: a worship built upon purity of heart
and brotherly love to men; a religion without priests and
outward ceremonies, entirely depending on the imitation of
God and the immediate communion of conscience with the
heavenly Father. The later realistic conception of the kingdom
of God is an obscuration of this then pure idea. At that
time, too, Jesus did not as yet perform any miracles. Had he
died during this period, his idea would have remained purer.
But it is one thing to conceive a great idea, and another to
give it practical effect.  In order to attain success, every idea
must sacrifice something, for none ever yet went forth unstained from  the great struggle of life.  "In order to make
that which is good successful among men, less pure ways are
necessary." 1  Without miracles the gospel could not have conquered the world. Here we see the fundamental desideratum
of Renan's historical theory; it leaves no room for the moral
consciousness. A little fraud is absolutely necessary in order
to succeed. And so Christ was obliged to come down more
and more from his ideal heights, till at length he fell into the
slough of deception as soon as he endeavoured to realize his
ideal.
With this we enter on the second period of his work, that
of intoxicated Galilean enthusiasm, brought in by the unfavourable influence of John the Baptist's austere spirit on the
milder soul of Jesus. He now adopts the Messianic belief
of his nation, and begins to think more highly of his own
person. In the energetic flight of his will he believes himself
to be almighty, the reformer of the universe.  He now preaches
the kingdom   of heaven, which he himself brings; his fundamental idea changes to that of an entire overthrow of the
existing order of things, a moral revolution by which even
sickness and death should be banished, but not through
sanguinary political means.  The kingdom of God was to be
realized in a peaceable manner by men amongst men.       He
1 "Pour faire reussir le bien parmi les hommes, des voies moins pures sont
necessaires." See, too, how Renan in his "St. Paul" (1869) makes the apostle
on several occasions take his refuge in jugglery, because "the contact with
reality always defiles."




430     MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
gathers around his person a circle of " childlike " disciples, of
publicans, and especially of women and Magdalens, " who in
his society discovered an easy means of becoming honest
again."  Thus he passes through the country riding on a
gentle mule along the lovely shores of the Sea of Galilee,
surrounded by applauding multitudes, with young fishermen
as his enthusiastic friends, women and children in his train.
It is " a constant festival," an uninterrupted intoxication, a
heavenly rural wedding feast. "The new religion is in many
respects a movement amongst women and children."
This lovely but visionary idyll is followed by the fatal
third period, that of the dark fanatical conflict with the
Pharisees and ecclesiastical rulers.  In order to attack the
citadel of Judaism, Jesus changes his place of action from
Galilee to Judea and Jerusalem.  In view of the temple with
its priests and slaughterings, he seizes the cleansing scourge.
This act loosened the last bond which bound him to the
Jewish faith, and tightened the knot of enmity between him
and the rulers. He and his provincials had made but small
impression on the smooth and polished floor of the capital.
All the more does this want of success inflame his zeal. The
preacher of morals turns into a violent revolutionary, and
apocalyptic enthusiast. Now he is the Messiah appeared in
person, who will abolish the law and found his kingdom on
the ruins of the present age.  He speaks of his second coming
in the clouds of heaven, makes the angels of God his servants to execute judgment on the world, and pronounces the
belief in his person as Son of God in a superhuman sense the
fundamental law  of his kingdom.   His natural meekness
changes into a sharp and dictatorial manner which can bear
no contradiction.  Indeed, at times his ill-temper towards all
resistance betrays -him into inexplicable and seemingly absurd
actions, as, e.g., his curse against the fig-tree.
At that time the first legendary germs began to collect even
around the living person of Christ. Because the Messiah was
generally supposed to be the Son of David, Christ let himself
be called so; at first unwillingly, because he well knew that
he was not descended from him, but afterwards he found
pleasure in the title.  Thence proceed the legends of his
lineage and his birth in Bethlehem. But above all, he now




LECT. VI.]        RENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS."            431
puts on the appearance of miraculous power, and in general
becomes less particular in the choice of ways and means.
True, even earlier than this he may have given an impulse
to the formation of miraculous legends; for one of his most
constant and deep-seated convictions was, that through faith
and prayer a man could obtain full power over nature. Resting upon this conviction, he obtained that extraordinary power
over men's minds which soon led them to attribute to his
miraculous power every remarkable case of recovery from
sickness, or awakening from apparent death, that happened in
his neighbourhood. Fame multiplied the number of these
occurrences immensely. For, on the whole, there are but few
different kinds of miracles related in the Gospels; they are
merely repetitions of one and the same pattern. Jesus, however, in all probability never performed real miracles; for in
all cases (though Renan himself can only cite two!) in which
scientific researches have been made as to ostensible miracles,
they have been found to be baseless. Renan expresses himself more cautiously than Strauss: "We do not say that a
miracle is impossible, but only that as yet none has ever been
confirmed;" but in reality he means the same.  But many
circumstances seem to indicate that it was not till ablater
period, and against his will, that Jesus became a miracleworker (pp. 265, 270).  He had no choice.   Miracles were
universally considered an indispensable proof of a divine mission. He allowed himself, compelled by this unconquerable
prejudice of the multitude, to assume the appearance of
miraculous power, and in some cases really did succeed in
producing improvement in the condition of physical or mental
sufferers by means ot his moral influence, and at other times
cured those who fancied themselves possessed, by falling in
with their monomania.   In other cases, however, miracles
were simply.fathered upon him by the superstition of his contemporaries or the enthusiastic fancy of his followers.  At
length his miracles became intentional fraudcs.  This was
especially the case with the illusion practised at the raising
of Lazarus, who was laid in the grave alive, in order that he
might issue forth at the call of Jesus.  "Tired of the cold
reception with which the kingdom of God had met in the
capital, the friends of Christ were desirous of a great miracle,




432      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
in order that they might strike a heavy blow at the unbelief
of Jerusalem. Lazarus and his two sisters undertook the
chief part in this fraud." And Christ, who knew of it, joined
in the comedy! " We must keep in mind that in this impure
town, with its dull, oppressive atmosphere, Jesus was no
longer the same. JHis conscience had, through the fault of
men, not his own, lost something of its original purity."  The
town had exercised a demoralizing influence upon him! Well
it was that death soon plucked him out of the fatal meshes
of a role which was no longer practicable.
But this death of his atoned for his momentary aberrations. Renan closes the life of Christ with the last sigh on
the cross. The resurrection is unhistorical. The empty grave
and the imaginary vision which appeared to the excited Mary
Magdalene gave the impetus to this legend.  Only the enthusiasm of love raised Jesus to the elevation of the Godhead.
"Divine power of love "-thus Renan concludes with solemn,
piously sounding pathos-" sacred moments, in which the
passion of a hallucinated woman gave the world a risen
God!" 1
This is the sad and downward path of the life of Christ
according to Renan. What is particularly repulsive in his
description is the constant mixture of admiration and blasphemy, of approbation and detraction.    But though this
defilement of our Lord's life may raise our indignation, we
are utterly disgusted when we look at the important and
ambiguous part in it which Renan assigns to the women.
Here we see only too distinctly that the writer borrows his
colours fiom the society amongst which he moves, and for
whom   his novel is calculated.  The young Galilean, "of
ravishing beauty " and amiableness, captivated women's hearts.
His words and looks penetrated their inmost soul. Women of
dubious morality are not wanting.  These "fair creatures"
(belles creatures) having received a strong impression from
him, now emulate each other in proofs of grateful love. True,
Renan does not think of accusing Christ Himself of anything
wrong.  But still he thinks it possible that "in that dark
hour in Gethsemane, Jesus thought not only of the clear
i "Moments sacres, ou la passion d'une hallucinee donne au monde un Dieu
resuscit!" (cf. Lect. VII.)




LECT. VI.]        RENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS."               433
brooks in his native land, but also of the Galilean girls,
whose love he renounced, in     order to live only for his
vocation!!"
We turn away in disgust.      Even a rationalist like A.
Coquerel wrote to Renan: "I beg you to expunge from     your
book an intolerably   odious phrase-that about the'fair
creatures.'... In the name of good taste, and of the highest
and most delicate rules of decency, do speak of them with
more dignified gravity!"1  Before this we have had occasion
to complain of arbitrary treatment of history by the antimiraculous critics of the life of Christ; but here we have
worse than that-the morbid abortions of an imagination corrupted by the air of Paris.
Nevertheless we will give a quiet investigation to these
statements of Renan.   In these three periods of the life of
Christ we really have a genuine human-one might even say
French-development, but only at the cost of openly giving?qp iis sinlessness.  According to the Gospels (of. Luke ii. 49
with John xvii.), Jesus rises from step to step in the development of His divine consciousness and the proof of His obedience even to death; according to Renan, He constantly sincks
lower both in spiritual knowledge and in moral purpose and
practice.  In the Christ of the Gospels we are astonished at
the constancy of His character, and the'uniformity of His
moral dignity. Renan goes so far in "developing" his Christ,
that he at last is "no longer himself!"   The sublime moral
teacher, with his pure ideas, becomes an amiable but unpractical enthusiast, who as yet knows little of the world; the
innocent enthusiast changes into a fanatic revolutionist, a dark
prophet who only hears in his dreams the trumpet of judgment; and he at last turns into a deceiver, at first against his
will, making one dishonest concession after another to the
spirit of.the age; then into a Jesuit, who thinks that the end
sanctifies any means, and who is not even ashamed of a
comedian's tricks!
1 In the people's edition several offensive things were really eliminated. But
in Renan's "St. Paul" (1869) he again assigns an important part to the Greek
women, and makes the apostle entertain the warmest feelings towards his beautiful and faithful devotees, " amongst whom he appears even to have formed a
more intimate connection with Lydia, though he may not have taken her with
him on his travels! "
2 E




43 4      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
Moral teacher, enthusiast, fanatic and deceiver, of what do
these three stages of life remind us? Doubtless the Koran
at once occurs to all of us.     And verily Renan is naive
enough openly to confess that " the life of l~ohammned supplied
him with the idea of these periods" (cf. the Introd.).  He has
merely made the little mistake of confounding the true Prophet
with the false one!!  Who can wonder, after this, that Renan
should have drawn a distorted caricature instead of a true
historical picture?
Here, as in the case of Strauss and Schenkel, we see a just
retribution.  In the character of Christ, deity and humanity
form an inseparable personal unity, and whoever, in depicting
Him, excludes the divine factor, cannot justly treat the human
natutre of Christ, for he cannot depict it without bringing in
shadows which would make Him         quite incompetent to be
the Redeemer of the world. Renan promises to show us a
"wondrously beautiful" human character.        But when we
think of his Christ at the grave of Lazarus, how much of this
beauty remains?     Renan's account gives us the impression
that he is unwilling to include these moral stains in the
picture of Christ. He would willingly represent Him as more
pure, if this were possible.  13ut through his acknowledgment
that our Gospels are essentially genuine apostolic writings, he
is compelled to take for genuine historical tradition much that
Strauss simply throws overboard as mythical.      What other
choice has Renan, since he denies the Godhead of Christ and
the existence of the miraculous, than to aseribe these elements
in the Gospels to visionary enthusiasm, o    if that will not
suffice, to deceit?1  It is of no use to try, as Renan does, to
excuse these impure means which he supposes Jesus to employ
by saying that this was the only way for [imm to attain His
object, that in this world "nothing great was ever accomplished without resting on a legend;" it is of no use to
transfer the guilt from  Jesus to " men who want to be de1 "The case of Renan is highly instructive, as showing what a man must come
to who concedes the historical character of the Gospels even merely in their
fundamental features (and this every one must do, or else give himself up to an
arbitrary disregard of all science), and yet refuses to acknowledge Jesus as the
God-man. Such an one may get a mere man, but assuredly not a morally puie
one, or a pattern of true humanity; his mere man must necessarily be a visionary
and a deceiver " (Uhlhorn, ubi sup. p. 25).




LECT. VI.]       nIENAN S "VIE DE JESUS."                435
ceived."  For every man who still has a moral consciousness
must feel that whoever is capable of employing such means is
not competent to release mankind from    sin and error, and
morally regenerate it; or, on the other hand, that if such influences really did proceed from Christ, He must have been
different to what Renan represents Him.
When any one can do such despite to history and its
records as to impute moral faults to Christ, this fundamentally
false view of the centre must dislocate the whole history which
is grouped around it. He who makes Christ develope morally
downwards instead of divinely upwards, is capable, ay, is
compelled, to turn all else upside down. And this is actually
the case in the work before us.    The death of Christ is a
redemption for himself, from  the difficulties of his impracticable role, instead of a redemption for us; in fact, the whole
work of Christ, instead of being accomplished step by step up
to the last word, "It is finished," is less accomplished the
longer it is carried on, till at length it becomes absolutely
"impracticable."  The resurrection, or the disciples' belief in
it, instead of being a divine release from all doubts and conflicts, is rather the occasion of endless errors and enthusiastic
lies.  Christianity itself, this manly religion of self-denial and
self-conquest, becomes a "movement amongst women and
children;" and the whole history of the world and the Church,
instead of being founded on divinely certain facts, rests on
the hallucinations of a nervously-affected woman!!
Truly the historical difficulties and psychological impossibilities in Renan's view of the life of Christ are far more
numerous than in that of Strauss. For Renan does not delay
the formation of legends till after the death of Christ, but
boldly includes it in His life.   He who said "I am      the
Truth," must Himself stand and see how falsehood grows up
around Him and be silent, nay, even help! Moreover, the
way in which Renan treats the Gospels is far mnore arbitrary
than the method either of Strauss or Schenkel; which is all
the more inexcusable, inasmuch as Renan      considers these
writings to be essentially genuine.l Often a piece is taken as
1 This arbitrary dealing is only equalled by Renan's exegetical incapacity. Of
this he gives some perfectly astounding proofs..g. the parable of the rich
man and Lazarus he explains thus: "The rich man is in hell because he i



4.36       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VL
true down to the smallest detail, when         another close   by
(merely from an aversion to the supernatural) is declared to
be a legend.   And not only this, but the various passages are
shuffled together like a pack of cards, without the least reqgard
to chronology or the plan of the evangelists, and then put
together again according to a self-invented chronology.    Renan
is bold enough to fabricate an entire period in Christ's ministry
about which not one of the Gospels tells anything.  According to
all four Gospels (and even according to Strauss, Schenkel, and
Keim), Christ meets with the Baptist before the beginning of
His public ministry.    But Renan transfers this meeting to the
beginning of the second period, and represents it as preceded
by the first period of pure moral teaching, which, however, he
fills up with words and works of Jesus which are related by
all the Gospels as. taking place after that meeting (as the
Sermon on the      Mount, etc.).    According   to  all the  four
Gospels, the first disciples are called by the Lord at the beginning of His ministry; according to Renan, this circle is not
formed till the second period.      All four evangelists relate
miracles of our,Lord from the very beginning of His public
appearance; according to Renan, it is at a much later period
that He permits Himself to be forced by popular pressure to
assume the character of a miracle-worker.     Is this the method
of a conscientious historian?
In addition to this, REenan everywhere utnblushingly lets his
fancy paint and speakc for him; and in the most frivolous
manner brings in details about which he knows nothing whatever, in order to give his story more freshness and vividness.
As soon as the picture of Christ threatens to become too lean and
insignificant, by reason of the denial of all that is miraculous,
Renan knows how to supply what is lacking from his imagination. We learn things that are entirely new to us, and for which
rich,-because he dines well whilst others before his door are dining ill." For
this reason Luke is supposed to be "an excited democrat and Ebionite, i.e.
most hostile to property, and persuaded that the vengeance of the poor would
soon come." His Gospel has a " communistic tendency!" Here again we see
how modern French conditions of life are dated back to the beginning of the
Christian era. From Matt. xxii. 1-14 Renan concludes "that pure Ebionismi.e. the doctrine that the poor are to be saved, and their kingdom is comingwas the doctrine of Christ! " Renan does not seem to have a notion that this
parable applies to the rejection of the Jews and the calling of Christ's Church
from amongst the Gentiles.




LECT. VI.]      RENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS."             437
we should be most grateful if they were not entirely imaginary.
Renan can tell us all about the teachers of Christ; the books
that He read in His young days; His youthful tendency to
zealotism; His sisters, who Renan knows were married in
Nazareth; about the children of Peter; about Judas, who "most
likely " led a harmless life on his estate of Hakeldama, etc.,
etc. On the other hand, what the Gospels know and tell, he
often ignores or'thinks he knows better.  Thus, in contradiction to,the Gospels, he knows that the family of David was
entirely extinct at the time of Christ's birth.  According to
the Gospels, Jesus travels on foot, so that He becomes " wearied
with the journey" (John iv. 6); but Renan knows that in His
progress through Galilee He " used a mule.  Evety now and
then the disciples would display around his person a rustic
pomp, at the expense of their own clothes, which served the
purpose of carpets.  They laid them  on the mule which
bore him, or spread them  before him  on the earth."  All
this Renan's imagination extracts from Matt. xxi. 7, 8, with
such slight changes as making the ass into a mule, converting the incident which took place once in Jerucsalem into
an oft-repeated habit in Galilee, and making the disciples
spread their garments on the road, which in ver. 8 is done
only by the people. He also knows that Jesus, who was pleased
with the " straightforward and lively character of Peter, sometimes condescended to smile at his very decided ways."...
" A naive doubt was sometimes raised amongst the disciples,
but Jesus with a smile or a look silenced the objection."
Where else are we told about Jesus smiling?  The wife of
Pilate, Renan supposes, perhaps saw the "gentle Galilean from
a window of the palace, which looked out on to the heights of
the temple."  (But according to Josephus the palace lay on
the hill of Zion, in the upper town, so that this outlook was
not possible.) All this sounds as lifelike as if Renan himself
had been an eye-witness of the events, and yet it is mere
vapour and false paint applied to real events.  How grand,
when compared with this sensational depiction, is the terse
and chaste style, the holy gravity of the Gospels!
After this we cannot wonder that Renan should put words
into the mouth of Christ which He never spoke; e.g. that the
law was abolished, whereas He plainly said, " I am not come




438       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
to destroy the law, but to fulfil it."  Christ said, "Destroy
[ye] this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John
ii. 19); and the false witnesses changed this into:' I am able
to destroy the temple of God, and to build it again in three
days" (Matt. xxvi. 60, 61; Mark xiv. 57-59); but this does
not prevent Renan from assuring us that "Jesus really pronounced these fatal words."
Respected hearers, can a book which professes to be history
be more full of weak points and blunders? The same question, as in the case of Strauss and Schenkel, returns to us with
redoubled force: Is a man like this capable qf writing history?one who draws on his imagination in the way we have seen,
who brings in an entirely new chronology of his own, taken
from elsewhere; one who, to judge by the solecisms we have
cited,l has not even carefully examined the passages in question; one who paints Christ and His times in the colours of
the present Parisian world;-can any confidence be placed in
him? And yet the present generation, from excess of criticism,
has become so uncritical as to go by hundreds of thousands
(I am  not exaggerating) to hear the history of all histories
from a man who has laid himself open to so many charges!
If one who were writing the life of Luther or Napoleon
thus gave the reins to his fancy, we should expunge his
name from the list'of historians and place him among the
novelists; and this we must do to Renan.   But at the source
of history, ii anywhere, only history should be written, and
not novels.
A novel-this is the only true title of his book with its
constant mixture of truth and fiction, of historical fragments
and subjective imagination.  The effeminate, unhealthy, morbid
tone of the modern French novel, with its utter want of
moral consciousness, permeates the whole work.   Hence the
peculiarly tentative style, with its constantly-recurring "probably "-" most likely "-" to all appearance "-" well-nigh," 
One of the most flagrant amongst the many not mentioned is the schoolboy's error of confounding Hellenes (Greeks) and Hellenists (Greek-speaking
Jews).
2 Renan is inexhaustible in such phrases as, " 11 faut supposer-on est tent6
de croire —il semble-il parait —probablement-petut-etre-on dit — ce que l'on
croit-je soup9onne-qui sait-si je puis le dire," etc.




LECT. VI.]         PENAN'S "VIE DE JESUS."              439
which are not wanting in any important passages, and betray
an involuntary distrust of his imaginative hypothesis.  Like
most modern beaux esprits, Renan always uses gentle approximations.  A real colour is too rough and painful to sensitive
eyes, so we always have shadings.   It is only consistent of
Renan finally to shade over the cardinal difference between
the colours of all human acts, i.e. to efface the distinction
between good and evil, and to represent even that which is
best and most beneficent as always mixed with evil. This
brings us to the fundamental error of his standpoint: the
pantheizing negation of the supernatural, and consequently the
absence of moral feeling.  lenan's God is not the God of
Scripture, the free personal Creator of the world.   This is
shown, not only by many pantheistic sentences in his book,
some of which he puts into Christ's mouth, but also by other
utterances 1 in which he declares his leaning to Hegel.  He
does not attribute self-consciousness to God, but only a progressive development in His self-knowledge from    the stone
and the plant upwards to Buddha and Christ.2   We must not
let ourselves be deceived as to this by the religious warmth
of tone in his Vie de Jesus.   But what does he mean by
continuing to talk of a heavenly Father?    If Jesus did so,
then even He could not have attained to the " pure idea," i.e.
the pantheistic conception of God.
This false fundamental view may explain to us the surprising obscuration of moral consciousness which strikes us in such
sentences as these: that for the success of what is good " less
pure ways are necessary;"-" the best cause is only won by
ill means; we must accept men as they are, with all their
illusions, and thus endeavour to work upon. them; France
would not be what it is (probably not!) if it had not for a
thousand years believed in the flask of holy oil at Rheims;
when we with our scrupulous regard for truth have accomplished what the heroes did by their deceptions, then, and not
till then, shall we have a right to blame them: the only
Cf. Renan's letter to Bertholet, Revue des deux Mondes, 1863; also Uhlhorn,
ubi sup. p. 28.
2 He considers God to be "le lieu de 1'ideal, le principe vivant du bien," etc.
"La these fondamentale de toute notre theologie " is the axiom that " Dieu est
immanent, non seulement dans 1'ensemble de lunivers, mais dans chacun des
6tres qui le composent" (ubi sup.).




440      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
culprit in such cases is mankind, who wants to be cheated."
Instead of destroying the delusions of mankind, we are merely
to let them be, and to use them cleverly, cheat those who want
to be cheated, and not shun false paint and ill means in order
to attain our end! Here we see the democrat turn into a
Jesuit. But these are the morals of Parisian circles-the truly
French confusion between momentary, outward success, and
real, durable, though slowly progressing moral welfare and
blessing. And these are the moral sentiments of one who
wishes to reduce Christianity to its purely moral basis while
doing away with all dogmas.    Here we may learn what. sort
of morals we may expect to result from this process.   For
Renan does not only give theory, he immediately carries his
maxims into practice in his book.  He knows the illusions of
the public with whom he has to deal, and chooses its weak
side, the love of novels, in order to attain great success. We
see that he is wanting in that very quality which is most
important for the exegete and for the historian, viz. moral
conscientiousness.  Not only-like   Strauss-does he     not
believe in an absolute moral perfection, but not even in the
power of pure truth.  He thinks that it must always be assisted
by some false paint and deception; whereas we all know that
the whole history of the world, but still more that of God's
kingdom, is one long proof that the truth is strong and invincible
in proportion as it is pure and unadulterated.   The more
unadorned it is, the more durable-though not always speedy
-are its effects, and every admixture of falsehood and fraud
weakens it and threatens its life.1 But a view of the world
which is so corrupt as to deny this can only be pitied, not
combated...
And now, "what think ye of Christ," and what of His
anti-miraculous biographers?  Perhaps some of my hearers
may have thought the judgment passed on them (which, however, is one with that of the greatest critics) somewhat hard.
Those who think so, I would merely ask one question: Do you
1 "Truth needs no colour with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd."
SAlakspeare, Sonnet ci.




LECT. VI.]            CONCLUSION.                    441
know what accusation is brought by those who deny the
Gcdhead of Christ against us who confess and defend it, ay,
and against the whole Church?  In virtue of this denial they
practically accuse zis of idolatry, and of a continuous most
aggravated offence against the majesty of God, because we
worship Jesus who is a mere man. They accuse Christ Himself at least of caring worse for His Church than Mohammed
did for his.  For whereas the latter taught and recorded in
writing the exclusive Unity of the Godhead so clearly that it
is well-nigh impossible for his followers to become idolaters,
Christ spoke so ambiguously in many discourses about His
unique and superhuman relation to God, that His disciples
and His Church not only were able, but were almost compelled, to fall into deep idolatry! Why did He not speak
more clearly in order to preclude this great evil?  More than
this. By the assertion that Christ was not the Son of God
(in a superhuman sense), our opponents (though they will not
confess it) affirm that the sentence passed on Him, because of
blasphemy, was the justest verdict ever pronounced! Nothing
but His trzue and real divinity can save Him from the accusation
of blasphemy, and ts from the charge oj idolatry!
This, then, without mincing the matter, is the issue between
us and our opponents.  Who can be angry with us ior not
allowing this slur to be cast upon our Lord, upon the goodly
host of His followers, and upon ourselves; or who chide us
for rebutting such a charge with all our energy? How can
preachers of tolerance be so devoid of understanding as to
demand that we should give the right hand of fellowship to
these opponents, and acknowledge the justification of their
standpoint in the Christian Church, whilst they declare the
central truth of our belief, as it has hitherto stood, to be a
deception?
Here stands our Lord Jesus Christ, and around Him His
accusers, and " their witness agreeth not together " in many
points, neither in their treatment of the Gospels as historical
records, nor in their apprehension of passages taken singly.
Let us now comprise in a few sentences what is common to
them as a body, and compare it with our old confession of
belief in Christ. You will then see at once the depth of the
chasm which separates us:



442       MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
THE CHURCH.                   THE ANTI-MIRACULISTS.
I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe in Jesus, who allowed himself to be
called Christ (or Messiah).
The only-begotten Son of The (illegitimate) son of Joseph the carpenter.
God.
Our Lord.                Our brother, who himself was not quite free from
sin and error.
Who was conceived by the Who was naturally begotten and conceived.
Holy Ghost.
Born of the Virgin 3Mary.  Born of Mary, the wife (?).
Suffered under Pontius   Who (merely on account of his resistance to the
Pilate.                  rulers) suffered under Pontius Pilate.
Was crucified, dead, and Was crucified, dead, and probably "hastily inburied.                  terred in some dishonourable burying-place."
He descended into hell.  (?)
The third day He rose again Remained in death, and did not rise again, but
from the dead.           was only in after years believed to have done so.
He ascended into heaven.  Whose body decayed in the grave, whilst his
spirit was raised to heaven, if indeed there be
such a thing as immortality and eternal bliss.
And sitteth on the right (?)
hand of God the Father
Almighty.
From thence He shall come Who also spoke of his second coming-which was
to judge the quick and the  either visionary or else intended impersonally
dead.                    -and of his judging the world, which was
undue self-exaltation.
If any one is suited by this non-miraculous         Christ, we
demand of him, with Strauss, that he should cease to speak of
Him as the "    edeemer."    If he is a clergyman, let him      no
longer read prayers to Christ in the Church or at the grave,
and let him be honourable and straightforward enough to give
his new religion a nczw name. He who no longer believes in
Christ as the divine, sinless, and holy Redeemer, no longer
stands within the pale of Christianity, though he may still hold
on to a few tatters of Christian morals. For the Christian
religion is, and remains, nought else than the belief in the
redemption accomplished by Christ the Son of God. This doctrinal foundation, which was laid by Christ and His apostles,
cannot be given up by the Christian Church to all ages without giving up herself.    In so saying, we lift up no stones
against those who have thus radically broken with the belief
of the Church; in matters of faith and conscience we abhor all
measures of force as wrong and hurtful to the cause of Christ;
we would allow to every man the fullest freedom to investigate for himself, and decide freely for or against our old




LECT. VI.]             CONCLUSION.                   443
Christian faith. But if this decision fall out against it, we
demand an open and honourable breach, and protest aloud
against those who notwithstanding proclaim as Christianityay, and even as a higher, purer form of Christianity-that
which deals a death-blow at the heart of the Christian faith.
And while, as a matter of course, we do battle for this central
truth, we feel that we have a right to do so, not only because
we have experienced the power of the truth in our own hearts,
but also because of the scientific weakness and untenableness of
our opponents' position.
Looking back upon the way which we have gone, and
passing by all details, we may comprehend the weak points
in the anti-miraculous accounts of the life of Christ under the
following heads:
1. Their authors are devoid of that true historical perception
which does not make its own subjective axioms the criterion
of what is historically possible, but which lets the records say
what they do say, and weighs their truth according to the
historical effects which the events related in them have had
and are still having.  Instead of this, we find that both
Rationalism of every sort and Mythicism exhibit a boundless
caprice in their treatment of the records; the former in its exposition of them, the latter in the way it cuts them down, i.e.
both in their elimination of the supernatural element. The
standard of possibility which they apply to all that is contained
in these records is their own unproved (and unprovable because false) presupposition that the miraculous is impossible.
Whence their right to apply this standard?  Certainly not
from Him who has said, " My ways are not your ways," but
solely from their own good pleasure. And what else is this,
if we examine it closely, than a tremendous presumption?
They alone, at least as regards their anti-miraculous axioms,
are absolutely free from error: whatever militates against these
cannot have happened.  History must be suited to their tastes,
instead of their learning from history, and widening the narrowness of their own ideas to suit the greatness of divine actions.
Is this historical perception  or presumption?  Whoever
approaches the treatment of a difficult historical problem
without a humble desire for instruction, will be sure to produce an abortion; above all, in the treatment of a subject




444      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
which should never be approached otherwise than with the
feeling, "Put off thy shoes from of' thy feet, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground."
2. Our opponents do not explain what most needs explanation,
viz. the existence of the Christian Church, with its wonderful
historical development, its moral influence, the spiritual and
temporal blessings which it has brought to nations and individuals. Let any impartial person look at that very natural
human demagogue of Schenkel's, or at that Galilean Rabbi of
Strauss', who finally is guilty of "undue self-exaltation," or at
that enthusiast and deceiver of Renan's who is constantly
sinking deeper in the mire; and then let him say whether any
of these characters will afford a sufficient explanation of such
far-reaching and mighty events?  No! must be the answernone but the Christ of the Gospels, the only-begotten Son of
God, is great and mighty enough for us to attach such results
to His holy name! The very existence of the Church is in itself
the strongest proof for the truth of the gospel history.  By its
fruits the truth may be known to this day.  Error may propagate itself, but only for a time. The undiminished-nay, the
ever-increasing-power of the gospel after the lapse of 1800
years, is proof enough that its contents are not legends and
myths, but eternal truths.
3. These accounts do not explain to us the Person of Christ,
notwithstanding-or rather because of-its depression to the
level of natural human development. The issue on this question is simple. Here is a series of discourses and actions
which the four Gospels attribute to Christ (even taking into
account merely what is common to all, and undisputed). But
no ordinary man can have said and done, or pretended to
do, these things, without laying himself open to the reproach
of arrogance, self-exaltation, fanaticism, and fraud.  Hence
the anti-miraculists are absolutely compelled to question
Christ's sinlessness and freedom from error. Their merely
human Christ no longer represents true, i.e. pure, humanity.
Here, too, on the other hand, is the Christian Church, i.e. a
world-wide series of wholesome moral influences which proceeded from  this Person.  How  can both these things be
reconciled? They are a complete enigma. For if Jesus acted
and spoke as a deceiver, then the moral effects of His teaching




LECT. VI.]             CONCLUSION.                   445
are inconceivable.  But since these effects are indubitably
certain, it follows that Christ cannot have been a visionary or
a deceiver, nor can He have acted as such. But if He truly
spoke and actually did what is related, then He was no mere
man, but the Son of God.
4. They do not even explain to us whence the Christ imaged
forth in the Gospels originated.  How came Galilean fishermen
to invent an ideal of moral and spiritual majesty such as has
never been attained in history, poetry, or philosophy, if it
did not walk before them in person? All endeavours to
explain this by means of myths and legends, later inventions
and exaggerations, accord neither with the character of that
age, nor with the spirit and style of the Gospels, nor with the
testimony of confessedly genuine Iauline epistles, nor with
the character of the primitive Christian Church, nor yet with
the behaviour of its opponents.
5. Not one of these accounts in the least satisfies the needs of
the heart, which, above all, the gospel is assuredly intended to
meet.  He who yearns after help and consolation, peace and
freedom, for a burdened conscience, an aching heart, or a restless doubting spirit, cannot look for this from a Jesus who
has ceased to be the Saviour of the world.
6. Every one of these accounts is based upon a false conception of God, either deistic or pantheistic. Together with their
negation of the miraculous, they deny the free, living, personal
God and Creator. Their whole tendency is to do away with
Christ as the great Witness for a supernatural world, and to
" disable " His testimony against the modern naturalistic views.
In so doing they lose the Father as well as the Son; or more
correctly, because they will not know the Father, they cannot
know the Son.
However, we may learn something from all our opponents,
even from these.   Fundamentally false though their antimiraculous standpoint may be, yet they contain certain elements
of truth, just as the cognate systems of Deism and Pantheism.
Does not the applause with which they were received proceed
partly from the fact that the Church has not, as yet, given to
the world an entirely correct representation of the life of
Christ? True, here below the Church will never fully see
through the great divine mystery of His Person; what the




446      MODERN ACCOUNTS OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. [LECT. VI.
apostles did not succeed in will scarcely be accomplished by
men of our own day. A perfect representation of Christ can
only be expected by one who does not believe that we know
in part.   Nevertheless, since these late disputes, certain
theologians have truly pointed out that the Church has proceeded in too one-sided and dogmatic a manner in her delineations of the Person of Christ.l It cannot be denied that there
is a considerable gulf between the portrait of Christ in the
Gospels and that of our dogmatic writings.  In the latter we
often miss the living historical reality of the Saviour. What
with the great stress laid on the two separate factors, His
humanity and His divinity, we have lost the living unity of
the Person, the human and historical element in Christ; His
learning obedience in constant and free self-surrender to His
Father's will has been neglected as against His divine nature.
At this point of her doctrinal development the Church has
still much to learn with regard to the great Christological
problem of the present day,-a problem so great and difficult
that it will never be more than approximately solved.  Yet
we shall constantly approach towards its final solution, if only
we do not forget, on the one hand, that the genuinely human
does not stand in absolute antithesis to the divine, but is
intimately related to it; whereas, on the other hand, in a race
degenerated through sin, this true humanity cannot be fully
brought out except by a fresh engrafting of the divine.  The
true, the perfectly beautiful, humanity of Christ is so far from
being annihilated by His divinity, that it is only the latter
which completes and guarantees the former.2
Let us therefore beware of sacrificing the divine nature of
Christ to His humanity, and of removing the stumbling-block
of His God-manhood at the expense of His supernatural glory.
This dangerous extreme will best be avoided by constantly
allowing the perfect sinlessness, the unique moral dignity of
Christ, to work upon our hearts and consciences.  In view of
this, the more earnestly a man feels his sin, the more deeply
will he be convinced that the divine Sonship of Christ far
transcends all natural humanity. And finally, let us cast
1 Cf. Luthardt, tbi sup. pp. 11 et ss.
2 Witness the perfectly beautiful humanity of Christ, combined with His no
less perfect divinity, in the Gospel ot St. John.




LECT. VI.]             CONCLUSION.                   447
into the scale the fact that this same divine Christ of the
Gospels at this day is still approving Himself to the souls of
men as the One who of God is made unto us wisdom and
righteousness, sanctification and redemption.  This, we know
in our inmost hearts, is no delusion of fable or fancy; and
this drives us to the conclusion, that the historical portrait
given by the evangelists of the Son of God is safe against all
attacks.
Jesus Christ is not only, as many at the present day would
have it, a great Question; He is far rather the Divine Answzer
to all human questions and complaints. If we look at Him
merely as a Question, He becomes more and more unintelligible.  Let us rather strive to understand Him   as the
Answer to that most vital question of our hearts: Who shall
save me from sin and death?   Then shall we soon learn to
believe and confess, " Thou art Christ, the Son of the living
God'"




SEVENTH LECTURE.
MODERN DENIALS OF THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.
THE discussion of this. question is, as it were, the final
test of all that has gone before.  What I have hitherto
been seeking to establish was the belief in the supernatural,
in the miraculous power of the living God as manifested in
His being and His revelations, and especially in the history of
His Son upon earth. All these miracles culminate in the
resurrection of Christ. If this be established as true, then all
else stands firm; if it be a legend, then little more can be
saved.  Therefore the investigation of this fact is peculiarly
adapted to serve as a test for the results which we have
hitherto attained.  For the dogma of the resurrection is the
proof of all other doymas, the foundation of our Christian life
and hope, the soul of the entire apostolic preaching, the cornerstone on Zvhich the Christian Church is built.
We will first make ourselves acquainted with the views
and statements of our anti-miraculous opponents; after this
we shall proceed to investigate the historical testimoniesespecially that of Paul-and the arguments of those who
reject them; and finally, we shall inquire whether the denials
of the resurrection are not contradicted by certain indubitable facts and circumstances.
L. —ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.
Not a few among those who deny the bodily resurrection of
Christ seek to diminish the importance of the question by representing it as non-essential to our faith, and "the corporeal
element" as of no special significance.  What matter, they
say, whether His body again issued from the grave, if only
the Spirit of Christ continue to work in those who are His?
"The risen One is the exalted and glorified Christ the Lord
448




LECT. VII.       ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.              449
who is the Spirit; He who lives in His Church."l   Thus we
find many surreptitiously changing the resurrection of Christ's
body into something quite different, whilst outwardly keeping
up a show of adherence to the letter of this Article, by
preaching and speaking of a " spiritual resurrection and glorification."  This miserably confuses the whole issue.  Whoever denies a bodily resurrection should be honest enough no
longer to speak of resurrection at all.'  Resurrection does not
refer to the spirit, the continued existence of which Scripture
takes as a matter of course, but only to the body, and its issuing
forth alive from  the grave.  Only that can rise again which
has before been laid down in the grave, and that is only
the body, not the spirit.  Let us then have done with these
ambiguities.
But according to Scripture, the body of Christ was a sinless body, broken only for the sins of the world. Hence His
death was freely undertaken (John x. 18) by One who, as the
Son of God, possessed life in Himself, and had received from
His Father power to lay down His life and to take it again
(John v. 26, ii. 19, x. 17 ff.).  The question therefore is,
whether by the raising up of this His body, Christ really was
"declared to be the Son of God" (Pom. i. 4), and His most
important self-testimonies confirmed or not; whether He was
indeed "crowned with glory and honour" (Heb. ii. 9), or
whether, forsaken of God, He merely died on the cross? We
must decide whether His death was accepted by God as an
atoning death for us or not; or, in other words, whether the
work of redemption was indeed accomplished.  On the resurrection of Christ depends our hope that this work will be fully
accomplished in each of us, first inwardly, but at length outwardly too, when the last enemy is destroyed in the general
resurrection (Rom. vi. S; 1 Cor. xv. 2).    This shows the
importance of the question    under consideration.  A  birth
divine and human; a perfectly sinless obedience; a worldredeeming death and passion; a resurrection by which death
was overcome; followed by exaltation at the right hand of
1 Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 233.
2 Thus, Vogelin confesses, "It would be more correct, instead of always
speaking of the resurrection of Christ, to mention only His continued existence
amongst us" (Die Geschichte Jesu, p. 111).
2 




450             THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.         [LECT. VII.
the Father and the mission of the Spirit,-all these things
are firmly connected parts of one and the same work of redemption.    Take but one link out of this chain, and the
whole falls to pieces.   The resurrection is the beginning of
Christ's exaltation, and therefore the most important and indispensable link which connects His temporal work on earth
with His eternal work in heaven.    It is necessary, no less for
the perfection of the person than for the completion of the
work of the God-man; it is no less the source of our living
faith than the firm foundation for our hope of coming glory
and perfection.
It is only if we take our stand on this fundamental view
that we can understand the apostle when he says: "If Christ
be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also
vain;... ye are yet in your sins: then they also which are
fallen asleep in Christ are perished" (1 Cor. xv. 14-18).   If
any one attaches weight to this testimony of St. Paul, he
ought not to deny that the resurrection of Christ must remain
the Shibboleth of our Christian faith, as it was from      the
beginning the centre of the apostolic preaching (Acts i. 22,
ii. 31 if.).  How can Schenkel, in contradiction to such a
testimony, maintain that " the Apostle Paul himself pronounced
a faith which rests only on the outward fact of a bodily resurrection of Christ to be entirely worthless "? l- What does
St. Paul-in our case as in that of our Lord-mean when he
speaks of resurrection, if not a bodily rising again?  In the
passage cited (vers. 33-54) he constantly mentions the resurrection-body: " How are the dead raised up? and with what
body do they come?... This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Against
whom is St. Paul writing in this entire chapter, if not against
the doubters of a bodily resurrection?  And we are told that
he pronounced the faith in this outward fact to be entirely
worthless: he who makes the truth of his preaching, the
1 Characterbild Jesu, p. 223. To support this, Schenkel appeals to 2 Cor.
v. 16, " Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know
we Him no more;" but this passage does not in the least confirm his view. For
St. Paul only means that he no longer lays any value upon having known Christ
"after the flesh," i.e. outwardly as a natural man, since he has now become
acquainted with Him as the risen and glorified One. The meaning or importance of the resurrection-body is not touched upon at alL




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.            451
certainty of our faith, our redemption from sin, and our hope
of life, dependent on this fact! It is impossible to speak more
distinctly than St. Paul does here.  But nothing is clear to
those who are determined to doubt and cavil.    Moreover,
unbelief has an interest, for reasons which are easy to discover, in not acknowledging any one article of our faith as of
fundamental importance for the whole.  For then it is all the
easier to shake and undermine one after another. Hence the
numerous attempts to diminish the importance of the resurrection, or to transfer it from the corporeal into the spiritual
region, and by these means to make this article of faith somewhat more palatable to the miracle-fearing minds of our age.
This tendency to ignore the importance of the body proceeds from  a general lack of insight into the scriptural
philosophy of nature and of spirit.  Those who do so are
entirely wanting in any profound apprehension of the process of
salvation, by which, according to Scripture, God is carrying
on the world towards its consummation.  This process must
extend to the corporeal world as well as to the spiritual.  For
the victory of divine love over all the powers of sin and death
would not be complete if the body of man were not once to be
released from the bonds of death, and raised into that glorious
condition for which God has originally destined it.  Like all
other terrestrial bodies, it is intended one day to be entirely
penetrated by the spirit, to be translated into the glorious
liberty of the children of God, and thus to be transformed in
light inwardly and outwardly (Rom. viii. 21-23; Phil. iii. 21;
2 Cor. iv. 10, etc.). And how otherwise could this worldrenewing process be begun than by the resurrection and transformation of that one Body over which death had no powerthe sinless body of Christ the second Adam, in whom all are
to be made alive (1 Cor. xv. 22 et ss.)?  In His resurrection
"the consummation of the world is anticipated."  As in the
nether world Christ broke the bonds of spiritual death, so in
His resurrection He destroyed the organic power of death in
the earthly creation, and impregnated it (as an organismhence the dead bodies of the saints appear in Matt. xxvii.
52 and 53) with new and divine vital forces: just as in the
heart the life-blood is prepared afresh, and from it flows forth
into all the-limbs. The resurrection power coming from Christ,




452               THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.             [LECT. VII.
through the medium of His word and sacraments, tends mainly
to the sanctification and renewing oi the sinner (Rom. v. 10;
Eph. ii. 5, 6; 1 Pet. i. 3): and thus interpenetrates, first, the
spiritual nature of man, planting within those who are regenerate a germ   for the resurrection   ol the body (Rom. viii. 11).
Then the spiritual life of Christ breaks forth into a manifestation in the visible world, by revivifying the bodies of those
who are sanctified (in the first resurrection, 1 Cor. xv. 23;
John v. 25 —29; Rev. xx. 5; 6).        In  the succeeding general
resurrection-an act of Christ's power which extends to the
whole of the corporeal world, and introduces the great mundane
catastrophe (Rev. xx. 11-13)-as well as in the formation
of a new heaven and a new earth, this grand and gradually
progressive process of the world's renewal has its fitting consummation.     It is God's will that His glory should dwell in
His whole creation, that He may be all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28;
Rev. xxi. 3 et ss.). In this respect we must indorse the sentiment of Oetinger, that " corporeity is the end of God's ways."
This profound connection between the resurrection of Christ
and the renewal of the whole world, is overlooked by our
opponents in a spirit that is as unbiblical as it is unphilosophical.   They have no comprehension for that great promise,
" Ilehold, I make all things new " (Rev. xxi. 5), nor yet for the
holy necessity of its fulfilment.
All the more are we ready to acknowledge the just perception of Strauss (who in this respect sees further than Keim 1)
i Der geschichtliche Christus, third edition, p. 104.  We say this at the risk
of Keim's classing us amongst "the zealots of the letter," as he has done with
Giider (p. 135) on account of his instructive book, The Actuality of Christ's
~Resurrection and its Opponents.  Keim is of opinion that "we cannot-as
Schleiermacher long since proved-bind down the Christian faith to an isolated
historical account, related with so many contradictions, and of so difficult and
variable interpretation." Against this we would remark, that we do not consider
the resurrection of Christ to be a mere "account," but also the intrinsically
necessary conclusion of all that had gone before, and the starting-point of all
that followed in the work of redemption. Nor is this "an isolated account
related with many contradictions," but rather one which is vouched for by many
witnesses, and in the main unanimously testified; an account which, like every
miracle, is historically difficult to explain, but by no means, according to the
plain meaning of the words, " of variable interpretation." The appeal to
Schleiermacher, who, in respect of the resurrection, unaccountably maintained
that most unfortunate theory of apparent death (vide below), is by no means
happy. In this case Schleiermacher only showed "that one cannot remain on
his standpoint."




LECT. VII.]      ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.              453
in assigning to the resurrection its full importance; calling
it as he does, "the centre of the centre, the real heart of
Christianity as it. has been until now," and saying that, " as
regards the resurrection of Christ, it can scarcely be doubted
that with it the truth of Christianity stands or falls.  Does
not the Apostle Paul say,' If Christ be not risen, then is
our preaching vain,' etc.? (1 Cor. xv. 14-17.)  This apostolic
saying cannot be explained away."' Indeed, Strauss acknowledges that this question is the real test of his standpoint:
"We here stand on the decisive spot where, in face of the
records which tell of the miraculous resurrection of Christ,
we must either confess the insufficiency of all natural historical
explanations of the life of Christ, i.e. give up our entire undertaking; or we must pledge ourselves to explain the purport of
those records, viz. the belief in the resurrection of Christ, without having recourse to a corresponding miraculous fact." 2
Most true. This is the point at which it must be decided,
more palpably than anywhere else, who is in the right, Strauss
or the Church, the anti-niraculists or the miracle-believers.
Strauss has shown greater keenness of perception in this
matter even than Baur, who, strange to say, seems to think
that he can evade this fundamental question.   He expresses
himself in a strangely ambiguous manner.        "What the
resurrection per se is, it does not lie within the bounds of
historical research to determine." 3 Our research has only to
bear in mind that, for the belief of the disciples, the resurrection
of Christ was incontestably certain.  " No analysis can penetrate into the inward spiritual process in the disciples' consciousness by which their unbelief at the death of Christ
afterwards changed into a belief in His resurrection.... For
the disciples the resurrection was as real as any historical fact
-whatever may have been the medium of this persuasion."
In this way Baur quickly passes by the chief question, how
this new belief can have originated in the disciples. The
resurrection is supposed to be the declaration of a firm belief,
that the person of Christ had not only not perished, but by
death was raised to its absolute importance-expressed in the
form of an external event.
I Die Halben und die Ganzen, pp. 125-127.  2 Leben Jesu, p. 288.
3 Das Christenthum der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, p. 39.




454            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
Thus we see that Baur rests the whole development of
the Christian Church, not on the objective fact of Christ's
resurrection, but on the subjective belief of His disciples in
it; not on Christ Himself, but on His disciples; not on a
divine act, but on a certain inexplicable condition o/ human
consciousness.  Instead of the fact, we have a fiction, i.e. the
mere conception of a fact, which may or may not have a
real objective foundation. Well might Strauss blame this
ambiguity.  "Baur," says he, "at least verbally, evaded the
bulrning question.  For his words sound as if it were impossible
to ascertain historically, nor were even a matter of historical
research, whether the resurrection of Christ was an outward
(natural or miraculous) event, or whether it only took place
in the belief of the disciples. But assuredly Baur had settled
in his own mind that it was by no means the former, i.e. an
outward occurrence of any sort, and therefore he must necessarily conclude that it was the latter, i.e. a mere idea" (ubi
sup. p. 228).  And, indeed, we are strangely impressed, but
not at all convinced, by the way in which this historian,-who
examines every portion of Church history with such exactitude,
and asks not merely what was. believed to have occurred, but
what really happened, —instead of examining into the reality
of this fact to which all the apostles appeal, and on which the
Christian Church is founded, simply contents himself with
knowing that it was believed in! This can only be done by
an idealistic philosopher, to whom history in general is nothing
but a process of consciousness.
Before this Baur had remarked: "Between the death of
Christ and his resurrection there lies so thick and impenetrable
a darkness, that after the connection has been so violently torn
and so wonderfully restored, we seem to be placed on a new
theatre of history."  This is perfectly true: the resurrection
of Christ turned over a new leaf in the history of the world,
and prepared a new soil for its development.  But does "a
new theatre ot history" originate from a mere idea? Would
not the formation of this divine idea, this belief, " from which
depends the entire weight of a movement so world-wide as that
of Christianity, without the corresponding fact, be a miracle
as great and far greater" than the resurrection itself?  Of
such a^ theory assuredly we may say: "In any case it does




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.            455
not help us to attain to a historical and philosophical comprehension of Christianity." 1  According to Scriptuie, the
apostles founded the Church on a fact. Here we have a
foundation-stone.  Baur founds it on a breach in the historical
connection which is enveloped in enigmatic darkness, i.e. upon
a gap. No wonder, then, that his historical construction of
the building is hollow.
Many others, however, have in the most various ways
endeavoured positively to show how this belief could arise in
the disciples in a natural manner.  On the one hand, the
reality of Christ's death was denied, and reduced to a mere
trance, so that the resurrection would be the perfectly natural
recoveryfrom a deep swoon.  On the other hand, the reality of
our Saviour's death was confessed, but the resurrection as an
outward fact denied, and the origin of the belief in it attributed
to visions experienced by the disciples.
The former of these hypotheses, that of apparent death, was
employed by the old Rationalists, and more recently by
Schleiermacher in his Life of Christ. We might remind the
upholders of this theory, of the blood and water which flowed
from our Saviour's opened side. However, we will let the
physiologists dispute whether this symptom is a sure test of
death or not.  This theory is contradicted in the first place by
the unanimous voice oJ Scripture in all its parts, which in a
hundred passages represents the death of Christ as real. We see
this throughout the Old Testament, from the promised coming
of the Serpent's Destroyer, whose heel shall be bruised (Gen.
iii. 15), down to such prophecies as these: "Thou hast brought
me into the dust of death " (Ps. xxii. 15); " He was cut off out
of the land of the living " (Isa. liii. 8); "They shall look
upon me whom thay have pierced" (Zech. xii. 12, 10).  And
far more clearly even do we see it throughout the New Testament,-in our Lord's numerous predictions of His own redeeming death (Matt. xvi. 21, xx. 28, etc.),-in the exact descriptions, of His death by all four evangelists, according to whom
He really died, or breathed out His spirit (e,7rvevvoe), and
commended it into the hands of His Father (Matt. xxvii. 50;
Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 46; John xix. 30, 33),-in the
apostolic testimonies of St. Peter and St. Paul, both in the
Landerer, Worte der Erinnerung an F C0. v. Baur, p. 71.




456            TIE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.     [LECT. VII.
Acts (ii. 24-32, x. 39, xiii. 28-30, 34 et ss., etc.) and in
the Epistles (Rom. v. 6-10; 1 Cor. xv. 3; 1 Pet. iii. 18,
etc.),-in the Revelation of St. John, where "the First-begotten
of the dead" testifies of Himself, "1... was dead, and
behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and
of death" (i. 5, 18, ii. 8). Again, this theory is contradicted
by the divine and human necessity of Christ's death as the
ground of our reconciliation with God.  How could this death,
foreshadowed by all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, be
imagined as a sacrificial death, if Christ did not actually expire?
And once more, this theory is contradicted by the parallel,
though contradistinctive, relation in which the death of Christ
is placed to His resurrection; as also by the way in which
our translation from the condition of death into new life is
connected with the resurrection of Christ as its pattern and
principle (Rom. iv. 24, 25, vi. 3 et ss., viii. 10 et ss., xiv. 9;
1 Cor. xv. 3 et ss.; 2 Cor. v. 14 et ss., etc.).
But apart from all these considerations, there is one simple
question which entirely upsets this contrivance of the rationalists.  How could the pitiable appearance of one who was just
recovering from deadly wounds give rise to such a sudden and
enthusiastic belief in the resurrection of death's conqueror?
Strauss has dealt a deadly blow to Rationalism by pointing
this out in his trenchant way.l  "One who had thus crept
forth half dead from the grave, and crawled about a sickly
patient, who had need of medical and surgical assistance, of
nursing and strengthening, but who notwithstanding finally
succumbed to his sufferings, could never have given the
disciples the impression that he was the conqueror over the
grave and death, and the prince of life.  Such a recovery- could
only have weakened, or at best given a pathetic tinge to the
impression which he had made upon them by his life and
death; but it cannot possibly have changed their sorrow into
ecstasy, and raised their reverence into worship."  Schleiermacher defends his strange view by the argument that real
death had never been known to take place without decomposition supervening; as if the shedding of Christ's blood and
His death were not adequate for our redemption without
ensuing  corruption, the  absence of which is sufficiently
1 Leben Jesu, p. 298.




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.             457
accounted for by the epithet "Thy Holy One " in Ps. xvi. 10
and Acts ii. 31.   Schleiermacher's supposition, that Jesus
afterwards lived for a time with the disciples, and then retired
into entire solitude for his second death, will scarcely obtain
fresh acceptation for this exploded hypothesis; for even then
the apparent death would be followed by the infinite disenchantment of real decease.' Hence the modern opponents of
the resurrection have not ventured to recur to this hypothesis,
according to which God would have founded His kingdom on a
misunderstanding,2-and the words of our old creed are still
valid, " who was crucified, dead, and buried."
At present, the second of the theories which we have
mentioned is in vogue among our opponents; i.e. they suppose
the belief in the resurrection to have arisen from  visions.
This is the distinctly expressed theory of Strauss and Renan;
while with Schenkel, who as usual stops half way, it is difficult
to say what theory he really adopts.   It would be scarce
worth while to follow out the various modifications of his
views, were it not that from him  we learn an instructive
lesson as to how the opponents of the biblical doctrine turn
and twist and cover their movements with a cloud of phrases,
in order, on the one hand, to remove the miraculous, and on
the other, to escape the reproach of radical unbelief.
Schenkel rejects the miraculous revivification of our Lord's
earthly body; he rejects the supposition of apparent death; ay,
he even rejects the " visionary hypothesis."  In chap. xxix. of
his Sketch of Christ's Character (under the ambiguous heading,
"The Glorification ") he considers three facts to be indubitable:
first, "that in the early morning of the first day of the week
which followed the crucifixion, the grave of Jesus was found
empty;" second, "that the apostles and other members of the
apostolic community were convinced that they had seen Jesus
since his crucifixion;" and last, " that the appearances of Christ
which the Gospels relate as taking place after his death were
essentially of the same character as that which the Apostle
Paul experienced on his way to Damascus" (p. 231).    And
St. Paul himself, in Gal. i. 16, designates "his vision mainly
1 Vide Schleiermacher, Leben Jesu, pp. 443 et ss., and 500 et ss. Against
this theory, cf. Keim, ubi sup. pp. 132 et ss.
2 Cf. also Kahnis, Die Ausferstehung Jesu als geschichtliche Thatsache,




458            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VIT.
as an inward revelation of Christ."  "The risen One is, therefore, the glorified and transfigured Christ, the Lord who is the
Spirit" (p. 232).
The two first of these facts are universally acknowledged.
But the third is no " fact;" it is merely a conjecture, which
leaves it an entirely open question whether that appearance
of Christ near Damascus was merely an inward revelation
or an outward and objective one as well, and whether Gal. i.
16 is a sufficient proof for the former of these suppositions;
indeed, whether this occurrence really does at all belong to
the same category as the appearances of the risen Christ in the
Gospels. This question will come before us presently; meanwhile " a mainly inward revelation" is of no use, as we must
postulate either an external or an internal event.
If, however, he denies the bodily resurrection of Christ, and
pronounces that which the Bible maintains to be of supreme
importance to be utterly worthless, how does Schenkel explain
the belief in the resurrection? He says that the Church at
Jerusalem regarded the fact, that the grave of Jesus was found
empty, as a miracle of divine omnipotence, and supposed that
"it had taken place by the help of angels.  Hence the first
tradition of an angelic appearance, which was supported by
the utterances of deeply-excited women" (p. 231). The feelings of love, of hope, and of trust were again awakened.
"Here, too, women led the way.   They believed that in the
place where Christ's body had lain they had seen celestial
beings. This was followed by ecstatic conditions, the consequence of deeply shaken feminine soul-life" (p. 226).  It
seems strange after this that Schenkel should reject Renan's
supposition of morbid hallucinations.  But what really happened? Did Christ in any way again approach His people?
We are merely told that "his appearances were so many
manifestations of his likeness, which till then had been so
much obscured in the hearts of those who believed in him.
He proved himself in them to be the ever-living One"
(p. 233).
Apparently Schenkel feels that indefinite phrases such as
these are nlere evasions, and not explanations of the matter in
question.  For in another place  he endeavours to give us
Allgemeine Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1865, No. 5, pp. 289-384.




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.              459
more precise information.  Here he tells us that the appearances of the risen Christ were "real manifestations of his
personality, which had issued forth from  death living and
glorified." This sounds almost orthodox, only that the more
indefinite expression "personality" is substituted for "body."
For, he continues, the corpse remained in the grave, or was
removed from it in a manner which we cannot now determine;
only the spirit issued forth alive (just as if the spirit had ever
been laid in the grave') and surrounded itself with some fresh
body, " because the life of the human personality absolutely
needs some (outward) organ for its manifestation."  Was it,
then, a kind of spiritual apparition through the medium of this
new " organ," and in any case without the old body?  No, it
was not this, but a "real though mysterious self-revelation of
Christ's personality which had come forth from death living and
imperishable," and which was of such a nature "that the disciples received the impression of having actually seen Jesus."
Instead of an explanation, a fresh enigma is here presented to
us.  Who can extract any clear idea from this cloud of words,
which seems to affirm everything, and yet is intended to deny
everything? If the body of Christ remained dead, then it is
a glaring abuse of biblical language, ay, verbal "forgery"
(Strauss), still to speak of Him  as "risen from the dead."
Here we are met by Schenkel with a strange objection:
"If Christ had returned among men after his crucifixion in
the same earthly and corporeal form as before,l why did he
not show himself to his Jewish judges and to the Roman
procurator? Why did he not appear in the streets of Jerusalem
before_ the people who had been so basely deceived as to his
person? Why did he not by his mere appearance inspire
courage in his frightened followers everywhere, and utterly
defeat his malignant enemies?"2 Why? Because God's ways
are far more wise and holy than our short-sightedness would
expect.  Why did our Lord always refuse to give a sign from
heaven?   Why did He not at the very beginning hold an
audible conversation with His Father up to heaven, in order
l This is nowhere maintained in the Scriptures; for, according to them, the
resurrection was the beginning of the transformation of His earthly body, which
transformation was completed at His ascension.
2 Charakterbild Jesu, p. 233.




460            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII,
publicly and irrefutably to prove His divine mission, to stop
the mouths of all doubters and adversaries, and make it easy
for every one! to believe in Him?  Why did He not come
down from the cross to prove His divine Sonship? Had it
been told us that Christ did, as Schenkel would have had Him,
make a public show of Himself before His enemies, then we
should have great reason to doubt the veracity of the records
which contained such a statement.  For this would be entirely
out of keeping with all His other miracles, as well as with His
character and work.  That He did not do so, speaks for the
credibility of His reappearance.  Miracles may facilitate faith,
but must never compel it. This objection of Schenkel's entirely
ignores the moral character of true faith, which must depend
upon a man's free decision. Would Christ's kingdom any
longer be a kingdom of faith, if it were founded upon the fact
that the risen Saviour had been seen and touched by all-i.e.
upon a miracle which had become a public gazing-stock? And
did Jerusalem still deserve this?  Had not the people, when
demanding the crucifixion of Jesus, passed sentence of death
upon themselves?  After Christ's entry into Jerusalem, the
respite of grace for Israel had hurried to its close.  With His
crucifixion, Israel, as a nation, was condemned to death. Only
individuals could still be saved. And Schenkel would demand
a further respite for the most hardened enemies of Christ;
nay, even a compulsion to believe! No; henceforth the risen
Saviour could only appear, " not to all the people, but unto
witnesses chosen before of God" (Acts x. 41), as a reward for
their measure of faith in still following Him even when shamefully put to death.  Henceforth it was ordained by " the foolishness of God," which is "wiser than men," that "by the
foolishness of preaching they that believe" should be saved;
and now Israel and the whole world, with all their wise men
and scribes, had to learn from the poor fishermen to whoni
the manifestations of this wondrous divine victory over death
had been vouchsafed.
But though Schenkel may not be a strict upholder of the
"visionary theory," Renan openly professes his adherence to
it.  We have already seen that he regards Mary Magdalene
as the creative authoress of the resurrection belief. For an
explanation of "the strange rumours which spread amongst




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.            461
the disciples in consequence of the grave being found empty,"
we are referred to his work on the Apostles. This has since
then appeared, and in the first chapterwe are told-as follows:"Though Jesus often spoke of resurrection and a new life,
yet he never distinctly said that he should rise again in this
flesh,"-just as if His repeated announcements that the Son of
man should be killed and rise again the third day could have
been understood by His disciples in any other sense than that
of a bodily resurrection from the grave (cf. Matt. xii. 40, xvii.
9, 23, xx. 19, xxvi. 32, Mark viii. 31, ix. 9, 10, 31, x. 34,
Luke ix. 22, xviii. 33). All the passages which contradict
Renan's notion are disposed of by the remark, that "after a
certain time had elapsed, much importance was attached to
Christ's predicting his resurrection."  This is the old critical
artifice, to reject as spurious that portion of the records which
contradicts one's presuppositions.  Christ must be told what
He may and what He may not have spoken.
Further on Renan cannot help confessing that "several of
the Master's words might be understood in the sense of his
again issuing from the grave."  He then describes to us the
state of mind in which a belief in the resurrection might arise.
"Enoch and Elijah had not tasted death.  The belief began to
gain ground that even the patriarchs and other Old Testament
worthies of the first rank had not really died, and that their
bodies were alive in their graves at Hebron." How does
Renan know this? It is simply a piece of his lively Oriental
imagination which plays such an important part in his Vie de
Je'sus. In Acts ii. 29, Peter says of David, " He is both dead
and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day;" and
he mentions this as a well-known fact, doubted by no one.
Nor can Renan adduce a single authority for this wild assertion.  But let us hear him further.  "The same thing must
happen to Jesus as has happened to all men (?) who had
riveted the attention of their contemporaries.  The world,
accustomed to invest them with superhuman powers, cannot
believe that they have succumbed to the hard law of death.
Heroes do not die.  This honoured Master had lived too profoundly amongst his followers for them not to maintain after
his death that he would always live. The day after his burial
was full of such thoughts as these. The women, especially




462            THE RESURRECTION OF CIRIST.     [LECT. VII.
in spirit, overwhelmed him with their tenderest caresses (only
hear the Parisian!). Their thoughts cannot for a moment forsake this beloved friend: surely the angels must be surrounding him, and veiling their countenances with his grave-clothes..  The little company of Christians on that day accomplished the true miracle; they raised up Jesus in their hearts
by the mighty love which they bore to him. They resolved
that Jesus should not die. The love of these passionatelymoved souls was indeed stronger than death."
According to the unanimous testimony of all the records,
the reports or manifestations of Christ's resurrection profoundly
startled both the women and the disciples, and so suddenly
broke in upon their sorrowful brooding, that at first they would
not believe them (Mark xvi. 11, 13 et ss.; Luke xxiv. 22 et
ss.). According to Renan, they were made way for by the
expectations of the disciples; nay, even produced by them
through a heroic resolution!!
Mary Magdalene played a most important part in this
matter.  "We must follow her step by step, for during one
hour of that day she carried within her all the workings of the
Christian consciousness.  Her testimony decided the faith oi
the future."  But how may we explain the appearances o_
Christ amongst the assembled disciples? Whilst they are
sitting together, probably "something like a light breath
passes over the faces of the assembly.  At such decisive hours
a breath of air, a rattling window, a chance murmur, may
decide the belief of nations for centuries." The disciples hear
the word "Peace."  There was no longer any doubt; Christ
is present!
Thus it is that Renan explains the belief in the resurrection. Hallucinations of a visionary woman, a breath of air, a
rattling window, a chance murmur; these are his last resorts.
Windy hypotheses in good sooth! Did ever unbelief give a
more flagrant proof of its inability to afford a natural explanation of divine facts than this? Woe be to us if a breath of
air may at any time chain us and our posterity for centuries
to a momentous error from which there is no escape, especially if we happen to be in an excited frame of mind! How
thoroughly must one who can thus speak have given up all
belief even in a moral harmony of the world, to say nothing




LECT. VII.]     ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.            463
of a holy providence! Unbelief delivers mankind's choicest
treasures, all its moral religious convictions, to the mercy of the
merest chance; and here we see in glaring colours how deeply,
in consequence of this, it degrades man, and how shamefully it
defiles his moral dignity.  And yet unbelief behaves as though
it were going to help man to attain his full dignity.
A far more notable upholder of the " visionary " hypothesis
meets us in the person of Strauss.  He extends the myth as
far back as Gethsemane, though it is not easy to imagine how
it should have occurred to any one to invent such a spiritual
struggle; for these myths are surely intended to exalt Christ,
whereas the scene in the garden shows Him in His deepest
abasement.  As is his wont, Strauss begins the investigation
by gathering together all the variations and contradictions ol
the different narratives, in order to deduce therefrom "the
insufficiency of the evangelical accounts."  He will not acknowledge any other witness as credible than Paul, who in
1 Cor. xv. only says that the revived Saviour "appeared " to
the apostles, i.e. " they believed that they visibly perceived him.
But he does not tell us what reasons they had for regarding
the appearance as something real, and even as their crucified
Master himself. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Paul ever
inquired after such reasons" (Leben Jess, p. 290).  "We do
not possess any deposition of an eye-witness about these
appearances" (p. 291; since the Gospels are not apostolic).
Only the appearance of Christ before Damascus, which is referred
to by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 8 and ix. 1, is related to us by
an eye-witness, and that "very briefly" (p. 301); for thi.
thrice-told story in the Acts has only the value of a "thirdclass testimony," on account of the spuriousness and uncertainty of this record.  True, from that testimony of St. Paul
about himself, short as it is, this much is evident, "that le
imagined the exalted Christ to be really and wonderfully present, and considered the appearance fully objective" (p. 302).
Notwithstanding, there is " nothing to prevent us from being
of a different opinion in this matter, and considering the
appearance as simply subjective, an event of his inward soullife."  Moreover, we may safely do this, as "certain overstrained conditions of the soul were nothing uncommon with
Paul," and many traits in him  make us suspect that he had




464            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
"a nervous constitution," which probably kept him subject to
convulsions, or perhaps epileptic fits! Only Strauss forgets
that the visions and revelations of which Paul speaks (2 Cor.
xii. 1 et ss.) belong only to his Christian life, and not to his
career as a Jew and a Pharisee, which closed with that first
and greatest vision of Christ before Damascus.
It is evident, then, that the clear and certain meaning of
that testimony points to an actual outward appearance of
Christ. Nevertheless, it was merely an inward occurrence, and
St. Paul must have deceived himself, since, with regard to
visions in general, he was not sober and dependable enough;
indeed, we may almost say, not a responsible agent. Another,
too, of Strauss' manceuvres is worthy of notice, viz. the way
in which he changes what St. Paul evidently considers an
incontestable objective fact (1 Cor. xv. 3 ff.) into the tradition of a subjective belief that the Lord had been seen, and
that merely because St. Paul does not enumerate the reasons
which induced the disciples to consider this appearance as
something objective. Does Strauss think that the apostle in
this short sketch ought to have made provision for the doubts
of every future sceptic?  Surely the absence of all such
reasons rather tends to show that the disciples had so little
doubt as to the reality of Christ's appearance, that it never
occurred to them to give further reasons for their belief in
what they had seen and experienced.
Having by coups de force such as these endeavoured to give
colour to his supposition that the vision of Christ before
Damascus was merely inward, Strauss proceeds from this to
draw "regressive conclusions as to the origin of the belief in
Christ's resurrection."  The appearances of Christ to the elder
disciples were of intrinsically the same character. " They, too,
were merely internal events, which might easily appear to the
persons concerned as outward and sensuous perceptions, but
by us must be comprehended as inward facts resllti.ng from ac
cxcitement of the emotional life, i.e. as visions" (p. 304). " The
endeavour of the disciples after the death of Christ must have
been to include the attribute of vicarious suffering, of violent
but expiatory death, in their conception of the Messiah." Such
a death which was undergone for all, could only be the
entrance into the Messianic glory-a transition to a new and




LECT. VII.]    ANTI-MIRACULOUS THEORIES.            465
higher life.  And did not the Old Testament contain prophecies of the Holy One whom God would not suffer to see corruption,-of the Servant of God who should be taken away out
of the land of the living, and yet see long life?  But "from
the Jewish standpoint, the soul without the body is a mere
shadow" (p. 30'7).  How else, therefore, could they imagine
the soul of Christ to be exalted to His Father in heaven otherwise than by the reviving of His body?  Hence their notion
of His resurrection.
Some of the narratives about the appearance of the risen
Christ may well make us " conjecture that the excitement of
the disciples after the sudden death of Jesus, and their imagination which was constantly employed in renewing his picture,
caused them to see a reappearance of their Master in any
unknown person who met them under enigmatical circumstances, and made a special impression upon them " (p. 308).
How is it that other mourners, whose imagination is also much
occupied with the picture of their dear and suddenly departed
ones, do not often suffer under a similar deception?  But even
Strauss remarks of the first occasions on which Christ appeared
to single individuals, that " it is scarce likely that they were
of this description."  How were they?  "The expression of
Mark, that he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whomn
he had cast out seven devils, gives much food for thought.
With a woman thus constituted in mind and body, there was
no great step between inward excitement and a vision."  The
case of Paul and the (legendary) vision of Peter (Acts x.), show
us that mental conditions of this kind were not rare even in
the case of men of that period, and of simple culture.  We
may therefore well " suppose that during the days which
followed the death of Jesus, there was among his followers a
general frame of mind, an intensification of the emotional and
nervous life, which would compensate for any want of disposition on the part of an individual" (p. 309).  But how can
we conceive that the belief in the resurrection should have
arisen so early as the third clay?  Does not the mental revulsion from which the visions of Christ are supposed to have
proceeded, need a longer space of time for its development?
Certainly; but Paul only says that Jesus rose on the third
day, not that he app.)leared at the same time (pp. 310, 311).
2 G




466             THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.       [LECT. VII.
We must therefore suppose the matter to have taken place
thus: "After the crucifixion of Jesus, his disciples, in their
first panic, fled back to their homes in Galilee.  There, in the
regions which they had so often traversed with him, they
were constantly aroused to recall anew    his picture.'[he
longer period which in this way elapsed would give time for
the revolution in the feelings of the disciples " (pp.. 315, 316).
And here, then, the visions took place.  True, this is contradicted by the Gospels, which all mention the first appearances
of the risen Saviour as taking place in Jerusalem    and its
neighbou~rhood; and even Matthew, who tells of the angel
commanding the disciples to come into Galilee, immediately
afterwards relates how Jesus appeared to women from Jerusalem.  But " there never was a thing so utterly superfluous
as this first appearance of Christ in Matthew; it is a later interpolation into the narrative on which Matthew     founded
his story of the resurrection" (p. 314).  For it was not until
afterwards that the manifestation of the resurrection was
transferred to Jerusalem and the third day, in order that
"death might only have a short-lived power over the crucified
Messiah" (p. 315).
This is the view of Strauss.  He uses the same violence
towards the records in carrying through his hypothesis as in
making way for it.  What he really offers as an explanation
of the belief in the resurrection, amounts merely to powerful imagination, excitement of the nervous life, intensified
emotions, and visions resulting therefrom.
For a historical demonstration of the actuality of Christ's
resurrection, Strauss demands a double proof: first, it must be
shown that the direct testimonies to the reality of this fact
should meet all the requirements of historical testimonies;
second, it must be proved that without the occurrence in question, other events which are historically certain could not have
taken place.1  Well, we think that these two things may be
proved: the historical credibility of our testimonies, and the
impossibility of explaining certain indubitable facts,-such as
the belief of the disciples in Christ's resurrection; the sudden
revolution in their consciousness, their preaching, and the
Church thereby gathered and founded on this belief; but
Die Halben u. die Ganzen, p. 125; cf. Leben Jesu, p. 289..




LECT. VII.]    THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.            467
especially the sudden conversion of St. Paul,-without having
recourse to the resurrection as a fact, and not a mere vision.
We will now proceed to consider the historical testimonies,first, that of the Gospels, then that of St. Paul (especially his
vision of Christ before Damascus),-and we shall see whether
the enemies of these records are right, or whether their credibility fulfils the first half of Strauss' demand.
II. —THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.
Strauss demands that these should be direct testimonies,
proceeding from eye-witnesses.  Now, according to his presuppositions, the only book of the New Testament which could
possibly have proceeded from an apostle is the Revelation of
St. John; and this book, he says, "does not go beyond the
general belief that Jesus had been killed, and was now alive
again and immortal" (p. 298).   Is this correct?  The contradiction which this proposition contains shows how untenable
such an interpretation of the passages in question must be.
For only that can live again which was before dead; but this
was not the case,with the immortal spirit of Christ, only with
His body. If, then, the Book of Revelation teach that Christ
is living again, it witnesses to His resurrection. But it does
so even directly. In chap. i. 5, Christ is called "the Firstbegotten of the dead."  This certainly cannot mean the first
of those who lived immortal after death, for there were enough
such before Christ; it must mean the first amlong the dead who
again came to life, and who, because He had broken the power
of death, has become the source of new life for all who have
died, i.e. the first risen One, who is the resurrection and the
life for all others.  In the same manner, chap. ii. 8-" which
was dead and lived" (a-E'gev)-mentions both, dying and coming
to life, equally as historical facts, and must be understood in
the same way.   What our Lord says in i. 18, "'I have the
keys of hell and of death," i.e. power over death and the kingdom of the dead, would not be fully true if a part of Christ,
viz. His body, had remained in the bondage of death. Here,
then, we have (especially in ii. 8) an historical testimony from
an apostle for the resurrection of Christ's body, which can be
overlooked only by a most superficial exegesis.




468            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.       [LECT. VII.
Strauss will not acknowledge the Gospels as direct testimonies,
because none of them was written by an apostle or eye-witness
of the life of Christ.  But we have already seen that even the
most negative critics in our day grant that they belong to the
apostolic a<ce, when there must at least have been many such
eye-witnesses living.  Moreover, it should be borne in mind
that the Gospel of St. John declares itself to have been written
by an eye-witness (xix. 35, xxi. 24), and would therefore, if
genuine, abundantly fulfil Strauss' first postulate.  But its
genuineness is maintained even by such critics as Schleiermacher, Credner, Lachmann, Ewald, Hase, and Ritschl, to say
nothing of more orthodox men, such as Gaussen, Henostenberg,
Tischendorf, Riggenbach, Oosterzee, and many others. Time
and space would fail us to go into this question here.  Only
to one thing I would draw your attention.  Notice the extraordinary vividness in St. John's narrative of the resurrection,
and see how, in a multitude of minute and delicate details, it
bears the impress of personal experience (e.g. the way in which
Peter and John go together to the grave; the description of
the interior; the bearing of Mary Magdalene, etc.).  None but
an eye-witness can have described the event with such original
freshness and vividness.  In fact, their exactness in isolated
details speaks strongly for the authenticity of these narratives;
the more so, the more numerous the appearances which they
relate as vouchsafed to different persons, and under different
circumstances.
Here Strauss (like his predecessor, the author of the Wolfenbiittel Frcagments) meets us with a second objection, viz. the
variations and cqntradictions in the narratives of the resurrection.
We will not deny that there may be certain differences and
inexactnesses of statement in the gospel accounts.  But are
these really important and irreconcilable contradictions, casting
suspicion on the great fact itself? Let us see.
Even in the succession of Christ's appearances there are supposed to be serious differences.  According to Mark xvi. 9, He
appears first to Mary Magdalene; according to Matt. xxviii. 9,
to her and the "other Mary" together; and according to St.
Paul's account in 1 Cor. xv. 5, to Cephas (Peter). But does
any one of these pledge himself to relate all the appearances
of the risen Saviour? Strauss himself confesses that this is




LECT. VII.]     THE HISTORICAL TESTIAMONIES.          469
not the case (p. 292).  Does not each one choose from the
rich treasure of tradition this or that appearance first, so that
they supplement, but do not contradict one another? If; e.g.,
Matthew, in relating what happened to the women on the
Easter morning, blends into one several traits which according
to the other evangelists are separate, is this so very important a
difference? If we compare the gospel narratives with that of
St. Paul, we see ten appearances of Christ, which probably took
place in the following order: (1) Mary Magdalene sees the
Lord first, on coming to the grave the second time (Mark xvi.
9; John xx. 16), after having told Peter and John that the
stone is rolled away, and the grave empty.  (2) The other
women, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, having heard
the angel's joyful message, hurry back in fear and great joy,
whereupon the Lord meets them (Matt. xxviii. 9, 10). (3) He
also appears in the course of the same day to Peter (Luke
xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 5); (4) in the evening, to two disciples
on their way to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 15 et ss.); (5) and
after this to the ten apostles (without Thomas) assembled in
Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 36-44  John xx. 19 et ss). (6) On the
Sunday following, He appears to the apostles, with Thomas (John
xx. 26 et ss.). All these appearances took place in Jerusalem
and the neighbourhood, shortly after the resurrection.  Then
come those between Passover and Pentecost, when the pilgrims
to the former feast had returned to Galilee, viz.: (7) at the
Lake of Tiberias (John xxi. 1 et ss.) to seven disciples; (8) the
great manifestation on a mountain in Galilee to all the disciples
(Matt. xxviii. 16 ff.; Mark xvi. 15-18; Luke xxiv. 45-49),
and probably at the same time to the 500 mentioned in 1 Cor.
xv. 6; (9) the special appearance accorded to James the
brother of the Lord (1 Cor. xv. 7), when, perhaps, the disciples
were exhorted to return earlier than usual to keep the feast of
Pentecost at Jerusalem.  (10) The final appearance is that to
the apostles on the Mount of Olives, which concluded with
the ascension (Mark xvi 19; Luke xxiv. 50 et ss.; Acts
i. 4-12).1
In this manner the various appearances, although not fully
enumerated in any one record, may be brought together.
1 The same order has been observed by Greiner in his book on The resurrection
oj Jesus Christfromn the dead; Carlsruhe (1869).




470            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.     [LECT. VII.
Strauss objects to this, first, that John, xxi. 14, mentions the
appearance at the Sea of Tiberias as being the third (instead
of the seventh); and secondly, that John does not count in
the appearance before the 500. The former difficulty is easily
explained by the fact that St. John is here only reckoning the
appearances among assembled disciples, of which only two (the
fifth and sixth) had gone before. The latter objection is futile,
since Christ did not appear to the 500 till later (the eighth
time), while Strauss himself confesses that St. John does not
say that the appearance at the Sea of Tiberias was the last
(p. 292).  St. Paul too, in 1 Cor. xv., does not wish to give a
judicial protocol ot all our Lord's appearances, but only to show
the number of witnesses, and their authority, and therefore
leaves out the women.
But we are told that there are far greater contradictions in
respect of the duration and the locality of these appearances.
True, all the evangelists and St. Paul agree that Christ rose
again on the third day (p. 313).  But the length of time
during which His appearances took place is fixed in Acts i. 3
at forty days, whereas Luke connects the last words of the
Lord immediately with His appearance to the disciples on the
evening of Easter Sunday, so that scarce a day would seem to
have elapsed between the resurrection and the ascension, and
there would have been no time for the appearances in Galilee.
Moreover, if, according to Luke xxiv. 29, Jesus commanded
the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they were endowed
with power from on high, He cannot, as Matthew relates,
have directed them to Galilee on the morning of His resurrection (p. 293).
This apparent contradiction, however, is very simply explained.  Had we only the narrative of St. Luke, we should
certainly have thought that Jesus ascended to heaven on the
first day after the resurrection.  But how often do the evangelists bring together sayings of Christ which were in point
of time separated by weeks and months! This is the case
here with St. Luke. He evidently collated the most important
of our Lord's last utterances, without regard to differences of
time, and so blends together sayings which the other evangelists, and he himself in Acts i., give separately in chronological order.  If (as was done by us above) Luke xxiv




LECT. VII.]    THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.          471
36-43 or 44 be taken to apply to the fifth appearance of
our Lord, and vers. 45-49 as spoken at His eighth appearance in Galilee, then all is clear; for then ver. 49 contains
a direction for the disciples who are in Galilee (or perhaps
already returned to Jerusalem) to wait for the blessing of
Pentecost at Jerusalem.  This direction was not therefore
given, as Strauss would have it, " on the resurrection day,"
but after the journey of the disciples to Galilee, so that all
appearance of a contradiction to Matt. xxviii. 7 and 10 is
removed.
But again, it is objected that Matthew and Mark gravely
contradict themselves, because on the one hand they make
Jesus appear in Jerusalem on Easter morning to the women,
but on the other hand they relate how the angels and our
Lord Himself direct the disciples to go to Galilee that they
may see Him there.  "If Jesus had indicated to the disciples
that Galilee was the place where they should see him, we
cannot conceive what should have moved him to show himself to them on the same day in Jerusalem" (p. 293). How
strange if,'immediately after the direction to go to Galilee,
"Jesus himself should step into the women's way! What
reason could he have had for so quickly giving up the plan
which he had only just proclaimed through an angel?" (pp.
313, 314.)
A pitiable objection this, in good sooth, and quite characteristic of the heartless ways of one who is utterly unable to
transport himself into the conditions and times whose historian
he lays claim to be.  Only look at the difference between the
first appearances in and about Jerusalem, and that latter one
on the mountain in Galilee.  In the former, the Lord appears
quite unexpectedly and suddenly, and soon disappears again;
to the latter, He had bid the whole body of disciples, and
dLubtless remained longer in their midst.  This was the chie'
manifestation, in which He openly asserts His participation in
the government of the world, institutes baptism, commands
that the gospel should be preached in all the world, and
promises ever to be with His people. Far from this longer
and more detailed manifestation excluding the first more fleeting appearances in Jerusalem, the latter were rather a necessary and fitting preparation for the former-not an alteration




472            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.     [LECT. VII
of His original plan. And must not love have driven Jesus
to dry the tears of His followers as soon as possible, and to
change their deep sorrow into the joyous assurance of victory?
Could He, niight He pass by His disciples, so bowed down
through grief, without giving them a single word of comfort
from His lips? Could He wait so long with the ocular proof of
His victory till His disciples were all assembled in Galilee, after
the close of the feast (to terminate which they remain those
eight days longer in Jerusalem)? Nothing was more natural
than that He should appear to them there. Had He not done
so, we should have reason to be perplexed.
As it is, all these events succeed each other in a way which
is not only explicable, but necessary. First come the passing
manifestations in Jerusalem, intended to re-establish the
crushed hopes of the disciples; then a pause of eight days,
during which they have time to recall the former promises of
the Lord, that He would rise again, and especially to recognise
His terrible death in the light of the Old Testament prophecies
as a holy necessity, as a wise and merciful decree of God
(Luke xxiv. 26, 44-46). Then, after they had reached this
standpoint, when their shaken faith was again confirmed and
deepened, come the longer communications, the last revelations
and grand directions as to their calling, first in Galilee, then
on the Mount of Olives, which once was the scene of the
Saviour's deepest humiliation, but now witnesses His exaltation and entrance into glory.
Would that our negative critics, before trying to master
Scripture with their hair-splitting logic, only took the trouble
to meditate a little on the wisdom and beauty of God's ways
which are depicted therein!
But Strauss himself has confessed that, in order to make
the origin of his visions conceivable, he needs a longer period
between the death of Jesus and the conviction that He had
risen than three days.  Hence his frantic efforts to do away
with the appearances at Jerusalem by any means; because, if
true (even subjectively), they would cut the ground from
under his feet.
Strauss asks why the disciples, if they knew of the resurrection of Jesus so early as the third day, waited to announce
it till the fiftieth? He will not accept the answer given by




LECT. VII.]     THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.           473
the Acts, "that they had to wait for the Holy Ghost," because he is of opinion that the feast of Pentecost was fixed
upon as the day when the Spirit was poured out, " not for
historical, but for dogmatic reasons" (p. 313).  Against this
we remark: first, that it was not only after (Acts i. 4 et ss.),
but also before His resurrection, that Jesus commanded His
disciples to wait for the Comforter; secondly, that after the
deep trial of their faith through the death of Christ, the
disciples naturally enough had need of some time to compose
themselves, and prepare for their coming vocation as witnesses
of the cross; and third, that to endeavour to persuade the
Christian Church that the historical miracle of Pentecost did
not take place, is as reasonable as it would,be to argue with a
living man that he never had a birthday.
This is how the matter stands with the so-called " contradictions " in the Gospel histories of the resurrection.  If we
look at them closely, they dwindle down to incompletenesses
and inaccuracies.  And even granting their non-agreement in
all details, is not the cardinal fact clearly and quite qnanimously related by them?   Do they not all say that Jesus
rose again the third day, and appeared in Jerusalem  to His
disciples?  What matters it much to whom He first appeared,
so long as the cardinal point that He appeared is a certainty?
Faith depends not on the letter of Scripture, but upon the
essential substance of the facts recorded in it.  And this
essential substance is manifested, not only by the agreements,
but even "by the differendes themselves; for these are signs
of the extraordinary effect which the resurrection produced
amongst the disciples," and which has taken an individual
shape in each of the narrators. Even a critic like Lessing
remarks: "It cannot possibly be otherwise than that each of
several witnesses seeing the same thing at the same time, and
in the same place, should hear and see, and therefore relate it
differently, for the attention of each one is differently directed."
Thus the events of the resurrection appear " fixed in indelible
memories, which were variously and yet harmoniously shaped
according to the standpoint of the different disciples. In these
records there is fixed for ever the startled joy of the Church at
the great news of the resurrection.  Here, as in a festal choir,
though the voices seem at times to be confused, isolated, or




474             TIIE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
contrary, yet they all are pursuing one theme in full, grand,
and blissful harmony.  We may clearly see the rich unity of
the one resurrection history amid all its details."  (Lange,
ubi s8p. p. 441.)
Indeed, we may well say that the differences in these accounts
exclude all idea of an intention to deceive.  If the evangelists
had been consciously inventing, the simplest prudence would
have made them avoid all traces of difference in their accounts.
Another, and a special proof of their historical veracity, is
the cuay in wvhich they lmake our Lornd acppea9r. Were they
legends that had arisen irom  the visions of enthusiasts, they
would certainly have represented the Lord quite differently,
probably in all the blaze of heavenly glory, as He might be
expected according to Dan. vii. 13, 14, x. 5, 6.1    But in
these accounts the risen Christ, with all His dignity, appears
in such unpretending humanity, in such a natural state of
transition between human lowliness and divine glory, that
this utter absence of all extravagance is a striking testimony
to the truth of that which is thus related.
But how can this be? Is not the way in which Christ still
appears in His body just the most enigmatical part of the
whole matter?  And, indeed, the most offence of all has perhaps been taken at the natmre of the resu'rrection body.  It has
been said that the Gospel accounts lead to quite contradictory
notions as to the quality of Christ's bodily life during those
forty days.  At one time He allows Himself to be felt and
touched, eats and drinks, showing Himself to be capable of
taking bodily nourishment even though He may not need it:
at another time His bodily substance would appear to be
supersensuous; it is not bound down to the limits of space;
He comes through shut doors, and suddenly vanishes again;
He can even assume different shapes (Mark xvi. 12).   What
contradictions! our opponents triumphantly exclaim.    "A
body which can be felt cannot pass through shut doors, and
vice versa a body which without hindrance passes through
boards cannot have bones, nor a stomach to digest bread and
broiled fish" (Strauss, p. 295).
Ever since the date of the Wolfenb;ittcl Fqctragments this con1 Compare the visions of the Anabaptists in Miinster at the time of the
Reformation.




LECT. VII.]     THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.           475
tradiction has been urged in disproof of the truth of the resurrection.  But it rather speaks for it.  For how should only
once evangelist, to say nothing of all together, have made a
description to all appearance so contradictory and utterly
unheard of, unless it necessarily followed from  the nature of
the case?  Would not an invented story betray itself too
glaringly in this matter?  Evidently it was only because the
evangelists considered the truth of the resurrection to be
beyond all question that they could venture to add to this
great miracle such strange appearances of their risen Master.
That they did so, proves their good conscience in the matter.
Like every, primal generation, the nature of the resurrection
body of Him who was "the First-fruits of them   that slept"
must remain a mystery.   WVe cannot form any clear conception of the process by which the corpse of Christ was transmuted into a glorified body, nor can we understand the nature
of the latter.  We can only recall to our minds that heavy
water is changed into light vapour, or dark flint into transpareint glass, by heat; or that the caterpillar which slowly
crawls along the ground, at length grows into an airy butterfly. And thus the glorified body of Christ was not altered as
regards its fundamental components; it was the same body,
with the marks of the nails and the wound in its side, but in
a new spiritual form of existence, and therefore standing under
other lazs.1  It therefore appears-until the ascension, when
its transformation was completed-as an elementary, earthly,
material body; but its elements are no longer bound by space,
and it can go here or there, make itself visible or invisible
-in fact, shape itself outwardly according to the internal will.
And this is possible, because the body is spiritualized through
and through; it has become an adequate expression of the
spirit, and its willing instrument. The body no longer opposes
its own laws (of space, gravitation, motion, etc.) to the volitions of the spirit; it does not hinder nor limit them, but
implicitly obeys.  All strife is at an end. If the spirit will
to transport itself to any place, it can do so together with the
body; the body no longer hinders it, for it is saturated with
vital force and immortality.  This is what the Scriptures (1
1 Cf. Steinmeyer, Die Atzferstehulgsgesclichte des Herrn (1871), pp. 120
et ss.




476            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.       [LECT. VII.
Cor. xv. 44-46) call a "spiritual lody" (o-c'la TrvevfLaTrtcv)
in contradistinction to the "natural body " (a-. vvxtKcOv).
In this resurrection body the Lord stands during those forty
days, as it -were, on the boundary line of both worlds; He
bears the impress of this as well as a future state of existence.
It is therefore no contradiction-as Strauss would have itthat this body sometimes manifested the force of repulsion
(when touched), and at other times not (when penetrating
through closed doors); for it could do so or not, according to
the will of the spirit.  Doors could not keep out that which
is in a spiritual state of existence.  Since all matter, too, is
well known to be porous, it can form no absolute barrier for
the spirit. We cannot wonder, moreover, that this body,
being formed from the same essential elements as the former
earthly one, should be capable of eating food (Luke xxiv. 43;
Acts x. 41), though not needing it, especially as the same
thing is mentioned in the case of angels (Gen. xviii. 8).  Our
Lord does not " digest " this food, as Strauss coarsely puts it,
but He assimilates it in some way or other, and transmutes it
into His spiritual form of existence, so that it cannot hinder
Him from   disappearing.  For we must not forget that it is
not earthly matter per se which is incapable of being developed
into a spiritual state of existence, but only the defilement
which cleaves to it in our fallen condition that prevents this.
The terrestrial body as such is dcstined to be spiritualizCed; but
if this is its destiny, it must also possess the capability. This
shows us at the same time the reason why the sinless body of
Christ could be immediately transmuted.  Its purity was the
possibility of its transformation.
In this manner we see that the enigma of our Lord's resurrection body, with its wondrous appearances, no longer contains any inexplicable contradiction.  And after what we have
said, it will be evident that the Gospel narratives of the
resurrection may be looked upon without suspicion, either by
reason of their differences from one another, or of their special
purport.
But even supposing that from    some cause or other the
testimony of the four Gospels were not valid, still we have
another witness for the truth of the resurrection, whose testimony no criticism   can  invalidate, viz. the Apostle Paul.




LECT. VII.]     THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.            477
Were he to stand quite alone, he would afford a perfect and
adequate refutation of all arguments against the Church's doctrine of the resurrection, as well as of the visionary hypothesis.
This is evident, partly from his testimony, partly from his
personal history.
First, let us listen to his testimony.  In Romans vi. 4, the
expression, " Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory
of the Father," cannot be reconciled with the "visionary
theory" of the resurrection; for the latter is here represented
as a consequence of the objective mighty working of God, not
of subjective action of the human nerves and imagination.
Those of our opponents who acknowledge the Epistle to the
Ephesians to have been written by St. Paul, we would refer
to chap. i. 19, 20 of the same, which speaks of "the working
of His mighty power, which He (the Father of glory, ver. 17)
wrought in Christ when He raised Him from    the dead" (cf.
Phil. iii. 21).  But St. Paul's chief testimony, every word of
which breathes a firm and joyous conviction of its truth, is contained in 1 Cor. xv.: " For I delivered unto you first of all
that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that
He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; and
that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.  After that He
was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom  the
greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
After that, He was seen of James, then of all the apostles, and
last of all He was seen (f me.... Therefore, whether it
were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.  Now, if
Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?"
In these terse and clear words, the force of which is involuntarily felt even by the present opponents of the resurrection, there is contained a double testimony.  First, St. Paul
here witnesses to many appearances that were vouchsafed to
other disciples, in a way which (as we showed) is perfectly
consonant with the Gospel accounts, and in the language of
an historical record which Strauss in vain endeavours to
represent as a mere tradition of the subjective belief that the
Lord had been seen. The value of this testimony cannot be
lessened by Strauss' arbitrary objection, that it is doubtful




478             THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.       [LECT. VII.
whether St. Paul ever inquired closely into the reasons which
the apostles had for believing in a real resurrection.  How
incomprehensible that a Pharisee, theoretically and practically
intimate with all the statutes of Judaism, and a much feared
enemy of the Christians, should suddenly have adopted this
new faith, thereby changing all his former religious convictions, without assuring himself of the truth of those facts on
which his new faith was founded! How       incomprehensible
that this man should have preached before Jews and Greeks
about the crucified and risen Jesus, and entered into many a
discussion on the subject with their wise men, without having
inquired closely into the objective proofs for the truth of his
own doctrine! This testimony to the appearances of Christ
amongst the apostles retains its full historical value.
It is important to notice that St. Paul, in ver. 6, appeals
for a confirmation of what he says to witnesses who were still
liviny.  Now any ordinary writer who should appeal for a
verification of his statements to living witnesses would, for the
sake of his literary honour, be sure to employ the utmost caution.  And shall we suppose that a man like St. Paul, writing
to the Church in such a world-renowned city as Corinth, and
relating a fact on which he rests the whole Christian faith,
should appeal to well-known witnesses without being sure of
their veracity? Clearly this is a moral impossibility.'
In the second place, St. Paul appears as eye-witness to an
appearance of the risen Christ which was vouchsafed to himself: "Last of all, He was seen of me also."   Every one is
agreed that this refers to the appearance before Damascus,
which was the turning-point of his life. How are we to
regard this: as an inward or as an outward event?    Since
St. Paul places this experience of his in the same category as
the manifestations accorded to the other apostles, and speaks
of it in precisely the same terms, it is evident that if it be a
merely inward occurrence, suspicion must be cast upon the
other manifestations of our Lord; whereas, if it can only be
conceived of as an external event, this will be a strong
argument in favour of our Lord's other appearances being
externally objective-i.e. it will militate greatly against the
"visionary hypothesis."' C~ Kahnis, ubi sup.




LECT. VII.]      THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.              479
In the Acts of the Apostles we have a threefold minute
history of St. Paul's conversion, chap. ix. 1-30, xxii. 1-21,
xxii. 4-23; and in both the latter passages it is St. Paul
himself who is relating his own history.      Strauss himself
confesses that this threefold narrative "sounds quite as if it
had been an outward sensuous phenomenon" (p. 299).          In
all three accounts, too, the main points are clearly and conformably stated:-the visible appearance of a light whicl
cast Paul to the ground and blinded him for some days; the
voice, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" and the answer,
" I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest;" the direction to go to
Damascus, and the transformation of Saul, under the hands of
Ananias, into a soldier of Christ.   But critics have laboured
much over the small variations in these accounts. Baur 1 seeks
to explain them by referring them to the "pragmatism " of the
writer, who alters the narrative in each different connection
according to his purpose in bringing it in there.  This paltry
criticism has been well met by the remark,2 that a historian
who purposely contradicts himself for pragmatic reasons must
indeed be a strange fool.  And if this same historian promises
in the introduction to his Gospel to write so that we might
know " the certainty of those things wherein " we have been
instructed, and then, from  sharp-witted pragmatism, turns so
important an event as the conversion of St. Paul, first this
way, then that, common sense can scarcely help thinking
him a liar.
But what do these differences consist of?    First, the communication which in chaps. ix. and xxii. is made by the Lord
through Ananias, is immediately attached to the words of
Christ Himself in chap. xxvi.    This simply shows that the
narrative in chap. xxvi. is condensed in comparison with the
others, and this Baur himself afterwards confesses.  Again, in
chap. ix. 7 the companions of Paul hear without seeing; in
1 Der Apostel Paulus, chap. iii.; and Kirclengesclichte der drei ersten
Jathrltwderte. vol. i. p. 45 et ss.
2 Cf. leyschlag's excellent articles on " The conversion of the Apostle Paul,"
in Stludlien ui. Kritiken, 1864, Part II. pp. 197 et ss.; and on "The visionary
hypothesis and its most recent defence " (against Holsten), ibid. 1870, Parts I.
and ii. Also Schulze on "The testimony of the Apostle Paul to the resurrection of our Lord," in Beioeis des Glaubens, 1866, p. 33 et ss.; and Grenier, ubi
sup. p. 73 et ss.




480            THE RESURRECTION OF CIIRIST.      [LECT. VII.
chap. xxii. 9, they see without hearing.  Formally considered,
this is, of course, a contradiction; but it is perfectly explained
if we consider that the companions of Saul only received a
general sensuous impression of that which was visible and
audible, i.e. the light and the sound, without either clearly
seeing the figure or distinguishing the words spoken by the
voice.  Only we must not lay the stress upon " they heard"
and " they heard not," but upon the words " of Him that spake
to me."  They heard the sound of a voice, but they did not
hear the articulated words which were spoken to Saul (just as
in John xii. 28, 29).  Nor must we forget that by "hear"
St. Paul sometimes means "understand" (cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 2).
And what shall we say, finally, when the sharp eyes of our
critics discover the flagrant discrepancy that in chap. ix. 7
the companions of Saul "stand speechless," in xxii. 9 " are
afraid," and in xxvi. 14 fall to the earth with him?  Is it
not a perfect farce, for the sake of such differences, to refuse
to believe records which in the main perfectly confirm one
another?  What liberties do critics take with the biblical
writings which they would never think of in the case of profane historians! Such conduct was long ago condemned by
that patriarch of critics, Lessing, who says, "If Livy, and
Dionysius, and Polybius, and Tacitus are so generously treated
by us that we do not rack them for every single syllable, why
should we not act in the same way towards Matthew, and
Mark, and Luke, and John?"
If we account for these small differences by referring them
to the different historical records of which St. Luke made use,
and which he did not wish to assimilate down to the last
letter, then this is an excellent testimony to his conscientiousness as a historian.  Then, too, that which is unanimously
recorded by all three authorities gains greatly in verification.
Now their unanimous testimony is this, that Christ appeared
to Saul externally and objectively; not merely inwardly in a
vision.  But if the upholders of the latter view argue that
Saul's companions neither saw nor heard this heavenly vision,
we must correct this statement to the effect that they did not
see and hear it distinctly; but they did receive a very strong
external impression, for they stood speechless, fearing, and tell
to the earth.  That they did not understand what was imme



LECT. VII.]    THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.           481
diately clear to Saul, is comprehensible from the nature of the
glorified body, which shares the power of the spirit to reveal
itself to one person and remain wholly or partially unperceived
by others, according to circumstances.
When Baur goes on to stamp the part played by Ananias
as a myth, we cannot help asking how the legend came to fix
on a person so little known as Ananias, and why it did not
rather make the Holy Ghost descend straight from heaven on
St. Paul, as on the other apostles?  Baur tries to explain this
by the supposition that the writer wished to recommend St.
Paul to the Jewish Christian party by connecting his conversion with a Jewish Christian. This is only an effect of Baur's
black view of the primitive Christian era, which makes him
everywhere look out for traces of an abrupt opposition between
Jewish and Gentile Christians,-between followers of Peter
and of Paul,-so that he often does not hesitate to represent
the most artless narrative as an intentional fabrication or a
didactic lie.
But putting aside the Acts, and considering only the direct
testimony of St. Paul himself, it cannot be denied that the
passages in his epistles which refer to that event can only
mean an external, bodily appearance of Christ, and not a mere
internal vision. Take, e.g., the words of 1 Cor. xv. 8, " Last
of all, He was seen by me also," and of 1 Cor. ix. 1, " Am I
not an apostle? have I not seen our Lord Jesus Christ?"
Strauss acknowledges this testimony as proving, in conjunction
with the Acts, that he was persuaded that he had seen Christ,
and even heard words from Him (p. 301); but he tries to take
away the point of it by saying that at other times as well St.
Paul "thought he had heard words from a higher world."
True, in 2 Cor. xii. 1 et ss. the apostle speaks of visions and
revelations which he had. (proceeding, however, from God, and
not from the action of his own nerves merely).  But it is evident that this passage does not refer to the revelation before
Damascus, which took place much earlier, and in quite a different manner; for here St. Paul is "caught up into paradise," and
in the other case Christ appeared to him on earth.  This very
passage (2 Cor. xii.), then, shows that when St. Paul is speakinq of visions, he expresses himself qgzite peculiarly; he describes
himself as " caught up," and does not know whether he is " in'. H




482            TIIE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VIL
the body or out of the body."  So that even if the apostle did
have visions, yet it is evident that he was perfectly well able
to distinguish between what he saw in this condition, and what
he perceived with his senses; and that he should have deceived
himself so as to confound an internal with an external occurrence, is out of the question.  In the passages where St. Paul
speaks of his having seen Christ, he gives not the slightest hint
that this seeing was other than the natural sensuous process;
whereas elsewhere he makes a sharp distinction between seeing
in spirit and in body.1
Our opponents, therefore, have no right to place the appearance near Damascus in the same category with the later visions
of St. Paul.  Strauss entirely overlooks the fact, that in 1 Cor.
xv. 8 he designates the manifestation of the risen Saviour
which was vouchsafed to him as the " last of all."  None of
his later visions or revelations can be classed with it, because
they were of an entirely different kind.  The appearance at
Damascus was unique in his memory, and he could only class
it with those vouchsafed to the other apostles.  If, then, it
was similar to these, and dissimilar to the later ones, it was
no mere vision, btlt an external occurrence, in which the Lord
became bodily visible.
The same thing necessarily follows from the context of these
passages.  In 1 Cor. xv. the apostle wishes to remove doubts
as to the resurrection, by pointing to the resurrection of Christ
as an established fact, since the apostles, many brethren, and
last of all, he himself, had seen Him after it. Now this seeing
could only be a proof of the resurrection if it was outward and
oclllar, and cannot be intended otherwise.  Further on St.
Paul seeks to demonstrate from the same fact the nature of
the resurrection boly, which would be meaningless if the risen
Lord had not appeared in bodily form. So, too, with 1 Cor.
ix. 1.  Against those who maintained that he was no real
apostle, and not called by the Lord, he upholds his apostleship
by an appeal to his having personally met Christ.  But the
apostles based their authority on their personal intercourse
with Christ, and their vocation by Him  as witnesses of His
resurrection.  Thus the apostolic consciousness of St. Paul
1 The former is attributed to the xvsv.m as the highest faculty of intuition;
the latter to the voY;, i.e. the intellect which receives impressions from the senses.




LECT. VII.]     TIIE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.           483
depends on this very point, that he had seen the Saviour
bodily, and not merely in a vision (like Stephen, Ananias, and
others, who were not apostles).
What is the result of our investigation?    In an incontestably genuine epistle we have found an eye-witness to the fact
of Christ's resurrection; St. Padl with his bodily eyes beheld the
risen Lord.  Against such clear testimonies it is of little use
for our opponents to appeal to Gal. i. 15, 16, "It pleased
God... to reveal His Son in me," though Strauss gathers
from these words that Paul laid the chief stress in this matter
upon the inward revelation (p. 302); and Schenkel, on account
of this passage, considers the manifestation of Christ to the
apostle to have been "mainly internal."   For though these
words doubtless apply primarily to the scene before Damascus,
yet they have a more general meaning too, and include the
subsequent divine enlightenments, especially the gift of the
HIoly Ghost after Ananias had laid on his hands. St. Paul is
here reviewing his whole life in the light of the divine act of
grace which called him to be the apostle of the Gentiles. It
is self-evident that this must have had an inward effect upon
his heart, which, by divine enlightenment, underwent the great
change through which he attained to the knowledge and discipleship of Christ.  But this does not exclude the external
appearance; on the contrary, the internal event was only the
necessary consequence of the external one.
We submit, however, that it is not only an exegetical, but
also a psychological impossibility, to comprehend the vision before Damascus as a merely internal event taking place in the
apostle's mind. Our opponents cannot explain to us the sudden
and total revolution in St. Paul's moral and religious conviction
as a purely natural mental process. The attempt to do so has
brought them  into the greatest straits, so that their leader,
Baur, after all his efforts, at length confessed himself fairly
beaten. The most zealous defender of this theory at the present
time is Baur's sagacious follower, Holsten.l  But his writings
clearly betray that the critical school is driven to this explanation, not by unbiassed exegetical researches, but only by
1 "Die Christusvision des Apostels Paulus," in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift fuir
wisseschacftliche Theologie, 1861, Part IIr. pp. 224-284. Against it, cf.
Beyschlag, ubi sztp.; also Krauss, Lehre von der Offenbarung, pp. 267 et s&




484            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
its pantheistic presuppositions.  "Criticism," he says, " must
endeavour to comprehend this vision as an internal psychological act of Paul's own spirit, because it is subject to the law
of finite causalities and the immanent development of the human
spirit."  Behold the cloven hoof! It is not the insufficiency
or inadequacy of the records, nor is it their isolated discrepancies, that give offence; but it is the fact of Christ's
bodily resurrection and actual appearance which is great and
strong enough to overthrow all the pantheistic and deistic
views of these critics. This fact must be got rid of at any
cost, because it threatens the supremacy of the law of immanent development; or, in other words, because the pantheistic standpoint will not allow of anything supernatural.
Here, again, we see how this so-called " historical criticism'
is " in reality dogmatic or philosophical, having for its first
principle the dogma of Pantheism." Furthermore, we see what
it must cost to do away with the fact under consideration. If
it be only an immanent psychological act,-and yet St. Paul
speaks of it as a sure external fact, on which thenceforth he
based his existence and his intellect, his faith and hope, his
testimony and his work,-then he laboured under a self-deception uhich rendered his whole life and preaching a mere illusion.
This Holsten candidly confesses.  He grants that criticism
must declare the actual basis of St. Paul's gospel to be a delusion, i.e. it converts the most notable witness and martyr for
the truth into an apostle of error!  This, and no less, is
the price which must be paid for the denial of the fast in
question.
What, then, we ask in astonishment, can the reasons be
which give the critical school courage to attempt such a
hazardous feat?  Baur in his later writings endeavours tc
account for this sudden change in the convictions of St. Paul
by supposing that the narrow-minded, one-sided pharisaical
Judaism  must at length have worn itself out by going to
extremes, and then have changed into the contrary.    The
great achievement of Christ's death all at once made a mighty
impression on the mind of Saul. How else can he have overcome his Jewish hatred to Christianity than by the involuntary impulse of his spirit, which drove him to meditate on that
death? In his mind, which was accustomed to more profound




LECT. VII.]    THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.          485
thought, the idea-so intolerable to a Jew-of a crucified
Messiah changed into the contrary, when he considered that
that which was most opposed to the sensuous consciousness
might, after all, be true in its deepest inward essence. But
how does Baur know that Saul was occupied with the thought
of Christ's death just at that time? If he ever were so, from
his standpoint he could only regard it as a divine judgment.
And why is the apostle-at other times so truthful and open
-here silent as to the doubts which at that time arose in his
mind respecting the correctness of his pharisaical standpoint?
And even had a presentiment of the truth of Christianity at that
time arisen of its own accord in his understanding, there was
still a long distance between the thought and the practical
resolve, which would assuredly have taken up much time.  Is
it usual that one should break thus radically with his past life,
and entirely give up convictions hitherto so deeply rooted and
notably acted out, and that he should suddenly go over so
decidedly to the opposite standpoint; —and all this as a result
of spontaneous mental action, without any external solicitation
or influence?  *Would not this be without parallel?  Later
on, Baur felt that this was a psychological monstrosity; for
in his last work he designates the conversion of St. Paul a
"wonder," a mysterious secret, "which no analysis, either
psychological or dialectic, can clear up." By this he does not
mean that it is a miracle in our sense of the word, but still he
confesses the inadequacy of all attempts at a natural psychological explanation.
This, then, is another portion of the unexplained and inexplicable residuum  of miraculous facts, which proves the
futility of all anti-miraculous theories as to the origin of
Christianity.
Nor do the explanations of Baur's disciples make the matter
clearer.  Holsten tells us that visionary seeing is only a
reproductive action: only that which lives in the mind as an
image or conception can thus appear.  The vision adds to
those elements which already exist in the spirit a sensuous
objectiveness, by exciting the nervous life, which thus makes
the image appear sensibly to the outward eye.  This is confirmed by physiologists.  "We may assert, that if any higher
or lower order of being is to appear to us subjectively in this




486            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
manner, it must first be conceived and imagined, and thus
impressed upon the senses."1  Therefore Saul, if he experienced merely a natural ecstatic vision, without a supernatural
divine communication, must in some way or other have received into his mind beforehand that which he afterwards saw.
But even Strauss confesses that this effect could not have
been produced by "the excitement into which the fanatical
upholder of Jewish traditions had been brought by the threatening advances of Christianity;" for, "from such emotions a
vision of Moses or Elias would have been far more likely to
result than an image of Christ" (p. 303). He therefore lays
especial stress on the probability that in his pharisaical selfrighteousness Saul had found no enduring satisfaction. While
as a ready dialectician he disputed with the Christians, or
when he broke into their meetings to hale them to prison, and
saw not only their sincerity, but also their tranquil peace and
quiet joy in suffering, which put to shame the peaceless and
joyless fanaticism of their persecutor,-his present convictions
must have been shaken day by day. Could it be an erroneous
teacher who had such followers? We must not therefore
" wonder if sometimes, in seasons of dejection and inward distress, he put to himself the question, "Who is in the right
after all;-thou, or the crucified Galilean whom these people
adore?"  When he had once come thus far, his bodily and
mental peculiarity would easily result in an ecstasy, in which
that very Christ, whom he had hitherto persecuted so passionately, would appear to him in all the glory of which His
followers spoke, showing him the wrongness and futility of
his course, and calling him to enter His service (pp. 303
and 304).
This is the explanation which Strauss gives of St. Paul's
conversion.  But neither the Acts nor the Epistles tell us
anything about "seasons of dejection" or of disputations with
the Christians; whereas St. Paul clearly states that he had
received the gospel of no man, neither was taught it, but by
the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. i. 12). These writings say
nothing of the image of the risen Saviour which lived in Saul
before that scene, or of a faith in Jesus which had already
taken root in his heart.  On the contrary, they bear witness
1 Joh. Miiller, Ueber die phantastischen Gesic!,tserscheinungen, p. 62 et ss.




LECT. VII.]      THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.               487
to the fact that he continued to rage in his blind zeal until the
Saviour met him, and that this meeting moved and astonished
him to the highest degree, not that it was internally prepared, and
then of necessity resulted from    the workings of his mind.
They do not as much as hint that he was in any inward
uncertainty as to his conduct up to that time, nor even that
the same knowledge had dawned upon him as upon Gamaliel
(Acts v. 38, 39): "If this work..     be of God, ye cannot
overthrow it."  The words " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me?" point, not to inward doubts, but to fanatical hatred
and zeal; as he himself, too, witnesses (Gal. i. 13, 14).  The
psychological precondition for a vision, which can only be
reproductive, is wanting in St. Paul.  For his mind contained
just the very opposite of what the vision is supposed to have
reproduced and objectivized.    Moreover, if his condition is
supposed to have been that of internal doubt, it is well to
remember that, in the Nevw Testament, visions are nzever accorded
to doubters or ene-mies of the gospel, Ibt only to believers when in
ecstasy.
And how about St. Paul's bodily constitution? was it such
as would be conducive to a vision? The origin of visions in all
those men who have experienced them, shows that the visionary, although he may be of sound mind, is invariably suffering from overstrained nerves, fever, congestion, or some sort of
bodily ailment.'  Hence the "visionary hypothesis"      has to
support itself with other new and strange hypotheses as to the
bodily constitution of St. Paul.    The "thorn in the flesh"
(2 Cor. xii. 1) is interpreted by Strauss to mean "convulsive,
and perhaps epileptic (!) fits;" and he, as well as Holsten, concludes therefrom   that St. Paul was of a "nervous temperament."   This conjecture is as ridiculous as it is undignified, in
the case of a man who was not only of such sound and clear
intellect, but also capable of such constant and severe bodily
1 Witness Mohammed and his morbid tendency to sensual indulgence in later
years (Sprenger, Leben u. Lehre des Mohammed, i. 209); Swedenborg and his
unhappy attachment to young Polhem (Sprenger, ubi stup. p. 276); the Maid
of Orleans and her frequent fasts, combined with a regular diet similar to that of
a strictly observed Lent (Hase, Nele Propheten, p. 88 et ss.); and the visions
of the bookseller Nicolai, in the year 1791, " when the usual bleeding and leeches
on account of hemorrhoids were omitted" (Joh. Muller, Phcantastische G(esicltserscheilangeez, pp. 77 et ss.). Cf. Krauss, ubi sutp. pp. 274 et ss.




488            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
exertion (consider the exhausting apostolic labour by day and
the work of his trade by night, Acts xviii. 3, xx. 34; 1 Cor.
iv. 12), and who went on his way with unbroken vigour after
undergoing the most rigorous hardships and persecutions
(1 Cor. iv. 11; 2 Cor. xi. 23-28).  Surely such a man does
not give one the impression of a feeble, nervous epileptic.
Since his conversion, the apostle feels free and strong in the
Lord; shall we suppose that this effect was produced by a
sickness, by an epileptic fit, or nervous convulsions?  Holsten
draws our attention to the fact that our actual knowledge of
the outer world is in no way increased by a vision. Was not
St. Paul's knowledge extended by that occurrence?  Was he
not enlightened with new and fruitful truths respecting himself and the world around and above him? From the scientific
investigations respecting visions, Lotze draws the following
true conclusion: "No notable new wisdom has as yet proceeded from the mouth of somnambulists or the dreams of
ecstatics and visionaries."'  Can we say the same of that
appearance of Christ before Damascus, in view of the immeasurable new and wholesome effects which the conversion
of St. Paul had on the history of the Church and the world?,We come to the conclusion that the scene before Damascus
is wanting in the chief characteristics of a vision.  There is
neither the physical precondition in the person concerned which
marks its reproductive character, nor the constitutional precondition which pertains to its pathologically morbid nature.  The
critics use the most arbitrary means to make way for this
theory, adapting history to their own fancy in spite of the
clearest testimonies.  Again do they expect us to believe
marvels far more inconceivable than the external miracles
related by Scripture; and again our former maxim is confirmed, that those who seek to escape the miraculous fall into
absurdities.
Every explanation of the appearance near Damascus as a
merely internal event, labours under the fundamental mistake,
that it must refer the conversion of St. Paul to the spontaneous
activity of his own spirit, whereas at first he could not but be
passive and receptive, in order afterwards to attain to a living
activity in Christ.  Not until he had been apprehended by Christ
1 Medizinische Psychologie, p. 489.




LECT. VII.]     THE HISTORICAL TESTIMONIES.           489
Jesus could he press forward towards the new mark, seeking
to apprehend it himself (Phil. iii. 12).  It was not he who
had chosen Christ, but Christ who had chosen and ordained
him, that he should go and bring forth much fruit (John
xv. 16; Rom. i. 1; Gal. i. 15).  Thenceforth he knows and
designates himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ, not by his
own will, but "by the will of God" (2 Cor. i. 1); called "not
of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the
Father, who raised Him from the dead" (Gal. i. 1).
We shall see further on, that in the construction of primitive Christianity, as attempted by the critical school, we always
have a beginning without a beqiining, because everything is
already existing beforehand. The same is the case with all
subjective explanations of the manifestation vouchsafed to St.
Paul. They are obliged to suppose that a belief in Christ
existed in him before he believed, and an image of Christ, such
as could only be formed afterwards, before Christ appeared to
him: they make him be converted while he was still a
Pharisee raging against the Christians.  All these attempts
are defeated by their psychological inconceivableness far more
than by the difficulty of explaining the impression on the
senses without an external appearance of Christ.
We revert to the issue before raised. Does the appearance
of our Lord to St. Paul speak for or against the attempt to
explain all His other appearances as visions, and thus to deny
the reality of the resurrection? May we not safely say that
the endeavour of Strauss to employ the internal nature of this
event as a handle to reduce all the other manifestations related
in the Gospels to mere subjective phenomena, recoils upon
himself?  Just as the appearance of the risen Saviour to St.
Paul before Damascus can only be conceived as external and
ebodily, so all the other manifestations enumerated by him in 1
Cor. xv. must be regarded in like manner.  But even were
the former subjective, the converse would not follow with
certainty, viz. that all the manifestations vouchsafed to the
older apostles were so too.'  Moreover, in comparing both, we
should not overlook the distinction, that before Damascus
the body of our Lord (about which, however, nothing is said)
1 This is correctly stated by Weizsicker, Untersuciungen iiber d. evangeliscl4
Geschichte, p. 570. Cf. Keim, Der geschichtiiche Christus, p. 137.




490             THIE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
was long since fully glorified (hence the blinding light);
whereas, when appearing before the ascension, it was in a
transitional state.
But St. Paul is not merely an immediate eye-witness of
the resurrection; he also testifies to it with his person and
history.  In his sudden transformction, and in his entire subsequent life-work, he appears as an incomparably energetic and
joyous witness and martyr for the Christian faith, who constantly refers his preaching to an immediate vocation by
Christ.  He himself is one long living proof for the objective fact
that the risen Saviour appeared before Damascus.
This leads us from the historical credibility of our records
-which was the first part of the proof demanded by Strauss
-to the second, viz. that certain indubitable events cannot be
explained without having recourse to the fact of the resurrection.
III.-COLLAPSE OF THE "VISIONARY") HYPOTHESIS IN CONSEQUENCE OF INDUBITABLE CIRCUMSTANCES AND FACTS.
Besides the conversion and history of St. Paul already
alluded to, there is a series of other facts, all of which no
less demand the bodily resurrection of Christ as a necessary
precondition.  Such are the belief of the disciples, and their
unanimous testimony that the resurrection took place on the
third day; the actual disappearance of the body of Jesus out
of the grave; the entire revolution in the disciples' state of
mind after the risen Saviour had appeared to them; and last
but not least, the world-wide effects proceeding from the resurrection.  Let us consider these a little more closely.
T7te belief of the disciples in the bodily resurrection of our
Lord is confessed by the critical school; and this fact cannot
be explained as the result of a mere vision. If we picture to
ourselves the condition and consciousness of the disciples at
that time, we    must first ask, how-unless their Master
actually issued forth from  the grave-could the idea of the
resurrection occur to them? They believed, we are told, in the
Messiahship of Christ, and in His victorious existence after
death.  But why should this belief take the shape of a fact so
utterly unheard of, as that He should shortly come forth again




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOTHESIS.   491
from the grave?  It has been shown that at that time the
belief in the resurrection of the dead at the last judgment was
current among the Jews; but the notion of the resurrection of
a dead man, who leaves his grave in a body already transformed
long before the judgment-day, was as little thought of by the
contemporaries of Christ (cf. John xi. 24) as by any of the Old
Testament writers. This idea was so foreign to the disciples,
as well as to the Jewish world in general, that had they
had visions of Christ, their only conclusion could have been
that His soul was living in heavenly glory; but never that
the Master who had died before their eyes had gone forth
from the grave again alive.  Their belief in the resurrection
was to all intents and purposes quite a new belief. "The Messianic expectations of the Jews contained no idea corresponding to it." 1  But since it *is undeniable that from their first
public appearance the apostles preached of their Lord, who
had not only been received up into heaven, but who had also
risen again in body, we ask, how was this new element introduced into their view of the Messiah unless a fact of their
indubitable experience convinced them  of it?  Strauss confesses that the Pharisees believed only in a resurrection at
the last day, but adds, " There was no difficulty, from the standpoint of Jewish thought at that time, in supposing that the
resurrection of some particularly holy man might take place
earlier in an isolated instance" (pp. 303, 304).  The artifice
of supposing an exception in this one case will not help
Strauss to get over this inconvenient difficulty.
Moreover, we ask, whence did the disciples obtain the notion
of a glorified body?  On other occasions when the dead were
raised, something quite different took place, viz. a return to
the present mortal body, but not a transformation of this
mortal flesh into a glorified body.  Besides, our critics maintain that these raisings of the dead were myths or deceptions,
and therefore cannot have been the source of this belief. The
same is the case with the history of our Lord's transfiguration,
which Strauss derives from the opinion of the Jewish Christians, that Moses was a type of Christ (pp. 516 et ss.). " The
belief in the rapture and heavenly life of Enoch, Elijah, or
Moses, was rather a hindrance than otherwise to the applicaI Weizsacker, ubi sup, p. 574.




492            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
tion of such notions to a man of the present age, especially
one who had been seen to die " (Weizsacker, ubi sup.). Whence,
then, could the idea of a glorified body, with these apparently
irreconcilable attributes of sudden disappearance and palpableness, proceed?  Our opponents have not as yet answered even
these preliminary questions.
With regard to the psychical possibility of visions, hallucinations, or phantasms, medical science teaches us,l that in
consequence of a strong excitement of the imagination, and of
the cerebral activity thereby caused, the organs of sense may
be affected in such a manner as to make the subject believe
that it hears or sees an external object corresponding to the
internal impression thus produced.  There are impressions on
the senses —proceeding entirely from internal causes, without
any corresponding external object-by which the nerves of
sense are affected precisely in the same manner as by an
external perception; the person who has such impressions errs
only in referring the image produced by them to some outward
cause. However, these visionaries themselves do not always
consider the image they see to be objective realities.  But
though self-deception in consequence of a vision is not impossible, yet it must be remembered that a vision is always
caused, in part at least, by some abnormal condition of the
body.  And how soon'mtust a subjective image of this kind
vanish before any attempt at definite personal intercourse, acconpanied by conversation and touch!
Some upholders of the "visionary" hypothesis, without
giving up the subjective character of these appearances, are
willing to grant that influences without or from above-" a
personal working of the departed spirit of Christ upon - His
disciples "-may have helped to produce them.  Is this any
more conceivable than an appearance of the risen Saviour
Himself? Or is a vision thus magically produced within the
disciples more comprehensible than the resurrection?  Are
not words and sounds (if they do not proceed from an illusion), without an actual appearance, more marvellous than the
appearance itself?  Do such explanations carry us a step
beyond the miraculous? They are but one more proof, of
Cf. among others, Job. Mlller, Lehlrbuch der Physiologie, vol. ii. pp. 563
et ss.




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY'" HYPOTHESIS.  493
Rothe's maxim, that "without miracles the divine revelation
must infallibly degenerate into magic."
Our opponents are compelled further to suppose that the
passionate imagination of the disciples stretched out its feelers
after their indispensable Master. Instead of this, we see that
on each occasion He appears to His followers quite unexpectedly; so much so, that at first they will not believe, and
He has to rebuke their unbelief. From this it is clear that
they were not prepared for the immediate reappearance of
Jesus, especially in the shape of a resurrection from the dead.
Here the psychological precondition of visions is wanting. The
deep dejection on account of their Master's shameful death
could scarcely give wings to a new and joyous faith. We see
the poor shepherdless sheep in fear of the Jews, in doubts
and conflicts respecting their Messianic hopes, in perplexity
as to the future.  These are not the frames of mind from
which ecstatic visions might be expected to proceed, but
rather the contrary. For in other parts of the New Testament
we see visions come upon those who are seeking for a deeper
knowledge of God by means of tranquil contemplation, still
communion, firm faith, and earnest prayer and fasting.
And finally, the mental and physical impossibility of visions
by so many people at once.  Critics may talk of a chain of
spiritual sympathy which can bind down whole assemblies at
once. But in the New Testament, visions presuppose a certain
moral and religious effort and frame of mind in the individual
who has them, and cannot be shown to be "infectious."  In
this case, too, there would always be one who began and drew
the others after him; whereas, in various appearances of our
Lord, many, ay hundreds, at once and simultaneously perceived
Him.   We do not deny that science can tell us of cases in
which visions were seen by whole assemblies at once; but
where this is the case, it has always been accompanied by a
mnorbid excitement of the mental life, as well as by a morbid
bodily condition, especially by nervous affections. Now even
if one or several of the disciples had been in this morbid state,
we should by no means be justified in concluding that all
were so. They were surely men of most varied temperament
and constitution. And yet one after another is supposed to
have fallen into this morbid condition; not only the excited




494            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.    [LECT. VII.
women, but even Peter, that strong and hardy fisherman who
was assuredly as far from nervousness as any one,-James, —
the two on their way to Emmaus, and so on down to the sober
doubting Thomas,-ay, all eleven at once, and even more than
five hundred brethren together.  All of these are supposed
suddenly to have fallen into the same self-deception, and that,
be it remarked, at the most different times and places, and
during the most varied occupations (mourning by the grave,
in conversation by the wayside, in the confidential circle of
friends, at work on the lake), in which their frames of mind
must assuredly have been very varied, and their internal tendency to visions most uneven.  This latter point especially is
important in considering the psychological possibility of such
simultaneous visions.
And could they all of them have agreed to announce these
visions to the world as bodily appearances of the risen Christ?
Or had they done so, could it have been pure self-deception
and not intentional deceit? Surely some one or other of them
must afterwards seriously have asked himself whether the
image that he had seen was a reality.  Schleiermacher says
most truly: "Whoever supposes that the disciples deceived
themselves and mistook the internal for the external, accuses
them of such mental weakness as must invalidate their entire
testimony concerning Christ, and make it appear as though
Christ Himself, when He chose such witnesses, did not know
what was in man (John ii. 25).  Or if He Himself had willed
and ordained that they should mistake inward appearances for
outward perceptions, He would have been the author of error,
and all moral ideas would be confounded if this were colnpatible with His high dignity."
Here we must again refer to the great distinction between the
appearances of the 9risen Saviour and the real visions related in
the New Testament.  How entirely different was the vision of
dying Stephen, who saw Jesus in heaven, and not upon earth!
how different the vision of St. Peter, who was " in a trance"
(Acts x. 10), and did not see Jesus at all! how different the
ecstatic condition in which the early Christians spoke in
different tongues, but did not see anything! how different, as
we saw, the visionary trance of St. Paul! (2 Cor. xii.) The
" visions of the Lord" mentioned here are not "brought into




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYIOTHESIS.   495
any connection whatever with appearances of the risen Christ"
(Keim), either by St. Paul or by his opponents.  If, then, the
New Testament writers well know what visions and ecstatic
conditions are, why do they always depict the appearances
of Christ quite differently? why do they never say of the
disciples, to whom these were vouchsafed, that they " fell into
a trance"?  Clearly, because the early Church considered
those appearances as distinct and separate from the later
visions.
Hence it is not possible to assume that those later visions
were a continuation of the first appearances of Christ.  But if
the latter soon ceased, a new difficulty arises for the visionary
hypothesis (cf. Keim, ubi sup. pp. 136 et ss.).  Why should
these visions of Christ have lasted only for a few weeks and no
lonqr?  "If the visions passed like electric shocks through
rank and file, through the twelve and the five hundred; if they
continued day by day and week by week; then psychological
science would teach us to expect an uninterrupted communication of these impulses,-a continuous intensification of mutual
infection in the great vibrating body,-an indolent life of
visionary self-gratification in imaginary intercourse with the
indispensable Master; but not a diminution, stoppage, and
transition to healthy energy."  The enigma would remain to
be solved, how the Church could so quickly sober down from her
visionary condition; since thus much at least is certain, that
she by no means boasted herself of continued appearances of
her risen Lord.
From all this we see how little the belief of the disciples
in the resurrection can be explained by means of visions, and
how little likelihood, or even possibility there is, psychologically speaking, in their case for the development of visionary
conditions of mind or body. But there are still more important circumstances which cannot be explained except by the
fact of Christ's bodily resurrection.
We have seen that all the biblical accounts agree in stating
that the Lord arose "on the third day."  Strauss himself feels
(p. 316) that it is hard to assign an unhistorical origin to this
definite date. For it cannot be denied that the resurrection
must from the very beginning have been regarded by the
disciples as an event which took place on the third day; for




496            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
we find in the CAristian observance of Sunday a liturgical fruit
of this belief, and one which can be proved to have been extant
as early as the apostolic age.  Hence the visions, too, must
have begun on the third day. Strauss is well aware that the
development of a visionary condition absolutely demands a muci
longer space of time thavn & day and a half, after which short
period the violent death of Jesus was in fresh remembrance.
So he tries, as we saw, to get out of the difficulty by saying
that St. Paul tells us that Christ rose on the third day, but not
that He appeared then. But the two cannot be separated.
How could the disciples know that Jesus rose on the third
day if He did not then appear to them, or seem to do so?
Had the visions, as Strauss maintains, not begun till later
on in Galilee, what reason could the disciples have had for
fixing the third day as the date of the resurrection?  It could
not have been in order that Christ's former prophecy might
be fulfilled, for Strauss does not recognise prophecies.  And
assuredly they would have been far more likely to change the
prophecy according to its fulfilment than vice versa. In these
straits Strauss has recourse to a desperate evasion. He says
that the third day "would seem in a measure to have been
the proverbial designation of a short time, meaning that a
matter should be carried through without impediment" (p.
317), i.e. it means "after some time."  This is a discovery
for which Strauss may claim the sole credit, since there is no
trace of it either in the Old or New Testament. For Hosea
vi. 2 is a typical prophecy which was fulfilled, or began to be
fllfilled, in the resurrection of Christ on the third day; and
in Luke xiii. 32, the true rendering is not "the third day I
shall be perfected, " but, " the third day I shall finish," viz. my
work in this region, and is to be taken literally.
Such subterfuges are vain.  Even a critic like Hilgenfeld
has lately confessed that the one distinct and unanimous
testimony for " the third day " is, for the reasons above stated,
of itself sufficient to overthrow the visionary hypothesis.  We
have already seen how untenable and arbitrary are the attempts
of Strauss, by means of wresting the biblical accounts, to show
that the first appearances of the risen Saviour took place in
Galilee.  If the testimony for the third day is sure, then it is
clear that the belief in the resurrection could only have arisen




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOTHESIS.   497
at Jerusalem, and that the first appearances must have taken
place there.  For it is self-evident that the disciples could
not have been in Galilee as early as the third day, even had
the intervening day not been a Sabbath.  Therefore Strauss
supposes the disciples to have been in Jerusalem on that
day.
But if Jerusalem became the cradle of belief in the resurrection so soon after the death of Christ, what would have been
easier for the enemies, when this was announced as a fact to the
people, than to confute the apostles by exhtuming the corpse of
their Master?
This is another great difficulty which lies in the way of our
opponents: What became of the body of Jesus?  The visionary
hypothesis cannot explain the fact of the empty grave, which even
Schenkel acknowledges as undeniable.  Strauss is of opinion
that when, at the feast of Pentecost, Christ, was announced as
having risen, neither His followers nor the Jews probably
knew any longer which was the place of His burial, nor would
they, on account of their horror of corpses, feel inclined to
search after the body. "Jesus had perhaps been hastily interred, along with others who had suffered capital punishment,
in some dishonourable spot; and when the apostles after a
considerable time appeared with the announcement that he
had risen, it must have been difficult for their opponents to
produce his corpse in a condition recognisable enough to afford
proofs against them" (p. 312).    If the resurrection, we
answer, had been only a visionary deception, the evangelists
would certainly have been obliged to take care that Jesus
should appear to have been buried in some unknown spot, in
order that a search should be difficult. But what do they
relate?  That Jesus was openly and honourably buried in a
place quite near to Golgotha, well known not only to the
disciples, but to the Jewish councillors and the Roman magistrates; and even that the Sanhedrim had the grave sealed,
and put a watch before it, so that the burial-place of "the
king of the Jews " must doubtless have been known throughout the town. Shall we then, it has been well said, suppose
that none of Christ's followers, not even the possessor of the
garden, wzas so cistrustsl or curious as to go to look at the grave
himself, when the women told of the appearance of Jesus 
21




493            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.        [LECT. VII.
Shall we imagine that no one out of the great number of His
enemies was prudent enough to examine the tomb, and have the
corpse, which assuredly would have still been in some degree
recognisable even after weeks, brought out, since it must have
been of the utmost importance to them openly to convict
Christ's followers of a falsehood; while, as regards their horror
of corpses, there were doubtless enough Gentile menials in
Jerusalem whom they could have employed? Instead of this,
we are told that they preferred to confess the fact of the grave
being found empty, in order. to saddle the disciples with the
accusation of stealing the corpse! The " criticism " which can
make such statements as these, itself needs criticising very
much.
Others have thought to evade the question by supposing
that some unknown adorer of Christ took away the corpse
without the knowledge of the apostles, —thus basing this
world-wide and world-ruling belief on an accident or a fraud!
Are not such fancies as these signs that our critics are in
despair; that, in the consciousness of having exhausted all their
sagacity in textual criticism, in psychology, and philosophy,
on the vain attempt to overturn the rock of our Christian faith,
they are now reduced to substituting the windiest hypotheses
for the historical testimonies which they reject?  The empty,
open tomb, with its loud question: Where is His body? puts
all their attempts to shame.
Add to all these grounds for the reality of our Lord's
resurrection the last and weightiest, viz. the immeasurable efect
exercised by this belief on the disciples and on the world. Take,
first of all, the sudden revolution in the frame of mnind and in
the behaviour of the disciples, which can no more be explained
as the result of visions in their case than in that of St. Paul.
Betore the resurrection we see the disciples so fearful; they
scatter when the Master is bound; the most courageous of
them denies his Lord before a servant-girl; only secretly do
they dare to meet with " doors shut for fear of the Jews;" —
and afterwards, though holding their lives in their hands, they
step forward so fearlessly' before the whole nation, before the
judges and murderers of their Master, and preach His resurrection with a joyousness that cannot be intimidated by any
threats or ill-usage.  Beforehand, they are so shaken and




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE " VISIONARY " HYPOTHESIS.  499
broken down by the sudden death of their Messiah, that their
hope in Him as the Redeemer of Israel is vanished, their own
future and that of their faith enveloped in impenetrable darkness; and suddenly a light of hope is kindled in them which
even the most violent storm of persecution cannot extinguish.
All at once they are clearly conscious of their vocation; an
intrepid, joyous faith, a holy zeal, a consciousness ot victory,
fills their hearts, and impels them to go to Jews and Gentiles
to conquer the world for their Master, and upholds and comforts them in tribulation and death.  And this new faith finds
an entrance everywhere; only becomes stronger and more
firmly rooted through opposition -and persecution; can be
damped by no power, either of the sword or of science; in a
stupendous revolution it conquers the world, and regenerates it
morally and spiritually; it embodies itself in a living and
growing Church which has penetrated to all nations, and already lasted for eighteen centuries.  Are we, then, to believe that
the impulse to these immeasurable effects proceeded from visions
and nervous convulsions; from the visionary or epileptic constitution of hysterical women and weak-nerved men; that the
disciples derived the clear knowledge of their extensive task
from a fleeting vision; that the light of the Christian Church,
the sobriety and truth of its spirit, and the earnestness of its
moral energy, came from over-excited nerves; ay, that the
moral regeneration of the world proceeding therefrom had its
origin in error and self-decpftion?  Are we to believe that the
great Fact which has afforded a sufficient explanation of the
history of the Church and the development of the world up to
this present moment, in the end dwindles down to the phantoms of a diseased imagination or "la passion d'une hallucinde "?  Believe that who will; call it what you please, only
not rational or natural; and be sure that it will never stand
before the judgment-seat of history or of conscience.
No; the enormous weight of these historical efects produced by
the belief in the resurrection, must crush every effort to derive it
frorm anything but the fact that Jesus Christ, the great Redeemer
of the world, actually did burst the bonds of death by rising on
that Easter morning.  Who is unacquainted with the law of
the sufficing reason?  In view of the facts enumerated, we
must say that, if anywhere, this law is lost sight of in the




500            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.       [LECT. VII.
visionary hypothesis.  Proceeding, as it does, from. a desperate
desire to get rid of the miraculous at any price, this theory
shares the fate which we have seen pertains to every such
undertaking.  Wishing to do away with the supernatural, it
falls into the unnatural, unhistorical, irrational.  For eighteen
hundred years Christ's body, the Church, has been living and
conquering; and should her Head not be fully living, but half
remained in death?    Of a truth, unbelief believes what is
most incredible.
What, then, is the result of our investigation?  It is this:
that both the proofs demanded by Strauss to substantiate the
fact of the resurrection are most fully fuirnished, viz. the historical credibility of the records, and the necessity of this event in
order to explain other indubitably certain facts. The historical
testimonies for the resurrection as an outward fact are firmly
established; they are equal to anything which may be demanded of a sure record of ancient times; and, as regards the
Epistles of St. Paul, they are unimpugned by any criticism,
nor can they possibly be interpreted as mere internal events.
And a series of indubitable events subsequent to the death of
Christ,-facts of spiritual and external experience in the history
of the apostles; indeed, the entire development of the Christian Church,-all these form an inexplicable enigma without
the fact of the resurrection.
On the other hand, the task that Strauss has set himselfto make us comprehend the belief in the resurrection without
miracles, or else to give up his entire undertaking as a failure
-has in no case been accomplished without open violence
and arbitrariness.  His explanatory attempts, as well as those of
all other anti-miraculous critics, are entangled in an endless
chain of enigmas and dficulties.  Difficulties exegetical: there
is the clear testimony of St. Paul, and the great distinction
made by New Testament writers between the description of
visions and the narratives of our Lord's appearances. Difficulties psychological: all likelihood is wanting for the supposition that so many and such differently constituted persons
should, even by hundreds at a time, have been simultaneously
predisposed to see visions; there is the sudden and thorough
change in the disciples' frame of mind, especially, too, the
sudden conversion of St. Paul; and finally, the speedy cessation




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" IYTIH'HESIS.  *501
of our Lord's appearances.  Difficulties dogmatical: arising
from the question, Whence should the idea of an isolated
individual resurrection, hitherto foreign to their belief, arise
in the minds of the disciples?   Difficulties chronological:
-nanimous historical evidence points to " the third day," and
this leaves no space for the gradual development of visions, or
for the translocation of the first appearances to Galilee. Difficulties topographical: there, in a well-known spot, stands the
empty tomb, with its loud. question, Where is the body?
which neither Jew nor Roman attempts to answer, though
investigation would have been easy.  Difficulties historical:
there is the firm and immovable belief of the disciples in their
Lord's resurrection, their preaching so full of victorious joy
and martyr's courage, which not even their most bitter enemies
dare on this point to gainsay; there is the Christian Sunday,
a continual celebration of the first Easter victory; there is the
Christian Church, founded and victoriously growing on the
rock of her belief in the crucified and risen Saviour. And
finally, difficulties moral: there is the entire moral regeneration of the world which proceeded from the preaching of the
apostles; there we see the kingdom of truth coming, and are
told to believe, as has been well said, that at first it was
false, afterwards it constantly became more true, and at length
"developed " into the sublimest truth!
The critic is not yet born who could overcome all these
obstacles. Where the supernatural so palpably intrudes into
history as in the resurrection of Christ, reason would be far
more prudent, humbly and thankfully to mount this rock
which " stands as the mountain of God," and thus continuously
to increase her range of vision, than to expose one weak point
after another by making futile efforts to undermine it.
A word to my readers! After the foregoing investigation,
I may well utter the conclusion, that if any one among you
imagines himself to be justified in his unbelief by the criticism
of Strauss or Baur, he is greatly deceived. In his earlier days
(when still a believer in the Bible), Baur once said, " As
assuredly as the origin of the Christian Church can only be
accounted for by a firm belief in the risen Saviour, so certain
is it that this belief in its turn could rest upon no other
ground than that of the historical truth of Christ's resurrec



502            THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST.      [LECT. VII.
tion;"1 nor did all the labours of Baur's later years suffice to
overthrow this position.
But in addition to these more negative grounds of defence,
consider, too, the positive counterproofs of the necessity of the
resurrection,-this most comforting and hope-inspiring fact in
the whole history of humanity; proofs which are not only of a
historical, but also of a dogmatic nature. They proceed, as we
hinted at the outset, from the nature of Christ's Person, As
the sinless and holy Son of God, He could not see corruption;
death could not bind Him continuously, since He had life in
Himself; and in laying down His life He manifested Himself
as eternal Love, which must live eternally because itself is life.
They proceed from the omnipotence and justice of the divine
government, which would have been annihilated had it left
the Holy One of God-in whose crucifixion sin and the power
of darkness had celebrated their greatest triumrph-to corrupt
in the grave; had it not crowned Him, who for our sakes was
forsaken on the cross, with glory and honour. They proceed
from the work of Christ, the crown of which would be wanting
unless through His resurrection He confirmed His death as
being a sacrifice for us, and not for Himself, and thereby overcame the last enemy —even death. They proceed from the
presence of the Holy Ghost, whom Christ imparts, and sends in
consequence of His resurrection and ascension (John xv. 26,
xx. 22; Acts ii. 33); and from the personal experience of
believers, who through that same Holy Ghost constantly experience the sanctifying and beatific influences of the Saviour's
resurrection-life (Rom. vi. 4; Col. ii. 12 et ss., iii. 1 et ss.;
1 Pet. i. 3); because the Lord is not only the risen One, but
also the Resurrection and the Life (John xi. 25). They proceed from the internal coherence in the history of God's kingdom,
-for with the resurrection of Christ the second spiritual period
of man's history begins, which will be fully realized at the end
of this age,-and hence, too, from the idea of the world's consummation; the resurrection and transformation of Christ being
the divine pledge of that general resurrection and transformation in which, as its aim and end, the history of mankind, as
well as that of nature, is eventually to be merged, when this
earthly sphere shall be transformed into a heavenly. Con1 Bengel's Archivfilr Tleologie, vol. ii. part 3, p. 715.




LECT. VII.]  FAILURE OF THE "VISIONARY" HYPOTIESIS.  503
sider, I pray you, all these grounds together, and then I think
that the question of the resurrection on which your whole
belief and your whole hope depends, will no longer cause you
doubts.
The enemies of Jesus once placed a watch at His grave,
that the body might not be stolen.  Now, we ourselves stand
before His empty tomb, to guard it with these arguments, and
with the experimental proof of His resurrection-power working
in our hearts, that none may again bury the Lord of glory.
Now if the resurrection be an established fact, we must
remember that, according to Strauss' own confession, his entire
undertaking is a failure, and the inadequacy of the purely
natural human view of the life of Christ is proved (p. 288).
For if this great central miracle of the resurrection stand firm,
so does all that precedes and follows it: the miraculous deeds
of Christ, the truth of His redeeming death, His ascension and
the outpouring of the Holy Ghost; yes, even His miraculous
birth and divine Sonship; for if the consummation of His life
were such a miracle, may we not fairly conclude that its
beginning was also miraculous?  By raising Christ from the
dead, God Himself has testified and confirmed that He is what
the Church has ever maintained and worshipped-His onlybegotten Son.  Thus our belief in Him is, in every essential
particular, shielded against the attacks of criticism and
mythicism, and those words remain true in which the Lord
has comprehended the entire miraculous history of His
Church: "Fear not; I am the First and the Last: I am He
that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore " (Rev. i 17 and 18).




EIGHTH LECTURE.
THE MODERN CRITICAL THEORY OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.
IN the preceding Lecture we adduced the origin of the
Christian Church, and the moral regeneration of the world
which sprang therefrom, as a principal argument for the
reality of our Lord's resurrection.  But what if the formation
of Christianity, its life and its doctrines, should prove to be
merely the natural historical result of a necessary process of
development? Clearly, if this, the greatest phenomenon in
the world's history, can be shown to be a merely natural link
in the chain Qf events, then the miraculous and all supernatural
revelations from God are absolutely eliminated from the
history of mankind.  The Tibingen critical school has led
the van in this last and most comprehensive attempt, made
under an inward compulsion by modern criticism, to exclude
God from history. For as long as men could not help regarding Christianity, at least in respect of its doctrine,
as lying beyond all analogies of human wisdom, it was in
itself, in the uniqueness of its spiritual purport, an actual
proof for the truth of supernatural revelation,-an immediate
attestation of its Founder's divinity.  Nor was it then of
much use to quarrel about the external history and its miraculous or natural origin.  Only if the fundamental and essential
ideas of Christianity can be fully connected with natural and
human factors already extant, and shown to be their intrinsically necessary development, would the battle be thoroughly
and once for all decided in favour of the modern anti-miraculous view of history.  For this reason the chiet efforts of the
critical school have been directed towards the elucidation of
primitive Christianity and its internal formation, towards the
proof of a connection between its doctrines and the elements
of spiritual culture which were already extant, and especially
towards the investigation of its records.
504




LECT. VIII.]      PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.           505
Our entire research into the existence of the supernatural
and of the miraculous can, therefore, only be completed by an
examination of the modern critical theory as to primitive
Christianity.  We have gained a firm foothold for this undertaking by our discussion of the resurrection,-as being the
most decisive epoch in the history of Christianity, the cornerstone on which the entire edifice of Christian teaching was
erected,-and also by our consideration of St. Paul's conversion.  If our opponents should, nevertheless, succeed in
eliminating the supernatural element from  the growth of
doctrine in the apostolic age, we should find it difficult to
retain this factor even in the Person of Christ. If, on the
contrary, we can prove to them that it is absolutely impossible to explain the origin and growth of Christianity from
merely natural and historical sources, without acknowledging
the interference of a supernatural factor, then they can have
no rational ground for denying the miraculous in general,
but will be compelled to acknowledge the interposition of
supernatural divine powers in all periods of the world's
history.
But there is another reason yet why the discussion of this
question should form the conclusion of our investigations.
Of all modern opponents of our old faith, we now stand before the greatest, whom hitherto we have only mentioned
cursorily. Writing as he did, only for the learned world, his
name is less known to the public at large than those of Strauss,
Renan, and others, but it will remain inscribed in the history
of modern theology when that of many others, now known to
every one, will have long since been effaced.  Dr. Ferdinand
Christian von Baur, professor of theology at Tiibingen (died
2d December 1860), was one of the greatest, if not the
greatest, theological scholar of this century; after the death of
Neander, the most notable historian of the Church and her
doctrines, not only in Germany, but in the world; the most
indefatigable of investigators, especially as regards the history
of primitive Christianity, in the elucidation of which he has
deserved well of theology. He stands a head and shoulders
above all other modern opponents of the miraculous. From
him they all learn and draw their supplies; they are fain to
appropriate the fruits of his enormous diligence if they wish




506               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
not merely to beat the air, but methodically to storm the
citadel of our Christian faith. Strauss himself, in the presence
of this man, confesses his backwardness: " I expected," says
he, "with the presumption of youth, to storm the fortress by
a single assault; but it remained for my greater master to
undertake a scientific siege, before which its walls must fall."
And, in truth, if human power, human diligence and acuteness, could ever bring about the overthrow of our faith, this
man would have accomplished it.   But our present theology
is daily becoming more convinced that he was incompetent to
this task, and that, in spite of all his unutterable exertions,
he did not succeed in proving the merely natural origin of
Christianity.  This is one of the surest signs that the rock
upon which our faith is founded is absolutely indestructible.
To impress you with this conviction is the last aim of these
lectures.
For this purpose, we will first make ourselves acquainted
with the principles of Baur and his school, and their representation of primitive Christianity thereupon founded; and
second, we will endeavour to give a critique of their theory.
L-THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.
Baur once blamed Strauss for venturing to write a critique
of the gospel history without a preceding critical investigation
of the Gospels; and we ourselves have seen that Strauss passes
over this point too lightly, even in his new edition of the Life
of Christ.  It is this gap which the Tiibingen School endeavours to fill up.  The weak point of Strauss is the strong
point with these critics, or at least that to which they devote
their chief attention.  Their maxim is, that we must recur
from the criticism of history to that of the historical writings.
No certain conclusions as to the history of the life of Christ,
or the origin of the Christian Church, can be arrived at until
we have discovered by whom, under what influences, and
with what tendency the different books of the New Testament
were written. Thus the chief importance of the Tiibingen
School-i.e. of Baur and his followers, Schwegler, It. K6stlin,
Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, etc.-lies in the critical investiga



LECT. VIII.]  THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.    507
tion into the origin of the New Testament, and the history of the
apostolic and post-apostolic age, with its peculiarly constituted
parties.
In order to comprehend the motive principle of these investigations, we must remember that the zenith of this school's
development coincides with that of the Hegelian philosophy
at Tiibingen.   The whole of Baur's conception of history is
accordingly pervaded by the Hegelian philoso2phy.  Though he
may gradually have overcome much of its onesidedness, he was
to the last governed by its fundamental idea, viz. the immanence of God and the world, according to which the relation
of the divine and human spirit must be conceived as essential
unity, not as personal distinction and intercourse.l God does
not live and reign above the world and its changes; He is
only realized in and with it, and the history of the world is
the process of absolute Being, which developes with an iron
necessity according to natural laws.    All that appears in
nature and history is a revelation of the eternal Idea. But
the latter is never fully realized in a single individual, only
in the general development taken as a whole. The individual,
as such, always stands in a certain contradictory relation to
the universal Idea, negatives it, and must therefore itself be
negatived. This eternally restless and aimless process is the
continuous negation of a negation in which one phenomenon
always calls forth the next, so that each can be connected
with the preceding one and explained from it. In this monotonous path the world's history, and likewise the history of the
Church, as of all religious development, is ever marching on.
With this fundamental view, Baur could not but consider
the doctrines "of an eternally self-perfected personality of
God, of a spontaneous creation of the world, of sin and moral
perversion originating from the freedom of man, of man's personal immortality, as imperfect notions of religious belief.
But above all he must, if consistent, reject the doctrines of a
truly supernatural revelation, and of a miraculous, unique union
1 Not until later, when Baur's historical principles had been long since
settled, did he appear to recognise the personality of God somewhat more fully;
when, e.g., he says: " If God be truly conceived as a Spirit, then either He must
be as such immediately personal, or else it is not evident what the attribute of
personality can contribute to the conception of God as the absolute Being."




508               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII.
of God and mac in,Christ, and of sinless perfection in the
historical Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of the world.
These he must transmute into the idea of the essential unity
of the divine and human spirit, and of a continuous, necessary
reconciliation and union of both, which must be principally
accomplished by the moral self-development of man." 1
From this it is evident that, on the standpoint of Baur, the
miraculous is ilmpossible.  Everything takes place in a necessary natural development, in which one phenomenon begets
another, and in which, therefore, nothing can form an absolutely
new beginning (which is the nature of a miracle, vide p. 293),
but all is only the result of germs and causes already extant.
Not even Christianicty may form any exception to this absolutely valid law.  It must therefore allow  of being inclucded
as a historical phenomenon in the universal development of the
wvorld, by being considered as a period in the general development of religious consciousness.  It had no miraculous beginning, nor has there appeared in Christ any absolutely new
principle which could have been the sudden and unmediated
commencement of a new development.       Christianity is only
the nattural unity of all pre-Christian, schools of thought, " the
ripe fruit of all the higher longings that had hitherto stirred
amongst all branches of the great human family."2 Baur will
not acknowledge any other view    of history as entirely unbiassed, or "free from presuppositions" as he likes to call it.
For him a strictly scientific research is only that which
excludes all supernatural interference of God in history, and
seeks to derive every phenomenon from purely natural causes.
HIence to this day the peculiar fashion, prevalent amongst the
opponents of all positive belief, of acknowledging as "scienztifc"
only those theories which tend to deny the supernatural, and
of accusing all others of being " biassed by dogmatic presuppositions" and " unscientific:" as if a belief in the supernatural
must exclude strict logic, and did not rather improve it; as
if it darkened our rational knowledge, and did not rather
enlighten and extend it.
Baur maintained these anti-miraculous principles to the last.
I Lanclerer, [orete lder Erinnerung an F. C. v. Baur, p. 38. Cf. this pamphlet also for the following pages.
2 Strauss, Leben Jesu, p. 167.




LECT. VIII.]  THE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.  509
" Whoever," he writes,1 "can see in the incarnation of the Son
of God nothing but an absolute miracle, must thereby give
up all historical connection.  The miraculous is an absolute'beginning; and the more this beginning is the precondition of
all that follows, the more must the whole series of phenomena
which belong to the region of Christianity bear the impress of
the same miraculous character.  If at the first point the historical continuity is rent asunder, then a similar interruption
is possible at every succeeding stage. It is, therefore, very
natural that historical investigation should, in its own interest,'seek to include the miracle of the absolute beginning in the one historical connection, and dissolve it as far as possible into its natzrca
elemnents."  Similarly he remarks in another passage:2 " It is
undeniable that the tendency of historical consideration must be
to brizn  down the supernatural and miratculous, which constitutes the specific character (?) of Christianity, to an absolute
ininmunm; nor can it, from  its very nature, have any other
tendency.  Its task is to investigate what has happened in
the connection of its causes and effects; but the miraculous,
in its absolute sense, destroys the natural connection."  So
only that can be historical investigation which tries to get rid
of the miraculous as far as possible.  But what if the miraculous itself were historical?
Thus Baur from the outset declares war against the miraculous; but he employs a peculiar method in getting rid of it.
We have already seen how, for this purpose, the Rationalists
make use of the "natural," i.e. unnatural explanation of isolated miracles: how Strauss and Renan class miracles in general
under the head of legends and fabrications.    Baur, on the
other hand, does not engage in many skirmishes about isolated
miracles; though, where he does so, he assumes either that
they were legends of unintentional origin, or still oftener,
didactic fabrications.  His chief endeavour is to divest the,phenomenon of CAristianity as a whole of its miraculous character; and this he does by deriving the elements oi the Christian religion as much as possible from conceptions and ideas
already extant in Judaism and heathenism, and by connecting
them with these, as though they were the products of a natural
1 Das Christenthumt der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, 2d ed. p. 1.
" )De Tbilnger Schule, p. 14.




510               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.         [LECT. VIII.
development. The substance of history, as extracted by his criticism,-but often, too, invented by it,-is of its own accord to
show the superfluousness and impossibility of miracles.  The
means by which he seeks to eliminate the miraculous, is, in
short, the demonstration of historical analogies and points of
contact between the pre-Christian and the Christian view of
the world and of God.
How, then, does Baur discover these? He looks for certain
views which are common on the one hand to the nature of
Christianity, and on the other to the general character of that
age.  "The more decidedly such common points of connection
appear, the clearer is the light which they cast upon the historical origin of Christianity itself."'  Such, e.g., is the idea
of universalism.  This was derived by Christianity from  the
world-wide Roman empire. "In its universalism Christianity
stood upon the same level to which the Roman State had raised
itself by its world-wide monarchy... The universalism
of Christianity never could have penetrated into the general
consciousness of the nations had not the way been prepared
for it by political universalism.  In its essence, Christian
universalism is the general form of consciousness to which the
development of mankind up to the appearance of Christianity
had attained."
Christianity became the absolute religion on account of its
purely spiritual character, since it is more free from all that is
merely outward and sensuous than any other religion, and
more deeply founded on the principles of moral consciousness,
knowing no other worship of God than that which takes place
in spirit and in truth.  The specific pre-eminence of Christianity in its character as the absolute religion, is based upon
the fact, that in it man becomes conscious of himself as a moral
subject.  " That which exalts Christianity, as against all other
belief, to the dignity of the absolute religion, is in the last
instance nothing but the purely moral character of its facts (?),
doctrines, and requirements." 2  This aspect of Christianity is
connected with the Greek philosophy, through which, since the
1 Das Christenthum der ersten drei JahrAlunderte, pp. 2-22.
2 Die Tiibinger Schule u. ihre Stellung zur Gegemcart (2d ed. pp. 30 et ss.).
Cf. with what follows, Beckh, "Die Tiibinger historische Schule," in the Zeit.
schrftfiir Protestantismus u. Kirche for March and April 1864.




LECT. VIII.] TIIE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.  511
time of Socrates, men had become acquainted with the conception of the subject.  The philosophy of Plato, more especially,
is very nearly related to Christianity, even in its ideal groundwork.   His doctrines respecting a Creator of the world, the
immortality of the soul, the essential affinity between man and
God, of man's need of communion with God,-the way in which
he recognises the dependence of man on a higher world, from
which alone he can receive instruction as to divine things,all these are so many points of contact with Christianity.
Other tendencies of thought, at least negatively, paved the way
for Christianity, since by their errors or onesidedness they
called forth a revulsion of the religious consciousness in the
opposite direction.  Thus, e.g., the haughty self-contentment
of the Stoic formed as great a contrast to Christianity as did
the voluptuousness of the Epicurean to Christian self-denial.
The more onesided the subjective character of philosophy in
the sceptical systems which despaired of attaining to any certainty of truth, the more must the necessity of an objective
foundation for the truth become clear to men. There naturally
followed a revulsion of consciousness from the subjective to
the objective, from philosophy to religion, from mere speculation to the belief in actual revelations of God.
But the chief factor to which attention must be directed in
considering the origin of Christianity is Judaism. Christianity
is nothing but Judaism spiritualized. And this spiritualization
of Judaism was made way for in the Old Testament by the
prophets.  Their writings " already contain the elements of a
religion which only needed to be brought into a more general
form of consciousness in order to become Christianity." As
for the national impress and the particularism of the Jewish
religion which is opposed to Christianity, it had broken through
these bounds in the religious philosophy of Alexandria-this
Hellenic Judaism-by the allegorical interpretation of the Old
Testament. In this way a means had been discovered of
extending at pleasure the scope of the Old Testament, and
hence there originated " a more universal form of the religious
consciousness which already possessed something of the spirit
of Christianity."... "In fact, we constantly find germs of
Christianity wherever Judaism or heathendom returns witlin
itself. As often as this happens, a more universal and self



512                PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.           [LEGT. VIII.
dependent form of religious consciousness is in process of
development."    The ascetic aspect of Christianity finally, its
renunciation of the possessions and pleasures of this life; and
its separation from the world, stand in close relationship with
the sects of the Therapeutes and Essenes, who withdrew from
the corruption of the world into still communities, where, with
all things in common, they lived the most simple and laborious
life, apart from all worldly delights.
In this manner Baur arrives at the conclusion that the
germs of a new creation lay dormant in the dissolution of the
old world, and only needed to be centred in one focus in
order to raise the religious consciousness to the level of Christianity.  Christianity, therefore, is only the natural unity of all
these elements.  " It contains nothing which is not conditioned
by a preceding series of causes and effects; nothing which had
not long before been prepared in different ways; nothing which
had not already been vindicated either as a result of rational
thought, or as a need of the human heart, or as a requirement
of the moral consciousness." 1 But that these existing elements
of a new religious growth " should converge in one special point,
and in this one special individual, this is the wonder in the
origin of Christianity which no historical reflection can further
analyse."
According to Baur, the true kernel of Christianity appears
in all those points on which Jesus insisted when He appeared
as the Reformer of the Jewish religion.   The pure elements of
this religion formed the motive principle of His religious work.
He did not come to destroy, but to fulfil; and the law was
fulfilled by Him, inasmuch as He recurred from       the merely
outward ceremonial service to the internal disposition.     The
tendency of the most important of Christ's didactic discourses
was to refer man back to himself, to call his attention to all
that may be learned from      the wants of his moral nature.
1 Das Christenthum der ersten 3 Jahrhunderte, p. 21. Further on he adds,
somewhat ambiguously, that the Christian doctrines would doubtless have been
relegated into the ranks of so many other sayings of the wise men of old, which
have long since been forgotten, "had they not in the mouth of the Founder
become words f eternal life" (pp. 35, 36). We have already seen (p. 389) that
Strauss in like manner refers the true humanitarian tendency in Christ to a
Hellenic origin, and considers His purely spiritual and moral conception of God
as an Old Testament heirloom.




LECT. VIII.] THE PRINCIPLES OF TiIE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.  513
"All that belongs to the truly moral purport of Christ's teachings, as contained in the Sermon on the Mount, the parables,
etc.,-his doctrine as to the kingdom of God, the conditions of
its membership whereby man is placed in a truly moral relation
to God;-all this constitutes the intrinsic essence of Christianity and its substantial centre " (Die Tubinger Schule, p. 30).
In those didactic discourses we find a system of religious truth
which imparts to Christianity the character of the purest rational?rligion. " What should there be supernatural in the fact that
the eternal verities of reason were once pronounced in such a
way that they only needed to be pronounced in order to ensure their universal acknowledgment?"  True, even the most
rational verities of religion will not meet with general acceptance if they are not supported by the weight of a great personality.  But there is every reason to believe that Jesus was
just such an extraordinary personality, intellectually gifted in
the highest degree, and morally grand.  That, however, which
gives His person the highest, its absolute significance, is only
that in Him " first this free conception of the relation between
God and man was cleared from all impurity, entered into the
living consciousness of man, and found there its truest and
most immediate expression" (ubi sup.).
In the miracles of Christ, and in the form that they have
taken in tradition, we can only see an effect of the wonderful
influence of Christ upon His contemporaries. No sooner had
He made Himself conspicuous than men saw in Him the longexpected Saviour, The question is, whether Jesus was at once
firmly convinced of His Messianic mission, or whether this
idea only gradually gained ground in Him. We shall presently
see that Baur does not sufficiently explain to us how Jesus
came to declare Himself to be the Messiah. Decidedly as He
asserted the conviction of His Messianic mission, He wAis
exceedingly reserved as to the political expectations of His
people, and held entirely aloof from them, for He only wished
to work by a spiritual reformation. Early in His career He
had become convinced that the sacrifice of His life was necessary to the realization of His idea. After a lengthy stay in
Galilee, He went to Jerusalem, in order to bring about the
crisis which ended in His death.  The heads of His nation
condemned Him, under the influence.of the correct presentiment
2 K




514               PIIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII,
that He had brought on the end of the old faith.  His death
cut off the last possibility of identifying the Messiah, whom
He claimed to be, with the Jewish Messiah, who was to have
erected another kingdom  of David.   Not until then did the
Messianic idea which He had enunciated stand forth in all its
purity, and now it could not but become the principle of a
new religion different from  Judaism.  Christianity, therefore,
gained its world-wide importance through the death of Jesus.
His resurrection is merely the declaration, put in the form of a
fact, that His person not only did not perish, but was even
raised by death to the dignity which pertained to Him as being
the living exponent of the new spiritual religion. "What the
resurrection per se is," says Baur, with peculiar caution, "it
does not lie within the province of historical research to determine" (cf. p. 453).  The conviction that His resurrection was
an absolute necessity forced itself upon the disciples, and for
their consciousness it was a firm fact. Church history, therefore, has for its starting-point, not the objective fact of the
resurrection, but the belief of the disciples in it.  This belief
was the commencement of the Christian Church.
T/lzs primitive Christianity, according to Bcaur, is a fo'rm of
the development of Judaism, to which, however, all the other
more spiritual elements of that age contributed.  In virtue of
the urgent efforts which He directed towards promoting an
internal and spiritual perception of the law, Christ became the
author of a religious and moral reformation of Judaism; but
in all this He was a mere man, nor did He exceed the limits
of what was purely natural either in His person or His work.
And thus, moreover, He was regarded during the primitive
Christian age.  The first Christians were Jews, only they believed in a Messiah who had already appeared, without, however, ascribing to Him divine attributes.  In this belief their
entire doctrine consisted.  To substantiate this, Baur appeals
to the Ebionites, a party of Jewish Christians who held to the
law of Moses, and denied the birth of Jesus from the Virgin, declaring Him to be a mere man. Primitive Christianity was, in
fact,nothing but Ebionitism,-i.e. a Jewish sect which afterwards
developed into the universal Church,-not, however, because it
successively drew conclusion after conclusion from its chief tenet
that Jesus was the Messiah, but only because it was gradually




LECT. VIII.] TIIE PRINCIPLES OF THE TUEBINGEN SCHOOL.  515
compelled to drop one piece of the old Judaism after another.'
For these primitive Christians had as yet no idea that the
kingdom of God was to be extended beyond the boundaries of
Israel. The Jewish-Christian party was predominant as far
down as the beginning of the second century; but before this
another more free and universalist school had separated from it,
chiefly through the teaching and work of the Apostle Paul.
This body held Christianity to be the universal religion, released
itself from the bondage of the law, and directed its attention
chiefly to the heathen. Hence it gradually became the more
numerous, and later on the dominant party.    Amongst its
members a higher conception of Christ —of His pre-existence,
His unity with the Father, His Godhead-was gradually developed during the course of the second century.
The chief representatives of the former party are St. Peter
and St. James; that of the latter, St. Paul. According to Baur,
the entire history of primitive Christianity is ruled by this
opposition between Petrinism  and Paulinism, or between
Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. There are traces
of it in the New Testament. In Gal. ii. we read of a dispute
between St. Peter and St. Paul as to the relative positions of
the Jewish and Gentile Christians. In 1 Cor. i. we read of
parties in the Corinthian Church who called themselves by
the names of Paul, Apollos, Kephas, and Christ. In the
Epistle of St. James we find a legal Jew setting up works as
against mere faith.  In course of time, however, men sought
to mediate between these two opposites, and to reconcile them.
All the books of the New Testament owe their origin either to
one or other of these parties, or to an attempt at mediation
between them.
For what follows from this view of primitive Christianity
with respect to the genuineness of the books of the New Testament?  First, that the books in which we find the doctrine of
tl' Godhead of Christ already developed cannot have bceen composed till the second century.  For the Apostolic Church, and
even St. Paul, had no such high conception of Christ. And
second, that only those writings which distinctly express that
opposition, i.e. which are either decisively Petrine or entirely
Pauline, can be genuine; whereas those in which the edge of
1 Cf. Schwegler, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter, i. p. 107.




516               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
this opposition is already blunted, and which are evidently
trying to mediate between the two tendencies, must belong to
that later age in which men were working at the reconciliation
of both parties.  It is presupposed that all the writings of
primitive Christianity-those of the New Testament not excepted-must have a tendency to exalt either the JewishChristian party of St. Peter, or the Gentile-Christian following
of St. Paul, or else to reconcile both. From this characteristic
of the Gospels we may explain their legendary miraculous
contents. The more distinct the tendency of a gospel, the less
can it be considered a reliable record.  The more developed
the doctrine of Christ's person, and the more conciliatory the
tone of a book towards both parties, the more surely may we
place it in a later age.
In accordance with these principles, Baur considers that
only five books of the Nezv Testament are undoubtedly genuine
and apostolic, viz. one book of a Jewish-Christian tendency,
the Revelation of St. John, and four Epistles which represent
the Pauline or Gentile-Christian tendency in its original form,
one to the  oomans, two to the Corinthians, and one to the
Galatians; whereas. those to the Ephesians, Colossians, and
Philippians have too high a view of. Christ's person, and the
others bear other traces of later origin.  Of the Gospels, that
of St. Matthew is the most authentic documental record, because it betrays least party tendency. Whilst this is JewishChristian, that of St. Luke is Pauline-universalist, that of St.
Miark mediatory.  The latest of all, chiefly on account of its
highly developed philosophical Christology, is the Gospel of
St. John, which some unknown person wrote after 160.1 The
book which most clearly betrays a tendency to reconcile the
Pauline and the Petrine school is the Acts of the Apostles,
especially because in chap. xv. it tells of the agreement between St. Peter and St. Paul in their resolution not to force
the Gentile Christians to observe the Mosaic law,-a narrative
which, no doubt, is diametrically opposed to Baur's entire conception of primitive Christianity, and must therefore be declared
to be unhistorical.
These are, in short, the views of Baur (somewhat modified
l Cf., however, the concessions since then made by the critical school in regard
to the age of the Gospels, as already stated.




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     517
by his school, which at present has its chief seats in Switzerland, France, and Holland) with respect to the origin of Christianity, more especially of the New Testament. At present we
cannot follow this criticism into details as to the origin of the
single books.  Here we are concerned only with the fundamental views of the school in general, inasmuch as it represents the greatest and most extensive attempt to do away with
the supernatural element in the origin of Christianity.  In
order to see whether this attempt has succeeded, we will now
proceed to examine successively the principles of the school,
its attempt to connect Christianityy with pre-Christian systems
of thought, its conception of the person and the consciousness
of Christ, the important position which it assigns to the
Apostle Paul in the history of the primitive Church, and
finally, the antitheses, the intensification and reconcilement of
which is supposed to have fixed the character of the entire
apostolic and post-apostolic age.
II. —CRITIQUE AND REFUTATION OF THIS THEORY.
This school arrogates to its criticism a purely historical
character.  It claims to have approached the investigation of
the Christian records without any other than a historical interest, and to have studied primitive Christianity in the unbiassed spirit of true science, which allows of no presuppositions.
Is this, I ask, even psychologically possible?  Can any one
approach the investigation of a subject which so deeply affects
our own life as does Christianity, without any presuppositions
whatsoever?   Must there not be-some self-delusion in this
matter?  A corpse may be dissected without sympathy, and
merely in the interests of science, but never a living body.
Only that which does not in the least affect us can be investigated entirely in an unbiassed spirit, and merely in the general
interests of science. Even Strauss has raised this objection
against Baur.  "With all due respect," he remarks (Leben
Jesu, p. 13), " for what the learned gentlemen say, I must still
confess that I consider what they lay claim to an impossibility; nor, even were it possible, would it seem to me praiseworthy.   True, the man who writes about the rulers of




518               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
Nineveh, or the Egyptian Pharaohs, may do so merely in the
interests of history.  But Christianity is such a living power,
and the question as to how it originated is fraught with such
momentous issues for the present day, that the investigator
must be destitute of all sense if he should feel none but a
historical interest in it."
But this " absence of presupposition" is not only a psychological delusion,-it is belied by the principles of the Tiibingen
School.  In reality the investigations of this school are not
"purely historical," but governed throughout by the philosophical axioms of Pantheism: they are not free from presuppositions; on the contrary, as regards the chief question, viz. the
possibility of the supernatural, they are previously decided.
Baur maintains from the outset that the really historical and
essential substance of Christianity can only be that which
does not transcend our natural human standards, and which
can be linked to other similar historical phenomena. Hence
his constant endeavour to reduce the supernatural events
which are recorded to merely natural dimensions.  Their historical element must be purely natural. And why? Because,
according to his Hegelian views, an immediate divine interposition in the course of history is impossible.  What is this
but approaching the investigation with a presupposition,
whereby the main point is already decided?  For surely the
most important question with respect to the origin of Christianity is whether its supernatural beginning, as related in
Scripture, is historical or not?  By adopting such strongly
biassed principles, and yet claiming for them  a purely scientific and historical character, Baur lays himself open to the
charge of begging the question, just as Strauss also does.
According to Scripture, all history, both of creation and redemption, begins with miracles; according to Baur, where
miracles begin, history ends.  He ought then to have proved to
us that the miraculous itself cannot be historical. And since
he did not do so, this fundamental principle of his is a mere
presupposition. True, Baur tries to assign the nature of the
records as the reason for his denial of the miraculous.  But
this is only a veil for the true reason, which lies in his
Hegelian views. And this denial is fatal to his whole system.
Thus we see that the absence of presuppositions, of which




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF TIE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     519
this school vaunts itself so much, is in reality the grcatest
possible assatmption; that its apparently purely historical principles include the philosophical axiom that the miraculous is
impossible; and that its historical criticism  is in truth dogmatical, having for its fundamental article the dogma of Pantheism.  From  this we may easily comprehend the motives
for the attempt to link Christianity entirely to pre-Christian
systems of thought.
Baur would be quite right in so doing if it were only we
men, i.e. purely natural factors, which constitute history. But
the greatest factor of all is the divine factor, which is supernatural, and therefore inexplicable, but none the less historical.
The divine deeds, i.e. the miracles, are absolute beginnings
which appear as something entirely new, and can therefore
never be completely linked to the old which already exists,
or sufficiently explained from preceding events.  But in their
character of absolute beginnings they are not only ordinary
history, but history in its most exalted sense; they constitute
the basis, the landmarks, and the internal mainspring of all
historical development. No wonder, then, that Baur's attempt
has signally failed.
In seeking for analogies to Christianity, Baur takes the
essential nature of the latter as consisting in its universalism,
its pure spirituality and genuine morality.   But I have
already endeavoured to show you (vide pp. 37-39) that these
elements by no means constitute the specific nature of Christianity, which consists, above all, in our having entered into a
new relation to God, not merely by recurring to our own moral
consciousness, but through certain historical facts and through
a distinct historical personage, viz. Christ.  Baur constantly
emphasizes only one aspect of the historical development; and
by treating it as the essential one, he loses sight of the real
essence and heart's core of Christianity, which is none other
than the person of Christ. If Christianity be nothing but the
purest rational religion, which, upon closer inspection, dwindles
down to a religionless morality, how poor'and meagre is its
essence, though we may exalt its moral truths ever so highly!
What an unmeaning phrase is it when Baur declares that the
principle which makes Christianity the absolute religion is
this, "that man becomes conscious of himself as a moral sub



o 20               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII.
ject!" Is this the new, the distinctive essence of Christianity?
Even our first parents, I trow, had attained to the elevation
of this standpoint when, in their consciousness of being moral
subjects, they were ashamed and hid themselves. Baur's definitions, therefore, do not in the least touch the specifically
new elements of Christianity; nor can they do so, since for his
standpoint there is nothing new, but everything necessarily
follows from what has gone before.  Hence, too, the points of
contact so laboriously discovered are valueless, since they do
not concern the root of the matter.
But they do not even sufficiently explain what Baur
intends them  to.  What an infinite difference is there between the universalism of the Roman empire and that of
Christianity!-the former resting upon the power of the sword,
built up by forcible conquests, and moreover very far from
being actually universal; the latter founded upon the idea of
a physical, moral, and religious affinity between all men, their
common descent from the first Adam, and their common
redemption through the second Adam.' What a difference is
there between a dialogue of Plato's and the Sermon on the
Mount; between the strugglings of Greek speculation and the
holy divine peace of our Saviour's consciousness; between the
confession of Socrates, that "he knew only this, that he knew
nothing," and the testimony of Him who not only knew Himself to be in full possession of the truth, but could even say,
" I am the Truth;" between the moral fluctuations and errors
even of the noblest Greek, and the sinless perfection of that
One, who for this reason can attach the salvation of the world
to His sole person!
And what a difference, again, is there between the asceticism
of the Essenes, who shunned the world and renounced its
society, and Christ's free and open intercourse with the world,
prompted by His love, which was seeking lost humanity!
What a contrast, in fact, " between the painful narrow-mindedness of Essene morality and the freedom peculiar to the spirit
1 It should be remembered that only in the Holy Scriptures, i.e. on the ground
of revelation, do we find the idea that all men are descended from one pair
(Gen. x. 32; Acts xvii. 26). Compare this with the belief of Hellenic heathenism, that their nation was born from the soil, and the contempt resulting there.
from for all that was foreign.




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.       521
and word of Jesus!    In the one case, man laboriously toiling
at length to place himself in the true relationship to God; in
the other, full and blissful harmony with the heavenly Father
in the walk and word of Christ;"-in the one case, self-isolation; in the other, intercourse even with publicans and
sinners;-in the one case, secret doings; in the other, our
Saviour's command to preach upon the house-tops, etc.    The
most recent investigations on the subject ot Essenism   have
irrefutably proved that, in spite of isolated points of contact,
"the doctrine of Jesus as compared with Essenism, both as a
whole and in detail, shows less of agreement than of difference.
The spirit of both is originally distinct."
Moreover, how can it be historically proved that Hellenic
culture and philosophy, or Alexandrine Judaism which was
permeated by these, or even Essenism, had a direct influence
upon the views of Christ, who was " not from below but from
above," and who spoke as His Father had taught Him, not
according to the doctrines of men? (John viii. 23, 28.)  Impossible; for " Christianity is an entirely independent formation,
which came into existence without any connection whatever
with these phenomena. They had no influence whatever on
Jesus, and on the circle in which His cause at first developed"
(Weizsacker, ubi sup.).  To this Strauss objects (Leben Jesm,
p. 165), that "though the circumstances which were the
originating causes of Christianity may be no longer known to
us, this by no means proves that such causes did not exist!
But, we answer, so long as our opponents cannot show any
sufficient natural cause for these effects, it is evident that no
one can dispute our right to suppose that they had a supernatural cause; and this all the more, inasmuch as such a
cause in fact explains everything, whereas those merely natural
influences explain nothing, since their difference from Christianity is always greater than their affinity to it.
We might even go a step further in our proof for the
existence of supernatural factors in history,' and say: If
1 Keim, Der geschichtliche Christus, 3d ed. p. 15; Jesu von Nazara, i. pp.
282 et ss., 306; Kbstlin, "Jesus gegeniiber den Parteien seines Volks," in Gelzer's
Protestantijche MIonatsblatter for December 1865, pp. 363 et ss.; Kleinert,
Jesus im Veridltniss zu den Parteien seiner Zeit, 1865; Weizsacker, lIntero
suchungen iber die evangelische Geschichte, p. 418.




522               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII
primitive Christianity is nothing but a development of
Judaism, whence, then, does the latter come?  Baur does not
give this question a consideration.  But since Judaism claims
to be a supernaturally revealed religion, and is so according
to Christian views, this investigation would assuredly have
been most fitting as a test of his historical principles, which
aim  at assigning a natural cause for everything.  True, the
tutility of his undertaking would have become patent at the
very outset. For even the old covenant, with its doctrine and
history, cannot possibly be explained as the fruit of a merely
natural development.  Whilst all the nations of the old world
are under the curse of nature-worship, we find Israel alone
adoring the one supramundane God.    Whilst all the nations
of the old world, "with backward longings after a vanished
golden age, live hopelessly onwards into the ever-deteriorating
future," Israel alone looks hopefully forward to a future golden
age of salvation. How is this? Can it be that this religion,
with those prophecies which are to be miraculously fulfilled,
are a natural product of the popular spirit of Israel, which for
so long a time rebelled against them, and needed a thousand
years of the heaviest divine chastisements at last to get rid
of its natural tendency to idolatry, and which even then
appropriated rather the husk than the kernel of these promises?
Even in this preliminary question the historical principles of
the critical school are found wanting.
The truth that underlies these deductions of Baur, which
it was his merit to bring to light, is simply this, that the
spiritual tendencies which he regards as the generating causes
of Christianity really were preparations and connecting links
for it; that they made way for its reception and spread, and
hence attained an influence on the development of the Church
which is not to be underrated. Not until the world was
listorically prepared by those elements of its outward and
inward development, did Christianity enter it: " In the fulness
of the time (when the time was fulfilled) God sent His Son"
(Gal. iv. 4). But are we to conclude that because Christianity
had its natural preparations and conditions, it is therefore
essentially nothing but the natural unity of these historical
conditions?  In this case the preparations for a  nmatter are
simply confounded with the generative cause of the matter itself; and




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN TIIEORY.    523
this is a fallacy which can only be perpetrated by the Hegelian
view of history, with its aversion to the miraculous. When
Christianity is once in existence, like every other original
phenomenon, it resembles the egg of Columbus, and may easily
be comprehended in its intrinsic truth and its grand simplicity, as the goal towards which the preceding development in
many ways was distinctly tending. But for all that it remains
an original production, a truly creative, specifically new and
world-regenerating principle, which carries the sufficing cause
of its existence in itself alone.  It is not, nor ever will be, possible to compare the incomparable. Critics may draw parallels as
they will in every direction between pre-Christian and Christian
truths, and search after the elements preparatory for Christianity; yet always the specific and characteristic principle of
Christianity will be wanting: the idea of the unity of God
and man is foreign to the pre-Christian world. St. Paul's
feeling for universal history can well discern those preparatory
elements in their dispersion through the divine plan of education; but he would never grant that the principle of Christitianity itself could result from  the "weak and beggarly
elements of this world" (Gal. iv. 3, 9); it could only come in
by a divine act, the sending of God's Son.
Baur says: "What long since in various ways was the goal
of all rational efforts, and of necessity forced itself upon the
consciousness of man as its essential purport," at length found
its natural expression in Christianity.  St. Paul says: "Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man, the things which God hath prepared for them   that
love Him: but God hath revealed them      unto us by His
Spirit" (1 Cor. ii. 9, 10).  Baur himself seems at length to
have felt that in the face of this truth all attempts at a
natural derivation are insufficient; for he says: "That the
elements of a new religious development, which per se were
already extant, should have concentrated themselves in the
generation of a new life at one particular point and in one
special individual,-this is the wonder in the history of the
origin of Christianity which no historical reflection can further
analyse." And still more would this seem to be the case,
when he tells us in another place that he too "acknowledges
a certain supernatural character and a divine principle work



524               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. VIII.
ing in an especial manner" in Christianity, only not an
absolute miracle which should exclude all natural mediation.
But we have already seen that real miracles do not
absolutely exclude natural mediation; on the contrary, that
they often are linked to that which is already extant. And
this was the case with the miraculous entrance of Christianity
into history.  That there was tinder enough laid ready we
willingly acknowledge, and thank the man who has pointed
it out to us in detail. But as long as we do not recognise
the lightning spark of a supernatural vital principle as having
actually touched the inert mass, we can never understand the
fire which suddenly burst forth and set the whole ancient
world in flames;-we shall grope in the dark as long as we
seek its origin below and not above.
Moreover, the attempt to deny the creative action of God
in the origin of Christianity, and to reduce the supernatural
to the co-operation of merely natural factors, likewise involves
the greatest historical difficulties and absurdities. If the world
at that time, we ask, was pregnant with the new spiritual
religion, why did she so remorselessly persecute her own offspring?
How was it that all nations did not hail it with applause, and
rejoice in the new acquisition?   How was it that Jews,
Greeks and Romans, especially the great and wise men of the
world, for three centuries carried on the most embittered warfare against Christianity with all the available resources of
their religion, their statesmanship, their culture, and science;
and all this in utter blindness, without seeing, what it was left
for Baur to discover, that they were raging against that which
was related to their own flesh and blood, and had emanated
from it by natural development? Ronman universalism rages
against its Christian counterpart with fire and sword.  The
cultivated Greek calls St. Paul a babbler. The thoughtful
Roman designates Christianity-this natural fruit of all past
culture-as an odium generis humani, hated and abhorred by
the whole world.  How can this be explained from the standpoint of the Tiibingen School? Here, if anywhere, our Lord's
words are applicable: "If ye were of the world, the world
would love his own,"-had Christianity been a natural outflow
of the spirit of the age, that age must straightway have
received it,-" but because ye are not of the world, but I have




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     525
chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you"
(John xv. 19). Here we find an explanation of this hatred.
The Tibingen School can give us none.
We obtain just as little satisfaction when we ask to be
enlightened as to the Person of Christ and His characteristic
consciousness. In this matter the historical school is very
cautious and reserved; and it is not without cause that
Strauss reproaches Baur with asking, "not what Jesus really
did or said, but what the narrators make him do and say: thus
he busies himself with the Gospels, but leaves the Lord out of
the question."  However, we have already seen that thus
much is evident, that Baur admits as the historical purport of
the life of Christ nothing but a career entirely devoid of
miracles, and likewise in His Person only such moral perfection
as shall not exceed the measure of natural humanity. In
order to carry out his views, the Tiibingen critic is compelled
to reduce all that is supernatural in the discourses of Christ
to mere natural truths, and to change divine revelations into
natural conditions of human moral consciousness.    It is
self-evident that the most arbitrary means must be used in
order everywhere to prove the "purely moral" character of
this doctrine, and especially that the imnportance of Christ's
Person for the neo redemption that had now appeared must
be entirely ignored.  Hence the passages in which salvation
appears linked to this particular Person, and which cannot
possibly be applied to the mere generality of a moral relationship, must be attributed to the conceptions of a later age, which
influenced the pseudo-evangelist.  What shall we say, e.g.,
when Baur explains the beatitudes to the effect that they
express "the still undeveloped pure sense of a need for
redemption "?  Just as if the pure sense of hunger contained
in itself all the reality of its appeasing! Everything must be
already extant, so that we may not have to acknowledge anything absolutely new or supernatural., Even Baur's example
plainly shows that all attempts to give a natural explanation
of the supernatural must lead to unnatural or at least ambiguous expedients.
If the essential substance of the self-consciousness of Christ
consisted merely in general principles of human morality, then
we find the same historical difficulties, the same unexplained




526               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII.
and inexplicable residuum, which, as we have already seen,
form an insurmountable barrier for all the anti-miraculous
accounts of the life of Christ.  They amount to these two
questions: How could these simple moral naxims bring about
that universal revolution in the religious life and thought of the
whole world? And again, If Jesus was conscious of being a merely
natural man, how could the belief in His Messiahship arise either
in Himself or His disciples?  Here Baur shows himself a true
Hegelian.  The Messiahship of Christ became a firmly established fact of His consciousness after others had "intuitively
seen " in Him the Messiah. And how so?     The universally
moral and purely spiritual substance of the consciousness of
Christ needed a distinct form, in order that "through the
medium of Jewish national consciousness it might be able to
expand into universal consciousness."1 And this concrete
form was the Messianic idea.  Now, because the substance of
Christ's consciousness was universal, but its form was affected
with the partiality of Judaism, therefore the personality of
Jesus is to be considered "in the light of a contradiction-as
a developing process "-and an inward conflict, in which " the
two opposing elements are related to each other as substance
to form, as idea to reality, as universal humanity to Jewish
nationality, as divine sublimity to human limitation."   In
answer to this monstrous conception, it has well been pointed
out,2 that the effectiveness in the character and work of great
men always consisted, not in a dualism, but in a harmonious
unison between substance and form; and that classical natures
have always been entire, complete, and self-contained ones
(cf. pp. 36 7 et ss.). And how inconceivable is the way in which
Baur rends asunder form and substance of the self-consciousness, as though the form suddenly appeared and enveloped the
substance, instead of each being generated in and with the
other!  But it the form  be original, that is to say, if the
Messianic idea belong,to the essential and original substance
of the self-consciousness of Christ, how can this be reduced to
mere human dimensions? It is the old story; the Hegelian
must always have two aspects or factors in order to evolve
from their unity and diversity the needful categories of position
and negation, idea and reality, etc. etc., as reels on which to
1 Die Tibiinger Schule, 2d ed. pp. 30 et ss.  2 Cf. cclkh, ubi sup.




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.    527
spin the threads of historical development.  How useless these
are, even from a psychological point of view, we hate here seen.
Just as little, on the other hand, is the belief of the disciples
explained.  How came the Messianic idea to be applied to
Christ if He was a mere man and did no miracles?  Whence
the entire origin of the new religion if it had no particular
facts, but only general moral discourses for its foundation?
"If a religion do not begin with an original fact, it cannot
begin at all," says Schleiermacher (Reden iber die Religion); "for
there must be some common reason for the sake of which a
certain religious element is especially emphasized, and this
reason can only consist in a fact."  Whence arose the belief
of the disciples in the divine Sonship of Christ? And if it
were a mere idea, a later conception, whence its transmutation
into facts in the shape of so many miraculous narratives?
Whence-as we have already asked, without receiving a
satisfactory answer-the belief of the disciples in the resurrection of Christ, if this was not a fact? Whence St. Paul's
testimony to it, even in the Epistles which Baur recognises as
genuine?  Whence the sudden inward change in Saul if the
risen Saviour did not meet him in the way to Damascus? We
have seen that it is impossible to explain away this event as
a merely inward vision. Baur is here. in great straits, and
feels what a large unexplained residuum is left after all his
attempts at natural explanations. Hence the confession in his
last book, that the conversion of St. Paul was a " wonder," and
that "no analysis, either psychological or dialectic, can clear
up the mystery of that act in which God revealed His Son in
Paul."
Finally, we come to Baur's theory, that it was St. Paul who
liberated Christianity from the limitations of Judaism and
raised it to the dignity of the universal religion; because in
him first "the principle of Christianity became purely and
absolutely predominant" (Der Apostel Paulus, p. 512).  If,
then, he was in fact the founder of Christianity as a worldwide power, how comes he constantly to refer all his teaching
and all his knowledge to the crucified and risen Christ?  ("I
determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified," 1 Cor. ii. 2,)  Whence his plain
declaration, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the




528                 PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.          ELECT. VIIL
Lord " (2 Cor. iv. 5); and that, "Other foundation can no man
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ"? (1 Cor. iii. 11.)
HIow can we account for his testimony that he had become
what he was only through Christ, and had only begun his new
course after having been apprehended by Him? (Phil. iii. 7-14,
iv. 13.) How is it that he constantly puts back his own
personality behind that of Christ, that He       only may be
preached (Phil i. 18), and is ever looking forward to the day
of Christ?    Surely the apostle who (Gal. i. 8) pronounces
even an angel from heaven accursed if he preach any other
gospel than that of Christ, would have declined the honour
of being regarded as the inventor of a new Christianity; nay,
rather would have indignantly repelled the reproach of having
disfigured, or at least essentially altered, the gospel of Christ
by his doctrine.  What, then, is St. Paul without Christ? Why
are we now Christians and not Paulinists?    And why did not
the apostles and primitive Christians, if they were nothing
but Jews, not remain such?
Clearly, the chief motive which impels Baur to refer as
much as possible of primitive Christianity to the authorship
of St. Paul, is again only his aversion to the miraculous.  For
in him he has a purely human actor, and has no need, step
by step, to explain away the supernatural element which
shines forth so strongly in the person and work of Christ.
The more he can put upon St. Paul, the less remains for
Christ, and the easier is it to draw Him into the current of
universal human development. Even Renan remarks on this
subject: " Since we know infinitely more of Paul than of the
twelve; since we possess his authentic writings and original
records, we make him     of the first importance, almost more
than Jesus.   This is a mistake.    Nothing can be more false
than the fashionable notion of our day, that Paul was the
author of Christianity. The true founder of Christianity was
JTesus." 1
1 The Apostles, p. 3. We do not, however, for a moment mean to compare
this miserable production of Renan's with the investigations of Baur, which will
ever continue to be of the greatest scientific value. For Renan immediately proceeds to exhibit his utter incapacity for historical insight into the real nature of
primitive Christianity, by adding: "St. Paul cannot be compared either with
Jesus or his immediate disciples (not even with the apostles then!). The first
places (after Jesus) must be reserved for those great companions of Jesus, and




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.         529
In view of all these unsolved difficulties, one can hardly
escape the conclusion, that the " construction" of history by the
critical school makes historical enigmas instead of explaining
them.   This is confirmed by Baur's account of the apostolic
age and its antitheses.
If primitive Christianity was only a species of Judaism, its
historical development presents a series of insoluble enigmas.
This will become evident from     a consideration of the two
fundamental suppositions on which Baur's entire criticism
rests, viz. that a sharp rivalry existed betwzeen the Petrine and
the Pauline party, and that the primitive Christians did not
believe in the Godhead of Christ.
We first consider the former of these suppositions.     Did
this antithesis between Jewish and Gentile Christianity really
govern the whole Church?     If this was the case, that is to
say, if the development of primitive Christianity consisted of
a struggle between contraries, which were for long engaged in
an irreconcilable conflict, and did not coalesce until towards
the latter part of the second century, then it is an enigma that
they should ever have coalesced at all.   Had so important a
difference of principles existed within the apostolic Church, it
must assuredly have separated into two distinct parties, which
would never again have united. The Petrine party would
always have appealed to St. Peter, the Pauline to St. Paul,
just as to this day, three centuries and a half since the Reformation, the Lutherans appeal to Luther, aid the Calvinists to
Calvin, although their doctrinal differences as to the presence
of Christ in the sacrament, etc., are far less important than
was the matter in dispute between St. Peter and St. Paul, viz.
whether the Jews who became Christians should be compelled
to be circumcised, and therefore to keep the whole law, or not.
History often teaches us that what was originally one, may
separate into various parts (as, e.g., the Baptists and the Methodists have split into various distinct denominations), but not
vice versa, that communities zwhich were originally separated by
those passionately moved and faithiful women (amies) who, in spite of death, believed on him!" Assuredly Baur's theory is grand compared with such nonsense as this, according to which Mlary Magdalene is greater, and has done more
for Christianity, than the apostle of the Gentiles!
2L




530                 PRIMITIVE CIRISTIANITY.            [LECT. VIII.
reason of the different principles of their founders should
afterwards coalesce into one body.
It was perfectly natural and necessary that Jews and
Gentiles who were converted to Christianity could not all at
once discard the influences of their past history, and that some
time must elapse before they could stand on equal terms with
each other.   It was also very natural that differences should
occur in the apostolic treatment of the Gentiles.      Nor is this
at all concealed by the Acts and Epistles.1       But distinctions
are not antitheses,2 and there are weighty testimonies contained
in the New Testament which go to prove that these distinctions were amicably adjusted in brotherly unity as early as the
apostolic age.   In Acts xv. the whole assembly at Jerusalem,
consisting of Peter and Paul, together with James and all the
other apostles and elders, agree together " to lay no greater
burden " upon the Gentiles who were baptized by requiring
them to keep the law of Moses.      Baur gets over this difficulty
by declaring the Acts to be a spurious book, written with the
intention of mediating between the opposed parties.        But he
cannot get rid of the passage (ii. 9) in the confessedly genuine
Epistle to the Galatians, where St. Paul says that James,
Peter, and John, i.e. the heads of the Jewish-Christian party,
" when they perceived the grace that was given unto me, gave
to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we
should go unto the heathen and they unto the circumcision."
Does this betoken rivalry, or brotherly unity?     True, St. Paul
is obliged severely to reprove St. Peter, because at Antioch he
1Cf. especially Gal. ii. 12, which tells how St. Peter allows himself to be
moved for a time to deny his former intercourse with the Gentiles by the arrival
of " certain that came from James," i.e. legal Jewish Christians from the church
at Jerusalem.
2 Not even the simply practical teaching of St. James's Epistle exhibits a
fundamentally different conception of Christianity from that of St. Paul. The
conviction is becoming more and more widespread, that St. James, having other
opponents, was obliged to emphasize a different aspect of the Christian life to
that principally described by St. Paul in his doctrine of justification, but that
both of them clearly distinguish between the inward reconciliation with God by
His grace through faith (attainment of the righteousness which is by faith), and
the outward verification of this faith by means of decisive proofs (works). The
difference lies in the language used by each, inasmuch as what St. Paul usually
designates as "being saved" (,s.r:ao,, e.g. Eph. ii. 8), is expressed by St.
James in the word which St. Paul generally applies to the first act of the Christian course (to be justified, hxciovai,).




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     531
hypocritically gave himself the appearance of one who avoided
intercourse with the Gentiles, whereas he had long since
carried it on.  But St. Paul evidently speaks of him  as one
who was hitherto of the same opinion with himself, and had
now become untrue to his convictions; and for this very
reason St. Peter could not answer him.   St. Paul says (Gal.
ii. 14 and 18), " If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner
of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the
Gentiles to live as do the Jews?.. For if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor."
These words evidently presuppose that at first St. Peter took
up the same position in regard to the Jews as St. Paul, and that
only in this single instance, ioom a fear of man which he more
than once evinces, he weakly gave way to the Jewish Christians who had come from James, and inconsistently withdrew
from  intercourse with the Gentiles.  But on two previous
occasions (Acts xi. 4 et ss. and xv. 7 et ss.), he had openly
defended this intercourse, and maintainedl the equality of Jews
and Gentiles in virtue of the one faith.
We willingly admit that the opinion of the oldest JewishChristian churches, and of their leaders, St. Peter and St.
James, may have undergone various 9nodcficctions. For clearly
the position which for some time seems to have been taken
up by St. Peter, that the Jewish Christians were to keep the
law, whereas the Gentiles were freed from  it, was undecided,
it not confused.  It may be that, after the apostolic council
related in Acts xv., a certain reaction was brolght about by
the strictly legal party, so that many repented of the concession made to their Gentile brethren, and that this caused a
wavering in the behaviour of Peter and James.  For we have
indications elsewhere of a variety of parties amongst the
Jewish Christians, whereas there is not a trace in the whole
New Testament of sects properly so called, i.e. ot ecclesiastical
schisms, nor yet of a heretical Jewish Christianity.  But, on
the supposition that these different tendencies existed, the
behaviour of the Jewish apostles as related in Gal. ii. may
very well be reconciled with the position taken up by thenm
in Acts xv.1  These very fluctuations prove that there was no
1 See the convincing demonstration of this by Lechler, Das apostolische u.
nachapostolische Zeitalter.




532               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
fundamental contradiction between them   and St. Paul, and
that it is false to represent the senior apostles as occzupying an
entirely Jewzish standpoint.  For how could they then have
formally acknowledged St. Paul as the apostle of the Gentiles,
endowed with apostolic gifts, and in consideration of this have
given him  "the right hand of fellowship"?    Surely this
would have been mean hypocrisy. And how could they have
quietly look7ed on whilst St. Paul converted the heathen in a
way so at variance with their convictions? And St. Paul
himself, too, who on other occasions (as e.g. in the Epistle to
the Galatians) opposed the extreme Judaists so vigorously,
would assuredly not have been silent had the other apostles
been essentially on a level with them.  And how could this
inimical rivalry be reconciled with the influence of the Holy
Ghost, who was to lead the apostles into all truth?  Or, as
the critical school does not acknowledge His action, we ask
how, on the same supposition, can we explain the constant
communion which St. Paul kept up with the church at Jerusalem, and the faithful care for their wants which he ceaselessly exercised by frequent collections for Jerusalem amongst
the Gentile Christian churches? (Gal. ii. 10; Rom. x. 25 et ss.;
1 Cor. xvi.; 2 Cor. viii. and ix.; Acts xi. 29, 30, xii. 25.)
When we see the Gentile Christians in Antioch, Macedonia,
Greece, ministering joyfully, and often " beyond their power"
(2 Cor. viii. 2-4), to the wants of the church in Judaea, does
this betoken fundamental differences, or brotherly love and
unity?
Jewish and Gentile Christianity are two forms of the same
spirit which supplement each other; they make up a unity
which soon enough was definitely exhibited in the persons of
the chief apostles, though after certain fluctuations.  Nor does
the question as to the treatment of Gentile Christians constitute
an original and fundamental contrariety within the apostolic
circle; they are essentially unanimous upon the subject.  Only
St. Paul and the Gentile-Christian party made more rapid progress in the direction of a free universalism than did the Jewish
Christians, especially St. James and the church in Jerusalem,
which, as long as the temple stood (in which Christ Himself had
taught), continued to pray there, and to take part in the Mosaic
worship. It was therefore quite another thing for them to tear




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     533
themselves away from Judaism than for the Gentile Christians,
who had no temple and no Jewish history to look back upon.
Hence the development of primitive Christianity progressed not
in contrarieties, but in steps:1 whilst one part soon went forward more quickly, the other slower one tenaciously clung to
a lower step, until at length, through the destruction of Jerusalem and the annihilation of the temple, even the blindest
eyes were opened.
The first stage in the development of primitive Christianity
may be considered to extend from the feast of Pentecost down
to the persecution to which Stephen fell victim.  At this
time the great body of the Church consisted of baptized Jews.
Doubtless, however, there were among these many Hellenists
(Greek Jews, called in the Authorized Version "Grecians,"
Acts vi. 1); even the seven almoners (ibid.) all having Greek
names. During this first period the opposition against the
Pharisees, then the ruling Jewish party, had developed most
vigorously within the Church, as we see from the speech of
Stephen. Even at this stage Christianity is by no means
merely a form of Judaism.  Baur admits that the first Christians recognised Jesus as the Messiah.  In conjunction with
this; we must believe that all the wondrous fulness which to
the Jew lay in the idea of the Messiah was transferred to Him.
This one point, the belief in the Messiah who had already
appeared, was sufficient to make the disciples in every respect
different from ordinary Jews. The Messianic expectation was
the culminating point of their religious consciousness as Jews;
and if an alteration took place in this climax, then their religious consciousness must have undergone an essential change
in every way. Baur himself admits that by their acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, even after His death on the
cross, they had substantially broken through the limitations of
Judaism,-an admission, however, which he does not care to
follow out. A church that has been baptized by the Spirit,
in the name of the triune God, and which, to the great
annoyance of the Jews, confesses a crucified Messiah, is
assuredly no longer a mere development of Judaism, but something specifically new.
1 Thus the First Epistle of St. Peter clearly indicates a progress in his
standpoint. Even that ot St. James is no longer specifically Judaistic.




534             PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
The germs, too, of a catholic conception of the Church were
not wanting amongst the first Jewish Christians: on the contrary, they showed great vigour from the very beginning,
though afterwards for a time somewhat pushed into the background.  This can only be denied by those who reject the
history of the feast of Pentecost, related in Acts ii., as without
historical foundation.  Even on this the day of her institution
the Christian Church shows herself as a missionary Church,
which is commissioned to proclaim the great deeds of God to
all nations (Acts ii. 9-11). Wherefore should not the idea
that the kingdom of God was to be extended far beyond the
boundaries of Israel have been introduced before the appearance of St. Paul?  Had not our Lord commanded the eleven,
and that long before the conversion of St. Paul, " Go ye and
teach all nations"?  Indeed, from the very beginning He had
spoken of them as "the salt of the earth" and "the light of
the world" (Matt. v. 13 and 14); He had told them that He
had other sheep who were not of this fold (John xv.); He had
testified to the Jews that men should " come from the east
and from the west, from the north and from the south, and sit
down in the kingdom of God " (Matt. viii. 11; Luke xiii. 29);
indeed, He had even roundly declared to them that the kingdom
of God should be taken from them and given to the Gentiles
(Matt. xxi. 43, etc.). IDid not all this clearly enough indicate
the world-embracing nature of the kingdom of God? Had He
not even gone amongst Samaritans and into heathen borderlands (Matt. iv. 15, xv. 21), although He was primarily sent
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel?  Could not
such conduct on the part of their Master have implanted
germs of a wider idea of the divine kingdom in the hearts of
the first disciples?  Nay, more.  Had not long since innumerable sayings of the prophets predicted the reception of the
heathen into the kingdom of God? (Micah iv. 1-4; Isa. ii.
2-4, xix. 18-25, lx.-lxvi. etc.; Ps. xxii. 28 et ss., lxxxvii
xcvi. xcvii. etc.; cf. Luke ii. 32, Matt. ii. 1 et ss., xii. 21.)
Are we to suppose that all these were lost upon the first
Jewish Christians? By whom else were they to be falfilled than
by the Messiah and His kingdom? and Him they believed to
have come.  Not only is the idea of a universal kingdom of
God older than St. Paul, but even than the Roman empire to




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THIE TUEBINGEN THEORY.    535
which Baur wishes to bind it down. This idea is a necessary
consequence of Monotheism, and, like it, has sprung up on the
soil of divine revelation.
Thus we see that the germs of Christian universalism were
extant from the very outset. But the apostles had received
the command to begin their preaching at Jerusalem (Luke
xxiv. 47; Acts i. 8), and it was therefore necessary that they
should first fulfil their mission for Israel.
The second stage includes the period from the death of
Stephen to the appearance of St. Paul.  Foreigners are admitted to the Church; many Sacmaritans believe through the
preaching of St. Philip; St. Peter baptizes the Roman Cornelius and his house after he had been convinced by the
vision of the clean and unclean animals (Acts x. 11 et ss.),
that "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh
righteousness is accepted with Him;" the gospel penetrates
to Antioch, from which place the name of Christian is spread
abroad.  In this period the Church became aware that the
Gentiles were now already called to share in Christ's salvation,
and that without becoming Jews by circumcision.
In the third stage we see the Church acting out this conviction with more and more decision, and endeavouring to
develope her unity and self-dependence by reconciling her
internal differences. The chief part in this work was reserved
for the spirit that rose from the ashes of Stephen.  St. Paul
looks at the distinction between the Old and the New Covenant
rather as one of kind than one of degree, as the other apostles
at first conceived it. He considers this difference in the light
of an antithesis, and contrasts Christ with Moses, as being the
new and the only way to the fulfilment of the law,-indeed,
as "the end of the law."   He teaches clearly and pointedly
that salvation is now  to be found in the gospel of Jesus
Christ alone, and not in the law; and that because this salvation is granted only throztgh grace, it is destined for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, although it must first be proclaimed
to the latter (Acts xiii. 46).  Here, then, the full universalist
standpoint of Christianity was attained.
This view of primitive Christianity has been successfully
defended against Baur by our present historical and exegetical
theology; and you can easily see how naturally everything is




536              PPIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIIT
here developed. True, no development can take place without the tension and reconciliation of contrarieties.  This is the
truth of Baur's fundamental axiom.    But it is not fair to
exaggerate the differences, and still less to introduce dissensions of later date into the apostolic age.  Now Baur is guilty
of so doing, for he has simply transferred the party divisions
of the second century back to the first.  This is a fundamental
error both in his views as to primitive Christianity and in his
criticism of the New Testament writings. After the death of,the leading apostles, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem
and the erection of a Romish colony (AElia Capitolina) in its
place, Jewish Christianity lost its original pre-eminence, and
was gradually separated from  the current of development.
Then, and not till then, did it begin to fall into heresy and
separate itself from the Catholic Church, whereupon it soon
split into different sects through the influence of the extreme
party mentioned in Acts xv. 5, Gal. ii. 4.  But during the
lifetime of the apostles, the milder party of Jewish Christians
had been in the ascendant (Acts xv. 22 et ss.), and had come
to'an agreement on the principal question, viz. the position of
Gentile Christians with respect to the law.1 A breach amongst
the apostles on account' of this matter would assuredly have
exercised a most paralysing influence on the development of
Christianity. But instead of this, we find that, when they
leave the scene, the Church had already grown so strong that
the subsequent separation of Jewish sects was unable perceptibly to impede the universal progress of Christianity.
History everywhere teaches us that each great new truth
needs some time before it can make its way and scatter the
old prejudices.  In this case, moreover, the emancipation from
the Jewish law must needs be all the more gradual, inasmuch
as the new religion was also the ful.filmlent of the old one.  If
we keep this in mind, we shall perfectly well be able to comprehend the development of the primitive Christian Church;
nor will there be any need for us to rend asunder into hostile
parties that pious company, for whom the Lord Himself had
prayed that they might be one, even as He was one with the
Father.
We come to the second axiom    of Baur's criticism, which
Cf. the article on "Ebionites " in Herzog's Rlealeneyclopadcie, iii. pp. 621 et sa,




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THIEORY.   537
maintains that the primitive Christians did not believe in the
Godhead o/ Christ, and that therefore all those writings in the
New Testament which contain this doctrine in a highly developed form are eo ipso spurious, and of post-apostolic origin.
To this we answer, that even those five books which Baur acknowledges as genuine (Romans, 1st and 2d Corinthians, Galatians, and Revelation), and not only those which he supposes to
have originated at a later period (Ephesians, Philippians,
Colossians, and especially the Gospel of St. John), contain a
conception of Christ which lifts Him entirely above the level of
a mere man, and places.im in a perfectly unique relationship to
God.  It is impossible to set up an impassable barrier between
the Christology of the former and that of the latter set of
writings, or to prove that the latter represent an essentially
new, and therefore later standpoint. This is proved, in the
first place, by all the predicates applied to Christ in the
unimpugned epistles: "the Son of God" (Rom. i. 3 and 4);
the "one Lord, by whom are all things" (1 Cor. viii. 6); the
"spiritual Rlock" which followed Israel through the wilderness, and hence existed before His incarnation (1 Cor. x. 4);
"the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. xv. 47); "the Lord of glory"
(1 Cor. ii. 8); "the Image of God" (2 Cor. iv. 4); He "in
whom" God was (2 Cor. v. 19); whom "God sent in the
likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. viii. 3); the Ruler of the
world, under whose feet God hath put all things (1 Cor. xv.
25-27); the Judge of the world before whose judgment-seat
we must all appear (2 Cor. v. 10; Rom. xiv. 10); yea, " who is
over all, God blessed for ever " (Rom. ix. 5; cf. p. 249). Again,
it is proved by the way in which these writings everywhere
represent Christ as the risen and exalted Lord, as the centre
of salvation for the whole world, and hence as One who is
higher than men (" not of men, but by Jesus Christ," Gal. i. 1),
while placing Him in a uniquely close relationship to God
(2 Cor. xiii. 13; 1 Cor. xii. 4-6; Rom. xi. 36; cf. pp. 255 et ss.).
And finally, even the Book of Revelation points to the same
conclusion, with its representation of the divine majesty of
Him  who is "Alpha and Omega," the "First and the Last,"
the living One who hath "the keys of hell and death"
(i. 8-18), the "Word of God" (xix. 13), who is worshipped
by the saints (v. 11-14, etc.).  Can any one who has con



538                PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII.
sidered all this believe that St. Paul and St. John, the indubitable authors of these writings, held an inferior view of Christ's
person, or believed Him to be a mere man?
And is there such a great gulf between these views and the
doctrine of Christ's person as contained in the later epistles?
No; for their doctrinal tenets may be traced, either as germs,
or even word for word, in the five earliest books.  Compare,
for instance, the following passages:-2 Cor. iv. 4, "Who is
the ilmage of God," and Col. i. 15, " Who is the image of the
invisible God" (also Heb. i. 3); 2 Cor. v. 19, "God was in
Christ," and Col. ii. 9, "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of
the Godhead bodily" -(also 1 Tim. iii. 16); 2 Cor. viii. 9,
" Who, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor,"
and Phil. ii. 6, "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation;"  oom. viii. 3, "God sent His Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh," and Phil. ii. 7, He " took upon Him the form of
a servant, and was made in the likeness of men;" 1 Cor. viii.
6, " One Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by
Him," and Col. i. 16, "By Him were all things created," etc.
(cf. Eph. iii. 9 and John i. 3); Pomn. ix. 5, "over all, God
blessed for ever," and Heb. i. 8 and 9, "Unto the Son He
saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (also Tit. ii.
13); Rev. i. 5, "the First-begotten of the dead," and Col. i.
1, "VWho is the Beginning, the First-born from    the dead"
(also Acts xxvi. 23); Rev. xix. 13, " His name is called, The
Word of God," and John i. 1 et ss., " The Word was with
God," etc.; 1 Cor. ii. 8, "Lord of glory," and Col. i. 27,
"Christ, the hope of glory" (also Acts iii. 15); and numerous
other passages.'
Is it possible, I ask, in the face of these parallels to maintain that essentially different views of our Lord's person are
taken in the unimpugned writings and in the others?    No;
the distinction is merely this, that the former in most cases
merely hint at what the others purposely discuss in all its
bearings.  This may be very simply explained from the fact,
As, e.g., 1 Cor. i. 24, 30, with Col. ii. 3; 1 Cor. viii. 9 with 1 Thess. iii.
13, v. 23, 24; 1 Cor. x. 4 with John viii. 58; Col. i. 17, Eph. i. 4, 2 Tim.
i. 9, 1 Cor. xii. 4-6, with Eph. iv. 4-6; 2 Cor. xiii. 13 with 1 Pet. i. 1, 2;
Rev. i. 4, 5, with Matt. xxviii. 19.




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.       539
that in course of time the grozuth of heresies made it increasingly
necessary to treat the doctrine of the person of Christ more in
delcail, and that the apostles themselves had gradually to grozo
ill their knowledge of Him.
The case is similar as regards the relationship of St. John's
Gospel to the three preceding ones.   Because it surrounds
Jesus with the eternal glory of His divine Sonship, and emphasizes His pre-existence, therefore its Christology is supposed to be specifically different from that of the Synoptics,
and a sure proof of its later origin.  But it is impossible to
deny that even the three first Gospels, contain a far higher
than merely human view of Jesus; they, too, ascribe to Him
so many superhuman, nay, divine attributes and works, that
we cannot in this respect make a fundamental distinction between their teaching and that of the fourth Gospel.  Passing
by the history of His conception through the Holy Ghost, of
His baptism, His miracles, His transfiguration, resurrection,
and ascension, we would point especially to the relation in
which Christ places His person to the Old Covenant (" But 1
say unto you," Matt. v.: His representation of Himself as the
Fulfiller of the law; as greater than the temple, as Lord of the
Sabbath, as Forgiver of sins, etc.; cf. pp. 246 et ss.), as also to
the world, in which He alone can relieve the weary and heavy
laden, whose future Judge He represents Himself to be, to
whom is committed all power in heaven and in earth (cf. ubi
sup. and Matt. xxviii. 18). But above all, Christ, even in the
Synoptics, represents God as His Father in a unique sense
(cf. p. 246), whom no one knows but the Son, and who alone
knows the Son;l so that in the baptismal command (Matt.
xxviii. 19) He may insert His own name between that of the
Father and the Holy Ghost as one of equal dignity.    In all
this we cannot but recognise a distinct premonition of St.
John's Christology exhibiting the germs of the doctrine explicitly taught in the fourth Gospel,-germs, too, which presuppose the pre-existence of Christ as maintained by St. John.
The critical school is here labouring under the same optical
l Cf. Matt. xi. 27a and John iii. 35, xiii. 3; Luke x. 22, Matt. xi. 27b,
and Joln vi. 46, xvii. 25, xiv. 6 et ss., xv. 21; Matt. xxviii. 18 and John
xvii. 2; Matt. xxviii. 20 and John xiv. 18; even John x. 30 and Matt. x. 3i7
etc.




540              PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.      [LECT. VIII.
illusion as we pointed out in the case of Strauss.  Because
the higher knowledge of Christ only gradually developed in
the Church, it supposes that the Church must have evolved
these higher elements from her own consciousness, or borrowed
them from Hellenistic philosophy.
Moreover, we would point out what peculiar and evidently
untenable conclusions result from this hypothesis, that the
great majority of the New Testament writings originated in
the endeavour to mediate between the Petrine and the Pauline
party, and were therefore composed by unknown authors in
the second century.  Even the tendency which these writings
are supposed to betray is by no means demonstrable, not even
in the Acts; indeed, it is so little proven, that every new critic
discovers a fresh " tendency."  WVere we to enter upon an
analysis of the various writings, we might thus even dispute
the presuppositions of this criticism.  But apart from this, how
very strange it would be if not a single apostle out of all the
eleven had left behind him any writings, with the exception
of the one Revelation of St. John, which does not even categorically affirm its own authenticity! How inconceivable that
this immense though gradual revolution from the most narrowminded Jewish primitive Christianity to Pauline universalism,
which changed a Jewish sect into the Christian Church universal, should have been guided entirely by the wor7cs of anony-,mous writers, who concealed their names under the cloak of
apostolic authority, without one of their contemporaries remarking, or at least thinking it worth his while to make a note of
the pious fraud! Unknown authors write the Gospels, more
especially the "mediating" Gospel of St. Mark and the
"sublime" Gospel of St. John; an unknown personage composes the " conciliatory" Acts; unknown forgers fabricate the
Epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians,
the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John, St. James, and St. Jude 
In fact, the entire movement through which Christianity became itself is brought about by unknown persons. Every trace
has vanished even of the " great nameless One," as Baur styles
the author of the fourth Gospel. The apostles live in the first
century, but they attain their reputation as writers during the
second through the services of others.  There, men appear, but
without writings; here,.witings come to light, but without




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.              541
men! How unnatural thus to tear asunder the men and their
writings! 
In other cases we invariably find that an age which is fertile
in literary productions is followed by a conservative period, in
which   the  productions of the foregoing      are collected   and
digested, —first the classical, then the post-classical period.
Here we should have exactly the reverse,-the first century
conservative, in the main keeping to Judaism, with scarcely
any productions; the second century progressive and fertile in
great, but alas! unknown writers.     Bat does the second century
in other respects bear the impress of a productive classical period
of literature? On the contrary: its undoubted products breathe
a spirit which bears the same relation to that of the New
Testament writings as does the tenor of a post-classical age to
that of the preceding classical.    Did these writings, especially
the Gospel of St. John, belong to " unknown" authors, they would
be a perfectly inexplicable phenomenon as compared with all the
other products of that period.     It has been well said, that it
were no less absurd to ascribe the most inspiriting writings of
Luther to the spiritless period of the Thirty Years' War, than
to transfer the Gospel of St. John to the middle of the second
century.   For, notwithstanding their warm     Christian life, the
writings of the second century evince such a remarkable dearth
of new ideas, that one plainly sees how, after the spiritual floodtide of the first century, the ebb had set in.2 Hence, as we
have seen, negative critics have been compelled again to raise
the age of the Gospels, and to place them in the apostolic age,
between 50 and 100 A.D.
All this compels us to assert that the fundamental views of
1 Cf. " Baur u. die Tibinger Schule," in Herzog's Realencyclopadie, xx. pp. 762
et ss. Hence Ritschl, too, considers the Gospel of St. John as genuine, "because
the lenial of its authenticity is a source of far greater difficulties than its acknowledgment."
2 Compare, e.g., the clear and sober-minded spirit of the New Testament
epistles, or the quiet sublimity of the Gospel of St. John, with the Epiistles of
lgnatins, the enthusiasm of which degenerates into a well-nigh fanatic desire for
martyrdom; or with the Pastor of Hermas, and the value ascribed by him to
ascetic rigour; or with the epistles written (in the first century) by Clement of
Rome, which tell the fable of the Phoenix as a fact; or again, with the Epistle of
Barnabas, which delights in insipid allegories, and gives the most absurd typical
interpretations of the Old Testament, justifying Neander's remark, that "here
we encounter quite another spirit than that of an apostolic man. "-Eccl. History,
i. 3, p. 1100.




542               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.       [LECT. VIII.
Batur entirely confuse and overturn the history of primitive
Christianity and its records.  Having rejected the miraculous
beginning of Christianity for the sake of his philosophical presuppositions, Baur is fated constantly to see his " purely historical commencement" melt away beneath his touch.   It is
a beginning without a beginning; everything is already extant.
Principles of thought which already exist are concentrated in
Christ.  He only introduces them  into the consciousness of
men, as the principle of a purely spiritual and perfectly moral
religion. But by mixing up this principle with the Messianic
idea He brings about His death, and with this the first beginning has failed.  The essential essence of Christianity is no
longer developed in connection with its Founder. Now Christianity has need of a new historical beginning, and this is
furnished by the belief of the disciples in the resurrection, i.e.
not by a fact, but merely by the notion of a fact.  But since
the disciples confine themselves to the exclusive national
element of Christ's consciousness, this beginning also threatens
to subside in the sand; Christianity is mere Ebionitism, and
remains essentially on the Judaistic standpoint.  At length
the real beginning of Christianity appears in St. Paul, who,
in the involuntary impulse of his dialectic consciousness, gains
the day in favour of Christian universalism. But this truly
Christian Pauline beginning is in danger of perishing through
Petrine opposition.  Happily there appears (or rather does not
appear) in the middle of the second century the author of the
fourth Gospel, " the great nameless One," with his free " composition guided only by the idea," but not in the least historical. Here, at last, is the final beginning, after which we
cannot conceive any other, although Baur, if he were consistent,
ought to maintain that pure Christianity (i.e. morals without
dogma) was only discovered by the modern age.
Here once more we see how the " natural explanation" of
Christianity accumulates enigmas instead of solving them.
Aversion to the miraculous must and ever will be punished in
this way.  It denies the existence of a specifically divine factor
in Christ, which is the sole thing that can make the historical
origin of Christianity and its immense effects conceivable, and
degrades the superhuman form of One "upon whose shoulder
is the government," and who alone can have been the primary




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF THE TUEBINGEN THEORY.     543
cause of so great a movement.   Thus it is that the antimiraculists are compelled, in order to explain these events,
to postulate reasons which crumble away on examination, because they are utterly insufficient to sustain the weight of such
a gigantic superstructure.  Having degraded the supernatural
to the level of the natural, they are fain to intensify the latter
supernaturally, by ascribing to it forces and effects which it
cannot possibly have, nor ever has had.
The failure of this attempt is quite analogous to that of
modern natural science in its endeavours to break down as
much as possible the original firm barriers between the various
species and genera of plants and animals, and finally to prove
the origin of man from the species next below him without
the influence of a higher principle.  Darwin, and still more
the materialistic members of his school, are aiming at the same
end in the region of natural science, as Baur and his followers
in that of history.  Both of them bring confusion into history.
Both of them convert orderly development into a chaos of strife
and enmity.  Both of them, especially, are desirous to eliminate
the miraculous as far as possible, by proving that all intervals
bridge themselves over naturally. And both cannot attain
their end for the same reason: because they overlook the fact
that nature as well as history often moves forward in letas; i.e.
although its progress is constantly mediated, yet this often
takes place through such imperceptible transitions that the
leap is concealed from our eyes.  Now we must maintain,
and that on specifically moral grounds, that every heroic deed,
as the fruit of a moral resolve, is something new and original,
which cannot be entirely derived from   what preceded it.
Much more, then, must we derive the doings of Him who is
the primal Cause of all that has ever taken place, not fromn
the past, but from His spramuzndane essence.  In other words,
we must believe it to be a miracle; and therefore we may not
deny its supernatural interposition in history, whereby new
beginnings are brought about, if we are not to lose the last
key to the comprehension of the most important historical
phenomena.   Rothe will ever be in the right as against the
anti-miraculists, when he thus addresses them: " Look to
yourselves, and see whether you can interpret history without
miracles,-whether you can put them aside and yet give a




544              PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.        [LECT. VIII.
pragmatic explanation of established historical results, the key
to which we who believe in miracles already possess.  I, for
my part, assuredly do not believe in miracles from dogmatic
cupidity, but in the interests of history, because I cannot dispense with them as historical explanations of certain indubitable historical facts.  I do not find that they make rents in
history; but, on the contrary, that by their aid alone am I able
to get over its gaping chasms."
Certainly the supernatural origin of Christianity in its
divine aspect is not to be explained: We who believe in the
Bible, from the outset renounce any such pretensions.  But we
do make bold to prove that the " natural" beginning offered to
us in its stead by the critical school and the Rationalists-or,
indeed, any other attempt at a natural explanation-is far
more incomprehensible; that it results in far greater enigmas,
and must therefore necessarily fail.  According to our view of
the matter, the beginning itself, i.e. the Divine Sonship of
Christ, is an enigma, but all the rest is fully comprehensible,
and may be deduced from it in the most simple, natural, and
rational manner.  The critical school, on the contrary, give us
what is apparently a natural beginning, but really none at all:
everywhere and nowhere; melting under our touch; and
making all that follows one great incomprehensible riddle.
That this is in fact the dilemma, may be proved by a recent
utterance of Professor Zeller's 1 (one of the few perfectly faithful and consistent followers of Baur).  According to him, the
essence of Christianity is not fully represented in its primitive
form, but "everywhere, if you will, or nowhere:" it can only
be known fully from the sum-total of its historical phenomena,
but least of all from its dogmas, which are constantly changing,
and must do so, since they are merely subjective(?).   So
Christianity is nothing but a portion of the world's history, the
substance of which is perpetually changing, whose real essence
can only be determined when once the drama of history is
played out, and of which we never can say what it is, but only
what it has been!  What a comfortless idea, that would lead
us to despair of all objective truth I The entire gain from the
history of the Christian dogma during eighteen hundred years
has dwindled down to zero. Though Baur does not openly
1 In Vortrage u. Abhandlungen geschichtlichen InhalU.




LECT. VIII.]  REFUTATION OF TIIE TUEBINGEN THEORY.   545
confess it, yet this is, in fact, the logical sequence of his views.
For, supposing his moral philosophical conception of Christianity to be correct, what that is permanent has its long development really added to the general ethical principles of the
Sermon on the Mount, if it is, properly speaking, only our own
age-shall we say, since Kant?-that has returned to this
pure conception of Christianity?  But if, during this long
period, the Christian faith has really made no true progress,
nor in any way substantially enriched itself, could we then
expect much from its future development, or entertain any hope
of a happy destination? 1  No; for as soon as the divine origin
of Christianity is done away with, its final aim is also extingzished: these two poles are inseparable.  Since it is " everywhere and nowhere," it has neither beginning nor end, and
hence no true development, no real history. A development
that results in nothing is merely apparent. Thus we arrive at
the logical sequence of Pantheism (cf. p. 207), that there is no
being, but only a becoming; and hence, since there is no real
being, the becoming also must be only apparent.  Is not this
a comfortless view?
Here we see what is the final fate of every mere moral
conception of Christianity.  Instead of affording a permanent
incitement to man's moral vigour, it ends (though we say this
without in the least wishing to derogate from  the intense
moral earnestness with which Baur struggled after truth) in
a world - view  which thoroughly paralyses all his moral and
intellectual energy.  For why should we exert ourselves if we
can hope for no real results?
If we wish to escape these sad consequences, then-in view
of the real and historical character of the miraculous-we
must take heart and enlarge the narrowness of our logical conceptions to meet the greatness of divine deeds, instead of
endeavouring to cramp the latter to suit our small conceptions
and reducing them  to mere vanishing magnitudes just as it
pleases us. He who takes the latter course cannot help turning history upside down, as we have seen that Strauss and
Baur do.  They suppose the miraculous facts to have been
produced by the belief in the Messianic dignity of Christ,
1 Cf. Uhlhorn's article on the Tiibingen School in the Jalrbiicer fui deutscle
Theologie, vol. iii. pp. 316-327.
2M




5-46               PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.          [LECT. VIIL
whereas this belief could only spring from the miraculous facts.
They suppose, again, that the resurrection arose from the belief
of the disciples, whereas the latter could only have taken its
rise from  the fact of the resurrection.  They suppose, moreover, that St. Paul introduced Christ, i.e. Christianity, into the
world's history, whereas St. Paul was called, borne, and guided
by Christ till he became a character of mark in the world's
history. This is what I call turning history upside down.
And what is the origin of this strange undertaking?  Nothing
but the   philosophical presuppositions and   the  aversion  to
miracles with which this school approaches history.      Very
many of the critics of our day fall into the fundamental error
of mistaking their philosophical and speculative treatment of
Sc-ripture for historical criticism.  Consciously or unconsciously,
they allow their philosophical doubts, their unbiblical conception of God, or their enmity towards the miraculous, to decide
even on purely historical questions, and thereby bring confusion into the whole.  Against this practice it has been truly
remarked, that "only the man whose religious convictions
are founded upon Scripture is capable of criticising it in an
entirely unbiassed spirit.  In the case of a man of any other
convictions, his disagreement with the substance of Scripture
must play him constant tricks even in matters purely formal
and historical."  That very thing which Baur thought to be
the strength of critical science, viz. the Hegelian view of the
world and of history, is its weakness; this was the barrier
which cramped the struggles of his mighty spirit, and prevented
him  from   arriving at solid results.1   Truly it is a tragic
spectacle to see such a gigantic intellect wrestling with iron
diligence to attain that which in itself is unattainable, a pure
impossibility; and this especially because it exhibits not so
much the error of the individual as the fault of his age,-that
age ruled by a onesided, idealistic philosophy, in consequence
of which so many of the first minds of our century-even a
1 Cf. Lancderer (ubi supq. pp. 76, 77), who on p. 67 utters over the grave of
his departed colleague the following noteworthy sentiment: "It would be the
greatest injustice to class Baur with the worthless and fiivolius rabble of those
who-without the intellectual power of following his deductions-merely
adopt the negative and sceptical portion of his results, in order to use them
as a fig ieaf wherewithal to cover their own moral shame and intellectual hol.
low10ess."




LECT. VIII.]            CONCLUSION.                   547
Schleiermacher-in their grandest achievements fell "victims
to the limitations of this particular standpoint."
With a correct presentiment of this inevitable issue, which
probably the master of this school himself experienced, his
followers have since, in part, like Schwegler and Kostlin, given
up theology entirely; partly, like Ritschl, approached the standpoint of revealed religion; partly, as we have seen, at least
made a series of important concessions with respect to the
criticism of the New Testament writings. Thus the number
of those who represent Baur's standpoint whole and entire is,
at least among German theologians, very small.  In Tibingen
there is now no longer any Tiibingen School.. 
In conclusion, a request to my readers.
And, first of all, to those who are believers. Let me beg you
not to place all doubters indiscriminately in one class. Some of
them seek in order to find.  These we must never despair of:
God gives success to the upright.  Others, however, seek in
order to lose, and to cast away one article after another of the
old faith; they diligently gather together specious arguments
in favour of the unbelief which suits them; they have soon
settled the question, mostly without any great inward conflicts,
and are then inaccessible to all arguments, so that, as a rule,
not human words, but only divine deeds, can set their heart
and head right once more.  In such cases the Christian's rule
will be to strive less against them  with human arguments
than for them before God, with the weapons of his Christian
priesthood.  As against such opponents, the best argument,
and that most likely to make an impression, is the actual
proof of a Christian moral life.  And while we lament tlat
in our day so many are shaking at the foundations of our
faith, let us not forget to take to ourselves a share oj the
blame.  The most convincing proof for the great deeds of
God, such as the resurrection, does not consist, nor ever has
consisted, in words; but it i is now as it was eighteen hundred
years ago, the living Church itself, in which the risen Lord is
dwelling and working, which counts all things for loss that
she "may know Him and the power of His resurrection."
So long as through our fault this spiritual life is lacking, there
will never be any scarcity of doubters and deniers of our faith.




548                   CONCLUSION.             [LECT. VIll.
On the other hand, let me beg our doubting opponents to
investigate religious questions, not merely with the head and
with the narrow standard of our logical conceptions, but at
the same time, nay, even beforehand, with the heart and conscience, whilst caret llly following up the traces which are
indicated to them  by the weaker or stronger promptings of
their innermost needs. Let me beg them to try themselves,
and see whether it is not only that in us which is low and
mean that is against Christ, whereas all that is great and
noble is for Him.  Let me beg them not to allow themselves
to be blinded by the hollow though high-sounding phrases of
so many journals and other writings, which, instead of promoting real knowledge, infinitely hinder it; or by the catchwords of those who know very well what they do not want,
but not what they do want, and what positive result is to
remain after all their negations.  Let me beg them not to
begin by accounting their doubts a sign of strength, whereas
they are the very contrary.  As in the case of the first
doubter in paradise, so to this day doubt in its innermost
nature is a wrong compliance, a weakness, a cowardly dread
of ventures and difficulties; whereas the innermost source of
faith is the courage which bravely seizes and stedfastly holds
to that which is invisible.  "A  sceptic," says J. A. Bengel,
the great commentator on the New Testament, "is like a
traveller who should refuse to cross a puddle or. to step over
a twig, till all were smoothed down and filled up.  Who
would think such a man wise? Faith takes up all that it
can get, and marches bravely onward; unbelief is the direct
opposite of this.  In studying the Bible, we must do like the
courier who hurries over pools and hillocks the nearest way to
his destination, and does not first seek to level every clod.
That which is difficult at last comes of its own accord. The
most important controversies are those which a man finds in
his own heart." But these latter, we add, point us to the
place where Thomas, the doubter even amongst the apostles,
had to learn his faith. Only in the wounds of Christ can we
learn by faith the truth which shall make us free. There
only does unbelief, even to this day, learn to surrender and
humbly confess: " My Lord and my God!"      He who will
not seek for the truth there will never find it.  All that we




LECT. VIII.]          CONCLUSION.                  549
can do for the sceptics of the present day is to make the way
there as easy for them as may be, in order that the sign of
Jonah, given by our buried and risen Lord, may be to them a
rock of salvation and not of offence.
All my readers together I would remind of that word:' Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but the Lord
pondereth the hearts" (Prov. xxi. 2). Whether we build, or
whether we pull down, to his own Master each one of us
standeth or falleth.  Let us "prove all things, and hold fast
that which is good;" and let us, even though we may have
our own secular calling, expend some labour on this probation.
That alone for which we have striven and suffered with all
our might, with labour and pains, is really ours: an honourably conquered conviction, a real possession.  Only in so
doing do we fulfil the apostolic injunction, "Let every one
be fully persuaded in his own mind."
My task has only been to scatter here, in hope, some of
those arguments for the truth which I have found to be
tenable.  The rest I must leave to my readers, and to the
Lord of the harvest.
THE END.