WAYS OF THE SPIRIT,
Ant Otter C,.apo
BY
FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE,
AUTIHOR OF " REASON IN RELIGION,"  "PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW
TRADITION, ETC.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
i877' 
Copyright,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS,
1877.
(
Cambridge:
Press of _7ohn Wilson and Son.
,i  t-'    
CONTENTS.
PAGE
1
34
61
95
120
144
189
210
224
252
285
THE WAY OF HISTORY.........
THE WAY OF RELIGION.......
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY. 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.. 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.. 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF THE BEING OF GOD
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS......
THE GOD OF R,ELIGION, OR THE HUMAN GOD
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.......
PANTHEISM...............
THE TWO RELIGIONS...........
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT IN THE NEW TES
TAMENT..............
INCARNATION AND TRANiSUBSTANTIATION.
THE HUMAN SOUL..........
, I.
'II.
,, - [II.
I - IV.
i
V.
VI.
vii.
Viii.
IX.
X.
Xi.
"Xii.
f
316
342
357
XTII.
xiv.  
I.
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
ISTORY, in the sense of a systematic survey
of the progress of society, based on the
principle of a necessary order of human development, is emphatically  a modern  science.   The
ancients had no history in this sense of the term,
no "universal" history as distinguished from the
history of single nations.   They recounted the
acts or described the fortunes of tribes and states,
but had nothing to say of the human family.
They knew no human family. They knew only
Greeks and Barbarians, Romans and Outsiders
(exteri), Jews  and  Gentiles.   Polybius, indeed,
called his history KaOXLK4 - universal- but only
as comprehending in its survey of Roman affairs
some account of the nations with which Rome came
in contact. His starting point is Rome, not man.
No classic historiographer, from Herodotus to
Heiodian, has attempted a history of man.
1 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
In one remarkable instance, however, the idea
of such a history, and with it, of a human family,
is distinctly recognized. In the Biblical Book of
Genesis we have the beginning of a history of mian,
but one which stops short with the mythic age of
the world. Biblical history brings man to the
building of Babel, or the period of greatest concentration, succeeded by disruption and dispersion;
and then, dismissing the theme, confines itself to
the single Hebrew line. Brief and fragmentary as
the narrative is, these first chapters of the Bible
contain more important contributions to the science of history than all the classics.
Christianity, by intoning the brotherhood of man,
awakened a new interest in human destiny. The
Christian Fathers manifest a truer appreciation of
the unity of the race.  Bunsen calls Clement of
Alexandria "the first Christian philosopher of the
history of mankind."  St. Augustine's "City of
God" embraces in its scope the whole human race
as the subject of divine education, and distributes
the ages of man in six days of a thousand years
each, to end with the millennium.
Of the historiographers of the Middle Age the
Western are simply chroniclers;   and the Byzan
I Such are Eginhlard, Paulus Diaconus, William of Malmesbury, Gregory of Tours, Albert of Aix, William of Tyre, Geoffroy
de Villehardoui', Froissart, and Matthew Paris.
2 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
tines - immensely important in their line - confine themselves, with one or two exceptions,1 to
the Lower Empire.
With the impulse given to the human mind by
the stirring events of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, this branch of science blossoms into new
significance.  The  astounding discoveries of the
great navigators who solved the "ocean secret,"
and lifted the veil from what till then had been
considered the night-side of the globe; the enlarged
geographic and ethnographic views, and the wider
survey of human kind resulting from these discoveries, combining with the recent " Revival of
Letters " and the Saxon Reformation of the Church,
- gave to history not only a new impulse but a
new direction. No longer partial, local, it becomes
encyclopedic, cosmopolitan.  The writers of history task themselves with new and higher aims,
evincing a new-born consciousness of unity and
integrity pervading all the epochs and all the races
and generations of man.  The study of history
becomes academic, and Torsellino's " Epitome
Historiarum" is used as a text-book in the universities of Europe.
1 Zonaras wrote a "History of the World;" Glycas, a "History of the World from the Creation to the Death of Alexius
Comnenus;" Zosimus, a "History of the Roman Empire from
Augustus to Honorius."
3 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
It was not, however, until after the lapse of another century, that the fundamental principle of
all history was adequately stated. It was not till
then that the discovery was made of a science of
history. For this science we are indebted to Italy.
The country which unlocked the New World was
the first to suggest the true interpretation of the
annals of the Old. Johni Baptist Vico, a native of
Naples, published in 1725 his "Scienza Nuova," or
"Principles of a New Science relative to the Common Nature of Nations."  This work contains the
germ of many of the speculations of subsequent
philosophies of history;  but its principal merit
consists in its clear and emphatic assertion of the
principle of divine necessity,- that is, of a natural
law in historic processes and revolutions. Vico
was the first to point out distinctly the analogies
and parallelisms in the history of nations, and to
show that the progress of society follows a given
order; that nations have their necessary, preappointed course of evolution and revolution; that
human history, in short, no less than the material
universe, is governed by fixed laws: consequently
that history is a science, or that a science of history
is possible.  "It is found," says Malichelet, in his
essay on the New Science, " that nations the most
remote in time and space follow in their political
revolutions and in those of their languages a
4 
TIE WAY OF HIS TORY.
strikingly analogous course."  "To disengage the
regular from the accidental; to trace the universal,
eternal history which develops itself in time in the
form of particular histories; to describe the ideal
circle within which the real world revolves,- this
is the aim of the new science. It is at once the
philosophy and the history of humanity."
From an examination of the languages, laws, and
religions of different peoples, and a survey of the
course of events in the principal nations, Vico
deduces these positions: I. Human society is
based on three fundamental conditions,- worship,
or the belief in Divine Providence; marriage, or
the restraint of the passions; sepultural rites, or
the belief in immortality. These are what Tacitus
callsfcedera generis huinani. II. Society has three
great periods,- the theoeratie, the heroic, and the
humane. III. The civil and political life of nations, so long as they preserve their independence,
assumes successively four different forms of government.  The theoeratic age produces domestic
monarchy (patriarchism). The heroic produces
aristocracy, or the government of the city, limiting the abuse of power. Then comes democracy,
founded on the idea of natural equality. And
lastly despotism, or imperial rule, establishes itself
onI the ruins of democracy, and puts an end to
the anarchy and public corruption to which popu
5 
THE WAY OF HIS TORY.
lar governments give rise. Or, if that remedy
fails, the degenerate nation, given over to anarchy
and corruption, becomes the prey of the spoiler,
and succumbs to a foreign yoke. IV. When a
nation or when society has passed through these
stages, and unreclaimed by the revolutions it has
experienced still continues to decline and degenerate, it passes at last into a second barbarism.
Faith expires, religion languishes, men grow-brutal,
cities decay, society becomes effete and lies supine
until regenerated by some providential impulse
from without. Then the cycle of history begins
anew, and humanity repeats with new auspices its
appointed course. V. From the facts thus observed, from the indications of law and a regular
succession in human events, Vico derives the idea
of a great city of nations, whose founder and
governor is God, -a republic of the universe, the
miracle of whose constitution is, that through all
its revolutions it finds in the very corruptions of
each preceding state the elements of a new and
better birth.
Since the publication of the "Scienza Nuova,"
the philosophy of history has found no end of
expositors. Among the numerous works in this
department,  Montesquieu's  "Esprit des Loix,"
Ferguson's "Civil Society," Lessing's little'treatise, "The Education of the Human Race," Her
6
f 
THE WAY OF HISTORY. l
der's "Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit," Kant's "Zur  Philosophie der Geschichte," Fichte's " Grundzuge des gegenwartigen
Zeitalters," the chapters relating to the progress of
human society in Comte's "Cours de Philosophie
Positive," Krause's and Hegel's "Philosophie der
Geschichte,"  deserve  especial  mention.   I am
speaking of the philosophy of history in the narrowest sense, not of historic criticism or historic
art; else would a host of names of equal and
even graver note demand to be noticed in this
connection.
It is now understood that history has its laws,
as well as astronomy; that the course of events is
a necessary, not a fortuitous, succession, and the
miarch of humanity through the nations and
through the ages a series of progressive developments. The supposition is fundamental to the
study of history as a science. If the course of
events and the destiny of nations were governed
by no law and subject to no method, there could
be no science of history, but only chronicles, registries of facts unreferred to any principle or ruling
idea, incapable of classification.  The  study of
history in that case wonld be useless, because it
would lead to nothing. The end of all study is
the discovery of law; that is, of spirit, that is, of
Deity in the facts studied. If ice any class of facts
7 
THE WAY OF HIS TORPY.
no law were discoverable, the knowledge of those
facts would be hardly worth the labor spent in
acquiring it. We read history to little purpose,
if we read it only as a record of facts, and see in
it no demonstration of Divine method. The facts
themselves are not truly apprehended, unless we
see them in the light of some principle or law
which they illustrate. Take the battle of Actium,
in Roman history. I read that the forces of Octavius met those of Antonius in the Ambracian Gulf,
and obtained a signal victory over them. What
signifies that fact to me? What do I know of
Roman history, if all I gather from it is that
Octavius was the better general or the luckier man
of the two? The real fact has escaped me, if I
fail to perceive its historic import. It was not
valor nor luck, but historic necessity that triumphed in that encounter. It was necessary that
democracy should replace an aristocratic oligarchy,
like that of republican Rome. It was necessary
that democratic anarchy should be replaced by an
imperial head. Octavius represents in that conflict the Latin or popular element in Roman history. Antonius represents the Sabine or patrician. The internal history of the Roman Republic,
and especially that of the previous century, had
been a conflict of these two elements, the former
seeking to disengage itself from the latter. The
8 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
battle of Actium was the consummation of that
strugole.  With the triumph of Octavius, -qui
cuneta discordiis civilibu?ts fessa nomine priltcipis
sub inperium accepit,1 - democracy came to a head,
Latin civility came to maturity, and ifn its turn
became the matrix of its successor in empire,the Christian Church.
An objection may be raised against the doctrine
of historic necessity, on the score of human free
will. The conduct of history lies in the hands of
human free agents.   A  glance at the course of
events shows us that those revolutions which have
furnished the materials and given the direction to
history have been the work of individuals following the impulse of their own wills.  How, then,
can we affirm them to be the operation of a law, or
how can history conducted by free will be a necessary process? If one looks at the matter a priori,
it seems a priori improbable that the destinies of
humanity should be committed to individual caprice, or that able and designing men should shape
the world according to their whib.  But what is
the fact?  Free agency acts under given conditions, and those conditions are contained in the
natural order of things. There is no more escape
from that order in the moral world than in the
physical. All the motions on the earth's surface,
1 Tacitus.
9 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
however arbitrary and contrary one to another,
obey the parent motion of the earth, and are swept
along in the spheral march. So all possible movements of the human will are comprehended in the
providential sweep of the parent will which works
in each. The contradiction between freedom and
necessity, so perplexing in the sphere of private
life, disappears in the large dynamic of history.
There, freedom and necessity are seen to be different factors of one movement,- freedom the human, necessity the divine.  The highest freedom
is the strongest necessity, as in chemistry those
affinities which are termed elective are precisely
the most determined   Says Kant:  " Whatever
notion, in a metaphysical point of view, we may
form to ourselves of the freedom of the will, its
manifestation, - i. e. human actions, - like every
other natural event, is determined by general laws
of Nature." 1
To the eye of sense "the river windeth at its
own sweet will," but reflection knows that the valley through which it winds has been scooped by
the action of unchangeable laws; and in human
life all freedom that succeeds is free occupation of
appointed paths. The course of destiny is the
providential channel in which human freedom
1 Zur Plilosophlie der Geschichte; Idee zu einer Allgemeinen
Geschichte in Weltbiirgerlichen A)sicht.
10 
THE WA Y OF HISTORY.
elects to run. Accordingly, the great men of history- the history-makers - are the "providential
men;" they are those, in the language of Hlegel,1
"whose private purposes contain the substance  of
that which is willed by the spirit of the world."
They may not be aware of their providential function; they may not contemplate all the results
they are used to effect; the ulterior consequences
of their free action may not come within the scope
of their design; - the consequences follow none
the less. Leo the Isaurian issues an edict prohibiting the use of images and pictures in the
churches; Pope Gregory repudiates the edict, and
resists its execution in the West.  What follows?
While Emperor and Pontiff quarrel among themselves, the empire splits between them; a goodly
fraction comes off in Gregory's hands.  Following
the bent of his own will in his own ecclesiastical
affairs, that prelate becomes the providential means
of sundering East and West, never to be united
agoain.  Rolf, from the coast of Norway, bent on
plunder, lands his pirates on the soil of France,
and extorts from Charles the Simple a slice of his
kingdom.   Rolf has no prevision of a Norman
landing on the coast of Sussex, and an Anglo-Norman kingdom, and an English House of Lords, all
which the future drew from that raid of his, whose
1 Philosophie der Geschichte.
11 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
providential import was to give to the finest of the
Gothic races a worthy field for their development.
Somietihmes, however, the providential men- like
Julius Cesar, MIohammed, Cromwell -have shown
themselves conscious of that Divinity which shapes
our ends, and subsidizes our free will in accomplishling its designs.  It was no affectation or puerile vanity which prompted the first Napoleon to
call himself the "Child of Destiny," but an irresistib)le conviction of a power behind him, whose
minister he was in spite of himself.
Assuming,, then, as a settled truth, that the
counse of history is governed by natural laws, the
question arises, How far are those laws discoverable and demonstrable by scientific investigation?
This is a question which only the future of scientifi(- investigation call answer. The application of
logic to history is yet too recent, history itself is
too recent, to furnish a complete solution. All
that we can thus far assert with any degree of
confidence is, that enough of law is discoverable
to constitute history a science; or that a science of
history is possible.
The subject of this science is Man. To distinguish it from anthropology, let us say Man in Society. To distinguish it from ethnology, let us say
Man the subject of progressive development.  We
have then three distinct topics: Man, Society or
the State, and Social Progress.
12 
THE WAY OF HISTOR Y.
I. Man.  To the catholic eye of history he is
one. The science presupposes what all its discov eries tend to demonstrate, - the unity of the hu man race. We need not trouble ourselves with
the question whether all men actually originated
from one pair, or whether different portions of the
globe have given birth to independent varieties of
the animal man. Enough that man, as the subject
of history, is one. The historic nations have descenided from one original. If any of the races
that inhabit the earth have a different origin, those
races are not historic; they have no part in human
destiny, and will finally disappear from the earth,
or be absorbed by historic man. Man, as the subject of history, is one. The nations that compose
him have one geographical, probably one genealogical, origin.
Historic man, according to tradition, was born in
Western Asia, precisely where speculative ethnology would place his origin.  If we glance at a map
of the world on Mercator's projection, we shall find
that tlhe portion of the earth's surface which lies
between the thirtieth and fortieth degrees of north
latitude, and between the fortieth and sixtieth of
east longitude, is about the centre of the habitable
globe.   Here it is, or hereabout, that tradition
first discovers man, on the banks of the Tigris and
the Euphrates.   From this natal centre we find
13 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
him radiating eastward and south-eastward to the
borders of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, westward and north-westward to the Mediterranean and
the Atlantic. In later ages his course has been prevailingly westward, across the Atlantic into South
and North America. And now having crossed
the American continent, and reached the uttermost
verge of the west, on the borders of that Pacific
which long since bounded his eastern migration, he
has " come full circle" around the globe.
The where being settled, the next question is,
How did man begin his race?  Civilized or savage, in rude ignorance or furnished with science
and art? This has long been a point in debate
between ethnologists and theologians. The latter
have taught that man's first estate was superior,
not only in moral purity but also in intellectual
illumination, to every subsequent age. Philosophy, on the contrary, maintains that the original
state was a savage state, - such as we find it to
this day in South Africa and New Zealand,- and
that ages went by before the race attained to
the knowledge and arts of civilized life. Happily,
our subject is not burdened with the responsibility of this question.  We  have nothing to do
with man prior to the period when history finds
him; that is, the earliest period marked by contemporary or nearly contemporary records. The
14 
THE WAY OF HIS TOR Y.
existence of records implies civilization.  The word
"history," it will be observed, has a twofold sense.
We use it to denote the course of events, and we
also use it to denote the record of those events.
This double meaning, says Hegel, is not accidental.
It showvs that actual history and written history
are nearly related and cannot exist independently
the one of the other. History does not begin to be
until it is written. A people has no history until
it is sufficiently mature to record its life; until it
arrives at that degree of self-consciousness which
makes the recording of it inevitable. The intelleetual life of the individual does not begin with
the animal birth; it begins with the birth of consciousness. It dates from the period of reflection,
from the time when the individual begins to act
knowingly, accounting to himself for his action.
History is the record of the intellectual life of
society; it begins with the self-consciousness of
society.  It dates from the time when man associates in civil bonds under fixed and accepted laws;
from the time when society becomes organized,
with settled functions and mutual responsibilities.
Whatever, then, may have been man's primal
state, when history first finds him he is civilized,
skilled in arts, governed by laws, living in cities,
worshipping in temples. Of the times antecedent
to that state, with their confused struggles, history
15 
TIIE WA Y OF HIS TOR.
knows nothing. The exploration of those unrecorded ages belongs to another province than that
of the historian: it belongs to the province of
archaeology or fore-history. History is coeval with
civility; that is, with the formation of States.
II. Accordingly, our next topic is the State. It
is not with man absolute or man as such, but with
man conditioned by social organizations, that the
science of history is concerned. These organizations-  monarchical,  republican,  democratic,  or
despotic -are the stated conditions of man's development, the ordained method by which he accomplishes his moral destiny, by which especially
he satisfies two pressing demands of his nature,
liberty and right. Liberty and right are both the
product of civil organization; i. e. of the State.
Of liberty the contrary opinion prevails. It is
thought that liberty belongs to man in his "natural state" as it is called, that is, in a savage state,
and is lost or impaired by civilization; that liberty
is older than civil society; that, being originally
unlimited, when States were formed it was surrendered for the sake of the State. It has been
affirmed, as a self-evident proposition, that man
is "born free." That means, man is born with
a natural capacity for freedom, and, co-ordinate
with the development of that capacity, has a natural right to freedom. It can mean nothing more.
16 
THE WAY OF HIS TORY.
Rousseau, unconscious of self-contradiction, declares that man "is born free, but is everywhere
found in bonds." He should have said, Man was
miade to be free, but has nowhere realized that destination.   But Rousseau meant something more.
He meant that man possessed originally a freedom
which hlie has lost by civilization. He and others
have imiagined a condition of humanity, a so-called
"state of nature," in which man was freer, and in
many respects more fortunate, than we find him in
civil society. Since none of these theorists have
inforlned us where in the present this state is to be
found, nor furnished any proofs of its existence in
time past, we are warranted in treating the notion
as a fancy or a fiction.  The term "natural," applied to any primitive condition of man, imaginary
or real, to distinguish it fiom subsequent conditions, is a foolish limitation of nature,- equivalent
to saying that the root of a plant is natural and
the blossom not natural. Civilization is the product of human nature; it contains nothing that
human nature does not contain, and cannot therefore in any rational sense be considered as less a
state of nature than that of the Camanches or New
Zealanders.   "If we are asked," says Ferguson,
"where the state of nature is to be found, we may
answer, it is here. And it matters not whether
we are understood to speak in the island of Great
2
17 
THIE WAY OF HISTORY.
Britain, or at the Cape of Good Hope, or the
Straits of Magellan."  "If we admit that man is
susceptible of improvement, and has in himself a
principle of progression and a desire of perfection,
it is improper to say that he has quitted the state
of nature when he has begun to proceed, or that
he finds a station for which he was not intended,
while, like other animals, he only follows the disposition and employs the powers that Nature has
given." " If Nature is opposed to art, in what situation of the human race are the footsteps of art
unknown? "1 I
The notion that primitive man is freer than civilized man is an error which springs from not distinguishinlg between liberty and caprice. We may
dream of a state which combines what is best in
civilization with all that is charming in aboriginal
nature; but reality knows nothing of the kind.
Reality knows only the civilized man and the savage; and the question is, Which is the freer of the
two?  Superficial observation may decide in favor
of the savage, but closer inspection will change
that decision. The savage is less bound by conventions, but is bound in other ways. He is more
the slave of his passions, more dependent on occasion, more fettered by necessity, less master of
1 Essay on the History of Civil Society.
18 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
himself and the world, and therefore less free
than the civilized.  With less of law, he experiences greater limitation. The nearer we come to
savage life, the more we find in it of tyranny and
violence, of the bondage of passion and caprice.
The nearer we come to it, the more we find the
condition of the savage to be one of thraldom and
restraint; the more we find him bounded and
bound.  Ferguson, with one word, refutes Rousseau's fancy of savage liberty, when he says, "No
person is free where any person is suffered to do
wrong with impunity;" and IHegel, who defines
liberty to be "the spirit's realization of its own
nature," insists that, so far from being an accident
of primitive man, it is something which must be
wrought out, achieved, by a perpetual "mediation
between knowledge and will." Right and morality are its indispensable constituents. It is true,
society as such imposes restraints, but the necessary restraints imposed by society are merely limitations of individual caprice which hampers liberty:
they promote that emancipation of the will in
which true freedom consists.1 The notion of an
antecedent natural liberty surrendered to society,
and of social contracts requiring such surrender, is
a pure fiction. Liberty is not an original but an
1 See Hegel's "Philosophie der Geschichte."
19 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
acquired possession; not an accident but a product, - the product of reflection, of legislation, of
scientific adjustment; in a word, the product of
the State.
Likewise, the State is the parent and condition
of morality.   Morality as sentiment, disposition,
faculty, is innate.   Morality as fact is the product of law. Its earliest form - respect for others'
rights- originates with the institution of property.
But property in its first beginnings provokes the
worst passions of the human breast, occasions strife
and shedding of blood.   It has therefore been
deemed unfriendly to morality, one of the evils
which civilization has inflicted on mankind.  "The
first man," says Rousseau, "who, having enclosed
a piece of ground, took it into his head to say,
' This is mine,' and found people foolish enough to
believe him, was the true founder of civil society.
How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries, and
horrors might have been spared to the human race,
if some one at that juncture had pulled up the
stakes or filled up the trenches, and had called to
his fellow-men,'Beware how you listen to this
impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits
of the ground belong to all, and that the earth is
no mnan's property!' " I
1 Rousseau, "Sur l'origine de l'inegalite parmi les Hommes."
20 
THE WAY OF HIS TORY.
But if property has been the occasion of strife
and deeds of violence, it has also served to develop
the idea of right in which all morality is founded;
and though some of the virtues -such as courage,
fortitude, and patience- might certainly exist without it, most of the duties and most of the topics
and occasions of moral discipline which society
now furnishes would be wanting. Most of the
duties of social life, as now constituted, are directly
or indirectly connected with property.  Rousseau
himself confesses that the first rules of justice are
derived thence.  "For in order to render to each
one his own," he remarks, "it is necessary that
each should own something."
Property begins with agriculture. To till the
land it was necessary to enclose it. From tillage
for the use of the tribe of land belonging to the
tribe, - such as we still find at certain stages of
savage life, -the transition was easy and natural
to tillage for private use; the fruits and the land
being both the property of the tiller.
The relation of agriculture to civil law and the
moral well-being of society was represented by the
Greeks in the fable of Demeter, the mythical
goddess of agriculture; who was called 1e9ro- poo,
law-bringer.   An  ancient cameo represents her
as accompanying Triptolemus, the planter, in his
tour around the earth.  She exhibits a scroll con
21 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
taining a code of laws, while Triptolemus scatters
wheat-seed. Hebrew tradition has embodied the
same idea in the story of Cain, the first tiller of
the ground; who is also the first citybuilder and
civilizer.
And not only by the institution of property
which it authorizes and protects, and around which
cluster so many motives and obligations to virtue,
but also by establishing stricter relations between
man and man;.by civil jurisprudence making the
moral sense of the wisest the rule for all; and more
especially by maintaining the sanctity of wedded
life, -  parent and nurse of domestic virtues,
the State develops the moral life of society. If
then, and so far as, man has a moral calling to
fulfil in this world, he belongs to the State and
the State to him. States are at once the theme
and the organ of history.
III. Our next and last topic is Social Progress.
Man is the subject of progressive development.
The world's history is not an aimless succession
of events,- a heap of facts fanned together by the
flight of time, as the wind piles sand-drifts in the
desert, - but a process and a growth. The ages are
genetically as well as chronologically related. The
succession of events is rational; they follow each
other by a necessary order, in such wise that one is
the exponent of another, and all are moments of
22 
TIJE WAY OF HISTORY. 
one process. We say, then, that as civil society
is the topic, so progress is the method, of history.
In saying this we pronounce no judgment on the
question of man's perfectibility and final perfection.
We assert nothing as to the ultimate destiny of
the race, -  whether the consummation of history
is to be the perfection of society, according to the
visions of the millennarians, or whether it is to be
the utter dissolution of society by the action of
some remediless evil. These are questions as to
which history may aid us in forming an opinion,
but which history thus far is incompetent to decide.
But, surveying the past and present of society, we
see such evidence of progress hitherto as warrants
us in assuming-  since some  aim  and purpose
must be assumed to make history intelligible- that
progress is that aim and purpose. We postulate
progress as the key to history; as the mathematician uses an hypothetical number in determining
an unknown quantity.
Progress in what and whitherward? Progress
in liberty, answers Hegel,- progress first in the
idea and then in the thing. This progress, accordilg to him, has three stages, dividing the world's
history into three epochs,- the period of the
Oriental nations, when only one was allowed to
be free; the period of Greek and Roman civilization, when freedom was accorded to many; and
23
I I 
TIIE WAY OF HIS TOR Y.
lastly, the period of the Germanic nations, when
freedom is seen to be the rightful property of all.
Instead of liberty, let us say progress in social
organization, - a more comprehensive interest of
which liberty is one element among many: progress in social union and toward a state in which
that union shall be complete, in which nationalities shall no longer divide mankind, when the humaii
family shall consciously unite in one organic whole,
- a state combining the greatest freedom of the individual with the greatest compactness of social
union, and securing to all the members of thlo
common-weal the greatest possible advantage in
their connection with each other.   This destination is at present strictly hypothetical: the
immeasurable future alone can verify it.  It is
rendered  probable, however, by the  course of
events thus far, of which it furnishes the most
satisfactory solution. According to this view, every
epoch of human history is a new stage of social
development; every state a firesh experiment in
social organization; and every historic revolution,
exposing the inadequacy of each former state,
inaugurates a new.
The condition of all development is antagonism.
Nothing grows without resistance, without opposition of contrary elements. Society is no exception to the universal law. There, too, is a perpetual
24 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
conflict of opposing forces, bursting often into open
war.
War is a normal crisis in human affairs, and
must therefore occupy a large share in the world's
annals. Judged from the point-of-view of Christiail ethics, it presents solely the aspect of a moral
evil, and incurs unreserved condemnation. So far
as war is the product of individual volition and
design, so far as it originates in or enkindles conscious malevolent passion, it bears this character
so distinctly and so appallingly, that the moral view
becomes paramount and excludes every other. But
war is not always, seldom indeed, on both sides the
product of malevolent passions; and the moral aspect of war is not the only one to be considered. It
has its objective, providential side, which demands
the attention of the philosophic historian.  The
same divine Teacher who inculcated peace in his
precepts, acknowledges the historic necessity of
war, when he says, "I am not come to send peace on
earth, but a sword." Wars differ widely in their
moral character, according to the purposes of those
who engage in them.  There are wicked wars of
vengeance and ambition, and there are also righteous wars of self-defence.  There are idle wars of
passion and caprice, and there are necessary wars
of antagonist races, and conflicting ideas, principles, religions.  The Persian war to the Greeks
25 
THE WAY OF HI-STORY.
was a holy war,- a war of liberty, which decided
the destiny of Hellenic civilization. On the other
hand, the Peloponnesian war was  an idle war of
rivalry, which decided nothing, but proved finally
ruinous to all the States engaged in it, and prepared the way for the downfall of Greece. The
Thirty Years'War, in the seventeenth century, was
a necessary war of principles, which decided for
the most intellectual portion of Europe the momentous question of the right of private judgment.
But the Seven Years' War of the eighteenth century was a foolish war of princely ambition and
princely spleen, which cost Europe over a million
of lives, and secured to Austria, the aggressor in
that conflict, none of the prizes for which she had
contended.
Besides this antagonism of contrary elements,
the progress of society is further conditioned by a
principle of alternation within itself which' causes
it to swing between opposite attractions, or to gyrate
around them as around the foci of an ellipse, and
which makes the development of humanity a series
of revolutions instead of a uniform movement in
one direction.  Humanity gains somlething with
each revolution; each lands society on a higher
plane: and so the course of history becomes  a
spiral movement, at once revolutionary and progressive.  There is a periodicity in the alterna
26 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
tions of society, a regular recurrence of the same
phases,   which indicates a law whose action is
calculable.
An instance of this periodicity is the regular
recurrence of periods of migration, which succeed
each other at stated intervals in the world's history in conformity with a law of development inherent in society. There never was an age when
migration entirely ceased, but we may distinguish
certain epochs in which it has proceeded with
special activity; and these epochs we shall find
to be the natural product of the social developimenits which preceded them.  The dispersion of
the builders of Babel, in Biblical history, indicates
the commencement of one of these periods of migration, which seems to have been a necessary
reaction on a period of immature concentration,
when, in Biblical phrase, "the whole earth was of
one speech and one language," and when a city
intended to be a centre of consolidation for the
human race was projected on the plain of Shinar.
This migration may be supposed to have covered a
period of five hundred years. The next occurs
after an interval of five centuries, about twvo thousand years before the Christian era, and continues
with intermissions and fluctuations, and different
degrees of activity, for a thousand years. This
great evolution, or series of evolutions, which colo
27 
THE WAY OF HIS TOR Y.
nized Asia Minor, Phcenicia, Palestine, Greece,
Italy, and the Grecian Archipelago, appears to
have been a reaction against the excessive spiritualisml of the old Asiatic polities.  It was followed
by a thousand years in which the concentrative
tendency again predominates, and migration, with
occasional exceptions, ceases. Then, again, the
excess of sensualism in Greek and Roman civilization encountered a reaction in Christianity, and
Christianity required new races and new regions
in and through which to develop its ideas. And
now begins a new exodus from the North, by
which Europe is flooded with the German and
Scandinavian races, and which, with brief interruptions, occupies another term of nearly a thousand years. The next five centuries are consumed
in consolidating the European monarchies, sometimes in antagonism, sometilmes in harmony, but
always within the bands of the Church of Rome.
Then Church and State become oppressive; the
humnan mind, new-quickened by the recently invented art of printing, reacts on ecclesiastical tradition, reacts on civil oppression, reacts on feudal
privilege; a new-found continent invites adventure, and simultaneously with the Protestant Reformation inaugurates the last of the migratory
epochs now in progress.
In accordance with this outline, instead of the
28 
'THE WAY OF HIS TOR Y.
usual division of history into ancient, mediceval,
and modern, a more philosophic arrangement will
distinguish four great periods,-the Asiatic (including the early African), the Greco-Roman, the
Germanic, and the American. Of these, the first
and the third may be subdivided into an earlier
and later Asiatic and Germanic.
Another example of periodicity in history is the
alternation of the positive and negative forces of
the mind,- imiagination and reflection.  The old
Asiatic civilization discovers in every province of
social life, and in all the action of the human mind,
the predominance of imagination.  Life is overshadclowed by huge superstitions; all is prodigious,
titanic, -colossal temples, colossal idols, in which
the monstrous predominates over the beautiful
and humane: everywhere mountainous theocracies
piled upon poor humanity, absorbing and crystallizing its best juices.  The institutions of society
rise frowning and pitiless like stranded icebergs,
while society itself, a scarcely perceptible stream,
creeps lazily out from beneath.   In secular or
Japhetic history, the Persian war with the Greeks
marks the boundary line of this era. When Themistocles, by tampering with the priests at Delphi,
could bend the oracle in accordance with his plans,
the despotism of faith and fate had ceased for
Greece. The secular elemnent thenceforth asserts
29 
THE WAY OF HISTORY.
itself in civil life. Reflection encounters Imagination in the Gulf of Salamis, and puts a limit to his
sway.  There is no excess as yet of the former faculty, but a happy equilibrium between the two.
Then appeared that miracle of Greek and Roman
culture which history is never weary of portraying.
Then the world's genius awoke, and lifted up the
hands which had hung down, and opened the long
silent lips. Then was the blossom time of art and
song and philosophy and science; the age of the
Parthenon, of the Apollo-Belvedere, of Sophocles
and Plato; followed, before its light had utterly gone
out, by the age of Cicero and the first Caesar, and
the great Augustan age of Latin civility and letters.
But now the negative power acquires a disproportionate ascendancy; imagination grows torpid,
art and religion decline, materialism becomes rampant, all truth and reverence depart out of life.
The poets of Alexandria employ themselves with
shaping verses into eggs and axes.   Lucian of
Samosata has turned the Pantheon into a cenotaph. Plutarch inquires " why the oracles cease
to give answers," and a voice from the island of
Paxos proclaims, "Great Pan is dead!"
"Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving,
No nightly trance or breatlihed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."
30 
THE WAY OF HIS TORY.
The fire is gone out on the altar, the marble
sleeps in the quarry.   Come,  Longobards  and
Franks, from the depths of the Odenwald and the
Black Forest! -  come, pour your fresh life into
withered humanity; revive the perished world or
bury it!
The age of reflection ends, and a new era of
despotic imagination begins: another long cycle
wherein the huge and grotesque prevail over the
beautiful and just.   Again the portentous misgrowths of time. Farewell to letters and science
and beautiful works of art!
"Now entertain conjecture of a time
Whlen creeping mumrhur and the poring dark
Fill the wide vessel of the universe."
The world's stage is cleared for a new act of the
great drama. The actors are harnessed warriors
with closed visors, and scarlet priests. The old
decorations - the storied friezes and Corinthian
capitals - are replaced by the feudal castle, that,
perched on a cliff at the angle of the river, seems a
continuation of the rock itself, wrought by some
freak of Nature into pinnacles and parapets. In
the valley below, the symbol of penal torture is
displayed in the cruciform church.  The age of the
Argonauts  reappears  in the crusades.   Europe
hurls herself upon Asia.  The East and the West
contend for the prize of the Holy Land.
31 
TIHE TVA Y OF HIS TOP, l.
Such was life in those centuries,- wild, mnon'strous, extreme in devotion and in arms.
"Der Mbnch und die Nonne zergeisselten sich,
Der eiserne Ritter turnierte."
Again there was a day when the empire of iimagin:ttion received a check, and impassable limits
were set to its sway.  And this time the change
was effected by the pen instead of the sword;
and the agent was a German Professor of Philosophy.  The  birthday of the new era was the
31st October, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed to
the church at Wittenberg his ninety-five propositions, which reinstated reason and conscience in
their long-suppressed rights, opened an irreparable
breach between the Roman and the Saxon mind,
and initiated the second age of reflection; which
has not yet expired, and which comprises the great
names of modern literature and science, from Galileo to Humboldt, from Shakspeare to Goethe.
Such is the method of history.   Progress by
alternation, by conflict, by revolution,- always
progress.  These are the steps by whichl Humanity
moves in its fore-ordclained path, advancing, not
simultaneously in all its faculties and members,
but in one or another part for ever advancing. To
what result aldt final consummation of its course
,32 
TIHE WA Y OF IIISTORY.
it is not in the Muse of History to predict, until,
perhaps, some thousands of years have been added
to her age,
"And old Experience do attain
To something of prophetic strain."
3
33
p: I 
II.
THE WAY OF RELIGION.
ELIGION, in the broadest sense, is the life of
the sentiments as contra-distinguished from
th at         of t he understanding, - of the sentiments
turned from self, and directed to objects sought
and cherished for their own sake, with no reflex
view t      o     private advantage.  It is losing oneself
in ideas, persons, things, which attract or command
by their own intrinsic, or supposed intrinsic, worth.
It is the heart's response to the claims of beauty,
duty,        honor,  man. All genuine enthusiasm; all
unselfish devotion, patriotism, philanthropy, art;
all sel     f-sac rificing zeal, whatever its object,- partakes of the nature of religion. Its essence is, 
"Forget, forswear, disdain
Thine own best hopes, thine utmost loss and gain,
Until at last thou scarce rememberest now
If on the earth be such a one as thou;
Nor hast one thought of self-surrender -no!
For self is none remaining to forego."
In the narrower and technical sense, religion may
be roughly defined as homage paid to surperhuman
powver.   And this definition holds good, albeit re
,'V 
TI]E WAY OF RELIGION.
ligions exist in which the objects worshipped are
not superhuman, but infra-human, - religions ill
wh-ich homage is paid to brute creatures and
inanimate things.   These objects are conceived
as superhuman by the worshipper.   When  the
Negro of South Africa prostrates himself before
a block of wood, he confesses as sincerely a superior to himself as the Parsee when he bends in
adoration before the rising sun, as the Christian
when he worships the invisible Lord. He has not
yet learned the greatness that is in hilm, and is
therefore ready to acknowledge in any creature a
greater than himself. The eternal Mystery which
all souls reverence looks out upon him fromn the
senseless block; and that is what he really adores.
And that is what we  also adore, more worthily
conceived, but can we say more exactly understood?  Must we not say, as incomprehensible to
us as to him?
The motive which prompts this homage is one
of the primary forces of the soul. There is nothiung more radical in man than religion; nothing
more capable, more commanding. Stated or spasmodic, quiescent or flamboyant, in calm or storm,
it builds by turns, and fires the world: in its pureness, the ornament and strength of society (decus
et prcesidium nostrnum); in its fall and perversion,
the scancll and scourge of nations.  Its scope is
35 
TIIE  A4 Y OF RELIGIONV.
the measure of history.   It supplied  the first
rudiments of civil society; it forecasts the social
destination of man.  Wherever humanity is found
at its highest, religion has been the motive-power,
leader in all progress; home-guard of all stability; source of revolutions the most prevailing;
champion and prize of tile boldest adventures;
pioneer more eager than commerce; explorer more
patient than science. Religion is acknowledged
the mother of arts: she reared the temples that
make Egypt venerable, and shaped the marbles
that made Greece renowned.  She lighted the eyes
of the Sistine Virgin, and unrolled the "Divina
Commedia," and inspired the strains of HIandel
and Bach. In private life she has been the authoritative teacher, comforter; lifting the soul
above  the  dust, purifying  the heart by faith,
eliciting the spirit of self-sacrifice by which society
subsists, cheering the sufferer in mortal pains,
redeeming and renewing the world.
While gratefully acknowledging this multifold
service of the great benefactress, we cannot forget
the mischief and the woes that have often accompanied these gifts and goods. We cannot forget
that religion has been a worker of evil, - one of
the greatest of the workers of evil. No agent
that has wrought in earthly scenes has been more
prolific of ruin and wrong. The wildest aberra
36 
TIIE WAY OF RELIGION.
tions of human nature, crimes the most portentous,
the most desolating wars; persecutions, hatred and
wrath and bloodshed, more than have flowed from
all sources beside, - have been its firuits. The vietirs of faniaticismn outnumber those of every other
and all other passions that have wasted the earth.
Pining in dungeons, hunted like beasts of prey,
stretched on the rack, affixed to the cross,- their
sufferings are the horror of history.  No  highwroughbt fiction, recounting imaginary woes, can
match the colors of their authentic tragedy.  A
corruption of the text of the Vedas has cast thousands of Hindu widows alive on the funeral pile.
An interpolation of two words in the service of
the Eastern Church has driven whole villages in
Russia into fiery death. A sentence in the Book
of Exodus has been a death-sentence to millions
of hapless women.  And who shall compute the
sumn of the lives that have furnished the holocausts
of the Inquisition?
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."
In this tale of sorrows we must reckon, moreover, the melancholy and madness religion so often
enigenders,-religious mania, which, where it does
not impel to self-slaughter, oppresses the soul with
dull despair, or pierces it with mortal anguish.
It is fearful to think that man, in addition to the
37 
THE WAY, OF RELIGION.
necessary burdens of life and all inevitable ills,
should be subject to these ideal woes;  that so
many fine spirits should suffer blight through their
own diseased imaginations; that to so many noble
minidS the light that is in them should be made
darkness through superstitious doubts and fears;
that so many innocent hearts should bear the
burden of self-imputed guilt and doom! No region
of the earth, and no plane of life, is secure from
this plague.  Bayard Taylor found in the track
of the missionaries beyond the Arctic circle the
same spiritual ails that have desolated polished
lands.  "The  soul," says Novalis, "is the most
active of poisons." Religion is the soul of mortal
life: when misdirected or over-urged it becomes,
instead of an animating force, a consuming fire.
Considering these harms, one is tempted to
question if religion, on the whole, has been a
blessing to mankind.  To  that question the answer must be sought in the infinite possibilities
that lie in the idea of God, and the infinite dearth
of spirit involved in the want of that idea, without
which life would seemi to be the sport of lawless
power,- no reason in its origin, no meaning, in its
course, no hope in its end. Given that idea, all
things desirable are possible.
Meanwhile, our business at present is not with the
moral but with the historical aspects of the subject.
38 
THE WA Y OF RELIGION.
The history of religion is the history of man;
not of nations, but of man. The chronicles of
nations, made up as they are of wars and revolutions, political formations and  decays, dynasties
and parties, institutions affecting the temporal and
material well-being of their subjects, -these and
the like of these, which figure so largely in the
volumes of historiographlers, are properly no part
(or a very subordinate part) of the history of man.
They are accidents, not substance; episodes, not
method. The true history, the thread on which
these are strung, is that progressive life of the
spirit which binds the nations in one Providential
order, and which alone gives meaning to man's
being in time.  Without this, what we call history
is a mere compilation of anecdotes, which may
entertain the curious, but which leads to no rational result. Reason demands, as the end and
destination of man in society, a state in which the
divine law shall organize itself in civil polity, and
form the basis and determine the conduct of social
life: in other words, a theocracy, or Kingdom of
Heaven.
Such being the end, the history of man must be
viewed in relation to that end; so viewed, it as sumes a sacred character. With all its contra dictions and immoralities, which do but furnish
the antagonism necessary to all development, the
39 
THE WAY OF RELIGION.
history of man is the history of religion: the main
epochs in the one are identical with those of the
other. Accordingly, it is no one-sided or bigoted
view of human things which has led Christian
nations to date the world's history with their
religion.  The chronology is true to the absolute
fact as well as to Christian consciousness.  Christianity dates, because it determined, the course of
time. The supreme moment in the ever-proceeding revelation of God, it became the confluence of
the two main streams of civilization,- the Semitic
and Japhetie. UnitingT these, it forms the one
river of modern history. Christendom is no provincialism; it is the world's highway.
In tracing the course of religious development,
our first business is to ascertain the law and
method by which that development proceeds.
On this point theology and science are at variance.
Where theology says "revelation, " science says
"law; " and each supposes an antagonism between
the two, as if one of these methods precluded
the other.  In the view of theology, the idea
of a law of development militates with the supposition of the present immediate action of the
spirit of God.  And, on the other hand, science
mistrusts the term revelation, as seemingly opposed
to that constant order which it loves to find in all
40 
THE  VA Y OF RELIG1ION.
the succession of the ages of man. As usual in
such controversies, both parties are right, and
both are wrong.  There is a law of development
in the history of religion, and there is revelation.
In     the realm of spirit, as well as in the kingdoms of
unconscious Nature, God acts by law. His revelation of himself is not spasmodic, but methodical,
continuous. Christianity, the highest instance of
that revelation, is no episode, but a necessary part
of the Divine method. The old way of treating the
subject regarded Christianity as an afterthought
of Deity, an amendment of the programme of
Providence, necessitated by the miscarriage of former         methods, "an act supplementary to an act,"
instead of the original design provided for in the
constitution of things. The Mohammedan poet
was   nearer the truth:
"The world's end and beginning are the same,
And Jesus entered it when Adam came."
All such views of all such subjects are fast disappearing in the light of modern thought, which
postulates law instead of arbitrary will as the fundamental reason of things. It is the business of science
to trace that law; in all that exists to ascertain the
normal principle by which it exists, and in virtue of
which it could not be other than it is.  Science
knows nothing fortuitous and nothing arbitrary;
she finds necessity in the most exceptional as well as
41 
'THE WA Y OF RELIGION.
the most stated; in a shower of meteoric stones as
well as the precession of the equinoxes; in spasms
of wind and storm as well as the regular alternation of the tides; in the flamiing aurora as well as
the motions of the planetary system.  In the very
madness of nature and of nations she sees or divines
an overruling method, and knows that the wildest
excesses of either must work in the traces of Omnipoteut order,-  as the caracoling, steeds in Guido's great fresco are harnessed to the chariot of the
constait sun, and lead the measured dance of the
Hours.
We express in one word the characteristic differenlce between the ancient and the modern view of
the universe, when we say Law. In-every realm
of human converse the scientific view has replaced
the mythical.  The world as viewed by the ancient
mind was the product of caprice.  Gods and demigods ruled it at will.  Egyptian droughts were
figured as the death of Osiris slain by the hand of
Typhon.  Returning fertility was ascribed to Horus,
the immortal youth who conquers Typhon,- type
of Nature's rejuvenating power.  The disproportion of the lunar to the solar year was expressed
by the threat of Sol to Rhea, that no month of
the year should be allowed her for the birth of her
child.  The difficulty is adjusted by Hermes, who
plays at dice with the AMoon, and wins from her the
42 
TIIE JIA Y OF RELIGION.
five supplementary days with which the improved
calendar eked out the three hundred and sixty of
the original year.  The term "Milky  Way"  in
sidereal astronomy recalls the mythical explanation
of the nebulous streak in the heavens so named;
the word " volcano " suggests the stitlhies of Vulcan and the Lemnian fires.  History was handled
in the same fashion: demonic  caprice was  its
motive power; its processes were the freaks of
Divinity. The progress of civilization from Asia
to Europe was conducted by Zeus, who crosses
the Hellespont in the form of a bull bearing the
daughter of Agenor or Canaan.  Semitic culture
conducted by conscious intelligence is Bunsen's
exposition of the myth.  Where ancient philosophy allegorized, the modern intellect formulizes.
Where the ancients saw  will, the modern  sees
law,- law from whose dominion human agency is
no more excluded than the kingdom of unconscious
life.  If there is any product of civilization which
might be supposed to be irresponsible and accidental, it is language. But language is shown by modern glossologists to be subject to laws as inevitable
as those which regulate all the processes of Nature.
For this, too, is a process of Nature. It is not a
human device, but a growth. The Roman Emperor
might extend to whomsoever he pleased the right
of citizenship, but he could not naturalize a vocable.
43 
THE WAY OF RELIGION.
If, then, history and language are necessary products, if the deeds and the speech of men in the
gross are subject to law, it may be presumed that
religion - the gravest and deepest of human concerns, the consummlate product of hlumanity - is no
exception to the general rule.  We cannot suppose
that the progress of religion, any more than the
secular progress of human kind, is surrendered to
accicdent; that the mind acts less methodically in
this than other manifestations; or that Destiny is
less concerned in this than ill others.  We must
suppose a Providence in it; that is, a Providential
education of the lhumani race in religion, and an
ordained method or necessary order by which it proceeds. That necessary order, viewed on the human
side, we term the law of religious development.
That such a law exists as part of the reason of God,
as a mode of the Divine wisdom, there can be no
doubt; the only question is whether it is discoverable by man.  Can it be ascertained by philosophic inquiry? Our answer to this question at
present must be an empirical one; we cannot answer it dogmiatically.  We cannot assume to demonstrate the entire law of religious development; we
can only indicate, as facts observed, or as inferences
from them, some of the principles involved in it.
I. In  the first place, then, we  observe  three
44 
TIlE  A' OF WELIGION.
stages of religion answering to the ages of human
life: childhood, youth, maturity,-  a period of the
senses, one of sentiment, and one of ideas.  Each
of these stages has its own appropriate faith and
worship; and so we distinguish three fundamental
forms of religion: realism, personism, and spiritualism, - the worship of things, the worship of
persons, the worship of spirit.
These stages are not sharply discriminated, but
overlap one another like childhood and youth, or
like youth and manhood, in the human individual.
Accordingly, the several religions corresponding
with them shade one into another  by such nice
gradations, and are so immixed in practice, that
the lowest form of Nature-worslip is not without
some gleams of spiritual life, and the purest of
historical religions is not without some taint of
fetichism.  All that can be fairly maintained is the
prevalence of one or the other at different stages of
human progress.  There have even been cases of
national religion in which the three forms co-existed,
- as in Egypt under the Sesostrids, where the grossest fetichism alternated with Osiris-cult in the practice of the laity, while the finished epopt, under
priestly training at Sais, was initiated in the truth
of pure theism.
Under the heads which have been named, there
are several subdivisions and many distinct phases
45 
THE WAY OF BRELIG ON.
of religious life. Realism illencludes fetishism, the
worship of earthly creatures, and what is called
"Sabaism," the worship of the heavenly bodies.
Personlism embraces the religions of Vedism, Brahmanism, Hellenism, and  Odinism.  Spiritualism
comprehends the highest phases of all the revealed
religions.
II. The threefold division which graduates the
religious progress of the human race repeats itself
in particular dispensations. Most historical religions have their sensuous, their sentimental, and
their spiritual or spiritualizing period; 1 they exhibit phases of realism, personism, and spiritualism.
Either of these phases is more or less marked according to the general character of each religion,
but in none are they wholly wanting. No religion
is through all its periods entirely exempt from
fetishism, and none is quite destitute of spiritual
life.
Take an example from Judaism.
In the earlier history of the Hebrew people,
before the establislhmenlt of the telmple-worship,
1 Not always indeed in the chronological order corresponding
with childhood, youth, and manhood.   The  origin and earliest
childhood of revealed religion is spiritual. Christianity especially
had such an origin, and preserved for a time its spiritual childhood.
But in its decline and subsequent revival, Christianity also exhibits
the three phases above named.  We note in it sacramental realism, idolatrous personism, and restored spirituality.
46 
7'1IE WAY OF RELIGION.
we read in the national Scriptures of a certain
consecrated chest, or "Ark  of the  Covenant."
This structure was held to be the dwelling-place
of Deity; it was borne in solemn procession on
great occasions, and formed, with the associations
and traditions attending it, the prominent feature
of Israelitish worship.  This institution the Tribes
appear to have derived from the Egyptians, in
whose religion kibotism, or ark-worsllip, was also
a leading rite.  We find traces of it in other ancient nations.  They seem  to be in some cases
reminiscences of the preservation of a human pair,
by means of a box or rude craft, from the waters
of a deluge. There are Greek mnedals representing
a chest in which two individuals are floating on
the water, with a dove and an olive-brainch and
a sacrifice supposed to be offered by the rescued
pair after the subsidence of the waters. The ark
on one of these medals bears the Greek name of
Noah (Noe). Whether or not the service of the
ark in the countries in which it was practised had
this origin, it appears to have prevailed not only
among civilized peoples, but also to some extent
among barbarous tribes.  Sir Joseph Banks, who
accompanied Captain Cook in one of his voyages,
found on an island of the Pacific a chest resembling
the Ark of the Covenant as described in the Old
Testament, with rings and poles for carrying it.
47 
THE WAY OF RELIGIVON.
It was called by the islanders, "The IHouse of
God."
Now the Ark of the Covenant was essentially
fetish.  It was supposed to be the medium  of
Divine power and blessing. When the Tribes
crossed the Jordan, it was carried in advance, and
miraculously divided the waters. It was borne in
procession around the walls of Jericho, and caused
their downfall. After temporary disuse, it was
brought out again in the time of the Judges, on
occasion of an engagement with the Philistines.
"And the Philistines were afraid, for they said,
God is come into the camp.  Woe unto us! for
there hath not been  such a thing heretofore."
They rallied, however, and not only repulsed the
Israelites, but even took the Ark of God, brought
it to their city of Ashdod, and placed it in the
Temple of Dagon. The consequence was that
early on the morrow, "Behold, Dagon was fallen
on his face before the Ark of the Lord." At the
same time, and owing to the same cause, we are
told that the city was visited with a sore epidemic.
Altogether, the presence of the ark proved so disastrous that the Gentiles were fain to be rid of it;
and after some consultation brought it to Kirjathjearim, and deposited it in the house of Aminidab,
where it lay for twenty years. When David ascended the throne, and established the seat of
48 
THE WAY OF RELIGION.
government at Jerusalem, he undertook the removal of the ark to that city. The first attempt
was unsuccessful, resulting in the death of the man
employed in its transportation; whereat David
was so disgusted that he abandoned the enterprise,
until he learned that Obed-edom, in whose house
the -ark had been stored, was miraculously prospering through the influence of the charm.  He
then appointed a new commission, and the ark
was brought into the city with great pomp, the
king himself heading the procession with a dance,
which "excited some remark."
This is the last act of homage to the ark in
Hebrew history.  When Solomon's Temple  was
completed, it was deposited in the Holy of Holies,
where it thenceforth remained an obsolete sanctity.
It perished with that temple, and that is the last
we hear of it. So completely had it dropped from
the use and consciousness of Jewish worship, that,
when after the Captivity a new temple was instituted, no attempt was made to restore it. Arkworship had died out: a new phase of Judaism
had succeeded.   The presence of Jehovah had
disengaged itself from the "Mercy-seat between
the Cherubim" which surmounted that time-honored box: it was no longer associated with any
material thing. The devout imagination had outgrown that conception, and replaced it with the
4
49 
THE WAY OF RELIGIO~V.
notion of a potentate enthroned in the heavens.
"It is He that sitteth above the circle of the earth,
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers."
The God of this period, though far surpassing the
divinities of Gentile worship, - distinguished from
them by onliniess, as sole governor of heaven and
earth, and by holiness, as exercising a moral jurisdiction over moral agents, - was still conceived
under human limitations. He is still a national
God, the God of Israel, with a special affection for
Mount Zion.
A third, and the supreme stage of Judaism,
begins with the settlement of Jewish colonies in
Alexandria and Asia Minor, where contact with
Greek wisdom stimulated the action of the national
mind, and gave the religious consciousness its final
development. In this stage, the idea of God is
entirely divested of local and national limitations.
The Alexandrian translators soften down, as far
as possible, the anthropomorphic expressions of
the Hebrew text. Jesus, the son of Sirachl, evades
the theophanies. It is no longer the Lord himself
whom Moses saw face to face, "as a man talketh
with a friend," but only a part of his glory. And
where the Book of Exodus speaks of the thick
cloud in which was God, Ecclesiasticus mentions
the cloud without affirming that God was in it.1
I Nicolas, "Des Doctrines religieuses des Juifs."
50 
TH- WrAY OF RELGIONV.
The God of Ecclesiasticus is a God whose "spirit
fills the earth."
III. The progress of religion, like all human
development, proceeds by action of antagonistic
powexs.  The  antagonisms most noteworthy are
those of Faith and Reason, and those of Sense and
Conscience.
Religion, in its first manifestation, is an act of
pure faith.   The  worshipper  embraces without
question the object on which it is directed, be it
fetish or person. Whoever professes to represent
that object is received as infallible authority.
Where this principle is dominant, it begets a corresponding form of social polity, -hierarchy, or
theocracy, such as we find in the earlier periods of
Egyptian history, in Brahmanical India, and among
the Druids. In this polity the priest is before the
king, and the State a function of the hierarchy.
The principle of theocratic or hierarchical government is implicit faith; its consummation is the
institution of an hereditary priestly caste, whom
the people regard as not only mediators of Godhead, but as being themselves divine.  This institution still survives in the Brahman of Hindostan.
"The birth of the Brahmnan," says Menu, "is the
eternal incarnation of justice. For the Brahman
born for the execution of justice is destined to
51 
THE WAY OF PELIGJON.
identify himself with Brahm." "The Brahman
is sovereign Lord of all beings; all that the world
contains is his property. By his primogeniture,
by his eminent birth, he has a right to all that
exists." To this day, in Bengal, the lowly Sudra.
crawls on his knees to kiss the feet, or beg parings
of the nails, of an individual of the priestly class
nowise superior to himself except in the article of
birth. The homage is not rendered to wealth or
power - the object of it may be destitute of either
-but to the portion of divinity supposed to reside
in the favored caste, indicated by the bit of sacred
cord which denotes the twice-born man. There is
no servility in it, but simple reverence, -pure,
unquestioning faith.
When, in the course of popular development or
military reaction, faith becomes modified by never
so little intellectual activity, the secular interest
begins to assert itself. By-and-by it conquers a position beside, and co-ordinate with, the sacerdotal;
and finally obtains supreme command, subordinating the sacerdotal, and controlling its functions.
The first stage in this process of secularization
is exemplified in the empire of Japan, where the
secular and ecclesiastical powers act with parallel
function. Also in Thibet, where, if the Dalai
Lama is theoretically incarnate Deity, the particular incumbent of the office for the time being
52 
THE WAY OF RELIGIONV.
is appointed by the secular power; that is, he is
one of three Khubilkans, or twice-born children,
nominated by the Chinese Court, or accepted by
plenipotentiaries of that government residing in
Thibet.1
The next degree of secular encroachment is
reached, wheni the temporal sovereign assumes
the patronage and visible headship of the Church,
- as does the English Crown of the ecclesiastical
establishment of Great Britain, and as Peter the
Great put himself at the head of the Orthodox
Church of Russia.2
The third and last stage of secularism in civil
society is entire separation of Church and State,
and the irrecognition on the part of the ruling
powers of any particular religion as divine or more
obligatory than any other. This is the position of
the Government of the United States, which knows
no religion as possessing any other claim than that
of the numerical majority of its disciples for the
time being. It recognizes the present fact, nothing
more. The Government appoints chaplains; and
the chaplains thus far have been Christian, for the
reason that the subjects to whom they minister
are Christian. But nothing in the Constitution
1  oppen, "Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche."
2 He is said to have thrown his hunting-knife on the table,
saying to the assembled clergy, "There is your Patriarch."
53 
THE WAY OF REL1GIOIV.
of the United States forbids the appointment of
Mohammedan  chaplains;  on the  contrary, the
principles of the Constitution would seem to require the appointment of such, or of those of any
other faith whose disciples should happen to constitute the majority of the population to whom
the chaplain was to minister. Ours is, perhaps,
the only Government in Christendom in which
Christianity is not formally recognized; the only
one which absolutely discharges itself of all preference for, or interest in, any particular religion as
possessing a supreme claim.
Beside the antagonism of faith and reason,
parallel with it, is the conflict of sense and conscience, of the outer and the inner life. Hence
the distribution of religion in two great classes,
-polytheism and monotheism, or natural and revealed.  The principle of polytheism is Deity in
Nature; -in Nature, not as God's handiwork, the
witness of his skill, but as God's embodiment, as
divine mediation. The principle of monotheism is
God in the conscience,- moral obligation divinely
imposed. Accordingly, Mosaism, the earliest historic embodiment of that principle, is termed "The
Law;" and Mohammedism, its later product, takes
the name of Islam, "Righteousness." 1
1 So Emanuel Deutschl explains the term.
54 
THE WA,4Y OF RELIGIJ0O.
Religion begins with the worship of things; from
fetishism it advances to personification of natural
forces, and proceeds in the direction of personism,
until some quickened and reflective soul,- in the
language of theology, some divinely-missioned individual, - through predominance in him of the
moral sense, arrives to the truer conception of
Deity as moral lawgiver, and adores the God of
conscience above all gods. Then commences, for
the age and people in which such prophet appears,
the reaction of the inner life; the soul asserts its
supremacy over Nature; religion becomes internal,
reflective, moral,  protestant.   Christianity  consummated that reaction, completely abolishing the
Nature-worship and polytheism of the Greco-Roman world. The two main streams of ancient religion, Hellenism and Semitic monotheism, - themselves the debouchtures respectively of other, elder,
Phoenician, Egyptian, and Persian faiths, -found
their confluence in the Christian dispensation.
Hellenism was completely merged and lost in it.
Semitic monotheism, after delivering its "tribute wave," has preserved an independent existence,
and still survives in the Judaism of the "Disper sion;" still flourishes in Mohammedism, one of
the most wide-spread of existing religions. This,
and the elder religions of Central and Southern
Asia, - Brahmanism and Buddhism, - still sway
55 
TIlE TVAY OF RELIGION.
the major portion of the human race, but with such
fixity, such incapacity of growth or effective reformation, as must needs neutralize their historic
influence, if it does not abridge their duration.
Extensive and prevailing as they seem when measured statistically, they are still but bounded provincialisms when viewed in relation to cosmopolitan
humnanity.
Christianity is the solvent of other religions, and
may be regarded as the ultimate religion of man.
In Protestant Christianity, religion has reached
the extreme limit which divides it from pure science; in its latest development it seems to portend the union of the two. Further than this
religion cannot go in the direction of reason,- in
the rational apprehension of spiritual truth. There
can be no progress out of Christianity into any
new religion; unless, indeed, we give that name
to some future dispensation of science, applying
ascertained laws and scientific demonstration to
the ethical and social relations of man.
Here, then, we have the entire cycle of religious
development, the outline and ground-plan of the
religious history of human kind. It begins with
the worship of irrational objects, and proceeding
through the various stages of naturalism, symbolism, personism, ends in the worship of pure
spirit.
56 
THE WAY OF RELIGION.
IV. The transitions from natural to revealed
religion are mediated by extraordinary personalities, - exceptional individuals, - who accordingly
are known  as mediators  in religion, and whose
names are indelibly written on their respective
faiths.  "Personality," says Bunsen, "is the lever
of the world's history." This is true of the secular, but far more true of the spiritual, history of
man. When we say Moses, Zoroaster, Sakya-Muni,
Jesus, we enunciate systems, civilizations, aeons.
Far back in the impenetrable twilight of prehistoric time, as reflected in Hebrew tradition, occurs the name of SETH, which - whether it stands
for an obsolete divinity, as recent criticism conjectures, or whether it represents a son of Adam,
according to the current interpretation - possesses
a deep religious significance. With this name, - as
father, or creator, of ENos (man), - there connects
itself in the Biblical record the remarkable statement, " Then men began to call upon the name of
the Lord." These words shadow forth some irrecoverable gospel, some long-perished revelation,
some  reaction  against  primeval superstition, of
which but this mystic cipher survives, - sufficient
to show how deep and aboriginal in human nature
is the protest of the spirit against the aberrations
of sense.
Emerging from this shadow-land of antediluvian
57 
TflIE ]ir Y OF RELIGION.
tradition, the first religionist who meets us on the
borders of recorded time is the patriarch Abraham,
-  a name of measureless import in the annals of
humanity as well as a cardinal date in the history
of religion.  Abraham is the first distinct historic
personality.1 Not the first historic personage, for
Egyptian history was old, and had dragged the
chain of its successive dynasties through long centuries, when the great Chaldean pitched his tent
on the plains of Moab.  But Egyptian history in
all those ages presents no defined individuality,
no character sufficiently marked "to point a moral
or adorn a tale." The dynasties evoked by the
Egy,ptologer out of the dim past, like the phantom
succession of Scottish kiings evoked from the dim
future by the witches in Macbeth,
"Come like shadows, so depart."
Dates and names and shadowy outlines are all
that Egyptology has raked "from coffined clay."
Egyptian history, like its perished forms whom we
dig out of their crypts, is a bloodless mummy, with
no expression in its faded lineaments,- important
only as a measure  of time.   The first defined
personality, the first live figure, the first blood
1 This was written before Herr Goldzihler's work on Hebrew
Mythology.  There is nothing in that work which alters the
opinion expressed above.
58 
THE WAY OF RELIGIOINr
warm individual known to history, is also the
first reformer, the first monotheist, - the patriarch
Abraham.  It is noticeable, by the way, that the
reformers in religion, - Abraham, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Luther,-  are historic characters, while
the authors of idolatrous systems have left no
trace of their personality. Or, to put the same
thing in another way, the known founders of religions are all reformers. So much more difficult
is it to abolish falsity and establish truth than to
authorize and propagate error! Such work  demands a virtue and a force which stamp themselves
indelibly on their time, and secure to the reformer
a permanent place in the world's records.
Abraham is the first reformer in religion, the
first protestant. High above the mythical formnations of his own and subsequent times he lifts his
sublime head, and displays the deepest faith of the
soul,- as geology fillds on the highest mountaintops the deeper layers of the earth's crust.
An anecdote which Biblical tradition has preserved, but which, I fancy, has been misconceived,
and therefore misrepresented in the process of
transmission, reveals the nature of the man, and
comes to us charged with typical import. Settled
ill a land where universal custom required the
sacrifice of the first-born, whether of brute or
human parentage, he is tempted, after the example
59
I 
THE WAY OF BELI GN0X.
of the worshippers of Moloch, to make an offering
of Sarah's first-born, the son of his hopes, to the
Lord. But a truer feeling corrects this impulse,
and stays the filicidal hand. If the piety of custom seemed to demand the sacrifice, the piety of
the heart forbade it. He had courage to believe
that the God of his devotion did not require the
monstrous act.  It was not his readiness to make
the conventional sacrifice, but the courage that
refused it in spite of custom and tradition, that
proved his faith. He dared to live by faith, and
was counted just in so doing.
Four thousand years later, when Luther, a
pilgrim in Rome, in compliance with the painful
fashion of his time was climbing on his knees the
Santa Scala of the Lateran, there rushed on his
soul that saving word, "The  just shall live by
faith." It was the spirit of Abraham come again
in the person of a German monk, that moment
new born of the lineage of faith.
This, then, is the import of the story; and this
is the import of Abraham to us and to all time,the voice in the soul correcting tradition; thought
purifying faith.
60 
III.
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CIHRISTIANITY.
HRISTIANITY must be studied in its social
developments, - must be studied as an organized and organizing power in human society,in order to a right understanding of the real import
of the Christian faith.
Only through its history can Christianity or any
religion as a social movement be truly known.
Whatever develops itself in time requires for its
full comprehension to be studied in its processes;
that is, historically. Even animal, even vegetable,
natures require to be so studied. It is with strict
philosophic accuracy that we speak of "Natural
Hlistory," in reference to such studies.   The nature of the bird is not exhausted by the study of
the egg, or the plumage, or the note, or the anatomy. To these must be added the knowledge of
its habits, its relations to its kind  and to other
kinds, its movements and migrations: in a word,
its history. To know the oak, it is not sufficient
to study the acorn or the sapling. We need for
that purpose the full-grown tree, with the wear of 
6 2   THE WAY OF IIIS TORIC CHRIS T'IANI TY.
centuries chronicled in its annual rings.   More
emphatically, of mnan our best knowledge is not
derived from a physical analysis of the human
frame, or metaphysical analysis of the human mind.
We may know every bone and muscle in the body,
and we may know every faculty and law of the
mind, and still be very ignorant of human nature
until we study it as it manifests itself in action,
and trace its action through successive ages.  Our
best anthropology is learned, not from Haller or
Hunter or Kant, but from Tacitus and Gibbon.
Of institutions, human and divine, of systems of
belief, of religious dispensations, of the Christian
dispensation in particular, the same  law holds:
they are known by their history. Christianity is
known by its history. As a sentiment affecting
the individual soul, as a doctrine determining individual faith, we may learn it from the Gospels;
but not as a world-dispensation involving the
spiritual destiny of many generations. Christianity in that sense can no more be known from the
Gospels than the oak can be known from the acorn;
than the river that traverses continents, that feeds
itself with streams from a thousand hills, and bears
half the commerce of the world on its bosom, can
be known fromn the trickling rill or sequestered
pool  to whvich  curiosity has  finally traced  it.
Rather the pool itself would be unknown, except 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRIS TIANITY.   63
to the heron that dips her wing in its wave, or the
deer that browses by its marge, had not the marvel  of the river first directed inquiry  to  the
marvellous source.  It was Christianity, already
established in the world, that led to the study of
the Gospels; not the study of the Gospels  that
revealed Christianity.  The gospel itself-I mean
the gospel record- is the product of Christian history, not its source.  Who knows how  much or
how little of the observation and experience of the
actual eye-witnesses of the ministry of Jesus has
come down to us?  It is impossible to say to what
extent the views and theories and disputes of more
than one generation of believers,- party interests
and ecclesiastical policy,   may have modified those
venerable and priceless records which bear the
titles of Matthew and John, and which, whatever
their origin and composition, are traceable in their
present form to within a century only of the events
they commemorate. The value of the record is
nowise impaired by this uncertainty.  The scriptures of the New Testament contain enough of the
mind of Christ to serve as a standard of Christian
truth, and to furnish a well of refreshing in which
a corrupted and penitent Church may wash and be
clean. But they do not contain the sum of Christianity, no more than the acorn contains the oak.
It is a mistake to suppose that the Apostolic age 
64   THIE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
was the perfect age of the Church, and every subsequent age a wider departure from the truth, a
steady progress in corruption. A truer idea of the
Christian dispensation is expressed in the word
development.   Christianity is not a fixed but a
flowing quantity and power. It is not to be found
complete and entire in any scripture, church, or
age, but unfolds itself successively through many
scriptures, churches, ages. It is not a totality, but
a process; a process of which the Church - that
is, Christian society - is at once the medium and the
exponent, and ecclesiastical history the report.
Let ecclesiastical history, then, understand its
function to be that of exhibiting the progress of
Christianity as it organizes itself in human society, and the progress of society as organized by
Christianity.
This twofold process is subject to laws without
which, and the belief in which, all history is a mere
collection of dead facts without sense or purpose.
These laws in the sphere of the Church are all
comprised in that Providential ageney which theology terms the " Holy Spirit."  The action of
the "Holy Spirit" is the fundamental postulate,
the organic hypothesis of Christian Church-history,
without which the study of that history is meaningless and valueless.
I propose to consider this agency which shapes 
TIIE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.   65
and constitutes the history of the Church, in some
of its aspects.
It manifests itself, in the first place, as Ordination, -a divine necessity directing and controlling
the order of events. In history as in Nature there
is nothing fortuitous, nothing wilful, nothing that
could have been other than it was. Human freewill is the instrument employed; but the result is
necessary. Every finite will is divinely circumscribed; and the sum of all wills is comprehended
in the orbit of the Universal Will, and resolves
itself into that. This first and vital principle of
all historical science applies with peculiar emphasis
to the history of the Church, and is all the more
important to the right understanding of the facts,
the more the facts appear to contradict it.
To the superficial glance, the history of the
Church appears to be a tissue of accidents, a wild
and wayward deviation at every step from the
probable and looked-for and natural direction.
A native of Palestine, and destined in the views
and expectations of its first teachers to occupy
that soil with its supreme power and central life,
Christianity soon became an alien in the land of
its birth. Of oriental lineage, it never perceptibly
influenced the civilization of the East; but casting
5 
66   TIIE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
aside its oriental costume, which survives only as
a fossil relic of Biblical archeology, forgetful of its
Asiatic blood, it turned its back on ancestral Shem,
and settled with the children of Javan who divided
the isles of the Gentiles. The seed of Abraham
identified itself with the uncircumcised West.
Entrusted to simple provincials whose little world
was all contained between Lebanon and Carmel,
whose highest conception of their mission was to
reinstate the Judaic dynasty, it was suddenly
snatched out of their hands by a daring outsider
who had never known Christ in the flesh; who
boasted that his Christianity was an independent revelation, and would take no instructions
from those who had the gospel direct from its author; who magnificently set aside the foremost of
them all, and withstood him to his face; who called
himself an Apostle, but was not so regarded by
the other Twelve; who gave the religion an entirely new aspect, and yet came to be regarded as
its authorized and principal exponent.  It began
with announcing a heavenly kingdom, and hastened to establish an earthly one.  Instead of erecting, as was fondly expected, its throne on Zion, it
selected for its capital the mother of abominations,
the Babylon of the Apocalypse. It began with
establishing social equality, even to community of
goods; but soon developed a priestly aristocracy, 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  67
the most complex and oppressive the world has
ever known. It began with hereditary horror of
graven images, and came to be the horror of Ishmael for its idolatry. It began with worshipping
Spirit in spirit and truth, and it came to worship
a morsel of bread.
If we come to doctrines, we find equal cause
for surprise in its wide and apparently wilful
divergence from the primitive faith, and in the
trivial causes which decided the prevalence of the
one or the other opinion in the Church. Compare
the discourses of Jesus as reported by the evangelists, or even the confession of faith known as the
Apostles' Creed, with the doctrines propounded by
the Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, with
the "Summa" of the thirteenth, with the Tridentine decisions of the sixteenth; and see how huge
a nimbus of ecclesiastical orthodoxy envelops how
small a nucleus of primitive faith. The christology
of the Church, for more than a century, fluctuated
between Athanasian orthodoxy on the one hand
and Arian, Nestorian, and Ettychian heresies on
the other. The decisions of the Councils did not
always coincide with the general opinion of Christ endom at the time; and only the accidental circum stance of imperial patronage, concurring with the
views of interested prelates, prevented the deci sion of the fourth Council from being reversed by 
68   THE WAY OF HIS TORIC CHRISTIANITY.
another in the brief period which intervened be tween the fall of the Western Empire and the
schism of the Churches, and left the doctrine of
Latin Christianity respecting the nature of Christ
where the middle of the fifth century had placed
it. The policy which fixed the faith of nations
was not always regulated by the piety and wisdom
of those who would seem most fit to direct it.
Cabal and intrigue, the accidents of life, court
patronage, intimidation, and even armed force
have sometimes carried the day in the action of the
Councils and the conduct of the Churches. The
turbulent ferocity of Cyril decided the issues of
the Council of Ephesus, and gave a goddess to the
Christian world. The sister'of one Cesar caused
the triumph of the Arians, and the sister of another
procured the defeat of the Nestorians. The death
of two emperors,1 leaving their orthodox widows
on the throne, established the worship of idols in
the East. The perfidy of another instigated the
reformation in Bohemia, the forerunner of Protestantism and the parent of one of the purest of
existing sects.   The want of a marriage license
drove Popery from England; a failing exchequer
drove Protestantism from France.
From these and numberless other instances it
might seem as if the course of ecclesiastical his
1 Leo and Theophilus. 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTI'ANITY.  69
tory, and with it the fortunes of Christianity, were
left to chance and human caprice; as if the conditionI of Christianity at any moment were the mere
fortuitous result of such agencies. But no one can
suppose this, who considers for a moment the consequences implied in it. Such a supposition is
fatal to any rational idea of Divine revelation.
For why do we believe in a self-revealing Spirit?
Why believe that the heavens in man were opened,
and a fresh word from the bosom of the Everlasting interpolated in the groping intellect's uncertain
process, but because we see such apocalypse to be
needful for the future and constant guidance of
the race? And how is that end to be accomplished
except by the stated, normal action of the same
Spirit which evolved that gospel in the fulness of
time, and which never, in all time past, had left
the world without witness and without mediation
of the godhead, and without a word proportioned to
its day?  There are Christians who seem to think
of the Holy Spirit as the ancients did of their
Astr,ea. They suppose that it had its dwelling on
this earth in the golden age (the apostolic age)
of the Church, but fled up to heaven in the brazen
and iron ages which succeeded, and has been to
the Church ever since but a distant star in the
zodiac of old traditions. I believe, on the contrary,
that the Holy Spirit,- in whatsoever manifestation 
70   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
or disguise, illumination or occultation, -has never
been wanting to the Church of Christ; has been in
sunshine or in shade, in triumph or in passion, the
"effectual working in the measure of every part,"
to "the increase of the body" and the " edifying
of itself in love; "-now emerging into solemn
epiphany in seasons of "refreshing from the presence of the Lord," now engulphed in disastrous
twilight; but still there, still active, though all its
action may, at some dear crisis, have been confined
to one poor, hunted, cowering sect, or folded up in
a single agonizing breast. Whatever reason there
is for supposing a revelation at all, for believing ill
divine dispensations of truth, the same reason compels us to believe that such a dispensation, once
initiated in human society, is not left to itself to
take what direction chance may impart, to prosper
or fail as chance may decide; but in all its developments and phases is still subject to the same Power,
and still directed by the same Wisdom, which dispensed the original word, and planted a new heaven
and a new earth in the human breast. Without
the supposition of the Holy Spirit as its method
and law, there is no ecclesiastical history that
deserves investigation.
Another aspect in which this agency presents
itself is Education. We have viewed it as divine 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  71
necessity, we have next to consider it as divine
beneficence. The Spirit not only appoints, but
appoints with a purpose, - a wise and benevolent
purpose directing the order of events, and causing
them to co-operate in promoting the spiritual growth
of society; that is, in educating society. There
is and can be, in the nature of things, no absolute
demonstration of such a purpose. It is pure hypothesis, which the consummation of all things
alone can verify. But the need of this hypothesis
to rationalize the portents and enormities of history, to bring them into harmony with any intelligible, conceivable order of the universe, the
atheistic alternative of no purpose and no Providence involved  in its rejection, -these  are its
warrant and abundant justification.
History, or the world of conscious, voluntary
agencies, is more prolific, as might be expected, in
disturbances and anomalies, in horrors and atrocities, than the unconscious, involuntary world of
Nature. But geology knows that the earth of today,- our human earth with its apt appointments
and nice accommodation to human uses, its stratified mountains and alluvial valleys, its granite and
slate and coal and iron,- is the product of those
stupendous revolutions that perplexed the Saurian
nations of pre-Adamite time. And humanity trusts
that the deadly encounters, the atrocious wrongs, 
72   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
the persecutions and fightings, the blood and crime
of past societies shall furnish the necessary social
deposits, the historic strata and ecclesiastical alluvium of future composed and tranquil ages,
when our present imperfect organizations shall
be known only as steps toward a new and replenished earth.
Nowhere is the dark side of history more prominent than it is in the annals of the Church. And
what to Christian faith is more perplexing than
the horrors of Christian warfare, than Christian
persecutions, and all the atrocities committed in
the name of religion, is the wide and seemingly
wilful divergence of the doctrine and practice of
the  Church  from  the  precepts of the Gospel.
When  we turn from the teachings of Jesus to
John-of-Damascus's or Anselm's doctrine of Redemption, or St. Thomas's doctrine of Sacraments;
from the Agapce of the Apostles to the High Mass;
from the Council at Jerusalem to the Council of
Constance, - we are conscious of a gulf imperfectly
bridged by the Christian name.   I have often
thought that if I were to undertake, as an exercise
of ingenuity, to construct a system of religion as
far as possible removed from the Christianity of
the Gospel, without abandoning the Christian
name, I should be likely to invent some such
system as that of the Church of Rome. And eer 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.   73
tainly many of the doctrines and practices of that
Church, -  such  as  indulgences,  transubstantiation, penances and masses for the dead, - must
be regarded by  all but  Romanists  themselves,
however liberal and philosophically tolerant, as
inventions and corruptions which have foisted
themselves on the primitive faith. But to say
that the entire doctrine and practice of the Church,
whereinsoever it departs from the Gospel record
and the teachings of the Apostles,- that is, where
Gospel and Epistles, as we understand them, furnish no basis for such doctrine or practice, -is
sheer corruption, this is to adopt a position which
I find it impossible to reconcile with any worthy
or tenable view of Divine revelation. It supposes Christ to be defeated by Anti-Christ; it supposes revelation to be a failure, and the Word
of God to return unto him void, not having accomplished the thing which he pleased, nor prospered in that whereunto he sent it. The idea of
Divine revelation involves as its necessary corollary a Providential oversight of that revelation, a
Providential order in its developments.  And if
we allow a Providential order in the history of the
Church, we concede to it the order best adapted
to the spiritual wants of the time and the education of the human mind. The religion of the
Middle-Age is certainly not the Christianity of 
74  THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
the New Testament; but we are not therefore
authorized to pronounce it unchristian or antichristian. The New Testament is the highest,
but by no means the only, authority in matters of
Christian doctrine. To maintain that it is so, is an
error of Protestantism, which a candid and enlightened Protestantism in this age of the Church should
reconsider and renounce. It is an error involving
consequences as grave as the Catholic theory of
tradition to which it was opposed. We cannot
claim inspiration for the Scriptures and deny it to
the Church. The former depends on the latter.
It was the Church that decided, and that after
much controversy, of what books the New Testament should consist.  And all the books of our
present New Testament were not embraced in the
canons either of Laodicea or of Carthage.
I do not say that the Church was infallible in
her speculative views, that she had sight of the
absolute truth, or came so near to it as enlightened
individuals who in all periods have dissented from
her judgments, -the heretics of elder and more
recent times.  But I believe that the Church was
wise in her practical decisions, wiser even than
she knew; wise with the unconscious wisdom of
spiritual instinct. In other words, she was inspired. Even in those cases in which her decisions seem most repugnant to reason, her course 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  75
may have been divinely shaped in accordance with
ends divinely ordained. The truths of the time
are not always truths of pure reason; and still
they are truths.
One or two eases may serve for illustration.
The earliest doctrinal decisions of the Church
are those which assert the deity of Christ. Whatever may be our private convictions regarding this
doctrine, whatever we may think of the evidence
for it or against it in the writings of the New Testament, thus much is certain, -that the deepest
consciousness and truest life of the Church in
the fourth century were with the doctrine and
for it.
Equally certain is the wonder-working influence
of this idea on the heart of Christendom, when
once by faith it became a constituent of the mental life of the Church. It brought the individual
mind and heart into close, immediate, and even
sensible communion with God; it made the Church
the veritable kingdom of God to believers; it gave
her a sense of Divine authority and sufficiency, of
saving necessity and absoluteness, which satisfied
her own consciousness of rightful sway and carried
conviction of that right to others. It was not
enough in rude ages to be intellectually assured of
the truth of Christianity as a system of faith and 
76   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
practice; it was necessary to have a God historically present and verbally speaking to the
soul. On the other hand, the philosophic mind,
impatient of propositions which it cannot range
and schematize in its own fashion, may find in the
very terms which formulate this dogma in the
language of the Councils a way of escape from
any violence done to the understanding by an
indiscreet presentation of the subject.
Nowhere, it seems to me, is the guiding Providence of God in history more conspicuous than it
is in the wording of the final dictum of the Councils respecting the nature of Christ. The christology of the Church was the growth of centuries.
The homoousian theory passed through several
stages before it was perfected and given to the
world in the form which remains to this day the
genuine "Orthodox" view of Christ, though very
unlike the soi-disant, Patri-passian Orthodoxy of our
time. The first four cecumenical councils represent
its principal phases and successive modifications, as
developed by the exigency of different periods and
conflicting minds. The Council of Nicma decided
that Christ was one with God in substance; that of
Constantinople reaffirmed this consubstantiality and
applied it to the Holy Spirit.  At Ephesus it was
determined that in Christ two natures unite in
one person; and finally, at Chalcedon it was con 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  77
eluded that, though the person be one, the natures
remain two natures still. This was the final triumph of Athanasian orthodoxy over the heresies
opposed to it.  It was well for the Church and
well for humanity that this view prevailed as
against the Arian and against the monophysite.
Both these doctrines flout the humanity of Jesus.
The monophysite perceived only deity in Christ.
The Arian saw neither God nor man, nor a Godman, but a hypothetical being who is different
from both, -a sheer invention, an unintelligible
ghostly chimera, whom one can neither repose in
as true God nor sympathize with as genuine man.
The Athanasian doctrine preserves the humanity
intact, and even guards it with jealous care, leaving me at liberty, as my spiritual wants or mental
habits incline, to fasten on the human or divine in
the hypostatic union, - ov',a/uov  0 rS    v Ov'Greovt
;tapopa av7rpVIE rT  t'a T eVl e,ri)~to, 0o 0Io/EV?7v 8e
A    ^  ^ L'tO  I     t,            \  I   -IN
/a\Xov Tr? Z;OeT/TOq EKaTEpa? poV'ecoS, Kat eb? ev
,     \ ~La,  vf,,t
7rpo-w7rov:ca't lay   vvro'Tao' v o'vvTpeXovo'?Iq.
The Catholic or Orthodox christology is precisely that which, by the comprehensiveness and
impartiality of its statement, allows the largest
liberty of speculation, and admits of the greatest diversity of view.  It merely affirms what
every one believes, who believes in Christianity
at all,- that God and man wrought together in 
78   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTLI4NITY.
Christ for the regeneration of human kind. In
what way and measure these two agencies combined in the one Trpo'G(7ror, it does not undertake
to determine. Your faith may prefer to dwell on
the God in Christ; my spiritual wants may need the
man. Here is that which gives to each what each
demands, unprejudiced and unimpaired: salva proprietate utriusque naturce; verbo operante quod verbi
est, et camrne exsequente quod carnis est. The Arian
doctrine, on the other hand, is a rigidly defined,
abrupt hypothesis, intractable, insoluble; to be
taken bodily, if at all, and held by an act of volition as a stubborn anomaly which the mind can
neither historically adjust nor philosophically assimilate.
Another instance in which the historical issue
conflicts with the rational, Protestant judgment
is that of the Council of Ephesus, which asserted
the godhead of the mother of Jesus by the title of
Oeo76KOS (God's mother), and deposed the patriarch
Nestorius for disputing that phrase.
When we read in the Gospel the story of Jewish
Mary, the descendant of forty generations of monotheists and idol-haters, the meek girl betrothed to
one as lowly as herself, the fond mother whose whole
future is concentrated in her first-born, the careful
housewife intent on domestic offices; when, with this 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.   79
conception in our mind, we turn to the fifth and
following centuries of the Christian Church, and find
this Galilean woman converted into a goddess, the
foremost figure in the Christian ritual,- this daughter of a nation whose prophets denounced the vengeance of God on the recreant women of the tribe
for burning incense to the " Queen of Heaven," herself transfigured into a Queen of Heaven, and receiving incense in that name,- we are conscious of a
startling discrepancy between the Gospel and the
Church. We perceive that, in migrating from its
native fold in the bosom of Israel to alien Gentile
climes, Christianity cast aside the sacred traditions
of its Hebrew ancestry, and compounded with the
profane Roman and Greek.  Our first feeling is one
of indignation and disgust at what seems a gross
and wilful perversion of the purpose and spirit of
our religion. But when we consider all that the
Virgin was to the Church of the Middle Age,how, when in the lapse of time and the absence of
the Scriptures the Son of Man had receded so far
into absolute godhead that, though theoretically
human still, his humanity and with it his mediatorial character had quite faded from the popular
mind, - how, then, the Mother replaced the Son,
and became the acknowledged mediatrix between
God and man; when we consider how this radiant figure of the medieval cult embodied to the
I@ 
80   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
popular mind, together with all that is holy and
reverend in Deity, all that is congenial and kindly
in man, and especially all that is pure and tender
in woman, -that in her, as never before and nowhere else, were impersonated spiritual beauty and
celestial love,- that in her for the first time the
world possessed a moral ideal, and with it a triumphant vindication of womanhood; when, above
all, we reflect that the Virgin was the only intelligible manifestation and representative of Divine
grace, that in her and through her the pardoning
mercy of God was revealed and dispensed to an
age incapable of apprehending spiritual ideas which
were not embodied in a sensuous type; and when
we think of the mighty influence which such a
personality, which the constant presence of such
an idea, must have had in refining and educating
the mind of the time,- our disgust will be changed
to admiration of the Providential wisdom which
furnished so important an aid to spiritual culture
and devout aspiration in the wreck of conventions,
the dissolution of manners, the shock of lawless
violence, the triumph of brute force, the desolation
and disorganization which succeeded the decay of
the old civilization. Over all the tumult and tempests of that wild time this gentle and benign form
brooded like a dove, rebuking violence, compassionating sorrow, calming grief, refreshing hope, at 
THIE WAY OF HISTORIC CIIRISTIANITY.   81
tracting devotion, forgiving penitent guilt; every where composing, encouraging, reconciling. It is
true the Mother in a measure supplanted the Son
and even concealed the Father, filling up the whole
field of the Christian's heaven, receiving the honors
and apparently fulfilling the functions of the godhead.   The creature was preferred  before  the
Creator: so far the action of the Church was seemingly a return to heathenism.   Yet it was no
heathen goddess which the Church adored in the
person of Mary, no imperfect creature disfigured
by human frailties and passions, but the very
beauty of holiness; a faultless image invested - so
far as the mind of that age could apprehend them
-with the veritable attributes of Deity.  Practically it wa       s       God h imself whom the mariolater addressed, - the Eternal, with a tenderer name and
more intelligible accidents and more defined personality. It is the nature of devout sentiment,
when once it becomes dominant in the mind and
acts independently of the understanding, to body
forth the object of its devotion, to give form and
feature to the infinite, to humanize if not to idolize
its God. We may well pardon mediaeval devotion,
which gave its God the form most intelligible to
its own thought and most grateful to its own feeling. So far as the religious life of the individual
is concerned, it matters less to what idea of divin                        6 
82   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
ity we pray (so it embrace our highest conceptions
of the holy and the good), than it does that the
prayer itself be fervent and true. It would seem
as if the Almighty had purposely shrouded himself
behind this effulgent image, and thrust it ostensibly forth as the fittest demonstration and truest
embodiment of those attributes of divinity which
it most concerned the popular mind to believe and
to cherish,- especially of divine grace, which having been excluded from the creed of the Church,
except as a special distinction conferred on certain
elect natures, reappeared in its mnythology. It was
the most effectual'if not the only way in which the
characteristic grace of the Gospel could be presented to the unreflecting mind of the time.
Nestorius and his party were burned and persecuted, not for refusing homage to the Virgin,
but because they protested against the title by
which it was proposed to designate the new divinity, -a severe measure, seeing that the protest
probably spruling from a truer piety than that which
dictated the dogma. But this historic wrong, if
we so regard it, was historically righted and compensated in the final event.  The pious patriarch
died the victim of unjust persecution; but his
party survived, and with them his faith and name.
The Nestorians became a large and powerful sect
independent of the Catholic Church.  They spread 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  83
through Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, India;
they crossed the Imnaus and established a church in
Tartary. The Christians of St. Thomas, on the
coast of MIalabar, are their descendants. They are
still extant in various parts of Asia. In their
origin the most primitive of Christian churches,
older than the Roman, more eastern than the
Greek, they have perpetuated Christianity in the
land of its birth.
I will cite but one more instance in which the
course of ecclesiastical history appears at first to
contradict our ideal, but is found on reflection to
justify itself as Providential wisdom.   My third
example is the stubborn policy of Rome, which
created, or which failed to heal, the successive
ruptures of the Church.   Beside the Nestorian
schism and other lesser fragments, Christendom is
now divided into three great sections,- the Greek,
the Latin, and the Protestant Churches.   This
division, of which Rome lays the blame on those
whom she excluded, is in fact her own work,the result of that imperious absolutism with which
she has always trampled on the private conscience,
and required unconditional surrender of opinion.
This policy ecclesiastical Rome inherited from
pagan Rome. The Emperor Trajan established
the principle, not unknown to modern and even
republican legislation, the precise enunciation of 
84   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
which he owed to Pliny, - that whatsoever the
private convictions of a subject, whether right or
wrong - qualecumqrue esset quod faterentur-the
obstinate persistence in it, contrary to the will of
government, was a punishable offence; debere puniri. In conformity with this principle, Rome in
the fifth century not only repudiated the imperial
Henoticon, which aimed to restore the integrity of
the Christian communion, but excommunicated the
Greek churches through their patriarchs for their
complicity in that instrument. In this spirit she
cast out the Iconoclasts in the eighth century, and
broke with Eastern Christendom in the ninth and
the eleventh. And when in the fifteenth, at the
Councils of Ferrara and of Florence, the attempt
was made to reconcile and reunite these severed
fragments, the project was frustrated by Rome's
insisting on the recantation and renunciation by
the Greeks, of the principal points of difference
between them. With the same pervicacity she
turned a deaf ear to the cry for "reform in the
head and members," which went up from the heart
of Christian Germany with the dawning of the
-e'naissance, set up Councils in opposition to the
reform Councils of Constance and Basil, and forced
the Protestant schism by excommunicating the reformers of the sixteenth century, who wished to
purify, not to divide, and would have given their 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  85
lives to preserve the unity of the Church, would
Rome but consent to have it purged of its corruptions. And finally, when forced by the pressure
of the North and West to call the Council of Trent
for the express purpose of reforming abuses and
recovering by reform the Protestant secession, her
intrigues brought about the contrary effect, perpetuated the most offensive features of Romanism,
and established an irreparable breach between the
Roman and the Saxon mind. Better break than
bend; better a divided Church than the smallest
concession; better lose a kingdom than abate a
tittle of her arbitrary will,- has been from the
beginning the one unvarying principle of Roman
policy.
Our moral sentiment of course condemns this
policy, so far as the spirit and temper of Rome are
expressed by it. But considered as the means and
condition of spiritual development and human
prog,ress, our riper judgment will rejoice in it.
The idea of catholicity, of ecclesiastical integrity,
of a single individual church whose heart shall be
the metropolis and whose extremities the outskirts
of civilization, which shall clasp the world with its
binding sacraments,  and string the nations like
beads on the thread of a common confession: one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, - this idea is pleasant to the mind and dear to the heart of humanity. 
86   TiE WAY OF HISTORIC CHlRISTIANII'Y.
When we consider what such a church might
accomplish for the civilization (tnd sanctification of
human kind, no wonder that the instinet of early
Christendom demanded it!  No wonder that earnest spirits in all time have striven for it as the
true fulfilment of the gospel's mission, the realization of that divine word, "That they all may be
one, as I Father in thee and thou in me, that they
may be one in us"! Unquestionably, a Catholic
Church, in some sense, is the rightful heritage of
the Spirit, the consummation to which Faith may
legitimately look, the ideal which Faith is bound
to cherish.
But here, as everywhere, the ideal and the actual
are wide asunder. It is a long way between the
conception and the consummation; and not only
long but devious, circuitous, oftentimes seemingly
retrograde. The path which may ultimately lead
to the goal tends meanwhile in a contrary direction.
Whoever studies attentively the times of those
schisms, and the nationalities divided by them, will
perceive that temporary separation, if not final divorce, was required in order that each new era might
develop itself freely, unhampered by the old.
The real quarrel between the Greek Church and
the Latin, if I rightly interpret it, was not the
worship of images, nor the use of unleavened
bread, nor the different procession of the Holy 
THIE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.   87
Ghost; but something more latent, unknown to
either party, and undefinable, It was the difference which divides the youth from the child.
Latin Chlristianity was rapidly developing a subjectiveness and a sentimentality unknown to classic antiquity, and which bred disaffection toward
the sensuous, objective Greek. The Greek, on the
other hand, always deficient in inwardness, had no
taste for Western devotion, and no sympathy with
Western romance. This antagonism, which displayed itself so glaringly in the time of the Crusades, was sufficiently developed in the eighth and
ninth centuries to render impossible a cordial
union and harmonious co-operation between the
two churches. The mutual excommunications and
formal separations of that crisis did not originate
but only declared a breach beyond the power of
synods to repair.
Six centuries later, there arose between  the
Latin and the German nationalities a feud analogous to that which divided the Latin and  the
Greek. As that was a rupture between boyhood
and youth, so this may be designated as a revolution separating youth from manhood. In the former case it was a new aeon, an age of romance
disengaging itself from the sensuous world of antiquity; in the other it was also a new  eon, an
era of science emancipating itself from the age
1;. 
88   THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
of romance.   Then it was sentiment contending
against sense; now it was science in conflict with
sentiment.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when
Europe began to weary of the saddle, when gunpowder was exploding feudalism, and when the
printing-press was striking off the first proofs of a
new dispensation,-the awakened intellect, hitherto the docile pupil of the Church, and the faithful vassal of suzerain Rome, became conscious of
a want which the Church could no longer supply;
became conscious of a mission whose supreme
function was to summon Rome herself, and all
things else in heaven above  and on  the earth
beneath, to its own inexorable bar. Accordingly,
the alternative of the sixteenth century was not
simply whether Rome should reform specific abuses
or Protestantism secede, but whether Rome should
,lay down her assumed infallibility, or the human
intellect forego its appointed career.  And since
neither course supposed in this alternative was
possible, a schism was the inevitable result.  Rome
might reform specific abuses, and behooved to do so;
but she could not renounce her assumed infallibility
without a suicide involving the downfall of the entire fabric of the Latin Church, - an event which,
in that day, would have been as perilous to Protestant Christendom as to Catholic.  But neither, 
THE WAY OF HI,S TORIC CHRISTIANITY.   89
on the other hand, could the intellect renounce its
divinely-appointed career, nor pursue it in subjection to papal authority. Science could not stoop
to prince or pontiff for leave to see and to say
what she saw. She could not sit at the feet of
Holiness to know if the sun stood still, or the earth
was put together in six times twenty-four hours,
or Moses and Matthew composed the writings
which bear their names. It was necessary that
Rome with her authority and Protestantism with
its science should part company, that each might
unfold its own life and fulfil its mission independently of the other, and both in their several and
separate spheres work together for the common
end, -the education of man.
Thus we have in the three great sections of the
Christian world three epochs of Christian history,
representing three life-periods, -childhood, youth,
and full age; the periods respectively of Sense, of
Sentiment, and of Science.
To the spiritual eye these superficial antitheses
of Greek Church and Latin, Catholic and Protestant, are resolved in the higher synthesis of a common origin and a common Lord; a Christendom
whose Head is one though its polities are many,
and whose kingdom is entire however its communion be divided. The Holy Catholic Church, which
Faith demnands and expects, is no illusion; it 
90   THE WAY OF HISTORI[C CHRISTIANITY.
exists already in the catholizing consciousness of
true piety. Wherever there is a catholic mind,
there, subjectively, is the Catholic Church.
I have spoken of historic Christianity as the
process of —the Spirit by which the divine idea of
the Gospel is to be realized in time. We have
viewed it in its two aspects of necessity and beneficence, with the two corresponding functions,
divine ordination and divine education. But the
action of the Spirit is not  exhausted in these
functions. There remains a third. It lies very
near; it is prefigured in the view which the Christian world entertains of the person of Christ.
Universal Christendom holds that, in some sense
or other, God and man were united in the person
of Christ. I say universal Christendom, because,
historically, the exceptions are not worth noticing.
Whether we state it in the language of the Scripture, "In him dwelt all the fulness of the godhead bodily," or adopt the Orthodox phraseology
of two natures in one person, or say with the Unitarian that Christ was divinely inspired, especially
inspired, possessed of the Spirit "without measure,"- the truth received is practically the same:
the difference is in breadth of statement, not in
substance of doctrine. But Christ, as the Head
of the Ecclesia, is the prototype of the Christian 
TIIE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.  91
world, the representative of the new heaven and
new earth, the spiritual cosmos which the Christian ages are expected to unfold. Whatever was
true of Jesus historically is theoretically and prospectively true of Christianized man. Christianization is mutual adoption of God and man.
The consummation of this process would be to
realize in all men the same union of the human
and the Divine which the Church ascribes to its
Head.  Historic Christianity is the miovemnent of
society in that direction, with all the hindrances
and contradictions and deviations and retrogradations which attend it, and which checker and date
the course of time. It is the progress of society in
that union with God which humanity has in Christ.
Accordingly, the third function of ecclesiastical
history to which I allude is expressed by the term
Incarnation.   God incarnates himself in human.
society just so far as the kingdom of God is established in the world.  Every triumph of truth and
right which Christianity achieves over the selfish
passions of men, like the abolition of slavery and
the emancipation of woman; every principle of justice which gains ascendancy in human legislation,
which incorporates itself with civil government
and becomes an organic element of society, such as
political equality; every institution which labors 
92  ITHE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
in the name of Christ for the relief of human misery and the furtherance of human well-being, such
as hospitals for the sick and insane and ministries
to the poor, - is a step in that progressive incarnation of divine attributes in human kind, which
illustrates and fulfils the prophetic prayer of Christ,
That they all may be one in us."
Christian history, -that is, the written history
of Christian society,- exhibits but little progress
as yet in this direction.   And had we no other
data from which to judge of the future of humanity than what is chronicled in the books, one
might almost despair of the gospel and of man.
So many centuries has the name of Christ been
graved on the forehead of society, and with all
reverence named of men, and so little has the
thing, the spirit, prevailed which that name imports! So many centuries has Christianity builded
its churches and administered its sacraments and
published its scriptures, and so little as yet has
been seen and felt of Christ! The written chronicle seems rather to conceal than to reveal him,
and the first impression of humanity regarding it
might well find vent in the cry, "They have taken
away lily Lord, and I know not where they have
laid him!"  But this first impression is founded
on a very superficial view  of Christian history
and the Christian world. The written chronicle 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.   93
is necessarily a very imperfect account of what has
been effected by the gospel. This is not what
the records have usually undertaken to exhibit.
They report the exterior constitution of the Church,
not its interior life. They chronicle the successive
organizations and varying costume of the Spirit,
not its essential growth. It would not be difficult
to trace through all these centuries of revolution
and misrule, of strife and oppression, of theological
hatred and priestly persecution, the secret windings and subtle ramifications of a sacred artery, a
spiritual aorta, connecting the heart of Christendom with its uttermost fibres, and filled with the
blood of Christ. It would not be difficult to show
that each century in turn has eaten of the flesh of
the Son of Man, and had his life, however latent,
abiding in it. And in this our day, amid all the
indifference and supineness, the scepticism and
the scorn, the madness and the crime, which meet
and appall us on every hand, it would not be difficult to discover unmistakable signs of deeper earnestness and truer devotion, of a more thorough
penetration and occupation of this age by the spirit
of Christ, than any past time has known.
The only philosophy of history which satisfies
mind and heart is optimism, - the belief that all
things tend to good and produce good in the final
result; and that if - in the lofty language of 
94 THE WAY OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
Leibnitz - "we were sufficiently acquainted with
the order of the universe, we should find that it
surpasses all the wishes of the wisest, and that it
could not be better than it is, not only for all in
general but for ourselves in particular."  Christian history, especially, is studied to little purpose
unless we learn from it the Christian lessons of
patience and hope. It reveals not only an unlooked-for power of self-recovery in man through
the agency of the IHoly Spirit, and shows how
impossible it is for God to withdraw or man to
drive that Spirit from the world, and what "a
charmed life old goodness hath," and how  the
deeper shades of moral corruption appear so only
through the light that limits them; but it also
discloses to careful observation a steady progression in good hitherto, which points to a future
better than this present and better than all the
past,- a height and breadth of social development,
a spiritual maturity of human kind, which secular
philosophy concurs with divine revelation in predicting, and to which both have assigned the august title, " City of God." 
IV.
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
A RELIGION wide as the widest outlook of
the modern mind; a religion free as human
thought, concurrent with reason, co-ordinate with
science; a religion in which the present predominates over the past, and the future over the present;
in which judgment tops authority and vision outruns tradition, - this is the instant demand of a
liberal faith.
Two ways appear of meeting this demand, two distinct postures of the mind toward it, among those
who equally urge the claim. The one undertakes to
supplant, the other seeks to unfold. The former
renounces, and declares its independence of, ecclesiastic and historic Christianity; disallows its hereditary title, and rejects all claim of its record to any
admiissions which conflict with the every-day experience of men, which offend the sensuous understanding, or transcend the methods of science. It
culls from the sifted gospel some golden grains of
ethical import, and embodies these in a theory of
life and man which may or may not, according to
circumstances, call itself Christianity, but which 
96  THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
claims to be its essence, and offers itself to the
Church as such.
The other position respects the claim of ecclesi astic continuity, and seeks in Christianity itself,
in historic Christianity, -a meaning and a pur pose so wide as to throw its orbit outside of the
most elliptical radicalisms that traverse its spheres:
as the sun, which seemed to the early Copernicans
stationary, is judged by sidereal astronomy to
have an orbit of its own, which includes the aphelia of all the comets; and not only so, but carries
them with it in its grander sweep.
It is not pretended that this comprehensiveness
lay in the conscious thought of the apostles and
first teachers of Christianity; enough to suppose
that it lay in the mind of the Spirit which edited
the gospel out of the deep of its own idea.  Of this
supposition there is and can be, in the nature of
things, no positive proof. Those who adopt it may,
with the easy self-deception of speculative zeal, unwittingly transfer to the gospel a conceit of their
own engendering. And certainly the Christianity
of those who conjure into it whatever their fancy
affects, is quite as arbitrary in one way as, in another, the Christianity of those who conjure out
of it whatever their fancy distastes. The plus
and minus are equally wide of the truth.
But who shall undertake to say, on historical and 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 97
critical grounds, precisely how much or how little lay
in those utterances of the early Church which have
come down to us, and what were the absolute limits
of their vision? In the writings of St. Paul there
are indications of a mind that out-travelled the perceptions of his contemporaries, and saw in Christianity a possible solution of quite other problems
than the rehabilitation of the Jewish State. The
thoughtful reader, in some of these Epistles, and especially in that to the Romans, comes upon traces
of an intellectual survey which took in a good deal
more than the civil world of that time. St. Paul
was the first interpreter of Christ, who seems to
have divined his historic significance. To the
Palestinian apostles the Christ was but the fulfilment of the hope of Israel. To the author of the
fourth Gospel he was only a bodied Word, a demonstration of godhead on a spiritual plane for
spiritual ends. Paul brought Christianity down
from heaven to earth, as Socrates did philosophy,
and brought it out of the little sanctum of Judaism
into the broad scene of the nations. Christianity,
in his view, was the universal mediator, the reorganizer of universal history. A Jew by descent,
but a citizen of the world in his new-born consciousness, he credited the gospel with cosmopolitan
aims. And one of those aims,- the one which in cludes all others, - he expressed by a term which is
7 
98 THE WAY OF HISTOPIC,ATONEMENT.
rendered "atonement" in our English version of
the text. This brave English word, in its literal
and etymological sense, is itself a contribution to
theology to be received with all thankfulness. No
modern language, that I am aware of, possesses a
word of precisely the same import. Nay, the word
" atonement," I suppose, though it seems presumptuous and sounds paradoxical to say so, expresses
more exactly than even the original Greek the
essential point in Paul's doctrine of reconciliation.
It expresses the result of that process of which the
original Greek and the corresponding word in other
versions suggest the method.
Atonement is one of those ideas which have
suffered much belittling in ecclesiastical hands. It
has never, since Paul's day, had justice done to it
in systems of theology. Theologians, especially
Protestant theologians, have belittled the idea by
a capital misconception, which makes atonement a
private concern of the individual soul, a private adjustment of the soul with God. Nothing could be
more foreign to Paul's view and the views of the
early Church, nothing more foreign to the spirit of
the gospel, than Calvin's idea of "Particular Redemption." Paul, if I rightly conceive him, would
have utterly repudiated such an idea; - a redemption determined by personal favoritism, - a redemption accorded to a favored few, himself 
T'HE WAY OF HIS' TORIC ATONEMENT. 99
being one of the few, and denied to the rest of mankind.  He who wrote, "I could wish that myself
were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
kinsman according to the flesh," was not likely to
limit the grace of God by personal preference, or
to put selection in the place of the election which
he taught. That election itself he saw to be only
initial, and neutralized by the new dispensation:
"Blindness in part hath happened to Israel until
the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and then
all Israel shall be saved. For God hath concluded
them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy
upon all."
The error of particular redemption, like so many
others in theology, has arisen from the transference
of the operation and fruits of the atonement from
this earthly world to a life beyond the grave.
The antichristian absurdity of such a redemption
appears the moment the doctrine is applied to
human life. The atonement comtemplated by
Paul is no private privilege, and no transmundane
acquisition; but a public grace, of which the individual becomes partaker through his social relations and not by private negotiation, and the
realization of which is society itself in the measure
of its moral and Christian progress.
The apostle, cherishing the analogy of Judaism,
connects this idea with that of sacrifice in the death 
100 THE WAY OF ilISTORIC ATONEMENT.
of Christ, - whether in the way of cause and effect,
or of typical demonstration and ecclesiastical parallelism, we need not stop to inquire. The idea
of sacrifice is an ineradicable element in religion,
and could not fail to be retained as an image and
object of contemplation when it ceased to be a ritual function. The Church of Rome has made the
image itself a part of its ritual, in the elevation of
the host; that is, in the presentation by the priest
to the worshipping assembly of a wafer which represents the host or victim offered for man in the
person of Christ. By the daily repetition of this
pantomimic sacrifice, the Church of Rome symbolizes the perpetuity of that atonement which is not
a single but a constant operation of the one sacrifice which, as the writer to the Hebrews says, Christ
offered once for ever. In that dumb show, when
the priest at the tinkling of the bell uplifts the sacred monstrance, according to the theory of Roman
symbolism, the breach that sundered heaven and
earth is momentarily evened, and God and man are
atoned.
Rome symbolizes the perpetuity of the atonement in the ecclesiastical sense of sacrifice for sin;
but, not divining its deeper sense and its application to human society, Rome has failed to represent
what is more important than its perpetuity,- viz.,
its progressiveness. A progressive reconciliation
..... 
TEE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 101
of the earthly and heavenly in human  life, -a
mutual interpenetration of the two,- this I conceive to be the real import of the doctrine of
atonement. An historic process, not a theological
device, is what I find in it.
The general formula of earthly and heavenly
includes many opposites, or supposed opposites,
which constitute accordingly the several topics of
atonement, -natural and supernatural, finite and
infinite, temporal and eternal, God and man, the
Church and the world, mortal and immortal. It
is the tendency of false religion, in all dispensations, to emphasize and magnify these antagonisms.
A true religion tends to harmonize them. Therefore we  say, "The atonement in Christ;" inasmuch as the reconciliation of these antitheses is
the consummation of the Christian idea. I select
for present consideration one or two of the more
significant.
I. Natural and supernatural. The antagonism
here is not in the thing, but in the thought. It is
a classification, under these two heads, of ordinary
and extraordinary phenomena and powers. The
term "natural" is used to denote the stated and
intelligible facts  of human  experience, -  those
which have been investigated, referred to known
agencies, and ranged under formulas which we 
102 THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
call laws. Together they constitute the "System
of Nature," so called; which of course can mean
nothing more than our observation or systematization of Nature. The system is in us, and not in
the things themselves. Whatever transcends these
familiar experiences, - facts which are not embraced in this system, and seem not to tally with
it,- are either denied, or classed as "supernatural."
They are denied by those who cannot tolerate that
their little system, with which so much pains has
been taken, should be proved imperfect by facts
or alleged facts which it will not take in. It is
the feeling of the child who fancies he has made a
perfect figure with the bits of ivory in his Chinese
puzzle, and subsequently discovers that one of the
seven pieces has been left out. He would fain
suppress the refractory piece. It is certainly more
agreeable to question the facts, than to entertain the
suspicion of the "more things in heaven and earth"
of which the poet speaks. Nor is any thing gained,
that I can see, by admitting the facts, so long as
they are excluded from the sphere of Nature, to
which humanity with its destinies belong.  The
term "supernatural" supposes two distinct agencies, Nature and God; that is, it separates Nature
from God, - it makes Nature godless,- and so introduces into the scheme of religion a dualism
which is Manichean and antieliristian.  The prog 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONVEMENT. 103
ress of Christian thought will abolish this dualism,
will teach that the ordinary and extraordinary in
human affairs are equally natural and equally divine. All phenomena are natural, and all causes
that produce them are natural. A genuine miracle
would be the most natural of all; it would be Nature in her immediateness, Nature unveiled, without the illusion of statedness which so befogs poor
human wit, and stands instead of Nature in the
vulgar mind. The spirit is Nature's innermost life:
he who has most of it is most natural. Who so
natural as Jesus? The miracles recorded of him
are proofs of his naturalness. Suppose them mythical, they would still in a certain sense be illustrations of it, as legitimate impressions of his great
nature on contemporary minds. Whoever shall
attain to the same spirituality will experience that
rapport with the central Power which the record
ascribes to Jesus; he will have that sympathy
with the universal Will, that shall make all things
possible which seem desirable. If miracles show
themselves in him, they will be the most natural
things which he does. In proportion as men grow
towards spiritual maturity, it will come to be seen
that there is but one power in the greatest and in
the least,- in the resurrection of the dead and the
shooting of a grain of wheat. In the fulness of
that spiritual maturity the godless distinctions of
I I I 
104 THE WTVAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
false religion will be done away, and natural and
supernatural be atoned.
II. God and man. Religion begins with a huge
separation between these two. In its barbarous
stage, where it takes the form of fetishism; that
with which man has least sympathy is most likely
to serve him as God. His god must be a fright to
command his homage. A monster will answer
that purpose better than a human model of power
and goodness. He will sooner bow to a crocodile
or misshapen stone than to any fellow of his tribe.
And so, at the other end of the spiritual line,
monotheism in its earlier forms, Hebrew monotheism, determined an absolute separation, an impassable gulf, between God and man. God was
in heaven, and man on the earth: the only relation
between them was legislation on one side and subjection on the other; arbitrary exaction there, unconditional obedience here; commandment above
and fear below, and burning and thundering Sinai
between. Theology before the Christian era had
outgrown this view, and sought to correct it with
the notion of a second God, not quite so distant as
the awful first, -a kind of prime minister of the
Majesty on high, intermediate between Him and
this earthly world. The Christian Church took up
the idea, applied it to Christianity, and turned it 
THE WA Y OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 105
about and about, and worked it this way and that
way, to see if a bridge could be made of it to span the
supposed gulf between God and man. The attempt
was a failure: the bridge would not reach. If the
second God is a creature, as the Arians affirmed, there
was still a gulf between him and the first. If he is no
creature, but consubstantial, "very God of very
God," as the Athanasians claimed, then there is a
gulf between him and man. Say with Apollinaris,
that he took the place in Jesus of the human soul;
then Jesus was no man at all, but God appearing
in a human form. Say with Theodore of Mopsuestia, that God was united to a genuine human individual in Christ; and the statement, if analyzed,
can mean no more than that God was associated
with Jesus and co-operated with him,- both uniting in one effect: which is true enough, but if predicated of Christ alone constitutes no substantial
union of God with man, and leaves human nature
where it was before. Practically, the second God
is no neairer to man than the first. The gulf is
still unbridged.  The Holy Spirit which proceeds
from both might supply the missing link, were it
not that the Holy Spirit is conceived by one party
as a priestly charm, by another as a fitful gust from
the heavenly shore. Neither the second God nor
the third can quite reach to bridge the gulf. The
Trinity sits throned on high,- man grovels be 
106 THE WAY OF HIISTORIC ATONEMENT.
low. Theology can mediate no real union between
the human and divine.
What theology did not finish, religion had already
found in the consciousness of Christ.  "I am in
the Father, and the Father in me." " He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father."  "I and the Father are one." Here is no doctrine, but a human
experience. To make theological capital of such
language, to coin this high utterance into dogma,
is almost a sin against the Holy Ghost. It is no
dogma, but the ecstasy of religion; which, as we saw,
having begun with the widest separation of the
human and divine, ends with declaring the absolute
union of the two. What Jesus affirms of himself
he prophesies and implores for all his followers:
"As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that
they may be one in us." Theology has never done
justice to this saying, has never fairly faced it, has
never dared to appropriate its awful import. The
contrast between the idea of humanity one with
God, and the actual world of any past time, has
seemed so monstrous, that the words have remained
a dead letter as to any serious application of their
import. The world, no doubt, is very godless;
society everywhere far below the Christian ideal,
yet somewhat less so than in ages past. Assuredly
the humanities have made some progress. The relief of want, the instruction of ignorance, the re 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 107
form of vice, are more and more objects of care and
effort in Christian society. And these humanities
are also divinities. All agencies and organizations
based on purely moral ideas, and working in the
spirit of faith and love for moral ends, are the
very presence and inworking of God in society.
Thus God progressively incarnates himself in human life; and thus human life, with progressive
edification, builds itself up into God. In the
measure in which these agencies accomplish their
design; in the measure in which sin and wrong are
weeded out of the walks of men, in which the law
of love asserts its sway and extends its empire over
human life, in which the face of society conforms
to the image of Christ, - in that measure the
atonement proceeds until God and man are one;
one not only in community of purpose and identity
of will, but one in the consciousness of mutual,
perfect, and unchangeable love.  "All mine are
thine, and thine are mine," "thou in me and I in
thee," must  be the confession, must express the
consciousness of collective humanity, if the kingdom of heaven is any thing more than a Jewish
chimera or a waking dream.
III. As the greater includes the less, the union
of God and man involves the resolution of all the
other antitheses named; and especially that of 
108 THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
temporal and spiritual, or the Church and the
world. The line of that division bisects all religions and civilizations hitherto.  The more immature, the more crude and idolatrous the faith of an
age or people, the more it has emphasized and
organized this dualism. In the elder faiths it developed an hereditary priesthood and a hieratic
government, and culminated in the deification of
the spiritual function; as witnessed to this day in
the twice-born Brahman of India, and the Khubilai Khan or Lama-God of Thibet. The separation of sacred and profane in human life bears an
inverse ratio to the progress of religion. The ruder
the religion, the wider the separation.
The genius of Christianity, as shown in the
Gospels, is wholly and gloriously adverse to such
separations.  While it sanctifies the world, it secularizes the Church, and looks to the doing away of all
distinction between the two. Jesus was emphatically a man of the world.  The daily walks of men
were familiar to his feet; their daily joys and sorrows, and all their wants, familiar to his heart.
When he went to the marriage feast, he went as a
wedding guest, and brought his own contribution,
material as well as moral, to the general joy. When
he went among publicans and sinners, he sat at their
tables without reserve, and shrank from no contact
with the daughters of vice. Religion might flaunt 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 109
her sanctimonies,- he wore no phylactery but his
native holiness; he suffered no sabbath to check
his humanity, and no tradition to bound his freedom. The genius of Christianity abhors professional sanctity; it abhors a priestly caste.
But the genius of Christianity is one thing; its
historic envelopment, another. Christendom hastened to establish a priesthood; the priesthood
hastened to invest itself with exclusive and magical
powers. Professional Christianity hastened to separate its holies from the profane world. Into the
desert and into the cell, into sackcloth and cowl,
went all the religion, and starved and scourged
and tormented itself, until piety and penance were
synonymous terms, and a wasted, woe-begone figure, bending over a death's-head or clasping a crucifix, became the exponent and symbol of devotion. With equal zeal, in the opposite direction,
the secular interest hastened to withdraw from the
ghastly presence of the sons of God. Into the saddle and into the field and into the pirate ship, into
violence and blood and lawless rapine, rushed the
godless outside world, and knew no religion but
the most external, - passive reception of sacraments that kept the Devil, who was also external,
at bay.
All through the centuries of the middle age, this
sheer separation of the spiritual and temporal pre 
110  [ItE WAY OF RISTO7I0C ATONEMENT.
vailed. Religion was a specialty, a distinct professionI, nowise incumbent on the world at large.  The
very word became a synonyme of separation,- as
in Southern Europe to this day a religious person
denotes a monk or a nun.  The institution of chivalry was a kind of mediation between these extremes.  When  martial prowess was married to
saintly devotion, when the swordsman became a
missionary of righteousness, a limit was set to the
reign of brute force on the one hand, and of ghostly
pretension on the other. This beautiful growth of
the middle age is the type of a still continuing mediation between the Church and the world, represented in our day by practical philanthropy
and social reform. For still the separation continues,- in Protestant Christendom still continues.
Religion is still a specialty, a distinct concern.
A sharply dividing, line, in most Protestant sects,
distinguishes with superior holiness the sheep of
the inner communion from the necessary but unsanctified goats of the outer fold. These distinctions, whatever their value in view of the present
state and stage of Christian culture, are nevertheless proofs of an immature Church and imperfect
atonement. " When that which is perfeet is come,
then that which is in part shall be done  away."
The Church as at present interpreted, is a partiality; religion, as now understood, is a partiality: par 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 111
tialities which are providential, indispensable hitherto; the abolition or disuse of which would only
leave us the opposite partialities of worldliness and
irreligion uncorrected and unchecked. Better that
the Church and the world, spiritual and temporal,
business and religion, should stand opposed to each
other as now, than that the world and its temporalities should stand alone, and Church and religion
have no standing.  Nevertheless, it must  not be
forgotten that the perfect state is the interpenetra-.
tion of these opposites; that the true Church is
society informed by the Spirit of God; that true religion is the health of the spirit manifest in healthy
and beneficent action. All other religion, - religion that detaches itself from thle business of life,however commended by saintly precept and illustrated by saintly example, is disease, or at best a
provisional experience. The sanctities of man are
not his separations, but his communications; and,
as language itself instructs us, holiness and wholeness are one.  Atonement will not be complete until the distinction of sacred and profane, temporal
and spiritual, business and religion, the Church
and the world, is practically neutralized; until
these dislocations of human nature are healed,
these severed parts and processes atoned in one
undivided and absolute life. 
112 T'HE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMlENT.
IV. That absolute life, that mighty solvent in
which flesh and spirit are resolved, and natural and
supernatural fused in one,- shall it not also fuse
and resolve the last and longest contradiction of
time, the contradiction of mortal and immortal, the
here and the hereafter, earth and heaven in the
local sense of those terms? " The last enemy that
shall be put under is death." The apostle who
wrote thus had a vision of a state in which death
should be no more. The popular belief transfers
that state from this human earth to some unknown
region beyond; and Christians talk of "going to
heaven" in much the same way that the ancients
talked of going to the place of departed souls:
with this exception, that the going in the one case is
a going up, in the other it was a going down; but
with this advantage on the side of the ancients,
that they had a distinct conception of the whereabouts of their imaginary world, and the route
by which it was reached. I see no reason for this
translocation; no reason for supposing that the
sphere of planetary attraction ceases with the dissolution of the animal frame; no reason for supposing that the planet's hold of its own is bounded by
the animal life. On the contrary, it accords with
reason to believe that the soul - which makes the
individual, and which must not be confused with
the accompanying spirit, which is not individual 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 113
is a part of the planetary life, and can never, while
that life endures, be divorced from the system to
which it belongs.
It may be that the human body, without the intervention of death, will one day become so etherealized as to be impervious to death, - will become
death-proof; that in this way mortal will put on
immortality. However this may be, I am persuaded that dying is not migration, that this earth
is man's future and eternal abode, and that in the
course of human development the time will come
when death shall no longer occupy the place it now
does in the human economy; but, if in any sense it
continues to be, will be practically, as an enemy,
put under. In the final and consummate atonement, this last antagonism of mortal and immortal,
earth and heaven, will be atoned. There will be no
talk then of "going to heaven," as in the Gospel
there is no such word. We do not go to heaven,
but heaven comes to us.  They whose inner eye
is opened see heaven, and they who see it are in it,
and the air to them is thick with angels, like the
background of Raphael's "M other in glory."
I have dwelt on those topics of atonement which
seemed to me most significant, and which best
illustrate the practical working and thoroughness
of the great historic process. It might seem that
8 
114 THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
the survey should embrace, among other adjustments, the reconciliation of science and religion,
-the two interests which divide the mental
life of the age, and whose growing antagonism
has been to many good people a source of uneasiness in recent time.  But this antagonism belongs
rather to the realm of thought than to that of
actual life, with which our view of the atonement
is mainly concerned. As such, it is properly included in that of natural and supernatural.
The opposition of science and religion is discrepance of methlod, rather than contrariety of aim.
Both are ministers of social well-being, and therefore co-agents in the work of atonement; for
whatever promotes the general well-being is an
agent in that work. Both seek the good of society,
but in ways how different!  The one by unfolding
and applying the laws of Nature; the other by
revealing and applying the laws of the soul.  The
one by facilitating social converse; the other by
ennobling its quality. The one by evening physical obstructions and extending the material comforts of life; the other by eradicating moral evils
and deepening the import and consciousness of life
into life everlasting. Both look to human wellbeing; both, if genuine, end there. But here is
the rub! The action and success of religion depend
on certain ideas and beliefs whichl science, if it 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 115
does not impugn, mistrusts and discredits, because
unable to verify them by its own methods, -
methods approved in its own domain. Such ideas
as Providence, Revelation, or God in history, Immortality,- nay, the idea of a God, in any proper
sense of the word, -is out of the domain of
science, and is only admitted, if at all, on the
ground of the moral sense.
The stupendous successes of science in her own
dominion have emboldened her to claim jurisdiction over territory not amenable to physical authority, and to war against dynasties that sit
"on no precarious throne, nor borrow leave to be."
Religion acknowledges with all thankfulness the
share in the atonement which science may rightfully claim,- her mediatorial agency in the sensible world, where her ministry is always a ministry
of reconciliation, smoothing the hostilities, adjusting the alienations, yoking the contrary forces, compelling the antagonisms of Nature, and stretching
the electric cord of intelligence from city to city,
and from land to land, across all solitudes and
under all deeps. Subsidizing for that purpose the
swiftest of material agents, by a kind of earthly
omnipotence, she compels the lightnings to be our
couriers, and drives them by the wondrous road
she has built for their journeyings along "the
bottom of the monstrous world," where, since the 
116 THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT.
birth of time, no sentient heart ever beat, no voice
ever broke the eternal silence, no thought ever
penetrated but the omnipresent thought of God!
Through those untrodden and sunless realms a
road has been built for the lightnings to go upon
and to carry intelligence and conscious thought and
purpose, and tidings of war and peace, and solemn
greetings, across the unsympathizing vastness, virtually annihilating the hostile element, and so fulfilling the prophecy, that there be "no more sea."
Religion accepts with all thankfulness the mediations of science; but religion will not suffer
science to dictate her beliefs, or to strike from her
creed whatever the text-books fail to explain.
When M. Renan declares it to be an absolute rule
of criticism to admit no miracle in history, because
the condition of a miracle is faith, religion is content that men should render to Criticism the things
which are Criticism's, and to Faith the things
which are Faith's.  But when he insists that "the
faith of humanity" rests on a fancy of Mary Magdalene, religion can but smile at the huge inconsistency which, seeking to escape an improbability,
tumbles into a tenfold greater, and which sacrifices
the real order of Nature to an idol so named. Of
the real order of Nature, the first principle is, that
every effect must have an adequate cause. The
Christian Church was founded in the belief of the 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 117
resurrection of Christ.   What was the cause of
that belief?  To rest the growth of ages on a
woman's delusion, is a greater invasion and inversion of the order of Nature than any miracle
recorded in the New Testament. It is one of the
mistakes of the time, to overrate the authority of
physical science, whose judgments are valid only
on purely material ground, and lose their conclusiveness when a spiritual factor intervenes. To
deny the spiritual factor is the instinct of science,
but also her weakness; an unconscious confession
of her own limitation, which many mistake for the
limit of truth. In the world of phenomena, science
is queen; in the world of causes, she is a bungler
and an alien. It is only within her proper and
bounded domain of physical inquiry that she can
claim to be interpreter of the methods of God. It
has been said that religion has no function "which
may not be discharged by science." If so, let us
hasten to make up for lost time, for wasted hours
of worship, since the foundation of the world.
Let us straightway convert our temples into lecturerooms.  Cease idle prayers, cease drivelling praise!
Henceforth let the weekly holy-day be devoted to
scientific investigations. Let the children of the
Sunday-school repeat for litany the multiplicationtable instead of the Lord's Prayer. Let anatomical and physiological demonstrations replace the 
118 THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMIENT.
broken body of the Eucharist and the waters of
baptism.   Let font and chalice be sent to the
curiosity-shop, and shelved with Chinese josssticks and hideous Indian gods. Vanish, ye dim
surmises of a supersensuous world! Vanish the
Holy Ghost! Let serviceable gases entertain the
well-spent hour!
Science call do much; but there are functions
of religion which cannot be discharged by science.
Not yet has science succeeded to the throne of God
in the heart of mankind.  We  are no nearer to
God in our knowledge than in our ignorance,
unless to the knowledge of Nature be added the
knowledge of spiritual truth.   On the contrary,
without the spiritual complement, the more scientific, the more atheistic.  Science can do much;
but there are straits in life where science can afford
neither counsel nor aid.  Standing by the bedside
of his dying mother, says a German humorist, "I
thought over all the great and little inventions of
man, -the doctrine of souls, Newton's system of
attraction, the Universal German Library, the Genera Plantarum, the Mayister lVatheseos, the Calculus Itnitorium, the right and oblique ascension of
the stars and their parallaxes. But nothing would
answer. And she lay out of reach, lay on the
brink, and was going; and I could not even see
where she would fall.  Then I commended her to 
THE WAY OF HISTORIC ATONEMENT. 119
God, and went out and composed a prayer for the
dying, that they might read it to her.  She was
my mother, and had always loved me so dearly;
and this was all I could do for her.... We  are
not great, and our happiness is, that we can believe
in something greater and better."
I said there are two ways of meeting the demand
for a truly liberal and rational religion; -two
ways of meeting, but only one way of solving, the
problem. Not in the way of denial, but of faith,
the solution must come, if at all.  Faith in Christ
as the type of consummate humanity; faith in humanity as prefigured in Christ; faith in God as
humanity's fulness and justification; faith ill reason
as God's interpreter; faith in revelation as reason's
consummate flower; faith in society as ever-progressive realization of reason and of God, — is not
this the desired solution?
The Christian confession need not bound our
religious sympathy.  All religions that devoutly
aspire, all religions that diligently labor, all religions that minister to human  weal, deserve our
sympathy and claim our respect.  But Christianity is more than religion; it is history's highway,
humanity's thoroughfare.  The paths that diverge
from it will return to it again, or lose themselves
in nothingness.  Whatever dissents from it is partiality and limitation; in it is wholeness, and the
widest vision, and the largest liberty.
r        AN 
V.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
A GLANCE at the world acquaints us with the
prevalence of worship, consequently of some
conception of Deity, in human society.
We  cannot indeed say what used  to be said,
what Plutarch and Cicero so confidently affirmed,
that belief in God is found wherever man is found.
A better-informed ethnology contradicts that assertion. There are certainly peoples in whose life, if
travellers report them truly, this element is altogether wanting. The natives of the valley of La
Plata and of Paraguay, according to Azara, were
entirely destitute of any religious beliefs or rites
when he travelled among them. The missionaries
who visited those tribes, supposing that they must
have some sort of religion, took for idols the figures
carved upon their pipes and bowls, and burned
those implements accordingly. Others, seeing them
beat the air on the appearance of the new moon,
imagined that they worshipped that luminary.
"But the positive fact is," says Azara, "that they 
'THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM. 121
worship nothing in the world, and have absolutely
no religioni." 1
According to Crantz, the Greenlanders had no
religious ceremonies, and exhibited no sign of religious life. Schoolcraft describes the Camanches
as equally godless.
Sir John Lubbock has accumulated a mass of
testimony to the same effect fromn travellers in
regions inhabited by savage tribes.  M. Bik inquired of the Arafuras what power they invoked
in time of need when their fishing vessels were
overtaken by storm, and no human aid could save.
The answer was, that they knew not on whom to
call in such straits; did he know? and would he
be so good as to inform themi?  The Zulu chief
when he heard of God would transfix him with his
spear.  "And yet this was a man whose judgment
on other subjects would command attention." Very
pathetic is the Kaffir's confession: "I ask myself,
Who has touched the stars with his hands? on
what hills do they rest? The waters are never
weary; they know no other law than to flow without ceasing from morning till night, and from night
till morning; but where do they rest, and who
makes them flow? The clouds come and go, and
burst in water over the earth; whence come they,
1 See "Voyages," II. 3, 137. Quoted by Schelling, Philosophie
der Mythologie, 73. 
122  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IHEISM.
and who sends them?... I cannot see the wind;
what is it, and who makes it blow?... Do I know
.how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a
blade in my field; to-day I returned and found
some. Who can have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried
my face in both my hands."
These exceptions do not disprove an innate tendency to worship in man; they only show that this
tendency is not always active, that certain conditions are required for its manifestation. Its state
of abeyance in the South American savage no more
disproves its existence in him, than its state of suspension disproves its existence in the secularist or
unbeliever of Christian lands. Still Cicero's assertion, that no people is so rude as not to have some
notion of Deity, must be taken with this qualification, that religion is usually found in the savage
state, and always in civil society.
We may say, then, that belief in Deity is natural
to man; is one of the primary forces of the soul.
The origin of this belief is a question of wide
dispute.  The "fecit timor" of the atheist poet, the
"notio insita" of Cicero, the original-revelation
theory of Cudworth and later divines, represent
the range of opinion concerning it. Hume was the
first to distinguish between the "foundation in
reason" and the "origin in human nature" of the 
TIlE NATURAL IIISTORY OF THIEISM.  123
idea of God.1 He supposes polytheism to have
preceded monotheism in the course of human development. And this supposition is confirmed by
ethnological research. On the other hand, a not
unreasonable prejudice in Christian lands has
leaned to the opposite view.   Reasoning  from
our idea of God and the seeming necessities of
human nature, one might presume that the Being
of whom the knowledge is so essential would make
Himself known to man in the beginning, that this
knowlecdge would enter into Nature's dower, would
form a part of the primal outfit of human kind.
And such has been the presumption of most Christian writers who have treated this topic prior to
Hume. They have held that the first of mankind
were endowed withl this saving knowledge; that a
revelation of the Godhead was made  to original
man, which soon waxed dim, was gradually perverted and finally lost; that all polytheismsIndian, Pheenician, Grecian, and others- are disintegrations and corruptions of an aboriginal monotheism.
To this hypothesis there are grave objections,
not to speak of the a priori difficulty of supposing
that so essential a good once possessed could be
lost to all but a fraction of the human race. A
revelation which could be so easily forfeited must
I Natural History of Religion, Introduction. 
124  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
have been quite inadequate; and, if thus inade quate, why bestowed?  Why did not the God who
gave it maintain it, or immediately replace it when
lost? Polytheism is no more deducible from mono theismn by division and dissolution of unity, than
monotheism, as some have maintained, is derivable
from polytheism by concentration and absorption
of the many into one. Each has its own independent origin.
Certain it is that history knows nothing of the
primal revelation which this theory affirms. History finds men in the earliest ages which its scrutiny has yet reached, possessed with the crudest
conceptions of Godhead,- the earlier, the cruder,
the farther from the truth. It finds savage tribes
or incipient nations involved in thick midnight of
spiritual ignorance, blindly feeling after something
divine.
And yet if we inquire whence the thought, the
presentiment of any thing divine to feel after, we
shall have to admit some innate impression, some
dim, instinctive sense of Deity, antecedent to even
the most imbecile groping after God.  So much
must be conceded in order to account for the first
and feeblest essays in that kind. An intimation of
Deity I implanted by Deity's self in the human constitution. We cannot call it an idea, for ideas are
I " Notio Dei insita." Cicero. 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM. 125
perceptions, and cannot be properly said to exist
where the object is not consciously present to the
subject. And yet it is something more than mere
perceptivity; it is preparation to perceive and the
certainty of perceiving whenever the requisite conditions shall concur, - external suggestion and internal demand.  It is with the discovery of God as
it is with the discovery of self. The infant has no
idea of self, and yet that idea is sure to arise in the
mind in due course of development. It is not communicated from abroad, but generated within. It
may therefore be said to pre-exist as impression
before it exists as idea.
The ancients, especially the Platonists, recognized this mental condition, and called it "prolepsis," anticipation.   Cicero  defines  it as  an
antecedent notion,' requiring further development,
and so applies it to the being of God. He speaks
of a God who reposes in the notion of the mind 2 as
in a track or impress he has made of himself.
To civilized man the idea of God arrives with
instruction, which does but fructify a pre-existing
germ. Without instruction, the idea is certainly
not developed in the individual mind with the same
I "Notionem appello quod Greci turn E'PoLa,  tum  7rpJAN7Lv
dicunt. Ea est insita et ante percepta cujusque forms cognitio
enodationis indigens." Topica 7.
2 " Deus ille quem mente noscimus atque in animi notione tanquam in vestigio volumus reponere." De Nat. Deorum, I. 14. 
126  TIlE NATURAL HISTORY OF TIlElSMl.
inevitableness with which the mind develops the
idea of self.  But taking the whole of humanity,
we may say that the idea of God is as proper to the
race as that of self to the individual. A human
being cast from infancy upon absolute solitude,
might not have the idea of Divinity in any sense or
shape awakened within him. If he did, it would in
all likelihood be not the monotheistic idea, but
some low form of polytheism or fetishism. Yet
even that would be impossible without an innate
aptitude for Theism in the soul. Without a prepared niche in human nature, no image occupying
the place of Deity and receiving divine honors
would ever have been set up. It is idle to talk of
fear as possessing this deific power.  Fear  can
make bugbears, but can never convert the bugbear
into a God. The brute fears, but the brute knows
no God. The brute shuns the object of its fear; in
man there is a principle which, in spite of fear, impels him to draw near to some dreaded object with
reverential homage. Fear alone would never do
that.  Fear alone would never have invented worship.  It may cringe, but not adore.
The fact is, human nature, prior to all teaching,
is conscious of a want which Deity alone can satisfy.
It seeks its own complement when it prays; and
were there not some affinity between the human
and the divine, the soul would never have dreamed 
I'HE ATATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.  127
so much as the wildest African dream of the unknown God.  Human nature requires a God, and
prior to all teaching, with no guide but vague
anticipation or unreasoning instinct, blindly gropes
after something to fill that place in the soul which
enlightened Theism fills in civilized man.
Now where will this groping first alight?  What
being will man first embrace as divine? Will it be
one of his own kind; some select individual eminently wise and good?   Obviously not, for the
reason that humanity lies too near. The savage
knows it only in its weakness and imperfection.
In the greatest of his tribe hlie sees only his like.
But religion's first impulse is to seek in God somnething foreign and very different.  For this, man is
thrown upon irrational Nature. There he encounters the unknown Power whose presence the rudest
feels, and endeavors to fix before he is able to
reason about it or to state it distinctly to himself.
It is not that he infers an intelligent Maker from
the wondrous works which meet his eye.  That is
the act of more advanced reason, to which the idea
of God is already familiar. But he feels a Presence
in Nature transcending human powers. That silent
Presence which we all feel, and feel most profoundly in the deepest solitude, the feeling of
which gave birth to Arcadian Pan, the instructed 
128  THE NATURPAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
monotheist refers to the one all-present God, the
Maker and Father of all.  The savage has no such
idea, but he has the same feeling, and has it more
intense. He is haunted by that felt Presence. In
the heart of the forest, on the lonely shore, he feels
that he is not alone, that very near him is a Greater
than himself. The Power that works in the processes of nature, that breathes in the wind, that
drives the cloud, that roars in the thunder, that
watches in the stars,- this unseen Power, his undeveloped thought has not yet learned to generalize. With him it is not the one pervading Spirit of
whom and by whom are all things. He can only
lay hold of it in particular phenomena; he must individualize it, must vest it in some palpable object.
And the more grotesque the object, the more abhorrent to taste and reason, the more likely it is to
stand for Deity in his conception, as appealing
more forcibly to his imagination than nobler and
comelier natures. Some misshapen tree or stone
that caught his eye at some critical moment of
danger or deliverance, of good or ill success, becomes to him an object of adoration, which may or
may not be adopted by the tribe. The tribe is
more likely to fix on some monstrous or dangerous
animal- a serpent, a crocodile, a tiger.
There is no caprice in this, no wilful perversion
or turning aside from the truth, no corruption of 
TIE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM. 129
degenerate humanity;  but human nature in its
first incipient aspirations, feeling after God,  "if
haply"' it " may find him." The history of religion
begins in this way. This is the first, initial act of
that spirit which sang the Hebrew litanies and
dictated the " Revelation of St. John the Divine."
This is what man first finds when he feels after
God; he passes by the sun and stars and the upright human form, and lights upon a serpent or a
stone.  These are objects which millions of human
beings worship at this day. Nor are these mionstrosities altogether confined to savage tribes. Fetishism mingles with the rites of nations full-grown
and refined.  It is found in Egypt  contemporaneous with the worship of Osiris and the splendors
of Luxor and Thebes. It is found in Assyria in
the palmiest days of Chaldean civilization. In the
most magnificent of cities, in the most flourishing
period of its history, the chief object of worship
was a serpent, - not a carved symbol, but the
living beast, - not as typifying any thing beyond
itself, but as actually divine. Arnobius, a Christian convert of the fourth century, relates that in
Africa, where he resided, he never, before his conversion, saw a stone on which oil had been poured
without paying it homage.1  Stones smeared with
oil and called "Betyls" were among the earliest
1 Adv. Gent. I. 39.
9 
130  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
objects of devotion. The patriarch Jacob, grandson though he was of the first-recorded monotheist,
made a "betyl" of the stone which had served him
for a pillow in the place where he dreamed the
dream of the ladder reaching from heaven to earth.
Aerolites were deemed by the ancients especially
sacred.  The world-famed temple of Diana at Ephesus commemorated one of these meteoric stones.1
The black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca is also, it is
supposed, an aerolite. Deyoutly kissed by annual
thousands of Mussulman pilgrims, it remains to
this day a relic-fetish in the midst of the purest
monotheism.
The next stage in the religion of Nature, still
within the sphere of realism, is separated by a wide
remove from the first in dignity and import,Sabaism,2 or more properly Astrolatry, the worship
of the heavenly bodies.
The most positive of natural phenomena, the
most universal and appreciable of natural benefits,
is light. It is no mere figure of speech to call it
the "life" of the world.  It is precisely that.  The
difference between light and no light to the eye
is the difference between the visible all and noth
1 AolrETo0s, Acts xix. 35.
2 According to Chwolsohln, the use of this term to designate a
form of religion is incorrect. Die Ssabier. Vorrede, 19. 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISiV. 131
ing. Historically, it is the difference between creatioo             n and n o   creation, between cosmos and chaos.
Without it no vegetable, without it no animal, no
organized  life.  Without it,
"The world was void:
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;
A lumnp of death, a chaos of hard clay."
The old astrolaters may not have had sight of
the whole of the truth poetically imaged by Byron,
and scientifically expounded by Moleschott and
Tyndall; but they saw enough to satisfy them that
light is the greatest of material benefactions.
What wonder that the sun, the prime source of
that light, should be worshipped as the prince of
the heavenly powers, and the other luminaries, in
their several degrees, as blessed and divine!
"Hail, holy Light," is the matin song of religion
emerging from the night of fetishism. Hallowed
be sun and stars! and hallowed be fire, the earthly
antitype of heavenly light and heat! Fire, the
purifying power, from which the word "pure" is
derived, which separates the ethereal from the
earthly, and re-unites it with its kindred sky!
Fire, in its finished form of flame, expresses aspiration: it suggests the pyramid; may it not have
suggested the earliest use of that structure? The
pyramid is a petrified flame.
But sun, stars, and fire are not the only benefac 
132  TlHE NATURAL HIST'ORY OF THEISM.
tions of Nature.  Thought pauses upon these as the
most commanaiding; but religion finds other kindred
objects of devout contemplation. Itoly, also, is the
vaulted sky outstretched as a tent, the suni's tabernacle; holy the circumfiucnt air, the fitful winds,
the stedfast earth. With the glowving appreciation
of the powers of Nature, with the action of the
plastic ihuagination upon them, they come in time
to be personified and worshipped as personal
agents: and so the next step in the progress of
natural religion I is impersonation of natural powers
resulting in mythology. Of this impersonation the
hymns of the Rig-Veda represent the initial stage
of this we have in the Osiris-cult 2 of ancient Egypt,
the first fully developed mythology: Bramanism is
its greatest social product; Greek poetry and art, its
noblest intellectual creations.
One  step farther brings  us  to
consummation of natural religion.
are great; the natural man renders
tive  homage: but  to  cultivated,
I I use this phrase in the sense of Nature-worship, not in the
current sense of rational religion, which seems to me a misuse of
the term.
2 According to Bunsen, the Osiris-cult preceded Egyptian zoolatry; but this can be true only of its adoption by the priesthood,
not of its intellectual genesis. See Gott in der Geschiiclite, Vol.
IL 27.
the top and
The elements
them instiiicself-possessed
I;, I 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.  133
thought there is something greater than  these.
Conscious intelligence, reason,- in a word, the
rational soul, is more than sun or stars, or wind
or flood. And the rational soul is man. Unconscious Nature is great; but man is greater. Not
man as we commonly behold him, the drivelling imbecile of every-day life, )but man as poetic
imagination apprehends him,- the ideal man, divested of earthly limitations and imperfections,
superior to accident, unvexed by care, impregnable
to fear, invulnerable, immortal, rejoicing in eternal
youth. What image of Divinity can equal this?
What impersonation of elemental powers, rude,
Titanic, hundred-handed, can vie with this glorified
human type? Surely, if there be gods, they must be
divine men. The Greeks saw this. They alone,
or they first, of ancient nations- the Athenians
especially, with their democratic leanings - perceived the import and worth of man, and embodied
that perception in their divinities. They expressed
it in two immortal myths; one retrospective, the
other prospective. The first is the conquest of the
Titans by the Olympians, "the younger gods; " the
second is the Chained Prometheus.   The former
demonstrates the superiority of conscious intelligence over lawless, however gigantic, force,-cosmos mastering chaos; the latter typifies the
present abeyance, premonitory of the ultimate 
134  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
triumph, of humanity,- the triumph of right over
will, of reason over fear, of the rational service of
human kind over all religion in whichl the moral
principle is not supreme.
We will call this last and highest stage of natural religion Theanthropism.  The Greco-Roman
and the Scandinavian mnythologies- Hellenism and
Odinism- are its two historic examples. Theanthropism is partly a development of the antecedent
stage,- the impersonation of natural forces,- and
partly the addition of a new element. The Greek
divinities were mostly impersonations, but impersonations stamped with a human type and subordinated to it. Other religions had developed gods
that were partly human.  Such were the Crishna
of the Mahabharatta and Egyptian Osiris.  What
distinguishes Hellenism is its preponderant humanity.  Indian and Egyptian worship still clung to
the symbol, and often, in accommodation to the
symbol, merged the human in the monstrous.
Crishna appears with more than the human complement of limbs, Osiris is figured with the head of a
bird, Isis with that of a cow, in pictorial representations. The Egyptians had no such impression of
the dignity of man as would make the human
form the most fitting embodiment of Deity. The
human was no more divine in their estimation than
the brute,-was even less so, because more familiar, 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TIIEISM.  135
less seemingly mysterious. It is an alien spirit that
looks througoh the eye of the serpent and the ox,
and, because alien, mysterious, unfathomable. The
more alien, the more divine, in the apprehension of
the pre-Hellenic world.  With the Greek, on the
contrary, the original symbol representing elemental powers was merged in the human person, or
retained only as adjunct and decoration, like the
bow in the hands of Phcebus, or the winged sandal
on the feet of Hermes. Zeus, the divine impersonation of the sky, is a human being of immortal
mould.  He bears in Homeric verse the epithets of
cloud-gatherer and thunder-rejoicing; but the bolt
in his right hand is the only visible sign which distinguishes the god from the man.1
Moreover, the Greeks introduced a new element
into religion, - the worship of actual historical
characters, of departed worthies, heroes whose
virtues had raised them to the level of the gods.
This was something very different from the worship of ancestors, of which traces appear in many
of the ancient religions. That was a family rite,
1 It may be objected that the Greek mythology differed from
those of India and Egypt, not in its essence, but only in its artistic
representations; that its human aspect is only a concession to the
claims of art, which abhors the monstrous. But art with the
Greeks was the product of religion, and must be regarded as the
exponent of pre-existing ideas. It represented conceptions which
religion had inspired. 
136  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TIIEISM.
having no connection with public worship, and
therefore not in the line of that historic development which I am tracing. The hero-worship of the
Greeks and Romans was a part of that Thleanthropism which constitutes a distinctive feature of their
religion. This I regard as the culmination of the
natural religions; just as Christian Theanthropism,
springing from a different root, is the culmination
of the spiritual or "revealed." To that different
root let us now direct our attention.
We have traced the progress of the idea of God
in the way of natural religion through the several
stages of Fetishism, Astrolatry, Impersonation of
physical forces, and Theanthropism; God as terrestrial creature, God as celestial radiance, God as
personified elemental power, and God as man.  Observe that these different conceptions, with only a
partial exception in the case of the last, have one
trait in common, one capital defect; to wit, the absence of that moral element which makes the distinguishing feature, the very foundation, of those
religions which we call "revealed." Even in Hellenisml, the moral clement is found only as an incidental trait, like the chastity of Artemis and the
avenging function of the Furies; not as a necessary
constituent.  Even in Theanthropism the moral is
subordinate to the physical. 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.  137
The reason is obvious. Natural religion is derived from the contemplation of external Nature;
but external Nature exhibits no trace of moral life.
There is no apparent sympathy in Nature with
moral ends, no faintest intimation of the moral law.
The elements are no respecters of persons: they
know neither sinner nor saint. The sun smiles
alike on the evil and the good. The same moon
lights the robber and the minister of mercy on their
several ways.  The same breeze propels the merchant's and the pirate's sail.  Traitor and patriot,
murderer and missionary, cannibal and Christian,
all have the same Nature for their hleritage, and find
in Nature the same accommodation. The blue sky
bends over all, the hospitable earth entertains all,
- all are served by Nature's laws.
Itow, then, should natural religion attain to the
idea of the moral law?  The deep saith, "It is not
in me; " earth and sky have not found it. But is
not the moral law written in the heart of man?
Religion has only to look there, has only to look
within, to find moral obligation, and from it to
infer a moral Ruler of the universe, the holy and
just God of monotheism. True, and this is precisely what distinguishes natural religion from
"revealed." When man looks within, looks deep
enough to find moral obligation, and to refer it to
the power and law of which it is the witness, the 
138 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THIIEISM.
whole system of natural religion is done away. A
revelation has been made in him of the one true
God. Revelation is not from without, but from
within: it is moral intuition.  God reveals himself,
not by sensible apparition, but by his witness in the
soul. That testimony, first heard by elect individuals, - meditative men, like Abraham, Zoroaster,
Moses, Jesus, - and declared by them, becomes
what we call a "revelation," or divine dispensation
of religion.
Monotheism, then, comes not by the way of natural religion, seeking God without and fusing its
many gods into one, but by reflection seeking God
within; and the difference between natural and revealed religion consists in this, that in the former the
religious sentiment is turned outward, and that in the
latter it is turned inward.
Quite otherwise, the phrase "Natural Religion,"
or, more properly, "Natural Theology," is commonly used to designate those primordial verities
which constitute the substance of monotheistic religion. This use of the term dates from Raymond
de Sebonde,l who wrote, in the beginning of the
fifteenth century, a work which Montaigne, at the
1 " Theologia naturalis nomine primus usus est Raymundus de
Sebonde, natione Hispanus, ineunte, sec. xv. auctor libri primum
editi Daventriae et Theologia Naturalis, sive Liber Creaturarum
inscripti." Wegscheider Institt. Theol. See Herzog's Real-Encyclopadie for an elaborate account of this work. 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM-.  139
instigation of his father, turned into French, and
to whose defence he devoted the most elaborate,
though not the most edifying, of the immortal
Essays. The design of Raymond was to vindicate
the truths of "Revelation" by proofs and illustrations drawn from Nature. But illustration of a
truth by the facts of Nature is one thing, the discovery of it from the contemplation of Nature is
another.  The phrase "Natural Theology" is an
unfortunate one, as fostering the delusion, so widely
spread, that the contemplation of Nature teaches
monotheism, would teach it to sagacious minds
where other teaching has not anticipated that result. The contemplation of Nature teaches no such
thing. Nature, the arena of antagonistic forces, the
scene of perpetual conflict between good and evil,
- Nature, with her sunshine and calm of to-day,
her earthquakes and tornadoes of to-morrow, suggests dualism or polytheism, not the one God, the
Creator and Father of all. Uninstructed by other
teaching, and without monotheism already in the
mind, who would ever divine that the desolate crag
or blasted volcano was moulded by the same Power
that flings the rainbow over it? Who would ever
conclude that the scorpion and the bird of Paradise
have one Father? Monotheism is not an inference
from Nature, but the gift of Tradition, or an intuition of the private soul divinely touched, brooding 
140  THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.
over its own deep. The first monotheist was one
who withdrew his gaze from the starry heaven and
the creaturely earth, and found in the secret of his
own thought the divine "I am." What they mean,
or should mean, who speak thus of " Natural Religion," is that system of truths which Nature studied in the light of revelation confirms, - not the
system which Nature teaches. "Rational Religion"
would be the fitter term.
To find the one God in Nature, man must first
have found him within. The religions mind turned
inward encounters another Divinity than the aspects of Nature had suggested to uninstructed contemplation. It finds in the dictates of the moral
sense, in imperative warnings and obligations, in
the consciousness of spiritual wants and aspirations,
a God unknown to natural religion,- a God who
is not mere Power and Intelligence and commanding Will, but Goodness, Holiness, Truth, Love.
These constitute the God' of moral intuition, - a
God self-evident, and One in the double sense of onliness and unity.  The very idea of such a God excludes multitude. There can be but one absolute
Good. Hence revealed religion is necessarily monotheistic. The natural religions, on the other hand,
seeking God outwardly, and based on the assumption of a separation in space between God and man,
are polytheistic.   So long as the divine is coin 
THIE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISMI.  141
ceived as existence in Nature instead of Nature's
continent, there is no ground for unity in the Godhead. On the contrary, many gods, in that case,
will be required to match the miany-sidedness of
Nature.
Other characteristics follow from this one. The
natural religions are sacrificial, the revealed are
ethical. The natural are hierarchical, the revealed
are congregational. The natural are idolistic, the
revealed are scriptural. I speak of tendencies, not
of uniform results. In practice these tendencies
are often modified by counter influences, by corruptions and perversions. When revelations expand
and harden into  ecclesiasticism, they  sometimes
assume the characteristics of naturalism: they become sacrificial, hierarchical, and here and there
degenerate into fetishism.
Revelation must not be confused with systems of
religion based upon it. Revelation, as such, is
purely individual experience; the revealed religions, such as Jehovism, Parsism, Christianity, Islami, are providential and historic growths, which
may or may not ensue from that experience. Revelation there has been in the midst of polytheism,
and through all the course of human history. For
the truths of the Spirit have no date, although the
"dispensations" which embody  them, like other
social products, are subject to historic necessity,
P -          1 
142  THE NATURAL HIS TORY OF TIIEISA.
and must bide their time. Revelation in individual
seers, like Pythagoras, Socrates, and Isaiah, may
antedate by centuries the organization of its truths
in ecclesiastical polities. It depends, not so much
on the clearness and fulness of the revelation, as
on the personality with which it is associated, and,
of course, on the providential order of events,
whether or not the revelation shall become an historic dispensation. The moral intuitions of Plato
far transcended those of Mohammed; but the moral
force, the momentum of personality, the quality of
soul in Mohammed, exceeded the genius of Plato.
Adopted by Providence, the slender thought and
vast soul of the Arab have rallied around them a
fifth part of the human race, whilst the fuller revelation of the Greek could only modify Gentile and
Christian theology with its intellectual leaven.
The history of religion is a record of man's search
after God. It begins with the lowest, and ends
with the highest; it begins with the most foreign,
and ends with the most interior; it begins with
stones and the beasts of the field, and ends with the
Spirit. Every step in this process is divine education.  Nature-worship had its meaning and embodied an essential truth. The presence of God in
Nature, the sacredness of Nature, is the truth deposited in the human mind by natural religions.
r. 11 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THEISM.  143
The supremacy of Spirit is the lesson of the revealed. And so the history of religion repeats the
story of creation: first that which is natural, then
that which is spiritual. The natural man seeks God
in Nature; first in the creaturely forms around him,
then in the skies.  The spiritual knows that the
Supremie Presence is not a question of topography;
that the throne above the skies is but the last resort
of realism; that neither up nor down, nor in any
outward direction, but inward and ever inward, is
the way to God.
F       n  
VI.
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF THE BEING
OF GOD.
HE traditional idea of God is that of a super   human, extramundane Being, combining  in
himself all conceivable perfections: from whom, as
cause and ground, all other being is derived; on
whom, as the universal Providence, all creatures
depend; whose will, as moral ideal, is the highest
law for intelligent natures.
An idea of such transcendent import could not
fail to stimulate in philosophic minds the attempt
to verify it by scientific demonstration.  Much
labor and learning have been expended in such
essays; but still the strongest proof of the Being
of God is his idea in the universal consciousness of
man. I say universal, because the exceptions -
of savage atheism at one extreme of humanity, and
of philosophic antitheismn at the other -do not materially invalidate the fact. God in this idea is his
own witness, and asserts himself with a weight of
evidence which no10 resistance of denial, and no ingenuity of speculation, can quite countervail. At 
THE BEING OF GOD.
tempts to demonstrate the truth of this idea from
external data have not been successful. Proofs
from Nature may entertain the faith of believers,
but cannot conquer unbelief. For though, to predisposed minds possessed with the idea, Nature
confesses God with the manifestations, everywhere
obvious, of intelligence and law in all her processes
and functions, these manifestations carry no conviction to the atheist, who sees in them nothing
more than the necessary conditions of being. In
the strictness of logic, they have not the binding
force of demonstration which the advocates of Theism profess to find in them.
Theology claims that Theism is the best solution
of the question, Whence this universe of things?
But the truth of an hypothesis which seems to
solve a given problem is not established by that
solution, unless the solution is complete, and leaves
no question unanswered. If it fails to satisfy that
condition, it is simply the best hypothesis, nothing
more.
What evidence have we of the being of God as
a real existence essentially distinct from other
being?
The demonstration of Deity attempted by Theism
has developed two sorts of proof, known as a posteriori and a priori; the proof of God from the
world, as effect presupposing a cause, and the proof
10
145 
CRPITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
of God from his idea in the mind. The proof a posterioni has been subdivided into cosmological and
physico-theological.  The a priori is termned ontological.
The cosmological proof is derived by different
thieists from different premises. Locke starts with
the consciousness which every man has of his own
existence. Leibnitz, in his "Confessio Nature contra Atheistas," argues from the fact of motion. But,
in each and every case in which this mode of
reasoning is employed, the gist of the argument is,
that all sensible phenomiena and all finite existences must be referred at last to an infinite and
immaterial Being, as their first cause: inasmuch as
every phenonemon and every finite existence is
known to be an effect of some antecedent cause,
and that cause again an effect of another antecedent, that of another, and so on ad infinitum;
which gives a b)eginningless sequence of cause and
effeet,- as Sir William Hamilton says, "an infinite
non-commencement."  But that is found to be an
tbsurdity and an impossibility.  Therefo)re, it is
argued, we must suppose, as the cause of all, a
Being outside of this series, from whom it originates: omnipotent, as being the source of all power
and all things; intelligent, because intelligence exists, and cannot be supposed to be derived fi'om the
unintelligent, -or, as Locke expresses it, "the cogi
146 
THE BEING OF GOD.
tative from the uncogitative." Philosophers who
rest in this argument, and especially the two that I
have named, express the uttermost confidence in
its validity.  Says Locke (Essay, book iv. ch. 10),
i Though this [viz., the being of God] be the most
obvious truth that reason discovers, and though its
evidence be, if I mistake not, equal to mathematical
certainty, yet it requires thought and attention, and
the mind must apply itself to a regular deduction
of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge.
... To show, therefore, that we are capable of
knowing, i.e., of being, certain, that there is a God,
and how we may come by this certainty, I think we
need go no further than ourselves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence.
I think it is beyond question that man has a clear
perception of his own being: he knows certainly
that he exists, and that he is something.... In
the next place, man knows by an intuitive certainty
that bare nothing can no more produce any real
being than it can be equal to two right angles....
If, therefore, we know that there is some real being,
and that nonentity cannot produce any real being,
it is an evident demonstration that from eternity
there has been something; since what was not from
eternity had a beginning, and what had a beginning
must be produced by something else." He then
proceeds to show that "that eternal Being must be
147 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS Or
most powerful," "and most knowing," "and therefore God." Immaterial, because the "cogitative"
cannot have been produced by the "uncogitative."
Leibnitz, after showing that every moving body
must derive its motion from some other body, and
that, as no body can, by its nature and definition,
be self-moving, so no infinite series of moving
bodies can explain the origin of motion, - concludes that motion must have originated from a
Being who is not body, i.e., from an immaterial
and omnipotent First Cause. He thereupon declares his astonishment that this method of demonstrating the existence of God has occurred to no
other philosopher of his day. "Et miror nleque
Gassendum, neque alium inter acutissimos hujus
seculi philosophos, preclaram hanc demonstrande
divinae existential occasionem animadvertisse."
My reverence for Leibnitz and Locke is as great
as any man's, " sed magis amica veritas."  I cannot
admit the force of either demonstration. Grant
that an endless chain of existences, - each antecedent producing its consequent, -an endless sequence of causes and effects, is inconceivable, I
cannot see that cutting the knot by the supposition
of a self-existent Being outside of that sequence
proves the existence of such a Being. It is assumed that every effect must have a cause; then,
148 
THIE BEING OF GOD.
from the fact that single existences are known to us
as effects, it is inferred that the entire universe is
effect, and must have a cause outside of itself. To
meet this necessity, the argument assumes something outside of the universe that caused it. But
what caused the cause? The answer is, It caused
itself; it is at once both cause and effect. But, so
far as the argument intends the solution of an ontological difficulty, it fails by substituting a greater
difficulty for a less. If inconceivableness is the
difficulty to be remedied, a self-existent Being outside of the universe, is, to say the least, as inconceivable as a self-existent universe, and burdens us
with the additional difficulty of conceiving a point
of connection between two beings which, by supposition, are alien the one to the other. The word
"omnipotence," or "infinite power," does not explain the difficulty; for all that we know of power is
the action of body or spirit on a given object to
change its condition. Of its action on any thing not
given, i.e., of its action on nonentity to produce entities, we have no knowledge, and can form no con ception. We can judge of infinite power, only by
what we know of finite power. It must be essen tially the same with finite power, differing only in
degree, if it be any thing of which we can form any
notion, or have any logical right to affirm any thing.
If infinite power can out of nonentity produce a
149
p-, 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
universe, finite power should be able out of nonentity, at least to produce some infinitesimal fraction
of a universe. But no power of which we have anv
experience can do this.  Strange that so cautious
and acute a thinker as Locke should rest in such a
conception, or rather in a phrase which conveys
no distinct conception to the mind; that, forsaking
the sure ground of experience in which his philosophy loves to dwell, he should link his proof of the
being of God with so questionable a notion as that
of the creation of matter by infinite power.  "Is it
not impossible," he asks, " to admit of the making
of any thing out of nothing, since we cannot possibly conceive it?" and he answers, "No, it is not
reasonable to deny the power of an Infinite Being
because we cannot comprehend its operations."
Here the good man's faith gets the better of his
logic. His proof of Deity rests on the inconceivableness of an uncreated universe; nevertheless he
acknowledges that creation out of nothing is utterly
inconceivable. All that is valid in Locke's demonstration is the first step; viz., that as something now
exists, and as nothing cannot produce something, it
follows that something must always have existed.
Between that and his idea of God there is an unbridged, and, by that method, unbridgeable, gulf.
He fails to prove that the universe itself may not
have existed from all eternity.  "Inconceivable,"
150 
THE BEING OF GOD.
yes; but creation out of nothing is equally so.
"The cogitative cannot have sprung from the uncog,itative." Granted; but does it appear how the
uncogitative can have sprung from the cogitative?
or why both may not be  coeternal?  The argument, I repeat, gives us a greater difficulty. for a
less. Either the infinite Being is a part of the
series of existences to be explained; and then it
would be a simpler solution of the difficulty in
question, and an easier cutting of the knot, to suppose, with Spinoza, a self-existenlt, infinite substance,
uniting both attributes, the cogitative and the uncogitative; or else the infinite Being is outside of,
and distinct from, the series of existences to be explained, and then the only connection between it
and those existences is the arbitrary and unintelligible notion of power.
The demonstration of Leibnitz is liable to the
same criticism. It substitutes a greater difficulty
for a less. The motion of moving bodies cannot,
he contends, be explained by the action of bodies,
since no body is self-moving. Therefore we must
suppose a Being who is not body, to account for the
origin of motion.  But howv explain the origin of
that Being?  " Ratio concltsionis," he says, tamditu
plane non reddita est, quamdiu reddita non est ratio
rationis."  Here, again, it is a cutting of the knot,
which might also be cut by supposing an eternally
existing, self-moving world.
151
p,;,t~, 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
Kant (Kr. d. r. V.) charges the cosmological ar gumenit with being the ontological in disguise. Ac cordingly, his refutation of it attacks the alleged
ontological character, which I cannot find to be in
its intent, whatever there may be of such a character in its essence. But he says of it, moreover,
that it hides a whole nest of dialectical assumptions,
which transcendental criticism may easily detect
and demolish.  For example, from contingency it
infers causality. But the principle of causality is
applicable only to the sensible world: it has no
meaning, and we have no criterion of its use, outside of that world. But in this case it is used for
the very purpose of transcending the sensible world.
In like manner, the inferring of a first cause from
the alleged impossibility of an infinite series of
given successive causes is not authorized by principles of reason, even within the sphere of experience; much less have we any right to extend the
inference beyond that sphere into a world to which
the chain does not reach. It is a false self-contentment of reason to regard this series as completed
by the final abolition of all conditionality; and
then, when nothing further can be idealized, to
accept that as the consummation of one's idea.
Moreover, the argument confuses the logical possibility of an idea,- the idea of a Being in whom
all reality combines, with no internal contradiction,
f    -  
152 
THE BEINATG OF GOD.
with the transcendental; whereas, the practicability
of such a synthesis demands a principle which
again would be applicable only within the field of
possible experience."  "It may be allowed," he
says, " to adopt the hypothesis of a Being of the
highest adequacy as the cause of all possible effects,
in order to facilitate the unity of explanation-which
reason demands.  But to take upon one's self to
say that such a Being exists necessarily, is no
longer the modest expression of an allowable hypothesis, but the bold assumption of apodictic certainty; for, of that which one professes to cognize
as absolutely necessary, the cognition also miust
carry with it absolute necessity."
The other a posteriori argument to be examined
is the so-called Physieo-theologieal, more commonly
known in English theology as the Argulment from
Design. The argument is this: Whatever is by its
constitution adapted to a particular end supposes
contrivance, and hence a contriver. Natural objects,
and especially organized creatures, are adapted to
certain ends; they must, therefore, be the product
of a Being who contrived them for the ends to
which their adaptation points.  Furthermore, as
the means by which those ends are effected far surpass all human power and skill, it is argued that
153
I I 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
their contriver is a Being whose power and skill
are infinite.  Everywhere in Nature we see what
seems to us design. Only infinite power and skill
could plan and execute the nice adaptations by
which vegetable and animal organs are severally
adapted to the wants of each creature, and perform
their life-sustaining and life-propagating functions.
Look at the human eye, says the theologian; examine its complex apparatus of layer, lens, and
humors, its adjustment to the light without and
the optic nerve within, observe  its capabilities
and defences; and say if any cause but a God of
infinite wisdom can explain the miraculous organ?
Man was designed to see, and this is the wonderfully skilful device by which that end is accomplished. The argument is a strong appeal to a
principle in human nature which prompts us to
infer an intelligent author wherever, in any object,
we see fitness and use.
Let us see what degree of validity is fairly
attributable to this demonstration, and how far, in
itself, without aid or support from any other source,
the argument from design is conclusive of the being
of God.
It should be premised that the argument originated with those who, by inheritance and without demonstration, were already possessed and
convinced of the truth to be established. This
154
I I I 
TIIE BEING OF' GOD.
circumstance would not invalidate the argument, if
otherwise conclusive, inasmuch as the aim is not
to show that men get their idea of God in that way,
but that the given idea may be thus scientifically
legitimated. Nevertheless, there is a difference of
cogency between the reasoning by which a truth is
discovered, like the truths of astronomy, and that
by which it is attempted to defend it.  If it could
be shown that an intelligent unbeliever has been in
any instance converted by it, or a competent reasoner, who (if such a thing were supposable) had
never heard of a God, has been made a believer by
it, the fact would add greatly to the strength of the
argument. What is that argument?
Whenever we behold a use resulting fromn the
constitution and arrangements of a complex object,
we infer design, and consequently a designer. So
far as this inference applies to objects which are
not products of Nature,- to artificial creations, so
called, - the inference is warranted by experience.
Have we any logical right to transfer the conclusions of that experience to natural products, to the
operations of Nature? To establish that right, to
authorize that transference, there  should be, I
think, not only an incidental resemblance, but a
perfect analogy between the two. But what is the
fact?  The works of man and the products  of
Nature resemble each other in a single point; in all
155 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
others they are utterly dissimilar, - dissimilar in
their origin, dissimilar in their conditions, dissimilar
in their history. In one point, viz., the adaptation
of means to ends, they coincide: the points in
which they do not coincide are infinite. Look
at the  works  of man.   The  human  artificer
takes the requisite materials which he did not
create, but which are furnished to his hand;
he fashions and puts them together in certain
combinations, and constructs a machine; let us say
a watch, a thing that, by operation of a mechanical law, which man again did not create, but which
is given him, carries an index around a dial-plate.
The watch is said to measure time. Properly
speaking, the watch does no such thing. All that
the watch does, is to carry two pins, one faster, one
slower, around a graduated circle. The maker has
fixed the rate at which they move from figure to
figure. The possessor notes their position on the
dial, anti by it measures time. Now, what analogy
is there between this structure and an apple-tree,
or the human eye, with which Paley compares it?
What analogy between a manufacture from given
materials, and the growth that secretes its materials
as it proceeds. How the eye is formed is a question to which physiology can give only an approximate answer.  All we can say is that its formation
is not a manufacture, but a growth; that, by the
156 
TIIE BEING OF GOD.
action of certain forces, certain organic filaments
and particles arrange themselves according to a
given type. Whence that type, physiology cannot
say. The theist believes it to be devised by an
infinitely wise Being, the God of theology. But
this belief is a foregone conviction, which he inherits by tradition. He brings it to the contemplation of Nature, and finds it confirmed: but it is not
the product of that contemplation; no a posteriori
reasoning can originate it, or demonstrate its truth.
For observe that, when we say design, we beg
the question. All we see in the case of the eye is
adaptation; a certain co-ordination of parts which
seem to condition the act of seeing. The idea of
design is purely subjective,- an idea derived from
human workmanship, which we apply to Nature.
Were we not already possessed with the idea of
God as the Author of Nature; and were it not for
our irresistible propensity to anthropomorphize, to
ascribe human methods to the God of our belief, - I
doubt if we should ever have come upon this mechanical view, this cunning-device theory of natural
products. I doubt if we should view them as workmanship at all. We see how human creations are
formed: we know what study and calculation go to
the making of a watch or steam-engine; we know
that the more complex and effective the mechanism,
the greater the ingenuity of the author; -and we
157 
CRITIQUE OF PROOF'S UP'
anthropomorphize, we carry our joiner-view of creation into Nature, and represent to ourselves a planning,, contriving intellect as the antecedent Power,
from whose skilful adjustments and nice calculations Nature had its rise.  If we came to the contemplation of Nature without the idea of God in
our minds, we should not, I suppose, view it as
cunning mechanism, or at all as something created
by antecedent power, but rather as a self-subsisting
whole. The question of its origin would hardly
force itself upon us: we should accept it as it is,
and suppose it to have been always as it is, and
self-perpetuating. The curiosity of its structure, if
it came at all into consideration, would not compel,
nor even, perhaps, suggest, the idea of contrivance
by an artificer external to itself.  We should view
the adaptation of organ to function and part to
part in any individual portion of it, as we should
the whole, as necessarily so constituted, - as something which could not be otherwise, if the whole
was to be at all. This, I think, is the natural, unbiassedl view of the universe: this is the way it
would strike us, were not the idea of God given in
human nature. And this is what Hume means
when in his "Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," the most sincere and original treatise on
the subject in English literature, he makes Philo,
one of the speakers, say, that the world bears a
158 
TIHE BEING OF GOD.
greater resemblance to an animal than it does to a
machine.
Does the physico-theological argument disprove
this view? I cannot see that it does. Paley, the
Bridgewiater essayists, and others of that stamp, have
not disproved, if even they have fairly considered it.
They have done nothing to prove the existence of
God to the satisfaction of a really logical unbeliever, competent to weigh evidence and to judge
of the force of arguments.  They have come to the
contemplation of Nature, not to ascertain an unknown fact, but to justify an assumed one; not
with a view to an impartial examination of different cosmogonies, but with a cosmogony fixed in
their minds which they were to verify, with a foregone conclusion to be confirmed.   They had a case
to make out, and in that they have not succeeded.
What they have  done is worthy of all praise.
They have brought to view the exquisite adaptations of Nature, and, on the supposition of a God for
its author, have abundantly illustrated the wondrous skill of the Creator.  But the pivotal point
on whichl the whole question hinges, this sort of
demonstration fails to substantiate.  That point is
that the aptitudes of Nature, or what seem to us
such, prove design in the sense in which the adaptations of a sewing-machine prove design in its
author. To impute design where we recognize use
159 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
in Nature is, I repeat it, a begging of the question.
The design we impute is something appertaining
to ourselves: it is our own subjectivity which we
import into Nature.
It has been surmised that what we regard as design in Nature may be a necessity inherent in the
nature of things. "It is observed by arithmeticians," says Hume, "that the products of 9 compose
always either 9 or some lesser product of 9, if you
add together all the characters of which the former
products are composed.  Thus of 18, 27, 36, which
are products of 9, you make 9 by adding 1 to 8,
2 to 7, 3 to 6. Thus 369 is also a product of 9, and
if you add 3, 6, and 9, you make 18, a lesser product of 9. By a superficial observer, so wonderful
a regularity may be admired as the effect either of
chance or design; but a skilful algebraist immediately concludes it to be the work of necessity, and
demonstrates that it must for ever result from the
nature of these numbers. Is it not probable, I ask,
that the whole economy of the universe is conducted by a like necessity, although no human algebra can furnish a key which solves the difficulty.
And, instead of admiring the order of natural beings,
may it not happen that, could we penetrate into the
intimate nature of bodies, we should clearly see
why it was absolutely impossible that they could
ever admit of any other disposition?"
160 
THE BEING OF GOD.
This suggestion, it may be said, can only be
regarded as an exercise of ingenuity, a trick of fence
intended to rebut the aggressive dogmatism of theology, not as pretending to be a sufficient account
of the order and fitness apparent in creation; that
it cannot be supposed to be the view sincerely entertained by a sound and seriously disposed mind,
of the constitution of things. It may be so: I only
cite it as showing that design is not the only supposable explanation of the aptitudes in question.
And here let me say that I am far from denying
the theological value of the argument from design;
its theological value is great: my criticism concerns
only its speculative claims. And, speaking in the
interest of speculative philosophy, I further contend that, though we grant to this argument the
fact of design, and therefore a designer, as the true
and only explanation of natural phenomena, there
is still an immense gulf between that conclusion
and the fact of an infinite and perfect Being which
Natural Theology pretends to deduce from it.
How does the argument bridge this gulf?  The
great Contriver is seen to be very powerful and
wise; and therefore, for aught we know, he may be
infinitely so.  "It is a power," says Paley, "to
which we are not authorized by our observation or,
knowledge to assign any limits.... It cannot
with respect to us be distinguished from infinite."
11
161 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
So much we may readily admit. But to metamorphose this modest negative into that transcendental
positive which Theism affirms, to exalt the absence
of known limitation into categorical infinity, to
read in the marks of power and wisdom surpassing
human art omnipotence and omniscience, is an
intellectual tour de force which sober logic is compelled to disown.  When the argument has shown
a contriver of incomparable skill, it has reached the
bounds of legitimate induction. The step from that
to the God of theology-a God not only powerful
and wise, but just and merciful and true- is not an
induction, but a leap. More glaring still is the failure of this demonstration when, from certain satisfactions for which provision has been made in the
constitution of sentient Nature, it argues a Being of
infinite benevolence united to infinite power. The
satisfactions of Nature are many and great: enjoyment abounds; but suffering also abounds, if not in
equal measure, yet in a measure which physical
theology leaves unexplained. Evil pervades the
system of things. Every stage in the ascent of
animated Nature, from the polyp to man, is an increment in the scale of suffering, which challenges
Theism with an ever louder and angrier Why? and
which the physical contemplation of the universe
can never adjust with the theory of omnipotent
Love. What infinite Benevolence wills, that in
i62 
THE BEING OF GOD.
finite Power might accomplish. Infinite Benevolence must will the happiness of sentient beings:
why then a world so cumbered with enormous woe?
is the everlasting protest of heart and flesh against
the positions of Natural Theology. There is an
answer to this protest; but the argument from desig,n is not that answer, and cannot furnish it.
That argument can only plead that the arrangements of Nature were planned to give pleasure, not
pain: if pain in any case results from them, it is
not a designed but an incidental consequence. But
the incidental consequence, if it does not impeach
the goodness, would seem to impeach the wisdom
of God, which failed to provide against such incidents. "The teeth," says Paley, "are contrived to
eat, not to ache. Their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable
from the contrivance;" and he adds that they may
be "a defect in the contrivance."
It is easy, no doubt, to exaggerate the evils of
life and their damaging effect on the cause of Theism.  The sceptic in Hume's Dialogues, I think,
overstates the theological dilemma when he says,
"Allowing,... what you never can prove, that
animal or at least human happiness in this life exceeds its misery, you have yet done nothing. For
this is not by any means what we expect from infinite power, infinite wisdom, and infinite goodness.
163 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
Why is there any misery at all in the world? Not
by chance surely. From some cause, then. Is it
from the intention of the Deity? But he is infinitely benevolent. Is it contrary to his intention?
But he is almighty." And he adds: "Nothing
can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so
clear, so decisive, except we assert that these subjects exceed all human capacity, and that our
common measures of truth and falsehood are not
applicable to them." I believe, on the contrary,
that this reasoning may be very easily refuted. But
Hume is entirely right in what he so much insists
on, - that though the contemplation of the world as
it is, with its manifold imperfections, would not invalidate the doctrine of an almighty, all-wise, and
benevolent God, were it otherwise established on
independent grounds, the contemplation of the
world as it is, does not, of itself, suffice to establish
that doctrine.
A curious illustration of the influence of abstract
speculation on the thinlker's practical estimate of
life is given in the views of the two English writers
whom I have quoted, - Paley and Hume. Paley
revels in the contemplation of the happiness which
beams upon him from all the aspects of Nature and
life, and exultingly points to the marks of divine
benevolence in the constitution of brute and man.
"It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth,
164 
THE BEING OF GOD.
the water, teem with delighted existence. In a
spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever
side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd
upon my view." And in human life, he is sure
"that the common course of things is in favor of
happiness; that happiness is the rule, misery the
exception."  Ilear how Humie, on the contrary, or
the speakers who may be supposed to represent
him, intone the wretchedness and sorrows of life.
"I am persuaded," says Philo, in the Dialogues,
"that the best and indeed the only method of
bringing every one to a due sense of religion is by
just representations of the wickedness and misery
of men." "The people, indeed, replied Demea,
are sufficiently convinced of this great and melancholy truth. The miseries of life, the unhappiness
of man, the general corruptions of our nature, the
unsatisfactory enjoyment of pleasures, riches, honors,- these phrases have become almost proverbial
in all languages. And who can doubt of what all men
declare from their own immediate feeling and experience?... As to authorities, you need not seek
them. Look round on this library of Cleanthes. I
venture to affirm that, except authors of particular
sciences,... there is scarce one of these innumerable writers from whom the sense of human misery
has not in some passage or other extorted a complaint or confession of it." "And why should man
165 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
pretend to exemption from the lot of all other
animals?   The whole earth... is cursed and
polluted. A perpetual war is enkindled among
all living creatures.  Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous; fear, anxiety,
terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born
infant and to the wretched parent.  Weakness,
impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life,
and it is at last finished in agony and horror."
"All the goods of life would not make a very happy
man; but all the ills united would make a wretch
indeed, and any one of them almost, (and who can
be free from every one?) nay, often the absence of
one good, (and who can possess all? ) is sufficient to
render life ineligible. Were a stranger to drop on
a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a
specimen of its ills, an hospital full of diseases, a
prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field
of battle strowed with carcases, a fleet foundering
in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny,
famiine, or pestilence.  To turn the gay side of life
to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures,
whither should I conduct him?- to a ball, to an
opera, to court? He might justly think that I was
only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow."  "There is no evading such striking instances," said Philo, "but by apologies which still
166 
THE BEING OF GOD.
further aggravate the charge. Why have all men,
I ask, in all ages, complained incessantly of the
miseries of life? They have no just reason, says
one: these complaints proceed only from their discontented, repining, anxious disposition. And can
there, possibly, I reply, be a more certain foundationi of misery than such a wretched temper?"
On comparing these opposite views of the value
of life, the suspicion may arise that a radical difference of temperament in the two witnesses has colored their respective and conflicting reports. But
luiume was not a morbid man.  He says in his life
of himself: "I was ever more disposed to see the
favorable than the unfavorable side of things,-a
turn of mind which it is more happy to possess
than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a
year."
The physico-theological argument, then, whatever
of practical and theological value may be conceded
to it, breaks down in the attempt to throw a bridge
of logic across the chasm which divides the finite
in human experience from the infinite of human
thought. To say nothing of the many instances in
which the alleged fitness in the arrangements of
Nature is apparently wanting, and where a different
arrangement would seem to be more conducive to
animal weal; to say nothing of the subterfuge contained in the plea of "general laws" by which it
167
r ;,11 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
is attempted to cover such cases, and to which the
obvious answer is, If general laws will not protect
individual well-being, why are not special arrangements provided for that end? to say nothing of all
this, - the argument is unsatisfactory as failing,
in the first place, to prove from the aptitudes of
Nature the fact of design in the sense in which it
is clailmed; and, secondly, as failing, if design be
allowed, to prove from that the infinite and perfect
Being whom Theism affirms.
Kant's critique of this argument is interesting, both as logical authority, and as indicating
a struggle between moral predilection on the
one hand, and the incorruptible judgment of the
thinker on the other.  "This demonstration," he
says, "deserves always to be named with respect.
It is the eldest, clearest, and best suited to the
common reason of man. It animates the study of
Nature, as in turn it owes its own being to that,
and through it obtains for ever new force. It
carries purpose and design where our observation
would not of itself have discovered them, and
enlarges our knowledge of Nature by the guiding
thread of a special unity, whose principle is outside
of Nature. This knowledge, again, reacts on its
cause,- that is, the idea which gave rise to it,and so increases faith in a Supreme Author to an
irresistible conviction.
168 
THIE BEING OF GOD.
"'It would therefore be not only disconsolate,
but altogether in vain, to attempt to detract any
thing from the authority of this demonstration.
Reason, unceasingly elevated by such mighty, and,
under its manipulation, ever-increasing, although
merely empirical, topics of proof, can never by
doubts of subtile, abstract speculation be so depressed as not to be roused from every fit of
brooding irresolution, as from a dream, by the first
glance which it throws on the wonders of Nature
and the majesty of the world-fabric, and to lift
itself from grandeur to grandeur up to the highest;
from conditioned to condition, up to the supreme
and unconditioned Author of all.
"But although we have nothing to object to the
reasonableness and utility of this procedure, but,
on the contrary, have to recommend and encourage it, we nevertheless cannot approve the claims
which this demonstration would make to apodictic
certaintyr, and to an acceptance needing no favor
or foreign support.  And it can do no injury to the
good cause to tone down the dogmnatic language
of scornful reasoners to that of moderation and
the modest expression of a faith which suffices to
pacify, though it may not command unconditional
subjection.  Accordingly,  I maintain  that  the
physico-theological demonstration alone can never
demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Being, but
169 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
must always leave it to the ontological (to which
it but serves as introduction) to supply that
defect."
Then, after showving how the argument, even if
successful in proving the contingency (or derivative character) of natural forms, and thence a
worldl-architect, fails utterly to prove the contingency of the substance of Nature, i.e., to prove a
world-creator; after showing how those who employ it, in defiance of logical authority, jump from
their conclusion of a potent and wise artificer to
that of an infinite and perfect Being,   the peerless
critic concludes with saying, that "The physicotheologians have therefore no cause for their coyness toward the transcendental demonstration,
and for looking down upon it with the self-conceit
of clear-seeing masters of natural lore, as on the
cobweb-fabric of benighted dreamers. For, if they
would examine themselves, they would find that
after they have travelled a considerable way on the
ground of Nature and experience, and found themselves as far as ever from the object which gleams
upon their reason, they suddenly quit that ground
and pass over into the region of mere possibilities,
where, on the wings of ideas, they hope to reach
that which had eluded their empirical investigation.  And when, at last, after this mighty leap,
they think they have got firm footing, they extend
170 
THE BEING OF GOD.
the now determined conception (which they have
come into possession of they know not how) over
the whole field of creation, and illustrate their ideal,
- at bottom the product of pure reason,- poorly
enough, it is true, and far below the dignity of the
object, by experience, without being willing to
confess that they have come to its cognition or
assumption by any other path."
The main defect, and the fatal defect, in both of
the arguments which have been examined, is the
want of a logical synthesis between eternal existence in the one case, or the fitness of creation in
the other, and the infinite Being, the almighty, allwise, and beneficent Person, whose existence the
argument aims to establish. The source of each
argument is a mental necessity which constrains
the theist to connect in the one case the evident
dependence, in the other the appearance of design
in creation, with the preconceived idea of God.
IJe carries into Nature what he had in his mind,
and what he carries that he finds.
We come now to the a priori or ontological
proof, known also as the proof by "aseity," vid
aseitatis, which means the demonstration of God
from himself (a se), from the nature of his idea.
This argument was first suggested, so far as we
171 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
know, by a godly Italian, a pupil of the Norman
Lanfranc, and his successor,-first as prior of Bee,
then as archbishop of Canterbury,- St. Anselm, a
man  in whom  the philosopher and the devotee,
simplicity of faith and activity of intellect, were
strangely combined, and who heralded the great
revival which scattered the sleep of the Dark Ages,
and irradiated Europe with the dawn of intellectual
light. The account which his biographer gives of
his discovery of this demonstration adds to its interest, if not to its weight. It came into his mind to
inquire if all that we believe and predicate of God
might not be proved by one brief argument. The
thought haunted him by day and by night; it invaded his rest, it even disturbed his devotions;
until once, in the midst of a self-imposed vigil, the
thought occurred which he endeavored to embody
in  his  " Monologium," and  afterwards  in  the
"Proslogium," or "Fides querens Intelleetum."
This is the famed ontological proof. We believe that
God is something than which nothing greater can
be imagined. But that than which nothing greater
can be imagined cannot be in the intellect alone: it
cannot be a mere thought of the mind; for, if it
were only a thought, it might be conceived as
existing, and that would be something greater.
If, therefore, that than which nothing greater can
be imagined existed in the mind alone, a mere
172 
TIIE BEING OF GOD.
conception, then that very thing than which nothing greater can be imagined would be something
than whlich something greater could be imagined,
which is contradictory.
This argument, with some modification in the
form of it, was revived by Descartes five centuries later, was confirmed by Spinoza, and has been
approved by some of the foremost of German
mietaphysicians, - not indeed as logically conclusive
against atheism, but as weighty and profound,
evincing a true conception of the nature of that
idea in which thought and thing, subjective contemplation and objective necessity, are so inextricably
blended.  Leibnitz says of it, "I do not contemn
the argument invented some centuries ago by
Anselm, which  proves  that the perfect Being
exists necessarily; although I find this defect in
it, that it presupposes the possibility of the perfect Being. If this one point can be established,
then the whole demonstration will be complete."
Hegel' finids this in it, that, as thought and being
are antithetical, a Supreme Being who is only
thought is finite, and therefore not really the Supreme Being.
The ontological argument came to be misrepresented, and is still understood to affirm necessary
existence on the simple ground of perfection in the
object of thought. We have the idea of a Being
173 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
embodying all perfection; but existence is necessary
to perfection, therefore our all-perfect Being must
exist. Eveni Leibuitz seems, in the passage I have
quoted, to have construed it thus.  It is against
this perverted argument that the mighty polemic
of Kant is directed; at least, it is only against this
perversion that his polemic is valid in the whole
extent of its demonstration. But against the argumient so understood his critique is conclusive.
Kant objects, 1st. That existence is not a predicate,
not one among other qualities appertaining to a
thing, but merely a putting of the thing with all
its predicates.  It may make some difference with
me, practically, whether or no I have the hundred
pounds which I imagine; but it makes no difference
as to the idea of the hundred pounds. 2d. He objects that necessity affirmed of a logical conclusion
is a very different thing from necessity of being.
If I entertain the idea of God at all, I must needs
ascribe to him such and such predicates,- omnipotence, omniscience, and necessary existence among
the rest. I may say, the idea of God implies these
attributes, -that, if he exists at all, he is selfexistent; but I can, nevertheless, reject the idea
altogether, with all its belongings.
But Anselm's demonstration is not the ontological argument which Kant assails; it is not at all
the absurd syllogism which some would make of it:
174 
THE BEING OF GOD.
that God is a being possessing all perfections; but
existence is one perfection, therefore God exists.
Aniselll does not reckon existence among the divine
perfections, and thence conclude that the being
whose idea embraces all perfections must needs
exist. He compares two modes of conceiving the
all-perfect Being,- that which conceives him simply
as an object of thought, and that which conceives
him as really existing; and he maintains that, so long
as God is conceived only as an object of thought,
- i.e., as a product of the human mind, -we do not
conceive that than which nothing greater can be
conceived, in which consists the true definition of
God.  And as to the objection, that a given idea is
no more perfect for representing an actual existence
than if it were merely a fiction of the mind, Anselm
would say that this may be true of finite things:
they may be conceived as existing or not existing;
necessary existence is no part of their idea. Not
so with the idea of God: in that idea is given
something which cannot be conceived as not existing; but which, if conceived at all, must be conceived as that necessary existence on which all
other existence depends. Otherwise, it is not the
idea of that than which nothing greater can be
conceived.
It must be allowed that this demonstration expresses a true perception of the grounds of certitude
175 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
by which the existence of God is assured to those
who have the idea, and seek confirmation of its import. But it has no validity as addressed to unlbelievers. All that it really proves is, that, given
the idea of God, it is that of a necessarily existing
being. The idea is presupposed as something given
by religion. The argument rests on the postulate
of faith.  Hence, the title of Anselm's treatise,
"Fides  quaerens  Intellectum."  Descartes, who
repeats the argument, places its whole force in the
consciousness we  have that our idea of God must
have God for its author.  "Tota vis argumenti,"
he says, "in eo est quod agnoscamin fieri non posse
ut existam talis naturge qualis sum, nempe, ideam
Dei in me habens, nisi revera Deus etiam existeret.
Deus, inquam, ille idem cujus idea in me est." But
this conviction does not admit of being logically
legitimated; and whilst we feel, as certainly a majority of the deepest thinkers have felt, the substantial weight of the ontological argument, we cannot,
in tile cause of Theism, employ it against systematic
atheism.  In that service it avails as little, perhaps
even less, than the a posteriori proof from design.
The really profound thought it embodies," says
Hegel, "has acquired a false and shallow aspect
from being forced into the form of a conclusion of
the understanding."
Kant, who rejects, in his "Kritik," &c., the on
176 
THE BEING OF GOD.
tological proof, on the ground that you never, as he
says, can thresh or shell (herau8 klauben) existence
out of thought, had previously attempted an argument somewhat resembling it in his " Einzig mc,glicher Beweisgrtnd zur Demonstration des Daseins
G6ttes."  He there offers a demonstration,-  or, to
state it more exactly, the ground of a demonstrationI,-which, whilst in abstruseness and subtlety
it exceeds that of Anselm and Descartes, holds less
of spiritual reality, as it seems to me; and, if more
logical in form, is less weighty in substance, and
therefore less convincing' than the one we have just
been considering. The demonstration is based on
the abstract notion of possibility. Possibility is relation to something given: it therefore presupposes
existence. Something is possible: therefore something exists which makes it possible. If all existence is denied, there is no material for supposing
any thing; and consequently all possibility ceases,
- possibility being the supposition of a supposable
thing.  Here, at the very threshold, a criticism suggests itself.  What we mean by possibility is the
perception of agreement between given ideas: it
resolves itself, at last, into a state of the thinking
mind. Not only, therefore, does possibility cease
when existence is denied, but it ceases also if intelligence is denied.  We might, therefore, on Kant's
premise of interior possibility implying existence,
12
177 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
shorten the process, and say at once, that possibility
implies intelligence. Kant seems to treat the notion
of possibility as something objective, - son] mething
distinct from thloughlt. There is no contradiction, he
says, in denying all existence; only we cannot deny
existence and still retain possibility, because then
there would be no material for thinking. But
suppose I deny possibility, as well as existence,
what becomes of the argument? It is true, the
denial of possibility presupposes existence as well
as the affirmationi of it.  It presupposes the denier.
Here we come at once to Descartes'  Cogito ergo
sum; and it does not appear why this is not a better, because a nearer and more appreciable, point of
departure, than the abstract notion of possibility.
We  need not follow the process by which, from
existence presupposed in possibility, the argument
deduces a necessary Being, and then logically demonstrates the unity, the simplicity, the unchangeableness, the eternity, the supreme reality, of that
Being. But, when in the Vierte Betrachtung the
author proceeds to show that the necessary Being
is a spirit, it is curious to see how he slides into the
inductive, and falls plump on the very satisfactory
cause-and-effect argument whose validity in this
application he afterward, in the treatise of "Pure
Reason," disallows.  "The properties of a Spirit,
Understanding and Will, are of such a kind that
178 
THE BEING OF GOD.
we cannot conceive any reality which would compensate a Being for the want of them. And since
these properties are those which are capable of the
highest degrees of reality, and are at the same time
among the possible, it would follow [that is, if we
deny them to the Supreme Being] that understanding and will and all the reality of the spiritual
nature are, through the necessary Being as a
ground, possible in others, whilst yet they are not
to be found, as belonging to its nature, in that
Being itself. Accordingly, the effect would be
greater than the cause." Most triue! But this
conclusion is not the legitimate yield of the a priori
method hitherto pursued in this demonstration.
The author ascribes understanding and will to the
necessary Being, not because he finds them in the
nature of that Being, but because he finds them
in finite and contingent being, and cannot account
for them there except on the principle of cause and
effect.
It has seemed to me that an argument simpler
than that of Kant, and equally rational, might be
drawn from the nature of space. Space is that
which cannot by any possibility be conceived as
non-existent. We may imagine every thing out of
space, every space-occupying thing annihilated;
but space will still remain. But space, says Kant, is
relative: it cannot be conceived without conceiving
179 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
something else. If, therefore, space remains, though
all space-occupying objects be supposed non-existent,
the something else must be a subject not occupying
space, - that is, spirit: or, to put the thing in a
different shape, space has no existence except as
contemplated; it is, in its essence, external. If,
therefore, space must have always existed, there
must also have been always a contemplating subject. We cannot conceive of space antecedent to
all created being, without also conceiving an intelligent mind. We cannot deny its essential externality, implying a conscious subject to which it is
external. Say, if you will, that the mind itself, in
attempting to conceive of pure space devoid of all
created being, by a necessary act of imagination
constitutes itself the conscious subject contemplating space, and then by a trick of subreption substitutes God in the place of self. That very necessity,
which is nothing less than a law of the mind, is
presumptive evidence in favor of the truth that a
conscious subject must have preceded all objective
finite being, which truth is the very kernel of
Theism.
Kant affirms that the cosmological, the physicotheological, and the ontological proofs are the only
possible methods of demonstrating the existence
of God.  Yet Kant, in his "Critique of Practical
Reason," suggests another more potent than these,
180 
THE BEINVG OF GOD.
derived from the moral law; whose empire in human nature implies an authority above nature, a
divine Lawgiver.
I think there is still another, which I will briefly
indicate.  To make it intelligible, we must first
disabuse ourselves of a very ancient and inveterate
prejudice, -the most obstinate of all our prejudices, -that which supposes the existence of an
external world subsisting by virtue of a certain
substratum to which we give the name of matter,
and which, though as commonly conceived it has
the reputation of something pre-eminently solid, as
if it were soliditv itself, every thinker knows to
be the merest fancy that ever got named in human
speech. Schelling, in the Introduction to his "Transcendental Idealism," says, "The one ground-prejudice to which all others may be reduced is none other
than this, that there are [material] things without us; a belief which because it rests on no rieasons or conclusions (for there is not a single proof
of it that will bear exanination), and yet does not
admit of being eradicated by any proof of the contrary, lays claim to immediate certainty. But since
it relates to something by supposition entirely different from ourselves,- nay, opposed to ourselves,
- of which it is impossible to understand how it
can enter into our immediate consciousness, the
181 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
belief must be regarded as nothing more than a
prejudice,- an inborn and original prejudice, it is
true, but not the less a prejudice on that account." He afterward finds the proposition, "There
are things without us," to be practically identical
with the proposition, "I am."  It is one of the
curiosities of psychology, that this emptiest of all
abstractions, a pure creation of the human mind,
-the notion of matter which Leibnitz defines as
the sleep of the Monads, and  Hemsterhuys  as
spirit curdled, Schelling as spirit in equilibrio, -
that this conceit should have dominated, not only
natural science, where it has its uses, but also theology and philosophy, where it is a senseless obstruction, a hindrance to all right perception. The
belief in matter, as it lies at the foundation of most
of the atheism in the world (not indeed of Schopenhauer's, who believes in no such thing), so it also
underlies most of the attempted demonstrations -
I mean, the a _osteriori demonstrations- of the
existence of God. Those demonstrations presume
the existence of matter, -a tertium quid, something
intervening between God  and the finite mind;
but leave us in the dark as to whether the supposed
matter, the material of creation, was created before
the forms of which it is supposed to be the stuff,
and then moulded into those forms as the potter
mnoulds his clay, or whether it was created simulta
182 
2'HE BEING OF GOD.
neously with those forms. In either case, since
matter by supposition is a substance distinct from
God, these arguments involve the inconceivableness, not to say contradiction, of the origination of
substance out of no substance,- something out of
nothing.
Let us, then, dismiss from our minds the notion of
matter, and view the phenomenal world as a sequence of mental experiences, -seeing, hearing,
feeling, tasting, and the like. I inquire the origin
and ultimate ground of those experiences. My consciousness tells me that I am not their author. I
do not cause, but receive them.  In some of them
I am entirely passive; in others, my action is one,
but not the sole, factor. The experience refers me
to a cause without, and the cause must l)e adequate
to the effect. And here is where all material explanation fails: for matter, by supposition, is inert
and powerless; it could not of itself, were there
any such thing, produce an effect. The cause must
be a power, and the power must be equal to my
uttermost experience.   If I have  an experience
which I call seeing a star a hundred million of
miles removed, the power must be equal to that
effect. Again, a portion of those experiences I
classify as intelligent and sentient beings like myself.  On comparinig my experience with theirs, I
find an almost uniform agreement. What is white
183 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
to me is white to them, what is black is black; we
agree ill square and round, in hot and cold. Hence
I infer the unity of the power which creates these
experiences in different minds. Following this line
of induction, I arrive to the idea, not precisely of
the God of theology, but yet of a Being resembling
that as nearly at least as the Being demonstrated
by the physico-theological argument.
The demonstration which I have indicated is
substantially Malebranche's doctrine of seeing all
things in God. After showing that we perceive
objects not in and through themselves, but by
means of their ideas, Malebranche says, "It is certain that ideas are effective, because they act upon
the mind.... Now, nothing can act immediately
on the mind, unless superior to the mind. Only
God can do that."  "Rien ne le pent que Dieu seul.
Car il n'y a que l'Auteur de notre etre qui en puisse
changer les modifications" (Recherche de la Verite,
L. III. ch. vi.). I shall not pursue the argument:
I only suggest it. I do not affirm that it has the
force of absolute demonstration. But I think I may
claim for it as much of validity at least as logical
analysis finds in the stock arguments of Natural
Theology. Those arguments attempt to prove the
existence of God from things; but the existence
of things, as Descartes has shown, is less certain
than that of God. The certainty of things depends
on the certainty of God.
184 
THE BEING OF GOD.
The fact is, the belief in God precedes and underlies all the attempts to prove his existence, and
vitiates all the reasoning in such demonstrations.
The idea being given, to defend it by reasoning is
one thing, to discover it by reasoning is a very different thing, and a feat that was never yet accomplished by mortal wit. The idea is given, a glance
at Nature confirms it, and all that is essential in the
argument from design is the feeling which demands
intelligence as the co-ordinate of being. It is not
the wonders of anatomy or cosmology, as portrayed
in the Bridgewater treatises, that compel belief:
they are simply responses to, or reflections of, the
God-idea; all the cogency they have in the way of
proof, the simplest existences have as well. For of
all existence the correlate in reason is absolute
Being,-i.e., God. He to whom Nature undissected
is not the immediate presence of God will never
reach him by dissection.   When Vanini was arraigned before the Senate of Toulouse on the
charge of atheism, he picked up a straw from the
floor, and said to his judges: "This straw compels
me to confess that there is a God." A straw is as
much a witness of God as any process of animal
life. On the ground of the argument from design,
we want a God as much for the first filament of incipient organization as we do for the finished curl
185 
CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF
osity of the human hand, as much for a blade of
grass as we do for a star, as much for a single wildflower of the woods as we do for the arch flower of
creation.  And, on the ground of the cosmological
argument, we need him as much for a chaos as we
do for a cosmos. The first aspect of Nature suggests a God, not on the principle of cause and
effect, but because it reflects to us the idea in our
mind. A glance does that as well, or even better,
than an anatomical demonstration. "We murder
to dissect;" and he who does not, like Adam in
Paradise, hear the voice of the Lord God walking
in the garden, will never find him by following the
anatomist along the paths of dusty death.
To the question, Is there any proof of the existence of God? I answer without hesitation, There
is none in the sense of syllogistic demonstration,none which has the force of a mathematical conclusionI, -none in which logic may not detect some
flaw, some vulnerable point, some tendo Achillis exposed to the shafts of criticism. Is it asked why
a truth so fixed in human faith, and so essential to
human well-being, should not admit of irrefragable
proof?  I answer that its very certainty precludes
demonstration. There is nothing of which you are
more certain than you are of your own existence;
and nothing which you would find it more difficult
186 
THE BEING OF GOD.
to prove, in words, to one who, for the sake of argument, should undertake to deny it. Your subjective certainty, expressed by the Coyito eryo sum of
Descartes, you would find it difficult by any process of logic to convert into objective certitude.
All attempts to prove the existence of God labor
with this difficulty, that the thing to be proved is
more certain than the topics of proof by which it is
attempted to prove it. We know God, if at all,
not by inference, but by direct intuition. So Norris
argues in his "Theory of the Ideal World."  "God
is seen by his own light." "If God," says this brave
Platonist, "as being pure Act [for which he quotes
Thomas Aquinas], be the most intelligible object,
then he must be intelligible in the most perfect
manner, or else he will not be what we suppose,the most intelligible object. But now it seems
plain, that for a thing to be intelligible by another
thing is not to be intelligible after so perfect a
manner as to be immediately intelligible in and by
itself. And, therefore, whatever necessity there
may be of ideas1 for the understanding of other
things, we have reason to conclude that God is by
himself immediately intelligible, and to be seen by
1 That is, representative ideas. The author, as idealist, supposes that sensible objects are seen by representative ideas; but
God, he argues, is seen without the intervention of these, - is seen
by immediate intuition.
187 
188     CRITIQUE OF PROOFS OF, ETC.
his own light as being himself that pure and perfect
light in which there is no darkness at all."  In
other words, God is his own witness; and his witnessing of himself in every unsophisticated mind
and every sound heart is the surest and most satisfactory proof we can ever have of this primary
truth. If God exists, it is incredible that the Being
so named should not give assurance of himself to
intelligent thought, should not bear witness of himself in intelligent minds. And, on the other hand,
the most philosophical, the only rational, way of
explaining the general, not to say universal, belief
in God, is the supposition of an object corresponding to that belief.
"I have not," says Kant, in the preface to the
"Einzig moglicher Beweisgrund," -"I have not
so high an opinion of the utility of an undertaking like the present as to suppose that the most
important of all our cognitions, There is a God, is
insecure without the aid of metaphysical investigations. Providence has not willed that those perceptions most necessary to happiness should rest on
the subtlety of fine conclusions; but has given them
directly to the natural, common understanding,
which, if we do not confuse it with false art, will
not fail to lead us to the true and the useful, so far
as it may be most needful for us." 
VII.
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
A BEGINNING of being is inconceivable;
a beginning of existence there must have
been. I use with distinction two words which are
commonly regarded as synonymous. For ordinary
purposes, they may properly enough be so regarded.
But in strictness of thought they are not synonymous; the things signified are not identical.  A
distinction of ideas is implied in the fact of two
different words in the languages of civilized peoples.   Existence presupposes being;  but being
does not necessarily include existence. Being is
the O'VT(o;'v, existence the apexwe  o', of the Platonists.  Being is universal; existence is particular.  Being is absolute;  existence  is relative.
Being is eternal; existence is transient. The one
is insensible and unsearchable; the other comprises
the sensible universe of things.
And the sensible universe had a beginning.
The whence, the how, and the why of that beginning is the ever-disputed problem of ontology. 
190     OVN SHE ORIGIN OF THINVGS.
Time was when men were content to accept the
world as it is, -  to look upon it as self-existent,
without inquiri)ng its cause or ground.  But when
advancing culture stimulated intellectual curiosity,
philosophy began to speculate on the origin of
things.  Observation of natural processes, - birth
and death, change and decay of visible formssuggested the thought that all things are in flux.
"H4vTa pei," said Herakleitos.  But an everlasting flood supposes an everlasting fountain.  A
never-beginning series of transient existences is
an impossibility. There must have been a first,
and, before that first, an unbeoinning something
that gave it birth.  The conviction arose  of a
Power behind this world of shows, - unseen, unknown, but absolute and eternal. This Power
nmiglt be conceived as single or as dual, or even as
plural; for the " Elolhim" of the Pentateuch expresses an indefinite number, and the " Atoims" of
Epicurus, which represent in ]his system the invisible agency, are supposed innumerable.
Tile two ideas, - the eternal and the temporal,
the infinite and the finite,- being given, creation
would seem to be the logical relation of the one to
the other. Intelligence in the finite would seemn to
be best explained by the supposition of creative
intelligence in the infinite.   Spinoza neutralizes
the distinction between the two by making the 
ON 7IIE ORIGIN OF'THINGS.
finite a mode of the infinite, and endowing the
latter with the two attributes of thought and extension. And Fichte, in the spirit of Spinozism,
pronounces the idea of creation to be the grounderror of false metaphysic.1 But " creation " is a
word of wide significance; formation by a conscious,
intelligent Will, -the traditional view of Theism,is not the only conceivable genesis. Others have
been propounded. The various attempts to formulate the copula between being and existence have
given rise to so many distinct theoretical cosmogonies, the more important of which may be classed
under the following heads:  Creation by chance;
creation (divine) by proxy; creation by emanations;  creation by God out of pre-existing matter; creation out of nothing; creation out of spiritual substance; and, lastly, ideal creation.
Creation by chance, in the Epicurean cosmogonly, postulates two conditions, - an infinity of
atoms, and motion.  The  atoms set in motion,
being furnishled with hooks, -or, in modern phrase,
having mutual affinities, - must needs combine.
Out of an infinite variety of possible combinations,
there was but one that would give the result of
a life-sustaining, self-propagating world.  If the
I Schelling, with truer consistency, affirms that no idea of Godhead can be considered complete which does not include the attribute of Creator.
191 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
atoms formed any other connection, the mesalianee
would prove infructuous and end in swift divorce.
As good luck would have it, after numberless failures, they finally blundered into right relations;
and behold a world!
Cicero's criticism on this theory - the comparison with the letters of the Iliad -is well known.
The chief and fatal objection to it is its exorbitant
postulate.   Why not ask a finished universe, at
once? One might as well grant the atoms in originally right relations as grant them in motion.  For
whence that motion? Motion is conceivable only
as resulting from impulse, and impulse presupposes
a force whose action it is.  You cannot have motion without a power to originate motion. And
that power must be self-determiniug, since by supposition there is nothing that could determine it;
in other words, it must be a supreme Will. It is
easier to suppose, with Spinoza, a self-existent universe, and so abandon the idea of creation; or an
origin of things, than it is to suppose atoms in
motion without a moving power.   The theory of
creation by chance must be rejected as less simple
than no creation.
Creation by proxy was a Jewish device for saving the holiness of God from actual contact with
matter. The strong repulsion of the Hlebrew mind
from Egyptian and Syrian Nature-worship had, in
192 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINA'GS.
the period succeeding the Captivity, reached the
point of entire separation from Nature.  Starting
with the notion of holiness in the sense of apartiless, Jehovism had developed  the idea of a God
too holy for any thing. To impute creation, other
than that of spirits like himself, to a Being so sublime, was to derogate  from the awful Majesty.
How could the high and holy One be supposed to
occupy himself with fashioning the impure creatures
of earth? If such creatures must be, it was absolutely necessary that some inferior agent should
give them being. The God of Judaism dwelt
apart in unapproachable holiness. You must not so
much as speak his name. Hence the idea of a second,
- a Creator-God, the Son or Wisdom or Word,- an
idea which, in this aspect and application, is quite
as much a Jewish as it is a Platonic conception.
Respecting this theory, it is enough to say that
what is gained by it in one way is lost in another.
If it saves the holiness of God, it does so at the
expense of his personal interest in his creatures;
which practically is the most essential element in
the idea of Godhead, and without which God for
us is an empty name. It gives us, for the Author
of our being, a secondary agent, -a Creator who
lacks finality,- and therefore can never quite satisfy the highest and freest aspirations of the soul.
The theory of creation by emanations, or eons,
13
193 
194     ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
has its root, or one of its roots, in the same idea of
the absolute separation of Deity from Nature; and
the other, in the correlate idea, which Judaism
proper did not develop, - the essential pravity of
matter. It was the doctrine of the Gnostic systems,
which prevailed in the first three centuries of our
era, and differs from creation by proxy in this:
that creation by proxy, though accomplished by
another, was willed by the Supreme; whereas, in
the Gnostic thleories, the Supreme had no part in
the work, - did not even consent to it. The eons
had it all their own way.  Of these eons, there
were several orders; according to Basilides, three
hundred and sixty-five, -one for each day in the
year, -all governed by "Abraxas," which means
three hundred and sixty-five.  The first two, a
male and a female, were begotten by the will of
the Father,   " Bythos" (the Abyss).  These begat others; these, still others; and so on; each
new generation, by its further remove from the
Bythos, becoming less ethereal than its predecessor,
but still inhabiting the "Pleroma," and sharing the
divine essence. The outermost members of this
hierarchy found themselves living on the confines
of Matter, which some represent as coeternal with
God; others, as the wreck of a fallen spiritual
world.   Perceiving  its capabilities,  they  were
tempted to lay hands on it, and make a world. 
ON THE ORIGIN OF TIIINGS.
This huge indiscretion has been the source of
unnumbered woes to the souls which the thievish
-eons, Prometheus-like, abstracted from the essence
of the Supreme, and imprisoned in mortal bodies.
It necessitates a long and painful process of redemption by wvhichl in time the captive souls shall
be set free, and restored to the "Pleroma" from
whence they sprang.  Then God will exert himself,
will dissolve the fabric of the material universe;
Matter will be confined within its original bounds,
and all will be as it was before the unlucky mistake of creation.
The theories vary, in some of their details, with
the different schools of Gnosticism; but the fundamental principles are the same in all.  Marcion
supposes creation to be the work of a Demiurge,
who holds a middle place between the Prince of
Light and the Prince of Darkness,- between God
and the Devil. He is the being whom the Jews,
uinder the name of Jehovah, worshipped as supreme.  That was their mistake.  He is not the
Supreme; he is only Demiurge.  He  is neither
wholly good nor wholly bad: good, inasmuch as
he rewards the good; but he also punishes the bad,
which a perfectly good Being would not do.
On the whole, the farrago of theosophic foolery
known as Gnosticism requires no comment from
the modern critic. I have none to make.
195 
196     ON THE ORIGIN OF TIHlNGS.
Next come the two theories, of creation from
pre-existing material, and creation out of nothing.
The prevailing theory of the ancients, common to
Hebrew and Greek, was that of creation from a
given material. " The earth was without form and
void," says the Elohist, when "the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters," and called into
being, first, light; then the strong firmament separating the waters; then grass and trees; then sun,
moon, and stars; then fishes and birds; then cattle;  then man.   " First of all," sings the Greek
theogonist, "there  was chaos;  then  the broadbreasted Earth; then Love; then Night and Erebus,
and   from their coition Ather and the Day.  Then
Earth created for herself the covering, Heaven."
Ovid, some centuries later, knows no other beginning of things: -
"Ante mare et tellus et quod tegit omnia coelunm,
Unus erat toto naturoe vultus in orbe,
Quem dixere chaos, rudis indigestaque moles."
"Moles," however, does not express precisely what
the Greeks meant by the word "chaos."  They
understood by that term. something less positive
and solid, so far as we can judge from the etymology of the word.  Chaos, from Xa'o(eiv), "to
yawn, to cleave asunder." We have an English
word which comes directly from the same root,"chasm."  Chaos, indeed, though not the mathe 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
matical "nothing" of the next theory, was a kind of
nothing. It was substance without quality, - if
such a thing can be conceived, - substance with
no attribute but extension.  It was the /u 6'v of
Plato, which must not be confounded with OV'cK V
or OV'8e'v. The French language expresses the difference by the two terms nHant and rien. Neant
is that which lacks all quality and life, whose
nature we, even in English, express by the word
"nothingness," but of which existence may nevertheless be predicated; whereas rien is pure privation,- absence not only of quality but of being.
It is true, neant is sometimes used in the sense of
rien; it comes from the Italian niente, which has
that sense, and no other. But there is this distinction between comparative nothing and absolute
nothing, the /L;'v and the OVK O'v.  Schelling defines the former as that which is capable of all
determinations, but devoid of all, - the pure sport
of divine free-will.  Chaos, then, in the old Greek
sense, at least in the etymological sense, is, being
emptied of all accidents, - emptiness. This, however, as it was not Ovid's, so it is not the common,
understanding of the term; for the obvious reason
that the vulgar mind can form no conception of
being without accidents, and can see no distinction
betwveen undetermined being and no being. Accordingly, the latest modern form of the theory of
197 
198'ON I'HE ORIGINV OF THIINGS.
creation from a pre-existing material invests that
material with certain accidents, and supposes, if I
rightly understand it, a heterogeneity of essence
latent in homogeneity of mode.  That latest form
is the so-called nebular hypothesis, commonly referred to Laplace, but whose first suggestion, I
believe, is due to Kant. The nebular hypothesis
supposes the existing cosmos to be the product,
under natural lawvs, of an aboriginal, gaseous mass,
which took on a rotary motion, and continued to
rotate around a centre of its own, until, the centrifugal force in the outermost portion exceeding the
centripetal, it gave forth successively detached
rings, which broke into fragments, and, still rotating,
formed the various bodies of the planetary systems.
Of the truth or plausibility of this hypothesis
it would be presumptuous in me to speak. As a
statement of the immediate antecedents of the
present cosmos, it seems to be generally accepted
by physicists. But, considered as exhaustive cosmogony, it is obviously inadequate. Nor did Kant
propound it in any such sense.  Granted the existence of the vapor or gas-world as antecedent and
material of the present creation, that  material
surely cannot be supposed to have existed from
eternity, nor yet to have been created with a view
to subsequent creations. Created out of what?
Shall we say, Out of nothing? But we are speak 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
ing of the theory of creation from a pre-existing
material. The hypothetical gas-world cannot be
otherwise understood than as the result of a foregone creation, - the relic of a perished world, of
which the present is but the apokatastasis, according
to Origenic dreams,-  the steam that went up from
a universe in flames, and that will go up again
when " the elements shall melt with fervent heat,
and the earth that now is and the works that are
therein shall be burned up." At any rate, it is
wholly unintelligible as a finality in the investigation of the origin of things. It leaves unanswered
the question suggested by so many other theories
and argumentations,- Whence all this gas?  The
same objection applies to every form of the theory
of creation from pre-existing material. Whence
the material?  If we  say, Created  outright, we
abandon the theory. If we say, Given from eternity, we have a dualism which can never, I think,
satisfy the philosophic mind; inasmuch as it nailitates with a fundamental principle of logic, - the
principle of the "sufficient reason."
We come to the theory of creation out of nothing. I call it a theory, and yet it hardly deserves
that name, if by theory we mean intellectual vision,
with a veritable theoroumenon for its object. It
has been and is still the prevailing doctrine of the
Christian Church, stoutly maintained by Irenius,
199
r         C;'I 
200     ON THE ORIGIN OF TIHINGS.
who says, in his work against Heresies, that, whereas men can make nothing except from a given material, God, on the contrary, himself created the
material of his creations, which had no previous
existence: by St. Augustine, who, in his "Confessions," argues that God  could not have  made
heaven and earth from his own essence, for then
would they be equal with God; neither from a
pre-existing material, for originally there was
niothing but God; therefore he must have made
them out of nothing: reaffirmled by Thomas Aquiiias in the Middle Age, and insisted on by modern
Orthodoxy. And yet it is not a Biblical doctrine,
and derives no sanction from Scriptural authority.
The only Biblical passage alleged in its support is
an apocryphal one.  In the second book of Maccabees, vii. 28, the mother of the seven martyrs says
to her youngest, "I beseech thee, my son, look
upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is
therein, and consider that God made them of things
that were not,'" -"   OV'c 0"VrT," which the Vulgate
renders "ex nihilo." The meaning of the passage is
doubtful, and may be rendered, according to some,
by quumn non essent, " while as yet they were not."
At all events, another apocryphal passage (Wisdom, xi. 17) tells us that the almighty hand made
the world of formless matter,- "dE't atpov verse." 
1 D. F. Strauss, Chlristliclle Glaubenslebre, par. 46. 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
So both passages, being of equal authority, neutralize each other.   Schelling, always  reverent
toward  Orthodoxy, remarks that there must be
somnethling ill a doctrine so universally accepted.
"It is not to be unconditionally repudiated," he
says; "only it must be explained." And he explains it to mean " creatio absque omni vrceexistente
potcntia." Unlquestionably, there is something in
the doctrine. It was the Church's protest - and a
very needful protest -against the Manichean and
Gnostic dualism, which ascribed independent eternlity to matter, and made it the source of all natural
and moral evil. Further significance it has none.
On the contrary, if creation is understood to be
substantial, - if it means fabrication of matter as
well as generation of forms, fabrication of a substance ontologically distinct from the substance of
God, and whose only antecedent is the divine Will,
- then the doctrine, fairly envisaged and analyzed,
asserts something unintelligible and unimaginable;
something which the tongue may profess, but which
the mind refuses to appropriate. And, as to its
being universally received, the fact is, that the
deepest minds of the Church have either resolved
it into something different, or emphatically denied
it. John Scotus, the greatest theosopher of a thousand years, explains the "nothing" to be the ineffable, incomprehensible, and inaccessible brightness
201 
202     ON THE  ORIGIN OF THINGS.
of the divine nature; and Jacob Boehme, the unfathomable cobbler of Gorlitz, says, "Many authors
have written that heaven and earth were created
out of nothing; but to me it is strange that, among
so many excellent men, not one has been found able
to describe the true ground, seeing the same God
has been from eternity what he is now. Where
nothing is, there nothing becomes....  God had
no other material from which he created the world
than his own essence, no other than himself."
In none of the theories thus far discussed can I
find a solution, which reason will accept, of the
problem of creation. And still the idea of creation
is one of those convictions which the human mind
refuses to part with. Indeed, it is the necessary
correlate and complement of the idea of God.
According to Newton's great word in the "Principia," God is a relative term, - "Deus  est vox
relativa." God is no more conceivable without
creation as the objectivation of the infinite of that
subject, than a universe is conceivable without God
as the subject of that object.  Angelus Silesius, a
daring mystic of the seventeenth century, says,
"I know that God cannot live a moment without
me.  If I perish, he must for want of me give up
the ghost. I am as important to him as he to me.
I help maintain his being as well as he mine." 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THIArGS.
"That God so blessed is and lives without desire,
He has from me as I from him acquire."
Is there, then, any theory of the origin of being
which criticism will tolerate, not to say approve?
I am not so presumptuous as to think of offering
any thing which claims to be a solution of the
problem. I will but venture one or two suggestions concerning it.
In the first place, no theory of creation is admissible which does not exclude the relation of time.
The idea of an historic genesis must be once for all
abandoned.  It is not an historic, but a metaphysical, origin of things which reason contemplates.
For suppose a beginning in time, the question confronts us, Why  at that particular moment, while
eternity, a parte ante, awaited the beneficent act?
If creation was good, why tarried that  good?
Whatever motive may be supposed to have actuated God in undertaking the work of creation at
all, must have actuated him from all eternity, since
God was ever the same. He could not have been
influenced from without, while nothing existed but
himself. Vainly does St. Augustine attempt to
repel the pertinent question of the  Manichees,
"H  ow came it, all of a sudden, to please your God
to do what he had not done before through eternal
time? And what did he before the good work of
creation? "-" He made time," the Father answers.
203 
204     OAT T'HE ORIGIN OF  THINGS.
If there was time before the creation of the world,
God made that time, and that was his work,- an
answer which evades, but does not solve, the question.
Moreover, it belongs to the idea of God, as Hermogenes 1 argued long ago, that he is Lord, that he
rules.  "Deitas," says Newton, is " domninatio Dei,
non in proprium corpus, sed in subditos." Deity is
essentially dominion, and therefore requires subjects, and must have had them from all eternity.
Those subjects, it is true, may have been spirits
formed of his own essence. But then the question
recurs, If a spiritual world sufficed before the creation of the material, whys did it not always sufficee, and what need of a material? An historic
creation -a direct creation with a date, however
remote- appears to me untenable, confuted moreover, as it is, by two axioms to be remembered in
this connection: No force without stuff, and no
stuff without force; and, The quantity of force in
existence is always the same.
Another important element in the consideration
of this question is the necessary character, the
character of divine necessity, which belongs to
the idea of creation, viewed in connection with the
being of God. I mean to say, that creation is inconceivable as all act of divine free-choice, ill the
sense that the God who chose to create might as
I Quoted by Strauss, Christliche Glaubenslehre, par. 46. 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
well have chosen not to create, or might not have
created had he so willed.  For then might God
have been other than he is, since the character of
the being and the character of the will are inseparable. When we say that God might have done
other than he has done, we say that he might have
been other than he is, - a proposition which contradicts itself, since God by definition is necessarily
God. Creation must be regarded as a necessary
manifestation of the divine nature, - the inevitable
going forth of himself, of the Creator, who only by
going forth of himself becomes real to himself.
"For," says the " Theologia Germanica," " Godcl
without creature has essential but not actual being." Moreover, if creation is not necessary, then
it is fortuitous,- a chance creation, as Spinoza has
aptly pointed out.  "Necessary and fortuitous," he
says, "are opposites;  therefore, whoever asserts
that God might have abstained from creating a
world, evidently says, in effect, that the world was
made by chance, as proceeding from  a volition
which might not have been." The idea of God
involves creation. "God as spirit," says Hegel, "is
essentially self-manifestation." This is his "idea."
God before and without the creation of the world
is pure abstraction. Without a world, God is not
God.
Two difficulties which lie in the way of a rational
205 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
theory of the origin of things - the difficulty of
imagining a beginning in time of the sensible world,
and the difficulty of arbitrariness in the act of creation-being thus disposed of, there remains the
difficulty arising from the supposition of a foreign
substance distinct from God, and created by God
in order therefrom to fashion the worlds which his
fiat called into being. Creation of a foreign substance is creation out of nothing, -a view which
we have seen to be based on no rational conception.   The  idea of a pre-existing material, coeternal  with  God,  we  have  also  seen  to  be
inadmissible. Shall we say, then, that God himself is the substance of which the worlds are
formed? This, in some sense, I am driven to
admit; but not in the way of Spinozism. Spinoza
invests Deity with the attribute of extension. Extension with him is not an operation, but a quality
of God. This view obliterates all distinction between God and the sensible world, and gives us
not merely Pantheism,- which, properly defined, is
still Theism,- but Cosmotheism, Hylotheism.  Spinioza is called by Novalis " a God-intoxicated manl."
His system has great fascinations, -it enlarges our
sense of the divine Presence; but, after all, it takes
from the idea of God its most essential element,
that which religion will never consent to part
with,- the attribute of lordship. Its logical de
206 
ON TJEI  ORIGINLV OF THINGS.
fects are obvious; and Schelling's criticism is just,
- that, whilst it invests God with the two qualities
of thought and extension, it brings them into no
relation.  "Thought and extension are as much
estranged from each other in the system of Spinoza
as in that of Descartes. Thought, according to
him, has no part in the modifications of the extended substance, altlough modification- that is,
determination - is conceivable only as an act of
thought. It is only on account of the actual existence of things that Spinoza posits modifications in
his infinite Substance.  The things are not products
of thought; and, were there not things independent
of his system, there could, from his principles, be
none deduced."
I can see but two ways of escape from Spinozismr
on the one hand, and the ontological dualism of
Descartes I on the other; to wit, the two theories
last named in my catalogue, - creation out of spirit,
and ideal creation.
Of the former of these, the MIonadology of Leib nitz is an apt example. Leibnitz supposes the
universe to consist of monads or entelechies; some
of which are conscious, and some unconscious.
1 The dualism of Descartes had its origin apparently in the
supposed necessity of a second substance to serve as the ground
of extension, which he conceived as a state. But extension may be
conceived as a continuous act of spirit.
207 
208      OV TFHE ORI GIN OF ITIINGS.
The conscious, or those which have apperceptions,
are spiritual monads, or souls; the unconscious, or
those which have only perceptions, are simply
monads. They all exist by momentary fulguration
from the central monad, which is God. The defect
of this system is that it fails to account for the
difference of  conscious and unconscious  in the
different orders of monads, which, as momentary
utterances from one and the sanme Being, should
have equal worth.
Abandoning, then, the momentary fulguration of
the monads, and substituting for it a momentary
influx of the life by which they subsist and act,
let us supplement the theory of Leibnitz with a
thought of Boehme. Let us suppose that God in
the beginning created a universe of spirits; that
some of these spirits by self-will estranged themselves from the Fountain Spirit, until by utter
defection they lost their self-possession, their conscious life. Suppose this, and we have the unconscious monads of Leibnitz. This theory, it is true,
does not explain the defection of spirits. But defection is one of the liabilities of that free-will with
which all spirits must be supposed to be endowed.
And, certainly, it is a comfort to think that fallen
spirits can be turned to so good a use as to furnish
a,piece de resistance for their betters.
In discussing the origin of things, the existence 
ON THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.
of things has of course been presumed: so much
has been conceded to ancient universal prejudice.
Bishop Berkeley, who seems of all philosophers to
have most completely emancipated himself from
this prejudice, and the fundamental position of
whose ontology, in the "Principles  of Human
Knowledge," is "Esse est percipi," represents the
ideal creation. For creation there may be, though
things there are none. Strictly speaking, ideal
creation is no cosmogony, but simply a theory of
being,, a ratio essendi of the sensible world, and as
such worthy of all respect; not to be vanquished
by the grins of coxcombs,1 grin they never so knowingly. Creation, according to this view, is the
immediate action of God on the mind of each percipient; the world, a continuous communication
between the infinite Spirit and the finite spirits
formed of his essence.
1 " And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin."-Pope.
14
209 
VIII.
THE GOD OF RELIGION, OR THE HUMAN
GOD.
HEN  we read in the Bible that God made
man in his own image, we may see in that
statement a reflex of the fact that man makes God
in his. It is a necessity of his nature so to do.
All that we  converse with or thiilk of takes its
character from ourselves. The sensible world of our
experience is a texture woven on the loom of our
nerves; the ideal world is a fabric fashioned in the
mould of our thought.  We think as we are.  And
so man fashions his God in his own image, endows
him with the attributes he has learned to respect
,in the wisest and best of human kind. He is right
in so doing; for what better can any one imagine
than the highest possible degree of the best known
kind?
But how, on this principle, account for the fact
of fetishism?  Does man make his God in his own
likeness when he worships a serpent or a stone?
The answer is, that man in that stage of development in which alone such worship is possible has 
OR TIIE HUAIAN GOD.
not yet become conscious of his own image; he
has not yet seized the idea of his humanity; it has
not yet occurred to him that man is greater than
serpent or stone, - greater than the outside world
of his surrounding.  The outside world to him is
ultimate and omnipotent; there is nothing behind
it; he feels its overweight and pressure; there is a
mystery in Nature which overawes him, and in
whatever object that mystery happens to strike his
imagination most forcibly,- serpent or tiger, or log
or stone, - that object becomes a god for him. But
when, with advancing intellectual development, visible objects no longer occupy that place in his imagination, no longer satisfy his want of a God; when
driven to seek his God in the invisible, with nothing to guide him but his own thought, -then, I
say, it becomes a necessity of his nature to fashion
his God in his own image.  Man is the highest that
he knows. The highest he can imagine is but an
enlargement and transfiguration of the human.
Hlis God must be man, - superhuman, indeed, as
transcending, in power, wisdom, and goodness, all
human experience, all actual humanity; but still
essentially man.
The God of religion must be an intelligent
and moral nature. No being destitute of these
qualities can fill the place of God for us; and
of these qualities we can form no conception,
211 
THE GOD OF RELIGION,
except as they are manifest in human subjects.
We suppose them indefinitely, infinitely extended,
and invest our God with their likeness. We cannot do otherwise.  If we have a God, he must be
in some sort the reflex of our own nature.  Mr.
Arnold objects to a "God who thinks and loves,"
as being but a "magnified, non-natural man." 1
I say this is precisely what the God of religion
must be, if devotion is to have an intelligible
object: man without human limitations; intelligence and love personified. Non-natural, because
Nature is birth, and God is unborn.
Nevertheless, it must be confessed that a God in
our own image is a kind of idol; anti the worship
of that image, without an accompanying consciousness of its inadequacy, may become idolatry. To
find the just medium between vague abstractiontoo vague for devotion -on the one hand, and
idolatry on the other, is the problem of enlightened
Theism. The question meets us at the threshold,
Can we speak of God as person? And in what
sense       ca n we use that term?   I answer, that, so
far as religious uses are concerned, it is useless
to talk of a God who is not in some sense person.
Necessity, Fate, does not make a God; nor
Power nor Intelligence alone; nor Mr. Arnold's
"Eternal n ot ourselves that makes for righteous
I " God and the Bible."
212 
OR THE HUMAN GOD.
ness." 1 These may suggest the origin or express
the moral order of the universe; but they do not
constitute a God whom one can pray to, - a God
whom one would care to worship, or would ever
draw near to and seek to commune with. The
God of our devotion, if devotion is any thing more
than an empty farce, must be, in some sense, person.  And in what sense? 2  I include in that idea
intelligent Will, providential care, and a moral
government of the universe. There may be other
properties belonging to this idea; but these are
essential. In this sense, then, the God of religion
must be person. "Deus sine dominio, providentia,
et causis finalibus," says Newton, "n ihil aliud est
quam fatum et natura."
But we know how difficult it is to disconnect
1 " God and the Bible." Strange that a writer who criticises with
so much acuteness should fail to perceive the hollowness of his own
definition, which puts a vague abstraction in the place of a living
Will.
2 Words exercise a controlling influence on thought and belief.
When turned from their original import, and fixed in some perverted use, they breed misconception and propagate ineradicable
error.  The word "person," which meant originally a mask, then
the?Mle of an actor on the stage, and which might be fitly employed
to designate the manifestation of a Being in character and action,
has come in its perversion to signify the conscious self, the human
qego.  That ego is not the deepest in man, but springs from an unknown ground. God, as the ground of all individuality, is superpersonal. He becomes personal to each believer through the
meditnm of his own consciousness, as a thousand lenses may at the
same moment concentrate, each in a separate focus, the rays of
the sun.
213 
TIIE GOD OF RELIGION,
the idea of person from that of form, from the individual human form. All the personality that we
know any thing about is vested in human forms.
A person, for us, means a human individual. The
terms are synonymous. It is difficult not to invest
Deity with a human form; but the moment we do
so, we lapse into idolatry. The form becomes an
idol. If it serves to represent Deity to us, it also
necessarily misrepresents him. If it helps our conception, it also necessarily misconceives, - in fact,
extrudes Deity from our thought, and installs another in his place. The very use of the masculine
pronoun in this connection is misleading. It is unavoidal)le. We must say " He" and " His," if we
speak of God at all; but what subtle illusions and
idolatries lurk in those pronouns! Hlow strong
the tendency to conceive of God as not only distinct
from creation in idea, but as spatially separated from
creation, - as an individual in space!  It is difficult, I say, to disconnect the idea of personality from
that of the human form. And the human form is
so dear to us, so essential to our affections! The
imagination insists upon it. It seems scarcely possible to be much in love with any thing else, - with
any thing that does not wear that form in our imagination. And this, I suppose, is the reason why
Christians have made a God of Christ: they want
an idol. I can fully appreciate the feeling which
214 
OR THE HUMAN GOD.
leads men to worship Christ as Deity. God, they
say, the absolute Being, is to them a thin abstraction, too vague and vast and remote and inconceivable to serve them as an object of worship.
They want for that purpose a God of their own
make; a God who has appeared ill human form; a
God whom they can thoroughly apprehend with
their idea. They believe in the infinite Father;
but can better understand and more  confidently
approach and commune with the Son. This is the
feeling of the great body of Christians everywhere.
It is very natural, but nevertheless it is idolatry;
it is the same feeling which, in ruder times, gave
birth to graven images of wood and stone to represent God.  Then it was a sculptured or pictured
idol; now it is a mental one. It was natural that
Christians should be led, by veneration for the
founder of their religion, to worship him as God.
But when I read in the Gospel that the Christ
whom they worship was himself a worshipper,
was always looking to One who was higher than
himself, that he prayed to One  whom  he called
Father, revealing thereby the conscious limitation
of his own finite nature,- I cannot but regard such
worship as idolatry. Idolatry is every worship that
stops short of the Supreme.
The God of our devotion must be person; but
devotion does not require that we invest that per
215 
TIIE GOD OF RELIGION,
son with a human form. It is a trick of the imagination, of the image-making faculty, that does this.
If we give reins to the imagination, it is difficult
not to confound person with form. But the understanding readily discriminates between  the two.
Take the analogy of the human individual. We
call the human individual a person. But what
constitutes personality is not the visible form,
but the invisible soul which animates that form.
What that soul is to the individual, that God
is to the universe of things, -its central Soul,
the supreme Personality, regent in all and present in all by diffused consciousness, as the human
soul is present by diffused consciousness in every
part of the human organism. The human organism is a world in little, of which the soul is its
God. The organic Whole, the world in its entireness, is a body of which God is the soul, -not
identical with the body in form, and not separated
from it in space. This is the best conception I can
form of Deity; conscious, nevertheless, how inadequate all human conceptions of Deity must be. In
religion, it is a matter of less moment that the intellect should form a perfect conception, than that
the heart should have perfect conviction.  Happily,
the eternal Mystery, which eludes the efforts of the
most developed understanding that seeks to comprehend it, condescends to the crudest and most
216 
OR THE IlHUMAN GOD.
infantile mind that is satisfied with believing.
"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and revealed them unto babes," is as true
of the being of God as it is of all his counsels.
Here, as in all things, the intellect has its rights;
but the office of the intellect in relation to God is
not to attempt to fathom the idea, but to clear it
of what is false and unworthy, -to correct that
idolatrous tendency which would make the infinite
and inscrutable altogether such an one as ourselves.
This tendency lurks in the characters we ascribe to
him, when even in themselves and with proper
limitations those characters are worthy and true,
-are the best conceptions we can form of the
Divine.
For example, we call God father, and we have
the highest authority for so doing. The most
touching and inspiring things that have been said
of him by wise and holy men connect themselves
with this epithet: "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him."
What more endearing, encouraging, reconciling!
"Our Father which art in heaven." How much of
Godhead - of the beauty and loveableness of Godhead- that phrase conveys! God must be conceived as Father, in order that we may get the
nearest access to him, and the best enjoyment of his
idea. The love of God must be conceived as pater
217 
8THE GOD OF RELIGION,
nal, in order that we may conceive of God's loving
at all. The idea of a rigid and unchangeable order
of events, comprehendilng all our destinies and
yielding now joy and now sorrow, according as
our several spheres are adjusted to the general plan,
does not satisfy us,- gives us really no God: it is
too impersonal. We want to believe that the Being
whose offspring we are has a care of his creatures,
not only collectively but individually; perceives
their necessities, feels them, ministers to them,
making all things with set purpose work for their
good. And this satisfaction we have when we
think of God as father; this faith we express when,
with a full understanding of its import, we employ
that term. Still, it becomes us to remember that
the term, after all, is a figure of speech, not a literal
fact; and that the figure which likens the eternal
Power to an earthly parent may be pushed beyond
its just application. It is applicable only as expressing a Providence whose motive power is love.
It is carried too far when it tempts us to impute to
the Ruler of worlds the indulgent weakness of an
earthly parent, who would spare his child all sorrow
and suffering, and saturate him with perpetual
felicities. The fatherhood of God consists with a
great deal of misery and helplessness and want and
distress; it consists with extreme suffering; it consists with fearful inequalities of fortune; with the
218 
OR THE HUMAN GOD.
existence of myriads who are born diseased and
maimed and crippled, and drag their life through
years of pain, without apparently one full draught
of the joy of being. We call God father, but
misery abounds; we believe him omnipotent, but
misery continues. We think, Would all earthly
father be willing to see his children suffer, and
suffer hopelessly, who had power to help and relieve?  And, when we look for explanation to the
heavenly Father, lie hides himself in thick darkness.
And we have to modify and complement our idea
of the fatherhood of God with other aspects and
facts of the divine nature; and to learn that, though
God is a father, it is a fatherhood which earthly
relations fail to pattern, and which earthly experience fails to interpret.
Again, we call God moral governor and judge,
and we are right in so doing. There is nothing
more definitive in Deity than the moral jurisdiction
which the Ruler of all exercises over moral natures.
All religions recognize this moral government.
Whatever else they may teach or fail to teach concerning God, they all inculcate the belief that he
tries and judges men by their actions; recompensing
good with good, and evil with evil. But here again
it must be remembered that we are dealing with
figures, and not with literal truths. The terms
"moral governor"  and "judge"  are figures of
219 
THIE GOD OF RELIGION,
speech derived from human relations, which fit the
being and action of God in only one point, and are
likely to mislead if taken as literal statements of
divine operations. The point in which they fit is
the fact, that, by the constitution of man and of
things, well-doing is productive of well-being, and
sin of suffering. This is all that is meant, or should
be meant, by the moral government of God. The
moment we exceed this, and transfer human methods to divine retributions, the terms "moral governor" and "judge" are found to be inapplicable.
The judgments of men are an action on each particular case; those of God inhere in the case itself.
Those of man are after the act; those of God are
before the birth of the actor, from the foundation
of the world. There is no trial and no judgment of
evil-doers; their penalty is merely the relation of
the seed to the fruit.  Every act that a man performs as a moral agent is seed cast into the ground.
When he acts a crime, he sows nightshade instead
of corn, and his punishment is that he reaps poison
instead of bread. The penalty is not always immediate and not always apparent, and human impatience is often disappointed in its expectation of
visible retributions, and looks in vain for some
stunning demonstration of divine vengeance. IHere
is an innocent man persecuted and trampled on by
some unrighteous oppressor; here, one tortured and
220 
OR THE HUMAN GOD.
put to death for difference of opinion; here, again,
a conspiracy of swindlers in office, banded together
to defraud the government they are sworn to serve,
and enrich themselves by enormous plunder.  Will
it please Omnipotence to give attention to these
outrages, and send a swift thunder-bolt to smite
the transgressors? Omnipotenlce attends; but as to
the thunder-bolt the answer is, "Thou thoughtest
I was altogether such an one as thyself," and must
needs blaze forth in flaming fury at every enormity
which my creatures perpetrate.  "My ways are not
as your ways."  I make my sun to shine and my
rain to fall alike on the evil and the good, and my
thunder-bolts strike indifferently the just and the
unjust.  What need of thunder-bolts to smite the
transgressor?  The seed was planted when the deed
was done, and no power in heaven or on earth can
prevent the ripening of the penal fruit.   The
mills of God grind slowly, but they grind.  Longsuffering turns the wheel, and patient Justice
appoints the result, - tribulation and anguish to
the evil-doer, and peace and contentment to the
good.
These are illustrations of what is true and what
is false in man's propensity to fashion God in his
own image. The tendency is inevitable. Man
must have a God in his own image, if he have one
at all, or one that really answers to that name and
221 
THE GOD OF RELIGION,
need. The God of religion must be human. But
this human God mnust be infinitely human,- man,
without manl's infirmities and bounds; personal,
without individuality; the Father, without parental doting; the moral Ruler, without vindictiveness.
In religion, it is sentiment that furnishes the
stuff; and the intellect, that, by modifying and eliminating, gives the form. All that is essential in our
idea of God we get, not firom the understanding,
but from the heart; and all that is essential in it is
secured to uis by the heart's perpetual need. Philosophy may assail the conception, and science may
disown the idea; but they furnish nothing that
can fill its place.  The pure in heart will still see
God.  The pure heart is a little child that knows
its Father, and will hear of no substitute. In the
morning of creation, it sought and found the unseen
Friend, when " Enoch walked with God."   From
the "house of bondage," in after years, it sent up
a sigh, and received for answer the great word,
"I am." In the noontide of history, it paused to
listen, and learned to say, "Our Father in heaven."
And when time is old, when Science has fulfilled
its career, and Speculation repeated its ever-recurring circle, and both have confessed their incompetence alike to grasp or refute; when prophecies
222 
OR THE HUIIAN GOD.
fail, and tongues have ceased, and fancied knowledge of the Absolute vanished away, - the heart,
the eternal child, with invinlcible faith, will still
rejoice iin Him "in whom we live and move and
have our being."
223 
IX.
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
OUR differing views of the universe divide the
belief of speculative minds.
I. The universe the sole product of a single,
extramundane, intelligent Will. II. The universe
the joint product and battle-ground of two opposing
Powers.  III. The universe the self-manifestation
of an immanent, diffusive Soul. IV. The universe
a self-sulbsisting, independent Reality. - Theism,
Ditheism or Dualism, Pantheism, Atheism.
Theism is the view which lies nearest to us, as the
common belief of the Christian world.  But Theism,
referring as it does all facts and events to a single
supreme Power, encounters a difficulty in human
experience which faith may adjust to its own satisfaction, but which philosophy is troubled to explain
to the satisfaction of the understanding.
The difficulty is this: that while by supposition
the Will that creates and ordains is one, the manifestations not only differ but conflict.  The unity
affirmed of the Cause is not apparent in the opera 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
tion. The Power over all is conceived to be omnipotent, omni-beneficent, wrilling only the best; but
the product is not, so far as we can see, that perfect world which ought to result from such a source.
The Power is affirmed to be absolutely good, but
the world abounds in evil. How from the one pure
Source can contraries flow? How from the one
Good can evil proceed? No question in theology,
and none in philosophy, goes deeper than this. No
problem has proved more perplexing.
The old Hebrew theology, as represented by the
later Isaiah, was content to refer the evil with the
good to the arbitrary power of Jehovah,' whose
simple will sufficed to justify the one as well as the
other.  "I am Jehovah, and there is none else.  I
form the light and create darkness; I make peace
and ereate evil." It is not till after the Captivity
that Judaism exhibits other views of the origin of
evil.
Meanwhile, to the Aryan mind in its Persian
development, the contemplation of a world where
good and evil appear to contend for the mastery
had suggested the existence of a principle of Evil,
- a malignant being opposed to the good, sole cause
of all mischief in the world of bodies and the world
of souls. Two self-subsistent, independent forces,
a power that creates and a power that destroys, a
power that blesses and a power that harms,- this
15
225 
DUALISM AND OPTJMISM.
is the theory of the universe known in philosophy
as Dualism, in religion as Parsism. Traces of it
appear in the good and bad deities of the polytheistic religions; but its consummation, the sharp
distinction of a good and an evil power,- the one
to be sought, obeyed, worshipped, the other to be
renounced and shunned, - is the prime and distinguishing feature of Parsism, the religion of
ancient Persia, from which sprung the Manicheism,
so threatening to Christianity in the fourth and
fifth centuries, and of which a remnant still survives in the Parsis of India.
Parsism ranks with the oldest of existing religions,
and, though greatly modified and perverted in its
subsequent developments, still claims for its founder
Zarathustra, - better known as Zoroaster, - one
of the leaders of the human race, whose name at
the distance of more than three thousand years,
like that of Abraham, his Semitic compeer, represents a hero of faith.  Like Abraham, Zaratlhustra
repudiated the idol-worship of his time, and initiated a religion of the spirit. In the thirteenth
century before Christ, according to Dunker, on a
mountain consecrated to the ancient idolatrous
worship of fire, the reformer appeared before an
assembly of the nation convened for the celebration of an annual sacrifice, and called on king and
people to renounce "the religion of lies," and ema
226 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
brace the truth of the spirit as he should declare it.
Bunsen I compares the scene to that in which the
prophet Elijah refuted the priests of Baal in the
presence of the people of Israel.  "Choose ye this
day whom ye will serve, "- Ahura-Mazda the wise
Lord, or the false divinities of the lying priests of
fire.  "Two spirits there are," he says, "originally
and fundamentally different, - a twin pair from
the  beginning, a good and an evil.   They rule
in thought, word, and deed; choose ye between
them."
We have here the first historic enunciation of
the principle of dualism, 1300 B. c., at the lowest
computation; according to some authorities, especially Bunsen, many centuries earlier.2
But the principle itself, or the view of Nature in
which it originated, is earlier still. It lay in the
ideas and the corresponding worship which Zoroaster found established in Iran, and which it was
his mission to reform. That elder religion consisted in the worship of fire and light.  These
types, while insisting on the worship of spirit,
Zoroaster retained by way of compromise, as symbols of truth and good. Hence sprung the religion
1 Gott in der Geschichte.
2 Bunsen places Zoroaster, at the latest, 2500 B. C. See Gott
in der Geshlichlte, Vol. II. p. 78.
227 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
of Parsism, one of the notable and representative
religions of the world. Inl virtue of its ethical
character, I reckon it among the revealed religions,
although less entitled to that designation than the
rest of its class, on account of its mixed origin,not being like Jehovism or Mohammedism, the
product of pure reflection, but admitting in conjunction with the inner light an element of naturalism. It has its root in a vivid sense of the priminal
antithesis of Nature, - the antithesis of light and
darkness. No wonder that this eldest and sharpest of all antagonisms should assume in primitive
thought a typical significance.   The  religion of
Iran made it the symbol of moral good and evil.
These opposites were represented by two antagonist powers, - Ahura-Mazda or Ormazd, the wise
Lord, and Angra-Mainyus or Ahriman, the evil
Spirit. Ormazd, the source of all good, dwells in
perfect light.  Ahriman, the source of all evil,
resides in the deepest darkness.  The visible world
derives its character from the mutual relation and
interaction of these two principles. Its origin, fortunes, and final consummation result from their
antagonism.   Spiegel, translator of the Avesta,
has sketched the orthodox cosmology of Parsism,
of which I here present the more salient features.
From the beginning the two powers were mutu
228 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
ally abhorrent, though separated the one from the
other by a boundless interval of vacant space.
Ahriman became aware of the existence of his
opposite; and, maddened by the sight of the
strange apparition, rushed forward to destroy it.
Ormazd, by virtue of his omniscience, had known
of the existence of Ahriman, and saw in him an
antagonist who must be overcome, but whose conquest would prove a difficult task; the two being
equal in strength, and each supreme in his own
domain. Now, it belongs to the nature of Ormazd
to think before acting; to that of Ahriman to act
before thinking. Consequently, Ormazd debated
with himself the means of success in this impending warfare. He foresaw that a present attack
might fail, but that victory was assured by postponing the conflict.
Meanwhile, he created beings adapted to his
ends; and Ahriman on his part did the same:
that is, he opposed to each of the creations of
Ormazd a corresponding negative,- for Ahriman
is incapable  of independent  creations.   Three
thousand years were consumed in these productions. At the end of that period, Ormazd persuaded Ahriman to enter into a compact by which
it was agreed to defer their battle for nine thousand
years. These, added to the three thousand which
preceded, make up the twelve thousand of the
229
0 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
world's duration. When the treaty was concluded,
Ormazd uttered the prayer which Parsism hallows
with the term " Honover." Theni Ahriman, who,
as usual, had acted before thinking, in agreeing to
the treaty, perceived that he had been outwitted,
and retreated, in his rage and terror, into the abyss
of darkness, where he remained in a state of stupor
for three thousand years. Ormiazd improved the
interval with new creations, in which he was assisted by certain spirits, - his former creatures.
The earth with its belongings, previously called
into being, but subsisting in heaven, was now let
down into the vacant space which separates the
kingdom of Ormazd from the realms of Ahriman.
There it serves as an outpost and fortress to protect the world of light from the powers of darkness.
When half the term assigned for the world's duration had elapsed, Ahriman, awaking from his long
torpor at the instigation of his devs, began to bestir
himself, and to make his preparations for the final
conflict. Emerging from his darkness, he finds the
earth placed between him and the hostile territory.
He bores a hole through its bottom, and so reaches
its surface. There he succeeds in seducing the first
human pair, Meschia and Meschiane, from their
allegiance to Ormazd, and thereby obtains a limited
dominion over their posterity.  All the imperfections and woes of life, all noxious creatures, all
earthly evils and plagues, are his creation.
230 
D Tr-4LISM AND OPTIMISM.
The earth, then, is the proper arena and battleground of these antagonistic principles. Inferior
natures serve by compulsion their several authors;
but man is free to choose which side he will embrace, which master he will serve.  Neutral he
cannot remain; he must declare himself for one or
the other party, and abide the consequences of his
decision. It is believed by the Parsis that Ahriman, originally the equal of Ormazd in power, has
long since ceased to be so. He is constantly losing
ground; so that when the nine thousand years of
the compact are ended, and the final battle is
fought, the good principle is sure to obtain an
easy victory.
A different view of the origin of evil is entertained by a sect of the Parsis, called the Zervanites,
as represented by the Arabian, Asch Schahlarastani.
According to him, a portion of the Persians believed
in an aboriginal being, whom they named Zrvana
Akerana (endless time). Zrvana offered a sacrifice
in order to obtain a son; but a doubt arose in his
mind whether a son would be given him. From.
this doubt sprang Ahlriman: Ormazd was the fruit
of the sacrifice. The father determined to confer
the rule on the first-born. Ormazd, yet unborn,
became aware of this intent, and imparted his
231 
DU.4LL1SH ADV OPTIMISM.
knowledge to his unborn brother. Whereupon
Ahriman broke through the maternal womb, and
came first into the world. Nevertheless, Zrvana
looked upon Ormazd as the rightful senior, and
accorded to him the right of primogeniture. But
not to do injustice to Ahriman, he gave him the
dominion for nine thousand years, at the expiration of which the elder brother is to have the
supremacy.
Of the whole cycle of twelve thousand years,
which both systems accept as the allotted term of
the world's duration, one-half had elapsed when
evil appeared on the earth.   The third quarter
extends fi'om the appearance of Ahriman to the
birth of Zoroaster, and the reformation of the national religion. The servants of Ahriman, aware
of the expected appearance of this prophet, exerted themselves to prevent his birth; and when
that was found impossible, to destroy him when
born.  Rescued by a series of miracles, at the age
of thirty he is brought into communion with Ormazd, and receives from him the revelation, which
he is instructed to communicate to Vistaspa, King
of Bactria, and to the rest of mankind.  Accordingly, Zoroaster repairs to the court of Vistaspa,
and, by miraculous demonstration of his mission,
induces that monarch to accept the revelation of
232 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
the Avesta. This revelation is conceived by the
Parsis as a weapon which acts on evil spirits
-the agents of Ahriman - when presented to
them, as material weapons act on mortal bodies.
It consists, in part, of practical rules of life for the
conduct of believers, and partly of instructions
concerning the life to come, - its rewards and
punishments, -and concerning  the issue of the
conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman, and the
end of the world.
As the final struggle approaches, Ahriman, conscious of imminent peril to his realm, exerts himself in convulsive efforts to recover the ground he
has lost, and to harry his adversary. Hence, all
the evils of the latter times, especially wars, oppressions, and persecutions of the faithful.  To
mitigate these sorrows, Ormazd sends every thousand years a new prophet, who brings from heaven
some further dispensation of the Avesta, and intercalates in the midst of the evil years a temporary reign of justice and peace. The last of these
expected prophets will be Soziosh, of the seed of
Zoroaster, but born of a virgin; who, when he appears, will abolish the evils inflicted by Ahriman,
and, with the assistance of seven- or, according to
the Bundehesh, fifteen- of the most distinguished
saints of all time, precursors of the final judgment,
233 
.DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
will establish a millennium of blessing. One sign
of its approach will be a diminution of animal
desire, to that extent that men will no longer care
to eat. Then comes the resurrection of the dead,
the accomplishment of which will occupy a period
of fifty-seven years.  After that the general conflagration, when "the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are
therein shall be burned up." The whole race of
men will pass through the flames, that all may be
thoroughly purged of their sins. The righteous
will experience no discomfort in the process; the
godless, on the contrary, will suffer excruciating
torments. But, purified by suffering, they, too,
will survive the fiery trial, and come forth whole
and happy; the universe will be freed from all
evil.  Ahriman is then defeated, hell destroyed,
and Ormazd and his blessed family of spirits alone
remain.
These are the main features of the Zoroastrian
cosmology, with which the ethical system of the
Parsis entirely corresponds. According to the life
which the individual leads in this world will be his
condition in the next. He whose thoughts and
words, as well as deeds, are pure and true is accepted as a votary of Ormazd, and will be received
into the fellowship of the spirits of light. Whoever
234 
DUA LISM AND OPTIMISM.
was an adversary of Ormazd in this world will be
surrendered to Alhriman, and have his abode in the
deepest darkness in the world to come. On the
third day after his death, the character and life of
each individual are brought to judgment.  The
soul must repair to the bridge Tsceinvad, where
the ways that lead, the one to heaven the other to
hell, diverge. There are seated the judges of the
dead, who weigh all their deeds in a balance. If
the good preponderate, the soul continues its journey over the bridge and arrives in Paradise, where
it is welcomed by all the just and lives in joy and
blessedness until the final judgment. If the good
and evil deeds exactly balance each the other,
the soul is sent to a place called Hamestegan,
where neither reward nor punishment awaits it.
But when the soul of the evil-doer, on the third
day after death, arrives at the bridge Tsclhinvad
and attempts to pass over, it seems so narrow and
dangerous that the soul is seized with dizziness and
tumbles into the abyss beneath, where it is received
with taunts and scoffs by Alirimian and his devs,
and tortured by them till the day of judgment.
That the Parsi, if possible, may be saved from this
doom, he is early instructed in the truths of his
religion; and at the age of fifteen is invested with
the Kosti, the sacred cord, in token of his formal
reception into the communion of his faith. He
235 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
then takes upon himself the responsibilities of life
and the duties of religion. He is a member of the
invisible Church of the faithful, whereby the good
deeds of others, and especially of his ancestry, redound to his spiritual benefit.
Of ancient religions, Parsism is that in which
moral good and evil are most sharply distinguished.
In no other religion is the antagonism of a good
and an evil principle so fundamental to its organism and so conspicuous in all its developments. In
fact, whatever of a like antagonism appears in subsequent religions - especially ill Judaism, Islamism,
Christianity - has descended directly or indirectly
from this Persian original.  The Mosaic religion
exhibits little or nothing of it previous to the return of the Jews from their Captivity, when they
appear as a Persian colony in Palestine.
A striking illustration of the change which intercourse with Persia had wrought in the views of the
Hebrew people may be found in the different accounts that are given in the Bible of the census
ordered by David of the population of his realm.
The earlier narrative in the second Book of Samuel
ascribes the institution of this census to the prompting of Jehovah; the later, written after the Captivity, imputes it to the instigation of Satan.
236 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
Another proof of Persian influence is the fact that
while the Old Testament has very little to say
about the Devil (for the serpent in the Garden of
Eden does not, as vulgarly supposed, represent the
evil principle; and Satan in the Book of Job is
not the Satan of the later theology, but one of the
sons of God), -that while the Old Testament has
very little to say about the Devil, the New Testament is full of him.
According to the doctrine of the Avesta, every
man is a follower either of Ormazd or Ahriman.
Neutrality is impossible: to one or the other party
every soul, and indeed every creature, belongs. A
line of unbending rigidity and unchangeable determination bisects the universe, disposing all that is
genial and healthful and beautiful and lovablegood men and women, useful or harmless animals
or plants- on one side, and arraying all bad people
and noxious creatures, snakes and scorpions, and
poisonous plants, on the other.
But man, and especially the Parsi, is vowed by
his origin to fight the battle of Ormazd against his
enemy. Hence, one of the good works of Parsism
is to till and plant the earth with corn and wholesome fruit; and another is to hunt out and put to
death all noxious and dangerous animals.
The religion is encumbered with a complex
ritual; its purifications, its fasts and other formali
237 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
ties, impose a heavy burden on the worshlipper.
Still it is emphatically a moral religion; of all relig,ions except the Christian the most moral. And
the fundamental article of its ethical code is truth,
the soul of all morality. Truth-telling and truthacting is the duty, above all others, enjoined by
the Avesta. Comparing this religion with other
religions of antiquity, one is tempted to say that
truth is a Persian invention. Accordingly, fidelity
in contracts is one of the distinguishing virtues of
the Parsi people, and has given them the high position they occupy in modern India, - where they
have a flourishing settlement, and where the Parsi
merchant holds, among all the nationalities represented in that land, the foremost rank in wealth
and commercial repute.
I return to the principle of dualism embodied in
the Persian faith. From the Zoroastrian religion it
passed into Judaism, and thence into Christendom.
The pseudo-Christian idea of the Devil is its lineal
and legitimate fruit. I call it pseudo-Christian; for
though Jesus employed the term, or, if you please,
the conception, as a given article in the mental furniture of his time, he by no means accents it in a
way to authorize its acceptance as a necessary constituent of the Christian creed.  It is scarcely any
longer regarded as such. Of Christian beliefs once
238 
DUALISMl ANVD OPTIMIISfM.
universally received, and never so much as questioned, there is none which seems to have passed
into such general discredit, none which is losing so
fast its hold of the popular mind. The Devil is
still a name to swear by, and still, as a figure of
speech, represents a spiritual fact, but no longer
stands for an ontological or statistical one. There
is something very curious, and not easily explained,
in this noiseless and imperceptible dropping out
from the mind and creed of mankind of a once
universal and rooted conviction.  For nearly two
thousand years the belief in Satan was as fixed as
any belief whatsoever in the mind of Christendom.  For more than a thousand, the doctrine of the
Atonement was not, as modern Orthodoxy conceives it, a satisfaction of divine Justice, but was
understood as a satisfaction of Satan, to whom the
world was supposed to have become forfeit by sin.
The early Church, among its regular officials, had
always one whose business it was to fight the Devil
in the person of any of his subordinates who might
take possession of a human subject. In every
church the exorcist was as much a stated function ary as the deacon or the priest. The idea of Satan
was not one of those which the Protestant Refor mation repudiated, as it did that of purgatory and
the efficacy of the mass. Luther, the arch-reformer,
insisted upon it, urged it as one of the fundamentals
239 
D DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
of the Christian system. The Devil was as real to
him as the Pope, or Tetzel, or Dr. Eck. In his
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians he
says: "We  are all subject to the Devil with our
bodies and our estate.  We are but guests in a
world of which he is the prince and the god. The
bread we eat, the water we drink, the garments we
wear, the very air, and all by which we live in the
flesh, is subject to his control."
From that time forward, until a comparatively
recent date, Protestants - clergy and laity, with
few exceptions -have assumed the existence of such
a being with as little hesitation as they assumed the
existence of God. They would as soon have questioned the latter as the former. Within this century ministers have been known to pray for his
conversion, either hoping with Origen that such a
consummation might be a part of the divine scheme,
or holding with Burns, that, would he "tak' a
thought and men'," he "aiblins might" "still ha.e
a stake."
The belief in Satanic agency had a fearfully
tragic side, in the contemplation of which one
shudders at the awful and uncontrollable power of
religious ideas over unenlightened human nature.
The long delusion of witchcraft with the thence resulting, persecutions, which desolated Christendom
with ghastliest horrors and countless deaths, was
a
240 
DUALISM AND OP1'IlIISM.
the natural outcome of this belief. Those terrors
which darkened and perplexed the life of former
generations have passed away. Like spectres begotten of nightmare and the dark, with the dawn
of a new intellectual day
"TThe flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail."
Satan, the head and sovereign of this spectral
realm, is passing from the fear and faith of mankind, and a load whose agonizing pressure we but
faintly conceive has been lifted from the mind.
The tragedy over, the farce succeeds.  Where
the fathers trembled, the children jest. Whom
Luther declared to be the Lord of this earth is
pursued with Lucianic derision as he goes the way
of the Olympian gods, chased by inexorable science
into the vast nowhere of the phantom world: no
longer owned by enlightened theology; for purposes of fiction even, no longer available. The
genius of Goethe has enucleated the true interior
import of the theological Devil, - the spirit of negation.   "Culture "   says Mephistopheles to the
witch who finds him very different from her idea,
-"culture that licks the world smooth has extended itself even to the Devil. The Northern
phantom is now no more seen; in vain you look
for horns, and tail, and claws." And when the
witch breaks out,
16
241 
D UALISM AND OPTIMISM.
"I shall lose my wits with joy, I fear,
To see Squire Satan once more here," -
he answers, " Woman, I forbid that name!"
Witch:  "Why, what harm is in the word?"
Mephistopheles:
"In the fable-book it was long since scored;
But human kind therefrom have little gain;
The Exiil One is gone, but evil ones remain."
The real Devil, as figured in Mephistopheles, is
"the spirit that denies," the opposing, unbelieving,
bitter, mocking spirit, -the spirit whose idiom is
sarcasm, whose life is a sneer.  There is nothing
more alien from Godhead, nothing more undivine,
more antagonistic to all divineness, than such a
spirit; whose natural symbol is the ape, and whose
theological expression is "the sin against the Holy
Ghost."
Satan has disappeared from the realm of accredited existences, but that which Satan stood for
remains; and much as we rejoice to see, in the
language of the Apocalypse, "the old Serpent
which is called the Devil and Satan," "cast out,"
philosophy misses a convenient answer to the question, "Whence and why the evil that is in the
world?" The idea of Satan was the eldest solution of that question. A very convenient solution
it was; an easy way of disposing of every noxious
242 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
and painful experience, of every calamity and mishap, and all moral evil as well, -to refer it, as
Luther did, to the one arch-enemy of human kind.
Men seemed to themselves to explain the existence
of evil by personifying it.
Reject as we may the personification, the fact
remains; what the world calls evil remains; and
the questions, Whence? and Why? still haunt the
philosophic mind. How reconcile the existence of
evil with the being and rule of a wise and good
God, almighty to effect what love proposes and
wisdom plans?
There is but one answer to this question.  What
love proposes, and wisdom plans, must needs be
good. This fundamental truth of practical reason
is the only solution of the problem. In the view
and intent of a Being of infinite wisdom and goodness there can be no evil. Such a Being sees, and
knows, and does only good. What we call evil,
therefore, the evil of our experience, when referred
to its source, has precisely the same character with
that which we call good. If God is good, and if all
that is proceeds from him, there is no evil. Suffering, distress, privation, woes of every kind; but no
evil.  All is good in its origin and purpose, and
must eventually approve itself as good in human
experience.
This summary solution of the problem is not a
243 
D UA LISM AND OPTIMISM.
conclusion reached, or that ever could be reached, by
reasoning, as theologians have commonly reasoned,
from the world to its author. Had we no other
knowledge of God, and no other way of arriving at
the truth of his being than that which is given us
in the contemplation of the world as it is, inferring
from visible effects the invisible cause, I doubt if
human wit would ever have reasoned out a Being
all wise and good from the study of nature and life.
Take the world as it is, with all its contradictions,
woes, and wrongs; and without other light what
sort of God would the contemplation of such a
world present? Possibly, infinite Power; but not,
I think, infinite Wisdom and Love. If we honestly
reason from effect to cause, whatever is in the
effect must be in the cause; whatever of imperfection and evil there is in the one must be in'the
other. There is no evading this obvious truth.
The only way to vindicate the goodness of God, in
view of the seeming ills of life, is to reason the
other way, from the cause to the effect. We know,
or believe that we know, the divine Cause. We
have the idea of a perfect Being, an all-wise and
utterly beneficent God. Starting with this, and
reasoning from this to the facts of life, we conclude
that all that is and befalls must be good, -good
in its purpose, and good in its end.
To the question, then, How evil consists with
244 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
the goodness of God? I answer flatly, It does not
consist with the goodness of God. One or the
other of these conceptions must be abandoned.
Either there is no God, such as we figure him, or
there is no evil.  Believing in a God on the
strength of his idea in may mind, independently of
the argument from Nature, I say there is no evil.
Pain and suffering in abundance, but no evil. For
only that is really and absolutely evil which is evil
in its cause and effect, in its origin and end; evil in
all its issues, evil for evermore. Nothing in God's
universe answers to that condition.
Obviously, if we consider it, that which we call
evil is as much a necessary part of the Divine order
as that which we call good, or it would not be in
the Divine order at all. And obviously, the Divine
order by its very definition must tend to good.
Without that tendency to good in human things,
which even the Atheist admits, the world would
long since have ended in ruin. And the tendency
to good, for ever accumulating its blest results, implies perpetual growth in good, perpetual progress
toward perfection. And endless progress toward
perfection is surely a greater good than a perfect
finite state.
But the stimulus to progress must come from
conscious imperfection, want, and pain. Picture
to yourself a world without a flaw, without a want,
245 
DUALISM AND OPLIMlISM.
without a pang; a world in which no storm ever
darkens the sky, no struggle ever taxes the will,
and no discomfort ever ruffles the breast; a world
in which no battle is ever fought, and consequently
no victory ever won; in which there is nothing to
be desired, and consequently nothing to hope,imagine such a world, and what have you? A
state of perfect blessedness? Nay, but a state of
pleasureless torpor and measureless'ennui.  No
dream, no fancy which the heart of man indulges,
is so utterly baseless as that of unbroken and unqualified enjoyment, -a world without foes, and
fightings, and pains.  Suffering is the price we pay
for enjoyment; disaster, the price of safety; difficulty and danger, the price of progress. It needed
all the calamities that have ever befallen, to bring
mnankind thus far in the onward way of their destiny. It needs all the woes and sorrows of life to
flavor its happiness. All the dark side of it is indispensable to constitute its bright side.
To say all in a word: it follows with logical
necessity from the very idea of God, that the world
of his making and ruling must be the best possible
world.
Leibnitz was the first to take this ground of unflinching Optimism, the first to base his theodicy, or
vindication of the goodness of God, on the doctrine
246 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
that the actual world is the best possible world.
He saw that the honor of God is involved in the
absolute perfection of his creation, and that, if the
world were not the best possible, the failure or
neglect to make it the best possible would imply a
defect in its author of ability or will, of power or
goodness; that, consequently, its author would not
be the perfect Being affirmed by, and essential to,
Theism.  And since the world as it is is the best
possible world, it follows that the evil that is in it,
and which forms an inseparable constituent part of
it, is necessary to make it the best possible.
Moral evil as well as physical is included by
Leibnitz in this view. The world is a whole so
connected, compacted, and dovetailed in all its
parts, that nothing in it could be altered without
altering all the rest. Strike out from it any existing evil, and, though you get rid of one objectionable ingredient, the world being thereby changed
in all its parts is no longer the best possible world.
Strike out from it the life of any villain who did or
is doing his miischievous work in it, and no longer
is it the best possible world. As Judas, the "sonl
of perdition," was a necessary agent in establishing
the Christian dispensation, so every malefactor is a
necessary agent in that system of blessing which,
according to this philosophy, the existing order is
supposed to be.
247 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
Lawrence Valla, a writer of the fifteenth century,
in a " Dialogue on the Freedom of the Will and its
Relation to Divine Prescience," supposes Sextus
Tarquinius, of infamous memory, to consult the
oracle of Apollo, and there to learn his fate, which
was to be driven an impoverished exile from the
enraged city. Tarquin complains of such a doom,
and is advised of the crime by which he would deserve it.  "No," he replies,'*I will do no such
thing."  " How!" says the god, "do you make me
to be a liar?  I show you the future; I tell you
that which must come to pass."  "But am I not
free?" the youth indignantly demands; " is it not
in my power to obey the dictates of virtue?"
" Know, my poor Sextus," Apollo rejoins, "the
gods make every one such as he is. Jupiter has
made the wolf voracious, the hare timid, the ass
foolish, the lion brave. He has given you a wicked,
incorrigible soul; you will act in conformity with
your nature, and Jupiter will deal with you as your
actions will deserve. He has sworn it by the
Styx."
Here Valla had left the case of Tarquin, and
here Leibnitz takes it up. He supplements the
apologue with a sequel conceived in the spirit of
his philosophy. Sextus quits Delphos and applies
to Jupiter at Dodona. "Why have you condemned
me, 0  God, to be wicked and to be miserable?
248 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
Change my lot, and change my heart, or acknowledge your injustice."  Jupiter tells him that, if he
will renounce Rome, the Parche shall spin him other
destinies, -he shall be good and happy.  If he
goes to Rome he is lost.  Sextus is unwilling to
make this sacrifice, and quitting the temple abandons himself to his fate.   But  Theodorus, the
priest of that temple, humbly entreats Jupiter to
explain why he has not given Sextus a different
will. Jupiter refers him to his daughter, Minerva,
at Athens. Theodorus makes the journey, arrives
in Athens, and sleeps in the temple of Minerva,
where he has a dream which conveys to him the
desired explanation.  His vision takes him to the
Palace of Destinies which contains, as the goddess
tells him, the representations not only of all that is
to happen, but of all that is possible. These possibilities Jupiter surveyed in the beginning, arranged
as so many possible worlds, and, having selected the
most desirable, gave it being; and so made the actual world of our experience.
She then conducts him to an apartment containing the plan of one of these possible worlds. There
he sees a possible Sextus, who, on quitting the
temple of Jupiter, instead of going to Rome, goes
to a city between two seas, which might be supposed to be Corinth; purchases a small garden, in
digging it finds a treasure of which he makes a
249 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
good use, lives beloved and respected, and dies at
an advanced age, mourned by all the city. Theodorus then passes into another apartment, representing a differently planned world and sees again
a possible Sextus; who, on quitting the temple,
goes to Thrace, where he marries the daughter of
the king, and succeeds him on the throne. The
apartments are arranged in the form of a pyramid;
and when Theodorus reaches the apartment which
forms the apex, he is transported with ecstasy at
the sight of a world-plan which far surpasses all its
predecessors in splendor and beauty. He is beside
himself with joy: "II ne se sentoit pas  de joie."
Then the goddess informins him that the world
which he beholds, and in which it appears that
Sextus, rejecting the counsel of Jupiter, goes to
Rome and commits the crime which causes his
ruin, - that this world which seems to him so
beautiful, of all possible worlds the best, is the
very world in which he lives.
Optimism is the true solution of the problem of
evil, a doctrine with which that of Theism must
stand or fall. If this world is not the best possible
world, then the God of Theism is not that world's
creator: the best possible, not as a present finality,
but as means and method of the perfect good.
This is the only Optimism which reason can legit
20'0 
DUALISM AND OPTIMISM.
imate. The time will never come when evil shall
wholly cease from the earth, when all wrong shall
be expunged, suffering unknown, and
"Fear and sin and grief expire,
CaLst out by perfect love."
Neither in this world nor in any future world is
such a state possible. Evil there must always be.
Old evils may be abolished, but new evils will
spring. The health of humanity requires the existeince of evil as incentive to effort and topic
of action. Progress is better than all perfection.
Finding is good, but seeking is better, if finding
is to end with rest in the found. The kingdom of
heaven must be always coming; but hope would
expire were it fully come. And the saying remains
for ever true, that "by hope we are saved."
251 
x.
PANTHEISM.
ANTHEISM is a name of bad repute in the      ology, where it passes for something akin to
Atheism, and a good deal more dangerous.
The justice of this reproach depends on the definition we give to the term, and on the correctness
of that definition. The word, though designating
views and opinions as old as any in philosophy, is
comparatively modern. The first writer who is
known to have used it is the English Deist Toland,
who, near the beginning of the last century, 1705,
published a work, entitled "Socinianismin fairly
stated; being an Example of Fair Dealing in Theological Controversies. To which is prefixed, Indifference in Disputes recommended by a Pantheist
to an Orthodox Friend." Some years later, in
1720, he published a treatise, entitled "Pantheisticum, sive Formula Societatis Socratice."  In this
he defines his Pantheism as follows: "Vis et Energia Totius, Creatrix omnium et Moderatrix, ac ad
optimum finem semper tendens, est Deus, quem 
PANTHEISM.
Mentem dicas si placet, et Animam Universi: unde
Sodales Socratici proprio ut dixi vocabulo appellantur Pantheistee, cum vis illa secundum eos non nisi
sola ratione ab ipsomet Universo separetur." "The
Force and Energy of the Whole, the Creator and
Ruler of all things, always tending to the best end,
is God, whom, if you please, you may call the
Mind and Soul of the Universe. Hence the Sodales Socratici are called, as I said, by the appropriate
term' Pantheists,' inasmuch as, according to them,
that force is distinguished by reason alone from the
Universe itself."
God, the creative and ruling power of the universe, distinguished by reason alone from the universe itself: if this definition be accepted, we have
in Pantheism a theory distinguished from Theism
proper by the immanence in Nature of the Supreme
Power, but not less widely distinguished from Atheism by the supposition of a Power to which the name
of God is applied.  The appellation of "atheist"
is then only legitimate when freely assumed, - when
the existence of God, or the agency of an intelligent Will in the conduct of the universe, is expressly denied. So long as the philosopher professes
to believe in a God, in whatever sense, and gives
that name to a Power over all, the belief in God
must be allowed him, however his conception of
Deity may differ from yours or mine, however it
253 
PANTHEISlM.
may seem to us to want what is most essential to
Godhead. It is not misconception of the nature,
but denial of the fact, of Godhead, that constitutes
Atheism.
Toland, so far as we know, was the first to assume the name of Pantheist, but by no means the
first to pantheize. Nor does his definition of Pantheism embrace all the varieties of view which might
with equal propriety be so designated. The name
is one of wide application. John Scotus, Giordano
Bruno, Spinoza, Schelling, are all Pantheists, but
with very considerable differences in their conception of God and the world.  Atheism has no more
sympathy with Pantheism than with Theism. The
Atheist regards it as a shallow pretence, or a senseless abstraction. To Schopenhauer, the controversy
between Theist and Pantheist suggests an imaginary dialogue, which might be supposed to take place
in a theatre at Milan. One of the speakers imagines himself to be in the celebrated puppet-theatre
of Girolamo, and admires the art with which the
director has fashioned his puppets and guides their
performance.  The other says, "No! we are in the
teatro della scala; the director and his associates
are themselves the actors, and the poet also takes
part in the play." " My principal objection to
Pantheism," says  this philosopher, "is that  it
settles nothing. Calling the world'God' is not
254 
PANTHEISM.
explaining it: it is only enriching language with a
superfluous synonyme. Whether you say the world
is God, or the world is the world, it amounts to the
same thing. It is true that, if you start with the
idea of God as sominething given, and then say, God
is the world, that is a kind of explanation, although
a mere verbal one, inasmuch as it refers an unknown to something known. But when you start
with the idea of the world which is actually given,
a given reality, and then say that the world is God,
it is clear that nothing is explained thereby. At
best, it is only a referring of the unknown to something still more unknown....  It would be much
more correct to identify the world with the Devil, as
the venerable author of the' Theologia Germanica'
has done. On page 93 of his immortal work (according to the restored text, Stuttgart, 1851), he
says,' Therefore the evil spirit and Nature are one;
and, unless Nature is overcome, the evil Enemy
is not overcome.'"
But Schopenhauer is wrong, whatever the "Theologia Germanica" may teach; wrong, if not wilfully unjust. No Pantheistic philosopher identifies
God with the phenomenal world.  " Jupiter est
quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris," is a flight
of poetic sentiment, not a philosophic statement.
Even Toland, as we see, distinguishes God from
the universe by the attribute of reason; and tlat
distinction is infinite.
255 
PA N7'HEI[S,.
It is a vulgar impression, which Schopenhaner
either ignorantly or wilfully indorses, that Pantheism is simply identification of God with the
sensible world. Let us hear what Schelling, the
greatest of recent Pantheists, says concerning this
common error. I quote from the "System der
gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie
insbesondere" (p. 177): "You will say, then, that
this system is Pantheism. Suppose it were Pantheism in your sense, what of it? Suppose that this
system precisely, and no other, were the result of
reason; ought I not, in spite of your terror at the
word, to maintain it as the only true one? The
most vulgar kind of polemic in philosophy is that
which is waged by means of certain images of
terror taken from the history of philosophy, and
held up to every new system as so many Medusaheads. But what is meant by your Pantheism?
If I rightly conceive it, it is that the all-ness
(allheit) of Deity is understood to mean that every
thing, that is, the sum of sensible objects, is God.
But this is not at all what we maintain. So far are
we from saying that the sum of sensible objects is
God, that, on the contrary, we contend that the
very reason of their being objects of sense is their
privation of Deity."
Giordano Bruno is unquestionably Pantheist;
but Bruno distinctly acknowledges God as the
256 
PANTHEISM.
Author of Nature, which, he maintains, must have
had a beginning and a cause.  He calls Nature the
mirror in which God is imaged.
Scotus Erigena, that wondrous intellect, the
light of the ninth century, is commonly regarded
as Pantheist; but the whole strain of the "De Divisionle Natturge " is an emphasizing of the distinction
between the created and the uncreated. Nature in
his division is four fold: (1) The Nature which
creates and is not created; (2) Nature created
and creating;  (3) Nature created, which does not
create; and, finally, (4) Nature uncereated and uncreating.  The first of these - Nature which creates
and is not created- he afterward identifies with the
fourth; nanmely, Nature which is neither created
nor creates. They are one and the same, viewed
in different relations, according to the following remarkable statement, which I translate as illustrating Erigena's doctrine of the "Apokatastasis: "
"When, therefore, we think of the divine Nature
as the beginning and cause of all things (for itself
is avapXov and (iva(Ttov, that is, without beginning
and without cause; since nothing precedes which
can have to it the relation of beginning or cause,
but itself, on the contrary, creates the nature of all
things whose cause and beginning it is), we not improperly call it Nature creative and uncreated.
For it creates, and suffers creation from no one.
17
257 
PANTHEISM.
But knowing this same divine Nature to be the end
of all things, beyond which there is nothing, and in
which all things eternally subsist and are altogether God, we rightly call it neither created nor
creative: not created, indeed, because it is created
by no one; neither creative, because it now ceases
to create, all things being converted into its own
eternal reasons (in which they will for ever remain),
and ceasing to be designated by the appellation of
'creature.' For God will be all in all, and all creation will be shadowed into God (obumbrabitur),
as the stars are hidden in the light of the rising
sun. Do you not see, therefore, with what reason
we may call one and the same divine Nature in
view of a beginning uncreated, but creative, and,
in view of the end, both uncreated and uncreative?" 1
Even Spinoza emphasizes causality in God, and
distinguishes between the infinite and the finite.
God, he says, is the efficient cause, not only of the
existence, but of the essence, of things.   Eth.
Part i. Prop. xxv.
I cite these four most eminent examples of pantheistic philosophy- Erigena, Bruno, Spinoza, and
Schelling -as proofs that Pantheism does not, as
Schopenhauer intimates, and as vulgar prejudice
1 From the edition Monasterii Guestphalorum, 1838, Lib. III.
p. 248.
258 
PANTHEISM.
supposes, confuse the distinction between God and
the sensible world. It is not atheistic, but theistic,
in its view of the visible creation. It agrees with
the Theism which condemns it, in its putting of
the world as secondary, as effect, and God as primary, as cause. It agrees with Theism in its confession of a supermundane God, - supermundane,
but not extramundane. The popular Theism supposes a God existing outside of the universe which
he  h as made. It supposes a Creator who once in
time called a universe into being, and has been
ever since a spectator and director of its ongoings,
having no substantial connection with it, but only
a      providential and governmental one: providentially active, but substantially withdrawnl; and not
only withdrawn, but, as so many of the popular
hymns   represent it, removed to an inconceivable
distance, -
"Infinite lengths beyond the bounds
Where stars revolve their little rounds."
The God of Pantheism is immanent, interfused, allpermeating, - copresent to all being, the ground
of all appearance, the life of all life. This is the
ontology of Pantheism; and, with this conception of
Deity, the view of many whose Theism is unquestioned coincides. Newton, in his " Principia," says,
" Omniproesens est [Deus] non per virtutem solam,
sed etiam per substantiam." Berkeley, whose posi
259 
PANTHIEISM.
tion in the Anglican Church would seem to be a
sufficient guarantee of his orthodoxy, is Pantheist
in his ontology, though differing widely from Spinoza, - Pantheist in his denial of any other substratum of the visible phenomenal world than the
immediate action of Deity. Pere Malebranche,
whose orthodoxy as a priest of the Church of Rome
is equally unquestionable, is also Pantheist in this
regard. It is but the combination of the two principles of Theism and Idealism. Every Theist who
is an Idealist is also a Pantheist to this extent. In
fact, it is the Christian doctrine of omnipresence as
affirmed by St. Paul: "In him we live, and move,
and have our being;" "One God and Father of all,
who is above and through all, and in you all."
The alternative'is Anthropomorphism in theology,
and Materialism in philosophy.
But this is only one stage or one form of Pantheism.  That which really and fundamentally distinguishes Pantheism, as represented by Spinoza, from
Theism as usually understood, is not the doctrine
of the one substance, but the doctrine of the one
sole agent,- the denial of any other agency than
that of the one God, as well in the spiritual as in
the phenomenal world. In this there is something
more than what is called in philosophy "determinism," or "necessitarianism,' - a doctrine by no
means peculiar to Pantheism. Spinoza not only
260 
PANTHEISM.
denies freedom of will to man, but denies to man
substantial existence, according to the Tenth Proposition of the Second Part of the Ethic.  "Ad essentiam hominis non pertinet esse substantial, sive
substantia formam hominis non constituit." "From
which," in a corollary, "it follows," he says, "that
the essence of man consists in certain modifications
of the attributes of God."  And in a corollary,
under the Eleventh Proposition of the same Part,
he infers the human mind to be "a part of the infinite intellect of God. So that, when we say the
human mind perceives this or that, we say nothing
else than that God, not in his infinity, but as explained by the nature of the human mind, or as
constituting the essence of the human mind, has
this or that idea." In other words, as appears more
fully from what follows, there is in Spinoza's system
no such entity as the human mind or soul.  What
we call such is only a thought of God.
Another characteristic of Pantheism as represented by Spinoza, and a point of marked distinction between it and Theism, is its non-recognition
of that attribute of Deity which Theism expresses
by the term "Lord."  The God of Pantheism is in
no sense Lord.  Having no intelligent subjects,
the mind or soul not being in this philosophy a distinct entity, but only a mode of the divine thought,
- the attribute of lordship cannot be ascribed to
261 
PANTHEISM.
him. But that attribute is among the fundamentals
of Theism. The two ideas of God and Lord, in the
view of Theism, are inseparable. Godhead is lordship. In the words of Newton, - the words with
which he closes his "Principia,"-" Deus est vox
relativa et ad servos refertur. Deitas est dominatio Dei, non in corpus proprium, sed in subditos."
It appears, then, that whilst, in its positive aspects, as recognizing the immanence of God in Nature, and affirming Him to be the real substratum
and ground of the phenomenal world, Pantheism
is not irreconcilable with Theism, -in fact, coincides with the Theism of theistic Idealists, -the
negative difference between the two is very wide.
In its denial, not only of proper agency, but of
individual being, to man, and its consequent nonrecognition of lordship in Deity, the Pantheism of
Spinoza differs as widely from Theism on the one
side as it does from Atheism on the other. A proof
of this double discrepance is the curious fact of the
diametrically opposite judgments of this philosophy
pronounced by men of distinguished ability, according to their light. Bayle, a confessed and inveterate sceptic, -a man who acknowledged that his
talent consisted in raising doubts, but whose sentence, unfortunately, determined the opinion entertained of Spinoza for a hundred years, -denounces
him in very emphatic terms as an Atheist. On the
262 
PANTHEISM.
contrary, the tender and devout Novalis, in whom
no trait is more conspicuous than a living and profound faith, did not hesitate to characterize him as
"God-inebriated," I- a man drunk with the idea of
God.  The latter judgment, as it certainly is the
fairest in its spirit and purpose, so it is also the
most correct in fact. To designate as Atheist a
man to whom God was all in all, is wilful absurdity.
On the other hand, however, it must be confessed
that a system which knows no being but God,
ignores what is most distinctive in Godhead as
conceived by Theism,- personal sovereignty and
providential rule. For, "a God," says Newton,
again, "without dominion, providence, and final
causes, is nothing else than Fate and Nature."2
This system misses, moreover, what is equally
essential in Theism,- the attribute of holiness, and
with it the related idea of a moral government
exercised by God over rational moral natures.
Spinoza is the typical exponent of Pantheism.
IHis system, given to the world two hundred years
ago, remains to this day the most thorough and
complete of all which bear that name. An immense influence the man has had with a certain
1 Mr. Froude, in his excellent essay on Spinoza, justly criticises
this epithet as descriptive of a mystic, not of a logician.
2 "l)eus sine dominio, providentia, et causis finalibus, nihl
aliud est quam Fatum et Natura."
263 
PANTHEISM.
class of minds; not conspicuous, but penetrating
and profound, -an influence not in the way of
commanding assent to his views, or of founding
a school (his following in this sense has been
small), but in that of giving direction and tone
to philosophy, -an influence affecting the sentiments rather than the reason; but, througl  tlhe
sentiments of minds in communion with his own,
acting indirectly on the feelings and the faith of
many to whom his system is unknown, and modifying the poetry, art, and religion of the time.
Gothle confesses the power of this influence as he
experienced it in early manhood.  "I had received
into myself, "he says, "the being and the way of
thinking of an extraordinary man, - imperfectly,
indeed, and as it were surreptitiously; but I was
already experiencing therefrom the most momentous  effects.  This mind, which  wrought so
decidedly upon me, and which was to have so
great an influence on my whole way of thinking,
wuas Spinoza. After looking about in the world, to
no10 purpose, for some means of fashioning my strange
nature, I chanced at last on this man's'Ethica.'
Of what I may have read for myself out of that
work, or of what I may have read into it, I can
give no account. Enough: I found there a sedative
to my passions. A large and free view of the sensible and moral world seemed to open itself before
264 
PANTHEISM.
me. But what specially chained me to him was
the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth
from every proposition.   That wondrous  word,
' Who rightly loves God must not demand that God
should love him in return,' with all the premises
on which it rests, and all the conclusions that
flow from it, entirely filled my thought. To be
disinterested in all, and most disinterested in love
and friendship, was my highest joy, my maxim, my
practice; and so, that later petulant saying of
mine,' If I love thee, what is that to thee?' was
spoken from my very heart.... The all-composing quietismn of Spinoza contrasted my up-stirring
endeavor;  his mathematical method was the opposite of my poetical way of looking at and describing objects; and precisely that ruled mode of
treatment, which was thought not suitable to moral
subjects, made me his passionate disciple, his most
ardent adorer."
Schleiermnacher, in his "Discourses on Religion,"
renders this enthusiastic tribute: "Sacrifice reverently with me to the Mvanes of the holy outcast,
Spinoza. Him penetrated the sublime world-spirit.
The infinite was his beginning and his end; the
universe, his only and eternal love. In holy innocence and deep humility, he mirrored himself in the
eternal world.  Full of religion he was, and full of
a holy spirit; and therefore he stands alone  ind
265 
PANTHEISM.
unapproaclhed, - master in his art, but exalted
above the profane guild; without disciples and
without citizenship."
And who, on a nearer view, is the man whom
two such witnesses,- Germany's greatest poet and
greatest theologian,- not to speak of inferior spirits, concur in exalting?  A Jew by race, by nearer
ancestry a Portuguese, or, according to Auerbach,
a Spaniard, with a mixture, on the mother's side,
of Moorish blood, by nativity a Dutchman, - Baruch, afterward Belledict, son of Benjamin Spinoza, or Espinoza, was born in Amsterdam (where
his father, with other Spanish and Portuguese merchlants, had found refuge from Peninsular persecution of the Jews), on the 24th November, 1632.
The boy received the best instruction which Jewish discipline - nowhere more thorough than in
Amsterdam-  could supply, and developed an early
and marked proclivity to intellectual pursuits.
Havingc mastered the Rabbinical lore of his day,
well-grounded in the Law and the Talmud, and
even, it is said, a proficient in the Kabbala, he carried his thirst for knowledge and his extraordinary
power of acquisition into Gentile fields. He stud(lied
Latin under tutelage of the somewhat notorious
Van den Ende, who was afterward put to death
at Paris for complicity in the Rohan conspiracy.
266 
PANTHEISM.
With the aid of Latin, the sole language of science
in that day, which he learned to write with great
purity, he applied himself to Christian authors;
studied theology and studied physics; made himself acquainted with the writings of Descartes, then
supreme in philosophy, and through him was initiated in the world of ideal speculation. In the
strength of this meat, he outgrew Judaism, or at
least the traditional, ceremonial Judaism of the
"Dispersion."  But such a witness of the ancestral
faith was not to be surrendered without a struggle by the Rabbins. They remonstrated with him,
they flattered him, and finally resorted to bribes.
An annual stipend of a thousand florins, according
to Colerus, was offered him, if he would not altogether desert the synagogue. He spurned the lure,
and went his way.
Finally, in 1657,1 in the twenty-fifth year of his
age, lie was excommunicated, with the triple and
extreme ban of Hebrew execration, devoting him
to all imaginable ills; invoking the wrath of Jehovah and the curses of all good angels to light upon
him and all his posterity; forbidding all men to
have communication with him, or to show him
mercy.  An attempt was made to arraign  him
before the civil tribunal on the charge of blasphemy, but without success. Christian Dutchmen
1 According to Auerbach's" Spinoza, Ein Denkerleben," p. 362.
267 
PANTHEISM.
would not lend themselves to the murderous spite
of Portuguese Jews. His life was imperilled by
the hatred of these zealots. Waylaid by night in
a lonely street, the assassin's dagger pierced his
coat, but missed his heart. He preserved the perforated garment by way of memorial.
Meaniwhile his father had died; leaving him not
without means, had he chosen to avail himself of
them. This he declined doing. He made over his
share of the paternal estate to his sisters, Miriam
and Rebecca, reserving for himself only a bed (" si
unicum lectum excipias ").  Thanks to his Jewish
training, and that wise provision of the Talmud
which (Chlristi4n laws and Christian systems of
education would do well to imitate, - the provision which ordains that every youth, whether
rich or poor, while receiving instruction in letters
and science, shall also learn some manual art,he had one resource. Any thing rather than dependence. He had learned to polish lenses; he
would live by his craft. With this brave resolve,
he hired a small attic, took thither his tools and
his bed, and lived a true philosophic life, dividing
his time between mechanical and intellectual toil.
The profits of his craft were moderate; but his
wants were equally so. A few stivers supplied
the daily rations of a man who subsisted mainly
on thought.
'263 
PANTHEISM.
The machinations of his enemies, who still plotted
against him, obliged him to quit Amsterdam.  He
removed his residence, first, to Auwerkerke; then
to Rhynsburg, near Leiden; thence to Voorburg;
and finally settled in the Hague, beneath the roof
of his friend, Henry Van der Spyck, - a painter of
note, of whom Spinoza learned the rules of that
art, which he practised with some success.
Friends were not wanting of the highest rank
and commanding influence, who were ready to patronize the martyr-scholar. Among them, Oldenburg, German ambassador to England, first under
Cromwell, then under Charles II.; also, the great
Cond6; and that noble republican, John de Witt,
grand pensioner of the States-General, who afterward fell a victim to the fury of the Orange party,
and was murdered by a mob in 1672. Karl Ludwig, the elector palatine, offered him a chair in the
University of Heidelberg, "Cum amplissima philosophandi libertate;" but he declined the position,
preferring independence to the favor of princes.
The wealthy Simon van Vries, one of his more
intimate associates, sent him a donation of two
thousand florins, which he returned; having no occasion, he said, for such subsidy, and fearing the
disturbing influence of riches. That devoted friend
would have made him his heir; but Spinoza entreated him not to pass by his own brother, to
269 
PANTHEISM.
whom the inheritance of right belonged.  The will
was altered accordingly, but with the proviso that
an annual pension should be paid to the philosopher out of the estate. The brother would have
made it five hundred florins; Spinoza would accept
three hundred, and no more.
Brief space was allowed him for the usufruct of
this legacy. A pulmonary weakness, with which
he had suffered from his twentieth year, though
it could not restrain his indefatigable industry,
abridged with a premature close his works and
days. He died of phthisis, at the age of fortyfour, on the 21st of February, 1677.
No philosopher has left a purer record; no
scholar ever lived a more blameless life. All that
is known of him, and especially the devotion of
such friends, declares him one of the truest and
bravest of the sons of men.
Of his works, beside the "Letters," and the
"Exposition of the Philosophy of Descartes," there
are four of pre-eminent importance, - the " Tractatus de Emendatione Intellectus," the "Tractatus
Politici," the "Tractatus Theologico-politicus," and
the "Ethica."  The two last named have originated
epochs in the history of human thought.
The "Tractatus Theologico-politicus" gave the
impulse and direction to modern Biblical criticism;
it presented or suggested views which German
270 
PANTHEISM.
theologians have subsequently elaborated, applied,
and set before the world, in the critical and exegetical results of their inquiries.
The "Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata,"
the most influential of all Spinoza's writings, is a
postumous publication, and contains his philosophy proper, -those pantheistic ideas which, durimng the past century, have wrought with such
marked effect on speculative minds. It is greatly
to be regretted that the author chose for this work
a form so forbidding in itself, and so ill-adapted to
his theme. The method of geometry is applicable
only to sensible objects, or topics that lie within
the scope of exact science. When applied to topics of pure speculation, - to things which do not
admit of exact demonstration, which are merely,
and must always be, matters of opinion,- it challengoes the counter-application of tests which speculative philosophy can never satisfy. Spinoza's
system, judged lby the test which he himself pro vokes, - considered as mathematical, or even as
logical, demonstration of the views it propounds,
is a failure.  MIany of the fundamental positions,
announced with such parade of mathematical cer tainty, are easily refuted, and have been refuted
by critical analysis. Its primary and obvious error
is the confusing of his own arbitrary positing of
the one Substance (which is God) with the im
271 
PANTHElSIM.
agined self-evident proof of that Substance. In
his third definition, he defines substance to be
"that which is in itself, and is conceived by itself;
that is, whose conception does not need the con ception of any other thing by help of which it is
found."  And this definition he seems to regard as
equivalent to a proof of the reality of that Sub stance He proceeds to speak of it as a reality, and
all at once, in the Seventh Proposition, affirms that
"it belongs to the nature of Substance to exist."
His demonstration of that proposition is, that Substance cannot be produced by another (according to the corollary of an antecedent proposition),
and therefore must be the cause of itself, which (according to Definition First) means that its essence
involves existence. This is all the evidence we
have of the fact of the one Substance, on which
Spinozt's whole system rests.
A remarkable instance of confusion of thought
occurs in the Scholium to the Eleventh Proposition, which affirms the necessary existence of God.
"Since the possibility of existence is a power
('quumi posse existere potentia sit'), it follows that
the more of reality belongs to the nature of any
thing, the more of power it has from itself to exist;
and that, therefore, the absolutely infinite Being, or
God, has from himself an absolutely infinite power
of existing, and must, therefore, absolutely exist."
272 
PANTIIEISM.
He does not see that the possibility of existence,
of which he speaks, is in himself, the subject, not
in the object. It is simply his perception of the
possibility that such a Being exists. Possibility is
not a thing, but a thought, - the judgment of a
thinking subject. It exists only as contemplated.
If, tlherefore, the possibility of existence is referred
to the Being in question, it must be a thought of
that Being; and, to have that thought, he must already exist. Imagine a being contemplating the
possibility of his own existence!
But the refutation of Spinoza's Propositions concerns only or mostly the form and demonstration of
his philosophy: it does not essentially affect the
underlying ideas, the grand intuitions, which make
the essence of his system. These are true, and of
infinite moment. All that is positive in his philosophy Theism may accept.  What is wanting in it
-the recognition of individual, self-determining
spirits, and, correlate with them, of the proper lordship or moral government of God -Theism must
supply.
Spinoza supposes a single and sole Substance comprising all that is, and of which all phenomena and
all finite existences are modes and affections. Of
this substance, all the known attributes are comprehended in the two determinations,- thought and
extension. And this Substance is God. I give his
18
273 
PANTHEISM.
own words: "Besides God, there can be no substance given or conceived."I  " Whatsoever is, is in
God; and, without God, nothing' can be or be conceived."2  "God is a thinking thing." 3  " God is
an extended thing." 4 These are the extreme and
most characteristic positions of his ontology. The
last, the most characteristic of all, will seem to
most Theists to be also the most questionable. But
here, too, the question respects rather the form than
the substance. What Spinoza really means is, that
God is the cause of all extension. So, at least,
I interpret him. The error- whether Spinoza's
error or the reader's misunderstanding of his intent
-the error lies in conceiving extension as passive,
instead of active; as a state, instead of an act.
Newton, as we have seen, says substantially the
same thing.
It is clear that, if this Substance exists, it must
exist necessarily. Spinoza does not prove its existence but hie felt this necessity, and points to it in
his First Definition,-the opening sentence of the
"E Ethica: " "By self-cause, I understand that whose
essence involves its existence."  The phrase "self
I "Prieter Deum, nulla dari neque concipi potest substantia."
Pars i. Prop. xiv.
2 " Quicquid est in Deo est, et nihil sine Deo esse neque concipi
potest." Ib. Prop. xv.
3 " Deus est res cogitans." Pars ii. Prop. i.
4 " Deus est res extensa." lb. Prop. ii.
274 
PANTHEISM.
cause " is unfortunate, inasmuch as causality expresses a relation between an antecedent and a
consequent, and calnnot with propriety be predicated of that which had no beginning, and is out of
the category of time. But Spinoza meant to indicate the fact of self-existence, which lies at the foundation of all philosophy. Self-existent is that which
not only is uncaused, if existent, but which must
exist, if any thing exists; which must exist in order
that the idea of existence may be present to my
thought; of whose existence, therefore, my idea is
a proof. It is that which cannot be conceived as
non-existent.  Any particular thing may, with an
effort of abstraction be conceived as non-existent,
- a tree, a book, a planet, a solar system. But
can you conceive of nothing existing,- of nothing
having ever existed? Make the attempt! Take
some quiet moment, and try to imagine-nothing.
What will be the result?  You will find yourself
imagining two things,-space, and a thinking subject. You cannot get rid of these two. You have
blown away the universe with your thought; but
the thought remains. You cannot imagine it not to
be. There is in your imagination some one who takes
cognizance of the void,-a thinking subject. In
other words, there is thought,- the first attribute
of Spinoza's God. And there is the void, that is,
space, which gives the idea of extension,- the second
275 
PANTIIEISM.
attribute of Spinoza's God. Space itself is not extension: it is only the perceived possibility of extended
existence; it is the first moment in the self-objectivation of the thinking subject. There is as yet no
actual, but there is an ideal, extension of the selfexistent. Since, therefore, in the absence of all
other existence, a thinking subject and space are
necessary conceptions, we have Spinoza's Substance,
with its two attributes, - thought and extension.
A full exposition of the "Ethica" is not within
the scope of this essay.  A selection of some of its
most characteristic positions may suffice to represent its spirit and purport.
"In the nature of things, there is given nothing
contingent, but all things are determined from the
necessity of the Divine Nature to a certain mode of
existence and operation." Part i. Prop. xxix.
"The will cannot be termed a free, but only a
necessary, cause." Prop. xxxii.
"Things could not have been produced by God
in any other mode and order than that in which
they have been produced." Prop. xxxiii.
"The power of God is his very essence."  Prop.
xxxiv.
"To those who ask why God did not create men
in such a way that they should be governed by
reason alone, I answer, Because there was in him
276
:x.~;o.,., 
PA-NTHIEISM.
no lack of material for creating all things from the
highest to the lowest grade of perfection. Or, more
properly speaking, Because the laws of his nature
were so ample that they sufficed to the production
of all that could be conceived by an infinite intellect." Appendix.
"The ideas of the attributes of God, as of single
things, have not for their efficient cause the things
idea'd, or the things perceived, but God himself so
far as he is a thinking thing." Part ii. Prop. v.
"The order and connection of ideas is the same
as the order and connection of things." Prop. vii.
" He who has a true idea, knows at the same time
that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the
truth of the thing."  Prop. xliii.
"Our mind does certain things, and suffers certain things. Namely, so far as it has adequate
ideas, it does necessarily certain things; and, so far
as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily suffers certain things." Part iii. Prop. i.
" The mind cannot determine the body to think,
nor the mind the body to move nor to rest, or to any
thing else." Prop. ii. (The demonstration is that all
thought, action, and rest are from God, according to
his two attributes of thought and extension. The
mind can only be determined by him as res cogitans,
the body as res extensa; that is, like by like.)
"Experience as well as reason teaches that men
277 
PA N'THEIS'fM.
believe they are free, only because they are conscious of their actions, and ignorant of the causes
by which they are determined."   Scholium  ad
Prop. ii.
"Acts arise solely from adequate ideas; but passions depend solely on inadequate ideas." Priop. iii.
"Joy is the transition of man fiom a lesser to a
greater perfection. Sadness is the transition of
mail fronm a greater to a lesser perfection." Affectuuml Definitiones, ii. and iii.
"We knlow nothing, certainly, to be good or bad,
except that which conduces to a true understanding, or that which hinders a true understanding."
Part iv. Prop. xxvii.
"The highest good of the mind is the cognition
of God, and the supreme virtue of the mind is to
know God." Prop. xxvii.
"Nothilng can be bad for us through that which
it has in colmmon with us; but, so far as it is bad for
us, it is contrary to us."  Prop. xxx.
"The good which any one who follows virtue
desires for himself, he desires also for the rest of
mankind; and that the more, the greater his knowledge of God." Prop. xxxvii.
"iHe who lives by the guidance of reason endeavors so far as possible to compensate the hatred,
anger, and contempt of others toward him, with
love or generosity on his part." Part iv. Prop. xlvi.
278 
PANTRE1SMI.
"Commiseration  in  him  who  lives by  the
guidance of reason is in itself bad and useless."
Prop. 1.
" Humility is not a virtue, or does not spring
from reason." Prop. liii.
"Repentance is not a virtue, or does not spring
from reason; but he who repents of his act is twice
miserable, or twice impotent." Prop. liv.
"The greatest pride and the greatest abjectness
are the greatest self-ignorance." Prop. lv.
"The greatest pride and the greatest abjectness indicate the greatest weakness of mind."
Prop. lvi.
"The cognition of evil is an inadequate cognition." Prop. lxiv.
c Whence it follows that, if the mind had only
adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil."
Coroll.
"The free man thinks of nothing less than of
death: his wisdom consists not in the meditation
of death, but of life." Prop. lxvii.
"If men were born free, they would form no conception of good or evil so long as they remained
free." Prop. lxviii.
" Only free men are mutually most agreeable the
one to the other."  Prop. lxxi.
"The man who is led by reason is freer in tlhe
State, where he lives according to the common
279 
PAN I'HE 1 S M.
decree, than in solitude, where he obeys his own
will alone." Prop. lxxiii.
"It is of the first utility in life to perfect as much
as possible the intellect or reason. In this one
thing consists man's highest felicity or beatitude,
since beatitude is nothing else than that acqui escence of the mind which springs firom the intui tive knowledge of God. But to perfect the intellect
is nothing else than to understand God, and those
attributes and acts of God which flow from the
necessity of his nature. Wherefore, the chief end
of man, the supreme desire by which he endeavors
to regulate all others, is that by which he is led to
an adequate conception of himself and of all that
can come within the range of his intelligence."
Appendix to Part iv. Cap. iv.
"Minds are not conquered by arms, but by love
and generosity." Ib. Cap. xi.
"An affection which is passion ceases to be passion the moment we form a clear and distinct idea
of it." Part v. Prop. iii.
" He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his own affections, loves God; and the
more, the more perfectly he understands them."
Prop. xv.
" No one can hate God." Prop. xviii.
"He who loves God cannot endeavor that God
should love him in return."  Prop. xix.
280 
PA.N THEISM.
"The mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with
the body; but something remains of it which is
eternal." Prop. xxiii.
" The  more we understand single things, the
more we understand God." Prop. xxiv.
"God loves himself with an intellectual love
which is infinite." Prop. xxxv.
"The intellectual love of the mind toward God
is a part of that infinite love with which God loves
himself." Prop. xxxvi.
"From this we clearly understand in what our
salvation, or blessedness, or liberty consists;
namely, in constant and eternal love toward God,
or inll the love of God toward men." Schol.
" He whose body has the greatest number of
aptitudes has most of that which is eternal in his
mind." Prop. xxxix.
"The more ally thing possesses of perfection, the
more it acts and the less it suffers; and, on the other
hand, the more active it is, the more perfect it is."
Prop. xl.
"Not beatitude but virtue itself is the reward of
virtue; we rejoice in it not because we restrain our
lusts, but on the contrary, we are able to restrain
our lusts because we rejoice in it." Prop. xlii.
The result of Spinoza's influence - an influence
not to be measured by the number of his readers,
281 
PANTIIHEISM.
which must always be small, but by the fructification of his idea in philosophy, religion, art, and generally in the thoughts and feelings of the thinking
and cultured minds of our time, - the result of
that influence may be summed up as emancipation
from the Dualism and the Anthropomorphism of the
old popular faith. Spinoza turned the Devil out of
the universe, and has given us a God who is not an
individual secluded and remote,-  a regent enthroned ab)ove the skies, - but an all-present reality.  In his attempt to establish this beneficent
verity, he sacrifices, as we have seen, - and that is
the vice of his system, -the proper personality of
God. But this very extreme has contributed more
effectually, perhaps, than a more  theistic view
would have done, to correct the opposite error.
And this false extreme is not essential, I think,
to the central and constitutive principle of the
"Ethica."  Unity of substance is not incompatible
with the creation, by self-limitation, of individual existences having separate consciousnesses, and therefore distinct persons; whereby the personality of
God is maintained in the one essential article of a
conscious and moral relation to others.
The weakness of Spinozism, of Pantheism as expounded by him, consists in the relaxation of the
moral sense, - the moral indifferentism resulting
from a system which not only refers all action, good
282 
PANTHEISM.     i
or evil, directly to God as the one immediate and
only actor in all, but virtually denies all distinction
between good and evil, by resolving,, as we have
seen, the notion of any such distinction into inadequate cognition.
Its strength is the quickened sense which, by its
emancipation from Dualism and Anthropomorphism, it gives us of the all-pervading and immediate
presence of God.  The divine Omnipresence, once
a cold, unmeaning dogma, it has made a fact of
consciousness. This effect -to mention but one
manifestation of it-is realized in the altered view
and new enjoyment of Nature so conspicuously
characteristic of the modern mind, and of which,
among EDglishl poets, Wordsworth is the truest exponent.  If Spinozism impairs the moral sublimity
of the idea, it deepens our consciousness of the
being of God. And the more profound our consciousness of God and the sense of his all-presence,
the more intense our enjoyment of Nature. This
explains the remarklable fact, that the love of Nature, in our sense of the term, - that joy in wild,
sequestered nooks, that delight in the contemplation of mountain-slopes and the valleys they embosom, that "pleasure in the pathless woods," that
"rapture on the lonely shore," - is wholly a modern
sentiment. The ancients-at least, the Greeks and
Romans- have recorded nothing, and probably ex
283 
PA ANTt'IEISI.
perienced nothing, of the kind.  They painted no
landscapes, or none like ours with a background
suggestive of mystery within and beyond. Mountains to them were merely an obstruction to their
marches, a problem for the  military engineer.
Some of their writers must have seen the robe of
glory which the setting sun flings over the shoulders of Mont Blanc; the charms of Como and Maggiore and the Rhine must have been familiar to their
eyes: but of all this no word in their works, no
sign that the meaning and beauty of the landscape
had melted into their thought. It needs the sense
of the one-pervading Presence to inspire that feeling in the soul. It is this that draws us to the
heart of Nature, and presses the aspects of Nature
on our hearts.
Pantheism and Theism are not contradictory, but
complementary, the one of the other.  Theism
gives us the holy Person, the Providential care,
the moral rule; Pantheism gives us the diffused
Presence, the all-pervading Life, the Divine nearness in the outspread landscape. To Pantheism
belongs the world of Nature; to Theism, the world
of spirits.
284 
XI.
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
ITHIN the compass of the Christian name       professing one origin, claiming one sanction
-are two religions, which differ as widely, the one
from the other, in principle and spirit, as Judaism
differs from Christianity.   The Pauline epithets,
"carnal" and "spiritual," used to express the latter difference, are equally expressive of the former.
But, as these are terms of blame and praise, I adopt
in their stead the less offensive and equally significant phrases, legal and liberal. Judaism is represented in the New Testament as a religion of law.
The ritual law, or law as a system, was repudiated
by Christianity; but law as a religious principle
survived the overthrow of the Jewish polity. It
went over into the new dispensation; it reappears
in Christian history, side by side with the principle
of grace. And so we have a dual Christianity, -
a legal and a liberal gospel, -the  rigid and the
fluid of Christian faith.
There are other classifications and other antith 
THE T'WO RELIGIONS.
eses in religion,- ecclesiastical and personal, sentimental and dogmatic, sacriamental and spiritual,
- but none so comprehensive as this of legal and
liberal, the religion of law and the religion of grace.
There is none which bisects with so trenchant a
stroke the Christian world.
Grace is a specialty of the Christian dispensation. This specialty legal Christianity excludes;
and yet, by a curious perversion of speech, the
"Orthodox" sects have been more free in the use
of the word "grace" than liberal Christians.  It is
one of the technicalities of their phraseology, while
the absence of the thing which that term denotes
-the free forgiveness of sin to the penitent- is
precisely the distinguishing trait in their systems.
No two ideas can be more fundamentally opposite
than that of grace is to the satisfaction of justice
by suffering; and nothing in the history of sects is
more extraordinary than the misapplication of the
word " grace" to a system of theology which virtually repudiates the thing. In tihe judgment of liberal
Christians, those systems which treat the death of
Christ as a satisfaction of Divine justice, -whether
in the sacrificial sense of expiation, or the more
questionable "governmental" sense of a shift or
compromise, - rule out of Christianity that which
constitutes its distinctive feature, grace; and place
286 
TIIE TWO RPELIGIONS.
it on a level with the old religions, in which law
and sacrifice are the prominent elements. In these
systems, the Christian's God, like the God of the
Jews and the gods of the Gentiles, is a being to be
propitiated by sacrifice; with this remarkable difference, that, while the Gentile and Jewish divinities, alienated from individuals and tribes by actual
personal transgressions, and visiting ancestral crimes
on the third and fourth generation, could be conciliated by the blood of bulls or rams, the Christian's God, averse from the whole human race by
reason of aboriginal sin, Call be placated only by
the blood of a man. Liberal Christianity sees in
this view a God less gracious than Hebrew Jehovah or Olympian Jove; and, instead of a dispensation of grace, the yoke of a new and sterner law.
The distinction of legal and liberal respects the
philosophy of religion, rather than sectarian symbol
or dogma. Every system of theology and every
religious creed presupposes antecedent speculation,
- some philosophic idea, some underlying theory
of God and man,  vl-ichl, consciously or uncon sciously, shapes the formula, and determines the
doctrine.  When we study the Homousian contro versy of the fourth century, or the Monothelitic of
the seventh, we see how each party starts from
premises back of the point in dispute, and back of
Christianity itself. Arius was a thinker of entirely
287 
TIIE  TWO  RPELIGIONS.
different build from Athanasius, and would proba bly have dissented from him as emphatically, on
every other subject involving a philosophical principle, as he did in his christology.  Augustine differed as wvidely from Pelagius, and Maximus from
Theodore. The Ebionitism which prevailed in the
early Church was the natural product of the strong
monarchian 1 proclivity of the Jewish mind. The
Christo-theism which  ultimately triumphed was
nursed and matured, if it did not originate, in the
bosom of Alexandrian speculation. And when we
come to the mighty spirits of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, - to Abelard and Anselm, and
Hug,o a St. Victoire; to Abbot Joachim and Raymond Lull and Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon,
we see them impelled to review the old dogmas
in the new light of the great revival of the human
mind, which began with the Crusades; we see how
the reawakened intellect held creed and symbol in
solution, and how theologians were obliged to reconsider and to seek a philosophic basis for the
placita of the Church.'
The " simple souls," who, according to Tertullian, compose, in every age, the great majority of
believers,2 experience no such necessity: they
1 The monarclian heresies, properly so called, were of later
date, and of Gentile growth; but the origin of one of them was
unquestionably Jewish.
2 " Simplices quique, ne dixerim imniprudentes et idiotae, quas
major semper cre(]entium pars est."
288 
THIIE TWO RELIGIONS.
swallow the symbol that is set before them, asking
no questions for conscience' sake; they neither
know nor care to know in what subsoil of philosophic speculation their dogma has its root; they
suppose it delivered bodily by revelation  from
heaven. But revelation never dogmatizes: all
dogma is grounded in antecedent philosophy.
Every system of theology is the fruit of philosophic ideas applied to the facts of revelation. The
two systems we are now considering presuppose
very different classes of ideas as their antecedents
and basis.  Their oppugriance is quite as much a
philosophical as a theological one. It respects the
fundamental ideas which form the basis of all theology, and is best understood by comparing the views
of God and spiritual topics proper to each kind.
In the view of the legalist, God is arbitrary
power,- a despot whose wvill makes right.  In the
view of the liberal, God is moral ideal, power in
which right precedes will, - a love which causes
all things to work together for the good of all.
In the view of the legalist, man is naturally bad;
sin his normal state. Depraved by an accident of
history, he is incapable of good, except by a radical
change in his nature.  In the view of the liberal,
man is naturally imperfect, liable to sin, but also
capable of good. Sin is an abnormal action of his
nature; rectitude, his normal state.
19
*I
289 
TIIE TWO RELIGIONS.
In the view of the legalist, revelation is a communication made by God to mllan from without;
Christ is God in a human form.  In the view of the'
liberal, revelation is the perfection of reason,an intuition of the deeper soul,- God speaking
from within; Christ is man ill the likeness of God.
In the view of the legalist, salvation is escape
from the punishment of sin; the deatlh of Christ,
placating the divine wrath, is a motive with God,
inducing him to remit that punishment.   In the
view of the liberal, salvation is deliverance firom
the power of sin; and the life of Christ, consummated by his death, an aid to mioral emancipation.
In the view of the legalist, Heaven is the local
residence of the Lord and his redeemed, from which
the vast majority of human souls are for ever excluded; Hell is the local and eternal abode of the
remainder of the race. In the view of the liberal,
Heaven is the method of moral ascension, also the
totality of ascending spirits; Hell is moral declension, also the totality of descending spirits.
From this exposition, it appears of what opposite
elements the two religions are composed, and how
radical and irreconcilable the antagonism between
them; how vain the attempt to symbolize these
sharp antitheses, to atone the intellectual schisnm,
or by any theological compromise to harmonize
290 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
legal and liberal views in one dogmatic confession.
The confession that shall reconcile this difference,
and unite the sects it has sundered, must not be a
dogmatic but a liturgical one.  Such a confession
and such a union I believe to be not impossible.
What Christian heart does not rejoice in the
thought?  But every movement in this direction,
every attempt to ceculmenize Protestant Christendom in one association for liturgical or practical
purposes, must start with a frank  recognition,
on both sides, of the logically and  theologically
unatonable discrepance between legal and liberal
theories of religion, frank toleration of that discrepance, and such a yearning for practical atonement
and reconciliation in Christ as shall place above all
dogmatic interests and disputes the common Master and Lord, and that union of all men in him for
which he prayed, "That they all may be one, as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us."  Let no one think to forward that
union by compronlising doctrinal issues, by dogniatic adjustments, by attempts to symbolize theologically with other sects.  All such attempts are
like temporary bridges of ice, which connect in
cold seasons two  hostile shores, -hard and  ungenial while they last, and soon dissolved.  When,
in times of suspended interest and theological torpor, sects unite by the crystallization of their dif
291 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
ferences, - when the very coldness between them
becomes their bond,- it is easy to foresee the speedy
dissolution of that bond in the new glow of returning interest, and the more direct light of the sun.
There is one word which should never be heard in
theology,-" compromise."
But under whatever organizations, whether ecclesiastically joined or disjunct, there will always
be, as I believe, these two religions in the world.
They are too abhorrent in their ground elements,
too discrete in the last analysis, to be ever completely merged in one. They are exponents each
of a quite distinct and peculiar order of mind;
each expresses an indestructible spiritual type.
Legal and liberal! How many peculiarities, theoretic and dogmatic, -how many antagonist doctrines and creeds, theological formulas, sectarian
issues, ecclesiastical disputes, - arrange and define
themselves under these two heads!  Christianity,
whose strong, victorious current broke down so
many barriers, and swept away so many distinctions, and floated and confounded, and finally
swallowed, so many philosophies and faiths,Christianity, the most powerful of intellectual and
historic solvents, did not quite solve this obdurate
dualism. It married these contrary elements, but
did not fuse them. The Church was yet in its
second decade when it fairly polarized into legal
292 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
and liberal. The two types were visibly discriminated, formally organized, and locally and thlieoretically and practically divided. Jerusalem, the
natural and ancestral home of legal religion, maintained that aspect of the gospel, as administered
by the twelve apostles, with James the Just at
their head. On the other hand, Antioch, capital of
Syria, "the eldest daughter of Zion," birth-place of
the Christian name, birth-place of Christianity itself
as a world religion, dispensed through Paul, or, in
his absence, through Hellenizing elders, the liberal
faith.
The head and protoplast of liberal Christianity
is Paul. But here I am bound to remark, that the
classification given above of the doctrinal aspects
of the two religions does not always, and in all
particulars, coincide with legal and liberal in ecclesiastical position. The christology of Paul is less
humanitarian, his redemptorial doctrine, notwithstanding his polemics against the law, has more of
a legal complexion, than the views of the old Jerusalem Church, so far as we can judge from the scanty
and uncertain notices which have reached us. In
subsequent divisions of the ecclesiastical world, the
Catholic party, while always legalizing in matters
of Church polity, have often adopted more liberal
views of questions purely theologic than the heretics with whom they contended. On the other
293 
4'HE TWO RELIGIONS.
hand, some of the sects -for example, the Montanists -have been legalists in doctrine and liberals
in polity.  Still, as a general rule, the theological
position has, in this respect, coincided with the
ecclesiastical.
The century waned; Jerusalem fell: with it the
Jewish ritual, the Jewish polity. And with the
subversion of Temple and state, Jewish Christianity
declined; Hellenistic Christianity triumphed; the
Pauline interest triumphed; the Anltiochian school
prevailed. With the exception of a feeble remnant
of Ebionites and Nazareans, the Jerusalem school
and party were extinct. Monstrous to relate, a
Gentile was chosen Bishop of Jerusaleml.  "In the
fire-flames of the Holy City, God proclaimed the
end of the Old Covenant; and the Roman, who
for ends of his own threw a torch into the Temple,
acted as the instrument of God in the interest of
the Christian religion." 1 The century closed; Christianity became coslmopolite; and, notwithstanding
heretical appearances here and there, the Christian
Church was substantially one. But let another
century pass, and the old contradiction bursts forth
afresh. In the Latin and Greek churchles of the
third century, legal and liberal are reproduced with
steep antagonism.  When I speak of Latin Clhris  1 I)ie Clementinen nebst den verwandten Schlriften, und der
Ebionitismus. Von Adolphl Schlieminann.
294 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
tianity as a theological influence, I am thinking
of Africa, not of Rome.  Rome was never an intellectual power in the world, though once and
agaill the world's mistress.   Ecclesiastical Rome
was always more occupied with strengthening her
own dominion than with illustrating Christian doctrine.  Africa was the cradle, if not the birth-place,
of Latin Christianity.  On the northern coast of
that continent, and especially in Carthage,- how
planted, we know not, -  theie had sprung up a
Church, which makes its first appearance in Christian history as a full-grown power and a mighty'
influence, in the time and person of TertuLllian.
The Greek Church dates from Paul.  The  GrecoEgyptian branch of it, its most intellectual and
characteristic representative, -the Church at Alexandria, -had already illustrated the second century andt itself with  the  writings  of  Clemens.
Thus, Africa, by a strange destiny, had become
the focus of the Christian world, the home of the
two representative Churchles of the post-apostolic
time,- at once the palkstra and the mart of those
spirits and ideas, the trace of which remains to this
day.  In Alexandria, gnosis contended with revelation; in Carthage, independency struggledl with
ecclesiastical rule: hut both  of these Churches
contrasted each other as exponents of speculative
and dogmatic theology, of liberal and legal religion.
295 
THE 7'WO RELIGIONS.
M. Charpentier, in a pleasant essay on the literary
characteristics of the two Churches, speaks of the
different training  of the writers of each.  The
Greek Fathers had come into the Church from the
schools; the Latin, from the bar.  "Sortis par la
plupart, les ecrivains grecs, de l'dcole des sophistes,
les dcrivains latins, de lenceinte du barrean, ils ont,
les uns et les autres, retenu cette double origine." 1
We are inclined to think that their spiritual, as well
as their literary, traits are referable in part to this
previous discipline. The habit of the schools is
free inquiry; the habit of the bar is sharp decision
by precedent and authority.  The one is discursive;
the other, pragmatical: the one, liberal; the other,
legal.
As a type of the Latin spirit, and a normal
instance of legal Christianity, let us take Tertullian, first of the Latin Fathers.   Tertullian was a
heretic in ecclesiastical position; but when  had
ever Orthodoxy, in the popular sense of the word,
a more perfect representative? We speak of Augustine as the Father of Calvinism; but the practical spirit of Calvinism is more fitly imaged in
Tertullian.  So  assured  and grim  and pitiless!
The Christian Church has had no abler writer and
no greater bigot. How fiercely his intolerant zeal
flashes out in his judgment of the  polytheists
1 Etudes sur les Peres de l'Etglise.  Par J. P. Charpentier.
296 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
ilHowv he burns and rages against them!  How he
revels in the thought of their sure damnation, and
gloats over the picture of everlasting burnings'
Oh, how I shall admire, how laugh, how exult,
when I behold so many proud monarchs, so many
fanecied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness! -so many magistrates, who persecuted the
name of Christ, melting in fiercer flames than they
kindled against the Christians!"  What contempt
he pours on ancient philosophy and philosophers!
"What has the Academy to do with the Church,
Christ with Plato, Jerusalem with Athenlls?" With
what self-righteous disdain and conscious superiority he sneers even at Socrates, and ridicules his
Daemon, and all his pretended wisdom!  Paul and
John had not hesitated to acknowledge traces of
moral truth and a divine spirit even in the Gentile
world; but Tertullian flouts the notion of a possible wisdom or knowledge that was not derived
from the Christian revelation. What could Socrates know of the soul? What right had he to think
or talk about it? Christ had not yet come into the
world; 1 consequently, no knowledge of spiritual
things, no means of investigating, no possibility of
apprehending them. All that the Gentile philoso
1 " Cui eiim veritas comperta sine Deo?  Cui Deus cognitus
sine Christo? Cui Chlristus exploratus sine Spiritu Sancto?...
Sane Socrates facilius diverso spiritu agebatur."- Tertull. De
A.imna.
297 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
phers could say on these subjects was of devilish
origin, - "secundum Pythii dcmonis suffragium."
Christianity was not only a revelation transcending
philosophy, but a fierce cartel hurled at human
wisdom.  It was not enough to say that the gospel was the source of the highest knowledge and
the fullest truth in relation to such matters. Tertullian's religioni required him to believe that all
previous theorizing, all the conclusions of the
"natural man" on the subject, were adverse  to
the gospel; that this wisdom inot only " descendethl
not from above," but must needs be "earthly, sensual, devilish." His faith rejected with scorn the aid
of reason.  "Credo quia imlpossibile est."  "The
Christian religion," says Maurice,1 in his admirable
critique of this Father, " was good for nothing in
his eyes, unless he could show that it set aside all
that honest men had been thinking of and feeling
before it was proclaimed.  That was the proof that
it came from God; that was the only comfortable
evidence Tertullian could have that the inheritance which had been left him was safe against
invaders."
This, in every period of the Church, has been
the position of legal Christianity in respect to the
claims of philosophy and the rights of the mind.
I Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of thle First and Second
Centuries.
298 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
It loves to set revelation against humanity, instead
of seeking to reconcile the two.  So far from finding the word of God in human reason, and human
reason in the word of God, it delights to sow
enmity between them.  It declares eternal feud to
be their normal relation.   Instead of adjusting
itself with the natural faith and universal heart
of man, it assumes in advance that human nature
is an enelmy, and must be crushed and trampled in
the dust, in order to receive its impress.  Compare
with these flings of Tertullian the tone of discourse
on such matters in modern writers of like faith.
Thus, the author of the " Greyson Letters," quite
in the spirit of tile old African, assures his corresponldent that Christianity goes desperately against
the grain of human nature. " You cannot say that
the Book has not given you every advantage; for
never was there one which more irritates the pride
and prejudices of lmankind, which presents greater
obstacles to its reception, morally and intellectually; so that it is amonglst the most unaccountable
things to me, not that it should be rejected by some,
but that it should be accepted by any...  Said
an old Deist,'I do not perceive in myself any
inclination to receive the Newv Testament.' There
spake not Deism only, but HUMAN NATURE."
As Tertullian in the Latin Church is the type of
legalism, so Origen in the Greek Church may be
299 
TI0lE TWO RELIGIONS.
regarded as, next to St. Paul, the truest representative of liberal Christianity. In him as in few
beside - perhaps we should say in none besidewere combined the scholar and the saint. Second
to none in purity and singleness of heart, in selfdenial, humility, devotion, in all Christian virtues,
he added "to virtue knowledge," surpassing all
others in intellectual activity and intellectual attainments, in the grasp of his thought, in the
vastness of his erudition. Neander calls him the
founder of sacred learning; that is, of the scientific study of the Bible and all related branches of
knowledge. He introduced into Christian study a
spirit of inquiry, and an element of intellectual
freedom which ages of bigotry were unable wholly
to eradicate thence. Unlike Tertullian, he believed
in philosophy, and believed in reason.  He believed
in the necessary and perfect harmony of reason and
revelation.   Possessed with this conviction, his
genius led him to spiritualize and allegorize whatever seemed contrary to reason in the letter of
Scripture, and especially all that savors of anthropomorphlism.  Tertullian did not shun to ascribe
corporeity to God. He must have an eye to watch
mail; a hand to protect him; an ear to hear him;
a heart to love him.  Origen, on the contrary, is
careful to divest the idea of God of all material
attributes: he conceives of Deity as pure spirit,
300
I 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
infinitely transcending all human conception. He
understands figuratively all those passages in the
Bible which speak humanly of God. He cannot
accept, in its literal sense, the Mosaic account of
creation. A creation that had its beginning but a
few thousand years ago is inconsistent with the
nature of God, who must have created from all
eternity. The existing universe must have been
preceded by an infinite series of creations. He believes        in t he p re-existence of human souls.  What
is called native depravity is the taint contracted by
transgression in some previous state. He believes
in a plurality of intelligent and spiritual worlds,
and regards tle death of Christ as a sacrifice whose
efficacy is not confined to this our earth, but
includes the spheres in its complete grace, and
carries atonement into all the heavens. His eschatology is as generous as his theory of redemption.
He believes that all souls will be finally restored
to God; Satan himself, as the Scottish bard hoped,
will take thought and mend; the universe in all
its abysses will be purged of evil,                  "And Hell itself shall pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day."
I do not propose Origen, no more than Tertullian, as authority or model; but only as type in his
own kind, as the foremost instance of liberalism in
religion. He represents the faults as well as the
301 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
merits of that kind. In him the philosopher outruns the evangelist.   The bold  speculations in
whichl he indulges, if not antagonistic to the teachings of the gospel, are foreign to the purport and
simplicity of the gospel, which subordinates curious inquiry to moral truth, - the knowledge that
puffeth up to the love that buildeth up.
Come down two centuries later, and the neverfailing dualism reappears in the conflict of Augustinian and Pelagian anthropology.  The Church,
already divided on the nature of Christ, divides
now on the nature of man, - on human free-will;
on the agency which the individual has in his own
salvation.  Augustine, who never entirely outgrew
his early Manichean determinations, and whose
theology was colored by his personal experience of
sin, was deeply impressed with the might and extent of the empire of evil, which he conceived as
reaching down to the very core of man's being.
He could see in human nature only the arena of a
contest between God and Satan. The human will
is entirely passive in this conflict; it is not human
nature that acts when one is converted and saved,
but grace in the place of human nature, supplanting it, replacing it. The regenerate man is not a
human original, but only a particular vessel into
which God's grace is poured. Opposed to this is
the liberal, Pelagian view, which recognizes human
302 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
nature as itself an independent, sacred reality.
Immensely important is this view,- far beyond
its theological bearings, and beyond the comprelhension of that time,- the first emphatic assertion, within the pale of the Christian Church, of
the dignity of human nature. It is the basis of
all civil and personal liberty.  The Stoics had a
glimpse of it; the gospel reveals it; the very term
" Son of man" implies it; but this is its first distinct recognition as a Christian doctrine.  Pelagius
himself is not the best representative of this view,
- himself less liberal on the whole, and with more
of a legal cast in his doctrine, than Augustiiie, who
as a thinker was immeasurably his superior.  But
this particular view of human nature (with him it
was rather an instinct than a vision) soon found
other and worthier exponents, as the liberal side of
Christian anthropology contrasted with the legal
positions of St. Augustine.
In the seventh century, the old antagonism
breaks forth afresh in the MIonothelite controversy
of the Greek Chlurch, repeating in substance the
Nestorian and Monophysite disputes of the fifth
and sixth.  MIaximus here represents the liberal,
and Theodore the legal, side. In the ninth century,
we have the question of the Double Predestination,
- Gottschalk taking the legal view, and Scotus
Erigena the liberal. And again, in the thirteenth,
o'PO3 
THIE TWO RELIGIONS.
we have the practical antithesis of St. Dominic and
St. Francis.
It is not my intent to pursue this parallel
through all the epochs of ecclesiastical history. I
will only remind the reader howv the great Refor- 
mation, which at first combined and concentred the
spirits and beliefs opposed to Romanism, soon disparted into two streams, into two religions, - ironhearted Calvin leading and organizing Protestant
legalism; Arminius, somewhat later, representing
liberal Protestantism.
From their theological characteristics, if now we
pass to their practical aspects, and survey the
working of the two religions in organized communions, we are struck with the very decided
superiority of legal over liberal Christianity as a
method of church-life. It needs but a glance at
ecclesiastical organizations to perceive what mighty
advantage a church derives from legal views and a
legalizing spirit.  It is not too much to say, that a
church is powerful and prosperous in precisely that
degree in which it is possessed with such views and
such a spirit. The Church of Rome, the most
powerful spiritual organism the world has known,
is a standing witness of the truth of this position.
The Church of Rome owes all her strength to this
cause. Whatever may have been her doctrinal
304 
TIE TWO RELIGIONS.
decisions when defining her faith in relation to the
heresies that sprung from her bosom, - whether
narrower or larger than the views she eliminated,
-the absolute authority of those decisions was
always a fundamental point in her faith. Her intense ecclesiastical consciousness (infallibility) gave
her decisions a binding force within the pale of her
communion, in which the very essence of legalism
consists. She broke with the Greek Church on a
question of reform. Espousing herself the conservative  side (             which was also in this case the popular
side), she gained new strength from tihe schism.
T    h    e     Greek Church, taking the side of reform, and
thereby condemining her own practice, seeking
orthodoxy at the expense of infallibility, failed to
maintain  her ground, and was finally worsted in
t h e           contest.   A    change of government restored
idolatry to Constantinople, but not oecumenical
prestiie.           With two successive empires  for her
allies, and historical antecedents in her favor, the
"Orthodox"  Church has never wielded the power
o      f the               " Catholic,"    with often an empire for her adversary.           T        he Albigenses, -the most liberal and
most powerful antagonists of papal rule in the
thirteenth century, having virtual control of the
fairest and most civilized portion of Europe, but
without dogmatic authority or bond, and only
agreeing in dissent from the Church, -were com
20
305 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
pletely exterminated by the sword of De Montfort
and the bloodhounds of Dominic. On the other
hand, the Waldenses, who with equal hostility to
Rome combined a more stringent faith, survived
the most savage persecution, and continue to this
day.
Need I point to Protestant Christendom, to our
own most Protestant land, for illustrations? The
superior strength of the self-styled "I vangelical"
sects, as compared with the Liberal, stares us in
the face. The Unitarians, with every advantage
in the way-of culture and of literary ability, have
not only made, relatively to other sects, no appreciable progress, but have never organized with corporate effect, have never united in any uniform
policy, have never cordially co-operated in any systematic attempt to extend their communion. Their
theological views they have propagated by books
and otherwise; their corporate influence they have
not extended, have not even maintained. The
management of the first University in the land had
fallen providentially into their han-; they endowed
it munificently, increased its professorial staff, and
raised the standard of education, not only for that
college, but through it, indirectly, for every college
in the land. They might with all legal propriety
have made it ancillary to their own ecclesiastical
growth. They might, as other sects would have
306
.ib 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
done in their place, have made it, what other colleges are, a sectarian institution. Far from this,
they religiously refrained from any effort in that
direction. I pass no judgment on this conduct; I
only cite it as an instance of that lack of organic
strength  and  ecclesiastical  consciousness which
seems to be inseparable from liberalism  in religion.  If corporate zeal were the test and measure of truth, Unitarianism would stand convicted
and condemned by irrefragable fact. I often think,
on the contrary, that zeal and truth are inversely
related, -that the clearer men see, the less concerned they are to communicate their vision.
Whatever its theological merits, Liberal Christianity is not, ecclesiastically, a good working faith.
It dwells too much in inquiry, is too "sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought," to succeed in sectarian "enterprises of great pith and moment."
Nor is this its only defect. Not only does it fail in
propagandism, not only does it lack the power to
organize, -the corporate zeal which shows itself in
vigorous and effective coaction, -but in every kind
of religious demonstration, in all that is technically
called religion, as distinct from moral and philanthropic action, it falls far short of the mark and
standard of legal faith. The religious sentiment,
properly so called, is less active,- or perhaps we
should say less concrete and demonstrative, - in
307 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
Christians of liberal views, than in those of the
legal communions. Popularly speaking, the former
are less religious than the latter. It is useless to
deny this; candor compels me to give to legal
Christianity the preference in this particular. At
what expense of other and equal good this advantage is maintained, is a point to be considered by
all who would weigh the comparative merits of the
two systems. It has been alleged by its adversaries that Unitarianism leads to irreligion. Whatever may be thought of the animus of that charge,
it is not so utterly baseless as the prompt repudiation of it by the Unitarian consciousness might
seem to imply. Viewed in one aspect, it is false,
and even recklessly false; considered in another, it
is not without some color of truth. It is false as a
matter of fact, inasmuch as the larger proportion of
unbelievers are notoriously the offspring of "Orthodoxy," and have come from the ranks of the
legal sects. But, theoretically, it is true so far as
this: Romanism being the positive extreme of the
Christian world, and irreligion the negative, Unitarianism is further removed from the positive,
consequently nearer the negative, than most of
the Protestant systems. As Romanism has more
of positive religion than Protestant Orthodoxy, so
Orthodoxy has more of positive religion than Unitarianism. The charge is true in the same sense in
308
I 
THE TWO RELIG[ONS.
which, from the Catholic point of view, Protestantism leads to infidelity.   Or again, Unitarianism leads to irreligion in precisely that sense in
which Orthodoxy leads to fanaticism,- which is
no better than irreligion, and leads to hypocrisy,
which is worse. It is a step in that direction; but
it does not follow that all the succeeding steps
must be taken until the goal is reached. It is a
question of comparative approximation. If one
sect is nearer irreligion than another, that other is
nearer to it than its antecedent, and so on. Heaven
help us if we are never to move in any direction,
because that direction may be followed to excess!
In that case, Protestantism is the first misstep; and
consistency would require the Protestant who recoils from a liberal faith, on the score of irreligion,
to pursue the retrograde movement until he lands
in the Church of Rome.
Religion is not a finality, but means to an end.
The end is the perfect man. The two religions
must be judged by the measure in which they contribute thereto. The first and principal function of
all religion is to aid the development of the moral
nature, to further moral purity and power. Only
so far as it answers this end directly or indirectly,
by quickening the conscience, by strengthening
the social bond, or by fostering and stimulating beautiful art, - only so far as it makes men
I
309 
THE TWO RELIGIONATS.
morally better, - is religion any real benefit to
man. Sad to say, religion has not always wrought
to this effect; and when it has not, it has been no
blessing, but a curse. When the light that is in
man is turned to darkness, that darkness is deeper
and deadlier than mere brute night. When religion
ceases to be regarded as means to an end, as an aid
to moral and spiritual culture, a handle by which
the soul lays hold of the eternal, -when it loses
this function in men's apprehension, and becomes
an end in itself, an exclusive and absorbing end,
an end above truth and righteousness, - then it is
apt to become a substitute for truth and righteousness, and then the light that is in man is turned to
darkness and to death. What different growths of
the spirit ostensibly spring from the same root!
The belief in the invisible, which lies at the basis
of all religions, -how diverse its action, how contrary its manifestations, according to the nature in
which it is rooted and the nurture it receives!
The same principle which made a Paul out of
Saul and a saint out of Augustine, which ravished
the soul of St. Francis and transfigured the life
of Elizabeth, which lit up the eyes of Raphael's
Marys and conjugated the notes of the MIiserere,
that same principle macerated the bodies of the
Encratites, and drove men to the tops of columns
and into the bowels of the earth, and put a scourge
310 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
into the hands of Piety, and planned the wiles of
the Inquisition, and enacted the fiery Acts of Faith.
"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place
sweet waters and bitter," godlike charities and
hellish crimes? Yes, human nature is such a fountain, and religion the prophet that unlocks its
secret life.  Human nature, the individual nature,
is deeper than any system, and stronger than any
faith. It reacts on religion in the same measure in
which it is actuated by it. Religion is not responsible for all the aberrations it has seemed to sanction, or that rage in its name.
"Thloughl all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."
At the same time, it is clear that different systems
of religion, received by tradition from the visible
Church, will act very differently on human nature;
and, according to their proper complexion, will
quicken or restrain, dissuade pr reassure, the native proclivities of souls. On the whole, then, a
religion may be judged by its moral fruits; or,
since the causal relation of subject and accident
in such matters is indemonstrable, let us say its
moral accompaniments.
Tried by this test, and compared in this aspect,
the two religions exhibit each their lights and their
shades according to their kind. Neither will be
found inglorious, and neither without spot. Great
311 
7'HE TWO RELIGIONS.
and holy characters and lives, noble men and noble
women, have been reared under both. Each has
had its heroes and confessors, and neither may
claim precedence of the other in the heraldry of
grace. Yet here also the two religions preserve
their distinctive types. They differ in their moral
traits, as in their intellectual. The characteristic
virtue of the legal is scrupulous sobriety, that of
the liberal, active beneficence; the one is more
strict in its way of life, the other lmore intent on
works of love; the one aspires to personal holiness,
the other delights in public good; the one, eontemning and renouncing the world, presses steadily
on to the kingdom of God, the other would establish that kingdom in the world. The prayer of the
one is, May we  come into Thy  kingdom!  The
prayer of the other is, May Thy kingdom come!
Likewise the immoralities incident to either as a
visible communion, the vices most often associated
with them, are respectively and characteristically
proper to each kind. The vices of the liberal are indolence, indifference, eudemonism, self-indulgence,
fleshly lusts, and sensual excess. The vices of the
legal are hypocrisy, falsehood, dishonesty in business, treachery, cruelty. I do not mean, of course,
to say that either religion engenders these results;
I am not speaking of necessary consequences, but
of common accompaniments.
812 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
There is one diagnostic of the two religions, and
that perhaps the most definitive of any, of which as
yet I have not spoken, and can only now point to
in passing, for want of room to do it justice. I
mean the attitude they respectively assume in
relation to public and private amusements. Legal
religion is prevailingly ascetic; it regards the
world as essentially godless, a Vanity Fair, a passing trial, a transient obstruction, with which the
Christian has nothing to do but to make his pilgrim's progress through it, unbending and succilnct,
drawing close his robe of righteousness, that it take
no defilement in the miry passage. It professes no
sympathy with gayety and mirth, is cold to all
pleasures but those which
"Rise from things unseen,
Beyond this world and time.;"
and turns with special aversion from the dance and
the play, if not as sinful in themselves, yet as
perilously dwelling in the neighborhood of sin. If
ill any community it had full scope and unqualified
sway, it would banish all this, spread sackcloth and
ashles, and establish perpetual Lent. Liberal religion secularizes without reserve; it feels itself at
home in the world, sanctions festive enjoyment,
contends for public amusements, tolerates theatre
and ball, with perhaps too little discrimination. If
in any community it had full sway, there is reason
313 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
to fear that society would miss the earnest shadow
of the law, that the passions which thirst for enjoyment would never have done with their carnival,
that "Joy and Feast" would encroach too far on
the awfulness of life.
It has been my aim, in this brief sketch, to
render strict justice to both of the religions which
divide mankind, -to exhibit fairly their prominent
traits, without disparagement and without exaggeration. It could never occur to me to pronounce
definitively respecting their comparative value on
the whole. As soon should I think of passing judgment respecting the comparative value of man and
woman, or of body and spirit, or any two necessary
correlates of being. Neither is best, and neither is
sufficient in itself. Both are necessary, and both
are partial, and both are permanent types. Each
is the other's complement, and neither could be
missed without loss to the world. Both will continue to exist in nearly the same proportions as
now. I have no misgivings respecting the cause of
Liberal Christianity, whatever may become of the
churches that embody it. If these fail, other coinmmunions will arise in their place, or legal communions will enlarge themselves to receive this
element. The gospel has this side, human nature
has this side; and both will be sure to find expression.  I have no misgivings about Orthodoxy.
314 
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
I rejoice in Orthodoxy, and am deeply conscious
how ill this factor could be missed from the sum of
the forces that rule the world. Both religions will
find their own. He who craves the largest liberty
of thought and worship, and still affects the Christian name, and still acknowledges the mastership
of Christ, will be naturally drawn to the liberal
side. He who requires for his edification the strong
embrace of a close communion, the pulsing life of
a vigorous organism, the warm breath of the
crowded conventicle, the frequent assembly, the
large operation, the triumphant report, will seek a
lodgement in some legal church. Happily, the
Christian idea is wide enough for both.
315 
XII.
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT.
4,iAoolrovTEpoz'a~          z po  7rot-qo-is Ui,,r  tLopias?TTLv.
ARISTOTLE.
WHEN Dr. Strauss, thirty-five years ago,1 in
his "Life of Jesus," advanced and applied
to the narrative of the New Testament a theory
of interpretation, in principle the same with that
which a Christian Father of the third century had
employed in his treatment of the Old, the theological world was profoundly shocked by what seemed
to be the last impiety of criticism. A hundred
champions rushed with drawn pen to the rescue of
the old interpretation of the text. The truth of
Christianity was supposed to be assailed; the belief
in Christianity as divine revelation was felt to be
imperilled by a theory which substituted mythical
figment for historic fact. That no such harm was
intended, or was likely to ensue from his labors,
the author himself assures us in the preface to that
extraordinary work.  "The inner kernel of Christian faith," he declares, "is entirely independent of
1 This was written in 1871. 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT, ETC.
all such criticism. Christ's supernatural birth, his
miracles, his resurrection and ascension, remain
eternal truths, however their reality as facts of history may be called in question."
In this declaration I find the motive of the
following dissertation.
How far does the cause of Christianity depend
on the facts, or alleged facts, of the Gospel narrative? Or, to state the question in other words, Is
the truth of Christianity identical and conterminous
with the literal truth of its record?
It is obvious at the start that a certain amount of
historic truth must be assumed as implied in the
very existence of any religion which dates from a personal founder whose thought it professes to embody,
and whose name it bears. Christianity purports to
be founded on the ministry of a Jewish teacher,
entitled by his followers "the Christ."  We  have
the testimony of a nearly contemporary Latin historian to the fact that an individual so named was
the leader of a numerous body of religionists, and
was put to death by command of Pontius Pilate,
in the reign of Tiberius. But, without this confirmation, the very existence of the Christian Church
compels us to accept as historic facts, the ministry
of Jesus, the strong impression of his word and
character, his purity of manners and moral greatness, his life of beneficent action, his martyr death,
317 
THE MY'THICAL ELEMENT
and his manifestation to his disciples after death,
however that manifestation be conceived, whether
as subjective experience or as objective reality. So
much, beyond all reasonable question, must stand
as history, vouched by documentary evidence, and
by the existence, in the first century, of a Church
universally diffused, which affirmed these facts as
the ground of its being, and in the strength of them
overcame the world.
But, observe, it is Christianity that assures the
truth of these facts, and not the facts that prove
Christianity. To base the truth of Christianity on
the credibility, in every particular, of the Gospel
record; to measure the claims of the religion by
the strict historic verity of all the narrative of the
New Testament, is to prejudice the Christian cause
in the judgment of competent critics. It is to
challenge the cavil and counter-demonstration of
unbelief.
Christianity assures the truth of certain facts;
but by no means of all the facts affirmed by the
writers of the New Testament. Faith in Christianity as divine dispensation does not imply, and
must not be held to the belief, as veritable history,
of all that is recorded in the Gospel. Not the historic sense, but the spiritual import; not the facts,
but the ideas of the Gospel, are the genuine topics
of faith.
318 
IN THE NEW TESTAMiENT.
Christianity, like every other religion, has its
mythology,- a mythology so intertwined with the
veritable facts of its early history, so braided and
welded with its first beginnings, that history and
myth are not always distinguishable the one from
the other. Every historic religion, that has won for
itself a conspicuous place in the world's history,
has evolved from a core of fact a nimbus of legendary matter which criticism cannot always separate,
and which the popular faith does not seek to separate, from the solid parts of the system. And in
one view the legends or myths which gather around
the initial stage of any religion are as true as the
vouched and substantial facts of its record: they
are a product of the same spirit working, in the
one case, in the acts and experiences; in the other,
in the visions, the ideas, the literary activity of the
faithful. It is one and the same motive that inspires both the writer and the doer.
When I speak of historic religions, I mean such
as trace their origin to some historic personage, and
bear the impress of his idea, in contradistinction to
those which have sprung from unknown sources,
the wild growths of Nature-worship as found in
ancient Egypt, in the Indian and Scandinavian
peninsulas, and in Greece.
No distinction in religion is so fundamental as
that between the wild religions and those which
319 
TIIE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
have sprung from the word of a human sower
going forth to sow; the religions of sense and
those of reflection, the "natural" and the "revealed." The prime characteristic of the former is
polytheism; that of the latter, monotheism.  Mosaism, Mohammedism, Buddhism,-so far as it knows
any God, - even Parsism, is monotheistic in so
much as its dualism is resolvable into the final
triumph and supremacy of the good. No founder
of a religion ever taught a plurality of gods.
Another characteristic of the wild religions is
their transitoriness.  The  Egyptian,  the  GrecoRoman, the Scandinavian, perished long ago.
Bramanism, the last survivor of the ancient polytheisms, is fast melting beneath the advancing
heats of Islam and the Brahmo Somaj.  The "revealed" religions on the contrary are permanent.
No religion of historic origin, so far as I know, has
ever died out. Judaism, the eldest of them, still
flourishes: never since the destruction of Jerusalem
has it flourished with a greener leaf than now.
Mohammedism is pushing its conquests faster than
Christianity in the East; Parsism is still strong in
Bengal; Buddhism in one or another form calls a
third part of the population of the globe its own.
All religions have their mythologies, but with
this distinction: polytheism is mythical in principle as well as form, in soul as well as body, and
320 
IN THE NEW TESTAMIENT.
mythical throughout. Its whole being is myth.
Whatever of scientific or historic truth may be hidden in any of its legends, such as the labors of Herakles, the fire-theft of Prometheus, or the rape of
Europa, is matter of pure conjecture.  In the "revealed" religions, on the contrary, the mythical is
incidental, not principal, and always subordinate to
doctrine or fact. Always the truth shines through
the myth, explains it, justifies it.
Before proceeding any farther, I desire to explain
what I mean by myth in this connection. I shall
not attempt a philosophic definition, but content
myself with this general determination. I call any
story a myth which for good reasons is not to be
taken historically, and yet is not a wilful fabrication with intent to deceive, but the natural growth
of wonder and tradition, or a product of the Spirit
uttering itself in a narrative form. The myth may
be the result of exaggeration, the expansion of a
veritable fact which gathers increments and a posse
comitatus of additions as it travels from mouth to
ear and ear to mouth in the carriage of verbal
report; or it may be the reflection of a fact in the
mind of a writer, who reproduces it in his writing
with the color and proportions it has taken in his
conception; or it may be the poetic embodiment of
a mental experience; or it may be what Strauss
21
321 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
calls "tke deposit' of an idea," and another critic
"an idea shaped into fact."  I think we have examples of all these mythical formations in the New
Testament; and I hold that the credit of the
Gospel in things essential is nowise impaired, nor
the claim of Christianity as divine revelation compromised, by a frank admission of this admixture
of fancy with fact in its record. On the contrary,
I deem it important, in view of the vulgar radicalism which confounds the Christian dispensation and
its record, soul and body, ill one judgment, to
separate the literary question from the spiritual,
and to free the cause of faith from the burden of
the letter.
It has been assumed that the proof of divine
revelation rests on precisely those portions of the
record which are most offensive to unbelief. On
this assumption the Christian apologists of a former
generation grounded their plea. Prove that we
have the testimony of eye-witnesses to the miracles
recorded in the Gospels, and Christianity is shown
to be a divine revelation. In the absence of such
proof (the inference is) Christianity can no longer
claim to be, in the words of Paul, "the power of
God unto salvation."  This is substantially Paley's
argument. Planting himself on the premise that
revelation is impossible without miracles, in which
.1 Niederschlila,g.
322 
IN THIE NEW TESTAilMENT.
it is implied that miracles prove revelation, he
labors to establish two propositions:  1. "That
there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles passed their lives in dangers, labors, and
sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of
the accounts which they delivered, and solely in
consequence of their belief in those accounts; and
that they also submitted firom the same motives to
new rules of conduct."  2. "That there is not
satisfactory evidence that persons pretending to be
original witnesses of any other similar miracles
have acted in the same manner in attestation of
the accounts which they delivered, and solely in
consequence of their belief in the truth of those
accounts." The argument is stated with the
characteristic clearness of the author, and as well
supported perhaps as Anglican chlurch-erudition in
those days would allow; but the case is not made
out, and, if it were, the argument fails to satisfy
the sceptical mind of to-day.  To say nothing of its
gross misconception of the nature of revelation,
which it makes external instead of internal, a stunning of the senses illstead of mental illumination,
an appeal to prodigy and not its own sufficient
witness, - waiving this objection, the argument
fails when confronted with the fact that, in spite of
the evidence which scholars and critics the most
323 
THE MYTHICAL ELEJIENT
learned and acute of all time have arrayed in support of the genuineness of the Gospels, the number
is nowise diminished, but rather increases, of intelligent minds that find themselves unable, on the
faith of any book, however ancient, to receive as
authentic a tale of wonders which contradict their
experience of the limits of human ability and their
faith in the continuity of Nature. For myself, I
beg to say, in passing, I am not of this number. I
do not feel the force of the objection against miraeles drawn from this alleged constancy of Nature,
which it seems to me reduces the course of human
events to a dead mechanical sequence, makes no
allowance for any reserved power in Nature or any
incalculable forces of the Spirit, and virtually rules
God, the present inworking God, out of the universe. I can believe in any miracle which does not
actually and demonstrably contravene and nullify
ascertained laws, however phenomenally foreign to
Nature's ordinary course. But the possibility of
miracles is one thing, the possibility of proving
them another. With such views as these objectors
entertain of the constancy of Nature, I confess that
no testimony, not even the written affidavit of a
dozen witnesses taken on the spot, supposing that
we had it, would suffice to convince me of the truth
of marvels occurring two thousand years ago, of
the kind recounted in the Gospels. Mly Christian
324 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
prepossessions might incline me to believe in them:
the weight of evidence would not.  No wise defender of the Christian cause, at the present day,
will rest his plea on the issue to which Paley committed its claims. After all that Biblical critics
and antiquarian research have raked from the dust
of antiquity in proof of the genuineness and authenticity of the books of the New Testament, credibility still labors with the fact that the age in which
these books were received and put in circulation
was one in which the science of criticism as developed by the moderns- the science which scrtutinizes statements, balances evidence for and against,
and sifts the true from the false -did not exist; an
age when a boundless credulity disposed men to
believe in wonders as readily as in ordinary events,
requiring no stronger proof in the case of the
former than sufficed to establish the latter, namely,
hearsay and vulgar report; an age when literary
honesty was a virtue almost unknown, and when,
consequently, literary forgeries were as common
as genuine productions, and transcribers of sacred
books did not scruple to alter the text in the interest of personal views and doctrinal prepossessions. The newly discovered Sinaitic Code, the
earliest known manuscript of the New Testament,
dates from the fourth century. Tischendorf the
discoverer, a very orthodox critic, speaks without
325 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
reserve of the license in the treatment of the text
apparent in this manuscript, -a license, he says,
especially characteristic of the first three centuries.
These considerations, though they do not discredit the essential facts of the Gospel history,
facts assured to us, as I have said, by the very existence of the Christian Church, - might seem to
excuse the hesitation of the sceptic in accepting, on
the faith of the record, incidental marvels of a kind
very difficult of proof at best. I recall in this connection the remarkable saying of an English divine
of the seventeenth century.  "So  great, in the
early ages," says Bishop Fell, "was the license of
fiction, and so prone the facility of believing, that
the credibility of history has been gravely embarrassed thereby; and not only the secular world,
but the Church of God, has reason to complain of
its mythical periods." 1
It is not in the interest of criticism, much less of
a wilful iconoclasm, from which my whole nature
revolts, but of Christian faith, that I advocate the
supposition of a mythical element in the New Testament. I am well aware that in this advocacy I
1 Tanta fuit primis seculis fingendi licentia, tam prona in credendo facilitas, ut rerum gestarum fides graviter exinde laboraverit, nec orbis tantum terrarum sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibus
suis mythicis merito queratur.
326 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
shall lack the consent of many good people who
identify the cause of religion with its accidents,
and fancy that the sanctuary is ill danger when a
blind is raised to let in new light. I respect the
piety that clings to idols which Truth has outgrown, as Paul at Athens respected the religion
which worshipped ignorantly the unknown God.
But Truth once seen will draw piety after it, and
new sanctities will replace the old.  No Protestant
in these days feels himself bound to accept as history the ecclesiastical legends of the post-apostolic
age. Some of them are quite as significant as some
of those embodied in the canon; but no Protestant
scruples to reject as spurious the story of the caldrdn of boiling oil into which St. John was thrown
by order of the Emperor Domitian, and from which
he escaped unharmed, or that of the lioness which
licked the feet of Thekla in the circus of Antioch,
or Peter's encounter with Christ in the suburbs of
Rome. If we talk of evidence, I do not see but the
miracles said to be performed by the relics of
martyrs at Milan, attested by St. Augustine, and
those of St. Cuthbert of Durham, attested by the
venerable Bede, are as well substantiated as the
opening of the prison doors and the liberation of
the Apostles by an angel, attested by Luke. The
Church of Rome makes no such distinction between
the first and the following' centuries: she indorses
327 
THE MYTHIICAL ELEMENT
the miracles of all alike. But modern Protestant ism draws a line of sharp separation between the
apostolic and the post-apostolic ages. On the far ther side the portents are all genuine historic facts:
on the hither side they are all figments.  While
John the Evangelist, the last of the twelve, yet
breathed, a miracle was still possible: his breath
departed, it became an impossibility for evermore.
And yet when Conyers Middleton first ran this line
between the ages, and published his refutation of
the claim of continued miraculous power in the
Church, religious sensibility experienced a shock
as great as that inflicted in our day by Strauss,
and resented with equal indignation the affront to
Christian faith. The author of the "Free Inquiry"
published in 1748 was assailed by opponents, who
" insinuate" he tells us "fears and jealousies of I
know not what consequences dangerous to Christianity, ruinous to the faith of history, and introductive of universal scepticismi."  The larger work
had been preceded by an "Introductory Discourse"
put forthi as a feeler of the public pulse; for "I
began," he says, "to think it a duty which candor
and prudence prescribed, not to alarm the public at
once with an argument so strange and so little
understood, nor to hazard an experiment so big
with consequences till I had at first given out some
sketch or general plan of what I was projecting."
328 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
The experiment which required such careful preparation was to ascertain how far the English public in the middle of the eighteenth century would
bear to have it said that the miracles affirmed by
Augustine and Chrysostom and Jerome, as occurring in their day, were not as worthy of credit as
any of the wonders recorded in the New Testament. Up to that time, English Protestants as
well as Romlanists had given equal credence to
both, and esteemed the former as essential to Christian faith as the latter.  Men like Waterland and
Dodwell and Archbishop Tillotson held that miracles continued in the Church until the close of the
third century, and were even occasionally witnessed in the fourth.   Whiston,  the consistent
Arian, maintained their continuance up to the establishment of the Athanasian doctrine in 381, and
"that as soon as the Church became Athlanasian,
antichristian, and popish, they ceased immediately;
and the Devil lent it his own cheating and fatal
powers instead."
To me, I confess, the position of the Church of
Rome in this matter seems less indefensible than
that of Middleton and modern Protestantism.
Either deny the possibility of miracles altogether
to finite powers, or admit their possibility in the
second century, and the third century, as well as.
the first, and in all centuries whenever a worthy
329 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
occasion demands such agency. I can see no reason for separating, as Middleton does, the age of
the Apostles from all succeeding. Had he drawn
the line between the miracles of Christ and those
ascribed to his followers, the principle of division
would have been more intelligible, and more admlissible on the ground of ecclesiastical orthodoxy.
But the question here is not of the possibility or
probability of miracles, as such, in one age rather
than another. It is a question simply of Biblical
interpretation, - whether the literal sense of the
record is in every case the true sense, whether
history or fiction is the key to certain Scriptures.
Those who insist on the verbal inspiration of the
New Testament will be apt to likewise insist on
the literal historic sense of every part of every narrative. And yet that mode of interpretation is by
no means a necessary consequence or logical outcome of that theory.  Origen believed in the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament, but Origen
did not accept in their literal sense the Hebrew
theophanies: he  allegorized whatever seemed to
him  to degrade the idea of God.  The Spirit can
utter itself in fiction as well as fact, and in communicating with Oriental minds was quite as likely to
do so.  And surely, for those who reject the notion
of verbal inspiration, the way is open, in perfect
330 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
consistency with Christian faith, for such interpretation as reason may approve or the credit of the
record be thought to require. The credit of the
record will sometimes require an allegorical interpretation instead of a literal one.
It is a childish limitation which in reading
stories can feel no interest ill any thing but fact;
and a childish misconception which supposes that
where the form is narrative, historic fact must
needs be the substance. Recount to a little child
a fable of Pilpay or 2Esop, and his questions betray
his inability to apprehend it otherwise than as
literal fact. He has no doubt of the truth of the
story.  "What did the lion say then?" he asks;
and "what did the fox do next?" The maturer
mind has also no doubt of the truth of the story,
but sees that its truth is the moral it embodies.
Of many of the Gospel stories the moral contained
in them is the real truth. In the height of our late
civil war there appeared in a popular journal a
story entitled "A Man without a Country," related
with such artistic verisimilitude, such minuteness
of detail, such grave official references, that many
who read it not once suspected the clever inventionI, and felt themselves somewhat aggrieved when
apprised that fiction, not fact, had conveyed the
moral intended by the genial author. But those
who saw from the first through the veil of fiction
331 
THIE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
the needful truth and the patriotic intent, were not
less edified than if they had believed the characters
real, and every incident vouched by contemporary record.  The story of William Tell was once
universally received as authentic history: it was
written in the hearts of the people of Uri; and so
religiously were all its incidents cherished, that
when a book appeared discrediting the sacred traditionll it was publicly burned by the hangman at A1torf. For five centuries the chapel on the shore of
the Lake of the Four Cantons has commemorated
a hero whose very existence is now questioned, of
whom contemporary annals know nothing, of whose
tyrant Gessler the well-kept records of the Canton
exhibit no trace, whose apple placed as a mark for
the father's arrow on the head of his child is proved
to have done a foregone service in an elder Danish
tale. The story resolves itself into an idea. That
idea is all that concerns us; and that idea survives,
inexpugnable to criticism, a truth for evermore.
In the world of ideas there is still a William Tell
who defied the tyrant at Altorf, and slew him at
Kuiisnacht, and whose image will live while the
mountains stand that gave it birth.
And so all that is memorable out of the past, all
that tradition has preserved, the veritable facts of
history as well as the myths of legendary lore, pass
finally into ideas. Only as ideas they survive, only
332 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
as ideas have they any abiding value. The anecdote recorded of Aristides   his writing his own
name at the request of an ignorant citizen on the
shell that should condemn him -embodies a noble
idea which has floated down to us from the headwaters of Grecian history. Do we care to know
the evidence on which it rests? If by critical investigation the fact were made doubtful, would
that doubt at all impair the truth of the idea?
The story of Damon and Pythias, reported by
Valerius Maximus, for aught that we know, may
be a myth: suppose it could be proved to be so,
the truth that is in it would be none the less
precious. We do not receive it on the faith of
the historian, but on the faith of its own intrinsic
beauty. There is scarcely a fact in the annals of
mankind so vouched and ascertained as to be
beyond the reach of historic doubt, if any delver
in ancient documents, or curious sceptic, shall see
fit to call it in question. But, however the fact
may be questioned, the idea remains.  We  have
lived to see apologies for Judas Iscariot, and the
literary rehabilitation of Henry VIII. But Judas
is none the less, in popular tradition, the typical
traitor, the impersonation of devilish malice; and
Henry VIII. is no less the remorseless tyrant
whose will was his God. When Napoleon I. pronounced all history a fable agreed on, he reasoned
333 
TIlE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
better perhaps than he knew.  The agreement is
the thing essential; but that agreement is never
complete, is never final.  Every original writer of
history finds something to qualify, and often something to reverse, in the judgment of his predecessors.  How can it be otherwise, when even eyewitnesses disagree in their observation and report
of the same transaction; when even in a matter so
recent as the siege of Paris, or the conflagration of
Chicago, the verification of facts is embarrassed by
contradictory accounts?   The best that history
yields to philosophic thought is not facts, but
ideas. These are all that remain at last when
the tale is told, - all, at least, that the mind can
appropriate, all that profits in historical studies,
the intellectual harvest of the past. A fact means
nothing until thought has transmuted it into itself:
its value is simply the idea it subtends. Homer's
heroes are as true in this sense as those of Plutarch. Ajax and Hector are- as real to me as
Cimon or Lysander; Don  Quixote's battle with
the windmills which Cervantes imagined is as real
as the battle of Lepanto in which Cervantes foug,ht;
and Shakspeare's Hamlet is incomparably  more
real than the Prince of Denmark whom Saxo
Grammaticus chronicles.
I do not underrate the importance of facts on
their own historic plane. The historian, as an
334 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
nalist, is bound by the rules of his craft with conscientious investigation to ascertain, substantiate,
and establish, if he can, the precise facts of the
period he explores. I only contend that historic
truth is not the only truth; that a fact,- if I may
use that term in this connection for want of a
better, - that a fact which is not historically true
may yet be true on a higher plane than that of
history; true to reason, to moral and religious sentiment and human need. The story of Christ's
temptation is none the less true, but a great deal
more so, when the narrative which embodies the
interior psychological fact is conceived as myth,
than when it is interpreted as veritable history.
The truth thlat concerns us is that the Son of Man
"was tempted in all points as we are;" not that he
was taken by the Devil and set on a pinnacle of the
Temple, and thence spirited away "into an exceeding high mountain."
We have now attained a point of view from
which to estimate on the one hand the real import
of what I have ventured to call the myths of the
New Testament, and on the other hand to overrule
the petulant radicalism which, not distinguishing
truth of idea from truth of fact, contemns these
legends, and perhaps contemns the Gospel, on their
account. I have wished to show how unessential
830, 
THE MYTIIICAL ELEMENT
it is to the right enjoyment or profitable use of
those portions of the record that we receive them
as fact; to show that, if we seize and appropriate
the idea, those narratives are quite as edifying from
a mythical as from an historical point of view; in
other words, that the Holy Spirit may and does
instruct by fiction as well as fact. If I am asked
to draw the line which separates fact from fiction,
or to fix the criterion by which to discriminate the
one from the other, I answer that I do not pretend
to decide this point for myself, much less should I
presume to attempt to settle it for others. I am
not disposed to dogmatize on the subject. It is a
matter in which each must judge for himself. I
will only say that for myself I do not place the
line of demarcation between miracle and the unmiraculous, for the reason that it seems to me, as I
said before, unphilosophical to make our everyday experience of the limits of human power and
the capabilities of Nature an absolute standard by
which to measure the possible scope of the one or
the other.
I content myself with a single illustration of
what I regard as a mythical formation. My example is the story known as "The Annunciation."
Luke alone, of all the evangelists, records the tale.
The angel Gabriel is sent to a virgin named Mary,
and surprises her with the tidings, "Thou shalt
336 
IN THE NEW TESTAlMENT.
conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son,
and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great,
and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And
the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David. And he shall reign over the house
of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall
be no end." This beautiful legend, the most beautiful, I think, of all the legends connected with the
birth of Christ, the favorite theme of Christian art,
so lovingly handled by Fra Angelico, by Correggio,
Raphael, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, and a host of
others, is best understood as a Jewish-Christian
conception, taking an historic form and "shaped
into a fact."  The legend represents the humility
and faith of a pious maiden communing with the
heavenly Presence, drawing to herself divine revelations of grace and promise, and thus sanctioning
the hope so dear to every Jewish maiden,- that
of becoming the mother of the Messiah. The sudden inspiration of that hope is the angel of the
Annunciation.
A word more. How far is our idea of Christ
affected by a mode of interpretation which supposes
a mingling of mythical with historic elements in
the Gospel record? That idea is based on the
representations of the evangelists. Will not our
confidence in those representations be impaired by
this view of their contents? I see no cause to ap
22
337 
THE MYTHIICAL ELEMENT
prehend a result so distressing to Christian faith.
The mythical interpretation of certain portions of
the Gospel has no appreciable bearing on the
character of Christ. The impartial reader of the
record must see that the evangelists did not invent
that character; they did not make the Jesus of
their story; on the contrary, it was he that made
them. It is a true saying that only a Christ could
invent a Christ. The Christ of history is a true
reflection of the image which Jesus of Nazareth
imprinted on the mind of his contemporaries. In
that image the spiritual greatness, the moral perfection, are not more conspicuous than the welldefined individuality which permeates the story,
and which no genius could invent.
If the Christ of the Church, of Christian faith,
is, as some will have it, an ideal being, it was
Jesus of Nazareth who made the ideal. The ideal
ill him is simply the result of that disengagement
from the earthly vestiture which death and distance work in all who live in history. By the
very necessity of its function, history idealizes.
The historic figure and the individual represented
by it, though inseparably one in substance, are not
so identical in outline that the one exactly covers
the other, no more and no less. The individual is
the bodily presence as it dwells in space; the historic figure is the image of himself which the in
838 
IN THE NEW TESTAMIENT.
dividual stamps on his time, and, so far as his
record reaches, on all succeeding time,- his import to human kind. That image is a veritable
portrait, but not in the sense of a fac-simile. A
material portrait, a portrait painted with hands, if
the painter understands his art, is not a fac-simile:
it presents the chronic idea or characteristic mode,
not the temporary accidents, "the fallings off, the
vanishings," of the person portrayed. In the herogalleries of tradition, as in the visions of the Apocalyapse, they are seen with white robes, and palms
in their hands, and ulnwrinkled brows of grace, who
in life were begrimed with the dust and furrowed
with the cares of their time. St. Paul is there
without his thorn in the flesh, Luther without his
impatience, Washington without his fiery choler,
Lincoln without his coarseness, Dante and Milton
without their scorn. History strips off the indig nities of earth when she dresses her heroes for im mortality.  And the transfigurations she gives Lus
are nearer the truth than the limitations of ordi nary life.  The man is more truly himself in the
epic strain of public action, with spirit braced and
harness on, than in the subsidence and undress ot
the closet. It is not the gossiping anecdotes, the
spoils of the ungirt private life, so dear to anti  quaries and literary scavengers, but the things
which history hastens to record, that show the
339 
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
man.   We  must take the life at full-tide; we
must view it in its freest determination, in its
supreme moment, to know the deepest that is in
him.  And the deepest that is in him is the true
man. That is his idea, his mission to the world,
his historic significance. It is this that concerns us
in all the great actors of history, - the historic
person, not the individual. And the more the historic person absorbs the individual, the higher we
rise in the scale of being until we reach the idea of
God, from which all individuality is excluded, and
only the Person remains, filling space and time
with the ceaseless procession of his being.
We misread the Gospel and reverse the true and
divine order, if we suppose the ideal Christ to be anl
essence distilled from the historical.  On the contrary, the ideal Christ is the root and ground of
the historical; and without the antecedent idea
inspiring, commanding, the history would never
have been.
It has not been my intention in any thing I have
said to make light of the record. The record to
me is a literary relic of inestimable value, aboriginal memorial of the dearest and divinest appearance in human form that ever beamed on earthly
scenes. I sympathize with every attempt to clear
up and verify its minutest details, with the labors
of all critics and archaeologists devoted to this end.
340 
IN THIE NEW TESTAMENT.
I rejoice in all topographical adjustments and illustrations; in all that local researches, following in
the steps of "those blessed feet," have gleaned
from the soil of Palestine. But all this is impoltart only as it draws its inspiration from  and
leads my aspiration to the ideal Christ, " the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Dissociated from
this idea, the acres of Palestine are as barren as
any which the ebbing of a, nation's life has left
desolate.
341 
XIII.
INCARNATION AND TRANSUBSTAN                TIATION.
AD  we no other'record than that which the
first three Gospels present of the sayings
and doings of Jesus, the Christian religion would
never have taken the form which it did in the
teaching and creed of the Church. Whoever compares the fourth Gospel with the other three perceives a wide difference, not to say conflict, between
the Jesus depicted by Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
and the Christ portrayed by John.  The difference
appears in the acts recorded, and is still more conspicuoIs in the sayings ascribed to him. In their
view of the Messiah, the first three evangelists -
the so-called "synoptics"- are substantially one.
Their record may be termed the Jews' Gospel; that
of John the Greek.
The vexed question of authorship I shall not
discuss. Whether written by John, the son of
Zebedee, or by whomsoever written, it is very
un-Jewish, and even anti-Jewish, in its spirit and
aim. 
INCAR.NA TION, ETC.
Tile Jews' Gospel sees in Jesus simply the Jewish Messiah, the destined king of the Jewish people,
having an hereditary claim to the national throne,
-a claim which it seeks to establish by genealogies tracing his descent from Davi(l and Abraham.
The Greek Gospel, on the contrary, cares nothing
for the royal lineage and nothing for the Jewish
throne. It has nothing to say of the human ancestry of Jesus, but leaps at once to his spiritual
pedigree, in virtue of which he overtops Moses and
out-dates Abraham.  Its Christ is the Word made
flesh. The Jews' Gospel presents its subject on
the natural, national, human side; the Greek Gospel propounds a Christ who is superhuman and
divine.
Here is a difference, which is very profound,
between the first three Gospels and that of John;
and one which involves a fundamental difference
of race,- a difference which reaches down to the
very roots of the human world. It takes us back
to Shem and Japhet, the ancestors respectively,
according to Biblical tradition, of two races whose
mental characteristics and religious proclivities are
widely distinct.  "Semitic" and "Japhetic" represent two types of mind which differ generally in
their intellectual manifestations, and more especially in their theology. They have given birth
respectively to two distinct classes or lines of re
343 
INCARNA TION
ligious, whose beginnings are as old as history, and
some of whose progeny remain to this day.
Judaism and Mohammedanism are the offspring
of Shem; the Greek mythology, long since extinct,
and Brahmanism and Buddhism, which still survive, are the progeny of Japhet.
Now, the chief characteristic of Semitic theology,
as it seems to me, is not monotheism, as Renan and
others have stated; for some of the Semitic nations
- the Pheenicians, for example- have been polytheists; not the belief in one God, but the wide separation between God and man, the absence of any
doctrine of incarnation. The Jewish mind, for examiple, knew no mediation between God and man
but that of the prophet's word or the priest's atoning sacrifice. In the Jewish religion - and the
same is true of the Mohammedan, its offspringthere is a gulf between God and man, not a consequence of sin, but inherent in the nature of
Godhead, and which no atonement can do away.
Jehovah is a being apart, uncommunicating, incommunicable. He sends his messengers abroad to
make known and execute his will, but he himself
inhabits the high and holy place, and never quits
his local throne. His word goes forth, it comes to
this or that individual; but never becomes man,
never incarnates itself in a human person. The
344 
AND TRANSUBSTAN7[IATION.
greatest of prophets is still but a prophet, nothing
more. The Jewish Church never dreamed of deifying Moses, Islam never dreamed of deifying Mohammed,  as the  Christian  Church  has  deified
Christ. The fundamental principles of both religions forbid such deification. But when we turn
to the religions of that other great division of the
human race, the Japhetic, we encounter an entirely
different conception of Godhead. Here deification
and incarnation are familiar and ruling ideas. In
the elder of the Hindoo religions we encounter a
series of successive incarnations, of which the tenth
and last is yet to come. In the younger faith of
Buddhism we encounter a succession of deifications,- the Buddhist knowing no God but one who
was first man, and, having become God, has again
and again descended into humianity for the salvation of men. In the religion of the Greeks, the
most cultivated nation of antiquity, we find gods
and men conversing on easy and familiar terms,Deity taking often a human form, mortals often
raised to the rank of gods.
This fundamental difference of religious tendency
in the two races, — the tendency, on the one hand,
to separate God from man by an infinite distance
not only of degree but of kind, and the tendency,
on the other, to view them as distinguished only by
degree, and as being in possible, close communion
345 
INCARNATION
with each other,- this fundamental difference is
reflected in the New Testament.  The Jews' Gospel, comprising Matthew,,Mark, and Luke, represents the former tendency;  the fourth Gospel,
bearing the name of John, represents the latter.
And thus the difference, which even the superficial
reader must notice between these two portions of
the New Testament, has its origin in the deepest
roots of human history.  The fact to me is one of
intense significance, proof, and illustration of the
universality of adaptation, the reconciling spirit,
the world-embracing scope, of the gospel of Christ.
When Paul said that in Christ there is neither Jew
nor Greek, he spoke with reference to the disregard
of nationality and the equal acceptance with God,
in the Christian view, of all the kindreds and tribes
of men. But the saying is true in another and
wider sense. In Christ -that is, in Christianitythere is neither Jew nor Greek, because both are
merged in a third and new creation.1 In other
words, Christianity is a reconciliation and compromise between the Jewish and the Greek religion, between polytheism and monotheism, correcting the
looseness of the one and moderating the stiffness
of the other.
In accordance with this view, we have in the
first three Gospels the Jewish conception of Christ
1 " If any man be in Chlrist, he is a new creature."
346 
AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
as the national Messiah; no suggestion, no hinit, of
any doctrine of incarnation, no hint of what may
be called the divine humanity, the union of God
and man in Christ.  The fourth Gospel, which, if
written by a Jew, was written under Greek influences and for Greeks, abounds in hints to that
effect.  Of these, the most noticeable are the statement at the start that the Word which was in the
beginning, and which was God, was made flesh in
Jesus Christ; and the statement in the sixth chapter that the flesh of Christ is the life of the world,
which, unless his disciples eat, they have no life in
them. From these two statements the Christian
Church in past ages developed two doctrines which
are closely related the one with the other, and
which constitute the two focal points in the Roman
Catholic s3,steml of faith: first, the identity in substane  of Christ with God, -in other words, the
incarnation of God in Christ; second, the doctrine
of the "real presence" of Christ in the bread of the
Lord's Supper when consecrated by the priest, commonly known as the doctrine of transubstantiation.
These are not doctrines of the New Testament,
but the passages I have cited from the Gospel of
John furnished the suggestions on which they are
founded. It took three centuries to bring out the
one, and seven centuries more to fix and complete
the other.  Most Protestant Christians, with some
347 
INCA RNA TION
inconsistency, reject the latter while retaining the
former; reject transubstantiation while retaining
the doctrine of incarnation, that is, of the deity of
Christ. With some inconsistency, I say, because
they are closely related. The theological motive,
the underlying principle, in both is the same. In
both, the interior sense is the union of the human
and divine, the principle that God is in real contact with human nature, and that only through that
contact is man redeemed from the power of sin and
death and made partaker of eternal life. Let us
look at both doctrines in the light of this idea.
I. Incarnation, - God taking a human form in
Christ. There is no trace of this doctrine in the
first century. The Christians of the first century
were strict iionotheists, -Unitarians.  They speculated very little, if at all, about the person of
Christ. The facts of his history were too near to
allow of such speculation.  No mystic theory that
might arise could compete with the recent impression which those facts had left in the mind.  Here
was the story of a man who had lived and died like
other men, distinguished only by his moral elevation, his wonder-working power, and his martyrdeath.   Jewish converts still looked upon  him,
through the medium of their Messianic idea, as the
national Messiah who would re-appear as earthly
348 
AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
potentate and establish his throne in Jerusalem.
Gentile Christians were content to see in him a
teacher of saving truths, a deliverer from the errors
of polytheism, from the bondage of superstition and
sin, -the authoritative witness of the doctrine of
one God and of the resurrection.
But when the historical Christ had receded into
the distance of a by-gone age; when his image, as
an actual person, had grown din, and the tendencies of the Gentile mind, especially the tendency to
deify illustrious and extraordinary men, had begun
to react on the simplicity of the gospel,- Christian
faith, no longer satisfied with] bare historic fact,
idealized the person of Christ, exalted him above
earthly limitations into something superhuman and
divine; and here and there went so far as to make
him pure spirit, assuming the likeness of man but
divested of all natural belongings, without flesh
and blood, a divine apparition.  Then came the
doctrine of the Word, the personified Wisdom, in
Jewish phrase "the first begotten Son of God,"
whom a portion of the Church, in accordance with
the Gospel of John, supposed to have been united
to the man Jesus, and to have constituted the true
Christ. To these two influences, the deifying tendency and the doctrine of the Word,'must be
added a third. That third and most influential
factor in the doctrine of the incarnation, as finally
349 
INCARNA TION
shaped by the Church, was the view entertained of
maan's redemption.  The mission of the gospel was
understood to be the redemption of human nature,
and the reconciliation or reunion of man with God,
in whose image he was formed. This redemption,
it was maintained, could be accomplished only by
actual communication and contact of God with
man.  This contact, it was therefore urged, must
be supposed to have taken place in the person of
Christ, -the divine and the human uniting in him.
Accordingly, the Word incarnated in Jesus must
be regarded as partaking of the nature or substance
of Deity; not, as the Arians taught, a created
being, however remote and antecedent to all other
finite existence that creation might be conceived,
but uncreated, without beginning of existence,
born of God from eternity, and therefore one with
God in substance, - " consubstantial." The Son
consubstantial with the Father, - this was the doctrine of Athanasius, and the Council of Nicea,
where this point was decided.
The superficial mind is apt to regard these questions, which then agitated the Chlurch and the
world, as empty ab)stractions, senseless quibbles.
But the union of God with man is no quibble; it is
a truth of profound significa-,ce; and the Council
of Nicea which declared it is one of the most ih -
350 
AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
portant assemblies that was ever convened on this
earth: it dates a new era in the history of human
thought.  God in actual contact with man- God
in man and man in God -is the underlying idea
of the Athanasian dogma which asserts that the
Son is consubstantial with the Father.  Probably,
Athanasius did not perceive the real drift and
scope of his doctrine.  It was only of the person
of Christ that he affirmed substantial community
with God. Christ united in his person two natures,
the human and the divine; and, by this union of
God with man in the person of Christ, human
nature is redeemed and restored to health and
God. This was the substance of his theology.
lie did not show, nor does it appear, how humanity in general is benefited by this exceptional participation of the divine nature.  Of what avail to
mankind at large that a single individual, of the
countless millions who in all the ages of human
history have walked the earth, was substantially
united to God, if all the rest are substantially separatedcl from him? Athanasius maintained, against
some of his contemporaries, the real humanity of
Christ. But if Christ was really man, he differed
from other men only in degree. What he by nature
possessed without measure, all men in a measure
must also possess.  This, Athanasius, from want
of thoroughness, failed to perceive; or, from want
351 - 
INCARNATION
of consistency, failed to admit. This was his doctrinal limitation and defect.   The  fault of the
Trinitarian doctrine, so far as this point is concerned, is not what it teaches, but what it omits to
teach. It is not the assertion of divinity in Christ,
but the limitation of divine humanity to him, the
implied exclusion of the rest of mankind from any
part or lot in this matter. In the view of the Trinitarian doctrine, mankind at large are separated
from Christ, not only in degree, but in kind; they
have not that oneness with him which he himself
accorded to them in his prayer, "That they all
may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me and I in
Thee, that they may be one in us." They have
not that part in God which one of the New Testament writers affirms of Christians  at least,"Called to be partakers of the divine nature."
II. To remedy this defect, to assure to believers
that participation of the Godhead, without which,
it was maintained, there is no salvation, was the
meaning and purpose of the doctrine of transubstantiation. According to this doctrine, the bread
of the Christian ordinance of the Supper, when
consecrated by the priest, is converted into the
body of Christ, whereby they who partake of it
are substantially, and, as it were, bodily, united to
Christ and to God. Transubstantiation, as I said,
352 
AND TRANSUBS TANTIA TION.
is closely connected with, and a logical supplement
to, incarnation.
Both of these doctrines, in the form in which
they are held and  m,aintained by the larger portioos   of th     e       C hurch, are repudiated by rationalizing
Christians, a      s      opposed to reason and common sense.
But in both of them there is an element of truth
which, stripped of its doctrinal embodiment, is
worth considering, and which most of us, I think,
will heartily accept. To say that God incarnated
hi mself  in a single     individual of all the multitude
o     f the human  fam ily; that once, and once only, in
all the ages of time he manifested himself in a
human person, - is a proposition which cannot
satisfy, if it does not shock, the unprejudiced
mind. But expand the proposition; say that God
is manifest (and that is the only logical sense in
whic                h we can spea k of incarnation),- that God is
manifest in every inspired teacher and prophet of
truth and righteousness, in every holy, self-sacrificing life, in every martyr who, living or dying,
devotes himself to any great and worthy cause,manifest i        n       al l in  w hom love of truth or love of
God and man is the ruling motive and principle of
action; say, with Paul, that all "who are led by
the Spirit of God are sons of God" in precisely the
sense,  if not in the    degree, in which Jesus was the
S on           of God;   that the real distinction and peculiar
23
353
11 I 
INCARNATION
ity of Christ was not an exceptional, but a sublimely typical, nature and life; not that he was the
only God-man, but the type of the God-man, in all
generations, -say thlis, and you assert what no unprejudiced thinker and no philosophic student of
religion will deny.  And this I believe to be the
real interior truth of the Athanasian doctrine, albeit Athanasius himself may not have seized it in
its fulness, as certainly he did not unfold it in his
teaching.
So, likewise, the doctrine of transubstantiation,
in its gross and literal sense the most monstrous
that was ever propounded by any religion, has yet
its true side.  Strip it of the technicalities and sensuous imagery with which it has been associated by
the Church of Rome, and it means that the consecrating action of faith transmutes the material into
the spiritual; discerns a spiritual presence and finds
spiritual nourishment in material things.  It means
the participation and assimilation of the spirit of
Christ, symbolized by the eating of the bread which
he called his body. Christ told his people, "Except
ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Manl ye have no
life abiding in you." It was a daring figure which
the Church understood in a coarse and literal way,
and of which the doctrine in question was the practical interpretation.  Let us understand by it the
application of Christian truth to the present earthly
354
r "I 
AND TRANS UBSTANTIATION.
life. Christianity requires the flesh of the Son of
Man; that is, a visible world, in which the spirit of
the Son of Man, a divine spirit, shall embody itself.
And this idea, amid all the superstitions and monstrous perversions which gathered around it, is
dimly shadowed forth in the Roman Church dogma
of transubstantiation.  Breads which forms so important a part of this "flesh" or visible world, may
be regarded as symbolizing the whole. The consecrated wafer, which Romish superstition conceives to be bread converted into Deity by the
word of a priest, may be taken to represent the
looked-for universal transformation of this human
world by the communication of a higher and
divine life.
Such meaning I discern in the doctrines discussed, and accept them in this sense. I believe
in the ever-proceeding incarnation of the spirit of
God in human life. I believe in the ever-proceeding transubstantiation of the world into the similitude of the divine idea. The Trinitarian doctrine
was a crude attempt to formulate these truths,
but instead of their exponent became their grave.
Trinitarian theology has lost its hold of advancing
Christian thought; but the thing it embodied,
divine humanity, across all the mists of theology
is struggling into light, is struggling into practi
355 
INCARNA TION, ETC.
cal self-demonstration across all the atrocities and
woes of time. Side by side with the horrors of
carnage and the desolations of war, it bids the
eternal charities bloom.  It accompanies the march
of devastating hosts with the sacred band of selfelected comforters, whose service no softness shuns
and no danger dismays. It summons the civilized
world to minister to the wants and woes of countries laid waste by famine or fire.  It challenges
science to show how ancient wrongs may be abated,
and the life of man in society be made more beautiful and safe.
Thus, practical Christianity fulfils the truth that
was hidden in the obsolete dogmas of the Church;
and thus, where "the  letter killeth, the spirit
maketh alive."
356 
XIV.
THE HUMAN SOUL.
ITS ORIGIN  AND  DESTINATION.
UR being is deeper than we know; it under      grounds all conscious experience. This is
true of all being, not excepting perhaps the Divine.
Certainly, no finite consciousness reaches to the
root from which it sprang. Scarcely in God can
consciousness be coeval and coordinate with life.
Divine consciousness may know, but does it bear,
its own root? 1 All conscious being springs from a
root unknown. Of all life the origin is lost to
itself in blank unconsciousness.  We reach back
with our recollection and find no beginning of existence.  Who of us knows any thing except by
1 Schelling, the most profound of the Transcendentalists, in
whose writings Mr. Stirling, would he know the true "Secret of
Hegel," should look for the root of his subject, says: "God himself, in order to be, requires a ground [of existence]; only, that
this ground is not outside of him, but in him. He has in himself a
nature, which, although belonging to him is yet distinct from him."
(Schelling's Werke, Erste Abth, 7ter Bd. p. 375.)  Did Schelling
borrow from Jacob Boehme, whose "First Principle" is unintelligent, although the Father of Intelligence, not God but the Source
of God? 
THE SOUL.
report of the first two years of earthly life?  Who
remembers the time when he first said "I," or
thought "I"? We began to exist for others before
we began to exist for ourselves. Our experience
is not co-extensive with our being, our memory
does not comprehend it. We bear not the root,
but the root us.
What is that root? We call it soul. Our soul,
we call it: properly speaking it is not ours, but we
are its. It is not a part of us, but we are a part of
it. It is not one article in an inventory of articles
which together make up our individuality, but the
root of that individuality. It is larger than we are
and older than we are, -that is, than our conscious
self. The conscious self does not begin until some
time after the birth of the individual. It is not
aboriginal, but a product, -as it were, the blossoming of an individuality. We may suppose countless
souls which never bear this product, which never
blossom into self. And the soul which does so
blossom exists before that blossom unfolds.
How long before, it is impossible to say; whether
the birth, for example, of a human individual is the
soul's beginning to be; whether a new soul is furnished to each new body, or the body given to a
pre-existing soul. It is a question on which theology throws no light, and which psychology buL
faintly illustrates. But so far as that faint illustra
358 
THE SOUL.
tion reaches, it favors the supposition of pre-existence. That supposition seems best to match the
supposed continued existence of the soul hereafter.
Whatever had a beginning in time, it should seem,
must end in time. The eternal destination which
faith ascribes to the soul presupposes an eternal
origin. On the other hand, if the pre-existence of
the soul were assured it would carry the assurance
of immortality.
An obvious objection, and one often urged against
this hypothesis, is the absence of any recollection of
a previous life. If the soul existed before its union
with this present organization, why does it never
recall any circumstance, scene, or experience of its
former state? There have been those who professed to remember a past existence; but without
regarding those pretended reminiscences, or regarding them only as illusions, I answer that the
previous existence may not have been a conscious
existence. In that case there would have been no
recorded experience, and consequently nothing to
recall.  But suppose a conscious existence antece dent to the present, the soul could not preserve the
record of a former organization. The new organ ization with its new entries must necessarily efface
the record of the old. For memory depends on
continuity of association. When the thread of that
continuity is broken, the knowledge of the past is
359 
THE SOUL.
gone. If, in a state of unconsciousness, one were
taken entirely out of his present surroundings; if,
falling asleep in one set of circumstances, like
Christopher Sly in the play, he were to wake in
another, were to wake to entirely new conditions;
especially, if during that sleep his body were to
undergo a change,- he would lose on waking all
knowledge of his former life for want of a connecting  link between it and the new.   And this,
according to the supposition, is precisely what has
happened to the soul at birth.  The birth into the
present was the death of the old, - "a sleep and a
forgetting."  The soul went to sleep in one body,
it woke in a new. The sleep is a gulf of oblivion
between the two.
And a happy thing, if the soul pre-existed, it is
for us that we remember nothing of its former life.
The memory of a past existence would be a drag on
the present, engrossing our attention much to the
prejudice of this life's interests and claims.  The
backward-lookinlg soul would dwell in the past instead of the present, and miss the best uses of life.
But though on the supposition of a former existence the soul would not be  liklely to preserve
the record of that existence, it would nevertheless retain the effect.  It would not, on assuming
its present conditions, be as thoulgh it had never
before been. Its past experiences would essen
860 
THIE SOUL.
tially modify it; it would take a character from
its former state. If a moral and intelligent being,
it would bring into the world of its present destination certain tendencies and dispositions, the
growth of a previous life. And thus the moral
law and the moral nature of the soul would assert
themselves with retributions transcending the limits
of a single existence, and reaching on from life to
life of the pilgrim soul.
It is commonoly conceded that there are native
differences of character in men, - different propensities, tempers, not wholly explained by difference of circumstance or education.   They show
themselves where circumstance and education have
been the same; they seem to be innate. These
are sometimes ascribed to organization. But organization is not final. That, again, requires to
be explained. According to my thinking, it is
the soul that makes organization, not organization the soul. The supposition of a previous existence would best explain these differences  as
something carried over from life to life,- the harvest of seed that was sown in other states, and
whose fruit remains, although the sowing is remembered no more.
This was the theory of the most learned and
acute of the Christian Fathers,1 and, though never
I Origen.
361
I 
THE SOUL.
adopted or sanctioned by the Church, has been
occasionally revived in later time.  Of  all the
theories respecting the origin of the soul it seems
to me the most plausible, and therefore the one
most likely to throw light on the question of a
life to come.  It is easy to speculate about the
hereafter, but most of the speculations on this
topic have no fixed data, no authorized assumption on which to rest.  They lack the first and
most essential condition of a rational theory of
future life,-to wit, a distinct conception of the
nature of the soul, what it is that survives the
event of death, what it is of which we predicate
immortality. This should be the starting point in
all our reasonings in this direction. Painting, an
imaginary heaven is an innocent enough entertainment of the fancy, but, as to any corresponding reality or probability, it is worth just as much
as any other day-dream or castle in the air. A
pleasant picture, nothing more.
What is it that survives the decease of this
mortal? It is that from which this mortal life
sprang,- its root, the soul. We are apt to fancy
that we bear the root, not the root us. What we
call "I" is not the origin, but a product of the
soul,- a phase or mode of its present life. The
soul was prior to the conscious self; it is the root
or seed from which the conscious self has grown.
362
I 
THE SOUL.
The future life, like the present, must spring from
that root; and in endeavoring to construct a theory
of that life the rational method is to follow the
analogy of this. According to that analogy, the
future life, like the present, will begin with infancy. The soul will wake from the sleep of death
an infant child. A period of infantile unconsciousness will precede the development of conscious life.
Gradually the new-born self will unfold and find
and fill its appointed sphere.
Opposed to this view is the current opinion which
supposes that souls are-translated at once by death
from a state of earthly imperfection to that region
of spiritual life which is commonly understood by the
term "heaven." A preposterous idea of human destiny! The purgatory of the Church of Rome is a less
irrational conception of the future of the soul. The
purgatory of the Church of Rome, indefensible as
it is in the gross material form in which it has been
held in time past, respects at least the moral conditions which, in every state, must shape the life of
rational souls. The fact is that in Protestant communions, since the passing away of the old beliefs,
the sentiments rather than the understanding have
had the fashioning of the popular theories of the
life to come. Very sentimental those theories are,
and very regardless of the facts and probabilities of
human nature. The fundamental error which per
863 
THE  SOUL.
vades them is the notion of a state of unchangeable
felicity, into whlich the soul is supposed to enter
with full consciousness immediately after the body's
death. The very word "heaven," in this view, is
misleading. I hold to the analogies of the present
life. I hold to what we know, or may rationally
surmise, of the nature of the soul. Above all, I
hold to the moral conditions which must govern
the future as they governed the past of moral
natures. Whatever of moral growth has been attained will tell on the future consciousness; and
whatever 6f moral evil has been contracted will
also tell.  If the soul in this mortal, by will and
endeavor, has laid hold of the divine, that divine
when new bodied will put forth new and finer
growths, and glorify itself with achievements which
here perhaps were meditated but could not be realized. And if, on the other hand, through weakness or blindness or adverse fate, that better life
has not been attained, its germ is still there, ineradicably there, and may under new conditions be
brought to bloom. So long as the soul is a conscious rational force in the universe of things, the
possibility will remain to it of the heavenly life.
Somewhere or other in the boundless all, at some
point or other of endless time, the good the soul
seeks it will surely find. So long as it faithfully
strives, its growth is sure, and if ever it can
364 
THIE SOUL.
cease to strive, if ever it can cease to see and seek
the good, then, as a conscious thing, it will cease
to be.
Of the "spiritual," disembodied state, which by
some is supposed to succeed this present, I can form
no conception.  A new and bodily organism I hold
to be an essential part of the soul's destination.
Whether the soul in that new organization will retain the memories which belong to this, is a question I am well content to leave as I find it, involved
in impenetrable night. I cannot feel it to be essential to the question of immortality. I cannot feel
that the fact of identity is involved in that of memory, that the soul which does not identify its being
with a foregone existence is no longer the same.
The soul is the same; but what it produces, the
conscious life that springs from that root, is not the
same.  The former life has left traces which remain, which essentially modify the soul.  Those
traces, those modifications, are important; but that
the acts and experiences which have wrought them
should be recalled, that the soul should be able to
recount to itself the story of its past existences,
appears to me a matter of little moment. If the
health and growth of the moral nature require
those memories, they will be vouchsafed; and that
is all we can venture to prophesy about it.
Another question immnediately connected with
365
p I: I 
THE  SOUL.
the memory of a former existence is one which
affection persistently asks of all the oracles,whether dear friends who were parted by death
shall meet again. To this the answer is still the
same: if the soul's well-being requires it, Heaven
will grant it. If when the soul wakes to new existence it shlall find in itself distinct impressions of
a previous life, and among those impressions the
image of any dear friend who has gone before, and
shall long, to recover the object of that affection, to
bind again what death had severed; and if the
friend so sought shall also experience a like reminiscence and reciprocal longings,- then I can suppose that the two, thus mutually drawn, shall find
one another and renew their bond. I can suppose
that love stronger than death may revoke the separation of death, and give like to like. Souls that
belong to each other by all their affinities and all
their yearnings, one would say, must sooner or
later unite. And yet it is equally supposable, and
I confess in my view more likely, that the coming
together of the two so inclined shall be without
recognition of identity and without recollection of
foregone union.  Who knows if the love which in
this world draws with mutual and irresistible attraction two kindred and predestined hearts, be
not an unconscious renewal of an old pre-natal
bond?
366 
THE SOUL.
But these are matters we may trustingly leave -
where indeed, whether trustingly or not, we must
leave them -with the infinite Love which embraces
all our loves, and the infinite Wisdomi which comp)rehends all our needs; assured that the Father of
the house whose mansions are many, and the Father
of spirits whose goal is one, will find the right place
and connections and nurture for every soul he has
caused to be; that in the eternities the thing desired
will arrive at last; that seeking and finding are
divinely evened. Let us rest in the thought that
life must be richer than all our experience, nay,
than our fondest dream.
THE END.
367
-' 
I
I