Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES If k :(■■' .^v^' W THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT BY HENRY VAN DYKE D.D. (PRINCETON, HARVARD, YALE), LL.D. (UNION) PASTOR OF THE BRICK CHURCH IN NEW YORK SIXTH EDITION REVISED WITH A NEW PREFACE " But if any speak not concerning Jesus Christ, I look upoji them as tombstones and sepulchres of the dead, on which are written only the names ofmett." St. Ignatius, Epist. ad Phil. iLontion HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 Paternoster Row 1901 Copyright, 1896, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped September, 1896. Reprinted December, 1896; January, October, 1897; September, 1898; May, October, 1899, August, 1900; October, 1901. Norlrootj ^rrsa J. 9. Gushing & Co. - Berwick s Smith Norwood Mail. U.S.A. PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION Two years have passed since this book was first printed. A new edition is now prepared for popular use by leaving out the appendix and making the volume smaller. In writing a new preface, I am glad of the opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the many friends who have given the book a welcome in different parts of the world, and have translated its message into other languages. I wish to acknowledge also the benefit received from those intelligent critics who have pointed out some of its faults and shortcomings, and to make some brief reply to those other critics who have misconceived its purpose and misrep- resented its meaning. But most of all I would like to say a word to make the spirit and aim of the book more clear, and so to bring it into touch with the personal life of those into whose hands it may fall. It was written in the form of a course of lectures on preaching, on the " Lyman Beecher xiv Preface Foundation," and delivered before the divinity students of Yale University. But the aim of these lectures was not to teach the art of making : ' sermons. It was to accentuate the truth that \ the question, What to preach, comes first, and the question, How to preach, comes afterwards. A man must have a distinct message, clear and luminous to his own soul, — a message which comes- to him with a joyful sense of newness and demands utterance, — he must feel the liv- ing fitness of this precise message to the needs of the world, before he can learn to deliver it with freedom and power. The study of theology as a science is a very important study. The training of men in the art of preaching is a very valuable discipline. But the vital experience of faitli is deeper and broader than the theories of theology. The art of preaching is worth little unless it serves to enrich and ennoble the larger art of living. Religion is the secret of this larger art of liv- ing. And the power of religion to inspire and guide men to purer, stronger, happier, more beautiful lives, does not depend upon the modes and forms in whicli it is preached, but simply upon the concrete gospel, the good news about God and the world, which it brings into their hearts. Preface xv The audience in the Yale chapel appealed to me less as students of theology, than as young men with a life to live and a work to do in the modern world, in the present age. Around them I felt the pressure of those great, myste- rious forces which are silently changing the current of human thought and the face of human society. Behind them I saw the wider circle of the young men and women of the new generation, the children of this age, born into the turmoil and confusion, the intellectual stress and storm, of a period of transition. It was to this wider circle that I really wanted to speak, through the divinity students who composed the immediate audience. I wanted to tell the \ men who were studying for the ministry that ; they must not let themselves be educated out ' of sympathy with the modern world; that they must imderstand the trials and difficulties of the present age in order to serve it effectively; that they must keep in touch with living men and women, outside of the circle of faith as well as within it, if they wished to help them. But more than this. I wanted to show that there is a message of religion especially fitted to meet the needs of our times. There is an aspect of Christianity which comes to the world to-day as glad tidings. There is a newness in xvi Preface the old gospel wliicli shines out like a sunrise upon the darkness and despondency that over- shadow so much of modern life. This aspect of Christianity centres in the person of Jesus Christ, as the human life of God. This new- ness of the gospel lies in believing in Him as a real man, in whose sonship the Fatherhood of God is revealed and made certain to all men. And the power of this message to enrich and ennoble life lies in the fact that those who receive it are set free from a threefold bond- age : first, from the heavy thought that they are creatures of necessity whose actions and destiny are determined by heredity and en- vironment ; second, from the liaunting fear that the world is governed by blind chance or brute force ; and third, from the curse of sin, which is selfishness. To see Christ as the true Son of God and the brother of all men, is to be sure that the soul is free, and' that God is good, and that the end of life is noble service. This is the message that I wanted to deliver in this book, as the true gospel for an age of doubt. The title has been misunderstood by some of the critics who have read it, apparently without going any further into the book. They have Preface xvii taken it as if it were an arraignment of the present age for irreligion and infidelity. They have resented it as if it were a confession of the decline of Christianity. They have found fault with the writer for a want of sympathy with the intellectual perplexities of the men and women of to-day, and a lack of insight into their spiritual life and moral purposes. It seems strange that any one should make such a criticism. The answer to it may be found in the first chapter, where I have tried to draw the distinction between doubt and infidelity. But in order that there may be no room for mistake, I will say what I mean again, and yet more clearly. In calling the present "an age of doubt," I do not mean that it is the only age in which doubt has been prevalent, nor that doubt is the only characteristic of the age. I mean simply that it is one of those periods of human history in which the sudden expansion of knowledge and the breaking-up of ancient moulds of thought have produced a profound and wide- spread feeling of uncertainty in regard to the subject of religioii. The remarkable achieve- ments of the critical method as applied to philosophy, history, and literature, have led men to ask whether it may not be applied in xviii Preface the same way to theology, and to take it for granted that the result must be destructive. The difficulty of adjusting the new discoveries of science to the established forms of theo- logical doctrine, has produced in some reluctant and irritable minds a disposition to resent all scientific research, and to denounce it as atheis- tic. But in a far greater number of minds it has begotten a misgiving, that if religion needs to defend itself by denying facts it must stand on a very insecure foundation. There is a large class of people, thoughtful, earnest, sin- cere, who live under the shadow of this misgiving. They want religion. Thej^ are attracted by its spiritual ideals, by its moral .inspiration. But they hesitate to accept it, at least in its Christian form, for fear that it may not be reasonable. The questioning temper holds possession of their minds. Their attitude toward religious things is interroga- tive. The secular spirit insensibly gains do- minion over their thoughts and feelings. They grow weary of asking questions which seem to find no answer. The influence of the great mass of popular literature in wliich religion is practically ignored, tends to foster the impression that it is a subject in regard to which certainty is neither necessary nor attain- Preface xix able. The existence of God, the reality of the soul, the prospect of immortality, — these appear like insoluble problems to many of the children of this age. They are troubled and depressed and impoverished by the want of faith, but they accept indecision as the only rational attitude, and try to do the best that they can without believing in | " The truths that never can be proved." This is what I mean by an age of doubt. Who that knows the young men and women of to-day, can deny that multitudes of the very best of them are feeling the influence of this kind of doubt, and suffering under it? Who can fail to see that in many ways this kind of doubt is an evidence of spiritual sincerit}^ of moral earnestness, of a desire to be true to the truth at all costs ? Who can forget that the sadness, the despondency, the pessimism of many of those who have surrendered faith at the call of what they conceived to be an intel- lectual duty, is in itself a proof that religion is necessary to complete human life and make the world endurable ? This is a doubting age. But it is not there-? fore an age to be despised or despaired of. It^ is a hopeful age, an earnest age, an age of gen- XX Preface erous feeling and noble action. What it needs is a clear answer to its doubt, and a powerful remedy for its sadness. This answer and this remedy are found in the person of Jesus Christ. ' His life is a fact which cannot be explained without God. His character is a standing proof of the reality of the spiritual world. ^ universe of matter and force could never have produced sucli a person. His teacliing is a direct witness to things which are unseen and eternal. Those who will receive it shall find His words a fountain of living waters springing up within them unto everlasting life. It is not to be supposed that any one can write or speak so as to make everybody perceive and accept this truth. All human preaching comes far short of the fulness of the gospel. Even while Christ was on earth there were many who doubted, and held fast to their doubts. But I am sure that the most helpful, the most con- vincing message for a doubtful age is that f which centres in His person, and seeks to make Him evident as the final and immutable revela- tion of God. That is what this book tries to do. It is in fact nothing more than an endeavour to prove these two things: Christ is a real person; Christ is God manifest in the flesh. Preface xxi But it differs from other arguments for the Divinity of Christ in at least one point. It accepts without reserve or qualification the per- fect humanity of Christ. The chapter in which this view of the person of Jesus is expressed has been criticised as dangerous. I cannot alter it, because it represents my most profound convictions. To me it seems not dangerous, but safe, — far more safe, indeed, than any other view, because it corresponds more closely with the facts. The life which Christ lived on earth was a veritable human life. The jjerson who lived it was the Son of God. But in order to live that human life He had to become man, not in a dramatic sense, but actually and en- tirely. There were not two wills and two minds working within the person of Jesus. The mind that was in Christ was a single mind, and His will was the expression of an undi- vided personality. He was subject to igno- rance, to limitation, to weakness, to temptation, even as we are. The only point of difference between Him and us is that we sin, but He sinned not. The Godhood that was in Him was such as manhood is capable of receiving. There is no evidence in His life or in His character of the omniscience and omnipresence and omnipotence that would have separated xxii Preface Him from us. His existence among men was simplj'^ the human life of God. It seems to me that this is the view of Christ which is given in the New Testament. I have tried to express it clearly, because it opens the way to the dissolving of many doubts, and makes His Divinity at once easier to be be- lieved, in and more precious in its significance. And if it does this for one reader who has been troubled by unbelief in the Divinity of Clirist, if it shows one seeker after God how to find Him in the man Christ Jesus, the chief purpose of the book will be accomplished. The same considerations and desires have controlled my treatment of the doctrines of fore- ordination, sovereignty, and election. There has been no intention to enter into theological controversy. Indeed, if I had intended to do this, the report of the critics upon tlie result Av^ould fill me with curious confusion. For they seem to be unable to decide upon which side of the controversy the book is to be reckoned. One of them calls it " a violent and unfair attack upon Calvinism " ; another says that "it presents the doctrines of the West- minster Confession so winningly that they are accepted almost before they are recognized." Preface xxiii The coraplimeut and the reproach are alike undeserved. In point of fact I was not think- ing at all of Calvinism or of the Westminster Confession, but only of the New Testament, and of how directly it meets the wants of our age with the liberating teachings of Christ. Nothing has been more effective in begetting and increasing doubts than the idea that Christian doctrine required us to believe that all events, good and evil, were foreordained by God, and that some men were eternally chosen to be saved, without regard to their faith or works, while all the rest were left to inevitable destruction. There is no trace of such an idea in the mind of Christ. On the contrary, He is the great liberator of men from the bondage of fatalism, and His invitation to all the weary and heavy-laden to come unto Him is a divine assurance that whosoever \vill may have ever- lasting life. After years of doubt and inward conflict I have arrived at great peace and comfort in the unreserved acceptance of these teachings of Jesus. I do not believe that all things that happen are determined beforehand. The soul is free. The evil that men do is all their own; God has not foreordained it. His only pre- destination is to good, and if men will accept xxiv Preface tlieir divine destiny, God will help them to fulfil it. Election is not the arbitrary choice of a few to receive blessings from which the many are excluded. It is the selection of certain races and men to receive great privileges to fit them for the service of all mankind in the divine kingdom. This is my faith in regard to these questions. I have made no secret of it. The recent agitation concerning ministerial honour in creed subscription seemed to require that it should be frankly confessed. If such a faith were inconsistent with any ecclesiastical obligations, I should be prompt to renounce them. But it is evident that there is no incon- sistency. A man may hold this faith and preach it, as a loyal Christian, in the fellow- ship of the Presbyterian Church. It remains only to add a word of explanation in regard to a criticism of this book which goes deeper than any of those of which I have spoken. A writer, for whose opinion I have great respect, has said that the volume does not give due place and proportion to the truth of the Atonement ; that it fails to set forth Christ as "tlie Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." If this were altogether true, I should be very Preface xxv sorry. I certainly believe tliat Christ is the only Saviour of sinners ; that He died to re- deem men from the curse of sin, and that the attraction of His cross is most potent upon the human heart. I have tried to say this very distinctly in the second chapter and at the close of the fourth chapter. But that the criticism is partly true I must admit. The Atonement does not appear in its due place and j)roportion in this book. It would not have been possible without pro- longing the volume to a much greater length and turning aside from the purpose for which it was written. It was not intended to be a complete statement of Christian truth. It was meant only to present that aspect of the gospel which seemed to be especially adapted to the wants of an age of doubt. I was thinking of the men and women whose minds are confused and troubled by modern speculations, who are oppressed by the intellectual difficulties of belief, who feel the benumbing influence of the secular spirit, and who stand sadly in doubt in regard to the reality of the whole spiritual life. I wanted to say something to help them, some- thing to make it easier for them to believe in Christ, and. through Christ, in God. I know ver}^ well that it is not enough for xxvi Preface men to be delivered from doubt. They need also to be saved from sin. But before this can have any meaning to them they must begin to believe in a Divine Being and in their own spiritual relationship to Him. What does sin I mean to a man who doubts whether there is a j personal God, and thinks that his soul may be S only a name for a certain secretion of the gray matter in his brain, and has no sure expectation I of a life beyond death? What he needs first of all is a gospel which will bring him news of a real spiritual world, a gospel whose simplicity and directness and personal force will make the first adventure of faith possible. It was of such men as this that I was thinking, when this book was written. I know very well that the book is incom- plete. It touches only one aspect of the great- est of all subjects. It needs a sequel, to make it harmonize more fully with the truth as it is in Jesus, and to bring it into touch with another side of the need of humanity. Very soon, I hope to be permitted to follow this volume on " The Gospel for an Age of Doubt," with another, on " The Gospel for a World of Sin." "Thule," York Harbour, July 10th, 1898. CONTENTS I. An Age of Doubt .... 1 II. The Gospel of a Person . 41 m. The Unveiling of the Father . 81 .T. The Human Life of God . 123 y. The Source of Authority . 167 VI. Liberty . 203 VII. Sovereignty . 245 vm. Service . 281 Index . 319 AN AGE OF DOUBT " Cleave evei- to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith I She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and ' No,' She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the Sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd ' i\Iirage ' I " — Tennyson, The Ancient Sage. AN AGE OF DOUBT There is one point in which all men resem- The person.' ble e'acirother : it is that they are all different. «^7«««*'«^ - ^ _ '' of the age. But their differences are not fixed and immuta- ble. They are variable and progressive. Types of character survive or perish, like the forms of animal life. Some predominate ; others are subordinated. Thus it comes to pass that underneath all the diversities of individual life, we may dis- cern, not with the clearness of a portrait, but with the vague outlines of a composite photo- graph, the features of a Zeitgeist, a spirit of the time. Generations differ almost as much as the men who compose them. There is a personal equation in every age. To know this is a necessity for the preacher. Even as the physician must apprehend the idio- syncrasy of his patient, and the teacher must recognize the quality of his pupil, so must the preacher be in touch with his age. 3 4 An Age of Doubt In endeavouring to arrive at this knowledge, contact with the workl is of the first conse- quence. For one who desires to make men and women what they ought to be, nothing can take the place of an acquaintance with men and women as they are. It seems to me that one of the best means of obtaining this ac- quaintance is through literature, — not that highly specialized and more or less technical variety of literature which is produced ex- pressly for certain classes of readers, but liter- ature in the broader sense, as it appeals to cultivated and intelligent people in general, including contemporary history and criticism, poetry and fiction, popular philosophy and di- luted science. This kind of literature is the efflorescence of the Zeitgeist. It is at once a product, and a cause, of the temperament of the age. In it we see not only what certain men have written by way of comment on the movement of the times, but also wliat a great many men are reading while they move. It expresses, and it creates, a spirit, an attitude of mind. " I do not imagine," says a keen observer, " that I am announcing an altogether novel truth in affirming that literature is one of the elements of the ethical life, — the most im- portant perhaps ; for in the decline, more and An Age of Doubt o more evident, of traditional and local influences, the book is taking its place as the great ini- tiator." i For this reason I believe that a course in The valve modern novels and poetry might well be made ^g£^"'''" a part of every scheme of preparation for the ministry. The preacher who does not know Avhat his people are reading does not know his people. He will miss the significance of the current talk of societ}*, and even of the daily comments of the newspapers, which are in fact only a cheap substitute for conversation, unless he has the key to it in the tone of popular literature. It is from this source that I have drawn many of the illustrations for this lecture. If they appear unfamiliar or out of place in a theological seminary, I can only say that they seem to me none the less, but perhaps the more, significant and valuable on that account. For I think that one of the causes by which, as John Foster wrote seventy years ago, " Evan- gelical Religion has been rendered unaccepta- ble to persons of cultivated taste," ^ has been a certain ill-disguised contempt on the part of 1 Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine, Paris, 1895. 2 John Foster, Essays, " On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion," p. 188. 6 An Age of Doubt persons of orthodox opinions for what they are pleased to call, "mere belles-lettres.'''' And though I do not fancy that there is any sym- pathy with that frame of mind in this place, yet the occasion seems opportune for saying in a definite way that the preacher who wishes to speak to this age must read many books in order that he may be in a position to make the best use of what Sir Walter Scott called " the one Book." He must keep himself in touch with modern life by stud^dng modern litera- ture, which is one of its essential factors. A doubting As soon as wc step out of the theological cir- cle into the broad field of general reading we see that we are living in an age of doubt. I do not mean to say that this is the only feature in the physiognomy of the age. It has many other aspects, from any one of which ^ we might pick a name. From the material side, we might call it an age of progress ; from the intellectual side, an age of science ; from the medical side, an age of hysteria; from the political side, an age of democracy; from the commercial side, an age of advertisement ; from the social side, an age of publicomania. An Age of Douht ? But looking at it from the spiritual side, which is the preacher's point of view, and considering that interior life to which every proclamation of a gospel must be addressed, beyond a doubt it stands confessed as a doubting age. There is a profound and wide-spread un- The. ques settlement of soul in regard to fundamental *^°'"f'' *^ spirit. truths of religion, and also in regard to the nature and existence of the so-called spiritual faculties by which alone these truths can be perceived. In its popular manifestations, this unsettlement takes the form of uncertainty rather than of denial, of unbelief rather than of disbelief, of general scepticism rather than of specific infidelity. The questioning spirit is abroad, moving on the face of the waters, seeking rest and finding none. It is not merely that particular doctrines, such as the inspiration of the Bible, or the future punishment of the wicked, are attacked and denied. The preacher who concentrates his attention at these points will fail to realize the gravity of the situation. It is not that a spirit of bitter and mocking atheism, such as Bishop Butler described at the close of the last century, has led people of discernment to set up religion " as a principal subject of 8 An Age of Doubt mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of re- prisal for its liaving so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." ^ The preacher who takes that view of the case now will be at least lifty years too late. He will fail to understand the serious and pathetic temper of the age. Respectful The questioning spirit of to-day is severe T-itibclicf* but not bitter, restless but not frivolous ; it takes itself very seriously and applies its meth- ods of criticism, of analysis, of dissolution, with a sad courtesy of demeanour, to the deep- est and most vital truths of religion, the being of God, the reality of the soul, the possibility of a future life. Everywhere it comes and everywhere it asks for a reason, in the shape of a positive and scientific demonstration. When one is given, it asks for another, and when anotlier is given, it asks for the reason of the reason. The laws of evidence, the prin- ciples of judgment, the witness of history, the testimony of consciousness, — all are called in question. The answers which have been given by religion to the most difiicult and pressing problems of man's inner life are declared to be unsatisfactory and without foundation. The •< Joseph Butler, The Analogy of BeJir/ion (London, Bell & Daldy, 1858). " Advertisement," p. xxiv. An Age of Doubt 9 question remains unsolved. Is it insoluble? The age stands in doubt. Its coat-of-arms is an interrogation point rampant, above three bishops dormant, and its motto is Query? If we inquire the cause of this general seep- Causes of .. • • 1 . T • ji scepticism. ticism in regard to religion, the common answer from all sides would probably attribute it to the progress of science. I do not feel satisfied with this answer. At least I should wish to qualify it in such a way as to give it a very different meaning from that which is implied in the current phrase " the conflict between science and religion." Science, in itself considered, the orderly and Science 7u>t -, -, IT c , 1 1 T • hostile to reasoned knowledge of the phenomenal universe j.giigio,i^ of things and events, ought not to be, and has not been, hostile to religion, simply because it does not, and cannot, enter into the same sphere. The great advance which has been made in the observation and classification of sensible facts, and in the induction of so-called general laws under which those facts may be arranged for pur- poses of study, has not even touched the two questions upon the answer to which the reality and nature of religion depend : first, the pos- 10 An Age of Doubt sible existence of other facts whicli physical science cannot observe and classify ; and sec- ond, the probable explanation of these facts. What has happened is just this. The field in which faith has to work has been altered, and it seems to me enormously broadened. But the work remains the same. The question is whether faith has enough vital energy to face and accomplish it. For example, the material out of which to construct an argument from the evidences of final cause in nature has been incalculably increased by the discoveries of the last fifty years in regard to natural selection and the origin of species. The observant wan- derer in the field of nature to-day no longer stumbles upon Dr. Paley's old-fashioned, open- faced, turnip-shaped watch lying on tlie ground. He finds, instead, an intricate and self-adjusting chronometer, capable not only of marking time with accuracy, but also of evolving by its own operation another more perfect and delicate instrument, with qualities and powers which adapt themselves to their surroundings and so advance forever. The idea of final cause has not been touched. Only the region which it must illuminate has been vastly enlarged. It remains to be seen whether faith can supply the illuminating power. Already we have the An Age of Douht 11 promise of an answer in many books, by mas- ters of science and philosophy, who show that the theory of evolution demands for its com- pletion the recognition of the spiritual nature of man and the belief in an intelligent and per- sonal God. The spread of scepticism is often attributed ^« espiuh to the growth of our conception of the physical knowledge magnitude of the universe. The bewildering numbers and distances of the stars, the gigan- tic masses of matter in motion, and the tremen- dous sweep of the forces which drive our tiny earth along like a grain of dust in an orderly whirlwind, are supposed to have overwhelmed and stunned the power of spiritual belief in man. The account seems to me incorrect and unconvincing. I observe that precisely the same argument was used by Job and Isaiah and the Psalmists to lead to a conclusion of faith. The striking disproportion between the littleness of man and the greatness of the stars was to them a demonstration of the ne- cessity of religion to solve the equation. They saw in the heavens the glory of God. And if man to-day knows vastly more of the heavens, does not that put him in position to receive a larger and loftier vision of the glory ? 12 An Age of JJouht D'vout men of pure sci- ence. The ai^o- gauce of scip.nce falsely so- called. We observe, moreover, that it is just in those departments of science where the knowledge of the magnitude and splendid order of the physi- cal universe is most clear and exact, namely, in astronomy and mathematics, that we find the most illustrious men of science who have not been sceptics but sincere and steadfast believ- ers in the Christian religion. Kepler and Newton were men of faith. The most brill- iant galaxy of mathematicians ever assembled at one time and place was at the University of Cambridge in the latter lialf of this century. Of these " Sir W. Thomson, Sir George Stokes, Professors Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, and Cayley — not to mention a number of lesser lights, such as Routh, Todhunter, Ferrers, etc. — were all avowed Christians." ^ Surely it needs no further proof to show that the pur- suit of pure science does not necessarily tend to scepticism. No, we must look more closely and distin- guish more clearly in order to discover in the scientific activities of the age a cause of the prevailing doubt. And if we do this I think we shall find it in the fallacy of that kind of science which mistakes itself for omniscience. 1 George John llomanes, INI. A., LL.D., F.K.S., Thoughts on BelUjion (Chicago, 1893), p. H7. An Age of Dcnht 13 " What we see is the pretence of certain sci- 1 ences to represent in themselves all human knowledge. And as outside of knowledge there is no longer, in the eyes of science thus curtailed, any means for man to come in con- tact with the realities, we see the pretence advanced by some that all reality and all life should be reduced to that which they have ver- ilied. Outside of this there are only dreams and illusions. This is indeed too much. It is no longer science, but scientific absolutism. "^ " The history of the natural sciences," said Du Bois-Reymond in 1877, " is the veritable history of mankind." "The world," says an- other, " is made of atoms and ether, and there is no room for ghosts." M. Berthelot in the preface to his Origines de V alchimie^ modestly claims that " the world to-day is without mys- teries " ; meaning thereby, I suppose, that there is nothing in existence, from the crys- tallization of a diamond to the character of a saint, which cannot be investigated and ex- plained by means of a crucible, a blow-pipe, a microscope, and a few other tools. This is simply begging the question of a An immense spiritual world in the negative. It is an im- ««^""'P"<^'i- 1 Charles Wagner, Tonth, translateil from the French by Ernest Redwood (New York, 1893), p. 28. 14 An Age of Doubt mense and stupefying assumption. It is a claim to solve the problems of the inner life by supx:)ressing them. This claim is not in any sense necessary to the existence of science, nor to any degree supported by the work which it has actually accomplished. But it is made with a calm assurance which imposes power- fully upon the popular mind ; and, being made in the name of science, it carries with it an appearance of authority borrowed from the great service which science has rendered to humanity by its discoveries in the sphere Ol the visible. Results of The result of this petitio principii in the 5tor''""'^" i^^i^^s of those who accept it fully and carry it out to its logical conclusion, is a definite system of metaphysical negation which goes under the various names of Naturalism, Posi- tivism, Empiricism, and Agnosticism. Its re- sult in the minds of those who accept it partially and provisionally, but lack the abil- ity or the inclination to formulate it, is the development of a sceptical temper. Its result in the minds of those who are unconsciously affected by it, through those profound instincts of sympathy and involuntary imitation which influence all men, is an attitude, — more or less sincere, more or less consistent and con- An Age of Doubt 15 tinuous, — an attitude of doubt. The spirit of the age tacitly divides all the various beliefs which are held among men into two classes. Those which are supported by sci- entific proof must be accepted. Those which are not thus supported either must be re- jected, or may safely and properly be disre- garded as matters of no consequence. in Now this general scepticism, in all its The mirror shades and degrees, from the most clear, self- ^-^ ^y'!/' "'"'** conscious, and aggressive, to the most vague, shadoio of diffused, and deprecatory, is reflected in the productions of current literature. Never was literary art more perfect, more accomplished, more versatile and successful than in the pres- ent age. Never have its laws been more widely understood and its fascinations more potently exercised. Never has it evoked more magical and charming forms to float above an abyss of disenchantment and nothingness. In the lay sermons and essays of Huxley and Tyndall and Frederic Harrison and W. K. Clifford, scepticism appears militant and trench- ant. These knights-errant of Doubting Castle are brilliantly equipped as men of war; and doubt. 16 An Age of Ihuht even when they fall foul of each other, as they often do, the ground of the conflict is an accu- sation of infidelity to the principles of unbelief, and its object is to drive the rulversary back into a more complete and consistent negation. Over the fragmentary but majestic life- philosophies of Carlyle and Emerson, lying- in the disarray of stones hewn for a temple yet unbuilt, imaginative scepticism hangs like a cloud. Over Carlyle, it is the shadow of a noonday tempest, full of darkness and tu- mult and muttering thunder. Over Emerson, it floats like a cumulus of evening vapours, luminous and beautiful, alluringly transfigured " 111 the golden lightning Of the sunken sun." ^ In the vivid and picturesque historical studies of Renan and Froude, scepticism is at once ironical and idealistic, destructive and dogmatic. In the penetrative and intelligent critiques of Scherer and Morley, it adheres with proud but illogical persistence to the ethical consequences of the faith with which logic has broken : like a son disinherited, but resolved to maintain the right of possession by the strong arm. 1 Shelley, " Ode to a Skylark." Ati Aye of Doubt 17 In the novels of unflinching and unblushing Fiction naturalism, — like those of Zola and ]Maupassant gloomy. and the later works of Thomas Hardy, scepticism speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the emptiness of all life and the futility of all endeavour. In the psychological romances of Flaubert and Bourget and Spielhagen, George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, it holds the mirror up to human nature to disclose a face darkened with inconsolable regret for lost dreams. Far apart as Madame Bovary and Cosmopolis^ Prohlematische Naturen and 3Iiddle- marcJi and Robert Elsmere may be in many of their features, do they not wear the same ex- pression, — the cureless melancholy of disil- lusion ? Fiction in its more superficial form, dealing \ only with the manners and customs of the so- cial drama, and relying for its interest mainly upon local colour and the charm of incident narrated with vivacity and grace, betrays its scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard of the part which religion plays in real life. In how many of the lighter novels of the day do we find any recognition, even between the lines, of the influence which the idea of God or its absence, the practice of prayer or its neg- 18 An Age of Doubt l( f Poetry de- siwndent. lect, actually exercise upon the character and conduct of men ? Take, for example, Trilby,^ as the type of a clever book carelessly written for the thoughtless public of a passing moment. It is incredibly credulous in regard to the dramatic possibilities of hypnotism. It is pitifully in- adequate in its conception of the actual poten- cies of religion ; and it uses Christianity chiefly as a subject for caricature in the style of the illustrated newspapers, which are called comic. Poetry has always been the most direct and intimate utterance of the human heart. And it is in poetry that we hear to-day the voice of scepticism most clearly, "making abundant music around an elementary nihilism, now stripped naked." ^ Listen to its sonorous chant- ings as they come from France in the verse of Leconte de Lisle, celebrating the sombre ritual of human automata before the altar of the un- known and almighty tyrant, who agitates them endlessly for his own amusement. Listen to its delicate and decadent lyrics, as Charles Baudelaire sings his defeat in life and his thirst for annihilation. " Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L'Espoir dont I'eiieron attisait ton ardeiir i Geoi'ge Du Maurier, Trilby (Harpers, 1895). 2 Paul Desjardins, Lc Devoir Present (Paris, 1892), p. 05. An Age of Doubt 19 Ne vent plus t'enfourcher. Couche toi sans pudeur, Vieiix cheval dont le pied h chaqiie obstacle butte. Resigne-toi, mon coeur, dors ton somnieil de brute. Et le Temps m'engloutit minute par minute Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur : Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur Et je n'y cherche plus I'abri d'une cahute ! Avalanche, veux tu m'emporter dans ta chute?" ^ Turn to England and hear its musical con- fession in the cool, sad, melodious tones of Matthew Arnold, no enemy of faith, but her disenchanted lover. " Forgive me, masters of the mind. At whose behest I long ago So much unlearned, so much resigned — I come not here to be your foe ; I seek these anchorites not in ruth, To curse and to deny your truth ; Not as their friend, or child, I speak But as on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own gods, a Greek, In pity and mournful awe might stand Before a fallen Runic stone, — For both were faiths, and both are gone." ^ There is a poem by Tennyson (who never broke with faith, though he felt the strain of 1 Charles Baudelaire, Fleurs du Mai (Paris, 1888), p. 205. " Le gout du N^ant." 2 Matthew Arnold, Poems (New York, Macmillan, 1878), p. 337. " Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse." 20 An Age of Doubt doubt), in wliicli he describes with intense dramatic sympathy the finality of scepticism in the human souL It is called "Despair." A picture of Xliere is another poem, called "Sea Dreams," the sea of . ■,.■,■, . .. p -, doubt. in which he gives a vision of tne rising tide of doubt as it threatens to undermine and over- whelm the beliefs of the past. The woman is telling her husband the dream which came to her ill the night as she watched by their sick child. " But round the North, a light, A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, And ever in it a low musical note Swell'd up and died ; and, as it swell'd, a ridge Of breaker issued from the belt, and still Grew with the growing note, and when the note Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that Living within the belt) whereby she saw That aU those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, But huge cathedral fronts of every age, Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, One after one : and then the great ridge drew, Lessening to the lessening music, back. And passed into the belt and swell'd again Slowly to music : ever when it broke The statues, king, or saint, or founder, fell; Then from tlie gaps and chasms of ruin left Came men and women in dark clusters round. Some crying, ' Set them up 1 they shall not fall ! ' And others, ' Let them lie, for they have fall'n.' And still they strove and wrangled: . . . . . . and ever as their shrieks An Age of Doubt 21 Ran highest up the gamut, that great -wave Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone, To the waste deeps together." ^ It was but a dream, dispelled from the mind r/iepz of her to v/hom it came in the night-watches '^" by the crying of her little child, and soon for- gotten in the sweet reality of human love. Only a dream, but how many souls have felt the vague sadness, the haunting, helpless pity and fear of a like vision, lookiiig out upon the landscape of man's inner life, and seeing the ancient landmarks slov/ly melted or swiftly swept away, the shrines of memory shaken and removed, the fair images of immortal de- sire and aspiration dissolving and disappearing in the onward waves, silently creeping, or surg- ing with mysterious and inarticulate music out of the waste deep of doubt, — " The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." ^ Who can think of the sharp anguish and dull grief that have fallen upon innumerable hearts through the loss of their most precious faiths ; 1 Tennyson's Poetical Worls (Macmillan, 1890), p. 138. 2 Matthew Arnold, "To Marguerite." Poems (Macmil- lan, 1878), p. 184. 22 An Age of Doubt who can think of the gray, formless, ever-mov- ing, yet immovable flood of mordant gloom that has covered so many once bright and fertile fields of human hope and endeavour, so many once secure and peaceful homes of human trust and confidence, — who can think of these things, even though his own standpoint be still un- touched, iiis own faith-dwelling founded upon an untrembling rock far above the tide, with- out a sorrowful perturbation of spirit and a deep, inward sense of compassionate distress and dread ? We stand upon the shore, but we stand beside the sea. And we look out upon it, as Emile Littre sadly wrote,^ like the women of Troy, whom the Roman poet pictured gaz- ing at its mighty currents and engulfing waves: " Ponlum adsjiectahant Jientes." IV Sympathy It is with no careless and exaggerating hand, loith doubt. 'i • • J.1 i • 1 J • • 'J. it IS m no unsympathetic and condemning spirit, that I have tried to draw this picture of the sceptical age in which we live. Its faults, its perils, are mine and yours. The preacher who assumes a supercilious and damnatory attitude 1 Emile Littrtj, Conservation, lievolution^ Positivisme, Bemarques, p. 430. An Age of Doubt 23 towards the doubts of the present time can do little to relieve, and may do much to increase them. If we desire to be true ministers to a doubting age, we must put ourselves in the posi- tion of Maurice, who said, " I wish to confess the sins of the time as my own."i So far as current scepticism has its source in evil, it flows from faults of which we all partake, — the pride of intellect, the haste of judgment, the prefer- ence of the seen to the unseen, the impatience of ignorance, the vain demand of perfection in the finite comprehension of the infinite, and the disloyalty of reason to conscience. But indeed this is not the point of view from Lessons of which we speak. This lecture is not an indict- ^^'^'^^^^^^ae- 7nent. ment. It is a diagnosis. Doubt, as we aro » thinking of it, is not a crime, but a malady, t And if we are to have any hope or power of staying its progress and healing its ravages, we must not only be sympathetic in our understand- ing of it, but we must also look through it, earnestly and patiently, to see whether there are not some favourable s3'mptoms, some signs of enduring vitality, some promises of returning health and strength in the spirit of Ihe age. Of these it seems to me that there are three, 1 The Life of Fredorick Denison Maiirice (New York, Scribners, 1881), vol. ii., p. 235. 24 An Age of Doubt Pessimism. Cheerful scepticism almost ex- tinct. SO evident and so important, that we onglit not to overlook them. First, the acknowledged discontent and pain of unbelief; second, the practical recoil of some of the finest minds from the void of absolute scepticism ; third, the persistent desire of many doubting spirits to serve mankind by love, self-sacrifice, and ethical endeavour. In other words, I would * read the lesson of encouragement in the suffer- \ ings of doubt, in the doubts of doubt, and in [the splendid moral inconsistencies of doubt. Begin, tlien, with pain, which is not only a warning of disease, but also a sign of life. The pessimism which goes hand in hand with scep- ticism in this nineteenth century is a cry of suffering. The closely reasoned philosophies of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, with their prem- isses of misery and conclusions of despair, are only the scientific statement of a widely diffused sentiment of dissatisfaction and desi:)ondency in regard to life.^ Their spread, like that of some apparently new disease, is due to the fact that they give a name to something from which men have long suffered. It seemed at one time as if the course of modern scepticism was to be free from sadness, a paiidess malady. At the beginning of the 1 James Sully, Pessimism, pp. 2, 3. )7uXaM4 An Age of iJouht 25 century the tone of infidelity was jubilant and triumphant. Percy Bysshe Shell ey wallied into t he inn at J^lontanvert and wrote his name in t he v isitors' book, adding " democrat,^ philan- thropist, atheist," — as if it were a record of victory and a title of glory. Tliis cheerful type of scepticism still survives, here and there, in a few men who insist that the process of dis- enchantment is pleasant and joyous, and that the optimism which belonged to faith may re- main while the faith itself disappears. It is like the smile of the famous cat, in the child's story-book, which broadened and brightened while the cat faded, until finally the animal was \ gone and nothing but the grin was left. * But for the most part modern doub t sh ows a The sorrow sad and pain-drawn face, liea\'y with grief and 5 -.^^"'^ dark with apprehension. There is an illustra- tion of this change in the life of George Eliot. In her girlhood she passed suddenly, by an un- conditional surrender, out of a warm faith in Evangelical Christianity into the coldest kind of rational scepticism. She writes of the dull, and now forgotten, book which ^^rought this change, Charles Hennell's Inquiry concerning the Origm of Christianitg, with strange and al- most fantastic merriment: "Mr. Hennell ought to be one of the happiest of men that he has 26 An Age of Doubt done such a life's Avork. I am sure if I had written such a book I should be invulnerable to all the arrows of all the gods and goddesses. The book is full of wit to me. It gives me that exquisite kind of laughter which comes from the gratification of the reasoning faculties."^ But the arrows which she despised struck home, ere life was ended, to her own heart. " I remember," writes Mr. F. W. H. Myers, "how at Cambridge I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an even- ing of rainy INIay, and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men, — the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pro- nounced, with terrible earnestness, how in- conceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second, and how peremptory and abso- lute the third. Never, perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of imper- sonal and unrecompensing law. I listened and night fell ; her grave, majestic countenance turned towards me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and 1 Ce.or(je ElioVs Life, as related in her Letters (New York, Harpers), vol. i., p. 119. An Age of Doubt 27 left me the third scroll only, awful with in- evitable fate." 1 An inevitable fate, seen through the gloom The sad as- of falling night, — that indeed is the aspect of ^^'^ ""-^ ^'J'^- life which the literature of doubt displays to us. A gray shadow of melancholy spreads over the questioning, uncertain, disillusioned age ; languid sighs of weariness breathe from its salons and palaces. Bitter discontent mut- ters in its Avorkshops and tenements. "Never, I believe," says Paul Desjardins, "have men been more universally sad than in the present time." And then he adds, with keen insight, " Our misery lies in feeling that we are less men than we were sixty years ago."^ Human ife has been unspeakably impoverished and narrowed by the loss of faith. Comedy has become tragic, and tragedy has grown mean and sordid.^ Men_ have lost the sound of a Divine voice in the story of their existence and learned to listen to it as " a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing." 1 R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought (London, Macmillan, 1887), p. 2G2. ^ Le Devoir Present, pp. 17, 19. 3 See the plays of Ihsen : Ghosts, A DolVs House, The Wild Duck, etc. 28 An Age of JJoubt Love itself, the great purifier and ennobler, lias been transformed in the subtle analysis of sex- ual passion, from the sea-born Venus, pure and radiant with immortal youth, to a dirt-engen- dered goddess, concealing her secret ugliness with illusory and artificial charms, and presid- ing with malignant power over the lower cur- rents o.? man's being, — a veritable Cloacina of human life.^ The mean- The thought of "the graudcur and misery of man," as Pascal conceived it, was painful but elevating. The conception of the insig- nificance and misery of man as scepticism pre- sents it, is painful and dispiriting. Born of blind force and unconscious matter, quickened by some mysterious cruelty to a consciousness of his own origin and a foreboding of his inex- plicable and fruitless destiny, he "drees his weird," between two fathomless abysses of gloom, as one who is indeed weary and heavy- laden. The music with which he accompanies his march towards the blank and dismal bourn, rolls and clashes through the literature of every land with deep and mournful discords, as if man had at last invented that strange organ of 1 Bourget, Psychol ogle Contemporaine, pp, 5, 8. An Ai/e of Douht 29 expression which a satirist has called " the Mu- Srophon.^'' ^ " This philosophy," says Stendhal, comment- The nausea ing upon the last reflections of his hero in Rouge ^^^^ ^'^^^ et Noir^ " was perhaps true, but it was of such a nature as to make one long for death." And then the critic from whom I have quoted these words, adds his own commentary. " Do you perceive, at the close of this work, the most complete which the author has left, the break- ing of the tragic dawn of pessimism ? It rises, this dawn of blood and tears, and, like the clear- ness of a new-born day, it overspreads with crimson hues the loftiest spirits of our age, those whose thoughts are at the summit, those to whom the eyes of the men of to-morrow lift themselves, — religiously. I am come in this series of psychological studies to the fifth and last of the personages whom I propose to ana- lyze. I have examined a poet, Baudelaire ; a historian, Renan ; a romancer, Flaubert ; a philosopher, Taine ; I have just examined one of these composite artists in whom the critic and the imaginative writer are closely united ; and I have found in these ^we Frenchmen of 1 Anton Bettelheim, article in Cosmoj^oUs, January, 1896. 30 An Age of Doubt such importance, the same philosophy of dis- gust with the universal nothingness."^ Melancholia. If we turn to Ivussia, which has given us some of the most brilliant and influential, though undisciplined, writers of modern fic- tion, do we not hear, in an accent harsher and more formidable, the same conclusions, the same cries of nausea over the inextricable confusion and vain efforts of human life? If we turn to England, do we not see the same cloud of melancholj, less threatening, less angry, but no less dark, rising from the chasm which doubt has made between man's inner life and the world as scientific posi- tivism pictures it? How mournful is the voice in which W. K. Clifford proclaims, " The Great j3omj3junpn_^jiead ! " How dark with silent, passionate grief__is_ tlmt_J.onelj wood Jn which " Robert Elsmere ''^ f e_els. him- self going blind to the dearest visions of his former faith. ^ How black the air in which " Jude the Obscure " breathes out the last throbbings of his insurgent heart in curses upon his sordid and desperate fate ! ^ Let a X 1 Paul Bourgct, Psychologie Contemporaine, p. 321. 2 Mrs. Humphry Ward, Bobert Elsmere (Macmillan, , vol. ii. , chap. xxvi. 8 Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Harpers, 189G). An Age of Doubt 31 poet, with that sublime insight of genius which endures even amid the ruins created by its own destructive passion, speak the last word of doubt, — the epitaph of The City of Dreadful Night. The portentous fig- ure of " Melancholia " sits enthroned above her vast metropolis. " The moving Moon and stars from east to west Circle before her in the sea of air ; Shadows and gleams glide round her solemn rest. Her subjects often gaze up to her there : The strong to drink new strength of iron endurance, The weak, new terrors ; all, renewed assurance And confirmation of the old despau-." i But why despair, unless indeed because Pain gives man, in his very nature and inmost essence, is framed for an immortal hope ? No other hope creature is filled with disgust and anger by the mere recognition of its own environment and the realization of its own destiny. This strange issue of a purely physical evolutioiL in a profound revolt against itself is incred- ibly miraculous. Can a vast universe of atoms and ether, unfolding out of darkness into dark- ness, produce at some jDoint in its progress, and that point apparently the highest, a feel- ing of profound disappointment Avith its par- 1 James Thomson, Tfie Cltij of Dreadful Night, xxi, 12. an argu- ment of 32 An Age of Doubt tially discovered processes and resentful grief at its dimly foreseen end? To believe this would require a monstrous credulity ! Athe- ism does not touch this difficulty. Agnosti- cism evades it. There are but two solutions which really face tlie facts. One is the black, unspeakable creed that the source of all things is an unknown, mocking, malignant Power, whose last and most cruel jest is the misery of disenchanted man.^ The otlier is the hope- ful creed that the very pain which man suffers when his spiritual nature is denied, is proof that it exists, and part of the discipline by wljich a truthful, loving God Avould lead man to Himself. Let the world judge which is the more reasonable faith. But for our part, Avhile we cling to the creed of hope, let us not fail to " cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt," and see in the very shadow that it casts the evidence of n light behind and above it. Let us learn the meaning of that noble word of St. Augustine : IViou hast made us for Th(/self and unquiet is our heart until it rests in Thee. 1 "It must have been an ill-advised God, who could fall upon no better amusement than the transforming of Himself into such a hungiy world as this, which is utterly miserable and worse than none at all." — David Friedrich Strauss, quoted in 77(6 British (^nurterhj lleview, January, 1877, p. 140. An Age of Doubt 33 Yes, the inq uietude of the heart which The renais- doubt has robbed of its faith in God, is an l^'}'^^^f faith. evidenc e that scepticism is a malady, not a normal state. The sadness of our times under the pressure of positive disbelief and negative uncertainty has in it the promise and potency of a return to health and happiness. Already we can see, if we look with clear eyes, the signs of what I have dared to call "the re- action out of the heart of a doubting age toward.s the Christianity of Christ and the faith in Immortal Love."^ Pagan poets, full of melancholy beauty and vague regret for lost ideals, poets of decadence and despondence, the age has born, to sing its grief and gloom. But its two great singers, Tennyson and Browning, strike a clearer note of returning faith and hope. " They resume the quest, and do not pause until they find Him whom they seek." ^ Pessimists like Hart- mann work back unconsciously, from the vague remoteness of pantheism, far in the direction, at least, of a theistic view of the universe. His later books — ReligionsphilosopTiie and 1 The Poetry of Tennyson (New York, Scribners, 1889), p. xiii. 2 Vida D. Scudder, The Life of the Spirit in the MoOjern English Poets (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1895), p. 333. B 34 An Aye of Doubt Sellstersetzmig des Christenthums — breathe a different spirit from his Philosoplde des Un- heu'ussten?- One of the most cautious of our younger students of philosophy has noted with care, in a recent article, the indications that "the era of doubt is drawing to a close." ^ A statesman, like Signor Crispi, does not hesitate to cut loose from liis former atheistic connec- tions and declare that ^' the belief in God i s the fundamental basis o f the healthy life of the people, while atheism puts in it the germ of an irreparable decay," The French critic, M. Edouard Rod, declares that " only religion can regulate at the same time human thought and human action."^ Mr. Benjamin Kidd, from the side of English sociology, assures us that " since man became a social creature, the development of his intellectual character has become subordinate to the development of his religious character," and concludes that religion affords the only permanent sanction for progress.^ A famous biologist, Romanes, 1 James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World (New York, Randolph, 189:5), pp. 456, 457. 2 The Methodist Review, January, 1896, "The Return to Faith," by Frof. A. C. Armstrong, Jr.. 8 Edouard Rod, Les Idees Morales du Temps Present (Paris, 1894), p. 304. * Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution (London, 1894), p, 246, An Age of Doubt 35 who once professed the most absolute rejec- tion of revealed, and the most unqualified scepticism of natural, religion, thinks his Avay ■??fw-j,, soberly back from the painful void to a posi- tion where he confesses that " itis reasonable to be a Christian believer," and dies in the full communion of the church of Jesus. ^ All along the line, we see men who once thought it necessary or desirable to abandon forever the soul's abode of faith in the unseen, returning by many and devious ways from tlie far country of doubt, driven by homesickness and hunger to seek some path which shall at least bring them in sight of a Father's house. And meanwhile we hear the conscience, the The indomU • !_• ^ • !.• I £ 1*1 i^- •-tic table con- etnicai instinct oi mankind, assertiiiQ" itseli ' o science. with splendid courage and patience, even in those who have as yet found no sure ground for it to stand upon. There is a sublime con- tradiction between the positivist's view of man as "the hero of a lamentable drama played in an obscure corner of the universe, in virtue of blind laws, before an indifferent nature, and with annihilation for its denouement," ^ and the doctrine that it is his supreme duty to sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. Yet many ^ Thoughts on Religion, p. 196. 2 Madame L. Ackermanu, Ma Vie (Paris, 1885), p. xviii. 36 An Age of Doubt of the sceptical thinkers of the age do not stumble at the contradiction. They hold fast to love and justice and moral enthusiasm even though they suspect that they themselves are the products of a nature which is blind and dumb and heartless and stupid. Never have the obligations of self-restraint, and helpful- ness, and equity, and universal brotherhood been preached more fervently than by some of the English agnostics. The new In France a new crusade has rise n ; a cru- crusade m ^^^^ which seeks to gather into its hosts men I ranee. ^ of all creeds and men of none, and which pro- claims as its object the recovery of the sacred places of man's spiritual life, the holy land in which virtue shines forever by its own light, and the higher impulses of our nature are in- spired, invincible, and immortal. On its ban- ner M. Paul Desjardins writes the word of Tolstoi, '■'•Ilfaut avoir une dme : it is necessary to have a sou l," and declares that the crusaders will follow it wherever it leads them. " For my part," he cries, " I shall not blush certainly to acknowledge as sole master the Chris*, preached by the doctors. I shall not recoil if my premisses force me to believe, at last, as Pascal believed." ^ ^ Le Devoir Present, 46. An Age of Doubt 37 In our own land sucli a crusade does not yet Tiie new appear to be necessary. The disinteofration of "'"'"' '^'<'' '^^ '' ^ America. faith under the secret processes of general scepticism has not yet gone far enough to make the peril of religion evident, or to cause a new marshalling of hosts to recover and defend the forsaken shrines of man's spiritual life. When the process which is now subtly w^orking in so many departments of our literature has gone farther, it may be needful to call for such a crusade. If so, I believe it will come. I be- lieve that the leaders of thought, the artists, the poets of the future, when they stand face to face with the manifest results of negation and disillusion, which really destroy the very sphere in which alone art and poetry can live, will rise to meet the peril, and proclaim anew with one voice the watchword, "It is necessary to have a soul! And though a man gain the whole world, if his soul is lost, it shall profit him nothing." But meanwhile, before the fol- lowing of the errors of France in literature and art has led us to that point of spiritual impov- erishment where we must imitate the organized and avowed effort to recover that which has been lost, we see a new crusade of another kind: a powerful movement of moral enthu- siasm, of self-sacrifice, of altruism, even among 38 An Age of Doubt those who profess to be out of sympathy with Christianity, which is a sign of promise, be- cause it reveals a force that cries out for faith, and for Christian faith, to guide and direct it. The cry for Ncvcr was tlicrc a time when the fine aspira- l^T^^sh tions of the young manhood and young woman- hood of our country needed a more inspiring and direct Christian leadership. The indica- tions of this need lie open to our sight on every side. Here is a company of re lined and edu- cated people going down to make a college set- tlement among the poor and ignorant, to help them and lift them up. They declare that it is not a religious movement,*that there is to be no preaching connected with it, that the only faith which it is to embody is faith in human- ity. They choose a leader who has only that faith. But they find, under his guidance, that the movement will not move, that the work cannot be done, that it faints and fails because it lacks the spring of moral inspiration which can come only from a divine and spiritual faith. And they are forced to seek a new leader who, although he is not a preacher, yet carries within his heart that power of religious conviction, that force of devotion to the Avill of God, that faith in the living and supreme Christ, which is in fact the centre of Christian- A71 Age of Doubt 39 ity. All around tlie circle of human doubt and despair, where men and women are going out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and strengthen their fellow-men under the perplex- ities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a gospel which shall be divine, and therefore sovereign and unquestionable and sure and vic- torious. All throng] 1 the noblest aspirations and efforts and hopes of our age of doubt, we feel the longhig, and we hear the demand, for a new inspiration of Christian faith. These are the signs of the times. Surely we The signs of must take note of them, surely we must labour *^^« '""«*• and pray to understand their true significance, if we are to say anything to our fellow-men which shall be worth our saying and their hearing. Renan made a strange remark not long be- fore his death : " I fear that the work of the 1 \/ Twentieth Century will consist in taking out '^ of the waste-basket a multitude of excellent ideas wEich the Nineteenth Century has heed- lessl y throw n into it." The sceptic's fear is the believer's hope. Once more the fields are white unto the harvest. The time is ripe ; ripe in the sorrow of scepticism, ripe in the return of aspiration, ripe in the enthusiasm of X 40 An Age of Doubt humanity, for a renaissance of the spiritual life. Already the horizon brightens with the tokens of this renaissance. There is a new interest in religion as the most living of all topics. There is a new sense of its vital meaning for the whole life of man. There is a new determination to apply it all around the circle of human respon- sibilities and test its value everywhere. There is a new cry for a Christ who shall fullil the hopes of all the ages. There is a new love waiting for Him, a new devotion ready to fol- low His call. Doubt, in its nobler aspect, — honest, unwilling, morally earnest doul)t, — has been a John the Baptist to prepare the way for His coming. The men of to-day are saying, as certain Greeks said to apostles of old, " Sirs, we would see Jesus." The disciple who can lead the questioning spirits to Him, is the man who has the Gospel for an Age of Doubt. II THE GOSPEL OF A PERSON to-day. A life on a \\\<^]\ level, yel, full of lielpful, healing .syrnpatliy for all life on its lowest levels, is the fij'st deht whiftli we owe to our fellow-men in this age. r>ut l)(;yond this, is thei'e not HometLing per- sonal and Hpecilic which the conditions of tlie present demand from us, as men who have not only the eommfjn duty of living, but also the peenliar vocation of speaking dii-ectly and con- stantly to tli(! innci- life of our hi'otluM's? We waiit some dii^tinet aixl dclinite m(;ssage, which is to he cleaj'ly formed \\\ ouj- thought and feel- ing and utterance, as the centml, guiding, domi- nati/ig I'ojce in all oui' efforts to realize the line aspiiatifjii of the old hymn: " '\.\> h*;i'v'- noses the sickness of inodcru times as the result, not of a loss of faith, but of a fatal increase of nervous iriitability pi-ocluced by the strain of an intricate civilization. lie (Ku'lares that tbe malady must run its course, but that in time it will be liealed by the re- storative force of '•'• niisoneism, that instinctive, invincible aversion to progress and its difficul- ties that Lombroso lias studied so much and to whicli he has given this name/'i The name is certainly not a pretty one, nor d(» 1 think that, after the first feeling of pleas- ure in Icai-uiug lo |)ronounce a newly imi)orted word has pa.ss;Ml, the contemjtlation of its meaning Avill aiford us any profomul siMise of satisfaction or hope. 'I'he picture of maidvind as a magnilicd .IiMumy Kutlon, returning from his temporary residence in England to his na- tive Terra del Fuei/o, and Hinging away his gloves and patent-leather shoes, to relapse into a peaceful and contented barbarism, is not in- spiring. Who is there that woidd care to do- vott> his life to the hastening of such a result? ^^'llo but the veriest quack, himself affected by the liyslt>ria of (lu> ag;', would lliiid; of cui'iug 1 Max Nurdau, Di'iniicmn'on ^^Xow York, IS',).')), i>. 542. 46 The Gospel of a Person the convulsions of St. Vitus' dance in an over- strained humanity by throwing the patient into the stupor of typhoid fever ? Another and very different method of deal- ing with the malady of the times is suggested by those who believe that Science itself, in the immense future advance which is predicted for it, will supply the antidote for the scepticism which has accompanied its previous course. New discoveries will be made which will sup- port the proposition : II faut avoir wie drtie. New arguments will be constructed which will give us a scientific demonstration of the un- seen universe and the future life. It is in this spirit that Mr. F. W. H. Myers calls at- tention to the phenomena of mesmerism and hypnotism and telepathy, and suggests that the need of the age is a more cordial and general interest in the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research. ^ I do not think, for one, that these investigations are to be slighted or despised. They may be of great value. But it is difficult to believe that this is the source to which the preacher is to look either for his inspiration or his message. For, in the first place, it is highly improbable that science is about to make any such aston- ^ Science and A Future Life (Maciiiillan, 1893), pp. 34, 44. The G-ospel of a Person 47 ishmg advance, either in methods or results, as some men anticipate. The best authorities admit this, and warn us that there are "limi- tations in the nature of the universe which must circumscribe the achievements of specu- lative research."^ Mr. Myers himself makes the same admission, and says that so far as our discoveries are confined to the physical side of things, there is no ground whatever for sanguine hope. Moreover, in the second place, whatever work may be done in this di- rection must be accomplished, not by preachers, but by scientists. The average preacher has no particular vocation, and no adequate qual- ification, for the task. Neither by tempera- ment nor by training is he fitted to judge of these matters. Now and then you will find a rare exception ; but as a rule nothing could \ be of less value than the scientific sermons of preachers who have only a bowing acquaint- ance with science. If the cure of modern scepticism is to be accomplished by the further progress of physical investigation, at least we must confess that this enterprise is not for us. But there are two other ways of deal- ing with current doubt which demand closer attention. One of them is the philosophic ^ C. H. Pearson, National Life and Character (Macmlllan, 1893), p. 291. 48 The Gospel of a Person Thorough- method of a reductio ad ahsurdiim. The logic rationalism. ^^ rationalism is applied to its own premisses in order to show that they are unfounded and unverifiable. The result of this attack, as it has been made with a relentless and masterly- hand by Mr. Arthur James Balfour in his Defence of Pliilosophic Doubt., is to exhibit the startling fact that " the universe as repre- sented to us by science is wholly unimaginable, and that our conception of it is what in The- ology would be termed purely anthropomor- phic."^ The evidence for the existence of a world composed of atoms and ether is no more conclusive, the account which science gives of their nature and qualities is no more coherent, than the evidence and account which faith gives of a world created by a personal God and inhabited by immortal souls. Pure agnosticism is thus forced into the service of Christianity and used to destroy all a priori objections to it. Giant Doubt is brought low by turning his own weapons against liimself, even as Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, slew the Egyptian "Avith his own spear." ^ The value of this service of philosophy is ^ A Defence, of Philosophic Doubt (Macmillan, 1879), pp. 284, 285, 287-289. 2 1 Cbron. xi. 23. The Crospel of a Person 49 considerable. The Cliristian preaclier ought not to be ignorant of its actual results, for they are such as to encourage him in preserv- ing his independence against the tyrannous claims of positivism ; nor unfamiliar with its methods, for they are fitted to train and disci- pline his mind by hard exercise and exact work. But it must be remembered that only a mighty ' man of valour, one who, like Benaiah, ranks j above the host, and above the thirty captains of the host, can hope to play a leading part in this | enterprise of "carrying the war into Africa." It must be remembered also that the reduction of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far short of the establishment of religious faith as a verity. Grateful for all that philosophy can do, and is doing, to clear the way, the preacher must have a principle, an impulse, a line of action which will carry him beyond the nega- tive result of making unbelief doubtful, to the positive result of making belief credible. At this point our attention is called to an- Theological other way of dealing with current scepticism, ^^^ ^•^''" *°'^' — the dogmatic method, which relies for the defence of faith upon the construction of a complete and consistent system of doctrine in regard to God and man, the present world and the future life. Faith, in other words, is to 60 The Grospel of a Person be established by fortification, surrounded and entrenched with banquette and parapet, scarp and ditch and counterscarp of iron-worded proof, defended on every side by solid syllo- gisms, and impregnable against all assaults of unbelief. It is foolish not to recognize the great work which has been done along this line by wise and strong men in the past. Those who affect to despise it and make light of it, are simply ignorant of some of the loftiest achievements of the human intellect. The works of Augustine and Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, of John Calvin and Richard Hooker and John Owen, of Ralph Cud worth and William Chillingworth, of Richard Baxter and Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler, of Jonathan Edwards and Charles Hodge and W. G. T. Shedd, are massive works. They impose a sense of wonder upon every thoughtful ob- server. Changed But concerning the attempt to conquer mod- conditions. -i ^ , ^ , c -i ,• .^ -i ern doubt by a system oi dogmatic theology, certain things must be remembered. The con- ditions of warfare change from age to age. The vast fortresses of solid stone whose posses- sion was once regarded as the security of nations, are not ranked so high as they were a hundred years ago. The earthwork, the The Gospel of a Person 51 rifled cannon, the iron-clad ship, the torpedo, have wrought great changes. Deductive logic is just as strong as it ever was, but somehow or other men are not as much impressed by it. Induction is the method of to-day: and that is a subtle, evasive, mobile method. It cannot be shut in by a ring of fortresses. Already I the dogmatic systems in which the inductive } method is ignored or subordinated (whether; made long ago, or constructed yesterday on j ancient models) are out of date. They are ] good for the men who are within them, but | on the outside world they have no more effect; than Windsor Castle would have in protecting'; England from a foreign invasion. \ We feel sure .that theology, in time, must The future and will vindicate its claim to be considered as ^^'^ °^^' an essential factor in the intellectual life of man, by adapting itself to the changed condi- tions, and producing even mightier works by the new methods than those which it produced by the old. Already we see the promise of a renaissance of dogmatics in such books as Mul- ford's The Republic of Gfod, Harris' The Self- Mevelation of God, Orr's The Christian Vieiv of God and the World, and Fairbairn's The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. But we must remember that even those who anticipate and 52 The Crospel of a Person Great things predict this reconstruction of the old truth on demanded of ,, ,. , .i • ,• n the new the- *^^® ^^^ Imes most enthusiastically, recognize oiogian. that it must be a long and difficult task, and that the man who is to be a master-builder must have a magnificent equipment. How ex- hilarating at the first sight, but at the second sight how overwhelming and discouraging, are the demands of the age upon him who would fain be an epoch-making theologian, as they are stated, for example, in Mr. Balfour's Founda- tions of Beliefs or in Dr. George A. Gordon's inspiring book The Christ of To-day. Truly it appears that such a man must realize the sup- position of St. Paul : he must speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge. Who is sufficient for these things ? It will take a long time for the best of us to learn all this. Perhaps the most of us may never go so far. Meantime, whether we are labouring towards that goal, or despairing of it, we need something divinely simple and divinely true that we can preach at once, di- rectly, joyfully, fervently to the heart of the age. A view of the world, a Welt-ansehauuncf, is de- sirable, perhaps in the long run necessary, for the mind of man ; but there is another thing The Grospel of a Person 53 which is more desirable and of prior necessity, -^ starting. and that is a standpoint of practical conviction ^^-"^^ Ig'lj^^ from which to obtain such a view. It may be ^'■** neccs- but a foothold, only a single point of contact, ^ ^' but we must have it, and it must be solid as a fact. A complete and consistent theology is a consummation most devoutly to be wished for ; but before it can come there must be some- thing else, — a living, active power of faith in the soul. This power, as we believe, already exists in every human being. But there is only one thing that can awaken it and call it into action, and that is a gospel, a message clear as light, which in its very essence is a force to quicken and stir the soul. We look out upon the world and we see that Preaching some men have had such a gospel without be- "" ^ ing in any sense finislied and systematic theo- logians. St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John had it. St. Chrysostom and St. Francis of Assisi and Savonarola had it. John Wesley and George Whitfield had it. In different ages and under different conditions these preachers had the primal message which moves men to believe. And in our own age, under our own conditions, a like message has been proclaimed with power. Pere Lacordaire preached such a message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in 64 The Gospel of a Person St. Paul's, to listening thousands. Bishop Brooks made it thrill like a celestial music through the young manhood of America; and Dwight Ij. Moody has spoken it with vigorous directness in every great city that knows the English tongue. In many things, in ecclesias- tical relation, in theological statement, in dress, in manner, in language, these preachers are unlike. One thing only is the same in all of them, and that is the source of their power. Their central message, the core of their preach- ing, is the piercing, moving, personal gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Sav- iour of mankind. This, in its simplest form ; this, in its clearest expression ; this presenta- tion of a person to persons in order that they may first know, and then love and trust and follow Him — this is pre-eminently the gospel for an age of doubt. The Gospel The adaptation of our central message, thus conceived and thus expressed, to meet the peculiar needs of a time of general scepticism, is the theme of this lecture. I do not say that this is the whole of Christianity. I do not say that when the preacher has delivered this mes- sage in this form he has fulfilled all of his The Gospel of a Person 55 duties. He may have to bear testimon}^ against errors of thought and vices of conduct ; he is certainly bound to give encouragement and guidance to new efforts of virtue and new en- terprises of benevolence in every field. But his first and greatest duty, the discharge of which is to give him influence over doubting hearts and strength for all his other work, is simply to preach Christ. This gospel meets the needs of the present The gospel time because it is the gospel o f a fact. of a fact. Personality is a fact. Indeed we may say that it is the aboriginal fact ; the source of all perception ; the starting-point of all thought ; the informing and moulding principle of all language. " All human observation implies that the mind, the ' I,' is a thing in itself, a fixed point in a world of change, of which world of change its own organs form a part. It is the same, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. It was what it is, when its organs were of a dif- ferent shape and consisted of different matter from their present shape and matter. It will be what it is, when they have gone through other changes." ^ 1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Frater- nity. Quoted by Hutton, Contemporary Thought, I., p. 114. 56 The Grospel of a Person Personality is the foun- dation. This fact of a rational, free, conscious, persist- ent self is the foundation of all sensation and of all reflection ; it is the basis of physics as well as of metaphysics. By contrast it gives us our first notion of matter ; by resistance, our first notion of force ; by operation, our first notion of causality. It is a necessary assumption even in the philosophies of agnosticism, positivism, and materialism. They cannot move a step without it. " They reckon ill who leave me out." To deny personality is to deny the possibility of any kind of knowledge and reduce the uni- verse to a blank. ^ Moreover, it is not only true that the recogni- tion of our own personality lies at the root of perception and reasoning. It is also true that contact with other personalities, conscious, in- telligent, free, and persistent like ourselves, is the gateway through wliich we reach the reality of all external things. To a solitary mind the outward world may be only a dream. But the moment two minds come into contact and com- munication, it becomes at least a permanent possibility of sensation. By comparison and contrast with the sensations and experiences of 1 Alfred -Williams Momorio, Personal ity ^ the Beginning and End of Meto physics (Blackwood, 1889), pp. 23, 132. Tlie Grosjyel of a Person 57 others, we verify our own. If it were not for this the whole universe would dissolve around us like the baseless fabric of a vision. The subtle analysis of modern science, transforming the apparently solid elements into invisible atoms, and these atoms into vortex rings in the impalpable and immeasurable ether, throws us back, more and more, upon personality, sub- jective and objective, as the only thing that remains sure and immutable. —J Persons, then, are the ni(^st real and substan- Persons an tialjobjects of our knowledge. They touch us at more points, they affect us in more ways and with greater intensity, they fit more closely into the faculties and powers of our own being, than anything else in the universe. A pe rson who / has influenced us or our fejiow-men. leaves a \ more profound, positive, permanent, and real impression than any other fact whatsoever. We live as persons in a world of persons, far more truly than we live in a world of phenomena or laws or ideas. Now, in an age that is characterized, as some German writer has said, by " a hunger for facts," the gospel of a person, if it is rightly appre- hended and preached, ought to have peculiar power because it is a factual gospel. We can come to those who are under the benumbing 58 The ao8pel of a Person A jA^T X 0/ V/inst. spell of uniyersal doubt and say : Here is a fact, a personality, real and imperishable. It is not merely a doctrine that was believed in Pales- tine eighteen hundred years ago. It is some one who was born and lived among men. It is not merely a theory of God and the soul and the future life that sprang up in the East in the first century and has strangely spread itself over the world. This religion is historical in every sense of the word, as the actual fulfilment of an ancient hope, and the starting-point of a new life. J^^^g^'g^^j^y, The person of Jesus Cln-ist stands solid in the history of man. He is indeed more substantial, more abiding, in human apprehension, than any form of matter, or any mode of force. The conceptions of earth and air and fire and water change and melt around Him, as the clouds melt and change around an everlasting moun- tain peak. All attempts to resolve Him into a myth, a legend, an idea, — and hundreds of such attempts have been made, — have drifted over the enduring reality of His character and left not a rack behind. The result of all criti- cism, the final verdict of enlightened common- sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a person as men could not ha\'e imagined if tjiey The Crosjjel of a Persoii 59 would, and would not have imagined if they could. He is neither Greek myth, nor Hebrew legend. The artist capable of fashioning Him did not exist, nor could he have found the materials. A non-existent Christianity did not spring out of the air and create a Christ. A real Ch rist appeared in the world and created Christianity. This is "what we mean by the gospel of a fact. II And here we come at once into sight of the The gospel second quality of this gospel which is pecul- iarly fitted to meet the needs of a doubting age. If it be true that a person is a fact, it is no less true that a person is a force. The world moves by i)ersonality. All the great currents of history have flowed from persons. Organi- zation is powerful; but no organization has ever accomplished anything until a. persou has stood at the centre of it and filled it Avitli his thought, with his life. Truth is mighty and must prevail. But it never does prevail actu- ally until it gets itself embodied, incarnated, in a personality. Christianity has an organiza- tion. Christianity has a doctrine. But the force of Christianity, that which made it move 60 The Crospel of a Person and lent it power to move the world, is the Per- son at the heart of it, who gives vitality to the organization and reality to the doctrine. All the abstract trnths of Christianity might have come into the world in anothei; form, — nay, the substance of these truths did actually come into the world, dimly and partially through the fragmentary religions of the nations, more clearly and with increasing, prophetic light through the inspired Scriptures of the He- brews ; but still the world would not stir, still the truth could not make itself felt as a univer- sal force in the life of humanity until "The Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds, In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought."^ I think we must get back, in our conception of Christianity and in our preaching of it, to this primary position. The fount and origin of its power was, and continued to be, and still is, the Person Christ. Christ wa$ This was the secret of His ministry. He Ili.s own TT- ic 1 1 (. TT *"" gospel. Himseli was the central word of His own preaching. He offered Himself to the world as the solution of its difliculties and the source 1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxvi. The Gospel of a Person 61 of a new life. He asked men simply to be- lieve in Him, to love Hiin, tj3 follow Him. He ' called tlie self-righteous to humble themselves to His correction, the sinful to confide in His forgiveness, the doubting to trust His assur- ance, and the believing to accept His guid- : ance into fuller light. ^ To those who became His disciples He gave doctrine and instruction in many things. But to those who were not yet_His disciples, to the world, He offered first of all Himself, not a doctrine, nut a plan of life, but a living Person. This was the sub- stance of His first sermon when He stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth and having read from the Book of Isaiah the prophecy of the Great Liberator, declared unto the people "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."^ This was the attraction of His univer- sal invitation, " Come unto Me^ all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." 2 This was the heart of His sum- mary of His completed work when He said, " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."* 1 Henry Latham, Pastor Pastor uiii (New York, James Pott & Co., 1891), pp. 273-275. 2 St. Luke iv. 16-21. 8 St. Matt. xi. 28. ^ St. John xii. 32. \y 62 The Gospel of a Person We are not considering, at this moment, the tremendous implications of such a personal self-assertion, unparalleled, I believe, in the founder of any other religion. We pass by for the present that famous and inevitable alternative, Aut Chriatus Deus, aut homo non bonus est. The point, now, is simply this. As a matter of history, setting aside all ques- tion of the divine inspiration and authority of the Gospels, taking them merely as a trustworthy report of a certain sequence of events,-^ it is pl;ii]i that the force wiiich started the i-eligion of Jesus was the person Jesus. Christ was His own Christianity. Christ was the core of His own gospel. The life of Read on through the other books of the New tJi6 C^h u Tch flowed from Testament, the Acts and the Epistles, and you Christ. ^yiu see that they are just the record of the , operation of this force in life and literature. It was this that sent the apostles out into the 1 The evidence for the historic trustworthiness of the Gospels may be found summed up in its modern form in Dr. Sahnon's Introduction to the New Testament^ fourth edition (New York, Young & Co., 1889); in Bishop Lightfoot's Es- says on '■'•Supernatural Beligion'''' (Macmillan, 1889); in Beyschlag's New Testament Theology (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clarlc, 1895), pp. 29-31, 216-221 of volume i. ; and in Prof- George P. Fisher's Grounds of Theistic and Christian Be- lief (Scribners, 1883). The Gospel of a Person^ 63 world, reluctantly and hesitatingly at first, then joyfully and triumphantly, like men driven by an irresistible impulse. It was the manifesta- tion of Christ that converted them,^ the love of Christ that constrained them,^ the power of Christ that impelled them.^ He was their certainty* and their strength.^ He was their peace ^ and their liope.'^ For Christ they la- boured and suffered ; ^ in Christ tliey gloried ; ^ for Christ's sake they lived and died.^*^ They felt and they decla,red that the life that was in them was His life.^^ I'hey were confident that they could do all things through Christ which strengthened them.^^ 'j'lig offices of the Church — apostle, bishop, deacon, evangelist, — call them by what names you will — were simply forms of service to Him as jNIaster ; ^^ the doctrines of the Church were simply unfold- ings of what she had received from Him as Teacher ; i* the worship of the Church, as dis • tinguished from that of the Jewish Synagogue and the Heathen Temple, was the adoration of Christ as Lord.^^ Now it was precisely this relation of the 1 Gal. i. 16. 6 Eph. ii. 14. " Gai. ii. 20. 2 2 Cor. V. 14. 7 Col. i. 27. i^ phn. jy. 13. 8 2 Cor. xii. 9. 8 phil. iii. 8-10. is Eph. iv. 8-12. *2Tim. 1. 12. 9 Gal. vi. 14. " 1 Cor. xi. 1, 23 ; xv. .3, 6 2Tim. ii. 1. 10 2 Cor. iv. 5, 11. iM^hil. ii.ll; lCor.xii.3. 64 The Gos2)el of a Person The influ- ence of Christianity came from Christ. The magic of Christ's name. early Churcli, in her organization and doctrine and worship, to the person Christ, hekl fast in her memory as identical with the real Jesus who was born in Bethlehem and crucified on Calvary, conceived in her faith as still living and present with His disciples, — it was this personal animation of the Church by Christ that gave her influence over men. Contrary tq^all human probability, against the prejudice of the Hebrev/s who abhorred the name of a crucified man, against the prejudice of the Greeks and Romans who despised the name of a common Jew, she made her way, not by concealing, but by exalting and glorifying, the name of Jesus Christ. ludfcd, it senilis as if her career of conquest^was actually delayed until that name was taken up and written upon her banners. It was in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians,^ that the missionary enterprise of the Church began, and it was from that centre, with that title, that she went out to her triumph. The name of Christ was magical ; not as a secret and unintelligible incantation, but^as the sign of a real person, known aji d love d. It enlightened and healed and quickened the heart of an age which, like our own, was dark 1 Acts xi. 26 ; xiii. 1-3. The Gospel of a Person 65 and sorrowful and heavy with doubt. It was the charm which drew men to Christianity out of the abstractions of philosophy,^ and the con- fusions of idolatry darkened with a thousand personifications but empty of all true person- ality. The music of that name rang through all the temple of the Church, and to its har- monies her walls were builded. The acknow- ledgment of that name was the mark of Clu'istian discipleship. To confess that " Jesus is the Christ " was the way to enter the Church. The symbolism of that name was the mark of Chris- tian worship. The central rites of the Church were baptism into Christ and communion with Christ. Fidelity to His name was the crown of Christian martyrdom. Unnumbered multi- tudes of men and women and children went down to death because they would not deny the Christ. Whatever the early Church was and did, beyond a doubt her character and her activity were but the resultant of the personal influence that flowed from Jesus Christ.2 When we turn to follow the history;jD| Chris- tianity through the later centuries down to the 1 See Justin Martyr, Dialogue icith Trypho, chap. viii. 2 George B. Steveus, The Pauline Theulogy (New York, Scribners, 1892), pp. 321-323. 66 The Gospel of a Person Thepersonai present time, we see that the same thing is dirist true. The temporal power of the Bishop of continues. Rome doubtless grew out of the union of the Church with the Empire. The immense wealth and secular authority of ecclesiastics may be traced to social and political causes. But the inward, vitalizing, self-propagating power of Christianity as a religion has always come from the person of Jesus who stands at the heart of Christ is it. The attraction of its hymns and psalm s and the charm . . , , , „ , i i i ~ i of Christi- Spiritual songs, the beauty oi its holy days and atiity. solemn ceremonies, were derived from Him who is the central figure in praise and prayer. The renaissance of Christian Art sprang from the desire to picture to the imagination the visible, adorable form and face of Him whom speculative theology had so often concealed or obscured. The penetrating and abiding fra- grance of Christia n lite ratiu-e resides in those books, like The Imitation of Christ, in wliicli the sweetness of His character is embalmed forever. The potency of Christian preaching comes from, and is measured by, tlie clearness of the light which it throws upon the personality of Jesus. Read the roll of those in every age whom the world has acknowledged as the best Christians, kings and warriors and philosophers, martyrs aiid Heroes and la1)0urers in every noble cause, Tlie Gospel of a Person 67 the purest and the highest of mankind, and you will see that the test by which they are judged, the mark by which they are recognized, is likeness and loyalty to the personal Christ. Then turn to the work which the Church is doing to-day in the lowest and darkest fields of human life, among the submerged classes of our great cities, among the sunken races of heathendom, and you canno t deny that the force of that work to enlighten^ and u^liftj stj.U depends upon the simplicity and reality with which it reveals the person of Jesus to the hearts of men. Christianity as a missionary religion would be fatally crippled if you took out of it the familiar story of Jesus and His love. "Mr.,Parwin," says Admiral Sir James SuUi- T'/ie tesd- van, " had often expressed to me his conviction doiibter. that it was utterly useless to send missionaries to such a set of savages as the Fuegians, proba- bly the very lowest of the human race. I had always replied that I did not believe any human beings existed too low to comprehend the sim- ple message of the Gospel of Christ. After many years he wrote to me that the recent account of the mission showed that he had been wrong and I right . . . and he requested me to forward to the Society an enclosed cheoj^ue 68 TJie Gospel of a Person The force which breaks the inertia of unbelief. for <£5, as a testimony of his interest in theii good work." ^ Observe, we are not constructing an argu- ment. We are only tracing a force, — the force tliat flows from the person of Jesus Christ. The more closely, the more powerfully we can feel it in ourselves and in others, the more confi- dently we can come to a doubting age and say : Here is this force, intense, persistent, far- reaching. It has moved all kinds of men, from the highest to the lowest. What do you make of it ? What will you do with it ? Is it not the only thing that can lift and move you out of your doubt ? For scepticism is just the inertia of the soul which stands poised between contrary and mutually destruc- tive theories. From that state of impotence f there is but one deliverance, and that is by force, the force of life embodied in a person. in TJie gospel J^nt tlie force which proceeds from the person spiritual o^ Jcsus is uot mere power, blind and purpose- loorid. less, II; moves always in a certain direction. It has a quality in it which produces certain 1 Alfred Barry, Some Lights of Science on the Faith (London, Longmans, 1892), p. 116. The Gospel of a Person 69 results. And one of these results is an im- mediate and overwhelming sense of the reality and nearness of spiritual things. This is the third point of adaptation in the gospel of the personal Christ to the needs of a sceptical age. It carries with itself an evidence of things not seen, a substance of things hoped for. An aura of wonder and mj^stery surrounded The mystery Jesus of Nazareth in His earthly life. All who came in contact with Him felt it ; in love, if they desired to believe ; in repulsion, if they hated to believe. In Hisjresence, faith in th e i nvisible , in the soul, in the future life, in God, revived and unfolded with new bloom ■^ -I'll, ■■- — and colour. In His presence hypocrisy was silenced and afraid, but sincere piety found a voice and prayed. This effluence of His char- acter breathes from the whole record of His life. It was not merely what He said to men about the eternal verities that convinced them. It was something in Himself, an atmosphere surromiding^Him, and a silent radiance shining from Him, that made it easier for them to lielieye„ilL_ their o\vn spiritual nature, and. in the Divine existence and presence. He drew out of their fallen and neglected hearts, by some celestial attraction, spontaneous, gentle, irresistible, a new efflorescence of faith and 70 The Grospel of a Person hope and love. Where He came a spiritual springtide flowed over the landscape of the inner life. lilossonis appeared in the earth and the time for the singing of birds was come. The effect of Faith was not imposed on doubting hearts ence. "^.Y <^^ external and mechanical process. It grew in the warmth that streamed from Him. It was not merely that men were at their best SlW ^ ^ nP^ ^^^ ^^^^ company, except, indeed, those who ' LS"^'"^ wei'e at their worst through sullen resistance \<}\ and malignant alarm at His power. It was that men were conscious of something fa r bet - ter than their best, a transcendent force, an influence from the immeasurable heights above them. And to withstand it they must sink below themselves, make new falsehoods and new negations to bind them down, grapple themselves more closely to the base, the earthly, the sensual. But if they yielded to that influence, it lifted and moved their thoughts inevitably upward. It was not merely what He told them of His own sight of spiritual things. It was what they saw reflected in His face and form of that loftier, wider outlook. He was like one standing on a ^ . high peak, reporting of the sunrise to men ir^ the dark valley. They heard His words. But they saw also upon His countenance the glow The Gosi?el of a Person 71 of dawn, and dazzling all about Him the incommunicable splendours of a new day. This was tlie effect of the personality of Jesus, as He stood amid the shadows and un- certainties of human life ; an effect strangely overlooked and ignored, often even beclouded and hidden, in much that has been written about Him by theologians and historians. I do not dream that I can put it into words. But I know that it can be felt as a reality in the Gospels. And I turn back to one who saw Him face to face, one who touched His hand and leaned upon His bosom, for the expression of the soul-uplifting, faith -begetting wonder of the person of Christ : The Word loas made flesh ' and dwelt among us, and ive beheld His glory, the glory as of the only -begotten of the Father^ A full of grace and truths Nor has this effect vanislied from the world Theiyiflu- ~ — — . — I- 1 1 Ti r- ence of His With the removal oi tlie bodily presence oi picture. Jesus. It has perpetuated itself by its own vital power, increasing rather than diminish- ing. It still flows from the picture of His life which is preserved in the Gospels, from the image of His character as it is formed in the minds of men. Eliminate, if you please, what is called the miraculous element. Make what 1 St. John i. 14. unique. 72 TJie Gospel of a Person allowance you will for the enthusiasm and unguarded utterance of His disciples. There still remains that enthusiasm itself to be reck- oned with, an enthusiasm which was kindled by Him alone. There still remains the figure Hof the person of Christ, who never can be expressed in terms of matter and force, who never can be explained by natural and histori- ■ ! cal causes, who carries us by His own inherent mystery into the presence of the spiritual, the jdivine, the supernatural. Gh'rist Something of this spiritual light, I will ad- mit, — nay, I will maintain with joyous and firm conviction, — comes from every human personality, even the lowliest, in so far as it refuses to be summed up in terms of sense perception, in so far as it gives evidence, by its affections and hopes and fears, of ele- ments in man that are not of the dust. But in Christ this light is transcendent and unique, because He manifestly surpasses the ordinary attainments of humanity, because He cannot be accounted for by the laws of heredity and environment. The more closely we apply these laws, the more clearly He shines out above them.^ " The learned men of our day," says M. 1 J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, p. 253. The Crospel of a Person 73 Pierre Loti in his latest book, La GalilSe, " have endeavoured to find a human explica- tion of His mission, but they have not yet reached it. . . . Around Him, none the less, there still glows a radiance of beams which cannot be comprehended." ^ Historically He appears alone, as no great Christ V 1 1 £ ■ solitary. man has ever appeared beiore or since. Heroes, teachers, and leaders of men have always been seen as central stars in larger constellations, surrounded by lesser but kin- dred lights. Plato shines in conjunction with Socrates and Aristotle; Csesar with Pompey and Crassus ; Luther with Melanchthon and Cal- vin ; Shakespeare with Beaumont and Fletcher and Ben Jonson ; Napoleon surrounded with his brilliant staff of marshals and diplomats ; Wordsworth among the mild glories of the Lake poets. In every case, if you search the neighbourhood of a great name, you will find not a blank sky, but an encircling galaxy. But Jesus Christ stands in an immense sol- itude. Among the prophets who predicted Him, among the apostles who testified of Him, there is none worthy to be compared or conjoined with Him. It is as if the heavens were swept bare of stars ; and suddenly, un- 1 Pierre Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1895), p. 93. 74 The Gospel of a Person expected, unaccompanied, the light of lights appears alone, in supreme isolation. Nor is there anything in His antecedents, in His surroundings, to explain His appear- ance and radiance. There was nothing in the soil of the sordid and narrow Jewish race to produce such an embodiment of pure and universal love.^ There was nothing in the atmosphere of that corrupt and sensual age to beget or foster such a character of stainless and complete virtue. Nor was His own life, — I say it reverently, — judged by purely hu- man and natural laws, calculated to result in such an evident perfection as all men have wonderingly recognized in Him. The high- lest type of human piety, the excellence of a ; beautiful soul, has never been reached among men without repentance and self-abasement. But Jesus never repented, never abased Him- self in shame and sorrow before God, never asked for pardon and mercy. Alone, among His followers who kneel at His command to confess their unworthiness and implore for- giveness, He stands upright and lifts a cloud- less face to heaven in the inexplicable glory 1 Amory II. Bradford, Hereditij and Christian Problems (New York, Macmillaa, 1895), p. 266. The Gospel of a Person 75 of piety without penitence. Moral perfection ^ of this kind is not only without a parallel ; it is also without an approach. Men have never attained to it, and there is no way for . them to climb thither. We can only look up ! to that perfection, serene, sinless, unsurpassable, and feel that here we are in sight of something which cannot be expressed except by saying , that it is the glory of eternal spirit embodied ^ in a person. IV But the force which resides in the person The gospel of Jesus is not exhausted in the production of this profound impression of its own spirit- ual and transcendent nature. It goes beyond this result of a vivid sense of the reality oT^tHe unseen. It lias in itself a purifying, cleansing power, a delivering, uplifting, sanc- tifying power. The Gospel of Christ is the/ gospel of a person who saves men from sin.' And herein it eomes verv eluse lo the heart of a doubting age. The great and wonderful fact of this expe- rience, which can neither be questioned nor fully explained, is not involved in the theo- logical speculations which have gathered about / 76 The Gosjjel of a Person ( 5/ cross. it. The person of Jesiis stands out clear and simple as a powerful Saviour of sinful men and women. In His presence, the publi- can and the harlot felt their hearts dissolve with I know not what unutterable rapture of forgiveness. At His word, the heavy- laden were mysteriously loosed from the imponderable burden of past transgression. He suffered with sinners, and even while He suffered He delivered them from the sharpest of all pains, — the pain of conscious Tiiepoiver r^jj^j unpardoned evil. He died for sinners, of C^Iivist*s according to His own word ; and ever since, His cross has been the sign of rescue for humanity. Whatever may be the nature of that sublime transaction upon Calvary ; whatever the name by which men call it, — Atonement, Sacrifice, Redemption, Propitia- tion ; whatever relations it may have to the eternal moral law and to the Divine right- eousness, — its relation to the human heart is luminous and beautiful. It does take away sin. Kneeling at that holy altar, the soul at once remembers most vividly, and confesses most humbly, and loses most entirely, all her guilt. A sense of profound, unutterable relief, a sacred quietude, diffuses itself through all the recesses of the troubled spirit. Looking The Gospel of a Person 77 iinto Christ crucified, we receive an assurance of sin forgiven, which goes deeper than tliought can fathom, and far deeper than words can measure. ♦*We may not know, we cannot tell What pains lie had to bear, But we believe it was for us He hung and suffered there. ♦'He died that we might be forgiven, He died to make us good ; That we might go at last to heaven, Saved by His precious blood." This is not theory, this is not philosophy, this is not theology. It is voiita1)lc fact. The person Jesus, living with men, dying for men, has actually brought this gift of pardon for the past and hope for the future, into the heart of mankind. And from pure love of Him — a love which is first of all and most of all a sense of gratitude for this immeasurable service — have blossomed, often out of the very abysses of sin and degradation, the sainllicst and sublimest lives that the world has ever seen. Now this, as I know from my own experience, is the gospel for doubting men, and for an age of doubt ; the gospel of a Person who is a fact 78 The Gospel of a Person and a force, an evidence of tlie unseen, and a Saviour from sin. Can we preach it ? V/ill we preach it ? Tlien one thing is necessary for us, a thing which might not be necessary, perhaps, if our message were of another kind. All knowledge, of the world, of human na- ture, of books, will be helpful and tributary ; all gifts, of clear thought, of powerful speech, of prudent action, will be valuable and should be cultivated ; but one thing will be abso- lutely and forever indispensable. To know If we are to preach Christ we must know Christ the one Christ, and know Him in such a sense that we thing need- can say with St. Paul that we are determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.^ We must study llim in the record of His life until His character is more real and vivid to us than that of brother or friend,. We must i niagin e Him with ardent soul, until His figure glows before our inward sight, and His words sound in our ears as a living voice. We must love with Plis love , and sorrow with His grief, and rejo ice with His joy, and offer o urselves with His sacrifice, so truly, so intensely that we can say, as St. Paul said, that we are crucified by His cross and risen in His resurrection. 2 We must trace the power 1 1 Cor. ii. 2. 2 Qal. ii. 20. ~to tfm^ The. Gospel of a Person 79 of His life i n tlie lu-es of ou r fellow-men, fol- lowing and realizing His triumphs in souls redeemed and sins forgiven, until we know the rapture that thrilled the breast of a St. Bernard, a St. Francis, a Thomas a Kempis, a Samuel Rutherford, a Robert McCheyne ; the chivalrous loyalty that animated a Henry Have- lock, a Charles Kingsley, a Frederick Robert- son, a Charles Gordon ; the deep devotion that strengthened a David Brainerd, a Henry Mar- tyn, a Coleridge Patteson. We must become the brothers of these men through brotherhood with Christ. We must kindle our hearts in communion with Him, by meditation, by prayer, and by service, which is the best kind of prayer. No day must pass in which we do not do something distinctly in Jesus' name, for Jesus' sake. We must go where He would go if He were on earth. We must try to do what He would do if He were still among men. And so, by our failure as well as by our effort,] by the very contrast Ijetween our incomplete- 1 ness and His perfection, the image of our Com- panion and our saving Lord will grow radiant and distinct within us. We shall know that potent attraction which His person has exer- cised upon the hearts of men, and feel in our breast that overmastering sense of loyalty 80 The Gospel of a Person to Him, wliicli alone can draw us to follow Him through life and death. " If Jesus Christ is a man, — And only a man, — I say That of all mankind I cleave to Him, And to Him will I cleave alway. " If Jesus Christ is a God, — And tlie only God, — I swear I will follow Him through heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air."^ 1 Eichard Watson Gilder, " Song of a Heathen, sojourning in Galilee, a.d. 32." Ill THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHER ^ He, who from the Father forth was sent, Came the true Light, light to our hearts to bring; The Word of (4od, — the telling of His thought ; The Light of God, — the making visible ; The far-transcending glory brought In human form with man to dwell ; The dazzling gone — the power not less To show, irrailiate, and bless ; The gathering of the primal rays divine, Informing Chaos to a pure sunshine ! " — George MacDonald. Ill THE UNVEILING OF THE FATHEE In the famous fifteenth chapter of The Be- A sceptic's dine and Fall of the R,'itnan Empire^ the author, ^tf^e^^readof who was but a superficial sceptic though a C'hristian- profound historian, introduces an account of the rise and spread of the Christian Religion. He attributes its remarkable triumph over the established religious of the earth to a series of causes which he ironically describes as sec- ondary, and uniformly treats as primary. He exhibits them as in themselves sufficient to explain the peculiarly favourable reception of the Christian faith in the world, and sets aside the question of a possible divine origin as unnecessary. With serene self-satisfaction he traces the rapid growth of the Christian Church to the five following causes : I. The Zeal of the Christians^ derived from the Jews, — but purified from that narrow and unsocial spirit wliich, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of ]\Ioses. 83 7iess of this view 84 The Unveiling of the Father II. The Doctrine of a Future Life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to tliat important truth. III. The 3Iiraculous Powers ascribed to the primitive Church. IV. The Pure and Austere Morals of the Christians. V. Tlie Union and Piscipline of the Christian Republic, which gradually formed an increasing and in- dependent state in the heart of the Roman empire.^ Theshailoio- Now this is a very fair, we may even say a brilliant, example of the kind of work which was done by the shallow and complacent scep- ticism of a century ago. But the moment we subject it to the more searching analysis of the scepticism of the present age, it dissolves into a thin and incoherent absurdity. For it is evident tliat, so far from giving an explanation of the grov/th of Christianity, Gibbon is simply describing some of the phenomena which ac- companied that growth. What, for example, is " the zeal of the Christians " but an unillu- minating name for a contagious and irresistible enthusiasm which spread through the world in connection with faith in Christ ? Wliat is 1 Edward Gibbon, Esq., A History of the Decline and Fall of the Botuan Empire (London, John Murray, 8tli Edition, 1854), vol. ii., p. 152, Tlie Unveiling of the Father 85 " the union and discipline of the Christian re- public " but a description, without explanation, of the organic unfolding of a new, myste- rious principle of fellowship. These alleged " causes," more closely examined, are in fact the very things that require to be accounted for. Instead of clearing up the mystery, they increase it. By a singular fatality of language, the seep- The"ex- tical historian has embodied in the statement ^^^g^^ ^^ ^^ of his position the demonstration of its insuf- explained. ficiency. In each of his causes, and in the : relation that subsists between them, he has | jDractically suggested a difficulty which de- mands another and a higher solution of the whole problem. Examine his words carefully. By what means, human or divine, was the Questions zeal of the Christians ' purified from the narrow ,„„„^ ^^ and unsocial spirit of tlie Jews ' ? The natural answer. history of sects and schisms teaches us that their invariable tendency is to intensify rather tlian to eliminate bigotry and exclusiveness. Through what influence was the doctrine of a future life 'improved by every additional cir- cumstance that could give it weight and effi- cacy ' ? The inevitable course of its human development under the guidance of abstract philosophy has been towards vagueness, cold- 86 The Unveiling of the Father ness, and uncertainty; under the guidance of concrete superstition, towards puerility and crass sensua,lism. On what grounds were mir- aculous powers ascribed to the early Church ? They must have been ascribed truly or falsely. If truly, there must have been some basis of fact for them to rest upon. If falsely, the Christians themselves were either ignorant, or cognizant, of the falsehood. Take the former supposition, and you present yourself with the inexplicable theory that what Pliny the Younger called superstitio prava immodiea, and imagined would be easily and certainly ex- tirpated, Avas able to hold its own against all the assaults of learning and philosophy. Take the latter supposition, and you are forced to the incredible assumption that a conscious decep- tion was the fountain of highest and strongest moral force that the world has ever felt.^ How then did the " pure and austere morals of the Christians " come into existence ? From a lie, or from a truth? If from a truth, what was the nature of that truth, in what form was it expressed, and how did it win credence ? 1 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship, sect. ii. : "A false man found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot even build a brick house ! If he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay, and what else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish heap." The Unveiling of the Father 87 And, finally, how did " the Christian republic " succeed in maintaining and increasing itself as an independent state in the heart of the Roman empire ? Every other attempt to do this par- ticular thing, by secret philosophic doctrine, or by open political organization, failed, and was violently crushed by imperial power, or silently dissolved and absorbed by imperial statesman- ship. How was it that this one invisible fel- lowship, this one visible organization, lived, and spread, and stood out at last, serene, com- plete, and magnificent, when the time-worn ruins of the empire crumbled around it ? The answer to these questions is found in tlie The answer person of Christ. This is not a matter of choice. *' *^''^'''^'- It is a matter of necessity. For if He was, as all candid observers will admit, the originator and animator of Christianity, then to stop short of Him in our inquiry as to the causes of its existence and progress is to stop half-way, as if one should account for the flow of the Nile, after the fashion of the ancient geographers, by attributing it to the melting of the snows on the Mountains of the Moon, instead of tracing it to its great fountain in the Albert Nyanza. Christ stands above and behind the Church, and all these secondary causes which have been 88 The Unveiling of the Father Christ, the eiiiimeratecl to account for her growth and CTGCltOT of . • Christian-* '' power flow directly from Him. He it was wlio »'y- purified and liumanized the zeal of Christians, !; so that they emerged from the narrowest of races to preach the broadest and most universal of all religions. He it was who cleared and enlarged their view of immortality, so that it became at once important and efficacious, the only doctrine of a future life that has exercised a direct and uplifting influence upon the pres- ent life. He it was who endowed the Church with whatever powers she possessed. He it was who cleansed and ennobled her moral ideals and gave her the only pattern and rule of virtue which has been universally acknowledged as self-consistent, satisfactory, and supreme. He it was who cemented her union and strength- ened her discipline to such an indestructible sol- idarity, that the tie which bound the individual soul to Him was regarded as superior to all earthly relations, and the fellowship which that common tie created, surpassed and survived all fellowships of race, of culture, of nationality. These are simple historical facts. In stating them we make no assumptions and propound no theories. It is not necessary to take any- thing for granted or to adopt any particular theological or philosophical system, in order to The Unveiling of the Father 89 see clearly and beyond the possibility of mis- take that all the force and influence of Chris- tianity in the world have, as a matter of fact, flowed directly from Jesus Christ and from the faith which lie has inspired in the hearts of men. The one question of supreme importance, Who, then, then, if v/e would understand what Christian- ^^ ^^^' . ity really means, is. Who is this person who stands at the centre of it and fills it with life and strength? What did the first Christians see in Him that made them believe in Him so absolutely and implicitly and gave them power to do such mighty works? What has the church seen in Him through the ages that has bound her to Him as her living Lord and j\Ias- ter ? And what are we to see in Him if He is to be in deed and in truth the theme of our gospel? WJiat think ye of Christ? This question, you see, is vital and inevitable. '^^^ *'««^^'- Tc 1 r^i • ,• •, 1 • 1 • 1 table ques- It we are to have a Ciiristianity which is real jj-,,^ and historical, we must get into line with his- tory. If we are to have behind us the power which comes from actual achievements of our gospel in the world, we must understand the relation which it has always held to the person of Christ. If we are to be in any sense the followers of the first Christians, and to share the joy and peace and power of their religion, we 90 Tlie Unveiling of the Father The historic answer. must take tlie view which they took, of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, the object of this lecture may be stated in a single sentence. It is to show that the first Christians saw, and ^hat tfie Church has always seen, in Jesus Christ a real incarnation of Crod ; a true and personal unveiling of the Father ; God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. In other words, not only must we find in Jesus Christ the centre of Christian- ity, but we must also behold an actual divinity as the centre of life in Jesus Christ. Christ's Godhood sloivly re- vealed. We are not to suppose that faith in Christ began with a clear and definite conception of His divinity. On the contrary, it is evident from the whole gospel record that the idea that Christ was divine gradually developed and un- folded in the minds of those who knew and loved and trusted Him. The idea of an incar- nation was foreign to the Hebrew mind. There was no race in the world that held so strongly to the thought tliat God was solitary, unsearch- able, and incommunicable. They believed that even His true name could not be pronounced by human lips, and that it was impossible for The Unveiling of the Father 91 human eyes really to behold His glory. And the very strength of this ancestral faith of theirs, standing as it must have done directly in the way of belief in an incarnation, is an evi- dence of the tremendous power and unquestion- able reality of the experience which forced the disciples, by slow degrees, to believe firmly and unhesitatingly in the divinity of Christ. The process by which this result was accom- The gradual plished lies open to our thought in the New v^'^'^^^^^J ^ '- ^ J'aUh. Testament. We must go back to the point in- dicated in the second lecture. It was the im- pression made upon the disciples by Christ's own manifestation of Himself, His character, His actions, and His words, evidently consistent and unique, which led them at last to see in Him the object of divine faith and worship. He was not a mere man. That was evident and undeniable. He was higher than men ; holier than men ; He possessed an excellence and a power which made them feel in His presence that He was more than they were. What then was He ? There were but two directions in which their faith could move. The alternative was sharply set before the disciples on that memorable day at Ciesarea Philippi, when Christ asked them first, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am ? " and then, " But whom say ye Hiieo/CJuis- tian belief. 92 The Unveiling of the Father that I am ? " There were but tAvo Imes open to them. One was the line of popuLar superstition, which led them back into the past to see in Christ only the ghost of John the Baptist, or Elias, or one of the prophets come to life again. The other was the new line of Christian faith which led them forward to see in Jesus " the Christ, the Son of the living God."^ The nevj Ncw ? Of course it was new ! It had to be new, in order to fit the facts, which were such as had never been seen before. And just be- cause it was so new it had to unfold itself by degrees to the fulness of conscious apprehension of all that it involved. What it It is evident that the disciples did not know the Christ. ^^ ^^'"^^ what was meant by the Christhood, the Messiahship, the fulfilment of all ancient prophecy and sacred ritual in Jesus. But they learned the lesson as they kept company with Him. They heard Him speak with an author- ity which none of the prophets had ever claimed. Recognizing a divine inspiration in the Old Testament Scriptures, He distinctly set Him- self above them as the bringer of a new and better revelation. He accomplished, interpreted, and revised them. " Ye have heard how it hath been said by them of old time " — by whom ? 1 St. Matt. xvi. 13-10. Tlie Unveiling of the Father 93 By the lawgivers and prophets and psalmists whom Christ recognized as His own forerun- ners and foretellers. " But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you." ^ Suppose that this were all ; suppose that the ^ new power to 7*67) GClL Sermon on the Mount were the whole of the ^^^(f^^ New Testament, what should we behold in it ? Not merely the amazing revelation of a morality more pure and perfect than any other the human heart has conceived, proceeding from the lips of an unlearned Nazarene peasant of the first century, but the absolutely overwhelming sight of a believing Hebrew placing Himself above the rule of His own faith, a humble teacher asserting supreme authority over all human conduct, a moral reformer discarding all other foundations, and saying, " Every one that hear- eth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock." 2 Nine and forty times, in the brief and fragmentary record of the dis- courses of Jesus, recurs this solemn phrase with which He authenticates the truth : Verily, I say unto you. And every time that the dis- ciples heard it they must have gotten a new idea of what it meant to be the Christ. ' St. Matt. V. 43, 44. ^ St. Matt. vii. 24. 3^o// e^ SVihK 94 The Unveiling of the Father A new relation to humanity. Think also of the significance which the favourite Messianic title used by Jesus to de- scribe Himself must have had to their minds. He called Himself "the Son of man."^ Why? Was it because He was merely human ? If that Avas all, surely it would not need to be asserted and emphasized again and again. Imagine any other man, the highest and the holiest, insisting upon the reality of his human life, dwelling upon it, repeating the assertion of it over and over. But this title was, in fact, the claim to a peculiar and supreme relation to the human race. Christ was not a son of man, but the Son of man, one who, in the luminous words of Irenoeus, recapitulavit w se ipso longam hominum expositionem.^ And as such He as- sumed on earth and in His prevision of heaven a position which no mere man could rightly take. " The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins."^ "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." ^ "When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy 1 In St. Matthew, 30 times ; in St. Luke, 25 times ; in St. Mark, 14 times. 2 Irenaeus, Adv. Hear., iii. 18. 1 : "He summed up in himself tlie long unfolding of humanity." The Syriac ver- sion of this passage is equally beautiful and significant: " He commenced afresh the long line of men." 3 St. Matt. ix. 6. * St. Mark ii. 28. The Unveiling of the Father 95 angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory ; and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats." ^ Consider what this implied. It was a decla- ^ supreme ,.,■,, -r ,1 T -IT J authority to ration that Jesus expected, and was willing, to juagatue take into His own hands the task of discrimi- world. nating between the good and the bad in the unsearchable confusions and complexities of the human heart, and of determining, without hesitation, without misgiving, without redress, the final destinies of the untold myriads of men ; " an office," it has been well said, " in- volving such spiritual insight, such discern- ment of the thoughts and intents of the heart of each one of the millions at His feet, such awful, unshared supremacy in the moral world, that the imagination recoils in sheer agony from the task of seriously contemplating the assumption of these duties by any created in- telligence." 2 When the disciples heard their Master declare that He would fulfil this office of Judge of the World, they must have begun , to feel what it meant to be the Christ. 1 St. Matt. XXV. 31, 32. 2 H. P. Liddoii, The Divinity of Our Lord (Londou, 1885), p. 176. 96 The Unveiling of the Father What it Nor do I suppose that they realized at first the Son of the full intention of that second phrase in God. which their view of Jesus was expressed. The So7i of the living Gfod, — that also was an idea to be gradually apprehended and unfolded. And think what light must have fallen upon it from the conduct of Jesus as they followed Him from day to day. The more closely they knew Ilim, the more deeply they felt His sin- less purity and sovereign virtue. There was a certainty, an independence, a freedom from all effort and from all restraint in His goodness, such as no other good man has ever shown. He had the deepest knowledge of the evil of sin, yet no shadow or stain of it fell upon His own soul. He was on terms of closest inti- macy — an intimacy such as no saint ever dared to assume — with God. He conversed with the Father in a friendship which was utterly without fear or regret or misgiving. Christ's oion Now wlien the disciples saw this, it must have words. put them upon deep thoughts, and the guidance to these thoughts was given by Christ's own words about Himself. He put Himself side by side with the Divine activity. " My Father worketh hitherto and I work.''^ The Jews who heard Him say this, sought to kill Him, 1 St. John V. 17. The Unveiling of the Father 97 because He had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. And if the Jews thought this, what did His own discijDles think ? He claimed a Divine origin and mission : " I came forth from the Father ; " i " My Father sent me. " ^ He claimed a Divine knowledge and fellowship : " No man knoweth the Father save the Son; "2 "O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee."* He claimed to unveil the Father's being in Himself : " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father in me."^ To what conclusion must such conduct and i The such words as these lead the disciples in their \ conclusion interpretation of the true meaning of the title • " the Son of God " ? A conclusion which Jesus Himself, if He was as wise and good as all men admit, must inevitably have foreseen. A con- clusion which He Himself, if He had been only a holy man, better than His disciples but of the same nature, would certainly have guarded ; against and prevented at any cost. A con- ' elusion which is expressed in the attitude of 1 St. John xvi. 28. 3 st. Matt. xi. 27. 2 St. John xii. 49. * St. John xvii. 25. 6 St. John xiv. 9, 11. H 98 The Unveiling of the Father ^ Thomas, kneeling at the feet of Christ and crying, "My Lord and my God."^ A conclu- sion which is finally and definitively embodied in the action of the apostles going out into the world to disciple all nations, and to baptize 1 them " into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 2 n The disci- There cannot be any question as to the state Tolas b?li€V€(i that Christ ^^ mind which this action implied. It was the toas Divine, deep conviction, not necessarily reasoned out ^'- and formulated, but lying at the very root of '^ \^' conduct, that Jesus Christ the Son was the un- l^p'^^tA* veiling of His Father God, and that the Holy Spirit who came upon the disciples was the Spirit of the Father and the Son. The part which the resurrection played in the clarifying and confirming of this conviction was impor- tant. But we must not misunderstand the meaning of the resurrection. It was not in any sense a new and different revelation of God, imagined or actually received. Whatever the form in which Jesus appeared to the dis- ciples during the forty days that followed His death, He was recognized as the same Jesus ; and the one effect of His appearance was 1 St. John XX. 28. 2 gt. Matt, xxviii. 19. The Unveiling of the Father 99 simply to confirm and deepen the truth of what He had said and done wliile He was with them. And with this confirmation the truth took shape and substance as an active and enduring power in human faitli and life and worship. There is no more room for doubt that the early Christians saw in Christ a personal un- veiling of God, than that the friends and fol- lowers of Abraham Lincoln regarded him as a good and loyal American citizen of the white race. And even if we could find no direct and definite statement of either of these views, the evidence that men held them could be clearly and certainly read in the facts of history. Divine honours were paid to Christ in the The early ^"^^ primitive Church, ihe first common prayer yjorsMpped of the disciples, when they were assembled to Christ. choose an apostle in the place of the traitor Judas, was addressed to Christ.^ The Chris- tians were distinguished both from the Jews and from the heathen as those who called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. ^ The dying martyr Stejghen showed what was meant by this phrase in his prayer, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 3 Saul of Tarsus, when he was con- 1 Acts i. 24. See Alford in loc. 2 Acts ix. 21 ; 1 Cor. i. 2. 8 Acts vii. 59. X ' iQo rpj^^ Unveiling of the Father vinced by that strange experience on the road to Damascus that Jesus was not an impostor, but the Christ, at once addressed Him in prayer, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"^ And Ananias, who received Saul into the Church, asked guidance and direction from the same Lord.^ Peter baptized the multi- tudes on the day of Pentecost in the name of Jesus Christ. 3 John wrote of prayer to the Son of God as a familiar ground of confidence in Christian experience.* The apostolic bene- 1 diction was: "The grace of our Lord Jesus !i Christ, and the love of God, and the communion I of the Holy Ghost be with you all."^ The whole current of adoration and devotion in the New Testament leads up natm-ally and without surprise to the magnificent words of St. Paul, I in which he speaks of " Christ, who is over all, ' God blessed forever."^ It should be frankly recognized that the first Christians assigned a certain subordination to the Son in relation to the Father ; but it must be admitted with equal candour that this sub- ordination was not in any sense a separation, 1 Acts ix. 6. 2 Acts ix. 13. s Acts ii. 38. 4 I John V. 13-15. 6 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 6 Rom. ix. 5. Cf. Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 201, for a succinct statement of the grounds on which this inter* pretatiou of the text is preferreil. The Unveiling of the Father 101 and that it really implied and involved a unity between them which made it possible and nat- ural and inevitable for the disciples to pay an adoration to the Son with the Father, which, if it had been offered to, or claimed by, the great- est and best of the apostles, would have been instantly repudiated by the whole Church as not only absurd but radically blasphemous. It is an easy matter to trace the worship of Christ in the later development of Christianity. There are two sources of evidence : the Chris- tian hymns and liturgies ; the heathen attacks and the apologies which they evoked. The earliest hymns of the Greek Church, the 7%e testi- " Thanksgiving at laraplighting," " Shepherd of /jy„j„5. tender youth," " The Bridegroom cometh," the " Hymn to Christ after Silence," celebrate the praise of the Lord Jesus. Syi'iac poetry, through its great poet, Ephrem Syrus, takes up the same strain of adoration to the Son of God, and its undying music may still be heard among the mountains of Armenia where the unspeakable Turk is exterminating a whole race for loyalty to the name of Christ. Latin hymnody, from its earliest origin in translations from the Greek like the Gloria in Exeelsis and the Te Deum, through its splendid unfolding in the poetry of Hilary of Poictiers, Ambrose of JMilan, and 102 The Unveiling of the Father Gregory the Great, to its sweet culmination in the two Bernards, him of Clairvaux and him of Cluny, repeats the same burden : " O Jesus, Thou the glory art Of angel worlds above ; Thy name is music to my heart, Enchanting it with love." In every land and language, in German, in French, in English, the most precious and potent melodies of the Church are fragrant with the name of Christ. The testi- The early liturgies bear the same testimony early litur- ^^ ^^^® pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus in the gies. doxologies and supplications of Christian faith. The Apostolical Constitutions,^ the liturgy of St. Janies,^ the liturgy of St. Mark,^ the liturgy of St. Adseus and St. Maris,* unquestionably preserve the spirit of the early Christian wor- ship; and they all are witnesses to the fact that the Christians prayed directly to Christ. In- deed, it lies upon the very surface of history that the growth of Christianity, as manifested 1 Apost. Const., Book VIII., chap. vii. 2 The Divine Liturgy of St. James, iii. : " Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, Word of God," etc. 3 The Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, v., xxii., etc. * Liturgy of the Blessed Apostles, composed by St. Adoeus and St. Maris, xiv. The Unveiling of the Father 103 in a spreading worship, was not simply the in- crease of those who were willing to adore God on the authority of Christ. It was distinctly and essentially the diffusion of an inward force which impelled men to blend the name of Christ with the name of God in their prayers, and to worship the Son with the Father. The beauti- ful Prayer of St. Chrjsostom, which closes the Litany and the Morning and Evening Prayers of the Protestant Episcopal Church, is addressed to Christ, " who dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in Thy name. Thou wilt grant their requests." ^ There is not in the world to-day a single great liturgy, Greek, Roman, Armenian, French, German, Scotch, or English, which does not contain ascriptions of divine glory, and petitions for divine grace, addressed to Jesus Christ. Heathen writer^ of very early date assure us The testi- that this was the practice of Christians from heathen. the beginning. The younger Pliny reported to the Emperor Trajan that the people called Christians were accustomed to assemble before daybreak and "sing a hymn of praise respon- sively to Christ, as it were to God."^ In the 1 St. Matt, xviii. 20. 2 A.D. 112. See the chapter on "Pliny's Report and Trajan's Rescript " in Ramsay, The Church in the Boman Empire (New York, Putnam, 1893), pp. 196 ff. 104 The Unveiling of the Father public trials that followed there was never anj denial of this statement. It was admitted alike by those who apostatized under the pressure of persecution and by those who remained faithful to the name of Christ. The Emperor Hadrian wrote to Servian that of the population of Alex- andria "some worshipped Serapis, and others Christ." Lucian, the pagan satirist, says in his biography of Peregrinus Proteus : " The Christians are still worshipping that great man who was crucified in Palestine."^ Christians In all the apologies for the Christian religion worshipping which were put forth during the persecutions Christ. under Hadrian, and his successors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, there was no at- tempt to refute the universal charge that the Christians worshipped Christ. ^ As if to con- firm this evidence by one of those indications which are all the more significant because they are so slight and so clearly unpremeditated, 1 there still exists a rude caricature, scratched ; by some careless hand upon the walls of the 1 Lueiani Samosatensis Opera. (Ed. Leipsic, 1829), Tomus iv., p. 173. 2 The First Apology of Justin Martyr., chap. xiii. : " Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ ; and that we reason- ably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove." X The Unveiling of the Father 105 Palatine Palace in Rome not later than the beginning of the third century, representing a human figure with an ass's head hanging upon a cross, while a man stands before it in the attitude of worship. Underneath is this ill- spelled inscription, — " Alexamenos adore his God." * Thus t he songs and prayers of believers, the accusations of persecutors, the sneers of seep tics, and the coarse jests of mockers all join in proving beyond a doubt that the primitive Christians paid divine honour to the Lord Jesus. I do not see how any man can be in touch with Christianity as a living form of worship in the world, unless he knows the reality and appreciates the force of this un- questionable fact. in Nor will it be possible to understand the Christ nmi (X 7X€X0 intellectual and moral teachings of the Chris- theology. tian religion, as they are recorded in the New Testament, unless we put ourselves at the focal point from which, as a matter of history, these teachings were first conceived and then un- 1 Das Spott-Crucifix der Edmischen Kaiser Paliiste, Fer- dinand Becker (Gera, 1876). Das Spott-Crucifix vom Pala- tini Franz Xaver Kraus (Freiburg, 1872). 106 The Unveiling of the Father folded. Tins point was the vision of an un- veiling of the being and mind of God in Christ. It was not merely that Jesus said certain things about God which men had not known, or had forgotten. It was that they saw in the coniiiig of Clirist a personal revela- tion of the Divine Being. And this revelation touched and transformed every possible sphere of thought and feeling in regard to the prob- lems of religion. The personality of God was made distinct and luminous, not only by the recognition of an eternal Fatherhood in His nature, but by the light of the knowledge of His glory shining in the face of a person.^ The righteousness of God was disclosed in a new aspect by the thought that He had sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin to condemn sin in the flesh.^ The good- ness of God was confirmed and made sufficient for all possible human needs by the conviction that He who spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, would also with Him freely give us all things.^ The saving will and power of God were apprehended through the vision of Him in Christ reconcil- ing the world to Himself.* The everlasting 1 2 Cor. iv. 6. 2 Rom. viii. 3. 8 Roui. viii. 32. * 2 Cor. v. 19. The Unveiling of the Father 107 and inseparable love of God became the sure ground of hope only when it was seen em- bodied in Christ Jesus our Lord.^ The true meaning of filial obedience to God and of union with God was interpreted in the light of conformity to the image of His Son.- And the immense significance of immortality was comprehended in the possession of a life hid with Christ in God.^ Now the window through which men caught (^od was sight of these truths was, and could have been, cuHst^^^ nothing else than faith in a real incarnation of God in Christ. The personal, moral, sym- pathetic view of God which distinguished the early Church was seen only through that open- ing.* She saw the Divine Being beaming with a new radiance, she saw the wide landscape of human duty and destiny illuminated and trans- \ figured, she saw a new heaven and a new earth, when she saw in Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily. And it was in the 1 Kom. viii. 39, 2 Rom. viii. 29. ^ Col. iii. 3. * First Epistle of St. Clement, chap, xxxvi. : "By Him we look up to the heights of heaven. By Him we behold, as iu a glass, His immaculate and most excellent visage. By Him are the eyes of our heart opened. By Him our foolish and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards the light." Bp. Lightfoot's Edition. (Macmlllan, 1890.) 108 The Unveiling of the Father strength and enthusiasm of this vision, that she concentrated all her moral and intellectual en- ergies on the one point of keeping that window open, and maintaining against direct assault and secret dissolution the real and personal Deity of Christ. IV Christian I am careful to put the statement in this grew around ^ o^m bccausc I belicve that it alone corresponds the Deity of with the facts, and because it is only by get- \Il7*ZSt ting our minds into this position that we can hope to understand the course, the meaning, and the force of Christian doctrine. The early Christians looked at God through Christ : they did not look at Christ through a preconceived idea and a logical definition of God. The true development of theology, to put the matter plainly, was not abstract, it was personal and practical. The doctrine of the Trinity came into being to meet an imperious neces* sity. That necessity was the defence of the actual worship of Christ, the actual trust in Christ as the Unveiler of the Father, which already existed at the heart of Christianity. It was recognized instinctively that the loss of this trust, the silencing of this worship, The Unveiling of the Father 109 meant the death of Christianity by heart-fail- ure. Every speculation which threatened this result, every theory of human nature or of divine nature which seemed to separate the personality of Christ from the personality of God, was regarded by the Church as dangerous and hostile. Every attempted statement of theological dogma which appeared to obscure or to imperil the reality and the eternal valid- ity of the unveiling of the Father in the Son, was resented, and a counter statement of theo- logical dogma was framed to meet it. This \ was the intellectual conflict of Christianity in | the first centuries : a struggle for life centring 1 about the actual Deity of Christ. As we trace the progress of this conflict, The conflict Willi hcvcsy its vital importance emerges more and more clearly. Often, I suppose, we cannot help feel- ing a sense of sympathy with the earnest pur- pose and the personal character of those men who were called heretics. Often we are con- scious of a certain distrust for the meta- physical and exegetical arguments, and of a grave repugnance for the physical and politi- cal methods, which were used by the orthodox to enforce their definitions. Athanasius was not an altogether lovely person. Some of the early Church Councils were almost as disor- 110 The Unveiling of the Father The Palla- dium of Christian- ity. derly and reckless as some of the regiments that have fouglit in various wars to defend the cause of human liberty and justice. But the question is not one of the manner of defence or attack. It is a question of the reality and significance of the cause attacked and defended. And here we see that Athanasius with all his faults was on the right side, and Arius with all his virtues was on the wrong side. Through all the con- fusion of metaphysical dispute about the exact meaning of substance and subsistence, nature and personality, ideal existence and real exist- ence, — terms which, as I conceive them, must change their significance as the methods of human philosophy change, and must always represent imperfectly a mystery which is for us unsearchable and indefinable, — through all I this confusion one fact shines out clear and dis- tinct. The unveiling of the Father in Christ was, and continued to be, and still is, the Palladium of Christianity. All who have sur- rendered it, for whatever reason, have been dispersed and scattered. All who have de- fended it, in whatever method, have been held fast in the unity of the faith and of the know- ledge of the Son of God.^ 1 Eph. iv. 13. The Unveiling of the Father 111 Tliis point of view must condition the atti- The doc- tilde of our minds towards the doctrine of the VriluyM^n. Trinity. No Christian man can be hostile or structedto indifferent to it when he remembers its history. ^^^^^/^ ^^^ It may have been too much elaborated by minds G'^nst. over-curious in metaphysical distinctions. It may have been put in a position of undue pre- eminence by theologians whose energies were all absorbed in its construction and in the con- templation of the work of their own reason in the service of Christianity. But in spite of all excesses and errors, it stands as an enduring monument of the loyalty of the faith to its cen- tral conviction. In all its forms, from the sharply tri-personal Trinity of Atlianasius, to the essentially tri-modal Trinity of Augustine, the great service which it has rendered is not abstract nor philosophical. It is practical. It has protected the conviction that the real nature of God is revealed in Christ ; it has jus- tified the consciousness that the Spirit of Christ, animating the Christian life, is the Spirit of God ; it has preserved the sense of real com- munion with God in Christ which is the nerve of Christian worship. And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is not the gospel, nor is it the foundation of the gospel. It cannot be preached as a saving message to the 112 The UHveiling of the Father Tiie. doc- soiils of men, except in that form in wliich we find ?me o. e ^^ ^^ Phillips Brooks' noble Sermon for Trinity subordinate Sunday, and Dr. George A. Gordon's powerful vel ^ ^^^' discourse on The Trinity the Ground of Humanity. It is the effort to apprehend a relation of the Being of God to the conscious experience of man ; a truth exhibited in the course of revela- tion and recognized in its mysterious unfolding both before and after all efforts to symbolize it in theological language ; in brief, it is the reaching out of the human mind, conscious of its limitations and conditions, towards a vision and worship of the Father in the Son through the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the Palladium. It is the defence. I will con- fess that in its broad outlines it seems to me necessary and satisfactory. I will confess that no other answer to the profound questions which inevitably arise out of the contact be- tween the idea of God, and the experience of real life in all its manifoldness, appears to me half so reasonable or complete as that which asserts that " the various fundamental forms of society on the earth, the essential relationships of humanity, have their Archetype, their Eter- nal Pattern and Causal Source, in the nature of the Infinite." 1 I will confess that the form of 1 Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 101. The Unveiling of the Father 113 this answer which contemplates the existence of these eternal relationships in the Divine natnre as most clearly and positively personal, is more conclusive to my mind than any other. But if other men think otherwise on this point, we are not therefore divided from each other, or from the Christian faith. The question is one of metaphysics. It is not a question of re- ligion. All modes of defining the Trinity as a doctrine must be kept subordinate to the pur- pose for which it exists. All attempts to ex- press it are valuable only in so far as they help us to keep in view the unveiling of the Divine nature which centres in Him who was mani- fested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory.i Now wherein is a message like this, the gos- The gospel pel of a personal unveiling of God in the per- if,'^'^^,^,^ son of Christ, adapted to the needs of the adapted to r, this age. present age r 1. It seems to me first of all that the course of modern thought has prepared the way for it by destroying the a priori objections to the In- 1 1 Tim. iii. 16, 114 The Unveilmg of the Father Philosophy has cleared the 10 ay for it. X carnation. Shallow agnosticism makes two as- sumptions which are contradictory. It assumes that man is unable to attain to the knowledsre of God ; and tliat it is impossible for God to reveal Himself to man. But if we cannot know Him, hoAv can we know that He cannot reveal Himself? This would be in effect the most intimate kind of knowledge. To take it for granted that an Incarnation of God is im- possible or incredible is to profess a most per- fect and exclusive understanding of the Divine nature. "At one time," says Mr. Romanes, " it seemed to me impossible that any proposi- tion, verbally intelligible as such, could be more violently absurd than that of the Incarna- tion. Now I see that this standpoint is wholly irrational. ... ' But the Incarnation is op- posed to common sense.' No doubt: utterly so ; but so it ought to be if true. Common sense is merely a rough register of common experience. But the Incarnation, if it ever took place, whatever else it may have been, was not a common event. 'But it is deroga- tory to God to become man.' How do you know? Besides, Christ was not an ordinary man. Both negative criticism and the positive effects of His life prove this ; while if we for a moment adopt the Christian point of view for The Unveiling of the Father 115 the sake of argument, the whole raison d'etre of mankind is bound up in Him. Lastly, there are considerations per contra^ rendering an In- carnation antecedently probable." ^ 2. Now these considerations to which Ro- manes alludes are not foreign to the intellect- ual atmosphere of our age ; they are native to it ; they are in fact the offspring of the times, born of tlie spirit which now leads the best thoughts of men. The whole doctrine of development, as it is Evolution conceived by the deepest and clearest minds, ^^"^^Lg ■( looks forward to the discovery of an Incarna- tion which shall be at once the crown and the completion of the process of natural evolution. If nature is an orderly and progressive mani- festation of an Unseen Power ; if each succes- sive step in this manifestation realizes and exhibits something higher and more perfect, to which all that has gone before has pointed, and in which the potentialities of all previous developments are not only summed up, but raised to a new power ; if the mechanical struct- ure of inorganic substances contains a proph- ecy'^(only to be interpreted after the event) of organic life, and organic life is a basis for in- stinct and the elementary processes of intellect, 1 Tfioughts on Beligion, p. 186. 116 The UnveiUng of the Father and the rude forms of thought and feeling in the lower animals foreshadow the unfolding of reflective reason and moral consciousness in man, — then surely this reflective reason and this moral consciousness, in themselves con- fessedly imperfect, must be only the founda- tion for a fuller and more perfect manifestation of that Unseen Power out of whose depths all preceding manifestations have come forth. . And if the universal verdict of human science I and philosophy is correct in assuming that the ; lower must precede the higher, and that or- j ganic life is above inorganic life, and that rea- son is above instinct, and that virtue is above automatic action, then it is to be expected that the complete manifestation of that Unseen j Power which makes for Reason and Righteous- ness will neither be omitted nor intruded before its thne. It cannot come too soon, without vi- olating the order of evolution. It cannot fail to come, without destroying the significance of evolution. Personality Rut in what form can it come except in one revelation, wliich at once sums up all that has gone before it, and advances to a new level ? If the ilni- verse contains an unveiling of the might, and wisdom, and reasonableness, and righteousness, I of its Primal Cause, then certainly it must con- The Unveiling of the Father 117 tain at last an unveiling of His personality. This is the only thing that remains to be added. This is the only thing that embraces all the rest and raises it to a new power. The highest category known to our minds is that of self-conscious life. Without the conception of a personal God, man's view of the universe must remain forever incomplete, incoherent, and unreasonable. Without the revelation of a personal God, the process of evolution as the unfolding of the real secret of the universe must remain unfinished and futile. Philosophy as well as religion pushes us forward to this conclusion. Personality is the ultimate reality. Personality must be the final revelation. But a person can be unveiled only in a personal form. Therefore all the presumptions of rea- son are in favour of an Incarnation of the Deity, not outside of nature, but in nature, to consummate and crown that visible evolution whereby the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. And all the processes of intelligence are satisfied, and rest and repose in the conviction that the Word, which was in the beginning with God and which was God and by whom all things were made, finally became flesh and dwelt among us, revealing His glory, the glory y 118 The Unveiling of the Father as of the only -begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth .^ TJie gospel 3. Moreover, this view of Christ is adapted 7/ r? ation ^^ ^^^^ present age because it is historically con- i.s histori- sistcut. We havc seen that it underlies the llstent"^' ^^^'y existence and growth of the Christian Church. The testimony of eighteen centuries i to the impossibility of explaining the person- 1 ality of Christ on humanitarian gi"Ounds_j.s_in^ \ itself an evidence of His divinity. Lincoln was right when he said : " You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can- not fool all of the people all of the time." A thousand attempts to account for the life of Christ without admitting His divinity have been made. Not one of them has succeeded in winning the assent and approbation of any great mass of men for any great length of time. They have hardly survived the lives of those who have invented them. Each new naturalistic theory of Christ has discredited and demolished its predecessors. And if any one of them is alive and finds credence to-day, it is only because it is the latest, and it is but ^ See Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894), "Christ is not the prod; uct of evolution, but the producer," pp7'240-242. The Unveiling of the Father 119 waiting for its successor (as the theory of Socinus waited for the theory of Strauss, and tlie theory of Strauss for the theory of Renan) to be its judge and destroyer. INIeantime historic Christianity, which be- 2"/ie imprr;/- holds God incarnate in Christ, stands as a rock ^o/Ch'-is^. around which the tides of opinion ebb and flow, tianihj. The Church has changed in some things, but not in this. It has modified, enlarged, dimin- ished, or abandoned some articles of faith, but not this. If it b e an error, it is such an error as the world has never seen anywhere else; for it has not only stood firm through the fiercest and most persistent storm of criticism that has ever been directed against any human opinion, but it has also been the foundation of the strongest and saintliest lives that humanity has ever known. If it be a truth, it must be for every Christian preacher the central truth. For it is certain that this age of ours, with its ruthless critical spirit, with its keen histori- cal sense, will never respect the intelligence, \ though it may acknowledge tlie good inten- tions, of a man who professes to speak in the name of Christianity without proclaiming, as the core of his message, the Divine Christ. 4. And this gospel meets the need of our times because it is the satisfaction of humanity. \ 120 The Uiiveiling of the Father The inmr- ]\Iore Urgent and painful even than the ques- sftiLii's the tions of tlie intellect in regard to the being and human nature of God, are the misgivings of the heart in regard to His relations to us. If He is that remote and inaccessible Sovereign " Who sees Vv'ith equal eyes, as Lord of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall," what possible answer can we find in Him to the longings and desires of our souls for a Divine love ? what possible support can we find in Him for our struggles against outward temptation and indwelling evil ? what possible sympathy can we find in Him for our hopes and aspirations and upward strivings, out of the quicksands of heredity and environment, towards liberty and light ? The religion of the Incarnation is the only one that brings us near to Him, assures us of our kinship with Him, and of His infinite, practical, helpful love for us. This faith alone bridges the chasm that divides the eternal self -existent Spirit from our finite, despondent, earthbound souls. This faith alone gives us any knowledge of the things that we most need to know about Him. Deism is like a message written in an inscruta- ble hieroglyph whicli conveys no clear meaning to the mind. Theism is like a message which is intelligible to the intellect, but unsatisfac- The Unveiling of the Father 121 tory to the heart, because it has no personal address and no signature. Christianity is a per- sonal message, signed by the hand of a Father, and conveyed to us by the hand of the Son. The comparison is imperfect. It falls far Christ is short of the truth. In Christianity the mes- ^^ senger is the message. The love which sent and the love which delivered it are the same. Christ is Immanuel, God with us. The gospel of the Incarnation does not profess to remove all intellectual perplexities in regard to the existence of God and our own souls. It pro- fesses simply to establish such a conscious re- lation between our souls and God that our ethical needs shall be satisfied at once ; and thus it shall be infinitely easier, either to dis- solve, or to endure, our intellectual perplexi- ties. This relation is possible only in Christ. And it is possible in Him only when we receive Him as the unveiling of the Father. This re- quires an act of faith. But it is a faith which is simpler in its form, more natural in its method, and more profound in its spiritual re- sults than any other. For in the last analysis it is just an act of personal confidence in a person. And this does not demand perfect knowledge, but absolute trust. 122 TJie Unveiling of the Father The Deity of To imagine that we can adapt our preaching Christ is the , ,■,. £ i \ i^ v^ i • t strength of *^ *^^^ ^S^ °^ cioubt by weakening, concealing, our gospel, or abandoning the truth of the Deity of Christ is to mistake the great need of our times. It is to seek to commend our gospel by taking away from it the chief thing that men really want, — an assurance of sympathy and kinship with God. " One of the great marks of the youth of to-day," says Ernest Lavisse, — "I speak of thinking youth, — is a longing for the Divine."^ This longing is to be met not by slighting, but by emphasizing, not by clouding, but by clarifying, not by withdrawing, but by advancing, the true Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us take up the words of the ancient creed : " We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, oydy-hegotten of the Father, that is of the substance of the Father, Grod of God, Light of Light, very God of God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father: by Whom all things were made which are in heaven and earth: Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down, and was incarnate, and was made man, and suffered, and rose the third day, and ascended into the heavens, and shall come to judge the quick and the dead/^^ 1 Ernest Lavisse, La Oeneration de 1890. 2 Symbolum Nicsenum, The Creeds of Christendom, Vol. ii. (Harpers, 1882). IV THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD ** Behold Him now 'where He comes ! Not the Christ of our subtle creeA-i, But the light of our hearts, of our homes, Of our hope3, our prayer--, our needs ; The brother of want and blame, Tlie lover of women and men, With a love that puts to shame All passions of mortal ken. • «••«• ** Ah no, thou life of the heart, Never shalt thou depart I Not till the leaven of Go^l Shall lighten each human clod; Not till the world shall climb To thy height serene, sublime, Shall the Christ who enters our door Pass to return no more." — RxcHARO \Vat-o.v Oilokr, STA* Pfjusilftij of Christ. rv THE HUMAN LIFE OF GOD Nearly fifty years ago, Horace Bushnell, ^ff^cat • 1 r 1 • • 1 • truth in the most mystical oi logicians, or the most logi- eclipse. cal of mystics, delivered before Yale University a magnificent discourse upon The Diviniti/ of Christ. In that fine work of genius, wrought out of darkness and light, mystery and clear- ness, like an intricate carving of ebony and gold, I find these words: "Christ is in such a sense God, or God manifested, tliat the un- known term of His nature, that which we are most in doubt of, and about which we are least 1 capable of any positive affirmation, is the i human." ^ This sentence, it seems to me, is not of light, but of darkness. It does not represent that illuminating and harmonious kind of truth which comes directly from the divine revelation of Christ. It belongs rather to that obscured 1 Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (New York, Scribners, 1887), p. 123. 126 126 The Suman Life of Q-od Theology has lost sight of Christ's humaniti/. i and discordant manner of presenting truth which is the consequence of studying it too much at second-hand and too little at first- hand, too much in the speculations and reason- ings of men and too little in the facts of life wherein it was first manifested. Whatever may be said of this sentence as a statement of the result of dogmatic theology, — and in this sense I, for one, do not question its accuracy, — when we consider its plain meaning as an expression of Christian experience and faith, one thing is clear : It is utterly out of touch with the experience and faith of the first dis- ciples. It is in sharp and striking discord with the consciousness of the primitive Church. For if there is anything in regard to which the New Testament makes positive and undoubting affirmation, it is the complete, genuine, and veritable humanity of Christ. If there is any fact which stands out luminous and distinct in the experience of the early Christians, it is that tliey saw in Christ, not merely a myste- rious manifestation of the Divine in a form cal- culated to beget new doubts, and under con- ditions which must remain inscrutable and incomprehensible, but something utterly differ- ent. They saw the mystery reduced to terms of simplicity, the revelation levelled to the The Human Life of Crod 127 direct apprehension of man, the unveiling of the Father under conditions which were so familiar that they dissolved doubts and diffi- culties. They saw in Christ the human life I of God. • The object of this lecture is, first, to trace How shall very briefly the way in which this view of J'^J^^^^.^^^l Christ has been beclouded so that His human- ity has appeared doubtful and less capable of positive affirmation ; second, to show how the primitive view of His 23erson and life may be, and in the history of Christian faith often has been, recovered and restored to its pristine brilliancy and beauty ; and third, to try to express, though but imperfectly, the meaning and importance of this view for the present age. Definition is dangerous. Necessary it may Obscuration be ; useful it undoubtedly is ; but our recogni- ^•'*^""" "* tion of these qualities ought not to make us forget or deny the peril which the process cer- tainly involves. And this is the nature of the dansrer : the definition has an inherent ten- dency to substitute itself for the thing defined. The terms in which a fact is expressed creep into the place of the fact itself. The reality is 128 The Human Life of God An illustra- tion from the history of Art. removed insensibly to a remote distance behind the verbal symbols which represent it. The way of access to it is blocked, and its influ- ence is restricted by the forms of expression invented to define it. I do not know where we can find a more vivid illustration of this process than that which is given, in many ways, in the history of art. The first effort of the artist is to represent something that he has seen or imagined. Out of this effort and the work which it produces, grow certain methods and habits of representing landscape and architecture and the human figure. Out of these habits grow rules and formulas, not only for the hand but also for the eye. On tliese formulas schools are founded. In these schools the example of masters comes to have an authority which overshadows and limits the vision of facts as well as the repre- sentation of them. The Japanese artists, of certain schools, actually reproduce that infan- tile condition of sight in which all things appear flat, in a single plane, without perspec- tive. The Giotteschi of Italy carried their disregard of anatomy to such a point that joints and articulations vanished from the human figure. The Human Life of Grod 129 Now this same process of limitation by for- Representa- mulas may be observed, on the ideal side, in chHst the course of religious art. The first pictures of Christ, traced in colour upon the walls of the Catacombs, or carved in stone upon the sar- cophagi of the Christian dead, do not give us indeed the very earliest conception of Him ; for the Christian art of the first two centuries, if it ever existed, has long since perished. But that! s/" which remains, dating from the third and fourth | centuries, bears witness to an idea of the Christ! which was simple and natural and humane.* He appears as a figure of youthful beauty and > graciousness ; the good Shepherd bearing a lamb upon His shoulders ; the true Orpheus - drawing all creatures and souls by the charm , of His amiable music. ^ These are only sym- bolic representations, yet they evidence a con- ception of Him which was still in touch with the facts. A little later we find an effort to conceive and depict Him with more realism. His face appears in pictures which resemble the description given in the spurious Epistle of L entul us : " A man of dignified presence, with dark hair parted in the middle and flowing down, after the custom of the Naza- 1 So in the paintings from the Catacombs of S. Agnesa and >S'. Callisto. 130 TJte Human Life of God renes, over botli slioulders ; His brow clear and pure ; His unfurrowed face of pleasant aspect and medium complexion ; His mouth and nose faultless ; His sliort, light beard parted in the middle ; His eyes bright and lustrous."^ Tradition But when we pass on to the creations of so- CUristian called Byzantine art, we find ourselves face to •^'■'- , face with an utterly different view of the Christ. I His countenance now stares out in glittering ^ ^ , j mosaic from the walls of great churches, huge, Qlj^' I dark, threatening, a dreadful and forbidding ttace. The fixed and formal lines are repeated and deepened by artist after artist. Every feat- ure of naturalness is obliterated ; every feature that seemed to express awfulness is exagger- ated and emphasized. The wide-set eyes, the long narrow countenance, the stern, inflexible mouth, — in this ocular definition the man Christ Jesus has vanished, and we see only the immense, immutable, and terri])le Pantokrator, who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 2 When we turn to the intellectual life of the Church out of which this type of art grew, we 1 This is the imcujo Chrisli whicli wc sec in the painting from the Catacomb of S. Ponziano. '^ This type was shown in the mosaic in the Cliurch of !-t. I'aul outside the walls, near Home, laiely destroyed by lire. The Human Life of God 131 see there the process explained. The early Dogmas Greek Fathers, like Irenseus, went directly to ^^g^, ^y the Holy Scriptures for their view of the per- Chnst. son of Christ, and frankly accepted all the features of the living, lovely portrait there dis- closed. They recognized without reserve the reality of Christ's human growth in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men ; the actual limitations of Christ's human knowledge as expressed in the questions that He asked and in His profession of ignorance in regard to the time of His second advent ; the intimacy of His sympathy with us in temptation, suffering, and death. But jvitlLthe development of theological definition this direct view of Christ was modified, obscured, and at last totally eclipsed. Instead of Tookmg^FGbd through His revelation in Christ, the Fathers began to look at Christ through a more and more abstract, precise, and inflexible statement of the metaphysical idea of God. It became necessary to harmonize the Scripture record of the life of Jesus with the theories of the divine nature set forth in the decrees of councils and defined with amazing particularity in the writings of theologians. In the effort to accomplish this, two main lines of thought were followed. One line abandoned the belief in 132 TJie Human Life of God The hiding Christ's real and complete humanity, and re- of Jesus. duced His human life to a tenuous and filmy a]3parition. The other line distinguished be- tween His humanity and His Divinity in such a way as to divide Him into two halves, either of which appears virtually complete without the other, and both of which are united, not in a single and sincere personality, but in an out- ward manifestation and a concealed life, cover- ing in some mysterious way a double centre of existence. It is only fair to say that the ex- treme results of these two lines of thought were condemned by the Church in the heresies of I Doketism and Apollinarianism, Eutychianism and Nestorianism. But it is equally fair to say that the influence of these theories was by no means checked nor extirpated. They continued to make themselves felt powerfully and perni- ciously ; now in tlie direction of dissolving the humanity of Christ into a mere cloud enveloping His Deity ; and again in the direction of dividing and destroying the unity of His person in the definitions of His dual nature. Bendiiig the It is not neccssary, nor would it be possible, de/iniUons. ^^^ ^^^ ^^ trace this process in detail through all its complexities and self-contradictions. It will be enough to give two or three specimens The Human Life of God 133 of the kind of work to which it led in dealing with two essential features of the picture of Christ which is given to us in the Gospels : His human limitation of knowledge, and His human growth in wisdom, stature, and grace. Both limitation and growth are unexempt conditions of manhood. Both are unquestionably attrib- uted to Christ in the New Testament. Both are explicitly denied by theologians. Ephrem Syrus, commenting upon the Diatessaron of Tatian, says : " Christ, though He knew the moment of His advent, yet that they might not ask Him any more about it, said, I know it not."'^ Chrysostom, in his explanation of St. Matthew xxiv. 36, paraphrases Christ's words in this extraordinary fashion : " For if thou seek after the day and the hour thou slialt not hear them of me, saith He ; but if of times and preludes, I will tell thee all exactly. For that indeed I am not ignorant of it, I have shown by many things, — I lead thee to the very vestibule ; and if 1 do not open unto thee the doors, this also I do for your good."^ John of Damascus, defending the orthodox faith, declares that, 1 Evang. Concordant. Expos. (Aucher and Moesinger, Venice, 1876), p. 16. 2 St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Ixxvii. 2. The Nicene Fathers (New York, Christian Litera- ture Co., 1888), vol. X. 134 The Huma7i Life of God "Christ is said to advance in wisdom and stature and grace, because He grows in fact in stature, and through His growth in stature brings out into exhibition the wisdom which already existed in Him. . . . But those who say that He really grew in wisdom and grace as receiving increase in these, deny that the flesh was united to the word from the first moment of its existence." 1 Peter Lombard does not explicitly adopt, but quotes with evident ap- proval, the opinion that the person of the eter- nal Word put on a human body and soul as a robe, in order that He might appear suitably to the eyes of mortals, yet in Himself He was not changed by this incarnation, but remained one and the same, immutable.^ A very full and clear exhibition of the dark- ness and unreality in which the patristic and mediaeval theologians involved the person of Christ may be found in Professor A. B. Bruce's great book on TJie Humiliation of Christ,^ and in Canon Charles Gore's two admirable vol- umes on The Incarnation,^ from which I liave 1 John Damascene, De Fide Orthod., Lib. iii. chap. xxii. 2 Peter Lombard, Sentt., Book iii., Dist. vi. § 6. 3 Prof. Alexander Balmain Bruce, The Humiliation oj Christ (New York, Arm.strongs, 1887). * Canon Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the So)i of God, Bampton Lectures, 1891 (New York, Scribners, 1891). Dis- The Human Life of Grod 135 taken some illustrations after verifying them. Professor Bruce sums up the matter bj saying : " The effect, though not the design, of theories of Christ's person has been to a large extent to obscure some of these elementary truths, — the unity of the person, or the reality of the humanity, or the divinity dwelling within the man, or the voluntariness and ethical value of the state of the humiliation. That is, certain- ties have been sacrificed for uncertainties, facts for hypotheses, faith for speculation. " ^ Canon Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, ^'''^e "^«'i- hood of adroitly uses the Jesuit theologian De Lugo as jesus van- a man of straw through whom he may safely ^^^'®*' and vigorously attack the false conceptions of Christ's person which are still current, and to a considerable degree dominant, in dogmatic the- ology. He says that De Lugo depicts a Christ " who, if He was, as far as His body is con- cerned, in a condition of growth, was, as re- gards His soul and intellect, from the first moment and throughout His life in full enjoy- ment of the beatific vision. Externally a way- farer, a viator, inwardly He was throughout a compreJiensor, He had already attained. . . . It is denied that He can be strictly called sertations on Subjects connected loith the Incarnation (New York, Scribners, 1895). i The Humiliation of Christ, p. 192. 136 The Human Life of Grod ' the servant of God ' even as man, in spite of the direct use of that expression in the Acts of the Apostles. He is spoken of at the institution of the Eucharist as offering sacrifice to His own Godhead."! Modern ex- Canon Gore condemns this picture by De 'false clris- I^igo as in striking contradiction to that which tology. the New Testament presents. But the point which I wish to make clear and distinct, is that, in spite of this contradiction, the picture has not been frankly and finally discarded in Chris- tian theology. It still exercises an obscuring and perverting influence upon the vision of Christ. It still produces, by imitation, repre- sentations of Him in which definitions dominate facts, and formulas hide or obliterate realities. We do not need to go back to the seventeenth century, nor abroad to tlie Jesuits, for our ex- amples. We may turn to Archdeacon Wilber- force's book on The Incarnation^ and find him representing the body of Christ as miraculous in its freedom from sickness, its power over animals, its exemption from the necessity of death, and its inherent power of communicat- ing life to others.''^ In regard to the mind of 1 The Incarnation, p. 1.64. 2 Archdeacon Wilberforce, The Doctrine of the Incarna- tion (New York, Young, 1885), pp. GO-65. The Human Life of Crod 137 Christ, he says that " smce it would be impious to suppose that our Lord had pretended an ignorance which He did not experience, we are led to the conclusion [astonishing conclu- sion !] that what He partook, as man, was not actual ignorance, but such deficiency in the means of arriving at truth as belongs to mankind."^ We may turn to the Dogmatic Theology of Dr. W. G. T. Shedd and read: ' ' Jesus Christ as a theanthropic person was -^ double ,■ , , -\ e T- i T 1 conscious' constituted oi a divine nature and a human ,jg^^ nature. The divine nature had its own form of experience, like the mind in an ordinary human person ; and the liuman nature had its own form of experience, like the body in a com- mon man. The experiences of the divine nature were as diverse from those of the human nature as those of the human mind are from those of the human body. Yet there was but one per- son who was the subject-ego of both of these experiences. At the very time when Christ was conscious of weariness and thirst by the well of Samaria, He also was conscious that He was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, the second person in the Trinity. This is proved by His words to the Samaritan woman : ' Who- soever drinketh of the water that I shall give 1 Ibid, p. 71. 138 The Human Life of God liim shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. I that speak unto thee am the Messiah. ' The first-mentioned consciousness of fatigue and thirst came through the human nature in His person ; the second- mentioned consciousness of omnipotence and supremacy came through the divine nature in His person. H He had not had a human nature, He could not have had the former consciousness; and if He had not had a divine nature. He could not have had the latter. Because He had both natures in one person, He could have both."^ We may turn to Canon Liddon's magnificent work on The Divinity of our Lord and find him His man- writing: : " Christ's Manhood is not of Itself an ^vlltwe individual being ; It is not a seat and centre of personality ; It has no conceivable existence apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word in becoming Incarnate called It into being and made It His Own. It is a vesture which He has folded around His person ; It is an instrument through which He places Himself in contact with men and whereby He acts upon humanity."^ 1 W. G. T. Shecld, Dor/matic Theology (New York, Scrib- ners, 1888), vol. ii., pp. 807, .'508. 2 II. P. Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord and Saviotir Jesus Christ, IJainptou Lectures, 18G0 (London, Rivingtons, 1 Ah edition, 1885), p. 2G2. The Human Life of Grod 139 And so, if we accept this picture of Christ, The human Chri lost. the manhood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows dim and shadowy. It wavers like a veiL It dissolves like mist. It descends again mys- terious and impenetrable, illusory and imper- sonal, to envelop Him whom we love and adore in its strange and unfamiliar folds. We grope after Him, but we can touch nothing but the hem of His mystic robe. We long for Him, but He approaches us, and comes into contact with us, only through an instrument. He is not what He seems. The Son of God behind that veil is beyond our reach. The Son of man, whom human eyes beheld and human hands touched, is not the real, living, veritable Saviour, but only the form, the garment, of an inscrutable life. And if, in our dire confusion, our reasoning faith still succeeds in holding fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding faith is maimed and robbed by the loss of that true, near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, who was born of a woman, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He is gone from us, as certainly as if the Pharisees had spoken truth when they said that His dis- ciples came by night and stole Him away. The thing of which we are most in doubt, and about which we are least capable of any positive 140 The Human Life of God affirmation, as Dr. Bushnell said, is the human- ity of Christ. AVe are left with a perfectly orthodox doctrine of two natures, but we no longer have a clear and simple gospel of One Person to preach to doubting men. n The cry of But the heart of Christendom has never a human rested contcnt with this distant, vague, uncer- Saviour. tain view of the real manhood of our Lord. There has always been a protest against it. There has always been an effort to escape from it. The loor- We cau scc a strange and indirect but Virgin indubitable evidence of this deep inward dis- Mary. satisfaction, in the rise and growth of an im- passioned devotion to the human mother of Jesus. The worship of the Virgin Mary was a reprisal for the obscuration of the humanity of her Son. In the thought of her true womanly tenderness and affection, her real and unquestionable sorrows, her simple and familiar joys, her intimate, genuine, unfailing sympathy witli all that makes our mortal life a bitter, blessed reality to us, the souls of the lowly and the lonely found that peace and consolation The Human Life of God 141 which they could no longer find in the con- teniplation of the distant Second Person of the Trinity through the telescope of theology. That which Jesus Himself was to John and Peter, to the household of Bethany, to the \ penitent publican, and to the woman which \ was a sinner, Mary became to the baffled and ,- confused faith of a later age, — an approachable ' mediator of the divine mercy, a helper who could really understand and feel the need of those who cried for help, a warm and living image of the Eternal Sympathy in flesh and blood. In the light of mediaeval dogmatics Mariolatry appears not without its justifica- tion. And for my part, I should not wish to be bound to the Christology of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, witliout finding the com- pensation which their followers found in per- sonal devotion and confidential trust, flowing instinctively and irresistibly towards the blessed Virgin. But, after all, this was only a sul)stitute for The search , 11. T ' — "i" • 1 1 • e after Jesm the real thing. It gave to laith the image oi a lovely and adorable humanity in closest union with God ; but it did not give back tlie old vision of the human life of God. And so through all the ages we see men turning, now in solitary thought, now in great companies, to 142 The Human Life of God seek that vision. The renaissance of Christian art, with its beautiful pictures of the infancy of Jesus, with its piercing and pathetic representa- tions of the sufferings of Jesus, bears witness to the eagerness of that search. The revivals of Christian life, seen in such diverse yet cog- nate forms as the rise of the " Poor Men of Lyons" and the foundation of the "Brother- hood of St. Francis " are evidences of the same movement back to Christ. Peter Waldo outside of the Church, and Francis of Assisi within the Church, were awakened by the same vision of Jesus, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," and were inspired by the same desire to make His real human life tlie pattern of all piety The spirit and the example of all goodness. The Refor- mation, which was at once and equally an intel- lectual and a spiritual protest against the arro- gance of current theology and the coldness of religious life, supplies no better watchword to express its great motive than the saying of Erasmus : " I could wish that those frigid subt- leties either were completely cut off, or were not the only things that the theologians held as certain, and that the Christ pure and simple might he implanted deep within the minds of men.""^ 1 Erasmus, quoted in Gore, Dissertations, etc., p. 180, Epistle 207. of the Refor- mation The Human Life of God 143 Modern Biblical scholarship, with its splendid apparatus of linguistic and historical learning, proceeding in part, at first, from a sceptical im- pulse, has developed in our generation, either through the conversion of sceptics in the process of research, or through the awakening of be- lievers to the necessities of their faith, into a reverent and eager quest for the historic Christ, the Jesus of the Gospels, the Lord of tlie primi- tive Church, that we may see Him as the first Christians saw Him, in the integrity of His per- son and the sincerity of His life, and receive from "Back to X Christ '" ' \ Him what they received, — a faith that dissolved ' ^ doubts and an inspiration that conquered diffi- culties. Back to the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, — back to the facts that lie behind the definitions, back to the Person who embodies the truth, back to the record and reflection of that which the apostles "heard, and saw with their eyes, and looked upon, and their hands handled of the word of life," — this, and this only, is the way that leads us within sight of " the heaven-drawn picture Of Christ, the living Word.** Now it is a marvellous thing, and one for which we can never be grateful enough, that 144 The Human Life of God The Bible gives ics a Kinsman- Redeemer. The Christ of the Gospels. \W^ when we come to the New Testament in this spirit, we find in it exactly what we need ; not an abstract formula, not a collection of definitions, but the graphic reflection of a Person seen from a fourfold point of view, and the simple record of manifold human experience under the direct and dominant influence of that Person. And the one fact that emerges clear and tri- umphant from the reflection and the record, is that the writers of the New Testament never were in doubt of the human nature of Christ and never hesitated to make the most positive affirmations in regard to it. The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind, heart of our heart. He is in subjection to His parents as a child. He grows to man- hood. His character is unfolded and perfected by discipline. He labours for daily bread, and prays for Divine grace. He hungers, and thirsts, and sleeps, and rejoices, and weeps. He is anointed with the Spirit for His minis- try. He is tempted. He is lonely and dis- appointed. He asks for information. He confesses ignorance. He interprets the facts of nature and life with a prophetic insight. But He makes no new disclosure of the secrets of omniscience. There is no liint nor indica- The Human Life of Grod 145 tion that He is leading a double life, reigning consciously as God wliile He is suffering appar- ently as man. His personality is simple and indivisible. The glory of what He is and does, lies not only in its perfection, but in the hard conditions of its accomplishment. Superhuman \ -■, YArt* in His origin, as the only -begotten Son of God ; Ti^M^ superhuman in His ofifice and work, as the re- vealer of the Father and the redeemer of man- kind ; in His earthly existence the Christ of the Gospels enters without reserve and without de- ception into all the conditions and limitations which are necessary to give to the world, once and forever, the human life of God. When we turn to the Epistles to see how ^^« Chria this view of Christ was affected by the recog- Epistles. nition of His divine glory and power as one who had been raised to the right hand of God and made head over all things to the Church, two things strike us with tremendous force. First, t he id entity of His person was not lost, nor the continuity of His being broken : the exalted Christ is none other than "this same Jesus." ^ Second, the reality and absoluteness of His humiliation are emphasized as the ground . and cause of His exaltation. How vividly these two things come out, for 1 Acts i. 11- vieto. 146 The Human Life of Grod St. Paul's example, in the writings of St. Paul. It has been well said that " the Christ whom Paul had seen was the risen Christ, and the conception of Him in His glorified character is the one which rules his thoughts and forms the start- ing-point of his teaching." ^ Corresponding to this present glory, Paul assumes an eternally pre-existent glory of Christ as the image of the invisible God, the medium and end of crea- tion.2 Now it is of this Person, divinely glori- ous in the past as the One who is before all things and in whom all things consist,^ divinely glorious in the present as the One who is far above every name that is named, not only in this world but in that which is to come,* — it is of this Person that Paul writes, in words so strong that they touch the very border of . the impossible : " For our sakes, ffe beggared Himself that we through His beggary might |be enriched."^ And again: "He, existing in the form of God, did not consider an equal state with God a thing to be selfishly grasped and held, but emptied Himself and took the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of man."^ These powerful expressions, "self- 1 Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 206. 2 Col. i. 16. 3 Col. i. 17. < Eph. i. 21. fi 2 Cor. Tiii. 9. « PhU. ii. 6, 7. The Human Life of G-od 147 beggary," "self-emptying," seem to be directly designed to break up the conventional moulds in which dogmatic theology has attempted to cast the truth and let it harden. They bring back a vital warmth and motion into the facts of the Incarnation. Once more it glows and flows. Once more we see that it is not a mere exhibition of being but a process of becoming. The idea of self-beggary mightily overflows the mere statement that a human nature was added and united to the divine nature ; for that would have been no impoverishment but an enrichment. The idea of self -emptying The shatters the narrow dogma tliat the Son of God suffered no change in Himself when He became man. It was a change so absolute, so immense, that it can only be compared with the vicissitude from fidness to emptiness. He laid aside the existence-form of God, in order that He might take the existence-form of man. Whatever right He had to an equal state of glory with God, that right He did not cling to, but surrendered, in order that He might become a servant. And upon this real self- emptying there followed a real self-humilia- tion, wherein, being found in fashion as a man, He became obedient unto death, even the death 148 The Human Life of God of the cross. ^ It was on account of this, — • and by " this " we must understand the entire actual operation of the self-den^dng, self-hum- bling, self-sacrificing mind of Christ, — it was for this reason, St. Paul declares, that " God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name."^ And I know not how to interpret such language with any reality of intelligence, unless it means that the present glory of the Son of God is in some true sense the result of His having become man and so fulfilled the will of God. .^^..,^~~--^-^— The Episfie This view, whicli St. Paul condenses into a toZlVod. single pregnant "wherefore," is expanded in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The object of this Epistle is to show the superiority of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, which are substantial and enduring, to the priesthood and sacrifice of the old dispensation, which were shadowy and transient. But the method which the writer follows is not to deny, but to assert the verity of Christ's humanity. Without this He could not be the true priest nor offer the true sacrifice. " In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren. "^ " For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched 1 Phil. ii. 8. 2 Phil. ii. 9. » Heb. ii. 17. The Human Life of Crod 149 with the feeling of our infirmities : but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." 1 " Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered, and being made perfect. He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him."^ This complete incarnation, this thor- The glory ouffh trial under human conditions, this perfect "-^ ^^" ^" o ' ^ scension. discipline of obedience through suffering, was a humiliation. But it was in no sense a degrada- tion. On the contrary, it was a crowning of Christ with glory and honour in order that He might taste death for every man. " For it be- came Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." ^ If the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches anything, it certainly teaches this. The humanity of Jesus was not I the veiling but the unveiling of the divine I glory. The limitations, temptations, and suffer- f ings of manhood were the conditions under which alone Christ could accomplish the great- est work of the Deity, — the redemption of a sinful race. The seat of the divine revelation and the centre of the divine atonement was and is the human life of God. 1 Heb. iv. 15. 2 Heb. v. 8, 9. ^ Heb. ii. 9, 10. 150 The Human Life of God ni A summary of conclu^ sions. Current theology at fault. ITuman theorirs not to he insisted upon. Here, then, we may pause for a moment and try to sum up the conclusions to which the New Testament leads us in regard to the person of Christ. I am sincerely anxious not to be misunder- stood. On the one hand, I would not conceal for a moment my conviction that current theol- ogy has failed, very often and very largely, to do justice to the meaning of the Incarnation on the human side, and that we 7nust go back to the image of Jesus Christ as it is reflected in the Gospels to purify, and refresh, and simplify our faith. We should not suffer any reverence for ancient definitions of doctrine, however well founded, nor any fear of incurring reproach and mistrust as innovators, to deter us from that necessary and loyal return to the reality of tlie Person in whom our creed centres and on whom it rests. To find Jesus anew, to see Him again, as if for the first time, in the wondrous glory of His humility, is the secret of the revival of Christianity in every age. This is not innova- tion ; it is renovation. On the other hand, we have no right and we ought to have no inclination to insist exclusively upon any particular theory as the only possible The Human Life of God 151 explanation of the facts of the Incarnation. Every earnest and thoughtful man must feel that these facts are so deep and mysterious that the plummet of human reason cannot sound their ultimate recesses. With all our thinking upon this subject, there must ever mingle a con- sciousness of insufficiency and a confession of ignorance. But with this confession of igno- rance there must go also a clear recognition of those portions of the truth which are unques- tionably revealed in the New Testament. Three things are there made plain to faith. 1. God is so closely related to man, and the ^^^^ vital likeness of God in man is so real, that the Di- vine Logos is able to descend by a free act of self-determining love into the lower estate of human existence, and humble Himself to the conditions of manhood without losing His per- sonal identity. 2. The essence of the Gospel is its declara- tion of the fact that this act of condescension, of self-humiliation, actually has been performed, and that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who has taken upon Him the existence-form of a servant, and lived a truly human life, and been obedient even unto death, in order to re- veal to the world the saving love of God. 152 The Human Life of God 3. The distinctive attributes of personality in Christ (self-consciousness and self-deter- mination) are not dual, as of two persons, the one divine and the other human, co-exist- ing side by side in a double life, but individual, and manifested as the life of one person. That person is the Son of God, who laid aside the glory which He had with the Father, and emp- tied Himself, and so became the Son of man ; and on account of this humiliation God hath highly exalted Him and crowned Him with glory and honour as the God-man forever. 7%ese points These are the points which are vital to the defended reality of the Gospel of the Incarnation. All theories which make these points clear, safe- guard the truth in its integrity and in its rec- onciling power. The question of the method of the divine humiliation and the human exal- tation of Christ, lies beyond these points. It is not necessary to insist upon an}' particular form of its solution. Indeed, it may well be that the profundity of the question, the inher- ent mystery of the facts of life and personality with which it deals, and the limitations of liuman thought and language, preclude the possibility of a complete and final answer at present. It must l)e frankly acknowledged that none of the solutions which have been pro- The Human Life of God 153 pounded hitherto are free from serious perplex- ities. But it must be recognized with equal frankness that the theories which have been put forward in modern times, with new earnest- ness and power, by men of unquestionable loy- alty to the Christianity of the New Testament, who have sought to find a clear and positive meaning for the great word Kenosis, which St. Paul uses to describe the self-emptying of Christ in the Incarnation, — theories which have been stigmatized as kenotic, as if the name were enough to mark them as unorthodox, — are so far from being heretical that they have the rare merit of conserving and emphasizing a truth of surpassing value, undoubtedly taught in the Bible, and too much neglected, if not practically denied, during many centuries of theological speculation. It may be, as Julius Miiller held, that the distinctive attributes of Various . T T . T . 1 methods of personality are, abstractl}^ considered, identical safe-guard- in God and man, so that, by the divine self- "'S' them. limitation in the Incarnation, they are actually unified, like two circles which have a common centre.^ It may be, as Dr. Fairbairn holds, that the Son of God, being the eternal repre- 1 For this statement of MuUer's view, which he gave in his lectures, I am indebted to Dr. George P. Fisher, who was one of his hearers. 154 The Human Life of God sentative of the filial relationship within the Godhead, the symbol of the created within the uncreated, needed but to surrender the form and status of the uncreated Son in order to assume, by the same act, the form and status which man as the created Son was intended to realize. 1 It may be, as Godet holds, that the Incarnation was by deprivation, and that the Eternal Word renounced His divine mode of being, and entered into life, without omnisci- ence, omnipresence, or omnipotence, as an un- conscious babe. 2 It matters little in what form of words we try to express the transcendent truth. But it matters much, it is supremely important for the integrity of our Gospel and for its influence upon the heart of this doubting age, that we should hold fast to the fact that the life of Jesus of Nazareth is simply and sincerely the human life of God. The new The time is at hand when this simple and Christ profound view of Christ, which beholds in Him the God-man in whom Deity is self-limited and humbled in order that humanity may be divinely exalted and perfected, must break through the clouds which have obscured it, and become the leading light of religion and theol- 1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 476. 2 Godet, Commentary on John i. 14. The Human Life of Crod 155 ogy. The life of Christ needs to be restudied and rewritten under this luminous guidance, in absolute and unhesitating loyalty to the facts as they lie before our eyes in the Gospels. ^ The doctrine of Christ's person needs to be recon- structed and restated in this light. It must include, as the creed of Chalcedon included, not only the truth of a Homoousia — a sameness of nature and experience — with God, which the past has vindicated ; but also the equal truth of a Homoousia with man, which the fut- ure is to unfold as the universality of Christ's manhood is exhibited through His progressive triumphs among all the races of men and all the modes of human life. The humanity of the incarnate Christ must stand out as clear, as pos- 1 " No action of our Saviour's earthly life, from Bethlehem to Calvary, exhibits divinity. He appears first as a helpless babe in the manger. He is subject to His parents. As the child grows, He waxes strong in spirit and increases in wis- dom. Such an increase in wisdom implies increase in know- ledge, and less knowledge or greater ignorance to-day tlian to-morrow. Omniscience could not have been exercised by the Jesus who was growing in wisdom. If any say here, as we usually do, that the humanity grew but the divinity was omniscient, let us ask if there were two persons in Jesus. This Nestorianism is practically the creed of the present day with the Reformed Churches. They have gone over to a virtual duplication of the person of Christ." — Howard Crosby, The True Humanity of Christ (New York, Ran- dolph, 1880). 156 The Human Life of Crod itive, as indubituble, as His Deity. Nay, more, it must stand where the New Testament puts it, in the foreground of faith. For it is only in this humanity that we can truly find the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. Tiieold How urgent and pressing are the needs of d-ifinitions i . tt inadequate, o^^i' o^^'^^ ^^^ whicli call US to this work! How far behind us, how effete and inadequate, are the terms and illustrations which were used in former ages to express the results of human thought in regard to the person of Christ ! Recall, for instance, that fine similitude of the heated sword which the Lutheran theologians borrowed from the Fathers to explain the union of tlie divine with the human in Christ! To them it was satisfactory because they re- garded heat as one substance and iron as another substance. In their view the divine nature penetrated and pervaded the human nature as the caloric fluid was supposed to j)er- meate a mass of metal. But in our world the caloric fluid does not exist. Heat is not a sub- stance, but a mode of motion in substances. In the light of modern science the old simili- tude fades into a meaningless comparison of things which cannot be compared. We cannot accept the scholastic terminology of " natures " and '• subsistences " in the final The Human Life of God 157 and absolute sense in which it was once em- ployed. The philosophy of realism, which ascribed an objective existence to universals apart from individuals, is not the philosophy of to-day. Its language is not only foreign, but dead. The philosophy of being and not-being has opened to receive the philosophy of becom- ing ; and, in so doing, it has been utterly trans- formed. Life is now the regnant idea ; personality its Life is the utmost expression. It is in the facts of life, ^^g^^"" its secret potencies, its mysterious limitations in germ and seed, its magnificent unfoldings in the process of development that we must seek our comparisons for the Incarnation. And the very search will bring us face to face with the conviction that life in all its manifestations transcends analysis without ceasing to be the object of knowledge. In the living world the boundaries of imagi- ^^^ ^■'^°"' . life but can- nation are not coterminous with the limits oi ,jof define it. apprehension. We know many facts and forms of life whose modes of becoming we cannot imagine. It is just as impossible for us to conceive how the life of the oak, root and trunk and branch and leaf, form and colour and massive strength, is all folded in the tiny, \ colourless, unshaped seed, as it is to conceive j 158 The Human Life of God how the life of God is embodied in the man Christ Jesus. But the difficulty of conceiving the manner of this infolding, this embodiment, does not destroy for us the reality of the life. Indeed, if we could explain it entirely, if we could trace it perfectly as in a diagram, if we could observe it completely, as in one of those beautiful models of flowers which a skilful artist^ has recently made to illustrate his lect- ures on botany, we should know that it was not life, but only a picture of it. The j)icture is useful, but it is not vital. The metaphor has its value, but it falls far short of the truth. Self-heggary and self-emptying are but "words thrown out towards " an unimaginable but not unreasonable manifestation of the Divine Love as life. The reality to which they point us is the Son of God descending to live under all the conditions and limitations of energy and consciousness which are proper to the Son of man : the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, like unto His brethren in all things. IV The import- j^ would be hard to overestimate the signifi- ance of tlds c ^ • >• ^ view for the caucc of tliis vicw lor the present age, and the present age. importance of setting it forth as a living truth 1 William Hamilton Gibson, The Human Life of Grod 159 in the language of to-day. It is the only view which gives us any ground of reality for our faith in the kinship of man with God. If the Son of God, who is the image of the Father, by laying aside the outward prerogatives of His divine mode of existence, actually becomes human, then, and only then, the divine image in which man was created is no mere figure of speech, but a substantial likeness of spiritual being. There is a true fellowship between our souls and our Father in heaven. Virtue is not a vain dream, but a definite striving towards His perfection. Revelation is not a deception, but a message from Him who knows all to those who know only a part. Prayer is not an empty form, but a real communion. " Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spiiit can meet : Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."i This view of the spiritual relation of man to TJie kiriship God cannot possibly have any foundation in q^^^ fact, deep enough and strong enough to with- stand the sweeping floods of scepticism, unless it builds upon the rock of a veritable Incarna- tion. The discoveries of modern science, en- larging enormously our conceptions of the JTeiinyson, The Higher Pantheism. IGO The Hutnan Life of Cfod /physical universe, have not only put man (as jwe said in the first lecture) in a position to I receive a larger and loftier vision of the glory I of God, but they have made such a vision in- dispensable. And they have emphasized, with overwhelming force, the form in which that vision must come in order to meet our needs and strengthen faith for its immense task. If we are not to be utterly belittled and crushed by the contemplation of the vast mass of matter and the tremendous lAaj of force by which we are surrounded ; if we are still to hold that the vital is greater than the mechanical, the moral than the material, the spiritual than the physi- cal ; if we are to maintain the old position of all noble and self-revering thought, that "man is greater than the universe," — there is nothing that can so profoundly confirm and establish us, there is nothing that can so surely protect and save us from " the distorting influences of our own discoveries," as the revelation of the Supreme Being in an unmistakably vital, moral, ' spiritual, and human form. The true Such a rcvclation at once rectifies, purifies, and elevates our view of God Himself. For if the Son of God can surrender omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence without destroy- ing His personal identit}^ then the central The Human Life of God 161 essence of the Deity is neither infinite wisdom nor infinite power, but perfect holiness and perfect goodness. And so from the very lowest valley of humiliation we catch clear sight of the very loftiest summit of theology, the serene and shining truth that God is Love. In the light of this truth we behold also the The supreme highest perfection of man and the path which loveJ^ leads to it. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and the supreme pattern of love is the example of Christ. And whether we look at it from the divine side as the supreme self-sacrifice of God, or from the human side as the complete obedience of man, everything dej)ends upon the genuineness and sincerity of this example. Un- less the Son of God truly became man, the In- carnation cannot be, as Bishop Westcott calls it, "a revelation of human duties." What strength could we draw from His victory over temptation if He was not exposed as we are to the assaults of evil ? What consolation could we draw from His patience if He was not a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ? " Jesus Christ," says one of the greatest of French theologians, "is not the Son of God hidden in the Son of man retaining all the attributes of Divinity in a latent state. This 162 The Human Life of God would be to admit an irreducible duality which would make the unity of His person vanish and withdraw Him from the normal conditions of human life. His obedience would become illusory, and His example would be without application to our race. No, when the Word became flesh. He humbled Himself, He put off His glory, being rich He made Himself poor, and became as one of us, only without sin, that IHe might pass through the moral conflict with all the risks of freedom." ^ When we see Him thus, we know what it means to follow Him and to be like Him. r/ie value of Finally, the whole value oj the Atonement, the atone- . . „. . ,, *■"'•"-• ''■"~". " "" " fncnt. 11^ its reconcilmg influence on the heart oi man, in its exhibition of the heart of God, depends upon the actuality of the Incarnation. If He who died on Calvary was a mere theophany, like the angel of Jehovah who appeared To Abraham, then His death was merely a dfa^ matic spectacle. The body of Jesus was broken, God suffers but God was not touched. But if the Father wit an for ^^^^y spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, then the Father also suf- fered by sympathy, making an invisible sacri- fice, an infinite surrender of love for our sakes. 1 De Pressens^, Jesus-Christ (Paris, 1865), Book I., chap. v., p. 254. The Human Life of God 163 Then the Son also suffered, making a visible sacrifice, and pouring out His soul unto death j '/^ to redeem us from the fear of death and the ' power of sin. And this becomes real to our faith and potent upon our souls only when we j see the human life of God, agonizing in the garden, tortured in the judgment-hall, and ex- piring upon the cross. Then we can say " Oh Love Divine ! that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear." Then we can look up to a God who is not im- passible, as the speculations of men have falsely represented Him, but passible, and therefore full of infinite capacities of pure sorrow and saving sympathy. Then the dumb and sullen resentment which rises in noble minds at the ,1 T . p TT • • 1 • 1 ji • Doubts dis- thought 01 a Universe m which there is so solve in the much helpless pain and hopeless grief, created tiwught of by an immovable Being who has never felt ^^fj^y^ and can never feel either pain or grief, — that sense of moral repulsion from the idea of an unsuffering and unsympathetic Creator which is, and always has been, the deepest, darkest spring of doubt, fades away, and we behold a God who became human in order that He might bear, though innocent and undeserving, all our pains and all our griefs. 164 Tiie Human Life of God Ifthe"^'"^ Thus the men who believe in the human life human of (lod cau staud before the doubting age, as David stood before the disillusioned, downcast, despondent Hebrew king, in Robert Browning's splendid poem of " Saul." The word, sought in vain among the glories of nature, among the joj's of human intercourse, the word of faith and hope and love and life, comes to us, leaps upon us, flashes through us. " See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall through. Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — know- ing which, I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now I Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou — so wilt Thou ! So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown — And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath, Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death ! As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being be- loved 1 He who did most, sliall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. The Human Life of God 165 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, that I seek In the Godhead I I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee I See the Christ stand I " THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN " But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time. But Tliee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labour writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, — What ifov yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumour, tattled by an enemy. Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ ? " — Sidney Lanier, The Crystal. THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Preach Christ, is the apostolic watchword The new that rings to-day, with all the force and charm ^^^^^ of a new commandment, througli the heart of a Church, which has felt, more deeply than it has yet confessed, the age-pervading chill of a winter of doubt and discontent. The very entrance of that mystic and reviving word has already brought a glow of enthusiasm into the Qliristiajijife, and caused new blossoms of hope and love, manifold and beautiful activities of help and healing, to appear in the earth. It seems as if some fresh and secret tide of vital- ity were flowing through the veins of Christen- dom, and breaking everywhere towards the light in deeds of charity and enterprises of mercy. Hospitals, asylums, red cross societies, rescue missions, salvation armies, spring into existence as if by magic. Never has there been a time when Christian men have tried to 169 170 The Source of Authority The new charity. Christ is the fountain. do SO mucli for their fellow-men in the name and for the sake of Christ. Never has there been a time when they have recognized so clearly and fully that there was so much yet to be done. It is an ag^e of secular do ubt, as many other ages have been. But it is also an age of Christian beneficence , as hardly any other age has been. And this beneficence is not self-satisfied and complacent. It is self- reproachful, and, in its best expressions, nobly discontented with all that has been accom- plished hitherto. It seeks, not always wisely, but with splendid eagerness, for plans which shall lead beyond the relief, to the prevention of human suffering. It aims to bring about not only the immediate mitigation, but also the ultimate abolition, of war. It demands that charity shall be translated into the terms of national, as well as of individual life. It will not be satisfied until in some real and palpable sense the kingdom of this world is become tlie kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.^ Now this renewal, this splendid expansion of Christian activities, evident by many signs to all thoughtful observers, depends for its power and permanence upon the setting forth of Christ, vividly, personally, practically, as the 1 Rev. xi. 16. The Source of Authority _ 171 pattern of all virtue and the Prince of Peace among men. The sense of absolute confidence in Him as the perfect example of goodness, and of thorough loyalty to Him as the Master of noble life, is the hidden reservoir of moral force. The organized charities of Christendom are the distributing system. Not more instant and m ore complete would be tlie water-famine on Manliattan Island if the great dam among the Croton hills were broken and all the lakes and streams dried up, than the drought that would fall upon the beneficence of the world if there were a sudden break in the reservoir of love and loyalty in Christian hearts to their moral Master, or a stoppage of the myriad and multiform feeders which keep it full by preach- ing Christ. But in all this renewal and expansion of what The peril of is well and proudly called practical Christianity, Christianity. there is, if I mistake not, a danger, or at least a serious possibility, of loss. The life of man is not only practical, it is also intellectual. His relations to his fellow-men are important, but his relation to truth is no less important. He cannot help acting ; neither can he help think- ing. When his thinking is divorced from his acting, when he has one standard for truth and a different standard for conduct, he is like a 172 Tlie Source of Authority What does it mean to preach Christ f house divided against itself. If the Christian- ity of to-day, by dwelling exclusively or too much on the ethical side of the Gospel as a beautiful and beneficent rule of conduct illus- trated by a perfect Example, tends to ignore the intellectual necessities of man and fails to real- ize that it has a message to deliver in the realm of truth as well as in the realm of righteous- ness, it will not and it cannot meet the deepest wants of tlie present age. Indeed, it may even aofofravate those wants and make them more painful. It may seem to give assent, by silence, to the desperate assumption of scepti- cism that the unseen world is unknown and unknowable, even to the most perfect of men. It may foster the sad feeling that the reality of religion is beyond our reach and that we must content ourselves with the convenient dreams of virtue. It may preach, in effect, a Christ whose character and conduct are to be accepted as infallible, but whose thoughts and convic- tions in regard to God and the soul and the future life are mere fallacies and illusions. Preach Christy if it is to be a true watchword for our ministry to the present age, must be cleared and vivified and expanded in our con- sciousness. We must know what we mean by it, and we must try to know what we ought to The Source of AuSliority 173 mean. We must ask ourselves again and again wlietlier the thing that we do mean is always quite, or even approximately, the thing that we ought to mean when we use this precious and powerful phrase. It was commonly employed, say fifty years ago, to describe by way of dis- tinction a presentation of Jesus which dwelt chiefly or entirely upon His death as the vicari- ous sacrifice for sin. It is frequently employed now as if it meant little or nothing more than the graphic description of Christ's life and actions as the supreme type of virtue and love. But surely to preach Christ exclusively in either of these ways is to divide Him. It is not enough to have a Christocentric theology. It is not enough to have a Christocentric morality. We \ must not only put Him at the centre; but we ( must also draw the circumference so that it ;• shall embrace the whole of human life. If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh A gospel for 1 n 1 TT • 1 J.1 J. ^^^ ivhole away the sm oi the world,^ He is also the true ^^^.^^g ^y Light which lighteth every man that cometli human life. into the world. ^ If He is the fulfilment of all dim prophecies of good, He is also the head and source of a new unfolding of spiritual vision. If He is the way and the life. He is also the truth. 3 If He is immortal love, regenerating 1 St. John i. 29. -^ St. John i. 9. ^ gt. John xiv. 6. 174 The Source of Autliority the affections, He is also immortal wisdom re- organizing the thoughts, and immortal power strengthening the wills, of men. If His heart is to be the norm of our feeling, His mind is to be the norm of our thinking. If He is the herald and founder of a new and celestial dominion upon earth, He is also the source of authority in the kingdom of heaven. The king- dom of heaven the keynote of Christ's teaching. The idea of the kingdom of heaven, as an act- ual reign of God over living men, in which all ancient anticipations of good are accomplished and a new state of virtue and blessedness is es- tablished on earth, was foremost and dominant in the teaching of Jesus. ^ It was the keynote of His ministry. Everything that He said, everything that He did, was in harmony with this master thought. It is passing strange to see how often and how utterly this keynote has been changed in the variations which men have woven about the ^ The word " kingdom " is used in the Gospels more than a hundred times to express the new condition of human life which Christ came to announce and establish. In St. ' Matthew's Gospel the favourite phrase is "the kingdom of heaven." St. Mark and St. Luke use "the kingdom of God." The Source of Authority 175 original theme of Christianity ; and how far Palse inter' we are, even yet, from hearing it clearly, and ^'"^ " ^'""' sounding it with dominant fulness, in the music of religion. At times the kingdom of heaven has been identified with the visible church as an outward embodiment of power in the world. And surely this interpretation is far enough away from the thought of Christ, who taught expressly that the kingdom was invisib l e and in ward. At other times men have removed their conception from the present to the future, and looked for its realization in the life of the redeemed after death, or in the second coming of Christ to reign in millennial glory. And surely this interpretation is equally remote from Christ's teaching, at the very outset of His . ministry and all through its course, that the I kingdom of lieaven was at hand, that it had | already come near to men, and was lying all around them, close to them, pressing upon them from every side so that many were already en- tering into it and dvv^elling within it. The unreality and incompleteness of these The idea two opposite interpretations of the kingdom produced their natural resulis. The idea fell out of its true place in Christian thought. It became obscure, subordinate, and was finally 176 The Source of Authority almost obliterated. No further illustration of this statement is necessary than that which may be obtained by consulting one of the most popular aids to the study of the liible : Talbot's Analysis, revised by the Rev. Nathaniel West, and again revised by the Rev. Dr. Roswell D. Hitchcock, and set forth under the title of A Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible; or, the Whole Bible arranged i-ti Subjects.^ In the in- dex to this work tliere is but one solitary reference to the kingdom of God. When we turn to look at it, we find eleven verses, under the heading of " The Millennium ; the Growth of the Kingdom of God." The kingdom of heaven is dismissed with a general reference to the Parables. To any one who is really familiar with his New Testament, the insufficiency of such a treatment of one of its controlling ideas must appear evident and surprising. The idea But it may be said that in very recent times egms o e ^j^g^.g |-^j^g been an intense revival of interest in rest07'eu. this idea and an immense amount of good work done in the study and explication of it. This is true and it should be gratefully recognized. Such books as those which Dr. James S. Cand- lish and Professor A. B. Bruce have written 1 Wilmore's Neio Analytical Reference Bible (New York, 1891). The Source of Authority 177 •upon " The Kingdom of God," are most valua- ble gifts to Christian literature.^ And yet I will frankly confess that these books, and others like them, seem to me rather to point the way than to reach the goal. The fulness of the conception of the kingdom of heaven is not yet restored in current theology. Its regnancy in all spheres of human life is not yet com- pletely rounded. There is still a great deal of work to be done in this direction by the Christian thinker and the Christian preacher. The vision of the kingdom is obscured, the proclamation of the kingdom is weakened, be- cause it is_ still pres ented _too__exclusiyely . as. a kingdom of grace, and not with equal em- phasis as a king-doiu of truth : it is set up too partially as a standard for the character and conduct of men, and not with equal clearness t as a standard for their thoughts and convic- 1 tions. One reason of this one-sidedness, it seems to it ^nust be T • 1 <> 1 1 1 • y 1 i 1 studied in me, lies m the tact that we have hitherto been aii/our looking almost entirely to the first three Gos- Gospels. pels as the source of our knowledge of the true 1 The Kingdom of God, Bihlicallij and Historically Con- sidered, James S. Candlish (Ediifourgh, Clarks, 1884). The Kingdom of God, or Christ's Teaching according to the Synoptical Gospels, Alexander Bahnain Bruce (New York, Scribners, ISo^)). 178 The Source of Authority meaning of the kingdom of lieaven. But the Fourth Gospel, if indeed it be, as the best modern scholars say it is, " the most faithful image and memorial of Jesus that any man could produce," must be no less important, no less significant in the light which it throws upon this controlling idea of His mind. And when we turn to study it with this aim in view, we find at once that it gives us wliat we need. It completes and rounds out the record of the three other Gospels. It answers the ques- tions which they suggest. It keeps the prom- ises which they seem to make to our faith. And it is only when we take the fourfold narrative in its entirety that we begin to catch sight of the satisfying and convincing fulness of the idea of the kingdom of heaven. The king- This idea underlies the whole Gospel accord- dom m . o T 1 X • 1 r 1 St. John. ^^^S to ^t- ^ '^^^^^^ ^^ 1^ ^o ^^'^s lundamental, no less necessary here than it is in the Synoptic Gospels. It is presented in different forms, because the type of the writer's mind and the purpose of his book are different. But it is the same idea. And this presentation of it is essential to its completeness. In the Synoptics we have the conditions of entrance into the kingdom, a child-like spirit,^ 1 St. Matt, xviii. 3. Tile Source of Authority 179 faith,^ repeiitance,^ and obedience.^ In St. John Com-pared we have the spiritual birth by which alone synoptics those requisites are made possible.* In the Synoptics we have the laws of the kingdom.^ In St, John we have the new life in Avhich alone those laws can be fulfilled.^ In the Synoptics we have the parables and pictures of the kingdom.'' In St. John we have the inmost sense of those parables, spoken directly to the soul, in words of which Christ Himself says "they are spirit, and they are life." ^ In the Synoptics we have the new order of human society in the imitation by the disciples of Christ's obedience to the will of God.^ In St. John we have the organizing principle of that new order in Christ's revelation of Himself to the disciples as the way, the truth, and the life.i^ In the Synoptics we have the supremacy of Christ's example over men's hearts. In St. John we have the supremacy of Christ's teach- ings over men's minds. Of course, I do not mean to say that either 1 St. Matt. ix. 22 ; St. Mark "^ St. Matt, xlii., xxi., xxv. ; X. 52. St. Luke xiii., xvii., xix., 2 St. Luke xiii. 3. etc. 8 St. Matt. V. 20. « St. John vi. 0.3; viii. 12-51. * St. John iii. 5. ^ St. Matt. xii. 50. ^ Tlie Sermon on the Mount. ^"^ St. John xiv. 6. « St. John vi. 22-65. 180 The Source of Authority Both views tiecessary. of these aspects of tlie kingdom is confined ex- clusively to the source in wliich it is most fully and clearly exhibited, ^ But this is what I mean. The Synoptics p^ive us the fi rst ap( j simplest descript ion of th e nature of the king - dom. St^ohn gives us the fullest and clear- est revelation of the mind of the King. We cannot understand the former without the lat- .^ y. ter. We cannot enter into the full meaning ./f of the initial proclamation of Jesus, when lie walked beside the Sea of Galilee crying " The kingdom of heaven has come near," ^ unless we go on with Him to the judgment-hall, and hear Him give His final answer to Pilate : " Thou sayest that I am a King ; to this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. "^ When we stand at this jDoint, when we ac- cept this declaration as the key to unlock and open the inmost meaning of the manifestation of the Father in the human life of the Son, we ^ See Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 185, on the personal claim of Christ in the Synoptics. See R. F. Horton, Jlie Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1800), pp. 219-233, on relation between Synoptic doctrine of the kingdom and Johannine doctrine of eternal life. 2 St. Matt, iv. 17. 3 St. John xviil. 37. Tlie Source of Authority 181 begin to apprehend the inexliaustible scope and ^'^^ *'«.9- significance of oiu- call to preach Christ to an ^5 y^^n „, ^y age of doubt. It is a gospel not only for the grace. affections, but also for the intellect. It takes up His words as well as His works and makes them vital in the lives of men. It conceives and proclaims the kingdom of heaven as some- thing more than " the reign of divine love ex- ercised by God in His grace over human hearts believing in His love and constrained thereby to yield Him grateful affection and devoted service."^ It is also the reio'n of divine truth exercised through a faithful witness over the minds of men who submit to His guidance and are led by Him into inward peace and unity of thought. And t he source^^f^aTTbhoritx m tlm kingdom of heaven, which is equally a realm of truth and a realm of grace, is Jesus the Christ, whose doctrine, as well as His example, is ulti- mate and supreme. n Let us observe in passing that we have pre- Th^ ^inff at cisely the same basis to rest upon in our preach- ing of the doctrine of Jesus as in our preaching of His character and life. If historical criticism 1 Bruce, The Kingdom of God, p. 46. 182 The Source of Authority gives us good reason to believe, as all candid inquirers now admit, that the four Gospels con- tain a veritable picture of an actual personage who once lived on earth, there is equally good reason to believe that they have preserved for us a trustworthy account of His teaching in its substance and spirit. If we can justly claim The doctrine tliat Ilis character is so perfect and transcen- dent that no man of that age, however gifted or learned, and least of all such men as the writers of the New Testament, could possibly have in- vented it ; we can make the same claim, with equal justice, for the body of doctrine which is attributed to Christ. In its coherence, its clarit}', its sublimity, and its universality it altogether surpasses the mental abilities and the religious insight of the writers of the four Gospels. Indeed, it is frankly confessed that the disciples of Jesus were so far from being able to invent Ills doctrine, that they actually misunderstood and misinterpreted many of its truths when they first heard them. It was contrary to their prejudices and expectations. They did not put it into His mouth. He re- vealed it to their minds. Their faith in it rested upon His personal authority. And it was only as they kept company with Him and followed Him, receiving His word into The Source of Authority 183 their souls and translating it into their lives, that it became to them luminous and satisfy- ing and convincing. We are enti tled, or rather we are compelled, ^" objective __ _ ,.. . ,,,.., ._ . , - ^ reality. to regard the teaching or Jesus as an objective fact just as much as His life and character. The record of it bears on its face the over- whelming evidence of verity. All the results \ of literary criticism are squarely against the supposition that such a doctrine as that whicli i is presented to us under His name in the four i Gospels, could ever have been pieced together out of the thoughts and imaginations of widely separated and divergent minds, and attributed to an unknown and perhaps mythical Master. It is not a mosaic ; it is a living unity. It ,is not a creation of faith ; it is the creator of faith. The hypothesis that four men agreed, or hap- pened, to gather together out of the Hebrew prophets, and the heathen philosophers, and the mysterious and inexplicable inner conscious- ness of the new-born Christian churches, cer- tain beautiful ideas in regard to God and the soul and the future life, and ascribe them to Jesus, utterly breaks down at the touch of real- ity. The central, unifying, formative quality of the teaching of Christ is the one thing that 184 The Source of AuOiority is most evident in the record. It is empha- sized by all the phenomena of growth, of vital development, of deepening power, which may be traced from the sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth to the discourse in the upper room at Jerusalem. It shines out unmistakably through all tlie living variety of impressions which it made upon various minds, and through all tlie consequent many-sidedness of • the report which is given of it. Not more certainly did the character of Christ inspire and unite the. lives of His followers than His doctrine illuminated and controlled their beliefs. The only view which meets the facts is that Jesus really lived, and really taught, thus and so, as He is presented to us in the Gospels. The form of This brings us at once to the most important feature in the record of His teaching. It is not given to us in the form of an abstract system, a treatise on theology, or a summary of doc- trine, written down by the hand of Jesus. He Himself made no record of His words. Only once do we see Him writing, — in the beautiful episode which a later tradition has added to the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Histori- cal or not, the incident is profoundly sugges- tive. For Jesus wrote not with a pen upon The Source of Authority 185 enduring parchment, nor with a stylus upon imperishable brass : " He stooped And wrote upon the unrecording ground." ^ He would not leave even a single line of manu- script where His followers could preserve it with literal reverence and worship it as a sacred relic. He cliose to inscribe His teach- ing upon no other leaves than those which are folded within the human soul. He chose to trust His words to the faithful keeping of memory and love ; and He said of them, with sublime confidence, that they should never pass away. 2 He chose that the truth which He declared and the life which He lived should never be divided, but that they should go down / together through the ages. And this is precisely what has come to pass, inseparable The Church in past ages has often been inclined -^''^'"^ -^** ^ ^ character, to abstract the doctrines of Christianity concern- ing the person and work of Christ from their union with His human life, and to condense them into a purely formal system of dogma for the intellect. The Church in the present age shows at least a tendency to separate the image 1 Katrina Trask, "A Niglit and Morning in Jerusalem" (Harper^s Magazine, April, 1896). 2 St. Mark xiii. 31, 186 The Source of Authority of Jesus from the truths which He taught, and hold Him up to men merely as an ideal of holi- ness and goodness. But the one barrier that stands firm against both these false tendencies is the marvellous narrative of the Gospels, in which the life and the doctrine of Christ are woven together, one and inseparable, like a robe without seam. Words and How can we understand His grace, unle ss we each other, accept His truth ? How can we appreciate_Iiis truth, unless we receive His grace ? At every step. His action is interpreted and explained bj His words. He trusts in Providence, and He commands His disciples to trust, not merely be- cause submissive confidence is a beautiful and happy thing, but because He knows and declares that God is really a Father, worthy to be trusted.^ He prays, secretly and openly ; secretly because He is sure that God hears Him always, and openly because He would fain give this as- surance to others.^ He seeks the sinful and the lost, not merely because such a ministry is lovely and gracious, but because He knows and declares that it is the will of God, and that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-aud-nine just 1 yt. Matt. vi. 20-30. - St. Jolin xi. 41, 42. The Som-ce of Authority 187 men tliat need no repentance.^ He cares for the bodies of men and He relieves their wants, but He cares infinitely more for their souls and He teaches them to care more, because He knows that the soul is capable of immortality and more precious than all that this world can give.^ He moves willingly and obediently to the cross, not because it is inevitable, not be- cause resignation is the crown of virtue, but because He knows and declares that this is the sacrifice appointed for Him as the Christ, the laying down of His life as a ransom for many, the lifting up by which He is to draw all men unto Himself.^ He goes down into death with unshaken courage, not because it is a fine thing to be brave, but because He knows and declares that He is returning to the Father and that He will bring those who love Him to be with Him where He is forever.* Now these are declarations of great truths. The doctrine H we deny them, if we make them uncertain, basis of His the life which was built upon them has no conduct. meaning, no substance, no power in it. It be- comes a splendid illusion, a heroic mistake. 1 St. Luke XV, 7. 2 St. John vi. 27; St. Mark viii. 36, 37. 8 St. Mark ix 12 ; St. Matt. xx. 28 ; St. Jolm xii. 32. 4 St. John xiv. 1-3. 188 Tlte Source of Autliority But if we accept them, then, and only then, that life becomes the rock of our confidence, the substance of things hoped for and the evi- dence of things not seen.^ For it was on the knowledge of these things that Jesus actually founded His own character and His conduct. It was by believing thus and so, and by living up to His belief, that He was made perfect. And it was by teaching His disciples to believe thus and so that He would bind them to follow His example and inspire them to share His life. " Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock."^ "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." "H ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." ^ 1 " Nicht das Leben Jesu an sich in seinem geschichtlichen Verlaufe, sondern die Auffassung der religiosen Bedeutuug desselben, auf welclie die jilteste N. T. liche Verkundigung ruht, bildet den Ausgangspunkt fur die biblische Theologie. Diese Auffassung war aber zunachst bedingt durch die Lehre Jesu, sofern dieselbe die autlientische Erlauterung iiber die Bedeutung seiner Person und seiner Erscheinung gab, und dalier muss eine Darstellung dieser Lehre den grundlegenden Abschnitt der biblisclien Theologie bilden." — Bernhard Weiss, Lehrbuch der Bihlisrhen llieologie des Neuen Testa- ments (2te Auflage, Berlin, 187o), p. 31. 2 St. Matt. vii. 24. 3 St. John xv. 3, 7. The Source of Authority 189 m The importance which Christ ascribed to The His words as the authoritative revelation of «''*^^''^'y of Chnsl's unseen verities to the confused and darkened teaching. minds of men, cannot be denied or overlooked by any one who reads the Gospels candidly and intelligently. It is true, indeed, that He ex- pressly disclaimed the idea that His doctrine was created, or invented, or even discovered by Himself. He said, "My doctrine is not mine but His that sent me,"i "All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. "2 But it is equally true that He claimed an absolute infallibility for the mes- sagc which was revealed in Him, committed unto Him, and delivered by Him. This claim \ )( is made with equal force in the Synoptics and in St. John. "No one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him."^ " We speak that we ( do know, and bear witness of that we have seen."* This is not the language that an honest and conscientious teacher would use to describe his religious opinions or his spiritual 1 St. John vii. 10. =* St. Luke x. 22. 2 St. John XV. 15. ^ St. John iii. 11. 190 The Source of Authority hopes. The wisest and the best of men have always hesitated to assume this tone of cer- tainty in regard to their deepest reflections upon the mysteries of being. But from first to last this tone marks the teaching of Jesus. I ♦' They were astonished at His teaching ; for He taught them as having authority, and not > as the scribes," ^ ■^'^« It is evident that He intended to speak thus. For nothing is more striking in the manner of His teaching than the absence of all reliance upon corroborative testimony or traditional support. 2 He did not seek to defend His posi- tions Avith a formidable array of great names. He did not make a long catena of quotations from learned sources. He gave out His doc- trine from the depth of His own consciousness as a flower breathes perfume, fresh, pure, origi- nal, and convincing. He certainly felt a Divine inspiration in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. The law and the prophets conveyed to Him the 1 St. Mark i. 22. 2 " Avec une certitude sereine, qui ue semble pas terrestre, il disait ces choses. II cliantait, comme aucuu proplifete n'avait su le faire, le chant des revoirs 6ternels qui a berc6 pendant des sifecles les souffrances et les agonies. Et ce cliant-1^, void que de nos jours, au triste d^clin des temps, les hommes se meurent de ne plus I'entendre." — Fierkk LoTi, La Oalilee (Paris, 1800), p. 94. X The Source of Authority 191 word of God. He used them on certain occa- sions to repel the assaults of evil, as in the temp- tation in the wilderness. He used them on other occasions to convince and convict the Scribes and Pharisees out of their own Scriptures. But He never rested upon them as the sole and sufficient basis of His doctrine. He was not a { ^ commentator on truths already revealed. YialAnew was a revealer of new truth. His teaching was not the exposition ; it was the text . And this higher revelation not only fulfilled, but also surpassed, the old ; replacing the temporal by the eternal, the figurative by the factual, the literal by the spiritual, the imperfect by the perfect. How often Jesus quoted from the Old Testament in order to show that it was al- ready old and insufficient ; that its forms of speech and rules of conduct were like the husk of the seed which must be shattered by the emergence of the living germ. His doctrine was in fact a moral and intellectual day- break for the world. He did far more than supply a novel system of conduction for an ancient light. He sent forth from Himself a new illumination, transcending all that had gone before, as the sunrise overfloods the pale glimmering of the morning star set like a beacon of promise upon the coast of dawn. X 192 The Source of Authority He did not rely upon reasoning for the proof of His doctrine. He put no trust in the com- pulsion of logic, in the keenness of dialectics. We look in vain among His words for an exhibition of the "evidences of Christianity." He did not endeavour to demonstrate the ex- istence of God or the immortality of the soul. What He said was meant to be its own evi- dence. His method was not apologetic ; it^ was declaratory. " He argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest." The result of this is marvellous and magnifi- cent. His teaching is cleared and disentangled from all that is temporary and transient in human thought. If He had reasoned with men, it must have been done upon the prem- isses and in the forms of philosophy current in that age. Otherwise He could not have reached their intelligence, His reasoning would have been of none effect. But because He passed by all these processes and left them on one side while His doctrine moved simply, di- rectly, and majestically to the heart of the truth, it comes to us to-day free and unencumbered by any of those theories of physical science, of psychology, of political economy, which the growth of knowledge has changed, discredited. The Source of Authority 193 or discarded. His teaching is neither ancient ■'^f ilHIii: V' nor modern, neither deductive nor inductive, ■--^!^*" ' neither Jewish nor Greek. It is universal, enduring, valid for all minds and for all times. There are no more difficulties in the Avay of accepting it now than there were when it was first delivered. It fits the spiritual needs of the nineteenth, as closely as it fitted the spiritual needs of the first, century. It car- ries the same attractions, the same credentials in the Western Hemisphere as it carried in the Eastern. It stands out as clearly from all the later, as it did from all the earlier, philoso- phies. It finds the soul as inevitably to-day as it did at first. And the men of this age who hear Christ can only say, as His disciples said long ago, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." ^ And yet how few are those words, compared f< i^ small with the utterances of other teachers. How small in compass is the doctrine of Jesus as it has come down to us. Eighty pages of a duo- decimo book will hold all of ITis" recbrded dis- courses and the story of His life. Other words He must have spoken v/hile He was on earth, but I doubt not that they moved within the same circle. For even in the present record 1 St. John vi. 68. o 194 The Source of Authority A n imf ail- ing Source. we find the same truths recurring again and again, expressed in different language, arranged in different sequence, as the evangelists re- trace, each from his own point of view, the memory of the things which Jesus taught to the multitudes and to His disciples. The lit- enittirc of the world holds no other doctrine so limited in bulk, so limitless in meaning. The teaching of Christ differs from that of all other masters in its fontal quality. It is comprised in a little space, but it has an infi- nite fulness. Its utterance is closely bounded, but its significance is inexhaustible. The sacred books of other religions, the commen- taries and expositions on the Christian religion, spread before us a vast and intricate expanse, like lakes of truth mixed with error, stretch- ing away into the distance, arm after arm, bay after bay, until we despair of being able even to explore tlieir coasts and trace their windings. When we come back to Christ, we find, not an inland sea of doctrine, but a clear fountain of living water, springing up into everlasting life. Calm, pure, unfathomable, it is never clouded and it never fails. The inspiration of other teachers rises and falls like an intermittent spring. To-day it is brimming full ; to-raor- The Source of Authority 195 row it is empty and diy. But the truth that flows from Jesus is constant and unvarying. The Spirit always rests upon Him. The Father is always with Him. Out of the deep serenity of His soul, as from some secret vale of peace high among the eternal hills, the vital spring of truth wells up forever, and forever the crystal stream runs down to refresh and revive the souls of men. New meanings come out of the teaching of ^hoays VB7lGZVG(i Jesus in every land and in every age. New stars are mirrored in its depths. New flowers blossom on its banks. New fields of love are fertilized by its waters. It is not that each succeeding century and race adds something of its own to the doctrine of Christ. It is that each finds in that source something which was meant to become its own, and so to satisfy its deepest needs. The old questions are repeated! - in new words, and the new answer comes in the I /^ old words. 1 The truth as it is in Jesus does' not have to be changed and adapted to fit it for a world-wide missionary enterprise. It needs only to be purified from the things that men 1 " Socrates asked questions which his disciples tried to answer ; Jesus provoked His disciples to ask questions which He answered." — James Stalker, Imago Christi (New York, Armstrongs, 1889), p. 270. 196 The Source of Autliority Tlie sim- plicita that Is ill Christ. have mingled Avitli it, restored to the simplicity that is in Clirist, and it proves itself as fresh, as satisfying, as life-bestowing to the thirsty soul in America or in the islands of the sea, as it did in Galilee or on the hillsides of Judea. AVhen we ask ourselves why it is that the doctrine of the Master has this enduring, self- renewing, fontal character, I tliink we must find the answer in the fact that it simply bears witness, with a directness and inevitableuess altogether unparalleled, to the actual existence of a spiritual world corresponding to the spirit- ual faculties and aspirations of men. It does not turn aside to discuss metapliysical problems or theological subtleties. The distinction be- tween the natural and the supernatural does not even appear in the teaching of Jesus. There may, or there may not, be such a distinction. If there is. He at least does not think it im^Dor- tant enough to speak of it. The one thing of which He wishes to make men sure is that the same God who sends His sunshine and His rain upon the evil and upon the good, the same God whose bounty feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field with beauty, hears in secret the prayers of the penitent and believ- ing and rew.ards them openly. The question of the how and the where of the life after deatli The Source of AiUliority 197 is not even touched in tlie teaching of Jesus. It matters little. The one thing that He de- clares with unfaltering certainty is the reality of that life. The one thing that He presses home upon the minds of men with calm inten- sity is the danger of losing it through sin and unbelief. The one thing that He tenderly and urgently pleads with them to do, is to make sure of its immortal blessedness through faith and love and obedience to Him. And so, at A V every point, He passes by the non-essential to I touch the essential, He disregards the passing curiosity to satisfy tlie real anxiety, He neglects the shadows to reveal the substance of the unseen world. Teaching like this is the only kind of teach- \ Worrjs of ing that will always renew itself, always have ) something more to bestow upon us. It cannot grow obsolete. It cannot be drained of its sig-^ nificance. It is like life. Nay, it is life, and it gives life. IV Let us understand, then, that if our Christi- Loyalty to anity is to satisiy our whole nature, it it is to i^adnncj. have its real and full meaning, and power to bring in the kingdom of heaven, it must in- clude this element. We must be as loyal to 198 The Source of Authority the teaching of Jesus as we are to His example. We must count no pains too great to spend upon the study of that teaching as it lies in the records, and no effort too severe to make in order that it may be restored in its integ- rity and entirety, rounded and harmonized, within the very centre of our minds. And then we must preach it, simply, sincerely, cer- tainly, as the only doctrine which can lead men out of the intellectual anarchy of doubt into the peaceful realm of truth. The aye xiiis is what the age is looking and longing demands . ^^ „ , • • ^.i i • j r authority. for. It can Jincl jio joy in of heaven unless it finds there a source of authgr- ity for the mind as well as for the heart. Au- thority is what the sociologist demands, in order that he may have a sure basis for the precepts of altruism. Authority is what the philosopher seeks, in order tliat he may have a fixed point of departure and certain limits of speculation. Authority is what the poet craves, as he clings to " The truths that never can be proved, Until we close with all we loved And all we flow from, soul in soul." ^ Men are crying" lo here ! and lo there ! We must find the source of authority in an in- 1 Tennyson, In Memoriam. The Source of Authority 199 errant Book, or in an enlightened reason, or in an infallible Church, or perhaps in all three ; as if there could be three sources of one author- ity, or as if a channel could ever be rightly- called a source! Let us not hesitate to pass through this confusion of tongues and of ideas, serene and untroubled, with the message of a more excellent way. Christ is the Light of all Scripture. Christ Christ is the is the Master of holy reason. Christ is the authority sole Lord, and Life of the true Church. By His word we test all doctrines, conclusions, and commands. On His word we build all faith. This is the source of authority in the kingdom of heaven. Let us neither forget nor hesitate to apj)eal to it always with un- trembling certainty and positive conviction. If Christ did not know and preach the truth, then there is no truth that can be known or preached. Unless we are sure of this, we would better go out of business entirely. It is inconceivable tliat the loftiest character in| history should be the most mistaken man that «ver thought about the real basis and meaning . of life. It is incredible that the noblest life in the world should be founded upon a faith that was vain. It is impossible that a supreme devotion and a real likeness to Christ should 200 The Source of AutJiority have been produced and perpetuated in the world without a veritable apprehension of that which He knew and taught concerning God and man. Our great Xo have this apprehension clearly formed His creed. withiu US must be our ardent and joyful intel- lectual endeavour. We are not to rest content with the study of single words and separate phrases. The limitations of language, the con- ditions of transmission, will always expose us to error if we follow that course. The truth as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but in the rounded whole. We must get back to the unity and integrity of the thoughts of Jesus, the creed of Christ. The broad outline of His vision of things human and divine, the central verities which appear firm and un- changeable in all the reports of His teaching, the point of view from which He discerned and interpreted the mystery of life, — that is what we must seek. And when Ave find it, we must take our stand there as men who feel the solid ground beneath their feet. Illustra- tions and confirmations we may gather from science and history and philosophy. But the rock of certainty is the mind of Jesus, ex- pressed in His living words and in His speak- The Source of Authority' 201 ing life. Beyond tliis we need not and we cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This is t he trut h, we say to men, because Jesus knew it, and__said. it, and lived it. But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- We must get. The condition of apprehending, and how ^^ ^^^^^ ^.^ much more of preaching, the truth revealed by doctnne. Christ is that we abide in Him. The word of Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the ^vill of Jesiis, lies li]ve,-seed-corn . in a .mummy's \ hand. It is only by dwelling with Him and receiving His character, His personality so profoundly, so vitally that it shall be with us as if, in His own words, we had partaken of His flesh and His blood, as if His sacred humanity had been interwoven with the very fibres of our heart and pulsed with secret power in all our veins, — it is thus only that we can 1)6 enabled to see His teaching as it is, and set it forth with luminous conviction to the souls of men. And if ever we ourselves become afraid of Return to Jesus. our own task, and shrink from it ; if the scep- ticism of our age appalls us and chills us to the very marrow ; if we question whether a gospel so simple, so absolute, as that which is com- mitted to us can find acceptance in such a world, at such a time as this, — be sure it is 202 The Source of AutJiority because we liave gotten out of fellowship with Him who is our Peace and our Hope, our Light and our Strength. A Christless man can never preach Christ. We have been anxious and troubled about many things, and have forgot- ten the one thing needful. Peace we must have before we can have power. Let us straight- way return, in prayer, in meditation, in trust, in faithful simple-hearted obedience, to Him who is the only centre of Peace because He is the only source of authority. " I liave a life in Christ to live, But ere T live it must I wait Till learning can clear answer give Of this and that book's date? I have a life in Christ to live, I have a death in Christ to die ; — And must I wait till science give All doubts a full reply? Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt Is raging wildly round about, Questioning of life and death and sin, Let me but creep within Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet Take but the lowest seat, And hear Thine awful voice repeat In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet, Come unto Me and rest; Believe Me, and be blest." ^ 1 John Caiapbell Shairp. VI LIBERTY " Bat, perfect in every part, Has the potter's moulded shape Leap of man's quickened heart. Throe of his thought's escape, Stings of his soul which dart " Through the barrier of flesh, till keen Slie climbs from the calm and clear Through turbidity all between From the known to the unknown here. Heaven's ' Shall be,' from Earth's ' Has been '? " Then life is — to wake and not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press From earth's level where blindly creep Things perfected, more or less. To the heaven's height, far and steep, " Where, amid what strifes and storms May wait the adventurous quest. Power is Love — transports, transforms Who aspired from worst to best. Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms.' " — Robert Browning, Reverie. VI LIBERTY There are three points at which the teach- Three great ing of Jesus comes into closest contact Vv'ith the ^^^'^ needs of the present age. Three problems of profound difficulty are pressing to-day upon all thoughtful men: the psychological problem of the freedom of the Avill; the theological prob- lem of the actual relation of God to the uni- verse ; and the moral problem of man's duty to liis fellow-men in a world of inequality. Out of the depths of these problems dark and multitudinous doul^ts are forever rising, like the clouds of smoke and steam which issue from the labouring bosom of Vesuvius, while sub- terranean thunder is muttering and rolling underneath. Most of the intellectual perplex- ities and practical perils of our times come directly from these questions, to which modern scepticism gives an answer of despair, or at best only a dubious and uncertain reply. But tlie gospel of Christ, rightly appre- hended and interpreted, offers us a solution 205 206 Liberty Three great of tliese problems wliich is full of light and ertij sover- iit)p6 and moral certainty. There is a breath eignty, and of the Spirit in His teaching, pure and strong, pouring like a clean wind out of heaven, to scoff away the obscuring vapours, and reveal the changeless verities and glories of the spiritual landscape. Three truthis, emerge in His doc- trine, and stand out clear and sharp as moun- tain peaks against the blue : the truth of human liberty, the truth of Divine sovereignty, and the truth of universal service. Of these three truths we must never lose sight, if our thinking is to be in accordance with the mind of Jesus. To these three truths we must bear witness, unhesitatingly, faithfully, and joy- fully, if our preaching is to be a gospel for this age of doubt. Modern fa- ta Usrn. No one who has looked steadily upon the face of modern life as it is reflected in popular literature can doubt that it is " sicklied o'er " with the dark shadow of fatalism. It is evident in the writings of the learned and in the scrib- blings of the ignorant. Everywhere there is a tendency to explain the whole life of man as the product of heredit} and environment. The student of physiology, ti cing the strange and Liberty 207 subtle correspondence between the processes of consciousness and the changes and movements of the nervous system, makes the enormous assumption that the correspondence amounts to identity. AUjheJiopes and fears, all the affec- tions and aspirations, which glorify this mortal life, are in_ their last analysis the result of cer- tain jguckeriugs a,nd. tintinnabulations of the gray matter of the nerves. The actions which flow from them are as necessary as the fall of an apple when the stem is broken. The caress which a mother gives to her child, and tlie blow with which a murderer strikes his victim dead, are equally automatic and inevitable. They are the motions of delicately constructed puppets, and the triumph of modern investigation is the discovery of tlie string which moves them and the forces which pull it. It is true that many of the teachers who steer Materialism us, more or less openly, towards this conciu- ^^^ tavuht sion are careful to disavow the idea that they are teaching materialism. The name is highly unpopular at the present moment, and there is hardly one of the men of science of to-day who has not protested with indignation that no one should dare to call him a materialist. They have devised subtle theories of some- thing called '"mind-stuff" which they hold, 208 Liberty with W. K. Clifford, " is the reality which we perceive as matter." They distinguish, with Huxley, between matter and force, and a third thing which they call consciousness and which they admit cannot conceivably be a modifi- cation of either of the first two things ; but they go on to say that " what we call the operations of the mind are functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity."^ In short, they give a materialistic explanation of the origin and processes of thought, and then protect themselves against the imputation of being materialists, by solemnly averring that they have not the slightest idea of what matter really is, nor the slightest intention of sug- gesting that it has any resemblance to the so-called mental operations which are prob- ably produced by one of its own forms of activity. A scheme like this certainly has no room for free-will or personal responsibility. It makes a man's character and action entirely depen- dent upon the amount and quality of nervous energy that has been transmitted to him by his ancestors and developed by the circumstances of his life. He lives, as Professor Tyndall 1 T. II. Huxley, in The Fortnightly Eeview, vol. xi., 793. Liberty 209 says, in a realm of " physical and moral neces- sity," — though why he should be at pains to say " moral," I can hardly conceive. One ad- jective would serve as well as two, when they both mean the same thing. It requires but a little exercise of this nervous energy on our part, in the form of imagination, to trace it back to its previous form of heat stored up in cer- tain hundredweights of food and appropriated by digestion. From this point our cerebral activity skips lightly and altogether without volition along the various lines of animal and vegetable life, of chemical and physical trans- formations of energy, until we arrive at the idea of the sun. From this idea a certain un- controllable change in the gray substance of our brain produces the further notion that the arrangement of certain quantities of mat- ter and force which took place in some in- explicable way long before the birth of the solar system was really the thing that settled the question whether you and I should prefer telling the truth to lying, — if we do. Indeed, there never has been any question at all about it; it was fixed from, the beginning. We have no more responsibility for it than we have for the colour of our eyes or the shape of our noses. 210 Liberty " Thoughts of an Au- tomaton." I have found a brief and explicit statement of the position to which this metliod of think- ing forces those who follow it, in an article ironically entitled " Thoughts of a Human Au- tomaton" in a recent English periodical.^ " I am an automaton — a pu})pet dangling on my distinctive wire, which Fate holds with an unrelaxing grip. I am not different, nor do I feel differently, from my fellow-men, but my eyes refuse to blink away the truth, which is, that I am an automatic machine, a piece of clockwork wound up to go for an allotted time, smoothly or otherwise, as the efiiciency of the machinery may determine. Free-will is a myth invented by man to satisfy his emotions, not his reason. I feel as if I were free, as if I were responsible for my thoughts and actions, just as a person under the influence of hypnotism believes he is free to do as he pleases. But he is not ; nor am I. If it were once possible for a rational being to question this fact, the dis- coveries of Darwin must have set his doubts at rest. . . . " What is crime ? A crime is an action threatened by the law with punishment, says Kant ; and freedom of action or free-will ^ Henry Beauchamp, iii The Fortnightly Review, English edition, March, 1892. Liberty 211 is a legally necessary condition of crime. But the law of heredity conclusively demonstrates that free-will and freedom of action stand in the category of lively imaginings. Therefore crime, as the law understands it, is non-existent, since no imputability can be recognized when a man is not responsible for his actions. There- fore the law is not justified in inliicting pun- ishment. . . . " Briefly to conclude. Religion can no more mix with science than oil with water. Science acknowledges no necessity for the existence of religion, and finally severs the bonds between morality and religion. Morality, altogether independent of religion, is entirely based upon self-interest. The supposed connection between religion and morality is an illusion most per- nicious to the general welfare and advance of mankind. Religion, as a superfluity, should be excluded from all educational institutions. Its place will be supplied by the creed of scien- tific philosophy — Determinism. The primary principle of Determinism, namely, that a human being is an automaton, and therefore not respon- sible for his thoughts or his acts, taken together with its corollaries, more than suffices for every intellectual need hitherto provided for by re- ligion. For the two great factors in the value 212 Liberty of religion are its ethics and its sedative prop- erties, and in both these uses Deteriainisni displays overwhelming intellectual superiority. Its ethics are more universal and its consolation more assured ; for they both rest on irrefraga- ble scientific truth. The Determinist is con- sequently never harassed by doubts — the Rock of Ages is fragile compared with the adaman- tine foundation of his creed." The creed of This curious claim of an automaton to have a " creed " would be deliciously humorous, if it were not so unutterably sad, and so detest- ably dangerous. For though, as a matter of fact, there are few men who will make, even under an assumed name, such a candid con- fession of faith in their own moral non-entity as that which we have just read, there are many men Avho are, consciously or unconsciously, preaching the same black creed of Necessity in the subtle forms of literary art, and multi- tudes who are silently accepting it as gospel , truth. Fatalism broods over modern fiction and the modern drama like a huge, shapeless spectre; and its influence is felt in all the judgments and conceptions and unspoken but clearly revealed sentiments of a society which finds its chief intellectual pabulum in novels and plays. Liberty 213 Here is the famous Frencli realist, Zola, of "Tiie whose books it is said that enough liave been „"'""„ sold to build a pile as high as the Eiffel tower. He writes a novel called La Bete Surname^ in which he shows hoAV unswervingly the lines of evil run through the plan of life. He describes seven inevitable murders, occurring within eisfh- teen months in close connection Avith a certain fated house, and closes his book with the descrip- tion of a railway train, cro'A'ded with soldiers,A J\ dragged by an engine whose driver has been killed, dashing at headlong speed into the mid- night. The train is the world ; we are the freight ; fate is the track ; death is the dark- ness ; God is the engineer, — who is dead. Here is the leader of the Dutch Sensitivists, "footsteps of Fate." Louis Couperus, who v/rites a romance called Noodlot, " Lestini/,^^ in which four human lives are tangled together in an inextricable and hor- rible coil. One of his characters pauses for an instant in the shameful career to which he is impelled. " He threw himself back in his chair, still feebly Avringing his hands, and the tears trickled again and again down his cheeks. He saw his own cowardice take shape before him. He stared into its frightened eyes, and he did not condemn it. For he was as fate had made 2U Liberty '■ GKOiti. The sm/ill ^atalists. him. He was a craven, and he could not heip it. Men called such an one as he a coward ; it I was but a word. Why coward, or simple and brave, or good and noble ? It was all a matter of convention, of accepted meaning ; the whole world was mere convention, a concept, an illu- sion of the brain. There was nothing real at all — nothing !"'i Here is the Xorse dramatist, Ibsen, — the new Shakespeare by the grace of heredity. He writes a drama of life which he calls Grhosts, and shows how every player is haunted by dead ancestors who look through his eyes, speak in his words, and act in his deeds. Echoes of sj^ent passion, shreds and patches of worn-out sin, rags and tatters of the past, — that is the stuff of which life is fabricated, like a piece of shoddy cloth, in the great mill of circumstance which stands on the banks of the river of time and turns out the shabby lives of men and women. Nor is this view of life confined to the great foreign masters of realism. It pervades almost all the minor schools of fiction ; it diffuses it- self insensibly through the work of the feeble and fatuous imitators. A keen and wholesome 1 Louis Coai)eras, T!fte Footsteps of Fate (New York, Apple tons), p. 05. Liberty 215 critic of our oayii literature, Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, put his finger upon the fact when he wrote : " It has come about that the novels and stories which are to fill our leisure hours and cheer us in this vale of tears have become what we call tragic. It is not easy to define what tragedy is, but the term is applied in modern fiction to scenes and characters that come to ruin from no particular fault of their own, — not even when the characters break most of the ten commandments, — but by an unappeasable fate that dogs and thwarts them. This is the romance of fatality, and if it is tragedy, it is the tragedy of fatalism." It is not possible that such a theory of ex- istence should prevail without bringing sadness Melancholy heaviness into the liearts ot men. Ihe modern melancholy of which we si)oke in the first lecture is largely the result of this gen- eral sense of a godless predestination. It is^ Calvinism with the bottom knocked out. It robs life of all interest, of all jo}^ of all en- thusiasm. Was it morphine that drove Guy de Maupassant, the most brilliant of the younger French novelists, to insanity? Or was it his philosophy that drove him to morphine as a refuge from the despair and ugliness of exist- 216 Liberty ence ? Pessimism exudes from fatalism like sejDia from the cuttlefish. What could be more dispiriting than to doubt the reality of all effort, to deny the possibility of self-con- quest and triumph over circumstances, to find heroism an illusion and virtue a dream? What could break the spring of life more completely than to feel that our feet are tangled in a net whose meshes were woven for us by our ances- tors, and for them by tailless apes, and for them by gilled amphibians, and for them by gliding worms, and for them by ciliated larvae, and for them by amtebte, and for them by God does not know what? It does not help the case in the least to do as some theologians have tried to do and bring back into the theory by the aid of certain misconstrued and very much overworked passages of Scripture, the idea of a supreme Deity who has constructed tlie loom and devised the pattern of the net and decreed the weaving of every loop. The chain of Fate is not made less heavy by fasten- insT the end of it to the distant throne of an omnipotent and impassive Creator. If our false sense of freedom comes from such a Be- ing, who is Himself free, it is all the more a cruel and bitter enigma. If moral responsi- Liberty 217 bility has been imposed upon us by the same hand which has bound us to an inalterable destiny, it is all the more a crushing and mis- erable fraud. To baptize fatalism with a Baptized Christian name does not change its nature. To hold fast to the metaphysical conception of God while accepting Heredity and Environment as His only and infallible prophets is simply to add a new ethical horror to the dismal delusion of life, and to fall back into the pessimism of Omar Khayyam. " We are no other than a moving row Of Magic Shadow-shapes, that come and go Round with this Sun-ilkimined Lantern, held In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; " Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays. " The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your Piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all yom- tears wash out a Word of it. " And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die. Lift not your hands to It for help — for it As impotently rolls as you or I."^ 1 Bubdiydt of Omar Khayy&m. Rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald, with an accompaniment of draw- ings by Elihu Vedder (Boston, 1884), stanzas 72, 73, 75, 70. / 218 Liberty II Is determin- This is the solution which modern positivism, christened or unchristened, offers for tlie prob- lem of the freedom of the will. Before we turn to consider the very different answer which Christ gives to the same question, let us stay for a moment to ask whether this current and popular solution is of the nature of a demonstration, or of the nature of a doubt. Is it so clearly proven that science forces us to accept determinism ? Or is it an unveri- fiable assumption, which is made under the influence of a general scepticism in regard to spiritual realities, and which leaves out of view quite as many and quite as important facts as those which it professes to explain? Are we compelled to admit it ; or is it only one of two alternatives, neither of which is scientifi- cally demonstrable, so that the choice between them must rest upon other considerations? I do not hesitate to say that the whole weight of sober and sane criticism inclines to the lat- ter conclusion. Determinism has not yet been established either by pliysiological, psychologi- cal, or metaphysical argument. Philosophy The commou assumption that the abstract saijs no. reasoninsf of Jonathan Edwards asfainst tiic Liberty 219 Hberty of the will has never been and cannoc be refuted, is based upon ignorance of the facts. An American philosopher, Mr. Rowland Haz- ard, has answered it with great clearness and force. Professor George P. Fisher says : " The fundamental point of Mr. Hazard's criticism of Edwards is fully established. It must be allowed that his confutation of that conception of the will which underlies the reasoning of the great theologian is sound and conclusive."^ The support v.^hich modern science is sup- Science says posed to give to the theory of determinism turns out, upon closer examination, to be alto- gether illusory. The soundest and most care- ful investigators utterly decline to commit themselves to that metaphysical dogma, or to bind out science as a maid-of-all-work in the service of fatalistic theology. The most distinguished of living English Free-wiii a scientists recently said : " The influence of ^^irade. animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demon- strated daily miracle of our human free-iv ill, and 1 Rowland Hazard, Freedom of Mind in Willing (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889). Introduction by George P. Fisher, p. xxxi. 220 Liberty in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely dif- ferent from any possible result of the fortui- tous concourse of atoms. The real phenomena of life infinitely transcend human science."^ The theory that consciousness is a function of the brain breaks down completely when it attempts to explain the phenomena of sleep. Why should all the other functions of the body be carried on without fatigue and with- out interruption while this alone demands rest and admits of intervals of cessation ? If con- sciousness is a function of nerve-matter, sleep abolishes it. How does it come back again without losing the sense of personal identity? TJiought is Is it conceivable that the highest character, the loftiest genius, is purely an intermittent secretion of certain nerve-cells, and that dur- ing the hours of sleep, embracing one-third of its entire history, it is absolutely non-existent ? '^ Function," says an eminent neurologist, " is a physiological term, and it is, I submit, im- proper to speak of states of consciousness as being functions of the brain. ... It is not the mind, but the physical basis of mind, which is a product of physical evolution. It is the 1 Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), in The Fortnighllij Bevieio, Marcli, 1892. not a sea'e tion. Liberty 221 organ of mind, not the mind of itself, wliicli being an evolution out of the rest of the body is representative of it."^ The fact that the brain is a double organ, — The brum that there are really two brains, only one of ^^^ 'milla which is used, — cannot be explained on the theory that consciousness is merely the result of the vibration of nerve filaments, as the music of the jEolian harp is the result of the pas- sage of the wind over its strings. A distin- guished physiologist has cleverly shown that if this were the case a double brain would mean a double amount of thought, just as twice the number of strings would mean twice the quan- tity of music. ^ But the fact that this is not so, points clearly to the hypothesis that the brain is not an iEolian harp helplessly vibrating under external impulses, but a double organ with two sets of keys, and the mind is like the player who can use either one of them to make the music. And this corresponds closely with our own sense of the process. For we are conscious not only of passive thoughts and 1 Dr. J. Hnghlings Jackson, "Lecture on the Comparative Study of Diseases of tlie Nervous System" {British Medical Journal, August 17, 1889). " Dr. William H. Thomson, Materialism and Modern Physiology of the Nervous System (New York, Putnams, 1892), pp. 83 ff. Heredity not Jinul. 222 Liherty feelings, evoked within us by external causes, but also of thoughts and feelings voluntarily- directed and combined, woven together in crea- tive harmonies, and moving under the guidance of chosen ideals towards a symphonic complete- ness. Even the sense of discord and conflict which often rises within us is an evidence that there is a player as well as an instrument. For it is inconceivable that an ^olian liarjD, ill- strung, should dislike its own bad music, and endeavour, or think that it could endeavour, to make a better, sweeter sound. Heredity is undoubtedly a real and power- ful force. It supplies the outfit of life. But does it determine the use which we shall make of it ? The very extension of the doctrine by the investigations of science dissolves this narrow and absolute conclusion. We inherit from thousands, from hundreds of thousands, of ancestors. The blood of mau}^ families and tribes and races is mingled in our veins. What is it that decides which of these many lines we shall follow ? It must be either blind chance or free choice. All the phenomena of society, all the facts of consciousness, are in favour of the latter supposition. We see men whose heritage is of the lowest and the worst, working their way up, by sheer strength of Liberty 223 moral clioice and effort, to a higher phiiie. We see men whose heritage is of the loftiest and the best, declining " thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still," i to the very depths of infamy. It is true that a man cannot bring out of himself anything that is not already there. But it is true also, by virtue of heredity, that there are many potential men in every man, and which of them | is to emerge, he chooses for himself by a thou- 1 \ sand silent moral preferences ; by yielding or < by resisting; by the cowardice and corruption, or by the courage and purification of his own free-will. Even those who write of human life from a Moraijudg- professedly naturalistic standpoint cannot cret "*^"^* ^ -J i o assume rid of this conviction. Take Zola, for example, liberty. If he were consistent, he would speak with equal and impassive coldness of all his cliarac- ters, tangled together in the inextricable toils of heredity. But he cannot help letting his hatred and contempt for the selfish, the luxu- rious, the vicious, express itself in the very accent with which he describes them. He cannot help showing his admiration and affec- 1 Tennyson's poem, Will. y 224 Liberty tion for those who, like Denise and Doctor Pascal^ and Clotilde, rise out of the infamy which envelops the family Rougon-Macquart. Virtue and vice may be scientifically treated as if they were merely natural products like sugar and vitriol ; but when we come to talk of them from a human and humane standpoint, there is something within us which demands that we shall recognize a merit in being virt- uous, and a shame in being vicious, — qualities which can never belong to mere secretions, whether of plants or of nerves, — qualities which have no possible meaning unless there is a free-will in man, capable of choosing be- tween the evil and the good. The testi- Now that a free-wiU is possible, modern psy- mldeni cliology assurcs us, as the result of its latest re- psychoiogy. searches. It does not attempt to demonstrate the existence of such a power by physiological investigation. It confesses that this demon- stration is impossible with our present know- ledge. But it declares with equal candour that the contrary attempt to show that the sense of freedom is a delusion, is inconclusive. " The last Avord of psychology here," says Professor William James, " is ignorance, for the forces engaged are too delicate and numerous to be followed in detail." He points out the ex- Liberty 225 tremely reckless and inconsequent nature of the reasoning by which the determinists seek to make mere analogies drawn from the course of rivers, and reflex actions, and other material phenomena, serve as proofs that the will is a mechanical effect. He exposes the bold as- sumption by which they ignore the testimony of consciousness in the presence of feeling and effort. He shows that the utmost which any argument for determinism can do is to present a possible hypothesis, which a man who has already determined to hold fast to the idea that the whole universe is one chain of inevi- table causation may accept if he likes. But meanwhile the other alternative stands equally open. The moral arguments all point in that direction. The only course, in such a situa- Free-tvillis tion, is voluntary choice. "For scepticism it- self, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If, meanwhile, the Avill be indetermined, it would seem only fitting that the belief in its inde- termination should be voluntarily chosen from amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's first deed should be to affirm itself. . . . Thus not only our morality but our religion, so far as the latter is deliberate, depends on the effort which we can make. '■Will you or won't you have it so f ' is the most probing Q possible. 226 Liberty question we are ever asked : we are asked it every hour of the da3% and about the largest as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical, things. AVe answer hy consents or 7ion-consents^ and not by words. What wonder if these dumb responses should seem our deepest organs of communication with the nature of things 1 What wonder if the effort demanded by them should be the measure of our worth as men ! V/hat wonder if the amount which we accord of it be the one strictly underived and original contribu- tion which we make to the world ! " ^ III Christ says Here, then, modern science, careful, exact, reai'*^^ ^* reverent, as distinguished from modern scep- ticism, leaves us before the two doors. And here Christ comes to us, calling us to enter through the door of liberty into the pathway of eternal life. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you."^ "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching. "^ 1 William James, Fsychology, vol. ii., p. 679. 2 St. Matt. vii. 7. 8 St. John vii. 17. Liberty 227 Tlie whole life and ministry of Jesus is a ^^'^ '^^^ °f . c ^ £ V " — tt"' Jesus, a revelation o± moral treedom. His entrance revelation of into the world was voluntary. His continn- free-win. ance in human life was voluntary. His death was voluntary. At t he fi rst crisis of His life He chose to go about His Father's business. In the temptation He chose to resist the allure- ments of th3 Evil One. On the way to the cross He clio^e not to call on God for the deliverance which He knew would come in answer to His call. He was, indeed, fulfilling an appointed task, treading the path which had been marked out for the feet of the Christ ; but He was fulfilling the task freely; He was walking in liberty because He loved to do the will of God. The triiunph of His virtue lay in the freedom of His choice. There was a singular propriety in the text of The preach- TT r- ITT r 11 • int/ of Jesus, His first i^ublic discourse. It was a declaration ^ gosjKi of of liberty, as well as of grace. It was an email- liberty. cipation proclamation as well as a gospel of com- fort and help. " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to pro- claim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of 228 Liberty the Lord."i And what was the oppressive bondage from which He proclaimed release? Was it not the tyranny of a false doctrine of necessity over the minds of men, as well as the enslaving influence of sin over their inert and hopeless wills? The riiari- Here w ere the^ scribes and Pharisees teach- sees tau'jht . ,i , ,-, i i " tt ' ~t ~i~V — •' Fate. ' ^^^o ^^'"-^ ^'^^ whole world was divided into two classes, — the chosen and the not-chosen, the righteous for whom salvation was secure what- ever they might do, and the sinners for whom salvation was impossible whatever they might do. Here were the outcast, the lost, the neg- lected, shut out, by no choice of their own, but by their birth, by the occupations in which they were engaged, by their ignorance, by the very conditions of their life, from all part in the kingdom of heaven as the scribes and Pharisees conceived it ; not only the harlots and the publicans, but also Am Haarez., "the people of the land," with whom it was not fit- ting that a righteous person should have aii}^ dealings ; ^ miserable souls, bound by inheri- tance to a desperate and unhallowed fate. Here came Jesus, taking His Avay directly to these lost bnes, these outsiders, and telling them that all this doctrine of inevitable doom was a chain 1 St. Lulte iv. 18. 2 Bruce, Kingdom of God, 145. Liberty 229 of lies, breaking the imaginary fetters from Jesus tavrjht their souls and assuring them Fy His first word that they were free, even though they were ignorant of it. "Repent," He cried, "for the kingdom of heaven has approached unto you."i "Except' ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. "^ And what is the signifi- cance of these words, "repentance" and "con- version," — their real significance, I mean, not that which has been read into them by centuries of false and formal theology? They are not passive and involuntary words ; they do not rest upon the idea of qualifications which may or may not be in the possession of those to whom Christ speaks. They are active words, — words of inward movement and exertion. " Repent " means change your mind ; make that simple effort of the soul for internal change which is the ultimate act of the free will ; ^ put forth 1 St. Matt. iv. 17. 2 St. Matt, xviii. 3. 3 " Every intelligent being, capable of conceiving of higher ethical conditions than he has yet attained, has in his own moral nature for the exercise of his creative powers an infi- nite sphere, within which ... he is the .supreme disposer. ... A man who does not want to be pure and noble, may yet begin one step lower in the scale of moral advancement, with the wish to want to be pure and noble ; and, here commenc- ing the cultivation of his moral nature, ascend from this lower fm 230 Liberty that power of fixed attention to the new motive whicli is tlie central essence of liberty and the creative force of the soul.^ "Be converted," as Christ spoke the word, is not passive ; it expresses an action exercised by the soul within itself ; it means simply " turn around " ; set yourself in a new relation to God, to truth, to Faith IS i virtue. The name of this relation is faith. " Believe " is Christ's great word. It is the '• open sesame " of the kingdom. " Believe in God, believe also in Me."^ " He that believeth hath everlasting life." ^ "All things are possible to him that believeth." ^ But it is never spoken of as a mere intellectual opinion, or emotional experience, an irresistible conviction wrought by external evidence in the mind, or bestowed without effort upon the soul. The Bible never says that faith is a gift. There is a voluntary element in it. It is something to be done by the exercise of an inward power. It is a com- ing of the soul to Christ ; it is a following of the point, through the want to be pure and noble, to the free effort to i^ratify this want." — Rowland Hazard, Freedom oj Mind in Willing, "Of Effort for Internal Change" (Bos- ton, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889), chap. xiv. 1 "The essential achievement of the will when it is most ' voluntary,' is to attend to a difiBcult object and hold it fast before the mind." — Jamks, Psychology, vol. ii., p. 561. 2 St. John xiv. 1. » gt. John vi. 47. < St. Mark ix. 23. Liberty 231 soul after Him ; it is the first step in a long course of spiritual activit3^ It is a deed. Tlie disoiples said unto Christ, "What must we do that we may work the works of God ? " Jesus answered, " This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.''^ Now there is not a hint in all the teaching of All may Jesus that this first act of freedom is impossible *^ ^^^^' for any soul to whom He sj^eaks. He has no idea of an eternal ^predestination binding some to belief and others to unbelief, a secret decree in- cluding certain men in the kingdom and exclud- ing others from all possibility of entering into it. It is true that He says, "No man can come unto Me except the Father draw him "; ^ but what He means by this drawing He teljs us in the par- able of the Lost Son, where it is jtlmsiniple ^ » ,, knowledge of the Father's abundant love that draws the prodigal back from the far country ■ of sin;^ and in the parable of the Publican in the Temple, * where it is the sense of the Divine mercy and forgiveness that makes the outcast man cry, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." There is prevenient grace in the doctrine of Jesus. But the grace is there. It lias already come. All that man has to do is to meet it, to 1 St. John vi. 28, 29. » St. Luke xv. 2 St. John vi. 44. * St. Luke xviii. 10-14. 232 Liberty Christ is God's call to faith. No predesti- nation to death. put himself into the upward swing of it, that it may lift and help him heavenward. A calling and a choosing by God are neces- sary before any man can be saved. But Jesus does not speak of this choosing and calling as eternal. Christ Hi.inself„is_.the^_call, and all who answer it are chosen. " If any man thirst, let him come unto INIe and drink. "^ "Him that Cometh unto Me I Avill in nowise cast out."^ The heavenly invitation is set forth in all its generosity and sincerity in the story of the Marriage Feast. ^ The bidding went out into the highways and hedges, to the bad and to the good; and all who heard and accepted it were welcome. And if a single guest was turned away, it was only because his own conduct showed that he had not really taken the invi- tation honestly and accepted willingly all that was provided for him. There is not a single word in all that Jesus said to suggest any other reason than this for the exclusion of a single person from the bless- ings of the kingdom. " Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life."^ "How often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under 1 St. John vii. 2 St. John vi. 8 St. Matt. xxii. 1-14. ■^ St. John V. 40. Liberty 233 her wings, and ye would not.'" "^ There is not one statement that anything else but mercy and grace has been eternally prepared by God for any human soul. In that awful parable of judgment which discloses the convincing picture of the final separation of the evil from the good, Christ says distinctly that the joy of the blessed has been prepared for them from the foundation of the world, but of the punish- ment of the cursed. He says with equal dis- tinctness that it was not prepared for them, but for the devil and his angels. ^ No one is ever lost because he cannot do good, but only because he will not do what he can. Christ recognizes the undoubted truth which Cimst on lies in the doctrine of heredity ; but He ex- poses, and almost ridicules, the false and fatal extremes to which men think it out. To the Jews, who claimed that because they were Abraham's seed they must be free. He showed that they were in bondage to their own sins. They had chosen to break away from the heredity of faith and righteousness, and were no longer the true children of Abra- ham. They had become the chihlren of the devil, because they had " willed to do his works." ^ He said to His disciples who took iSt. Matt, xxiii. 37. ^st. ]\Iatt. xxv. 34-41. 8 St. Jolin viii. 33-17. 234 Liberty. up the cant of tlie day about licreditary sin and punishment, asked whether the blind man or his parents had sinned that he was born blind, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." ^ Th e true inheritance , the deepest inheritance which Jesus recognizes in the liuman race, is an inheritance from God ; a nature made in the Divine image, spiritual, free, responsible, and capable, though so sadly marred, though so far astray, of returning to communion with the Heavenly Father. The weak- Undoubtedly Christ perceived and taught ness of man. , ,^ , ,- i • the immense dilhculty of being good ; the in- firmity which long centuries of sin has wrought into the very fibres of the soul ; the awful and almost inaccessible height of trne holi- ness ; the enormous obstacles which lie in the way of attaining it. The gate is strait, and we must agonize to enter in by it. The road is steep, and we must toil to climb it. " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God."^ And yet "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force. "^ There is an effort which succeeds even in this greatest of all endeavours, not in its own strength, » St. John ix. 3. 2 gt. Mark x. 23. 8 St. Matt. xi. 12. Liberty 235 but because it is sure of a Diviue assistaiK^e. The grace "With man it is impossible, but not v.ith God."^ To the human will, enfeebled and corrupted, so that it is like a sick man, barely able to turn himself upon his couch, and look and long and cry for help, tliree great sources of strength are always open and accessible. The first is prayer. "Men ought always to I'rayer. pray, and not to faint.'' ^ How sweet and serene is the voice that rings through the vain disputations and doubtful wranglings of the scribes and Pharisees, and calls every sinful soul to pray ! Pray ! you may not be able to realize your own ideal, but you can ask God to help you hold fast to it and struggle towards it. Pray ! " More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of." ^ Pray ! For God is not deaf, nor sleeping, nor gone upon a journey ; He has not bound you to an inexorable fate and bound Himself not to interfere with it. Pray ! The liberty of your own soul, and the liberty of God Himself, dwells in that word ; for when you stretch your feeble hand to Him, a Divine hand will meet it, and 1 St. Mark x. 27. 2 st. Luke xviii. 1. 3 Tennyson, The Passing of Arlhur. 236 Liberty lireak your fetters, and lift you out of darkness and death into life and light. The Holy The secoud source of strength is the Holy ^"' ' Spirit. It is inconceivable, morally impossible, tlial tlici'c should be such a Spirit, and jet that His influence should be withheld from those who need and implore it. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him."i Christ our xiie third source of strength is Christ Him - self. Does the sense of past guilt stand in the way of future effort ? He says, " I have power on earth to forgive sins." ^ Does the soul feel dead and hopeless under the burden of evil habits ? He says, " I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."^ Do tlie works of a true and vital righteousness seem far beyond our power ? He says, "Without Me ye can do nothing ; " ■* but, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." ^ " He that believeth on Me, the works tliat I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father."^ The whole 1 St. Luke xi. 13. * St. John xv. 6. " St. Mark ii. 10. « gt. Matt, xxviii. 20. 8 St. John X. 10. 6 St. John xiv. 12. Liberty 237 life of Christ is summed up in the words, " But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." ^ ^J* " But this receiving, we need to remember and The way of assert again and again, is not a passive thing. It is an action of the soul, the opening of a door within the heart, the welcoming of a heavenly- master. God does not save men as a watch- maker who repairs and sets a watch, but as a King \\\vo recalls his servants to their duty, as a Father who makes new revelations of His love to draw His lost children back to Himself. The dogmas of the schools in regard to the working out of what they call the scheme of redemption sound like the creak and rattle of some vast machine. The doctrine of C-hrist is like the soft breath of spring, evoking the songs of birds and the unfolding of new life. No fiery chariot of grace swoops down to snatch men to glory. But a living INIessenger comes forth from God to ask men to turn and walk back with Him to their soul's home. The invitation itself is a guarantee of the power to accept it. With au- thority Christ commanded the Avinds and the sea and they obeyed Him. But with gracious plead- ing He invited the hearts of men, and those that were v/illing gladly heard and followed Him. 1 St. John i. 12. 238 Liberty Ood helps those who help them- selves. Christus Liberator "If any man tviUs to come after Me," ^ — that is the prelude of His message. He offers a leader- ship to men who can follow, a mastership to men who can obey. Out of this first movement He promises to guide and direct the whole de- velopment of the new life, — not a passive life of retirement, of ascetic meditation, of reflec- tion upon secret truth, — but an active life of service, of warfare against evil in the world, a life which translates truth into conduct. Contrast the religion of Jesus in this respect with the Oriental religions, and with those forms of Christianity which have borrowed the garments of Buddha and speak with the accent of Mahomet. They despise and slight per- sonality. Christ respects and emphasizes it. They aim to reduce and evaporate responsi- bility. Christ aims to deepen and increase it. They point forward to a blank Nirvana in which the individual is lost and absorbed, or a Paradise in which he is forever lapped in sensual ease and pleasure. Christ speaks of the perfecting of the individual through the Divine communion and service on earth, and his entrance in heaven upon a new stage of the same communion, the same service, — " not in a blessed idleness, but in an exalted 1 St. Matt. xvi. 24. Liberty 239 kingly work and activity." And the entrance to this kingdom on earth, the continuance in its realm of liberty, the attainment of its final glory, are all through an act of the will. The freedom which originated in God is only to be preserved by returning to God and abiding in Him. " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." ^ That is the teaching of Jesus. That is the truth which, when it comes to men, makes them and keeps them free. IV It is impossible that we should be faithful The age TlCGds tills preachers of Christ to the present age, unless nigggage. we preach this truth. There ma}^ have been ages in which it was important to dwell upon other sides and aspects of the manifold reality of the spiritual world. But to-day this is the important side ; this is the aspect which de- mands a clear recognition and an unfaltering proclamation by those who mean to be true to Christ and loyal to the needs of humanity. I do not believe that there is a single passage in the Old Testament which contradicts Christ's 1 Tennyson, In Memorimn, Proem, 240 Liberty doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. But if there were such a passage, I would leave it forever alone, as belonging to that knowledge which was in part, and which was done away when that which was perfect had come. I do not believe that there is a single word in the St. Paul on writings of St. Paul which stands against this ^^' doctrine of the real liberty of the soul. I cut loose from the false interpretations which men have read into his words. I take the light of Christ's teaching in my hand, and I go back to interpret by that light the teacli- ings of the great Epistle to the Romans with its glorious revelation of " the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eter- nal, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith.'''' ^ I hear again the cry of the struggling, labouring, con- quering apostle : " To ivill is present ivith ?7ie, but to do that which is good is not. ... O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord;'''''^ and I know that St. Paul also was a believer in the free- dom of the will, and that lie received this 1 Rom. xvi. 26. 2 Rom. vii. 18, 24, 25. Liherty 241 gospel and the power to fulfil it, through the proclamation of liberty in Jesus Christ. " This matter of free-will," wrote one of the Free-ivill most orthodox of theologians, but a few years question. before his death, "underlies everything. If you bring it to question, it is infinitely more than Calvinism. ... I believe in Calvinism, and I say that free-will stands before Calvin- ism. Everything is gone if free-will is gone ; the moral system is gone, if free-will is gone ; you cannot escape except by Materialism on the one hand or by Pantheism on the other. Hold hard therefore to the doctrine of free- will." i Yes, and we may say more than this. Not only is the moral system gone, but the great | y attraction of Christ is gone, the power of His gospel to liberate men is gone, if free-vvdll is gone. The age has hypnotized itself. It is drift- The age has Q