THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LETTERS ON RELIGION >- LETTERS TO HIS SON ON RELIGION BY ROUNDELL FIRST EARL OF SELBORNE 3Lonti0n MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1898 A II rights reserved GIFT BS530 CONTENTS LETTER I PAGE The Importance of a True Knowledge of God i LETTER II The Means to a True Knowledge of God . 8 LETTER III Natural Religion : the Outward Light . 16 LETTER IV The Outward Light, and the Inward Light 24 LETTER V The Inward Light 31 341 LETTERS ON RELIGION LETTER VI PAGE The Inward Light 38 LETTER VII Revealed Religion : Introduction ... 46 LETTER VIII The Holy Scriptures 53 LETTER IX The Holy Scriptures 62 LETTER X The Testimony of the New Testament to the Old 69 LETTER XI The Testimony of the New Testament to the Inspiration of the Prophetical Scrip- tures of the Old and of its own Writers 77 CONTENTS LETTER XII PAGE The Inspiration and Authority of the Writers of the New Testament . . 85 LETTER XIII Biblical Criticism . . . . . . 94 LETTER XIV Biblical Criticism, Scientific . . . . 103 LETTER XV Biblical Criticism, Scientific . . . .111 LETTER XVI Biblical Criticism, Scientific . . . . 117 LETTER XVII Biblical Criticism, Scientific .... 124 LETTER XVIII Biblical Criticism, Scientific .... 130 LETTERS ON RELIGION LETTER XIX PAGE Biblical Criticism, Literary . . . .136 LETTER XX Biblical Criticism, Literary .... 144 LETTER XXI Biblical Criticism, Literary . . . .151 LETTER XXII Biblical Criticism, Literary .... 158 I I $tk February 1880. I offered to write to you frequently on religious and ecclesiastical subjects, and you said you would be glad to receive and read such letters. As my wish is to help you in what I know to be of all things the most important, but not to make it a burden to you, I do not expect answers to these letters, except when you have questions to ask, or otherwise feel prompted to pursue any subject farther than I may have done. But I hope you will not think it any loss of time to read what I write with B 2 LETTERS TO HIS SON care, and with the same degree of thought which you would give to any otheir ''subject* t:b; -vrhieh you paid serious aUention.; .; '; .' ."; ; / I consider you now to be quite old enough to understand that the happi- ness, honour, and usefulness of our lives must depend on two things ; first, on our being masters of ourselves, and keeping all our animal inclinations and appetites under the government of moral principle and reason ; and secondly, on our endeav- ouring to fulfil the purposes for which we were brought into the world, and placed there in the particular station to which we are called, with a right sense of responsibility towards God and goodwill (what the Scripture calls love) to men. I do not, as you know, grudge you those exercises, amusements, and pleasures which are in themselves innocent, manly, ON RELIGION 3 and sociable, provided they are indulged in with moderation, and in due sub- ordination to intellectual and moral improvement. But I cannot conceal from you that I should be very jealous of them indeed, if I saw that, as you got older, they acquired more power over you, and did not fall naturally into their proper places, as the accessories and recreations, and not the business of life. The main business of your life, now, and for some time to come, is and must be to store your mind with necessary or useful knowledge ; and of such know- ledge, the most important beyond com- parison is that which relates to the nature and objects of your life itself, and to God the Giver of it, in whose hands all the issues of it are, and to whom an account of the use you make of it will have to be rendered. 4 LETTERS TO HIS SON I wish to devote the rest of this letter to that one subject : the importance of a true knowledge of God, and the necessity of it as a foundation for such a life as it is my desire to see you lead. It follows necessarily, from the mere belief that there is a Divine Author and Governor of the world, that all true light and wisdom has its source and centre in Him, and, therefore, that the knowledge of Him, so far as it is attain- able by man, is the highest light and the truest wisdom to which man can attain ; and that by this alone we can be truly directed and governed, both in our endeavours to understand the world we live in, and in our ideas of what is practically right and good for ourselves and others, and of the proper way to pursue it. This is, no doubt, the ex- planation of what might perhaps, at first ON RELIGION 5 sight, seem difficult the way in which the Bible seems to place idolatry or falsehood in matters of religion in the forefront of sins, before those which relate to human conduct. False and unworthy conceptions of God corrupt, at their source, all the springs of human conduct, and turn them into wrong channels. In the ancient idolatries the process was to identify God with various (all of them partial and limited) forms of the manifestation of His power in Nature ; and then to invest those natural powers, thus made the representatives and the measure of their author, with an imaginary personality, of which the elements were human, without human morality. The result was every sort of odious moral degradation, and that in the name of religion. The superstitions of savages have the same effects. And 6 LETTERS TO HIS SON even among those who ought to have a true knowledge of God it is frightful to see how easily false conceptions of His laws and His will lead to practical wickedness ; as, for example, the crimes of persecution, and all sorts of un- charitableness towards those who have the misfortune (as we suppose) to possess less light, or to be less faithful to it, than ourselves. As knowledge must precede and regulate action in all things, so it is as to the governing principles of life : if we believe what is false to be true, our action will be on false lines ; and if this is the case in the region of the lower, it must be at least as much so in that of the highest Truth. " If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." In this way we see the force of St. John's declaration concern- ing our Lord : " That was the true ON RELIGION 7 Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." And there is in such a case but little difference between ignorance, arising not from the necessary limits of our knowledge, but from carelessness, worldliness, and neglect, and the substitution of false- hood for truth. If the soul of man does not seek after the highest truth to govern it, if (as St. Paul says, Romans i.) he " does not like to retain God in his knowledge," it is impossible that he should not set up some lower rule and principle as the governing power of his life instead of God, pleasure, it may be, or covetousness, which (no doubt for that reason) St. Paul calls idolatry. These false illusions, which never fulfil their promise, and de- grade men to the level of beasts or below it, or self-worship and intellectual pride 8 LETTERS TO HIS SON (which, if less degrading, is quite as false) become his gods. If the soul is empty it will not be long before devils come and lodge in it. To all this is to be added that God is not only the source of light to our souls; He is " our Father "also. You, who are so loving a son to your earthly parents, need not that I should magnify to you the Parental and Filial relation, or the loss which it must be to a son to reject or not care about the Highest Parental Love. II 22nd February 1880. In my last letter I spoke of the supreme importance of a true knowledge of God. In this I intend to speak of the means by which that knowledge is attainable by us. ON RELIGION 9 There are four main sources of this knowledge: of which two, (1) the out- ward light from the sensible universe which surrounds us, and of which we form part, and (2) the inward light from the constitution of our own minds and souls, belong to the province of what is commonly called Natural Religion. The other two, (3) Scripture, and (4) the institution and ordinances of the Church (in which I include Prayer and the Sacraments) belong to what is commonly distinguished as Revealed Religion. But in this as in many other things there is danger of error from separating things which ought to be regarded not as separate, but as combined. What God makes known to us by His works, or by His voice in our own souls, is as truly Revelation (so far as it conveys a true knowledge of Him) as anything io LETTERS TO HIS SON written under His inspiration, or appointed by His special ordinance. And it has been a fruitful source of error in religion to set up one or more of these sources of Divine knowledge against the others, instead of harmonising and recognising the mutual relation of them all. Heathen idolatry arose mainly out of a one-sided reliance upon man's power to interpret God by the Outward Light, the manifestation of Him in Nature, without due regard to the Inward Light of Reason and the Moral Sense, and without keeping in mind the primitive knowledge which, to the earlier ages of men, was what Scripture and the Church, etc. are to us. In modern times the Quakers and Rationalising Protestants have made the Inward Light their sole and infallible rule, to the disparagement of the other means ; and ON RELIGION n the consequence, with many of them, has been to obscure that Light itself. With some Protestants the recoil from superstition and exaggerated claims of Church authority has expressed itself in the well-known dogma of Chillingworth, that " the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." This one- sided and exclusive recognition of the Bible, as if it were the only source of religious knowledge, is by no means confirmed by the Bible itself; and it has tended greatly towards division and variety of doctrine in the Church, and to substitute an intellectual and emotional for a practical and historical conception of the Christian religion. On the other hand, the merely ecclesiastical view, which exalts the authority of the Church or of Popes, above all other sources of knowledge, and refuses to private reason 12 LETTERS TO HIS SON any place in the interpretation of Scrip- ture, has been the parent of an infinite amount of formalism, superstition, and corruption, and, by the unavoidable reaction from it, has contributed much to unsettle the minds of many men on the whole subject of religion. It is an almost universal law that the one-sided and exclusive assertion of particular truths, to the neglect or disparagement of others, results in falsehood. Pure and unmixed falsehoods would never be believed ; perhaps it might even be impossible for the human mind, con- stituted as it is, to believe them, if they did not come with some semblance of truth or with some element of truth plausibly presented in them. But, inasmuch as all Truth is really One, a particular truth may become a falsehood, when it is set up in opposition to, and ON RELIGION 13 made to exclude or contradict some other truth. In one respect there is something comforting in this ; for the fact that those who are most in error may have been misled by following fragments of truth, disjointed from their proper relation to other truths, may assist us to form charitable views of such persons. But, as far as we our- selves are concerned, our own search for Truth ought to be loyal and compre- hensive, taking in all light, from all its sources, and not willingly neglecting or undervaluing any. And we cannot be too much upon our guard against any dogmas or theories, by which the access of Divine light to our souls, from any of its real sources, may be obscured. An- other thing, against which we should also be on our guard, is the error of either identifying our own fallible inter- 14 LETTERS TO HIS SON pretations of the light accessible to us from any of these sources with the light itself, or undervaluing any source of light, as if it could safely be disregarded, because we have not the power of infallibly interpreting it. I said just now that the saying of Chillingworth, about the Bible only, was not confirmed by the Bible itself; and I shall show you that the Bible very dis- tinctly recognises both the outward and the inward lights of Natural Religion, as true and real revelations of God to man. As to the Outward Light, the 19th Psalm says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handy- work." The book of Job is full of appeals to the same source of light. St. Paul, in that very important first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, says that unrighteous men ON RELIGION 15 everywhere will be judged, not as ignorant of truth, but as "holding the truth" in unrighteousness; " because that which may be known of God is manifest in (or to) them : for God has shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead ; so that they are without excuse." And, with respect to the Inward Light, of Reason and the Moral Sense, we are, in the first place,- told at the beginning of Genesis that man was created " in the image," or "likeness," of God, clearly not as to his animal, but as to his spiritual nature ; a statement which at once sug- gests the conclusion that we may know something at least of Him and His attributes, by the image or likeness of 16 LETTERS TO HIS SON Himself which He has impressed upon our own souls; and St. Paul, in some passages to which I will refer when I return to this subject in another letter (Acts xvii. 28, 29 ; and Romans ii. 14, 15), refers to, and insists upon, the possession of this Inward Light by the Gentile world. Ill 29//Z February 1880. I was stopped at the end of my last letter while indicating some of the more prominent recognitions in Scripture of sources of Divine Light, other than itself. St. Paul, when speaking to the Athenian philosophers from the Areopagus, re- ferred to the Inward Light which man has by nature, as created in the image of God. He speaks of it as part of the Creator's purpose that men should ON RELIGION 17 "seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us : for in Him we live, and move, and have our being." And then, appealing to the words of " certain of their own poets " (Cleanthes and Aratus), " For we are also His offspring," he adds ; " Foras- much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device " (Acts xvii.). And in the second chapter of the epistle to the Romans he says, "When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things con- tained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves ; which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bear- ing witness, and their thoughts the c 18 LETTERS TO HIS SON meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." With respect to the institution and ordinances of the Church it is, for the present, sufficient to refer to one testimony only ; that in which St. Paul, writing to Timothy (i Tim. hi.), calls the Church "the pillar and ground of the truth (ttvXos /cat eSpaico/jba tt}? aX^^eta?" ; a very remarkable expression, to which I shall have occasion, when I speak more par- ticularly of the Church, to advert again. It will reward our pains to endeavour to see, more particularly, what we really may learn from each of these sources of light ; what the limits are of each, standing alone, and how needful and instructive is the supplement, or de- velopment, which each of them receives from the others. It will be convenient, in point of order, first to consider the Outward Light, remembering, of course, ON RELIGION 19 that it could not reach us at all except by the power which that part of the Inward Light which we call " Reason " gives, of receiving into the mind the impressions conveyed through the bodily senses, and forming intelligent judg- ments concerning them. When we have obtained some conception of what by this aid may be learnt from the Out- ward Light and of the questions which it raises but does not itself solve, it will then be well to see what enlargement and expansion this conception naturally receives, when the information coming from the moral part of the Inward Light is combined with it ; and again, when it is regarded in the Light derivable from Scripture. The evidence of the truth of religion in all its parts is of the kind called " cumulative " ; that is, it is made up of a number of different (but all of 20 LETTERS TO HIS SON them converging) lines of truth, of which some, when separately considered, may seem imperfect or incomplete, but which, when brought together, are found so to bear upon and support each other as to be in their combined effect impregnable. Even without aid from any other sort of revelation there is, in the sensible universe around us, that which leads irresistibly to a knowledge of those attri- butes of God which we call Omnipo- tence, Omniscience or Supreme Wisdom, Omnipresence, Incomprehensibility, In- finity, and Eternity, without beginning or end. And it is very noteworthy that these ideas, so vast and transcendent as to baffle human comprehension, and dazzle, so to say, the eyes of the mind when it attempts to dwell upon them, are, nevertheless, impressions which result equally from the unscientific and ON RELIGION 21 the scientific observation of nature. Omnipotence is the sum of all the powers and forces which are manifested in the universe, by which everything which exists has been produced and is governed, from the suns and stars which we see in the heavens, and the boundless space which contains them, to the smallest grain of dust or sand, and the myriads of creatures so small as to be seen only by the microscope, or not seen at all : which has determined the orbits of all the heavenly bodies, and keeps them all in their courses, and is continually working by those agencies which we call physical, chemical, me- chanical, and vital, all around and within us. These manifestations give us a natural impression of power with- out limit ; and, as we cannot conceive of any place where this power is not, the 22 LETTERS TO HIS SON idea of Omnipresence follows, as a corollary from it ; and the investigations and conclusions of natural philosophers which have led them to believe in the " correlation " or interchangeability of all natural forces, and to suggest as probable a pervading uniformity in the original natural conditions of all matter, concur with the religious instinct in ascribing an essential unity to this Power and Presence. The ideas of Infinity as to Space and Incomprehensi- bility (i.e. immeasurableness) are per- ceived to be necessary by the natural reason ; and even the Roman Epicurean poet, Lucretius, was able to demon- strate them, because there can be no bond or limit of that beyond which there is nothing else existing. Infinity as to time or Eternity is also an idea, which reason irresistibly arrives at, from ON RELIGION 23 its inability to conceive how anything could have ever come into existence, if there ever was nothing ; and from the observation that, though all things sensible may be decomposed as to their elements, and change their combinations and forms, no part of those elements is ever lost or destroyed. Omniscience or perfect wisdom is not less naturally discerned, from the fact that law and order pervade all this infinite space, as far as our faculties can discern, from the greatest to the smallest things ; from the wonderful adaptation of means to ends observable (as Paley has pointed out with especial reference to the human body) throughout the whole life and organisation of animated beings, and the whole natural economy of all things subservient to the support of their life and to their other needs ; and (as the 24 LETTERS TO HIS SON Duke of Argyll in his Reign of Law has shown) in the instincts of all the inferior creatures, which if not directed by any conscious reason or intelligence in those creatures themselves, are so much the more wonderful proofs of a Supreme Reason and Intelligence in the Power which created them. IV yth March 1880. There is a form of opinion called " Pantheism," by which some, stopping short at the point to which we were brought by my last letter, and shutting their eyes to all other Light, have practically denied to the Outward Light itself any religious significance ; and it may be doubtful whether that opinion is not virtually held even by those philo- sophers whose language, being merely ON RELIGION 25 negative, leads others to describe their views in mere terms of negation. That something does exist, with the wonderful and mysterious attributes spoken of in my last letter, is undeniable ; and the only possible question (the light of nature alone being regarded) must be, whether we are to ascribe all these attributes to the sensible or material universe itself, or to a Being who is to be acknow- ledged as the Author and Ruler of that universe. Pantheism (i.e. the opinion which identifies the whole material uni- verse with God and acknowledges no God except this universe, or aggregate of sensible things) asserts the former of these alternatives. In this, I think, we have a strong example of the superiority of the common sense of mankind at large over the refinements of philo- sophers. The knowledge of truth on 26 LETTERS TO HIS SON those subjects which touch the whole government of life is as necessary for ordinary men as for philosophers ; and, unless man were the only creature whose general intelligence was without a proportionate adjustment to his wants, it might be safely concluded that the faculty of a true discernment in these matters would not be a result of ad- vanced science in a few, but would belong to, or be within the reach of, all who did not make unnecessary diffi- culties about it for themselves. Such difficulties may be created in men of all sorts by a moral antipathy to the light ; and in men of high intellectual attain- ments by intellectual pride and self- confidence, which trusts to nothing but itself, and so becomes entangled in its own sophisms. Our Lord thanked His Father, that He "had hid these things ON RELIGION 27 from the wise and prudent, and had revealed them unto babes." "God" (says St. Paul) " has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." " In the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God" (1 Cor. i.), and " Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Rom. i.). Now on this subject of Pantheism as opposed to Theism I think the appeal may very safely be made to the common sense of mankind. If the attributes which we call Divine were to be ascribed to the material universe as a whole, they must, on the same principle, be ascribed to every part of it. But the common sense of mankind echoes, as to this, the declarations of Scripture. It says, indeed, "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence ? If I ascend up 28 LETTERS TO HIS SON into Heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed in Hell, behold, Thou art there" (Psalm cxxxix.). But the pre- sence which it so recognises is not localised in any particles of matter or portions of space ; " The Lord is not in the wind," nor in "the earthquake," nor " in the fire " (i Kings xix.). " Where shall wisdom be found ? and where is the place of understanding ? The depth saith, It is not in me; and the sea saith, It is not with me " (Job xxviii.). Omnipotence cannot be ascribed to stocks and stones or other aggregates of material particles over which even man can exert power. Omnipresence, Infinity, Incomprehen- sibleness are ideas opposed to the con- ditions of all such material substances ; which are finite, and contained within definite bounds of space. Change, ON RELIGION 29 decay, and death, to which all animated natures in the material world are sub- ject, and the instability and variability of the combinations of inorganic matter, are very remote from any rational con- ception of the eternal. And to repre- sent all dead, inert, inorganic matter as Supremely Intelligent is manifestly absurd. Whatever else, therefore, is true, Pantheism cannot be. So far as to Outward Light alone without any aid from the inward beyond the powers of perception and intelligent judgment. Now let us consider what more the Inward Light adds to it. It adds the ideas of Personality, of Will, and of Moral Goodness, with its opposite, Moral Evil. The two former are derived from the consciousness of the unity and individuality of that Intelligent Being which each man calls " himself," and of 30 LETTERS TO HIS SON the faculty of volition (so as to deter- mine action) which each man knows himself to possess. The third is an in- tuition of the critical faculty on which depend the notions of right and wrong and all our moral judgments. These ideas, when compared with those derived from the Outward Light, reveal to us Will as the Law of Power ; Personality as the seat of rational Intelligence ; and Good- ness as the perfection of an intelligent nature. How can the attributes of Absolute Power and Supreme Wisdom be without Personality and Will ? How can that perfection, to which all the Divine attributes testify, be without per- fect goodness? We obtain, therefore, in this manner, and to this extent from the Outward and the Inward Light com- bined, a revelation of God. But this revelation, if we had nothing more, ON RELIGION 31 would be subject to many questions and many perplexities ; especially those which arise out of the presence of evil in ourselves and in the world. It is, therefore, no more than the belief in an Author of our Being, All-powerful and All-good, would make probable, that this need of still further light should be in some way supplied. V 1 4tA March 1880. In my last letter I spoke of the per- ception by the Inward Light of the ideas of moral good and evil. This, which we call the Moral Sense, is to our spiritual nature what the eye is to the body. It places us, on the spiritual side, in the same kind of necessary relation with truths and principles not cognisable by the physical sense (but nevertheless under- 32 LETTERS TO HIS SON stood to be real and certain), as we are placed in by the physical sense with those which are so cognisable. And it asserts the supremacy to us, at all events, of the truths with which it is conversant. The moral sense is not only like the intellect, receptive and critical of the impressions made upon it by its proper subject-matter, but it enters into our personal consciousness and is impera- tive ; i.e. it convinces us of duty or of obligation. It presupposes a law, not of our own making, to which we owe obedience, and for opposition to which we shall be in some way answerable ; it passes judgment upon us for all wilful breaches of that law, making us at once witnesses against and judges of our- selves ; and by the same rate of judg- ment we judge others also. This judicial faculty, which we call " con- ON RELIGION 33 science," thus becomes, both in its direct action as to ourselves, and in its reflex or indirect action as to others, the regulating principle of our lives. Being implanted in us from our birth by the Author of our Being it must be (if anything in the world is) His voice within us ; the law which it enforces must be His law; its judgments- must be His judgments, and the Power which gives effect to them His. The morality which it teaches us must be the Image and Reflection of His Nature. It is, therefore, most important that we should have as correct a knowledge as possible of the subject-matter, and of the manner, of the operations of this moral sense, and that we should not confound it with any- thing from which it is really distinct. It is concerned, not with opinion or speculation on any abstract truths, but D 34 LETTERS TO HIS SON with the motives of action, and the voluntary actions resulting from them. It absolves, or at least excuses, mistakes and errors originating in involuntary ignorance; and it condemns every action, and every Trpoaipea^ (to use Aristotle's word, signifying an intelligent determination of the will) in which the prevailing will is opposed to conscience. It is to this prevalence of an evil will over what we know to be right, that we apply the words " wickedness," "guilt," and " sin " ; all which derive their essential meaning from the moral sense, and express something wholly different from "wrong" in the sense of mere error. The whole of this system of thought and language bears witness to the existence of an element in man's nature unlike and incommensurable with all the elements of all the inferior ON RELIGION 35 natures of which we have any know- ledge ; while, on the other hand, the bodily constitution of man is, as plainly, like to and commensurable with that of brute creatures. Those creatures have (though in a lower degree) something resembling even the intellectual faculty in man ; but the moral sense differs from anything which we can perceive in them, not only in degree, but in kind. In man himself reason is obscured when the moral sense is deficient ; so that the inability to distinguish between right and wrong has become, among ourselves, a critical test of insanity. Conscience, in all its operations, pre- supposes (as I have said) a law ; and, of course, a law which is known. But it is not the office of conscience by itself to give that knowledge. It can, and does, recognise those primary rudiments 36 LETTERS TO HIS SON of it which result from our physical constitution, and from our necessary or natural relations to other men ; and it enables us to test, by reference to them, all ethical codes or systems which may be otherwise presented to us. But it does not itself construct any such codes or systems. The primary moral duty of self-government, by keeping appetite and passion in subjection to reason, may properly be said to result from our physical constitution ; it being proved by universal experience that this is necessary to prevent the higher faculties being overpowered by the lower, and the body itself becoming diseased, exhausted, enfeebled, and made un- serviceable for its proper uses. The other primary moral duties spring out of our necessary relations to other men. Of these the first and most invariable ON RELIGION 37 is the filial ; of which the necessary and invariable condition is absolute depend- ence on, and subjection to, others, in the first stage of our lives. The law of filial love and that of subordination and obedience to legitimate authority thus come naturally home to us from the first dawn of consciousness and reason. As we grow up we are brought, in the course of nature, into relations with, first others of our own family circle besides our parents, and afterwards strangers ; and, from the consciousness of wrong done to ourselves by cruelty, unkindness, and injustice we learn that to behave cruelly, unkindly, or unjustly towards others would be wrong and immoral on our part. The same ''Royal Law" of doing to others as we would be done by also teaches us the duty of truth. And these five elementary principles, of self- 38 LETTERS TO HIS SON government, obedience to legitimate authority, love, justice, and truth, lie at the root and foundation of all morality. VI list March 1880. It may be useful before going farther to illustrate what has been already said, by some instances of the extent to which moral and spiritual illumination was, in fact, attained by good and wise men in the Gentile world, who made the best use which they could of those natural sources of it, which alone were accessible to them. I will take three examples ; one from Cleanthes, a Stoic philosopher, who lived at Athens about 300 years before Christ ; one from the Republic of Plato (about 100 years earlier) who puts the words which I shall quote into the mouth of Socrates ; and the ON RELIGION 39 third from Juvenal, writing at Rome about 120 years after Christ, but with- out any knowledge of Christian doctrine. Cleanthes (in a hymn to Jupiter) prayed for guidance and light to the " Sovereign Ruler of Nature, govern- ing all things by Law"; " for we" (he said) "are Thy offspring, alone of all living creatures created in Thy sole image. Obedient to Thee is all this revolving universe which surrounds the earth ; it willingly accepts Thy control ; nor is anything done without Thee in earth, or sky, or sea, except the wicked deeds of men of perverted mind. Thou knowest how to set bounds to excess, to bring order out of disorder, and to reconcile enmity to Thy Love. Thou unitest all things, both good and evil, in one by the bond of Eternal Reason ; which the wicked, to their misery, fly 40 LETTERS TO HIS SON from and forsake, longing ever to become possessors of good things, yet shutting their eyes and ears to the universal Law, by obedience to which they might attain both wisdom and happiness." Socrates, according to Plato, con- ceived thus of the nature and the reward of Righteousness in man (Rep. book x. ; Jowett's TransL p. 510) 1 : " This must be our notion of the just man ; that, even when he is in poverty or sickness, or in any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him in life and death : for the Gods have a care of any one, whose desire is to become just (oo-tls TrpoaipelaOai iQekeu Slfcaios yty- veadai), and to be like God, as far as man can attain the Divine likeness, by 1 i.e. in the second edition (1875), vol. iii. ; in the paging of vStephanus, 613 a. ON RELIGION 41 the pursuit of virtue." Compare this with St. Paul's words in Romans viii. 28, 38, 39'- "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. . . . For I am per- suaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christjesus our Lord." The other passage (from the 13th Satire of Juvenal) lays down the same high law of morality which we find in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 22, 28), and in Matt. xv. 19. I quote from Gifford's translation (all but the last couplet) : Guilt still alarms, and conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud but deep, While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies 42 LETTERS TO HIS SON A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes. (Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum.) Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign Can match the fierce, th' unutterable pain, He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest, Carries his own accuser in his breast. (" Nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem.") Such wrath pursues each wicked purpose still ; For Heaven can judge the Deed, while 'tis but Will. (" Has patitur pcenas peccandi sola voluntas. Nam, scelus intra se taciturn qui cogitat ullum, Facti crimen habet.") But, although some few men could rise to such heights as these, by those lights only which belong to what we call " Natural Religion," the general tendency of mankind, when left to these alone, has been to go back from lower rather than advance towards higher degrees of moral and spiritual know- ledge. It is matter, not of dogma, but ot experience, that there is present in every man's nature (in varying degrees ON RELIGION 43 of power) a perverse and contradictory element which takes the wrong side, and tends to corrupt the will, when the solicitations of sense are at variance with the dictates of right reason and conscience. This is too apt to prevail ; and, when it prevails, it leads to the formation of evil habits which gain strength by repetition and indulgence ; and thus, under the multiplying in- fluences of time and of example, opinion and practice become debased in in- dividuals, communities, and nations. And when the unaided intellect en- deavours to penetrate the mystery which surrounds and lies behind all physical phenomena it finds itself baffled. The truths which the voice of Nature proclaim are inarticulate, and want definition and interpretation. The attempt to define, demonstrate, or 44 LETTERS TO HIS SON analyse them by experimental or logical methods fails of success ; and minds, which insist on experiment and logic as the only means of arriving at any true knowledge, are landed, by these processes, in perplexity, doubt, and disbelief. Thus, as St. Paul says (i Cor. ii. 14), "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness to him ; because they are spiritually dis- cerned." This downward course, both of the Will and of the Intellect, when the natural light alone is relied on, is in itself, as it seems to me, strong evidence that further information as to moral and spiritual truths is a want of our nature, a necessary supplement required by, and implied in, the natural light itself, without which the design and purpose discoverable from ON RELIGION 45 the moral nature of man and his rela- tions to the rest of the universe would not be adequately fulfilled. In other words, the Natural Light, having those limits which we find it to have, and raising those questions which we find it to raise without solving them, pre- pares us to believe and leads us to expect, that some further information and aid will, in other ways, be Divinely given so as to enable us to resist and counteract these downward tendencies. The belief of Christians is that such further information has, in fact, been given, and is contained in the Holy Scriptures ; and that Divine aid has also been, and is continually, given, in other ways, which the Scriptures dis- close. This it is, which makes the study of the Bible of so much more importance to us than any other study in the world. 46 LETTERS TO HIS SON VII Easter Eve 1880. When St. Paul supposed (1 Cor. xv.) the case of some one who might require, as a condition of belief in the doctrine of the Resurrection, that the manner of it should be explained to him, he rebuked the demand as "foolish," and thought it enough to show, by analogies from the natural world, that there might be a real continuity between states of existence wonderfully different from each other. Some persons make the same kind of demand as to the doctrine of special Divine revelations ; and our Saviour's own words (John iii.), V The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or ON RELIGION 47 whither it goeth " (with respect to one particular operation of the Holy Spirit) indicate that to this demand, also, the same kind of answer may properly be given. When men are able perfectly to explain the origin, causes, laws, and operations of nature it will be time enough to lay down the proposition that nothing is to be believed which cannot be fully explained. In the meantime, the natural light will carry us some way towards the conception of that which is beyond it, and may be a ladder, by which we shall be helped to rise higher. If, for convenience of phrase we call what is higher " supernatural," we do not mean by that form of expression that the " natural" and " supernatural " are really two different modes or sys- tems of Being ; both ideas centre in God, whom we believe to be alike the 48 LETTERS TO HIS SON Author of all forms and modes of Being ; nor can we conceive anything more essentially " supernatural " than the origination of " Nature " ; which word we practically use to describe that sys- tem of things, of which our senses inform us, or which is directly the subject of our consciousness. It has been already seen that, to the minds of those who do not start with the assump- tions of unbelief, the idea of special Divine revelation commends itself, not as possible only, but as probable ; and any questions or difficulties, which may be suggested as to the manner of it, may be answered as far as is needful for the confirmation of faith. It is certainly not more difficult to believe that God can impress upon the mind of man, through all or any of the faculties by which it is enabled to receive ON RELIGION 49 intelligence, any knowledge which it is His will to impart, than to believe that God created the mind itself with those faculties. If He is present everywhere ; if He " maintains all things by the word of his power" ; if He is the Author of all the laws of the universe, ruling and over- ruling all events, and appointing the course of all things by His providence, man cannot be exempted from His presence, power, government, and provi- dential care ; and, all natural things, influences, and powers being his instru- ments and ministers, it seems manifest that He can use them all as true and real means of communication between Himself and man. What is the gift of reason itself, and the cognate gift of speech, but a Divine communication on which all man's intelligence is founded ? The whole elements of speech are, in 50 LETTERS TO HIS SON reality, made up of figures, pictures, and images derived from the objects of sensation ; and yet we find them well adapted and sufficient to convey to our minds a true, trustworthy, and (where accuracy is necessary) even an exact and scientific knowledge of abstract (e.g. mathematical) truths, and of intellectual and moral conceptions. The moral sense which enables us to form moral conceptions at all is certainly not less a Divine communication. And the thought comes naturally to men that (in Shake- speare's words) " there's a Divinity which shapes " the more rare and excellent products of these gifts, and the impressions conveyed by them to the soul from outward things, even short of anything to which we should apply the word " supernatural." When the Scrip- ture represents extraordinary wisdom, ON RELIGION 51 even concerning earthly things (as in the case of Solomon) as a special gift of God, it does but confirm an instinctive sentiment of humanity. The Scripture goes still farther in this doctrine (if I may so call it) of inspiration, as applied to all the more excellent achievements of human reason. "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri . . ., and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship " (Exodus xxxi.). This, you see, applies to works of art and handicraft. We hardly can need Scripture warrant to 52 LETTERS TO HIS SON assume as much of poetry, the most last- ing and far-reaching storehouse of the higher intuitions of the most gifted men, in which also are preserved the most interesting and instructive of the older traditions of humanity. "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven" (Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream). Of Scripture itself a very large part is poetry. It was said by Pindar, of some classical legends, that they were (jxovdvTa avveTOicnv ' e? 8e to irav epfj,7]vecov x aT ^ 61 " full of meaning to the wise, but needing an interpreter to men in general." And it is certain that the common sights and sounds which are all around us are often made, as if by some mysterious power giving them a special interpretation, to serve the purposes of special impressions upon ON RELIGION 53 the minds or hearts of particular men. To the guilty, for example, as is said (with much more enlargement) in the context of that passage in the 13th Satire of Juvenal, which I quoted in my last letter : Hi sunt qui trepidant, et ad omnia fulgura pallent, Quum tonat ; exanimes primo quoque murmure coeli. Nor do such intimations come in such ways to the guilty only. They often come in the way of warning, sometimes of encouragement. If it be said that they are imaginations, so they are ; but their effects are realities, and imagina- tion is a real power. " Non sine Numine." VIII ^t k April 1880. To what was said of imagination in my last letter this should be added, that it 54 LETTERS TO HIS SON is capable of physical as well as mental excitements. A familiar instance is that of dreams, in which various combina- tions of ideas present themselves, some- times with much vividness and coher- ence, while the active powers are in suspense. The retina of the eye in persons not asleep is also said to be capable, under certain conditions, of receiving abnormal impressions, as if objects not presented to it in the ordinary way of nature were actually seen ; and this has been regarded by men of science (as you may see, among other books, in Sir Walter Scott's Demonology, etc.) as a sufficient physical cause for some extraordinary apparitions. The ear is probably capable of like abnormal impressions of vocal sounds. From such facts of human experience as these the transition to special Divine ON RELIGION 55 revelations is not difficult to those who believe in a moral and providential government of the world. In the Bible special revelations are represented as having been made to men in several different ways. Some of them {e.g. the use of lots, and " Urim and Thummim") by the employment of instrumental means under the Jewish Theocracy to obtain Divine guidance upon particular occasions. Others, for communications of more general and permanent importance; as (1) inward impulse or inspiration ; (2) dreams ; (3) visions, either in trance or otherwise ; and (4) articulate voices. Underlying and connecting all these is the general doctrine of Divine and spiritual influence upon man, which is of the very essence of the scriptural idea of religion, and of which the Bible from beginning to end is full. 56 LETTERS TO HIS SON The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is revealed to us (as to His Divine nature, and His personal attri- butes in the Divine economy) under the title of o X0709, the Greek word signifying both " reason" and " speech." We are told that He is the " Light of men"; the " true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world " ; " the Light of the world." " No man," it is said (John i. 18), " has seen God at any time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him " (ef^o-aro). His special work as the Saviour of men from sin and its effects is the main subject of the whole Bible. The Third Person of the same Holy Trinity is (evidently on the same prin- ciple of the approximate conveyance to our minds of truths not absolutely com- ON RELIGION 57 prehensible by us, through symbols derived from things within our observa- tion and experience) revealed to us under the title of irvevfia (with the addi- tions dycov and rod Oeov) : that Greek word, and its Latin equivalent spiritus, meaning breath of air, that breath of air by the infusion of which into his body man " became a living soul"; which constitutes the atmosphere surrounding the whole globe we inhabit ; and on which the life of all organised beings on the surface of that globe depends. By the same word we distinguish that part or principle of our own nature in which we feel our consciousness, personality, intelligence, and moral sense to reside ; and by the adjective derived from it we describe the whole class of ideas which arises out of the distinction between these and what we call material things. 58 LETTERS TO HIS SON To this Divine Person, the Holy Spirit of God, the Scripture ascribes an active and energetic presence in the souls of those men who submit themselves to His government. Our Lord's own teaching (John iii.) is that they are " re- generated {i.e. adopted into the earthly family of the Heavenly Father, as by the natural birth they were brought into that of their natural parents) by "the Spirit " : of whom also our Lord else- where (John xiv. 17; xv. 26; xvi. 13) speaks as "the Spirit of Truth," sent to His disciples as an "Advocate or Helper" (mistranslated "comforter,") to "guide" them into all truth. He is (Romans viii.) the " Spirit of adoption " ; by whom men are enabled to enter into, and realise their filial relation towards God. " The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of ON RELIGION 59 God." To His operation all Christian gifts, graces, and virtues, both ordinary and extraordinary, are attributed. St. Paul has a whole chapter (1 Cor. xii.) upon this subject, beginning 7repl 8e twv 7rv6v/jbaroKcov, aSeXxpol, ov 6e\(D v/juas ayvoelv. Even the simple profession of belief in Jesus Christ as " the Lord " (sincere, he of course assumes it to be) is, he says, impossible " but by the Holy Ghost." And he goes on to speak of the various forms and degrees of manifestations of the power of "that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will " ; ascending up from such gifts (attainable by, if not necessary to, ordinary Chris- tians) as "the word of wisdom," "the word of knowledge and faith," to those which were extraordinary and, as we are accustomed to say, supernatural. 60 LETTERS TO HIS SON Christians acknowledge the Scriptures as M the Word of God " and habitually speak of them as " inspired." Less cannot be meant by this, than that what, in those books, is recorded as Divine revelation really is so, and that the substance of the information contained in them concerning spiritual things is true, and to be certainly believed. But it is not inconsistent with that belief, that, as to much of the form and inci- dental matter of those books, the human faculties of the men who wrote them may have been left free. Men, whom God makes His ministers or mess- engers, do not therefore cease to be men. And, looking at the same point from the side, not of those who deliver, but of those who receive the message, the general law of moral probation might lead us to expect that some re- ON RELIGION 61 sponsible exercise of the human faculties of attention, inquiry, and discernment might be required for the right appre- hension and use of this (as it is of every other) source of light and knowledge. The canonical authority of each book of Scripture is not established by a special and personal revelation to each in- dividual Christian, but by the historical testimony of its reception from the earliest ages of the Church. The text of the ancient manuscripts of the Scrip- tures has (like that of other ancient books) various readings in different copies, affecting the form and letter of a great number of passages ; and in many cases the choice between these is, and always must remain, a matter of fallible human criticism. The language in which those books are written is not (at least in the Gospels) that used by the 62 LETTERS TO HIS SON Divine and human persons whose words and actions are recorded ; and, to those who compare carefully the different narratives of the same dis- courses and events (e.g. by the Evan- gelists), differences in the structure, order, method, arrangement, and par- ticulars of the narrative, are at once apparent. Even in trustworthy, unin- spired books, the credit of the general text and belief in the substance of the history is not affected by such varia- tions. Why, then, should they be diffi- culties in the Scriptures ? IX ntk April 1880. Pursuing the subject of the special revelation (or rather revelations) from God to man, contained in the Holy Scriptures, we should observe first, of ON RELIGION 63 what the Scriptures consist ; and secondly, how they themselves repre- sent their own claim to authority. The Old Testament (which has the double and independent testimony to its authenticity of both Jews and Christians) consists : (1) of seventeen historical books, written at many different times, and covering the whole tract of time from the beginning of the human race to the earlier Persian kings of the dynasty of Darius Hystaspes; (2) five books of devo- tional and philosophical poetry, written at intervals during the space of about 1000 years ending with the dedication of the second temple, a little less than 500 years before Christ ; and (3) sixteen other books, also in the main poetical, bearing the names of as many prophets, which are supposed to range over the 500 years or thereabouts, preceding the 64 LETTERS TO HIS SON fourth century before Christ. Most of these books are in the Hebrew lan- guage, a few of the later are in Chaldee or the dialect of Babylon ; and one (the book of Daniel) is partly in Hebrew and partly in Chaldee. The historical books contain two kinds of matter: (i) that which is like the matter of other human histories, concerning such events and occurrences in the lives of in- dividual men, or in the affairs of families, tribes, or nations, as might take place and be recorded according to the ordinary course of human experience ; and (2) that which on the face of the books claims to be, or from the nature of the case (if true) must have been, matter of special revelation. In all but four of the historical books (the excep- tions being Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) both these kinds of matter are ON RELIGION 65 found. The second occupies a large pro- portion of the whole contents of the first five books, called the Pentateuch. The account, with which it opens, of the work of Creation could not possibly, from the nature of the case, be the subject of human observation and experience ; and many- special revelations are recorded as made directly by God, to Adam and Eve, Cain, Noah, Abraham, and Isaac ; to Lot by the ministry of angels ; and to Jacob and Joseph by visions and dreams. The book of Exodus is mainly occupied with special revelations to Moses and Aaron and their acts in consequence of them ; the whole Mosaic "Law" embodied in that and the later books of the Pentateuch is of the same character. The books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel contain many special revela- tions to Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, F 66 LETTERS TO HIS SON Nathan, and David ; and the books of Kings and Chronicles contain many more, to Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, and other prophets. Of the poetical books, that of Job contains several chapters, spoken as by the voice of the Almighty ; and the Psalms have always been ac- counted as, in great part, prophetical. On the other hand, the books of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, Jonah, Daniel, and Jeremiah, contain no incon- siderable amount of strictly historical matter. In the New Testament the four Gospels and the Acts are historical ; the twenty -one epistles are doctrinal and practical ; the book of Revelation is a prophetical vision. They have been handed down to us by the testimony of the Church from very ancient times as the genuine works of the persons whose ON RELIGION 67 names they bear six of them apostles, and the other two (Mark and Luke) companions of the apostles, Barnabas and Paul. The epistle to the Hebrews does not bear St. Paul's name, and has sometimes been thought to be written by Apollos, mentioned in the " Acts," and a question has been made as to the identity of "John the Divine" (#60X070?), the author of the " Revelation," with the apostle John. To me, both the internal evidence and the weight of external authority appear to be in favour of the received authorship of both these books ; but, be that as it may, they have always been received as Scripture by the best authorities of the Church. I have already said that the books of the Old Testament have the double witness of Christians and of Jews. They have always been most jealously and 68 LETTERS TO HIS SON sacredly kept and guarded by the Jewish nation ; and although it is probable that no Hebrew manuscript known to be now extant is as old as the beginning of the Christian era, there can be no doubt that the Greek or " Septuagint " translation of all those books was made, not indeed all at one time, but certainly all before the coming of Christ. All the prophetical, and almost all the historical books of the Old Testament, are quoted in the New ; most of them both in the Gospels and in the Epistles, and some of them very frequently. Most, if not all of them are also quoted by Philo the Alexandrian Jew, who was born before our Lord, and lived till the reign of the Emperor Caligula, or later ; and by Josephus, the Jewish historian, who lived at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and wrote the history ON RELIGION 69 of that war. These (who both wrote in Greek) are the earliest writers of the Hebrew nation, except the Sacred Authors themselves whose works are now extant. X zyh April 1880. I now come to the Scripture testi- monies as to their own authority ; and this I shall take entirely from the Scriptures of the New Testament : having pointed out in my last letter how many and how large portions of the Old Testa- ment directly lay claim to the character of Divine revelations. The writers of the New Testament, when referring to the " Scriptures" could, of course, only mean those books which were in existence and regarded as authoritative when they wrote. 70 LETTERS TO HIS SON With a single exception all these refer- ences are, in fact, to the books of the Old Testament or some of them. Their testimony to the authority of the books which constitute the New Testament itself is, necessarily, of a different and less direct kind, and more nearly re- sembles that which we have seen to occur in the Old Testament as to some of its own constituent parts. The first point to be observed in the testimony of the New Testament to the Old is the use, continually made, of the words al ypcujxiL u the Scriptures " and the cognate verb "it is written," etc. No one can read such passages as, " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God" (Matt. xxii. 29); "How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (Matt, xxvi. 54) ; " The Scriptures must be ON RELIGION 71 fulfilled" (Mark xiv. 49); "He expounded unto them in all the Scrip- hires the things concerning himself" (Luke xxiv. 27); "Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures " [Ibid. v. 45) ; " Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life " (John v. 39), all occurring in the narratives of our Lord's own discourses by the different Evangelists, without perceiving that they recognise the books, so referred to, not merely as true, but as having more than human authority. In the same Gospels, and in the Epistles, the leading historical facts recorded in the Old Testament (e.g. the Creation, the Fall, the history of Cain and Abel, the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the histories of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, 72 LETTERS TO HIS SON David, Solomon, the Delivery of the Law, the departure of the Israelites from Egypt and their wanderings in the wilderness, etc. etc.) are uniformly referred to as true. " The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God " (spoken of in Eph. vi. 17) can hardly mean anything else than ''Scripture." So much for the more general forms of expression, which show what our Lord and His apostles understood and taught concerning those books, which were received and acknowledged as of Divine authority by the Jewish Church. But the witness of the New Testament to the Old does not rest upon general forms of expression and general assump- tions of historical truth only. To the whole body of it, and to the Law, the Psalms and the books of the Prophets ON RELIGION 73 specifically, there are more explicit and particular testimonies. As to the general body of the Old Testament Scriptures there is an im- portant passage in St. Paul's second epistle to Timothy (iii. 15, 16): " From a child thou hast known the holy Scrip- tures (ra lepa ypd/JL/Jiara), which are able to make thee wise unto salvation (to Svvdfjbevd ae aocpio-ai eh crcoTrjpiav). . . . All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (iraaa ypa^rj OeoTrvevcrros), and is profitable for doctrine (777305 StSaor/caXLav), for re- proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness ; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works " (tva aprios y 6 rod 6eov av0pc07ro<;, 7rpo? irav epyov ayadbv i^7]pri(TfjL6V0<;j. As to " the Law " there are many notable passages, in the front of all of 74 LETTERS TO HIS SON which is the remarkable saying of our Lord Himself (Matt. v. 17, 18), "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled" (Iwtcl ev rj fiia Kepaia ov fjurj irapekOr) airo rod vofjuov, eo)? av nravra yivrjrai). The word translated " tittle" is part of a letter (like the crossing of a i), and it is diffi- cult to interpret this place as teaching any other doctrine, with respect to the Law (however that term ought here to be understood) than that of literal in- spiration. That our Lord may here have had in view the Ten Command- ments (said in Exodus xxxi. 18 and xxxiv. 1 and 28, and also in Deut. ix. 10 and x. 4, to have been written with ON RELIGION 75 " the finger of God ") as containing the sum and essence of the whole Law, seems not improbable from some other passages, particularly Matt. xxii. 40, and Romans xiii. 8-10. He Himself (Matt. xv. 4) spoke of the fifth Com- mandment as "God's" (0eo? evereikaTo). Other parts of the books of the Penta- teuch He recognised as prophetical of Himself (Luke xxiv. 44 ; John v. 45), and He quoted the words heard by Moses at the Bush (Exodus iii. 15) as spoken to the Israelites by God (to prjdh bfuv vtto tov Oeov). St. Paul (Gal. iii. 19 and 24) speaks of " the Law" as " ordained by angels, in the hand of a mediator " (BiarayeU 8t' ayyeXwv, iv %etpt fieo-LTov); and as "our schoolmaster to bring US to Christ" (irauhaywyo^ rj/ncov et? Xpio-Tov). And in the epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 8), where the spiritual 76 LETTERS TO HIS SON significance of the ceremonial part of the Mosaic Law is unfolded, it is ex- pressly said that this was signified by the Holy Ghost (tovto StjXovvtos tov Uvev- tiaTos tov 'Aylov). With respect to the Psalms some of them are quoted as spoken by David iv irvevfiari (Matt. xxii. 43); iv tg3 Hvevfiari rat 'A^tco "by the Holy Ghost" (Mark xii. 36) ; as spoken by " the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David" (Acts i. 16) ; as sayings, simply, of the Holy Ghost (/ca#&)? \eyei to Tlvev/jua rb f 'Ayi,ov, Heb. iii. 7); or "in David" (eV AafilS Xeycov, Heb. iv. 7) ; and the words of Psalm ex. are directly ascribed to God, " Called of God " (irpoaayopevOels virb rov Oeov) "an High Priest after the order of Melchisedek " (Heb. v. 10). The passages in which the Psalms are quoted as prophetical, or otherwise cited for proof of doctrine, are too numerous ON RELIGION 77 to mention ; so that all that is said as to the inspiration of the prophetical Scrip- tures (which I must reserve for another letter) is strictly applicable to them. XI 2nd May 1880. I proceed, in continuation of my last letter, with the testimony of the New Testament to the prophetical Scriptures of the Old, which is very full and ex- plicit. Every reader of the Gospels is familiar with the many passages in which the fulfilment of particular prophecies is spoken of, and in some of which par- ticular things are said to have been done, or to have happened, that particular Scriptures of the Old Testament might be fulfilled. In such places the pre- diction and the event are set before us as having to each other a predetermined 78 LETTERS TO HIS SON relation originating in the Mind and Providence of God. There is no kind of evidence of the Divine Nature, Mission, and Work of our Lord Him- self, and of the truth of His doctrine, to which both He and His apostles so frequently referred. The words of prophecy are constantly (e.g. in Matt. i. 22 and ii. 15) quoted, as spoken "by the Lord, throtigh the prophet." Zacharias (Luke i. 68-70) blessed "the Lord God of Israel," because He had "visited and redeemed His people, etc., as He spake by the mouth of His Holy Prophets^ which have been since the world began." To the two disciples, on the way to Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 27), our Risen Lord "beginning at Moses and all the prophets expounded in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." St. Peter, after the miracle of healing at the ON RELIGION 79 " Beautiful " Gate of the Temple (Acts iii. i-8 and 21), said, " Those things, which God before had shewed {irpoKaT- rjyyetke) by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled," and "Whom (Jesus Christ) the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken (&v iXaXtjo-ev 6 0e6s) by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began " [air aloovos). St. Paul opens the epistle to the Romans with his claim to be "an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised afore (irpo67rr)yryL\aTo) by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures." The epistle to the Hebrews begins : " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken 80 LETTERS TO HIS SON unto us by His Son." In the epistles of St. Peter there are two passages of importance on this subject ; in the first epistle (i. 10-12): " Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you ; searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the suffer- ings of Christ and the glory that should follow : unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister," etc. In the second epistle (i. 19-21), after speaking of what he had himself seen and heard on the Mount of Transfiguration, as enabling him to claim the character of an eVoTTT?;? (or witness at first hand of Christ's superhuman Majesty) (rfjs itceivov fjbeyaXetoTrjro^, he proceeds thus: "We have also Pepcuo- ON RELIGION 81 repov tov irpo^TCKov \6yov " (which OUght not, I think, to be translated "a more sure word of prophecy," but " a confirma- tion," or " greater assurance, hereby, of the word of prophecy "), " whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts ; knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation " (iraaa irpo^reia ypaJ V7T0 HvevfjLdTos Aytov fapofievoi ekakrjcrav ol ayioi 0eov avOpcDiroi). This passage, beyond all question, teaches, as to the prophetical writings, a very full and general doctrine of inspiration. It now remains for us to see what foundation there is in the New Testa- ment itself for that part of the belief of the Christian Church which places it upon the same level in point of inspira- tion with the Old. Its testimony, in this respect, is in this sense indirect, that it is borne to the writers and to their authority, and (with one exception) not to any books identified by it as theirs and as already esteemed " Scriptures." The one exception being in St. Peter's second epistle (iii. 15, 16), where he refers to what St. Paul had written (eypaijrev v/uv) in his epistles, " according to the ON RELIGION 83 wisdom given unto him," adding, " in which are some things hard to be under- stood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the other Scriptures (o>? real ras \017ras ypacfrds) to their own destruction." From this general recognition of St. Paul's epistles as Scripture it is a natural and just in- ference that the other apostolic epistles (viz. those of St. Peter himself, St. James, St. John, and St. Jude) were also received from the time when they were written on the same footing. With respect to the other books of the New Testament the Gospels contain the record of the life on earth and the personal teaching of Our Lord Himself; who is there set before us as the In- carnate Son or " Word " of God (John i.) teaching "as one having authority (&>? i^ovaiav e^coz/) and not as the Scribes " 84 LETTERS TO HIS SON (Matt. vii. 29) ; as speaking "the words of God " and having the Spirit " without measure " (John iii. 34), and as having in Himself by His Unity in the Divine Nature with the Father (to which con- stant reference is made in His discourses recorded by St. John) what St. Paul (Col. ii. 9) calls the "bodily indwell- ing " of " all the fulness of the Godhead " (eV avT

piov etc rod fiicrdov tt)? ahucias) are not inapplicable to such an involuntary acquisition, with the money which he left the chief priests to use as they pleased, as St. Matthew records this, a place to die in, and to be buried in as a " stranger," was what he got, and all that he got "out" of those pieces of silver, for which he had sold his Lord and his own soul. Of this pur- chase he heard ; to that spot he resorted for self-destruction. There, in a pre- cipitous place, he (not " hanged " but) " strangled himself" (a^y^aro) ; and, having done so, his body might easily be found in the state described by St. Peter (Acts i. 18). Variations like these, in the circumstances of events ON RELIGION 141 not belonging to the main narrative, and only referred to by the way, are rather evidence of the truthfulness of writings in which no pains are taken to reconcile them, than the reverse. I will add two more instances, which have been sometimes alleged as incon- sistencies by the superficial and the ignorant, but which only show the levity and carelessness with which such criticisms can be made. The first relates to the place where the Sermon on the Mount was delivered. Our Lord, according to St. Matthew (v. 1), "went up into a mountain " (the Greek is to opos, not a mountain, but the mountain range of that country) to deliver it. St. Luke, after saying (vi. 12) that " He went out into a mountain " (again to opo?) "to pray," and that He there chose His twelve apostles, adds [v. 17) that 142 LETTERS TO HIS SON He "came down with them, and stood in the plain" and there delivered (what appears to be) the same discourse. "A mountain " and " the plain " are sup- posed to be contradictory descriptions of the same place. But when we look at the Greek, the supposed contradiction disappears. " teal Karaftas peT avrcov, ew? idedaavro, ryv Se (fxovrjv ov/c r^Kovaav tov \cl\ovvt6s fioi). This has been repre- sented as if it were said, in the ninth chapter, that they heard but did not see, and in the twenty-second, that they saw but did not hear. But this is not so ; they both saw and heard ; but they saw a light only, not the revelation of the Lord ; they heard the sound only of a voice, not the words spoken to the apostle by the Lord. I will add but one more illustration. If the twenty-second verse of the third chapter of St. John's Gospel (which says that Jesus " baptized ") and the second verse of the next chapter (which says that "Jesus Himself baptized not, but his disciples ") had occurred in different 144 LETTERS TO HIS SON Gospels we should have been told that they contradicted each other. As it is, their consistency is plain, the one passage only explaining the other. XX ioth February 1881. As I have endeavoured, in former letters, to give you a general idea of the kind of answers which seem to me satisfactory to certain lines of criticism (directed against the authority of Holy Scripture) with which you might be likely to meet either in books or in con- versation, it may be well before leaving that subject to add something more as to the criticism which concerns itself with the authorship of the books of Scripture, and the time of their com- position. ON RELIGION 145 Upon the whole body of this criticism, there are some preliminary observa- tions which it may be of importance to make. It is no very difficult exercise of learned ingenuity to suggest plausible reasons for doubting the authorship or date of almost any ancient book which it suits the theorist to call in question ; and the number of those persons who both can and will closely investigate the grounds alleged for such doubts, with minds not already biassed in that direction, is usually small. The received text of such ancient books is, almost always, derived from manuscripts of a much later date than the time of the reputed authors, and in some cases from a very small number of such manuscripts ; and it is never free from interpolation or corruption. The more ancient it is, L 146 LETTERS TO HIS SON the less there is of strictly, or nearly, contemporaneous evidence by which to test it, of other literature with which it may be compared, or of references to and citations from it which may approxi- mately fix its date. Differences (real, or fancied) in the vocabulary, idiom, or style of different works ascribed to the same writer or the same period, or in different parts of the same book, supposed anachronisms of language or fact, or unhistorical statements, and the like, form the stock arguments of this kind of criticism. No line of argument affords greater facilities for passing off conjecture as fact, and founding entire chains of reasoning upon postulates which are contradicted by experience. A statement may be rejected as unhistor- ical, merely because the critic thinks it incredible, or assumes the superior credit ON RELIGION 147 of some writer who is either silent about it, or has handed down a different tradition ; though (unless the question in controversy is assumed) there would be nothing to entitle that other writer to superior credit. A supposed anachron ism may exist only in the critic's mind ; a word, for instance, in a Hebrew or Chaldee book may be assumed to have been introduced from the Greek into the Eastern language after the time of Alexander ; when it may really have been introduced before the time of Alexander into the Greek language from the East. A real anachronism may be no part of the genuine text, but may have come in through an inter- polation or note by some later copyist or editor. Differences of vocabulary, idiom, or style, quite as important as those which these critics generally rely 148 LETTERS TO HIS SON on, often occur, not only in works of one period, but in different works or different parts of the same work of the same modern author; and are then readily understood to be accounted for by the mere interval of time between the earlier and the later com- position. Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, or even a less number of years will natur- ally produce very considerable changes in the phraseology, idiom, manner, and other characteristics of mind and of style of the same man ; and others may depend upon the nature of the occasion and the subject. The battle of Homeric criticism (which is an example of this kind) rages till this day, and probably will as long as the Greek learning lasts. But to those who feel the weight of broad internal evidence, as compared with the labor ineptiarum of the de- structive school, no paradox can be ON RELIGION 149 greater than that which represents either the Iliad or the Odyssey as a collection, arranged in a later age, of the unconnected rhapsodies of a number of different hands ; and even the theory (less strangely paradoxical) that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of one mind is perceived by common sense and poetical insight to rest upon grounds wholly inadequate to support such a conclusion. There have been critics who have (not, I believe, very long since) gravely propounded the theory that the Annals of Tacitus are not a genuine work of the Roman historian, but were written in his name by some Italian ecclesiastic of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and certainly, if a mere comparison of style with style were enough for that purpose, there is difference enough to i5o LETTERS TO HIS SON be the foundation of such an argument between the style of the Annals and that of the Histories. A still more recent and familiar example of the anatomical criticism of literature is that of which Shakespeare's plays are at the present day the subject. Many of them are, no doubt, examples of a fact, which has its parallel in the conditions of the Biblical controversies, viz. : that a work may have been made up partly of the genuine and original writing of the author whose name it bears, and partly of other writings incorporated into that work, and adopted by the reputed author. As for those who pronounce historical narratives to be mythical or unhistorical, merely because they think them a pi r iori incredible, I can do no better than advise you to read (if it should ever fall in your way) a happy ON RELIGION 151 " parody " upon this sort of criticism called Historic Doubts as to Napoleon Bonaparte, by the late Archbishop Whately. XXI 27th February 1881. Applying the general observations which were made in my last letter to the questions which are sometimes raised as to the authorship and dates of the books of the Old Testament, the first thing which it is important to remember is that all philological criticism of those books can only be founded upon the internal evidence of those books themselves. There is no other literature in the Hebrew tongue now existing which is not later than the Christian era, later, I believe, by a century or upwards. And of Jewish 152 LETTERS TO HIS SON writers in any other language, whose works are not included either in the canonical Scriptures or in the Apocrypha, there are only two as early as the beginning of the Christian Church Philo of Alexandria, who lived from the time of Tiberius to that of Claudius, and Josephus, who was a witness of and actor in the war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, both of whom wrote in Greek. From their writings it is sufficiently plain that they had the same canonical books (historical and other) of the Old Testament that we have. The Greek tradition of the Septuagint was also complete before the Christian era, having been begun (according to Josephus) under Ptolemy Philadelphus, nearly three hundred years before Christ, when it is said to have proceeded as far as the Pentateuch. It ON RELIGION 153 is impossible now to say at what time each of the later books in this translation was finished, but I do not believe it to be doubted by any critics (even those who are boldest in their speculations) of any weight. or authority that the whole body of the books which we call canonical, as we now have them rendered in that version, were in the hands of the Greek- speaking Jews some considerable time before the nativity of our Lord. All the manuscripts of the Hebrew text now extant and also of the Greek are later than the Christian era; and, of course, it must be assumed that some variations of the text have come in (as they do in all other manuscripts) in the course of transcription. But the Jews are known to have been always, from the time of our Lord downwards (and I think there can be no reasonable doubt that they 154 LETTERS TO HIS SON were before, at least from the times of Ezra and Nehemiah), most careful and jealous, to the point almost of super- stition, of the preservation and integrity of the sacred text. The multiplication of copies was great, beyond that of copies of any other books (except those composing the New Testament), and the variations in them are unsubstantial and inconsiderable. There are, no doubt, many places in which the Greek translators would seem, from the way in which they have rendered the sense, to have had before them a text not exactly the same with that of the present Hebrew manuscripts ; but none of these variances are of any substantial importance. I have not myself the advantage of knowing Hebrew ; and it is, I think, much to be regretted that so few of our ON RELIGION 155 educated people (even among the clergy) do know it. In what I shall say about it, I found myself, in great part, on what I have heard from those who have studied it, and particularly from your Uncle Edwin 1 : and I rely all the more on what I have so heard, because I am myself able, with the moderate amount of Greek scholarship which I possess, to form an opinion of my own as to the value of the destructive criticism when applied to the books of the New Testa- ment, and can therefore judge of the probable value of the same sort of criticism when applied to books still more ancient, and standing more en- tirely by themselves, in a language which I do not understand. Now, what I understand about the 1 The late Rev. Edwin Palmer, D.D., Archdeacon of Oxford. 156 LETTERS TO HIS SON Hebrew books is, that the language in which they are written varies singularly little, from the earliest to the latest ; and, further, that there are instances of phrases and idioms, in some of those which are confessedly the most ancient, which are absent from (what may be called) the middle period, and reappear in that which is, confessedly, the latest. Of this last fact the explanation may very well be (consistently with all that we know of the history of the Hebrew race), that phrases and idioms which were part of the common speech of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia in the times of the patriarchs, when the Israelites first became a separate people, remained in common use at Babylon and in Chaldea generally down to and during the times of the captivity ; and so came again into use among the Jews of the ON RELIGION 157 captivity, though they had fallen out of use in the times of the kings before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchad- nezzar. It is, I believe, upon such* slender grounds as these that most of the purely philological criticism of the Old Testament rests. Differences of style, for instance, are supposed to exist between the book of Deuteronomy and the rest of the Pentateuch ; and it has been ascribed by some to one, and by others to another, later period partly on the ground of similarity of style or language. But, as to the differences, I am assured that they are microscopic, and not at all greater than might be accounted for by the time and circum- stances of the production of that book itself, if taken as a genuine record of the last words and acts of Moses, perhaps by his successor Joshua ; and also, that 158 LETTERS TO HIS SON there is no greater similarity in Deuter- onomy to the style or language of any later books than is consistent with the fixed character, through a succession of ages, of a written language whose whole literature consisted of the sacred books preserved by its priesthood. XXII London, 27 th March 1881. It is no part of my object to give you in these letters any summary of the proofs or evidences of the Canon of Scripture, which may be found in such books as those of Jeremiah Jones and Lardner in the last century, and their successors in the present. But I wish to say what my own study of Scripture suggests on some points connected with the authorship and structure of ON RELIGION 159 the Canonical Books, as material to help any one from being perplexed by captious objections on that subject. We find in the New Testament that our Lord and His apostles refer to Moses and David, etc., as having written and spoken certain laws, prophecies, etc., whioh are quoted from the books which we now have bearing their names ; and, for my part, I utterly disbelieve in the existence of any real grounds for doubting the authorship which is so accredited. But it by no means follows from this that every part of the books which pass by those names was written by those authors ; nor is it of the smallest importance if the con- trary is the case, as in some instances and to a certain extent can easily be shown. No one, for example, has ever supposed that David was the author of 160 LETTERS TO HIS SON all the Psalms, though they are collected together in a book entitled " The Psalms of David." Some of them were evi- dently written in the times of later kings, some during and some after the captivity. They were no doubt col- lected and arranged (probably with reference to their use in the Temple services, and certainly not in any critical or chronological order) after the build- ing of the second Temple. The tradi- tion is very probable that all the Old Testament Scriptures were at that time brought together and re-edited by Ezra, or under his supervision. We do not know the names of the authors of many (perhaps the greater number) of the Psalms ; but our belief in them as canonical Scripture is independent of any such knowledge, and depends upon their universal reception, both by the ON RELIGION 161 Jewish and by the Christian Church, and on the seal placed upon them (as on the Old Testament Scriptures gene- rally) by the recognition of our Lord and His apostles. In like manner, we know nothing of the authorship of the books of Kings and Chronicles, though from their contents we may reasonably infer that we have in them true and original historical records kept by contemporary priests and prophets. Of the two books which bear the name of Samuel but little (if any part) can actually have been written by that prophet ; from the 25th chapter of the first book to the end of the second the history is later than his death. The title, doubtless, does not mean authorship ; it is given to both books, probably because they were reduced at one time into their present M 162 LETTERS TO HIS SON form, beginning with the history of the acts and administration of Samuel. The books of Judges and Ruth bear the names of no authors ; they are doubt- less a collection of ancient national or tribal records, kept and preserved in the same manner as those in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. The book which bears the name of Joshua does not purport to be written by him. Not only does it close with the record of his death, but refers (chap, x.) to the " Book of Jasher," which (from 2 Sam. i. 18) seems to have been of later date than the death of Saul. With respect, however, to these references they may (not improbably) be instances of (what is very frequent in the historical Scrip- tures of the Old Testament) notes by editors, transcribers, or commentators later than the original text, which, in the ON RELIGION 163 course of subsequent transcription, be- came incorporated with the text. It is plain that the 18th verse of 2 Sam. i. must be of this character ; as are (among many other places which might be referred to), "As it is said to this day," etc., in Gen. xxii. 14 and xxxii. 32, and 2 Kings xvii. 34-41. In the New Testament there are similar examples. It is most probable that the verse about Cyrenius (Luke ii. 2), in which there is a chronological difficulty, and Acts i. 19 have got into the text in this way ; and I cannot myself doubt that the same is the true explana- tion of the introduction of the word "Jeremy" into Matt, xxvii. 9, where Zechariah and not Jeremiah is the prophet really referred to. It is evi- dent that interpolations of this kind are rather evidence of an antiquity 1 64 LETTERS TO HIS SON of the context in which they are found earlier than their own, than proofs that the whole books in which they occur ought to be brought down to the date (be it what it may) of the matter inter- polated. With respect to the Penta- teuch, the inscription of it with the name of Moses certainly does not mean that every part of it was written by him. The last chapter, which records his death, certainly cannot have been, and all which the four last books (Exodus to Deuteronomy) purport to do is truly to record his words and acts. The history in Genesis, if com- piled by him, not only may have been, but from the internal evidence of its component parts, most probably was, compiled from earlier patriarchal records and traditions. 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