Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. University of Illinois Library m -f (953 L161 — H41 'r L V & S*w-U LITERATURE & DOGMA O quam magna multitude) dulcedinis Tuce , Domtne , quam abscondisti timentibus Te ! ’ Psalm, xxx. 20 . 1 La tendance a Vordre ne peut-elle faire ttne par tie essentielle de nos hiclinations , de notre instincty comme la tenda7ice d la conservation, d la reproduction ? ’ Senancour. ‘And as it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at : by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, and by particular persons attending to, comparing and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the world. Nor is it at all incredible that a book which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before.’ Butler. LITERATURE & DOGMA AN ESSAY TOWARDS A BETTER APPREHENSION OF THE BIBLE BY MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L. FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE THIRD EDITION LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE i8 73 {The right of translation is reserved) Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/literaturedogmae00arno_1 •rrvt*. - /&2> -? 3 ^l\ ^ £24 k but as something one could not manage to do without But : 4 Zion heard of it and rejoiced . , and the daughters of Judah were glad , because of thy judgments, O Eternal ! ’ Happiness is our being's end and aim, and no one has ever come near Israel in feeling, and in making others feel, that to righteousness belongs happiness ! The prodigies and the marvellous of Bible-religion are common to it with all religions ; the love of righteousness, in this eminency, is its own. 5 * The real germ of religious consciousness, therefore, out of which sprang Israel’s name for God, to which the records of his history adapted themselves, and which came to be clothed upon, in time, with a mighty growth of poetry and tradition, was a consciousness of the not ourselves which makes for righteousness . And the way to convince oneself of this is by studying their literature with a fair mind, and with the tact which letters, surely, alone can give. For the thing turns upon understanding the manner in which men have thought, their way of using words, and what they mean by them. And if to know letters is to know the best that has been thought E 2 university of Illinois LIBRARY 52 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. and uttered in the world, then by knowing letters we become acquainted not only with the history, but also with the scope and powers, of the instruments men employ in thinking and speaking. And this is just what is sought for. And with the sort of experience thus gained, objections, as we have said, will be found not so much to be refuted by logical reasoning as to fall of themselves. Is it ob- jected : ‘Why, if the Hebrews of the Bible had thus emi- nently the sense for righteousness, does it not equally dis- tinguish the Jews now?’ But does not experience show us, how entirely a change of circumstances may change a people’s character ; and have the modern J ews lost more of what distinguished their ancestors, or even so much, as the modern Greeks of what distinguished theirs ? Where is now, among the Greeks, the dignity of life of Pericles, the dignity of thought and of art of Phidias and Plato? Is it objected, that the Jews’ God was not the enduring power that makes for righteousness, but only their tribal God, who gave them the victory in the battle and plagued them that hated them? But how, then, comes their literature to be full of such things as : 1 Shew me thy ways, O Eternal, and teach me thy paths ; let in - tegrity and uprightness preserve me, for I put my trust in thee ! if I incline unto wickedness with my heart, the Eternal will not hear me, for they who do no wickedness RELIGION GIVEN. 53 walk in his ways.’ From the sense that with men thus guided and going right in goodness it could not but be well, that their leaf could not wither, and that whatsoever they did must prosper, would naturally come the sense that in their wars with an enemy the enemy should be put to confusion and they should triumph. But how, out of the mere sense that their enemy should be put to confusion and they should triumph, could the desire for goodness come? Is it ob- jected, that ‘the law of the Lord’ was a positive traditionary code to them, standing as a mechanical rule which held them in awe ? that their ‘fear of the Lord’ was superstitious dread of an assumed magnified and non-natural man? But why, then, are they always saying : ‘ Teach me thy law, open mine eyes , make me to understand wisdom secretly / ’ if all the law they were thinking of stood stark and fixed before their eyes already? And what could they mean by : ‘ I will love thee, O Eternal, my strength ! ’ if the fear they meant was not the awe-filled observance from deep attachment, but a servile terror? Is it ob- jected, that their conception of righteousness was a narrow and rigid one, centring mainly in what they called judg- ment : ‘ Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate ! ’ so that ‘ evil/ for them, did not take in all faults whatever of heart and conduct, but meant 54 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . chiefly oppression, graspingness, a violent mendacious tongue, insolent and riotous excess? True; their concep- tion of righteousness was much of this kind, and it was narrow. But whoever sincerely attends to conduct , along however limited a line, is on his way to bring under the eye of conscience all conduct whatever ; and already, in the Old Testament, the somewhat monotonous inculcation of the social virtues of judgment and justice is con- tinually broken through by deeper movements of personal religion. Every time that the words contrition or humility drop from the lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears. Is it objected, Anally, that even their own narrow conception of righteousness this people could not follow, but were perpetually oppressive, grasping, slander- ous, sensual ? Why, the very interest and importance of their witness to righteousness lies in their having felt so deeply the necessity of what they were so little able to ac- complish ! They had the strongest impulses in the world to violence and excess, the keenest pleasure in gratifying these impulses. And yet they had such a sense of the natural necessary connexion between conduct and happiness, that they kept always saying, in spite of them- selves : To him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God ! Now manifestly this sense of theirs has a double force RELIGION GIVEN. 55 for the rest of mankind, — an evidential force and a prac- tical force. Its evidential force is in keeping in men’s view, by the example of the signal apparition in one branch of our race of the sense for conduct and righ- teousness, the reality and naturalness of that sense. Clearly, unless a sense or endowment of human nature, however in itself real and beneficent, has some signal representative among mankind, it tends to be pressed upon by other senses and endowments, to suffer from its own want of energy, and to be more and more pushed out of sight. Any one, for instance, who will go to the Potteries, and will look at the tawdry, glaring, ill-pro- portioned ware which is being made there for certain American and colonial markets, will easily convince him- self how, in our people and kindred, the sense for the arts of design, though it is certainly planted in human nature, might dwindle and sink to almost nothing, if it were not for the witness borne to this sense, and the pro- test offered against its extinction, by the brilliant aesthetic endowment and artistic work of ancient Greece. And one cannot look out over the world without seeing that the same sort of thing might very well befall conduct, too, if it were not for the signal witness borne by Israel. Then there is the practical force of their example ; and this is even more important. Everyone knows, how 5 6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. those who want to cultivate any sense or endowment in themselves must be habitually conversant with the works of people who have been eminent for that sense, must study them, catch inspiration from them ; only in this way, indeed, can progress be made. And as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteous- ness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest ; and in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. As well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakspeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cul- tivating it by the help of the Bible ! And this 'sense, in the satisfying of which we come naturally to the Bible, is a sense which the generality of men have far more decidedly than they have the sense for art or for science ; at any rate, whether we have it decidedly or no, it is the sense which has to do with three-fourths of human life. This does truly constitute for Israel a most extraordi- nary distinction. In spite of all which in them and their character is unattractive, nay, repellent ; — in spite of their shortcomings even in righteousness itself and their in- RELIGION GIVEN. 57 significance in everything else, — this petty, unsuccessful, unamiable people, without politics, without science, with- out art, without charm, deserve their great place in the world’s regard, and are likely to have it greater, as the world goes on, rather than less. It is secured to them by the facts of human nature, and by the unalterable constitution of things. 4 God has given commandment to bless, and he hath blessed, and we cannot reverse it ! He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, and he hath not seen perverseness in Israel ; the Eternal, his God, is with him ! 9 Any one does a good deed who removes stumbling- blocks out of the way of feeling and profiting by the witness left by this people. And so, instead of making our Hebrew speakers mean, in their use of the word God, a scientific affirmation which never entered into their heads, and about which many will dispute, let us content ourselves with making them mean, as matter of scientific fact and experience, what they really did mean as such, and what is unchallengeable. Let us put into their ‘ Eternal ’ and ‘ God 9 no more science than they did : — the enduring power , not ourselves , which makes for righteousness . They meant more by these names, but they meant this ; and what they meant more they could not grasp fully, but this they grasped fully. The sense LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 58 which this will give us for their words is at least solid ; so that we may find it of use as a guide to steady us, and to give us a constant clue in following what they say. And is it so unworthy ? It is true, unless we can fill it with as much feeling as they did, the mere possessing it will not carry us far. But matters are not much mended by taking their language of approximative figure and using it for the language of scientific definition ; or by crediting them with our own dubious science, deduced from metaphysical ideas which they never had. A better way than this, surely, is to take their fact of experience, to keep it steadily for our basis in using their language, and to see whether from using their language with the ground of this real and firm sense to it, as they them- selves did, somewhat of their feeling, too, may not grow upon us. At least we shall know what we are saying ; and that what we are saying is true, however inadequate. But is this confessed inadequateness of our speech, concerning that, which we will not call by the negative name of the unknown and unknowable, but rather by the name of the unexplored and the inexpressible, and of which the Hebrews themselves said : It is more high than heaven , what canst thou dot deeper than hell, what canst thou know ? — is this reservedness of affirmation about God less worthy of him, than the astounding par- RELIGION GIVEN. 59 ticularity and licence of affirmation of our dogmatists, as t if he were a man in the next street ? Nay, and nearly all the difficulties which torment theology, — as the reconciling God’s justice with his mercy, and so on, — come from this licence and particularity; theologians having precisely, as it would often seem, built up a wall first, in order afterwards to run their own heads against it. This, we say, is what comes of too much talent for ab- stract reasoning. One cannot help seeing the theory of causation and such things, where one should only see a far simpler matter : the power, the grandeur, the neces- sity of righteousness. To be sure, a perception of these is at the bottom of popular religion, underneath all the ex- travagances theologians have taught people to utter, and makes the whole value of it. For the sake of this true practical perception one might be quite content to leave at rest a matter where practice, after all, is everything, and theory nothing. Only, when religion is called in question because of the extravagances of theology being passed off as religion, one disengages and helps religion by showing their utter delusiveness. They arose out of the talents of able men for reasoning, and their want (not through lack of talent, for the thing needs none ; it needs only time, trouble, good fortune, and a fair mind ; but through their being taken up with their reasoning 6o LITERATURE AND DOGMA. power), — their want of literary experience. Unluckily, the sphere where they show their talents is one for literary experience rather than for reasoning. And this at the very outset, in the dealings of theologians with that starting- point of our religion, — the experience of Israel as set forth in the Old Testament, — has produced, we have seen, great confusion. Naturally, as we shall hereafter see, the con- fusion becomes worse confounded as they proceed. ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 61 CHAPTER II. ABERGLAUBE INVADING. When people ask for our attention because of what has passed, they say, 1 in the Council of the Trinity/ and been promulgated, for our direction, by 4 a Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the uni- verse/ it is certainly open to any man to refuse to hear them, on the plea that the very thing they start with they have no means of proving. And we see that many do so refuse their attention ; and that the breach there is, for instance, between popular religion and what is called science , comes from this cause. But it is altogetner dif- ferent when people ask for our attention on the strength of this other first principle: 4 To righteousness belongs happiness ; ’ or this : ‘ There is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness. , The more we meditate on this starting-ground of theirs, the more we shall find that there is solidity in it, and the more we shall be inclined to go along with them, and to see what they can make of it. 62 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. And herein is the advantage of giving this plain, though restricted, sense to the Bible phrases : ‘ He that keepeth the law, happy is he ! ’ and, ‘ Whoso trusteth in the Eternal, happy is he ! ’ By tradition, emotion, imagina- tion, the Hebrews, no doubt, came to attach more than this plain sense to these phrases ; but this plain, solid, and experimental sense they attached to them at bottom, they attached originally; and in attaching it they were on sure ground of fact, where we can all go with them. Their words, we shall find, taken in this sense have quite a new force for us, and an indisputable one. It is worth while accustoming ourselves to use them thus, in order to bring out this force and to see how real it is, limited though it be, and unpretending as it may appear. The very substitution of the word Eternal for the word Lord is something gained in this direction. The word Eternal has less of particularity and palpability for the imagina- tion, but what it does affirm is real and verifiable. Let us fix firmly in our minds, with this limited but real sense to the words we employ, the connexion of ideas which was ever present to the spirit of the Hebrew people. In the way of righteous?iess is life , and in the pathway thereof is 710 death ; as righteousness tendeth to life , so he that pursueth evil , pursueth it to his own death ; as the whirlwind passeth , so is the wicked no more , but the ABERGLAUBE INVADING . 63 righteous is an everlasting foundation ; — here is the ground idea. Yet there are continual momentary suggestions which make for gratifying our apparent seif, for un- righteousness ; nevertheless, what makes for our real self, for righteousness, is lasting, and holds good in the end. Therefore : Trust in the Eternal with all thine heart , and lean not unto thine own wider standing ; there is no wisdom , nor understanding, nor counsel against the Eternal ; there is a way that seemeth right unto a man , but the end thereof are the ways of death; there are many devices in a mads heart , nevertheless the counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand. To follow this counsel of the Eternal is the only true wisdom and understanding : The fear of the Eternal, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is understanding. It is also happiness : Blessed is every one that feareth the Eternal, that walketh in his ways ; happy shall he be, and it shall be well with him ! O taste and see how gracious the Eternal is! blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Eternal; his leaf shall not wither, and whatso- ever he doeth, it shall prosper. And the more a man walks in this way of righteousness, the more he feels himself borne by a power not his own : Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Eternal. O Eternal, I know that the way of man is not in himself ! all things 6 4 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. come of thee; in thy light do we see light ; the preparation of the heart in man is from the Eternal. The Eternal ordereth a good man’s going , and making his way accept- able to himself. But man feels, too, how far he comes from fulfilling or even from fully perceiving this true law of his being, these indications of the Eternal, the way of righteousness. He says, and must say: I am a stranger upon earth , O, hide not thy commandments from me ! Enter not into judgment with thy servant , O Eternal , for in thy sight shall no man living be justified! Never- theless, as a man holds on to practice as well as he can, and avoids, at any rate, ‘ presumptuous sins/ courses he can clearly see to be wrong, films fall away from his eyes, the indications of the Eternal come out more and more fully, we are cleansed from faults which were hitherto secret to us : Examine me , O God \ and prove me , try out my reins and my heart ; look well if there be any way of wickedness in me , and lead me in the way everlasting ! O cleanse thou me from my secret faults ! thou hast proved my heart , thou hast visited me in the night , thou hast tried me and shalt find nothing. And the more we thus get to keep innocency, the more we wonderfully find joy and peace : O how ple7itiful is thy goodness which thou hast laid- up for them that fear thee ! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the provoking of men . Thou wilt show me the path ABERGLAUBE INVADING . 65 of life, in thy presence is the fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore . More and more this dwelling on the joy and peace from righteousness, and on the power which makes for righteousness, becomes a man’s consolation and refuge : Thou art my hiding-place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble ; if my delight had not been in thy law, I should have perished in my trouble . When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God ; a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat! O lead me to the rock that is higher than I! The name of the Eternal is as a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe. And the more we experience this shelter, the more we come to feel that it is protecting even to tenderness : Like as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Eternal merciful mito them that fear him. Nay, every other support, we at last find, every other attachment may fail us, this alone fails not : Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee ! All this, we say, rests originally upon the simple but solid experience : ‘ Conduct brings happiness ,’ or, ‘ Righte- ousness tendeth to life! And, by making it again rest there, we bring out in a new but most real and sure way its truth and its power. F 66 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . For it has not always continued to rest there, and in popular religion now, as we manifestly see, it rests there no longer. It is worth while to follow the way in which this change gradually happened, and the thing ceased to rest there. Israel’s original perception was true : Right- eousness tendeth to life! The workers of righteousness have a covenant with the Eternal , that their work shall be blessed and blessing, and shall endure for ever. But what apparent contradictions was this true original per- ception destined to meet with ; what vast delays, at any rate, were to be interposed before its truth could become manifest ! And how instructively the successive docu- ments of the Bible, which popular religion treats as if it were all of one piece one time and one mind, bring out the effect on Israel of these delays and contradictions ! What a distance between the eighteenth Psalm and the eighty-ninth, between the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes ! A time some thousand years before Christ, the golden age of Israel, is the date to which the eighteenth Psalm and the chief part of the Book of Proverbs belong ; this is the time in which the sense of the necessary connexion between righteousness and happiness appears with its full simplicity and force. The righteous shall be recompensed in the earthy much more the wicked aiid the sinner! is the constant burden of the Book ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 67 of Proverbs. And David, in the eighteenth Psalm, ex- presses his conviction of the intimate dependence of happiness upon conduct, in terms which, though they are not without a certain crudity, are yet far more edifying in their truth and naturalness than those morbid senti- mentalities of Protestantism about marts natural vileness and Christ’s imputed righteousness, to which they are diametrically opposed. ‘ I have kept the ways of the Eternal,’ he says ; 6 1 was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity; therefore hath the Eternal rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recom- pensed me ; great prosperity showeth he unto his king, and showeth loving-kindness unto David his anointed, and unto his seed for evermore.’ That may be called the classic passage for that covenant Israel always thinks and speaks of, as made by God with his servant David, Israel’s second founder. And this covenant was but a renewal of the covenant made with Israel’s first founder, God’s servant Abraham, that righteousness shall inherit a llessing , and that in his seed all nations of the earth shall he Messed. But what a change in the eighty-ninth Psalm, a few hundred years later! ‘ Eternal, where are thy former loving-kindnesses which thou swarest unto David ? thou 68 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . hast abhorred and forsaken thine anointed, thou hast made void the covenant ; O remember how short my time is ! ’ ‘ The righteous shall he recompensed in the earth ! 7 the speaker means ; ‘ my death is near, and death ends all ; where, Eternal, is thy promise ? 7 Most remarkable, indeed, is the inward travail to which, in the six hundred years that followed the age of David and Solomon, the many and rude shocks befalling Israel’s fundamental idea, Righteousness tendeth to life and he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death , gave occasion. ‘Wherefore do the wicked live , 7 asks Job, 4 become old, yea, are mighty in power ? Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them ? 7 Job himself is righteous, and yet: 4 On mine eyelids is the shadow of death, not for any injustice in mine hands . 7 All through the Book of Job, the question how this can be is over and over again asked and never answered; inadequate solutions are offered and repelled, but an adequate solution is never reached. The only solution reached is that of silence before the insoluble : ‘ I will lay mine hand upon my mouth . 7 The two perceptions are left confronting one another like Kantian antinomies. 4 The earth is given unto the hand of the wicked! 7 and yet : 4 The council of the wicked is far from me , God rerwardetlijiim , and he shall know it ! 7 And this last, the ABERGLAUBE INVADING . 69 original perception, remains indestructible. The Book of Ecclesiastes, again, has been called sceptical, epicu- rean ; it is certainly without the glow and hope which animate the Bible in general. It belongs, probably, to the latter half of the fifth century before Christ, to the time of Nehemiah and Malachi, with difficulties pressing the newly restored Jewish community on all sides, with a Persian governor lording it in Jerusalem, with resources light and taxes heavy, with the cancer of poverty eating into the mass of the people, with the rich estranged from the poor and from the national traditions, with the priesthood slack insincere and worthless. Composed under such circumstances, thebook has been said, and with justice, to breathe resignation at the grave of Israel; its author sees ‘ the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter, and on the side of their oppressors there was power ; wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.’ He sees 6 all things come alike to all, there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked.’ Attempts at a philosophic indifference appear, at a sceptical suspension of judgment, at an easy ne quid nhnis : 6 Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise ! why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’ Vain attempts, even at a moment which favoured them ! shows of scepticism, vanishing as soon as uttered before the in- 70 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . tractable conscientiousness of Israel ! For the Preacher makes answer against himself : 4 Though a sinner do evil a hundred times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God ; but it shall not be well with the wicked, because he feareth not before God.' The Preacher’s contemporary, too, Malachi, felt the pressure of the same circumstances, had the same occasions of despondency. All around him people were saying : 4 Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Eternal, and he delighteth in them ; where is the God of judgment ? it is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance ? ’ What a change from the clear certitude of the golden age : 4 As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more ; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation ! ’ But yet, with all the certitude of this happier past, Malachi answers on behalf of the Eternal : 4 Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings ! * Many there were, no doubt, who had lost all living sense that the promises were made to righteousness ; who took them mechanically, as made to them and sure to them because they were the seed of Abraham, because they were, in St. Paul’s words : 4 Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption and the glory and the covenants and ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 71 the giving of the law and the service of God, and whose are the fathers.* These people were perplexed and indignant when the privileged seed became unprosperous ; and they looked for some great change to be wrought in the fallen fortunes of Israel, wrought miraculously and mechanically. And they were, no doubt, the great majority, and of the mass of Jewish expectation about the future they stamped the character. With them, how- ever, our interest does not for the present lie ; it lies with the prophets and those whom the prophets represent. It lies with the continued depositaries of the original revelation to Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life ; who saw clearly enough that the promises were to righteousness, and that what tendeth to life was not the seed of Abraham taken in itself, but righteousness. With this minority, and with its noble representatives the prophets, our present interest lies ; and the development of their conviction about righteousness is what it here imports us to trace. An indestructible faith that the righteous is an everlasting foundation they had ; yet they too, as we have seen, could not but notice, as time went on, many things which seemed apparently to contradict this their belief. In private life, there was the frequent prosperity of the sinner. In the life of nations, there was the rise and power of the great unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen, the unsuccessfulness 72 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . of Israel; though Israel was undoubtedly, as compared with the heathen, the depositary and upholder of the idea of righteousness. Therefore prophets and righteous men also, like the unspiritual crowd, could not but look ardently to the future, to some great change and redress in store. At the same time, although their experience, that the righteous were often afflicted and the wicked often prosperous, could not but perplex pious Hebrews; although their conscience felt, and could not but feel, that, com- pared with the other nations with whom they came in contact, they themselves and their fathers had a concern for righteousness, and an unremitting sense of its necessity, which put them in covenant with the Eternal who makes for righteousness, and which rendered the triumph of other nations over them a triumph of people who cared little for righteousness over people who cared for it much, and a cause of perplexity, therefore, to men’s trust in the Eternal, — though their conscience told them this, yet of their own shortcomings and perversities it told them louder still, and that their sins had in truth been enough to break their covenant with the Eternal a thousand times over, and to bring justly upon them all the miseries they suffered. To enable them to meet the terrible day, when the Eternal would avenge him of his enemies and ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 73 make up his jewels, they themselves needed, they knew, the voice of a second Elijah, a change of the inner man, repentance. 2. And then, with Malachi’s testimony on its lips to the truth of Israel’s ruling idea, Righteousness tendeth to life ! died prophecy. For four hundred years the mind of Israel revolved those wonderful utterances, which, on the ear of even those who only half understand them, and who do not at all believe them, strike with such strange, incomparable power, — the promises of prophecy. For four hundred years, through defeat and humiliation, the Hebrew race pondered those magnificent assurances that c the Eternals arm is not shortened that ‘ righteousness shall be for ever] and that the future would prove this, even if the present did not. 4 The Eternal fainteth not, neither is weary ; he giveth power to the faint. They that wait on the Eternal shall renew their strength ; the redeemed of the Eternal shall return and come with singing to Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head ; they shall repair the old wastes, the desolations of many generations ; and I, the Eternal, will make an everlasting covenant with them. The Eternal shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning 74 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. shall be ended ; the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising, and my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation shall not be abolished ! ’ The prophets themselves, speaking when the ruin of their country was impending, or soon after it had happened, had had in prospect the actual restoration of Jerusalem, the submission of the nations around, and the empire of David and Solomon renewed. But as time went on, and Israersreturn from captivity and resettlement of Jerusalem by no means answered his glowing anticipa- tions from them, these anticipations had more and more a construction put upon them which set at defiance the unworthiness and infelicities of the actual present, which filled up what prophecy left in outline, and which embraced the world. The Hebrew Amos, of the eighth century before Christ, promises to his hearers a recovery from their ruin in which they shall possess the remnant of Edom ; the Greek or Aramaic Amos of the Christian era, whose words St. James produces in the Conference at Jerusalem, promises a recovery for Israel in which the residue of men shall seek the Eternal. This is but a specimen of what went forward on a large scale. The redeemer, whom the unknown prophet of the captivity foretold to Zion, has, a few hundred years later, for ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 75 the writer whom we call Daniel and for his con- temporaries, become the miraculous agent of Israel's new restoration, the heaven-sent executor of the Eternal's judg- ment, and the bringer-in of the kingdom of righteousness; the Messiah, in short, of our popular religion. ‘ One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and there was given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him ; and the kingdom and dominion shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.' An impartial criticism will hardly find in the Old Testament writers before the times of the Maccabees (and certainly not in the passages usually quoted to prove it) the doctrine of the immortality of the soul or of the resurrection of the dead. But by the time of the Maccabees, when this passage of the Book of Daniel was written, in the second century before Christ, the Jews have undoubtedly become familiar, not indeed with the idea of the immortality of the soul as philosophers like Plato conceived it, but with the notion of a resurrec- tion of the dead to take their trial for acceptance or rejection in the Messiah’s judgment and kingdom. To this has swelled Israel's original and fruitful thesis : — Righteousness tendeth to life! as the whirlwind fasseth, so is the wicked no more , hut the righteous is an everlasting 76 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. foundation ! The phantasmagories of more prodigal and wild imaginations have mingled with the work of Israel’s austere spirit ; Babylon, Persia, Egypt, even Greece, have left their trace there ; but the unchangeable substructure remains, and on that substructure is everything built which comes after. In one sense, the lofty Messianic ideas of ‘ the day of the Eternal’s coming/ c the consolation of Israel,’ the restitution of all things,’ are even more important than the solid but humbler idea, Righteousness tendeth to life ! out of which they arose ; in another sense they are much less important. They are more important, because they are the development of this idea and prove its strength. It might have been crushed and baffled by the falsification events seemed to delight in giving it; that instead of being crushed and baffled, it took this magnificent flight, shows its innate power. And they also in a wonderful manner attract emotion to the ideas of conduct and morality, attract it to them and combine it with them. On the other hand, the idea that righteousness tendeth to life has a firm, experimental ground, which the Messianic ideas have not. And the day comes when the possession of such a ground is invaluable. That the spirit of man should entertain hopes and anticipations, beyond what it actually knows and can ABERGLAUBE INVADING. 77 verify, is quite natural. Human life could not have the scope, and depth, and progress it has, were this otherwise. It is natural, too, to make these hopes and anticipations give in their turn support to the simple and humble experience which was their original ground. Israel, therefore, who originally followed righteousness because he felt that it tended to life, might naturally come at last to follow it because it would enable him to stand before the Son of Man at his coming, and to share in the triumph of the saints. But this later belief has not the same character as the belief which it is thus set to confirm. It is a kind of fairy-tale, which a man tells himself, which no one, we grant, can prove impossible to turn out true, but which no one, also, can prove certain to turn out true. It is exactly what is expressed by the German word ‘ Aber- glaube, ’ extra-belief \ belief beyond what is certain and verifiable. Our word ‘ superstition ’ had by its derivation this same meaning, but it has come to be used in a merely bad sense, and to mean a childish and craven religiosity. With the German word it is not so ; therefore Goethe can say with propriety and truth : ‘ Aberglaube is the poetry of life, — der Aberglaube ist die Poesie des LebensI It is so ; extra-beliefs that which we hope, augur, imagine, is the poetry of life, and has the rights of poetry. But it 73 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. is not science ; and yet it tends always to imagine itself science, to substitute itself for science, to make itself the ground of the very science out of which it has grown. The Messianic ideas, which were the poetry of life to Israel in the age when Christ came, did this ; and it is the more important to mark that they did it, because similar ideas have so signally done the same thing in popular Christianity. RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 79 CHAPTER III. RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. Jesus Christ was undoubtedly the very last sort of Messiah whom the Jews expected. Christian theologians say confidently that the characters of humility, obscure- ness, and depression, were commonly attributed to the Jewish Messiah; and even Bishop Butler, in general the most severely exact of writers, gives countenance to this error. What is true is, that we find these characters at- tributed to some one by the prophets ; that we attribute them to Christ ; that Christ is for us the Messiah, and that Christ they suit. But for the prophets themselves, and for the Jews who heard and read them, these cha- racters of lowliness and depression belonged to God's chas- tened servant, the idealised Israel. When Israel had been purged and renewed by these, the Messiah was to appear; but with glory and power for his attributes, not humility and weakness. It is impossible to resist acknowledging this, if we read the Bible to find from it what those who $o LITERATURE AND DOGMA . wrote it really intended to think and say, and not to put in it what we wish them to have thought and said. To find in Jesus the genuine Jewish Messiah, the Messiah of Daniel, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven and having universal dominion given him, must certainly, to a Jew, have been extremely difficult. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly in the Old Testa- ment the germ of Christianity. In developing this germ lay the future of righteousness itself, of Israel’s primary and immortal concern ; and the incomparable greatness of the religion founded by Christ comes from his having developed it. He is not the Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation pointed ; and yet Christendom with perfect justice has made him the Messiah, because he alone took, when his nation was on another and a false tack, a way obscurely indicated in the Old Testament, and the one possible and successful way, for the accomplishment of the Messiah’s function : — to bring in everlasting righteous- ness . Let us see how this was. Religion in the Old Testament is a matter of national and social conduct mainly. First, it consists in devotion to Israel’s God, the Eternal who loveth righteousness, and of separation from other nations whose concern for righteousness was less fervent, of abhorrence of their idolatries which were sure to bewilder and diminish this RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 8s fervent concern. Secondly, it consists in doing justice, hating all wrong, robbery, and oppression, abstaining from insolence, lying, and slandering. The Jews’ polity their theocracy, was of such immense importance, be- cause religion, when conceived as having its existence in these national and social duties mainly, requires a polity to put itself forth in ; and the Jews’ polity was adapted to such a religion. But this religion, as it developed itself, was by no means entirely worthy of the intuition out of which it had grown. We have seen how, in its intuition of God, — of that not ourselves of which all mankind form some conception or other, — as the Eternal that makes for righteousness , the Hebrew race found the revelation needed to breathe emotion into the laws of morality, and to make morality religion. This revelation is the capital fact of the Old Testament, and the source of its grandeur and power. But it is evident that this revelation lost, as time went on, its nearness and clear- ness; and that for the mass of the Hebrews their God came to be a mere magnified and non-natural man, like the God of our popular religion now, who has commanded certain courses of conduct and attached certain sanctions to them. And though prophets and righteous men, among the Hebrews, might preserve always the immediate and truer G 82 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. apprehension of their God as the Eternal who makes for righteousness , they in vain tried to communicate this ap- prehension to the mass of their countrymen. They had, indeed, a special difficulty to contend with in communi- cating it ; and the difficulty was this. Those courses of conduct, which Israel's intuition of the Eternal had originally touched with emotion and made religion, lay chiefly, we have seen, in the line of national and social duties. By reason of the stage of their own growth and the world’s, at which this revelation found the Hebrews, the thing could not well be otherwise. And national and social duties are peculiarly capable of a mechanical, exterior performance, in which the heart has no share. One may observe rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry, abstain from murder and theft and false witness, and yet have one’s inward thoughts bad, callous, and disordered. Then even the admitted duties themselves come to be ill-discharged or set at nought, because the emotion which was the only certain security for their good dis- charge is wanting. The very power of religion, as we have seen, lies in its bringing emotion to bear on our rules of conduct, and thus making us care for them so much, consider them so deeply and reverentially, that we sur- mount the great practical difficulty of acting in obedience to them, and follow them heartily and easily. Therefore RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 83 the Israelites, when they lost their primary intuition and the deep feeling which went with it, were perpetually idolatrous, slack or niggardly in the service of Jehovah, violators of judgment and justice. The prophets perpetually reminded their nation of the superiority of judgment and justice to any exterior cere- mony like sacrifice. But judgment and justice them- selves, as Israel in general conceived them, have some- thing exterior in them ; now, what was wanted was more inwardness , more feeling. This was given by adding mercy and humbleness to judgment and justice. Mercy and humbleness are something inward, they are affections of the heart. And even in the Proverbs these appear : 4 The merciful man doeth good to his own soul ; ’ 4 He that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he ; ’ 6 Honour shall uphold the humble in spirit ; 5 4 When pride cometh, shame cometh, but with the lowly is wisdom.' So that Micah asked his nation : 4 What doth the Eternal require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy , and to walk humbly with thy God ? ’ — adding mercy and humility to the old judgment and justice. But a further develop- ment is given to humbleness, when the second Isaiah adds contrition to it : 4 1 ’ (the Eternal) 4 dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit ; 5 or when the Psalmist g 2 8 4 LITERATURE AND DOGMA says, ‘ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart , 0 God, thou wilt not despise ! ' This is personal religion ; religion consisting in the inward feeling and disposition of the individual himself, rather than in the performancce of outward acts towards religion or society. It is the essence of Christianity, it is what the Jews needed, it is the line in which their religion was ripe for development ; — and it appears in the Old Testament. Still, in the Old Testament it by no means comes out fully. The leaning, there, is to make religion social rather than personal, an affair of duties rather than of dispositions. Soon after the very words we have just quoted from him, the second Isaiah adds : ‘If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger and speaking vanity, and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon-day, and the Eternal shall guide thee continu- ally and make fat thy bones.' This stands, or at least appears to stand, as a full description of righteousness ; and as such, it is unsatisfying. What was wanted, then, was a fuller description of righteousness. Now, it is clear that righteousness, the RELIGION NEW-GIVEN 85 central object of Israel’s concern, was the central object of Christ’s concern also. Of the development and cardinal points of his teaching we shall have to speak more at length by-and-by ; all we have to do here is to pass them in a rapid preliminary review. Israel had said : { To him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God.’ And Christ said : 4 Except your righteousness exceed the righteous- ness of the Scribes and Pharisees,’ — that is, of the very people who then passed for caring most about righteous- ness and practising it most rigidly , — 4 ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ But righteousness had by Christ’s time lost, in great measure, the mighty impulse which emotion gives ; and in losing this, had lost also the mighty sanction which happiness gives. 4 The whole head was sick and the whole heart faint;’ the glad and immediate sense of being in the right way, in the way of peace, was gone ; the sense of being wrong and astray, of sin, and of helplessness under sin, was op- pressive. The thing was, by giving a fuller idea of right- eousness, to reapply emotion to it, and by thus reapplying emotion, to disperse the feeling of being amiss and help- less, to give the sense of being right and effective ; to restore, in short, to righteousness the sanction of happi- ness . 86 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . But this could only be done by attending to that inward world of feelings and dispositions which Judaism had too much neglected. The first need, therefore, for Israel at that time, was to make religion cease to be mainly a national and social matter, and become mainly a personal matter. i Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, that the outside may be clean also ! ’ — this was the very ground-principle in Christ’s teaching. Instead of attending so much to your outward acts, attend, he said, first of all to your inward thoughts, to the state of your heart and feelings. This doctrine has perhaps been overstrained and misapplied by certain people since ; but it was the lesson which at that time was above all needed. It is a great progress beyond even that advanced maxim of pious Jews : ‘To do justice and judgment is more acceptable than sacrifice.’ For to do justice and judgment is still, as we have remarked, something external, and may leave the feelings un- touched, uncleared, and dead ; what was wanted was to plough up, clear, and quicken the feelings themselves. And this is what Christ did. c My son, give me thy heart P says the teacher of right- eousness in the golden age of Israel. And when Israel had the Eternal revealed to him, and founded our religion, he gave his heart. But the time came when this direct RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 87 vision ceased, and Israel’s religion was a mere affair of tradition, and of doctrines and rules received from with- out. Then it might be truly said of this professed servant of the Eternal : ‘ This people honour me with their lips, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of mend With little or no power of distinguishing between what was rule of ceremonial and what was rule of conduct, they followed the prescriptions of their religion with a servile and sullen mind, ‘ precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little,’ and no end to it all. What a change since the days when it was joy to the just to do judgment f The prophets saw clearly enough the evil, nay, they even could point to the springs which must be touched in order to work a cure ; but they could not press these springs steadily enough or skilfully enough to work the cure themselves. Christ’s new and different way of putting things was the secret of his succeeding where the prophets could not. And this new way he had of putting things is what is indicated by the expression epieikeia , best rendered, as we have elsewhere said, 1 by these two words, — 4 sweet reasonableness.’ For that which is epieikes is that which 1 Si. Paul and Protestantism , p. xix. 88 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. has an air of truth and likelihood; and that which has an air of truth and likelihood is prepossessing. Now, never were utterances concerning conduct and righteousness, — Israel’s master-concern, and the master-topic of the New Testament as well as of the Old, — which so carried with them an air of consummate truth and likelihood as Christ’s did ; and never, therefore, were any utterances so irresistibly prepossessing. He put things in such a way that his hearer was led to take each rule or fact of conduct by its inward side, its effec-t on the heart and character ; then the reason of the thing, the meaning of what had been mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon him. He could distinguish between what was only ceremony, and what was conduct ; and the hardest rule of conduct came to appear to him infinitely reasonable and natural, and therefore infinitely prepossessing. To find his own soul , his true and permanent self, became set up in man’s view as his chief concern, as the secret of hap- piness ; and so it really is. 4 How is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of himself ?’ was the searching question which Jesus made men ask themselves. A return upon themselves, and a conse- quent intuition of the truth and reason of the thing in question, gave men for right action the clearness, spirit, energy, happiness, they had lost. RELIGION NE W- GIVEN. 89 This power of returning upon themselves, and seeing by a flash the truth and reason of things, his disciples learnt of Christ. They learnt too, from observing him and his example, much which without, perhaps, any conscious process of being apprehended in its reason, was discerned instinctively to be true and life-giving as soon as it was recommended in Christ’s words and illus- trated by Christ’s example. Two lessons in particular they learnt in this way, and added them to the great lesson of self-examination and an appeal to the inner man, with which they started. ‘ Whoever will come after ?ne, let him deny himself a?id take up his cross daily and follow me I was one of the two; ‘ Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart , and ye shall fi?id rest unto your souls/ 1 was the other. Christ made his followers first look within and examine themselves ; he made them feel that they had a best and real self as opposed to their ordinary and apparent one, and that their happiness depended on saving this best self from being overborne. And then, by recommending, and still more by himself exemplifying in his own practice, by the exhibition in himself with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness, and beauty, of the two qualities by which our ordinary self is indeed most essentially counteracted, self-renounce - 77ient and mildness , he made his followers feel that in 90 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . these qualities lay the secret of their best self ; that to at- tain them was in the highest degree requisite and natural, and that a man’s whole happiness depended upon it. Self-examination, self- renouncement, and mildness, were, therefore, the great means by which Christ renewed righteousness and religion. All these means are indi- cated in the Old Testament : God requireth truth in the inward parts ; Not doing thine own ways , nor finding thine own pleasure ; Before honour is humility . But how far more strongly are they forced upon the attention in the New Testament, and set up clearly as the central mark for our endeavours ! Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup that the outside may be clean also! Whoever will come after me, let him renounce himself and take up his cross daily and follow me ! Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls ! So that, although personal religion is clearly present in the Old Testament, nevertheless these injunc- tions of the New Testament effect so much more for the extrication and establishment of personal religion than the general exhortations in the Old to offer the sacrifice of righteousness , to do judgment, that, comparatively with the Old, the New Testament may be said to have really founded inward and personal religion. While the Old Testament says : Attend to co7iduct ! the New Testament RELIGION NEW-GIVEN . 91 says : Attend to the feelings and dispositions whence conduct proceeds ! And as attending to conduct had very much degenerated into deadness and formality, attending to the springs of conduct was a revelation, a revival of intui- tive and fresh perceptions, a touching of morals with emotion, a discovering of religion, similar to that which had been effected when Israel, struck with the abiding power, not of man’s causing, which makes for righteous- ness, and filled with joy and awe by it, had in the old days named God the Eternal. Man came under a new dispensation, and made with God a second covenant, 3 - To rivet the attention on the indications of personal religion furnished by the Old Testament ; to take the humble, inward, and suffering c servant of God ’ of the prophets, and to elevate this as the Messiah, the seed of Abraham and David, in whom all nations should be blessed, whose throne should be as the days of heaven, who should redeem his people and restore the kingdom to Israel, — was a work of the highest originality. It can- not, as we have seen, be said, that by the suffering Servant of God and by the triumphant Messiah, the prophets themselves meant one and the same person. But lan- 92 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . guage of hope and aspiration, such as theirs, is in its very nature malleable. Criticism may and must determine what the original speakers seem to have directly meant ; but the very nature of their language justifies any power- ful and fruitful application of it, and every such applica- tion may be said, in the words of popular religion, to have been lodged there from the first by the spirit of God. Certainly it was a somewhat violent exegetical proceeding, to fuse together into one personage Daniel’s Son of Man coming with the clouds of Heaven, the first Isaiah’s ‘Branch out of the root of Jesse’ who should smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and reign in glory, peace, and righteousness, and the second Isaiah’s meek and afflicted Servant of God who was charged with the precious message of a golden future ; — to fuse to- gether in one these three by no means identical person- ages, to add to them the sacrificial lamb of the passover and of the temple-service which was constantly before a Jew’s eyes, to add, besides, the Prophet like to himself whom Moses promised to the children of Israel, to add, further, the Holy One of Israel the Redeemer, who for the prophets was the Eternal himself ; and to say, that the combination thence resulting was the Messiah or Christ whom all the prophets meant and predicted, and that Jesus was this Messiah. To us, who have been RELIGION NE W- GIVEN. 93 fashioned by a theology whose set purpose is to efface all the difficulties in such a combination, and to make it received easily and unhesitatingly, it may appear natural ; in itself, and with the elements of which it is composed viewed singly and impartially, it cannot but be pro- nounced violent. But the elements in question have their chief use and value, we repeat, not as objects of criticism; they belong of right to whoever can best possess himself of them for practice and edification. Of the Messiah coming in the clouds, of the Branch of Jesse smiting the earth with the rod of his mouth, slaying the wicked with his breath, and re-establishing in unexampled splendour David’s kingdom, nothing could be made. With such a Messiah filling men’s thoughts and hopes, the real defects of Israel still remained, because these chiefly proceeded from Israel’s making his religion too much a national and social affair, too little a personal affair. But a Messiah who did not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and afflicted without opening his mouth, who worked obscurely and patiently, yet failed not nor was discouraged until his doctrine made its way and transformed the world, — this was the Messiah whom Israel needed, and in whom the lost greatness of Israel could be restored and culmi- nate. For the true greatness of Israel was righteousness ; 94 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . and only by an inward personal religion could the sense revive of what righteousness really was, — revive in Israel and bear fruit for the world. Instead, then, of ‘ the Root of David who should set up an ensign for the nations and assemble the outcasts of Israel,’ Christ took from prophecy and made pre-eminent ‘the Servant whom man despiseth and the people ab- horreth,’ but ‘ who bringeth good tidings, who publisheth peace, publisheth salvation.’ And instead of saying like the prophets : ‘ This people must mend, this natio7i must do so and so, Israel must follow such and such ways,’ Christ took the individual Israelite by himself apart, made him listen for the voice of his conscience, and said to him in effect : ‘ If every one would mend one , we should have a new world.’ So vital for the Jews was this change of character in their religion, that the Old Testa- ment abounds, as we have said, in pointings and ap- proximations to it ; and most truly might Christ say to his followers, that many prophets and kings had desired, though unavailingly, to see the things which his disciples saw and heard. The desire felt by pious Israelites for some new aspect of religion such as Christ presented, is, undoubtedly, the best proof of its timeliness and salutariness. Perhaps New Testament witnesses to the workings of this, desire RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. • 95 may be received with suspicion, as having arisen after the event and when the new ideal of Christ had become es- tablished. Otherwise, John the Baptist’s characterisation of the Messiah as ‘ the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, and the bold Messianic turn given in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew to the prophecy there quoted from the forty-second chapter of Isaiah, would be evidence of the highest importance. ‘ A bruised reed breaketh he not,’ says Isaiah of the meek servant and messenger of God, ‘ and a glimmering wick quench- eth he not ; he declareth judgment with truth ; far lands wait for his doctrine.’ ‘A bruised reed shall he not break,’ runs the passage in St. Matthew, ‘and smoking flax shall he not quench, until he send forth judgment unto victory : in his name shall the Gentiles trust.’ The words, until he send forth judgment unto victory , words giving a clear Messianic stamp to the personage de- scribed, are neither in the original Hebrew nor in the Greek of the Septuagint ; — where did the Gospel-writer And them ? If, as is possible, they were in some version of Isaiah then extant, they prove in a striking way the existence and strength of the aspiration which Christ satisfied by transforming the old popular ideal of the Messiah. But there is in any case proof of the existence of such an aspiration, since a Jewish commentator, con- 9 6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA , temporary, probably, with the Christian era but not himself a Christian, assigns to the prophecy a Messianic intention. And, indeed, the rendering of the final words, in his name shall the Gentiles trust , which is in the Greek of the Septuagint as well as in that of St. Matthew, shows, perhaps, a similar leaning in the Jews of Alexandria some two centuries before Christ. Signs there are then, without doubt, of others trying to identify the Messiah of popular hope, — the triumphant Root of David, the mystic Son of Man, — with an ideal of meekness, inwardness, patience, and self-denial ; and well might reformers try to effect this identification, for the true line of Israel’s progress lay through it ! But not he who tries makes an epoch, but he who effects ; and the identification which was needed Jesus effected. Hence- forth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly, he who allied himself with this identification ; who perceived its incom- parable fruitfulness, its continuance of the real tradition of Israel, its correspondence with the ruling idea of the Hebrew spirit : Through righteoiLS?iess to happiness ! or, in Bible words : To him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God, That the Jewish nation at large, and its rulers, refused to accept the iden- tification, shows simply that want of power to penetrate through wraps and appearances to the essence of things, RELIGION NE W- GIVEN 97 which the majority of mankind always display. The national and social character of their theocracy was every- thing to the Jews, and they could see no blessings in a revolution which annulled it. It has often been remarked, that the Puritans are like the Jews of the Old Testament; and Mr. Froude thinks he defends the Puritans by saying that they, like the Jews of the Old Testament, had their hearts set on a theocracy, on a fashioning of politics and society to suit the govern- ment of God. How strange that he does not perceive that he thus passes, and with justice, the gravest con- demnation on the Puritans as followers of Christ! At the Christian era the time had passed, in religion, for out- ward constructions of this kind, and for all care about establishing or abolishing them. The time had come for inwardness and self-reconstruction, — a time to last till the self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It was the error of the Jews that they did not perceive this ; and the error of the J ews the Puritans, without the J ews’ excuse, faithfully repeated. And the blunder of both had the same cause, — a want of tact to perceive what is really most wanted for the attainment of their own professed ideal, the reign of righteousness. When Jesus appeared, his disciples were those who did not make this blunder. They were, in general, simple F 9 8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. souls, without pretensions which Christ’s new religious ideal cut short, or self-consequence which it mortified; and any Israelite who was, on the one hand, not warped by personal pretensions and self-consequence, and on the other, not dull of feeling and gross of life like the common multitude, might well be open to the spell which, after all, was the great confirmation of Christ’s religion, as it was the great confirmation of the original religion of Israel, — the spell of its happiness. 4 Be glad , O ye righteous, and rejoice in the Eternal/ the old and lost prerogative of Israel, Christianity offered to make again a living and true word to him. 4 - For we have already remarked, how it is the great achievement of the Israel of the Old Testament, happiness being mankind’s confessed end and aim, to have more than anyone else felt, and more than anyone else suc- ceeded in making others feel, that to righteousness belongs happiness. Now, it will be denied by no one that Christ, in his turn, was eminently characterised by professing to bring, and by being felt to bring, happiness. All the words that belong to his mission, — gospel , kingdom of God, \ saviour , grace, peace, living water , bread of life , — are brim- ful of promise and of joy. 4 1 am come/ he said, 4 that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abun - RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 99 dantly ; ’ ‘ Come to me, and ye shall find rest wito your souls ‘I speak, that my disciples may have my joy fulfilled in themselves l That the operation, professed and actual, of this. ‘ son of peace 7 was to replace his followers in ‘ the way of peace/ no one can question ; the only matter of dispute can be how he replaced them there. Now, that we may see this more clearly, let us return for a moment to what we said of conduct , — of conduct, which we found to be three-fourths, at least, of human life, and the object with which religion is concerned. We said of conduct, that it is the simplest thing in the world as far as knowledge is concerned, but the hardest thing in the world as far as doing is concerned. We added that going right , succeeding, in the manage- ment of this vast concern, gave naturally the liveliest possible sense of satisfaction and happiness; that at- tending to it was naturally the secret of success, that attachment makes us attend, and that whatever, therefore, made us love to attend to it must inspire us with gratitude . We found the central point of the religion of the Old Testament in Israel’s keen perception of a power, not ourselves , which makes for righteousness and disposes us to attend to it, and in his energy of grateful self-surrendei to this power. Let us take, to guide ourselves in the New Testament, the help of the clue furnished by all this. H 2 JOO LITERATURE AND DOGMA . First, as to the extreme simplicity of the matter con- cerned ; a matter sophisticated, overlaid, and hidden in a thousand ways. The artless, unschooled perception of a child is, Christ says, the right organ for apprehending it : ‘ Whosoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, cannot enter therein.' And yet it is so diffi- cult of attainment that it seems we cannot attain it of our- selves : ‘No man can come to me unless it be given him of the Father.' The things to be done are so simple and necessary that the doctrine about them proves itself as soon as we do them : ‘ Whoever will do God’s will, shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.' Only it is indispensable to do them ; speculating and professing are absolutely useless, here, without doing : ‘ Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say ? ' The great and learned people, the masters in Israel, have their authoritative version of what righteousness and the will of God is, of what the ideal for the Jewish nation is, of the correct way to interpret the prophets. But : ‘Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment;' ‘ beware of insmcerity ; ' ‘ God sees the heart ; what comes from within , that defiles us.' The new cove- nant, the New Testament, consists in the rule of this very inwardness, in a state of things when God ‘ puts his law in the inward parts and writes it in the heart,' in co?iscience RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. ioi being made the test. You can see, Jesus says, you can see the leading religionists of the Jewish nation, with the current notions about righteousness, God’s will, and the meaning of prophecy, you can see them saying and not doing, full of fierce temper, pride, and sensuality ; — this shows they can be but blind guides for you. The saviour of Israel is he who makes Israel use his conscience simply and sincerely, who makes him change and sweeten his temper, conquer and annul his sensuality. The prophets all point to such a saviour, and he is the Messiah, and the promised happiness to Israel is in him and in his reign. He is, in the exalted language of prophecy, the holy one of God, the son of God, the beloved of God, the anointed of God, the son of man in an eminent and unique sense, the Messiah and Christ ; in plainer language, he is ‘ a man who tells you the truth which he has heard of God ; ’ who came not of himself and speaks not of himself, but who ‘ came forth from God,’ — from the original God of Israel’s worship, the God of righteousness, and of happi- ness joined to righteousness, — ‘and is come to you.’ Israel is perpetually talking of God and calling him his Father, and c everyone,’ says Christ, ‘ who hears the Father comes to me, for I know Him, and know His will, and utter His word.’ God’s will and word, in the Old Testament, was righteousness ; in the New Testament, it 102 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . is righteousness explained to have its essence in inward- ness , mildness , and self -renouncement. This is, in sub- stance, the word of Christ which he who hears ‘ shall never see death ; ’ of which he who follows it 6 shall know by experience whether it be of God/ But as the Israel of the Old Testament did not say or feel that he followed righteousness by his own power, or out of self-interest and self-love, but said and felt that he followed it in thankful self- surrender to ‘ the Eternal who loveth righteousness,’ and that ‘the Eternal ordereth a good man’s going and maketh his way acceptable to Himself] — so, in the restoration effected by Jesus, the motive which is of force is not the moral motive that inwardness, mildness, and self-renouncement make for man’s happi- ness, but a far stronger motive, full of ardent affection and gratitude, and which, though it really has its ground and confirmation in the fact that inwardness, mildness, and self-renouncement do make for man’s happiness, yet keeps no consciousness of this as its ground. For it finds a far surer ground in personal devotion to Christ, who brought the doctrine to his disciples and made a passage for it into their hearts ; in believing that Christ is come from God, following Christ, loving Christ. And, in the happiness which thus believing in him, following him, and loving him gives, it finds the mightiest of sanc- tions. RELIGION NEW-GIVEN. 103 5 - And thus was the great doctrine of the Old Testament, To righteousness belongs happiness! made a true and potent word again. Christ was the Messiah to restore the all things of Israel, — righteousness, and happiness with righteousness ; to bring light and recovery after long days of darkness and ruin, and to make good the belief written on Israel's heart : The righteous is an ever- lasting foundation ! But we have seen how in the hopes of the nation and in the promises of prophecy this true and vital belief of Israel was mixed with a quantity of what we have called Aberglaube or extra-belief, adding all manner of shape and circumstance to the original thought. The kingdom of David and Solomon was to be restored on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel were to lick the dust, kings were to bring gifts ; there was to be % the So 1 '* of Man coming in the clouds, judgment given to the saints of the Most High, and an eternal reign of the saints afterwards. Now, most of this has a poetical value, some of it has a moral value. All of it is, in truth, a testimony to the strength of Israel’s idea of righteousness. For the order of its growth is, as we have seen, this : 4 To righteousness belongs happmess / — -this sure rule is often broken in the 104 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. state of things which now is; there must, therefore, be in store for us, in the future, a state of things where it will hold good/ But none of it has a scientific value, a certitude arising from proof and experience. And indeed it cannot have this, for it professes to be an anticipa- tion of a state of things not yet actually experienced. But human nature is such, that the mind easily dwells on an anticipation of this kind until we come to forget the order in which it arose, place it first when it is by rights second, and make it support that by which it is in truth supported. And so there came to be many Israelites, — most likely they were the great majority of their nation, — who supposed that righteousness was to be followed, not out of thankful self-surrender to ‘ the Eternal who loveth righteousness/ but because the Ancient of Days was coming before long, and judgment was to be given to the saints and they were to possess the kingdom, and from the kingdom those who did not follow righteousness would be excluded. From this way of conceiving reli- gion came naturally the religious condition of the J ews as Christ at his coming found it ; and from which, by his new and living way of presenting the Messiah, he sought to extricate the whole nation, and did extricate his disciples. He did extricate these, in that he fixed their thoughts upon himself and upon an ideal of inwardness, RELIGION NEW-GIVEN 105 mildness, and self-renouncement, instead of a phantas- magory of outward grandeur and self-assertion. But at the same time the whole train of extra-belief, or Aberglaubc , which had attached itself to Israel's old creed : The righteous is an everlasting foundation ! transferred itself to the new creed brought by Christ : I am the door ! by me if any man enter in , he shall be saved ! And there arose, accordingly, a new Aberglaube like the old. The mild, inward, self-renouncing and sacrificed Servant of the Eternal, the new and better Messiah, was yet, before the present generation passed, to come on the clouds of heaven in power and glory, like the Messiah of Daniel, to gather by trumpet-call his elect from the four winds, and to set his apostles on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The motive of Christianity, — which was, in truth, that pure souls ‘ knew the voice ’ of Jesus as sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and felt after seeing and hearing him that his doctrine and ideal was what they wanted, that he was 4 indeed the saviour of the world,’ — this simple motive became a mixed motive, adding to its first contents a vast extra-belief of a phantasmagorical Advent of Christ, a resurrection and judgment, Christ’s adherents glorified, his rejectors punished everlastingly. And when the generation, for which this Advent was io6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . first fixed, had passed away without it, Christians dis- covered by a process of criticism common enough in popular theology, but by which, as Bishop Butler says of a like kind of process, ‘ anything may be made out of anything/ — they discovered that the Advent had never really been fixed for that first generation, but that it was foretold, and certainly in store, for a later time. So the Aberglaube was perpetuated, placed out of reach of all practical test, and made stronger than ever. With the multitude, this Aberglaube or extra-belief inevitably came soon to surpass the original conviction in attractiveness and seeming certitude. The future and the miraculous engaged the chief attention of Christians ; and, in accor- dance with this strain of thought, they more and more rested the proof of Christianity, not on its internal evidence, but on prediction and miracle. THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY . 107 CHAPTER IV. THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. ‘ Abergla ube is the poetry of life.’ That men should, by help of their imagination, take short cuts to what they ardently desire, whether the triumph of Israel or the triumph of Christianity, should tell themselves fairy- tales about it, should make these fairy-tales the basis for what is far more sure and solid than the fairy-tales, the desire itself, — all this has in it, we repeat, nothing which is not natural, nothing blameable. Nay, the region of our hopes and presentiments extends, as we have also said, far beyond the region of what we can know with certainty. What we reach by hope and presentiment may yet be true, and he would be a narrow reasoner who denied, for instance, all validity to the idea of immor- tality, because this idea rests on presentiment mainly, and does not admit of certain demonstration. In reli- gion, above all, extra-belief is in itself no matter, assuredly, for bla*me. The object of religion is conduct; and if a io8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . man helps himself in his conduct by taking an object of hope and presentiment as if it were an object of certainty, he may even be said to gain thereby an advantage. And yet there is always a drawback to a man’s advan- tage in thus treating, in religion and conduct, what is extra-belief, and not certain, as if it were matter of cer- tainty, and in making it his ground of action ; — he pays for it . The time comes when he discovers that it is not certain ; and then the whole certainty of religion seems discredited, and the basis of conduct gone. This danger attends the reliance on prediction and miracle as evi- dences of Christianity. They have been attacked as a part of the 4 cheat ’ or ‘ imposture ’ of religion and of Christianity. For us, religion is the solidest of realities, and Christianity the greatest and happiest stroke ever yet made for human perfection. Prediction and miracle were attributed to it as its supports, because of its grandeur, and because of the awe and admiration which it inspired. Generations of men have helped themselves to hold firmer to it, helped themselves in conduct, by the aid of these supports. i Miracles prove] men have said and thought, 4 that the order of physical nature is not fate, nor a mere material constitution of things, but the subject of a free, THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 109 omnipotent Master. Prophecy fulfilled proves that neither fate nor man are masters of the world .’ 1 And to take prophecy first. ‘ The conditions/ it is said, ‘ which form the true conclusive standard of a pro- phetic inspiration are these : That the prediction be known to have been promulgated before the event ; that the event be such as could not have been foreseen, when it was predicted, by any effort of human reason ; and that the event and the prediction correspond together in a clear accomplishment. There are prophecies in Scripture answering to the standard of an absolute proof. Their publication, their fulfilment, their supernatural prescience, are all fully ascertained .’ 2 On this sort of ground men came to rest the proof of Christianity. 2. Now, it may be said, indeed, that a prediction fulfilled, an exhibition of supernatural prescience, proves nothing for or against the truth and necessity of conduct and righteousness. But it must be allowed, notwithstanding, that while human nature is what it is, the mass of men are likely to listen more to a teacher of righteousness, if he accompanies his teaching by an exhibition of supernatural 1 Davison’s Discourses on Prophecy ; Discourse ii. Part 2. 2 Discourses ix. and xii. no LIT ERA TUBE AND DOGMA . prescience. And what were called the ‘ signal predictions’ concerning the Christ of popular theology, as they stand in our Bibles, had and have undoubtedly a look of super- natural prescience. The employment of capital letters, and other aids, such as the constant use of the future tense, naturally and innocently adopted by interpreters who were profoundly convinced that Christianity needed these express predictions and that they must be in the Bible, enhanced, certainly, this look ; but the look, even without these aids, was sufficiently striking. That Jacob on his death-bed should two thousand years before Christ have ‘ been enabled,’ as the phrase is, to fore- tell to his son Judah that ‘ the sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh (or the Messiah) come, and to him shall the gathering of the people be,’ does seem, when the expla- nation is put with it that the Jewish kingdom lasted till the Christian era and then perished, a miracle of predic- tion in favour of our current Christian theology. That Jeremiah should have ‘been enabled’ to foretell, in the name of J ehovah : ‘ The days come when I will raise to David a righteous Branch ; in his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby he shall be called, the lord our righteous- ness ! ’ — does seem a wonder of prediction in favour of that tenet of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, for which THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY, iii the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious to do something. For unquestionably Jehovah is often spoken of as the saviour of Judah and Israel: ‘ All flesh shall know that I the Eternal am thy saviour and thy redeemer , the mighty one of Jacob ; ’ and in the pro- phecy given above as Jeremiah’s, the Branch of David is clearly identified with Jehovah. Again, that David should say : ‘ The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool/ — does seem a prodigy of prediction to the same effect. That he should say : ‘ Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and so ye perish/ does seem a supernaturally prescient assertion of the Eternal Sonship. And so long as these prophecies stand as they are here given, they no doubt bring to Christianity all the support (and with the mass of mankind this is by no means inconsiderable) which it can derive from the display of supernatural prescience. But who will dispute that it more and more becomes known that these prophecies cannot stand as we have here given them ? Manifestly, it more and more becomes known, that the passage from Genesis, with its mysterious Shiloh and the gathering of the people to him, is rightly to be rendered as follows : ‘ The pre-eminence shall not depart from Judah so long as the people resort to Shiloh (the national sanctuary before Jerusalem was I 12 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. won ) ; and the nations (the heathen Canaanites) shall obey him l We here purposely leave out of sight any such consideration as that our actual books of the Old Testa- ment came first together through the piety of the house of Judah, and when the destiny of Judah was already traced ; and that to say roundly : 4 Jacob was e?iabled to foretell : The sceptre shall not depart from Judah/ as if we were speaking of a prophecy preached and published by Dr. Cumming, is wholly inadmissible. For this consideration is of force, indeed, but it is a con- sideration drawn from the rules of literary history and criticism, and not likely to have weight with the mass of mankind. Palpable error and mistranslation are what will have weight with them . And what, then, will they say as they come to know (and do not and must not 'more and more of them come to know it every day?) that Jeremiah’s supposed signal identification of Christ with the God of Israel : 6 1 will raise to David a righteous Branch, and this is the name whereby he shall be called, the lord our right- eousness/ runs really : ‘ I will raise to David a righteous branch ; in his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely ; and this is the name whereby they shall call themselves : The Eternal is our righteous?iess ! ’ The prophecy thus becomes simply one of the many THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY. 113 promises of a successor to David under whom the Hebrew people should trust in the Eternal and follow righteous- ness ; just as the prophecy from Genesis is one of the many prophecies of the enduring continuance of the greatness of Judah. ‘ The Lord said unto my Lord/ in like manner — will not people be startled when they find that it ought to run instead : ‘ The Eternal said unto my lord the king/ — a simple promise of victory to a prince of God’s chosen people? — and that: ‘Kiss the Son/ is in reality, ‘Be warned/ or, ‘ be instructed ; 5 ‘ lay hold/ according to the Septuagint, ‘ on instruction 5 ? 3 - Leslie, in his once famous Short and Easy Method with the Deists , speaks of the impugners of the current evidences of Christianity as men who consider the Scripture histories and the Christian religion ‘ cheats and impositions of cunning and designing men upon the credulity of simple people. 5 Collins, and the whole array of writers at whom Leslie aims this, greatly need to be re-surveyed from the point of view of our own age. Nevertheless* we may grant that some of them, at any rate, conduct their attacks on the current evidences for Christianity in such a manner as to give the notion that in their opinion Christianity itself, and religion, is a cheat 1 1 14 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . and an imposture. But how far more prone will the mass of mankind be to hearken to this opinion, if they have been kept intent on predictions such as those of which we have given specimens ; if they have been kept full of the great importance of this narrow line of mechani- cal evidence, and then suddenly find that this line of evi- dence gives way at all points ? It can hardly be gainsaid, that, to a delicate and penetrating criticism, it has long been manifest that the chief literal fulfilment by Christ of_ things said by the prophets, was the fulfilment such as would naturally be given by one who nourished his spirit on the prophets and on living and acting their words. The great prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah are, critics can now see, not strictly predictions at all ; and predictions which are strictly meant as such, like those in the Book of Daniel, are an embarrassment to the Bible rather than a main element of it. The ‘ Zeit-Geist,’ and the mere spread of what is called enlightenment , superficial and barren as this often is, will inevitably, before long, make this conviction of criticism a popular opinion held far and wide. And then, what will be their case, who have been so long and sedulously taught to rely on super- natural predictions as a mainstay ? The same must be said of miracles. The substitution of some other proof of Christianity for this accustomed THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY, 1 15 proof is now to be desired most by those who most think Christianity of importance. That old friend of ours on whom we have formerly commented , 1 who insists upon it that Christianity is and shall be nothing else but this, 6 that Christ promised Paradise to the saint and threatened the worldly man with hell-fire, and proved his power to promise and threaten by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven,’ is certainly not the guide whom lovers of Christianity, if they could discern what it is that he really expects and aims at, and what it is which they themselves really desire, would think it wise to follow. But the subject of miracles is a very great one ; it includes within itself, indeed, the whole question about ‘ supernatural prescience,’ which meets us when we deal with prophecy. And this great subject requires, in order that we may deal with it properly, some little recapitulation of our original design in this essay, and of the circum- stances in which the cause of religion and of the Bible seems to be at this moment placed. St. Paul and Protestantism , p. 157. n6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. CHAPTER V. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. We have seen that some new treatment or other the religion of the Bible certainly seems to require, for it is attacked on all sides, and the theologians are not so successful as one might wish in defending it. One critic says, that if these islands had no religion at all it would not enter into his mind to introduce the religious and ethical idea by the agency of the Bible 3 another, that though certain commonplaces are common to all systems of morality, yet the Bible way of enunciating these com- monplaces no longer suits us. And we may rest assured, he adds, that by saying what we think in some other, more congenial, language, we shall really be taking the shortest road to discovering the new doctrines which will satisfy at once our reason and our imagination. Another critic goes farther still, and calls Bible-religion not only destitute of a modern and congenial way of stating its commonplaces of morality, but a defacer and disfigurer THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . ii 7 of moral treasures which were once in better keeping. The more one studies, the more, says he, one is convinced, that the religion which calls itself revealed contains, in the way of what is good, nothing which is not the incoherent and ill-digested residue of the wisdom of the ancients. To the same effect the Duke of Somerset, — who has been affording lately proof to the world that our aristocratic class are not, as has been said, inaccessible to ideas and merely polite, but that they are familiar, on the contrary, with modern criticism of the most advanced kind, — the Duke of Somerset finds very much to be dissatisfied with in the Bible and its teaching ; although the soul, he says, has (outside the Bible, apparently) one unassailable for- tress to which she may retire, — faith in God. All this seems to threaten to push Bible-religion from the place it has long held in our affections. And even what the most modern criticism of all sometimes does, to save it and set it up again, can hardly be called very flattering to it. For whereas the Hebrew race imagined that to them were committed the oracles of God, and that their God, ‘ the Eternal wholoveth righteousness/ was the God to whom every knee should bow and every tongue swear, there now comes Monsieur Emile Burnouf, the accomplished son of a gifted father, and will prove to n8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . us in a thick volume 1 that the oracles of God were not committed to a Semitic race at all, but to the Aryan; that the true God is not Israel’s God at all, but is ‘the idea of the absolute 7 which Israel could never properly master. This ‘ sacred theory of the Aryas,’ it seems, passed into Palestine from Persia and India, and got possession of the founder of Christianity and of his greatest apostles St. Paul and St. John; becoming more perfect, and returning more and more to its true character of a ‘ transcendent metaphysic , 7 as the doctors of the Christian Church developed it. So that we Christians, who are Aryas, may have the satisfaction of thinking that ‘ the religion of Christ has not come to us from the Semites , 7 and that ‘it is in the hymns of the Veda and not in the Bible that we are to look for the primordial source of our religion . 7 The theory of Christ is accordingly the theory of the Vedic Agni, or fire ; the Incarnation repre- sents the Vedic solemnity of the production of fire> symbol of force of every kind, of all movement, life, and thought ; the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit is the Vedic Trinity of Sun, Fire, and Wind ; and God, finally, is ‘ a cosmic unity . 7 Such speculations almost take away the breath of a mere man of letters. What one is inclined to say of 1 La Science des Religions ; Paris, 1872. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 119 them is this : Undoubtedly these exploits of the Aryan genius are gratifying to us members of the Aryan race. The God of the Hebrews, M. Burnouf says expressly, ‘was not a cosmic unity ; 7 the religion of the Hebrews ‘ had not that transcendent metaphysic which the genius of the Aryas requires ; 7 and, ‘ in passing from the Aryan race to the inferior races, religion underwent a deteriora- tion due to the physical and moral constitution of these races . 7 For religion, it must be remembered, is, in M. Burnouf 7 s view, fundamentally a science ; ‘ a meta- physical conception, a theory, a synthetic explanation of the universe . 7 Now ‘the perfect Arya is capable of a great deal of science; the Semite is inferior to him . 7 As Aryas or Aryans, then, we ought to be pleased at having vindicated the greatness of our race, and having not borrowed a Semitic religion, but transformed it by im- porting our own metaphysics into it. And this seems to harmonise very well with what the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester say about ‘ doing something for the honour of Our Lord’s Godhead , 7 and about ‘the infinite separation for time and for eternity which is involved in rejecting the Godhead of the Eternal Son, Very God of Very God, Light of Light ; 7 and also with the Athanasian Creed generally, and with what the clergy write to the Guardian about ‘ eternal life being 120 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . unquestionably annexed to a right knowledge 9f the Godhead/ For all these have in view high science and metaphysics, worthy of the Aryas. But to Bible-religion, in the plain sense of the word, it is not flattering; for it throws overboard almost entirely the Old Testament,, and makes the essence of the New to consist in an esoteric doctrine not very visible there, but more fully developed outside of it. The metaphysical element is made the fundamental element in religion ; but ‘ the Bible books, especially the more ancient of them, are destitute of metaphysics, and consequently of method and classifica- tion in their ideas/ Israel, therefore, instead of being a light of the Gentiles and a salvation to the ends of the earth, falls to a place in the world’s religious history behind the Arya. He is dismissed as ranking anthropo- logically between the Aryas and the yellow men ; as having frizzled hair, thick lips, small calves, flat feet, and belonging, above all, to those ‘occipital races’ whose brain cannot grow after the age of sixteen ; whereas the brain of a theological Arya, such as one of our bishops, may go on growing all his life. But we, who think that the Old Testament leads surely up to the New, who believe that, indeed, ‘ salvation is of the Jews,’ and that, for what concerns conduct or righteous- ness (that is, for what concerns three-fourths of human THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . 121 life), they and their documents can no more be neglected by whoever would make proficiency in it, than Greece can be neglected by anyone who would make proficiency in art, or Newton’s discoveries by whoever would compre- hend the world’s physical laws , — we are naturally not satisfied with this treatment of Israel and the Bible. And admitting that Israel shows no talent for metaphysics, we say that his religious greatness is just this, that he does not found religion on metaphysics, but on moral experience,, which is a much simpler matter ; and that, ever since the apparition of Israel and the Bible, religion is no longer what, according to M. Burnouf, to our Aryan forefathers in the valley of the Oxus it was, — and what perhaps it really was, to them , — a metaphysical theory, but is what Israel has made it. And what Israel made, and how he made it, we seek to show from the Bible itself. Thus we hope to win for the Bible and its religion, which seem to us so indispensable to the world, an access to many of those who now neglect them. For there is this to be said against M. Burnouf s metaphysics : no one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics being applied to it. Metaphysics are just what all our theology runs up into, and our bishops, as we have seen, are here particularly strong. But we have seen that the 1 22 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . making religion into metaphysics is the weakening of religion; now M. Burnouf makes religion into metaphysics more than ever. Yet evidently the metaphysical method lacks power for laying hold on people, and compelling them to receive the Bible from it ; it is felt to be incon- clusive as thus employed, and its inconclusiveness tells against the Bible. This is the case with the metaphysics of our bishops, and it will be the same with M. Burnouf’s new metaphysics also. They will be found, we fear, to have an inconclusiveness in their recommendation of Christianity. To very many persons, indeed to the great majority, such a method, in such a matter, must be in- conclusive. 2. Therefore we would not allow ourselves to start with any metaphysical conception at all, not with the mono- theistic idea, as it is styled, any more than with the pantheistic idea ; and, indeed, we are quite sure that Israel himself began with nothing of the kind. The idea of God \ as it is given us in the Bible, rests, we say, not on a metaphysical conception of the necessity of certain deductions from our ideas of cause, existence, identity, and the like ; but on a moral perception of a rule of con- duct not of our own making, into which we are born, THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 123 and which exists whether we will or no ; of awe at its grandeur and necessity, and of gratitude at its beneficence. This is the great original revelation made to Israel, this is his ‘ Eternal/ Man, however, as Goethe says, never knows how anthropomorphic he is. Israel described his Eternal in the language of poetry and emotion, and could not thus describe him but with the character of a man. Scientifi- cally he never attempted to describe him at all. But still the Eternal was ever at last reducible, for Israel, to the reality of experience out of which the revelation sprang ; he was 6 the righteous Eternal who loveth righteousness/ They who 4 seek the Eternal/ and they who 4 follow after righteousness/ were identical ; just as, conversely, they who Tear the Eternal/ and they who ‘ depart from evil/ were identical. Above all : ‘ He that feareth the Eternal happy is he ; ? ‘it is joy to the just to do judgment 6 righteousness tendeth to lifej The righteous is an everlasting foundation, l But, as time went on, facts seemed, we saw, to con- tradict this fundamental belief, to refute this faith in the Eternal ; material forces prevailed, and God appeared, as they say, to be on the side of the big battalions. The great unrighteous kingdoms of the world, kingdoms which cared far less than Israel for righteousness, and for the 124 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. Eternal who makes for righteousness, overpowered Israel. Prophecy assured him that the triumph of the Eternal's cause and people was certain : Behold, the Eternals hand is not shorte7ied, that it cannot save. The triumph was but adjourned through Israel's own sins : Your iniquities have separated betwee?i yoit and yoitr God. Prophecy directed his thoughts to the future, and promised to him a new everlasting kingdom under a heaven-sent leader. The characters of this kingdom and leader were more spiritualised by one prophet, more materialised by another. As time went on, in the last centuries before our era, they became increasingly turbid and phantasma- gorical. In addition to his original experimental belief in the almighty Eternal who makes for righteousness, Israel had now a vast Aberglaube, an after or extra-belief, not experimental, in an approaching kingdom of the saints, to be established by an Anointed, a Messiah, 1 one like the Son of Man,' commissioned from the Ancient of Days and coming in the clouds of heaven. Jesus came, calling himself the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God ; and the question is, what is the true meaning of these assertions of his, and of all his teaching ? It is the same question we had about the Old Testament. Is the language scientific, or, as we say, lite- rary ; — that is, the language of poetry and emotion, ap- THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . 125 proximative language, thrown out, as it were, at certain great objects which the human mind augurs and feels after, but not language accurately defining them? Po- pular religion says, we know, that the language is scien- tific ; that the God of the Old Testament is a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves (for this too, it seems, we ought to have added), the moral and intelli- gent Governor of the universe. Learned religion, the metaphysical theology of our bishops, proves or confirms this by abstruse reasoning from our ideas of cause, de- sign, existence, identity, and so on. Popular religion rests it altogether on miracles . The God of Israel, for popular religion, is a magnified and non-natural man who has really worked stupendous miracles, whereas the Gods of the heathen were vainly imagined to be able to work them, but could not, and had therefore no real existence. Of this God, Jesus for popular religion is the Son. He came to appease God's wrath against sinful men by the sacrifice of himself ; and he proved his Sonship by a course of stupendous miracles, and by the wonderful accomplishment in him of the super- natural Messianic predictions of prophecy. Here, again, learned religion elucidates and developes the relation of the Son to the Father by a copious exhibition of meta- physics ; but for popular religion the relationship, and the 126 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . authority of Jesus which derives from it, is altogether established by miracle . Now, we have seen that our bishops and their meta- physics are so little convincing, that many people throw the Bible quite aside and will not attend to it, because they are given to understand that the metaphysics go necessarily along with it, and that one cannot be taken without the other. So far, then, the talents of the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, and their zeal to do something for the honour of the Eternal Son's God- head, may be said to be actual obstacles to the receiving and studying of the Bible. But the same may now be also said of the popular theology which rests the Bible's authority and the Christian religion on miracle. To a great many persons this is tantamount to stopping their use of the Bible and of the Christian religion ; for they have made up their minds that what is popularly called miracle never really happens nor can happen, and that the belief in it arises out of ignorance, fraud, or mistake. To these persons we restore the use of the Bible, if, while showing them that the Bible-language is not scien- tific, but the language of common speech or of poetry and eloquence, approximative language thrown out at certain great objects of consciousness which it does not pretend to define fully, we convince them at the same THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 127* time that this language deals with facts of experience most momentous and real. We have sought to do this for the language of the Old Testament first, and we now seek to do it for that of the New. Our attempt, therefore, has in view those who now throw the Bible aside, not those who receive it on the ground supplied either by popular theology or by metaphysical theology. For persons of this kind, what we say neither will have, nor seeks to have, any con- straining force at all; only it is rendered necessary by the want of constraining force, for others than themselves, in their own theology. How little constraining force meta- physical dogma has, we all see. And we have shown, too, how the proof from the fulfilment in Christ of a number of definite, detailed predictions, supposed to have been made with supernatural prescience about him long be- forehand, is losing, and seems likely more and more to lose, its constraining force. It is found that the predic- tions and their fulfilment are not what they are said to be. Now we come to miracles , more specially so called;, and we have to see whether the constraining force of this proof, too, must not be admitted to be far less than it used to be, and whether some other source of authority for the Bible is not much to be desired. 128 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . 3 - That miracles, when fully believed, are felt by men in general to be a source of authority, it is absurd to deny. One may say, indeed : Suppose I could change the pen with which I write this into a pen-wiper, I should not thus make what I write any the truer or more convincing. That may be so in reality, but the mass of mankind feel differently. In the judgment of the mass of mankind, could I visibly and undeniably change the pen with which I write this into a pen-wiper, not only would this which I write acquire a claim to be held perfectly true and con- vincing, but I should even be entitled to affirm, and to Te believed in affirming, propositions the most palpably at war with common fact and experience. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence ; or the extent to which religion, and religion of a true and admirable kind, has been, and is still, held in connexion with a reliance upon miracles. This reliance will long outlast the reliance on the super- natural prescience of prophecy, for it is not exposed to the same tests. To pick Scripture miracles one by one to pieces is an odious and repulsive task ; it is also an unprofitable one, for whatever we may think of the THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 129 affirmative demonstrations of them, a negative demonstra- tion of them is, from the circumstances of the case, im- possible. And yet the human mind is assuredly passing away, however slowly, from this hold of reliance also ; and those who make it their stay will more and more find it fail them, will be more and more disturbed, shaken, distressed, and bewildered. For it is what we call the Time- Spirit that is sapping the proof from miracles, — it is the 4 Zeit-Geist ’ itself. Whether we attack them, or whether we defend them, does not much matter ; the human mind, as its experience widens, is turning away from them. And for this reason : it sees, as its experience widens, how they arise. It sees that, under certain circumstances, they always do arise ; and that they have not more solidity in one case than another. Under certain circumstances, wherever men are found, there is, as Shakspeare says : — No natural exhalation in the sky, No scape of nature, no distemper’d day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause, And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven. Imposture is so far from being the general rule m these cases, that it is the rare exception. Signs and wonders K 130 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . men’s minds will have, and they create them honestly and naturally; yet not so but that we can see how they created them. Roman Catholics fancy that Bible miracles and the miracles of their Church form a class by themselves ; Pro- testants fancy that Bible miracles, alone, form a class by themselves. This was eminently the posture of mind of the late Archbishop Whately : — to hold that all other miracles would turn out to be impostures, or capable of a natural explanation, but that Bible miracles would stand sifting by a London special jury or by a committee of scientific men. No acuteness can save such notions, as our know- ledge widens, from being seen to be mere extravagances, and the Protestant notion is doomed to an earlier ruin than the Catholic. For the Catholic notion admits miracles in the mass ; the Protestant notion invites to a criticism by which it must finally itself perish. When Stephen was martyred, he looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand *of God. That, says the Protestant, is solid fact. At the martyrdom of St. Fructuosus, Babylas and Mygdone, the Christian servants of the Roman governor, saw the heavens open, and the saint and his deacon Eulogius carried up on high with crowns on their heads. That is, says the Protestant, imposture or else illusion. St. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 13 1 Paul hears on his way to Damascus the voice of Jesus say to him : ‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? ’ That, again, is solid fact. The companion of St. Thomas Aquinas hears a voice from the crucifix say to the pray- ing saint : ‘ Thou hast written well of me, Thomas ; what recompense dost thou desire ? J That, again, is impos- ture or else illusion. Why? It is impossible to find any criterion by which one of these incidents may establish its claim to a solidity which we refuse to the others. One of two things must be made out in order to place either the Bible miracles alone, or the Bible miracles and the miracles of the Catholic Church with them, in a class by themselves. Either they must be shown to have arisen in a time eminently unfavourable to such a process as Shakspeare describes, to amplification and the pro- duction of legend ; or they must be shown to be recorded in documents of an eminently historical mode of birth and publication. But surely it is manifest that the Bible miracles fulfil neither of these conditions. It was said that the waters of the Pamphylian Sea miraculously opened a passage for the army of Alexander the Great. Admiral Beaufort, however, tells us that, ‘ though there are no tides in this part of the Mediterranean, a consider- able depression of the sea is caused by long-continued north winds, and Alexander, taking advantage of such a k 2 132 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . moment, may have dashed on without impediment;’ 1 and we accept the explanation as a matter of course. But the waters of the Red Sea are said to have miracu- lously opened a passage for the children of Israel ; and we insist on the literal truth of this story, and reject natural explanations as monstrous. Yet the time and circumstances of the flight from Egypt were a thousand times more favourable to the rise of some natural inci- dent into a miracle, than the age of Alexander. They were a time and circumstances of less broad daylight. It was said, again, that during the battle of Leuctra the gates of the Heracleum at Thefoes suddenly opened, and the armour of Hercules vanished from the temple, to enable the god to take part with the Thebans in the battle. Probably there was some real circumstance, how- ever slight, which gave a foundation for the story. But this is the most we think of saying in its favour; the literal story it never even occurs to one of us to believe. But that the walls of Jericho literally fell down at the sound of the trumpets of J oshua, we are asked to believe, told that it is impious to disbelieve it. Yet which place and time were most likely to generate a miraculous story with ease, — Hellas and the days of Epaminondas, or Palestine and the days of Joshua? And of documentary 1 Beaufort’s Karamcinia, p. 116. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 133 records, which are the most historical in their way of being generated and propagated, which the most favour- able for the admission of legend and miracle of all kinds, — the Old Testament narratives with their incubation of centuries, and the New Testament narratives with their incubation of a century (and tradition active all the while), or the narratives, say, of Herodotus or Plutarch ? None of them are what we call critical. Experience of the history of the human mind, and of men’s habits of seeing, sifting, and relating, convinces us that the mira- culous stories of Herodotus or Plutarch do grow out of the process described by Shakspeare. But we shall find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later, to extend the same rule to all miraculous stories ; nay, the considera- tions which apply in other cases, apply, we shall most surely discover, with even greater force in the case of Bible miracles. 4 - This being so, there is nothing one would more desire for a person or document one greatly values, than to make them independent of miracles. And with regard to the Old Testament we have done this; for we have shown that the essential matter in the Old Testament is the revelation to Israel of the immeasurable grandeur, 134 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . the eternal necessity, the priceless blessing of that with which not less than three-fourths of human life is indeed concerned, — righteousness . And it makes no difference to the preciousness of this revelation, whether we believe that the Red Sea miraculously opened a passage to the Israelites, and the walls of Jericho miraculously fell down at the blast of Joshua’s trumpet, or that these stories arose in the same way as other stories of the kind. In the New Testament the essential thing is the revelation of Christ. For this too, then, if one values it, one’s great wish must in like manner be to make it independent of miracle; if miracle is a stay which one perceives, as more and more we are all coming to perceive it, to be not solid. Now, it may look at first sight a strange thing to say, but it is a truth which we will make abundantly clear as we go on, that one of the very best helps to prepare a way for the revelation of Christ, is to convince oneself of the liability to mistake in his reporters. Our popular theology imagines that the Old Testament writers were miraculously inspired, and could make no mistakes ; that the New Testament writers were miraculously inspired, and could make no mistakes ; and that there this mira- culous inspiration stopped, and all writers on religion have been liable to make mistakes ever since. It is as if THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . *35 a hand had been put out of the sky presenting us with the Bible, and the rules of criticism which apply to other books did not apply to the Bible. Now, the fatal thing for this fancy is, that its owners stab it to the heart the moment they use any palliation or explaining away, how- ever small, of the literal words of the Bible ; and some they always use. For instance, it is said in the eigh- teenth Psalm, that a consuming fire went out of the mouth of God, so that coals were kindled at it. The veriest literalist will cry out : Every one knows that this is not to be taken literally ! The truth is, even he knows that this is not to be taken literally ; but others know that a great deal more is not to be taken literally. He knows very little ; but, as far as his little knowledge goes, he gives up his theory, which is, of course, palpably hollow. For indeed it is only by applying to the Bible his criticism, such as it is, that any man makes out that criticism does not apply to the Bible. But suppose that the Bible itself put forth (which it does not) this theory, and made its own value all depend on the truth of it, then the result would be, at the best, not firmer conviction, but utter puzzle and bewilderment. Contradictions would meet us, and we should have no means of escape from them. There would grow up an irresistible sense that the belief in miracles was due to LITERATURE AND DOGMA . 136 man’s want of experience, to his ignorance, agitation, and helplessness ; and yet we should have a book, which we felt to be precious, purporting to be put out of the sky, to be full of miracles, and to depend for all its value upon their being true. Then it is that the cry, imposture ! would more and more, in spite of all we could do, gather strength, and the book be thrown aside more and more. But when we convince ourselves that, in the New Testament as in the Old, what is given us is words thrown out at an immense reality, not fully or half fully grasped by the writer, but, even thus, able to affect us with indescribable force ; when we convince ourselves that, as in the Old Testament we have Israel’s inadequate yet inexhaustibly fruitful testimony to the Eternal that makes for righteous- ness, so we have in the New Testament a report in- adequate, indeed, but the only report we have and therefore priceless, by men, some more able and clear, others less able and clear, but all full of the influences of their time and condition, partakers of some of its simple or its learned ignorance, — inevitably, in fine, expecting miracles and demanding them, — a report, I say, by these men of that immense reality not fully or half fully grasped by them, the mind of Christ ; — then we shall be drawn to the Gospels with a new zest and as by a fresh spell. We shall throw ourselves upon their nar- THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 1 37 ratives with an ardour answering to the value of the pearl of great price they hold, and to the difficulty of reaching it. So, to profit fully by the New Testament, the first thing to be done is to make it perfectly clear to oneself that its reporters both could err and did err. For a plain person, an incident in the report of St. Paul's conversion, — which comes into our minds the more naturally as this incident has been turned against something we have our- selves said, 1 — would, one would think, be enough. We had spoken of the notion that St. Paul's miraculous vision at his conversion proved the truth of his doctrine. We related a vision which converted Sampson Staniforth, one of the early Methodists ; and we said that just so much proving force, and no more, as Sampson Staniforth's vision had to confirm the truth of anything he might after- wards teach, St. Paul’s vision had to establish his subse- quent doctrine. It was eagerly rejoined that Staniforth’s vision was but a fancy of his own, whereas the reality of Paul's was proved by his companions hearing the voice that spoke to him. And so in one place of the Acts we are told they did ; but in another place of the Acts we are told by Paul himself just the contrary : that his com- 1 St. Paul and Protestantism , p. 54. 138 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . panions did not hear the voice that spoke to him. Need we say that the two statements have been ‘ reconciled ’ ? They have, over and over again ; but by one of those pro- cesses which are the opprobrium of our Bible criticism, and by which, as Bishop Butler says, anything can be made to mean anything. There is between the two statements a contradiction as clear as can be. The contradiction proves nothing against the good faith of the reporter, and St. Paul undoubtedly had his vision ; he had it as Sampson Staniforth had his. What the contradiction proves is, the incurable looseness with which the circumstances of what is called and thought a miracle are related ; and that this looseness the Bible relaters of a miracle exhibit, just like other people. And the moral is, what an unsure stay, then, must miracles be ! But, after all, that there is here any contradiction or mistake, some do deny ; so let us choose a case where the mistake is quite undeniably clear. Such a case we find in the confident expectation and assertion, on the part of the New Testament writers, of the approaching end of the world. Even this mistake people try to explain . away ; but it is so palpable that no words can cloud our perception of it. The time is short The Lord is at hand ’ The end of all things is at hand. Little children , it is the final time . The Lord's coming is at hand; behold THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 139 the judge standeth before the door .' 1 Nothing can really obscure the evidence furnished by such sayings as these. When Paul told the Thessalonians that they and he, at the approaching coming of Christ, should have, their turn after, not before, the faithful dead : ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air/ — when he said this, St. Paul was simply mistaken in his notion of what was going to happen. This is as clear as anything can be. And not only were the New Testament writers thus de- monstrably liable to commit, like other men, mistakes in fact ; they were also demonstrably liable to commit mis- takes in argument. As before, let us take a case which will be manifest and palpable to every one. St. Paul, arguing to the Galatians that salvation was not by the J ewish law but by J esus Christ, proves his point from the promise to Abraham having been made to him and his seed \ not seeds. The words are not, he says, ‘ to seeds, as of many, but as 1 I. Cor. vii. 29 ; Philipp, iv. 5 ; I. Pet. iv. 7 ; I. John ii. 18 ; James v. 8, 9. We have here the express declarations of St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John, and St. James. 140 LITERATURE AND DOGMA of one ; to thy seed \ which is Christ/ Now, as to the point to be proved, we all agree with St. Paul ; but his argument is that of a Jewish Rabbi, and is clearly both fanciful and false. The writer in Genesis never intended to draw any distinction between one of Abraham’s seed, and Abraham’s seed in general . And even if he had ex- pressly meant, what Paul says he did not mean, Abraham’s seed in general, he would still have said seed, and not seeds. This is a good instance to take, because the Apostle’s substantial doctrine is here not at all concerned. As to the root of the matter in question, we are all at one with St. Paul. But it is evident how he could, like the rest of us, bring a quite false argument in support of a quite true thesis. And the use of prophecy by the writers of the New Testament furnishes really, almost at every turn, instances of false argument of the same kind. Habit makes us so lend ourselves to their way of speaking, that nothing checks us ; but, the moment we begin to attend, we perceive how much there is that ought to check us. Take the famous allegation of the parted clothes but lot-assigned coat of Christ as fulfilment of the supposed prophecy in the Psalms : 4 They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture did they cast lots.’ The words of the Psalm are taken to mean contrast, when they do in truth THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 141 mean identity. According to the rules of Hebrew poetry, for my vesture they did cast lots is merely a repetition, in different words, of they parted my garments among them , not an antithesis to it. The alleged 4 prophecy ’ is, there- fore, due to a dealing with the Psalmist’s words which is arbitrary and erroneous. So, again, to call the words, a hone of him shall not he broken , a prophecy of Christ, fulfilled by his legs not being broken on the cross, is evidently, the moment one considers it, a playing with words which nowadays we should account childish. For what do the words, taken, as alone words can rationally be taken, along with their context, really prophesy ? The entire safety of the righteous, not his death. Many are the troubles of the righteous , hut the Eternal deliver eth him oitt of all; he keep eth all his hones , so that not one of them is broken. Worse words, therefore, could hardly have been chosen from the Old Testament to apply in that connexion where they come ; for they are really contra- dicted by the death of Christ, not fulfilled by it. It is true, this verbal and unintelligent use of Scripture is just what was to be expected from the circumstances of the N ew T estament writers. It was inevitable for them ; it was the sort of trifling which then, in common Jewish theology, passed for grave argument and made a serious impression, as it has in common Christian theology ever J42 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . since. But this does not make it the less really trifling ; or hinder one nowadays seeing it to be trifling, directly we examine it. The mistake made will strike some people more forcibly in one of the cases cited, some in another, but in one or another of the cases the mistake will be visible to everybody. Now, this recognition of the liability of the New Testa- ment writers to make mistakes, both of fact and of argu- ment, will certainly, as we have said, more and more gain strength, and spread wider and wider. The futility of their mode of demonstration from prophecy, of which we have just given examples, will be more and more felt. The fallibility of that demonstration from miracles to which they and all about them attached such prepon- derating weight, which made the disciples of Jesus believe in him, which made the people believe in him, will be more and more recognised. Reverence for all, who, in those first dubious days of Christianity, chose the better part, and resolutely cast in their lot with 1 The despised and rejected of men ’ ! Grati- tude to all, who, while the tradition was yet fresh, helped by their writings to preserve and set clear the precious record of the words and life of Jesus ! And honour, eternal honour, to the great and profound qualities of soul and mind which some of these writers display ! But the THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 143 writers are admirable for what they are, not for what, by the nature of things, they could not be. It was superiority enough in them to attach themselves firmly to Jesus ; to feel to the bottom of their hearts that power of his words which alone held permanently, — held when the miracles, in which the multitude believed as well as they, failed to hold. The good faith of the Bible writers is above all question ; it speaks for itself ; and the very same criticism, which shows us the defects of their exegesis and of their demon- strations from miracles, establishes their good faith. But this could not, and did not, prevent them from arguing in the methods by which everyone around them argued, and from expecting miracles where everybody else expected them. In one respect alone have the 'miracles recorded by them a more real ground than the mass of miracles of which we have the relation. Medical science has never gauged, — never, perhaps, enough set itself to gauge,-— the intimate connexion between moral fault and disease. To what extent, or in how many cases, what is called illness is due to moral springs having been used amiss, whether by being over-used or by not being used sufficiently, we hardly at all know, and we too little inquire. Certainly it is due to this very much more than we commonly think ; and the more it is due to this, the more do moral thera- $44 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . peutics rise in possibility and importance . 1 The bringer of light and happiness, the calmer and pacifier or invigo- rator and stimulator, is one of the chiefest of doctors. Such a doctor was Jesus ; such an operator, by an effica- cious and real though little observed and little employed ■agency, upon what we, in the language of popular super- stition, call the unclean spirits , but which are to be desig- nated more literally and more correctly as the uncleared , tmpurified spirits , which came raging and madding before him. This his own language shows, if we know how to read it. 4 What does it matter whether I say, Thy sins are forgiven thee! or whether I say, Arise and walk V And again : 4 Thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee! His reporters, we must remember, ■are men who saw thaumaturgy in all that Jesus did, and who saw in all sickness and disaster visitations from God, ■and they bend his language accordingly. But indica- tions enough remain to show the line of the Master, his perception of the large part of moral cause in many kinds of disease, and his method of addressing to this part his cure. It would never have done, indeed, to have men pro- 1 Consult the Charmides of Plato (chap, v.) Jor a remarkable account of the theory of such a treatment, attributed by Socrates to Zamolxis, the god-king of the Thracians. THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES. 145 nouncing right and left that this and that was a judgment, and how, and for what, and on whom ; and so, when the disciples, seeing an afflicted person, asked whether this man had done sin or his parents, Jesus checked them and said : 4 Neither the one nor the other, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.’ Not the less clear is his own belief in the moral root of much physical disease, and in moral therapeutics ; and it is important to note well the branch of miracles where this belief comes in. For the action of Jesus in these cases, how- ever it may be amplified in the reports, was real ; but it is not, therefore, as popular religion fancies, thaumaturgy, — it is not what people are fond of calling the sitper- natural , but what is better called the non-natural ' It is, on the contrary, like the grace of Raphael, or the grand style of Phidias, eminently natural ; but it is above common low-pitched nature ; it is a line of nature not yet mastered or followed out. Its significance as a guarantee of the authenticity of Christ’s mission is trivial, however, compared with the guarantee furnished by his sayings. Its importance is in its necessary effect upon the beholders and reporters. This element of what was really wonderful, unprecedented and unaccountable, they had actually before them ; and we may estimate how it must have helped and seemed L 146 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. to sanction that tendency which in any case would have carried them, circumstanced as they were, to find all the performances and career of Jesus miraculous. But, except for this, the miracles related in the Gospels will appear to us more and more, the more our experience and knowledge increases, to have but the same ground which is common to all miracles, the ground indicated by Shakspeare ; to have been generated under the same kind of conditions as other miracles, and to follow the same laws. When once the ‘ Zeit-Geist 9 has made us entertain the notion of this, a thousand things in the manner of relating will strike us which never struck us before, and will make us wonder how we could ever have thought differently. Discrepancies which we now labour with such honest pains and by such astonishing methods to explain away, — the voice at Paul’s conversion, heard by the bystanders according to one account, not heard by them according to another ; the Holy Dove at Christ’s baptism, visible to John the Baptist in one narrative, in two others to Jesus himself, in another, finally, to all the people as well ; the single blind man in one relation, growing into two blind men in another; the speaking with tongues, according to St. Paul a sound without meaning, accord- ing to the Acts an intelligent and intelligible utterance, — all this will be felt to require really no explanation THE PROOF FROM MIRACLES . H 7 at all, to explain itself, to be natural to the whole class of incidents to which these miracles belong, and the inevit- able result of the looseness with which the stories of them arise and are propagated. And the more the miraculousness of the story deepens, as after the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of the incidents become loose and floating, the more does the very air and aspect of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after his resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her for the gardener; not known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him there; not known by his most intimate apostles on the borders of the Sea of Galilee ; — and presently, out of these vague beginnings, the recog- nitions getting asserted, then the ocular demonstrations, the supreme commissions, the ascension ; — one hardly knows which of the two to call the most evident here, the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators, or the plainness with which they themselves really say to us : Behold a legend growing under your eyes / And suggestions of this sort, with respect to the whole miraculous side of the New Testament, will meet us at every turn ; we do but give a sample of them. It is neither our wish nor our design to accumulate them, to marshal them, to insist upon them, to make their force l 2 14B LITERATURE AND DOGMA . felt Let those who desire to keep them at arms’ length continue to do so, if they can, and go on placing the sanction of the Christian religion in its miracles. Our point is, that the objections to miracles do, and more and more will, without insistance, without attack, without controversy, make their own force felt ; and that the sanc- tion of Christianity, if Christianity is not to be lost along with its miracles, must be found elsewhere. i THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 149 CHAPTER VI. THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. Now, then, will be perceived the bearing and gravity of what we some little way back said, that the more we convince ourselves of the liability of the New Testament writers to mistake, the more we really bring out the greatness and worth of the New Testament. For the New Testament exists to reveal Jesus, not to establish the immunity of its writers from error. Jesus himself is not a New Testament writer ; he is the object of description and comment to the New Testament writers. As the Old Testament speaks about the Eternal and bears an invaluable witness to him, without yet ever ade- quately in words defining and expressing him ; so, and even yet more, do the New Testament writers speak about Jesus and give a priceless record of him, without adequately and accurately comprehending him. They are altogether on another plane from Jesus, and their mistakes are not his. It is not Jesus himself who 150 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. relates his own miracles to us ; who tells us of his own apparitions after his death; who alleges his crucifixion and sufferings as a fulfilment of the prophecy : The Eternal keepeth all the hones of the righteous so that not one of them is broken; who proves salvation to be by Christ alone, from the promise to Abraham being made to seed in the singular number, not the plural. If, therefore, the human mind is now drawing away from reliance on miracles, coming to perceive the community of character which pervades them all, to understand their natural laws, so to speak, — their loose mode of origination and their untrustworthiness, — and is inclined rather to distrust the dealer in them than to pin its faith upon him ; then it is good for the authority of J esus, that his reporters are evidently liable to ignorance and error. He is reported to deal in miracles, to be above all a thaumaturgist. But the more his reporters were intellec- tually men of their nation and time, and of its current beliefs, — the more, that is, they were open to mistakes, — the more certain they were to impute miracles to a won- derful and half-understood personage like Jesus, whether he would or no. He himself may, at the same time, have had quite other notions as to what he was doing and intending. Again, the mistake of imagining that the world was to THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 15 1 end, as St. Paul announces, within the lifetime of the first Christian generation, is now palpable. The reporters of Jesus make him announcing just the same thing : £ This generation shall not pass away till they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then shall he send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds.’ Popular theology can put a plain satisfactory sense upon this, but, as usual, through that process described by Butler by which anything can be made to mean anything ; and from this sort of process the human mind is beginning to shrink. A more plausible theology will say that the w T ords are an accommodation ; that the speaker lends himself to the fancies and expecta- tions of his hearers. A good deal of such accommoda- tion there is in this and other sayings of Jesus ; but accommodation to the full extent here supposed would surely have been impossible. T o suppose it, is most violent and unsatisfactory. Either, then, the words were, like St. Paul’s announcement, a mistake, or they are not really the very words Jesus said, just as he said them. That is, the reporters have given them a turn, however slight, a tone and a colour, to make them comply with a fixed idea in their own minds, which they unfeignedly be- lieved was a fixed idea with Jesus also. Now, the more we regard the reporters of Jesus as men liable to err, full 152 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. of the turbid Jewish fancies about ‘the grand consumma- tion’ which were then current, the easier we can under- stand these men inevitably putting their own eschatology into the mouth of Jesus, when they had to report his discourse about the kingdom of God and the troubles in store for the Jewish nation, and the less need have we to make Jesus a co-partner in their eschatology. Again, the futility of such demonstrations from pro- phecy as those of which we have given examples, and generally of all that Jewish exegesis, based on a mere unintelligent catching at the letter of the Old Testament, isolated from its context and real meaning, of which the New Testament writers give us so much, begins to discon- cert attentive readers of the Bible more and more, and to be felt by them as an embarrassment to the cause of Jesus, not a support. Well, then, it is good for the authority of Jesus, that those who establish it by arguments of this sort should be clearly men of their race and time, not above its futile methods of reasoning and demonstration. The more they were this, and the more they were sure to mix up much futile logic and exegesis with their presenta- tion of Jesus, the less is Jesus himself responsible for such logic and exegesis, or at all dependent upon it. He may himself have rated such argumentation at precisely its true value, and have based his mission and authority THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 153 upon no grounds but solid ones. Whether he did so or not, his hearers and reporters were sure to base it on their own fantastic grounds also, and to credit Jesus with * doing the same. In short, the more we conceive Jesus as almost as. much over the heads of his disciples and reporters as he is over the heads of the mass of so-called Christians now, the more we see his disciples to have been, as they were, men raised by a truer moral susceptiveness above their countrymen, but in intellectual conceptions and habits much on a par with them, all the more do we make room, so to speak, for Jesus to be inconceivably great and wonderful ; as wonderful as anything his reporters imagined him to be, though in a different manner. 2. We make room for him to be this, and through the inadequate reporting of his followers there breaks and shines, and will more and more break and shine the more the matter is examined, abundant evidence that he was this. It is most remarkable, and the best proof of the simplicity, seriousness, and good faith which inter- course with Christ inspired, that witnesses with a fixed prepossession, and having no doubt at all as to the 154 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. interpretation to be put on Christ's acts and career, should jet admit so much of what makes against themselves and their own power of interpreting. For them, it was a thing beyond all doubt that by miracles Christ manifested forth his glory and induced the faithful to believe in him ; yet what checks to this paramount and all-governing belief of theirs do they report from Christ himself] Everybody will be able to recall such checks, although he may never yet have been accustomed to consider their full signifi- cance. Except ye see signs and wonders , ye will not believe ! — as much as to say : ‘ Believe on right grounds you can- not, and you must needs believe on wrong ! ’ And again : c Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me ; or else believe for the very works’ sake l ’ — as much as to say : c Acknowledge me on the ground of my healing and restoring acts being miraculous, if you must; but it is not the right ground.' No, not the right ground ; and when Nicodemus came and would put conversion on this ground (‘We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no one can do the miracles that thou doest except God be with him ’), Jesus rejoined : ‘ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born from above , he cannot see the kingdom of God ! ’ thus tacitly changing his disciple’s ground and correcting him. Even distress and impatience at this false ground being taken is visible sometimes : THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 15 5 ‘ Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why doth this generation ask for a sign ? Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to this generation ! ’ Who does not see vvhat double and treble importance these checks of Jesus to the reliance on miracles gain, from their being- reported by those who relied on miracles devoutly ? Whu does not see what a clue they offer as to the real mind of Jesus ? To convey at all to such hearers of him that there was any objection to miracles, his own sense of the objection must have been profound ; and to get them, who neither shared nor understood it, to repeat it a few times, he must have repeated it many times. Take, again, the eschatology of the disciples, their notion of final things and of the approaching great judg- ment and end of the world. This consisted mainly in a literal appropriation of the apocalyptic pictures of the book of Daniel and the book of Enoch, and a transference of them to Christ and his kingdom. It is not surprising, certainly, that men with the mental range of their time, and with so little flexibility of thought, that, when Jesus told them to beware of ‘ the leaven of the Pharisees/ or when he called himself ‘ the bread of life ’ and said, He that eateth me shall live by me ! they stuck hopelessly fast in the literal meaning of the words, and were accordingly puzzled or else offended by them, — it is not surprising that these 156 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . men should have been incapable of dealing in a large spirit with the prophecies of Daniel, that they should have applied them to Christ narrowly and literally, and should therefore have conceived his kingdom unintelligently. This is not remarkable ; what is remarkable is, that they should themselves supply us with their Master’s blame of their too literal criticism, his famous sentence: ‘The kingdom of God is within you ! ’ Such an account of the kingdom of God has more right, even if recorded only once, to pass with us for Christ’s own account, than the common materialising accounts, if repeated twenty times; for it was manifestly quite foreign to the disciples’ own notions, and they could never have invented it. Evidence of the same kind, again, evidence borne by the reporters themselves against their own power of rightly under- standing what Christ, on this topic of the kingdom of God and its coming, meant to say, is Christ’s warning to his apostles, that the subject of final things was one where they were all out of their depth : ‘ It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power.’ So, too, with the use of prophecy and of the Old Testa- ment generally. A very small experience of Jewish exegesis will convince us that, in the disciples, their catching at the letter of the Scriptures, and mistaking this THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 157 play with words for serious argument, was nothing extra- ordinary. The extraordinary thing is that Jesus, even in the report of these critics, uses Scripture in a totally different manner ; he wields it as an instrument of which he truly possesses the use. Either he puts prophecy into act, and by the startling point thus made he engages the popular imagination on his side, makes the popular fami- liarity with prophecy serve him ; as when he rides into Jerusalem on an ass, or clears the Temple of buyers and sellers. Or else he applies Scripture in what is called 4 a superior spirit/ to make it yield to narrow-minded hearers a lesson of wisdom ; as, for instance, to rebuke a supersti- tious observance of the Sabbath he employs the incident of David’s taking the shewbread. His reporters, in short, are the servants of the Scripture-letter, Jesus is its master ; and it is from the very men who were servants to it themselves that we learn that he was master of it. How signal, therefore, must this mastery have been ! how eminently and strikingly different from the treatment known and practised by the disciples themselves Finally, for the reporters of Jesus the rule was, un- doubtedly, that men 4 believed on J esus when they saw the miracles which he did.’ Miracles were in these reporters’ eyes, beyond question, the evidence of the Christian reli- gion. And yet these same reporters indicate another and 158 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. a totally different evidence offered for the Christian religion by Jesus himself. Every one that heareth and tear net h from the Father cometh unto me. As the Father hath taught me , so I speak; he that is of God heareth the words of God; if God was your Father, ye would have loved me ! This is inward evidence, direct evidence. From that previous knowledge of God, as ‘ the Eternal that loveth righteousness/ which Israel possessed, the hearers of Jesus could and should have concluded irresis- tibly, when they heard his words, that he came from God. Now, miracles are outward evidence, indirect evidence, not conclusive in this fashion. To walk on the sea can- not really prove a man to proceed from the Eternal that loveth righteousness ; although undoubtedly, as we have said, a man who walks on the sea will be able to make the mass of mankind believe about him anything he chooses to say. But there is, after all, no necessary connexion between walking on the sea and proceeding from the Eternal that loveth righteousness. Jesus pro- pounds, on the other hand, an evidence of which the whole force lies in the necessary connexion between the proving matter and the power that makes for righteous- ness. This is his evidence for the Christian religion. His disciples experienced the evidence, indeed. Peter’s answer to the question ‘Will ye also go away?’ — ‘To THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 159, whom should we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life ! * proves it. But experiencing a thing is very different from understanding and possessing it. The evidence, which* the disciples were conscious of understanding and possess- ing, was the evidence from miracles. And yet, in their report, Jesus is plainly shown to us insisting on a different evidence, an internal one. The character of the reporters gives to this indication a paramount importance. That they should indicate this internal evidence once, as the evidence on which Jesus insisted, is more significant, we repeat, than their indicating, twenty times, the evidence from miracles as the evidence naturally convincing to mankind and recommended, as they thought, by Jesus. The notion of the one evidence they would have of them- selves; the notion of the other they could only get from a superior mind. This mind -must have been full of it to make them feel it at all ; and their exhibition of it, even then, must of necessity be inadequate and broken. But is it possible to over-rate the value of the ground thus gained for showing the riches of the New Testament to those, who, sick of the popular arguments from prophecy, sick of the popular arguments from miracles, are for casting the New Testament aside altogether % The book contains all that we know of a wonderful spirit, far above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the i6o LITERATURE AND DOGMA . head of our popular theology, which has added its own misunderstanding of the reporters to the reporters’ mis- understanding of J esus. And it was quite inevitable that anything so superior and so profound should be im- perfectly understood by those amongst whom it first appeared, and for a very long time afterwards ; and that it should come at last gradually to stand out clearer only by time, — Time, as the Greek maxim says, the wisest of all things , for he is the unfailing discoverer . Yet, however much is discovered, the object of our scrutiny must still be beyond us, must still transcend our adequate knowledge, if for no other reason, because of the character of the first and only records of him. But in the view now taken we have, — even at the point to which we have already come, — at least a wonderful figure transcend- ing his time, transcending his disciples, attaching them but transcending them ; in very much that he uttered going far above their heads, treating Scripture and prophecy like a master while they treated it like children, resting his doctrine on internal evidence while they rested it on miracles; and yet, by his incomparable lucidity and penetrativeness, planting his profound veins of thought in their memory along with their own notions and pre- possessions, to come out all mixed up together, but still distinguishable one day and separable ; — and leaving his word thus to bear fruit for the future. THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 161 3 - Surely to follow and extract these veins of true ore is a wise man’s business ; not to let them lie neglected and unused, because the beds where they are found are not all of the same quality with them. The beds are invaluable because they contain the ore ; and, though the search for it in them is undoubtedly a grave and difficult quest, yet it is not a quest of the elaborate and endless kind that it will at first, perhaps, be fancied to be. It is a quest with this for its governing idea : Jesus was over the heads of his reporters ; what , therefore, in the report of him, is Jesus , and what is the reporters ? Now, this excludes as unessential much of the criticism which is bestowed on the New Testament, and gives a sure point of view for the remainder. And what it excludes is those questions as to the exact date, the real authorship, the first publication, the rank of priority, of the Gospels ; — questions which have a great attraction for critics, which are in themselves good to be entertained, which lead to much close and fruitful observation of the texts, and in which very high ingenuity may be shown and very great plausibility reached, but not more; — they cannot be really settled, the data are insufficient. And for our purpose they are not essential. Neither is it M 162 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . essential for our purpose to get at the very primitive text of the New Testament writers, deeply interesting and deeply important as this is. The changes that have befallen the text show, no doubt, the constant tendency of popular Christianity to add to the element of theurgy and thaumaturgy, to increase and develope it. To clear the text of these, will show the New Testament writers to have been less preoccupied with this tendency, and is, so far, very instructive. But it will not, by re-establishing the real words of the writers, necessarily give the real truth as to Christ’s religion ; because to the writers them- selves this religion was, in a considerable degree certainly, a theurgy and a thaumaturgy, although not in the mechanical and extravagant way that it is in our present popular theology. For instance ; the famous text of the three heavenly witnesses is an imposture, and an extravagant one. It shows us, no doubt, theologians like the Bishop of Gloucester already at work, — men with more metaphysics than literary tact, full of the Aryan genius, of the notion that religion is a metaphysical conception ; anxious to do something for the thesis of ‘ the Godhead of the Eternal Son/ or of 6 the blessed truth that the God of the universe is a person,’ — or as the Bishop of Gloucester writes it, * person,’ — and so on. But something of the same THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 163 intention is unquestionably visible, — never, indeed, in Jesus, but in the author of the Fourth Gospel. Much of the conversation with Nicodemus is a proof of it ; the 46th verse of the 6th chaper is a signal proof of it. One can there almost see the author, after recording Christ’s words : Every one that heareth and learneth of the Father cometh unto me, take alarm at the notion that this looks too downright and natural, and, sincerely persuaded that he ‘did something’ for the honour of Jesus by making him more abstract, bring in and put into the mouth of Jesus the 46th verse : Not that any one hath seen the Father, except he that is from God , he hath seen the Father . This verse has neither rhyme nor reason where it stands in Christ’s discourse, it jars with the words which precede and follow, and is in quite another vein from them. Yet it is the author’s own, it is no interpolation. Again; Socinians lay much stress on the probability that in the first words of St. Mark’s Gospel: ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,’ the Son of God is an interpolation. And, no doubt, if the words are an interpolation, this shows that the desire to prove the dogma of Christ’s Godhead was not so painfully ever- present to the writer of the Second Gospel as it became to later theologians. But it shows no more ; it does not show that he had the least doubt about Jesus being the M 2 164 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Son of God. Ten verses later, in an undisputed passage, he calls him so. Again, in the last chapter of the same Gospel, all that follows the eighth verse, — all the account of Christ’s resur- rection and ascension, — is probably an addition by a later hand. But the resurrection is plainly indicated in the first eight verses ; and that the writer of the Second Gospel stops after the eighth verse, proves rather that he was writing briefly than that he did not believe in the resurrection and ascension as much as, for instance, the writer of the Third Gospel; unless indeed, there are other signs (for example, in his way of relating such an incident as the Transfiguration) to show that he was suspicious of the preternatural. But there are none ; and he plainly was not, and could not have been. Again; it seems impossible that the very primitive original of the First Gospel should have made Jesus say, that 4 the sign of Jonas ’ consisted in his being three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, as the Son of Man was to be a like time in the heart of the earth. It spoils the argument, and in another place the argument is given simply and rightly. Jonas was a sign to the J ews, because the Ninevites repented at his preaching and a greater than Jonas stood now preaching to the Jews. But whether the words are genuine (and there seems no THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 165 evidence to the contrary) in that particular place or not, to get rid of them brings us really but a very little way, when it is plain that their argument is exactly one which the evangelists would be disposed to use, and to think that Jesus meant to use. For so they make him to have said, for instance : Destroy this temple , and in three days I will raise it up ! in prediction of his own death and resurrection. In short, to know accurately the history of our docu- ments is impossible, and even if it were possible, we should yet not know accurately what J esus said and did ; for his reporters were incapable of rendering it, he was so much above them. This is the important thing to get clearly fixed in our minds. And the more it becomes established to us, the more we shall see the futility of what is called rationalism , and the rationalistic treatment of the New Testament ; — of the endeavour, that is, to reduce all the supernatural in it to real events, much resembling what is related, which have got a little magnified and coloured by being seen through the eyes of men having certain prepossessions, but may easily be brought back to their true proportions and made historical and reasonable. A famous specimen of this kind of treatment is Schleier- macher’s fancy of the death on the cross having been a swoon, and the resurrection of Jesus a recovery from 1 66 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . this swoon. Victorious indeed, whatever may be in other ways his own shortcomings, is Dr. Strauss’s demo- lition of this error of Schleiermacher’s ! Like the rational- istic treatment of Scripture throughout, it makes far more difficulties than it solves, and rests on too narrow a conception of the history of the human mind, and of its diversities of operation and production. It puts ourselves in the original disciples’ place, imagines the original disci- ples to have been men rational in our sense and way, and then explains their record as it might be made explicable if it were ours. And it may safely be said that in this fashion it is not explicable. Imaginations so little creative and with so substantial a framework of fact for each of their wonderful stories as this theory assumes, would never have created so much as they did ; at least, they could not have done so and retained their manifest simplicity and good faith. They must have fallen, we in like case should fall, into arrangement and artifice. But the original disciples were not men rational in our sense and way. The real wonderfulness of J esus, and their belief in him, being given, they needed no such full and parallel body of fact for each miracle as we suppose. Some hint and help of fact, undoubtedly, there always was, and we naturally seek to explore it. Sometimes our guesses may be right, sometimes wrong, but we can never THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 167 be sure , the range of possibility is so wide ; and we may easily make them too elaborate. Shakspeare’s explanation is far the soundest : — No natural exhalation in the sky, No scape of nature, no distemper’d day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause, And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven. And it must be remembered, moreover, that of none of these recorders have we, probably, the very original record. The record, when we first get it, has passed through at least half a century, or more, of oral tradition, and through more than one written account. Miraculous incidents swell and grow apace ; they are just the elements of a tradition that swell and grow most. These incidents, therefore, in the history of J esus, the preternatural things he did, the preternatural things that befell him, are just the parts of the record which are least solid. Beyond the historic outlines of the life of Jesus, — his Galilean origin, his preaching in Galilee, his preaching in Jerusa- lem, his crucifixion, — much the firmest element in the record is his 2 words. Happily it is of these that he him- self said : ‘The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ But in reading them, we have i68 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. still to bear in mind our governing idea, that they are words of one inadequately comprehended by his hearers , men though these be of pureness of heart, discernment to know and love the good, perfect uprightness of intention, faithful simplicity. What they will have reported best, probably, is dis- course where there was the framework of a story and its application to guide them, — discourse such as the parables. Instructive and beautiful as the parables are, however, they have not the importance of the direct teaching of Jesus. But in his direct teaching we are on the surest ground in single sentences, which have their ineffaceable and unforgettable stamp : My yoke is kindly and my bur- den light ; — Many are called, few chosen ; — They that are whole need not a physician , but they that are sick; — No ma?i having put his hand to the plough , and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. The longer trains of discourse, and many sayings in immediate connexion with miracles, present much more difficulty. Probably there are very few sayings attributed to Jesus which do not contain what he on some occasion actually said, or much of what he actually said. But the connexion, the juncture, is plainly often missed ; things are put out of their true place and order. Failure of memory would occasionally cause this with any reporters ; failure of comprehension would THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 169 with the reporters of Jesus frequently cause it. The surrounding tradition insensibly biases them, their love of miracles biases them, their eschatology biases them. All these three exercise an attraction on words of Jesus, and draw them into occasions, placings, and turns, which are not exactly theirs. The one safe guide to the extri- cation and right reception of what comes from J esus is the internal evidence. And wherever we find what enforces this evidence or builds upon it, there we may be especially sure that we are on the trace of Jesus ; because turn or bias in this direction the disciples were more likely to omit from his discourse than to import into it, they were themselves so wholly preoccupied with the evidence from miracles. 4 - This is what gives such eminency and value to the Fourth Gospel. The confident certainty with which Professor Ewald settles the authorship of this gospel, and assigns it to St. John, is an exhibition of that learned man’s weakness. To settle the authorship is impossible, the data are insufficient ; but from what data we have, to believe that the Gospel is St. J ohn’s is extremely difficult. But, on the other hand, the stress which Professor Ewald, following Luther, lays on this 170 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. gospel, the value he attributes to it, is an exhibition of his power, — of his deep, sure feeling, and true insight, in the essential matters of religious history; and of his superiority, here, to the best of his rivals, Baur, Dr. Strauss, M. Renan. ‘ The true evangelical bread,’ says Dr. Strauss, ‘ Christians have always gone to the three first gospels for ! ’ But what then means this sentence of Luther, who stands as such a good, though favourable, representative of ordi- nary Christianity : 1 John’s gospel is the one proper chief - gospel , and far to be preferred to the three others’? Again, M. Renan, often so ingenious as well as eloquent, says that the narrative and incidents in the Fourth Gospel are probably in the main historical, the discourses in- vented ! Reverse the proposition, and it would be more plausible ! The narrative, so meagre, and skipping so unaccountably backwards and forwards between Galilee and Jerusalem, might well bethought, not indeed invented, but a matter of infinitely little care and attention to the writer of the gospel, a mere slight framework in which to set the doctrine and discourses of Jesus. The doctrine and discourses of Jesus, on the other hand, cannot in the main be the writer’s, because in the main they are clearly out of his reach. The Fourth Gospel delights the heart of M. Burnouf. For its writer shows, M. Burnouf thinks, signal traces THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD . 171 of the Aryan genius, has much to favour the notion that religion is a metaphysical conception, and was perhaps even capable, with time, of reaching the grand truth that God is a cosmic unity. And undoubtedly the writer of the Fourth Gospel seems to have come in contact, in Asia or Egypt, with Aryan metaphysics whether from India or Greece ; and to have had this advantage, what- ever it was, in writing his gospel. But who, that has eyes to read, cannot see the difference between the places in his gospel, such as the introduction, where the writer speaks in his own person, and the places where Jesus himself speaks? The moment Jesus speaks, the metaphysical apparatus falls away, the simple intuition takes its place ; and wherever in the discourse of Jesus the metaphysical apparatus is intruded, it jars with the context, breaks the unity of the discourse, impairs the thought, and comes evidently from the writer, not Jesus. It may seem strange and incredible to M. Burnouf that metaphysics should not always confer the supe- riority upon their possessor ; but such is the case. Who, again, cannot understand that the philosophical acquirements of the author of the Fourth Gospel, like the rabbinical training and intellectual activity of Faul, though they may have sometimes led each of them astray, must yet have given each of them a range of thought, and an 172 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . enlarged mental horizon, enabling them to perceive and follow ideas of Jesus which escaped the ken of the more scantily endowed authors of the synoptical . gospels ? Plato sophisticates somewhat the genuine Socrates ; but it is very doubtful whether the culture and mental energy of Plato did not give him a more adequate vision of the true Socrates than Xenophon had. It proves nothing for the superiority of the first three gospels that their authors are without the logic of Paul and the metaphysics of John (by this commonly-received name let us for shortness’ sake call the author of the Fourth Gospel), and that Jesus also was without them. Jesus was without them because he was above them ; the authors of the synoptical gospels because they were (we say it without any disrespect) below them. Therefore, the author of the Fourth Gospel, by the very characters which make him inferior to Jesus, was made superior to the three synop- tics, and better able than they to seize and reproduce the higher teaching of J esus. Does it follow, then, that his picture of Christ’s teaching can have been his own invention ? By no means ; since it is as plainly over his head (at that time of day it could not have been othenvise) as it is over theirs. He deals in miracles as confidingly as they do, while unconsciously indicating, far more than they THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 173 do, that the evidence of miracles is superseded. In those two great chapters, the fifth and sixth, where Jesus deals with the topics of life, death, and judgment, and with his thesis : He that eateih me shall live by me ! invaluable and full of light as is what is given, the escha- tology and the materialising conceptions of the writer do yet evidently intervene, as they did with all the disciples, as they did with the Jews in general, to hinder a per- fectly faithful mirroring of the thought of Jesus. We have already remarked how his metaphysical acquirements intervene in like manner. In the discourse with Nicodemus in the third chapter, from the thirteenth verse to the end, phrases and expressions of Jesus of the highest worth are scattered ; but they are manifestly set in a short theo- logical lecture interposed by the writer himself, a lecture which is, as a whole, without vital connexion with the genuine discourse of Jesus, and needing only to be carefully studied side by side with this for its dispa- rateness to become apparent. But a failure of right understanding, which will be visible to every one, occurs with this writer in his seventh chapter. Jesus, with a reference to words of the prophet Zechariah, says : ‘ He that believeth on me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ The thought is plain ; it belongs 174 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . to the same order as that of the saying, 6 If any thirst, let him come unto me and drink ;’ or of the words to the woman of Samaria, ‘ If thou hadst known the gift of God, and who it is that talketh with thee, thou wouldst have asked of him and he would have given thee living water.’ It means that a man, receiving Jesus, finds a source of refreshment for himself and be- comes a source of refreshment for others ; and it means this generally, without any limitation to a special time. But the reporter explains : ‘ Now this he said concerning the Spirit (. Pneuma ) which they who believed on him should receive; for Pneuma was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’ A clearer instance of a narrow and mechanical interpretation of a great and free thought can hardly be imagined; and the words of Jesus himself enable us here to control the inadequacy of the interpre- tation, and to make it palpable. So that the superior point of view in the Fourth Gospel, the more spiritual treatment of things, the in- sistance on internal evidence, not external, cannot, we say, be the writer’s, for they are above him ; and while his gifts and acquirements are such as to make him report them, they are not such as to enable him to originate them. The great evidential line of this gospel : ‘ You are always talking about God, and about your founder THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD , . 175 Abraham, the father of God’s faithful people ; here is a man who says nothing of his own head, who tells you the truth, as he has learnt it of God ; if you were really of God you would hear the words of God ! if you were really Abraham’s children you would follow the truth like Abraham !’ — this simple but profound line, sending Israel back to amend its conventional, barren notions of God, of righteousness, and of the founders of its religion, leading it to explore them afresh, to sound them deeper, to gather from them a new revelation and a new life, was, we say, at once too simple and too profound for the author of the Fourth Gospel to have invented. Our endless grati- tude is due to him, however, for having caught and preserved so much of it. And our business is to keep hold of the clue he has thus given us, and to use it as well as possible. 5 - Truly, then, some one will exclaim, we may say with the Imitation : c Magna ars est scire conversari cum Jcstt ! 1 And so it is. To extract from his reporters the true Jesus entire, is even impossible ; to extract him in considerable part is one of the greatest conceivable tasks of criticism. And it is vain to use that favourite argument of popular theology that man could never have been left by Provd- 176 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . dence in difficulty and obscurity about a matter of so much importance to him. For the cardinal rule of our present inquiry is that rule of Newton’s : Hypotheses non Jingo ; and this argument of popular theology rests on its eternal hypothesis of a magnified and non-natural man at the head of mankind’s and the world’s affairs. And a further answer is, that, as to the argument itself, even if we allowed the hypothesis, yet the course of things, so far as we can see, is not so ; they do not proceed in this fashion. Because a man has frequently to make sea-passages, he is not gifted with an immunity from sea-sickness ; because a thing is of the highest interest and importance to know, it is not , therefore, easy to know ; on the contrary, in general, in proportion to its magnitude it is difficult and requires time. But the right commentary on the sentence of the Imi- tation is given by the Imitation itself in the sentence following : ‘ Esto humilis et pacijicus , et erit tecum Jesus ! ’ What men could take at the hands of Jesus, what they could use, what could save them, he made as clear as light, and Christians have never been able, even if they would, to miss seeing it. No, never ; but still they have super-added to it a vast Aberglaube , an after or extra- belief of their own ; and the Aberglaube has pushed on one side, for very many, the saving doctrine of Jesus, has THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 1 77 hindered attention from being riveted on this and on its line of growth and working, has nearly effaced it, has developed all sorts of faults contrary to it. This Aber - glanbe has sprung out of a false criticism of the literary records in which the doctrine is conveyed ; what is called ‘ orthodox divinity ’ is, in fact, an immense literary misapprehension. Having caused the saving doctrines enshrined in these records to be neglected, and credited the records with existing for the sake of its own Aber- glaube , this blunder now threatens to cause the records themselves to be neglected by all those (and their numbers are fast increasing) whom its own Aberglaube fills with impatience and aversion. Therefore it is needful to show the line of growth of this Aberglaube, and its delusiveness; to show anew, and with more detail than we have ad- mitted hitherto, the line of growth of Christ’s doctrine, and the far-reaching sanctions, the inexhaustible attrac- tiveness, the grace and truth, with which he invested it. But the doctrine itself is essentially simple ; and what is difficult, — the literary criticism of the documents con- taining the doctrine, — is not the doctrine. This literary criticism, however, is extremely difficult. It calls into play the highest requisites for the study of letters ; — great and wide acquaintance with the history of the human mind, knowledge of the manner in which men N 1 78 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . have thought, their way of using words and what they mean by them, delicacy of perception and quick tact, and, besides all these, a favourable moment and the ‘ Zeit- Geist.’ And yet every one among us criticises the Bible, and thinks it is of the essence of the Bible that it can be thus criticised with success ! And the Four Gospels, the part of the Bible to which this sort of criticism is most applied and most confidently, are just the part which for literary criticism is infinitely the hardest, however simple they may look, and however simple the saving doctrine they contain really is. For Prophets and Epistlers speak for themselves; but in the Four Gospels reporters are speaking for Jesus, who is far above them. Now, we all know what the literary criticism of the mass of mankind is. To be worth anything, literary and scientific criticism require, both of them, the finest heads and the most sure tact ; and they require, besides, that the world and the world’s experience shall have come some considerable way. Now, since this last condition has been fulfilled, the finest heads for letters and science, the surest tact for these, have turned themselves in general to other regions of work than criticism of the Bible, this region being occupied already in such force of numbers and hands, if not of heads, and there being so many THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 179 annoyances and even dangers in freely approaching it. As our Reformers were to Shakspeare and Bacon in tact for letters and science, or as Luther, even, was to Goethe in this respect, such almost has on the whole been, since the Renascence, the general proportion in rate of power for criticism between those who have given themselves to secular letters and science* and those who have given themselves to interpreting the Bible, and who, in con- junction with the popular interpretation of it both tra- ditional and contemporary, have made what is called ‘orthodox theology/ It is as if some simple and saving doctrines, essential for men to know, were enshrined in Shakspeare’s Hamlet or Newton’s Principia (though the Gospels are really a far more complex and difficult object of criticism than either) ; and a host of second-rate critics, and official critics, and what is called ‘ the popular mind ’ as well, threw themselves upon Hamlet and the Principia with the notion that they could and should extract from these documents, and impose on us for our belief, not only the saving doctrines enshrined there, but also the right literary and scientific criticism of the entire docu- ments. A pretty mess they would make of it ! and just this sort of mess is our so-called orthodox theology. And its professors are nevertheless bold, over-weening, and even abusive, in maintaining their criticism against all ques- N 2 i8o LITERATURE AND DOGMA . tioners ; although really, if one thinks seriously of it, it was a kind of impertinence in such professors to attempt any such criticism at all. Happily, the faith which saves is attached to the saving doctrines in the Bible, which are very simple ; not to its literary and scientific criticism, which is very hard. And no man is to be called ‘ infidel ’ for his bad literary and scientific criticism of the Bible ; but if he were, how dreadful would the state of our orthodox theologians be ! They themselves freely fling about this word infidel at all those who reject their literary and scientific criticism, which we see to be quite false. It would be but just to mete to them with their own measure, and to condemn them by their own rule ; and, when they air their unsound criticism in public, to say indignantly : The Bishop of So-and-so , the Dean of So-and-so , and other infidel lecturers of the present day ! or: That rampant infidel , the Arch- deacon of So-and-so, in his recent letter on the Athanasian Creed ! or : 6 The Rock,’ ‘ The Church Tunes’ and the rest of the infidel press ! or : The torrent of infidelity which pours every Sunday from our pulpits ! Just it would be, and by no means inurbane ; but hardly, perhaps, Christian. Therefore we will not permit ourselves to say it ; but it is only kind to point out, in passing, to these loud and rash people to what they expose themselves, at the hands of adversaries less scrupulous than we are. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 181 CHAPTER VII. THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. We have said, — and it cannot be repeated too often, — that what is called orthodox theology is, in fact, an immense misunderstanding of the Bible, due to the junction of a talent for abstruse reasoning with much literary inex- perience. It cannot be repeated too often ; because our dogmatic friends seem to imagine that the truth of their dogma is conceded on all hands, and that the only objection is to the harsh or over-rigid way in which it is put. Dr. Pusey and the Church Review assume that what the Athanasian Creed, for instance, does, is ‘ to take up the admitted facts of Christian faith, and arrange them sentence after sentence ; ’ and then they ask us why we should be so squeamish about ‘ letting the Prayer Book contain once, at least, the statement that Christian faith is necessary to salvation.’ Others talk of the contest going on between ‘ definite religion/ ‘ religion with the sinew and bone of doctrine/ and ‘indefinite religion/ 182 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. ‘ nerveless religion/ ‘ vague, negative and cloudy reli- gion;’ and Lord Salisbury, as we have seen, declares that ‘ religion is no more to be severed from dogma than light from the sun.’ To be sure, to make this maxim of Lord Salisbury’s go on all fours, it ought to be : ‘ Religion is no more to be severed from the truth of religion than light from the sun.’ And dogma and the truth of religion are not exactly syno- nyms ; dogma means, not necessarily a true doctrine, but merely a doctrine or system of doctrine determined, decreed \ and received. Lord Salisbury, however, takes it as in this case another word for truth , and so do the other speakers. And they accordingly represent their opponents as either secret enemies of the truth of religion, men who are, as the Rock says in a Biblical figure addressed to the Dean of Westminster, ‘the degenerate plant of a strange vine bringing forth the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah ;’ or, at best, as amiable, soft-headed people, afraid of clear thought and plain speech, and requiring with their light a very unnecessary dose of sweetness. We, however, try to keep our love of sweetness within reasonable bounds; and the Rock will hardly call us a Gomorrah vine, when we agree to say heartily after it, as we do, that ‘ Christian faith is necessary to salvation.’ But what is Christian faith ? Is it the ‘ admitted facts taken TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 183 up and arranged, sentence after sentence, in the Atha- nasian Creed?’ Are these facts admitted ? — the whole question is here. So far from these facts being admitted , or from the enumeration of them being the enumeration of the facts of the Christian faith , we say that they are de- ductions from the Bible of matters which are not the real matters of Christian faith at all ; and that, moreover, they are false deductions from the Bible, blunders arising from a want of skill and experience in dealing with a very complex literary problem. Therefore we can honestly tell our dogmatic friends, that we agree with them in disliking an indefinite religion, in preferring a definite one. Our quarrel with them is, not that they define religion, but that they define it so abominably. And to the eloquent and impetuous Chancellor of Oxford, who cannot away with a hazy amiability in religious matters, and brandishes before us his dogma, not vague, he says, but precise : — 4 Precise enough,’ we answer, ‘ precisely wrong ! ’ And having thus, we hope, put ourselves right with our adversaries as to the real question between us and them, we will proceed with our endeavour to free the Bible, — by showing that it is not metaphysics but lite- rature, by following it continuously and by interpreting it naturally, — to free the Bible from the serious dangers 184 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. with which their advocacy threatens it. For when the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester talk of 4 doing something for the Godhead of the Eternal Son,’ they are doing nothing, we say, for the Bible, they are endanger- ing it. For their notions about the Godhead of the Eternal Son, and what it is, cannot possibly stand ; and yet these notions they have drawn, they tell us, from the Bible, they impute them to the Bible. But they have drawn them wrongly, and the Bible is to be made an- swerable for no such doctrine. And we have now come to that point where we may see, clearer than we were in a position to see before, what is rightly to be drawn from the Bible on this matter, and what the doctrine of Jesus himself about his own Godhead really is. 2. Following the Bible continuously and interpreting it naturally, we saw the people of 4 the Eternal that loveth righteousness/ and that 4 blesseth the man that putteth his trust in Him/ we saw Israel, confounded and perplexed by the misfortunes of God’s people and the success of the unrighteous world, construct a vast Aberglaube , an after or extra-belief, according to which there should come about, in no distant future, a grand and wonderful change. God should send his Messiah, judge the world, TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 185 punish the wicked, and restore the kingdom to Israel. For Israel’s original revelation and intuition had been : The Eternal loveth righteousness ; to him that ordereth his con- versation right shall be shown the salvation of God. And the natural corollary from this was : As the whirlwind passeth , so is the wicked no more ; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation . Both the revelation and the corollary from it were true ; but the virtue of both, for Israel, turned upon knowing what righteousness and righteous meant. And this indispensable intuition Israel is always represented as having once had, and with time in great measure lost. ‘ Stand ye in the ways and see/ says Jeremiah, ‘and ask for the old paths , where is the good way , and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’ The prophets may be seen trying to re-awaken in Israel this intuition, by inculcating inwardness, humbleness, sincerity. But the mass of people naturally inclined to place righteousness rather in something mechanically to be given or done, — in being endowed with the character of God’s chosen people, or in punctually observing a law full of minute observances. And the promises to righteousness they in like manner construed as promises of things material : a mighty Jewish kingdom, God’s people reigning, the heathen licking the dust. 1 86 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. This material conception of the promises to righteous- ness fell in with the mechanical conception of righteous- ness itself, and each heightened the hurtful ness of the other. Between them both, a type of soul more and more hard, impervious, and impracticable, was formed in the Jewish people; and the intuition, in which their greatness began, died out more and more. There still remained of it so much as this : that of all the nations of the world they were the only one that felt the all-importance of righteousness, and the eternity of the promises made to it. But what righteousness really was they knew not ; and their situation, when Christ came, is admirably summed up in these two verses of prophecy, which everyone who wishes for a clear sense of the Jews’ relations with Christ would do well to write as a reminder on the blank page between the Old Testament and the New : — 6 Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth , and with their lips do homier me , but have removed their heart far from me , and their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men; 6 Therefore , behold , I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people , even a marvellous work and a wonder; for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish , and the under- standing of their prudent men shall be hid l TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 187 Meanwhile, the Jews were full of their Aberglaube , their added or extra-belief in a Messianic advent, a great judg- ment, a world-wide reign of the saints ; and it is well to have distinctly before us the main texts which they had gathered from the Old Testament in support of this belief, and which were in everybody's mind and mouth. They are all given us by the New Testament. Moses had said : ‘ The Eternal thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto him shall ye hearken.’ In the Psalms it was written : ‘ The Eternal hath sworn a faithful oath unto David : Of the fruit of thy body will I set up07i thy seat ; thy seed will I stablish for ever , and set up thy thro7ie froTn one generatio7i to another l Isaiah had said : ‘ There shall come forth a Rod out of the stem of Jesse and a Branch shall grow out of his roots ; and the Spirit of the Eternal shall rest upon him, and he shall smite the earth with the breath of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.’ Finally, Malachi, the last prophet, had announced from God : ‘ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming <5f the great and dreadful day of the Eternal.’ These may stand, perhaps, as four fundamental texts forming the ground for popular Jewish Aberglaube as it developed itself ; and it will be seen of what large and LITERATURE AND DOGMA. loose construction they admit. But the ground-plan thus given was filled out from later and inferior scriptures, full of the spirit of the time, grandiose, but turbid and phantasmagoric, such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is in our Bibles ; we can all verify there the elements which constituted, when Christ came, the popular religious hope and belief of the Jews. It may be hoped that we our- selves, most of us, read other parts of the Bible far more than the Book of Daniel ; but we know how, in general, those who use the Bible most unintelligently have a peculiar fondness for the apocalyptic and phantasmagoric parts of it. The Book of Daniel gave form and body to the Prophet of Moses, the seed of David of the Psalms, the great and terrible day of Malachi ; it enabled the popular imagination to see and figure them. ‘ A time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation to that time ! The Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow and the hair of his head like the pure wool ; his throne was like the fiery flame; the judgment was set and the books were opened. And behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and there was given him dominion and glory, that all people, nations, and lan- TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 189 guages should serve him ; his dominion is an ever- lasting dominion which shall not pass away. And judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. At that time the people of God shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book ; and many of them that sleep in dust shall awake, some to ever- lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt/ Other figures which laid hold on men’s memories the Book of Enoch supplied. It told how, in the great visi- tation: .‘They shall rise up to destroy one another, neither shall a man acknowledge his friend and his brother, nor the son his father and his mother ; ’ how : ‘ Ye shall enter into the holes of the earth and into the clefts of the rocks ; ’ and how, finally, the proud rulers of the world ‘ shall see the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his glory.’ The Book of Enoch described this Son of Man, also, as ‘ The Son of Man, living with the Lord of Spirits,’ ‘ The Elect One, whom the Lord of Spirits hath gifted and glorified.’ Both books gave him the name of ‘ Son of God ’ and of ‘ Messiah.’ It was of all this that the heart of the Jews was full when Christ came ; it was on this that their thoughts fed and their hopes brooded. The old words, God, the Eternal, the Father, the Redeemer, were perpetually in 190 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . their mouths ; but in this connexion. The goal of their lives was still, as of old, 4 the salvation of God ; ’ but this was what they understood the salvation of God to be. They had lost the intuition, and they had thrown them- selves, heart and soul, upon an extra-belief, or Aber- glaube. 3 - Now, if we describe the work of Christ by a short expression which may give the clearest view of it, we shall describe it thus: — that he came to ?*estore the in- tuition. He came, it is true, to save, and to give eternal life ; but the way in which he did this was by restoring the intuition. This we have already touched upon in our third chapter, for we there passed in brief review the teaching of Jesus. But there the objection met us, that what at- tested Christ was miracles, and the preternatural, fulfil- ment in him of certain minute predictions made about him long before ; and that such is the teaching of Christ himself and of the Bible. We had to pause and deal with this objection; and now, as it disperses, we come in full view of our old point again, — that what did attest Christ was his restoration of the intuition . He found Israel all astray, with an endless talk about God, the law, righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting life, — and no TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 191 real hold upon any one of them. Israel’s old, sure proof of being in the right way, — the sanction of joy and peace, — was plainly wanting ; and this was a test which anybody could at once apply. ‘O Eternal, blessed is the man that putteth his trust in thee,’ was a corner-stone of Israel’s religion. Now, the Jewish people, however they might talk about putting their trust in the Eternal, were evidently, as they stood there before Jesus, not blessed at all ; and they knew it themselves as well as he did. ‘ Great peace have they who love thy law,’ was another corner-stone. But the Jewish people had at that time in its soul as little peace as it had joy and blessedness ; it was seething with inward unrest, irritation, and trouble. Yet the way of the Eternal was most indubitably a way of peace and joy; so, if Israel felt no peace and no joy, it could not be walking in the way of the Eternal. Here we have the firm unchanging ground on which the opera- tions of Jesus both began, and always proceeded. And it is to be observed that Jesus by no means gave a new, more precise, scientific definition of God, but took up this term just as Israel used it, to stand for the Eternal that loveth righteousness . If therefore this term was, in Israel’s use of it, not a term of science, but, as we say, a term of common speech, of poetry and eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of consciousness not fully 192 LITER A TURK AND DOGMA. covered by it, so it was in Christ’s use of it also. And if the substratum of scientific affirmation in the term was, with Israel, not the affirmation of 6 a great Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the uni- verse,’ but the affirmation of ‘ an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness,’ so it remained with Christ likewise. He set going a great process of searching and sifting, but this process had for its direct object the idea of righteousness , and only touched the idea of God through this, and not independently of this and immediately. If the idea of righteousness was changed, this implied, undoubtedly, a corresponding change in the idea of the Power that makes for right- eousness ; but in this manner only, and to this extent, does the teaching of J esus re-define the idea of God. But search and sift and renew the idea of righteous- ness Jesus did. And though the work of Jesus, like the name of God, calls up in the believer a multitude of emotions and associations far more than any brief defi- nition can cover, yet, remembering Jeremy Taylor’s advice to avoid exhortations to get Christ , to be in Christ , and to seek some more distinct and practical way of speaking of him, we shall not do ill, perhaps, if we sum- marise to our own minds his work by saying, that he restored the intuition of God through transforming the TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 193 idea of righteousness ; and that, to do this, he brought a method, and he brought a secret. And of those two great words which fill such a place in his gospel, repentance and peace, — us we see that his Apostles, when they preached his gospel, preached ‘ Repentance unto life ’ and * Peace through Jesus Christ,’ — of these two great words, one, rcpe?itance, attaches itself, we shall find, to his method, and the other, peace, to his secret. There was no question between Jesus and the Jews as to the object to aim at. 4 If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments,’ said Jesus. And Israel, too, on his part, said : ‘ He that keepeth the com- mandments keepeth his own soul.’ But what com- mandments ? The commandments of God ; about this, too, there was no question. But : ‘ Leaving the com- mandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men ; ye make the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition f said Jesus. Therefore the command- ments which Israel followed were not the commandments of God, by which a man keeps his own soul, enters into life. And the practical proof of this was, that Israel stood before the eyes of the world manifestly neither joyful, nor blessed, nor at peace; yet these characters of joy, bliss, and peace, the following of the real command- ments was confessed to give. So a rule, or method, was o 194 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. wanted, by which to determine what the real command- ments were. And J esus gave one : ‘ The things that come from within a mails heart , they it is that defile him ! ’ We have seen what an immense matter conduct is ; — that it is three- fourths of life. We have seen how plain and simple a matter it is, so far as knowledge is concerned. We have seen how, moreover, philosophers are for referring all conduct to one or other of man’s two elementary instincts, — the instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive instinct ; it is the suggestions of one or other of these instincts, they say, which call forth all cases in which there is scope for exercising morality, or conduct. And this does, we saw, cover the facts well enough. For we can run up nearly all faults of conduct into two classes, — faults of temper and faults of sensuality ; to be referred, all of them, to one or other of these two instincts. Now Jesus not only says that things coming from within a man’s heart defile him, he adds expressly what these things that, coming from within a man, defile him, are. And what he enumerates are the following : ‘ Evil thoughts, fornications, stealings, murders, adulteries, greed, vices, fraud, dissoluteness, envy, evil-speaking, pride, folly.’ These fall into two groups : one, of faults of self- assertion, graspingness and violence, all of which we may TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 195 call faults of temper ; and the other, of faults of sensuality. And the two groups, between them, do for practical pur- poses cover all the range of faults proceeding from these two sources, and therefore all the range of conduct. So the motions or impulses to faults of conduct . , were what Jesus said the real commandments are concerned with. And it was plain what such faults are ; but, to make assur- ance more sure, he, as we have seen, said what they are. No outward observances were conduct, were that keeping of the commandments, which was the keeping of a man’s own soul and made him enter into life. To have the thoughts in order as to certain matters, was conduct. This was the ‘ method 1 of J esus : setting up a great unceasing inward movement of attention and verifi- cation in matters which are three-fourths of human life, where to see true and to verify is not difficult, the diffi- cult thing is to care and to attend. And the inducement to attend was, because joy and peace, missed on every other line, were to be reached on this. 6 Keep judgment and do righteousness ! ’ had not been guidance enough. The Jews found themselves taking 6 meats and drinks and divers washings ’ for judgment ; taking for righteousness ‘ gifts and sacrifices which cannot perfect the worshipper as to his conscience' 1 (here is the word of Jesus !) ; tithing mint, anise and cummin ; say- iq6 LITERATURE A ED DOGMA . ingto their parents, It is Corban ! evil-disposed, and not at all blessed. But: ‘As to all wherein what men com- monly call conduct is exercised, — eating, drinking, ease, pleasure, money, the intercourse of the sexes, the giving full swing to one’s tempers and instincts, — as to all this, watch attentively what passes within you, that you may obey the voice of conscience ! so you will keep God’s commandment and be blessed ; ’ — this is the new and much more exact guidance. ‘ The things that come from within a man’s heart, they defile him ! cleanse the inside of the cup ! beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is insincerity ! judge not after the appearance , but judge righteous judgment ! ’ — this, we say, is the ‘method’ of Jesus. To it belongs his use of that important word which in the Greek is ‘metanoia.’ We translate it repen- tance, a mourning and lamenting over one’s sins; and we translate it wrong. Of ‘metanoia,’ as Jesus used the word, the lamenting one’s sins was a small part; the main part was something far more active and fruitful, the set- ting up an immense new inward movement for obtaining the rule of life. And ‘metanoia,’ accordingly, is: a change of the inner man . Mention and recommendation of this inwardness there often was, we know, in prophet or psalmist ; but to make mention of it was one thing, to erect it into a positive TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 197 method was another. Christianity has made it so familiar, that to give any freshness to one’s words about it is now not easy ; but to its first recipients it was abun- dantly fresh and novel. It was the introduction, in morals and religion, of the famous know thyself of the Greeks ; and this among a people deeply serious, but also wedded to moral and religious routine, and singularly devoid of flexibility and play of mind. For them it was a revolution. Of course the hard thing is not to say, Cleanse the inside of the cup , but to make people do it ; in morals and religion, the man who is founded upon rock is always, as Jesus said, the man who does, never the man who only hea 7 's. To say, Look within , was therefore not everything ; yet we none of us, probably, enough feel the power which at first resided in the mere saying of it, as Christ said it. And this is because his words have become so trite to us, that we fail to see how powerfully they were all adapted to call forth the new habit of inwardness ; and if we want to see this, we must for a time either re-translate his words for ourselves, or paraphrase them. And not only the words he employed but also the words he excited; the words which the effect produced by him made men use about him. Just as it is well to substitute Eternal for Lord, and the good news for the gospel, so we must put new words in the 1 98 LI TER A TURE AND DOGMA. place of the now hackneyed repentance , truth , grace, spirit , if we wish at all to know how these words worked originally. ‘ Metanoia’ we have seen, is a change of the inner man : repentance unto life was a life-giving change of the iimer man . ‘ Aletheia ’ is not so well rendered truth , which is often speculative only, as it is reality ; 6 charis ’ is the boon of happiness. Instead, then, of, ‘ Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ/ let us say: ‘ Happiness and reality came through Jesus Christ ; ’ instead of , 4 To know the grace of God in truth/ ‘To know the happiness of God in reality l Even if the new rendering is not so literally correct as the old, not permanently to be adopted, it will be of use to us for a while to show us how the words worked. Above all is this true in regard to the word spirit , made so mechanical by popular religion, that it has come to mean a person without a body , which is the child’s definition of a ghost. This word, specially designed by Jesus to serve in restoring the intuition and in bringing Israel’s religion face to face with Israel’s inward consciousness, is rather influence : 6 Ex- cept a man be born of a new influence , he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Instead of proclaiming what the Bishop of Gloucester calls ‘the blessed truth that the God of the universe is a Person/ Jesus uttered TESTIMONY 01 JESUS TO HIMSELF, 199 a warning for all time against this unprofitable jargon by saying : ‘ God is an influence , and those who would serve him must serve him not by any form of words or rites, but by inward motion and in reality ! ’ No ren- dering can too strongly bring out the original bent to inwardness and intuition in language of this kind, which has now become almost formal to us. Just the same bent appears in Christ’s taking, as the rule for a man’s action in regard to another’s conduct, simply and solely the effect on the actor’s own character. This is what is so striking in the story of the woman taken in adultery : c Let him that is without fault cast the first stone ! and they were all convicted by their con- science .’ And who is without fault, and where is the judge whom the conviction of conscience might not thus paralyse ? Punishment, then, is impossible ; and, with punishment, government and society ? But punishment government and society are all of them after-inven- tions, creations of man, and unintuitive. Jesus re- garded simply what was primary, — the individual and the intuition. And in truth if the individual and the intuition are once reached, the after-inventions may be left to take care of themselves ; and if conscience ever became enough of a power, there would be no offenders to punish. This is the true line of religion ; it was the 200 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . line of Jesus. To work the renovation needed, he concentrated his efforts upon a method of inwardness, of taking counsel of conscience. 4 - But for this world of busy inward movement created by the method of Jesus, a rule of action was wanted ; and this rule was found in his secret. It was the same of which the Apostle Paul afterwards possessed himself with such energy, and called ‘ the word of the cross,’ 1 or, necrosis , ‘ dying.’ The rule of action Paul gave was : 1 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the Hfe also of Jesus may be made manifest in our body !’ In the popular theurgy, these words are commonly referred to what is called ‘ pleading the blood of the covenant,’ — relying on the death and merits of Christ, in pursuance of the contract originally passed in the Council of the Trinity, to satisfy God’s wrath against sinners and to redeem us. But they do really refer to' words of Jesus, often and often repeated, and of which the following may very well stand as pre-eminently re- presentative : ‘ He that loveth his life shall lose it , and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. Whosoever would come after me, let him 1 ‘O \6yos 6 r ov (navpov . — I Cor. i. 1 8. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 2or renounce himself, and take tip his cross daily , and follow mel These words, or words like them, were repeated again and again, so that no reporter could miss them. No reporter did miss them. We find them, as we find the 4 method ’ of conscience, in all the four Gospels. Per- haps there is no maxim of Jesus that has such a combined stress of evidence for it, and may be taken as so eminently his. And no wonder ; for the maxim contains his secret, the secret by which, emphatically, his gospel ‘ brought life and immortality to light.' His ‘method/ directed the disciple's eye inward and set his consciousness to work ; and the first thing his con- sciousness told him was, that he had two selves pulling him different ways. Till we attend, till the method is set at work, it seems as if ‘ the wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts/ 1 were to be followed as a matter of course ; as if an impulse to do a thing means that we should do it. But when we attend, we find that an impulse to do a thing is really in itself no reason at all why we should do it ; because impulses proceed from two sources, quite different, and of quite different degrees of authority. St. Paul contrasts them as the in- ward man, and the man in our members ; the mind of the 1 Ta OeXrjfjLara r rjs aapicbs koi rwv biavoiwv. — Eph. ii. 3* 202 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. flesh, and the spiritual mind. Jesus contrasts them as life , properly so named, and life in this world} And the moment we seriously attend to conscience, to the sug- gestions which concern practice and conduct, we can see plainly enough from which source a suggestion comes, and that the suggestions from one source are to over- rule those from the other. But this is a negative state of things, a reign of check and constraint, a reign, merely, of morality. Jesus changed it into what was positive and attractive, lighted it up, made it religion, by the idea of two lives. One of them, life properly so called, full of light, endurance, felicity, in connexion with the higher and permanent self ; and the other of them, life improperly so called, in connexion with the lower and transient self. The first kind of life was already a cherished ideal with Israel (‘ Thou wilt show me the path of life ! ’) ; and a man might be placed in it, Jesus said, by dying to the second. For it is to be noted that our common expression, ‘ deny himself/ is an inadequate and misleading version of the words used by Jesus. To deny one’s self is commonly understood to mean that one refuses one’s self something; 1 The strict grammatical and logical connexion of the words ev Kocr/xci) r ovTcp is with 6 niacbv, but the sense and effect is as given above. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 203 but what J esus says is : c Let a man disown himself, re- nounce himself, die as regards his old self, and so live. Himself \ the old man , the life in this world, , meant following those ‘ wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts ? which Jesus had, by his method, already put his disciples in the way of sifting and scrutinising, and of trying by the standard of conformity to conscience. Thus, after putting him by his method in the way to find what doing righteousness was, by his secret Jesus put the disciple in the way of doing it. For the breaking the sway of what is commonly called one's self \ ceasing our concern with it and leaving it to perish, is not, he said, being thwarted or crossed, but living . And the proof of this is that it has the characters of life in the highest degree, — the sense of going right, hitting the mark, succeeding. That is, it has the cha- racters of happiness \ and happiness is, for Israel, the same thing as having the Eternal with us, seeing the sal- vation of God. 4 The tree/ as Jesus was always saying, ‘is known by its fruits'-, Jesus was to be received by Israel as sent from God, because the secret of Jesus leads to the salvation of God, which is what Israel most de- sired. The word of the cross , in short, turned out to be at the same time the word of the kingdom} And to 1 'O A 6 yos rr)s $a.(n\dias. — Matt. xiii. 19. 204 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . this experimental sanction of his secret, this sense it gives of having the Eternal on our side and approving us, J esus appealed when he said of himself : ‘ Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.’ This, again, in our popular theurgy, is materialised into the First Person of the Trinity approving the Second, because he stands to the contract already in the Council of the Trinity passed. But what it really means is, that the joy of Jesus, of this 4 Son of peace,’ the ‘joy’ he was so desirous that his disciples should find ‘fulfilled in themselves,’ was due to his having himself followed his own secret. And the great counterpart to : A life-giving change of the inner man , — the promise : Peace through Jesus Christ ! — is peace through this secret of his. Now, the value of this rule that one should die to one’s apparent self, live to one’s real self, depends upon whether it is true. And true it certainly is ; — a profound truth of what our scientific friends, who have a systematic philosophy and a nomenclature to match, and who talk of Egoism and Altruism , would call, perhaps, psycho-physi- ology. And we may trace men’s experience affirming and confirming it, from a very plain and level account of it to an account almost as high and solemn as that of J esus. That an opposition there is, in all matter of what TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 205 we call conduct , between a man's first impulses and what he ultimately finds to be the real law of his being ; that a man accomplishes his right function as a man, fulfils his end, hits the mark, in giving effect to the real law of his being ; and that happiness attends his thus hitting the mark — all good observers report. No statement of this general experience can be simpler or more faithful than one given us by that great naturalist, Aristotle. 1 4 In all wholes made up of parts,' says he, 4 there is a ruler and a ruled ; throughout nature this is so ; we see it even in things without life, they have their harmony or law . The living being is composed of soul and body, whereof the one is naturally ruler and the other ruled. Now what is natural we are to learn from what fulfils the law of its nature most, and not from what is depraved. So we ought to take the man who has the best disposition of body and soul ; and in him we shall find that this is so ; for in people that are grievous both to others and to themselves the body may often appear ruling the soul, because such people are poor creatures and false to nature.' And Aristotle goes on to distinguish between the body, over which, he says, the rule of the soul is absolute, and the movement of thoitght and desire, over which reason has, says he, 4 a constitutional rule,' in words which 1 Politics , i. 5. 206 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . exactly recal St. Paul’s phrase for our double enemy : 4 the flesh and the current thoughts' So entirely are we here on ground of general experience. And if we go on and take this maxim from Stobaeus: ‘All fine acquirement implies a foregoing exercise of self-control ; ’ 1 or this from the Latin poet : ‘ Rule your current self or it will rule you ! bridle it in and chain it down ! ’ 2 or this from Goethe’s autobiography : ‘ Everything cries out to us that we must renounce ; ’ 3 or still more this from his Faust : ‘ Thou must go without , go without ! that is the everlasting song which every hour, all our life through, hoarsely sings to us ! ’ 4 — then we have testimony not only to the necessity of this natural law of rule and suppression, but also to the strain and labour and suffering which attend it. But when we come a little further and take a sentence like this of Plato : ‘ Of sufferings and pains cometh help, for it is not possible by any other way to be ridded of our iniquity ; ’ 5 then we get a higher strain, a 1 Tlavr'bs kcCKoxj KT^/xaros irovos tt porjyGrai 6 Kar iyKpdreiav. 2 ... . Animum rege, qui nisi paret Imperat ; hunc froenis hunc tu compesce catenis. 3 Alles ruft tins zu, dass wir entsagen sollen. 4 Entbehren sollst du ! sollst entbehren ! Das ist der ewige Gesang, Den rinser ganzes Leben lang Uns heiser jede Stunde singt. 5 At* a\y rjdSuwv kclL otivvoov ylyverai t; oNjbeAeia* ov yapol6v re &\\us atiutlas aTraWdTTecrdcu. — Gorgias , c. 8 1. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 207 strain like St. Peter’s : He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin ; and we are brought to see, not only the necessity of the law of rule and suppression, not only the pain and suffering in it, but also its beneficence.. And this positive sense of beneficence, salutariness, and J hope, comes out yet more strongly when Wordsworth says, to Duty : c Nor know we anything so fair as is the smile upon thy face ; ’ or when Bishop Wilson says : ( They that deny themselves will be sure to find their strength increased, their affections raised, and their inward peace continually augmented ; ’ and most of all, perhaps, when we hear from Goethe : ‘ Die and re-exist ! for so long as this is not accomplished thou art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom ! ’ 1 But this is evidently borrowed from Jesus, and by one whose testimony is of the more weight, because he certainly would not have become thus a borrower from Jesus, unless the truth had compelled him. And never, certainly, was the joy which in self- renouncement underlies the pain, so brought out, as when Jesus boldly called the suppression of our first impulses and current thoughts: life, real life , eternal life . So that. 1 Stirb und werde ! Denn, so lang du das nicht hast, Bist du nur ein triiber Gast Auf der dunkeln Erde ! 208 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. Jesus not only saw this great necessary truth of there being, as Aristotle says, in human nature a part to rule and a part to be ruled ; he saw it so thoroughly , that he saw through the suffering at its surface to the joy at its centre, filled it with promise and hope, and made it infinitely attractive. As Israel, therefore, is ‘ the people of righteousness/ because, though others have perceived the importance of righteousness, Israel, above everyone, perceived the hap- piness of it ; so self-renouncement, the main factor in conduct or righteousness, is ‘the secret of Jesus/ because, though others have seen that it was necessary, Jesus, above everyone, saw that it was peace, joy, life. Now, we may observe, that even Aristotle (and it is a mark of his greatness) does not, in the passage we have quoted from him, begin with a complete system of psycho- physiology, and show us where and how and why in this system the rule of renouncement comes in, and draw out for us definitively the law of our being towards which this rule leads up. He says that the rule exists, that it is ancillary to the law of our being, and that we are to study the best men, in whom it most exists, to make us see that it is thus ancillary. He here appeals throughout to a verifying sense, such as we have said that everyone in this great but plain matter of conduct really has ; he does not appeal to a speculative theory of the system of things, TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 209 and deduce conclusions from it. And he shows his greatness in this, because the law of our being is not something which is already definitively known and can be exhibited as part of a speculative theory of the system of things ; it is something which discovers itself and becomes , as we follow (among other things) the rule of renounce- ment. What we can say with most certainty about the law of our being is, that we find the rule of renouncement lead sensibly up to it. In matters of practice and conduct therefore, an experience, like this, is really a far safer ground to insist on than any speculative theory of the system of things. And to a theory of such sort J esus never appeals. Here is what characterises his teaching, and dis- tinguishes him, for instance, from the author of the Fourth Gospel. This author handles what we may call theoso- phical speculation in a beautiful and impressive manner ; his introduction to his Gospel is undoubtedly in a very noble and profound strain. But it is theory ; an intellec- tual theory of the divine nature and the system of things, which was then, and is still at present, utterly irreducible to experience. And therefore it is impossible even to conceive Jesus himself uttering the introduction to the Fourth Gospel ; because theory Jesus never touches, but bases himself invariably on experience. True, the expe- rience must, for philosophy, have its place in a theory of p 210 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. the system of human nature, when the theory is perfect ; but the point is, that the experience is ripe, and solid, and to be used safely, long before the theory. And it was the experience which Jesus always used. Undoubtedly, however, attempts may not improperly be made, even now, — by those, at least, who have a talent for these matters, — to exhibit the experience, with what leads to it and what derives from it, in a system of psycho-physiology. And then, perhaps, it will be found to be connected with other truths of psycho- physiology, such as the unity of life, as it is called, and the impersonality of reason. Only then it will be philosophy, mental exercitation, and will concern us as a matter of science, not of conduct. And, as the dis- cipline of conduct is three-fourths of life, for our aesthetic and intellectual disciplines, real as these are, there is but one-fourth of life left ; and if we let art and science divide this one-fourth fairly between them, they will have just one-eighth of life each. So the exhibition of the truth : ‘ He that loveth his life shall lose it , and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal in its order and place as a truth of psycho-physiology, concerns one -eighth of our life and no more. But Jesus, we say, exhibited nothing for the benefit of this one-eighth of us ; this is what distinguishes TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 21 1 him from all moralists and philosophers, and even from the greatest of his own disciples. How he reached a doctrine we cannot say ; but he always exhibited it as an intuition and a practical rule, and a practical rule which, if adopted, would have the force of an intuition for its adopter also. This is why none of his doctrines are of the character of that favourite doctrine of the Bishop of Gloucester, ‘ the blessed truth that the God of the universe is a Person ; ’ because this doctrine is incapable of application as a practical rule, and can never come to have the force of an intuition. But what we call the secret of Jesus: ‘ He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal] was a truth of which he could say : c It is so ; try it yourself and you will see it is so, by the sense of living , of going right, hitting the mark, succeeding, which you will get/ And the same with the commandment, ‘ Love one an- other] which is the positive side of the commandment, ‘ Renounce thyself] and, like this, can be drawn out as a truth of pyscho-physiology. Jesus exhibited it as an in- tuition and a practical rule ; and as what, by being prac- tised, would, through giving happiness , prove its own truth as a rule of life. This, we say, is of the very essence of his secret of self-renouncement, as of his method of 212 LITER A TURK AND DOGMA . inwardness; — that its truth will be found to commend itself by happiness , to prove itself by happiness . And of the secret more especially is this true ; and as we have said, that though there gathers round the word ‘ God * very much besides, yet we shall in general, in reading the Bible, get the surest hold on the word ‘ God’ by giving it the sense of the Eternal Power , not ourselves , which makes for righteousness , so we shall get the best hold on many expressions of Jesus by referring them, though they in- clude more, yet primarily and pointedly to his ‘ secret,’ and to the happiness which this contained. Bread of life, living water, these are, in general, Jesus, Jesus in his whole being and in his total effect ; but in especial they are Jesus as offering his secret . And when Jesus says : ‘ He that eateth me shall live by me ! ; we shall understand the words best if we think of his secret. And so again with the famous words to the woman by the well in Samaria : c Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that 1 shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that 1 shall give him shall be in him a fount of water springing up unto everlasting life.’ These words, how are we to take them, so as to reach their meaning best? What distinctly is this ‘ water that I shall give him ’ ? Jesus himself and his word, no doubt ; yet so we come TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 213 but to that very notion, which Jeremy Taylor warns us against as vague, of getting Christ . The Bishop of Gloucester will tell us, perhaps, that it is ‘ the blessed truth that the Creator of the universe is a Person/ or the doc- trine of the consubstantiality of the Eternal Son. But surely it would be a strong figure of speech to say of these doctrines, that a man, after receiving them, could never again feel thirsty ! See, on the contrary, how the words suit the secret : 6 He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eter- nal.’ This ‘ secret of Jesus/ as we call it, will be found applicable to all the thousand problems which the exer- cise of conduct daily offers ; it alone can solve them all happily, and may indeed be called ‘ a fount of water springing up unto everlasting life.’ And, in general, wherever the words life and death are used by Jesus, we shall do well to have his ‘ secret * at hand ; for in his thoughts, on these occasions, it is never far off. And now, too, we can see why it is a mistake, and may lead to much error, to exhibit any series of maxims, like those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity may be run up. Maxims of this kind are but applications of the method and the secret of Jesus; and the method and secret are capable of yet an infinite number more of such applications. Christianity 214 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. is a source ; no one supply of water and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity. 5 - A method of inwardness , a secret of self -renouncement ; — but can any statement of what Jesus brought be com- plete, which does not take in his mildness ? To the repre- sentative texts already given there is certainly to be added this other : 6 Learn of me that I am mild and lowly in heart , and ye shall find rest unto your souls /’ Shall we attach mildness to the method , because, without it, a clear and limpid view inwards is impossible ? Or shall we attach it to the secret ? — the dying to faults of temper is a part, certainly, of dying to one’s ordinary self, one’s life in this world. Mildness , however, is rather an element in \ which, in Jesus, both method and secret worked ; the medium through which both the method and the secret were exhibited. We may think of it as perfectly illus- trated and exemplified in his answer to the foolish ques- tion, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? — when, taking a little child and setting him in the midst, he said : ‘ Whosoever receives the kingdom of God as a little child, the same is the greatest in it.’ Here are both inward appraisal and self-renouncement; but what is most admir- able is the ‘ sweet reasonableness,’ the exquisite, mild, TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 215 winning felicity, with which the renouncement and the in- ward appraisal are applied and conveyed. And the con- junction of the three in Jesus, — the method of inwardness, and the secret of self-renouncement, working in and through this element of mildness, — produced the total impression of his ‘ epieikeia,’ or sweet reasonableness ; a total impression ineffable and indescribable for the dis- ciples, as also it was irresistible for them, but at which their descriptive words, words like this ‘ sweet reasonableness] and like ‘full of grace and truth] are thrown out and aimed. And this total stamp of ‘ grace and truth,’ this exquisite conjunction and balance, in an element of mildness, of a method of inwardness perfectly handled and a self- renouncement perfectly kept, was found in Jesus alone. Yet what is the method of inwardness, and the secret of self- renouncement, without the sure balance of J esus, without his epieikeia ? Much, but very far indeed from what he showed or what he meant ; they come to be used blindly, used mechanically, used amiss, and lead to the strangest aberrations. St. Simeon Stylites on his column, Lacor- daire flogging himself on his death-bed, are what the secret by itself produces. The method by itself gives us our political Dissenter, pluming himself on some irrational ‘ conscientious objections,’ and not knowing that with conscience he has done nothing until he has got to the 2l6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . bottom of conscience, and made it tell him right . There- fore the disciples of Christ were not told to believe in his. method, or to believe in his secret, but to believe in him ; they were not told to follow the method or to follow the secret, but they were told: ‘ Follow me l* It was only by fixing their heart and mind on him that they could learn to use the method and secret right ; by ‘ feeding on him,’ by, as he often said, ‘ remaining in him.’ But this is just what Israel had been told to do as regards the Eternal himself. ‘ I have set the Eternal always before me;' ‘Mine eyes are ever toward the Eternal •/ ‘ The Eternal is the strength of my life; ’ ‘ Wait, I say, on the Eternal ! ’ Now, then, let us go back again for a little to Israel, and to Israel’s belief. 6 . We have seen how the Jews, at the coming of Christ, had their thoughts full of a grand and turbid phantasma- gory; — a vision of God judging the world, sending his Messiah on the clouds of heaven, taking vengeance on nis enemies, restoring the kingdom to Israel. And we marked the line of texts which this expectation followed : from the ‘ Prophet ’ of Moses to the victorious ‘ Rod out of the stem of Jesse’ of Isaiah, and thence to the TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 217 c Messiah/ the ‘ Son of Man/ the ‘ Son of God/ of the Book of Daniel. But there was another line of texts pointing to a ser- vant and emissary of God, besides the line pointing to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the princely and con- quering Root of David. It stood written : 6 Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth ! I have put my spirit upon him ; he shall declare judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets ; he shall declare judgment with truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, until he set judgment in the earth ; far lands wait for his law/ Who is this ? And again : ‘ He was despised, and we esteemed him not ; but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. All we like sheep were gone astray, we were turned every one to his own way; and the Eternal hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. And he made his grave with the wicked, although he had done no violence ; yet it pleased the Eternal to bruise him. When he hath made his life an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper in his hand ; he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied ! 7 Who, again, is this ? LITERATURE AND DOGMA . 218 Is it the ‘Prophet’ like great Moses? Is it the brilliant ‘ Branch’ out of the root of Jesse, smiting the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips slaying the wicked ? with his dominion from the one sea to the other, all things falling down before him, all nations serving him; with his seed to en- dure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven ? This Branch it was, whom Israel identified with the Messiah coming in the clouds of heaven to give the kingdom to the saints of the Most High, with the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his glory. Was the afflicted and lowly servant at the same time the Branch, and therefore the Messiah, the Son of God, and the bringer of the kingdom ? Israel never identified them. Here and there he made guesses and snatches at the truth ; momen- tary elevations of it there were, faint approaches towards connecting the two ideals, isolated tentatives; but the Jewish people at large had never grasped the idea of the identification, and it had never been so presented to them that they coidd grasp it. And, as we have already said, it was an extraordinary novelty, although the profound and the only true solu- tion of Israel’s wonderful history, when this identifi- cation was by Jesus boldly made. ‘A little while,’ the Jews were saying, ‘and the God of heaven shall set up TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 219 a kingdom which shall never he destroyed l 1 — ‘ Nay/ answered J esus, ‘ the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand l change the inner man , and believe the good news l ’ — ‘ But,’ said the Jews, 1 Elias must first cornel J esus replied : ‘ Elias is come already ! J ohn the Baptist, my precursor, who preached a change of the inner man as I do.’ — ‘ But there shall he a time of trouble] the Jews urged, ‘ such as never was since there was a nation to that time ; abomination and desolation; a fiery stream issuing from before the throne of the Ancient of days ; one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven T 2 J esus beheld the fierce and impracticable people before him, with their inevitable future : ‘ Fear not/ he answered mournfully, c where the carcase is , there will the eagles be gathered together ! soon enough you will have the affliction such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, the Son of Man coming, Jerusalem encompassed with armies, abomination and desolation, not one stone of the Temple left on another/ — ‘ But the judgment shall sitE said the Jews, ‘ and at that time the people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book!* — To the outward crisis, or world-judgment of Jerusalem’s ruin, shall correspond, Jesus answered, an inward judgment, the new crisis of conscience. ‘ The 1 Dan. ii. 44. 2 Dan. xii. 1, 11 ; vii. 10, 13. 220 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . hour ‘ is coming, and now is , when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and they who hear shall live. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice; the word that I speak, the same shall judge him/ — ‘But the righteous/ the Jews said, ‘ shall awake to everlasting life!' ■ — ‘ If a man keep my word/ answered Jesus, ‘ he shall never see death ; but it shall be in him a fount of water, springing up unto everlasting life ! — ‘ But God’s Messiah/ finally rejoined the Jews, ‘shall smite the earth with the hreath of his month ! his throne shall endure for ever , and his dominion shall be from the one sea to the other ; the Gentiles shall he given to him / — ‘ Ye know not what spirit ye are of/ said Jesus : ‘He is mild ■ and lowly in heart ; he must suffer many things and he rejected of his generation. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die , it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit; and Iff I he lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto mel Then, turning to the disciples: ‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom ! And other sheep I have, not of this fold ! they also shall he brought ; and there shall be one fold, one shepherd.’ By a line like this did Jesus identify the two ideals, — the ideal of popular Aherglauhe and his own. And this is why the phrases of the popular Aherglauhe come so TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 221 often from his lips ; he was for ever translating it into the sense of the higher ideal, the only sense in which it had truth and grandeur. It was hopeless that the Jews should go along with him. The best of his disciples went along with him but imperfectly, and popular Christianity has fallen far behind the best of his disciples. The hour is coming , and now is , when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man , and they who hear shall live , — this saying could not lift the Jews out of their Aber- glaube into the ideal of Jesus, with its new meaning for the words life and death. But neither has it lifted popu- lar Christianity, which out of this and other like sayings has fashioned for itself an Aberglaube precisely corre- sponding to that of the J ews. Yet Jesus could not but use the dominant phrases of the Jewish religion, if he was to talk to the Jewish people about religion at all. And we have now seen that he did use them, and how. And this leads us further, and explains his way of using such words as the Christ , the Son of Man , the Son of God, For, as the Jews were always talking about the Messiah, so they were always talking, we know, about God. And they believed in God’s Messiah after their notion of him, because they believed in God after their notion of him ; — but both notions were wrong. All their aspirations were now turned towards the 222 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Messiah ; whoever would do them good, must first change their ideal of the Messiah. But their ideal of God's Messiah depended upon their notion of God. This notion was now false, like their ideal of the Messiah ; but once it had been true, or, at least, true comparatively ; — once Israel had had the intuition of God, as the Eternal that loveth righteousness. And the intuition had never been so lost but that it was capable of being revived. To change their dangerous and misleading ideal of God’s Messiah, therefore, and to make the Jews believe in the true Messiah, could* only be accomplished by bringing them back to a truer notion of God and his righteousness. By this it could, perhaps, be accomplished, but by this only. And this is what Jesus sought to do. He sought to do it in the way we have seen, by his ‘ method ’ and his ‘secret/ First, by his ‘method’ of a change of the inner man : — ‘ Do not be all abroad, do not he in the air] 1 he said to his nation ; ‘ you look for the kingdom of God ; the kingdom of God is the reign of righteousness, God’s will done by all mankind ; well, then, seek the king- dom of God ! the kingdom of God is within you? And, next, by his ‘ secret ’ of peace : — ‘ Renounce thyself and take tip thy cross daily and follow me. He that loveth his life shall lose it , and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal .’ And the revolution thus made was so 1 M tj iierecopifcarde. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 223, immense, that the least in this new kingdom of heaven, this realm of the ‘ method ’ and the ‘ secret/ was greater, Jesus said, than one who, like John the Baptist, was even * . greatest in the old realm of Jewish religion. And those who obeyed the gospel of this new kingdom came to the light ; they had joy ; they entered into peace ; they ceased to thirst ; the word became in them a fount of water springing up unto everlasting life. But these were the admitted tests of righteousness, of obeying the voice of the Eternal who loveth righteousness. ‘ There ariseth light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart ; he that feareth the Eternal, happy is he ! 9 Now, the special value of the Fourth Gospel is, not that it exhibits the method and secret of Jesus, — for all the Gospels exhibit them, — but that it exhibits the establish- ment of them by means of Israel’s own idea of God,, cleared and re-awakened. The argument is: ‘You are always talking about God, God’s word, righteousness; always saying that God is your Father, and will send his Messiah for your salvation. Well, he who receives me shows that he talks about God with a knowledge of what he is sayin'; , he sets to his seal that God is true. He who is of God hrareth the words of God; every one that heareth and learneth of the Father cometh unto me; my doctrine is not mine but his that sent me , and ye have- not his word abiding in you , because^ whom he hath senp 224 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. him ye believe not ; if any one will do God's will he shall know of the doctrine , whether it be of God! This, there- fore, is what Jesus said : — 4 1, whose message of salvation is : If a man keep my word he shall never see death ! am sent of God ; because he, who obeys my saying: Renounce thyself and follow me! shall feel that he truly lives, and that he is following, therefore, Israel’s God of whom it is said : Thou wilt show me the path of life! The doctrine therefore is double: — Renounce thyself the secret of Jesus, involving a foregoing exercise of his method ; and, Follow me , who am sent from God! That is the favourite expression : Sent fro7n God ; ‘ The Father hath sent me, God hath sent me.’ Now this identified Jesus and his salvation with the Messiah whom, with his salvation, the Jews were expecting. For his dis- ciples, therefore, and for Christendom after them, Jesus was and is the Christ. This, we say, his disciples, and Christendom after them, have comprehended and ac- cepted : his identification of himself with the Messiah. On the other hand, his fruitful and profound harmonisa- tion of the two ideals,— the mild and suffering Servant of God, and the Anointed Prince smiting the earth with the breath of his mouth and giving the king- dom to the saints, — was not understood and accepted. Nevertheless, the turbid Aberglaube , with which the Jews TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 225 lhad surrounded this latter ideal, was by the disciples of J esus borrowed, and transferred wholesale to Christ and Christ’s future advent Meanwhile, as with the word God, so with the word Christ ; Jesus did not give any scientific definition of it, — such as, for instance, that Christ was the Logos. He took the word Christ as the Jews used it, as he took the word God as the Jews used it ; and as he amended their notion of God, the Eternal who loveth righteousness, by showing what righteousness really was, so he amended their notion of the Messiah, the chosen bringer of God’s salvation , by showing what salvation really was. And though his own application of terms to designate him- self is not a matter where we can perfectly trust his reporters (as it is clear, for instance, that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was more metaphysical than Jesus him- self), 1 yet there is no difficulty in supposing him to have applied to himself each and all of the terms which the Jews in any way used to describe the Messiah , — Messiah or Christ, God’s Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or 1 It is to be remembered, too, that whereas Jesus spoke in Ara- maic, the most concrete and unmetaphysical of languages, he is reported in Greek, the most metaphysical. What, in the mouth of Jesus, was the word which comes to us as /xoi/oyep^s ( only-begotten ) ? And yet, in the Greek record, this word is not, like only-begotten in our translation, reserved for Christ; see Luke, ix. 38. Q 226 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Glorified One , the Son of God \ the Son of Man ; because his concern, as we have said, was with his countrymen’s idea of salvation, not with their terms for designating the bringer of it. But the simplest term, the term which gives least opening into theosophy, — Son of Man , — he certainly preferred. So, too, he loved the simple expres- sions, / God sent me,’ ‘ The Father hath sent me;’ and he chose so often to say, in a general manner, ‘ I am He] rather than to say positively, ‘ I am Christ .’ And evidently this mode of speaking struck his hearers. We find the Jews saying: How long dost thou make us to doubt ? if thou be Christ, tell us plainly /’ And even then Jesus does not answer point-blank, but prefers to say: ‘ I have told you, and ye believe not.’ Yet this does not imply that he had the least doubt or hesitation in naming himself the Messiah, the Son of God; but only that his concern was, as we have said, with God’s righteousness and Christ’s salvation , and that he avoided all use of the names God, and Christ, which might give an opening into mere theosophical specula- tion. And this is shown, moreover, by the largeness and freedom, — almost, one may say, indifference, — of his treatment of both names ; as names, in using which, his hearers were always in danger of going off into a theo- sophy that did them no good and had better occupy them as little as possible. */ and my Father are one ! 7 TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 227 he would say at one time ; and ‘ My Father is greater than I! ’ at another. When the J ews were offended at his calling himself the Son of God, he quotes Scripture to show that even mere men were in Scripture called Gods ; and for you, he says, who go by the letter of Scripture, surely this is sanction enough for calling anyone, whom God sends, the Son of God ! He did not at all mean, that the Messiah was a son of God merely in the sense in which any great man might be so called ; but he meant that these questions of theosophy were useless for his hearers, and that they puzzled themselves with them in vain. All they were concerned with was, that he was the Messiah they expected, sent to them with salvation from God. It is the same when Jesus says : ‘ Before Abraham was, I am ! ’ He was baffling his countrymen’s theosophy, showing them how little his doctrine was meant to offer a field for it. ‘ Life,’ he means, ‘ the life of him who lays down his life that he may take it again , is not what you suppose ; your notions of everlasting life are all false, and with your present notions you cannot discuss theology with me ; follow me ! ’ So, again, to the J ews in the rut of their traditional theology, and haggling about the Son of David ; — J esus, they insisted, could not be the Christ, because the Christ was the Son of David. Jesus answers 228 LITERATURE AND DOGMA them by the objection that in the Psalms (and the Scrip- ture cannot be broken !) David calls the Christ his Lord; and ‘ if he call him Lord, how is he then his son ? ' The argument as a serious argument is perfectly futile ; the King of Israel is going out to war, and what the Psalmist really sings is : 4 The Eternal saith unto the king's majesty, Thou shalt conquer ! 7 St. Peter in the Acts gravely uses the same verse to prove Jesus to be Christ : ‘ God,' says he, ‘ tells my Lord, Sit thou upon my right hand ! Yet David never went up into heaven.' And this is exactly of a piece with St. Paul's proving salva- tion to be by Christ alone, from seed , in the promise to Abraham, being in the singular not the plural. It is merely false criticism of the Old Testament, such as the Jews were full of, and of which the Apostles retained far too much. But the Jews were full of it, and there- fore the objection of Jesus was just such an objection as the Jews would think weighty. He used it as he might have used a crux about personality or consubstantiality with the Bishops of Winchester or Gloucester; — to baffle and put to rout their false dogmatic theology, to disen- chant them with it and make them cast it aside and come simply to him. 6 See,’ he says to the Jewish doctors, ‘what a mess you make of it with your learning, and evidences, and orthodox theology; with the wisdom of TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF , . 229 your wise men and the understanding of your prudent men ! You can do nothing with them, your arms break in your hands ; fling the rubbish away, and throw yourselves upon my method and secret, — upon me ! Believe that the Father hath sent me ; he that receiveth me receiveih Him that sent me . If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, ’, or whether I have invented it ! 9 And no grand performance or discovery of a man’s own to bring him thus to joy and peace, but an attachment ! the influence of One full of grace and truth ! An influence, which we feel we know not how, and which subdues us we know not when ; which, like the wind, blows where it lists, passes here, and does not pass there ! Once more, then, we come to that root and ground of religion, that element of awe and gratitude which fills religion with emotion, and makes it other and greater than morality, — the not ourselves . We did not make the order of conduct, or provide that happiness should belong to it, or dispose our hearts to it The preparation of the heart in man is, as Israel said, from the Eternal ! We did not make the 6 grace and truth’ of Jesus, provide that happiness should belong to feeling them, and dispose our hearts to feel them. No man can come to me, as Jesus said, except the Father which sent me 230 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. draw him! So the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, like the revelation of the God of Israel in the Old, is the revelation of 6 the Eternal, not ourselves , which makes for righteousness/ It is like it, and has the same power of religion in it. 7 - Now, then, we see what the doctrine, I came forth from God \ really means. We see how far it has any likeness with that doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, for which our two bishops are so anxious to ‘ do some- thing/ We see how far the pseudo-scientific language of our creeds, about persons , and substance , and godhead, \ and co-equal , and co-eternal , and created \ and begotten , and proceeding , has anything at all to do with what Jesus said or meant. We see how impossible it is that one should concede to our clerical friends what they assume to be beyond dispute : — that the so-called Athanasian Creed c takes the facts of Christian doctrine, and just arranges them sentence after sentence/ We see how wide of the mark is that philosophical clergyman, who writes y to the Guardian that ‘ Our Lord unquestionably annexes eternal life to a right knowledge of the Godhead,’ in imagining, that when Jesus said : ‘ This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 231 thou hast sent/ Jesus had in view anything at all like the ‘ facts ’ which the Athanasian Creed ‘ arranges, sentence after sentenced But we see more than this. We see how much a very common use of the word faith , which gives rise to false notions like that of this clergyman, needs amending. For it is constantly assumed that there is an opposi- tion between faith and reason ; and that those, whom Christ calls to believe in him , he calls to receive a doctrine puzzling to the reason, but which, if adopted, will gradu- ally become clear. It is obvious how well this notion of faith suits the recommenders of such doctrine as that which the Athanasian Creed ‘arranges, sentence after sentence/ which is certainly very puzzling to the reason. But this is of the essence of faith, it is said : — to take on trust what perplexes the reason. Only adopt the doctrine which perplexes the reason, be a Christian, and after- wards ‘you shall know of the doctrine whether it be of Godd And with this is connected what is so often said in the Bible about ‘ receiving the kingdom of God as a little child/ about ‘ babes seeing what is hidden from the wise and prudentd The unlettered believer is, in fact, — according to this version of what the Bible means to say, — represented in the Bible as a better judge about a thing which perplexes the reason than the philoso- 2‘32 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. pher. And this explains the disdain with which the possessors of gospel-truth, as it is called, are apt to treat art, and literature, and science. These happy men are supposed to have, by faith, a certainty in matters per- plexing in the highest degree to the reason, which the vaunted exercise of the reason can newer attain to. And as with faith in Christ, so with faith in God : it is taking on trust something perplexing to the reason. Texts like : They that seek the Eternal understand all things, and : lam wiser than the aged decause I keep Thy commandments y mean, that we are better off and see clearer than men of study and experience, if, in spite of its puzzling the reason, we accept in faith, and they do not, some truth like the Bishop of Gloucester's c blessed truth that the God of the universe is a Person/ No one has more insisted on this opposition between faith and reason than a writer whom we can never name but with respect, — Dr. Newman. ‘ The moral trial » involved in faith/ he says , i lies in the submission of the reason to external realities partially disclosed/ And again : * Faith is, in its very nature, the acceptance of what our reason cannot reach, simply and absolutely upon testimony/ But surely faith is, in its very nature (with all respect be it spoken ! ), nothing of the kind ; else how could Christ say to the Jews : ‘ If I tell you the truth* TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 233 why do ye not believe me ? ’ Surely this implies that faith, instead of being a submission of the reason to what puzzles it, is rather a recognition of what is perfectly clear, if we will attend to it. We cannot always attend, all of us ; and here is the not ourselves in the matter, 6 the grace of God.’ But attention , cleaving, attaching oneself fast to what is undeniably true, — this is what the faith of Scripture, ‘ in its very nature/ is ; and not the submission of the reason to what puzzles it, or the acceptance, simply and absolutely upon testimony, of what our reason cannot reach. And all that the Bible says of bringing to nought the wisdom of the wise, and of receiving the kingdom of God as a little child, has nothing whatever to do with the believer’s acceptance of some dogma that perplexes the reason ; it is aimed at those who sophisticate a very simple thing, religion, by importing into it a so-called science with which it has nothing to do. Jewish theological learning, the system of divinity of the Jewish hierarchy, who did not know how simple a thing righteousness really was, and who, when simple souls saw it in Christ and were drawn to it, cried out, ‘ This people that knoweth not the law are cursed l it was at these, and at whatever re- sembles these, that Christ aimed the words about receiv- ing the kingdom of God as a little child. And the ‘ marvellous work and wonder ’ about the 234 LITERA TURK AND DOGMA . saving truth which the simple receive is, not that, being difficult to the reason, it is yet got hold of by the un- lettered and not by the wise ; but that, being so simple, it should yet be so immense, important, indispensable ; and that, being so immense, important, indispensable, it should yet so often be followed by quite unlettered people and neglected by such very clever ones. They are attending to other things, — things which do task the reason and intelligence, and in which the unlettered have no skill and no voice ; these things however are, at most, only one-fourth of life. And this absurdity, for such it really is, we see every day ; — people attending to the diffi- cult science of matters where the plain practice they quite let slip. How many people will be now busy with Mr. Darwin’s new book, so admirably ingenious, on the natural history of the emotions, who yet are always using their own emotions in the worst possible manner ! They are eager to know how their emotions arose, how these came to express themselves as they do ; yet there the emotions now are, and have for a long time been, and the first thing for any sane man is, to make a proper use of them, and to know how to make a proper use is not difficult ; — but all this we never think of, but investigate zealously how they arose ! Such persons are just like those learned TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 235 inquirers the Cynic laughed at, who were so busy about the strayings of Ulysses, so inattentive to their own. And Israel’s greatness was that he was so impatient of trifling of this kind, of being busy with one-fourth of life while the three-fourths, conduct, was forgotten. And Israel boldly said : ‘ They that seek the Eternal understand all things ; ’ that is, they are occupied with conduct, right- eousness, which truly is, as we have seen, at least three- fourths of life, and which Israel thought the whole of it. They have a hold on three-fourths of life, while it may be that their great, clever, and accomplished neighbours have a hold on only one-fourth, or part of one-fourth, of life. Which is the solid and sensible man, which under- stands most, which lives most? Compare a Methodist day-labourer with some dissolute, gifted, brilliant grandee, who thinks nothing of him ! — but the first deals suc- cessfully with nearly the whole of life, while the second is all abroad in it. Compare some simple and pious monk, at Rome, with one of those frivolous men of taste whom we have all seen there ! — each knows no- thing of what interests the other ; but which is the more vital concern for a man : conduct, or arts and antiquities ? Nay, and however false his science and Biblical criti- cism, the believer who applies the method and secret of J esus has a width of range and sureness of foothold in 236 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . life, which even the best scientific and literary critic of the Bible, who applies them not, is without ; because the first is right in what affects three-fourths of life, and the second in what affects but one- fourth, or even but one- eighth. Each has a secret of which the other, who has no experience of it, does not know the value ; but the value of the learned man’s secret is ridiculously least. This, I say, is the very glory and marvel of the religion of the true Israel, and what makes this religion, as Jesus called it, ‘ the good news to the poor ; 1 that it covers nearly the whole of life, and yet is so simple. The only right contrast, therefore, to set up between faith and reason is, not that faith grasps what is too hard for reason, but that reason does not, like faith, attend to what is at once so great and so simple. The difficulty about faith is, to attend to what is very simple and very important, but liable to be pushed by more showy or tempting matters out of sight ; the marvel about faith is, that what is so simple should be so all-sufficing , so neces- sary , and so often neglected . And faith is neither the submission of the reason, nor is it the acceptance, simply and absolutely upon testimony, of what reason cannot reach. Faith is : the being able to cleave to a power of good- ness appealing to our higher and real self not to our lower and apparent self. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 237 8 . So we see how unlike is Christ’s own doctrine of his being the Son of God to the difficult doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son, as the Athanasian Creed 6 arranges it, sentence after sentence,’ and in the form in which our bishops want to f do something ’ for it ; as unlike as the original revelation to Israel of the Eternal that loveth righteousness is to c the blessed doctrine that the God of the universe is a Person.’ And we see how the clergymen who write to the Guardian deceive themselves, when they imagine that it is to these doctrines of our bishops that Christ ‘ unquestionably attaches eternal life,’ and how they are led into this error by having more of turn for abstruse reasoning than of literary experience. They are not conversant enough with the many different ways in which men think and speak, so as to be able to distinguish rightly between them, and to perceive that the Bible is literature ; and that its words are used, like the words of common life and of poetry and eloquence, approximately, and not like the terms of science, adequately. And if they fall into mistakes about words applied to the Father and the Son, by thus making them scientific, how much more do they fall into mistakes when they extend this treatment to words applied to the Holy Spirit. 23B LITERATURE AND DOGMA . We have seen how the word Pneuma , just by reason of its inward and infinite character, was much employed by Jesus for his method of inwardness and of deliverance from binding traditions and formulas ; and how, since Holy Ghost has become to us a formula, just as God and righteous?iess were to the Jews, to get the force of Christ’s use of the word 4 Pneuma,’ we ought to re- translate the word for ourselves, and to call it, for a time at any rate, rather influence , intuition , or some such name. For it was thus that Jesus himself used it. When Jesus was going away, above all, and his disciples were to be thrown on themselves and left to use his method of inwardness more deeply and thoroughly, not having him to go to, — then they would find, he said, a new power come to their help ; a power of insight such as they had never had before, and which was none of their making, but came from God as Jesus did, and said nothing of itself, but only what God said or Jesus said ; a * Para- clete,’ or reinforcement working in aid of God and Jesus : even the Spirit of Truth. While Jesus was with them, the disciples had lived in contact with aletheia , or reality ; and they were promised now an intuition of reality within themselves. Now, will it be believed that the Athanasian Creed, and our bishops, and the clergymen who write to the TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 239 Guardian , and dogmatic theology in general* should have imagined that Christ here meant to convey to us the 4 blessed doctrine ’ that this Spirit of truth* too, ‘ is a Person ’ ? The force of metaphysical talent out-running literary experience could really, we say, no further go ! The Muse, who visited Hesiod when he was tending his sheep on the side of Helicon, and ‘ breathed into him a divine voice, and taught him the things to come and the former things,’ might every bit as well be made, with much display of meta- physical apparatus, 4 a Person.’ The influence which visited Hesiod was a real one ; — that is as much meta- physics as we can without error, in a case of this sort, apply. Whoever applies more, falls into absurdity. The 4 Spirit of truth,’ indeed, which rejoiced the wise poet of Ascra, was the Muse of art and science, the Muse of the gifted few, the Muse who brings to the ingenious and learned among mankind 4 a forgetful- ness,’ as Hesiod sings, ‘of evils and a truce from cares.’ It was the same Muse, no doubt, who visits the Bishop of Gloucester when he sits in his palace, meditating on per- sonality, or sometimes perhaps, in his lighter hours, on political economy. The Paraclete that Jesus promised, on the other hand, was the Muse of righteousness ; the Muse of the workday, care-crossed, toil-stained millions 240 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . of men, — the Muse of humanity. To all who live, for all that concerns three-fourths of life, this divine Muse offers ‘a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares/ That is why it is far more real, and far greater, than the Muse of Hesiod ; not from any metaphysical personality. 9 * But the whole centre of gravity of the Christian religion, in the popular as well as in the so-called orthodox notion of it, is placed in Christ’s having, by his death in satisfaction for man’s sins, performed the contract originally passed in the Council of the Trinity, and having thus enabled the magnified and non-natural Man in heaven, who is the God of theology and of the multitude alike, to consider his justice satisfied, and to allow his mercy to go forth on all who heartily believe that Christ has paid their debt for them. Now we have seen how that whole structure of materialising mythology, which the Bible is supposed to deliver, and in which this conception of the Atonement , as it is called, holds the central place, drops away and disappears as the Bible comes to be better known. The true centre ot gravity of the Christian religion is in the method and the secret of Jesus, approximating, in their application, ever closer to the epieikeia } the sweet reasonableness and unerring sureness TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF . 241 of Jesus himself. And as the method of Jesus led up to his secret, and his secret was dying to ‘ the life in this world ’ and living to ‘the eternal life/ both his method and his secret, therefore, culminated in his ‘ perfecting ’ on the cross, which he foresaw and foretold. The miracle of the corporeal resurrection ruled the minds of those who have reported Christ’s sayings for us ; and their report, how he foretold his death, cannot always be entirely accepted. One of them alleges him to have foretold it by pointing to his body and . saying : Destroy this temple , and in three days I will raise it up ! Now, this is certainly an instance of the retrospective pressure exercised on words of Jesus by the established belief in the resurrection. He had said of the Temple at Jerusalem : There shall not be left of it one stone upon another . He had said of himself and this much- reverenced Temple : There standeth here One greater than the Temple . He had said he should be put to death, and the death of the worst malefactors, crucifixion. He had said that this should happen after he had worked but a little while longer : I do cures to-day and to-morrow , and the third day I shall be perfected. Nothing more was needed. The miraculous prediction concerning ‘ the temple of his body ’ was ready to the miracle-writer’s hand ! R 242 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . J esus had said : Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up ! In sayings of this kind, the internal evidence is all- important. Now, the sure clue of internal evidence to follow, in tracing any words of Jesus about his death and rising again, is the clue given by the ideal of the stricken Servant of God in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. This ideal, as we have seen, Jesus had adopted and elevated as the true ideal of Israel’s Saviour ; he had corrected by it the favourite popular ideals he found regnant. And, in this ideal of the stricken Servant of God, the notion of sacrifice is, that this lover of righteousness falls because of a state of iniquity and wickedness which he had no share in making, and as the only remedy for it. The notion of redemption is, that by endurance to the end and by his death crowning his life, he establishes all seekers after good in their allegiance to good, enables* them to follow it and to reach true life through it. Finally, the notion of resurrection is, that his death makes an epoch of victory for him and his cause, which thenceforward live and reign indestructibly. He had done no violence , neither was any deceit in his mouth ; he was bruised for our iniquities , the Eternal hath laid on him the iniquity of us all ; — there is the sacrifice. With his stripes we are healed; — there is the redemption. TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 243 But : When he hath made his life an offering for sin , he shall see his seed \ he shall prolo 7 ig his days , and the pleasure of the Eternal shall prosper in his hand ; — there, at the end of it all, is the resurrection. And just these stages we shall find again in Jesus. Which of you convicteth me of sin ? he asked the Jews ; nevertheless : The Son of Man vmst stiff er many things and be rejected of this generation ; the Son of Man must be lifted up ; — there is the sacrifice. Except a grain of corn fall into the ground and die , it abideth alone; the Son of Man came to give his life a ranson for many ; — there is the redemption. But: If the grain of corn die y it bringeth forth much fruit ; f if I be lifted up from the earth , will draw all men unto me ; if I go not away the Spirit of truth will not come unto you , but if I depart I will send him unto you , and when he is come he will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment ; — there, there is the resurrection and triumph ! The use by Jesus of the words life and death must on no account, however, be limited to this his crucifixion and after-triumph, though in these, no doubt, his dying and living culminated. Yet both here, and always in his use of them, they are to be referred to his secret : ‘ He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it wito life eternal ; renounce thyself \ 244 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . and take up thy cross daily , and follow Me ! ’ Long before his signal Crucifixion Jesus had died, by taking up daily that cross which his disciples, after his daily example, were to take up also. ‘ Therefore doth my Father love me/ he says, i because I lay dow?i my life that I may take it again l He had risen to life long before his crowning Resurrection, risen to life in what he calls ‘ my joy ,’ which he desired to see fulfilled in his disciples also ; * my joy , to have kept my Father’s commandment and abide in his love.’ Nay, and there is no more powerful testimony to Christ’s real use of the words life and death , than a famous text, borrowed from Jewish Abeiglaube , which popular Chris- tianity has wrested in support of its tenet of a physical resurrection at the Messiah’s second advent. Whatever we may think of the narrative of the raising of Lazarus, we need have no difficulty in believing that Jesus really did say to the brother or sister of a dead disciple : ‘ Thy brother shall rise again ! ’ and that the mourner replied : ‘ I know that he shall rise again at the resurrection of the last day.’ For the answer which follows has the certain stamp of Jesus : ‘ I am the resurrection and the life; he that believ eth on me , though he die , shall live , and whoso- ever liveth and believeth on me shall never die l Now, Martha believed already in the resurrection of Jewish TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF, 245 and Christian Aberglanbe , — the resurrection according to the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch, the resurrection of the last day, when 4 they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt/ But Jesus corrects her Aberglciube , by telling her that her brother is not dead at all ; and his words, out of which the story of the miracle very likely grew, do really make the miracle quite unnecessary. ‘ He that has believed on me and had my secret/ says Jesus, ‘though his body die to the life of this world, still lives ; for such an one had died to the life of this world already, and found true life, life out of himself, life in the Eternal that loveth righteousness, by doing so/ Just in the same way, again, in his promise to see his disciples again after his crucifixion and to take up his abode with them, Jesus corrects, for those who have eyes to read, he corrects in the clearest and most decisive way, those very errors with which our common material conceptions of life and death have made us invest his death and resurrection. ‘ Yet a little while/ he says, ‘ and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me, because I live, and ye shall live too. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me ; and him that loveth me I will love, and will manifest 246 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . myself to him l Jude naturally objects : ‘ How is it that thou wilt manifest thyself to us and not to the world ? * And Jesus answers : ‘If a man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him ; he that loveth me not, keepeth not my word.’ Therefore the manifesta- tion of himself he speaks of is nothing external and material. It is, — like the manifestation of God to him that ordereth his conversation right, the internal life and joy in keeping the commandments, — it is the life for the disciples of Christ, in and with Christ, in keeping the commandments of God ; those commandments, which had at last in their true scope been made known to men, through Christ’s method and through his secret. 10. Thus, then, did Jesus seek to transform the immense materialising Aberglaube into which the religion of Israel had fallen, and to spiritualise it at all points ; while in his method and secret he supplied a sure basis for practice. But to follow him entirely there was needed an epieikeia , an unfailing sweetness and an unerring perception, like his own. It was much if his disciples got firm hold on his method and his secret ; and if they transmitted fragments enough of his lofty spiritualism, to make it in the fulness TESTIMONY OF JESUS TO HIMSELF. 247 of time discernible, and to make it at once and from the first in a large degree serviceable. Who can read an the Gospels the comments preserved to us, both of disciples and of others, on what he said, and not feel that Jesus must have known, while he nevertheless persevered in saying them, how things like : 4 The bread \ which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world] or : 4 1 will not leave you comfortless , I will come unto you] would be misapprehended by those who heard them ? But, indeed, Jesus himself tells us that he knew and foresaw this. With the promise of the Spirit of truth which should, after his departure, work in his disciples first, then in the world, and which should convince the world of sin of righteousness and of judgment, and finally transform it, we are all familiar. But how little we remark the impressive words, uttered to the crowd around him only a little while before, and of far wider application than the reporter imagined : 6 Yet a little while is the light with you; walk while ye have the light , lest the darkness overtake you unawares ! 1 The real application cannot have been to the unconverted only • — a call to the unconverted to make haste because their chance of conversion would soon, with Christ’s departure, be gone. No, converts came in far thicker after Christ’s departure than in his life. The words are for the converted also. It is as if J esus foresaw the want 248 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . of his sweet reasonableness which he could not leave, to help his method and his secret which he could leave as if he foresaw his words misconstrued, his rising to eternal life turned into a physical miracle, the advent of the Spirit of truth turned into a scene of thaumaturgy, Peter proving his Master’s Messiahship from a Psalm that does not prove it, the great Apostle of the Gentiles word-splitting like a pedantic Rabbi, the most beautiful soul among his own reporters saddling him with meta- physics; — foresaw the growth of creeds, the growth of' dogma, and so, through all the confusion worse con- founded of councils, schoolmen, and confessions of faith,, down to our own twin Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester bent on c doing something ’ for the honour of the Godhead of the Eternal Son ! THE EARLY WITNESSES. 249, CHAPTER VIII. THE EARLY WITNESSES. Our object in this essay has never been to argue against miracles. Even with Lourdes and La Salette before our eyes, we may yet say that miracles are doomed ; they will drop out, like fairies or witchcraft, from among the matters which serious people believe. Our one object is to save the revelation in the Bible from being made solidary , as our Comtist friends say, with miracles ; from being attended to or held cheap just in proportion as miracles are attended to or are held cheap. In like manner, nay far more, our object is not, and never can be, to pick holes in the apostles and reporters of Jesus. But much which they say cannot stand ; our one object is to hinder people from making Jesus solidary with this, and with his reporters’ and apostles’ character for infallibility. To this extent, and to this only, we are brought at moments into collision with miracles, into collision with the disciples of Jesus and with the writers 250 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . of the New Testament. We have to show that, the men being what and when and whence they were, the miracles would certainly grow up for them around and in the wake of Jesus. How did Christ’s words : c I will see you again , I go to prepare a place for you /’ grow into the legend, — so beautiful, and round which have for centuries gathered such sacred feelings and aspirations, yet a legend, — of his corporeal resurrection and ascension ? How ? Why, Herod^s first words, when after the execution of John the Baptist he heard of Jesus, were : ‘It is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead!' In such an atmosphere of belief were the disciples living, when their loss of Jesus, the greatest loss that ever befel men, happened. All his dis- course, when he was with them, had run on life and death, — apparent death, enduring life ; and how many are the stories of the survivors, in an atmosphere of belief like that of those Palestine times, refusing to believe in the death of a head even far less precious to them, full of reports of his reappearance in this place and that place, feeding themselves on the promise of his trium- phant return! How many thousands at this moment, in Persia, refuse to credit the death of the Bab, their Gate of life , executed some years ago ! assert that he will return, that he has been seen, that they have seen him ! THE EARLY WITNESSES . 251 But the reporters of J esus were not as others ; they were infallible ? So infallible, that they report themselves, when Jesus reappeared, after all his labours to transform and spiritualise for them the old Jewish ideal, — they report themselves to have met him with the inquiry : Lord , wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel I But the Holy Ghost had not then been given ? And after the Holy Ghost was given, we find them with one voice asserting that in the lifetime of that generation should come Christ’s second advent and the end of the world ; Peter falling back into J udaism, so that Paul had to withstand him to the face because he was to be blamed, and Paul himself proving sal- vation to be by Jesus, from seed , in the promise to Abraham, being used in the singular ! That it is im- possible the disciples of Jesus should have been, alone of all the disciples in the world, infallible, that it is begging the question to say they were infallible, need not be made out ; it is conspicuous, on the face of their own showing of themselves, that they were not infallible. And well it is that it should be so ; for this favourite Protestant doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible writers, inherited, indeed, from the Fathers along with that of the infalli- bility of the Church, but kept and extolled by Protestants as the true single anchor to ride at, whereas the other 252 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. was rotten, — this doctrine involves Christianity in dangers quite as serious as its discarded rival does. But it was not for nothing that the Apostles had lived with T esus ; or even, in the case of a great religious spirit like Paul, lived in his time, lived in his country, had his presence and words near and fresh to them. And, un- true and dangerous as is the popular Protestant doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Apostles, making them infallible, and vouchsafed no more to anyone after the apostles were gone, yet it rests on a true perception of the vast distance which separates them from after-writers on Christianity, from the Fathers as from Luther and Calvin, all alike. This they owe to their contact with Jesus ; or, in Paul's case, to their nearness to him. The impression of him was too fresh and vivid, his method and secret still had too firmly the prominence he had given them, the atmosphere of his sweet reasonableness still hung round his disciples too much, to permit of the deep con- fusions and misunderstandings of after-times. There is no pleasure in proving that the Apostles sometimes made mistakes ; but to trace in the Apostles the reproduction of the method and secret of Jesus, is one of the most delightful of tasks. And since to show such reproduction of Jesus in his followers throws light on what we have said of Jesus himself, and confirms it, we will permit THE EARLY WITNESSES. 253 ourselves to do this very briefly. And we will show it, first and above all, in the case of the three great witnesses to him in the New Testament, — Peter, Paul, and the writer who is called, properly or improperly, St. John. 2. To begin with St. Peter. The First Epistle of St. Peter commends itself almost as certainly as the genuine work of the author whose name it bears, as the Second Epistle bespeaks itself the contrary. And, except for the one strange passage about the spirits in prison and Noah’s flood, at the end of the third chapter, — where the meaning which was in the writer’s mind is probably now irrecoverable for us, — there is shed over this whole production more, perhaps, of the epicikeia , or what we call the sweet reasonableness, of Christ, than over any other epistle we possess. Very much this is due to its simplicity, to the unambitious nature of its topics and of its treatment of them ; because, clearly, the application of prophecy, the adjustment of the old ideal of Israel to the new, the management of the ideas of life and death, of justification, and the like, — in all of which the epieikcia of Christ hi mself shone forth so matchlessly, — are much harder to treat with the winning simplicity and limpid intuitiveness which make the charm of epieikeici , than conduct itself is. 254 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . And conduct is what this epistle is concerned with, almost from the first line to the last. 4 Your good conver- sation in Christ ( As He who called you is holy, be ye also holy in all your conversation — this is the head and front of the matter with the writer. Holiness is but, as we have said, a deep and finished righteousness. And the method for it is the method of Jesus : — the inward man awakened, conscience. 4 Born again through the word of God that liveth and abideth ; 1 4 The hidden man of the heart ; 9 4 Having a good conscience ; 9 — again and again this word 4 conscience/ so strange to the Old Testament, appears. And the two great groups of faults which, in a rough way, do sufficiently comprehend all conduct, are again, as they were by Jesus, marked as the matter to be dealt with : — faults of temper and faults of sensuality. 4 Not conformed to the former lusts of your time of ignorance ; ’ 4 The time past may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, having walked in dissoluteness , lusts , excess of wine , revellings ; 9 4 Abstain from fleshly lusts , which war against the soul ; * 4 Be tem- perate , be sober ; ’ — -this is for faults of sensuality. 4 Putting away all malice, and all deceit, and insincerities , and envies, and all evil-speakings 9 ; 4 Be of one mind, feel with one another , love as brethren 9 ; 4 Be tender-hearted, humble- minded j 9 4 The incorruptible of that mild and quiet spirit THE EARLY WITNESSES . 25S which is, in the sight of God, of great price ; ’ — this is; for the faults of temper. So far the 4 method ’ of Jesus ; and now for his 4 secret of self-renouncement, of dying to our apparent self,, to our life in this world. 4 Even though ye suffer for * righteousness, happy are ye!' 4 For to suffering ye are' called \ because Christ also suffered for our sakes, leaving us an ensample that we should follow his steps ; ’ 1 As - Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with • the same mind, for he that suffers in the flesh is freed fro?n * sin ; 1 ( Elected of God unto obedience and sprinkling withr the blood of Christ l And nowhere does the joy , which* with Christ is the great test and sanction of his method* and secret, come out fuller and stronger than in this epistle. 4 But ye area chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, to tell forth the excellences - of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvel- lous light ! 1 The belief in the bodily resurrection, of Christ, and'* the expectation of his second Advent in the life-time of the generation then living, are signal supports to the- writer's mind. But our popular notion of the Atonement r — Christ’s death represented as a satisfaction of GodV offended justice, — does not yet appear. The governing idea of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, adopted by Jesus LITERATURE AND DOGMA . 256 himself, is still faithfully preserved. Christ died for his people ‘to redeem them, from their vain conversation delivered by tradition ; 9 Christ suffered, c in order that we, •dying to sins, might live to righteousness/ 3 - Next we come to St. Paul; but elsewhere 1 we have •spoken so fully of St. Paul’s theology that we shall be very brief here. Need we say that righteousness is its ground-thought, — real righteousness discerned to be such by means of a change of the inner man? ‘ Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keepitig of the commandments of God / Righteousness is the end and aim. Then, in the words : ‘ I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offence towards God and men continually,’ we find ourselves in the method of Jesus. ‘ Let every man prove by experience his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another ; ’ £ Prove all things by experience , keep what is good ; ’ ‘ Prove by experwice what things are excellent ; 7 £ Able to prove by expci'ience what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God/ All this points to inward appraisal, the method of inwardness, the indi- vidual conscience. Jesus has given a new faculty of judg- ing things, light : ‘ All things that are convicted as wrong 1 See St. Paid and Protestantism . THE EARLY WITNESSES. 2 57 are shown to be what they really are by the light ; for what- ever shows things to be what they really are, is light. Wherefore he saith : Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light ! 1 This is the new power of the method of Jesus, of conscience. And no one has so well described as St. Paul the working of conscience as first set going by Christianity. c Commending ourselves, by the manifesting of the reality , to every human conscience ! 1 ‘ The hidden things of a mads heart are made manifest ,’ he says ; 4 all that he hears convicts him, sifts him to the bottom; he falls on his face and worships, declaring that God is indeed here ! ’ Nor does St. Paul fail to specify again and again the matter wherewith conscience deals : — ‘ the works of the flesh] as he calls them; ‘ fornica- tion, uncleanness, dissoluteness, idol-worship, witch- craft, hatreds, strife, jealousy, angers, contentions, divisions, sects, envies, drunkenness, revellings, and such like/ They are manifest , says he, and so they are; for they roughly cover what all the Corinthians, to whom he wrote, understood by conduct , — the whole body of faults connected with our two great primary instincts, faults 1 Eph. v. 13, 14. The Epistle to the Ephesians cannot well be altogether Paul’s, but it is full of Pauline things, and this is certainly among them. S 258 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. of temper and faults of sensuality. Elsewhere, to the Colossians, he even seems to follow, — but still in an in- formal, approximative manner, such as one uses when one speaks of matters so familiar that to be precise is pedan- tic, — he even seems to actually follow this division, and to throw faults of conduct into two groups which nearly correspond to it. Finally, to the works of the flesh, which are thus evidently conduct wrong, he opposes the fruits of the Spirit, which are as evidently conduct right : ‘ Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.’ By following the inward method of Jesus, he tells us, we perceive that here is the subject- matter of righteousness, that this is what keeping the com- mandments of God really is. But that the 4 secret’ of Jesus was applied to this subject-matter by Paul, who can doubt, when that secret is the very heart of Paul’s theology, and he came to view the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ altogether in connexion with it? We would ask the student of the Pauline theology to read again now, by the light of what we have in this essay said of the teaching of Jesus, what we have elsewhere said of Paul’s theology . 1 At present we will quote as Paul’s witness to the secret of Jesus but these three texts, so strong and plain that they 1 St. Paul and Protestantism, Part ii. THE EARLY WITNESSES. 259 may well stand as the great signal-marks to it : 4 I am cru- cified with Christ ; ’ 4 If ye die with him, ye shall also live with him ; ’ 4 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.’ The word of the cross , as he calls it, is his pole-star. By the method and example of Jesus he has become aware of anew principle of choosing and refusing, of going after things and retiring from them. This principle acts always in view of a new creature , the higher or real self, agreeing with the 4 will of God,’ con- flicting with the lower or apparent self, or the wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts. With this new principle, a man’s great aim is now 4 to put off, as regards our former way of life, the old man that perishes by compliance with the misleading lusts ; 1 and to put on the new man , that after God is created in righteousness . And the secret for this is, says Paul, being crucified with Christ , or, being con- formed to Christ's death , or, always bearing about in the body the dying of fesus. Paul told his converts he was 4 in travail of them till Christ be fashioned in them,’ — the entire Christ, with his method, secret, and sweet reason- ableness ; but the great stress is laid on the 4 secret,’ on dying with him , because this was Christ’s secret, because 1 T bu naXcubv d.vOp(anov x rbu J>0eip6fjL€vov Kara rds in lOvju'ias tt)s dnarrjs. — Eph. iv. 22 . 2 6o LITERATURE AND DOGMA . the heart of the matter is indeed here. And as we shall do well to have the 4 secret’ in our minds when Jesus talks of ‘ the living water/ ‘ the bread of life/ so it is of the possession of this same secret that Paul is specially- thinking, when he talks of ‘ counting all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; ’ or when he says : ‘ God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ , whereby the world is crucified unto me , and L unto the world ! 9 And the evidence of joy which testifies to the salvation there is in J esus and in his secret, and the sense of ‘ not ourselves ’ which fills this joy with awe and gratitude, and makes it religious to the core, who has rendered them like Paul ? 4 Rejoice evermore ! ’ ‘ Rejoice in the Lord alway; again I say, rejoice J 1 6 Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing !’ 6 As the sufferings of Christ abound with us, so through Christ abounds also the consolation? ‘ The unsearchable riches of Christ ! 1 6 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? ’ ‘ O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! ’ c Lt is God that worketh in you , both to will and to do, of his good power/ ‘ He that glorieth, let him glory in the Eternal !' All this is in Paul ; and there is, besides, the Aber- glaube or extra-belief of the bodily resurrection, of Christ’s second advent during the life-time of men then living, THE EARLY WITNESSES. 261 of the God ‘ willing to show his wrath and to make his power known with vessels of wrath fitted to destruction ; ’ there is the Rabbinical logic, and the unsound use of prophecy and of the Old Testament. For popular theology the writings of Paul are a fatal rock ; because they are the products of a mind that was constantly growing, and because they affect the forms of logic and science which a complete notional system adopts, while their true character and force is that of an approximative experience. So the mechanical theory of inspiration makes strange work indeed with Paul's writings. They are, how- ever, to those who can use them right, inexhaustible, not only in their power of animation and edification, but also in their illustration of the genuine doctrine of Jesus. 4 - The author of the Fourth Gospel is undoubtedly the author of the epistle which we call the First Epistle of St. J ohn ; and we of course might expect that the epistle should tally with the gospel. And so it does ; only it upholds, one may say, in one most important matter, the doctrine of Christ against the Fourth Gospel itself. We have seen how the author of this gospel had a lean- ing to metaphysics ; so that he delights M. Burnouf by showing a quite Indo-European turn for making God into 262 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . a metaphysical source of things, such as is not unworthy, perhaps, of being called a cosmic unity; and Jesus into the Logos, necessarily related, by some lofty metaphysical law or other, to this cosmic unity. But presently came the Gnostics, still more full of the Aryan genius, and still more admired by M. Burnouf ; full of religion’s being a knowing rather than a doing , a metaphysical conception rather than righteousness . And, in fact, as we have said already, it may well seem wonderful that so great ' a thing as religion should be taken up with so simple a thing as conduct ; so that Christ says, that he who receives the kingdom of God as a little child , — that is, who simply receives it as concerned with this simple matter, — the same is the greatest in that kingdom. Christ does say so, however ; and no one who had lived with him, and felt his influence, could doubt it. But the Gnostics, who had not lived with him, did not think so ; and they naturally imagined that a man who was right about such grand things as the cosmic unity, and the pleroma, and emanation, and personality, and con- substantiality, and the like, must have true religion and be the perfect man. And they naturally imagined, too, that the Christ, the Saviour of the world, could not have been anything so unmetaphysical, so unworthy of the cosmic unity, as a mere man with flesh and blood ; THE EARLY WITNESSES. 263 and the Doceice , or Apparitionists, taught accordingly that Jesus had been an apparition or phantom, not a man at all. The writings of the Apostles can hardly be under- stood unless we know that very often they are alluding to these Gnostics and their writings, which had at the time a great success. Now, the author of the Fourth Gospel had a turn, as we have seen, for metaphysics. But a man, who had been in vital contact with Jesus and aletheia , knew what reality was, the reality of Jesus, too well, to carry his play of meta- physics into the domain of this. And by a sort of retribu- tion, glorious indeed to the writer, still more glorious to the power of Christ’s word, the two great points of the document which we call the First Epistle of St. John are these : Jesus Christ come in the flesh ! and, He that doeth righteous?iess is righteous ! Jesus is no metaphysical phantom, but a living man having to do with conduct. Religion is no intellectualism, but righteousness. Here we have the substratum as Jesus laid it : righteousness. And we have also, the ‘ method ’ of conscience, which tells us what righteousness is, and how great it is, and that it is indeed the substratum, c Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things ; the unction ye received from him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one should teach you, but as his unction teacheth you of all 264 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. things, and is true and is no lie, and as it teacheth you ye will abide in it.’ ‘ If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things ; if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.’ It is characteristic of this beautiful soul, that he does not go into detail and give lists of faults. He has fixed the method, conscience , and the subject-matter of the method, righteousness ; and that is enough. It is charac- teristic, in like manner, that he states and restates the 4 secret ’ of Jesus by its positive and loveliest side. The ‘ method 9 gives us light , and the ‘ secret ’ gives us the power of 4 walking in the light ’ ; and, ‘ If we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another I For to live by dying to our life in this world is to transfer the natural love of life from the personal self to the impersonal self, — the self that we share with all other men ; so that to die to oneself is to love the brethren , and by this side is the secret of Jesus always in our Epistle presented. ‘Let us love one another J 9 ‘We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren .’ And it agrees with what we have seen in the Fourth Gospel of his ear for Christ’s profounder teaching, that in this writer’s Epistle, too, we find the proof of God, of Christ, and of eternal life, made experimental , rested on internal evidence. ‘ No man hath ever yet seen God ; THE EARLY WITNESSES. 265 if we love one another, God dwelleth in us. ? Therefore we must not attempt to define God adequately, or in a way that goes beyond our experience, — to say, like the Bishop of Gloucester : God is a Person ! — but we define God approximately, according to our actual experience of him. And as Jesus had said of this infinite not ourselves , 4 God is an influence / so our Epistler says, 4 God is love l And he says indifferently, 4 He that loveth is born of God/ and, 4 He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God/ because believing that Jesus is the Christ means, mainly admitting the authority of his message or secret, and his secret is : Love one another ! And God’s evidence for his Son is this : 4 That God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.’ That is : in righteousness we have the sense of being truly alive, and through the method, secret, and sweet reasonableness of Jesus, and only through these, we get at righteousness. As in the Fourth Gospel, and indeed in all the Gospels, the joy which is the signal accompaniment of life is in this Epistle strongly marked : 4 These things write I unto you, that your joy may be full l And the not ourselves , that element wherein religion has its being : — 4 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us ; we love, because he first loved us ! ? As we did not make the law of righteousness, so we did not, the writer means, 266 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . make 4 the fulfilling of the law,’ which is love ; it arises in us from the way the not ourselves affects us. In our Epistle, the Aberglaube of the approaching second advent appears, of course, prominently ; not so that of Christ’s physical resurrection. On the other hand, there are here launched phrases destined to rank one day as foremost texts fo v the doctrine of the Atonement : 4 The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin; ’ 4 He is the propitiation for our sins.’ No development is given to them. How much in them is figure, how much is tenet or the commencements of tenet, we cannot say ; but there they are, they are launched, and the hint is given to popular religion to materialise and blunder with. 5 * The Epistle of St. James and the Epistle to the Hebrews, though not of equal importance with the docu- ments we have been reviewing, suggest, nevertheless, two or three remarks. The zeal of St. James for works, carries us back to Christ’s sentence : 4 If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments ! ’ it is the voice of the indestructible sense in the writer that with Jesus righteousness was always the end and aim. The opposition to St. Paul, of which so much has been said, does not really exist ; with both Apostles the aim is identical, THE EARLY WITNESSES. 267 righteousness. Only Paul observed righteousness to be in danger from men using the Jewish law as a kind of spell which they could conjure mechanically with, and therefore he elevated the faith by which we get hold of the ‘ secret’ of Jesus, of the ‘doctrine of the cross/ James, in his turn, observed righteousness being in danger from men using faith, as it may easily be used, as a spell or charm to conjure mechanically with ; and therefore he elevated works , the being a doer, not an idle hearer and talker. But his noble expression, ‘ If a man offend in one point, he is guilty of all ! ’ and his calling the law which he had in view, ‘ the law of liberty ,’ proves sufficiently that in no unsound sense did he elevate works, as Paul in no unsound sense elevated faith. The matter whereon the ‘secret’ of Jesus finds exer- cise, ‘ the wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts,’ is well called by St James : ‘ Our pleasures which war in our members.’ And when he goes on and says : ‘ Being in with the world is being out with God ! ’ 1 he has on his lips, and in his thoughts too, the very words of the secret : ’ ‘ He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.’ For he means, not, as many readers suppose : ‘ He that stands well with the world stands ill 1 'H (piX'ia rod k6ctijlov €X&P a r °v eariV. — James, iv. 4. 268 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. with God \ 9 he means : ‘ He that is in with the pleasures which war in our members, is out with God/ But we must not dwell at length on this writer, in- structive as he is, and ill as he has been often judged. In fineness or richness of spiritual perception his Epistle may be inferior to that of others ; without undue disparagement of him we can own this. All the more remarkable, as a testimony to what was chiefly striking in Christ, is his signalling and extolling that character in Christianity into which fineness of perception enters most : epieikeia . ‘ The wisdom from above/ says St. James, ‘is sweetly reasonable l It is more difficult to limit ourselves in speaking of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Almost alone in the Bible, it is, like later theology, a notional work as distinguished from an experimental work; that is, instead of being found to run up, at last, into an experience of the Eternal that makes for righteousness, it will be found to run up into a notion of Jesus being the Logos, with the characters of the Logos as they are stated, for instance, in Philo ; and of this being proveable from Scripture and putting an end to the old Jewish dispensation. And because of this notional character, later theology has so much used the Epistle to the Hebrews, and is really in great part built on it. For later theology is notional, too ; the ground- THE EARLY WITNESSES . 269 thesis of the Bishop of Gloucester, ‘ the blessed truth that the God of the Universe is a Person/ is just such a notion as the ground-thesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Jesus is the Logos of Jewish- Alexandrian philosophy. Religion has nothing really to do with either thesis, and that is fortunate ; for neither thesis is demonstrable, and the demonstrations attempted are often palpably hollow. For instance, the whole of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is an allegation of text after text as meaning Jesus, and as therefore establishing the writer’s thesis, not one of which texts does really mean Jesus. The seventh chapter, again, is one tissue of clever, learned trifling, such as we might have from the Bishop of Gloucester, all based on the false assumption that ‘ Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek ! ’ was really said to Jesus , whereas it was not. Now, just because of this notional character, the Epistle to the Hebrews could not have been Paul’s ; for Paul goes upon experience, not notion. And such a work can never have the value and interest of Paul’s writings, for it is, in truth, all in the air. But a man who puts a hollow notion as the basis of his theology, may yet in treating it give us all kinds of real and valuable experience ; of this we have abundant examples in the writings of theologians. And so the 270 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Epistle to the Hebrews is full of beautiful things, and things of real religious experience ; but they are indepen- dent of the ground-thesis of the Epistle, their value has another source than the value of the writer’s main design, and indeed is often marred by it. Their value is as reminiscences of Jesus, and their witness to Jesus is the more striking because of the medium where they appear. To have survived and appear in such a medium they must have been originally very strong. The sense that in righteousness religion begins and ends, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has not ; like the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, he has lost it. He talks of ‘ not laying again the foundations,’ by which he means righteousness, but 4 going on unto perfection,’ by which he means such things as the doctrine that Christ is, like the Logos of theosophy, High Priest, and as the demonstration about Melchisedek. All this is of the same order with the Bishop of Gloucester’s 6 blessed truth that the God of the universe is a Person,’ which he and his friends imagine to be the marrow of religion, whereas in truth it is not re- ligion at all. But it is remarkable how frequently the writer of our Epistle has the word of the ‘method,’ conscie7ice ; again and again it recurs with him ; nowhere in the Bible does it appear, within equal limits of space, THE EARLY WITNESSES. 271 so often. The word has evidently established itself and become a power. But most remarkable is the testimony of this writer to the ‘ secret/ His view of the sacrifice of Christ as replacing the sacrifices of the Jewish law is all notional, and is really quite independent of Christ’s sacrifice as the ‘secret/ Yet the ‘secret’ appears; and in phrases so striking and so much profounder than the strain of this writer’s argument, that one is tempted to see in them a tradition of words, not otherwise preserved, of Jesus himself. ‘It behoved God, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the leader of their salvation perfect through suffering? Christ ‘ learned obedience from the things that he suffered , and being perfected, became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him / Christ, like mankind, partook of flesh and blood, ‘ in order that by death he might deliver them who through fear of death were all their life subject to bondage / This is precisely the ‘ secret ; ’ the pain and fear and gloom of dying to our apparent self, to ‘ the wishes of the flesh and the current thoughts 9 are so great, that only Jesus and his ‘secret,’ lighting the process up with joy by showing it to be really life not death, could overcome them, and could enable mankind to overcome them. In like manner the noble phrase, ‘ without shedding of 272 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . blood is no remission 1 notional and unfruitful as is its use in the connexion where our author employs it, is in itself, perhaps, a reminiscence of actual words of Jesus; certainly it is a reminiscence of his ‘secret.’ In itself it ranks with the beautiful and profound phrase of St. Peter : ‘ He that suffers in the flesh hath ceased from sin . 1 Finally, in the ardour for martyrdom which followed the Christian Church a little later, in the passion for seeking out this kind of death, courting it, provoking it by every means discoverable, we shall not err if we believe that here again is visible the trace of the ‘ secret.’ Assuredly many martyrs, in the temper with which they provoked their death, were false to the epieikeia , the ‘ sweet reason- ableness,’ of Jesus, and laid themselves open to that sen- tence of Paul, the sentence which will be the final verdict of religious history on Puritanism also, Puritanism glorying in its resistances : ‘ Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity , it profiteth me nothing.’ And there was nothing to command or advise the repetition, upon every disciple, of the actual bodily execution of Jesus. But Jesus had enjoined dying , taking up the cross , the ‘secret; ’—a long inward travail, other, and often much harder, than being once for all executed. Paul still understood what Jesus meant by dying. But THE EARLY WITNESSES. 2 73 the apostolic age passed ; and now the Christian com- munity took the word literally, and Christians vied with each other which could run fastest to the place of execution. The wonderful spectacle accelerated Christianity’s conquest of the world ; but it was already an evidence of failure, in some sort, to follow the mind of Jesus and the teaching of his greatest apostles. Yet a little while is the light with you ! walk while ye have the light , lest the darkness overtake you unawares ! i 274 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . CHAPTER IX. ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. So spoke the men who had had the Light with them or near them. Mistakes they made and could not but make. But they still knew, that to believe Jesus to be the Son of God, meant to receive and apply the method and secret of Jesus; and therefore their word is the Christian's greatest source of instruction and inspiration after the word of Christ himself. But miracles, and the crowning miracles of the Resur- rection and Ascension to be followed by the second Advent, were from the first firmly fixed as parts of the disciples’ belief. 4 Behold, \ he cometh with clouds ; and every eye shall see him , and they also which fiiei'ced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him ! 9 As time went on, and Christianity spread wider and wider among the multitudes, and with less and less of control from the personal influence of Jesus, Christianity developed more and more its side of miracle and legend ; ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 2 75 until to believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant to believe the points of the legend : — his preternatural conception and birth, his miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily resurrection, his ascent into heaven, and his future triumphant return to judgment. And these and like matters are what popular religion drew forth from the records of Jesus as the essentials of belief. These essen- tials got embodied in a short formulary; and so the creed which is called the Apostles’ Creed came together. It is not the apostles’ creed, for it took more than five hundred years to grow to maturity ; it was not the creed of any single doctor or body of doctors, but it was the sort of summary of Christianity which the people, the Church at large, would naturally develope ; it is the popular science of Christianity. Given the alleged charge : 4 Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,’ and the candidate for baptism would naturally come to have a profession of faith to make respecting that whereinto he was baptized ; this profession of faith would naturally become just such a summary as the Apostles’ Creed. It contains no mention of either the ‘method’ or the ‘secret,’ it is occupied entirely with external facts ; and it may be safely said, not only that such a summary of religious faith could never have been T 2 276 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . delivered by Jesus, but it could never have been adopted as adequate by any of his principal apostles, by Peter, or Paul, or John. But it is, as we have said, the popular science of Christianity. As years proceeded, and the world came in to Chris- tianity, and the world’s educated people, and the educated people’s Aryan genius with its turn for making religion a metaphysical conception, — and all this in a time of declining criticism, a time when the possibility of true scientific criticism, in any direction whatever, was lessen- ing rather than increasing,— the popular science was too rude to satisfy. Ingenious men took its terms and its data, and applied to them not an historical criticism showing how they arose, but abstruse metaphysical con- ceptions. And so we have the so-called Nicene Creed, which is the learned science of Christianity, as the Apos- tles’ Creed is the popular science. And how this learned science is related to the Bible we shall feel, if we compare the religious utterances of its doctors with the religious utterances of the Bible ; — if, for instance, we compare with the Psalms the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, a truly great and religious man ; and this man, not in school and controversy, but in religious soli- loquy. St. Augustine prays : ‘ Come to my help, thou one God, one eternal true substance, where is no discre- ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 2 77 ’ pancy, no confusion, no transience, no indigency, no death; where is supreme concord, supreme evidence, supreme constancy, supreme plenitude, supreme life ; where nothing is lacking, nothing is over and above ; where he who begets and he who is begotten of him are one ; God, above whom is nothing, outside whom is no- thing, without whom is nothing ; God, beneath whom is • the whole, in whom is the whole, with whom is the whole . . . hearken, hearken, hearken unto me, my God, my Lord ; open thy door unto me that knock ! ’ And a further Book of Soliloquies , popularly ascribed to St. Augustine and printed with his works, but probably of a later date and author, shows the full-blown development of all this, shows the inevitable results of bringing to the idea of God this play of the intellectual fancy so alien to the Bible. The passages we shall quote take evidently their inspiration from the words of St. Augustine just given, and retain even in some degree his very forms of expression : ‘ Holy Trinity, superadmirable Trinity, and superinenarrable, and superinscrutable, and superinac- cessible, superincomprehensible, superintelligible, super- essential, superessentially surpassing all sense, all reason, all intellect, all intelligence, all essence of supercelestial minds ; which can neither be said, nor thought, nor understood, nor known, even by the eyes of angels ! * 278 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . And again, more practically, but still in the same style : 4 O three co-equal and co-eternal Persons, one and true God, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, who by thyself inhabitest eternity and light inaccessible, who hast founded the earth in thy power, and rulest the world by thy prudence, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, terrible and strong, just and merciful, admirable, laudable, amiable, one God, three persons, one essence, power, wisdom, goodness, one and undivided Trinity, open unto me that cry unto Thee the gates of righteousness ! 9 And now compare this with the Bible : — ‘ Teach me to do the thing that pleas eth thee, for thou art my God! let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land of righteous- ness ! That is Israel's way of praying ! that is how a poor ill-endowed Semite, belonging to the occipital races, unhelped by the Aryan genius and ignorant that religion is a metaphysical conception, talks religion ! and we see what a different thing he makes of it. But, finally, the original Semite fell more and more into the shade. The Aryas came to the front, the notion of religion being a metaphysical conception prevailed. But the doctors differed in their metaphysics ; and the doctors who conquered enshrined their victorious form of metaphysics in a creed, the so-called Creed of St. Atha- nasius, which is learned science like the Nicene Creed, ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 279 but learned science which has fought and got ruffled by fighting, and is fiercely dictatorial now it has won ; — learned science with a strong dash of violent and vindictive temper. So we have the three creeds : the so- called Apostles’ Creed, popular science; the Nicene Creed, learned science ; the Athanasian Creed, learned science with a strong dash of temper. And the two latter are founded on the first, taking its data just as they stand, but dressing them metaphysically. Now this first Creed is founded on a supposed final charge from J esus to his apostles : ‘ Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ! ’ it explains and expands what Jesus here told his apostles to baptize the world into. But we have already remarked the difference in character between the narrative, in the Gospels, of what happened before Christ’s death and the narrative of what happened after it. For all words of Jesus placed after his death, the internal evidence becomes pre-eminently important. He may well have 'said words attributed to him, but not then. So the speech to Thomas : * Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed ; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed ! ’ may quite well have been a speech of Jesus uttered on some occasion during his life, and then transferred to the story of the days after his 28 o LITERATURE AND DOGMA . resurrection and made the centre of this incident of the doubt of Thomas. On the other hand, again, the pro- phecy of the details of Peter’s death 1 is almost certainly an addition after the event, because it is not the least in the manner of Jesus ; what is in his manner, and what he had indeed said, are the words given elsewhere : ‘ Whither I go thou canst not follow' me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards.’ So, too, it is extremely im- probable that Jesus should have ever charged his apostles to 6 baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ There is no improbability in his investing them with a very high commission. He may perfectly well have said : 4 Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ But it is almost impossible he can have given this charge to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; it is by far too syste- matic, and what people are fond of calling an anachronism . It is not the least like what Jesus was in the habit of saying, and it is just like what would be attributed to him as baptism and its formula grew in importance. The genuine charge of Jesus to his apostles was, almost certainly : ‘ As my Father sent me, even so send I you,’ and not this. So that our three creeds, and with them 1 John xxi. 1 8 . ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 281 the whole of our so-called orthodox theology, are founded upon words which Jesus in all probability never uttered. 2. We may leave all questions about the Church, its rise, and its organisation, out of sight altogether. Much as is made of them, they are comparatively unimportant. Jesus never troubled himself with what are called Church matters at all ; his attention was fixed solely upon the individual. His apostles did what was necessary, as such matters came to require a practical notice and arrangement ; but to the apostles, too, they were still quite secondary. The Church grew into something quite different from what they or Jesus had, or could have had, any thought of. But this was of no importance in itself ; and how believers should organise their society as cir- cumstances changed, circumstances themselves might very well decide. The one important question was and is, how believers laid and kept hold*on the revelations contained in the Bible ; because for the sake of these it confessedly is, that every church exists. Even the apostles, we have seen, did not lay hold on them perfectly. In their attachment to miracles, in the prominence they gave to the crowning miracles of Christ’s physical resurrection and second 282 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . advent, they went aside from the saving doctrine of Jesus themselves, and were sure, — which was worse,— to make others go aside from it ten thousand times more. But they were too near to Jesus not to have been able to preserve the main lines of his teaching, and his way of using words ; and they did, as we have shown, preserve them. But at their death the immediate remembrance of Jesus faded away, and whatever Aberglaube the apostles them- selves had had and sanctioned was left to work without check ; and, at the same time, the world and society pre- sented conditions constantly less and less favourable to sane criticism. And it was then, and under these con- ditions, that the dogma which is now called orthodox, and which our dogmatic friends imagine to be purely a methodical arrangement of the admitted facts of Chris- tianity, grew up. We have shown from the thing itself, by putting the dogma in comparison with the genuine teaching of Jesus, how little it is this; but it is well to make clear to oneself also (for one can) from the circum- stances of the case, that it could not be this. For dogmatic theology is, in fact, an attempt at both literary and scientific criticism of the highest order ; and the age which developed dogma had neither the resources nor the faculty for such a criticism. It is idle to talk of the ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING . 283 theological instinct, the analogy of faith, as if by the mere occupation with a limited subject-matter one could reach the truth about it. It is as if one imagined that by the mere study of Greek we could reach the truth about the origin of Greek words, and dogmatise about them ; and could appeal to our supposed possession, through our labours, of the philological instinct, the analogy of lan- guage, to make our dogmatism go down. In general such an instinct, whether theological or philological, will mean merely, that, having accustomed ourselves to look at things through a glass of a certain colour, we see them always of that colour. What the science of Bible criticism, like all other science, needs, is a very wide experience from comparative observation in many directions, and a very slowly acquired habit of mind. All studies have the benefit of these guides, when they exist, and one isolated study can never have the benefit of them by itself. There is a common order, a general level, an uniform possibility, for these things. As were the geography, history, physiology, cosmology, of the men who developed dogma, so was also their faculty for a scientific Bible- criticism, such as dogma pretends to be. Now, we know what their geography, history, physiology, cosmology, were. And again, as one part of their scientific Bible-criticism, 2 34 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . so the rest. We have seen in the Bible-writ ers themselves a quite uncritical use of the Old Testament and of pro- phecy ; now, does this become less in the authors of our dogmatic theology, — a far more pretentious effort of criti- cism than the Bible-writers ever made, — or does it become greater? It becomes a thousand times greater. Not only are definite predictions found where they do not exist, — as, for example, in Isaiah’s I will restore thy judges as at the first , is found a'definite foretelling of the Apostles, — but in the whole Bible a secret allegorical sense is supposed, higher than the natural sense; so that Jerome calls tracing the natural sense an eating dust like the serpent, in modum serpentis terrain comedere . Therefore, for one expounder, Isaiah’s prophecy against Egypt : The Eternal rideth upon a light cloud, and shall come into Egypt , is the flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, and the light cloud is the virgin-born body of Jesus; for another, The government shall be upon his shoulder , is Christ’s carrying upon his shoulder the cross ; for another. The lion shall eat straw like the ox, is the faithful and the wicked alike receiving the body of Christ in the Eucharist. These are the men, this is the critical faculty from which our so-called orthodox dogma proceeded ; the worth of all the productions of such a critical faculty is easy to estimate, for the worth is nearly uniform. ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 28 5 When the Rabbinical expounders interpret : Woe unto them that lay field to field ! as a prophetic curse on the accumulation of Church property, or : Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink ! as a prediction of the profligacy of the Church clergy, or : Woe unto them that draiu iniquity with cords of vanity ! as God’s malediction on Church bells, we say at once that such critics thus give their measure as extractors of the true sense of the Bible. The moment we think seriously and fairly, we must see that the Patristic interpretations of prophecy give, in like manner, their authors’ measure as extractors of the true sense of the Bible. Yet this is what the dogma of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds professes to be, and must be if it is to be worth anything, — the true sense extracted from the Bible ; for ‘the Bible is the record of the whole revealed faith,’ says Dr. Newman. But we see how im- possible it is that this true sense the dogma of these creeds should be. Therefore it is, that it is useful to give signal instances of the futility of patristic and mediaeval criticism; not to raise an idle laugh, but because our whole dogmatic theology has a patristic and mediaeval source, and from the nullity of the deliverances of this criticism, where it can be brought manifestly to book, may be inferred 286 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. the nullity of its deliverances, where, from the im- palpable and incognisable character of the subjects treated, to bring it manifestly to book is impossible. In the account of the Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, ‘ the greater light to rule the day 9 is the priest- hood ; ‘ the lesser light to rule the night/ borrowing its beams from the greater, is the Holy Roman Empire. When the disciples of Jesus produced two swords, and Jesus said : 6 It is enough/ he meant, we are told, the temporal and the spiritual power, and that both were necessary and both at the disposal of the Church ; but by saying afterwards to Peter, after he had cut off the ear of Malchus : 4 Put up thy sword into the sheath/ he meant that the Church was not to wield the temporal power itself, but to employ the secular government to wield it. Now, this is the very same force of criticism which in the Athanasian Creed c arranged, sentence after sentence/ that doctrine of the Godhead of the Eternal Son for which the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester are so anxious to 6 do something.’ The Schoolmen themselves are but the same false criticism developed, and clad in an apparatus of logic and system. In that grand and immense repertory founded by the Benedictines, the Histoire Litteraire de la France , we read, that in the theological faculty ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 287 of the University of Paris, the leading mediaeval university,, it was seriously discussed whether Jesus at his ascension* had his clothes on or not. If he had not, did he appear before his apostles naked ? if he had, what became* of the clothes? Monstrous ! everyone will say . 1 * * Yes,, but the very same criticism, only full-blown, which produced : 4 Neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.’ The very same criticism, which origi- nally treated terms as scientific which were not scien- tific ; which, instead of applying literary and historical criticism to the data of popular Aberglaube , took these data just as they stood and merely dressed, them scientifically. Catholic dogma itself is true, urges, however, Dr. Newman, because intelligent Catholics have dropped^ errors and absurdities like the False Decretals or the works of the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite, but have not dropped dogma. This is only saying that meix drop the more palpable blunder before the less palpable.. The adequate criticism of the Bible is extremely difficult, and slowly does the ‘Zeit-Geist’ unveil it. Meanwhile, 1 Be it observed, however, that there is an honest scientific effort in the Schoolmen, and that to this sort of thing one really does- come, when one really sets oneself to treat miracles literally and exactly ; but most of us are content to leave them in a half light. 288 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . of the premature and false criticism to which we are accustomed, we drop the evidently weak parts first ; we retain the rest, to drop it gradually and piece by piece as it loosens and breaks up. But it is all of one order, and in time it will all go. Not the Athanasian Creed’s dam- natory clauses only, but the whole Creed ; not this one Creed only, but the three Creeds, — our whole received application of science , popular or learned, to the Bible. Bor it was an inadequate and false science, and could not, £rom the nature of the case, be otherwise. 3 - And now we see how much that clergyman deceives himself, who writes to the Guardian : 4 The objectors to the Athanasian Creed at any rate admit, that its doc- trinal portions are truly the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture on the deep mysteries in question, — priceless discoveries made in that field.’ When one has travelled to the Athanasian Creed along the gradual line of the historical development of Christianity, instead of living stationary all one’s life with this Creed blocking up the view, one is really tempted to say, when one reads a deliverance like that of this clergyman : Sancta simplicitas ! It is just because the Athanasian Creed pretends to be, in ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 289 its doctrine, ‘the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture/ and is so very far from if that it is worthless. It is ‘ the carefully distilled essence of the scattered intimations of Holy Scripture ’ just as that allegory of the two swords was. It is really a mixture, — for true criticism, as it ripens, it is even a grotesque mixture, — of learned pseudo-science with popular Aber- glaube. But it cannot be too carefully borne in mind that the real ‘ essence of Holy Scripture/ its saving truth, is no such criticism at all as the so-called orthodox dogma attempts, and attempts unsuccessfully. No, the real essence of Scripture is a much simpler matter. It is, for the Old Testament : To him that ordereth his con- versation right shall be shown the salvation of God ! — and, for the New Testament : Follow Jesus ! This is Bible dogma, as opposed to the dogma of our formularies. On this Bible dogma if Churches were founded, and to preach this Bible dogma if ministers were ordained, Churches and ministers would have all the dogma to which the Bible attaches eternal life. Plain and precise enough it is, in all conscience; with the advantage of being precisely right , whereas the plain dogma of our formu- laries is precisely wrong. And if any one finds it too simple, let him remember that its hardness is practical, u 290 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. not speculative ; it is a rule of co?iduct ; let him act it, and he will find it hard enough. Utinam per wium diem bene essemus conversati in hoc mundo ! But as a matter of knowledge it is very simple, it lies on the surface of the Bible and cannot be missed. And the holders of ecclesiastical dogma have always, vve must remember, held and professed this Bible dogma too. Their ecclesiastical dogma may have pre- vented their attending closely enough to the Bible dogma, •may have led them often to act false to it ; but they have always held it. The method and the secret of Jesus have been always prized. The Catholic Church from the first held aloft the secret of J esus ; the monastic orders were founded, we may say, in homage to it. And from time to time, through the course of ages, there have arisen men who threw themselves on the method and secret of J esus with extraordinary force, with intuitive sense that here was salvation ; and who really cared for nothing else, though ecclesiastical dogma, too, they professed to believe, and sincerely thought they did believe, — but their heart was elsewhere. These are they who ‘ received the kingdom of God as a little child,’ who perceived how simple a thing Christianity was, though so inexhaustible, and who are therefore 4 the greatest in the kingdom of God.’ And they, not the theological ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 291 doctors, are the true lights of the Christian Church ; not Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Butler, but the name- less author of the Imitation , Tauler, St. Francis of Sales, Wilson of Sodor and Man. Yet not only these men, but the whole body of Christian churches and sects always, have all at least professed the method and secret of Jesus, and to some extent used them. And when- ever these were used, they have borne their natural fruits of joy and life ; and this joy and this life have been taken to flow from the ecclesiastical dogma held along with them, and to sanction and prove it. And people, meaning to praise the bridge which carried them over from death to life, have taken this dogma for the bridge, or part of the bridge, that carried them over, and have eagerly praised it. Thus religion has been made to stand on its apex instead of its base ; righteousness is supported on ecclesiastical dogma, instead of ecclesias- tical dogma being supported on righteousness. But in the beginning it was not so. Because righteous- ness is eternal, necessary, life-giving, therefore the mighty 1 not ourselves which makes for righteousness ’ was the Eternal, Israel’s God ; was all-powerful, all-merciful ; sends his Messiah, elects his people, establishes his kingdom, receives into everlasting habitations. But gra- dually this petrifies, gradually it is added to more and 292 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. more ; until at last, because righteousness was originally perceived to be eternal, necessary, life-giving, we find ourselves ‘ worshipping One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance/ And then the original order is re- versed. Because there is One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, who receives into everlasting habita- tions, establishes his kingdom, elects his people, sends his Messiah, is all-merciful, all-powerful, Israel’s God, the Eternal , — therefore righteousness is eternal, neces- sary, life-giving. And shake the belief in the One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, the belief in righteousness is shaken, it is thought, also. Whereas righteousness and the God of righteousness, the God of the Bible, are in truth quite independent of the God of ecclesias- tical dogma, the work of critics of the Bible, — critics un- derstanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. 4 * Nor did the Reformation and Protestantism much mend the work of these critics ; the time was not yet ripe for it. Protestantism, nevertheless, was a strenuous and noble effort at improvement ; for it was an effort of return to the ‘method’ of Jesus, — that leaven which never, since he set it in the world, has ceased or can cease to work. ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 293 Catholicism, we have said, laid hold on the ‘ secret ’ of Jesus, and strenuously, however blindly, employed it ; this is the grandeur and the glory of Catholicism. In like manner Protestantism laid hold on his 4 method,’ and strenuously, however blindly, employed it; and herein is the greatness of Protestantism. The prelimi- nary labour of inwardness and sincerity in the con- science of each individual man, which was the method of Jesus and his indispensable discipline for learning to employ his secret aright, had fallen too much out of view ; obedience had in a manner superseded it. Pro- testantism drew it into light and prominence again ; was even, one may say, over-absorbed by it, so as to leave too much out of view the ‘ secret.’ This, if one would be just both to Catholicism and to Protestantism, is the thing to bear in mind : Protestantism had hold of Christ’s ‘ method ’ of inwardness and sincerity, Catholi- cism had hold of his ‘ secret ’ of self-renouncement. The chief word with Protestantism is the word of the method : repentance , conversion ; the chief word with Catholicism is the word of the secret : peace, joy. And since, though the method and the secret are equally indispensable, the secret may be said to have in it more of practice and conduct, Catholicism may claim perhaps to have more of religion. On the other hand. 294 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. Protestantism has more light; and, as the method of inwardness and sincerity, once gained, is of general application, and a power for all the purposes of life, Protestantism, we can see, has been accompanied by most prosperity. And here is the answer to Mr. Buckle’s famous parallel between Spain and Scotland, that parallel which every one feels to be a sophism. Scotland has had, to make her different from Spain, the ‘ method * of J esus ; and though, in theology, Scotland may have turned it to no great account, she has found her account in it in almost everything else.^ Catholicism, again, has had, perhaps, most happiness. When one thinks of the bitter and contentious temper of Puritanism, — temper being, nevertheless, such a vast part of conduct , — and then thinks of St. Theresa and her sweetness, her never-sleeping hatred of c detraction,’ one is tempted almost to say, that there was more of Jesus in St. Theresa’s little finger than in John Knox’s whole body. Protestantism has the method of Jesus with his secret too much left out of mind, Catholicism has his secret with his method too much left out of mind ; neither has his unerring balance, his in- tuition, his sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power. And many of the reproaches cast by one on the other are idle. If Catholicism is reproached with ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 2 95 being indifferent to much that is called civilisation , it must be answered : So was Jesus. If Protestant- ism, with its private judgment, is accused of open- ing a wide field for individual fancies and mistakes, it must be answered : So did Jesus when he introduced his method. Private judgment, ‘ the fundamental and insensate doctrine of Protestantism ,’ as Joseph de Maistre calls it, is in truth but the necessary ‘ method,’ the eternally incumbent duty , imposed by Jesus himself, when he said : ‘ Judge not according to the appearance,, but judge righteous judgment.’ 4 Judge righteous judg- ment’ is, however, the duty imposed ; and the duty is not, whatever many Protestants may seem to think, fulfilled if the judgment be wrong. But the duty of inwardly judging is the very entrance into the way and walk of Jesus. Luther, then, made an inward verifying movement, the individual conscience, once more the base of operations; and he was right. But he did so to the following extent only. When he found the priest coming between the individual believer and his conscience, standing to him in the stead of conscience, he pushed the priest aside and brought the believer face to face with his conscience again. This explains, of course, his battle against the sale of indulgences and other abuses of the like kind ; but it explains also his treatment of that cardinal point in the 296 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Catholic religious system, the mass. He substituted for it, as the cardinal point in the Protestant system, justification by faith. The miracle of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, satisfy- ing God’s wrath, and taking off the curse from mankind, is the foundation both of the mass and of the famous Lutheran tenet. But, in the mass, the priest makes the miracle over again and applies its benefits to the believer. In the tenet of justification, the believer is himself in contact with the miracle of Christ’s atonement, and applies Christ’s merits to himself. The conscience is thus brought into direct communication with Christ’s saving act ; but this saving act is still taken, — just as popular religion conceived it, and as formal theology adopted it from popular religion, — as a miracle, the miracle of the Atonement. This popular and imperfect conception of the sense of Christ’s death, 'and in general the whole inadequate criticism of the Bible involved in the Creeds, underwent at the Reformation no scrutiny and no change. Luther’s actual applica- tion, then, of the ‘method’ of Jesus to the inner body of dogma, developed as we have seen, which he found regnant, proceeded no further than this. And Justification by faith , our being saved by ‘ giving our hearty consent to Christ’s atoning work on our be- half,’ by ‘ pleading simply the blood of the covenant,’ Luther made the essential matter not only of his own ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 297 religious system but of the entire New Testament. We must be enabled, he said, and we are enabled, to distin- guish among the books of the Bible those which are the best; now, those are the best which show Christ , and teach what would be enough for us to know, even if no other parts of the Bible existed. And this evangelical element , as it has been called, this fundamental thought of the Gospel , is, for Luther, our ‘ being justified by the alone merits of Christ/ This is the doctrine of ‘passive or Christian righteousness,’ as Luther is fond of naming it, which consists in ‘doing nothing, but simply knowing and believing that Christ is gone to the Father and we see him no more ; that he sits in Heaven at the right hand of the Father, not as our judge, but made unto us by God wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ; in sum, that he is our high-priest, making intercession for us.’ Every one will recognise the consecrated watchwords of Protestant theology. Such is Luther’s criticism of the New Testament, of its fundamental thought ; and he picks out, as the kernel and marrow of the New Testament, the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle by the author of this Gospel, St. Paul’s Epistles, — in especial those to the Romans, Gala- tians, and Ephesians, — and the First Epistle of St. Peter. Now, the common complaint against Luther is on the 298 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. score of his audacity in thus venturing to make a table of precedence for the equally inspired books of the New Testament. Yet in this he was quite right, and was but following the method of Jesus, if the good news conveyed in the whole New Testament is, as it is, something definite, and all parts do not convey it equally. Where he was wrong, was in his delineation of this fundamental thought of the New Testament, in his description of the good news ; and few, probably, who have followed us thus far, will have difficulty in admitting that he was wrong here, and quite wrong. And this has been the fault of Protestantism generally : not its presumption in interpreting Scripture for itself, — for the Church inter- preted it no better, and Jesus has thrown on each indi- vidual the duty of interpreting it for himself, — but that it has interpreted it wrong , and no better than the Church. 1 Calvinism has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity,’ says Mr. Froude. This is a flourish of rhetoric ; for the Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic dogma, a false criticism of the Bible, an illusion. And the Calvinistic and Lutheran doctrines both of them sin in the same way; not by using a method which, after all, is the method of Jesus, but by not using the method enough, by not applying it to the Bible thoroughly, by keeping too much of what the traditions of men chose to tell them. ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 299 5 - The time was not then ripe for doing more; and we, if we can do more, have the fulness of time to thank for it, not ourselves. Yet it needs all one’s sense of the not ourselves in these things, to make us understand how doctrines, supposed to be the essence of the Eible by great Catholics and by great Protestants, should ever have been supposed to be so, and by such men. To take that chief stronghold of ecclesiasticism and sa- cerdotalism, the institution of the Eucharist. As Catholics present it, it makes the Church indispensable, with all her apparatus of an apostolical succession, an authorised priesthood, a power of absolution. Yet, as Jesus founded it, it is the most anti-ecclesiastical of institutions, pulve- rising alike the historic churches in their beauty and the dissenting sects in their unloveliness it is the con- secration of absolute individualism. 1 This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you.’ When Jesus so spoke, what did he mean, what was in his mind? Undoubtedly these words of the pro- phet Jeremiah: 4 Behold the days come, saith the Eternal, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, which covenant they brake; but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the 3oo LITERATURE AND DOGMA . house of Israel : After those days, saith the Eternal, I will put my law in their inward parts , and write it in their hearts , and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying : Know the Eternal ! for they shall all kjiow me , from the least to the greatest/ No more scribes, no more doctors, no more priests ! the crowning act in the 4 secret ’ of J esus seals at the same time his 4 method,’ — his method of pure inward- ness, individual responsibility, personal religion. Take, again, the Protestant doctrine of Justification; of trusting in the alone merits of Christ, pleading the Blood of the Covenant, imputed righteousness. In our railway stations are hung up, as everyone knows, sheets of Bible texts to catch the passer’s eye ; and very profitable admo- nitions to him they in general are. It is said that the thought of thus exhibiting them occurred to Dr. Marsh, a venerable leader of the so-called Evangelical party in our Church, the party which specially clings to the special Protestant doctrine of justification ; and that he arranged the texts we daily see. And there is one which we may all remember to have often seen. Dr. Marsh asks the prophet Micah’s question : 4 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God ? ’ and he answers it with one short sentence from the Epistle to the Hebrews : 4 With the precious blood of ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 301 Christ. 7 This is precisely the popular Protestant notion of the Gospel ; and we are all so used to it that Dr. Marsh’s application of the text has probably surprised no one. And yet, if one thinks of it, how astonishing an application it is ! For even the Hebrew Micah, some seven or eight centuries before Christ, had seen that this sort of gospel \ or good news, was none at all ; for even he suggests this always popular notion of atoning blood only to reject it, and ends : 6 Fie hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the Eternal require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’ So that the Hebrew Micah, nearly three thousand years ago, under the old dispensa- tion, was far in advance of this venerable and amiable Coryphaeus of our Evangelical party now, under the Christian dispensation ! Dr. Marsh and his school go wrong, it will be said, through their false criticism of the New Testament, and we have ourselves admitted that the perfect criticism of the New Testament is extremely difficult. True, the per- fect criticism ; but not such an elementary criticism of it as shows the gospel of Dr. Marsh and of our so-called Evangelical Protestants to be a false one. For great as their literary inexperience is, and unpractised as is their tact for perceiving the manner in which men use 302 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . words and what they mean by them, one would think they could understand such a plain caution against mis- taking Christ’s death for a miraculous atonement as St Paul has actually given them. For St Paul, who so admirably seized the secret of Jesus, who preached Jesus Christ crucijied in you , and who placed salvation in being able to say I am crucijied with Christ! — St. Paul warns us clearly, that this word oj the cross , as he calls it, is so simple, being neither miracle nor metaphysics, that it would be thought foolishness. The Jews want miracle, he says, and the Greeks want metaphysics, but I preach Christ crucijied! — that is, the ‘ secret’ of Jesus, as we call it. The Jews want miracle! — that is a warning against Dr. Marsh’s doctrine, and against Evangelical Pro- testantism’s phantasmagories of the ‘ Contract in the Council of the Trinity,’ ‘ the Atoning Blood,’ and ‘ Im- puted Righteousness.’ The Greeks want metaphysics ! — that is a warning against the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester, with their Aryan genius (if so ill-sounding a word as Aryan, spell it how one may, can ever be properly applied to our bishops, and one ought not rather to say Indo-European), dressing the popular doc- trine out with fine speculations about the Godhead of the Eternal Son, his Consubstantiality with the Father, and so on. But we preach, says St. Paul, Christ cruel ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 303 fied! to Mr. Spurgeon and to popular religion a stum- bling-block, to the bishops and to learned religion foolish- ness ; but to them that are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. That is, we preach a doc- trine, not thaumaturgical and not speculative, but prac- tical and experimental ; a doctrine which has no meaning except in positive application to conduct, but in this ap- plication is inexhaustible. 6 . So false, so astoundingly false (thus one is inclined to say by the light which the ‘Zeit-Geist’ is beginning to hold out over them) are both popular and learned science in their criticism of the Bible. And for the learned science one feels no tenderness, because it has gone wrong with a great parade of exactitude and philosophy ; whereas all it really did was to take the 4 magnified and non- natural Man ’ of popular religion as God, and to take Jesus as his son, and then to state the relations between them metaphysically. No difficulties suggested by the popular science of religion has this learned science ever removed, and it has created plenty of its own. But for the popular science of religion one has, or ought to have, an infinite tenderness. It is the spon- taneous work of nature; it is the travail of the human 304 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . mind to adapt to its grasp and employment great ideas of which it feels the attraction, but for which, except as given to it by this travail, it would be immature. The imperfect science of the Bible, formulated in the so-called Apostles’ Creed, was the only vehicle by which, to genera- tion after generation of men, the method and secret of Jesus could gain any access ; and in this sense we may even call it, taking the point of view of popular theology, Providential. And this rude criticism is full of poetry, and in this poetry we have been all nursed. To call it, as many of our philosophical Liberal friends are fond of calling it, a c degrading superstition/ is as untrue as it is a poor compliment to human nature, which produced this criticism and used it. It is an Aberglaube , or extra- belief and fairy-tale, produced by taking certain great names and great promises too literally and materially; but it is not a degrading superstition. Protestants, on their part, have no difficulty in calling the Catholic doctrine of the mass ‘ a degrading superstition/ It is indeed a rude and blind criticism of Christ’s words : He that eateth me shall live by me. But once admit the miracle of the ‘ atoning sacrifice/ once move in this order of ideas, and what can be more natural and beautiful than to imagine this miracle every day repeated, Christ offered in thousands of places, ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING . 305 everywhere the believer enabled to enact the work of redemption and unite himself with the Body whose sacrifice saves him ? And the effect of this belief has been no more degrading than the belief itself. The fourth book of the Imitation , which treats of The Sacra- ment of the Altar , is of later date and lesser merit than the three books which precede it ; but it is worth while to quote from this book a few words, for the sake of the testimony they bear to the practical operation, in many cases at any rate, of this belief. ‘To us in our weakness thou hast given, for the refreshment of mind and body, thy sacred Body. The devout communicant thou, my God, raisest from the depth of his own dejec- tion to the hope of thy protection, and with a hitherto unknown grace renewest him and enlightenest him within ; so that they who at first, before this Communion, had felt themselves distressed and affectionless, after the refreshment of this meat and drink from heaven find themselves changed to a new and better man. For this most high and worthy Sacrament is the saving health of soul and body, the medicine of all spiritual languor ; by it my vices are cured, \ my passions bridled , temptations are conquered or diminished , a larger grace is infused, the beginnings of virtue are made to grow , faith is confirmed, hope strengthened, and charity takes fire and dilates into x 306 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. flame.' So little is the doctrine of the Mass to be called a ‘ degrading superstition,’ either in its character or in its working. But it is false! sternly breaks in the Evangelical Pro- testant. O Evangelical Protestant, is thine own doc- trine, then, so true? As the Romish doctrine of the mass, the Real Presence, is a rude and blind criticism of : He that eateth me shall live by me; so the Protestant tenet of Justification, ‘ pleading the Blood of the Cove- nant,’ is a rude and blind criticism of : The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many ; — it is a taking of the words of Scripture literally and unintelligently. And our friends, the philosophical Liberals, are not slow to call this, too, a degrading superstition, just as Protestants call the doctrine of the Mass a degrading superstition. We say, on the contrary, that a degrading superstition neither the one nor the other is. In im- agining a sort of infinitely magnified and improved Lord Shaftesbury, with a race of vile offenders to deal with, whom his natural goodness would incline him to let off, only his sense of justice will not allow it ; then a younger Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of his father and very dear to him, who might live in grandeur and splen- dour if he liked, but who prefers to leave his home, to go and live among the race of offenders, and to be put ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING. 307 to an ignominious death, on condition that his merits shall be counted against their demerits, and that his father’s goodness shall be restrained no longer from taking effect, but any offender shall be admitted to the benefit of it on simply pleading the satisfaction made by the son ; — and then, finally, a third Lord Shaftesbury, still on the same high scale, who keeps very much in the background, and works in a very occult manner, but very efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy in applying everywhere the benefits of the son’s satisfaction and the father’s good- ness ; — in an imagination, I say, such as this, there is nothing degrading, and this is precisely the Protestant story of Justification. And how awe of the first Lord Shaftesbury, gratitude and love towards the second, and earnest co-operation with the third, may fill and rule men’s hearts so as to transform their conduct, we need not go about to show, for we have all seen it with our eyes. Therefore in the practical working of this tenet there is nothing degrading ; any more than there is anything degrading in this tenet as an imagi- native conception. And looking to the infinite impor- tance of getting right conduct, — three-fourths of human life, — established, and to the inevitable anthropomorphism and extra-belief of men in dealing with ideas, one might well hesitate to attack an anthropomorphism or an extra- 3°8 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . belief by which men helped themselves in conduct, merely because an anthropomorphism or an extra-belief it is, so long as it served its purpose, so long as it was firmly and undoubtingly held, and almost universally prevailing. But, after all, the question sooner or later arises in respect to a matter taken for granted, like the Catholic doctrine of the Mass or the Protestant doctrine of Justifi- cation : Is it sure ? can what is here assumed be verified ? And this is the real objection both to the Catholic and Protestant doctrine as a basis for conduct ; — not that it is a degrading superstition, but that it is not sure , that it assumes what cannot be verified. For a long time this objection occurred to scarcely any- body. And there are still, and for a long time yet there will be, many to whom it does not occur. In particular, on those ‘ devout women 7 who in the history of religion have at all times played a part in many respects so beautiful but in some respects so mischievous, — on them, and on a certain number of men like them, it has and can as yet have, so far as one can see, no effect at all. Who that watches the energumens during the celebration of the Communion at some Ritualistic church, their gestures and behaviour, the floor of the church strewn with what seem to be the dying and the dead, progress to the altar almost barred by forms suddenly ABERGLAUBE RE-INVADING , . 309 dropping as if they were shot in battle, — who that ob- serves this delighted adoption of vehement rites, till yesterday unknown, adopted and practised now with all that absence of tact, measure, and correct perception, in things of form and manner, all that slowness to see when they are making themselves ridiculous, which belongs to the people of our English race, — who, I say, that sees this, can doubt, that for a not small portion of the reli- gious community, a difficulty to the intelligence will for a long time yet be no difficulty at all ? With their mental condition and habits, given a story to which their reli- gious emotions can attach themselves, and the famous Credo quia ineptum will hold good with them still. To think they know what passed in the Council of the Trinity is not hard to them ; they could easily think they even knew what were the hangings of the Trinity’s council-chamber. Arbitrary and unsupported, however, as the story they have taken up with may be, yet it puts them in connexion with the Bible and the religion of the Bible, — that is, with righteousness and with the method and secret of Jesus. These are so clear in the Bible that no one who uses it can help seeing them there ; and of these they do take for their use something, though on a wrong ground. But these, so far as they are taken into use, are saving. 3io LITERATURE AND DOGMA. CHAPTER X. OUR ‘ MASSES 9 AND THE BIBLE. Many, however, and of a much stronger and more important sort, there now are, who will not thus take on trust the story which is made the ground for putting ourselves in connexion with the Bible and learning to use its religion ; be it the story of the divine authority of the Church, as in Catholic countries, or — as generally with us — the story of three Lord Shaftesburys standing on its own merits. Is what this story asserts true , they are beginning to ask ; can it be verified ? — since experience proves, they add, that whatever for man is true, man can verify. And certainly the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys no man can verify. They find this to be so, and then they say: The Bible takes for granted this story and depends on the truth of it ; what, then, can rational people have to do with the Bible ? So they get rid, to be sure, of a false ground for using the Bible, but they at the same time lose the Bible itself, and OUR ‘MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 31 1 the true religion of the Bible : righteousness, and the method and secret of Jesus. And those who lose this are the masses , as they are called ; or rather they are what is most strenuous, intelligent, and alive among the masses, and what will give the direction for the rest to follow. This is what everyone sees to constitute the special moral feature of our times : the masses are losing the Bible and its religion. At the Renascence, many culti- vated wits lost it ; but the great solid mass of the common people kept it, and brought the world back to it after a start had seemed to be made in quite another direction. But now it is the people which is getting detached from the Bible ; the masses can no longer be relied on to counteract what the cultivated wits are doing, and stub- bornly to make clever men’s extravagances and aberra- tions, if about the Bible they commit them, of no avail. When our philosophical Liberal friends say, that by uni- versal suffrage, public meetings, Church-disestablishment, mariying one’s deceased wife’s sister, secular schools, in- dustrial development, man can very well live ; and that if he studies the writings, say, of Mr. Herbert Spencer into the bargain, he will be perfect, he will have 6 in modern and congenial language the truisms com- mon to all systems of morality,’ and the Bible is be- come quite old-fashioned and superfluous for him; — 312 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . when our philosophical friends now say this, the masses, far from checking them, are disposed to applaud them to the echo. Yet assuredly, of conduct, which is more than three-fourths of human life, the Bible, whatever people may thus think and say, is the great inspirer ; so that from the great inspirer of more than three -fourths of human life the masses of our society seem now to be cutting themselves off. This promises, certainly, if it does not already constitute, a very unsettled con- dition of things. And the cause of it lies in the Bible being made to depend on a story, or set of asserted facts, which it is impossible to verify ; and which hard- headed people, therefore, treat as either an imposture, or a fairy-tale that discredits all which is found in con- nexion with it. Now if we look attentively at the story, or set of asserted but unverified and unverifiable facts, whici we have summarised in popular language above, and yhich is alleged as the basis of the Bible, we shall find that the difficulty really lies all in one point. The whole difficijlty is with the elder Lord Shaftesbury. If he could be verified, the data we have are, possibly, enough to warrant oir ad- mitting the truth of the rest of the story. It is singular OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 313 how few people seem to see this, though it is really quite clear. The Bible is supposed to assume a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intel- ligent Governor of the Universe; a sort of elder Lord Shaftesbury, as we call him, infinitely magnified. This is the God, also, of natural religion , as people call it; and this supposed certainty learned reasoners take, and render it more certain still by considerations of causality, identity, existence, and so on. These, however, are not found to help the certainty much; but a certainty in itself the great Personal First Cause, the God of both natural and revealed religion, is supposed to be. Then, to this given beginning all that the Bible de- livers has to fit itself on. And so arises the account of the God of the Old Testament, and of Christ and of the Holy Ghost, and of the incarnation and atone- ment, and of the sacraments, and of inspiration, and of the church, and of eternal punishment and eternal bliss, as theology presents them. But difficulties strike people in this or that of these doctrines ; the incarnation seems incredible to one, the vicarious atonement to another, the real presence to a third, inspiration to a fourth, eternal punishment to a fifth, and so on. And they set to work to make religion more pure and rational, as they suppose, by pointing out that this or that of these 314 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . doctrines is false, that it must be a mistake of theolo- gians ; and by interpreting the Bible so as to show that the doctrine is not really there. The Socinians are, perhaps, the great people for this sort of partial and local rationalising of religion ; for taking what here and there on the surface seems to conflict most with common sense, arguing that it cannot be in the Bible and getting rid of it, and professing to have thus relieved religion of its difficulties. And now, when there is much loosening of authority and tradition, much impatience of what conflicts with common sense, the Socinians are beginning to give themselves out as the Church of the Future. But in all this there is in reality a good deal of what we must call intellectual shallowness. For, granted that there are things in a system which are puzzling, yet they belong to a system ; and it is childish to pick them out by themselves and reproach them with error, when you leave untouched the basis of the system where they occur, and indeed admit it for sound yourself. The Socinians are very loud about the unreasonableness and unscripturalness of the common doctrine of the Atonement. But in the Socinian Catechism it stands written : ‘ It is necessary for salvation to know that God is; and to know that God is, is to be firmly persuaded that there exists in reality some OUR ‘ MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 3i5 One, who has supreme dominion over all things.’ Presently afterwards it stands written, that among the testimonies to Christ are, ‘ miracles very great and immense/ miracula admodum magna et immensa . Now, with the One Supreme Governor, and miracles, given to start with, it may fairly be urged that the construction put by common theology on the Bible data, which we call the story of the three Lord Shaftesburys, and in which the Atonement fills a pro- minent place, is the natural and legitimate construction to put on them, and not unscriptural at all. Neither is it unreasonable ; in a system of things where the Supreme Governor and miracles, or even where the Supreme Governor without miracles, are already given. And this is Butler’s great argument in the Analogy. You all concede, he says to his deistical adversaries, a supreme Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe ; this, you and I both agree, is the order of nature. But you are offended at certain things in reve- lation ; — that is, at things, Butler means, like the story of the three Lord Shaftesburys as theology collects it from the Bible. Well, I will show you, he says, that in your and my admitted system of nature there are just as great diffi- culties as in the system of revelation. And he does show it ; and by adversaries such as his, who grant what the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered. 3i 6 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . he never can be answered. The spear of Butler’s reasoning will even follow and transfix the scientific Duke of Somerset, who dislikes so much in the Bible, but ‘ retires into one unassailable fortress, — faith in God.' The only question, perhaps, is whether Butler as an Anglican bishop puts an adequate construction upon what Bible-revelation, this basis of the Supreme Governor being supposed, may be allowed to be ; whether Catholic dogma is not the truer construction to put upon it. Dr. Newman urges, fairly enough : Butler admits, analogy is in some sort violated by the fact of revelation ; only, with the precedent of natural religion given, we have to own that the difficulties against revelation are not greater than against this precedent, and therefore the admission of this precedent of natural religion may well be taken to clear them. And must we not go farther in the same way, says Dr. Newman, and own that the precedent of reve- lation, too, may be taken to cover more than itself; and that as, the Supreme Governor being given, it is credible that the Incarnation is true, so, the Incarnation being true, it is credible that God should not have left the world to itself after Christ and his Apostles disappeared, but should have lodged divine insight in the Church and its visible head? So pleads Dr. Newman; and if it be said that facts are against the infallibility of the Church, OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE . 317 or that Scripture is against it, yet to wide, immense things, like facts and Scripture, a turn may easily be given which makes them favour it ; and so an endless field for dis- cussion is opened, and no issue is possible. For once launched on this line of hypothesis and inference, with a Supreme Governor assumed, and the task thrown upon us of making out what he means us to infer and what we may suppose him to do and to intend, one of us may infer one thing and another of us another, and neither can possibly prove himself to be right or his adversary to be wrong. Only, there may come some one, who says that the basis of all our inference, the Supreme Governor, is not the order of nature, is an assumption, and not a fact; and then, if this is so, our whole superstructure falls to pieces like a house of cards. And this is just what is happening at present. The masses, with their rude practical instinct, go straight to the heart of the matter. They are told there is a great Per- sonal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Author and Governor of the universe ; and that the Bible and Bible-righteousness come to us from him. Now, they do not begin by asking, with the intelligent Socinian, whether the doctrine of the Atone- ment is worthy of this moral and intelligent Ruler ; they 3i8 LI TER A TURK AND DOGMA begin by asking what proof we have of him at all. Moreover, they require plain experimental proof, such as that fire burns them if they touch it. If they are to study and obey the Bible because it comes from the Per- sonal First Cause who is Governor of the universe, they require to be able to ascertain that there is this Governor, just as they are able to ascertain that fire burns. And if they cannot ascertain it, they will let the intelligent Soci- nian perorate about the Atonement if he likes, but they themselves pitch the whole Bible to the winds. Now, it is remarkable what a resting on mere probabi- lities, or even on less than probabilities, the proof for religion comes, in the hands of its great apologist, Butler, to be, even after he has started with the assumption of his moral and intelligent Governor. And no wonder; for in the primary assumption itself there is and can be nothing experimental and clearly known. So that of Christianity, as Butler grounds it, the natural criticism would really be in these words of his own : ‘ Suppositions are not to be looked upon as true, because not incredible/ However, Butler maintains that in matters of practice, such as religion, this is not so ; in them it is prudent, he says, to act on even a supposition, if it is not in- credible. Even the doubting about religion implies, he argues, that it may be true. Now, in matters of practice OUR '* MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE . 319 we are bound in prudence to act upon what may be a low degree of evidence ; yes, even though it be so low as to leave the mind in very great doubt what is the truth. Was there ever such a way of establishing righteous- ness heard of? And suppose we tried this with rude, hard, downright people, with the masses, who for what is told them want a plain experimental proof, such as that fire will burn you if you touch it. Whether in prudence they ought to take the Bible and religion on a low degree of evidence or not, it is quite certain that on this ground they never will take them. And it is quite certain, moreover, that never on this ground did Israel, from whom we derive our religion, take it himself or recommend it. He did not take it in prudence, because he found at any rate a low degree of evidence for it ; he took it in rapture, because he found for it an evidence irresistible. But his own words are the best : 4 Thou, O Eternal, art the thing that I long for , thou art my hope even from my youth ; through thee have I been hoi den up ever since I was born ; there is nothing sweeter than to take heed unto the commandments of the Eternal. The Eternal is my strength, my heart hath trusted in him and I am helped; therefore my heart danceth for joy, and in my song will I praise him l That is why Israel took his religion. 320 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . 3 - But if Israel spoke of the Eternal thus, it was, we say, because he had a plain experimental proof of him. God was to Israel neither an assumption nor a metaphysical idea ; he was a power that can be verified as much as the power of fire to burn or of bread to nourish : the power , not ourselves , that makes for righteousness . And the greatness of Israel in religion, the reason why he is said to have had religion revealed to him, to have been entrusted with the oracles of God, is because he had in such extraordinary force and vividness the perception of this power. And he communicates it irresistibly because he feels it irresistibly ; that is why the Bible is not as other books that inculcate righteousness. Israel speaks of his intuition as still feeling it to be an intuition, an experience ; not as something which others have de- livered to him, nor yet as a piece of metaphysical notion- building. Anthropomorphic he is, for all men are, and especially men not endowed with the Aryan genius for abstraction; but he does not make arbitrary assertions which can never be verified, like our popular religion, nor is he ever pseudo-scientific, like our learned religion. He is credited with the metaphysical ideas of the per- sonality of God, of the unity of God, and of creation as OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 2,21 opposed to evolution ; ideas depending, the first two of them, on notions of existence and of identity, the last of them, on the notion of cause and design. But he is credited with them falsely. All the countenance he gives to the metaphysical idea of the personality of God is given by his anthropomorphic language, in which, being a man himself, he naturally speaks of the Power, with which he iis concerned, as a man also. So he says that Moses saw God’s hinder parts ; and he gives just as much coun- tenance to the scientific assertion that God has hinder parts, as to the scientific assertion of God’s personality. That is, he gives no countenance at all to either. As to his asserting the unity of God the case is the same. Pie would give, indeed, his heart and his worship to no mani- festation of power, except the power which makes for righteousness ; but he affords to the metaphysical idea of the unity of God no more countenance than this, and this is none at all. Then, lastly, as to the idea of creation. He viewed, indeed, all order as depending on the supreme order of righteousness, and all the fulness and beauty of the world as a boon added to that holder of the greatest of all boons already, the righteous ; this is as much countenance as he gives to the famous argument from design, or to the doctrine of creation as opposed to evolu- tion. And it is none at all. Y 322 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Free as is his use of anthropomorphic language, Israel has far too keen a sense of reality not to shrink, when he comes anywhere near to the notion of exact speaking about God, from affirmation, from professing to know a whit more than he does know. ‘ Lo, these are parts of his ways/ he says of what he has experienced, ‘ but how little a portion is known of him !’ And again : ‘ The secret things belong wito the Eternal our God ; but the revealed things belong unto us and to our children for ever : that we may do all the words of this law l How different from our licence of full and particular statement : ‘ A Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe ! ’ Israel knew, of the Eternal not ourselves , that it was 6 a power that made for righteousness.’ This was revealed to Israel and his children, and through them to the world ; all the rest about the Eternal not ourseleves was this power’s own secret. And all Israel’s language about this power, except that it makes for righteousness , is approximate language, — the language of poetry and eloquence, thrown out at a vast object of our consciousness not fully apprehended by it, but extending infinitely beyond it. This, however, was c a revealed thing,’ Israel said, to him and to his children : ‘ the Eternal not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’ And now, then, let us go to the OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE, 323 masses with what Israel really did say, instead of what our popular and our learned religion may choose to make him say. Let us announce, not : ‘ There rules a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe, and therefore study your Bible and learn to obey this ! ’ No ; but let us announce : 4 There rules an enduring Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, and therefore study your Bible and learn to obey this.’ For if we announce the other instead, and they reply : e First let us verify that there rules a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe/ — what are we to answer? we cannot answer. But if, on the other hand, they ask : ‘ How are we to verify that there rules an enduring Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness ? ’ — we may answer at once : ‘ How? why, as you verify that fire burns , — by experience! It is so ; try it ! you can try it \ every case of conduct , of that which is more than three-fourths of your own life and of the life of all mankind, will prove it to you. Dis- believe it, and you will find out your mistake, as sure as, if you disbelieve that fire burns and put your hand into the fire, you will find out your mistake. Believe it, 324 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . and you will find the benefit of it . 7 This is the first experience. But then they may go on, and say : ‘ Why, however, if there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, should we study the Bible that we may learn to obey him ? — will not other teachers or books do as well ? 7 And here again the answer is : ‘ Why ? why, because he is revealed in Israel and the Bible, and not by other teachers and books ! that is, there is infinitely more of him there, he is plainer and easier to come at, and incomparably more impressive. If you want to know plastic art, you go to the Greeks ; if you want to know science, you go to the Aryan genius. And why ? Because they have the specialty for these things ; for making us feel what they are and giving us an enthusiasm for them. Well, and so have Israel and the Bible a specialty for righteousness, for making us feel what it is and giving us an enthusiasm for it. And here again it is experience that we invoke : try it! Having convinced yourself that there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, set yourself next to try to learn more about this, and to feel an enthusiasm for this. And to this end, take a course of the Bible first, and then a course of Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr. Herbert Spencer ; see^ which has most effect, which OUR ‘ MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 325 satisfies you most, which gives you most power. Why, the Bible has such power for teaching righteousness, that even to those who come to it with all sorts of false notions about the God of the Bible, it yet teaches righteousness, and fills them with the love of it ; how much more those who come to it with a true notion about the God of the Bible ! And this is the second experience. 4 - Now here, at the beginning of things, is the point, we say, where to apply correction to our current theology, if we are to bring the religion of the Bible home to the masses. It is of no use beginning lower down, and amending this or that ramification, such as the Atonement, or the Real Presence, or Eternal Punishment, when the root from which all springs is unsound. Those whom it most concerns us to teach will never interest themselves at all in our amended religion, so long as the whole thing appears to them unsupported and in the air. Yet that original conception of God, on which all our religion is and must be grounded, has been very little examined, and very few of the controversies which arise in religion go near it. Religious people say solemnly, as if we doubted it, that 4 he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of 326 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . them that seek him ; ’ and that 4 a man who preaches that Jesus Christ is not God is virtually out of the pale of Christian communion/ We entirely agree with them ; but we want to know what they mean by God ’ Now on this matter the state of their thoughts is, to say the truth, extremely vague ; but what they really do at bottom mean is, in general : The best one knows . And this is the soundest definition they will ever attain ; yet scientifically it is not a satisfying definition, for clearly the best one knows differs for everybody. So they have to be more precise ; and when they collect themselves a little, they find that they mean by God a magnified and non-natural man . But this, again, they can hardly say in so many words ; therefore at last, when they are pressed, they col- lect themselves all they can, and make a great effort, and out they come with their piece of science : God is a great Personal First Cause , who thinks and loves , the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe . But this piece of science of theirs we will have nothing to say to, for we account it quite hollow ; and we say, and have shown (we think), that the Bible, rightly read, will have nothing to say to it either. Yet the whole pinch of the matter is here ; and till we are agreed as to what we mean by God \ we can never, in discussing religious questions, understand one another or discuss seriously. Yet, as we have said, OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE, 327 hardly any of the discussions which arise in religion turn upon this cardinal point. This is what cannot but strike one in that torrent of petitiones principii (for so one really must call it) in the shape of theological letters from clergymen, which pours itself every week in the columns of the Guardian . They all employ the word God with such extraordinary confidence ! as if ‘ a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe/ were a verifiable fact given beyond all question ; and we had now only to discuss what such a being would naturally think about Church vestments and the use of the Athanasian Creed. But everything people say, under these conditions, is in truth quite in the air. Even those who have treated Israel and his religion the most philosophically, seem not to have enough con- sidered, that so wonderful an effect must have had some cause to account for it other than any they assign. Professor Kuenen, whose excellent History of the Reli- gion of Israel 1 ought to find an English translator, suggests that the Hebrew religion was so unlike that of other Semitic people because of the simple and 1 De Godsdienst van Israel tot den Ondergang van den Joodschen Siaat (The Religion of Israel till the Downfall of the Jewish State) ; Haarlem. 328 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. austere life of the Beni-Israel as nomads of the desert; or because they did not, like other Semitic people, put a feminine divinity alongside of their masculine divinity, and thus open the way to all sorts of immorality. But many other tribes have had the simple and austere life of nomads of the desert, without its bringing them to the religion of Israel. And, if the Hebrews did not put a feminine divinity alongside of their masculine divinity, while other Semitic people did, surely there must have been something to cause this difference ! and what we want to know is this something* And to this something , I say, the * Zeit-Geist ’ and a prolonged and large experience of men’s expressions, and how they employ them, leads us. It was be- cause while other people, in the operation of that mighty not ourselves which is in us and around us, saw this thing and that thing and many things, Israel saw one thing only : — that it made for conduct , for righteousness. And it does ; and conduct is nearly the whole of human life. And hence, therefore, the extraordinary reality and power of Israel’s God and of Israel’s religion. And the more we strictly limit oui selves, in attempting to give a scientific account of God, to Israel’s authentic intuition of him, and say that he is ‘ the Eternal Power, not our- selves, that makes for righteousness,’ the more real and OUR ‘ MASSES' AND THE BIBLE. 329 profound will Israel's words about God become to us, for we can then verify his words as we use them. Eternal , Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another ! If we define the Eternal to ourselves, ‘ a great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the universe,' we can never verify that this has from age to age been a refuge to men. But if we define the Eternal , 6 the enduring power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, ' then we can know and feel the truth of what we say when we declare : Eternal , Thou hast been our refuge from o?ie generation to another ! For in all the history of man we can verify it. Righteousness has been salvation ; and to verify the God of Israel in man's long history is the most animating, the most exalting, and the most pure of delights. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Eternal ! is a text, indeed, of which the world offers us the most inexhaustible and the most marvellous illustration. Nor is the change here proposed, in itself, any difficult or startling change in our habits of religious thought, but a very simple one. However, simple as is this change to be made high up and at the outset, it undeniably governs everything farther down. Jesus is the Son of God ; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth that proceeds from God. What God % 4 A great Personal First Cause, 330 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Gover- nor of the universe’ — to whom Jesus and the Holy Spirit are related in the way described in the Athanasian Creed, so that the operations of the three together pro- duce what the Westminster divines call 4 the Contract passed in the Council of the Trinity/ and we, for plain- ness, describe as the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftes- burys ? This is all in the air, but in the air it all hangs together. There stand the Bible words ! how you con- strue them, depends entirely on the definition of God you start with. If Jesus is the Son of ‘a great Personal First Cause/ then the words of the Bible, literally taken, may well enough lend themselves to a story like that of the three Lord Shaftesburys. The story can never be verified ; but it may nevertheless be what the Bible means to say, if the Bible have started, as theology starts, with the ‘ Great Personal First Cause.’ And the story may, when it comes to be examined, have many minor difficulties, have things to baffle us, things to shock us ; but still it may be what the Bible means to say. However, the masses will get rid of all minor difficulties in the simplest manner, by rejecting the Bible altogether on account of the major difficulty, — its starting with an assumption which cannot possibly be verified. But suppose the Bible is discovered, when its expressions OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 33i are rightly understood, to start with an assertion which can be verified : the assertion, namely, not of ‘ a great Personal First Cause,’ but of 4 an enduring Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.’ Then by the light of this discovery we read and understand all the expressions that follow. Jesus comes forth from this en- during Power that makes for righteousness, is sent by this Power, is this Power’s Son; the Holy Spirit proceeds from this same Power, and so on. Now, from the innumerable minor difficulties that attend the story of the three Lord Shaftesburys, this right construction, put on what the Bible says of Jesus, of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit, is free. But it is free from the major difficulty also ; for it neither depends upon what is unverifiable, nor is it unverifiable itself. That Jesus is the Son of a great Personal First Cause is itself unverifiable ; and that there is a great Personal First Cause is unverifiable too. But that there is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, is verifiable, as we have seen, by experience; and that Jesus is the offspring of this power is verifiable from experience also. For God is the author of righteous- ness ; now, Jesus is the son of God because he gives the method and secret by which alone is righteousness possible. And that he does give this, we can verify, 332 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . again, from experience : it is so ! try, and you will find it to be so. Try all the ways to righteousness you can think of, and you will find that no way brings you to it except the way of J esus, but that this way does bring you to it. And, therefore, as we found we could say to the masses : 4 Attempt to do without Israel’s God that makes for righteousness, and you will find out your mistake ! ’ — so we find we can now go on farther, and say : ‘Attempt to reach righteousness by any way except that of Jesus , and you will find out your mistake ! ’ This is a thing that can prove itself, if it is so ; and it will prove itself,, because it is so. Thus we have the authority of both Old and New Testament placed on just the same solid basis as the authority of the injunction to take food and rest : namely, that experience proves we cannot do without them. And we have neglect of the Bible punished just as putting one’s hand into the fire is punished : namely, by finding we are the worse for it. Only, to atte?id to this experience about the Bible, needs more steadiness than to attend to the momentary impressions of hunger, fatigue, and pain ; therefore it is called faith , and counted a virtue. But the appeal is to experience in this case just as much as in the other ; only to experience of a far deeper and greater kind. OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE, 333 5 - So there is no doubt that we get a much firmer, nay an impregnable, ground for the Bible, and for recommending it to the world, if we put the construction on it we pro- pose. The only question is : Is this the right construc- tion to put on it ? is it the construction which properly belongs to the Bible ? And here, again, our appeal is to the same test which we have employed throughout, the only possible test for men to employ, — the test of reason and experience. Given the Bible-documents, what, it is inquired, is the right construction to put upon them? Is it the construction we propose ? or is it the construction of the theologians, according to which the dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and so on, are presupposed all through the Bible, are sometimes latent, sometimes come more visibly to the surface, but are always there ; and to them every word in the Bible has reference, plain or figured ? Now, the Bible does not and cannot tell us itself, in black and white, what is the right construction to put upon it ; we have to make this out. And the only possible way to make it out, — for the dogmatists to make out their construction, or for us to make out ours, — is by reason and experience. 4 Even such as are readiest/ says 334 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Hooker very well, ‘ to cite for one thing five hundred sentences of Scripture, what warrant have they that any one of them doth mean the thing for which it is alleged ? ’ They can have none, he replies, but reasoning and col- lection ; and to the same effect Butler says of reason, that 4 it is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself/ Now it is simply from experience of the human spirit and its productions, from observing as widely as we can the man- ner in which men have thought, their way of using words and what they mean by them, and from reasoning upon this observation and experience, that we conclude the construction theologians put upon the Bible to be false, and ours to be the truer one. In the first place, from Israel’s master-feeling, the feeling for righteousness , the predominant sense that men are, as St. Paul says, ‘ created unto good works which God hath prepared beforehand that we should walk in them,’ we col- lect the origin of Israel’s conception of God, — of that mighty not ourselves which more or less engages all men’s atten- tion, — as the Eternal Power that makes for righteousness . This we do, because the more we come to know how ideas and terms arise, and what is their character, the more this explanation of Israel’s use of the word ‘God’ seems the true and natural one. Again, the construction we put OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE. 335 upon the doctrine and work of Jesus is collected in the same way. From the data we have, and from comparison of these data with what we have besides of the history of ideas and expressions, this construction seems to us the true and natural one. The Gospel narratives are just that sort of account of such a work and teaching as the work and teaching of Christ, according to our construction of it, was, which would naturally have been given by de- voted followers who did not fully understand it. And understand it fully they then could not, it was so very new, great, and profound ; only time gradually brings its lines out more clear. On the other hand, the theologians’ notion of dogmas presupposed in the Bible, and of a constant latent refer- ence to them, we reject, because experience is against it. The more we know of the history of ideas and expres- sions, the more we are convinced that this account is not and cannot be the true one ; that the theologians have credited the Bible with this presupposition of dogmas and this constant latent reference to them, but that they are not really there. ‘ The Fathers recognised’ says Dr. New- man, 4 a certain truth lying hid under the tenor of the sacred text as a whole, and showing itself more or less in this verse or that, as it might be. The Fathers might have traditionary information of the general drift of the 336 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . inspired text which we have not.’ Born into the world twenty years later, and touched with the breath of the ‘‘ Zeit-Geist,’ how would this exquisite and delicate genius .have been himself the first to feel the unsoundness of all this ! that we have heard the like about other books before, and that it always turns out to be not so, that the right interpretation of a document, such as the Bible, is not in this fashion. Homer’s poetry was the Bible of the Greeks, however strange a one; and just in the same way there grew up the notion of a mystical and inner sense in the poetry of Homer, underlying the apparent sense, but brought to light by the commentators; per- haps, even, they might have traditionary information of the drift of the Homeric poetry which we have not ; — who knows? But, once for all, as our literary experience widens, this notion of a secret sense in Homer proves to be a mere dream. So, too, is the notion of a secret .sense in the Bible, and of the Fathers’ disengagement of it. Demonstration in these matters is impossible ; it is a maintainable thesis that the allegorising of the Fathers is right, and that this is the true sense of the Bible. It is a maintainable thesis that the theological dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, underlie the whole Bible. It is a maintainable thesis, on the 'Other hand, that Jesus was himself immersed in the OUR ‘MASSES’ AND THE BIBLE . 337 Aberglaube of his nation and time, and that his disciples have reported him with absolute fidelity ; in this case we should have, in our estimate of Jesus, to make deduc- tions for his Aberglaube , and to admire him for the in- sight he displayed in spite of it. This thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or another thesis, is maintainable , as to the construction to be put on such a document as the Bible. Absolute demonstration is impossible, and the only question is : Does experience, as it widens and deepens, make for this or that thesis, or make against it? And the great thing against any such thesis as either of the two we have just mentioned is, that the more we know of the history of the human spirit and its deliverances, the more we have reason to think such a thesis improbable, and it loses hold on our assent more and more. On the other hand, the great thing, as we believe, in favour of such a construction as we put upon the Bible is, that experience, as it increases, constantly confirms it ; and that, though it cannot command assent, it will be found to win assent more and more. z 338 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. CHAPTER XI. THE TRUE GREATNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Win assent in the end the new construction will, but not at once ; and there will be a passage-time of confusion first. It is not for nothing, as we have said, that people take short cuts and tell themselves fairy-tales, because the immense scale of the history of ‘ bringing in everlasting righteousness ’ is too much for their narrow minds. It is not for nothing ; they pay for it. It is not for nothing that they found religion on prediction and miracle, guarantee it by supernatural interventions and the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, consummate it by a banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city shining with gold and precious stones. They are like people who have fed their minds on novels or their stomachs on opium ; the reality of things is flat and insipid to them, although it is in truth far grander than the phantasmagorical world of novels and opium. But it is long before the novel-reader or opium-eater can rid himself of his bad habits, and GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 339 brace his nerves, and recover the tone of his mind enough to see it. Distress and despair at the loss of his accus- tomed stimulant are his first sensations. Miracles, the mainstay of popular religion, are touched by Ithuriel’s spear. They are beginning to dissolve ; but what are we to expect during the process ? Probably, amongst many religious people, vehement efforts at reac- tion, a recrudescence of superstition ; the passionate re- solve to keep hold on what is slipping away from them by giving up more and more the use of reason in religion, and by resting more and more on authority. The Church of Rome is the great upholder of authority as against reason in religion ; and it will be strange if in the coming time of transition the Church of Rome does not gain. But for many more than those whom Rome attracts, there will be an interval, between the time when men take the religion of the Bible to be a thaumaturgy and the time when they perceive it to be something different, in which they will be prone to throw aside the religion of the Bible altogether as a delusion. And this, again, will be mainly the fault, — if fault that can be called which was an inevitable error, — of the religious people themselves, who, from the time of the Apostles downwards, have insisted upon it that religion shall be a thaumaturgy or nothing. For very many, therefore, when it cannot be a thaumaturgy, 340 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . it will be nothing. And very likely there will come a day when there will be less religion than even now ; for the religion of the Bible is so simple and powerful that even those who make the Bible a thaumaturgy get hold of it, because they read the Bible ; but if men do not read the Bible, they cannot get hold of it. And then will be fulfilled the saying of the prophet Amos : ‘ Behold, the days come, saith the Eternal, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Eternal ; and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Eternal, and shall not find it.’ Nevertheless, as after this mournful prophecy the herds- man of Tekoah goes on to say : ‘ There shall yet not the least grain of Israel fall to the earth T To the Bible men will return ; and why ? Because they cannot do without it. Because happiness is our being’s end and aim, and happiness belongs to righteousness, and righteousness is revealed in the Bible. For this simple reason men will return to the Bible, just as a man who tried to give up food, thinking it was a vain thing and he could do without it, would return to food ; or a man who tried to give up sleep, thinking it was a vain thing and he could do without it, would return to sleep. Then GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 341 there will come a time of reconstruction ; and then, per- haps, will be the moment for labours like this essay of ours to be found useful. For though every one must read the Bible for himself, and the perfect criticism of it is an immense matter, and it may be possible to go much beyond what we here achieve or can achieve, yet the method for reading the Bible we, as we hope and believe, here give. And though, in this or that detail, the con- struction we put upon the Bible may be wrong, yet the main lines of the construction will be found, we hope and believe, right ; and the reader who has the main lines may easily amend the details for himself. 2. Meanwhile, to popular Christianity, from those who can see its errors, is due an indulgence inexhaustible, except where limits are required to it for the good of religion itself. Two considerations make this indulgence right : one is, that the language of the Bible being, — which is the great point a sound criticism establishes against dogmatic theology , — approximate not scientific, in all expressions of religious feeling approximate language is lawful, and indeed is all we can attain to. It cannot be adequate, more or less proper it can be ; but, in general, approxi- mate language consecrated by use and religious feeling 342 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . acquires therefrom a propriety of its own. That is the first consideration. The second is, that on the 6 method * and 4 secret * of Jesus popular Christianity in no contemp- tible measure both can and does, as we have said, lay hold, in spite of its inadequate criticism of the Bible. Now, to lay hold on the method and secret of Jesus is a very great thing ; an inadequate criticism of the Bible is a comparatively small one. Certainly this consideration should govern our way of regarding many things in popular Christianity ; — its missions, for instance. The non-Christian religions are not to the wise man mere monsters; he knows they have much good and truth in them. He knows that Mahometanism, and Brahminism, and Buddhism, are not what the missionaries call them ; and he knows, too, how really unfit the missionaries are to cope with them. For any one who weighs the matter well, the missionary in clerical coat and gaiters whom one see in wood-cuts preaching to a group of picturesque Orientals, is, from the inadequacy of his criticism both of his hearers’ reli- gion and of his own, and his signal misunderstanding of the very Volume he holds in his hand, a hardly less grotesque object in his intellectual equipment for his task than in his outward attire. Yet every one allows that this strange figure carries something of what is called GREA TNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 343 European civilisation with him, and a good part of this is due to Christianity. But even the Christianity itself that he preaches, imbedded in a false theology though it be, cannot but contain, in a greater or lesser measure as it may happen, these three things : — the all- importance of righteousness , the method of Jesus, the secret of Jesus. No Christianity that is ever preached but manages to carry something of these along with it. And if it carries them to Mahometanism, they are carried where of the all-importance of righteousness there is a knowledge, but of the method and secret of Jesus, by which alone is righteousness possible, hardly * any sense at all. If it carries them to Brahminism, they are carried where of the all-importance of righteousness, the foundation of the whole matter, there is a wholly insufficient sense ; and where religion is, above all, the metaphysical conception, or metaphysical play, so dear to the Aryan genius and to M. Emile Burnouf. If it carries them to Buddhism, they are carried to a religion to be saluted with respect, indeed ; for it has not only the sense for righteousness, it has, even, it has the secret of Jesus. But it employs the secret ill, because greatly wanting in the method, because utterly wanting in the sweet reason- ableness, the unerring balance, the epieikeia. Therefore, to all whom it visits, the Christianity of our missions. 344 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. inadequate as may be its criticism of the Bible, brings what may do them good. And if it brings the Bible itself, it brings what may not only help the good preached, but may also with time dissipate the erroneous criticism which accompanies this and impairs it. All this is to be said for popular religion ; and it all makes in favour of treating popular religion tenderly, of sparing it as much as possible, of trusting to time and indirect means to transform it, rather than to sudden, violent changes. 3 * Learned religion, however, the pseudo-science of dog- matic theology, merits no such indulgence. It is a separable accretion, which never had any business to be attached to Christianity, never did it any good, and now does it great harm, and thickens an hundred-fold the religious confusion in which we live. Attempts to adopt it, to put a new sense into it, to make it plausible, are the most misspent labour in the world. Certainly no religious reformer who tries it, or has tried it, will find his work live. Nothing is more common, indeed, than for religious writers who have a strong sense of the genuine and moral side of Christianity and much enlarge on the pre-eminence GREA TNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT . 345 of this, to put themselves right, as it were, with dogmatic theology, by a passing sentence expressing profound belief in its dogmas, though in discussing them, it is implied, there is little profit. So Mr. Erskine of Lin- lathen, that unwearying and much revered exponent of the moral side of the Bible : ‘ It seems difficult,’ he says, ‘ to conceive that any man should read through the New Testament candidly and attentively, without being con- vinced that the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to and implied in every part of the system/ Even already many readers of Mr. Erskine feel, when they come across such a sentence as that, as if they had suddenly taken gravel or sand into their mouth. Twenty years hence this feeling will be far stronger ; the reader will drop the book, saying that certainly it can avail him nothing. So, also, Bunsen was fond of saying, putting some peculiar meaning of his own into the words, that the whole of Christianity was in the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. Thus, too, the Bishop of Exeter chooses to say that his main objection to keeping the Athanasian Creed is, that it endangers the doctrine of the Trinity, which is so important. Mr. Maurice, again, that pure and devout spirit, — of whom, however, the truth must at last be said, that in theology he passed his life beating the bush with deep emotion, and never starting the hare, — 346 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Mr. Maurice declared that by reading between the lines he saw in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Athanasian Creed the altogether perfect expression of the Christian faith. But all this is mischievous as well as vain. It is vain, because it is meant to conciliate the so-called orthodox, and it does not conciliate them. Of his attachment to the doctrine of the Trinity the Bishop of Exeter may make what protestations he will, Archdeacon Denison will still smell a rat in them ; and the time has passed when Bunsen’s Evangelical phrases could fascinate the Evangelicals. Such language, however, does also actual harm, because it proceeds from a, misunderstanding and prolongs it. For it may be well to read between the lines of a man labouring with an experience he cannot utter ; but to read between the lines of a notion-work is absurd, for it is of the essence of a notion- work not to need it. And the Athanasian Creed is a notion-work, of which the fault is that its basis is a chimaera. It is an application of the forms of Greek logic to a chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity, a notion unestablished, not resting on observation and experience, but assumed to be given in Scripture, yet not really given there. Indeed the very expression, the Trinity , jars with the whole idea and character of Bible-religion ; but, lest GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 347 the Socinian should be unduly elated at hearing this, let us hasten to add that so too, and just as much, does the expression, a great Personal First Cause. Learned pseudo-science applied to the data of the Bible is best called plainly what it is, — utter blunder; criticism of the same order, and of which the futility will one day be just as visible, as that criticism about the two swords which we have quoted. To try to tinker such criticism only makes matters worse ; the best way is fo throw it aside altogether, and forget it as fast as possible. This is what the good of religion demands, and what all the enemies of religion would most deprecate. The hour for softening down, and explaining away, is passed ; the whole false notion-work has to go. Mild defences of it leave on the mind a sense of the defender’s hopeless inability to perceive our actual situa- tion ; violent defences, such as Archdeacon Denison’s, read, alas ! only like ‘ a tale told by an idiot \ full of sound and fury , signifying nothing .’ 4 * But the great work to be done for the better time which will arrive, and for the time of transition which will precede it, is not a work of destruction, but to show that the truth is really, as it is, incomparably higher, grander. 343 LIT ERA TURE AND DOGMA. more wide and deep-reaching, than the Aberglaube and false science which it displaces. The propounders of ‘The great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves/ are too modest when they sometimes say, taking their lesson from the Bible, that, after all, man can know next to nothing of the Divine nature. They do themselves signal injustice; they themselves know a great deal, far too much. They know so much, that they make of God a mag- nified and non-natural man, a sort, as we have said, of infinitely extended Lord Shaftesbury ; and when this leads them into difficulties, and they think to escape these by saying that God’s ways are not man’s ways, they do not succeed in making their God cease to resemble a man, they only make him resemble a man puzzled. But the truth is, that one may have a great respect for Lord Shaftesbury, and yet be permitted, even however much he be magnified, to imagine something far beyond him. And this is the good of such an unpretending definition of God as ours : the Eternal Power , not ourselves , that makes for righteousness ; — it leaves the infinite to the imagination, and to the gradual efforts of countless ages of men, slowly feeling after more of it and finding it. Ages and ages hence, no such adequate definition of the infinite not ourselves will yet GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 349 be possible, as any sciolist of a theologian will now pre- tend to rattle you off in a moment. But on one point of the operation of this not ourselves we are clear : that it makes for conduct, righteousness. So far we know God, that he is ‘ the Eternal that loveth righteousness ; 9 and the farther we go in righteousness, the more we shall know him. And as this true and authentic God of Israel is far grander than the God of popular religion, so is his real affirmation of himself in human affairs far grander than that poor machinery of prediction and miracle, by which popular religion imagines that he affirms himself. The greatness of the scale on which he operates makes it hard for men to follow him ; but the greatness of the scale, too, makes the grandeur of the operation. As the whirlwind passeth , so is the wicked no more; hut the right eoits is an everlasting foundation . And again : They shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal , and all the nations shall he gathered imto it. c Men are impatient and for precipitating things,’ says Butler ; and Davison, whom on a former occasion we quoted to differ from him, — Davison, not the least memorable of that Oriel group, whose reputation I, above most people, am bound to cherish, — says with a weighty and noble simplicity worthy of Butler : ‘ Conscience and the present constitu- 350 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . tion of things are not corresponding terms ; it is con- science and the issue of things which go together.* It is so; and this is what makes the spectacle of human affairs so edifying and so sublime. Give time enough for the experience, and experimentally and demonstrably it is true, that 4 the path of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.* Only the limits for the experience are wider than people think. ‘ Yet a little while, and the ungodly shall be clean gone ! * but a little while according to the scope and working of that mighty Power, to which a thousand years are as one day. The world goes on, nations and men arrive and depart, with varying fortune, as it appears, with time and chance happening unto all. Look a little deeper, and you will see that one strain runs through it all : nations and men, whoever is shipwrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct . It is the God of Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting himself ; the Eternal that loveth righteousness . In this sense we should read the Hebrew prophets. They did not foresee and foretell curious coincidences, but they foresaw and foretold this inevitable triumph of righteousness. First, they foretold it for all the men and nations of their own day, and especially for those colossal unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen which looked everlasting ; then, for all time. ‘ As the whirlwind GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 35c passeth, so is the wicked no more ; ’ sooner or later it is, it must be, so. Hebrew prophecy is never read aright until it is read in this sense, which indeed of itself it. cries out for; it is, as Davison, again, finely says, impa- tient for the larger scope . How often, through the ages,, how often, even, by the Hebrew prophets themselves,, has some immediate visible interposition been looked for ! 4 I beheld/ they make God say, 4 and there was no man, and I wondered that there was no intercessor, therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me;, the day of vengeance is in mine heart, the year of my redeemed is 001116.’ O long delaying arm of might, will the Eternal never put thee forth, to smite these who go on as if righteousness mattered nothing ? There is no need; they are smitten. Down they come, one after another ; Assyria falls, Babylon, Greece, Rome ; they all fall for want of conduct , righteousness. 4 The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved ; but God hath showed his voice, and the earth doth melt away.’* Nay, but Judaea itself, the Holy Land, the land of God’s Israel, falls too, and falls for want of righteousness. Yes, Israel’s visible Jerusalem is in ruins; and how then shall men 4 call J erusalem the throne of the Eternal, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it ? 7 But the true Israel was Israel the bringer-in and defender of 352 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. ithe idea of conduct , Israel the lifter-up to the nations of the banner of righteous7iess ; the true Jerusalem was the •city of this ideal Israel. And this ideal Israel could not and cannot perish, so long as his idea, righteous- ness and its necessity, does not perish, but prevails. -Now, that it does prevail, the whole course of the world proves, and the fall of the actual Israel is of itself witness. 'Thus, therefore, the ideal Israel for ever lives and prospers ; and its city is the city whereto all nations and languages, after endless trials of everything else except conduct, after incessantly attempting to do without righteousness and failing, are slowly but surely gathered. To this Israel are the promises, and to this Israel they •are fulfilled. 4 The nation and kingdom that will not ‘serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be •utterly wasted/ It is so ; since all history is an accumula- tion of experiences that what men and nations fall by is 'want of conduct. To call it by this plain name is often not amiss, for the thing is never more great than when it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. Yet the true name to touch the soul is the name Israel gave : Righteousness. And to Israel, as the representative of this imperishable and saving idea of righteousness, all the promises come true, and the language of none of them is pitched too high. The Eternal , Israel says truly, is on GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 353 my side. 1 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and thou handful Israel; I will help thee, saith the Eternal. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls are continually before me. The Eternal hath chosen Zion ; O pray for the peace of J erusalem ! they shall prosper that love thee. Men shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Eternal , and all the nations shall be gathered unto it. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations ; he will swallow up death in victory. And it shall be said in that day : Lo, this is our God ; this is the Eternal, we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation/ 5 * And if Assyria and Babylon seem too remote, let us look nearer home for testimonies to the inexhaustible grandeur and significance of the Old Testament revelation, according to that construction which we here put upon it. Every educated man loves Greece, owes gratitude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up to the nations of the banner of art and science, as Israel was the lifter-up of the banner of righteousness. Now, the world cannot do without art and science. And the lifter-up of the banner of art and science was naturally much occupied with A A 354 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . them, and conduct was a homely plain matter; not enough heed, therefore, was given by him to conduct. But conduct, plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life, while art and science are only two-eighths. And this brilliant Greece perished for lack of attention enough to conduct ; for want of conduct, steadiness, character. And there is this difference between Greece and Judaea ; both were custodians of a revelation and both perished ; but Greece perished of over-fidelity to her revelation, and Judaea perished of under - fidelity to hers. Nay, and the victorious revelation now, even now, — in this age when more of beauty and more of knowledge are so much needed, and knowledge, at any rate, is so highly esteemed, — the revelation which rules the world even now, is not Greece's revelation, but Judaea’s ; not the pre-eminence of art and science, but the pre-eminence of righteousness. It reminds one of what is recorded of Abraham, before the true inheritor of the promises, the humble arid homely Isaac, was born. Abraham looked upon the vigorous, bold, brilliant young Ishmael, and said appealingly to God : ‘ Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! ’ But it cannot be ; the promises are to conduct , conduct only. And so, again, we behold, long after Greece has perished, a brilliant successor of Greece, the Renascence, present GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 355 herself with high hopes. The preachers of righteous- ness, blunderers as they might be, have had it all their own way, art and science have been forgotten, men’s minds have been enslaved, their bodies macerated. But the gloomy, oppressive dream is now over : ‘ Let us return to Nature I 1 And all the world salutes with pride and joy the Renascence, and prays to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ishmael might live before thee ! * Surely the future belongs to this brilliant new-comer, with his animating maxim : Let us return to Nature. Ah, what pitfalls are in that word Nature! Let us return to art and science, which are a part of Nature; yes. Let us return to a proper conception of righteousness, to a true use of the method and secret of Jesus, which have been all de- naturalised; yes. But, ‘Let us return to Nature ;’ — do you mean that we are to give full swing to our in- clinations, to throw the reins on the neck of our senses, of those sirens whom Paul the Israelite called ‘ the de- ceitful lusts,’ and of following whom he said : ‘ Let no man beguile you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience ’ ? Do you mean that conduct is not three- fourths of life, and that the secret of J esus has no use ? And the Renascence did mean this, or half meant this ; so disgusted was it with the cowled and tonsured Middle A A 2 356 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . Age. And it died of it, this brilliant Ishmael died of it ! it died of provoking a collision with the homely Isaac, righteousness. On the Continent came the Catholic re-action ; in England, as we have said elsewhere, ‘ the great middle class, the kernel of the nation, entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the key turned upon its spirit there for two hundred years/ After too much glorification of art, science, and culture, too little ; after Rabelais, George Fox. France, again, how often and how impetuously for France has the prayer gone up to Heaven : ‘ Oh that Ish- mael might live before thee ! ’ It is not enough perceived what it is which gives France her attractiveness for every- body, her success, her repeated disasters. France is Thomme sensuel moyen , the average sensual man ; Paris is the city of Vhomme sensuel moyen. This has an attrac- tion for all of us. We all have in us this homme sensuel ’ the man of the ‘ wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts ; ’ but we develope him under checks and doubts, and unsystematically and often grossly. France, on the other hand, developes him confidently and harmoniously. She makes the most of him, because she knows what she is about and keeps in a mean, as her climate is in a mean, and her situation. She does not develope him with mad- ness, into a monstrosity, as the Italy of the Renascence did, GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 357 she developes him equably and systematically ; and hence she does not shock ' people with him but attracts them, she names herself the France of tact and measure, good sense, logic. In a way, this is true. As she developes the senses, the apparent self, all round, in good faith, without misgivings, without violence ; she has much reasonableness and clearness in all her notions and arrangements; a sort of balance even in conduct; as much art and science, and it is not a little, as goes with the ideal of Thomme sensuel moyen . And from her ideal of the average sensual man France has deduced her famous gospel of the Rights of Man, which she preaches with such an infinite crowing and self-admiration. France takes 4 the wishes of the flesh and of the current thoughts ’ for a man’s rights ; and human happiness, and the perfection of society, she places in everybody’s being enabled to gratify these wishes, to get these rights, as equally as possible and as much as possible In Italy, as in ancient Greece, the satisfying development of this ideal of the average sensual man is broken by the imperious ideal of art and science disparaging it; in the Teutonic nations, by the ideal of morality disparaging it. Still, whenever, as often happens, the pursuers of these higher ideals are a little weary of them or unsuccessful with them, they turn with a sort of envy and admiration to the ideal set 358 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . up by France, — so positive, intelligible, and up to a certain point satisfying. They are inclined to try it instead of their own, though they can never bring themselves to try it thoroughly, and therefore well. But this explains the great attraction France exercises upon the world. All of us feel, at some time or other in our lives, a hankering after the French ideal, a disposition to try it. More particularly is this true of the Latin nations ; and there- fore everywhere, among these nations, you see the old indigenous type of city disappearing, and the type of modern Paris, the city of Vhomme sensuel vioyen y re- placing it. La Boheme, the ideal, free, pleasurable life of Paris, is a kind of Paradise of Ishmaels. And all this assent from every quarter, and the clearness and apparent reasonableness of their ideal besides, fill the French with a kind of ecstatic faith in it, a zeal almost fanatical for propagating what they gall French civilisa- tion everywhere, for establishing its predominance, and their own predominance along with it, as of the people entrusted with an oracle so showy and taking. Oh that Ishmael might live before thee! Since everybody has something which conspires with this Ishmael, his success, again and again, seems to be certain ; again and again he seems drawing near to a worldwide success, nay, to have succeeded 3 — but always, at this point, disaster GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT. 359 overtakes him, he signally breaks down. At this crowning moment, when all seems triumphant with him, comes what the Bible calls a crisis, or judgment. Now is the judgment of this world ! now shall the prince of this world he cast out ! Cast out he is, and always must be, be- cause his ideal, which is also that of France, however she may have noble spirits who contend against it and seek a better, is after all a false one. Plausible and attractive as it may be, the constitution of things turns out to be somehow or other against it. And why? Because the free development of our senses all round, of our apparent self, has to undergo a profound modifica- tion from the law of our higher real self, the law of righteousness; because he, whose ideal is the develop- ment of the senses all round, serves the senses, is a servant. But : The servant abideth not in the house for ever ; the son abideth for ever. Is it possible to imagine grander testimony to the truth of the revelation committed to Israel? What miracle of making an iron axe-head float on water, what successful prediction that a thing should happen just so many years and months and days hence, could be really half so impressive ? 360 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. 6 . So that the whole history of the world to this day is in truth one continual establishing of the Old Testament revelation : ‘ O ye that love the Eternal , see that ye hate the thing that is evil ! to him that ordereth his conversation right , shall he shown the salvation of God l And whether we consider this revelation in respect to human affairs at large, or in respect to individual happiness, in either case its importance is so immense, that the people to whom it was given, and whose record is in the Bible, deserve fully to be singled out as the Bible singles them. 6 Behold, darkness doth cover the earth, and gross darkness the nations : but the Eternal shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee ! ’ For, while other nations had the misleading idea that this or that, other than righteousness, is saving, and it is not ; that this or that, other than conduct, brings happiness, and it does not ; Israel had the true idea that righteousness is saving, that to conduct belongs happiness. Nor let it be said that other nations, too, had at least something of this idea. They had, but they were not possessed with it ; and to feel it enough to make the world feel it, it was necessary to be possessed with it. It is not sufficient to have been visited by such an idea at times, to GREATNESS OF OLD TESTAMENT 361 have had it forced occasionally on one’s mind by the teach- ing of experience. No ; he that hath the bride is the bride- groom; the idea belongs to him who has most loved it. Common prudence can say : Honesty is the best policy ; morality can say : To conduct belongs happiness. But Israel and the Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise higher and say : 6 Righteousness is salvation ! ’ — and this is what is inspiring. ‘ I have stuck unto thy testimonies. Eternal, what love have I unto thy law ! all the day long is my study in it. Thy testimonies have I claimed as mine heritage for ever , and why? they are the very joy of my hearth This is why the testimonies of righteousness are Israel’s heritage for ever, because they were the very joy of his heart . Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and elect of the Eternal. 4 He showeth his word unto Jacob , his statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws.’ Poor Israel ! poor ancient people! It was revealed to thee that righteousness is salvation ; the question, what righteousness is, was thy stumbling-stone. Seer of the vision of peace, that yet couldst not see the things which belong unto thy peace ! with that blindness thy solitary pre-eminence ended, and the new Israel, made up out of all nations and languages, took thy room. But, thy visit- 36 2 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. ation complete, thy temple in ruins, thy reign over, thine office done, thy children dispersed, thy teeth drawn, thy shekels of silver and gold plundered, did there yet stay with thee any remembrance of thy primitive intuition, sim- ple and sublime, of the Eternal that loveth righteousness ? Perhaps not ; the Talmudists were fully as well able to efface it as the Fathers. But if there did, what punishment can have been to thee like the punishment of watching the performances of the Aryan genius upon the foundation which thou hadst given it ? — to behold this terrible and triumphant philosopher, with his monotheistic idea and his metaphysical Trinity, e neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance ’ ? Like the torture to a poet to hear people laying down the law about poetry who have not the sense what poetry is, — a sense with which he was bom ! like the affliction to a man of science to hear people talk of things as proved , who do not even know what constitutes a fact ! From the Council of Nicaea down to Convocation, and the Bishops of Win- chester and Gloucester 4 doing something ’ for the God- head of the Eternal Son, what must thou have had to suffer ! TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 363 CHAPTER XII. THE TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. No ; the mystery hidden from ages and generations, which none of the rulers of this world knew, the mystery revealed finally by Christ and rejected by the Jews, was not the doctrine of the Trinity, nor anything speculative ; it was the method and the secret of Jesus. Jesus did not change the object for men, — righteousness; he made clear what it was, and that it was this : his method and his secret. This was the mystery , and the Apostles had still the con- sciousness that it was. To ‘ learn Christ/ to ‘ be taught the truth as it is in Jesus/ was not, with them, to acquire certain tenets about One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity; it was, to 6 be renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness / And this exactly amounts to the method and secret of Jesus. For Catholic and for Protestant theology alike, this consciousness, which the Apostles had still preserved^ 364 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . was lost. For Catholic and Protestant theology alike, the truth as it is in Jesus, the mystery revealed in Christ, meant something totally different from his method and secret. But they recognised, and indeed the thing was so plain that they could not well miss it, they recognised that on all Christians the method and secret of J esus were enjoined. So to this extent the method and secret of Jesus were preached and had their effect. To this extent true Christianity has been known, and to the extent before stated it has been neglected. Now, as we say that the truth and grandeur of the Old Testament most comes out experimentally , — that is, by the whole course of the world establishing it, and confuting what is opposed to it, — so it is with Christianity. Its grandeur and truth are far most brought out experimentally ; and the thing is, to make people see this. But there is this difference between the religion of the Old Testament and Christianity. Of the religion of the Old Testament we can pretty well see to the end, we can trace fully enough the experimental proof of it in history. But of Christianity the future is as yet al- most unknown. For that the world cannot get on with- out righteousness we have the clear experience, and a grand and admirable experience it is. But what the world will become by the thorough use of that which is really righteousness, the method and the secret and the TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY . 365 sweet reasonableness of Jesus, we have as yet hardly any experience at all. Therefore we, who in this essay limit ourselves to experience, shall speak here of Chris- tianity and its greatness very soberly. Yet Christianity is really all the grander for that very reason which makes us speak about it in this sober manner, — that it has such an immense development still before it, and that it has as yet so little shown all it contains, all it can do. In- deed/ that Christianity has already done so much as it has, is a witness to it ; and that it has not yet done more, is a witness to it too. Let us observe how this is so. 2. Few things are more melancholy than to observe Chris- tian apologists taunting the Jews with the failure of He- braism to fulfil the splendid promises of prophecy, and Jewish apologists taunting Christendom with the failure of Christianity to fulfil these. Neither has yet fulfilled them, or could yet have fulfilled them. Certainly the restoration by Cyrus, the Second Temple, the Maccabean victories, are hardly more than the shadows of a fulfilment of the magnificent words : ‘ The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet ; thy gates shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the treasures of the Gentiles 366 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . and that their kings may be brought.’ The Christianisa- tion of all the leading nations of the world is, it is said, a much better fulfilment of that promise. Be it so. Yet does Christendom, let us ask, offer more than a shadow of the fulfilment of this : ‘ Violence shall no more be heard in thy land ; the vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl bountiful ; thy people shall be all righteous ; they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest ; I will put my law in their inward p&rts, and write it in their hearts ; the Eternal shall be thine everlasting light and the days of thy mourning shall be ended’? Manifestly it does not; yet the two promises hang together, one of them is not truly fulfilled unless the other is. The promises were made to righteousness , with all which the idea of righteousness involves ; and it involves Christianity. They were made on the immediate pros- pect of a small triumph for righteousness, the restoration of the Jews after the captivity in Babylon ; but they are not satisfied by that triumph. The prevalence of the pro- fession of Christianity is a larger triumph ; yet in itself it hardly satisfies them any better. What satisfies them is the prevailing of that which righteousness really is, and nothing else satisfies them. N o w Christianity is that which righteousness really is. Therefore, if something called TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 367 Christianity prevails, and yet the promises are not satisfied, the inference is that this something is not that which righteousness really is, and therefore not really Christianity. And as the course of the world is perpetually establishing the pre-eminence of righteous- ness, and confounding whatever denies this pre-eminence, so, too, the course of the world is for ever establishing what righteousness really is, — that is to say, true Chris- tianity, — and confounding whatever pretends to be true Christianity and is not. Now, just as the constitution of things turned out to be against the great unrighteous kingdoms of the heathen world, and against all the brilliant Ishmaels we have seen since, so the constitution of things turns out to be against all false presentations of Christianity, such as the theology of the Fathers or Protestant theology. They do not work successfully, they do not reach the aim, they do not bring the world to the fruition of the promises made to righte- ousness. And the reason is, because they substitute for what is really righteousness something else. Catholic dogma or Lutheran justification by faith they substitute for the method and secret of Jesus. Nevertheless, as all Christian Churches do recommend the method and the secret of Jesus, though not in the right way or in the right eminency, still the world is made 368 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . acquainted with what righteousness really is, and the doctrine produces some effect, although the full effect is much thwarted and deadened by the false way in which the doctrine is presented. Still the effect produced is great ; for instance, the sum of individual happiness that has been caused by Christianity is, anyone can see, enormous. But let us take the effect of Christianity on the world. And if we look at the thing closely, we shall find that its effect has been this : Christianity has brought the world, or at any rate all the leading part of the world, to regard right eous?iess as only the Jews regarded it before the coming of Christ . The world has accepted, so far as profession goes, that original revelation made to Israel : the pre-eminence of righteousness. The infinite truth and attractiveness of the method and secret and cha- racter of Jesus, however falsely surrounded, have pre- vailed with the world so far as this. And this is an immense gain, and a signal witness to Christianity. The world does homage to the pre-eminence of righteousness ; and here we have one of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so true and so glorious. ‘ Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God ! I will make men- tion of Rahab and Babylon as of them that know me ! behold, the Philistines also, and Tyre, with the Ethio- pians, — these were born there! And of Zion it shall TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 369 be reported : This and that man was born in her ! — and the Most High shall stablish her. The Eternal shall count, when he writeth up the people : This man was born there!' That prophecy is at this present day abundantly fulfilled. The world’s chief nations have now all come, we see, to reckon and profess themselves ad- herents of the religion of Zion, the city of righteousness . But there remains the question : what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonable- ness of Jesus. But the world does not see this ; for it puts, as righteousness, something else first and this second. So that here, too, as to seeing what righteous- ness really is, the world now is just in the same position in which the Jews, when Christ came, were, It is often said : If Christ came now, his religion would be rejected. And this is only another way of saying that the world now, as the Jewish people formerly, has something which thwarts and confuses its perception of what righte- ousness really is. It is so ; and the thwarting cause is the same now as then : — the dogmatic system current, the so-called orthodox theology. This prevents now, as it did then, that which righteousness really is, the method and secret of Jesus, from being rightly received, from operating fully, and from accomplishing its due effect. So true is this, that we have only to look at our own 370 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . community to see the almost precise parallel, so far as religion is concerned, to the state of things presented in Judaea when Christ came. The multitudes are the same everywhere. The chief priests and elders of the people and the scribes, are our bishops and dogmatists, with their pseudo-science of learned theology blinding their eyes, and always, — whenever simple souls are disposed to think that the method and secret of Jesus is true religion, and that the great Personal First Cause and the Godhead of the Eternal Son have nothing to do with it, — eager to cry out : This people that knoweth not the law are cursed ! The Pharisees, with their genuine concern for religion, but total want of perception of what religion really is, and by their temper, attitude, and aims doing their best to make religion impossible, are the Protestant Dissenters. The Sadducees are our friends the philosophical Liberals, who believe neither in angel nor spirit but in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even the Roman governor has his close parallel in our celebrated aristocracy, with its superficial good sense and good nature, its thorough inaptitude for ideas, its profound helplessness in presence of all great spiritual movements. And the result is, that the splendid promises to righteousness made by the Hebrew prophets, claimed by the Jews as the property of Judaism, claimed by us as the property of Christianity, are almost as ludi- TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY, 371 crously inapplicable to our religious state now, as to theirs then. And this, we say, is again a signal witness to Chris- tianity. Christ came to reveal what righteousness, to which the promises belong, really is; and so long as this, though shown by Christ, is not seen by us, we may call ourselves Christendom as much as we please, the true character of a Christendom will be wanting to us, because the great promises of prophecy will be still without their fulfilment. N othing will do, except righteous- ness ; and no other conception of righteousness will do, except Christ’s conception of it : — his method and his secret, 3 - Yes, the grandeur of Christianity and the imposing and impressive attestation of it, if we could but worthily bring the thing out, is here : in that immense experi- mental proof of the necessity of it, which the whole course of the world has steadily accumulated, and indicates to us as still continuing and extending. Men will not admit assumptions, the popular legend they call a fairy-tale, the metaphysical demonstrations do not demonstrate, nothing but experimental proof will go down ; and here is an experimental proof which never fails, and which at the same time is infinitely grander, by the vastness of its b b 2 372 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . scale, the scope of its duration, the gravity of its results, than the machinery of the popular fairy-tale. Walking on the water, multiplying loaves, raising corpses, a heavenly judge appearing with trumpets in the clouds while we are yet alive, — what is this compared to the real expe- rience offered as witness to us by Christianity? It is like the difference between the grandeur of an extrava- ganza and the grandeur of the sea or the sky, — immense objects which dwarf us, but where we are in contact with reality, and a reality of which we can slowly trace the laws. The more we trace the real law of Christianity’s action, the grander it will seem. Certainly in the Gospels there is plenty of matter to call out our feelings, but perhaps this has been somewhat over-used and mis-used, applied, as it has been, chiefly so as to be subservient to what we call the fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftesburys, — a story which we do not deny to have, like other products of the popular imagination, its pathos and power, but which we have seen to be no solid foundation to rest our faith in the Bible on. And perhaps, too, we do wrong, and inevitably fall into what is artificial and unnatural, in labouring so much to produce in ourselves, as the one impulse determining us to use the method and secret of Jesus, that conscious ardent s.ens.ation of personal love to him, which wp TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 373 find the first generation of Christians feeling and profess- ing, and which was the natural motor for those who were with him or near him, and, so to speak, touched him ; and in making this our first object. At any rate, misem- ployed as this motor has often been, it might be well to forego or at least suspend its use for ourselves and others for a time, and to fix our minds exclusively on the recommendation given to the method and secret of Jesus by their being true , and by the whole course of things proving this. Now, just as the best recommendation of the oracle committed to Israel, Righteousness is salvation , is found in our more and more discovering, in our own history and in the whole history of the world, that it is so, so we shall find it to be with the method and secret of Jesus. That this is the righteousness which is salvation, that the method and secret of Jesus, that is to say, conscience and self-renouncement, are righteousness, bring about the kingdom of God or the reign of righteousness, — this, which is the Christian revelation and what Jesus came to estab- lish, is best impressed, for the present at any rate, by experiencing and showing again and again, in ourselves and in the course of the world, that it is so ; that this is the righteousness which is saving, and that there is none other. Let us but well observe what comes, in ourselves or the 374 LIT ERA T URE AND DOGMA. world, of trying any other, of not being convinced that this is righteousness, and this only ; and we shall find ourselves more and more, as by irresistible viewless hands, caught and drawn towards the Christian revelation, and made to desire more and more to serve it. No proof can be so solid as this experimental proof ; and none again, can be so grand, so fitted to fill us with awe, admiration, and gratitude ; so that feeling and emotion will now well come in after it, though not before it. For the whole course of human things is really, according to this ex- perience, leading up to the fulfilment of Christ’s promise to his disciples : Fear not , little flock l for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom . And thus that comes after all to be true, which St. Paul an- nounced prematurely to the first generation of Christians : When Christ , who is our life , shall appear , then shall ye also appear with him in glory. And the author of the Apocalypse, in like manner, foretold : The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. The kingdom of the Eternal the world is already become, by its chief nations professing the religion of righteous- ness. The kingdom of Christ the world will have to become, it is on its way to become, because the profession of righteousness, except as Christ interpreted righteous- ness, is vain. We can see the process, we are ourselves TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 3 75 part of it, and can in our measure forward or keep back its completion. When the prophet, indeed, says to Israel, on the point of being restored by Cyrus : ‘ The nation and kingdo7n that will not serve thee shall perish ! 9 the promise, applied literally, fails. But extended to that idea of righteousness, of which Israel was the depositary and in which the real life of Israel lay, the promise is true, and we can see it fulfilled. In like manner, when the Apostle says to the Corinthians or to the Colossians, instructed that the second advent would come in their own generation : ‘ We must all appear before the judgmenUseat of Christ f — ‘ When Christ , who is our life , shall appear , then shall ye also appear with him in glory J’ the promise, applied lite- rally as the Apostle meant it and his converts understood it, fails. But divested of this Aberglaube or extra-belief, it is true ; if indeed the world can be shown, — and it can, — to be moving necessarily towards the triumph of that Christ in whom the Corinthian and Colossian disciples lived, and whose triumph is the triumph of all his dis- ciples also. 4- Let us keep hold of this same experimental process in dealing with the promise of immortality ; although here, 376 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. if anywhere, Aberglaube , extra-belief, hope, anticipation, may well be permitted to come in. Still, what we need for our foundation is not Aberglaube , but Glaube\ not extra-belief in what is beyond the range of possible ex- perience, but belief in what can and should be known to be true. By what futilities the demonstration of our immortality may be attempted, is to be seen in Plato’s Phcedo . Man’s natural desire for continuance, however little it may be worth as a scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a proof a thousand times stronger than any such demonstration. The want of solidity in such argument is so palpable, that one scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at all. But of the com- mon Christian conception of immortality the want of solidity is perhaps most conclusively shown by the im- possibility of so framing it, as that it will at all support a steady regard turned upon it. In our English popular religion, for instance, the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of the Vision of Mirza : ‘ Persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, amid a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments.’ Or, even, with many, it is that of a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 377 spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. ‘ Poor fragments all of this low earth ! 7 Keble might well say. That this conception of immor- tality cannot possibly be true we feel, the moment we consider it seriously ; and yet who can devise any con- ception of a future state of bliss which shall bear close examination better ? Here, again, it is far best to take what is experimentally true, and nothing else, as our foundation, and afterwards to let hope and aspiration grow, if so it may be, out of this. Israel had said : ‘In the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death. 7 And by a kind of short cut to the conclusion thus laid down, the Jews constructed their fairy-tale of an advent, judgment, and resurrection, as we find it in the Book of Daniel. Jesus had said : ‘ If a man keep my word, he shall never see death ; 7 and by a kind of short cut to the conclusion thus laid down, Christians constructed their fairy-tale of the second advent, the resurrection of the body, the New Jerusalem. But instead of fairy-tales, let us begin, at least, with certainties. And a certainty is the sense of life, of being truly alive, which accompanies righteousness. If this experimental sense does not rise to be stronger in us, does not rise to the sense of being inextinguishable, that is probably be- cause our experience of righteousness is really so very 378 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. small ; and here we may well permit ourselves to trust Jesus, whose practice and intuition both of them went, in these matters, so far deeper than ours. At any rate, we have in our experience this strong sense of life from righteousness to start with ; capable of being developed, apparently, by progress in righteousness into something immeasurably stronger. Here is the true basis for all religious aspiration after immortality. And it is an experimental basis ; and therefore, as to grandeur, it is again, when compared with the popular Aberglaube , grand with all the superior grandeur, on a subject of the highest seriousness, of reality over fantasy. At present, the fantasy hides the grandeur of the reality. But when all the Aberglaube of the second advent, with its signs in the sky, sounding trumpets and opening graves, is cleared away, then and not till then will come out the profound truth and grandeur of words of J esus like these : ‘ The hour is coming, when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man ; and they that hear shall live l 5 - Finally, and above all. As, for the right inculcation of righteousness, we need the inspiring words of Israel’s love for it, that is, we need the Bible ; so, for the right incul- cation of the method and secret of Jesus, we need the TRUE GREATNESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 379 epieikeia , the sweet reasonableness, of Jesus. That is, in other words again, we need the Bible ; for only through the Bible-records of Jesus can we get at his epieikeia. Even in these records, it is and can be presented but imperfectly ; but only by reading and re-reading the Bible can we get at it at all. Now, greatly as the failure, from the stress laid upon the pseudo-science of Church dogma, to lay enough stress upon the. method and secret of Jesus, has kept Chris- tianity back from showing itself in its full power, it is probable that the failure to apply to the method and secret of Jesus, so far as these have at any rate been used, his sweet reasonableness or epieikeia , has kept it back even more. And the infinite of the religion of Jesus, — its immense capacity for ceaseless progress and farther development, — lies principally, perhaps, in the line of extricating more and more his sweet reasonableness, and applying it to his method and secret. For it is obvious from experience how much our use of Christ’s method and secret requires to be guided and governed by his epieikeia ; indeed, without this, his method and secret seem often of no use at all. The Flagellants imagined that they were employing his secret ; and the Dissenters, with their ‘ spirit of watchful jealousy,’ imagine that they are employing his method. To be sure, Mr. Bradlaugh imagines that the method and the secret of Jesus, nay, 3 So LITERATURE AND DOGMA. and Jesus himself too, are all baneful, and that the sooner we get rid of them all, the better. So far, then, the Flagellants and the Dissenters are in advance of Mr. Bradlaugh ; they value Christianity, and they profess the method and secret of Jesus. But they employ them so ill, that one is tempted to say they might nearly as well be without them. And this is because they are wholly without his sweet reasonableness, or epieikeia. Now this can only be got, first, by knowing that it is in the Bible, and looking for it there ; and then, by reading and re-reading the Gospels continually, until we catch something of it. This, again, is an experimental process* That the epieikeia or sweet reasonableness of J esus may be brought to govern our use of his method and secret, and that it can and will make our use of his method and secret quite a different thing, is proved by our actually finding this to be so when we try. So that the culmination of Christian righteousness in the applying, to guide our use of the method and secret of Jesus, his sweet rea- sonableness or epieikeia , is proved from experience. We end, therefore, as we began. For the whole series of experiences, of which the survey is thus completed, rests, primarily, upon one fundamental fact, — itself, also, a fact of experience : the necessity of righteousness . CONCLUSION. CONCLUSION. But now, after all we have been saying of the pre- eminence of righteousness, we remember what we have said formerly in praise of culture and of Hellenism, and against too much Hebraism, too exclusive a pursuit of the ‘ one thing needful/ as people call it. And we cannot help wondering whether we shall not be reproached with inconsistency, and told that we ought at least to sing, as the Greeks said, a palinode ; and whether it may not really be so, and we ought. And, certainly, if we had ever said that Hellenism was three-fourths of human life, and conduct or righteousness but one-fourth, a palinode, as well as an unmusical man may, we would sing. But we have never said it. In praising culture, we have never denied that conduct, not culture, is three-fourths of human life. Only it certainly appears, when the thing is examined, that conduct comes to have relations of a very close kind with culture. And the reason seems to be given by 382 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . some words of our Bible, which though they may not be exactly the right rendering of the original in that place, yet in themselves they explain the connexion of culture with conduct very well. 6 1 have seen the travail/ says the Preacher, ‘ which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it ; he hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart/ He hath set the world in their heart J - — that is why art and science, and what we call culture, are necessary. They may be only one-fourth of man’s life, but they are there , as well as the three-fourths which conduct occupies ; — ‘ he hath set the world in their heart.’ And, really, the reason which we hence gather for the close connexion between culture and conduct, is so simple and natural that we are almost ashamed to give it ; but we have offered so many simple and natural explanations in place of the abstruse ones which are current, that our hesitation is unreasonable. Let us suggest then, that, having this one-fourth of their nature concerned with art and science, men cannot but somehow employ it. If they think that the three- fourths of their nature concerned with conduct are the whole of their nature, and that this is all they have to attend to, still the neglected one-fourth is there, it fer- ments, it breaks wildly out, it employs itself all at random and amiss. And hence, no doubt, our hymns and our CONCLUSION ; 383 dogmatic theology. Of our hymns we here say nothing ; but what is our dogmatic theology, except the mis-attri- bution to the Bible, — -the Book of conduct , — of a science and an abstruse metaphysic which is not there, because our theologians have in themselves a faculty for science ? for it makes one-eighth of them. But they do not employ it on its proper objects ; so it invades the Bible, and tries to make the Bible what it is not, and to put into it what is not there. And this prevents their attending enough to what is in the Bible, and makes them battle for what is not in the Bible, but they have put it there ; — battle for it in a manner clean contrary, often, to the teaching of the Bible. So has arisen, for instance, all re- ligious persecution. And thus, we say, has conduct itself become impaired. So that conduct is impaired by the want of science and culture ; and our theologians really suffer, not from having too much science, but from having too little. Whereas, if they had turned their faculty for abstruse reasoning towards the proper objects, and had given themselves, besides, a wide and large acquaintance with the pro- ductions of the human spirit and with men’s way of thinking and of using words, then, on the one hand, v they would not have been tempted to mis-employ on the Bible their faculty for abstruse reasoning, for they would 384 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . have had plenty of other exercise for it ; and, on the other hand, they would have escaped that literary inexperience, which now makes them fancy that the Bible-language is scientific and fit matter for the application of their powers of abstruse reasoning to it, when it is no such thing. Then they would have seen the fallacy of confounding the obscurity attaching to the idea of God, — that vast not our- selves which transcends us, — with the obscurity attaching to the idea of their Trinity, a confused metaphysical specu- lation which puzzles us. The one, they would have per- ceived, is the obscurity of the immeasurable depth of air, the other is the obscurity of a fog. And fog, they would have known, has no proper place in our conceptions of God ; since whatever our minds can possess of God they know clearly, for no man, says Goethe, possesses what he does not understand ; but they can possess of Him but a very little. All this our dogmatic theologians would know, if they had had more science and more literature. And therefore, simple as the Bible and conduct are, still culture seems to be required for them, — required to prevent our mis-handling and sophisticating them. 2. Culture, then, and literature are required, even in the interest of religion itself, and when, taking nothing but CONCLUSION. 385 conduct into account, we make God, as Israel made him, to be simply and solely c the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness But we are not to forget, that, grand as this conception of God is, and well as it meets the wants of far the largest part of our being, of three-fourths of it, yet there is one-fourth of our being of which it does not strictly meet the wants, the part which is concerned with art and science; or, in other words, with beauty and exact knowledge. For the total man, therefore, the truer conception of God is as ‘ the Eternal Power, not ourselves, by which all things fulfil the law of their being by which, therefore, we fulfil the law of our being so far as our being is aesthetic and intellective, as well as so far as it is moral. And it is evident, as we have before now remarked, that in this wider sense God is displeased and disserved by many things which cannot be said, except by putting a strain upon words, to displease and disserve him as the God of righteousness. He is displeased and disserved by men uttering such doggerel hymns as : Sing glory, glory , glory to the great God Triune! and : Out of my stony griefs Bethels I'll raise ! and : My Jesus to know , and feel his blood flow , Us life everlasting , 9 tis heaven below! or by the Bishop of Gloucester uttering such pseudo-science as his i blessed truth that the God of the universe is a person . 1 386 LITERATURE AND DOGMA . But it would be harsh to give, at present, this turn to our employment of the phrases, pleasing God, displeasing God. And yet, as man makes progress, we shall surely come to this ; for, the clearer our conceptions in science and art become, the more will they assimilate themselves to the conceptions of duty in conduct, will become practically stringent like rules of conduct, and will invite the same sort of language in dealing with them. And so far let us venture to poach on M. Emile Burnouf s manor, and to talk about the Aryan genius, as to say, that the love of science, and the energy and honesty in the pursuit of science, in the best of the Aryan races, do seem to correspond in a remarkable way to the love of conduct, and the energy and honesty in the pursuit of conduct , in the best of the Semitic. To treat science with the same kind of seriousness as conduct, does seem, therefore, to be a not impossible thing for the Aryan genius to come to. But for all this, however, man is hardly yet ripe. For cur race, as we see it now and as ourselves we form a part of it, the true God is and must be pre-eminently the God of the Bible, the Eternal who makes for righteousness, from whom Jesus came forth, and whose Spirit governs the course of humanity. Only, we see that even for apprehending this God of the Bible rightly and not CONCLUSION. 387 wrongly, letters, which so many people disparage, and what we call, in general, culture , seem to be necessary. And meanwhile, to prevent our at all pluming ourselves on having apprehended what so much baffles our dog- matic friends (although indeed it is not so much we who apprehend it as the 4 Zeit-Geist ’ who discovers it to us), what a chastening and wholesome reflection for us it is, that it is only to our natural inferiority to these ingenious men that we are indebted for our advantage over them ! For while they were born with talents for metaphysical spe- culation and abstruse reasoning, we are so notoriously defi- cient in everything of that kind, that our adversaries often taunt us with it, and have held us up to public ridicule as being 4 without a system of philosophy, based on principles interdependent, subordinate and coherent.’ And so we were thrown on letters ; thrown upon reading this and that, — which anybody can do, — and thus gradually getting a notion of the history of the human mind, which enables us (the 4 Zeit-Geist’ favouring) to correct in reading the Bible some of the mistakes into which men of more meta- physical talents than literary experience have fallen. Cripples in like manner have been known, now and then, to be cast by their very infirmity upon some mental pursuit which has turned out happily for them ; and a good fortune of this kind has perhaps been ours. c c 2 388 LITERATURE AND DOGMA. But we do not forget that this good fortune we owe to our weakness, and that the natural superiority remains with our adversaries. And some day, perhaps, the nature of God may be as well known as the nature of a cone or a triangle ; and then the Bishops of Winchester and Gloucester will deduce its properties with success, and make their brilliant logical play about it, — rightly, instead of, as now, wrongly; and will resume all their advantage. But this will hardly be in our time ; so that the superiority of this pair of distinguished metaphysicians will, never, perhaps, after all, be of any real advantage to them, but they will be deluded and bemocked by it until they die. LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET BY THE SAME AUTHOR, , i. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM; with an Essay on Puritanism and the Church of England. II. Crown 8vo. qs. 6d. 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