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STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY.

STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY:

A SERIES OF ORIGINAL PAPERS,

NOW FIRST COLLECTED, OR NEW.

JAMES MAETINEAU.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, and ROBERTS.
1858.

PREFACE.

The Volume here presented to the English Eeader has
been compiled, primarily, for American use, by the zealous
hand of my friend, the Eev. W. R. Alger, of Boston, U.S.
With the exception of the last piece but one, 'which is new,
the papers comprised in it have been published before ;
and have nothing to plead in excuse for their re-appearance,
except that many of them, being either out of print or
buried in reviews, had become prematurely inaccessible.
For the friendly estimate to which they owe their preserva
tion in more permanent form, I desire to express my
grateful acknowledgments. Whether ratified or not by a
more public judgment, it gives assurance of that kind of
sympathy which best delivers the solitary student from his
self- distrusts.
The Eeader will be at no loss how to divide the respon
sibility of this Volume between my Editor and myself.
For the contents of the papers, taken separately, I alone
am answerable. Their selection, their grouping, and the
common title which brings them into a certain unity, are
due to Editorial care. In the writings here strung upon a
single thread, many repetitions, I am well aware — perhaps
some inconsistencies — may be found. Brought together
from dates scattered over nearly thirty years, they cannot
all exhibit the same phase of opinion and feeling. Did
3hey do so, they would only betray an insensibility, truly
culpable in any public instructor, to the great movements
of both historical criticism and philosophical thought
a 2

VI PREFACE.
during the last and present generation. It would be a
strange result of a studious man's reading and reflection,
did he find that he had nothing to learn, and nothing to
unlearn, but could still believe at fifty precisely what he had
set down at twenty-five. Conservatism of this kind the reader
of the following papers will certainly miss. But he will
greatly mistake me, or I must greatly deceive myself, if he
finds no trace of that other Conservatism, which recedes
from the untenable only to save the essential, and, in occu
pying new positions, simply meets the conditions of an
altered field. Amid lesser varieties, critical or logical, I
indulge the hope that no breach of moral continuity will be
found ; but the same desire, at the end as at the beginning,
to harmonise the outer and the inner, the natural and the
supernatural, witness of Divine truth and good.
Two or three of the following papers, while disquisitional
in substance, are controversial in form. Though defending,
under certain aspects, a Unitarian interpretation of Chris
tianity, they make no pretension to a representative charac
ter, but express purely personal convictions. I am anxious
that no one, for whom they may concede too much, or
claim too little, should be compromised by them. To
define to himself, and, at proper times, explain to others,
with unreserved distinctness and simplicity, the nature and
grounds of the faith in which he lives, is the indispensable
duty of every Christian teacher, and the natural impulse of
every earnest man. But in this task of exposition I have
never been able — or, indeed, anxious — to suppress a cer
tain secondary sympathy with the very beliefs from which
I dissent — a perception that they, too, catch by side-lights
an aspect of the infinite truth. No one possessed with
this feeling can dare unconditionally to identify his own
conviction with the whole absolute truth which it repre
sents. He will look for ultimate unity, not from the world's
coming round to him while he stands still, but from a con
verging movement of thought, affecting all faithful men,

PBEFACE. Vll
towards a centre of repose as yet invisible. The present
Volume, mainly produced under the influence of such a
hope, goes forth to trace for a little way, should the privi
lege be allowed it, one of these lines of Christian approxi
mation. J. M.
West Pentire, Cornwall,
August 19, 1858.

CONTENTS.

Page 1

Date.
DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY . 1854
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND WITHOUT
RITUAL .....
SCHEME' OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION
MEDIATORIAL RELIGION
FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH
CREED AND HERESIES OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY 1853
THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM
THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM
THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF
ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS .
ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS .
SIN : WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT
DUTIES OF CHRISTIANS IN AN AGE OF CONTROVERSY ]830 478

1839

35

1839

83

1856

147

1841

177

ety 1853

201

1851

266

1852

299

1852

356

1856

399

1855

414

1858

466

By the same Author,
Price 9s., cloth,
MISCELLANIES:
CONTAINING ESSAYS ON
1. THE LIFE, CHAEACTEE, and WOEK.S of DE. PEIESTLEY.
2. THE LIFE and COEEESPONDENCE of Dr. AENOLD.
3. CHURCH and STATE.
4. THEODORE PARKER.
5. NEWMAN'S PHASES of FAITH.
6. THE CHUECH of ENGLAND.
7. THE BATTLE of the CHURCHES.

Also, in Two Vols., Price 7s. 6d. each,
ENDEAVOURS AFTEE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Second Edition.

Also, Thirteenth Edition, 12mo, 3s. 6d., cloth,
HYMNS FOE THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND HOME.
And Seventh Edition of the same, 32mo, cloth, Is. id.

MESSRS. LONGMAN, BROWN and CO.

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OE CHRISTIANITY.

If unity be the character of truth, no generation was ever
so far gone in errors as our own : nor is the weariness sur
prising, with which statesmen and philosophers turn away
from the Babel of Divinity, and, in despair of scaling the
heavens, apply themselves to found and adorn the politics of
this world. But the confusion of tongues is too positive and
obtrusive a fact to be escaped by mere retreat : it bids defi
ance to polite evasion : it pursues life into every public place
and private haunt ; invades the home, the school, the college,
the court, the legislature ; and, besides the problems which it
fails to solve, constitutes in itself a new one, not undeserving
the closest study and reflection. To the believers in doctrinal
finality, who imagine the whole sacred economy to be settled
by a documentary revelation, the reopening of every question,
down to the very basis of religious faith, must be an appalling
phenomenon, charging either failure on the presumed designs
of God or a traitorous perversity on even the most gifted and
upright of men. And not a whit better is the conclusion of a
conceited illuminism, which, either boldly recalling the human
mind to the sciences of induction, despises all faith as false
alike ; or, conscious at least of its own incompetency, pleases
itself with a more indulgent scepticism, and accepts them all
as true. If no better revenge can be taken on pious dogma
tism than by falling into the cant of an eclectic neutrality or
an impious despair, there is little encouragement for any high-

2 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
minded man to take part against the bigotries of the present
on behalf of sickly negations in the future. The world is bet
ter left in the hands of the poorest interpreter of Paul, and
most degenerate heirs of Augustine and Pascal, than trans
ferred to the dialectic of Proclus or the materialism of the liv
ing " Fondateur de la Religion de V Humanite." * There are
those, however, who deny that we are left to any such alter
native ; who cannot conceive that human aspirations after
divine reality shall for ever pine and sigh in vain ; who con
tend that objective truth in reference to morals and religion
is attainable, and has been largely attained ; — and who, ac
cordingly, despairing of neither philosophy nor Christianity,
require only the free intercommunion of the two to appreciate
the contradictions of the present without foregoing the hope
of greater unity in the future. The controversies of the hour
are but ill understood by one who remains enclosed within
them, and judges them only on their own assumptions. Like
a village brawl, which, with only the sound of vulgar noise,
may be the ripe fruit of oppression and the germ of revolu
tion, they have an assigned place in the unfolding of modern
civilization ; and not till their place is computed in the life of
the human race, and the law which brings them up in our age
is observed, can their real significance be apprehended, and
all anger at their clamorous littleness be lost in hope of their
ulterior issues. Regarded from this higher point, the surface
of religious belief in England, at first sight a mere troubled
fermentation of struggling elements, betrays some organic
principle of order, and many salient points of promise.
We . hazard no theory of religion in saying that there is a
natural correspondence between the genius of a people and
the form of their belief. Each mood of mind brings its own
wants and aspirations, colors its own ideal, and interprets best
that part of life and the universe with which it is in sympa
thy. John Knox would have been misplaced in Athens, and

* The title which Auguste Comte gives himself in his " Catechisme Posi-
tiviste." — Preface, p. xl.

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 3
Tauler could not have lived on the moralism of Kant. No
doubt the ultimate seat of human faith lies deep down below
the special propensities of individuals or tribes, — in a con
sciousness and faculty common to the race. But ere it comes
to the surface, and disengages itself in a concrete shape, its
type and color will be affected by the strata of thought and
feeling through which it emerges into the light Without pre
tending to an exhaustive classification, we find four chief tem
peraments of mind expressed in the theologies and scepticisms
of civilized Europe : the quest of physical order, the sense
of right, the instinct of beauty, and the consciousness of tem
pestuous impulses carrying the will off its feet. Variously
blended in the characters of average persons, these tendencies
are liable to separate their intensities, and severally dominate
almost alone in minds of great force and periods of special
action or reaction. Were each left to itself to form its own
unaided creed, the doctrine of mere Science would be atheis
tic ; of Conscience, theistia ; of Art, pantheistic ; of Passion,
sacrificial. The evidence of this distribution of tendencies is
equally conclusive, whether we look to its rational ground or
to its historical exemplification; and a few words on each
head will suffice to clear and justify it.
Notwithstanding some occasional attempts to exhibit natu
ral theology as a necessary extension of natural philosophy, it
is plain that the maxims, which are ultimate for physical Sci
ence, stop short of contact with Religion ; that the final appeal
of the two is carried to different faculties ; and that the scope
and sphere of the one may be complete without borrowing any
conception from the other. The assumption, for instance, that
" we can know nothing but phenomena," directly excludes all
permanent and eternal Being as the possible object of rational
thought. And as "phenomena" are apprehensible only by
the observing faculties, whatever refuses to put in an appear
ance in their court is nonsuited as an unreality. And again,
physical knowledge has accomplished its aim, as soon as it can
predict all the successions that he within its field of time and
space ; and nowhere in this system of series, nor in the calcu-

4 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
lated forces which yield it to the view, does any divine Person
look in upon the mind. Whoever, by the restraints of a hypo
thetical necessity, detains his intellect within nature, debars
himself ipso facto from any faith that transcends nature, and
recognizes no reserve of supernatural possibilities, hidden in a
Mind of which the actual universe is but the finite expression.
We do not, of course, intend to affirm that scientific culture
cannot coexist with religious belief; — so preposterous an as
sertion would be confuted by a manifold experience; — but
only that, where the canons of inductive knowledge are in
vested with unconditional universality, and are logically car
ried out as valid for all thought, they shut the door upon the
sources of faith. It is the old battle, of which history supplies
such abundant illustration; which brought Parmenides and
Protagoras upon the lists at opposite ends on the field of phi
losophy ; which Bacon profoundly avoided by assigning sepa
rate empires, without common boundary, to science and relig
ion ; but which his modern disciples have rashly renewed, by
invading the realm left sacred by him. Uneasy relations
have always subsisted in Christendom between the investiga
tors of nature and the trustees of the faith : the men of science
rarely quitting, unless for signs of unequivocal aversion, the
attitude of polite indifference to the Church ; and in their turn
watched with the jealous eye of sacerdotal vigilance. It is no
untrue instinct that has hitherto maintained them in this pos
ture of mutual suspicion : to exchange which for a hearty and
intelligent reverence for each other is an achievement re
served for a higher philosophy than we yet possess.
As Science pays homage to the force of nature, so Con
science enthrones the law of right. The conscious subject of
moral obligation feels himself under a rule neither self-im
posed and fictitious, nor foreign and coercive; — neither a
home invention nor an outward necessity ; — a rule invisible,
authoritative, awful ; carrying with it an alternative irreduci
ble to the linear dynamics of the physical world ; incapable of
being felt but by a free mind, or of being given but by an
other. He is aware that his will follows a call of duty not at

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY". 5
all as his body adapts itself to the force of gravitation ; and as
within him the conscientious obedience wholly differs from the
"corporeal, so in the universe of realities beyond him does the
moral legislation differ from the natural, and express the will
of a person, not a mere constitution of things. No ethical
conceptions are possible at all, — except as floating shreds of
unattached thought, — without a religious background; and
the sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the inner rev
erence for justice, first find their meaning and vindication in a
supreme holiness that rules the world. Nor can any one be
penetrated with the distinction between right and wrong, with
out recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of
local or arbitrary change. His feeling insists on its perma
nent recognition and omnipresent sway ; and this unity in the
Moral Law carries him to the unity of the Divine Legislator.
Theism is thus the indispensable postulate of conscience, —
its objective counterpart and justification, without which its
inspirations would be illusions, and its veracities themselves a
he. To adduce historical proofs of this conjunction is at once
difficult and superfluous in a world whose theism is almost all
of one stock. But it will not be forgotten that Socrates, in
whom Greek religion culminated, avowedly based his reform
on the substitution of moral for physical studies. It is unde
niable too that, in spite of their fatalism, the monotheistic Mo
hammedans have been surpassed by few nations in their sense
of truth and fidelity ; and that wherever the same type of be
lief has been approached by Christian sects, the heresy has
been said to arise from an exaggerated estimate of the moral
law. Art, we have said, is pantheistic. Its aim, often uncon
sciously present, is to read off the expressiveness of things,
and find what it is which they would speak with their silent
look. To its perceptions, form, color, sound, motion, have
a soul within them whose hfe and activity they represent :
and even language, by flinging itself into the mould of rhythm
and music, acquires, beyond its logical significance, a second
meaning for the affections. As if waked up and tingling be-
l*

b DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF . CHRISTIANITY.
neath the artist's loving gaze, matter lies dull and dead no
more ; opens on him a responding eye ; communes with him
from its steadfast brow ; and becomes instinct with grace or
majesty. Instead of being the drag-weight and opposite of
spiritual energies, it becomes to him their pliant medium, the
docile clay for the shapes of finest thought, the brilliant pal
ette for the spread of inmost feeling. He melts the barrier
away that hides from mere sense and intellect the interior
sentiment — the formative idea — of all visible things; and
his glance of sympathy changes them not less than a burst of
amber sunrise changes a leaden landscape and picks out the
freshest smiles. Thus he finds himself in a living universe,
ever striving to show him a divine beauty that lurks within
and presses to the surface ; and he stands before a curtain
only half opaque, watching the lights and shadows thrown on
it from behind by the ceaseless play of infinite thought. Not
that the interpretation is by any means self-evident, or acces
sible except to the apprehensive instinct of sympathy. For
it seems as though no form of being, no object in creation,
could ever represent completely its own type : something is
lost from its perfection in the realization; and the actual,
falling short of the ideal, can give it only to one for whom a
hint suffices. This conception of the world as an incarnate
divineness does not, we are well aware, amount to pantheism,
unless it become all-comprehensive, so as to take in not simply
physical nature, but the human life and will ; and there are
numbers who are saved from this extreme, either by knowing
where to draw the lines of philosophical distinction, or by the
natural force of moral conviction restraining the absolutism of
imagination. But so far forth as the tendency operates, it
substitutes for the theistic reverence for a Holy Will the pan
theistic recognition of a Creative Beauty, and presents God
to the mind less as the prototype of Conscience than as the
apotheosis of Genius. The spontaneity of poetic action is
supposed to illustrate His procedure better than the preferen
tial decisions of the moral sentiment; and the genesis of what
ever is good and fair is referred not so much to deliberate

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 7
plan as to the eternal interfusion and circulation, through the
great whole, of a Divine Essence, which flings off the universe
and its history as a mere natural language. That this is the
religion of art, is proved by the literature of every creative pe
riod, Greek, Italian, or Teutonic ; and negatively by the com
parative absence of artistic feeling and production in ages and
nations that have most intensified at once the Unity and the
Personality of God. Beauty was the Bible of Athens ; and
Plato, its devoutest and most comprehensive expounder, shows
everywhere, in his metaphysics, his morals, and his myths, the
mould into which its faith inevitably falls.
In passionate and impulsive natures there is a self-contra
diction which makes their religious tendency peculiarly diffi
cult to describe. They are not less conscious than others of
moral distinctions, and own the sacred authority of the better
invitation over the worse. Indeed, when surprised into a
fall, their remorse shares the vehemence of all their emotions,
and from the black shadow in which they sit, the sanctity of
the law which they have violated looks ineffably bright ; and
they speak of its holy requirements, and of the infinite purity
of the Divine Legislator, in such fervid tone, that whatever
else they may endanger, the perfection of God's character,
you feel assured, and the obligations of human morality, are
secure of reverential maintenance. Yet the truth is precisely
the reverse. At the very moment that the law of duty is
thus loftily extolled, it is on the point of total subversion ; lift
ed to a height precarious and unreal, it overbalances on the
other side and disappears. For the very same stormy inten
sity which makes these men strong to feel the claim of good,
makes them weak to obey it. Their personality wants solid
ity ; and an atmosphere of tempestuous affections sweeps over
it like a hurricane on water. They can do nothing from out
of their own resolves, and are for ever drawn or driven from
the fortress they were not to surrender. What remains for
them, solicited thus by forces which are an overmatch for their
just self-reliance ? Is it surprising that they no sooner confess
how they ought to obey, than they declare that they cannot

8 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
obey ? The thing is a contradiction; but it all the better for
this expresses what they are : with their centre of gravity in
the wrong place, they cannot but hold the truth in unstable
equilibrium. Repose on contradiction is, however, impossi
ble ; and the necessary result of these co-existent feehngs of
obligation and incapacity is a substitute for obedience. The
resort to sacrifice which thus arose expressed no more, prior
to the Christian era, than the sentiment, "Take this, O
Lord, 't is all I have to give " ; and afforded but a fictitious re
lief to the laboring spirit. It acknowledged and attested the
incompetency of the will, but made no use of the excess of
the emotions. It was the Pauline doctrine of faith which first
turned this great power to account; and virtually said, "Are
you in slavery because you cannot manage your affections ?
turn their trust and enthusiasm on Christ in heaven, and let
them manage you, and you shall be free." The soul that falls
in love with immortal goodness rises above the region of in
effectual strife, and spontaneously offers what could never be
extorted from the will by the lash of self-mortifying resolve.
This is the truth which underlies the sacrificial doctrine in
Christian times, — the emancipating power of great trusts and
high inspirations ; and its very nature indicates its birth from
impassioned temperaments, and its affinity with their special
wants. The vicarious sacrifice is a mere plea, an ideal point
of attraction, for a profound allegiance of heart ; which minds
of this class would hardly yield without an intense appeal to
their gratitude ; but which, if really awakened by a clear and
tranquil moral reverence, would no less triumph over the
gravitation of self. The one needful condition for the re
demption of these natures is the objective presence and action
upon them of a divine person to lift them clear out of them
selves, and render back on the healing breath of trust the
strength that only pants itself away in feverish effort. Every
doctrine of sacrifice necessarily contradicts its own premises ;
because for guilt, which is personal and inalienable, it offers
a compensation which is foreign, and meets a moral ill with
an unmoral remedy. True and sound as a mere confession of

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 9
weakness, it runs off from that point into mere confusion and
morbidness. But add to it the doctrine of faith, and it ac
quires its proper complement ; balances its human disclaimer
with a divine resource ; and instead of sending its captive
through dark labyrinths of vain experiment, opens a direct
way from the chambers of humiliation to the prophet's watch-
tower of prayer and vision. Without this complement, the
doctrine created priesthoods ; with it, destroys them. With
out it, men are caught up in their moments of helplessness,
and handed over to ritual quackeries ; with it, they are seized
in their hour of inspiration, and flung into the arms of God.
The susceptibility for either treatment depends on the pre
dominance of impulse and passion over breadth of imagination
and strength of will. In short, there are minds whose power
is shed, if we may say so, in pretension, precipitated forwards
in narrow channels with impetuous torrent. There are others
whose affluence is in extension, and spreads out like a still lake
to drink in light from the open sky, and reflect the look of
wide-encircling hills. And there are others yet again, whose
character is intension, and that move on in full volume, and
with steady stream of tendency, rising and falling little with
the seasons, and holding to the limits within which they are
to go. The faith of the first is sacrificial; of the second,
pantheistic ; of the third, iheistic.
Of the four cardinal tendencies we have named, the scien
tific has never been provided for within the interior of Chris
tianity ; whose organic life and structure are complete without
it. It remains, therefore, sullenly on the outside, without re
nouncing at present its atheistic propensions : and the part it
has played, however important, has been that of external
check and antagonism, in the assertion of neglected rights of
knowledge, and slighted interests of mankind. This cannot
possibly continue for ever ; nor is it at all consistent with ex
perience to suppose, that either of the opponent influences
will obtain a victory over the other. Their reconcilement,
through the mediation and within the compass of some third
and more comprehensive conception, is a task remaining for

10 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
the philosophy and charity of the future. We feel no doubt
that it will be accomplished ; and will spare us that revolution
ary extermination of theology and metaphysics which is pro
claimed, on behalf of positive science, by the self-appointed
Committee of the " Republique Occidentale." The other three
tendencies early worked their way into the Christian religion,
and vindicated a place within its organism. Indeed, the his
torical genesis of the Catholic Church consists of little else,
on the inner side of dogma and ethics, than the successive and
successful self-assertion of each of these principles ; and, on
the outer side of ecclesiastical polity, than the construction of
a social framework which held them in co-existence till the
sixteenth century. The genius of three distinct peoples con
spired to fill up the measure of the early faith ; and each
brought with it a separate constituent. The Hebrew believer
contributed his theistic conscience ; the Hellenic, his panthe
istic speculation ; the Romanic, his passionate appropriation
of redemption by faith. The elements were, from the first,
mixed and struggling together ; so that the phenomena of no
period, probably of no place, serve to show them disengaged
from one another and insulated. But the Ebionitish period,
with its rigorous monachism, its historical and human
Christ, its scrupulous asceticism, its sternness against wealth,
represents the ethical principle in its excess. The Logos idea,
and indeed the whole development of the Trinitarian doctrine,
exhibits the effort of the Greek thought to obtain recognition,
and qualify the Judaic. And the Augustinian theology,
pleading the wants of fervid natures, on whose surface the
web of moral doctrines alights only to be shrivelled and dis
appear, completes the triad of agencies from whose confluence
the faith of Christendom arose. In the Catholic system the
three ingredients unite in one composite result ; and hence the
tenacity with which that system keeps possession of the most
various types of human character, and, baffled by the spirit
of one age, returns with the reaction of another. The ethical
feeling finds satisfaction in its theory of human nature ; the
pantheistic, in its scheme of supernatural grace ; the sacrifi-

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 11
cial, in its conditions of redemption. Through the realism of
the medieval schools, its eucharistic doctrine, which is only
the theological side of that philosophical conception, becomes a
direct transfusion of Hellenic influence into the Church. And
its faith in perpetual inspiration, in the unbroken chain of
physical miracle, in the ceaseless mingling of sacramental
mystery with the very substance of this world, so far softens
and diffuses the concentrated personality of the Divine Es
sence, as to indulge the free fancy of art. Nor can we deny
the same capacity of beauty to its hierarchy of holy natures,
— from the village saint, through the heavenly angels, to the
Son of God, — all blended in living sympathies that cross and
recross the barriers of worlds. This comprehensive adap
tation to the exigencies of mankind is a reasonable object of
admiration. But nothing can be more absurd than the appeal
to it in proof either of preternatural guidance, or of human
artifice, in the constitutive process of the Roman Church.
There is nothing very surprising in the fact, that a system
which is the product of three factors should contain them all.
No doubt if these factors are, as we contend, primary and
indestructible features of our unperverted nature, no religion
can be divine and completely true which refuses to take any
of them up ; and this one condition of the future faith we may
learn from the Christendom of the past. The condition, how
ever, must be satisfied otherwise than by the strange congeries
of profound truths and puerile fancies which is dignified by
the name of " Catholic doctrine."
For, be it observed, this system has no intrinsic and neces
sary unity, which would hold it together when abandoned to the
free action of the mind, whose requirements it is said to meet.
It has something for conscience, something for art, something for
passion, each in its turn ; but it is not a whole that can satisfy
all together. Its contents, gathered by successive experiences,
cohere through the external grasp of a sacerdotal corporation ;
and if that hand be paralyzed or relaxed, it becomes evident at
once how little they have grown together. Hence the phenom
ena of the sixteenth century, whose revolt was the expression,

12 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
not of theological dissent, but of ecclesiastical disgust ; and in
which doctrine only accidentally fell to pieces, because the
authority that guarded and wielded it became too rotten to be
believed in. The secondary revolution, however, was incom
parably more momentous than the primary. The treasured
seeds that dropped from the shattered casket of the Church
had to germinate again in the fresh soil of the richer Euro
pean mind ; and the great year of their development is still
upon its round. The outward dictation of the Apostolic See
being discarded, it became necessary to find another clew to
divine truth ; and the inner wants of the human soul and the
passing age came into play, with no restraint within the
ample scope of Scripture. A reconstitution of Christianity
began, — on the basis, no doubt, of materials already accumu
lated, — more eclectic, therefore, and less creative, than in the
infancy of the religion ; but proceeding, nevertheless, by the
same law, and commencing a similar cycle. The order of
development in this second life of Christendom has not been
the same as in the first ; but the stages, though transposed,
do not differ taken one by one. It is only this, — that whilst
in the formation of the faith the dominant influences were
Conscience, Art, and Passion, in its Re-formation they are
Passion, Conscience, Art. At the moment when Luther shat
tered the fabric of pretended unity, and compelled the husk to
shed its kernels, the season and the field were unfavorable to
two out of the three, and they lay dormant till more genial
times. The moral element had been discredited by the casu
istry of the confessional, the " treasure of the Church," and the
trade in meritorious works ; and, decked in these vile trap
pings, was flung away in generous disgust. The esthetic ele
ment had become so paganized in Italy, and was so identified
with the reproduction of the very tastes and vices, the thought
and style, nay, even the mythology itself, which the primitive
religion had expelled as the work of demons, that the new
piety shrank from it, and let it alone. In an age when epis
copates were won by an ear for hexameters or a Ciceronian
Latinity, when priests defended materialism in Tusculan dis-

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 13
putations, when popes frequented the comic theatre and Plau-
tus was acted in the Vatican, when the proceeds of a purga
torial traffic were spent in destroying ancient basilicas and
raising heathenish temples over the sepulchres of saints, it was
inevitable that beauty should become suspected by sanctity.
There remained, yet unspoiled by the adoption of a corrupt
generation, the impetuous devotion and tremendous theory of
Augustine ; and this, accordingly, was the direction in which
the whole early Reformation advanced. It was not the acci
dent that Luther was an Augustinian monk, which determined
the character of his movement. The sickened soul of Europe
could breathe no other ah-. Emaciated with the mockery of
spiritual aliment, revolting at the chopped straw and apples
of Sodom that had been given for fruit from the tree of life,
it sighed for escape from this choking discipline into some
region fresh with the mountain breath of faith and love, and
not quite barren of " angels' food." The burdened moral
sense, so long deluded and abused, reduced to self-conscious
dotage by vain penances and vainer promises, flung away all
behef in itself, asked leave to lay its freedom down, and went
into cajDtivity to Christ. So exclusively did the feehng of
the time flow into this channel, that no doctrine which had an
ethical groundwork, or attempted to soften in the least the
implacable hostility of nature and grace, obtained any suc
cess ; while every enthusiastic excess of the anti-catholic ideas
spread like wildfire. The irreproachable innocence and piety
of the Salzburg Gartner-bruder did nothing to save them
from quick martyrdom to their Ebionitish faith ; while the
atrocities and ravings of the Anabaptists of Munster scarcely
sufficed to stop the triumph of their hideous kingdom of the
saints. The movement of the brave Zwingli, earlier and
more moderate than either Luther's or Calvin's, was easily
restrained by them within the narrowest range, whilst the
Genevan Reformer, cautious and ungenial, had but to collect
his logical fuel, and kindle the terrible fire of his dogma, and
it spread from the icy chambers of his own nature and wrapt
whole kingdoms in its flames. That men without passion or
2

14 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
pathos themselves, who do their work by force of intellect
and will, should be successful disseminators of a doctrine that
can live in no cool air, only shows how wide was the prepara
tion of mind, and how the coming of this time fulfilled the
long desire of nations.
The first stage, then, of the new development of Christian
ity was its Puritan period. The natural perdition of man,
the radical corruption of his will, the religious indifference of
all his states and actions, and the consequent worthlessness
of his morality, except for civil uses and social police, con
stitute the fundamental assumptions of the system. From
this basis of despair its doctrine of atonement comes to the
rescue. The obedience of Christ is accepted in place of that
which men cannot render, and his sacrifice instead of the
penalty they deserve. Not, however, for all, but for those
alone who may appropriate the deliverance by an act of faith,
and present the merits of Christ as their offering to God, with
full assurance of their sufficiency. Nothing but a divine and
involuntary conversion can generate this faith, which follows
no predisposition from the antecedent life, but the inscrutable
decree of Heaven. Once transferred from the state of nature
into that of grace, the disciple becomes, through the Holy
Spirit, a new creature ; is conscious of a sacred revolution in
his tastes and affections ; gives evidence of this by good
works, which, now purified in their principle, are no longer
unacceptable to God ; and knows that, though he is still
liable to the sins, he is redeemed from the penalties, of a son
of Adam. The Church is the body of the converted, and
while the Sacrament of Baptism initiates the candidate, and
provisionally secures him, the Communion seals his adoption
afterwards ; the efficacy of both being conditional on the inner
faith of the participant. The intense and unmediated antith
esis of nature and grace, and the gulf, impassable except by
miracle, between their two spheres, may be regarded as the
most characteristic feature of this scheme. Its text-book
contains the Pauline Epistles, and opens most readily at the
Romans or Galatians ; and its favorite writers are Augustine,

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 15
Luther, Calvin, and Edwards. With vast internal differences
in their particular conceptions of Christian truth and of eccle
siastical government, the so-called Evangelical sects retain the
impress of their common origin in the dearth of any ethical
or aesthetic element in their religion.
From this alone must have resulted the fact which a plu
rality of causes has concurred in producing ; viz. that the
Reformation soon (within a century and a half) reached its
apparent limit of extent, and propagated itself only internally
by further evolutions of thought. It had taken up and ex
hausted the class of minds to which it was specially adapted ;
and after appropriating these, found itself arrested. Under
the impulse of a newly-awakened piety men are disposed to
feel that they cannot attribute too much to God ; and there
will always be large numbers who, from the absorbing inten
sity of religious sentiment, or the dominance of predestinarian
theory, or the ill balance of partial cultivation, abdicate all
personal power of good in favor of irreversible decrees. But
as the tension relaxes or the culture enlarges, the moral in
stincts reassert their existence ; and the monstrous distortions
incident to any theory which denies their authority become
too repulsive to be borne. Hence a reaction, in which the
natural conscience takes the lead, and insists on obtaining that
reconciliation with God which has already been conquered for
the affections. Men in whom the sense of right and wrong
is deep cannot divest themselves of reverence for it as au
thoritative and divine ; nor can they truly profess that it is to
them an empty voice, which, venerable as it sounds, they are
never able to obey. They know what a difference it makes
to them, in the whole peace and power of their being, whether
they are faithful or whether they are false ; that this differ
ence belongs alike to their state of nature and their state of
grace ; that it is as little possible to withhold admiration from
the magnanimity of the Pagan Socrates as from that of the
Christian Paul ; and that the sentiment which compels homage
to both is the same that looks up with trust and worship to the
justice and holiness of God : how, then, can they consent to draw

16 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
an unreal line of impassable separation between ethical quali
ties before conversion and the very same qualities after, and
abrogate in the one case the moral distinctions which become
valid in the other ? The two lives, — of earth and heaven ;
the two minds, — human and divine; the two states, — nature
and grace ; which it is the impulse of enthusiasm to contrast,
it' is the necessity of conscience to unite. When Luther first
blew up the sacerdotal bridge which had given a path across
to the steps of centuries, the boldness of the deed and the
inspiration of the time lightened the feet of men, and enabled
them to spring over with him on the wing of faith. But
when the van had passed, and the more equable and dis
ciplined ranks of another generation were brought to the
brink, there seemed a needless rashness in the attempt, and
foundations were discovered for a structure based on the rock
of nature, and making one province of both worlds. Even
Melancthon, long as he yielded to his leader's more powerful
will, could not permanently acquiesce in the complete extinc
tion of human responsibility ; and vindicated for the soul a
voluntary co-operation with divine grace. This semi-Pelagian
example rapidly spread ; first among the later Lutherans,
especially of Brunswick and Hanover ; next into the school
of Leyden; and finally into the Church and universities of
England. Quick to seize the reaction in the temper of the
times, the Jesuits put themselves at the head of the same
tendency in their own communion ; defended against the Jan-
senists a doctrine of free-will beyond even the limits of Catho
lic orthodoxy ; upheld Molina against Augustine, as among
the Protestants Episcopius was gaining upon Calvin. Among
patriotic theologians the authority of the Latin Church gave
way in favor of the early Christian apologists and Greek
Fathers, who knew nothing of the scheme of decrees. Di
vinity, under the guidance of More and Cudworth, no longer
disdained to replenish her oil and revive her flame from the
lamp of Athenian philosophy. And the conception of a uni
versal natural law was elaborately worked out by Grotius.
As the sixteenth century was the period of dogmatic theology,

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 17
the seventeenth was that of ethical philosophy; the whole
modern history of which lies mainly within that limit and half
a century lower; and conclusively attests the decline of a
scheme of belief incompatible with the very existence of such
a science. When the Protestantism which had produced a
Farel, a Beza, and a Whitgift, offered as its representatives
Locke and Limborch, Tillotson and Butler, the nature of the
change which had come over it declares itself. It was the
revolt of moral sentiment against a doctrine that outraged it,
— the re-development, under new conditions, of the ethical
principle which had fallen neglected from the broken seed-
vessel of the Catholic faith.
The second season of the Reformation, though treated now
with unmerited disparagement, was not less worthy of admira
tion than the first. High-Churchmen may be ashamed of an
archbishop who proposed a scheme of comprehension ; Evan
gelicals, of a preacher who applauded the Socinians ; and
Coleridgians, of a theologian who was no deeper in metaphys
ics than the " Grotian divines " ; but neither the Erastianism,
the charity, nor the common sense of a Tillotson would be at
aU unsuitable at this moment to a church openly torn by dis
sensions and really held together only by dependence on the
state. It has been a current opinion, perseveringly propa
gated by adherents of the Geneva theology, that the spread of
Arminian sentiments was equivalent to a religious decline,
and concurrent with the growth of a worldly laxity and selfish
indifference of character. The allegation is absolutely false.
In literature, in personal characteristics, and in public life, the
Latitude-men and their associates in belief bear honorable
comparison with their more rigorous forerunners. There is
not only less of passionate intolerance, but a nobler freedom
from an equivocal prudence, in the great writers of the second
period, than in the Reformers of the first : and there is more
to touch the springs of disinterestedness and elevation of mind
in Cudworth and Clarke than in Calvin and Beza. Nor did
the return of ethical theory weaken the sources of religious
action. The very enterprises in which evangelical zeal most
2*

18 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
rejoices, — missions to the heathen, and the diffusion of the
Scriptures, — were not only prosecuted but set on foot in new
directions and with more powerful instrumentalities, in the
very midst of this period, and by the very labors of its most
distinguished philosophers. The Society for the Diffusion of
Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, were both born with the eigh
teenth century ; and while the latter addressed itself to the
natives and slaves of the American provinces, the former first
made the Scriptures known on the Coromandel coast. It was
Boyle who, of all men of his age, displayed the most generous
zeal for the multiplication of the sacred writings, himself pro
curing their translation into four or five languages. For thirty
years he was governor of a missionary corporation. Yet the
complexion of his theology is sufficiently indicated by the fact
that he bought up Pococke's Arabic translation of Grotius
(De Veritate Christians Religionis), and was at the cost of
its wide distribution in the East. And who that has ever
read it can forget Swift's letter to the Irish viceroy (Lord
Carteret), introducing Bishop Berkeley (then Dean of Der-
ry), and his project for resigning his preferment at home in
order that, on a stipend of £ 100 a year, he might devote him
self to the conversion of the American Indians ? The imper
turbable patience with which the good Dean prosecuted his
object, the self-devotion with which he embarked in it his
property and life, the gratefulness with which he accepted
from the government the promise of a grant, and the treach
ery which broke the promise, and after seven years compelled
his return, make up a story unrivalled for its contrast of
saintly simplicity and ministerial bad faith. These and simi
lar features of the time superfluously refute the arbitrary and
arrogant assumption, that no piety can be living and profound
except that which disbelieves all natural religion, no gospel
holy which does not renounce the moral law, no faith prolific
in works unless it begins with despising them.
There was, however, still a defect in this gospel of con
science. Regarding the world and life as the object of a

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 19
divine administration, and seeking to interpret them by a
scheme of final causes, it was wholly occupied with the con
ception of God as proposing to himself certain ends, and ar
ranging the means for their accomplishment. In this light
He is a Being with moral preconceptions and an economy
for bringing them to pass. Everything is for a purpose, and
subsists for the sake of what is ulterior, and forms part of a
mechanism working out a prescribed problem. The tendency
of this way of thinking will inevitably be, to hunt for provi
dences. These the narrow mind will place in the incidents
of individual life ; the comprehensive intellect, in the laws and
relations of the universe ; not perhaps in either case without
some danger from human egotism of referring too much to the
good and ill which is relative to man. The infinite perfec
tions of God will be concentrated, so to speak, too much in
the notion of His will, and the powers which subserve its
designs ; and will in consequence be as much misapprehended
as would be our own nature by an observer assuming that we
put forth all its life and phenomena on purpose. Indeed, the
exclusive and unbalanced ascendency of the moral faculty
tempts a man to fancy this sort of existence the only right one
for himself; to suspect every flow of unwatched feeling, and
call himself to account for the burst of ringing laughter, or the
surprise of sudden tears, and aim at an autocratic command of
his own soul. It is not wonderful that his ideal of human
character should reappear in his representation of the Divine.
The error deforms his faith as much as it tends to stiffen and
constrict his life. Leading him always to ask what a thing is
for, it hinders him from seeing what it is ; in search of the
motive, he misses the look / and his interest in it being transi
tive, he sinks into it with no sympathy on its own account.
This is only to say, in other words, that his prepossession de
tains him from the artistic contemplation of objects and
events ; for while it is the business of science to inquire their
origination, and of morals to follow their drift, it remains for
art to appreciate their nature. To feel the type of thought
which they express, to recognize the idea which they invest

20 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
with form, the mind must rest upon them, not as products or
as instruments, but as realities; and their significance must
not be imposed upon them, but read off from them. The
meaning which art detects in life and the world is not a pur
pose, but a sentiment ; in its view the present attitudes and
development of things are rather the out-coming of an inner
feeling than the tools of a remoter end. To find room for this
mode of conception something must be added to the ethical
representation of God. He must be regarded as not always
and throughout engaged in processes of intention and volition,
but as having, around this moral centre, an infinite atmos
phere of creative thought and affection, which, like the native
inspirations of a pure and sublime human soul, spontaneously
flow out in forms of beauty, and movements of rhythm, and a
thousand aspects of divine expression. Religion demands the
admission of this free element : and without it, will cease to
speak home to men of susceptible genius and poetic nature,
and must limit itself more and more to the fanatical minds
that have too little regulation, and the moral that have too
much. A God who offers terms of communion only to the
passionate and to the conscientious, will not touch the springs
of worship in perceptive and meditative men. Their prayer
is less to know the published rules than to overhear the lonely
whispers of the Eternal Mind, to be at one with His immedi
ate life in the universe, and to shape or sing into articulate
utterance the silent inspirations of which all existence is full.
Their peculiar faculties supply them with other interests than
about their sins, their salvation, and their conscience ; they
feel neither sufficiently guilty, nor sufficiently anxious to be
good, to make a religion out of the one consciousness or the
other ; but if, indeed, it be God that flashes on them in so
many lights of solemn beauty from the face of common things,
that wipes off sometimes the steams of custom from the win
dow of the soul, and surprises it with a presence of tenderness
and mystery, — if the tension of creative thought in themselves,
which can rest in nothing imperfect, yet realize nothing per
fect, be an unconscious aspiration towards Him, — then there is

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 21
a way of access to their inner faith, and a temple pavement
on which they will consent to kneel. It is, we believe, the in
ability of Protestantism, in either of its previous forms, to
meet this order of wants, that has reduced it to its state of
weakness and discredit ; and the struggle of thought, charac
teristic of the present century, is an unconscious attempt to
supply the defect, and to vindicate, for the third element of
Catholic Christianity, the possibility of development in the
open air of Protestant belief. The change began, like both
of the earlier ones, in Germany ; and it was from Plato that
Schleiermacher learned where the weakness of Christian dog
ma lay, and in what field of thought he might create a diver
sion from the disastrous assaults of French materialism, and
restore the balance of the fight. An Hellenic spirit was in
fused into the scientific theology of the Continent, and has
never ceased to prevail there, though Aristotle has long suc
ceeded to Plato as the channel of influence. When Hegel,
long the rival of Schleiermacher, triumphed over him, not only
in the coteries of Berlin, but in the schools of Germany, he no
doubt turned the philosophy which had been invoked to pre
serve the faith into a dialectic, at whose magic touch it deli
quesced ; and no one who has followed the application of his
principles to history and dogma can be surprised at the antip
athy they awaken in the Church. But it would be a mistake
to suppose that the step into Pantheism was made by Hegel,
and that the opposing theologians raised up by the great
preacher of Berlin occupy in this respect any different
ground. Since the time of Jacobi theism proper has not
been heard of in Germany : the very writers who mean to
defend it, surrender it in the disguise of their definition of per
sonality ; and so steeped is the whole national mind in the
colors of Hellenic thought, that from Neander to Strauss can
be found, in our deliberate judgment, only different shades of
the same pantheistic conception. What does this denote but
a universal sigh after a God, who shall be neither a Jehovah,
a Judaic avTOKparap, nor a redeeming Deus ex machina, super
vening upon the theatre of history, but a living and energizing

22 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
Spirit, quickening the very heart of to-day, and whispering
round the dome of Herschel's sky not less than in the third
story of Paul's heaven ? In some this feeling breaks out in
devilish defiance, as in the unhappy Heinrich Heine's saying,
" I am no child, I do not want a Heavenly Father any more":
in others it breathes out, as with Novalis, in a tender mysti
cism, and is traceable by the reverent footfall and uncovered
head with which they pace, as in a cathedral, the solemn aisles
of life and nature. The expression of this tendency has
passed into the literature of our own language, and every
year is tinging it more and more with its characteristic hues.
Emerson affords the purest and most unmixed example ; but
perhaps the earlier writings of Carlyle, — before the divine
thirst had advanced so much into a human rabies, — and more
especially his Sartor Pesartus, may be taken as the real gos
pel of this sentiment. The intense operation of these essays,
so entirely alien to the traditions of English thought and taste,
is an evidence of something more than the genius of their au
thors : it is proof of a certain combustible state of the English
mind, prepared by drought and deadness to burst into the
flame of this new worship. This feeling, diffused through the
very air of the time, has unmistakably evinced its essential
identity with the instinct of art ; in part, by a direct affluence
and excellence of production unknown to the preceding age,
but still more, in the wide extension of an appreciating love
for the creations of artistic genius. The melancholy prophets
who see in this spreading susceptibility only a morbid symp
tom of decadent civilization, are misled, we hope, by imperfect
historical parallels. The flower, no doubt, both of Athenian
and of Italian culture, was most brilliant just before it drooped.
But the soil which bore it, and the elements that surrounded
it, had no essential resemblance to the conditions of modern
English society, in which, above all, there are the unex
hausted juices of a moral faith and a strenuous habit, not stim
ulant perhaps of hasty growth, but giving hardihood against
the open air and the natural seasons.
By the rules of technical theology, it may appear strange

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 23
to reckon the turn from, theism to pantheism as a third stage
of the Reformation ; as if it could be at all included in the in
terior history of Christianity, instead of being treated as a
direct apostasy. And it is in reality a very serious question,
whether, without unfaithfulness to its essential character, the
Christian religion can domesticate within it this new action of
thought, or must from the first visit it with unqualified excom
munication. On the one hand, nothing can be more absurd
than to suppose that a faith of Hebrew origin, a faith whose
very hypothesis is sin, and whose aspiration is moral perfect-
ness, can ever be reconciled with a thorough-going pantheism.
On the other hand, nothing can be more gratuitous than to
assume that the feeling which, on getting the whole mind to
itself, generates a pantheistic scheme, has no legitimate exer
cise, and gains its indulgence altogether at the expense of
Christian truth. If we mistake not, the pith of the matter
lies in a small compass. Let Christian Theism keep Morals,
and Pantheism may have Nature. This rule is no mere com
promise or coalition of incongruous elements, but is founded,
we are convinced, on distinctions real and eternal. So long
as a holy will is left to God, and a power committed to man,
free to sustain relations of trust and responsibility, room re
mains for all the conditions of Christianity, and the field be
yond may be open to the range of mystic perception, and
railed off for the sacrament of beauty. But whether this or
any other be the just partition of territory between the two
claimants, partition there must be, for the real truth of things
must correspond, not to the hypothesis of any single human
faculty, but to harmonized postulates of all. It is not surpris
ing that, on its first re-birth, the gospel of nature should deny
the gospel of duty, or so take it up into its own fine essence
as to volatilize all its substance away. This is but the natural
revenge taken for past neglect, and the needful challenge to
future attention. Each one of the three developments has in
its turn run out beyond the limits of the Christian faith, and
yet, hitherto, each has established a place within it. The He
gelian, or Emersonian, type of the third period is but the cor-

24 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
responding phenomenon to the Antinomianism of the first, and
the Deism of the second. And as these have passed away,
after surrendering into the custody of Christendom the princi
ples that gave them strength, so will the Pantheism of to-day,
when it has provided for the safe-keeping of its charge, and
seen the Church complete its triad of Faith, Holiness, and
Beauty. This question, however, will be asked : If the Reformation
only repeats, with some transposition, the cycle of the primi
tive development, how are we the better for having thus to do
our work again ? Are we to end where the sixteenth century
began, and to reproduce the Catholicism which was then re
solved into its elements ? And does some fatal necessity doom
us to this wearisome periodicity ? Not in the least. How
ever little the seeds may be able to transgress the limits of
species, and may remain indistinguishable from millennium to
millennium, the conditions of growth are so different as practi
cally to cancel the identity in the result. Taken even one by
one, the modern forms of doctrine are far nobler than their
early prototypes. The narrow Ebionitism of the original
Church is not comparable, as an expression of the conscience,
with the moral philosophy of Butler ; and the Greek element
of thought, flowing by Berlin, has entered the Church in
deeper channels than when infiltrating through the theosophy
of Alexandria. It is only in relation to the passionate ele
ment that the doubt can be raised, whether we have gained
in truth and grandeur by passing the religion of Augustine
through the minds of the modern reformers ; and whether the
Jansenists within the Church do not exhibit a higher phase of
character than the Huguenots without it. But at any rate,
the modern development, taken as a whole, is secure of an in
ner unity and completeness which before has been unattained.
It is an obvious, yet httle noticed, consequence of the inven
tion of printing, that no one mood of feeling or school of
thought can tyrannize over a generation of mankind, and
sweep ah before it, as of old ; and then again, with change in
the intellectual season, rot utterly away, and give place to a

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 25
successor no less absolute. Generations and ages now live in
presence of each other; the impulse of the present is re
strained by the counsels of the past, and, in fighting for the
throne of the human mind, finds it not only strong in living
prepossession, but guarded by shadowy sentinels, encircled by
a band of immortals. Hence the history of ideas can never
be again so wayward and fitful as it was in the first centuries
of our era ; losing all interest at one period in the questions
which had maddened the preceding; for a time covered all
over with the pale haze of Byzantine metaphysics, and then
suffused with red heats of African enthusiasm. New truth
can no longer forget the old, and thrive wholly at its expense,
or even make a compact with it to take turn and turn about,
but must find an organic relation with it, so as to be its en
largement rather than its rival. The modern moralist already
understands Augustine better than did the old Pelagians;
"Evangelical" teachers begin to insist on Christian ethics;
and the increasing disposition, even in heterodox persons, to
dwell on the Incarnation as the central point of faith, shows
how credible and welcome becomes the notion of the union of
human with divine, and of the moral manifestation of God in
the life and soul of man. The time, we trust, is gone, for the
merely linear advancement of the European mind, with all its
action and reaction propagated downwards, and wasting centu
ries on phenomena that might co-exist. Henceforth it may
open out in all dimensions at once, and fill, as its own for
ever, the whole space of true thought into which its past in
crements have borne it. Sects, no doubt, and schools, will
continue to arise on the outskirts of the intellectual realm,
possessed by partial inspirations ; but the world's centre of
gravity will be more and more occupied by minds that gan at
once balance and retain these marginal excesses, that can
round off the sphere by inner force of reason, and, dispensing
with the outer mould of sacerdotal compression, let the tides
flow free, and the winds blow strong, without alarm for the
eternal harmony. This is the form in which nature will re
store, and God approve, a Catholic consent.

26 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
The idea we have endeavored to give of the genesis of
Christian doctrine, and the law of its vicissitudes, is offered
only as conveniently distributing the subjective^ sources of
faith. It cannot be applied to the phenomena of particular
countries apart from ample historical knowledge of the con
current social and political conditions, without which the most
accurate clews to the natural history of thought can only mis
lead as the interpreter of concrete events. When, for instance,
we look around us at home, and seek for the Enghsh repre
sentatives of the several tendencies explained above, we may,
no doubt, find them here and there, but they are so far from
exhausting the facts of our time, that some of the most con
spicuous parties — as the Anglicans — seem provided with no
place at all. The obscurity first begins to clear away when
we remember that in England Schism went before Reforma
tion. The aim of Henry VIII. was simply to detach and
nationalize the Church in his dominions; to give it insular
integrity instead of provincial dependence ; and could this
have been done without meddling with the system of Catholic
doctrine at all, the scheme of faith would have been preserved
entire. While Luther and the Continental opponents of Rome
were faithful to the idea of the unity of Christendom, and
were calling out for a general council to restore it by a
verdict on doubtful points of faith, the Enghsh monarch,
undisturbed by doubt or scruple, broke off from Rome, and
destroyed the traditions of centralization by taking the ecclesi
astic jurisdiction into his own hands and stopping its passage
of the seas. In the new movement of the time, England
tended to become a petty papacy, still unreformed ; Europe
sought a universal church reformed. Neither aim admitted
of realization. To repudiate the supreme pontiff, and substi
tute a civil head, involved a fatal breach in the sacerdotal
system, and carried with it inevitable departures from the
integrity of Catholic dogma; so that reformation was found
inseparable from schism. And when no council, acknowledged
as universal, was called to give authoritative settlement, ar
rangements ad interim became consolidated, provisional rights

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 27
grew into prescriptive; with the spectacle of variety, and
the taste of freedom, the idea of unity faded away, till
the co-existence of two churches within one land and one
Christendom passed into a necessity, and reformation proved
impossible without a schism. But, notwithstanding this par
tial approximation of the English and the Continental move
ments, the traces remain indelible that their point of departure
was from opposite ends. In its origin and earliest traditions,
in the basis of its constitution and worship, the Church of
England has nothing whatever to do with Protestantism ; it
is but the Westminster Catholic Church instead of the Roman
Catholic Church. Authoritative doctrine, sacramental grace,
sacerdotal mediation, are all retained ; and throughout the
whole of Henry's reign, while the new laws were working
themselves into habits, the seven sacraments, the communion
in one kind, the Ave Maria, the invocation of saints, with the
doctrines of transubstantiation and purgatory, remained within
the circle of recognized orthodoxy. The impelling and regu
lative idea of the whole change was that of a nationalization
of Catholicism. This original ascendency of the national over
die theological feeling was never lost ; and though channels
were more and more opened, through the sympathies of exiles
and the intercourse of scholars, for the infusion of Continen
tal notions, yet the form given to the Church rendered it not
very susceptible to the new learning ; whose admission, so far
as it took place, was rather induced by political conception
than made in the interests of universal truth. The present
Anglicans represent the first type of the English schism;
and the High Church in general embodies the distinguishing
national sentiment of the Reformation in this country, as com
pared with the cosmopolitan character of the Continental re
ligious change. Doctrine is universal, administration and
jurisdiction are local. Where the former becomes the bond
of sympathy, as among the Evangelic Protestants, it unites
men together by ties that are irrespective of the limits of
country, and subordinates special patriotisms to the interests
of a more comprehensive fraternity. Where the latter be-

28 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
come the objects of zeal, a flavor of the soil mingles itself
with the sentiments of honor, and a peculiar loyalty concen
trates itself on the inner circles of duty, often with the nar
rowest capacity of diffusion beyond. Hence the intensely
English feeling which has always prevailed among the paro
chial' — especially the rural — clergy of the Establishment, and
the people who form their congregations. They constitute
the very core of our insular society, and the retaining centre
of our historical characteristics. Their admirations, their
prejudices, their virtues, their ambitions, are all national.
Their interest in dogma is not intellectually active, or pro
vocative of any proselyting zeal, and is subservient to the
practical aim of giving territorial action to the religious in
stitutions under their charge. Their dealings are less with
the individual's solitary soul, than with the several social
classes in their mutual relations ; and to mediate between
the gentry and the poor, to keep in order the school, the
workhouse, and the village charities, ¦ — ¦ not forgetting the
obligation to ward off Methodists and voluntaries,* — consti
tute the approved circle of clerical duties. Their very an
tipathies, unlike those of Protestant zealots, are less theo
logical than political; they hate Roman Cathohcs chiefly as
a sort of foreigners, who have no proper business here, and
Dissenters as a sort of rebels, who create disturbance with
their discontents ; and were old England well rid of them
both, the heart of her citizenship, they believe, would be
* The zest with which this ecclesiastical garrison-duty is sometimes per
formed, hardly comports with the traditional dignity of the Anglican gentle
man and scholar. We remember an incident which occurred in a village
situated among the hills of one of our northern dioceses. On a fine sum
mer evening we had gone, at the close of the afternoon service, for a stroll
through the fields overlooking the valley. When we had walked half a mile
or so, an extraordinary din arose from the direction of the village, sounding
like nothing human or instrumental, larynx, catgut, or brass, though occa
sionally mingled with an undeniable note from some shouting Stentor. It
was evident, through the trees, that a crowd was collected on the village green ;
and not less so, that a farmer and his wife, who were looking on from a stile
hard by, understood the meaning of the scene below. On asking what all
the hubbub was about, we were told by the good woman : " It 's all of our

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 29
sounder. They stand, indeed, in a curious position, pledged
to hold a proud Anglican isolation between two cosmopolitan
interests, — the Popish theocracy and the Evangelical dogma,
— refusing obedience to Rome, yet declining the alliance of
foreign Protestants. Their enmity to the Papal system is
quite a different sentiment from that which animates Exeter
Hall ; they do not deny the absolute legitimacy of the elder
corporation in general, but only its relative legitimacy here ;
and Scottish ravings against it as " Babylon " and " Anti
christ " offend them more than the confessional and the mass.
Twice in their history — under the Stuarts and in our own
day — have they seemed to forget their destiny, and make
overtures to the Vatican ; in both instances it was when Pu
ritanism had threatened to take possession of the Church, and
reduce it to a federal member of an Evangelical alliance ;
and if its separate integrity were in peril, they had rather
fling it back into the Apostolic monarchy, than enroll it in the
Genevan league. But the first real sight of danger from
the Papal side has dissipated this reactionary inclination, and
rekindled the instinct of local independence. Thus, in our
Church, ideal interests and purely religious conceptions have
held the second place to a predominating nationalism. The
Church has embodied and handed down the leading sentiment
of the Tudor times ; and though not guiltless of share in many
a Stuart treachery, and often cruel to the stiff-necked recu
sant, has, on the whole, been true to the English feeling, that
parson, that 's banging out the Methody wi' the tae-board." Being cu
rious in ecclesiastical researches, we hastened down the hill, in spite of the
repulsion of increasing noise. On one side of the green was a deal table,
from which a field-preacher was holding forth with passionate but fruitless
energy; for on the other side, and at the back of the crowd, was the paro
chial man of God, who had issued from his parsonage, armed with its largest
tea-tray and the hall-door key, and was battering off the Japan in the ser
vice of orthodoxy. No military music could more effectually neutralize the
shrieks of battle. The more the evangelist bellowed, the faster went the
parish gong. It was impossible to confute such a " drum ecclesiastic."
The man was not easily put down ; but the triumph was complete ; and the
" Methody's " brass was fairly beaten out of the field by the Churchman's
tin. 3 *

30 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
the Pope was too great a priest, and Calvin too long a
preacher. The reason then is evident why the Church of England
cannot be referred to any of the heads of classification we
have given ; neither coinciding with Romanism, nor exem
plifying distinctively any of the tendencies springing succes
sively out of the disintegration of Catholic dogma. It arose
out of an ecclesiastical revolt ; other communions, out of a
theological aspiration. Its original conception involved no
serious modification of belief, no invention or recovery of
strange usages, but a mere separation of the island branch
from the Roman stem, that it might strike root and be as a
native tree of life. The first alterations in doctrise were
slight, and merely incidental to this primary end : and the
whole amount of change, instead of being determined by the
intellectual dictatorship of a Luther or a Calvin, was the il
logical result of social forces, seeking the equilibrium of prac
tical compromise. The phenomenon therefore which we ob
served in the elder Church is repeated in this younger offshoot:
the several elements of faith co-exist (though in greatly spoiled
proportions) without unity or natural coherence ; and the
English Church, as the depository of a creed, occupies no
place in the history of the human mind : its individual great
men must be put here or there in the records of thought, with
out regard to the accident of their ecclesiastical position. The
one real idea which has permanently inspired its clergy and
supporters is that of nationalism in religion. To the time of
the Restoration they attempted, since then they have pretended,
to represent the nation in its faith and worship. Once, their
aim appeared to be a noble possibility, struggling still and un
realized, but unrefuted. Now, thousands of Non-conformist
chapels proclaim its meaning gone, and its language an affec
tation and an insolence. The Enghsh Church has become an
outer reality without an inner idea.
In contrast with the insular • feeling predominant in the
English schism, we have placed the cosmopolitan zeal of the
foreign Puritanism. With this, however, was combined the

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 31
very opposite pole of sentiment, — a certain egoism and lone
liness in religion, from which have flowed some of the most im
portant characteristics of Protestantism. Having flung away,
as miserable quackeries, the hierarchical prescriptions for souls
oppressed with sin, Luther fell back upon an act of subjective
faith in place of the Church's objective works. For the cor
poration he substituted the individual : whom he put in im
mediate, instead of mediate, relation with Christ and God.
The Catholic's unbloody sacrifice had no efficacy, no existence,
without the priest; the Lutheran's bloody sacrifice was a
reahzed historical fact, to be appropriated separately by every
believer's personal trust. It was not, therefore, the Church
which, in its corporate capacity, occupied the prior place, and
held the deposit of divine grace for distribution to its mem
bers ; but it was the private person that constituted the sacred
unit, and a plurality of believers supplied the factors of the
Church. The grace which before could not reach the indi
vidual except by transit through accredited officials, now be
came directly accessible to each soul : and only after it had
been received by a sufficient number to form a society, did
the conditions of spiritual office and organization exist. This
essential dependence of the whole upon the parts, instead of
the parts upon the whole, is the most radical and powerful
peculiarity of Protestantism. A system which raises the in
dividual to the primary place of religious importance, places
him nearest to the supernatural energy of God, and makes him
the living stone without which temple and altar cannot be
built, naturally draws to it minds of marked vigor, and trains
men in self-subsisting habits. By giving scope to the forces
of private character, it sets in action the real springs of healthy
progress, and happily with such intensity as to defy the checks
it often seeks to impose in later moods of repentant alarm.
This emancipation of the personal hfe from theocratic control,
at first achieved in connection with the doctrine of justification,
was sure to present itself in other forms. In its spiritual ap
plication Protestant egoism assumes the shape of reliance on
inner faith; in its political, of voluntaryism; in its intellect
ual, of free inquiry and private judgment. These several

32 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
directions may be taken separately or together, but where, as
in the Church of England, not one of them is unambiguously
marked, the very principle of reformed Christianity is unse
cured, and Protestantism is present, not by charter, but by
social accident. Puritanism everywhere — conforming or non
conforming, Enghsh or Continental — exhibits the first direc
tion; "Evangelical" Dissenters add the second; while Uni
tarians occupy the third, — not perhaps completely, and not
altogether exclusively, but characteristically nevertheless. For
it is impossible to unite the orthodox with the intellectual
egoism. So long as the inner faith, which is the presumed
condition of justification, includes a controverted doctrme, like
the scheme of Atonement, the need of faith imposes a limit
on the right of judgment : and you are only free to think till
you show symptoms of thinking wrong. But when the sac
rificial Christianity has passed into the ethical, and no other
condition of harmony with God is laid down than purity of
affection and fidelity of will, then honest thought can peril no
salvation, and the devotion of the intellect to truth and the
heart to grace is a divided allegiance no more.
It was for some time doubtful how far this Protestant egoism
was likely to go. Luther was clear and positive that it was
faith that justified ; and fetching this doctrine out of a deep
personal experience, he paid little respect to any one who
contradicted it, and regulated by it his first choice of religious
authorities. Led by this clew, he arrived at results strangely
at variance with modem canons. He neither accepted as a
standard the whole Bible, nor at first rejected the whole tra
dition of the Church ; loosely attempting to reserve the Au-
gustinian authorities, and to repudiate the Dominican. When
he had renounced altogether the appeal to councils and patris
tic lore, it was in favor, not of the external Scriptures, uncon
ditionally taken as the rule of faith, but of the private spirit
of the Christian reader, who was himself "made king and
priest," and could not only find the meaning, but pronounce
upon the relative worth, of the canonical books. Accordingly,
the Reformer made very free with portions of the Old Testa
ment, and with the more Judaic elements of the New, — the

DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 33
Epistle to the Hebrews, that of James, and the Apocatypse ;
and avowedly did this because he disliked the flavor of their
doctrine, and felt its variance from the Pauline gospel. He
thus tampered with his court before he brought forward his
cause, and incapacitated the judges whose verdict he feared.
In short, the religious life of his own soul was too intense and
powerful to be prevailed over by any written word : he ap
propriated what was congenial, and threw away the rest.
Uneasy relations were thus established between the subjective
rule of faith found in the believer's own mind, and the objec
tive standard of a documentary, revelation : they were soon
constituted, and have ever since remained rival authorities,
commanding the allegiance of different orders of minds. The
vast majority of Protestants, of less profound and tumultuous
inner life than Luther, and less knowing how to see their way
through it, subsided into exclusive recognition of the sacred
writings ; denying alike the regulative authority either of
church councils or of the private soul. In every branch and
derivative of the Genevan Reformation, throughout the whole
range of both the Puritan and the Arminian Churches, a rig
orous Scripturalism prevails ; and the Bible is used as a code
or legislative text-book, which yields, on mere interpretation,
verdicts without appeal on every subject, whether doctrine or
duty, of which it speaks. But Luther's spiritual enthusiasm
kindled a fire that he scarce could quench ; and while he him
self, flung into perpetual conflicts with opponents, was obliged
more and more to refer to evidence external to his personal
ity, others had learned from him to look upon their own souls
as the theatre of conscious strife between heaven and hell, and
to recognize the voice of inspiration there. Carlstadt was the
¦ first to catch the flame of his teacher's burning experience,
and, touched by prophetic consciousness, to set the Spirit above
the Word. Luther, so often recalled from the tendencies of
his own turbulent teaching by seeing their mischiefs realized in
other men, instantly turned on Carlstadt with his overwhelm
ing scorn : " The spirit of our new prophet flies very high
indeed: 'tis an audacious spirit, that would eat up the Holy
Ghost, feathers and all. < The Bible ? ' — sneer these fellows,

34: DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY.
— 'Bibel, Bubel, Babel!' And not only do they reject the
«5ible thus contemptuously, but they say they would reject God
too, if he were not to visit them as he did his prophets." Carl
stadt had got hold of a doctrine that was too much for his ill-
balanced mind, and Luther easily destroyed his repute. But
a principle had been started which has never been dormant
since ; the very principle which afterwards constituted the
Society of Friends, and finds its best exposition in the writings
of their admirable apologist, Barclay ; and which in our times
reappears in more philosophic guise, and fights its old battles
again as the doctrine of religious intuition. No period of
awakened faith and sentiment has been without some increas
ing tincture of this persuasion ; and under modified forms,
with more or less admixture of the ordinary Puritan elements,
it has played a great part among the Quietists in France, the
Moravians in Germany, and the Methodists in England. In
all these, far as they are from being committed to the notion
of an "inner light," spiritualism has predominated over Scrip-
turalism, and permanent life in the Spirit has engaged the
affections more than the transition into the adoption of faith.
In this endeavor to lay out the ground-plan of modern
Christian development, and trace upon it the chief lines both of
psychological and of historical distinction, our design is to pre
pare the way for a series of sketches exhibiting the sects and
types of religion in England. It is scarcely possible to notice
the phenomena present here and to-day without referring to
their antecedents in a prior age, their counterparts in other
lands, and their permanent principles in human nature ; and
if our chart be tolerably correct, our future course will be
rendered less indeterminate by the relations and points of
comparison which have been established. The age, and even
the hour, is teeming with new interests and pregnant auguries
in relation to the highest element of human well-bein"-. From
a desire to approach these in a temper of just and reverential
appreciation, we have abstained from recording the first im
pression of them, and sought rather, by a preliminary disci
pline, to detect some criteria by which prejudices may be
checked, tendencies be estimated, and criticism acquire a clew.

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND
WITHOUT RITUAL.

" To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men,
but chosen of God, and precious ; ye also, as lively stones, are built
up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices,
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." — 1 Peter ii. 4, 5.
The formation of human society, and the institution of
priesthood, must be referred to the same causes and the same
date. The earliest communities of the world appear to have
had their origin and their cement, not in any gregarious in
stinct, nor in mere social affections, much less in any pruden
tial regard to the advantages of co-operation, but in a binding
religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance, and
expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be
more strong, so is none more primitive, than this agreement
res23ecting what is holy and divine. In simple and patri
archal ages, indeed, when the feelings of veneration had not
been set aside by analysis into a little corner of the char
acter, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed
it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces
that can suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions, and
compact a multitude of men together. It was not, as at
present, to have simply the same opinions (things of quite
modern growth, the brood of scepticism) ; but to have the
same fathers, the same tradition, the same speech, the same
land, the same foes, the same priest, the same God. Nothing

36 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
did man fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong,
by some affinity, to his faith. Nor had he any book to keep
the precious deposit for him ; and if he had, he would never
have thought of so frail a vehicle for so great a treasure. It
was more natural to put it into structures hollowed in the
fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks which only a
giant age could stir ; and to tenant these with mighty hie
rarchies, who should guard their sanctity, and, by an un
dying memory, make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the
first humanizer of men was their worship ; the first leaders
of nations, the sacerdotal caste ; the first triumph of art, the
colossal temple ; the first effort to preserve an idea produced
a record of something sacred ; and the first civilization was,
as the last will be, the birth of rehgion.
The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon
the sentiments of God ; at first, by such natural and intelli
gible means as produce favorable impressions on the mind
of a fellow-man, • — by presents and persuasion, and whatever
is expressive of grateful and reverential affections. Abel, the
first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock ; Cain, the
first farmer, the fruits of his land; and while devotion was
so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff,
and have his own altar. But soon, the parent would inevi
tably officiate for his family ; the patriarch, for his tribe.
With the natural forms dictated by present feelings, tra
ditional methods would mingle their contributions from the
past ; postures and times, gestures and localities, once indif
ferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and
so long as their origin was unforgotten, they would add to
the significance, while they lessened the simplicity, of wor
ship. Custom, however, being the growth of time, tends to
a tyrannous and bewildering complexity : forms, originally
natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary ; suggestive
of nothing, except to the initiated ; yet, if connected with
religion, so sanctified by the association, that it appears sacri
lege to desist from their employment ; and when their meanino-
is lost, they assume their place, not among empty gesticula-

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 37
tions, but among the mystical signs by which earth com
munes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early
worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in the
freshest colors of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and
was open to every hand. To this succeeded a piety, which
expressed itself in symbolical figures, veiling it utterly from
strangers, but intelligible and impressive still to the soul of
national tradition. This, however, passed again into a lan
guage of arbitrary characters, in which the herd of men saw
sacredness without meaning ; and the use of which must be
consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence the origin
of the priest and his profession ; the conservator of a worship
no longer natural, but legendary and mystical ; skilful enactor
of rites that spake with silent gesticulation to the heavens ;
interpreter of the wants of men into the divine language of
the gods. Not till the powers above had ceased to hold
familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance had be
come deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the
mediating priest arise ; — needed then to conduct the finger-
speech of ceremony, whereby the desire of the creature took
shape before the eye of the Creator.
Observe, then, the true idea of Priest and Ritual. The
Priest is the representative of men before God ; commissioned
on behalf of human nature to intercede with the divine. He
bears a message upwards, from earth to heaven ; his people
being below, his influence above. He takes the fears of the
weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets them with avail
ing supplication before Him that is able to help. He takes
the sins and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with ex
piating tribute at the feet of the averted Deity. He guards
the avenues that lead from the mortal to the immortal, and
without his interposition the creature is cut off from his
Creator. Without his mediation no transaction between them
can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an out
law from the world invisible and holy. There are means of
propitiation which he alone has authority to employ ; powers
of persuasion conceded to no other ; a mystic access to the
4

38 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
springs of divine benignity, by outward rites which his ma
nipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which his lips
must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of
his office and the sources of his power ; the magic by which
he is thought to gain admission to the will above, and really
wins rule over human counsels below. As they are supposed
to change the relation of God to man, not by visible or natural
operation, not (for example) by suggestion of new thoughts,
and excitement of new dispositions in the worshipper, but by
secret and mysterious agency, they are simply spells of a dig
nified order. Were we then to speak with severe exactitude,
we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms ;
and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.
So long as any idea is retained of mystically efficacious
rites, consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands,
this definition cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have
rational instruction and natural worship appended to them ;
and these additional elements may give them a title to true
respect. The order of men appointed to administer them
may have other offices and nobler duties to perform, render
ing them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attach
ment. But in so far as, by an exclusive and unnatural
efficacy, they bring about a changed relation between God
and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and the Priest is an
enchanter. To this sacerdotal devotion there necessarily attach cer
tain characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which
give it a distinctive influence on human character, and adapt
it to particular stages of civilization. It clearly severs the
worshippers by one remove from God. He is a Being, ex
ternal to them, distant from them, personally unapproachable
by them ; their thought must travel to reach the Almighty ;
they must look afar for the Most Holy ; they dwell themselves
within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the
Infinite. He is not with them as a private guide, but in the
remoter watch-towers^ of creation, as the public inspector of
their life ; not present for perpetual communion, but to be

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 39
visited in absence by stated messages of form and prayer.
And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation in
duces the feehng, that man is too mean to touch him ; that a
consecrated intervention is required, hi order to part Deity
from the defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I re
stricted from unlimited personal access to my Creator, and
driven to another in my transactions with him ? And so, in
this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in alliance,
with the divine, and those views of it are favored which
make the opposition strong ; its puny dimensions, its swift
decadence, its poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its
giant guilt, become familiar to the thought and lips ; and life,
cut off from sympathy with the godlike, falls towards the
level of melancholy, or the sink of epicurism, or the abject-
ness of vicarious reliance on the priest. Worship, too, must
have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill ; to rid the
mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow ;
for principally to these disburdening offices do priests and
rituals profess themselves adapted ; — and who, indeed, could
pour forth the privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through
the cumbrousness of ceremonies, and the pompousness of a
sacred officer ? The piety of such a religion is thus a refuge
for the weakness, not an outpouring of the strength, of the
soul : it takes away the incubus of darkness, without shed
ding the light of heaven ; lifts off the nightmare horrors of
earth and hell, without opening the vision of angels and of
God. Nay, for the spiritual bonds which connect men with
the Father above, it substitutes material ties, a genealogy of
sacred fires, a succession of hallowed buildings, or of priests
having consecration by pedigree or by manual transmission ;
so that qualities belonging to the soul alone are likened to
forces mechanical or chemical; sanctity becomes a physical
property ; divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation ; re
generation is degraded into a species of electric shock, which
one only method of experiment, and the links of but one
conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly system ever
abjures all aim at any higher perfection ; boasts of being im-

40 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
mutable and unimprovable ; encourages no ambition, breathes
no desire. It holds the appointed methods of influencing
Heaven, on which none may presume to innovate ; and its
functions are ever the same, to employ and preserve the
ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust.
Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or
prospective ; it turns its back upon the living, and looks
straight into departed ages, bowing the head and bending the
knee ; as if all objects of love and devotion were there,
not here ; in history, not in life ; as if its God were dead, or
otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed to its
keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction.
Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it
possesses a sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a
mean humanity, a servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a
retrospective reverence.
Let no one, however, imagine that there is no other idea
or administration of religion than this ; that the priest is the
only person among men to whom it is given to stand between
heaven and earth. Even the Hebrew Scriptures introduce
us to another class of quite different order ; to whom, indeed,
those Scriptures owe their own truth and power, and perpe
tuity of beauty : I mean the Prophets ; whom we shall very
imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians,
for whom God had turned time round the other way, so that
they spoke of things future as if past, and grew so dizzy in
their use of tenses, as greatly to incommode learned gram
marians ; or if we treat their writings as scrap-books of Prov
idence, with miscellaneous contributions from various parts
of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of
view within eternity, and put together at random and without
mark, on adjacent pages, for theological memories to identify ;
first, a picture of an Assyrian battle, next, a holy family ; now,
of the captives sitting by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching
to the Gentiles ; here, a flight of devouring locusts, and there,
the escape of the Christians from the destruction of Jeru
salem ; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary ; a

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 41
march through the desert, and John the Baptist by the Jor
dan ; the day of Pentecost, and the French Revolution ;
Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet ; Caligula and the Pope, —
following each other with picturesque neglect of every rela
tion of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always
indeed belong to the future ; but far otherwise than thus.
Meanwhile, let us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he
takes his natural station above the priest. It was Moses the
prophet who even made Aaron the priest. And who cares
now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament, compared
with the rest ? Who, having the strains of David, would pore
over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when
he might catch the inspiration of Isaiah ? It was no priest
that wrote, " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ;
thou delightest not in burnt-offering: the sacrifices of God
are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God,
thou wilt not despise." It was no pontifical spirit that ex
claimed, " Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomi
nation to me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting : your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul
hateth ; they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear
them." " Wash you, make you clean." Whatever in these
venerable Scriptures awes us by its grandeur and pierces us
by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the priests ; and from
that part of their writings, too, in which they are not con
cerned with historical prediction, but with some utterance
deeper and greater. I do not deny them this gift of occa
sional intellectual foresight of events. And doubtless it was
an honor to be permitted to speak thus to a portion of the
future, and of local occurrences unrevealed to seers less privi
leged. But it is a glory far higher to speak that which be
longs to all time, and finds its interpretation in every place ; to
penetrate to the everlasting realities of things ; to disclose,
not when this or that man will appear, but. how and wherefore
all men appear and quickly disappear ; to make it felt, not in
what nook of duration such an incident will happen, but from
4*

42 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
what all-embracing eternity the images of history emerge and
are swallowed up. In this highest faculty the Hebrew seers
belong to a class scattered over every nation and every
period ; which Providence keeps ever extant for human good,
and especially to furnish an administration of religion quite
anti-sacerdotal. This class we must proceed to characterize.
The Prophet is the representative of God before men, com
missioned from the Divine nature to sanctify the human.
He bears a message downwards, from heaven to earth ; his
inspirer being above, his influence below. He takes of the
holiness of God, enters with it into the souls of men, and heals
therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin. He is
charged with the peace of God, and gives from it rest to the
weariness and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carry
ing the foulness of life to be cleansed in heaven, he brings
the purity of heaven to make life divine. Instead of inter
posing himself and his mediation between humanity and Deity,
he destroys the whole distance between them ; and only fulfils
his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the infinite
into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature
consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the
primitive and everlasting relations between God and man
have revealed themselves, stripped of every disguise, and
bared of all that is conventional ; who is possessed by their
simplicity, mastered by their solemnity; who has found the
secret of meeting the Holy Spirit within, rather than without ;
and knows, but cannot tell, how, in the strife of genuine duty,
or in moments of true meditation, the Divine immensity and
love have touched and filled his naked soul ; and taught him
by what fathomless Godhead he is folded round, and on what
adamantine manhood he must take his stand. So far from
separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed
to himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same
godlike consciousness ; burns to impart it to them ; and by the
vivid light of his own faith speedily creates it in those who
feel his influence, drawing out and freshening the faded colors
of the Divine image in their souls, till they too become visibly

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 43
the seers and the sons of God. His instruments, like the
objects of his mission, are human ; not mysteries, and mum
meries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pre
tend to be talking with the skies ; but the natural language
which interprets itself at once to every genuine man, and
goes direct to the living point of every heart. An earnest
speech, a brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of
conscience, freshness and loftiness of faith, — these natural
sanctities are his implements of power; and if heaven be
pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons all, —
not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom, — but forged in
the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows be
neath the breath of God, framing things of ethereal temper.
Thus armed, he lays undoubting siege to the world's con
science ; tears down every outwork of pretence ; forces its
strong-holds of delusion ; humbles the vanities at its centre,
and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet of
every age is no believer in the temple, but in the temple's
Deity ; trusts, not rites and institutions, but the heart and soul
that fill or ought to fill them ; if they speak the truth, no one
so reveres them; if a lie, they meet with no contempt like
his. He sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind itself,
wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell ; and whence it
will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may
suit the season of Providence. He is conscious that there is
no devotion like that which comes spontaneously from the
secret places of our humanity, no orisons so true as those
which rise from the common platform of our life. He de
sires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of
the heart. Give him but that, and he will find for man
an everlasting worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy
of his infinitude.
It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit
could never be, and could never make, a priest ; nor frame a
ritual for priests already made. He is destitute of the ideas
out of which alone these things can be created. His mission
is in the opposite direction : he interprets and reveals God to

44 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
men, instead of interceding for men with God. In this office
sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do not say
that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny
that he may directly sanction them. If he does, however, it
is not in his capacity of prophet, but in conformity with- feel
ings which his proper office has left untouched. His tendency
will be against ceremonialism ; and on his age and position
will depend the extent to which this tendency takes effect.
Usually he will construct nothing ritual, will destroy much,
and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of much
more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet,
let us notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and re
hgious, which naturally connect themselves with his faith ;
comparing them with those which belong to the sacerdotal
influence. In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his wor
shippers. He is not simply in contact with them, but truly
in the interior of their nature ; so that they may not only
meet him in the outward providences of life, but bear his
spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict, and find it
still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the
far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will.
No structure made with hands, nay, not even his own ar
chitecture of the heaven of heavens, contains and confines
his presence : were there any dark recess whence these were
hid, the blessed access would be without hinderance still ;
and the soul would discern him near as its own identity. No
mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of a mind
which is thus the residence of Deity; — the shrine of the
Infinite must have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in
this system, does our nature appear in alliance with the Di
vine, not in contrast with it ; inspired with a portion of its
holiness, and free to help forward the best issues of its provi
dence. Human life, blessed by this spirit, becomes a minia
ture of the work of the great Ruler : its responsibilities, its
difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as the glorious
theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit of

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 45
God, for the mastery over evil. Worship, issuing from a
nature and existence, thus consecrated, is not the casting off
of guilt and terror, but the glad unburdening of love, and
trust, and aspiration, the simple speaking forth, as duty is
the acting forth, of the divine within us ; not the prostration
of the slave, but the embrace of the child ; not the plaint of
the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private,
individual ? And may it not by silence say what it will, and
intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at heart ? —
whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence,
truth with one's own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary
or lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and
God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit :
from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with
which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanc
tity arise ; and herein there is none to help us, or give a
vicarious consecration. And, finally, the spirit of God's true
prophet is earnestly prospective ; more filled with the con
ception of what the Creator will make his world, than of
what he has already made it : detecting great capacities, it
glows with great hopes ; knowing that God fives, and will
hve, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and
reverences rather the promise of the present, and the glories
of the future. It esteems nothing unimprovable, is replete
with vast desires ; and amid the shadows and across the wilds
of existence chases, not vainly, a bright image of perfection.
The golden age, which priests with their tradition put into
the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth, transfers into
the future ; and while the former pines and muses, the latter
toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion,
in proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacer
dotal character, involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a noble
humanity, a loving worship, an individual holiness, and a
prospective veneration.
We have found, then, two opposite views of religion : that
of the Priest with his Ritual, and that of the Prophet with
his Faith. I propose to show that the Church of England,

46 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
in its doctrine of sacraments, coincides with the former of
these, and sanctions all its objectionable sentiments; and
that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect to its
reputed rites, coincides with the latter.
The general conformity of the Church of England with the
ritual conception of religion will not be denied by her own
members. Their denial will be limited to one point : they
will protest that her formulas of doctrine do not ascribe a
charmed efficacy, or any operation upon God, to the two
sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider what
we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I ap
prehend, denotes any material object or outward act, the pos
session or use of which is thought to confer safety or blessing,
not by natural operation, but by occult virtues inherent in
it, or mystical effects appended to it. A mere commemo
rative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there be any
superstition in its employment : it simply stands for certain
ideas and memories in our minds ; re-excites and freshens
them, not otherwise than speech audibly records them, except
that it summons them before us by sight and touch, instead of
sound. The effect, whatever it may be, is purely natural, by
sequence of thought on thought, till the complexion of the
mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow. But
in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things
having efficacy at all ; as desirable observances, under whose
action we should put ourselves, in order to get up certain
good dispositions in the heart. As soon as we see them ac
quiesced in, with this dutiful submission to a kind of spiritual
operation, we may be sure they are already empty and dead.
An expedient commemoration, deliberately maintained on util
itarian principles, for the sake of warming cold affections by
artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this mechan
ical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is
found to belong to rites of remembrance ; but only so long as
it is not privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by
the staring eye of prudence, but simply and unconsciously
received. No ; commemorations must be the spontaneous

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 47
fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the soul, not
the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They
are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold ;
but the shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted
lights thrown by that central love on the dark temple-walls of
this material life.
It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere com
memorative rites And nothing, I submit, remains, but that
they should be pronounced charms. It is of little purpose
to urge, in denial of this, that the Church insists upon the
necessity of faith on the part of the recipient, without which
no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue. This only limits the
use of the charm to a certain class, and establishes a pre
requisite to its proper efficacy. It simply conjoins the out
ward form with a certain state of mind, and gives to each of
these a participation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient
without the ceremony, then some efficacy is due to the rite ;
and this, being neither the natural operation of the material
elements, nor a simple suggestion of ideas and feelings to the
mind, but mystical and preternatural, is no other than a
charmed efficacy.
Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon God, but
upon man, bear examination. It is very true, that the ulti
mate benefit of these rites is a result reputed to fall upon the
worshipper ; — regeneration, in the case of baptism ; partici
pation in the atonement, in the case of the Lord's Supper.
But by what steps do these blessings descend ? Not by those
of visible or perceived causation ; but through an express and
extraordinary volition of God, induced by the ceremonial
form, or taking occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy,
therefore, is so arranged, that, whenever the priest dispenses
the water at the font, the Holy Spirit follows, as in instan
taneous compliance with a suggestion ; and whenever he
spreads his hands over the elements at the communion, God
immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting
the moment before, between the substances on the table and
the souls of the faithful communicants : so that every partaker

48 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
receives, either directly or through supernatural increase of
faith, some new share in the merits of the cross. Whatever
subtleties of language then may be employed, it is evidently
conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes place
in heaven; and that on this depends whatever benediction
they may bring: nor can a plain understanding frame any
other idea of them than this ; first, they act upwards, and
suggest something to the mind of God, who then sends down
an influence on the mind of the believer. From this concep
tion no figures of speech, no ingenious analogies, can deliver
us. Do you call the sacraments " pledges of grace " ? A
pledge means a promise ; and how a voluntary act of ours, or
the priest's, can be a promise made to us by the Divine Being,
it is not easy to understand. Do you call them " seals of
God's covenant," — the instrument by which he engages to
make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and
completion of a deed conveying an estate ? It still perplexes
us to think of a service of our own as an assurance received
by us from Heaven. And one would imagine that the Divine
promise, once given, were enough, without this incessant bind
ing by periodical legalities. If it be said, " The renewal of
the obligation is needful for us, and not for him " ; then call
the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the
solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors,
the question recurs, Does the covenant stand without these
seals, or are they essential to give possession of the privileges
conveyed ? Are they, by means preternatural, procurers of
salvation ? Have they a mystical action towards this end ?
If so, we return to the same point ; they have a charmed
efficacy on the human soul.
In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a
brief reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical
services of the Church respecting Baptism and the Com
munion. Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common
Prayer, as the instrument of regeneration : not simply as its
sign, of which the actual descent of the Holy Spirit is inde-

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 49
pendent ; but as itself and essentially the means or indispen
sable occasion of the washing away of sin. That this is
regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural and spirit
ual effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its occurrence
in infants, to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on
whom, in the course of nature, it can leave no impression.
Yet it is declared of the infant, after the use of the water,
" Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is re
generate" &c. : at the commencement of the service its aim
is said to be that God may " grant to this child that thing
which by nature he cannot have," — " would wash him and
sanctify him with the Holy Ghost," that he may be " deliv
ered from God's wrath." Nothing, indeed, is so striking in
this office of the national Church, as its audacious trifling
with solemn names, denoting qualities of the soul and wiU;
the ascription of spiritual and moral attributes, not only to
the child in whom they can yet have no development, but
even to material substances ; the frivolity with which engage
ments with God are made by deputy, and without the con
sent or even existence of the engaging will. Water is said
to possess sanctity, for " the mystical washing away of sin."
Infants, destitute of any idea of duty or obligation to be re
sisted or obeyed, are said to obtain " remission of their sins " ;
— to " renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp
and glory of the world " ; " steadfastly to believe " in the
Apostles' Creed, and to be desirous of "baptism into this
faith." Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some one's mind :
the language of this service attributes them to the personality
of the infant (/renounce, /believe, Jdesire) ; yet there they
cannot possibly exist. If they are to be understood as af
firmed by the godfathers and godmothers of themselves, the
case is not improved : for how can one person's state of faith
and conscience be made the condition of the regeneration of
another ? What intelligible meaning can be attached to these
phrases of sanctity applied to an age not responsible? In
what sense, and by what indication, are these children holier
than others? And with what reason, if all this be Chris-
5

50 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
tianity, can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on
the horses ? The service appears little better than a profane
sacerdotal jugglery, by which material things are impregnated
with divine virtues, moral and spiritual qualities of the mind
are sported with, the holy spirit of God is turned into a
physical mystery, and the solemnity of personal responsibihty
is insulted. That a superstitious value is attributed to the details of
the baptismal form, in the Church of England, appears from
certain parts of the service for the private ministration of the
rite. If a child has been baptized by any other lawful min
ister than the minister of the parish, strict inquiries are to
be instituted by the latter respecting the correctness with
which the ceremony has been performed ; and should the
prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is invalid,
and must be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested,
lest danger should be incurred by an unnecessary repetition
of the sacrament : to guard against which, the minister is to
give the following conditional invitation to the Holy Spirit ;
saying, in his address to the child, " If thou art not already
baptized, I baptize thee," &c. It is worthy of remark, that
the Church mentions as one of the essentials of the service,
the omission of which necessitates its repetition, the use of
the formula, " In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost." By this rule, every one of the apos
tolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be pronounced in
valid ; and the Church of England, were it possible, would
perform them again : for in no instance does it appear that
the Apostles employed either this or even any equivalent
form of. words.
That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel
of grace, and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from
the provision of a short and private form, to be used in cases
of extreme danger. The prayers, and faith, and obedience,
and patient love, of parents and friends, — the dedication and
heart-felt surrender of their child to God, the profound appli
cation of their anxieties and grief to their conscience and

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 51
inward life, — all this, we are told, will be of no avail, with
out the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says : " That
baptism is necessary to the salvation of infants (in the or
dinary way of the Church, without binding God to the use
and means of that sacrament, to which he hath bound us), is
expressed in St. John iii., ' Except a man be born of water,'
&c. So, no baptism, no entrance ; nor can infants creep in,
any other ordinary way." * Bishop Bramhall says : " Wilful
neglect of baptism we acknowledge to be a damnable sin;
and, without repentance and God's extraordinary mercy, to
exclude a man from all hope of salvation. But yet, if such
a person, before his death, shall repent and deplore his neg
lect of the means of grace, from his heart, and desire with
all his soul to be baptized, but is debarred from it invincibly,
we do not, we dare not, pass sentence of condemnation upon
him ; not yet the Roman Catholics themselves. The ques
tion then is, whether the want of baptism, upon invincible
necessity, do evermore mfalhbly exclude from heaven." f
Singular struggle here, between the merciless ritual of the
priest, and the relenting spirit of the man !
The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of
the same sacerdotal superstitions ; and, notwithstanding the
Protestant horror entertained of the mass, approaches it so
nearly, that no ingenuity can exhibit them in contrast. Near
doctrines, however, like near neighbors, are known to quarrel
most. The idea of a physical sanctity, residing in solid and liquid
substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest conse
crates the elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread,
and upon every flagon containing the wine about to be dis
pensed. If an additional quantity is required, this too must
be consecrated before its distribution. And the sacredness
thus imparted is represented as surviving the celebration of
* Conference with Fisher, § 15 ; quoted in Tracts for the Times,' No. 76.
Catena Patrum, No. II. p. 18.
t Of Persons dying without Baptism, p. 979 ; quoted in loc. cil. pp.
19,20.

52 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
the Supper, and residing in the substances as a permanent
quality : for in the disposal of the bread and wine that may
remain at the close of the sacramental feast, a distinction is
made between the consecrated and the unconsecrated portion
of the elements ; the former is not permitted to quit the
altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and the
communicants ; the latter is given to the curate. What the
particular change may be, which the prayer and manipulation
of the minister are thought to induce, it is by no means easy
to determine ; nor would the discovery, perhaps, reward our
pains. It is certainly conceived, that they cease to be any
longer mere bread and wine, and that with them thence
forth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of
Christ. Respecting this Real Presence with the elements,
there is no dispute between the Romish and the English
Church ; both unequivocally maintain it : and the only ques
tion is, respecting the Real Absence of the original and cu
linary bread and wine ; the Roman Catholic believing that
these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the body and
blood of Christ ; the English Protestant conceiving that they
remain, but are united with the latter. The Lutheran, no
less than the British Reformed Church, has clung tenaciously
to the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist. Luther
himself declares : " I would rather retain, with the Romanists,
only the body and blood, than adopt, with the Swiss, the
bread and wine, without the real body and blood of Christ."
The catechism of our Church affirms that " the body and
blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by
the faithful in the Lord's Supper." And this was not in
tended to be figuratively understood, of the spiritual use and
appropriation to which the faith and piety of the receiver
would mentally convert the elements : for although here the
body of Christ is only said to be " taken " (making it the act
of the communicant), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as
" given " (making it the act of the officiating priest), and im
plying the real presence before participation. However
anxious, indeed, the clergy of the " Evangelical " school may

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 53
be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted that their
Church has always maintained a supernatural change in the
elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver.
Cosin, Bishop of Durham, says, " We own the union between
the body and blood of Christ, and the elements, whose use
and office we hold to be changed from what it was before " ;
" we confess the necessity of a supernatural and heavenly
change, and that the signs cannot become sacraments but by
the infinite power of God." *
In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed
efficacy is attributed to the subsequent participation in the
elements. Even the body of the communicant is said to be
under their influence : " Grant us to eat the flesh of thy
dear Son, and drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be
made clean through his body, and our souls washed through
his most precious blood " ; and the unworthy recipients are
said " to provoke God to plague them with divers diseases
and sundry kinds of death." Lest the worshipper, by pre
senting himself in an unqualified state, should " do nothing
else than increase his damnation," the unquiet conscience is
directed to resort to the priest, and receive the benefit of ab
solution before communicating. Can we deny to the Oxford
divines the merit (whatever it may be) of consistency with
the theology of their Church, when they applaud and recom
mend, as they do, the administration of the Eucharist to in
fants, and to persons dying and insensible? Indeed, it is
difficult to discover why infant Communion should be thought
more irrational than infant Baptism. If, as I have endeav
ored to show, the primary action of these ceremonies is con
ceived to be on God, not on the mind of their object, why
should not the Divine blessing be induced upon the young
and the unconscious, as well as on the mature and capable
soul ? And were any further evidence required than I have
hitherto adduced, to show on whom the Communion is con-
* History of Popish Transubstantiation, Chap. IV. ; printed in the Tracts
for the Times, No. XXVII. pp. 14, 15.
5*

54 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
ceived to operate in the first instance, it would surely be
afforded by this clause in the Service : by not partaking,
" Consider how great an injury ye do unto God."
The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system,
is to obtain for a certain class of men the corporate posses
sion, and exclusive administration, of these essential and holy
mysteries. This our Church accomplishes by its doctrine of
Apostolical Succession ; claiming for its ministers a lineal
official descent from the Apostles, which invests them, and
them alone within this realm, with divine authority to pro
nounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the
Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the chan
nels of the Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose them
selves between a nation and its God. " Receive the Holy
Ghost," says the Service for Ordination of Priests, " for the
office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now com
mitted unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins
thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost
retain, they are retained." " They only," says the present
Bishop of Exeter, " can claim to rule over the Lord's house
hold, whom he has himself placed over it ; they only are able
to minister the means of grace, — above all, to present the
great commemorative sacrifice, — whom Christ has appointed,
and whom he has in all generations appointed in unbroken
succession from those, and through those, whom he first or
dained. ' Ambassadors from Christ ' must, by the very force
of the term, receive credentials from Christ : ' stewards of the
mysteries of God ' must be intrusted with those mysteries by
him. Remind your people, that in the Church only is the
promise of forgiveness of sins ; and though, to all who truly
repent, and sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants forgive
ness, yet he has, in an especial manner, empowered his minis
ters to declare and pronounce to his people the absolution and
remission of their sins : < Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
retained.' This was the awful authority given to his first
ministers, and in them, and through them, to all their sue-

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 55
cessors. This is the awful authority we have received, and
that we must never be ashamed nor afraid to tell the people
that we have received.
"Having shown to the people your commission, show to
them how our own Church has framed its services in accord
ance with that commission. Show this to them not only in
the Ordinal, but- also, in the Collects, in the Communion Ser
vice, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick ; show it, es
pecially, in that which continually presents itself to their no
tice, but is commonly little regarded by them ; show it in the
very commencement cbf Morning and Evening Prayer, and
make them understand- the full blessedness of that service, in
which the Chureh thus calls on them to join. Let them see
that there the minister authoritatively pronounces God's
pardon and absolution to all them that truly repent, and un-
feignedly believe Christ's holy Gospel ; that he does this, even
as the Apostles,- did, with the authority and by the appoint
ment of ;onr Lord himself, who, in commissioning his Apos-
flesj. gave this. to be the never-failing assurance of his co
operation -in their ministry: ' Lo, I am with you always, even
unto the end of the world ' ; a promise which, of its very
nature, was not to be fulfilled to the persons of those whom
he addressed, but to their office, to their successors therefore
in that office, ' even unto the end of the world.' Lastly,
remind and warn them of the awful sanction with which our
Lord accompanied his mission, even of the second order of the
ministers whom he appointed : ' He that heareth you, heareth
me ; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me ; and he that
despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.' " That this high
dignity may be clearly understood to belong in this country
only to the Church of England, the Bishop proposes the
question, " What, then, becomes of those who are not, or
continue not, members of that (visible) Church ? " and replies
to it by saying, that though he "judges not them that are
without," yet " he who wilfully and in despite of due warning,
or through recklessness and worldly-mindedness, sets at naught
its ordinances, and despises its ministers, has no right to

56 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
promise to himself any share in the grace which they are
appointed to convey." * " Why," says one of the Oxford
divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of
his Church, — " Why should we talk so much of an Establish
ment, and so little of an Apostolic Succession ? Why
should we not seriously endeavor to impress our people with
this plain truth, that, by separating themselves from our com
munion, they separate themselves not only from a decent,
orderly, useful society, but from the only Church in
THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE
THAT SHE HAS THE LORD'S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEO
PLE ? " f
Of course this divine authority has been received through
the Church of Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evan
gelical clergymen ; and through many an unworthy link in
the broken chain. The Holy Spirit, it is acknowledged, has
passed through many, on whom, apparently, it was not pleased
to rest ; and the right to forgive sins been conferred by those
who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in
the Oxford Tracts observes : " Nor even though we may admit
that many of those who formed the comiecting links of this
holy chain were themselves unworthy of the high charge
reposed in them, can this furnish us with any solid ground
for doubting or denying their power to exercise that legiti
mate authority with which they were duly invested, of trans
mitting the sacred gift to worthier followers." \
In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of eccle
siastical authority and succession, the Church of England is
thoroughly imbued with the sacerdotal character. It doubt
less contains far better elements and nobler conceptions than
those which it has been my duty to exhibit now ; and sol
emnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience, and
Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of

* Bishop of Exeter's Charge, delivered at his Triennial Visitation in
August, September, and October, 1836, pp. 44-47.
t Tracts for the Times, No. IV. p. 5.
% Ibid., No. V. pp. 9, 10.

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 57
its ritual ; with the external it unites the internal condition of
sanctification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy
in the Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these
with each other: and hence the opposite parties within its
pale ; the one magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the
other exalting the sacraments and ecclesiastical communion.
They represent respectively the two constituent and clashing
powers, which met at the formation of the English Church,
and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the recon
ciliation ; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic
spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did
Heaven bless us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It
was his mission (no modern man had ever greater) to substi
tute the idea of personal faith for that of sacerdotal relia7ice.
And gloriously, with bravery and truth of soul amid a thou
sand hinderances, did he' achieve it. But though, ever since,
the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did
the hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that something
should be made of it, and at least some colorable terms pro
posed. Hence, every reformed church exhibits a coalition
between the new and the old ideas : and combined views of
religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible with each
other ; the formal with the spiritual ; the idea of worship as
a means of propitiating God, with the conception of it as an
expression of love in man; the notion of Church authority
with that of individual freedom; the admission of a license
to think, with a prohibition of thinking wrong. In our na
tional Church the old spirit was ascendant over the new,
though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern
times. Now it is attempting to reassert its power, not with
out strenuous resistance. Indeed, the present age seems
destined to end the compromise between the two principles,
from the union of which Protestantism assumed its estab
lished forms. The truce seems everywhere breaking up : a
general disintegration of churches is visible ; tradition is ran
sacking the past for claims and dignities, and canvassing
present timidity for fresh authority, to withstand the wild

58 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
forces born at the Reformation, and hurrying us fast into an
unknown future.
Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity ; which, I
submit, is throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal.
Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our
Lord's personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet,
not of the Priest ; tending directly to the disparagement of
whatever priesthood existed in his country, without visibly
preparing the substitution of anything at all analogous to it.
The sacerdotal order felt it so ; and, with the infallible instinct
of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they seized,
they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural
antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution,
and is the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment
and the gracious words of Christ's first preaching in Nazareth,
struck with fate the temple in Jerusalem. To the old men
of the village, to the neighbors who knew his childhood, and
companions who had shared its rambles and its sports, he
said, with the quiet flush of inspiration : " The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the
Gospel to the poor : he hath sent me to heal the broken
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover
ing of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are
bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." The
Spirit of the Lord in Galilee ! speaking with the peasantry,
dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it listeth
among the hills ! This would never do, thought the white-
robed Levites of the Holy City ; it would be as a train of
wildfire in the temple. And were they not right? When
it was revealed that sanctity is no thing of place and time,
that a way is open from earth to heaven, from every field or
mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof that
shelters a human head; that, amid the crowd and crush of
life, each soul is in personal solitude with God, and by speech
or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and
find its peace ; that a divine allegiance might cost nothing,
but tlie strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 59
heart, — how could any priesthood hope to stand ? See how
Jesus himself, when the temple was close at hand, and the
sunshine dressed it in its splendor, yet withdrew his prayers
to the midnight of Mount Olivet. He entered those courts
to teach, rather than to worship ; and when there, he is felt
to take no consecration, but to give it ; to bring with him the
living spirit of God, and spread it throughout all the place.
When evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over
the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of
God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above
him, and the sad love within him, than in the place called
" Holy " which he had left ? And when he had knocked at
the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his guest, — when,
after the labors of the day, he unburdened his spirit to the
affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the
sisters listening at his feet, — did they not feel, as they retired
at length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there
is no sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within
us all ? In childhood, he had once preferred the temple and
its teachings to his parents' home : now, to his deeper expe
rience, the temple has lost its truth ; while the cottage and
the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and constant duties
of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration. True,
he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within
its enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain, and
would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of
merchandise : because in this there was imposture and a lie,
and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In
nothing must there be mockery and falsehood ; and while
the temple stands, it must be a temple true.
Our Lord's whole ministry, then, (to which we may add
that of his Apostles,) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite
to that of priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed lo
cality, without form, without rites ; with teaching free, oc
casional, and various, with sympathies ever with the people,
and a strain of speech never marked by invective, except
against the ruling sacerdotal influence ; — all these characters

60 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the
Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his
enemies, the word " Priest " (Upevs) never occurs in either
the historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament,
except in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And there its applica
tion is not a little remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone ;
it is declared to belong to him only after his ascension ; it is
said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could be, a
priest ; and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven,
this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians
for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile
them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges
one great pontiff in the world above, "that the whole race may
be superseded in the world below ; and banishes priesthood
into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more.
All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers
of the Gospel and superintendents of churches, — as Deacon,
Elder or Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop, — are lay terms, be
longing previously, not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life ; an
indication, surely, that no analogy was thought to exist be
tween the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal relations.* I shall,
no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which our Lord is
supposed to have given their commission to his first repre
sentatives : " Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven ; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven " ; and shall be asked whether this does not con
vey to them and their successors an official authority to
* Archbishop Whately, speaking of the word Upevs and its meaning,
says : " This is an office assigned to none under the Gospel scheme, except
the one great High-Priest, of whom the Jewish priests were types." (Ele
ments of Logic. Appendix : Note on the word " Priest.") Of the " Gos
pel scheme " this is quite true ; of the Church-of-England scheme it is not.
There lies before me Duport's Greek version of the Prayer-Book and Offices
of the Anglican Church : and turning to the Communion Service, I find the
officiating clergyman called lepevs throughout. The absence of this word
from the records of the primitive Gospel, and its presence in the Prayer-Book,
is perfectly expressive of the difference in the spirit of the two systems ; 
the difference between the Church with, and the " Christianity without
Priest."

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 61
forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the unseen world.
I reply briefly : —
1st. That the power here granted does not relate to the
dispensations of the future life, but solely to what would be
termed, in modern language, the allotment of church-mem
bership. The previous verse proves this, furnishing as it does
a particular case of the general authority here assigned. It
directs the Apostles under what circumstances they are to
remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as
an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican.
Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application
of it to them : and being about to retire erelong from per
sonal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, he assures
them that their decisions shall be his, and that he may be
considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon
earth. He simply " consigns to his Apostles discretionary
power to direct the affairs of his Church, and superintend the
diffusion of the glad tidings : they may bind and loose, that
is, open and shut the door of admission to their community,
as their judgment may determine; employing or rejecting
applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from their
assemblies obstinate delinquents ; receiving with openness, or
dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, ac
cording to their estimate of his qualifications and motives."
2dly. It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any
one being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the per
sons immediately addressed. Not a word is said of any official
successor or any distant age. No indication is afforded, that
any idea of futurity was present to the mind of Jesus : and
a title of perpetual office, an instrument creating and endow
ing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted, to be
somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power
has been successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to
prove. The alleged ritual of Christianity, consisting of the sacra
ments of Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less
destitute of sanction from the Scriptures. The former we
6

62 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
shall see reason to regard as simply an initiatory form, ap
plicable only to Christian converts, and limited therefore to
adults ; the latter as purely a commemoration : neither there
fore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.
For baptism it is impossible to estabhsh any supernatural
origin. It is admitted to have existed before the Christian
era ; and to have been employed by the Jews on the admis
sion of proselytes to their religion. It is certain that it is
not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic dispensation ; and, though
prevalent before the period of the New Testament, is nowhere
enforced or recognized in the writings of the Old. It arose
therefore in the interval between the only two systems which
Christians acknowledged to be supernatural ; and must be
considered as of natural and human origin, invested, thus far,
with no higher authority than its own appropriateness may
confer. There seem to have been two modes of construing
the symbol : the one founded on the cleansing effect of the
water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on
the appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the
eye of a spectator. The former was an image of the heathen
convert's purification from a foul idolatry, and his transition
to a stainless condition under a divine and justifying law.
The latter represented him, when he vanished in the stream,
as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its sight ; and
when he reappeared, as emerging or born again to a better
state ; the " old man " was " buried in baptism," and when
he " rose again," he had altogether " become new." * The
* See Rom. vi. 2 - 4 : " How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any
longer therein ? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into
Jesus Christ were baptized into his death ? Therefore we are buried with
him by baptism into death ; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."
Mr. Locke observes of " St. Paul's argument," that it " is to show in what
state of life we ought to be raised out of baptism, in similitude and con
formity to that state of life Christ was raised into from the grave." See also
Col. ii. 12 : " Ye are ... . buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are
risen with him through tjje faith of the operation of God, who hath raised
him from the dead." The force of the image clearly depends on the sinking
and rising in the water.

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 63
ceremony then was appropriately used in any case of tran
sition from a depressed and corrupt state of existence to a
hopeful and blessed one ; from a false or imperfect rehgion to
one true and heavenly.
But it will be said, whatever the origin of baptism, it was
employed and sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned
his Apostles to go and baptize all nations. True ; but is there
no difference between the adoption of a practice already ex
tant, — of a practice which was as much the mere institutional
dress of the Apostles' nation, as the sandals whose dust they
were to shake off against the faithless were the customary
clothing of the Apostles' feet, — and the authoritative appoint
ment of a sacrament ? They were going forth to make con
verts : and why should they not have recourse to the form
familiarly associated with the act ? Familiar association rec
ommended its adoption in that age and clime ; and the ab
sence of such association elsewhere and in other times may
be thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony
thus taken up must be presumed to retain its acquired sense
and its established extent of application : and if so, baptism
must be strictly limited to the admission of proselytes from
other faiths. This accords with the known practice of the
Apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but
those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries,
persuaded to become Christians. Not a single case of the
use of the rite with children can be adduced from Scripture ;
and the only argument by which such employment of it is
ever justified is this : that a household is said to have been
baptized, and all nations were to receive the offer of it ; and
that the household may, the nations must, have contained chil
dren. It is evident that such reasoning could never have
been propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and
the defence had been found afterwards.
With the system of infant baptism vanish almost all the
ideas which the prevalent theology has put into the rite ; and
it becomes as intelligible and expressive to one who believes
in the good capacities of human nature, as to those who

64 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
esteem it originally depraved. " How unmeaning," say our
Orthodox opponents, " is this ceremony in Unitarian hands,
denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents ! Of
what regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if
not of the washing away of that hereditary sin which they
refuse to acknowledge ? for when the infant is brought to the
font, he can as yet have no other guilt than this." I reply,
the objection has no force except against the use of infant
baptism in our churches, — which I am not anxious to defend ;
but of course those Unitarians who employ it conceive it to
be the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of
truths and feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I
believe, with our opponents, that the doctrine of original sin
and the practice of infant baptism do belong to each other,
and must stand or fall together ; and therefore deem it a fact
very significant of the Apostles' theology, that no infant can
be shown ever to have been " brought to the font " by these
first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the new
birth which baptism (i. e. recent and genuine discipleship to
Jesus) may give to the maturely convinced Christian, he must
have a great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew concep
tions and language in relation to the Messiah, but of the
spirituality of the Gospel, and of the fresh creations of char
acter which it calls up, who can be much puzzled about its
meaning. In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with
mystic power ; but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetu
dinary obligation only ; but if enjoined, apphcable exclusively
to proselytes, and misemployed in the case of infants ; a sign
of conversion, not a means of salvation ; confided to no sa
cerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to gife it an
appropriate use.
I turn to the Lord's Supper ; with design to show what it
is not, and what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament,
any more than it is an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us
that it has a ritual character, we are first assured that it is
clearly the successor in the Gospel to the Passover under the

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 65
Law. Well, even if it were so, it would still be simply
commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festi
val, filled with great remembrances, and inspired with re
hgious joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem ; the
annual gathering of families and kindred, a sacred carnival
under the- spring sky and in sight of unreaped fields, when
the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the tale
was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back
of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the
promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more
than this ; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we
erroneously conceive it to be a proper sacrifice. So that
those who would interpret the Lord's Supper by the Pass
over have their choice between two views : that it is a simple
commemoration ; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice : in the
former case they quit the Church of England ; in the latter,
they fall into the Church of Rome.
But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name
" Christian Passover " to the Communion. The notion rests
entirely on this circumstance : that the first three Evangelists
describe the last Supper as the Paschal Supper. But the in
stitutional part of that meal was over before the cup was dis
tributed, and the repetition of the act enjoined. Nor is there
the slightest trace, either in the subsequent Scriptures, or in
the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion was
thought to bear relation to the Passover. The time, the fre
quency, the mode, of the two were altogether different. In
deed, when we observe that not one of these particulars is
prescribed and determined by our Lord at all, when we no
tice the slight and transient manner in which he drops his
wish that they would " do this in remembrance of" him, when
we compare these features of the account with the elaborate
precision of Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates,
and places, and modes in the establishment of the Hebrew
festivals, it is scarcely possible to avoid the impression, that
we are reading narrative, not law ; an utterance of personal
affection, rather than the legislative enactment of an ever-
6*

66 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
lasting institution. However this may be, no importance
can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of
that meal with the day of Passover ; for the Apostle John,
who gives by far the fullest account of what happened at
that table (yet never mentions the institution of the Supper),
states that this was not the paschal meal at all, which did
not occur, he says, till the following day of crucifixion.
" But," it will be said, " the Gospels are not the only parts
of Scripture whence the nature of the Eucharist may be
learned. Language is employed by St. Paul in reference to
it, which cannot be understood of a mere memorial, and im
plies that awful consequences hung on the worthy or unwor
thy participation in the rite. Does he .not even say, that a
man may ' eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning
the Lord's body ' ? "
The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws
great light on the institution of which we treat ; but there
must be a total disregard to the whole context and the gen
eral course of the Apostle's reasoning before it can be made
to yield any argument for the mystical character of the rite.
It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the habit
of celebrating the Lord's Supper in a way which, even if it
had never been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck
a modern Christian with wonder at its singularity. The
members met together in one room or church, each bringing
his own supper, of such quantity and quality as his opulence
or poverty might allow. To this the Apostle does not object,
but apparently considers it a part of the established arrange
ment. But these Christians were divided into factions, and
had not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith ; nor do
they seem to have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanc
tity of mind which their profession ought to have induced.
When they entered the place of meeting, they broke up into
groups and parties, class apart from class, and rich deserting
poor: each set began its separate meal, some indulging in
luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping
the commemoration at all ; and, infamous to tell, the blessed

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 67
Supper of the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross
and habitual had the abuse become, that the excesses had
affected the health and hfe of these guilty and unworthy par
takers. They had made no distinction between the Com
munion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of
the memorial significance of their meeting, had not discrimi
nated or " discerned the Lord's body " ; and so they had eaten
and drunk judgment (improperly rendered " damnation " in
the English Version) to themselves ; and many were weak
and sickly among them, and many even slept. Well .would
it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of the Lord ;
in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast
out of the Church, and driven to take their chance with the
unbelieving and heathen world. " When we are judged, we
are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned
with the world."
In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds
them, that to eat and drink under the same roof, in the
church, does not constitute proper Communion ; that, to this
end, they must not break up into sections, and retain their
property in the food, but all participate seriously together.
He directs that an absolute separation shall be made between
the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those for
observing this commemorative rite, discriminating carefully
the memorial of the Lord's body from everything else. He
refers them all to the original model of the institution, the
parting meal of Christ before his betrayal ; and by this ex
ample, as a criterion, he would have every man examine him
self, and after that pattern eat of the bread and drink of the
cup. Hence it appears, —
That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian,
who made no distinction between the sacred Communion and
a vulgar meal :
That the judgment or damnation which such brought on
themselves, was sickliness, weakness, and premature but nat
ural death :
That the selT-examination which the Apostle recommends

68 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
to the communicant is a comparison of his mode of keeping
the rite with the original model of the last Supper :
That in the Corinthian church there was no Priest, or
officiating dispenser of the elements ; and that St. Paul did
not contemplate or recommend the appointment of any such
person. The Lord's Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple
commemoration. Am I asked : " Of what ? Why, accord
ing to Unitarian views, the death on the cross merits the
memorial more than the remaining features of our Lord's
history, ¦ — ¦ more even than the death of many a noble martyr,
who has sealed his testimony to truth by like self-sacrifice " ?
The answer will be found at length in the Lecture on the
Atonement, where the Scriptural conceptions of Christ's
death are expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is sufficient
to recall an idea, which has more than once been thrown
out during this course ; that, if Jesus had taken up his
Messianic power without death, he would have remained a
Hebrew, and been limited to the people amid whom he was
born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left this fleshly
tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his na
tionality might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as sub
jects of his reign. It was the cross that opened to the
nations the blessed ways of life, and put us all in relations,
not of law, but of love, to him and God. Hence the memo
rial of his death celebrates the universality and spirituality of
the Gospel ; declares the brotherhood of men, the fatherhood
of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with God.
That is no empty rite which overflows with these concep
tions. Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest and with
out Ritual. It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea
of religion, and repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself
was transcendently the Prophet. He brought down God
to this our hfe, and left his spirit amid its scenes. The
Apostles were prophets ; they carried that spirit abroad, re
vealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their .nature, and

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 69
the proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to
admit an apostolic succession, never yet extinct, and never
more to be extinguished. But then it is by no means a rec
tilinear regiment of incessant priests ; but a broken, scattered,
yet glorious race of prophets ; the genealogy of great and
Christian souls, through whom the primitive conceptions of
Jesus have propagated themselves from age to age ; mind
producing mind, courage giving birth to courage, truth de
veloping truth, and love ever nurturing love, so long as one
good and noble spirit shall act upon another. Luther surely
was the child of Paul ; and what a noble offspring has risen
to manhood from Luther's soul, whom to enumerate were
to tell the best triumphs of the modern world. These are
Christ's true ambassadors ; and never did he mean any fol
lower of his to be called a priest. He has his genuine mes
senger, wherever, in the Church or in the world, there toils
any one of the real prophets of our race ; any one who can
create the good and great in other souls, whether by truth of
word or deed, by the inspiration of genuine speech, or the
better power of a hfe merciful and holy.
And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture
close, were it not that we are assembled now to terminate
this controversy; and that a few remarks in reference to its
whole course and spirit seem to be required.
That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unita
rian Christianity was prompted by no unworthy motive, in
dividual or political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its
spirit is disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is ex
clusive, has never been doubted or denied by my brother
ministers or myself. That much personal consideration and
courtesy have been evinced towards us during the controversy,
it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that we must only re
gret the theological obstructions in the way of that mutual
knowledge which softens the prejudices and corrects the
errors of the closet. From such errors, the lot of our fallible
nature, we are deeply aware that we cannot be exempt, and

70 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
profoundly wish that, by others' aid or by our own, we could
discover them. Meanwhile, we do not feel that our oppo
nents have been successful in the offer which they have made,
of help towards this end. They are too little acquainted with
our history and character, and have far too great a horror of
us, to succeed in a design demanding rather the benevo
lence of sympathy and trust than that of antipathy and
fear. Hence have arisen certain complaints and charges
against our system and its tendencies, which, having been
reiterated again and again in the Christ Church Lectures,
and scarcely noticed in our own, claim a concluding observa
tion or two now.
1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system
to be drifting fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is
said we make great advances that way.
It is by no means unusual to dismiss this charge on a whirl
wind of declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to
the greatest possible distance. My friend who delivered the
first Lecture noticed it in a far different spirit ; and in a dis
cussion where truth and wisdom had any chance, his reply
would have prevented any recurrence to the statement. Let
me try to imitate him in the testimony which I desire to add
uyjon this point.
Every one, I presume, who disbelieves anything, is, with
respect to that thing, an infidel. Departure from any prev
alent and established ideas is inevitably an approach to in
fidelity ; the extent of the departure, not the reasonableness
or propriety of it, is the sole measure of the nearness of that
approach ; which, however wise and sober, when estimated
by a true and independent criterion, will appear, to persons
strongly possessed by the ascendant notions, nothing less
than alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average popu
lar creed of the day is the mental standard, from which the
stadia are measured off towards that invisible, remote, nay,
even imaginary place, lodged somewhere within chaos, called
utter unbelief. Christianity at first was blank infidelity ; and
disciples, being of course the atheists of their day, were

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 71
thought a fit prey for the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.
Every rejection of tradition, again, is unbelief with respect
to it ; and to those who hold its authority, it is the denial of
an essential. It is too evident to need proof, that the average
popular behef cannot be assumed, by any considerate per
son, as a standard of truth. To make it an objection against
any class of men, that they depart from it, is to prove no
error against them ; and no one, who is not willing to call in
the passions of the multitude in suffrage on the controversies
of the few, will condescend to enforce the charge.
But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter
stands. In the popular religion we discern, mixed up to
gether, two constituent portions : certain peculiar doctrines
which characterize the common Orthodoxy ; and certain uni
versal Christian truths remaining, when these are subtracted.
The infidel throws away both of these ; we throw away the
former only ; and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with
him. But on what grounds do we severally justify this rejec
tion ? In answer to this question, compare the views, with
respect both to the authority and to the interpretation of
Scripture, held by the three parties, the Trinitarian, the
Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The Unbeliever does not usually
find fault with the Orthodox interpretation of the Bible, but
allows it to pass, as probably the real meaning of the book,
only he altogether denies the divine character and authority
of the whole religion ; he therefore agrees with the Trinita
rian respecting interpretation, disagrees with him respecting
authority. The Unitarian, again, admits the divine character
of Christianity, but understands it differently from the Trini
tarian ; he therefore reverses the former case, agrees with
the Orthodox on the authority, disagrees respecting inter
pretation.- It follows, that with the Unbeliever he agrees in
neither, and is therefore farther from him than his Trini
tarian accuser.
I have given this explanation from regard simply to logi
cal truth. I have no desire to join in the outcry against
even the deliberate unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must

72 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
necessarily be a fiend. Profoundly loving and trusting Chris
tianity myself, I yet feel indignant at the persecution which
theology, policy, and law inflict on the many who, with un
deniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of re
search, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its
evidence. The very word " infidel" implying not simply an
intellectual judgment, but bad moral qualities, conveys an un
merited insult, and ought to be repudiated by every generous
disputant. The more deeply we trust Christianity, the more
should we protest against its being defended by a body-guard
of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services which
they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture.
2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of
our honesty, with want of anxiety about spiritual truth ; and
the following justification of the charge was offered : " The
word of God has informed us, that they who seek the truth
shall find it ; that they who ask for holy wisdom shall re
ceive it ; but it must be a really anxious inquiry, — a heart
felt desire for the blessing. ' If thou seekest her as silver,
and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou
understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of
God.' Such promises are express, — they cannot be broken,
— God will give the blessing to the sincere, anxious inquirer.
But the two qualities must go together. A man may be sin
cere in his ignorance and spiritual torpor; but let the full
desire for God's favor, his pardoning mercy, and his en
lightening grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest
assured that the desire will soon be accomplished. Admit
ting, then, the sincerity of Unitarians, we doubt their anxiety,
for we are well persuaded from God's promises, that, if they
possessed both, they would be delivered from their miserable
system, and be brought to the knowledge of the truth." *
The praise of our " sincerity," conveyed in these bland
sentences, we are anxious to decline : not that we undervalue

* Mr. Dalton's Lecture on the Eternity of Future Rewards and Punish
ments, p. 760.

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 73
the quality ; but because we find, on near inspection, that it
has all been emptied out of the word before its presentation,
and the term comes to us hollow and worthless. It affords a
specimen of the mode in which alone our opponents appear
able to give any credit to heretics : many phrases of appro
bation they freely apply to us ; but they take care to draw
off the whole meaning first. We must reject these " Greek
presents " ; and we are concerned that any Christian divine
can so torture and desecrate the names of virtue, as to make
them instruments of disparagement and injury. This play
with words, which every conscience should hold sacred, and
every lip pronounce with reverence, — this careless and un
meaning application of them in discourse, — indicates a loose
adhesion to the mind of the ideas denoted by them, which
we regard with u.ifeigned astonishment and grief. What,
let me ask, can be the " sincerity " of an inquirer, who is not
" anxious " about the truth ? How can he be " sincerely " per
suaded that he sees, who voluntarily shuts his eyes ? Unless
this word is to be degraded into a synonyme for indolence and
self-complacency, no professed seeker of truth must have the
praise of sincerity, who does not abandon all worship of his
own state of mind as already perfect, who is not ready to
listen to every calm doubt as to the voice of heaven, — to un
dertake with gratitude the labor of reaching new knowl
edge, — to maintain his faith and his profession in scrupulous
accordance with his perception of evidence ; and, at any mo
ment of awakening, to spring from his most brilliant dreams
into God's own morning light, with a matin hymn upon his
lips for his new birth from darkness and from sleep. The
earnestness implied in this state of mind is perhaps not pre
cisely the same as that with which our Trinitarian opponents
seem to be familiar. The " anxiety " which they appear to
feel for themselves is, to keep their existing state of belief :
the " anxiety " which they feel for us is, that we should have
it. We are to hold ourselves ready for a change ; they are
not to be expected to desire it. If a doubt of our opinions
should occur to us, we are to foster it carefully, and follow it
7

74 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
out as a beckoning of the Holy Spirit : if a doubt of their
sentiments should occur to them, they are to crush it on the
spot, as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. " Our
aim," says the concluding Lecturer again, " has been to beget
a deep spirit of inquiry " ; * and so has ours, I would reply :
only you and we have severally prosecuted this aim in dif
ferent ways. We have personally listened, and personally
inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom our influence
could reach, to do the same : and few indeed will be the
Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of Lectures
that will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered
this controversy, evidently strange to our literature and his
tory; and any deficiency in such reading before, has not
been compensated by anxiety to listen now. Your people
have been warned against us, and are taught to regard the
study of our pubhcations as blasphemy at second hand ; and
were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish
" to beget a deep spirit of inquiry," and plunge into the in
vestigation of Unitarian authors, and judge for themselves of
Unitarian worship, they would speedily hear the word of
recall, and discover that they were practically disappointing
the whole object of this controversy.
Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of
language in the Lecturer's disparaging estimate of Unitarian
" anxiety," we may profitably direct a moment's attention to
the reasoning which it involves. It presents us with the
standing fallacy of intolerance, which is sufficiently rebuked
by being simply exhibited. Our opponents reason thus : —
God will not permit the really anxious fatally to
err:
The Unitarians do fatally err :
Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious.
Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be
no less mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as
* Mr. Dalton's Lecture, p. 760.

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 75
for from us, as we from them ; and from either point, taken
as a standard, the measure of error must be the same. More
over, we cannot but eagerly assent to the principle of the
Lecturer's first premise, that God will never let the truly
anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in
the nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllo
gism, with a change in the names of the parties, against our
opponents. Yet we should shrink, with severe self-reproach,
from drawing any such unfavorable conclusion respecting
them, as they deduce of us. Accordingly, we manage our
reasoning thus : —
God will not permit the really anxious fatally to
err :
The Trinitarians show themselves to be really
anxious :
Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err.
Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the
right, than that their neighbors' conscience is in earnest.
They sacrifice other men's characters to their own self-con
fidence: we would rather distrust our self-confidence, and
rely on the visible signs of a good and careful mind. We
honor other men's hearts, rather than our own heads. How
can it be just, to make the agreement between an opponent's
opinion and our own the criterion of his proper conduct of
the inquiry ? Every man feels the injury the moment the
rule is turned against himself; and every good man should
be ashamed to direct it against his brother.
3. Our reverend opponents affect to have labored under
a great disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized
standard of Unitarian belief. " We give you," they say, " our
Articles and Creeds, which we unanimously undertake to
defend, and which expose a definite object to all heretical
attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no authorized
exposition of your system, but leave us to gather our knowl
edge of it from individual writers, for whose opinions you
refuse to be responsible, and whose reasonings, when re
futed by us, you can conveniently disown."

76 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm,
that it is vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Uni
tarians, than that of the members of the Established Church ;
and for this plain reason, that with us there really is such a
thing as a common faith, though defined in no confession ; in
the Anglican Church there is not, though articles and creeds
profess it. The characteristic tenets of Unitarian Christianity
are so simple and unambiguous, that little scope exists for
variety in their interpretation : to the propositions expressing
them all their professors attach distinct and the same ideas ; —
so far, at least, as such accordance is possible in relation to
subjects inaccessible both to demonstration and to experience.
But the Trinitarian hypothesis, venturing with presumptuous
analysis far into the Divine psychology, presents us with
ideas confessedly inapprehensible ; propounded in language
which, if used in its ordinary sense, is self-contradictory, and
if not, is unmeaning, and ready in its emptiness to be filled
by any arbitrary interpretation ; — and actually understood so
variously by those who subscribe to them, that the Calvinist
and the Arminian, the Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite to
praise them. Indeed, in the history of the Enghsh Church,
so visible is the sweep of the centre of Orthodoxy over the
whole space from the confines of Romanism to the verge of
Unitarianism, that our ecclesiastical chronology is measured
by its oscillations. Our respected opponents know full well,
that it is not necessary to search beyond the clergy of this
town, or even beyond the morning and afternoon preaching
in one and the same church, in order to encounter greater
contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole library
of Unitarian divinity. What mockery, then, to refer us to
these articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the mo
ment we pass beyond the words, and address ourselves to the
sense, every shade of contrariety appears ; and no one definite
conception can be adopted of such a doctrine as that of the
Trinity, without some church expositor or other starting up
to rebuke it as a misrepresentation ! How poor the pride of
uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the sym
bol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reahty !

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 77
In order to test the force of the objection to which I am
referring, let us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit
the Unitarian and Trinitarian theology in most direct oppo
sition. It will appear that the advantage of unity lies, in this
instance, on the side of heresy ; and that, if multiformity be
a prime characteristic of error, there is a wide difference
between orthodoxy and truth. There are four great subjects
comprised in the controversy between the Church and our
selves : the nature of God ; of Christ ; of sin ; of punishment.
On these several points (which, considered as involving on
our part denials of previous ideas, may be regarded as con
taining the negative elements of our belief) all our modern
writers, without material variation or exception, maintain the
following doctrines : —
Unitarian Doctrines, opposed to Church Doctrines.
1. The Personal Unity of God. 1. The Trinity in Unity.
2. The Simplicity of Nature in 2. Two Distinct Natures in
Christ. Christ.
3. The Personal Origin and 3. The Transferable Nature
Identity of Sin. and Vicarious Remov
al of Sin.
4. The Finite Duration of Fu- 4. The Eternity of Hell
ture Suffering. Torments.
Now no one at all familiar with polemical literature can
deny that the modes and ambiguities of doctrine comprised
in this Trinitarian list are more numerous than can be de
tected in the parallel " heresies." I am willing, indeed, to
admit an exception in respect to the last of the topics, and to
allow that the belief in the finite duration of future punishment
has opposed itself, in two forms, to the single doctrine of
everlasting torments. But when the systems are compared
at their other corresponding points, the boast of orthodox
uniformity instantly vanishes. Since the primitive jealousy
between the Jewish and Gentile Christianity, the rivalry be
tween the " Monarchy " and the " Economy," the believers
7*

78 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
in the personal unity of God, though often severed by ages
from each other, have held that majestic truth in one un
varied form. Never was there an idea so often lost and re
covered, yet so absolutely unchanged : a sublime but occa
sional visitant of the human mind, assuring us of the perpetual
oneness of our own nature, as well as the Divine. We can
point to no unbroken continuity of our great doctrine : and
if we could, we should appeal with no confidence to the
evidence of so dubious a phenomenon ; for if a system of
ideas once gains possession of society, and attracts to itself
complicated interests and feelings, many causes may suffice
to insure its indefinite preservation. But we can point to a
greater phenomenon : to the long and repeated extinction of
our favorite belief, to its submersion beneath a dark and
restless fanaticism ; and its invariable resurrection, like a
necessary intuition of the soul, in times of purer light, with
its features still the same ; stamped with imperishable identity
of truth, and, like him to whom it refers, without variableness
or shadow of a turning. Meanwhile, who will undertake to
enumerate and define the succession of Trinities by which
this doctrine has been bewildered and banished ? Passing
by the Aristotelian, the Platonic, the Ciceronian, the Carte
sian Trinity, — quitting the stormy disputes and contradictory
decisions of the early councils, shall we find among even the
modern fathers of our National Church any approach to
unanimity ? Am I to be content with the doctrine of Bishop
Bull, and subordinate the Son to the Father as the sole foun
tain of divinity ? Or must I rise to the Tritheism of Water-
land and Sherlock ? or, accepting the famous decision of the
University of Oxford, descend, with Archbishop Whately,
to the modal Trinity of South and Wallis ? Are we to
understand the phrase, three persons, to mean three beings
united by " perichoresis," three " mutual inexistences," three
" modes," three " differences," three " contemplations," or
three " somewhats " ; or, being told that this is but a vain
prying into a mystery, shall we be satisfied to leave the
phrase without idea at all ? It is to the last degree astonish-

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 79
ing to hear from Trinitarian divines the praises of uniformity
of belief; seeing that it is one of the chief labors of eccle
siastical history to record the incessant effort, vain to the
present day, to give some stability of meaning to the funda
mental doctrines of their faith.
The same remark applies, with little modification, to the
opposite views respecting the person of the Saviour. It is
true, that Unitarians, agreed respecting the singleness of
nature in Christ, differ respecting the natural rank of that
nature, whether his soul were human or angelic. But, for
this solitary variety among these heretics, how many doc
trines of the Logos and the Incarnation does Orthodox
literature contain ? Can any one affirm, that, when the Coun
cil of Ephesus had arbitrated between the Eutychian doc
trine of absorption, and the Nestorian doctrine of separation,
all doubt and ambiguity was removed by the magic phrase
" hypostatic union " ? Since the monophysite contest was
at its height, has the Virgin Mary been left in undisputed
possession of her title as " Mother of God " ? Has the Eter
nal Generation of the Son encountered no orthodox sus
picions, and the Indwelling scheme received no orthodox
support ? And if we ask these questions : " What respec
tively happened to the two natures on the cross ? what has
become of Christ's human soul now ? is it separate from the
Godhead, like any other immortal spirit, or is it added to the
Deity, so as to introduce into his nature a new and fourth
element ? " shall we receive from the many voices of the
Church but one accordant answer ? Nay, do the authors of
this controversy suppose that, during its short continuance,
they have been able to maintain their unanimity ? Tf they
do, I believe that any reader who thinks it worth while to
register the varieties of error, would be able to undeceive
them. If the diversities of doctrine cannot easily and often
be shown to amount to palpable inconsistencies, this must be
ascribed, I believe, to the mystic and technical phraseology,
the substitute rather than the expression for precise ideas, —
which has become the vernacular dialect of orthodox divinity.

80 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST
The jargon of theology affords a field too barren to bear so
vigorous a weed as an undisputed contradiction.
It is needless to dwell on the numerous forms under which
the doctrine of Atonement has been held by those who sub
scribe the articles of our National Church ; while its Unitarian
opponents have taken their fixed station on the personal
character and untransferable nature of sin. One writer teUs
us that only the human nature perished on the cross ; another,
that God himself expired : some say, that Christ suffered no
more intensely, but only more " meritoriously," than many a
martyr ; others, that he endured the whole quantity of tor
ment due to the wicked whom he redeemed : some, that it is
the spotlessness of his manhood that is imputed to believers ;
others, that it is the holiness of his Deity. From the high
doctrine of satisfaction to the very verge of Unitarian heresy,
every variety of interpretation has been given to the language
of the established formularies respecting Christian redemp
tion. Nor is it yet determined whether, in the lottery of
opinion, the name of Owen, Sykes, or Magee shall be drawn
for the prize of orthodoxy.
And if, from those parts of our belief to which the acci
dents of their historical origin have given a negative char
acter, we turn to those which are positive, not the slightest
reason will appear for charging them with uncertainty and
fluctuation. All Unitarian writers maintain the Moral Per
fection and Fatherly Providence of the Infinite Ruler ; the
Messiahship of Jesus Christ, in whose person and spirit there
is a Revelation of God and a Sanctification for Man ; the
Responsibility and Retributive Immortality of men ; and the
need of a pure and devout heart of Faith, as the source of all
outward goodness and inward communion with God. These
great and self-luminous points, bound together by natural
affinity, constitute the fixed centre of our religion. And on
subjects beyond this centre we have no wider divergences
than are found among those who attach themselves to an
opposite system. For example, the relations between Scrip
ture and Reason, as evidences and guides in questions of doc-

AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 81
trine, are not more unsettled among us, than are the relations
between Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Nor is the
perpetual authority of the " Christian rites " so much in
debate among our ministers, as the efficacy of the sacraments
among the clergy. In truth, our diversities of sentiment
affect far less what we believe, than the question why we
believe it. Different modes of reasoning, and different results
of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our several
authors. We all make our appeal to the records of Chris
tianity ; but we have voted no particular commentator into
the seat of authority. And is not this equally true of our
opponents' Church ? Their articles and creeds furnish no
textual expositions of Scripture, but only results and deduc
tions from its study. And so variously have these results
been elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can
be adduced in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some
witness unexceptionably orthodox may not be summoned to
prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no greater variety of
critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from whom we
dissent; while the system of Christianity in which our Scrip
tural labors have issued, has its leading characteristics better
determined and more apprehensible than the scheme which
the articles and creeds have vainly labored to define.
The refusal to embody our sentiments in any authoritative
formula appears to strike observers as a whimsical exception
to the general practice of churches. The peculiarity has had
its origin in hereditary and historical associations ; but it has
its defence in the noblest principles of religious freedom and
Christian communion. At present, it must suffice to say,
that our societies are dedicated, not to theological opinions,
but to religious worship ; that they have maintained the
unity of the spirit, without insisting on any unity of doc
trine ; that Christian liberty, love, and piety are their essen
tials in perpetuity, but their Unitarianism an accident of a
few or many generations, — which has arisen, and might
vanish, without the loss of their identity. We believe in the
mutability of rehgious systems, but the imperishable char-

82 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, ETC.
acter of the religious affections ; — in the progressiveness of
opinion within, as well as without, the limits of Christianity.
Our forefathers cherished the same conviction; and so, not
having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave
our successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine
can never prevail, we seek to attain its only good — peace on
earth and communion with Heaven — without it. We aim to
make a true Christendom, — a commonwealth of the faithful,
— by the binding force, not of ecclesiastical creeds, but of
spiritual wants and Christian sympathies ; and indulge the
vision of a Church that " in the latter days shall arise," hke
" the mountain of the Lord," bearing on its ascent the blos
soms of thought proper to every intellectual chme, and withal
massively rooted in the deep places of our humanity, and
gladly rising to meet the sunshine from on high.
And now, friends and brethren, let us say a glad farewell
to the fretfulness of controversy, and retreat again, with
thanksgiving, into the interior of our own venerated truth.
Having come forth, at the severer call of duty, to do battle
for it, with such force as God vouchsafes to the sincere, let
us go in to live and worship beneath its shelter. They tell
you it is not the true faith. Perhaps not; but then you
think it so ; and that is enough to make your duty clear, and
to draw from it, as from nothing else, the very peace of God.
May be, we are on our way to something better, unexistent
and unseen as yet, which may penetrate our souls with nobler
affection, and give a fresh spontaneity of love to God and all
immortal things. Perhaps there cannot be the truest life of
faith, except in scattered individuals, till this age of conflicting
doubt and dogmatism shall have passed away. Dark and
leaden clouds of materialism hide the heaven from us ; red
gleams of fanaticism pierce through, vainly striving to reveal
it ; and not till the weight is heaved from off the air, and the
thunders roll down the horizon, will the serene light of God
flow upon us, and the blue infinite embrace us again. Mean
while we must reverently love the faith we have ; to quit it for
one that we have not, were to lose the breath of hfe and die.

INCONSISTENCY OP THE SCHEME OP VICA
RIOUS REDEMPTION.

" Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under
heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." — Acts iv. 12.
The scene which we have this evening to visit and explore,
is separated from us by the space of eighteen centuries ; yet
of nothing on this earth has Providence left, within the
shadows of the past, so vivid and divine an image. Gently
rising above the mighty "field of the world," Calvary's
mournful hill appears, covered with silence now, but dis
tinctly showing the heavenly light that struggled there
through the stormiest elements of guilt. Nor need we only
gaze, as on a motionless picture that closes the vista of Chris
tian ages. Permitting history to take us by the hand, we
may pace back in pilgrimage to the hour, till its groups stand
around us, and pass by us, and its voices of passion and of
grief mock and wail upon our ear. As we mingle with the
crowd which, amid noise and dust, follows the condemned
prisoners to the place of execution, and fix our eye on the
faint and panting figure of one that bears his cross, could
we but whisper to the sleek priests close by, how might we
startle them, by telling them the future fate of this brief
tragedy, — brief in act, in blessing everlasting; that this
Galilean convict shall be the world's confessed deliverer,
while they that have brought him to this shall be the scorn
and by-word of the nations ; that that vile instrument of tor
ture, now so abject that it makes the dying slave more servile,

84 INCONSISTENCY OP THE
shall be made, by this victim and this hour, the symbol* of
whatever is holy and subhme ; the emblem of hope and love ;
pressed to the lips of ages ; consecrated by a veneration which
makes the sceptre seem trivial as an infant's toy. Meanwhile,
the sacerdotal hypocrites, unconscious of the part they play,
watch to the end the pubhc murder which they have pri
vately suborned ; stealing a phrase from Scripture, that they
may mock with holy lips ; and leaving to the plebeian soldiers
the mutual jest and brutal laugh, that serve to beguile the
hired but hated work of agony, and that draw forth from the
sufferer that burst of forgiving prayer, which sunk at least
into their centurion's heart. One there is, who should have
been spared the hearing of these scoffs ; and perhaps she
heard them not ; for before his nature was exhausted more,
his eye detects and his voice addresses her, and twines round
her the filial arm of that disciple, who had been ever the most
loving as well as most beloved. She at least lost the religion
of that hour in its humanity, and beheld not the prophet, but
the son : — had not her own hands wrought that seamless
robe for which the soldiers' lot is cast ; and her own lips
taught him that strain of sacred poetry, " My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? " but never had she thought to
hear it thus. As the cries become fainter and fainter, scarcely
do they reach Peter standing afar off. The last notice of him
had been the rebuking look that sent him to weep bitterly ;
and now the voice that alone can tell him his forgiveness will
soon be gone ! Broken hardly less, though without remorse,
is the youthful John, to see that head, lately resting on his
bosom, drooping passively in death ; and to hear the involun
tary shriek of Mary, as the spear struck upon the lifeless
body, moving now only as it is moved ; — whence he alone, on
whom she leaned, records the fact. Well might the Galilean
friends stand at a distance gazing ; unable to depart, yet not
daring to approach ; well might the multitudes that had cried
" Crucify him ! " in the morning, shudder at the thought of that
clamor ere night ; " beholding the things that had come to
pass, they smote their breasts and returned."

SCHEME OP VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 85
This is the scene of which we have to seek the interpreta
tion. Our first natural impression is, that it requires no in- •
terpretation, but speaks for itself; that it has no mystery,
except that which belongs to the triumphs of deep guilt, and
the sanctities of disinterested love. To raise our eye to that
serene countenance, to listen to that submissive voice, to
note the subjects of its utterance, would give us no idea of
any mystic horror concealed behind the human features of
the scene ; of any invisible contortions, as from the lash of
demons, in the soul of that holy victim ; of any sympathetic
connection of that cross with the bottomless pit on the one
hand, and the highest heaven on the other; of any moral
revolution throughout our portion of the universe, of which
this public execution is but the outward signal. The his
torians drop no hint that its sufferings, its affections, its re
lations, were other than human, — raised indeed to distinction
by miraculous accompaniments ; but intrinsically, however
signally, human. They mention, as if bearing some appre
ciable proportion to the whole series of incidents, particulars
so shght, as to vanish before any other than the obvious his
torical view of the transaction ; the thirst, the sponge, the
rent clothes, the mingled drink. They ascribe no sentiment
to the crucified, except such as might be expressed by one
of like nature with ourselves, in the consciousness of a fin
ished work of duty, and a fidelity never broken under the
strain of heaviest trial. The narrative is clearly the produc
tion of minds filled, not with theological anticipations, but
with historical recollections.
With this view of Christ's death, which is such as might
be entertained by any of the primitive churches, having one
of the Gospels only, without any of the Epistles, we are
content. I conceive of it, then, as manifesting the last degree
of moral perfection in the Holy One of God; and believe
that, in thus being an expression of character, it has its pri
mary and everlasting value. I conceive of it as the needful
preliminary to his resurrection and ascension, by which the
severest difficulties in the theory of Providence, life, and
8

86 INCONSISTENCY OE THE
duty are alleviated or solved. I conceive of it as imme
diately procuring the universality and spirituality of the
Gospel ; by dissolving those corporeal ties which gave nation
ality to Jesus, and making him, in his heavenly and immortal
form, the Messiah of humanity ; blessing, sanctifying, regen
erating, not a people from the centre of Jerusalem, but a
world from his station in the heavens. And these views,
under unimportant modifications, I submit, are the only ones
of which Scripture contains a trace.
All this, however, we are assured, is the mere outside
aspect of the crucifixion ; and wholly insignificant compared
with the invisible character and relations of the scene ;
which, localized only on earth, has its chief effect in hell ;
and, though presenting itself among the occurrences of time,
is a repeal of the decretals of Eternity. The being who
hangs upon that cross is not man alone ; but also the ever
lasting God, who created and upholds all things, even the sun
that now darkens its face upon him, and the murderers who
are waiting for his expiring cry. The anguish he endures is
not chiefly that which falls so poignantly on the eye and ear
of the spectator; the injured human affections, the dreadful
momentary doubt ; the pulses of physical torture, doubling
on him with full or broken wave, till driven back by the
overwhelming power of love disinterested and divine. But
he is judicially abandoned by the Infinite Father ; who ex
pends on him the immeasurable wrath due to an apostate
race, gathers up into an hour the lightnings of Eternity, and
lets them loose upon that bended head. It is the moment of
retributive justice ; the expiation of all human guilt: that
open brow hides beneath it the despair of millions of men ;
and to the intensity of agony there, no human wail could give
expression. Meanwhile, the future brightens on the elect ; the
tempests that hung over their horizon are spent. The ven
geance of the lawgiver having had its way, the sunshine of a
Father's grace breaks forth, and lights up, with hope and
beauty, the earth, which had been a desert of despair and
sin. According to this theory, Christ, in his death, was a

SCHEME OP VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 87
proper expiatory sacrifice ; he turned aside, by enduring it
for them, the infinite punishment of sin from all past or
future believers in this efficacy of the cross; and trans
ferred to them the natural rewards of his own righteous
ness. An acceptance of this doctrine is declared to be the
prime condition of the Divine forgiveness ; for no one who
does not see the pardon can have it. And this pardon, again,
this clear score for the past, is a necessary preliminary to all
sanctification ; to all practical opening of a disinterested heart
towards our Creator and man. Pardon, and the perception
of it, are the needful preludes to that conforming love to God
and men, which is the true Christian salvation.
The evidence in support of this theory is derived partly
from natural appearances, partly from Scriptural announce
ments. Involving, as it does, statements respecting the ac
tual condition of human nature, and the world in which we
live, some appeal to experience, and to the rational interpre
tation of hfe and Providence, is inevitable ; and hence cer
tain propositions, affecting to be of a philosophical character,
are laid down as fundamental by the advocates of this system.
Yet it is admitted, that direct revelation only could have ac
quainted us, either with our lost condition, or our vicarious
recovery ; and that all we can expect to accomplish with
nature, is to harmonize what we observe there with what we
read in the written records of God's will ; so that the main
stress of the argument rests on the interpretation of Scrip
ture. The principles deduced from the nature of things, and
laid down as a basis for this doctrine, may be thus repre
sented : — ¦
That man needs a Redeemer ; having obviously fallen, by
some disaster, into a state of misery and guilt, from which
the worst penal consequences must be apprehended ; and were
it not for the probability of such lapse from the condition in
which it was fashioned, it would be impossible to reconcile
the phenomena of the world with the justice and benevolence
of its Creator.
That Deity only can redeem ; since, to preserve veracity,

88 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
the penalty of sin must be inflicted ; and the diversion only,
not the annihilation of it, is possible. To let it fall on angels
would fail of the desired end ; because human sin, having
been directed against an Infinite Being, has incurred an in
finitude of punishment; which on no created beings could
be exhausted in any period short of eternity. Only a nature
strictly infinite can compress within itself, in the compass of
an hour, the woes distributed over the immortality of man
kind. Hence, were God personally One, like man, no re
demption could be effected ; for there would be no Deity to
suffer, except the very One who must punish. But the tri-
plicity of the Godhead relieves all difficulty; for, while one
Infinite inflicts, another Infinite endures ; and resources are
furnished for the atonement.
Amid a great variety of forms in which the theory of atone
ment exists, I have selected the foregoing ; which, if I un
derstand aright, is that which is vindicated in the present
controversy. I am not aware that I have added anything to
the language in which it is stated by its powerful advocate,
unless it be a few phrases, leaving its essential meaning the
same, but needful to render it compact and clear.
The Scriptural evidence is found principally in certain of
the Apostolical Epistles ; and this circumstance will render it
necessary to conduct a separate search into the historical
writings of the New Testament, that we may ascertain how
they express the corresponding set of ideas. Taking up suc
cessively these two branches of the subject, the natural and
the Biblical, I propose to show, first, that this doctrine is in
consistent with itself; secondly, that it is inconsistent with the
Christian idea of salvation.
I. It is inconsistent with itself.
(1.) In its manner of treating the principles of natural
religion. Our faith in the infinite benevolence of God is represented
as destitute of adequate support from the testimony of na
ture. It requires, we are assured, the suppression of a mass
of appearances, that would scare it away in an instant, were

SCHEME OP VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 89
it to venture into their presence ; and is a dream of sickly
and effeminate minds, whose belief is the inward growth
of amiable sentimentality, rather than a genuine production
from God's own facts. The appeal to the order and mag
nificence of creation, to the structures and relations of the
inorganic, the vegetable, the animal, the spiritual forms, that
fill the ascending ranks of this visible and conscious universe ;
— to the arrangements which make it a blessing to be born,
far more than a suffering to die, — which enable us to extract
the relish of hfe from its toils, the affections of our nature
from its sufferings, the triumphs of goodness from its temp
tations ; — to the seeming plan of general progress, which
elicits truth by the self-destruction of error, and by the ex
tinction of generations gives perpetual rejuvenescence to the
world ; — this appeal, which is another name for the scheme of
natural rehgion, is dismissed with scorn ; and sin and sorrow
and death are flung in defiance across our path, — barriers
which we must remove, ere we can reach the presence of a
benignant God. Come with us, it is said, and listen to the
wail of the sick infant ; look into the dingy haunts where
poverty moans its hfe away ; bend down your ear to the ac
cursed hum that strays from the busy hives of guilt ; spy
into the hold of the slave-ship ; from the factory follow the
wasted child to the gin-shop first, and then to the cellar
called its home ; or look even at your own tempted and sin-
bound souls, and your own perishing race, snatched off into
the dark by handfuls through the activity of a destroying
God ; and tell us, did our benevolent Creator make a crea
ture and a world like this ? A Calvinist who puts this ques
tion is playing with fire. But I answer the question ex
plicitly : All these things we have met steadily, and face to
face ; in full view of them, we have taken up our faith in the
goodness of God ; and in fuU view of them we will hold fast
that faith. Nor is it just or true to affirm, that our system
hides these evils, or that our practice refuses to grapple with
them. And if you confess that these ills of life would be too
much for your natural piety, if you declare, that these rugged
8*

90 INCONSISTENCY OP THE
foundations and tempestuous elements of Providence would
starve and crush your confidence in God, while ours strikes
its roots in the rock, and throws out its branches to brave
the storm, are you entitled to taunt us with a faith of puny
growth? Meanwhile, we willingly assent to the principle
which this appeal to evil is designed to establish; that,
with much apparent order, there is some apparent disorder
in the phenomena of the world ; that from the latter, by
itself, we should be unable to infer any goodness and benev
olence in God; and that, were not the former clearly the
predominant result of natural laws, the character of the Great
Cause of all things would be involved in agonizing gloom.
The mass of physical and moral evil we do not profess
fully to explain ; we think that in no system whatever is
there any approach to an explanation; and we are accus
tomed to touch on that dread subject with the humility of
filial trust, not with the confidence of dogmatic elucidation.
Surely the fall of our first parents, I shall be reminded,
gives the requisite solution. The disaster which then befell
the human race has changed the primeval constitution of
things ; introduced mortahty and all the infirmities of which
it is the result ; introduced sin, and all the seeds of vile affec
tions which it compels us to inherit ; introduced also the
penalties of sin, visible in part on this scene of hfe, and de
veloping themselves in another in anguish everlasting. Fresh
from the hand of his Creator, man was innocent, happy, and
holy ; and he it is, not God, who has deformed the world
with guilt and grief.
Now, as a statement of fact, all this may or may not be
true. Of this I say nothing. But who does not see that, as
an explanation, it is inconsistent with itself, partial in its
application, and leaves matters incomparably worse than it
found them? It is inconsistent with itself; for Adam, per
fectly pure and holy as he is reputed to have been, gave the
only proof that could exist of his being neither, by succumb-
ino- to the first temptation that came in his way ; and though
finding no enjoyment but in the contemplation of God, gave

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 91
himself up to the first advances of the Devil. Never surely
was a reputation for sanctity so cheaply won. The canoniza
tions of the Romish Calendar have been curiously bestowed
on beings sufficiently remote from just ideas of excellence ;
but usually there is something to be affirmed of them, legen
dary or otherwise, which, if true, might justify a momentary
admiration But our first parent was not laid even under this
necessity, to obtain a glory greater than canonization ; he had
simply to do nothing, except to fall, in order to be esteemed
the most perfectly holy of created minds. Most partial, too,
is this theory in its application ; for disease and hardship, and
death unmerited as the infant's, afflict the lower animal crea
tion. Is this, too, the result of the fall? If so, it is an un
redeemed effect ; if not, it presses on the benevolence of the
Maker, and, by the physical analogies which connect man
with the inferior creatures, forces on us the impression, that
his corporeal sufferings have an original source not dissimilar
from theirs. And again, this explanation only serves to make
matters worse than before. For how puerile is it to suppose
that men will rest satisfied with tracing back their ills to
Adam, and refrain from asking who was Adam's cause ! And
then comes upon us at once the ancient dilemma about evil ;
was it a mistake, or was it mahgnity, that created so poor a
creature as our progenitor, and staked on so precarious a will
the blessedness of a race and the well-being of a world ? So
far, this theory, falsely and injuriously ascribed to Christianity,
would leave us where we were : but it carries us into deeper
and gratuitous difficulties, of which natural religion knows
nothing, by appending eternal consequences to Adam's trans
gression ; a large portion of which, after the most sanguine
extension of the efficacy of the atonement, must remain unre
deemed. So that if, under the eye of naturalism, the world,
with its generations dropping into the grave, must appear (as
we heard it recently described *) like the populous precincts

* See Rev. H. M'Neile's Lecture, The Proper Deity of our Lord the only
Ground of Consistency in the Work of Redemption, pp. 339, 340.

92 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
of some castle, whose governor called his servants, after a
brief indulgence of liberty and peace, into a dark and inscru
table dungeon, never to return or be seen again, the only
new feature which this theory introduces into the prospect is
this : that the interior of that cavernous prison-house is dis
closed; and while a few of the departed are seen to have
emerged into a fairer light, and to be traversing greener fields,
and sharing a more blessed liberty than they knew before, the
vast multitude are discerned in the gripe of everlasting chains
and the twist of unimaginable torture. And all this infliction
is a penal consequence of a first ancestor's transgression!
Singular spectacle to be offered in vindication of the character
of God!
We are warned, however, not to start back from this repre
sentation, or to indulge in any rash expression at the view
which it gives of the justice of the Most High; for that,
beyond all doubt, parallel instances occur in the operations
of nature; and that, if the system deduced from Scripture
accords with that which is in action in the creation, there
arises a strong presumption that both are from the same
Author. The arrangement which is the prime subject of ob
jection in the foregoing theory, viz. the vicarious transmission
of consequences from acts of vice and virtue, is said to be
familiar to our observation as a fact ; and ought, therefore, to
present no difficulties in the way of the admission of a doc
trine. Is it not obvious, for example, that the guilt of a
parent may entail disease and premature death on his child,
or even remoter descendants ? And if it be consistent with
the Divine perfections that the innocent should suffer for
others' sins at the distance of one generation, why not at the
distance of a thousand? The guiltless victim is not more
completely severed from identity with Adam, than he is from
identity with his own father. My reply is brief: I admit
both the fact and the analogy ; but the fact is of the excep
tional kind, from which, by itself, I could not infer the justice
or the benevolence of the Creator; and which, were it of
large and prevalent amount, I could not even reconcile with

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 93
these perfections. If then you take it out of the list of ex
ceptions and difficulties, and erect it into a cardinal rule, if
you interpret by it the whole invisible portion of God's gov
ernment, you turn the scale at once against the character of
the Supreme, and plant creation under a tyrant's sway. And
this is the fatal principle pervading all analogical arguments
in defence of Trinitarian Christianity. No resemblances to"1
the system can be found in the universe, except in those
anomalies and seeming deformities which perplex the student
of Providence, and which would undermine his faith, were
they not lost in the vast spectacle of beauty and of goocLj
These disorders are selected and spread out to view, as speci
mens of the Divine government of nature ; the mysteries and
horrors which offend us in the popular theology are extended
by their side ; the comparison is made, point by point, till the
similitude is undeniably made out ; and when the argument is
closed it amounts to this : Do you doubt whether God could
break men's limbs ? You mistake his strength of character ;
only see how he puts out their eyes ! What kind of impres
sion this reasoning may have, seems to me doubtful even to
agony. Both Trinitarian theology and nature, it is trium
phantly urged, must proceed from the same Author ; ay, but
what sort of author is that ? You have led me, in your quest
after analogies, through the great infirmary of God's creation ;
and so haunted am I by the sights and sounds of the lazar-
house, that scarce can I believe in anything but pestilence ; so
sick of soul have I become, that the mountain breeze has lost
its scent of health ; and you say, it is all the same in the
other world, and wherever the same rule extends : then I
know my fate, that in this universe Justice has no throne.
And thus, my friends, it comes to pass, that these reasoners
often gain indeed their victory ; but it is known only to the
Searcher of Hearts, whether it is a victory against natural
religion, or in favor of revealed. For this reason I consider
the " Analogy " of Bishop Butler (one of the profoundest of
thinkers, and on purely moral subjects one of the justest too)
as containing, with a design directly contrary, the most terrible

94 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The
essential error consists in selecting the difficulties, — which
are the rare, exceptional phenomena of nature, — as the basis
of analogy and argument. In the comprehensive and gener
ous study of Providence, the mind may, indeed, already have
overcome the difficulties, and, with the lights recently gained
from the harmony, design, and order of creation, have made
those shadows pass imperceptibly away ; but when forced
again into their very centre, compelled to adopt them as a
fixed station and point of mental vision, they deepen round
the heart again, and, instead of illustrating anything, become
sohd darkness themselves.
I cannot quit this topic without observing, however, that
there appears to be nothing in nature and hfe at all analo
gous to the vicarious principle attributed to God in the
Trinitarian scheme of Redemption. There is nowhere to be
found any proper transfer or exchange, either of the qualities,
or of the consequences, of vice and virtue. The good and
evil acts of men do indeed affect others as well as themselves ;
the innocent suffer with the guilty, as in the case before ad
duced, of a child suffering in health by the excesses of a
parent. But there is here no endurance for another, similar
to Christ's alleged endurance in the place of men ; the in
fliction on the child is not deducted from the parent ; it does
nothing to lighten his load, or make it less than it would
have been, had he been without descendants ; nor does any
one suppose his guilt alleviated by the existence of this in
nocent fellow-sufferer. There is a nearer approach to anal
ogy in those cases of crime, where the perpetrator seems to
escape, and to leave the consequences of his act to descend
on others ; as when the successful cheat eludes pursuit, and
from the stolen gains of neighbors constructs a life of luxury
for himself; or when a spendthrift government, forgetful of
its high trust, turning the professions of patriotism into a
lie, is permitted to run a prosperous career for one genera
tion, and is personally gone before the popular retribution
falls, in the next, on innocent successors. Here, no doubt,

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 95
the harmless suffer by the guilty, in a certain sense in the
place of the guilty : but not in the sense which the analogy
requires. For there is still no substitution; the distress of
the unoffending party is not struck out of the offender's pun
ishment ; does not lessen, but rather aggravates, his guilt;
and, instead of fitting him for pardon, tempts the natural
sentiments of justice to follow him with severer condemna
tion. Nor does the scheme receive any better illustration
from the fact, that whoever attempts the cure of misery must
himself suffer ; must have the shadows of iU cast upon his
spirit from every sadness he alleviates ; and interpose himself
to stay the plague which, in a world diseased, threatens to
pass to the living from the dead. The parallel fails, because
there is still no transference : the appropriate sufferings of
sin are not given to the philanthropist ; and the noble pains
of goodness in him, the glorious strife of his self-sacrifice,
are no part of the penal consequences of others' guilt ; they
do not cancel one iota of those consequences, or make the
crimes which have demanded them, in any way, more ready
for forgiveness. Indeed, it is not in the good man's suffer
ings, considered as such, that any efficacy resides ; but in
his efforts, which may be made with great sacrifice or with
out it, as the case may be. Nor, at best, is there any proper
annihilation of consequences at all accruing from his toils ; the
past acts of wrong which call up his resisting energies are
irrevocable, the guilt incurred, the penalty indestructible ;
the series of effects, foreign to the mind of the perpetrator,
may be abbreviated ; prevention applied to new ills which
threaten to arise ; but by all this the personal fitness of the
delinquent for forgiveness is wholly unaffected ; the volition
of sin has gone forth, and on it flies, as surely as sound
on a vibration of the air, the verdict of judgment.
Those who are affected by slight and failing analogies
like these, would do well to consider one, sufficiently obvious,
which seems to throw doubt upon their scheme. The atone
ment is thought to be, in respect to all believers, a reversal
of the fall : the effects of the fall are partly visible and

96 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
temporal, partly invisible and eternal ; linked, however, to
gether as inseparable portions of the same penal system.
Now it is evident, that the supposed redemption on the cross
has left precisely where they were all the visible effects of
the first transgression : sorrow and toil are the lot of all, as
they have been from of old ; the baptized infant utters a cry
as sad as the unbaptized ; and between the holiness of the
true believer and the worth of the devout heretic, there is
not discernible such a difference as there must have been
between Adam pure and perfect and Adam lapsed and lost.
And is it presumptuous to reason from the seen to the unseen,
from the part which we experience to that which we can only
conceive ? If the known effects are unredeemed, the suspicion
i is not unnatural, that so are the unknown.
I sum up, then, this part of my subject by observing, that,
besides many inconclusive appeals to nature, the advocates of
the vicarious scheme are chargeable with this fundamental
inconsistency. They appear to deny that the justice and
benevolence of God can be reconciled with the phenomena
of nature ; and say that the evidence must be helped out by
resort to their interpretation of Scripture. When, having
heard this auxiliary system, we protest that it renders the
case sadder than before, they assure us that it is all benevo
lent and just, because it has its parallel in creation. They
renounce and adopt, in the same breath, the religious appeal
to the universe of God.
(2.) Another inconsistency appears, in the view which this
theory gives of the character of God.
It is assumed that, at the era of creation, the Maker of
mankind had announced the infinite penalties which must
follow the violation of his law ; and that their amount did
not exceed the measure which his abhorrence of wrong re
quired. " And that which he saith, he would not be God if
he did not perform : that which he perceived right, he would
be unworthy of our trust, did he not fulfil. His veracity
and justice, therefore, were pledged to adhere to the word that
had gone forth ; and excluded the possibility of any free and

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 97
unconditional forgiveness." Now I would note, in passing,
that this announcement to Adam of an eternal punishment
impending over his first sin, is simply a fiction ; for the warn
ing to him is stated thus : " In the day that thou eatest thereo^
thou shalt surely die " ; from which our progenitor must hav<:
been ingenious as a theologian, to extract the idea of endlesp
life in hell. But to say no more of this, what notions of ve
racity have we here ? When a sentence is proclaimed again?
crime, is it indifferent to judicial truth upon whom it falls ;
Personally addressed to the guilty, may it descend without a
he upon the guiltless ? Provided there is the suffering, is it
no matter where f Is this the sense in which God is no re
specter of persons ? 0 what deplorable reflection of human
artifice is this, that Heaven is too veracious to abandon its i-
proclamation of menace against transgressors, yet is content
to vent it on goodness the most perfect ! No darker deed can
be imagined, than is thus ascribed to the Source of all perfec
tion, under the insulted names of truth and holiness. What
rehance could we have on the faithfulness of such a Being ?
If it be consistent with his nature to punish by substitution,
what security is there that he will not reward vicariously ?
All must be loose and unsettled, the sentiments of reverence
confused, the perceptions of conscience indistinct, where the
terms expressive of those great moral qualities which ren
der God himself most venerable are thus sported with and
profaned. The same extraordinary departure from all intelligible
meaning of words is apparent, when our charge of vindictive-
ness against the doctrine of sacrifice is repelled as a slander.
If the rigorous refusal of pardon till the whole penalty has
been inflicted, (when, indeed, it is no pardon at all,) be not
vindictive, we may ask to be furnished with some better
definition. And though it is said, that God's love was mani
fested to us by the gift of his Son, this does but change the
object on which this quality is exercised, without removing
the quality itself ; putting us indeed into the sunshine of his
grace, but the Saviour into the tempest of his wrath. Did
9

98

INCONSISTENCY OF THE

we desire to sketch the most dreadful form of character, what
more emphatic combination could we invent than this, — rigor
in the exaction of penal suffering, and indifference as to the
person on whom it falls ?
But in truth this system, in its dehneations of the Great
Ruler of creation, bids defiance to all the analogies by which
Christ and the Christian heart have delighted to illustrate
his nature. A God who could accept the spontaneously re
turning sinner, and restore him by corrective discipline, is pro
nounced not worth serving, and an object of contempt.* If
so, Jesus sketched an object of contempt when he drew the
father of the prodigal son, opening his arms to the poor
penitent, and needing only the sight of his misery to fall on
his neck with the kiss of welcome home. Let the assertions
be true, that sacrifice and satisfaction are needful preliminaries
to pardon, that to pay any attention to repentance without
these is mere weakness, and that it is a perilous deception to
teach the doctrine of mercy apart from the atonement, and
this parable, of our Saviour's becomes the most pernicious
* " Either he " (" the Deity of the Unitarians ") " must show no mercy,
in order to continue true ; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise
mercy. If he overlook man's guilt, admit him to the enjoyment of his favor,
and proceed by corrective discipline to restore his character, he unsettles the
foundations of all equitable government, obliterates the everlasting distinc
tions between right and wrong, spreads consternation in heaven, and pro
claims impunity in hell. Such a God would not be worth serving. Such
tenderness, instead of inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless
contempt." — Mr. M'Ncile's Lecture, p. 313.
Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, hut of the Lecturer's
own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents' belief, that God
first admits the guilty to his favor, and then "proceeds" "to restore his
character." This arrangement, by which pardon precedes moral restoration,
is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which
Unitarians protest, and which Mr. M'Neile himself insists upon as essential
throughout his Lecture. "We think," he says, "that before man can be
introduced to the only true process of improvement, he must^Jr-s^ have for
giveness of his guilt." What is this " first " step, of pardon, but an " over
looking of man's guilt " ; and what is the second, of " sanctification," but a
"restoring of character" ; whether we say by " corrective discipline," or
the " influence of the Holy Spirit," matters not. Is it said that the guilt is
not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty ? I ask, again, whether justice

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 99
instrument of delusion, — a statement, absolute and unqualified,
of a feeble and sentimental heresy. Who does not see what
follows from this scornful exclusion of corrective punishment?
Suppose the infliction not to be corrective, that is, not to be
designed for any good, what then remains as the cause of the
Divine retribution ? The sense of insult offered to a law.
And thus we are virtually told, that God must be regarded
with a mixture of contempt, unless he be susceptible of per
sonal affront.
(3.) The last inconsistency with itself, which I shall point
out in this doctrine, will be found in the view which it gives
of the work of Christ. Sin, we are assured, is necessarily
infinite. Its infinitude arises from its reference to an Infinite
Being, and involves as a consequence the necessity of re
demption by Deity himself.
The position, that guilt is to be estimated, not by its
amount or its motive, but by the dignity of the being against
whom it is directed, is illustrated by the case of an insubor
dinate soldier, whose punishment is increased according as
regards only the infliction of suffering, or its quantity, without caring about
its direction ? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of God freely to
forgive the penitent ? And how was the injustice of liberating the guilty
mended by the torments of the innocent ? Here is the verdict against sin :
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed?
The soul that had sinned does not die ; and one " that knew no sin " dies
instead. And this is called a divine union of truth and mercy ; being the
most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed.
Pirst, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their
first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it
down ; to vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet
continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law ; to
assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in
view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its
provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence ; to forgive that which is in
itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a God, is to shock and
confound all notions of rectitude, without affording even the sublimity of a
savage grandeur. This will be called "blasphemy"; and it is so; but the
blasphemy is not in the words, but in the thing.
Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as " overlooking man's
guilt." They hold, that no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the
soul; and that pardon proceeds pari passu with sanctification.

100 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
his rebellion assails an equal or any of the many grades
amongst his superiors. It is evident, however, that it is not
the dignity of the person, but the magnitude of the effect,
which determines the severity of the sanction by which, in
such an instance, law enforces order. Insult to a monarch is
more sternly treated than injury to a subject, because it in
curs the risk of wider and more disastrous consequences, and
superadds to the personal injury a peril to an official power
which, not resting on individual superiority, but on conven
tional arrangement, is always precarious. It is not indeed
easy to form a distinct notion of an infinite act in a finite
agent ; and still less is it easy to evade the inference, that, if
an immoral deed against God be an infinite demerit, a moral
deed towards him must be an infinite merit.
Passing by an assertion so unmeaning, and conceding it
for the sake of progress in our argument, I would inquire
what is intended by that other statement, that only Deity
can redeem, and that by Deity the sacrifice was made ? The
union of the divine and human natures in Christ is said to
have made his sufferings meritorious in an infinite degree.
Yet we are repeatedly assured, that it was in his manhood
only that he endured and died. If the divine nature in our
Lord had a joint consciousness with the human, then did
God suffer and perish; if not, then did the man only die,
Deity being no more affected by his anguish, than by
that of the malefactors on either side. In the one case the
perfections of God, in the other the reality of the atonement,
must be relinquished. No doubt, the popular belief is, that
the Creator literally expired ; the hymns in common use de
clare it ; the language of pulpits sanctions it ; the consistency
of creeds requires it ; but professed theologians repudiate the
idea with indignation. Yet by silence or ambiguous speech,
they encourage, in those whom they are bound to enlighten,
this degrading humanization of Deity ; which renders it im
possible for common minds to avoid ascribing to him emo
tions and infirmities totally irreconcilable with the serene
perfections of the Universal Mind. In his influence on the

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 101
worshipper, He is no Spirit, who can be invoked by his agony
and bloody sweat, his cross and passion. And the piety
that is thus taught to bring its incense, however sincere, be
fore the mental image of a being with convulsed features and
expiring cry, has httle left of that which makes Christian
devotion characteristically venerable.
II. I proceed to notice the inconsistency of the doctrme
under review with the Christian idea of salvation.
There is one significant Scriptural fact, which suggests to
us the best mode of treating this part of our subject. It is
this : that the language supposed to teach the atoning efficacy
of the cross does not appear in the New Testament till the
Gentile controversy commences, nor ever occurs apart from
the treatment of that subject, under some of its relations.
The cause of this phenomenon will presently appear; mean
while I state it, in the place of an assertion sometimes incor
rectly made, viz. that the phraseology in question is confined
to the Epistles. Even this mechanical limitation of sacrificial
passages is indeed nearly true, as not above three or four have
strayed beyond the epistolary boundary into the Gospels and
the book of Acts ; but the restriction in respect of subject,
which I have stated, wiU be found, I believe, to be absolutely
exact, and to furnish the real interpretation to the whole
system of language.
(1.) Let us then first test the vicarious scheme by refer
ence to the sentiments of Scripture generally, and of our Lord
and his Apostles especially, where this controversy is out of
the way. Are their ideas respecting human character, the
forgiveness of sin, the terms of everlasting life, accordant
with the cardinal notions of a behever in the atonement ?
Do they, or do they not, insist on the necessity of a sacri
fice for human sin, as a prehminary to pardon, to sanctifi-
cation, to the love of God? Do they, or do they not,
direct a marked and almost exclusive attention to the
cross, as the object to which, far more than to the life and
resurrection of our Lord, all faithful eyes should be di
rected ? 9 *

102 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
(a.) Now to the fundamental assertion of the vicarious
system, that the Deity cannot, without inconsistency and im
perfection, pardon on simple repentance, the whole tenor of
the Bible is one protracted and unequivocal contradiction.
So copious is its testimony on this head, that if the passages
containing it were removed, scarcely a shred of Scripture re
lating to the subject would remain. " Pardon, I beseech
thee," said Moses, pleading for the Israelites, " the iniquity
of this people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, and
as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until
now. And the Lord said, / have pardoned according to thy
word." Will it be affirmed, that this chosen people had their
eyes perpetually fixed in faith on the great propitiation, which
was to close their dispensation, and of which their own cere
monial was a type ? — that whenever penitence and pardon
are named amongst them, this reference is implied, and that
as this faith was called to mind and expressed in the shedding
of blood at the altar, such sacrificial offerings take the place,
in Judaism, of the atoning trust in Christianity ? Well, then,
let us quit the chosen nation altogether, and go to a heathen
people, who were aliens to their laws, their blood, their hopes,
and their religion ; to whom no sacrifice was appointed, and
no Messiah promised. If we can discover the dealings of
God with such a people, the case, I presume, must be deemed
conclusive. Hear, then, what happened on the banks of the
Tigris. " Jonah began to enter into the city," (Nineveh,)
" and he cried and said, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and
proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of
them even unto the least of them." " Who can tell," (said
the decree of the king ordaining the fast,) " if God will turn
and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we
perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned
from their evil way ; and God repented of the evil that he
had said he would do unto them ; and he did it not." And
when the prophet was offended, first at this clemency to
Nineveh, and afterwards that the canker was sent to destroy

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 103
his own favorite plant, beneath whose shadow he sat, what
did Jehovah say ? " Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for
which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow ; which
came up in a night and perished in a night ; and should not
I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-
score thousand persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and their left hand ? " — and who are not likely,
one would think, to have discerned the future merits of the
Redeemer. In truth, if even the Israelites had any such prospective
views to Calvary, if their sacrifices conveyed the idea of the
cross erected there, and were established for this purpose, the
fact must have been privately revealed to modern theologians ;
for not a trace of it can be found in the Hebrew writings. It
must be thought strange, that a prophetic reference so habit
ual should be always a secret reference ; that a faith so fun
damental should be so mysteriously suppressed ; that the
uppermost idea of a nation's mind should never have found
its way to lips or pen. " But if it were not so," we are re
minded, "if the Jewish ritual prefigured nothing ulterior, it
was revolting, trifling, savage ; its worship a butchery, and
the temple courts no better than a slaughter-house." And
were they not equally so, though the theory of types be true ?
If neither priest nor people could see at the time the very
thing which the ceremonial was constructed to reveal, what
advantage is it that divines can see it now ? And even if the
notion was conveyed to the Jewish mind, (which the whole
history shows not to have been the fact,) was it necessary
that hecatombs should be slain, age after age, to intimate
obscurely an idea, which one brief sentence might have lucidly
expressed ? The idea, however, it is evident, slipped through
after all ; for when Messiah actually came, the one great
thing which the Jews did not know and believe about him
was, that he could die at all. So much for the preparatory
discipline of fifteen centuries !
There is no reason, then, why anything should be supplied
in our thoughts, to alter the plain meaning of the announce-

1 04 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
ients of prophets and holy men, of God's unconditional for-
iveness on repentance. " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else
would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering; the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a con-
Jrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." " Wash you,
make you clean," says the prophet Isaiah in the name of the
Lord ; " put away the evil of your doings from before mine
eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well ; seek judgment, re
lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord ; though
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Once
more, " When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die ;
if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right ;
if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he hath
robbed, walk in the statutes of life without committing in
iquity ; he shall surely five, he shall not die." Nor are the
teachings of the Gospel at all less explicit. Our Lord treats
largely and expressly on the doctrine of forgiveness in several
parables, and especially that of the prodigal son ; and omits
all allusion to the propitiation for the past. He furnishes an
express definition of the terms of eternal life : " Good master,
what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good ? there is
none good save one, that is God ; but if thou wilt enter into
life, keep the commandments." And Jesus adds, "If thou
wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come,
follow me." This silence on the prime condition of pardon
cannot be explained by the fact, that the crucifixion had not
yet taken place, and could not safely be alluded to, before the
course of events had brought it into prominent notice. For
we have the preaching of the Apostles, after the ascension,
recorded at great length, and under very various circum
stances, in the book of Acts. We have the very "words
whereby," according to the testimony of an angel, " Cornelius
and all his house shall be saved " ; these, one would think,

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 105
would be worth hearing in this cause : " God anointed Jesus
of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power ; who went
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the
Devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all
things which he did, both in the land of the Jews and in
Jerusalem ; whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Him God
raised up the third day, and showed openly ; not to all the
people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us,
who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.
And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to
testify that it is he who was ordained of God to be the judge
of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness,
that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall
receive remission of sins." Did an Evangelical missionary
dare to preach in this style now, he would be immediately
disowned by his employers, and dismissed as a disguised
Socinian, who kept back all the " peculiar doctrines of the
Gospel." (b.) The emphatic mention of the resurrection by the
Apostle Peter in this address, is only a particular instance
of a system which pervades the whole preaching of the first
missionaries of Christ. This, and not the cross, with its sup
posed effects, is the grand object to which they call the atten
tion and the faith of their hearers. I cannot quote to you
the whole book of Acts ; but every reader knows, that " Jesus
and the resurrection " constitutes the leading theme, the cen
tral combination of ideas in all its discourses. This truth
was shed, from Peter's tongue of fire, on the multitudes that
heard amazed the inspiration of the day of Pentecost. Again,
it was his text, when, passing beneath the beautiful gate, he
made the cripple leap for joy; and then, with the flush of
this deed still fresh upon him, leaned against a pillar in Solo
mon's porch, and spake in explanation to the awe-struck
people, thronging in at the hour of prayer. Before priests
and rulers, before Sanhedrim and populace, the same tale is
told again, to the utter exclusion, be it observed, of the
essential doctrine of the cross. The authorities of the temple,

106 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
we are told, were galled and terrified at the Apostle's preach
ing ; " naturally enough," it wtll be said, " since, the real
sacrifice having been offered, their vocation, which was to
make the prefatory and typical oblation, was threatened with
destruction." But no, this is not the reason given : " They
were grieved because they preached, through Jesus, the resur
rection from the dead." Paul, too, while his preaching was
spontaneous and free, and until he had to argue certain con
troversies which have long ago become obsolete, manifested a
no less remarkable predilection for this topic. Before Felix,
he declares what was the grand indictment of his countrymen
against him : " Touching the resurrection of the dead, I am
called in question of you this day." Follow him far away
from his own land ; and, with foreigners, he harps upon the
same subject, as if he were a man of one idea ; which, in
deed, according to our opponents' scheme, he ought to have
been, only it should have been another idea. Seldom, how
ever, can we meet with a more exuberant mind than Paul's ;
yet the resurrection obviously haunts him wherever he goes :
in the synagogue of Antioch you hear him dwelling on it with
all the energy of his inspiration ; and, at Athens, it was this
on which the scepticism of Epicureans and Stoics fastened for
a scoff. In his Epistles, too, where he enlarges so much on
justification by faith, when we inquire what precisely is this
faith, and what the object it is to contemplate and embrace,
this remarkable fact presents itself: that the one only im
portant thing respecting Christ, which is never once mentioned
as the object of justifying faith, is his death, and blood, and
cross. " Faith " by itself, the " faith of Jesus Christ," " faith
of the Gospel," " faith of the Son of God," are expressions
of constant occurrence ; and wherever this general description
is replaced by a more specific account of this justifying state
of mind, it is faith in the resurrection on which attention is
fastened. " It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
again." " He was delivered for our offences, and raised again
for our justification." " Faith shall be imputed to us for
righteousness, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 107
Lord from the dead." Hear, too, the Apostle's definition of
saving faith : " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved." The only instance in
which the writings of St. Paul appear to associate the word
faith ^vith the death of Christ, is the following text : " Whom
God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his
blood " ; and in this case the Apostle's meaning would, I con
ceive, be more faithfully given by destroying this conjunction,
and disposing the words thus : " Whom God hath set forth to
be a propitiation by his blood, through faith." The idea of his
blood, or death, belongs to the word propitiation, not to the word
faith. To this translation no Trinitarian scholar, I am per
suaded, can object ; * and when the true meaning of the writer's
sacrificial language is explained, the distinction will appear to
be not unimportant. At present I am concerned only with
the defence of my position, that the death of Christ is never
mentioned as the object of saving faith; but that his resur
rection unquestionably is. This phenomenon in Scripture
phraseology is so extraordinary, so utterly repugnant to every
thing which a hearer of orthodox preaching would expect,
that I hardly expect my affirmation of it to be believed. The
two ideas of faith, and of our Lord's death, are so naturally
and perpetually united in the mind of every believer in the
atonement, that it must appear to him incredible that they
should never fall together in the writings of the Apostles.
However, I have stated my fact ; and it is for you to bring it
to the test of Scripture.
(c.) Independently of all written testimony, moral reasons,
we are assured, exist, which render an absolute remission for
the past essential to a regenerated life for the future. Our
human nature is said to be so constituted, that the burden

* Mr. B'uddicom has the following note, intimating his approbation of this
rendering : " Some of the best commentators have connected ev tw alrov
alpan, not with oia rfjs mo-Teas, but with JXaonjpioi' • and, accordingly,
Bishop Bull renders the passage, ' Quem proposuit Deus placamentum in
sanguine suo per fidem.' " ¦— Lecture on Atonement, p. 496,

108 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
of sin, on the conscience once awakened, is intolerable ; our
spirit cries aloud for mercy ; yet is so straitened by the bands
of sin, so conscious of the sad alhance hngering still, so full
of hesitancy and shame when seeking the relief of prayer, so
blinded by its tears when scanning the heavens for an opening
of light and hope, that there is no freedom, no unrestrained
and happy love to God; but a pinched and anxious mind,
bereft of power, striving to work with bandaged or paralytic
will, instead of trusting itself to loosened and self-oblivious
affections. Hence it is thought, that the sin of the past must
be cancelled, before the holiness of the future can be com
menced ; that it is a false order to represent repentance as
leading to pardon, because to be forgiven is the prerequisite
to love. We cannot forget, however, how distinctly and
emphatically he who, after God, best knew what is in
man, has contradicted this sentiment ; for when that sinful
woman, whose presence in the house shocked the sanctimo
nious Pharisee, stood at his feet as he reclined, washing
them with her tears, and kissing them with reverential
lips, Jesus turned to her and said, " Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven ; for she loved much." From him, then,
we learn, what our own hearts would almost teach, that love
may be the prelude to forgiveness, as well as forgiveness the
preparative for love.
At the same time let me acknowledge, that this statement
respecting the moral effects of conscious pardon, to which I
have invoked Jesus to reply, is by no means an unmixed
error. It touches upon a very profound and important truth ;
and I can never bring myself to regard that assurance of
Divine forgiveness, which the doctrine of atonement imparts,
as a demorahzing state of mind, encouraging laxity of con
science and a continuance in sin. The sense of pardon, doubt
less, reaches the secret springs of gratitude, presents the soul
with an object, strange before, of new and divine affection,
and binds the child of redemption, by all generous and filial
obligations, to serve with free and willing heart the God who
hath gone forth to meet him. That the motives of self-

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 109
interest are diminished in such a case, is a trifle that need
occasion small anxiety. For the human heart is no laborer
for hire ; and, where there is opportunity afforded for true
and noble love, will thrust away the proffered wages, and toil
rather in a free and thankful spirit. If we are to compare,
as a source of duty, the grateful with the merely prudential
temper, rather may we trust the first, as not the worthier
only, but the stronger too ; and till we obtain emancipation
from the latter, — forget the computations of hope and fear,
and precipitate ourselves for better or for worse on some object
of divine love and trust, — our nature will be puny and weak,
our wills will turn in sickness from their duty, and our affec
tions shrink in aversion from their heaven. But though per
sonal gratitude is better than prudence, there is a higher
service still. A more disinterested love may spring from the
contemplation of what God is in himself, than from the rec
ollection of what he has done for us ; and when this mingles
most largely as an element among our springs of action ;
when, humbled indeed by a, knowledge of dangers that await
us, and thankful, too, for the blessings spread around us, we
yet desire chiefly to be fitting children of the everlasting
Father and the holy God ; when we venerate him for the
graciousness, and purity, and majesty of his spirit, imper
sonated in Jesus, and resolve to serve him truly, before he
has granted the desire of our heart, and because he is of a
nature so sublime and merciful and good ; — then are we in
the condition of her who bent over the feet of Christ ; and
we are forgiven, because we have loved much.
(2.) Let us now, in conclusion, turn our attention to those
portions of the New Testament which speak of the death of
Christ as the means of redemption.
I have said, that these are to be found exclusively in pas
sages of the sacred writings which treat of the Gentile con
troversy, or of topics immediately connected with it. This
controversy arose naturally out of the design of Providence
to make the narrow, exclusive, ceremonial system of Judaism
give birth to the universal and spiritual religion of the Gos-
10

110 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
pel ; from God's method of expanding the Hebrew Messiah
into the Saviour of humanity. For this the nation was not
prepared ; to this even the Hebrew Christians could not easily
conform their faith ; and in the achievement of this, or in
persuading the world that it was achieved, did Paul spend his
noble life, and write his astonishing Epistles. The Jews knew
that the Deliverer was to be of their peculiar stock, and then-
royal lineage ; they believed that he would gather upon him
self all the singularities of their race, and be a Hebrew to
intensity; that he would literally restore the kingdom to
Israel ; ay, and extend it too, immeasurably beyond the
bounds of its former greatness ; till, in fact, it swallowed up
all existing principalities, and powers, and thrones, and do
minions, and became coextensive with the earth. Then in
Jerusalem, as the centre of the vanquished nations, before
the temple, as the altar of a humbled world, did they expect
the Messiah to erect his throne ; and when he had taken the
seat of judgment, to summon all the tribes before his tribunal,
and pass on the Gentiles, excepting the few who might submit
to the law, a sentence of perpetual exclusion from his realm ;
while his own people would be invited to the seats of honor,
occupy the place of authority, and sit down with him (the
greatest at his right hand and his left) at his table in his
kingdom. The holy men of old were to come on earth again
to see this day. And many thought that every part of the
realm thus constituted, and all its inhabitants, would never
die : but, like the Messiah himself, and the patriarchs whom
he was to call to life, would be invested with immortality.
None were to be admitted to these golden days except them
selves ; all else to be left in outer darkness from this region
of light, and there to perish and be seen no more. The grand
title to admission was conformity with the Mosaic law ; the
most ritually scrupulous were the most secure ; and the care
less Israelite, who forgot or omitted an offering, a tithe, a
Sabbath duty, might incur the penalty of exclusion and death :
the law prescribed such mortal punishment for the smallest
offence ; and no one, therefore, could feel himself ready with

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. Ill
his claim, if he had not yielded a perfect obedience. If God
were to admit him on any other plea, it would be of pure
grace and goodness, and not in fulfilment of any promise.
The Jews, being scattered over the civilized world, and
having synagogues in every city, came into perpetual contact
with other people. Nor was it possible that the Gentiles,
among whom they lived, should notice the singular purity
and simplicity of the Israelitish Theism, without some of them
being struck with its spirit, attracted by its sublime prin
ciples, and disposed to place themselves in religious relations
with that singular people. Having been led into admiration,
and even profession, of the nation's theology, they could not
but desire to share their hopes ; which indeed were an in
tegral part of their religion, and, at the Christian era, the one
element in it to which they were most passionately attached.
But this was a stretch of charity too great for any Hebrew ;
or, at aU events, if such admission were ever to be thought
of, it must be only on condition of absolute submission to
the requirements of the law. The Gentile would naturally
plead, that, as God had not made him of the chosen nation,
he had given him no law, except that of conscience; that,
being without the law, he must be a law unto himself; and
that, if he had lived according to his light, he could not be
justly excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification.
Possibly, in the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might
sometimes become froward and insolent in his assertion of
claim ; and, in the pride of his heart, demand as a right that
which, at most, could only be humbly hoped for as a priv
ilege and a free gift.
Thus were the parties mutually placed to whom the Deliv
erer came. Thus dense and complicated was the web of
prejudice which clung round the early steps of the Gospel;
and which must be burst or disentangled ere the glad tidings
could have free course and be glorified. How did Providence
develop from such elements the divine and everlasting truth ?
Not by neglecting them, and speaking to mankind as if they
had no such ideas ; not by forbidding his messengers and

112 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
teachers to have any patience with them; but, on the con
trary, by using these very notions as temporary means to his
everlasting ends ; by touching this and that with light before
the eyes of Apostles, as if to say, there are good capabilities
in these ; the truth may be educed from them so gently and
so wisely, that the world will find itself in light, without per
ceiving how it has been quitting the darkness.
So long as Christ remained on earth, he necessarily con
fined his ministry to his nation. He would not have been
the Messiah had he done otherwise. By birth, by lineage,
by locality, by habit, he was altogether theirs. Whoever,
then, of his own people, during his mortal life, believed in
him and followed him, became a subject of the Messiah;
ready, it was supposed, even by the Apostles themselves, to
enter the glory of his kingdom, whenever it should please
him to assume it; qualified at once, by the combination of
pedigree and of belief, to enter into hfe, to become a mem
ber of the kingdom of God, to take a place among the elect ;
for by all these phrases was described the admission to the
expected realm. If, then, Jesus had never suffered and
died, if he had never retired from this world, but stayed to
fulfil the anticipations of his first followers, his Messianic
kingdom might have included all the converts of the Israelitish
stock. From the exclusion which fell on others, they would
have obtained salvation. Hence, it is never in connection
with the first Jewish Christians that the death of Christ is
mentioned. It was otherwise, however, with the Gentiles. They could
not become his followers in his mortal lifetime ; and had a
Messianic reign then been set up, they must have been ex
cluded ; no missionary would have been justified in addressing
them with invitation ; they could not, as it was said, have
entered into life. The Messiah must cease to be Jewish,
before he could become universal ; and this implied his death,
by which alone the personal relations, which made him the
property of a nation, could be annihilated. To this he sub
mitted ; he disrobed himself of his corporeality, he became

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 113
an immortal spirit ; thereby instantly burst his religion open
to the dimensions of the world ; and, as he ascended to the
skies, sent it forth to scatter the seeds of blessing over the
field of the world, long ploughed with cares, and moist with
griefs, and softened now to nourish in its bosom the tree of
Life. Now, how would the effect of this great revolution be de
scribed to the proselyte Gentiles, so long vainly praying for
admission to the Israelitish hope. At once it destroyed their
exclusion ; put away as valueless the Jewish claims of cir
cumcision and law ; nailed the handwriting of ordinances to
the cross ; reconciled them that had been afar off; redeemed
them to God by his blood, out of every tongue, and kindred,
and people, and nation ; washed them in his blood ; justified
them by his resurrection and ascension ; an expression, I
would remark, unmeaning on any other explanation.
Even during our Lord's personal ministry his approach
ing death is mentioned as the means of introducing the Gen
tiles into his Messianic kingdom. He adverts repeatedly to
his cross, as designed to widen, by their admission, the ex
tent of his sway ; and, according to Scripture phrase, to yield
to him " much fruit." He was already on his last fatal visit
to Jerusalem, when, taking the hint from the visit of some
Greeks to him, he exclaimed : " The hour is come, that the
Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto
you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
He adds, in allusion to the death he should die : " And I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
It is for this end that he resigns for a while his life, — that he
may bring in the wanderers who are not of the common
wealth of Israel: "Other sheep I have, which are not of
this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my
voice ; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd : there
fore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that
I may take it again." Many a parable did Jesus utter, pro
claiming his Father's intended mercy to the uncovenanted
10 *

114 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
nations : but for himself personally he declared, " I am not
sent, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." His
advent was a promise of their economy ; his office, the tra
ditionary hope of their fathers ; his birth, his hfe, his person,
were under the Law, and excluded him from relations to
those who were beyond its obligations. On the cross, all the
connate peculiarities of the Nazarene ceased to exist : when
the seal of the sepulchre gave way, the seal of the law was
broken too ; the nationality of his person passed away ; for
how can an immortal be a Jew ? This, then, was the time to
open- wide the scope of his mission, and to invite to God's
acceptance those that fear him in every nation. Though, be
fore, the disciple might " have known Christ after the flesh,"
and followed his steps as the Hebrew Messiah, " yet now
henceforth was he to know him so no more " ; these " old
things had passed away," since he had " died for all," — died
to become universal,' — to drop all exclusive relations, and
" reconcile the world," the Gentile world, to God. Observe
to whom this " ministry of reconciliation " is especially con
fided. As if to show that it is exclusively the risen Christ
who belongs to all men, and that his death was the instrument
of the Gentiles' admission, their great Apostle was one Paul,
who had not known the Saviour in his mortal life ; who never
listened to his voice till it spake from heaven ; who himself
was the convert of his ascension ; and bore to him the rela
tion, not of subject to the person of a Hebrew king, but of
spirit to spirit, unembarrassed by anything earthly, legal, or
historical. Well did Paul understand the freedom and the
sanctity of this relation ; and around the idea of the Heavenly
Messiah gathered all his conceptions of the spirituality of the
Gospel, of its power over the unconscious affections, rather
than a reluctant will. His believing countrymen were afraid
to disregard the observances of the law, lest it should be a
disloyalty to God, and disqualify them for the Messiah's
welcome, when he came to take his power and reign. Paul
tells them, that, while their Lord remained in this mortal
state, they were right ; as representative of the law, and filling

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 115
an office created by the rehgion of Judaism, he could not but
have held them then to its obhgations ; nor could they, without
infidelity, have neglected its claims, any more than a wife can
innocently separate herself from a living husband. But as
the death of the man sets the woman free, and makes null the
law of their union, so the decease of Christ's body emanci
pates his followers from all legal relations to him ; and they
are at liberty to wed themselves anew to the risen Christ,
who dwells where no ordinance is needful, no tie permitted
but of the spirit, and all are as the angels of God. Surely,
then, this mode of conception explains why the death of Jesus
constitutes a great date in the Christian economy, especially
as expounded by the friend and Apostle of those who were
not " Jews by nature, but sinners of the Gentiles." Had he
never died, they must have remained aliens from his sway ;
the enemies against whom his power must be directed ; with
out hope in the day of his might ; strangers to God and his
vicegerent, w
But, while thus they " were yet without strength, Christ
died for " these " ungodly " ; died to put himself into con
nection with them, else impossible; and, rising from death,
drew them after him into spiritual existence on earth, analo
gous to that which he passed in heaven. " You," says their
Apostle,, "being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision
of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him " ; giving
you, as " risen with him," a life above the world and its law
of exclusion, — a life not "subject to ordinances," but of
secret love and heavenly faith, "hid with Christ in God";
" blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against
us, which was contrary to us, and taking it out of the way,
nailing it to his cross." God had never intended to per
petuate the division between Israel and the world, receiving
the one as the sons, and shutting out the other as the slaves
of his household. If there had been an appearance of such
partiality, he had always designed to set these bondmen free,
and to make them "heirs of God through Christ"; "in
whom they had redemption through his blood" from their

116 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
servile state, the forgiveness of disqualifying sins, according
to the riches of his grace. Though the Hebrews boasted
that " theirs was the adoption," and till Messiah's death
had boasted truly ; yet in that event God, " before the foun
dation of the world," had "blessed us" (Gentiles) "with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places " ; " having predesti
nated us unto the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ, ac
cording " (not indeed to any right or promise, but) " to the
good pleasure of his will," " and when we were enemies,
having reconciled us, by the death of his Son " ; " that in the
fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in
Christ" ; "by whom we " (Gentiles) " have now received this
atonement " (reconciliation) ; that he might have no partial
empire, but that " in him might all fulness dwell." " Where
fore," says their Apostle, " remember that ye, Gentiles in the
flesh, were in time past without Messiah, being aliens from
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant
of promise, having no hope, and without God in#the world;
but now in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off, are
made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who
hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall
of partition between us " (not between God and man, but
between Jew and Gentile) ; " having abolished in his flesh
the enmity, even the law of commandments, contained in or
dinances ; for to make in himself, of twain, one new man, so
making peace ; and that he might reconcile both unto God, in
one body, by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby ; and
came and preached peace to you who were afar off, as well
as to them that were nigh. For through him we both have
an access by one spirit unto the Father."
The way, then, is clear and intelligible, in which the death
and ascension of the Messiah rendered him universal, by
giving spirituality to his rule ; and, on the simple condition of
faith, added the uncovenanted nations to his dominion, so far
as they were willing to receive him. This idea, and this only,
will be found in almost every passage of the New Testa
ment (excepting the Epistle to the Hebrews) usually adduced

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 117
to prove the doctrine of the Atonement. Some of the
strongest of these I have already quoted ; and my readers
must judge whether they have received a satisfactory mean
ing. There are others, in which the Gentiles are not so dis
tinctly stated to be the sole objects of the redemption of the
cross ; but with scarcely an exception, so far as I can discover,
this limitation is implied, and either creeps out through some
adjacent expression in the context, or betrays itself, when we
recur to the general course of the Apostle's argument, or to
the character and circumstances of his correspondents. Thus
Paul says, that Christ " gave himself a ransom for all, to be
testified in due time " ; the next verse shows what is in his
mind, when he adds, " whereunto I am ordained a preacher,
and an Apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
verity " ; and the whole sentiment of the context is the Uni
versality of the Gospel, and the duty of praying for Gentile
kings and people, as not abandoned to a foreign God and
another Mediator ; for since Messiah's death, to us all " there
is but One God, and One Mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus " : wherefore the Apostle wills, that for
all " men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without
wrath and doubting," — without wrath at their admission, or
doubt of their adoption. And wherever emphasis is laid on
the vast number benefited by the cross, a contrast is implied
with. the few (only the Jews) who could have been his sub
jects had he not died : and when it is said, " he gave his hfe
a ransom for many " ; his blood was " shed for many, for the
remission of sins " ; " thou wast slain, and hast redeemed
us by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people,
and nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and
priests, and we shall reign on the earth " ; " behold the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world " ; * —

* John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word " world" to denote
the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12 - 15 ; where St. Paul, speaking of the rejection
of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only temporary ; and as it has
given occasion for the adoption of the Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate
reaction, to the readmission of Israel ; a consummation in which the Gentiles

118 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
by all these expressions is still denoted the efficacy of Christ's
death in removing the Gentile disqualification, and making
his dispensation spiritual as his celestial existence, and uni
versal as the Fatherhood of God. Does Paul exhort certain
of his disciples " to feed the church of the Lord, which he
hath purchased with his own blood " ? * We find that he is
speaking of the Gentile church of Ephesus, whose elders he
is instructing in the management of their charge, and to
which he afterwards wrote the well-known Epistle, on their
Gentile freedom and adoption obtained by the Messiah's
death. When Peter says, " Ye know that ye were not re
deemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your
vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers ;
but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot," — we must inquire to whom he is
addressing these words. If it be to the Jews, the interpre
tation which I have hitherto given of such language will not
apply, and we must seek an explanation altogether different.
But the whole manner of this Epistle, the complexion of its
phraseology throughout, convinces me that it was addressed
especially to the Gentile converts of Asia Minor; and that
the redemption of which it speaks is no other than that
which is the frequent theme of their own Apostle.
In the passage just quoted, the form of expression itself
suggests the idea, that Peter is addressing a class which did
not include himself : " Ye were not redeemed," &c. ; farther
on, in the same Epistle, the same sentiment occurs, however,
should rejoice without boasting or high-mindedness. " If," he says, " the fall
of them (the Israelites) be the riches of the world (the Gentiles), and the
diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness 1
For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles,
I magnify my office ; if, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them
which are my flesh (the Jews), and save some of them; for if the casting
away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of
them be but life from the dead? "
# Acts xx. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our
common version, " church of God," wants the support of the best authorities ;
and that, with the general consent of the most competent critics, Griesbach
reads " church of the Lord."

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 119
without any such visible restriction. Exhorting to patient
suffering for conscience' sake, he appeals to the example of
Christ ; " who, when he suffered, threatened not, but com
mitted himself to Him that judgeth righteously; who, his own
self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we,
being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness " : yet,
with instant change in the expression, revealing his corre
spondents to us, the Apostle adds, " by whose stripes ye
were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray ; but are
now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."
With the instinct of a gentle and generous heart, the writer,
treating in plain terms of the former sins of those whom he
addresses, puts himself in with them ; and avoids every ap
pearance of that spiritual pride by which the Jew constantly
rendered himself offensive to the Gentile.
Again, in this letter, he recommends the duty of patient
endurance, by appeal to the same consideration of Christ's
disinterested self-sacrifice. " It is better, if the will of God
be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing : for
Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God." And who are these " un-
just " that are thus brought to God ? The Apostle instantly
explains, by describing how the " Jews by nature " lost pos
session of Messiah by the death of his person, and " sinners
of the Gentiles " gained him by the resurrection of his im
mortal nature ; " being put to death in flesh, but quickened
in spirit ; and thereby he went and preached unto the spirits in
prison, who formerly were without faith." This is clearly a
description of the heathen world, ere it was brought into
relation to the Messianic promises. Still further confirmation,
however, follows. The Apostle adds : " Forasmuch, then, as
Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves like
wise with the same mind ; for the time past of our life may
suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles ; when we
walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings,
banquetings, and abominable idolatries." If we cannot admit
this to be a just description of the holy Apostle's former life,

120 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
we must perceive that, writing to Pagans of whom it was all
true, he beautifully withholds from his language every trace
of invidious distinction, puts himself for the moment into the
same class, and seems to take his share of the distressing
recollection. The habitual delicacy with which Paul, likewise, classed
himself with every order of persons in turn, to whom he had
anything painful to say, is known to every intelligent reader
of his Epistles. Hence, in his writings too, we have often
to consider with whom it is that he is holding his dialogue, and
to make our interpretation dependent on the answer. When,
for example, he says, that Jesus "was delivered for our
offences, and was raised again for our justification " ; I ask,
" For whose ? — was it for everybody's ? — or for the Jews',
since Paul was a Hebrew?" On looking closely into the
argument, I find it beyond doubt that neither of these answers
is correct ; and that the Apostle, in conformity with his fre
quent practice, is certainly identifying himself, Israelite though
he was, with the Gentiles, to whom, at that moment, his rea
soning applies itself. The neighboring verses have expres
sions which clearly enough declare this : " when we were yet
without strength" and " while we were yet sinners" Christ died
for us. It is to the Gentile church at Corinth, and while
expatiating on their privileges and relations as such, that
Paul speaks of the disquahfications and legal unholiness of
the heathen, as vanishing in the death of the Messiah ; as the
recovered leper's uncleanness was removed, and his banish
ment reversed, and his exclusion from the temple ended,
when the lamb without blemish, which the law prescribed
as his sin-offering, bled beneath the knife, so did God provide
in Jesus a lamb without blemish for the exiled and unsancti-
fied Gentiles, to bring them from their far dwelling in the
leprous haunts of this world's wilderness, and admit them to
the sanctuary of spiritual health and worship : " He hath
made him to be a sin-offering for us (Gentiles), who knew no
sin ; that we might be made the justified of God in him " ;
entering, under the Messiah, the community of saints. That,

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 121
in this sacrificial allusion, the Gentile adoption is still the
Apostle's only theme, is evident hence: that twice in this
very passage he declares that he is speaking of that peculiar
" reconciliation," the word and ministry of which have been
committed to himself; he is dwelling on the topic most natural
to one who " magnified his office," as " Apostle of the Gen
tiles." To the same parties was Paul writing, when he said,
" Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us." Frequently as
this sentence is cited in evidence of the doctrine of Atone
ment, there is hardly a verse in Scripture more utterly inap
plicable ; nor, if the doctrine were true, could anything be
more inept than an allusion to it in this place. I do not
dwell on the fact that the paschal lamb was neither sin-offer
ing nor proper sacrifice at all : for the elucidation of the
death of Jesus by sacrificial analogies is as easy and wel
come as any other mode of representing it. But I turn to
the whole context, and seek for its leading idea, before multi
plying inferences from a subordinate illustration. I find the
author treating, not of the deliverance of believers from curse
or exclusion, but of their duty to keep the churches cleansed,
by the expulsion of notoriously profligate members. Such
persons they are to cast from them, as the Jews, at the pass-
over, swept from their houses all the leaven they contained ;
and as for eight days, at that season, only pure unleavened
bread was allowed for use, so the Church must keep the
Gospel festival free from the ferment of malice and wicked
ness, and tasting nothing but sincerity and truth. This com
parison is the primary sentiment of the whole passage ; under
cover of which the Apostle is urging the Corinthians to expel
a certain licentious offender : and only because the feast of
unleavened bread, on which his fancy has alighted, set in with
the day of passover, does he allude to this in completion of
the figure. As his correspondents were Gentiles, their Chris
tianity commenced with the death of Christ ; with him, as an
immortal, their spiritual relations commenced ; when he rose,
they rose with him, as by a divine attraction, from an earthly
11

122 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
to a heavenly state ; their old and corrupt man had been
buried together with him, and, with the human infirmities of
his person, left behind for ever in his sepulchre ; and it be
came them " to seek those things which are above," and to
" yield themselves to God, as those that are ahve from the
dead." This period of the Lord's sequestration in the heavens
Paul represents as a festival of purity to the disciples on
earth, ushered in by the self-sacrifice of Christ. The time is
come, he says ; cast away the leaven, for the passover is slain,
blessed bread of heaven to them that taste it ! let nothing
now be seen in all the household of the Church, but the un
leavened cake of simphcity and love.
Paul again appears as the advocate of the Gentiles, when
he protests that now between them and the Jews " there is
no difference, since all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God " ; that the Hebrew has lost all claim to the
Messianic adoption, and can have no hope but in that free
grace of God, which has a sovereign right to embrace the
heathen too ; and which, in fact, has compassed the Gentiles
within its redemption, by causing Jesus the Messiah to die ;
" by whose blood God hath set forth a propitiation, through
faith ; to evince his justice, while overlooking, with the for
bearance of God, transgressions past ; — to evince his justice
in the arrangements of the present crisis ; which preserve his
justice (to the Israelite), yet justify on mere discipleship to
Jesus." The great question which the Apostle discusses
throughout this Epistle is this : " On what terms is a man
now admitted as a subject to the Messiah, so as to be ac
knowledged by him, when he comes to erect his kingdom ? "
" He must be one of the circumcised, to whom alone the holy
law and promises are given," says the Jew. " That is well,"
replies Paul ; " only the promises, you remember, are con
ditional on obedience ; and he who claims by the law must
stand the judgment of the law. Can your nation abide this
test, and will you stake your hopes upon the issue ? Or is
there on record against you a violation of every condition of
your boasted covenant, — wholesale and national transgression,

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 123
which your favorite code itself menaces with ' cutting off' ?
Have you even rejected and crucified the very Messiah, who
was tendered to you in due fulfilment of the promises ? Take
your trial by the principles of your law, and you must be
cast off, and perish, as certainly as the heathen whom you
despise ; and whose rebellion against the natural law, gross
as it is, does not surpass your own offences against the tables
of Moses. You must abandon the claim of right, the high
talk of God's justice and phghted faith; — which are alike
ill suited to you both. The rules of law are out of the ques
tion, and would admit nobody; and we must ascend again
to the sovereign will and free mercy of Him who is the source
of law; and who, to bestow a blessing which its resources
cannot confer, may devise new methods of beneficence. God
has violated no pledge. Messiah came to Israel, and never
went beyond its bounds ; the uncircumcised had no part in
him ; and every Hebrew who desired it was received as his
subject. But when the people would not have him, and
threw away their ancient title, was God either to abandon his
vicegerent, or to force him on the unwilling ? No : rather
did it befit him to say : ' If they will reject and crucify my
servant, — why, let him die, and then he is Israelite no more ;
I will raise him, and take him apart in his immortality ; where
his blood of David is lost ; and the holiness of his humanity
is glorified ; and all shall be- his, who will believe, and love
him, as he there exists, spiritually and truly.' " Thus, ac
cording to Paul, does God provide a new method of adoption
or justification, without violating any promises of the old.
Thus he makes Faith in Jesus — a moral act, instead of a
genealogical accident — the single condition of reception into
the Divine kingdom upon earth. Thus, after the passage of
Christ from this world to another, Jew and Gentile are on an
equality in relation to the Messiah ; the one gaining nothing
by his past privileges ; the other, not visited with exclusion
for past idolatry and sins, but assured, in Messiah's death,
that these are to be overlooked, and treated as if cleansed
away. He finds himself invited into the very penetraha of

124 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
that sanctuary of pure faith and hope, from which before he
had been repelled as an unclean thing ; as if its ark of mercy
had been purified for ever from his unworthy touch, or he
himself had been sprinkled by some sudden consecration.
And all this was the inevitable and instant effect of that death
on Calvary, which took Messiah from the Jews and gave him
to the world.
With emphasis, not less earnest than that of Paul, does
the Apostle John repudiate the notion of any claim on the
Divine admission by law or righteousness ; and insist on
humble and unqualified acceptance of God's free grace and
remission for the past, as the sole avenue of entrance to the
kingdom This avenue was open, however, to all " who
confessed that Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh " ; in
other words, that, during his mortal life, Jesus had been
indicated as this future Prince ; and that his ministry was the
Messiah's preliminary visit to that earth on which shortly he
would reappear to reign. The great object of that visit was
to prepare the world for his real coming ; for as yet it was
very unfit for so great a crisis ; and especially to open, by his
death, a way of admission for the Gentiles, and frame, on
their behalf, an act of oblivion for the past. " If," says the
Apostle to them, " we walk in the light, as he is in the light "
(of love and heaven), " we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all
sin " : the Israelite will embrace the Gentiles in fraternal re
lations, knowing that the cross has removed their past un
holiness. Nor let the Hebrew rely on anything now but the
Divine forbearance ; to appeal to rights will serve no longer :
" If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us." Nor let any one despair of a reception,
or even a restoration, because he has been an idolater and
sinner : " Jesus Christ the righteous " is " an advocate with
the Father " for admitting all who are willing to be his ; " and
he is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only (not
merely for our small portion of Gentiles, already converted) ;
but also for the whole world," if they will but accept him.

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 125
He died to become universal ; to make all his own ; to spread
an oblivion, wide as the earth, over all that had embarrassed
the relations to the Messiah, and made men aliens, instead of
Sons of God. Yet did no spontaneous movement of their
good affections solicit this change. It was " not that we
(Gentiles) loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his
Son, the propitiation for our sins " ; " he sent his only-begot
ten Son into the world, that we might live through him."
That this Epistle was addressed to Gentiles, and is therefore
occupied with the same leading idea respecting the cross
which pervades the writings of Paul, is rendered probable by
its concluding words, which could hardly be appropriate to
Jews : " Keep yourselves from idols." How little the Apostle
associated any vicarious idea even with a form of phrase
most constantly employed by modern theology to express it,
is evident from the parallel which he draws, in the following
words, between the death of our Lord and that of the Chris
tian martyrs : " Hereby perceive we love, because Christ
laid down his life for us ; and we ought to lay down our
hves for the brethren."
Are, then, the Gentiles alone beneficially affected by the
death of Christ ? and is no wider efficacy ever assigned to it
in Scripture ? The great number of passages to which I have
already applied this single interpretation will show that I
consider it as comprising the great leading idea of the Apos
tolic theology on this subject; nor do I think that there is
(out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall soon no
tice) a single doctrinal allusion to the cross, from which this
conception is wholly absent. At the same time, I am not
prepared to maintain, that this is the only view of the cruci
fixion and resurrection ever present to the mind of the
Apostles. Jews themselves, they naturally inquired, how
Israel, in particular, stood affected by the unanticipated
death of its Messiah ; in what way its relations were changed,
when the offered Prince became the executed victim ; and
how far matters would have been different, if, as had been
expected, the Anointed had assumed his rights and taken
11*

126 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
his power at once ; and, instead of making his first advent a
mere preliminary and warning visit " in the flesh," had set
up the kingdom forthwith, and gathered with him his few
followers to " reign on the earth." Had this — instead of
submission to death, removal, and delay — been his adopted
course, what would have become of his own nation, who had
rejected him, — who must have been tried by that law which
was their boast, and under which he came, — who had long
been notorious offenders against its conditions, and now
brought down its final curse by despising the claims of the
accredited Messiah ? They must have been utterly " cut
off," and cast out among the " aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel," " without Messiah," " without hope," " without
God " ; for while " circumcision profiteth, if thou keep the
law ; yet if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is
made uncircumcision." Had he come then " to be glorified
in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe," —
had he then been " revealed with his mighty angels " (whom
he might have summoned by "legions"), — it must have
been " in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that knew
not God, nor obeyed the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus
Christ " ; to " punish with everlasting destruction from the
presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." The sins
and prospects of Israel being thus terrible, and its rejection
imminent (for Messiah was already in the midst of them),
he withheld his hand ; refused to precipitate their just fate ;
and said, " Let us give them time, and wait ; I will go apart
into the heavens, and peradventure they will repent ; only
they must receive me then spiritually, and by hearty faith,
not by carnal right, admitting thus the willing Gentile with
themselves." And so he prepared to die and retire ; he did
not permit them to be cut off, but was cut off himself in
stead ; he restrained the curse of their own law from failing
on them, and rather perished himself by a foul and accursed
lot, which that same law pronounces to be the vilest and
most polluted of deaths. Thus says St. Paul to the Jews :
" He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 127
a curse for us ; for it is written, ' Cursed is every one that
hangeth on a tree.' " * In this way, but for the death of the
Messiah, Israel too must have been lost ; and by that event
they received time for repentance, and a way for remission
of sins ; found a means of reconcihation still ; saw their
providence, which had been lowering for judgment, opening
over them in propitiation once more ; the just had died for
the unjust, to bring them to God. What was this delay, —
this suspension of judgment, — this opportunity of return
and faith, — but an instance of "the long-suffering of God,"
with which " he endures the vessels of wrath (Jews) fitted to
destruction, and makes known the riches of his glory on
the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto
glory " ? If Christ had not withdrawn awhile, if his power
had been taken up at once, and wielded in stern and legal jus
tice, a deluge of judgment must have overwhelmed the earth,
and swept away both Jew and Gentile, leaving but a remnant
safe. But in mercy was the mortal hfe of Jesus turned into
a preluding message of notice and warning, like the tidings
which Noah received of the flood ; and as the growing frame
of the ark gave signal to the world of the coming calamity,
afforded an interval for repentance, and made the patriarch,
as he built, a constant " preacher of righteousness " ; so the
increasing body of the Church, since the warning retreat of
Christ to heaven, proclaims the approaching " day of the
Lord," admonishes that " all should come to repentance," and
fly betimes to that faith and baptism which Messiah's death
and resurrection have left as an ark of safety. " Once, in
the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God waited while the
ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were
saved by water : a representation, this, of the way in which
baptism (not, of course, carnal washing, but the engagement
of a good conscience with God) saves us now, by the resur
rection of Jesus Christ ; who is gone into heaven, and is on
# Gal. iii. 13. Even here the Apostle cannot refrain from adverting to his
Gentile interpretation of the cross ; for he adds, — "that the blessing of
Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ."

128 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
the right hand of God ; angels, and authorities, and powers,
being made subject to him." Yet "the time is short," and
must be " redeemed " ; " it is the last hour " ; " the Lord,"
" the coming of the Lord," " the end of all things," are " at
hand." I have described one aspect, which the death of the Mes
siah presented to the Jews ; and, in this, we have found
another primary conception, explanatory of the Scriptural
language respecting the cross. Of the two relations in which
this event appeared (the Gentile and the Israelitish), I believe
the former to be by far the most familiar to the New Testa
ment authors, and to furnish the true interpretation of almost
all their phraseology on the subject. But, as my readers may
have noticed, many passages receive illustration by reference
to either notion ; and some may have a meaning compounded
of both. I must not pause to make any minute adjustment
of these claims, on the part of the two interpreting ideas : it
is enough that, either separately or in union, they have now
been taken round the whole circle of apostolic language re
specting the cross, and detected in every difficult passage the
presence of sense and truth, and the absence of all hint of
vicarious atonement.
It was on the unbelieving portion of the Jewish people that
the death of their Messiah conferred the national blessings
and opportunities to which I have adverted. But to the con
verts who had been received by him during his mortal life,
and who would have been heirs of his glory, had he assumed
it at once, it was less easy to pomt out any personal benefits
from the cross. That the Christ had retired from this world
was but a disappointing postponement of their hopes ; that
he had perished as a felon was shocking to their pride, and
turned their ancient boast into a present scorn ; that he had
become spiritual and immortal made him no longer theirs
" as concerning the flesh," and, by admitting Gentiles with
themselves, set aside their favorite law. So offensive to
them was this unexpected slight on the institutions of Moses,
immemorially reverenced as the ordinances of God, that it

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 129
became important to give some turn to the death of Jesus,
by which that event might be harmonized with the national
system, and be shown to effect the abrogation of the law,
on principles strictly legal. This was the object of the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; who thus gives us a third idea
of the relations of the cross, — bearing, indeed, an essential
resemblance to St. Paul's Gentile view, but illustrated in a
manner altogether different. No trace is to be observed here
of Paul's noble glorying in the cross : so studiously is every
allusion to the crucifixion avoided, till all the argumentative
part of the Epistle has been completed, that a reader finds the
conclusion already in sight, without having gained any notion
of the mode of the Lord's death, whether even it was natural
or violent, — a literal human sacrifice, or a voluntary self-
immolation. Its ignominy and its agonies are wholly un-
mentioned; and his mortal infirmities and sufferings are
explained, not as the spontaneous adoptions of previous com
passion in him, but as God's fitting discipline for rendering
him "a merciful and faithful high-priest." They are re
ferred to in the tone of apology, not of pride; as needing
rather to be reconciled with his office, than to be boldly
expounded as its grand essential. The object of the author
clearly is, to find a place for the death of Jesus among the
Messianic functions; and he persuades the Hebrew Chris
tians that it is (not a satisfaction for moral guilt, but) a com
mutation for the Mosaic Law. In order to understand his
argument, we must advert for a moment to the prejudices
which it was designed to conciliate and correct.
It is not easy for us to realize the feelings with which the
Israelite, in the yet palmy days of the Levitical worship,
would hear of an abrogation of the Law ; — the anger and
contempt with which the mere bigot would repudiate the
suggestion ; — the terror with which the new convert would
make trial of his freedom ; — the blank and infidel feeling
with which he would look round, and find himself diifted
away from his anchorage of ceremony ; — the sinking heart
with which he would hear the reproaches of his countrymen

130 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
against his apostasy. Every authoritative ritual draws to
wards itself an attachment too strong for reason and the
sense of right; and transfers the feeling of obligation from
realities to symbols. Among the Hebrews this effect was
the more marked and the more pernicious, because their
ceremonies were in many instances only remotely connected
with any important truth or excellent end ; they were sepa
rated by several removes from any spiritual utility. Rites
were enacted to sustain other rites ; institution lay beneath
institution, through so many successive steps, that the crown
ing principle at the summit easily passed out of sight. To
keep alive the grand truth of the Divine Unity, there was a
gorgeous temple worship ; to perform this worship there was
a priesthood ; to support the priesthood there were (among
other sources of income) dues paid in the form of sacrifice ;
to provide against the non-payment of dues there were penal
ties ; to prevent an injurious pressure of these penalties, there
were exemptions, as in cases of sickness ; and to put a check
on trivial claims of exemption, it must be purchased by sub
mission to a fee, under name of an atonement. Wherever
such a system is received as divine, and based on the same
authority with the great law of duty, it will always, by its
definiteness and precision, attract attention from graver moral
obligations. Its materiality renders it calculable : its account
with the conscience can be exactly ascertained : as it has httle
obvious utility to men, it appears the more directly paid to
God : it is regarded as the special means of pleasing him, of
placating his anger, and purchasing his promises. Hence it
may often happen, that the more the offences against the
spirit of duty, the more are rites multiplied in propitiation ;
and the harvest of ceremonies and that of crimes ripen to
gether. At a state' not far from this had the Jews arrived when
Christianity was preached. Their moral sentiments were so
far perverted, that they valued nothing in themselves, in com
parison with their legal exactitude, and hated all beyond
themselves for their want of this. They were eagerly ex-

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 131
pecting the Deliverer's kingdom, nursing up. their ambition
for his triumphs ; curling the lip, as the lash of oppression
fell upon them, in suppressed anticipation of vengeance ; sa
tiating a temper, at once fierce and servile, with dreams of
Messiah's coming judgment, when the blood of the patri
archs should be the title of the world's nobles, and the ever
lasting reign should begin in Jerusalem Why was the hour
delayed ? they impatiently asked themselves. Was it that
they had offended Jehovah, and secretly sinned against some
requirement of his law ? And then they set themselves to a
renewed precision, a more slavish punctiliousness than be
fore. Ascribing their continued depression to their imper
fect legal obedience, they strained their ceremonialism tighter
than ever ; and hoped to be soon justified from their past sins,
and ready for the mighty prince and the latter days.
What, then, must have been the feeling of the Hebrew,
when told that all his punctuahties had been thrown away, —
that, at the advent, faith in Jesus, not obedience to the law,
was to be the title to admission, — and that the redeemed
at that day would be, not the scrupulous Pharisee, whose
dead works would be of no avail, but all who, with the heart,
have worthily confessed the name of the Lord Jesus ? What
doctrine could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite ?
it dashed his pride of ancestry to the ground. It brought to
the same level with himself the polluted Gentile, — whose
presence would alone render all unclean in the Messiah's
kingdom. It proved his past ritual anxieties to have been
all wasted. It cast aside for the future the venerated law ;
left it in neglect to die ; and made all the apparatus of Provi
dence for its maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Was
then the Messiah to supersede, and not to vindicate, the law ?
How different this from the picture which prophets had drawn
of his golden age, when Jerusalem was to be the pride of
the earth, and her temple the praise of nations, sought by
the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with the splendor
of their gifts ! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a
life' without law ? How think himself safe in a profession,

132 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
which was without temple, without priest, without altar,
without victim?
Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with re
luctance two of the leading features of Christianity ; the
death of the Messiah, and the freedom from the law. The
Epistle addressed to them was designed to soothe their un
easiness, and to show that, if the Mosaic institutions were
superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies
contained within themselves. With great address, the writer
links the two difficulties together, and makes the one explain
the other. He finds a ready means of effecting this, in the
sacrificial ideas familiar to every Hebrew ; for by represent
ing the death of Jesus as a commutation for legal observ
ances, he is only ascribing to it an operation acknowledged to
have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering
at the altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition, on
the part of the Levitical code, of a principle of equivalents for
its ordinances ; a proof that, under certain conditions, they
might yield : nothing more, therefore, was necessary, than to
show that the death of Christ established those conditions.
And such a method of argument was attended by this ad
vantage, that, while the practical end would be obtained of
terminating all ceremonial observance, the law was yet treated
as in theory perpetual ; not as ignominiously abrogated, but
as legitimately commuted. Just as the Israehte, in paying
his offering at the altar to compensate for ritual omissions,
recognized thereby the claims of the law, while he obtained
impunity for its neglect ; so, if Providence could be shown to
have provided a legal substitute for the system, its authority
was acknowledged at the moment that its abohtion was se
cured. Let us advert, then, to the functions of the Mosaic sin-
offerings, to which the writer has recourse to illustrate his
main position. They were of the nature of a mulct or ac
knowledgment rendered for unconscious or inevitable disregard
of ceremonial liabilities, and contraction of ceremonial un-
cleanness. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 133
causes ; and, while unremoved by the appointed methods of
purification, disqualified from attendance at the sanctuary,
and " cut off" " the guilty " " from among the congregation."
To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay,
rendered a person " unclean for seven days " ; to come in
contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave, to be next
to any one struck with sudden death, to be afflicted with
certain kinds of bodily disease and infirmity, unwittingly to
lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned defilement, and
necessitated a purification or an atonement. Independently
of these offences, enforced upon the Israelite by the accidents
of life, it was not easy for even the most cautious worshipper
to keep pace with the complicated series of petty debts which
the law of ordinances was always running up against him.
If his offering had an invisible blemish ; if he omitted a tithe,
because " he wist it not " ; or inadvertently fell into arrear,
by a single day, with respect to a known liability ; if absent
from disease, he was compelled to let his ritual account accu
mulate ; " though it be hidden from him," he must " be guilty,
and bear his iniquity," and bring his victim. On the birth
of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a prescribed pe
riod, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her sin-
offering, and " the priest made atonement for her." The poor
leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by
the nature of his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary,
and on return from his tedious quarantine brought his lamb
of atonement, and departed thence, clear from neglected obli
gations to his law. It was impossible, however, to provide by
specific enactment for every case of ritual transgression and
impurity, arising from inadvertence or necessity. Scarcely
could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves
would escape defilement, from imperfections in the offerings,
or unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear
off the whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual " day
of atonement " was appointed ; the people thronged the ave
nues and approaches of the tabernacle ; in their presence a
kid was slain for their own transgressions, and for the high-
12

134 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
priest the more dignified expiation of a heifer; charged with
the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not only the
exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first
and holy chamber into the Holy of Holies (never entered
else), he touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid
(the Mercy-seat) and foreground of the Ark. At that mo
ment, while he yet lingers behind the veil, the purification is
complete ; on no worshipper of Israel does any legal unholi
ness rest ; and were it possible for the high-priest to remain
in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still protracting the expia
tory act, so long would this national purity continue, and the
debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must re
turn ; the sanctifying rite must end ; the people be dismissed ;
the priests resume the daily ministrations ; the law open its
stern account afresh ; and in the mixture of national exacti
tude and neglects, defilements multiply again till the recurring
anniversary lifts off the burden once more. Every year,
then, the necessity comes round of " making atonement for
the holy sanctuary," " for the tabernacle," " for the altar,"
" for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation."
Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it
went, had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny ; for cere
monial sins, unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement
was limited*), it was accepted as an indemnity; and put it
beyond doubt that Mosaic obedience was commutable.
Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his
correspondents to forsake their legal observances. " You can
look without uneasiness," he suggests, " on your ritual omis-
* In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded from the
perpetrator of some act of moral wrong. But in all these cases a suitable
punishment was ordained also ; a circumstance inconsistent with the idea,
that the expiation procured remission of guilt. The sacrifice appended to
the penal infliction indicates the twofold character of the act, — at once a
ceremonial defilement and a crime ; and requiring, to remedy the one, an
atoning rite, — to chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent
tract by Rev. Edward Higginson, of Hull, entitled, " The Sacrifice of Christ
scripturally and rationally interpreted," particularly pp. 30 - 34.

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 135
sions, when the blood of some victim has been presented in
stead, and the penetraha of your sanctuary have been sprin
kled with the offering : well, on no other terms would I soothe
your anxiety ; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does Chris
tianity exhibit, only of so peculiar a nature, that, for all cere
monial neglects, intentional no less than inadvertent, you may
rely upon indemnity." The Jews entertained a behef respect
ing their temple, which enabled the writer to give a singular
force and precision to his analogy. They conceived that the
tabernacle of their worship was but the copy of a divine
structure, devised by God himself, made by no created hand,
and preserved eternaUy in heaven : this was " the true taber
nacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man " ; which no
mortal had beheld, except Moses in the mount, that he might
" make all things according to that pattern " ; within whose
Holy of Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation of God's
presence, but his own immediate Spirit ; and the celestial
furniture of which required, in proportion to its dignity, the
purification of a nobler sacrifice, and the ministrations of a
diviner priest, than befitted the " worldly sanctuary " below.
And who then can mistake the meaning of Christ's departure
from this world, or doubt what office he conducts above?
He is called by his ascension to the pontificate of heaven ;
consecrated, " not after the law of any carnal commandment,
but after the power of an endless life " ; he drew aside the veil
of his mortahty, and passed into the inmost court of God : and
as he must needs " have somewhat to offer," he takes the only
blood he had ever shed, — which was his own, — and, like
the High-Priest before the Mercy-seat, sanctifies therewith the
people that stand without, " redeeming the transgressions "
which " the first covenant " of rites entailed. And he has
not returned ; still is he hid within that holiest place ; and
still the multitude he serves turn thither a silent and expec
tant gaze ; he prolongs the purification still ; and while he
appears not, no other rites can be resumed, nor any legal
defilement be contracted. Thus, meanwhile, ordinances cease
their obligation, and the sin against them has lost its power.

136 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
How different this from the offerings of Jerusalem, whose
temple was but the " symbol and shadow " of that sanctuary
above. In the Hebrew " sacrifices there was a remembrance
again made of sins every year " ; " the high-priest annually
entered the holy place " ; being but a mortal, he could not go
in with his own blood and remain, but must take that of other
creatures and return ; and hence it became " not possible that
the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins," for
instantly they began to accumulate again. But to the very
nature of Christ's offering a perpetuity of efficacy belongs ;
bearing no other than " his own blood," he was immortal
when his ministration began, and " ever liveth to make his
intercession " ; he could " not offer himself often, for then
must he often have suffered since the foundation of the
world," — and " it is appointed unto men only once to die " ;
so that " once for all he entered into the holy place, and
obtained a redemption that is perpetual " ; " once in the end
of the world hath he appeared, and by sacrificing himself
hath absolutely put away sin " ; " this man, after he had
offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right
hand of God," "for by one offering he hath perfected for
ever them that are sanctified." The ceremonial, then, with
its periodical transgressions and atonements, is suspended ;
the services of the outer tabernacle cease, for the holiest of
all is made manifest ; one who is " priest for ever " dwells
therein ; — one " consecrated for evermore," " holy, harmless,
undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate from sinners ;
who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacri
fice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's ; for this
he did once for all when he offered up himself." *
* Heb. vii. 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and
logical structure of this verse; and then ask himself whether it is not as
plain as words can make it, that Christ " once for all " offered up " a sacrifice
first for his own sins, and then for the people's. The argument surely is
this: " He need not do the daily thing, for he has done it once for all; the
never-finished work of other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved." The
sentiment loses its meaning, unless that which he did once is the selfsame
thing which they did always : and what was that ? — the offering by the

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 137
Nor is it in its perpetuity alone that the efficacy of the
Christian sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law ; it
removes a higher order of ritual transgressions. It cannot
be supposed, indeed, that Messiah's life is no nobler offering
than that of a creature from the herd or flock, and will confer
no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes beyond those " sins
of ignorance" those ceremonial inadvertences, for which alone
there was remission in Israel ; and reaches to voluntary neg
lects of the sacerdotal ordinances ; insuring indemnity for
legal omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents
of the flesh, but even by intention of the conscience. This
is no greater boon than the dignity of the sacrifice requires ;
and does but give to his people below that living relation of
soul to God which he himself sustains above. " If the blood
of bulls and of goats .... sanctifieth to the purifying of the
high-priest of a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people's.
With what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom ask us this question : " Why
is he said to have excelled the Jewish high-priest in not offering a sacrifice
for himself?" I submit, that no such thing is said ; but that, on the con
trary, it is positively affirmed that Christ did offer sacrifice for his own sins.
So plain indeed is this, that Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a
restraining word and an additional sentiment into the last clause of the verse.
Thus Pierce: " Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time
to time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for the peo
ple's. For this latter he did once for all when he offered up himself; and as
to the former, he had no occasion to do it at all." And no doubt the writer of
the Epistle ought to have said just this, if he intended to draw the kind of
contrast which orthodox theology requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew
priests. He limits the opposition between them to one particular ; — the Son
of Aaron made offering daily, — the Son of God once for all. Divines must
add another particular ; — that the Jewish priest atoned for two classes of sins,
his own and the people's, — Christ for the people's only. Suppose for a mo
ment that this was the author's design; that the word " this," instead of hav
ing its proper grammatical antecedent, may be restrained, as in the commen
tary cited above, to the sacrifice for the people's sins; then the word " daily "
may be left out, without disturbance to the other substantive particular of
the contrast : the verse will then stand thus : " Who needeth not, as those
high-priests, to offer up sacrifice for his own sins ; for he offered up sacrifice
for the people's sins, when he offered up himself." Here, all the reasoning
is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity : to make sense,
we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of Pierce, — for " he had
no occasion to do this at all." This, however, is au invention of the exposi-
12*

138 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify
(even) your conscience from dead works (ritual observances)
to serve the living God ! " Let then the ordinances go, and
the Lord " put his laws into the mind, and write them in the
heart " ; and let all have " boldness to enter into the holiest
by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way which he
hath consecrated for us " ; " provoking each other to love
and to good works."
See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the
Gospel ; and the reply of their instructor. They said : " What
a blank is this ; you have no temple, no priest, no ritual !
How is it that, in his ancient covenant, God is so strict about
ceremonial service, and permits no neglect, however inciden
tal, without atonement ; yet in this new economy throws the
whole system away, letting us run up an everlasting debt to
a law confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it or
atonement for it ? "

tor, more jealous for his author's orthodoxy than for his composition. I think
it necessary to add, that, by leaving out the most emphatic word in this
verse (the word once) Mr. Buddicom has suppressed the author's antithesis,
and favored the suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was uncon
sciously done ; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural
difficulties. — I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the passage : " De
pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid vero fecit semel Christus? quid aliud,
quam quod Pontifex antiquus stata die quotannis * faciebat ? Principaliter
autem hie non de oblatione pro peccatis populi ; sed de oblatione pro ipsius
Pontificis peccatis agi, ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu mani-
festum est."
The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same order in
the people and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in their character,
but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less than for his Hebrew dis
ciples, a commutation for the Mosaic ordinances. Had he not died, he must
have continued under their power; "were he on earth, he would not be a
priest," or have " obtained that more excellent ministry," by which he clears
away, in the courts above, all possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself
emerges from legal to spiritual relations.
* This is obviously the meaning of <a8 fjfiepav in this passage ; from
time to time, and in the case alluded to, yearly ; not, as in the common ver
sion, daily.

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 139
"Not without redemption and atonement," replies their
evangelical teacher ; temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us
also, only glorified into proportions worthy of a heavenly
dispensation ; our temple, in the skies ; our sacrifice, Messiah's
mortal person ; our priest, his ever-living spirit. How poor
the efficacy of your former offerings ! year after year, your
ritual debt began again: for the blood dried and vanished
from the tabernacle which it purified ; the priest returned
from the inner shrine ; and when there, he stood, with the
interceding blood, before the emblem, not the reality, of
God. But Christ, not at the end of a year, but at the end of
the great world-era of the Lord, has come to offer up himself,
— no lamb so unblemished as he ; his voluntary and immortal
spirit, than which was nothing ever more divinely consecrate,
becomes officiating priest, and strikes^his own person with
immolating blow ; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the outer
altar, standing on the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven :
thither he ascends with the memorials of his death, vanishes
into the Holy of Holies of the skies, presents himself before
the very living God, and sanctifies the temple there and
worshippers here ; saying to us, ' Drop now for ever the legal
burdens that weigh you down ; doubt not that you are free,
as my glorified spirit here, from the defilements you are wont
to dread ; I stay behind this veil of visible things, to clear you
of all such taint, and put away such sin eternally. Trust,
then, in me, and take up the freedom of your souls : burst the
dead works, that cling round your conscience like cerements
of the grave ; and rise to me, by the living power of duty,
and a loving allegiance to God.'"
So far, then, as the death of Christ is treated in Scripture
dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in
contrast with the different order of things which must have
been expected, had he, as Messiah, not died. And thus
regarded, it presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in
three relations : —
First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects
of the Messiah, by breaking down the barriers of his He-

140 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
brew personality, and rendering him spiritual as well as
immortal. Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews ; whom his retirement
from this world delivered from the judgment due to them, on
the principles of their own law, both for their general viola
tion of the conditions of their covenant, and for their positive
rejection of him. His absence reopened their opportunities ;
and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he took on him
self the death which had been incurred by them.
Thirdly, to the believing Jews ; the terms of whose disci
pleship the Messiah's death had changed, destroying all the
benefits of their lineage, and substituting an act of the mind,
the simpler claim of faith. It was therefore a commutation
for the Ritual Law, and gave them impunity and atonement
for all its violations, y
With the last two of these relations, beyond their remark
able historical interest, we have no personal concern. The
first remains, and ever will remain, worthy of the glorious joy
with which Paul regarded and expounded it. God has com
mitted the rule of this world to no exclusive prince, and no
sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty ; but to one whose
spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through
clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has
since been drawing our human love, though for ages now he
has been unseen and immortal. An impartial God, a holy
and spiritual law, an infinite hope for all men, are given to
us by that generous cross. ¦
It is evident that all three of the relations which I have
described belonged to the death of Jesus, in his capacity of
Messiah ; and could have had no existence if he had not
borne this character, but had been simply a private martyr to
his convictions. The foregoing exposition gives a direct
answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest perti
nence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross
is never found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble
confessor, who died in attestation of the truth ; why " no
record is given that we are justified by the blood of Stephen ;

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 141
or that he bare our sins in his own body, and made reconcilia
tion for us." * I know not why such a question should be
submitted to us ; we have assuredly no concern with it ;
having never dreamt that the Apostles could have written as
they did respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought
of it only as a scene of martyrdom. We have passed under
review the whole language of the New Testament on this
subject ; and in the interpretation of it have not even once had
recourse to this, which is said to be our only view of the
cross. We have seen the Apostles justly announcing their
Lord's death as a proper propitiation ; because it placed
whole classes of men, without any meritorious change in their
character, in saving relations : declaring it a strict substitute
for others' punishment ; on the ground that there were those
who must have perished, if he had not ; and that he died and
retired, that they might remain and live : describing it as a
sacrifice which put away sin ; because it did that for ever,
which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day : but we
have not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfac
tion to the justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to
men. The Trinitarians have one idea of this event them
selves ; and their fancy provides their opponents with one
idea of it ; of the former not a trace exists, on any page
of Scripture ; and of the latter the Unitarian need not avail
himself at all, in explaining the language whereof it is said
to be his solitary key.
Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything
corresponding with the prevailing notions of vicarious re
demption ; everywhere, and most emphatically in the per
sonal instructions of our Lord, do we find a doctrine of
forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly inconsistent
with it. "He spake often of the unqualified clemency of God
to his returning children ; never once of the satisfaction
demanded by his justice. He spake of the joy in heaven
over one sinner that repenteth ; but was silent on the sacri-
# Mr. Buddicom's Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471.

142 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
ficial faith, without which penitence is said to be unavailing.
Nor did he, like his modern disciples, teach that there are
two separate salvations, which must follow each other in a
fixed order : first, redemption from the penalty, secondly,
from the spirit, of sin ; pardon for the past, before sanctifica
tion in the present ; a removal of the " hinderance in God,"
previous to its annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there
were in Christianity two deliverances, discriminated and suc
cessive, it would be more in accordance with its spirit to
invert this order ; — to recall from alienation first, and an
nounce forgiveness afterwards ; to restore from guilt, before
cancelling the penalty ; and permit the healing to anticipate
the pardoning love. At least, there would seem, in such
arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness of
the divine law, a severer reservation of God's complacency
for those who have broken from the service of sin, than
in the system which proclaims impunity to the rebel will,
ere yet its estrangement is renounced. If the outward re
mission precedes the inward sanctification, then does God
admit to favor the yet unsanctified; guilt keeps us in no
exile from him: and though the Holy Spirit is to follow
afterwards, it becomes the peculiar office of the cross to hft
us as we are, with every stain upon the soul and every vile
habit unretraced, from the brink of perdition to the assur
ance of glory: the divine lot is given to us, before the
divine love is awakened in us ; and the heirs of heaven have
yet to become the children of holiness. With what con
sistency can the advocates of such an economy accuse its
opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding men into a
false trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human
nature ? * What ! shall we, who plant in every soul of sin a
hell, whence no foreign force, no external God, can pluck
us, any more than they can tear us from our identity, — we,
who hide the fires of torment in no viewless gulf, but make
them ubiquitous as guilt, — we, who suffer no outward agent
* See Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341.

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 143
from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon the
solitude of man's responsibility, and confuse the simplicity
of conscience, — we, who teach that God will not, and even
cannot, spare the froward, till they be froward no more, but
must permit the burning lash to fall, till they cry aloud for
mercy, and throw themselves freely into his embrace ; — shall
we be rebuked for a lax administration of peace, by those
who think that a moment may turn the alien into the elect ?
It is no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral
capacities : we only discern in them the more solemn trust,
and see in their abuse the fouler shame. And it is not of
what men are, but of what they might be, that we encourage
noble and cheerful thoughts. Doubtless, we think exaggera
tion possible (which our opponents apparently do not) even
in the portraiture of their actual character : and perhaps we
are not the less likely to awaken true convictions of sin, that
we strive to speak of it with the voice of discriminative jus
tice, instead of the monotonous thunders of vengeance ; and
to draw its image in the natural tints provided by the con
science, rather than in the preternatural flame-color mingled
in the crucibles of hell.
In making penal redemption and moral redemption sep
arate and successive, the vicarious scheme, we submit, is
inconsistent with the Christian idea of salvation. Not that
we take the second, and reject the first, as our Trinitarian
friends imagine ; nor that we invert their order. We accept
them both ; putting them, however, not in succession, but in
super-position, so that they coalesce. The power and the
punishment of sin perish together ; and together begin the
holiness and the bliss of heaven. Whatever extracts the
poison cools the sting : nor can the divine vigor of spiritual
health enter, without its freedom and its joy. That there can
be any separate dealings with our past guilt and with our
present character, is not a truth of God, but a fiction of the
schools. The sanctification of the one is the redemption of
the other. The mind given up to passion, or chained to
self, or anyhow alienated from the love and life divine,
dwells, whatever be its faith, in the dark and terrible abyss ;

144 INCONSISTENCY OF THE
while he, and he only, that, in the freedom and tranquillity
of great affections, communes with God and toils for men,
understands the meaning, and wins the promises, of heaven.
Am I asked : " What, then, is to persuade the sinful heart
thus to draw near to God ; — what, but a proclamation of
absolute pardon, can break down the secret distrust, which
keeps our nature back, wrapped in the reserve of conscious
guilt ? " I reply ; however much these fears and hesitations
might cling round us, and restrain us from the mystic Deity
of Nature, they can have no place in our intercourse with the
Father whom Jesus represents. It needs only that Christ
be truly his image, to know " that the hinderance is not with
him, but entirely in ourselves " ; * to see that there is no
anger in his look ; to feel that he invites us to unreserved
confession, and accepts our self-abandonment to him, — that
he lifts the repentant, prostrate at his feet, and speaks the
words of severe, but truest hope. Am I told, "that only
the gratitude excited by personal rescue from tremendous
danger, by an unconditional and entire deliverance, is capable
of winning our reluctant nature, of opening the soul to the
access of the Divine Spirit, and bringing it to the service of
the Everlasting Will " ? I rejoice to acknowledge, that some
such disinterested power must be awakened, some mighty
forces of the heart be called out, ere the regeneration can
take place that renders us children of the Highest ; ere we
can break, with true new birth, from the shell of self, and
try and train our wings in the atmosphere of God. The
permanent work of duty must be wrought by the affections ;
not by the constraint, however solemn, of hope and fear ; no
self-perfectionating process, elaborated by an anxious will,
has warmth enough to ripen the soul's diviner fruits ; the
walks of outward morality, and the slopes of deliberate medi
tation, it may keep smooth and trim ; but cannot make the
true life-blossoms set, as in a garden of the Lord, and the
foliage wave as with the voice of God among the trees. I
gladly admit that, to a behever in the vicarious sacrifice, the
* Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, p. 338.

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 145
sense of pardon, the love of the Great Deliverer, may well
fulfil this blessed office, of carrying him out of himself in
genuine allegiance to a being most benign and holy. And
perceiving that, if this doctrine were removed, there is not,
in the system of which it forms a part, and which else would
be all terror, anything that could perform the same generous
part, I can understand why it seems to its advocates an
essential power in the renovation of the character. But
great as it may be, within the limits of its own narrow
scheme, ideas possessed of higher moral efficacy are not
wanting, when we pass into a region of nobler and more
Christian thought. Shall we say that the view of the Infinite
Ruler, given in the spoken wisdom or the living spirit of
Christ, has no sanctifying power ? Yet where is there any
trace in it of the satisfactionist's redemption ? When we sit
at Messiah's feet, that transforming gratitude for an extin
guished penalty, on which the prevailing theology insists, as
its central emotion, becomes replaced by a similar and pro-
founder sentiment towards the Eternal Father. If to rescue
men from a dreadful fate in the future be a just title to our
reverence, never to have designed that fate claims an affec
tion yet more devoted ; if there be a divine mercy in annihi
lating an awful curse, in shedding only blessing there is surely
a diviner still. Shall the love restored to us after long delay,
and in consideration of an equivalent, work mightily on the
heart, — and shall that which asked no purchase, which has
been veiled by no cloud, which has enfolded us always in its
tranquillity, nor can ever quit the soul opened to receive it,
fail to penetrate the conscience, and dissolve the frosts of our
self-love by some holier flame ? Never shall it be found true,
that God must threaten us with vengeance, ere we can feel
the shelter of his grace !
In truth, the Christian idea of salvation cannot be better
illustrated, than by the doubt which has been entertained
respecting the proper translation of my text. Some, refer
ring it to spiritual redemption, adhere to the common ver
sion ; others, seeing that the Apostle Peter is explaining " by
13

146 SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION.
what power or by what name " he had cured the lame man
at the temple gate, refer the words to this miracle of deliver
ance, and render them thus : " Neither is there healing in any
other ; for there is none other name under heaven given
among men, whereby we can be healed." It matters little
which it is ; for whether we speak of body or of mind, Jesus
" saves " us by " making us whole " ; by putting forth upon
us a divine and healing power, by which past suffering and
present decrepitude disappear together; which supplies the
defective elements of our nature, cools the burning of inward
fever, or calls into being new senses and perceptions, open
ing a diviner universe to our experience. The deformed and
crooked will, bowed by Satan, lo ! these many years, and no
wise able to lift up itself, he loosens and makes straight in
uprightness. The moral paralytic, collapsed and prostrate
amid the stir of life, and incapably gazing on the moving
waters in which others find their health, has often started up
at the summons of that voice, though perchance " he wist not
who it was " ; and, going his way, has found it to be " the
sabbath," and owned the " work " of one who is in the spirit
of " the Father." From the eye long dark and blind to duty
and to God, he has caused the film to pass away, and shown
the solemn look of life beneath a heaven so tranquil and
sublime. Even the dead of soul, close wrapped in bandages of
selfishness, — that greediest of graves, — have been quickened
by his piercing call, and have come forth, to learn, " when
risen," that only in the meekness that can obey is there the
power to command, only in the love that serves is there the
life of heart-felt liberty. To call, then, on the name and trust
in the spirit of Christ, is to invoke the restoring power of God;
to give symmetry and speed to our lame affections, and the
vigor of an athlete to our limping wills. There is not any
Christian salvation that is not thus identical with Christian
perfection : " nor any other name under heaven given amon»
men, whereby we may be (thus) made whole." Let all that
would "^ be perfect be thus minded"; seek " the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ" ; and they shall find, in
him a " power to become the sons of God."

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.

The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission
of Sins and Eternal Life. By John M'Leod Campbell.
Cambridge : Macmihan & Co. 1856.
This is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it.
A Puritan would have found it savory, even where it was un
sound. Rosenkranz, who has written on the ^Esthetik des
Hasslichen, would have been thankful for such a fund of illus
tration. Cumbrous, tiresome, monotonous, it has few attrac
tions for the natural man, who may have a weakness in favor
of pure English and nice grammar. It despises the graces of
carnal literature, and treats all the color and music of lan
guage as the Roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the
"box of whistles" and smashing the "mighty big angels in
glass." And yet, if you can get over its grating way of de
livering itself, you will find it no barbaric product, but the
utterance of a deep and practised thinker, charged with the
richest experiences of the Christian hfe, and resolute to clear
them from every tangle of fiction or pretence. Beneath the
uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great tender
ness and beauty, — a fine apprehension of the real inner strife
of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of es
cape from it, without compromise of any sanctity. The author,
though not tuneful in his speech, has the gifts of a true proph
et ; and often enables one to fancy what Isaiah might have

148 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
been if he had heard nothing but the bagpipe, and had set his
" burdens " to its drone. Whether Mr. Campbell's style has
been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In any case,
it is trained in the school of Calvinism ; is untouched there
fore by any feeling for art ; and runs on with a sort of ex
temporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes
of grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior
aspect, however, that he presents the features of the rugged
old Calvinism : and though the first-born of that system and
its younger sons are distinguished like Isaac's children, " Esau
is a hairy man, and Jacob is a smooth man," yet no true pa
triarch of the school can be so blind as not to see beneath our
author's goat-skin dress, and know that he is other than the
heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a theological
phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism without
any revolt from it, — an escape from it through its own in
terior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not
rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in
the main accepted. Its provision for the solution, — the In
carnation of the Son, — is sacredly preserved. Yet these
elements are put into such play as to make it checkmate itself
on its own area. Its definitions are shown to be suicidal ; and
its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through the ligaments that
constrain and shape it.
We have spoken first of the style of this book, because it
strikes the" reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel
him if he is not warned. Of one other feature, derived from
the same school, we must say a word, to qualify the admiration
and gratitude which we shall then ungrudgingly tender to the
author. In common with all the great masters of the " Evan
gelical " school, he is too much at home with the Divine econ
omy ; knows too well how the same thing appears from the
finite and the infinite point of view ; can tell too surely how
a mixed nature, both divine and human, would feel on look
ing from both ends at once ; and altogether goes with too
close a search to the " secret place of the Most High." Not
that he speaks unworthily on these high themes ; we have

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 149
nothing truer to suggest, except more silence. But we must
confess that when a teacher lays down the conditions of divine
possibility, expatiates psychologically on the sentiments of the
Father and the Son, and seems as though he had been al
lowed a peep into the autobiography of God, we shrink from
the sharp outlines, and feel that we shall believe more if we
are shown less. With so many soundings taken, and so many
channels buoyed, the sense of the shoreless sea is gone, and
we find only a port of traffic, with coast-lights instead of stars.
The temptation to this theological map-making has always
proved peculiarly strong among the disciples of Geneva : and
the reason is to be found in the very nature of the problem
they have attempted to resolve. Religion has two foci to de
termine, — the divine nature and the human. Athanasius and
the Greek influence fixed the doctrine of the Godhead : Au
gustine and the Latin Church defined the spiritual state of
man. The one, it has been said, produced a theology ; the
other, an anthropology. In the construction of the former, it
is obvious that the appeal could be made only to positive au
thority, whether of Scripture or the Church. On the Nicene
question no one could pretend to have personal insight or
scientific data : it must be decided by arbitrary vote on im
pressions of testimony. But for establishing a doctrine of
humanity, the living resources of consciousness and experience
were present with perpetual witness ; every proposition ad
vanced could be confronted with its corresponding reality:
the disciple could not help carrying the dogma inward to the
test of his self-knowledge. The scheme of the Trinity partook
of the nature of a Gnosis, which dwelt apart from the stir of
phenomena, and, having once set and crystallized, could only
be hung up for preservation. The dogmas of human deprav
ity and helplessness partook of the nature of a Science, com
ing in contact with the facts of hfe and character at every
point. Moral experience had something to say to them : and
unless they could keep good terms with it, they could not
hope to hold their ground. Hence the Augustinian divines
have been constrained to seek a philosophy of religion, and
13 *

150 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
to collate the text of their Scriptural system with the running
paraphrase of actual life. No writers have contributed so
much to lay bare the inmost springs of human action and
emotion; have tracked with so much subtilty the windings
of guilty self-deception, or so found the secret sorrow that
lies at the core of every unconsecrated joy. If we must con
cede to the Roman Catholic casuists and the problems of the
confessional the merit of creating an ethical Art embodied in
systems of rules, we owe to the deeper Evangelical spirit,
whether in its action or its reaction, the ground-lines of an eth
ical Philosophy ; — or, if you deny that such a thing as yet
exists, at least the true idea and undying quest of it. The
disciples of Augustine, belonging to an anthropological school,
have been naturally distinguished by a reflective and psycho
logic habit.
If it was the function of the Greek period to settle the doc
trine of God, and of its Latin successor to define ,the nature
of man, it was the aim of the Reformation, leaving these two
extremes undisturbed, to find the way of mediation between
them. So long as the great sacerdotal Church, living continu-
ator of Christ's presence, was intrusted with the business, pri
vate Christians wanted no theory on the subject ; all nice
questions went into the ecclesiastical closet and disappeared.
But as soon as ever the hierarchy fell out of this position,
there was an immense void left to be filled. On the one
hand, Infinite Holiness, quite alienated ; on the other, Human
Pravity, quite helpless : how was any approximation to be
rendered conceivable ? True, the great original Mediation on
Calvary, which the papal priesthood pretended to prolong, re
mained ; for it was fixed in history. But it lay a great way
off, a fact in the old past ; and its intervention was required
to-day by Melancthon, and Carlstadt, and a whole generation
quite remote from it. How was its power to be fetched into
the present ? how applied to men walking about in Witten
berg or Zurich ? This was the problem which flew open by
the cancelling of the Romish credentials : and the various an
swers to it constitute the body of Protestant theology. In

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 151
one point they all agree, that, to replace the priestly media
that are thrust out, Personal Faith is the element that must <
be brought in. In what way this subjective state of the indi
vidual mind draws or appropriates the efficacy of the Incar
nation ; in what order the redeeming process runs among the
three given terms, — the alienated Father, the mediating Son,
the believing disciple; whether any part of the process is
moral and real, or all is legal and virtual ; — these are ques
tions which the Reformation has found it easier to open than
to close. But answer them as you will, they entangle your
thoughts in the mutual relations and sentiments of three per
sons ; and cannot be discussed without establishing some prin
ciples of moral psychology, as the common grounds of inter
communion between minds finite and infinite, and dealing with
hypothetical problems of divine as well as human casuistry.
Hence the inevitable tendency of the doctrine of Mediation
to venture on a natural history of the Divine Mind, — to con
struct a drama of Providence and Grace, with plot too artful
ly wrought for the free hand of Heaven, and traits too spe
cific and minute for reverent contemplation.
It is deeply instructive to observe the pulsation of religious
thought in men. Revealed religion is ever passing into natu
ral, and natural returning to re-interpret the revealed. We
can almost see the steps by which sacred history was convert
ed into dogma ; while dogma, assumed in turn as the starting-
point, is ever producing new readings of the history. This
world may be regarded as a human theatre, where the Wills
of men perform the parts ; or as the stage of Divine agency,
using the visible actors as the executants of an invisible
thought. Its vicissitudes, presented in the former aspect,
yield only history ; in the latter, give rise to doctrine. No
ticed by Tacitus, the life of Christ is a provincial incident of
Tiberius's reign, and his death a judicial act of Pontius Pi
late's government. In the three first Gospels and the book of
Acts, the crucifixion is still the act of wicked or misguided
men, inflicted on an expostulating victim ; not, however, with
out being foreseen as the appointed precursor of a resurrec-

152 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
tion. The event is thus in the main simply historical ; but
with a divine comment which gives it an incipient theological
significance. It appears under another aspect in the Gospel
of John ; there, Christ not only foresaw, but determined his
own death : his hfe " no man taketh it from him," but he " lays
it down of himself"; he is not merely the submissive medi
um, but the spontaneous co-agent of a Divine intent. Final
ly, in St. Paul, — to whom the person and ministry of Christ
were unfamiliar, who, as a disciple of his heavenly life, looked
back upon them from a higher point, — the historical aspect
almost wholly disappears in the ideal ; and the cross becomes
the Gospel, the wisdom of God and the power of God, the
self-sacrifice of the Son the reconciling way to the Father, the
very focus and symbol of all the mystery and mercy com
prised in humanity. The movement of thought through these
successive stages is obvious. An event is at first accepted as
it arises. But in proportion as its concrete impression retires,
the need becomes more urgent to find its function : instinctive
search is made for all those elements, accessories, and effects
of it, which promise to bring out its meaning and idea, until
at last its doctrine absorbs itself, and enters the human mind
as a permanent factor of positive religion. It is thus that
the great antitheses, of Law and Gospel, of the Natural and
the Spiritual man, of dead Works and living Faith, of self-
seeking enmity and self-surrendering reconciliation with God,
have settled upon the consciousness of Christendom, and
grown into the very substance of its experience. They have
become part of its natural religion. But in this character
they may, conversely, be taken as the initiative of a new ver
sion of the history whence they sprung. They could not be
born into unmixed and formed existence at once ; but, like all
new affections, must feel their way out of an early indetermi
nate state, into clear self-apprehension and settled purity.
The testimony of the Christian conscience needs time to be
come articulate and collected. The shadow of human guilt
may lie so dark upon the mind, the dawn of the divine holi
ness may so dazzle the inward vision, that blindness in part

MEDIATORIAL REEIGION. 153
may linger for a while; and the eye, in very opening to
Christ's healing touch, may fail to see. Once accustomed to
the new light of life, men are no longer occupied with it alone,
but find in it a medium for truer discernment of objects
around. The special sentiments awakened by the Gospel test
themselves afresh, like any other theory, by being fully lived
out, and tried as experiments upon the soul. The type of
character, — the edition of human nature, — in which they
take embodiment, becomes a distinct object of critical appre
ciation ; and while all its deep expressive traits speak for the
inner truth whence they are moulded, every mixture of dis
harmony or defect calls for some revision of idea. In the
thirsty spiritual state to which men were reduced on the eve
of the Reformation, they drank up with intense eagerness the
most turbid supplies of evangelical doctrine. With purer
health and finer perception they become aware that not all
was water of hfe ; and that coarse notions of the nature of
justice, the conditions of mercy, and the measurement of sin,
were intermixed and must become mere sediment. Cleared
of these, the theory is taken back to the facts of revelation,
and so washed through them, that they may also emerge as
from a sprinkling of regeneration. Through such re-baptism
does our author, furnished with a purified conception of
" atonement," pass the history of Christ.
In looking for the whereabouts of the atonement, we are
guided, as in search for the pole-star, by two pointers whose
indications we are to follow. Its function was double, — to
cancel a guilty past, to make a holy future : and it must be
of such a nature as to disappoint neither of these conditions.
In determining its form, the great anxiety of theologians hith
erto has been to fit it for its retrospective action, and disembar
rass the problem of salvation of the burden of accumulated
sin. It is Mr. Campbell's distinction that he lays the superior
stress on its prospective action, and requires that it shall pos
itively heal the sickness of our nature, and evolve thence a
real and living righteousness. God's moral perfectness could
be satisfied with nothing less. If, indeed, He looked on our

154 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
guilt merely as an obstacle to our " salvation,'7 and desired to
remove it as a hinderance out of the way, — if He rather
sought a pretext for making us happy than a provision for
drawing us to goodness, — then the work of Christ might be
so devised as simply to tear out the defiled page of the past,
and register an infinite credit not our own, without inherent
care for ulterior personal holiness. But were it so, the divine
love would amount only to an unrighteous desire for our hap
piness, and the divine righteousness to an unloving repulsion
from our sin. Such spurious analysis corresponds with no
reality ; and in the truth of things there can be no heavenly
affection that is not holy, nor any holiness that is not affec
tionate. " While in reference to the not uncommon way of regard
ing this subject which represents righteousness and holiness
as opposed to the sinner's salvation, and mercy and love as on
his side, I freely concede that all the Divine attributes were,
in one view, against the sinner, in that they called for the due
expression of God's wrath against sin in the history of re
demption : I believe, on the other hand, that the justice, the
righteousness, the holiness of God, have an aspect according
to which they, as well as his mercy, appear as intercessors for
man, and crave his salvation. Justice may be contemplated
as according to sin its due ; and there is in righteousness, as
we are conscious to it, what testifies that sin should be miser
able. But justice, looking at the sinner not simply as the fit
subject of punishment, but as existing in a moral condition of
unrighteousness, and so its own opposite, must desire that the
sinner should cease to be in that condition ; should cease to be
unrighteous, should become righteous : righteousness in God
craving for righteousness in man, with a craving which the
realization of righteousness in man alone can satisfy. So also
of holiness. In one view it repels the sinner, and would ban
ish him to outer darkness, because of its repugnance to sin.
In another, it is pained by the continued existence of sin and
unholiness, and must desire that the sinner should cease to be
sinful. So that the sinner, conceived of as awakening to the

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 155
consciousness of his own evil state, and saying to himself, ' By
sin I have destroyed myself. Is there yet hope for me in
God ? ' — should hear an encouraging answer, not only from
the love and mercy of God, but also from his very righteous
ness and holiness. We must not forget, in considering the
response that is in conscience to the charge of sin and guilt,
that, though the fears which accompany that response are
partly the effect of a dawning of light, they also in part arise
from remaining darkness. He who is able to interpret the
voice of God within him truly, and with full spiritual intelli
gence will be found saying, not only, ' There is to me cause
for fear in the righteousness and holiness of God,' but also,
' There is room for hope for me in the Divine righteousness
and holiness.' And when gathering consolation from the med
itation of the name of the Lord, that consolation will be not
only, ' Surely the Divine mercy desires to see me happy rath
er than miserable,' but also, ' Surely the Divine righteousness
desires to see me righteous, — the Divine holiness desires to
see me holy, — my continuing unrighteous and unholy is as
grieving to God's righteousness and holiness as my misery
through sin is to his pity and love.' ' Good and righteous is
the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners the way which they
should choose.' ' A just God and a Saviour ' ; not as the
harmony of a seeming opposition, but ' a Saviour, because a
just God.' " — p. 29.
From this justly-conceived passage the characteristics of
Mr. Campbell's theory may already be divined. He sets his
faith on a- concrete, living, indivisible God, whom you can
never understand by laying out His abstract attributes one by
one, with their separate requirements, and then putting them
together again to compute the resultant. He insists on the
absolute dominance of a moral and spiritual idea throughout
the revealed economy : of this nature is the evil to be met, —
sin and estrangement ; of this nature is the good to be reached,
— righteousness and reconciliation ; and only of this nature
can be the mediation which effects the change ; related up
ward to the Father and downward to men, in a way accordant

156 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
with the laws of conscience, and intelligible by its v self-light.
He craves, therefore, a natural juncture, a real causal nexus,
between the several parts of the process, to the exclusion of
all forensic fictions and arbitrary scene-shifting and sovereign
tours-de-force. In short, he will have no tricks passed off, no
gwasi'-transformations upon the conscience ; he feels the moral
world to be above the range of mere miracle ; any change in
it irreducible to its solemn laws would ipso facto fall out of
it and become a mere dynamical surprise. Of physical mir
acle our author avails himself to the full amount ; the incar
nation of the Son of God being, with him, as with others, the
central fact and essential medium of Christian redemption.
But the august power thus siipernsAuvally set up — ¦ the Per
son at once divine and human — works out his great problem
naturally, without requiring the suspension of one rule of
right, or holding any magical dealings with the character of God
or man. His problem, therefore, is to show how the life and
death of Christ — considered as God in humanity — were fit
ted, and alone fitted, to blot out the sins of the world before
God, and to introduce among men a new state of real right
eousness and eternal life.
The common Evangelical scheme of redemption so far af
fects to be deduced from certain general principles, and to
render the way of redemption conceivable, that it is stigma
tized as rationalistic by Catholics and Anglicans. It is so,
however, only in the sense of hanging well together, and
serving the purpose of a theological Mnemonic to those who
want a religion ready more than deep. In the higher sense,
of occupying any natural ground of reason, it does not earn
its reproach. The propositions which it lays down, as to the
inability of a holy nature to forgive unless circultously and
with compensation, and as to the commutability of either pe
nal liabilities or moral attributes, are without any support from
our primary sentiments of right and wrong, and could be car
ried out by no sane man in the conduct of life. The doctrine
is taught in two principal forms ; — the earlier and more ex
act scheme of " Satisfaction," elaborated by Anselm of Can-

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 157
terbury, and perfected by Owen and Edwards ; and the mod
ern theory of " Public Justice," maintained in the writings of
Dr. Pye Smith and Dr. Payne, and prevailing wherever the
first decadence from the old Calvinism is going on. The first
of these prepares its ground by laying down these principles
as fundamental ; — that the connection between sin and suf
fering is inviolably secured on the veracity of God; that
" when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants," and
have only rendered our strict due ; that, far from " doing all,"
we have done and can do nothing, except accumulate guilt,
which, measure it as you will, — by the majesty of the au
thority defied, or the multitude of the offenders and their sins,
— is practically of infinite amount. Here, then, is a case of
utter despair : infinite debt ; nothing to pay ; remission impos
sible ; punishment eternal ; death unattainable. But we are
brought into the labyrinth on one side, to emerge from it
on the other. While men can only multiply demerit, there
are natures conceivable to which merit is possible. A Divine
Person, laying aside a blessedness inherently his, and assum
ing sorrow not his own, and doing this out of a pure love, ful
fils the conditions ; and when the Son takes on him our
humanity, the act, carried out unto the end, has a merit in it
which in amount is a full set-off against the guilt of men.
Still, this only leaves us with two opposite funds — of infinite
good desert and infinite ill desert — which sit apart and unre
lated. In due course, the one ought to have a boundless re
ward, the other a boundless punishment. But to render his
affluence available for our debt, the Son consummates his self-
sacrifice, substitutes himself for us as the object of retribution,
and dies once for all, — one infinite death for many finite here
afters of woe. The Father's justice is satisfied ; the allot
ment of suffering to sin has been accurately observed ; His
desire to pardon is released from its restraint. Having dealt
with the person of the Son as if it were mankind, He may
deal with mankind as if they were the Son, and look upon
them as clothed with a perfect obedience.
The wholly artificial structure of this scheme, which is its
14

158 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
greatest condemnation, has been its chief security. It is by
approaching within conducting-distance of reality, that a doc
trine elicits resistance and meets the stroke of natural objec
tion ; and if it only keeps far enough aloft in the metaphysic
atmosphere, it may float along unarrested from zone to zone
of time. Men know not what to make of propositions so
much out of their sphere, so evasive of any real encounter
with their consciousness, and are apt to let them pass for their
very strangeness' sake. But surely we are bound to demand
for them some " response of conscience," and, with Mr. Camp
bell, to demur to such of them as will not bear this test. Lim
iting ourselves to the mediatorial part of the theory, we will
assume the problem of moral evil to be correctly stated, and
only ask whether, from the supposed case of despair, the
offered solution affords any. real exit of relief. Nor do we
assume this for argument's sake alone. We can perfectly
understand any remorseful sense, however deep, of human
unworthiness ; any appreciative reverence, however intense,
of Christ's self-sacrifice. Set the one under the shadow of
the Father's infinite disapproval, the other in the light of His
infinite complacency ; so far we go ; there let them lie. But
what next? Here, on the left hand, is Sin with its need of
punishment; there, on the right, a perfect Holiness with its
merits. While they are thus spread beneath the Father's
eye, they break up their inviolable alliances ; each moral
cause crosses over and takes the opposite effect. If such
change took place, the seat of the fact must be sought partly
in the consciousness of Christ, partly in the Father's view of
things. In reference to the first, must we say that the Cruci
fied felt himself under Divine wrath and punishment, and
esteemed that wrath to be just, — the fitting expression of his
own inward remorse ? If so, can we affirm that his conscious
ness was veracious ? or did he not feel, in regard to others'
sins, sentiments and experiences that are false except in rela
tion to one's own ? And, ascending to the other point of view,
shall we affirm that the Father saw sin in the Son and was
angry with him ; so that, in the hour of sublimest obedience,

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 159
the words ceased to be true, " Thou art my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased"? And on the other hand, what is
meant when it is said that beneath the Divine eye men in
their guilt are seen " clothed with " a perfect righteousness?
Is such an aspect of them true ? or is it akin to an ocular de
ception ? We seem to be reduced to this dilemma ; — the
change of apparent moral place implied in " imputation " is
either a faithful representation, or a gwasi'-representation, of
the reality of things. If the latter, then the Divine con
sciousness is illusory, and the world is administered on a fic
tion ; if the former, then the moral law, in assuring us of the
personal and inalienable nature of sin, gives a false report,
and there is nothing to prevent a circulating medium of merit
from passing current through the universe. Mr. Campbell's
deference for the great advocates of this marvellous doctrine
does not obstruct his perception of its difficulties.
" I freely confess," he says, " that to my own mind it is a
relief, not only intellectually, but also morally and spiritually,
to see that there is no foundation for the conceptions that
when Christ suffered for us, the just for the unjust, he suffered
either ' as by imputation unjust,' or ' as if he were unjust.'
I admit that intellectually it is a relief not to be called to con
ceive to myself a double consciousness, both in the Father
and in the Son, such as seems implied in the Father's seeing
the Son at one and the same time, though it were but for a
moment, as the well-beloved Son, to whom infinite favor should
go forth, and also as worthy, in respect of the imputation
of our sins to him, of being the object of infinite wrath, he
being the object of such wrath accordingly ; and in the Son's
knowing himself the well-beloved of the Father, and yet
having the consciousness of being personally, through impu
tation of our sin, the object of the Father's wrath. I feel it
intellectually a relief neither to be called to conceive this, nor
to assume it as an unconceived mystery. Still more do I feel
it morally and spiritually a relief, not to be required to recog
nize legal fictions as having a place in this high region, in
which the awful realities of sin and holiness, spiritual death

160 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
and spiritual life, are the objects of a transaction between the
Father and the Son in the Eternal Spirit." — p. 310.
The second form of mediatorial doctrine, to which we have
referred as the modern type of Calvinism, has arisen from the
endeavor to evade some of these perplexities. The riddle
that haunts its teachers is still the same, — how it can become
possible to show mercy to sinners ; but the difficulty in the
way is differently conceived, and therefore met by a different
expedient. It is not an obstacle in God, arising from his per
sonal sentiment of equity, which must be satisfied ; but springs
out of the necessity of consistent rectitude, and adherence to
law in his administrative government. The Father himself,
it is intimated, would be quite willing to forgive, were there
nothing to consult except his own disposition. But it would
never do to play fast and loose with the criminal law of the
universe, and, notwithstanding the most solemn enactments,
let off delinquents on mere repentance, as if nothing were the
matter beyond a personal affront. Something more is due to
Public Justice. If the due course of retribution is to .be
turned aside, it must be in such a way and at such a cost as
to proclaim aloud the awfulness of the guilt remitted. This,
we are told, is accomplished by the sufferings and death of the
Son of God, which were substituted for our threatened pun
ishment, not as its quantitative equal paid to the Father, but
as a moral equivalent in the eyes of men. Their vahdity is
thus conceived to depend by no means on their particular
measure, but on the meritorious obedience of love which was
their sustaining and animating soul, and which, being on the
scale of a Divine nature, gave infinite value to the smallest
sorrow. Within the casket of his grief was held such a price
less righteousness, that, on beholding it, the Father might re
gard it as an adequate plea for acts of mercy to sinners. He
does not indeed impute to them the actual moral perfectness
of Christ, so as to see them invested with it, any more than
he imputed to Christ their guilt, and frowned on Calvary. It
is the effects only of that holiness which he imputes ; he offers
to men the benefits of it, without reckoning it as really theirs,

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 161
and giving them the legal standing which its possession would
bestow. No doubt this scheme gets rid of the penal mensuration and
moral conveyancing of the older Calvinism. It shifts also the
bar to free mercy away from the inner personahty of God,
and sets it in his outer government. But when we again at
tempt to seize the mediatorial expedient, what is it? It is
said to be a display of the enormity of that guilt which needs
to be redeemed at such a cost. But is that need real ? Have
we not been told that it has no place in God ? Does he then
hang out a profession that is not true to the kernel of things,
but only a show-off for impression's sake ? If Eternal Justice
in its inner essence does not require the expiation provided,
why in its outer manifestation pretend that it does'? As
nothing can become right for "the sake of good example"
that is not right in itself, so is " Public Justice," unsustained
by the sincere heart of reality, a mere dramatic imposture.
Mr. Campbell has supplied us with a forcible statement of
this truth : —
" Surely rectoral or public justice, if it is to have any moral
basis, — any basis other than expediency, — must rest upon,
and refer to, distributive or absolute justice. In other words,
unless there be a Tightness in connecting sin with misery, and
righteousness with blessedness, looking at individual cases
simply in themselves, I cannot see that there is a lightness in
connecting them as a rule of moral government. ' An English
judge once said to a criminal before him : You are condemned
to be transported, not because you have stolen these goods,
but that goods may not be stolen.' (Jenkyns, 175, 176.) This
is quoted in illustration of the position, that 'the death of
Christ is an honorable ground for remitting punishment,' be
cause ' his sufferings answer the same ends as the punishment
of the sinner.' I do not recognize any harmony between this
sentiment of the English judge and the voice of an awakened
conscience on the subject of sin. It is just because he has
sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he says to
himself that God is a moral governor, and must punish him
14*

162 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
to deter others, that the wrath of God against sin seems so
terrible, — and as just as terrible." — p. 79.
Even were the expression backed up by reality, we cannot
but ask about the fitness of the medium for the thought to be
conveyed. God's horror at guilt is publicly proclaimed by the
most awful crime in human history ! To explain the difficulty
of letting off the offender, he exhibits the anguish of the inno
cent ! The spectacle would seem in danger of suggesting the
wrong lesson to the terrified observer, — of raising to intensity
the doubt whether, in a world that gives its silver to a Judas,
its judgment-seat to a Pilate, and the cross to the Son of God,
any Providence can care for rectitude at all. Even when
the death of Christ is contemplated exclusively as a self-saa-
rifice, without remembering the guilt which compassed it, we
are at a loss to understand how it could be " an honorable
ground for remitting punishment." What difference did it
make in the previous reasons of the Divine government, so
that penalties right before should be less right afterwards?
If Catiline were undergoing his just retribution at the date
of the Last Supper, what plea was there for releasing him at
or before the date of the resurrection ? That obedience ren
dered and suffering endured by one soul should dispense with
the liabilities of another, is a supposition at variance with the
personal and inalienable nature of all sin ; and to say that
God " imputes the effects " of Christ's holiness to those who
are not partakers in the cause, is to accuse the Divine gov
ernment of total disregard to character and evasion of moral
reality. The old Calvinism represents the Father as having
an illusory perception of men, as if they were clad in a divine
righteousness. The new Calvinism represents him as having
indeed a true perception of their unrighteousness, but, notwith
standing this, falsifying the truth in action, and proceeding as
if the facts were quite other than they are. Inasmuch as un-
veracious vision is intellectual, while unveracious practice is
moral, the younger doctrine appears to us a positive degrada
tion of the elder, not only in logical completeness, but in re
hgious worth. Both of them make the redeeming economy

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 163
proceed upon a. fiction ; but there is all the difference between
unconscious and conscious fiction ; between an inner " satis
faction " brought about by an optical displacement of merit,
and an outward " exhibition " set up for the sake of impres
sion. The theory of Owen, stern as it is, bears the stamp of
resolute meaning consistently carried through into the inmost
recess of the Divine nature. The newer doctrine is the pro
duction of a platform age, which obtrudes considerations of
effect even into its thoughts of God and his government, and
can scarce refrain from turning the universe itself into a thea
tre for rhetorical pathos and ad captandum display.
With good reason, therefore, does our author feel that this
whole subject is in need of reconsideration. His own doctrine
diverges from its predecessors at a very early point, and is
seen at its source in the following proposition of Edwards, as
cited by Mr. Campbell : —
" In contending that sin must be punished with an infinite
punishment, President Edwards says, ' that God could not be
just to himself without this vindication, unless there could be
such a thing as a repentance, humiliation, and sorrow for this
(viz. sin) proportionable to the greatness of the Majesty de
spised,' — for that there must heeds be ' either an equivalent
punishment, or an equivalent sorrow and repentance ' ; ' so,' he
proceeds, ' sin must be punished with an infinite punishment ' ;
thus assuming that the alternative of ' an equivalent sorrow
and repentance ' was out of the question. But, upon the as
sumption of that identification of himself with those whom he
came to save, on the part of the Saviour, which is the founda
tion of Edwards's whole system, it may at the least be said,
that the Mediator had the two alternatives open to his choice,
— either to endure for sinners an equivalent punishment, or
to experience in reference to their sin, and present to God on
their behalf, an adequate sorrow and repentance. Either of
these courses should be regarded by Edwards as equally se
curing the vindication of the majesty and justice of God in
pardoning sin." — p. 136.
The side of the alternative which Edwards abandoned, our

164 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
author takes up and follows out. The work of Christ, as a
ground of remission, consisted in the offering on behalf of
humanity of an adequate repentance. Adequate it could not
have been but for his Divine nature ; which attaches to his
holy sorrow an infinite moral value, to balance the infinite
heinousness of the sin deplored. The only reason why hu
man penitence does not in itself avail to restore, lies in its im
perfect purity and depth. Through the cloud of evil, and
with the eye of self, we are disqualified for true discernment
of sin as it is : both the limits of a finite nature, and the delu
sions of a tempted and fallen one, hinder us from appreciat
ing the measure of our guilt and misery. Even when our
better mind reasserts itself, our very compunction carries in
it many a speck of ill, and our repentance needs to be repent
ed of. But were it not for this, there would be " more aton
ing worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow which
the memory of the past would awaken," " than in endless ages
of penal woe." It is not the inefficacy, but the impossibility,
of due penitence that constitutes our fatal disability ; to be re
lieved from which we need to be taken out of ourselves, to be
identified with a perfect spirit ; our humanity must cease to
be human, and become one with the Divine nature. This is
precisely the condition which realized itself in Christ. As
God in humanity, he had perfect sympathy with the holiness
of one sphere, and the infirmities of the other; he saw the
whole amount of the world's moral estrangement, not only
with infinite pity for its misery, but with infinite horror at its
guilt. He could both make a plenary confession for us, and
respond unreservedly to the Father's righteous judgment;
could bear our burden on his heart before heaven, and utter
the Miserere of holy sorrow, which our most plaintive cry can
never approach. This is the true nature of his sufferings.
He " made his soul an offering for sin," yielded it up to be
filled with a sense of our real aspect beneath the Omniscient
eye, and an Amen to its condemning look. Hence his sor
rows had nothing penal in them, any more than the tears of a
devout parent over a prodigal child are penal. They are

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 165
incident to that attitude of soul which a perfect nature cannot
but have in the presence of a brother's sin. They are alto
gether moral and spiritual ; and their efficacy as an expiation
is that of true repentance ; expressing at once our entire con
fession, acceptance of the Father's just displeasure, and sym
pathy with his compassionate grieving at our alienation.
At the same time, this mere retrospective confession would
not of itself avail, were there no better hope for the future of
mankind. But our Mediator's own experience in humanity,
his consciousness of intimate peace and communion with the
Father, opened to him the other side of our nature, assured
him of its secret capacity for good, and filled him with hope
in the very moment of contrition. As his sympathy could
have feUowship with our temptations, so could ours have fel
lowship with his righteousness ; and the light of Divine love
that rested actually on himself was thereby a possibility for
the universal human soul, and was already hovering round
with longing to descend. It was on the strength of this as
surance that his intercession on our behalf was presented ; it
would never have pleaded for indemnity in relation to the
past, but as the prelude to a real righteousness, a true partner
ship in his hfe of filial harmony with God. The validity of
his transaction on our behalf consisted hi its perfect seizure
of the whole reality, its entire " response to the mind of the
Father in relation to men " ; sorrow for their estrangement,
conviction of their possible return, and desire to draw them
into the spirit of genuine Sonship.
It was needful, then, — so we conceive our author's mean
ing, — that the sentiments of God towards the world's sin and
misery should quit their absolute position, and should come
and take their station in humanity ; and from that field should
turn their gaze and expression upward to meet the Father's
downward and accordant look. As this " Amen of the Son
to the mind of the Father" constitutes the essence of the
atonement on the Divine side, so does it consist on the human
side in " the Amen of each individual soul to the Amen of
the Son." The reproduction in us of the filial spirit of

166 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
Christ, — his confession, his pleading, his trust, — is our fel
lowship with him and reconciliation with God.
" This is saving faith, — true righteousness, — being the
living action, and true and right movement of the spirit of the
individual man in the light of eternal life. And the certainty
that God has accepted that perfect and divine Amen as ut
tered by Christ in humanity is necessarily accompanied by
the peaceful assurance that, in uttering, in whatever feeble
ness, a true Amen to that high Amen, the individual who is
yielding himself to the spirit of Christ to have it uttered in
him is accepted of God. This Amen in man is the due
response to that word, ' Be ye reconciled to God ' ; for the
gracious and Gospel character of which word, as the tenderest
pleading that can be addressed to the most sin-burdened spirit,
I have contended above. This Amen is sonship ; for the Gos
pel call, ' Be ye reconciled to God,' when heard in the light
of the knowledge that ' God made him to be sin for us who
knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him,' is understood to be the call to each one of us on the
part of the Father of our spirits, ' My son, give me thine
heart,' addressed to us on the ground of that work by which
the Son had declared the Father's name, that the love where
with the Father hath loved him may be in us, and he in us.
In the light itself of that Amen to the mind of the Father in
relation to man which shines to us in the atonement, we see
the righteousness of God in accepting the atonement, and in
that same light the Amen of the individual human spirit to
that divine Amen of the Son of God is seen to be what the
Divine righteousness will necessarily acknowledge as the end
of the atonement accomplished." — p. 225.
In this view, it is not the rescue from punishment, not any
favorable change in our legal standing, not any imputed right
eousness, that Christ's mediation obtains, but a real transfor
mation of soul and character through the divine infection and
infusion of his own filial spirit. Only in so far as his mind
thus spreads to us are we united to him, or in any way par
takers of his gift of life. Personal ahenation can have no

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 167
reversal but in personal return ; nor can anything " extra
neous to the nature of the Divine will itself, to which we are
to be reconciled, have part in reconciling us to that will."
The fear of hell is not repentance ; the assurance of heaven
is not salvation; nor under any modification can the desire
of safety, or the consciousness of its attainment, constitute the
least approach to holiness. The good alone can touch the
springs of goodness ; and the divine and trustful hfe of Christ
must speak to us on its own account, and win us by its own
power, or not at all. Not that it acts on us merely in the
way of example. We do not so stand apart from him in our
independent individuality, that by an external imitation we
can copy him, and become, as it were, each another Christ,
repeating in ourselves his offering of propitiation. He is the
Vine, of which we are the branches. The sap is from him,
drawn through the eternal root of righteousness, and does but
flow as a derived life into us. The Son of God is not a mere
historical personage, to be contemplated at a distance in the
past, but ever with us in the power of an endless life ; still
succoring us when we are tempted, and ministering to con
science a present help and- peace. It is not, therefore, by
following him, but by abiding in him, that we have our fel
lowship in his harmony with God.
The essence, then, of the scheme of redemption, in the
view of our author, seems to be this : that the Divine nature
entered humanity to open the Fatherliness of God by living
the life of perfect Sonship ; and that, having awakened that
life in us by this its visible reahzation, he sustains it by the
inner presence of his Spirit. It is one of the obvious conse
quences of this doctrine, that no exclusive or exceptional value
is to be ascribed to the death of Christ. It is simply the final
and crowning expression of the same filial mind which is the
continuous essence of his whole existence upon earth. Nor
does the theory attach importance to any sufferings of Christ,
as such ; but only as media and measures of moral expression.
Had men sinned as spirits, his reconciling work would not
have involved death at all : but since in our constitution mor-

168 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
tality is " the wages of sin," his response to the Divine mind
in regard to sin would have been incomplete, had he not
honored this law and tasted its realization. Not to lose sight
of the main features of the doctrine in pursuit of details, we
must pass without notice many curious and subtle thoughts of
our author on this part of his subject. Indeed, everywhere
the reader who has patience with the entangled style will find
deep hints and delicate turns of reflection. But we must
withdraw to a little distance from his system, and endeavor to
look at it as a whole ; fixing attention especially on the central
point of all, — the mediatorial provision, which replaces the
penal " satisfaction " of the elder Calvinism, and the " exhi
bition of rectoral justice " of the modern divines.
Instead of an infinite punishment endured or represented,
the theory offers us an infinite repentance performed. Repent
ance for what ? — for human sin. Repentance by whom ? —
by Him " who knew no sin." Is this a thing that can be ? Is
vicarious contrition at all more conceivable than vicarious
retribution? It is surely one and the same difficulty that
meets them both. On what ground is the transfer of either
moral qualities or their effects regarded by our author as
impossible ? — because at variance with our consciousness of
the personal and inalienable nature of sin. But not less is
this truth contradicted when we say that the guilt may be
incurred by one person, and the availing repentance take
place in another. Nor can any imagination of Christ's state
of mind identify it with penitence. Mr. Campbell himself
describes it (p. 135) as having "all the elements of a perfect
repentance in humanity for all the sin of man — a perfect
sorrow ¦ — • a perfect contrition, — all the elements of such a
repentance, and that in absolute perfection — all — excepting
the personal consciousness of sin." This exception, however,
contains just the essential element of the whole. Penitence
without any personal consciousness of sin is a contradiction in
terms ; and the requisition of the Divine law is, that the sinner
shall turn from the evil of his heart, not that the righteous
shall make confession for him. The entire moral value of

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 169
contrition belongs to it as the sign of inner change of char
acter from prior evil to succeeding good ; and it admits of no
transplantation from the identical personality which has been
the seat of the evil and is the candidate for the good.
Further, it seems a paradox to say, with our author, that
true repentance is impossible to man, who alone needs it ; and
can be realized only by the Son of God, in whom there is no
room for it. It would indeed be a hopeless realm to live in,
which should annex to all sins both an imperative demand
and an absolute disqualification for adequate contrition, and first
open the fountain of availing tears in holy natures that have
none to shed. It is, in truth, of the very essence of repent
ance to have its seat in mixed and imperfect moral beings :
and our author lays upon it quite an arbitrary requisition,
when he insists that, to pass as adequate, it must contain a
perfect appreciation of the sin deplored, — a view of it coinci
dent with that of God. Under such an aspect as this it could
never have appeared to us, though we had remained guiltless
of it, and recoiled from it : and we can hardly be required to
reach, in the rebound of recovery, a point beyond the station
which would have prevented the fall. Many errors in theol
ogy arise from applying absolute conceptions to relative con
ditions, and forgetting that rehgion, as realized in us, is a life,
a movement, a progress, and not an ultimate limit of perfec
tion. Repentance is a transitional state, to which it is absurd
to apply an infinite criterion : it is a change from the worse to
the better mind, and cannot need the resources or belong to
the experience of the best. To pronounce it impossible to
the wandering and fallen, and make it the exclusive function
of the All-holy, implies the strangest metamorphosis of its
meaning. But how, it may be asked, could a paradox so violent find
favor with an author everywhere intent on the exclusion of
fiction from Christian theology ? To refer a moral act to
the wrong personality, to toss about a solemn change like
penitence between guilty and innocent, as if its particular seat
were a matter of indifference, is so serious an error, that it
15

170 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
could never enter a mind like Mr. Campbell's, unless under
some plausible disguise. Can we find the shape under which
it has recommended itself to his approval ?
The sentiment ascribed to the Son of God in regard to
sin, — wanting as it does the essential penitential element of
personal compunction, — is simple sorrow for others' guilt,
founded on perfect apprehension of its nature. But this
attitude of soul in him awakens the conscience of his disci
ples, and is reproduced in them by fellowship. Spread into
their consciousness, it is no longer clear of the immediate
presence of sin, but, falling in with it, assumes the missing
element, and becomes repentance. When the Christian sense
of evil, which ever partakes of true contrition, is thus contem
plated as a transmigration of the Mediator's own spirit into
the soul, the two are so identified in thought, that what is true
only of the human effect is referred to the Divine cause ; and
the moral sorrow of Christ is regarded as potentially equiva
lent to repentance, because that is actually the form of the
corresponding phenomenon in us. If this, however, explains
our author's position, it hardly justifies it. Intercession for
others in their guilt may move them to remorse for their own,
but is a fact of quite different nature. As attributes and ex
pressions of character, the two phenomena are not to be con
founded ; and as affecting our relation to God, there is the
obvious and admitted distinction, that intercession avails not
for those who remain impenitent, and would not be needed for
the spontaneously penitent. The sorrowful expostulations
of the Son of God have only so far a reconcihng effect as
they become the medium, in the hearts of men, of an awak
ened contrition, aspiration, and faith. We cannot conceive
them to have immediately altered — as repentance does —
the personal relation between God and the transgressors of
His will ; else the change would be a change in the Divine
sentiment whilst its objects still remained unchanged. The
effect waits for its development in souls melted and renewed.
And thus the atoning sorrow of Christ becomes simply a
provision for a healing penitence in men.

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 171
The ascription of " repentance " to Christ is curious in
another point of view. It arises from a blending together of
his consciousness and his disciples' ; from slurring the lines of
personahty between them ; from regarding their spiritual
state as an organic extension of his, and his as the vital root
of theirs. In his endeavor to recommend it to us, our author
instinctively runs into abstract expressions in speaking of
mankind ; fusing down concrete men into " humanity " ; re
ferring to the Mediator as " God in humanity " / and so, deal
ing with our nature as if it were a single existence, carrying
or turning up all its individuals as partial phenomena of one
essence. On the other hand, in our endeavor to correct his
doctrine, we have had to lay stress on the inalienable and
separate character of all particular persons, taken one by
one ; to insist on the solitude of each responsible agent, and
the impassable barriers which forbid the transference of moral
attributes from mind to mind. Which of these two modes of
conception is the truer ? For according as we incline to the
one or the other, — according as we treat humanity as the
organic unit of which individual samples of mankind are nu
merical accidents, or take each man as an integer, of which
the race is a multiple, — shall we lean towards mediatorial
or towards direct religion. We are firmly convinced that no
doctrine of mediation — in the strict sense implying trans
actions with God on behalf of men, as well as in the opposite
direction — can be harmonized with the modern individual
ism ; and that it is precisely in the attempt to unite these in-
compatibles, that the forensic fictions to which Mr. Campbell
objects, and the moral fiction in his own theory to which we
object, have had their origin. They are mere artificial devices
to compensate the loss of that reahstic mode of conception in
which alone a true atoning doctrine can rest in peace. So
long as you contemplate the Redeemer as a detached person,
not less insulated in his integrity of being than angel from
archangel or from man, the difficulty will remain insuperable
of making his moral acts avail for other human individuals,
unless by a fictitious transference, against which conscience

172 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
protests. Punishment by substitute, righteousness by deputy,
vicarious repentance, are notions at variance with the funda
mental postulates of the Moral Sense : and in the attempt to
defend them we are liable to lose the solemn, living, face-to-
face reality of the strife within us, and to weave around us a
web of legal and formal relations, as little like any. heart-felt
veracity as a chancery decree to a law of nature. In pro
portion as the soul is pierced with a sharper contrition, and
attains a deeper and clearer insight into her own unfaithful dis
order, will the inherent impossibility of any foreign exchange
of righteousness become apparent, and the desire to be shielded
from punishment will pass away : nor is the conscience truly
awakened which does not rather rush into the arms of its just
anguish than start back and fly away. And the more you
hold up to view the holiness of Christ, the darker will the
personal past appear to grow; for self-reproach will say:
" Yes, I see him as the holy Son of God ; the guiltier am I
that the vision did not keep me from my sin." Talk to such
a one of Christ's transactions on our behalf, as " federal head"
of a redeemed people ; and his misery will take no notice of
the cold pretence, unless to think, " Whatever engagements
he made for me, I have broken them all." In short, while
Christ is regarded simply as an historical individual, with the
chasm of an incommunicable personality between him and us,
no ingenuity can construct, except from the ruins of moral
law, any other bridge of mediation than the suasion of natural
reverence, by which his image passes into the heart of faith.
It is otherwise when we break through the restraints of the
modern individualism, and strive to enter into that literal
identification of Christ with Christians which is so frequent
with St. Paul. If, instead of saying that Christ had our
human nature, we could put our thought into this form, —
"He was (and is) our human nature," — if we could suppose
our. type of being not merely represented in him as a sample,
but concentrated in him as a whole, — we should read its
essentials and destination in his biography: his predicates
would be its predicates : and in his sorrows and sanctity it

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 173
might undergo purification. Humanity thus made into a
person would then be the corresponding fact to Deity em
bodied in a person : both would be Incarnations, — essential
Manhood and essential Godhead, — co-present in the same
manifested life. In the ordinary conception of the doctrine
of two natures, Christ is represented, we believe, as a man ;
in the mode of thought to which we now refer, he appears as
Man. The difficulties which arise in the attempt to carry out
this form of thinking are evident enough, even to those who
know nothing of the Parmenides of Plato. Indeed, they are
rendered so obtrusive by our modern habits of mind, that
even a momentary seizure, for mere purposes of interpreta
tion, of that older intellectual posture, scarcely remains possi
ble to us. The apprehension of it, however, is indispensable
to one who would appreciate the mediatorial theology of
Christendom, — a theology which never could have sprung up
if our present conceptualist and nominalist notions had always
prevailed, and which, ever since their ascendency in Europe, '
has been driven to deplorable shifts of self-justification. The
parallel between the first and second Adam, the fall and the
restoration, the death incurred and the life recovered, acquire
new meaning for those who thus think, — that as the incidents
of Adam's existence become generic by descent, so the inci
dents of Christ's existence are generic by diffusion ; that if
in the one we see humanity at head-quarters in time, in the
other we see it at head-quarters in comprehension ; so that,
like an atmosphere which, purified at nucleus, has the taint
drawn off from its margin, our nature is freed from its sickli
ness in him. It becomes intelligible to us in what sense we
are to take refuge in him as our including term, to find in
him an epitome of our true existence, to die (even to have
died) with him, to suffer with him, to be risen with him, to
dwell above in him. On the assumption of such a union, his
hfe ceases to be an individual biography ; what is manifested
in him personally, becomes true of us universally ; and it is as
if we were all — hke special examples ' in a general rule, or
undeveloped truths in a parent principle — virtually present
15*

174 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
in his dealings with evil and with God. It is evident, that in
this view his mediation has no chasm to cross, no foreign
region to enter, but is an inseparable predicate of his own
personal acts. The facility of conception afforded by this
method is betrayed by Mr. Campbell's resort to an analogous
hypothesis as a mere illustrative help to the mind. Witness
the following striking passage : —
" That we may fully realize what manner of equivalent to
the dishonor done to the law and name of God by sin an
adequate repentance and sorrow for sin must be, and how far
more truly than any penal infliction such repentance and con
fession must satisfy Divine justice, let us suppose that all the
sin of humanity has been committed by one human spirit, on
whom is accumulated this immeasurable amount of guilt ; and
let us suppose this spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pass out
of sin into holiness, and to become filled with the light of God,
becoming perfectly righteous with God's own righteousness, —
such a change, were such a change possible, would imply in
the spirit so changed a perfect condemnation of the past of its
own existence, and an absolute and perfect repentance, a con
fession of its sin commensurate with its evil. If the sense of
personal identity remained, it must be so. Now, let us con
template this repentance with reference to the guilt of such a
spirit, and the question of pardon for its past sin and admis
sion now to the light of God's favor. Shall this repentance
be accepted as an atonement, and, the past sin being thus con
fessed, shall the Divine favor flow out on that present perfect
righteousness which thus condemns the past, or shall that
repentance be declared inadequate ? Shall the present perfect
righteousness be rejected on account of the past sin, so abso
lutely and perfectly repented of? and shall Divine justice still
demand adequate punishment for the past sin, and refuse to
the present righteousness adequate acknowledgment, — the
favor which, in respect of its own nature, belongs to it ? It
appears to me impossible to give any but one answer to these
questions. We feel that such a repentance as we are suppos
ing would, in such a case, be the true and proper satisfaction

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 175
to offended justice. Now, with the difference of personal
identity, the case I have supposed is the actual case of Christ,
the holy one of God, bearing the sins of all men on his spirit,
— in Luther's words, ' the one sinner,' — and meeting the cry
of these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorb
ing and exhausting that Divine wrath in that adequate con
fession and perfect response on the part of man which was
possible only to the infinite and eternal righteousness in hu
manity." — p. 143.
The case which our author here presents as an aid to the
imagination was to Luther the literal reality ; to whom, ac
cordingly, Christ was " the one sinner," without " the differ
ence of personal identity," which is here so innocently slipped
in, as if it were of no consequence. Christ, in the Reformer's
view, was humanity, our humanity ; and the grand function
and triumph of faith is to feel ourselves included in him, to
merge our individuahty, sins and all, in his comprehending
manhood and atoning obedience. Hence the stress which
Luther lays on " the well-applying the pronoun " our, in the
phrase, " who gave himself for our sins " ; " that this one
syllable being believed may swallow up all thy sins." The
effect of this realism on the theology of Luther has not been
sufficiently remarked. We believe it to be the key to much
that is obscure in his writings, and the secret source of his
antipathy to the Calvinistic type of the Reformation. Ab
sorption of Manhood into Christ, — distribution of Godhead
into humanity, — these were the correlative parts of his objec
tive belief, — Atonement and Eucharistic Real Presence : and
neither in themselves nor in their correspondence can they be
appreciated, without standing with him at the point of view
which we have endeavored to indicate.
Whether mediatorial rehgion shall continue to include in its
scheme some provision for dealing with God on behalf of men,
will mainly depend on the successful revival or the final aban
donment of the old reahstic modes of thought. Mr. Camp
bell's compromise with them, taking refuge with them for
illustration while disowning them in substance, answers no

176 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
logical or theological purpose at all. If he follows out the
natural tendencies and affinities of his faith, he must rest
exclusively at last in the other half of the doctrine, which
exhibits the dealing with man on behalf of God. In this best
sense mediatorial religion is imperishable, and imperishably
identified with Christianity. The Son of God, at once above
our hfe and in our life, morally divine and circumstantially
human, mediates for us between the self so hard to escape,
and the Infinite so hopeless to reach ; and draws us out of our
mournful darkness without losing us in excess of light. He
opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries of our existence,
appealing to a consciousness in us that was asleep before.
And though he leaves whole worlds of thought approachable
only by silent wonder, yet his own walk of heavenly com
munion, his words of grace and works of power, his strife of
divine sorrow, his cross of self-sacrifice, his reappearance
behind the veil of life eternal, fix on him such holy trust and
love, that, where we are denied the assurance of knowledge,
we attain the repose of faith.

HYE POINTS OP CHRISTIAN FAITH.

It is at all times difficult, even for the wisest, to describe
aright the tendencies of the age in which they live, and lay
down its bearings on the great chart of human affairs. Our
own sensations can give us no notice whither we are going ;
and the infinite life-stream on which we ride, restless as it is
with the surface-waves of innumerable events, reports noth
ing of the mighty current that sweeps us on, except by faint
and silent intimations legible only to the skilled interpreter of
heaven. It is something, however, to have the feeling that
we are moving, and to be awake and looking out ; and perhaps
there never was a period in which this consciousness was
more diffused throughout society than in our own. No one
can look up and around at the religious and social phenomena
of Christendom, without the persuasion that we are entering
a new hemisphere of the world's history, — a persuasion cor
roborated even by those who disclaim it, and who insist on
still steering by lights of tradition now sinking into the mists
of the receding horizon. Wherever we turn our eye, we dis
cover some symptom of an impending revolution in the forms
of Christian faith. The gross materialism and absolute unbe
lief diffused for the first time among vast masses of our popu
lation; the fast-spreading (and, as it appears to us, morbid)
dislike to look steadily at anything miraculous ; the extensive
renunciation, even among the religious classes on the Continent,
of historical Christianity ; the schisms and ever-new pecuhar-

178 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
ities which are weakening all sects, and, like seedlings of the
Reformation, are obscuring the species, by multiplying the va
rieties, of opinion ; the revived controversies, penetrating all
the great political questions of the age, between the ecclesi
astical and civil powers, — are not the only indications of
approaching theological change. That very conservatism
and recoil upon the high doctrine of an elder time, which is
manifest in every section of the Christian world, is a confes
sion by contrast of the same thing. For opinion does not
turn round and retreat into the past, till it has lost its natural
shelter in the present, and dreads some merciless storm in the
future. The outward strength which the older churches of
our country seem to be acquiring arises from the rallying of
alarm and the herding together of trembling sympathies ; and
though fear may unite men against external assaults upon in
stitutions, it cannot stop the decay of inward doubt. It would
seem as if Christianity was threatened by the mental activity
which it has itself created; as if the intellectual weapons
which have been forged and tempered by its skill were treach
erously turned against its life. It is vain, however, to strike
a power that is immortal ; nothing will fall but the bodily
form cast for a season around the imperishable spirit.
Protestantism, with all its blessings, has after all greatly
disfigured Christianity, by constructing it into a rigid meta
physical form, and setting it up on a narrow pedestal of anti
quarian proof ; — by destroying its infinite character through
definitions, and developing it dogmatically rather than spiritu
ally ; — by treating it, not as an ideal glory around the life of
man, but a logical incision into the psychology of God. The
wreck of systems framed under this false conception will but
leave the pure spirit of our religion in the enjoyment of a
more sacred homage; — you may dash the image, but you
cannot touch the god.
In the following remarks we shall seek to make this evi
dent ; — to show what principles of religion in general, and of
Christianity in particular, may be pronounced safe from the
shocks of doubt. In times of consternation and uncertainty,

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 179
it behooves each one to look within him for the heart of cour
age, and around him for the place of shelter, and to single
out, amid countless points of danger, some refuge immutable
and eternal. With this view, we propose to trace an outline
of Christian truths which we consider secure and durable as
our very nature ; — a chain of granite points rising, like the
rock of ages, above the shifting seas of human opinion. In
doing so, we shall be simply delineating Unitarian Christian
ity, according to our conception of it ; — expounding it, not as
a barren negation, but as a scheme of positive religion ; ex
hibiting both its characteristic faiths, and something of the
modes of thought by which they are reached.
I. In the first place, We have faith in the Moral Per
ceptions of Man. The conscience with which he is endowed
enables him to appreciate the distinction between right and
wrong ; to understand the meaning of " ought," and " ought
not "; to love and revere whatever is great and excellent in
character, to abhor the mean and base ; and to feel that in the
contrast between these we have the highest order of differen
ces by which mind can be separated from mind. And on this
consciousness, — the basis of our whole responsible existence,
— no suspicion is to be cast ; no lamentation over its fallibil
ity, no hint of possible delusion, is to pass unrebuked ; it is
worthy of absolute reliance as the authoritative oracle of our
nature, supreme over all its faculties, — entitled to use sense,
memory, understanding, to register its decrees, without a mo
ment's license to dispute them. That Justice, Mercy, and
Truth are good and venerable, is no matter of doubtful opin
ion, in which peradventure an error may be hid; — is not
even a thing of certain inference, recommended to us by the
force of evidence ; — is not an empirical judgment, depending
on the pleasurableness of these qualities, and capable of re
versal, if, under some tyrant sway, they were to be rendered
sources of misery. The approval which we award to them is
quite distinct from assent to a scientific probability ; the ex
cellence which we ascribe to them is not identical with their

180 FIVE points of christian faith.
command of happiness, but altogether transcends this, pre
cedes it, and survives it; the obligation they lay upon us is
not the consequence of positive law, human or divine, or in
any way the creature of superior will ; for all free-will must
itself possess a moral quality, — can never stir without exer
cising it, — and cannot therefore give rise to that which is a
prior condition of its own activity. And if (to pursue the
thought suggested above) we could be snatched away to some
distant world, some out-province of the universe, abandoned
by God's blessed sway to the absolutism of demons, where
selfishness and sensuality, and hate and falsehood, were pro
tected and enjoined by public law, it is clear that, by such
emigration, our interests only, and not our duties, would be
reversed ; and that to rebel and perish were nobler than to
comply and live.- The discernment of moral distinctions,
then, belongs to the very highest order of certainties ; it has
its seat in our deepest reason, among the primitive strata of
thought, on which the depositions of knowledge, and the accu
mulations of judgment, and the surface growths of opinion, all
repose. As experience in the .past has not taught it, experi
ence in the future cannot unteach it. The difference between
good and evil we cannot conceive to be merely relative, and
incidental to our point of view, — variable with the locality
and the class in which a being happens to rest, — an optical
caprice of the atmosphere in which we live ; — but rather a
property of the very light itself, found everywhere out of the
region of absolute night ; or, at least, a natural impression,
belonging to that perceptive eye of the soul, through which
alone we can look out, as through a glass, upon all beings and
all worlds ; and if any one will say that the glass is colored, it
is, at all events, the tint of nature, shed on it by the inefface
able art of the Creator. The modes in which we think of
moral qualities are not terrestrial peculiarities of idea, like
foreign prejudices ; the terms in which we speak of them are
not untranslatable provincial idioms, vulgarities of our plan
etary dialect, but are familiar, like the symbols of a divine
science, to every tribe of souls, belonging to the language of

five points of christian faith. 181
the universe, and standing defined in the vocabulary of God.
The laws of right are more necessarily universal than the
physical laws of force ; and if the same agency of gravitation
that governs the rain-drop determines the evolutions of the
sky, and the Principia of Newton would be no less intelligible
and true on the ring of Saturn than in the libraries of this
earth, — yet more certain is it that the principles of moral
excellence, truly expounded for the smallest sphere of respon
sibility, hold good, by mere extension, for the largest, and that
those sentiments of conscience which may give order and
beauty to the life of a child, constitute the blessedness of
immortals, and penetrate the administration of God. This is
what we intend, when we insist on implicit faith in the moral
perceptions of man. They are to be assumed by us as the
fixed station, the grand heliocentric position, whence our sur
vey of the spiritual universe must be made, and our system
of religion constructed. Whatever else may move, here, as
in creation's centre of gravity, we take our everlasting stand.
Whatever else be doubtful, these are to be simply trusted.
The force of certainty by which nature and God give them to
the conscience exceeds any by which, either through the un
derstanding or through external supernatural communication,
they might seem to be drawn away. No revelation could per
suade me that what I revere as just, and good, and holy, is
not venerable, any more than it could convince me that the
midnight heavens are not sublime.
There is nothing to move us from this position, in the ob
jection, that different men have different ideas of right and
wrong, and that the heroic deeds of one latitude are regarded
as the crimes of another. This moral discrepancy is, in the
first place, infinitely small in proportion to the moral agree
ment of mankind, so that it is even difficult to find many
striking examples of it ; and when the subject is mentioned,
everybody expects to hear the self-immolation of the Indian
widow, and other superstitions of the Ganges, adduced as the
standing illustrations. What, after all, are these eccentricities
of the moral sense, compared with the scale of its common
16

182 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
consent? As well might you deny the existence of an at
mosphere, because you have found the air exhausted from a
pump ! Where is the nation or the individual, without the rudi
ments, however imperfectly unfolded, of the same great ideas
of duty which we possess ourselves ? — where the language,
in which there are no terms to denote good and evil, — the
just, the brave, the merciful ? — where the tribe so barbarous
as not to listen, with earnest eye, to the story of the good
Samaritan ? And if such there were, should we not call
them a people but little human {inhuman), and deem them,
not the specimens, but the outlaws of our nature ? Moreover,
the variances of moral judgment are usually only apparent
and external. The action which one man pronounces wrong
and another right, is not the same, except upon the lips :
enter the minds of the two disputants, and you will find that
it is only half taken into the view of each, and presents to
them its opposite hemispheres ; no wonder that it shows the
darkness of guilt to the one, and the sunshine of virtue to the
other. And accordingly, these differences actually vanish as
the faculty of conscience unfoj-ds itself, and the scope of the
mind is enlarged. Like the discrepancies in the ideas which
men have of beauty, they exist principally between the un
cultivated and the refined: and the well-developed percep
tions of the best in all ages and countries visibly agree. Nay,
while yet the discordance lasts, it introduces no real doubt :
for heaven has established a moral subordination among men,
which reveals the real truth of our own nature. Do we not
always see, that the lower conscience bows before the higher ;
— that the heart, without light or heat itself, may be pierced,
as with a flash, by a sentiment darted from a loftier soul, and
own it to be "from above ; — that, simply by this natural
allegiance of the lesser to the nobler, classes and nations
and sects are raised in dignity and moral greatness ; — that
they, and they only, have had any grand and sublime exist
ence in the history of the world, who have been gifted with
power to create a new religion, — a fresh development of
what, is holy and divine ; — and that every one so endowed

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 183
has always gathered around him the multitudes ever praying
to be lifted above the level of their life, and blessing the
benefactor who wakes up the consciousness of their higher
nature ? And if so, the general direction of the moral senti
ment is the same, however its intensity may vary : and the
irregular indications which it gives are not due to any inherent
vacillation, but to the disturbing causes which deflect it from
the celestial line of simplicity and truth.
We keep our foot, then, on this primitive foundation, —
faith in the moral perceptions of man. We say, that we
know what we mean, when we affirm that a being is just,
pure, disinterested, merciful ; that these terms describe one
particular kind of character, and one only ; that they have
the same sense to whomsoever they are applied, and are not
to be juggled with, so as to denote quite opposite forms of
action and disposition, according as our discourse may be of
heaven or of earth ; that whenever they lose their ordinary
and intelligible signification, they become senseless ; and that
what would be wrong and odious in any one moral agent,
can be, under similar relations, right and lovely in no
other. These positions, which we take to be fundamental,
are in direct contradiction to the theological maxims with
which most churches begin ; — viz. that human nature is so
depraved that its conscience has lost its discernment, sees
everything through a corrupted medium, and deserves no
trust ; that it may surrender its convictions to anything
which can bring fair historical evidence of its being a revela
tion ; — in other words, that it may be right to throw away
our ideas of right, and, in obedience to antiquarian witnesses,
suppose it holy in God to design and execute a scheme
which it would be a crime in man to imitate. These prin
ciples are defended by the assertion, that the relations of
the Divine and the human being are so different as to de
stroy all the analogies of character between them. The only
tendency, both of this defence and of the principles them
selves, is to absolute scepticism ; — to atheistical scepticism,
inasmuch as our propositions respecting God, if not true in

184 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
the plain human sense, are to us true in no other, and repre
sent nothing ; to moral scepticism, inasmuch as, the sentiments
of conscience being exposed to distrust, and all its language
rendered unsettled, the very ground on which human char
acter must plant itself is loosened ; the rock of duty melts
into water beneath our feet, and we are cast into the waves
of impulse and caprice.
II. We have Faith in the Moral Perfection of God. This
indeed is a plain consequence of our reliance on the natural
sentiments of duty For it is not, we apprehend, by our
logical, but by our moral faculty, that we have our knowledge
of God ; and he who most confides in the instructor will learn
the sacred lesson best. That one whom we may call the
Holiest rules the universe, is no discovery made by the in
tellect in its excursions, but a revelation found by the con
science on retiring into itself; and though we may reason
in defence of this great truth, and these reasonings, when
constructed, may look convincing enough, they are not, we
conceive, the source, but rather the effect, of our behef, —
not the forethought which actually precedes and introduces
the Faith, but the afterthought by which Faith seeks to make
a friend and an intimate of the understanding. Does any
one hesitate to admit this, and think that our conceptions
of the Divine character are inferences regularly drawn from
observation, — not indeed observation on the mere physical
arrangements, but on the moral phenomena, of our world, —
from the traces of a regard to character in the administration
of human hfe ? We will not at present dispute the conclu
sion; but, observing that the premises which furnish it are
certain moral experiences, we remark that the very power of
receiving and appreciating these, of knowing what they are
worth, belongs not to our scientific faculty, but to our sense of
justice and of right. On a being destitute of this they would
make no impression ; and in precise proportion to the intensity
of this feeling will be the vividness and force of their per
suasion. And is it not plain in fact, that it is far from being

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 185
the clear and acute intellect, but rather the pure and trans
parent heart, that best discerns God ? How many strong.and
sagacious judgments, of coolest capacity for the just estimate
of argument, never attain to any deep conviction of a perfect
Deity ! Nay, how much does scepticism on this great matter
seem to be proportioned, not to the obtuseness, but rather to
the subtlety and searchingness of the mere understanding?
But when was it ever known that the singularly pure and
simple heart, the earnest and aspiring conscience, the lofty
and disinterested soul, had no faith in the " First fair and
the First good " ? Philosophy at its ease, apart from the
real responsibihties and strong battle of life, loses its diviner
sympathies, and lapses into the scrupulosity of doubt, and
from the centre of comfort weeps over the miseries of earth,
and the questionable benevolence of heaven ; while the prac
tically tried and struggling, with moral force growing beneath
the pressure of crushing toil, look up with a refreshing trust,
and with worn and bleeding feet pant happily along to the
abodes of everlasting love. The moral victor, flushed with
triumph over temptation, feels that God is on his side, and
that the spirit of the universe is in sympathy with his joy.
Never did any one spend himself in the service of man, and
yet despair of the benignity of God. Our faith, then, in the
Divine perfection, forms and disengages itself from the deeps
of conscience : and the Holiest that broods over us solemnly
rises — the awful spirit of eternity — from the ocean of our
moral nature.
It is in conformity with this doctrine of the moral origin
of our behef in the first principles of religion, that to every
man his God is his best and highest, the embodiment of that
which the believer himself conceives to be the greatest, The
image which he forms of that Being may indeed be gross and
terrible; and others may be shocked, and exclaim that he
trusts, not in a Divinity, but in a Fiend : but will the wor
shipper himself perceive and acknowledge this ? — will he not
indignantly deny it ? — will he not eagerly vindicate the per
fection of the Deity he serves ? He can do no otherwise ; for
16*

186 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
he discerns nothing more sublime, and cannot be convinced
that that is low which stands at the summit of his thoughts.
This uniform phenomenon in the history of religion could
not exist, if human faith were an inference of intellectual
origin. There would be nothing then to prevent some men,
in their reasonings on the probable character of God, from
assigning to that character a place beneath their own con
ceptions of what is most excellent ; and amid the infinite
varieties of speculation, many forms of this opinion would
undoubtedly arise. Let any one, then, who dissents from the
account which we have given, ask himself this question : Why
is it, that to discover a blemish in a divinity is the same
thing as to renounce faith in him ; and that, even in pagan
times, to assail the character of the gods was the constant
mark of an unbelieving age ? Is it not clear that, by a
constraining necessity of our being, we are compelled to
regard the godlike and the perfect as identical, and to look
to heaven through the eye of our moral nature ? The Intellect
alone, hke the telescope waiting for an observer, is quite blind
to the celestial things above it, — a dead mechanism dipped
in night, — ready to serve as the dioptric glass, spreading the
images of light from the Infinite on the tender and living
retina of Conscience.
If, then, there is no discernment of Deity except through
our moral sense, the importance of confiding in the percep
tions of that sense, — of rendering our consciousness of them
vivid and distinct, — and the corresponding mischief of dis
trusting and repudiating these our appointed instructors, —
become evident. Faith in the human conscience is neces
sary to faith in the Divine perfection : and this again is the
needful prelude to the belief in any special revelation. For,
unless we are first assured of the truth and excellence of
God, we cannot tell that his communications may not de
ceive us, giving us false notices of things, and agitating us
with illusory hopes and fears. This might be apprehended
from a Being of undetermined benevolence and integrity:
and that this idea of a mendacious revelation has never se-

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 187
riously entered the minds of men, is a strong proof of their
natural and necessary faith in the rectitude and goodness of
the Divine Administrator of creation. This Moral Perfec
tion of God being assumed as a postulate in the very idea of
a Revelation, no system of religion which contradicts it can
be admitted as credible on any terms.
Now the whole scheme of Redemption, as it is represented
in the popular theology, appears to us to fall under this
condemnation. Under the names of Justice, Sanctity, Mercy,
it ascribes to the All-perfect a course of sentiment and of
practice which — it is undeniable — no other moral agent,
placed in analogous relations, could adopt without the deepest
guilt. The Hohness of God, so often adduced to justify the
severities of this scheme, we would yield to no one in ear
nestly maintaining ; beheving, as we do, that his abhorrence
of moral evil is absolute and everlasting, his resistance to it
real and true, and his love of exceUence simply infinite as
his nature. But purity of mind does not express itself by
implacable vengeance against the impure, or oblige its pos
sessor to engage himself in physically smiting them, — much
less limit him through all eternity to this mode of adminis
tration. Rather does it incline away from a treatment which
too often adds only torment, and removes no guilt, — which
makes no advance towards the blessed dispositions it loves, —
which fevers and parches instead of cooling and melting the
passions of a culprit nature. It is a coarse and wretched
error to suppose that anguish is a specific for sin, to the
incessant infliction of which the Sinless is bound. God never
departs indeed from his devotion to the laws of goodness, and
his design of calling wider and wider virtue into existence :
but he pursues them with the fertility of his infinite free-will ;
— now by the severities of his displeasure, — now by the
openness of his forgiveness, — now by the solicitations of his
love. His purpose, as one whose perfection is not merely
spotless, but active and productive, cannot be, as some Chris
tians seem to say, the penal publication of his personal offence
against the insulters of his law, but the spread and cultivation

188 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
throughout his spiritual universe of pure and high affections :
and whenever the new germs of these appear in the garden
of the Lord, no vernal sunshine or summer dews can more
gently cherish the bursting flower, than does his mercy foster
the fair and early growth. The assertion that God cannot
pardon and recall to goodness till he has expended his tor
tures upon the evil, seems to us a plain denial of his moral
excellence. Theologians speak as if there were some crime,
or at least some weakness, in the clemency which freely
receives a repentant creature into favor; as if the mercy
which exacts no penalty, when penalty is no longer needed,
were an amiable imbecility of human nature, which only a
loose-principled and unholy being can exercise ! as if absolute
unforgiveness were the perfection of sanctity ! True, this
is disclaimed in words ; and the Eternal Father is called
merciful, for remitting the sinner's doom and transferring the
burden of his guilt to a victim divine and pure. But surely
this disclaimer is more insulting to our moral sense than the
accusation. For, either this transference of righteousness
and guilt is a mere figure of speech, denoting only that, from
the death on Calvary, God took chronological occasion to
pass his own spontaneous pardon, and set up the cross to
mark the date of his volition ; or else, if the vicariousness be
not this mere pretence, it describes an outrage upon the first
principles of rectitude, a reckless disregard of all moral con
siderations, from the thought of which we are astonished
that all good men do not recoil.
We press once more the question which has never been
answered : How is the alleged immorality of letting off the
sinner mended by the added crime of penally crushing the
Sinless ? Of what man — of what angel — could such a thing
be reported, without raising a cry of indignant shame from
the universal human heart ? What should we think of a
judge who should discharge the felons from the prisons of
a city, because some noble and generous citizen offered him
self to the executioner instead ? And if this would be bar
barity below, it cannot be holiness above. Moral excellence

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 189
and beauty, we repeat, are no local growths, changing their
species with every clime ; nor are the poisonous weeds of this
outer region the chosen adornments of paradise. The prin
ciples of Justice and Right embrace all beings and all times,
and, like the indestructible conception of space, attach them
selves to our contemplation of objects within the remotest
infinitude. It is no more possible that what would be evil in
man should be good in God, than that a circle on earth
should be a square in heaven. Having faith, then, in the
absolute perfection of our Creator, we dare ascribe to Him
nothing which revolts the secret conscience He has given us.
III. The relation which thus subsists between the human
conscience and the Divine excellence leads us to avow, in
the next place, a faith in the strictly Divine and Inspired
Character of our own highest Desires and best Affections.
We do not mean by this, that these affections are of miracu
lous origin ; that their appearance breaks through any regular
law ; or that they do not belong to our own nature so as to
form an integrant part of its history ; or that they do not
arise spontaneously within it, but require to be precipitated
upon it from without. They are as much properties of our
own minds, as our selfishness and sin : we are conscious of
them, and so they cannot but be parts of our personality.*
* Perhaps we should rather say, " they cannot be alien to our nature."
The word personality is used by philosophical writers to denote that
which is peculiar, as well as essential, to our individual self. In this strict
sense the moral and spiritual affections are impersonal, according to the doc
trine of the context, which treats them as constituting a participation in the
Divine nature. The metaphysical reader will perhaps perceive here a re
semblance to the theory of Victor Cousin, who maintains that the will — the
free and voluntary activity — of the human being is the specific faculty in
which alone consists his personality; and that the intuitive reason by
which we have knowledge of the unlimited and absolute Cause, as well as
of ourselves and the universe as related effects, is independent and imper
sonal, — a faculty not peculiar to the subject, but " from the bosom of con
sciousness extending to the Infinite, and reaching to the Being of beings."
" Reason," observes this philosopher, " is intimately connected with person
ality and sensibility, but it is neither the one nor the other: and precisely
because it is neither the one nor the other, because it is in us without being

190 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
But in admitting them to be human, I do not deny that they
are divine : in regarding them as indigenous to our created
spirit, I do not treat them as foreign to the Creator's ; nor is
there any inconsistency in believing them to be simultaneously
domesticated with both. That which is included within the
mind of man, is not therefore excluded from the mind of God;
much less is it true that occurrences agreeable to the order of
nature are, by that circumstance, disqualified from being held
the immediate products of the Heavenly Will. The Supreme
Cause, so far from being shut out by his own secondary causes
and natural laws, has now at least no residence, no activity,
no existence, except within them ; He covers, penetrates, fills
them ; thinks, speaks, executes, through them, as the media of
his volition : and His energy and theirs not only may coincide,
but even must coalesce He is not to be brought down from
his universal dominion to the rank of one of the physical
causes active in creation, doing that only which the others
have left undone. Will any one stand with me by the mid
night sea, and, because the tides in the deep below hang upon
the moon in the heavens above, forbid me to hear in their
sweep the very voice of God, and tell me that, while they

ourselves, does it reveal to us that which is not ourselves, — objects beside
the subject itself, and which lie beyond its sphere." At the opposite pole to
this doctrine, which makes the perceptions of " Reason " a part of the ac
tivity of God, lies the system of Kant and Fichte, which represents God as
an ideal formation, — it may be, therefore, a. fiction, — arising from the ac
tivity of the " Reason." This faculty is treated by these German philoso
phers as merely subjective and personal ; its perceptions, even when they
seem to go beyond itself, are known only as internal conditions and results
of self-activity ; its beliefs, though inevitable to itself, are simply relative,
and have no objective validity. The faiths and affections which this system
regards as purely human, are considered by the other as divine. The doc
trine maintained above, though resembling that of Kant in one or two of
its phrases, far more nearly approaches that of Cousin in its spirit. It is
scarcely necessary to observe that, in this note, the word " Reason " is used,
not as equivalent to " Understanding," but in the German sense so long ren
dered familiar to the English reader by the writings of Mr. Coleridge. It
includes, therefore, (in its two senses of " Speculative " and " Practical,") the
" Moral Perceptions " and " Primitive Faiths of the Conscience," spoken of
in the text.

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 191
roll untired on, He sleeps through the silent vault around me ?
It is by the law of gravitation that the planets find an un
erring track in the desert space ; and is it false, then, that
He " leadeth them forth with his finger," and bids us note, in
pledge of his punctuality, that " not one faileth " ? Is there
any error in ascribing the very same event at one time to
gravitation, at another to God ? Certainly not ; for this is
but one of the forms of his personal activity. And it is the
same in the world of Mind ; its natural laws do not exclude,
but, on the contrary, include, the direct Divine agency : and
though my thought, or hope, or love, cannot be yours, they
may yet be God's ; not emanations from the God without
us, but inspirations of the God within. Why should we
start to think that there is a part of us which is divine ? —
why image to ourselves a distant, external, contemplative
God, seeing all things and touching nothing, gazing on the
unconscious evolutions of things, as the retired Mechanist of
nature ? — why enthrone Him in the inertness of dead space,
without even a sacred function there, and exclude Him from
the tried, and tempted, and ever-trembling soul of Man ? If
we found Him not at home in the secret places of strife and
sorrow, vainly should we wander to seek Him in the colder
regions of nature abroad. We have no sympathy with any
system which denies the doctrine of a Holy Spirit; which
discerns nothing divine in the higher experiences of human
nature ; which owns no black abyss and no heavenly heights
in the soul of man, but only a flat, common, midway region,
neither very foul nor very fair, — well enough for the streets
of traffic, but without a mount of vision and of prayer. Noth
ing noble, nothing great, has ever come from a faith which
did not deeply reverence the soul, and stand in awe of it as
the seat of God's own dweUing, the presence-chamber of his
sanctity, — the focus of that infinite whispering-gallery which
the universe spreads around us.
Nor can we doubt at what point of our own nature we
must stand, in order to hear the voice and feel the inspira
tion of the Eternal. The pure in heart — each in propor-

192 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
tion to his purity — see Him. Our Conscience, our Moral
Perceptions, as we have seen, are our only revealers of God.
In proportion to their clearness do we discern Him ; and
behind the clouds that obscure them, He becomes dim, and
vanishes away. The aspirations of duty, the love of excel
lence, the disinterested and holy affections, of which every
good heart is conscious, constitute our affinity with Him, —
by which we know Him, as like knows like : they are the
expression of his mind, the pencil of rays by which He paints
his image on our spiritual nature. God is related to our
soul, like the sun in a stormy sky to the windowed cells in
which mortals live ; and as we sit at our work in the cham
ber of conscience or of love, the burst of brilliancy or the
sudden gloom within reports to us the clear-shining or the
cloud of the heaven without. Nor can any philosophy,
falsely so called, permanently expel this conviction from the
Christian heart. Every devout and earnest mind naturally
feels that its selfishness and sin are of the earth, earthy, —
the most offensive of all attitudes to God, — the infatuated
turning of the back to Him : and, on the other hand, wel
comes the fresh glow of pure Resolve, the heart-felt sob of
Penitence, the glorious Courage that slays Temptation at his
feet, — each as the gracious gift of a divine strength, and the
authentic voice of the Inspirer, God. By this natural faith
(natural, however, only to the Christian mind) we are pre
pared to abide ; and, with the Apostle Paul, to own ourselves,
not without deep awe, the very temple of the Holiest.
IV. We have said, that in the Conscience and Moral Af
fections we have our only revealers of God. Let it be un
derstood that we mean our only internal revealers of Him ;
the only faculty of our nature capable of furnishing us with
the idea and behef of Him, with any perception of his char
acter, and allegiance to his will. We mean to state that,
without this faculty, the bare intellect, the mere scientific
and reasoning power, could make no way towards the knowl
edge of divine realities ; could never, by any system of helps

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 193
whatsoever, be trained or guided into this knowledge, any
more than, in the absence of the proper sense, the ear of
the blind can be taught to see ; and that nature, life, history,
miracle, notwithstanding their most sedulous discipline, would-
leave us utterly in the dark about religion, except so far as
they addressed themselves to our consciousness of what is
holy, just, beautiful, and great. But we do not mean to state
that the Moral Sense can stand alone, dispense with all out
ward instruction, and supply a man with a natural religion
ready made. Nor do we mean that the every-day experience
of man, and the ordinary providence of God, are enough,
without special revelation, to lead us to heavenly truth. And
we are therefore prepared to advance another step, and to say,
that, while regarding the human conscience as the only inward
revealer of God, we have faith in Christ as his perfect and
transcendent outward revelation. We conceive that Jesus of
Nazareth hved and died, not to persuade the Father, not to
appease the Father, not to make a sanguinary purchase from
the Father, but simply to " show us the Father " ; to leave
upon the human heart a new, deep, vivid impression of what
God is in himself, and of what he designs for his creature,
man ; to become, in short, the accepted interpreter of heaven
and life. And this he achieved, in the only way of which we
can conceive as practicable, by a new disclosure in his own
person of all that is holy and godlike in character, — startling
the human soul with the sudden apparition of a being diviner
far than it had yet beheld, and lifting its faith at once into
quite another and purer region. If it be true, as we have
ventured to affirm, that to every man his God is his best, you
can by no means give to his faith a higher God, till you have
given to his heart a better best, — till you have touched him
with a profounder sense of sanctity and excellence, and puri
fied and enlarged the perceptions of his conscience. Nor can
you do this, except by presenting him with nobler models,
with the living form of a fairer and sublimer goodness, visibly
transcending every object of his previous reverence. No
verbal teaching, no didactic rules, oan transform any man's
17

194 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
moral taste, and place before his mental view a lovelier and
truer image of perfection : as well might you hope, by defi
nition, and precept, and book-wisdom, to train an artist with a
soul like Raffaelle, or an eye like Claude. But only give the
glorious model to the mind, produce the most finished excel
lence and harmony, and our instinctive sympathy with good
ness feels and discerns it instantly, and, though unable to
conceive it inventively beforehand, recognizes it reverently
afterwards. And so Christ, standing in solitary greatness,
and invested with unapproachable sanctity, opens at once the
eye of conscience to perceive and know the pure and holy
God, the Father that dwelt in him and made him so full of
truth and grace. Him that rules in heaven we can in no
wise believe to be less perfect than that which is most divine
on earth ; of anything more perfect than the meek yet majestic
Jesus, no heart can ever dream. And, accordingly, ever since
he visited our earth with blessing, the soul of Christendom has
worshipped a God resembling him, — a God of whom he was
the image and impersonation ; — and, therefore, not the God
of which philosophy dreams, — a mere Infinite physical Force,
without spirituality, without love, chiefly engaged in whirling
the fly-wheel of nature, and sustaining the material order
of the heavens, and weaving in the secret workshop of
creation new textures of life and beauty; not the God of
which natural theology speaks, the mere chief of ingenious
mechanicians, more optical, and dynamical, and architec
tural, than our most skilful engineers, — a cold intellectual
Being, in the severe immensity and immutabihty of whose
mind all warm emotions are absorbed and dissolved ; not the
God of Calvinism, creating a race with certain foresight of
the eternal damnation of the many, and against the few re
fusing to relax his frown except at the spectacle of blood ; —
but the Infinite Spirit, so holy, so affectionate, so pitiful, whom
Jesus felt to be in him as his Inspirer ; who passes by no
wounds of sin or sorrow ; who stills the winds and waves of
terror, to the perishing that call on him in faith ; who stops
the procession of our grief, and bids bereaved affection weep

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 195
no more, but wait upon the voice that even the dead obey ;
who scathes the hypocrite with the hghtning of conviction,
and permits the penitent to wash his feet with tears ; who
reckons most his own the gentlest follower, that rests the
head and turns up the trustful eye on him ; and bends that
look of piercing love upon the guilty which best rebukes the
guilt. Jesus has given us a faith never held before, and still
too much obscured, in the affectionateness of the Great Ruler ;
has made Him our own domestic God, whose ample home
encircles all, leaving not the solitary, the sinner, or the sad
without a place in the mansions of his house ; has wrapped
us in the Divine immensity without fear, and bid us claim
the warm sun in heaven as our Paternal hearth, and the
vault of the pure sky as our protecting roof.
We have spoken of Christ's personal representation, in
his own character and practical hfe, of the spirit of the Di
vine Mind, and have explained how in this way we believe
that he has " shown us the Father." This, however, is not
all. His direct teachings, perfectly in harmony with his life,
confirm and extend its lessons ; and we listen, with venerat
ing faith, to his inimitable exposition of all divine truth.
Purity of soul makes the most wonderful discoveries in heav
enly things, and is indeed the pellucid atmosphere through
which the remoter hghts of God are " spiritually discerned."
As we have said, the knowledge of him which any mind (be
it of man or of angel) may possess, is just proportioned to
its sanctity : and our Messiah, having the very highest sanc
tity, was enabled to speak with the highest and most au
thoritative knowledge, and was inspired to be our infallible
guide, not perhaps in trivial questions of literary interpre
tation, or scientific fact, or historical expectation, but in all
the deep and solemn relations on which our sanctification
and immortal blessedness depend. And both to his person
and to his teachings do the miracles of his life, the tragedy
of his crucifixion, and the glory of his resurrection, articu
lately call the attention of all ages, as with the voice of
God. In every way we discern in Christ the transcendent

196 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
revelation of the Most High. We are told, that this is to
dishonor Christ. We think it, however, a more glorious
honor to him, to be thus indissolubly folded within the in
timacy of the Father's love, than to be blasted by the tempest
of his wrath ; nor could we ever trust and venerate a God
who — like the barbarians in the judgment-hall — could
smite that meek lamb of heaven with one rude blow of
vengeance. V. But we hasten to observe, finally, that we have faith
in Human Immortality, as exemplified in the heavenly life
to which Jesus ascended. To assure us of this great truth,
it were enough that Jesus assumed and taught it ; that it
was his great postulate, essential to the development of his
own character, and to all his views of the purposes of life, —
an integrant part of his insight into human responsibility
and his version of human duty. For if he did not teach the
reality of God in this matter, sure we are that none else has
ever done so ; and most of all, that the sceptics who doubt
the heavenly futurity have no claim to take his place as
our instructors. For if this hope were a delusion, who would
the mistaken be ? Will any one tell me, that the voluptuary,
who, from abandonment to the body, cannot imagine the
perpetuity of the spirit ; — that the selfish, who, looking at
the meanness of his own nature, sees nothing worth immor
talizing ; — that the contented Epicurean, who, in prudent
quietude of sense and sympathy, finds adequate satisfaction
in this mortal hfe ; — that the cold speculator, who looks at
the fouler side of human nature, and, showing us on its
features the pallor of sensualism or the hard lines of guilt,
deems it less fit for the duration of the angel than for the
extinction of the brute ; — that these men are right ; while
Christ, who walked without despair through the deepest
haunts of sin, with faith that succumbed not to wretchedness
and wrong, but stood up and conquered them ; who em
braced our whole nature in his love, and displayed it in its
perfectness ; who lived and died in its utmost service, with

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 197
prayers and tears and blood ; to whom our most binding
affections cling almost with worship as the holiest glory of
our world ; — that he could be under a delusion here ? — that
when, sinking in trustful death, he laid his meek head to
rest on the bosom of the Father, he was cast off, and dropped
on the cold clod ? — that he sobbed into the Infinite by night
with a vain love that met no answer ? — that God rather
takes part in his providence with the mean-souled, the
cynic, the morbid, the selfish? There is no greater impos
sibility than this, on which evidence can fall back. Nay,
we confess that, even apart from his doctrine, the mere
mortal history of Christ would have settled with us the ques
tion of futurity. For the great essential to this belief is a
sufficiently elevated estimate of human nature : no man will
ever deny its immortality who has a deep impression of its
capacity for so great a destiny. And this impression is so
vividly given by the life of Jesus, — he presents an image
of the soul so grand, so divine, — as utterly to dwarf all the
dimensions of its present career, and to necessitate a heaven
for its reception. At all events, it is allowable to feel this,
when we see that this natural sequel was actually and per
ceptibly appended ; that this " Holy One of God could not
see corruption," but rose, above the reach of mortal ill, to
the world where now he welcomes the souls of the sainted
dead. That other hfe we take to be a scene for the
mind's ampler and ampler development, apart from those
animal and selfish elements which now deform and degrade
it by their excess. And this alone, if there were nothing
else, would render it a life of awful retribution. For to the
wicked, what is this loss of " the natural man," but total
bereavement and utter death of joy ? — what to the good, but
ra glad and sacred birth ? — to the one, a Promethean exile
on a mid-rock in the ocean of night, under the bite of a
remorse that gnaws impalpably, felt always, but never seen,
— to the other, a welcome to the loving homes of the blest,
amid the sunshine of the everlasting hills ? Yet precisely
because we beheve in Retribution, do we trust in Restoration.
17*

198 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
The very abhorrence with which a man's better mind ever
looks upon his worse, while it inflicts his punishment, begins
his cure : and we can never allow that God will suspend this
natural law impressed by himself on our spiritual constitu
tion, merely in order to stop the process of moral recovery,
and specially enable him to maintain the eternity of torment
and of sin. And so, beyond the dark close of life rise before
us the awful contrasts of retribution ; and in the farther dis
tance, the dim but glorious vision of a purified, redeemed, and
progressive universe of souls.
Here, then, are our Five Points of Christianity, considered
as a system of positive rehgious doctrine, viz.: — 1st. The
truth of the Moral Perceptions in man, — not, as the de
generate churches of our day teach, their pravity and blind
ness ; 2dly. The Moral Perfection of the character of God, —
in opposition to the doctrine of his Arbitrary Decrees and
Absolute Self-will ; 3dly. The Natural awakening of the
Divine Spirit within us, — rather than its Preternatural
communication from without; 4thly. Christ, the pure Image
and highest Revelation of the Eternal Father, — not his Vic
tim and his Contrast ; 5thly. A universal Immortality after
the model of Christ's heavenly life; an immortality not of
capricious and select salvation, with unimaginable torment as
the general lot, but, for all, a hfe of spiritual development,
of retribution, of restoration.
To the Moral doctrine which, in our view, the Gospel
conjoins with this rehgious system, it is impossible for us
at present to advert. Suffice to say that, with Paul, we ex
claim, " not Law, but Love " : — love to God, to Christ, not
simply for what they have done for us, but chiefly for what
they are in themselves ; — nothing like the narrow-hearted..
gratitude for an exclusive salvation, but a moral affection
awakened by their holiness, rectitude, truth, and mercy, —
by the sublimity and spirituahty of their designs, and the
sanctity and fidelity of their, execution : love also to man,
looking to him not merely as a sentient being who is to

FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 199
be made happy, but as a child of God, who is to be raised
into some likeness to the Divine image ; as a brother spirit,
noble in nature, even though sinful in fact, glorious as an
immortal in the eye of God, though disfigured by this world's
hardship or contempt.
Does any one ask, where we get our system of faith and
morals ? What are the principles of reasoning which we
apply to nature and Scripture to extract it thence? The
reply would require a volume of exposition. Suffice it to
say, that we think we have full warrant for this belief from
the Scriptures of the New Testament, with which alone we
conceive that Christians have any practical concern; that,
in interpreting these Scriptures, we follow the same rules
which we should apply to any other books ; that not even
could their instructions make us false to that sense of right
and wrong which God has breathed into us ; that if they
taught respecting him anything unjust or unholy, we should
not accept it, but reject them ; and that, as to the points of
faith on which we have dwelt, some receive these truths
because they were taught by Christ ; others receive Christ
because he taught these truths.
On this faith we desire to take our stand, with the firmness,
but without the ferocity, of the first Reformers. Opposing
churches tell us, we " are so frigid " ! Why, it is the very
thing our own hearts had often said to us ; for there is noth
ing that so promptly rebukes the coldness of our nature as
the warmth of our faith. We do not, however, much ad
mire this mutual criticism of each other's temperature ; and
strongly suspect the reality of that earnestness which prides
itself on its own intensity. We must not propose to assume
any artificial heats, in order to spite and disprove this fre
quent accusation ; but be resolved, in an age diseased with
pretence, to remain realities, to profess nothing which we do
not believe, to withhold nothing whereon we doubt, to affect
nothing which we do not feel, to promise nothing which we
will not do ; holding, with Paul, that simplicity and sincerity
are truly the godliest of things. With Heaven's good help,

200 FIVE POTNTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.
may we bear our testimony thus ; deeming it a small thing
to be judged by man's judgment ; and, with such light and
heat as God shall put into our hearts, delivering over our
portion of truth to generations that will give it a more genial
welcome. There is greatness in a faith, when it can win a
wide success or make rapid conquest over submissive minds.
There is a higher greatness in a faith that, when God ordains,
can stand up and do without success ; — unmoved amid the
pitiless storms of a fanatic age ; with foot upon the rock of its
own fidelity, and heart in the serene Infinite above the canopy
of cloud and tempest.

CREED AND HERESIES OF EARLY CHRIS-
TIANITY.

1. 'Clpiyevovs QiKocrocpov/ieva rj Kara TvacaiV alpeo-eoiv eXeyxos.
Origenis Philosophumena sive omnium hceresium refutatio.
E codice Parisino nunc primum edidit Emmanuel Miller.
Oxonii: e Typographeo Academico. 1851.
2. Hippolytus and his Age ; or the Doctrine and Practice of
the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Se-
verus ; and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity
compared. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen,
D.OL. In Four Volumes. London. 1852.
When a stranger knocks at the gate of the Clarendon
Printing-house, and presents his petition for aid, the Univer
sity of Oxford maintains its national character for good-na
tured opulence, — gives its money and signs its name, without
very close inquiry into the case. The documents are really
so respectable that there cannot be much amiss ; and a vener
able institution, well known to be fond of the house, cannot be
expected to go trudging through the back-lanes of history, and
exposing its nostrils in the purlieus of heresy, in order to
identify a literary petitioner, evidently above all common im
posture. So it supphes all his wants upon the spot, dresses
him handsomely, and sends him out into the world as its wor
thy (though eccentric) friend, the catechist of Alexandria.
The introduction, being left at the Prussian Legation, falls

202 creed and heresies
into the hands of no stay-at-home benefactor, but of one who
knows the by-ways of human life, and has an ear for the di
alects of many a place. M. Bunsen — as Oxford might have
remembered — is not unacquainted with Egypt ; and no soon
er does he raise his eyes from the credentials to the person of
the stranger, than he discovers him to be no disciple of the
Alexandrine Clement ; recognizes the accent of the West ; is
reminded of the voice of Irenseus ; and, finally, being even
more familiar with the Tiber than the Nile, detects a Roman
beneath the mask of Origen. We do not in the least grudge
the friend of Niebuhr the honor of a discovery which no one
could turn to more effectual account ; but every English schol
ar must feel mortified that the Imprimatur of our great Ec
clesiastical University should appear on a title-page manifestly
false ; that the first reader should see at a glance what the
learned proprietors had missed ; and that their Editio Prin-
ceps of a recovered monument of Church antiquity should be
superseded within a year or two of its pubhcation. They are
not principals, it is true, but only secondaries to the Editor, in
the commission of this error : still, a lay bibliographer might
reasonably expect, in resorting for aid to so renowned and
reverend a body, that his own judgment would be kept in
check ; and their very consent to issue the work implies some
critical opinion of its value, as derived from age and author
ship. Whether they are called upon to adopt at once M.
Bunsen's proposed title-page, and substitute the name of Hip
polytus for that of Origen, we will not say ; but that the pres
ent title gives the book to the wrong author, seems placed
beyond the reach of doubt.
M. Emmanuel Miller, one of the curators of the National
Library in Paris, was the first to make himself acquainted
with the contents of this work, and to appreciate their impor
tance. Among the manuscripts under his care was one on
cotton paper of the fourteenth century, which had been
brought from Mount Athos in 1842, by M. Mynoides Mynas,
a Greek agent employed by the French government to
search the neglected treasures of that celebrated spot. The

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 203
superscription, " On all Heresies," was not inviting ; but on
turning over the leaves, some lines, unknown before, of Pin
dar and of another lyric poet, were found and copied ; and the
value of these excerpts being ascertained, M. Miller's atten
tion was directed to the body of the treatise containing them.
The treatise had already been described, in the Moniteur of
the 5 th of January, 1844, as a Refutation of all Heresies, in
ten books, but with the first three missing, as well as the con
clusion of the whole ; and he soon became aware, that, of the
three missing books, the first already existed, and had been
printed under the name of " Philosophumena," in the edi
tions of Origen's works. Its very title is found in the manu
script at the end of the fourth book, and denotes that the por
tion of the work there concluded completes the sketch of phi
losophical systems, which the author prefixes to his account of
ecclesiastical aberrations ; and there are mutual references,
backwards and forwards, between the printed book and the
manuscript, which leave no doubt that the latter is a sequel
to the former. The Editor, therefore, has very properly re
printed the " Philosophumena " as the commencement of the
newly recovered work; which thus exhibits a regular plan,
and consists of two parts, viz. : first, four books, — of which
the second and third are lost, — expounding the Pagan phi
losophies, especially the Greek, from which, the author con
tends, the various heresies of Christendom are mere plagia
risms ; then six books, containing an account, in an order pre
vailingly historical, of thirty or thirty-two heresies, supported
by extracts from their standard writings, and wound up in the
recapitulary book at the end by the writer's own profession of
faith. Now who is the author ?
Not Origen ; for, as Huet had already remarked respecting
the " Philosophumena," the writer speaks of himself in terms
implying an episcopal position; and, in the ninth book, he
gives an account of transactions in Rome, extending over
many years, in which he was evidently an eyewitness and an
actor. While the scene is thus laid at a distance from Ori
gen's sphere, and the date also of the personal matter runs

204 CREED AND HERESIES
back into his boyhood, the cast of the theological doctrine is
wholly different from his ; for instance, in a certain " Treatise
on the Universe," to which the author refers as his own, and
of which a fragment is preserved, the penal condition of the
wicked after death is said to be immutable ; * but Origen, it is
well known, taught a doctrine of final restoration. Add to
this, that no such work as the present is attributed to Origen
by any ancient witness, and the case against his name may be
regarded as complete.
The evidence which disappoints this claim narrows also our
choice of others. The personal transactions to which we
have referred took place at Rome, while Zephyrinus and his
successor, Callistus, presided over the Christian community
there, that is, during the first twenty years of the third cen
tury. We must, therefore, look for our author among the
metropolitan clergymen of that period. Still closer is the cir
cle drawn by the fact, that the writer largely borrows from
the treatise of Irenasus on the same subject ; and, though vast
ly improving on that foolish production, and copiously contrib
uting fresh materials, betrays the general affinity of thought
which unites the stronger disciple with the feebler master.
The problem then being to find a pupil of the Bishop of
Lyons among the ecclesiastics of Rome, at the beginning of
the third century, two names are given in as answering the
conditions, — those of Hippolytus, a suburban clergyman, and
of Caius, whose charge lay within the city itself. In order to
vindicate the claim of the first, it has been necessary for M.
Bunsen to prove that his locality is right ; and that the " Por-
tus Roma?," of which he was bishop, was not, as Le Moyne
* to'is pev ev jrpd|acn SiKala>s rrju dtBiov awoXavcrtv Trapao-^oVror,
rdls Be twv <pav\aw epacrrals ttjv alavtov KoXacriv dirovei fiavros. Kat
rovrois pei> to irvp ao~/3eo-roi> Biapevei Kat dreXevTerov, o-/ca>Ae£ Be Tis
eptrvpoe, prj reXevrSiv, p;8e crcopa Bia<p6elpa>v, airavcrrco Be oBCvrj e<
o-aparos eKJUpaccraiv irapapevei. Tovtovs ov^ vttvos avaTvavaei, ov
vv!^ naprjyoprjO'ei, ou Bavaros rr/s KoXacreas dnoXvo-ei, ov irapdKkrjcris
ovyyev£>v peo-irevo-avrav cVjjo-ci. S. Hippol. adv. Graecos. Fabricii Hipp.
Op. p. 222.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 205
and Cave had groundlessly supposed, the Arabian "Portus
Romanus " of the district of Aden, but the new harbor made,
or at least enlarged, by Trajan, on the northern bank of the
Tiber, immediately opposite to Ostia. That he suffered mar
tyrdom there, and was buried in a cemetery on the Tiburtine
road, is generally admitted, on the evidence of Prudentius,
who has left a poem describing his memorial chapel on that
spot, and of a statue of him, seated in a cathedra, which was
dug up there three hundred years ago, and now stands in the
library of the Vatican. It is certainly perplexing to find Je
rome avowing ignorance of the see over which he presided, if,
for a quarter of a century, he was active at the centre of the
Christian world ; and not less so to discover in Rome itself,
nay, in a Pope, or his transcriber, at the end of the fifth cen
tury, the impression that his scene of labor had been in Ara
bia ; and under the influence of these facts it has been sup
posed that though, coming to Italy, he had fallen among the
martyrs of the West, he ought to be reckoned among the
bishops of the East. On the whole, however, the reasons
preponderate in favor of his residence, as " Episcopus Portu-
ensis," within the presbytery of Rome. The title itself is an
old one, still always assigned to some dignitary of the curia,
and, no doubt, deriving its origin from the time when the
Northern Harbor of the Tiber — of which in the ninth cen
tury, scarce a trace was left — was a flourishing emporium.
The name of Hippolytus is associated by tradition with the
spot ; it is given, our author assures us, to a certain tower,
near Fiumicino ; and in the eighth and ninth centuries, a basil
ica of St. Hippolytus was restored at Portus by Leo III. and
IV. An episcopal palace still remains. By acute and skilful
combinations, effected with evidence scanty as a whole, and
suspicious in every part, M. Bunsen has endeavored to re
produce the historical image of Hippolytus. His office of
" bishop " implied simply the charge of the single congrega
tion at Portus ; the members of that congregation were the
" plebs " committed to his supervision ; the city or village in
which they hved was his diocese. His vicinity to the great
18

206 CREED AND HERESIES
capital drew him, however, into a wider circle of duties. For
while Rome itself was divided into several ecclesiastical dis
tricts, each of which had its own clergyman and lay deacons,
the suburban bishops were associated with these officers to
form a committee of management, or presbytery, presided
over by the metropolitan. By his seat at this board, he was
kept in living contact with all the most stirring interests of
Christendom, which, wherever their origin might be, found
their way to the imperial city, and more and more sought
their equilibrium there. At a commercial seaport, his own
congregation would largely consist of temporary settlers and
mercantile agents, Greek brokers, Jewish bankers, African
importers, to whom Italy was a lodging-house rather than a
home ; and by the continual influx of foreigners he would
hear tidings of the remotest churches, and carry to the cleri
cal meetings in the city the newest gossip of all the heresies.
Possibly this position, with its opportunities of various inter
course, may have contributed to form in him the agreeable ad
dress, and faculty of eloquent speech, which tradition ascribes
to him ; and induced him to commence the practice of writing
with studious care the homilies which were to be delivered in
the congregation. At all events he is the first of whom we
distinctly hear as a great preacher. His period extends, it is
supposed, from the reign of Commodus (180 - 193) to the first
year of Maximin (235 — 6) ; and so brought him into the
same presbytery-room with five popes, — Victor (187 — 198) ;
Zephyrinus (201 - 218) ; Callistus (219 - 222) ; Urbanus
(223 - 230) ; and Pontianus (230 - 235) ; with the last of
whom he shared, in the last year of his life, a cruel exile to
Sardinia, and returned only to fall a victim to fresh informa
tions, and suffer martyrdom by drowning in a canal. It can
not be denied that, in order to recover this picture of Hip
polytus, and still more in order to fix his literary position, the
materials of evidence have to be dealt with in somewhat
arbitrary fashion, and their lacunce to be filled by conjecture.
Prudentius, for instance, is called as an historical witness, yet
convicted of fable in much of what he says. His poem

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 207
declares that at one time Hippolytus had supported Novatus
in his attempt to close the gates of repentance against the
Lapsi, but had been reconciled to the catholic doctrine before
he died. He must in this case have joined in the opposition
raised by Novatianus (in 251) to the election of Cornelius to
the papacy, and have died in the Decian persecution, which
continued till the year 257. Moreover, the painting seen by
the Spanish versifier on the walls of the memorial chapel
introduces us to so ridiculous a story, as only to show how
completely the martyrological legends had already escaped all
the restraints of history. In this fresco the mythical fate of
Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, is transferred to the Roman
presbyter : he 6 represented as torn to pieces by horses ;
while the faithful follow to pick up his limbs and hair, and
sponge away the blood upon the ground. If the sanctuary
exhibiting this scene received the martyr's remains from their
original resting-place as early as the time of Constantine, —
and such is our author's opinion, — into what a state of degra
dation had the history of Hippolytus sunk in three quarters
of a century ! And if already memorial painting could thus
impudently lie, how can we better trust the statue, admitted
to be later still ? Yet this statue, on whose side is a list of
the writings of Hippolytus, is appealed to in determining the
martyr's written productions, as the painted chapel in evidence
of facts in his personal career. We fully admit the success
of M. Bunsen in eliciting a possible result from a mass of
intricate and tangled conditions, and presenting us with a
highly interesting personage. But perhaps, as the venerable
image of the good bishop has grown in clearness before his
eye, and attracted his affection more and more, the very
vividness of the conception may have rendered him insensible
to the precariousness of the proof. Ecclesiastical fancy, in its
unrestrained career, has torn his personality to pieces, and
left the disjecta membra so rudely scattered on the strand of
history, that we almost doubt the power of any critical iEscu-
lapius to restore him to the world again.
At the same board of church councillors with Hippolytus

208 CREED AND HERESIES
sat another Xoymraros dvijp,* the presbyter Caius ; and as an
urban clergyman, he would be more constantly there than his
suburban brother, separated by a distance of eighteen miles.
To form any living image of him from the scanty notices of
him which begin with Eusebius and end with Photius, is quite
impossible. In one respect only do the personal character
istics attributed to him distinguish him from the bishop of
Portus. He was a strenuous opponent of the peculiarities
favored by the Christians of Lesser Asia, and especially of
the claims to prophetic gifts, and the appeal to clairvoyant
skill, by Montanus and his followers. With one of these, by
name Proclus, he held a disputation ; from which Eusebius
has preserved a passage or two, showing, in conjunction with
the title, not very intelligibly assigned to him, of " Bishop of
the Gentiles," that he belonged to the most advanced anti-
Jewish party in the Church, lamented the grossness of the
popular millenarian dreams, vindicated the apostolic dignity
of the Roman against the pretensions of the Eastern Chris
tianity, and disowned the Epistle to the Hebrews. This
feature in the figure of Caius, though constituting the distinc
tion, does not, however, necessarily oppose him to Hippolytus,
whose attitude towards the Montanists may not have been
very different, but only less positively marked. Still the
suspicions directed against the two men are of an opposite
kind : with Hippolytus, the difficulty is to set him clear of
sympathy with Montanism ; f with Caius, to prevent his being
classed with its unmeasured opponents, the Alogi.J And a
report even reaches us, that among the Chaldean Christians
there exists, or did exist in the fourteenth century, a con
troversial treatise of Hippolytus against Caius. §

* Euseb. H. E., VI. 20.
t Attributed to him by Neander, Kirch. Geschichte, I. iii. 1150; and
Schwegler, Montanismus, p. 224.
% Storr places him at their head, Zweck der Evang. Geschichte, p. 63 ;
and Eichhorn associates him with them, Einleitung in das N. T., II. 414.
§ See the notice of the Nestorian Ebed Jesu, in Asseman's Bibl. Orient.
III. i. ap. Gieseler, k. 9, § 63.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 209
Between these two men, so similar in position, and not,
perhaps, unused to sharp argument face to face, springs up, at
the end of all these ages, a rival claim to property in the
" Refutation of all the Heresies." The chief counsel for
Hippolytus, besides our author, are the eminent Professors
Jacobi, Duncker, and Schneidewin, — all, we believe, belong
ing to the Neander school of theology ; and as the last two
are about to edit the work anew, and probably to give it its
final form, their opinion of its authorship may be expected to
prevail. The other side, however, advocated by Dr. Fessler,
is sustained by perhaps the greatest of living historical critics,
F. C. Baur, representative of the much-abused Tubingen
school. Into so intricate a question we might be excused for
inviting our readers, had we anything fresh to offer towards
its solution ; but the chief impression we have brought from
its study is one of astonishment at the extreme positiveness
with which the learned men on either side affirm their own
conclusion. A more equal balance of evidence we never
remember to have met with in any similar research ; and the
faint and slender preponderance which alone the scale can
ever exhibit, amusingly contrasts with the triumphant asser
tion, of both sets of disputants, that not a reasonable doubt
remains. The leading points of M. Bunsen's case are these.
A work " On all Heresies " is attributed to Hippolytus, and
in no instance to Caius, by Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and
Peter of Alexandria, at the beginning of the fourth century.
Such a book was still extant in the ninth century ; for Pho-
tius, the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, has given us
an account of its contents in the journal and epitome of his
studies which he has left us. On comparing his report with
the newly discovered book, the identity of the two works is
established in some important respects : the number and con
cluding term of the series of heresies are the same ; they
both of them include materials taken from Irenseus, while
reversing his order of treatment. Further, in the newly
found treatise reference is made by the author to other works
of his, in which he has discussed certain points of early He-
18 *

210 CREED AND HERESIES
brew chronology in proving the antiquity of the Abrahamic
race. Now, Eusebius was acquainted with a certain " Chroni
cle " of Hippolytus, brought down to the first year of Alex
ander Severus ; and such a chronicle, in a Latin translation,
is found in Fabricius's edition of Hippolytus, only that its list
of Roman emperors terminates, not with the beginning, but
with the end, of Severus's reign. It has, however, in common
with our work, a peculiar number of tribes, — viz. seventy-
two, derived from Noah. Thus, the author of the " Here
sies " and of the " Chronicle " would appear to be the same,
and, according to Eusebius, to be Hippolytus. Lastly, both
in our new work, and also in a book called the " Labyrinth,"
written against some Unitarians of the second century, refer
ence is made to a treatise " On the Universe," which the
author mentions as his own production. By printing a frag
ment of this last in his edition of " Hippolytus," Fabricius has
shown to what name all three should, in his judgment, be set
down ; and that they cannot be given to Caius is rendered
evident by the occurrence, in the fragment, of certain Apoca
lyptic fictions inconsistent with his rejection of the Book of
Revelations. Moreover, the list of works on the statue of
Hippolytus includes a disquisition " Against the Greeks and
against Plato, or Respecting the Universe."
What can be said to weaken so strong a case? Two
doubts at once arise upon it, which we find it by no means
easy to set aside. Granted, Hippolytus wrote a book " On
all Heresies " ; is it the same which is now delivered into our
hands ? One medium of comparison we possess, enabling us
to place the original and the present book, for a short space,
side by side. The very Peter of Alexandria who is one of
the early witnesses called on Hippolytus's behalf has handed
down to us a passage or two (preserved in the Paschal Chron
icle) from the book which he attests, with a distinct reference
to the place where they are to be found. We turn to the
right chapter, and the passages are not there. Nor is it a
mere want of verbal agreement which we have to regret ; the
same topic — the controversy about the time of Easter — is

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 211
treated ; the same side — that of the Western Church — is
taken, in both instances ; but the arguments are different, and
so far irreconcilable, that no one who had command of that
which Peter gives would ever resort to the feebler one which
our work contains. With the dauntless ingenuity of German
criticism M. Bunsen makes a virtue of necessity, and en
deavors to convert this unfortunate discrepancy into a fresh
proof of identity. He thinks that, in this and some other
parts, our work is but a clumsy abstract of Hippolytus's
original, which the citations of Peter enable us to recover
and complete. This, however, is a plea which, it strikes us,
damages his case as much by success as it could by failure.
For if the book presented to us by the Clarendon Press
reflects the original no better than would appear from this
only sample which it is in our power to test, it may indeed be
a degenerate descendant from the pen of Hippolytus ; but all
reliable identity is lost, and the traces of his hand are no
longer recoverable. The second doubt is this : — Is the work
which Photius read the same that has now been rescued ? Of
the few descriptive marks supplied by the patriarch, there are
as many absent from our work as present in it. The treatise
which he read was a " little book " or " tract," as Lardner caUs
it (Pi^XiBdpiov), a word which can scarcely apply to a volume
extending (as ours would, if complete) to four hundred and
twenty octavo pages. M. Bunsen cuts down this number to
two hundred and fifty, by supposing Photius to have only the
last six books, containing the historical survey, without the
groundwork of the philosophical deduction, of the heresies.
The curtailment, if conceded, seems scarcely adequate to its
purpose, and appears to us a very questionable conjecture.
The manuscript, stripped of the first four books, would want
the very basis of the whole argument ; and, if such a mutila
tion were conceivable, it is impossible that Photius should fail
to observe and mention it ; for the fifth book opens, not like
an independent treatise, but with a summary statement of
what has been accomplished " in the four books preceding
this." Again, Photius mentions the Dositheans as the first

212 CREED AND HERESIES
set of heretics discussed ; whereas their name does not occur
at all, if we remember right, in our work, and their place is
occupied by the " Ophites." M. Bunsen treats this as a mere
inaccuracy of expression on the part of Photius, who meant,
by the name "Dositheans," to indicate the same "earliest
Judaizing schools" that are better described as "Ophites."
The name, however, is so unsuitable to this purpose, that it
would be a strange wilfulness in the learned patriarch to sub
stitute it for the language of the author he describes. He
could not be ignorant that Dositheus, Simon, Menander, were
the three founders of the Samaritan sect, exponents of the
same doctrine, if not even reputed avatars of the same divine
essence ; * and if he had apjilied the name Dositheans to
any of the heretics enumerated in our work, it would assured
ly have been to the followers of Simon, who stand fourth in
the series of thirty-two, and not to Phrygian serpent-worship
pers, who commence the list. Further, the author whom
Photius read stated that his book was a synopsis of the Lec
tures of Irenseus. In our work no such statement occurs;
and the use made of Irenasus does not agree, either in quan
tity or character, with the substance of the assertion. And,
lastly, the patriarch's Hippolytus said " some things which
are not quite correct; for instance, that the Epistle to the
Hebrews is not by the Apostle Paul." In our work there is
no such assertion ; and when M. Bunsen suggests that per
haps its place might be in the lost books, he forgets that,
according to his own conjecture, these books were no more in
Photius's hands than in ours, and that he cannot first cut them
off in order to make a f3i@Xi8dpLoi/, and then restore them, to
provide a locus for a missing criticism on the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The identity of our " Philosophumena " with the
treatise which Photius read and Hippolytus wrote, appears,
therefore, to be extremely problematical.
One fixed point, however, is gained in the course of the
argument, and gives an acknowledged position from which the
* On their relation, and the doctrine connected with their names, see
Baur's " Christl. "Gnosis," p. 310.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 213
opposite opinions are willing to set out. Whoever wrote the
disquisition " On the Universe" wrote also our work. This
fact rests on the assertion of the author himself; yet, if the
author be Hippolytus, and our "Philosophumena" be his
" Refutation of all Heresies," it is strange that no list of his
writings mentions both books : the catalogues of Eusebius and
Jerome naming the " Heresies " without the essay " On the
Universe " ; and the engraving on the statue giving the essay
" On the Universe " without the " Heresies." How can we ex
plain it, that these ecclesiastical writers, in knowing our work,
did not know what is contained in it about the authorship of
the other book ; and that this book should have wandered
anonymously about down to the ninth century, side by side
with an acknowledged writing of Hippolytus, which all the
while was proclaiming the solution of the question ? We
should certainly expect that the book of avowed authorship
would convey the name of Hippolytus to the companion pro
duction for which it claims the same paternity ; but, instead
of this, it not only leaves its associate anonymous for six
hundred years, but afterward assumes the modest fit, and
becomes anonymous itself. Even if no previous reader had
sense enough to put the two things together, and pick out the
testimony of the one book . to the origin of the other, are we
to charge the same stupidity on the erudite Photius, who had
both books in his hand, and has given his report of both ? In
his account of Hippolytus's treatise, he nowhere teUs us that it
contains a reference to the essay " On the Universe," as being
from the same pen ; and that he found no such reference is
certain ; for he actually discusses the question, " Who wrote
the essay on the Universe ? " without ever mentioning Hippo
lytus at all. Just such a reference, however, as he did not find
in Hippolytus, he did find in another work, of which he speaks
under the title of " The Labyrinth " ; and, strange to say, it
was at the end of the work,* precisely where it stands in our
* Phot. Biblioth., cod. 48. Ids Kai airrbs (i. e. Tatos) iv t£> reXei toC
XaftvpivOov Biepaprvparo, eavrov eivat rov 7rep\ rrjs tov ttovtos ovcrlas
\6yoy.

214 CREED AND HERESIES
" Philosophumena. " Who can resist the suspicion, that the
anonymous " Labyrinth " of Photius is no other than our
anonymous " Philosophumena " ? This conviction forced
itself upon us on first weighing the evidence collected by
M. Bunsen, in support of his different conclusion ; and we
observe that it is the opinion sustained by the great authority
of Baur,* who even finds a trace in our work of the very
title given by Photius ; the writer observing, at the beginning
of the tenth book, " The Labyrinth of Heresies we have not
broken through by violence, but have resolved by refutation
alone with the force of truth ; and now we come to the posi
tive exposition of the truth." At aU events, the difference of
title in the case of a work having probably more names than
one, is of no weight in disproof of identity. With this new
designation in our possession, we may return to search for
our book in the records of ecclesiastical antiquity ; and we
have not far to go, before we alight on traces affording hopes
of a result. No " Labyrinth," indeed, turns up in the literary
history of earlier centuries than Photius ; but a " Little Laby
rinth " is mentioned by Theodoret,f as sometimes ascribed to
Origen, but as evidently not his ; and from his account of it,
confirmed by the matter which he borrows from it, we learn
that it was a controversial book, against a set of Unitarians in
Rome, followers of Theodotus. It so happens that the very
passage from this tract which Theodoret has used appears
also, with others from the same source, in Eusebius, only
quoted under another title, — the book being called a " Work
against the Heresy of Artemon " (who was another teacher
of the same school in the same age). The extracts thus pre
served to us are not found in our work ; which, therefore, if it
be the " Labyrinth," is a distinct production from the " Little
Labyrinth " ; but they are so manifestly from the same pen,
* Theologische Jahrbiicher, 12er Band, I. 1853, p. 154.
t Hasret. Fab. II. c. 5. Kara rrjs tovtodv 6 o-piKpbs ovueypd(j>r] Xa/3u-
piv8os, ov rives ' Slptyevovs vnoXapfiavovcri troinpa • dXX' 6 xapawrip
iXey^ei roiis Xeyovras.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 215
occupied in the same task, as to render it perfectly conceiv
able that the two books might receive the same name, with
only a diminutive epithet to distinguish the lesser from the
greater. Nor are we left, as Baur has shown, without a dis
tinct assertion by our " great unknown," that he had already
composed a smaller treatise on the same subject ; for, in the
introduction to the " Philosophumena," he says of the here
tics, " We have before given a brief exposition of their opin
ions, refuting them in the gross, without presenting them in
detail." This shorter work would naturally treat of the par
ticular forms of error most immediately present and mischiev
ous before the author's eyes ; and if he dwelt especially on
the doctrines of Theodotus and Artemon, it is just what we
should expect from an orthodox Roman. This essay, on a
limited range of heresy, would naturally be issued at first
with the special title by which Eusebius refers to it. But if
it led the author to execute afterwards a much enlarged
design, to which, from its intricate extent, he gave, on its
completion, the fanciful designation of " The Labyrinth," he
might naturally carry the name back to the earlier production,
and, to mark the relation between the two, issue this in future
as " The Little Labyrinth." Photius speaks of the tract
against the heresy of Artemon as a separate work from
" The Labyrinth," * and says the same thing of the latter f
that Theodoret had remarked of the former, that by some it
was ascribed to Origen. The result to which we are thus led
is the following. Our newly found work is not Hippolytus's
PtpXiBdpwv " On all Heresies," but the book known to Photius
as " The Labyrinth " ; the author of which had previously
produced two other works, viz. " The Little Labyrinth " men
tioned by Theodoret, and quoted under another name by
Eusebius, and the " Treatise on the Universe," whose contents
* He also describes its exact relation to the other, when he calls it a
special work (J 8 i o> s) in comparison with " The Labyrinth " as a general
one: o-vvrd^ai Be kcu erepov Xoyov IBias Kara tt)s' hprepavos alptcreas.
Cod. 48.
t Ibid. &o-irep kcu tov AafivpivBov nves iiriypatyav 'Qpiyivovs.

216 CREED AND HERESIES
Photius reports. Whatever, therefore, fixes the authorship of
any of these, fixes the authorship of all.
Notwithstanding, however, our threefold chance, we have
only a solitary evidence on this point. Attached to Photius's
copy of the " Treatise on the Universe " was a note, to the
effect that the book was not (as had been imagined) by Jo-
sephus, but by Caius, the Roman presbyter, who also com
posed the "Labyrinth."* In the absence of other external
testimony, this judgment appears entitled to stand, unless the
books themselves disclose some features at variance with the
known character of Caius.
But, it is said, such variance we do actually find. For
while our work expressly appeals to the Apocalypse as the
production of John, we know from Eusebius that Caius
ascribed it to Cerinthus, and, in opposing himself to Monta-
nism, rejected the millenarian doctrine which is taught in the
Revelations. This argument, we admit, would be decisive if
its allegations were indisputable. It is curious, however, that
the one locus classicus,\ from which is inferred the presbyter's
repudiation of the Apocalypse, is confessedly ambiguous ; and
the charge it prefers against Cerinthus may amount to either
of these two propositions ; that he had composed the Book of
Revelations and palmed it on the world as the production of

* Biblioth. cod. 48; Lardner's "Credibility," Part II. ch. xxxii.; Bun-
sen's Hippolytus, I. p. 150.
t Euseb. H. E., in. 28. dXXa Ka\ KrjpivSos, 6 St' d7TOKaXv^ea>v o>s ino
a7rooroAou peyaXov yeypappivav reparoXoyias rjpiv ws 6Y dyyiXav
aiiTW BeBetypevas y^evBopevos ejreio-ayei, Xeycop, pera ttjv dvdcrrao-iv
liriyetov eivai to fiacriXewv rov XptaToO, kxu tvoXiv eiriQvpiais Koi t]Bo-
vols ev lepovcfaXrjp rrjv crapKa 7VoXiTevopevr]v BovXeveiv. Kai i%6pos
vrrdp-)(av rals ypacpals too deov dpidpov xiXioyraeWar iv ydpco eoprfjs
6eXa>v WXavav Xiyei ylveo-dat. The passage, preserving its obscurities,
seems to run thus : " Cerinthus too, through the medium of revelations
written as if by a great Apostle, has palmed off upon us marvellous accounts,
pretending to have been shown him by angels ; to the effect that, after the
resurrection, the kingdom of Christ will be an earthly one, and that the flesh
will again be at the head of affairs, and serve in Jerusalem the lusts and
pleasures of sense. And with wilful misguidance he says, setting himself in

OF EARLY- CHRISTIANITY. 217
the Apostle John ; or, that he had given himself the air of a
great Apostle, and published accordingly some revelations
affecting to be imparted, like those of John, by angels. Ac
cording to this last interpretation, the work of Cerinthus
would be a book distinct from our Apocalypse, written in
imitation of it, and seeking to share its authority. The con
tents of the production are briefly described by Caius ; but
they present such a mixture of agreement and disagreement
with our canonical book, as to leave the ambiguity unresolved.
They affirm, that after the resurrection will follow an earthly
kingdom of Christ, in which the lower nature of man will, in
Jerusalem, be again in servitude to passion and pleasure ;
and that the number of a thousand years are to be spent in
the indulgence of sense. So far as the place and the duration
of the kingdom are concerned, our Apocalypse might here be
referred to ; but it has nothing answering to the description
of a gross and luxurious millennium. Taking the passage in
conjunction with the similar statement of Theodoret, that
" Cerinthus invented certain revelations, pretending that they
were given in vision to himself," we think it unlikely that our
Apocalypse can be meant ; and conceive the indictment to be,
that Cerinthus had put forth a set of apocryphal visions, in
which he abused the style and corrupted the teachings of a
great Apostle to the purposes of a sensual fanaticism. This

opposition to the Scriptures of God, that a period of a thousand years will be
spent in nuptial festivities." On this much-controverted passage, Lardner
(Cred., P. II. ch. xxxii.) suspends his judgment, rather inclining to doubt
whether our Apocalypse is referred to; Hug (Einl. § 176), Paulus (Hist.
Cerinth., P. I. § 30), with Twells and Hartwig (whose criticisms we have not
seen), deny that the Apocalypse is meant; while Eichhorn (Einl. in das
N. T., VI. v. § 194. 2), De Wette (Lehrbuch der Einl. in d. N. T., § 102 a),
Liicke (Commentar iib. d. Schriften des Ev. Johannes, Offenb. § 33), and
Schwegler (Das naehapost. Zeitalter, 2er B. p. 218), take the other side. It
must be confessed also, that, till the rise of the present discussion about the
" Philosophoumeua," Baur agreed with these last writers. (See his Christl.
Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeit, ler B. p. 283.) He now urges, however, that, in a
case already so doubtful, the discovery of a lost book, which we have good
reason to ascribe to Caius, necessarily brings in new evidence, and may turn
the scale between two balanced interpretations. (Theol. Jahrb., p. 157.)
19

218 CREED AND HERESIES
is a charge which Caius might bring, in consistency with the
fullest acceptance of the Apocalypse as authentic and true.
It was not the doctrine of a reign of Christ on earth, not the
millenarian period assigned to it, to which he objected in
Cerinthus ; but the coarse and demoralizing picture given of
its employments and delights. In proportion to his respect
for the real Apocalypse and its teachings, would he be likely to
resent such a miserable parody on its lofty theocratic visions.
His opposition to the Montanists in no way pledged him to
renounce the eschatological expectations which they were dis
tinguished from other Christians not by entertaining, but by
exaggerating. If our work, in its notice of their heresy,
passes by in silence this particular element of the system,
and treats their claim to special gifts of prophecy with less
contemptuous emphasis than might be looked for in the an
tagonist of Proclus, there is nothing that ought really to sur
prise us in this. It does not follow that, because in our scanty
knowledge we have only one idea about an historical person
age, the man himself never had another. Caius did not live
in a perpetual platform disputation with Proclus ; and either
before that controversy had waked him up, or after it was
well got over, he might naturally enough dismiss the Mon
tanists with very cursory notice ; in the one case, because
they had not yet adequately provoked his antipathy ; in the
other, because they had already had enough of it*
Nothing therefore presents itself in our work which should
deter us from attributing it to Caius ; and the more we ponder
the evidence, the more do we incline to believe it his. This
* Baur explains the slight treatment of the Montanist heresy in the
" Philosophumena " by the intention which Caius already had of writing a
special book against them : and contends that this intention is announced
expressly in the words (p. 276), irepl tovtcov aiBis Xeirropepio-Tepov iK^ry
aopat • noXXcas yap dcpoppr] KaKwv yeyevrjrai T) tovtwv atpeais. These
words, however, do not refer, as the connection evidently shows, to the Mon
tanists generally ; but only to a certain class of them who fell in with the
patripassian doctrine of Noetus. The Noetian scheme Caius was going to
discuss further on in this very book : and it is evidently to this later chapter,
not to any separate work against Montanism, that he alludes.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 219
result is to us an unwelcome one ; both because we know how
strong the presumption must be against a critical judgment
condemned by the masterly genius of M. Bunsen, and because
he has really made us in love with his ecclesiastical hero, — has
put such an innocent and venerable life into that old effigy,
that after wandering with him about the quays of Portus, and
entering with listening fancy into the Basilica* where he
preached, it is hard to return him into stone, and think of him
only as a dead bishop who made a bad almanac. Should our
readers have contracted no such ideal attachment, we fear that
this discussion of authorship may appear as trivial as it is
tedious. Somebody wrote the " Philosophumena," and wheth
er we call him Hippolytus or Caius, whether we lodge him
on the Tiber within sight of the Pharos, or of the Milliarium
Aureum, may seem a thing indifferent, so long as the elements
of the personal image do not materially change. This utilita
rian impression is by no means just, and indeed is at variance
with all true historical feeling. But it is time that we should
give it its fair rights, and turn from the name upon our new
book to its substances and significance.
Many sensible persons are at a loss, we believe, to under
stand why this refutation of thirty-two extinct heresies should
be regarded with so much interest. Is it so well done, then ?
they ask. Far from it : better books are brought out every
year; and such a controversial argument offered in manu
script to Mr. Longman or Mr. Parker to-morrow, would hard
ly be deemed worth the cost of printing. Does it add materi
ally to our knowledge of the early heresies? .Something of
this kind it certainly contributes ; but the gain is not large,
and will make no essential change in the conclusions of any
competent historical inquirer. Is any light thrown by it on
the authenticity of our canonical books ? This can hardly be
expected from a production of the third century; and M.
Bunsen's application of it to this purpose appears to us, for
* The word is perhaps not allowable in speaking of the earliest time (the
reign of Alexander Severus) assignable for the erection of separate build
ings appropriate to Christian worship.

220 CREED AND HERESIES
reasons which we shall assign, extremely precarious. Per
haps it supplies the want which every student of that period
must have felt, and organically joins ecclesiastical to civil his
tory, so that they no longer remain apart, — • the one as the
stage for saints and martyrs, bishops and books, the other for
soldiers and senators, emperors and paramours, — but min
gle in the common life of humanity. When we think how
the author was placed, it is impossible not to go to him with
an eager hope of this nature. He lived at the centre of the
vast Roman world, and felt all the pulsations and paroxysms
of that mighty heart. He witnessed the ominous decline of
every traditional maxim and national reverence in favor of
imported superstitions and degenerate barbarities. Under
Commodus he saw the ancient Mars superseded by the Gre
cian Hercules, and Hercules represented by an emperor who
sunk into a prize-fighter, and the administration of the empire
in the wanton hands of a Phrygian slave, who was only less
brutal than his master. In the midst of pestilence, which had
become chronic in Italy from the time of M. Antoninus, and
of which a Christian bishop could not but know more than
others, the city was still adding to its semblance of splendor
and salubrity ; and the magnificent baths and grounds that
were opened to the public service at the Porta Capena, with
the multiplied festivities and donatives, attested how little
mere physical attention to the people can arrest the miseries
of a moral degradation. Nor could the Christians of that
age be wholly without insight into the habits of the highest
class in Rome, for, in that great colluvies of heterogeneous
faiths, the caprice of taste, if not some better impulse, deter
mined now and then an inmate of the palace to favor the re
ligion of Christ ; and the favorite mistress of Commodus, who
ruled him while she could, and then had him drugged and
strangled in his sleep, is the very Marcia whom our presbyter
describes as <pCX66eos, and at whose intervention the Christian
exiles were released from their banishment in Sardinia. If he
was at home when the excellent Pertinax was murdered, and
cared to know what tyrant was to have the world instead, he

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 221
was perhaps in the throng that ran to the Quirinal, and heard
the Prastorians shout from their ramparts that the empire was
for sale, and saw the bargain with the foolish senator below,
who bought it with his money, and paid for it with his head.
Caius and his people had reason to tremble when they saw in
Septimius Severus not only the implacable conqueror who
suffered no political opponent to live, but the worshipper of
demons, the gloomy and fitful devotee of astrology and magic,
pliant only to sacerdotal hate ; and when the young Origen
came to be their guest awhile, and told of the terror in Alex
andria which had joined his father to the band of martyrs, the
post that just then brought the news of the Emperor's death
in Britain would seem to take off a weight of fear ; especially
as one son at least of the two inheritors of the empire had in
childhood been committed to a Christian nurse, and been said
to shrink and turn away from the savage spectacles of the am
phitheatre. They were doomed to be disappointed, if they
had placed any hope in Caracalla, and to find that what they
had taken in the boy for the nobleness of grace, was but the
timidity of nature ; the murder, before his mother's face, of
his only brother, and then of his best counsellor, for refusing
to justify the fratricide, would soon make them ashamed of
remembering that he had ever heard the name of Christ. It
would be curious to know how the Christians comported them
selves when the Priest of the Sun became monarch of the
world, and seemed intent on dethroning every divinity to en
rich the homage to his own. The grand temple on the Pal
atine, which he built for the god of Emesa, every passer-by
must have seen as it rose from its foundations. And when
the black stone was paraded on its chariot through the streets,
and the elder deities were compelled to leave their shrines
and attend in escort to the Eastern idol, or when the nuptials
were celebrated between the Syrian divinity and the goddess
of Carthage, and Baal-peor and Astarte succeeded to the hon
ors of Jove, no Christian presbyter could fail to witness the
gorgeous and humiliating procession, — .renewed as it was
year by year, — or to ask himself into what deeper abomina-
' * 19*

222 CREED AND HERESIES
tion the city of the Scipios must sink, ere the catastrophe of
judgment made a sudden end. The orgies of Helagabalus
were more insulting to the elder Paganism of Rome than in
jurious to the new faith, which equally detested both ; and the
offended moral feeling of the city reacted perhaps in favor of
the Christian cause, and prepared the way for that more pub
lic teaching of the religion, in buildings avowedly dedicated
to the purpose, which was first permitted in the succeeding
reign. The natural recoil in the imperial family itself from
the degradation of the court tended, perhaps, in the same di
rection, and drove the astute Mamaea to seek, amid the univer
sal corruption, for some school of discipline which might save
the young Alexander Severus from the ignominy of her sis
ter's son. Whether from this motive, or from suspicion of the
growing force of Christianity as a social power, she had sent
for Origen, and had an interview with him at Antioch ; and
the Roman disciples had reason to rejoice that her intellectual
impressions of their system should have been derived from
such a man, and her political estimate of it formed in the
East, where the crisis of conflict between the dying and the
living faiths was more advanced than in the West, and afford
ed a less disguised augury of the result. From their fellow-
believers trading with the Levant, or arriving thence, the pas
tors of the metropolis would learn the propitious temper of
the young Csesar and his mother ; and would feel no surprise,
when he succeeded to the palace of his cousin, that he not
only swept out the ministers of lust and luxury, but in his pri
vate oratory enshrined, among the busts of Pagan benefactors,
the images also of Abraham and of Christ. They could not,
however, but observe how little the morals of the court and
the wisdom of the government could now avail to arrest the
progress of decay, and reach in detail the vices and miseries
of a degenerate state. When they passed the door of the
palace, they heard the public crier's voice proclaim, " Let only
purity and innocence enter here " ; they visited a Christian
tradesman in a neighboring street, and found him just seized
by a nobleman whom he had dunned for an outstanding debt,

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 223
charged with magic or poisoning, doomed to pine in prison till
he gave release, and no redress or justice to be had. The Em
peror who, gazing in his chapel on the features of Christ, rec
ognized a religion human and universal, was the first under
whom a visible badge was put upon the slave, and a distinc
tive servile dress adopted ; the slave markets were still in con
secrated spots, the temple of Castor and the Via Sacra ; and
if ever some captive Onesimus, recommended by letters from
the East to the brethren in Rome, was brought to the metrop
olis for sale, thither must the deacon or the pastor go to find
how the auction disposes of their charge, and learn which
among the chalked feet it is that are " shod with the prepa
ration of the Gospel of peace." The commonwealth had
never boasted of so many great jurists as in the age of Papin-
ian and Paulus ; but as the science of Law was perfected, the
power of Law declined; and Alexander Severus, the justest
of emperors, was unable to protect Ulpian, the greatest of
civilians, from mihtary assassination in the palace itself, or to
punish the perpetrators of this outrage on popular feeling as
well as public right. The three days' tumult, in which this
master of jurisprudence fell the victim of Praetorian licen
tiousness, our presbyter Caius must have witnessed; and
countless other momentous scenes, during a generation pain
fully affluent in vicissitude, must have passed before his eyes ;
and had he but known of what value his reports would be to
this age of ours, he would have said more of the hfe he saw,
and less of the speculations he denounced. To us it would
have been worth anything to know just what was too close to
him to catch his eye; — how the Christians lived in such a
world ; what thoughts stirred in them as they walked the
streets and heard the news ; what happened and was said
when they met together, and how this could adjust itself with
the real facts of an inconsistent and tyrannical present ; and
how, as the corrupted State became ever more incapable of
vindicating moral ends, the rising Church undertook the secret
governance of life, and penetrated with its authority into re
cesses beyond the reach, not of the arm of administration

224 CREED AND HERESIES
only, but of the definitions of the widest code. But in this
respect also our author fails to realize our hopes. He gives
us a book of fancies rather than of facts, and instead of paint
ing existence, which is transient, and must be caught as it
flies, occupies himself in describing nonsense, which is always
to be had. The enormities of Helagabalus, though staring
him in the face, are nothing to him in comparison with heresy
in Lesser Asia, which keeps Easter on a wrong day. He is
shut up within the interior circle of the community of believ
ers, and gives but a single glimpse beyond ; and builds for us
no bridge to abolish the mysterious separation of ecclesiastical
and ideal from civil and real existence in the early ages of
our faith. He is not peculiar in this defect. We all of us
live in the midst of history without knowing it, and ourselves
make history without feeling it ; and that which will most
clearly paint us in the thought of other times, which will
seem our power to them, our romance and nobleness, with
which, therefore, they will most crave to satiate their eye, is
precisely what is least consciously present to us, — the natural
spirit and daily spring of our common being, through which
not the will of man, but the providence of God, works its ap
pointed ends. At all events, the insight which we should be
best pleased to gain into the life of the third century is not
given even incidentally, except in the scantiest measure, by
the " Philosophumena," which we must rank, in this respect,
below the Apologies, and with the writings of Irenasus and
Epiphanius. The book is dogmatic and controversial, and
the interest attached to it arises entirely from its being a reg
ister of opinion, a new witness to the thoughts about divine
things, which the Christianity of its period owned and dis
owned. For those who care at all to know the state of behef
a century before the Council of Nice, the work possesses a
high value. But the worth of this sort of information is it
self a thing disputed, at least its religious worth ; and will be
very differently estimated, according to the preconception
which occupies us as to the nature of Divine Revelation, and
the sources open to us for the attainment of sacred truth.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 225
Here it is that we find M. Bunsen's great and peculiar
strength. His religious philosophy, taken by itself, brings
us occasionally to a pause of doubt. His historical criticism
is not always convincing. But his doctrine of the relation
between religion and history, of the mingling of divine and
human elements in the theatre of time, and of the special
agency of Christianity in the spiritual education of mankind,
appears to us profoundly true and beautiful. This it is that
makes him attach so much importance to the creed of the
second and third centuries, and to the new light now thrown
upon it ; an importance which, from every ordinary point of
view, can scarcely fail to appear fanciful and exaggerated.
The Roman Catholic, for instance, entertains a conception
about what sacred truth is, and how it is to be had, which,
leaving nothing to depend on new discoveries, discharges all
the richest interest from any fresh knowledge we may gain of
religion in the past. With him divine truth, so far as it is
special to Christendom, is something wholly foreign to the
human mind, intrinsically unrelated to any faculty we have.
Li being supernatural, it belongs to another sphere than that
to which our thought is restricted, and is totally withdrawn
from all the movements of our nature. It consists, indeed, in
a set of objective facts from which we are absent, and which
no ratiocination of ours can seize, any more than our ear can
tell whether there be music on Saturn's ring. There is no
human consciousness answering to it ; and to resort thither for
it is like asking the dreamer or the blindfold to describe the
scene in which he stands, or consulting your own feelings to
learn what is going on in Pekin or Japan. On this theory,
the objects of faith are conceived of as objects of perception,
only by senses otherwise constituted than ours ; we can have
no surmise about them, till they are announced to us by qual
ified percipients, and no comprehension of them even then,
but only reception of them as facts imported for us from
abroad. The bearing of this doctrine of invisible realism on
the treatment of ecclesiastical history is manifest. The inac
cessible facts are deposited with the sacerdotal corporation ;

226 CREED AND HERESIES
with whom alone is vested the duty and the power of stating
and defining them. They are not indeed all stated and de
fined in their last amplitude at once ; for definition is always
an enclosure of the true by exclusion of the false; and it is
only in proportion as the dreaming perversity of men throws
forth one delusive fancy after another, that the Church draws
line after line to shut the intrusion out. If the creeds seem
to enlarge as the centuries pass, it is not that they have more
truth to give, but only more error to remove. The divine
facts were conceived aright and conceived complete in the
minds of Apostles and Evangelists, but they were not contem
plated then as against the follies and contradictions opposed to
them in later times ; but as soon as the hour came for this
antagonism to be felt, the infallible perception secured in per
petuity to the living hierarchy supplied the due verdict of re
jection. To the Catholic, therefore, Christianity was made
up and finished, its treasury was full, in the first generation ;
its power of development is only the refusal of deviation;
and its intellectual hfe is tame as the story of some perfect
hero, who does nothing but stand still and repel temptations.
The history of doctrines thus becomes a history of heresies ;
the primitive stock of tradition and Scripture must, on the one
hand, be maintained entire in the face of all possible expos
ures by critical research ; and, on the other, remain in eternal
barrenness and produce no more. Natural knowledge, wheth
er of the world or of humanity, may grow continually, but
the new thoughts it may lead us to entertain of God are ei
ther not new, or not true ; and every pretended enrichment of
truth is nothing but evolution of falsehood. This removal of
all variety from religion, this expulsion of hfe and change
into the negative region of aberration and denial, eviscerates
the past of its devout interest, rests the study of it on con
tempt instead of reverence for man ; with all its pious air, it
simply betrays history with a kiss, and delivers it over for
scribes to buffet and chief priests to crucify. Short work is
made in this way of any fresh witness, like the author of our
book, who turns up unexpectedly from an early age. Does

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 227
he speak in agreement with the hierarchical standards ? He
only flings another voice into the consensus of obedient believ
ers. Does he say anything at variance with the regulafidei?
Then have we only to see in what class of heretics he stands.
His testimony is either superfluous or misleading.
The Protestant, of the approved English type, arrives,
under guidance of a different thought, at the same flat and in
different result. • Though he gives a more subjective charac
ter to divine truth than the Roman Catholic, and brings both
the want and the supply of it more within the attestation of
consciousness, he puts its discovery equally beyond the reach
of our ruined faculties, and equally cuts it off from all rela
tion to philosophy and the natural hving exercise of reason
and conscience. He further agrees that his foreign gift of
revelation was imported all at once, and all complete, into our
world, within the Apostolic age ; that the conceptions of that
time are an authoritative rule for all succeeding centuries ;
and that every newer doctrine is to be regarded as a false
accretion, to be flung off into the imcompetent and barren
spaces of human speculation. He denies, however, the two
fold vehicle of this precious gift; and, cancelling altogether
the oral tradition and indeterminate Christian consciousness
of the early Church, shuts up the whole contents of religion
within the canonical Scriptures. The guardianship of un
written tradition being abolished, and the canon requiring no
guardianship at all, the trust deposited with the hierarchy
disappears ; and no permanent inspiration, no authoritative
judicial function, in matters of faith, remains. Whatever
Holy Spirit continues in the Church is not a progressively
teaching spirit, which can ever impart thoughts or experiences
unknown to the first believers ; but a personally comforting
and animating spirit, whose highest climax of enlightenment
is the exact reproduction of the primitive state of mind. The
apprehension of Divine truth is thus reduced to an affair of
verbal interpretation of documents ; and though in this pro
cess there is room for the largest play of subjective feeling,
so that different minds, different nations, different ages, will

228 CREED AND HERESIES'
unconsciously evolve very various results ; these are not to
be regarded as possible Divine enrichments of the faith, but
to be brought rigidly to the standard of the earliest Church,
and disowned wherever they include what was absent there.
This view is less mischievous than the Roman Catholic, only
because it is more inconsequent and confused. The canon
which you take as sacred was selected and set in authority
by the unwritten consciousness and tradition which you reject
as profane. The Church existed before its records ; ex
pressed its life in ways spreading indefinitely beyond them ;
and neither was exempt from human elements till they were
finished, nor lost the Divine spirit when they were done. So
arbitrary a doctrine corrupts the beauty of Scripture, and
deadens the noblest interest of history. If the New Testa
ment is to serve as an infallible standard, it is thus committed
to perfect unity and self-consistency ; and you are obliged to
contend that the various types of doctrine found within its
compass — the Messianic conceptions of Matthew and John,
the " Faith " of Paul and James, the eucharistic conceptions
of the first Evangelists and the last, the eschatology of the
Apocalypse and the Epistles — are only different sides of one
and the same belief, colored with the tints and shadings of
several minds. How utterly inadequate such an hypothesis
is to the explanation of the Scriptural phenomena, what a
distorted and absurd representation it gives of the sacred writ
ers, and their mode of thought, is best known to those who
have honestly tried to deal with the fourth Gospel, for instance,
as historically the supplement of the others, and dogmatically
of the Book of Revelation ; to suppose the Logos-doctrine
tacitly present in the speeches of Peter ; to detect the pre-
existence in Mark, or remove it from John ; or to identify
the Paraclete with the gifts of Pentecost. All feeling of liv
ing reahty is lost from our picture of the Apostolic time, when
its outlines are thus blurred, its contrasts destroyed, its grouped
figures effaced, and the whole melted away by the persever
ing drizzle of a watery criticism into a muddy glory round
the place where Christ should be. If, moreover, we are to

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 229
find everything in the first age, then the second, and the
third, and all others, must be worse, just in so far as they dif
fer from it ; and the whole course of succeeding thought, the
widening and deepening of the Christian faith and feeling, the
swelling of its stream by the lapse into it of Oriental Gnosis
and Hellenic Platonism and the Western Conscience, must
be a ceaseless degeneracy. Thus to the Bibliolater as to the
Romanist, Divine truth has no history among men, unless it be
the history of decline, or of recovery purchased by decline.
He also will accordingly care nothing about what the people
of Caius or Hippolytus thought. Is it in the Bible ? If so,
he knew it before. Is it not in the Bible ? Then he has noth
ing to do with it but throw it away. By a fitting retribution,
this moping worship of the letter of a book and the creed
of a generation brings it to pass that both are lost to the mind
in a dismal haze of ignorance and misconception ; and if the
"Evangelical" behever could be transported suddenly from
Exeter Hall into the company of the twelve in Jerusalem, or
the Proseucha which Paul enters on the banks of the Stry-
mon, or the room where the Agape is prepared at Rome, we
are persuaded that he would find a scene newer to his ex
pectations than by any other migration into a known time and
place. But now let us abolish this isolation from the rest of human
existence of the incunabula of our faith, and throw open that
time to free relation with the whole providence of humanity.
Suppose Christianity to be the influence upon the world of a
Divine Person, — in quahty divine, in quantity human, —
whose Epiphany was determined at a crisis of ripe conditions
for the rescue, the evolution, the spread of holy and sanctify
ing truth. What are those conditions ? They consist mainly
in the co-presence, within the embrace of one vast state, of
two opposite races or types of men, both having a partial gift
of divine apprehension, and holding in charge an indispensa
ble element of truth ; both with their spiritual life verging to
exhaustion and capable of no separate effort more ; and each
unconsciously pining away for want of the complement of
20

230 CREED AND HERESIES
thought which the other only could supply. The Hebrew
brought his intense feeling of the Personality of God ; con
ceiving this in so concentrated a form as to exclude the proper
notion of infinitude, and render Him only the most powerful
Being in the Universe, its Monarch, — wielding the creatures
as his puppets, — acting historically upon its scenes as objec
tive to Him, and by the annals of his past agency supplying
to the Abrahamic family a religion of archives and documents.
The sovereignty of Jehovah raised him to an immeasurable
height above his creation ; dwarfed all other existence ; placed
him by nature at a distance from men, and only by conde
scension allowing of approximation. And hence his worship
pers, in proportion as they adored his greatness, felt the little
ness of all else ; acquired a temper towards their fellow-men,
if not severe and scornful, at least not • reverent and tender ;
and regarded them as separate in kind from Him, mere dust
on the balance or locusts in the field. The religion of the
Hellenic race began at the other end,- — from the midst of
human hfe, its mysteries, its struggles, its nobleness, its mix
ture of heroic Free-will and awful Destiny ; and their deepest
reverence, their quickest recognition of the Divine, was di
rected towards the soul of a man vindicating its grandeur,
though it should be against superhuman powers. In propor
tion as men were great, beautiful, and good, did they appear
to be as lesser gods, and earth and heaven to be filled with
the same race. Thought, conscience, admiration in the hu
man mind were not personal accidents separately originat
ing in each individual ; but the sympathetic response of our
common intellect, standing in front of Nature, to the kindred
life of the Divine intellect behind Nature, and ever passing
into expression through it. When this feeling of the Hellenic
race became reflective, and organized itself into philosophy, it
represented the universe as the eternal assumption of form by
the Divine thought, which we were enabled to read off by
our essential identity of nature. Hence a whole series of
conceptions quite different from the Hebrew representations ;
instead of Creation, Evolution of being ; instead of Interposi-

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 231
tion from without, Incarnation operating from within ; instead
of Omnipotent Will, Universal Thought ; assigning as the
ideal of man's perfection, not so much obedience to Law, as
simihtude of Mind to God ; and tending predominantly not to
strength in Morals, but to beauty in Art. These two opposite
tendencies had run their separate course, and expended their
proper history ; and were talking wildly, as in the approach
ing dehrium of death. But they are the two factors of all
religious truth : and to fuse them together, to make it impos
sible that either should perish or should remain alone, the
Christ was given to the world, so singularly balanced between
them, that neither could resist his power, but both were drawn
into it for the regeneration of mankind. In the accidents of
his lot given to the one race, and only baffling the visions of
prophets to transcend them ; in the essence of his nature, so
august and attractive to the other that the faith in Incarna
tion was irresistible ; presented to the Hebrews by his mortal
birth, and snatched from them by his immortal; stopping by
his holiness the mouth of Law, and carrying it up into the
higher region of Faith and Love ; in the Temple wishing the
Temple gone, that there might be open communion, Spirit
with Spirit ; translating sacrifice into self-sacrifice ; — he had
every requisite for conciliating and blending the separated
elements of truth which, for so many ages, had been converg
ing towards him. But if this was the function providentially
assigned to him, and for which the divine and human were
so blended in him, it is a function which could not be accom
plished in a moment, in a generation, in a century. It is an
historical function, freely demanding time for its theatre ; and
as the separate factors had occupied ages in attaining their
ripeness for combination, so must their fusion consume many
a lifetime of effervescing thought, ere the homogeneous truth
appeared. The words of Christ are not in this view the end
in which Revelation terminates ; but the means given to us
of knowing himself, contributions to the picture we form of
his personality. Nor are the sentiments of his immediate
followers about his office and position in the scheme of Prov-

232 CREED AND HERESIES
idence anything more authoritative to us than the incipient
attempts made, when his influence was fresh, to grasp the
whole of his relations while only a part was to be seen. The
records of the great crisis are no doubt of superlative value,
as the vehicles by which alone we understand and feel its
power ; but their value is lost if they are to dictate truth to
our passive acceptance, instead of quickening our reason and
conscience to find it : they stop in this way the very develop
ment which they were to lead, and disappoint Christ of the
very work he came to achieve. Human elements were in
evitably and fully present in the first age and its Scriptures,
as in every other ; and the transitory ingredients they have
left, it is a duty to detach from the eternal truth. And as
conditions of finite imperfection cannot be banished from the
central era, neither can the guidance of the Infinite Spirit be
denied, whether among the Hebrew, the Hellenic, or the
Christian people, in the ages before and after. In that new
development of human consciousness and knowledge in regard
to God, which we call Christianity, all the requisite condi
tions — viz. the factors taken up, the Person who blends them,
and the continuous product they evolve — include Divine
Inspiration as well as Human Reflection, — the hving pres
ence and communion of the Eternal with the Transitory Mind,
of the perfectly Good with the good in the Imperfect. To
disengage the one from the other, to treasure up the true
and holy that is born of God, and let fall the false and wrong
that is infused by man, is possible only to Reason and Con
science, is indeed the perpetual work in which they live ; the
denial of which is not merely Atheism, but Devil-worship, —
not the bare negation, but the positive reversal, of religion, —
the virtual affirmation that God indeed exists, but exists as
C/z-reason and tfo-good. No mechanical, no chronological
separation can be effected of the Divine from the Human, the
Revealed from the Unrevealed, in faith ; there is no person,
no book, no age, no Church, in which both do not meet, and
require to be disentangled the one from the other ; but the
perseverance of God's living and self-harmonious Spirit

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 233
throughout the discordant errors of dying generations enables
the men most apt and faithful to his voice to know more and
more what his reality is, and drop the semblances by which
it is disguised. The effect of this view on our estimate of
ecclesiastical literature is evident. As, according to it, the
Apostolic period is not exempted from critical judgment, so
neither are succeeding times to be without their claim on re
ligious reverence. The canonical books of the New Testa
ment fall back into the general mass of literature recording
the earliest knowledge and consciousness of the disciples,
neither detached, as a mysterious whole, from other produc
tions of their time, nor excluding the greatest diversities of
value among themselves. They exhibit the first struggling
efforts — not always concurrent in their direction — of an
awakening spiritual life, to interpret a recent Divine manifes
tation, and to solve by it the problem of the world's Provi
dence. Their very freshness and proximity to the great fig
ure of Christ was by no means an unmixed advantage to these
efforts ; and they were not so complete and successful as to
supersede their continuance in the next and following gener
ations, which lay under no incompetency for their prosecution,
and are as likely, so far as antecedent probability goes, to
have enriched and improved, as to have impoverished and
spoiled, the earlier doctrine of Christ's relation to God and to
mankind. The chasm thus disappears between the Apostolic
age and its successor ; the products of the first are not to be
accepted simply because they are there, nor those of the sec
ond rejected because they are absent from the first ; nor is
everything to be admitted on showing that it stands in both,
and even had a tenure long enough to become the prescriptive
occupant of the Church. The Catholic is right in clinging to
the continuous thread of Divine Inspiration binding the cen
turies of Christendom together ; and in maintaining that the
expression of true doctrine grows fuller with time. He is
wrong in making the Spirit over to an hierarchical corpora
tion ; and in treating the ostensible growth of doctrine as the
mere negation of heresies. The Protestant is right in rescu-
20*

234 CREED AND HERESIES
ing from the haze of uncertain tradition the real historical
ground of his religion, and setting it in the focus of an intense
reverence ; and in rejecting whatever cannot be adjusted with
the clear facts and essential Spirit of that primitive Gospel-
He is wrong in his insulation of that time as a sole authorita
tive age of golden days, in which the faith had neither error
nor defect, and from which it must be copied, with daguerreo
type exactitude, into every disciple's mind. Keep the positive
elements, destroy the negative limitations of both these sys
tems, and the true conception of Christianity emerges. As a
system of self-conscious doctrine, it is a religious Philosophy,
starting from the historical appearance of Christ as an ex
pression of God in human life, and always detained around
this one object as its centre ; and in its development consult
ing not the idiosyncrasies and conceits of private and personal
reflection, but the devout consciousness and spiritual consensus
of all Christian ages and all holy men. All religion is the
product of an action of the Infinite mind upon the finite : in
the Christian religion that action takes place upon souls en
gaged in the contemplation of Christ as the manifestation of
God's moral nature. This given object remaining the same,
there is room for indefinite expansion and variety ; and every
developed form is to be tried, not by its date, but by the tests
of truth relevant to religious philosophy.
How far M. Bunsen would recognize his own doctrine in
this exposition we cannot say ; but without intending in the
least to make him responsible for it, we think it does not es
sentially deviate from his scheme of thought. The philosoph
ical aphorisms in which he has embodied his speculative faith
follow an order which we should have spoiled, had we, for our
present purpose, so brought them together as to make them
speak for themselves. And though they display the same
astonishing command of our language, in which the author
never fails, the cast of the thoughts is so Teutonic, that few
English readers, it is to be feared, will appreciate their depth
and richness. The complaint, which we have heard and seen,
that they are wholly unintelligible, is indeed purely ridiculous,

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 235
except that it sadly illustrates the extent to which reflection,
and even feeling, on such subjects has ceased in England. M.
Bunsen, we can assure our readers, knows what he means,
and lucidly states what he means ; and those who miss his
meaning have for the most part no slight loss. The following
sentences, which the greatest sufferer from philosophobia may
drink in without convulsions, will explain his idea of Revela
tion, in its bearing upon the use of written records. The
mere " Natural Rehgion " of the Deist, he observes, was —
" The negative reaction against the equally untenable, un-
philosophical, and irrational notion, that revelation was noth
ing but an external historical act. Such a notion entirely
loses sight of the infinite or eternal factor of revelation, found
ed both in the nature of the infinite and that of the finite
mind, of God and man.
" This heterodox notion became still more obnoxious, by its
imagining something higher in the manifestation of God's
will and being than the human mind, which is the divinely-
appointed organ of divine manifestation, and in a double man
ner ; ideally in mankind, as object, historically in the individ
ual man, as instrument.
"The notion of a merely historical revelation by written
records is as unhistorical as it is unintellectual and materialis
tic. It necessarily leads to untruth in philosophy, to unreality
in religious thought, and to Fetichism in worship. It misun
derstands the process necessarily implied in every historical
representation. The form of expressing the manifestation of
God in the mind, as if God was himself using human speech
to man, and was thus himself finite and a man, is a form in
herent in the nature of human thought as embodied in lan
guage, its own rational expression. It was originally never
meant to be understood materialistically, because the religious
consciousness which produced it was essentially spiritual;
and, indeed, it can only be thus misunderstood by those who
make it a rule and criterion of faith, never to connect any
thought whatever with what they are expected to believe as
divinely true.

236 CREED AND HERESIES
" Every religion is positive. It is, therefore, justly called a
religion ' made manifest ' (offenbart), or, as the English term
has it, revealed ; that is to say, it supposes an action of the in
finite mind, or God, upon the finite mind, or man, by which
God, in his relation to man, becomes manifest or visible.
This can be mediate, through the manifestation of God in the
Universe of Nature; or a direct, immediate action, through
the religious consciousness.
" This second action is called revealed, in the strictest sense.
The more a religion manifests of the real substance and na
ture of God, and of his relation to the universe and to man,
the more it deserves the name of a divine manifestation, or of
Revelation. But no religion which exists could exist without
something of truth, revealed to man, through the creation,
and through his mind.
" Such a direct communication of the Divine mind as is
called Revelation has necessarily two factors, which are unit
edly working in producing it. The one is the infinite factor,
or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by
the power which that mind has of perceiving it ; for human
perception is the correlate of divine manifestation. There
could be no revelation of God if there was not the corre
sponding faculty in the human mind to receive it, as there is
no manifestation of light where there is no eye to see it.
" This infinite factor is, of course, not historical ; it is inhe
rent in every individual soul, only with an immense difference
in the degree.
" The action of the Infinite upon the mind, is the miracle of
history and of religion, equal to the miracle of creation.
" Miracle, in its highest sense, is therefore essentially and
undoubtedly an operation of the Divine mind upon the human
mind. By that action the human mind becomes inspired with
a new life, which cannot be explained by any precedent of the
selfish (natural) life, but is its absolute contrary. This mira
cle requires no proof; the existence and action of religious
life is its proof, as the world is the proof of creation.
" The second factor of revelation is the finite or external.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 237
This means of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a uni
versal one, the Universe or Nature. But, in a more special
sense, it is a historical manifestation of divine truth through
the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These
men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate some
thing of eternal truth to their brethren ; and, as far as they
themselves are true, they have in them the conviction, that
what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth.
They therefore firmly believe that it is independent of their
individual personal opinion and impression, and will last, and
not perish, as their personal existence upon earth must.
" The difference between Christ and other men of God is
analogous to that between the manifestation of a part, and of
the totality and substance, of the divine mind." — Vol. II. p.
60, seq.
The newly-found work, like other productions of the same
period, can have only a disturbing interest for the Roman
Catholic and Orthodox Protestant. For, in conjunction with
previous evidence, it shows that the unbroken unity of teach
ing is altogether a fiction ; that what afterwards became here
sy was, in the latter part of the second century, held in the
church of the primacy itself, and by successors of St. Peter ;
that the clergy of Rome, so far from owning the apostolic au
thority of their chief, could resist him as heterodox ; and that
the contents of the Catholic system, far from appearing as an
invariable whole from the first, were a gradual synthesis of
elements flowing in from new channels of influence brought
into connection with the faith ; and as against the approved
type of Protestant, it shows that his favorite scheme of dog
ma was still in a very unripe state, and that further back it
had been still more so ; so that if he binds himself to the ear
liest creed, he may probably have to accept a profession
which he hardly regards as Christian at all. But from the
third point of view, which assumes that development is an in
herent necessity in a revelation, and may add to its truth, in
stead of subtracting from it, the monuments of Christian liter
ature from the secondary period have a positive interest, free

238 CREED AND HERESIES
from all uneasiness and alarm. They arrest for us, in the
midst, the advance of theological belief towards the form ulti
mately recognized in the Church, and expressed in the estab
lished creeds ; they render visible the beautiful features and
expanded look of the faith, when its Judaic blood had been
cooled by the waters of an Hellenic baptism ; and though
they leave many undetermined problems as to the successive
steps by which the original Hebrew type of the Gospel in Je
rusalem was metamorphosed into the Nicene and hierarchical
Christianity, they fix some intermediate points, and make us
profoundly conscious of the greatness of the change.
The author of the " Philosophumena," for instance, would
be stopped at the threshold of every sect in our own country,
and excluded as heterodox. He crosses the lines of our theo
logical definitions, and trespasses on forbidden ground, in
every possible doctrinal direction. Cardinal Wiseman would
have nothing to say to him ; for he is insubordinate to the
" Vicar of Christ," and profanely insists that a pope may be
deposed by his own council of presbyters. The Bishop of
Exeter would refuse him institution ; for his Trinity is imper
fect, and he allows no Personality to the Holy Ghost. The
Archbishop of Dublin might probably think him a little hard
upon Sabellius ; but, if he would quietly sign the Articles,
(which, however, he could by no means do,) might abstain
from retaliation, and let him pass. At Manchester, Canon
Stowell would keep him in hot water for his respectable opin
ion of human nature, and his lofty doctrine of free-will. In
Edinburgh, Dr. Candlish would not listen to a man who had
nothing to say of reliance on the imputed merits of Christ.
The sapient board at New College, St. John's Wood, would
expel him for his loose notions of Inspiration. And the Uni
tarians would find him too transcendental, make no com
mon sense out of his notions of Incarnation, and recommend
him to try Germany. This fact, that a bishop of the second
and third centuries would be ecclesiastically not a stranger
only, but an outcast among us, is most startling ; and ought
surely to open the eyes of modern Christians to the false and

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 239
dangerous position into which their churches have been brought
by narrow-heartedness and insincerity. It will not be M.
Bunsen's fault if our Churchmen remain insensible to the
national peril and disgrace of maintaining unreformed a sys
tem long known to have no heart of modern reality, and now
seen to have as httle ground of ancient authority. Again
and again he raises his voice of earnest and affectionate warn
ing. As a foreigner domesticated among us, as a scholar of
wide historical view, as a philosophical statesman who, amid
the diplomacy of the hour, descends to the springs of peren
nial life in nations, as a Christian who profoundly trusts the
reality of religion, and cannot be dazzled by the pretence, he
sees, with a rare clearness and breadth, both the capabilities
and the dangers of our social and spiritual condition. He
sees that God has given to the English people a moral mas-
siveness and veracity of character which presents the grand
est basis of noble faith ; while learned selfishness and aristo
cratic apathy uphold in the Church creeds which only stupid
ity can sign without mental reservations, — a Liturgy that
catches the scruple of the intellectual without touching the
enthusiasm of the popular heart, — a laity without function, —
a clergy without unity, — and a hierarchy without power.
He sees that our insular position has imparted to us a distinc
tive nationality of feeling, supplying copious elements for coa
lescence in a common religion ; while obstinate conservatism
has permitted our Christianity to become our great divisive
power, and to disintegrate us through and through. He re
spects our free institutions, which sustain the health of our
political life ; but beside them he finds an ecclesiastical sys
tem either imposed by a dead and inflexible necessity, or left
unguided to a whimsical voluntaryism, which separates the
combinations of faith from the relations of neighborhood, of
municipality, of country. With noble and richly-endowed
universities at the exclusive disposal of the Church, he finds
the theological and philosophical sciences so shamefully neg
lected, that Christian faith notoriously does not hold its intel
lectual ground, and in its retreat does nothing to reach a firm-

240 CREED AND HERESIES
er position ; but only protests its resolution to stand still, and
raise a din against the critic or metaphysic host that drives it
back. Is there no one in this great and honest country that
has trust enough in God and truth, foresight enough of ruin
from falsehood and pretence, to lay the first hand to the work
of renovation? Is statesmanship so infected with negligent
contempt of mankind, that no high-minded politician can be
found to care for the highest discipline of the people, and re
organize the institutions in which their conscience, their rea
son, their upward aspirations, should find life? Has the
Church no prophet with faith enough to fling aside creed and
college, and fire within him to burn away mediaeval pedantries,
and demand an altar of veracity, that may bring us together
for common work and " common prayer " ? Or is it to be left
to the strong men, exulting in their strength, and storming
with the furor of honest discontent, to settle these matters
with the sledge-hammer of their indignation? Miserable
hypocrisy ! to open the lips and lift the eyes to heaven, while
beckoning with the finger of apathy to these pioneers of Ne
cessity ! Would that some might be found to lay to heart
our author's warning and counsel in the following sentences : —
" While we exclude all suggestions of despair, as being
equally unworthy of a man and of a Christian, we establish
two safe principles. The first is, that, in all congregational
and ecclesiastical institutions, Christian freedom, within limits
conformable to Scripture, constitutes the first requisite for a
vital restoration. The second fundamental principle is, that
every Church must hold fast what she already possesses, in so
far as it presents itself to her consciousness as true and effi
cacious. In virtue of the first condition, she will combine
Reason and Scripture in due proportions ; by virtue of the
second, she wiU distinguish between Spirit and Letter, be
tween Idea and Form. No external clerical forms and me
diaeval reflexes of bygone social and intellectual conditions
can save us, nor can sectarian schisms and isolation from
national life. Neither can learned speculations, and still less
the incomparably more arrogant dreams of the unlearned.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 241
Scientific consciousness must dive into real hfe, and refresh
itself in the feelings of the people, and that no one will be
able to do without having made himself thoroughly conver
sant with the sufferings and the sorrows of the lowest classes
of society. For out of the feeling of these sufferings and
sorrows, as being to a great degree the most extensive and
most deep-seated product of evil, — that is, of selfishness, —
arose, eighteen hundred years ago, the divine birth of Christi
anity. The new birth, however, requires new pangs of labor,
and not only on the part of individuals, but of the whole na
tion, in so far as she bears within her the germs of future life,
and possesses the strength to bring forth. Every nation must
set about the work herself, not, indeed, as her own especial
exclusive concern, but as the interest of all mankind. Every
people has the vocation to coin for itself the divine form of
Humanity, in the Church as well as in the State ; its life de
pends on this being done, not its reputation merely ; it is the
condition of existence, not merely of prosperity.
" Is it not time, in truth, to withdraw the veil from our mis
ery ? to point to the clouds which rise from ah quarters, to
the noxious vapors which have already well-nigh suffocated
us ? to tear off the mask from hypocrisy, and destroy that
sham which is undermining all real ground beneath our feet ?
to point out the dangers which surround, nay, threaten already
to engulf us ? Is the state of things satisfactory in a Chris
tian sense, where so much that is unchristian predominates,
and where Christianity has scarcely begun here and there to
penetrate the surface of the common life ? Shall we be sat
isfied with the increased outward respect paid to Christianity
and the Church ? Shall we take it as a sign of renewed life,
that the names of God and Christ have become the fashion,
and are used as a party badge ? Can a society be said to be
in a healthy condition, in which material and selfish interests
in individuals, as well as in the masses, gain every day more
and more the upper hand ? in which so many thinking and
educated men are attached to Christianity only by outward
forms, maintained either by despotic power, or by a not less
21

242 CREED AND HERESIES
despotic, half-superstitious, half-hypocritical custom ? when
so many churches are empty, and satisfy but few, or display
more and more outward ceremonials and vicarious rites ?
when a godless schism has sprung up between spirit and
form, or has even been preached up as a means of rescue ?
when gross ignorance or confused knowledge, cold indiffer
ence or the fanaticism of superstition, prevails as to the un
derstanding of Holy Scripture, as to the history, nay, the fun
damental ideas of Christianity ? when force invokes rehgion
in order to command, and demagogues appeal to the religious
element in order to destroy ? when, after all their severe
chastisements and bloody lessons, most statesmen base their
wisdom only on the contempt of mankind? and when the
prophets of the people preach a hberty, the basis of which is
selfishness, the object hbertinism, and the wages are vice ?
And this in an age the events of which show more and more
fatal symptoms, and in which a cry of ardent longing pervades
the people, re-echoed by a thousand voices ! " — III. xv.
Sorry, however, as we should be to see our Roman presby
ter disconsolately wandering from fold to fold in modern
England, and dismissed as a black sheep from all, we should
not hke to find him metamorphosed into chief shepherd ei
ther, and invested with the guidance of our ecclesiastical affairs.
Though he is above imitating the feeble railing of Irenasus at
the heresies, he deals with them in the true clerical style ;
often missing their real meaning, he does not spare them his
bad word ; and fancies he has killed them before he has even
caught them. He has an evident relish also for a tale of
scandal, as a make-weight against a theological opponent. In
the " Little Labyrinth," he had told us a story about a Unita
rian minister, who, for accepting his schismatical office, had
been horsewhipped by angels all night ; so that he crawled in
the morning to the metropolitan, and gave in his penitential
recantation. And now, in the larger work, the author flies at
higher game, and makes out that Pope Callistus was an in
corrigible scamp ; originally a slave in the household of a
wealthy Christian master, Carpophorus, whose confidence he

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 243
abused in every possible way. First, having been intrusted
with the management of a bank in the Piscina publica, he
swindled and ruined the depositors, and decamped, with the
intention of sailing from Portus, but was found on board ship ;
and, though he jumped into the sea to avoid capture, was
picked up, and condemned by his master to the hand-mill.
Next, being allowed to go out, on the plea of collecting some
debts which would enable him to pay a dividend to the de
positors, he created a riot in a Jews' synagogue, and, being
brought before the prefect, was sentenced to be flogged and
transported to Sardinia. Thence he escaped by passing him
self off among a number of Christians, released from their
exile through the influence of the Emperor's concubine, Mar-
cia, and on the recommendation of Victor, the Pope. As he
was not included in the list of pardons, he no sooner made his
appearance in Rome than his master sent him off to live on a
monthly allowance at Antium. On the death of Carpophorus,
he seems to have attained his freedom by bequest ; and his
fertility of resource having made him useful to the new Pope
Zephyrinus, he acquired influence enough to succeed him in
the Primacy. We must confess that the evident gusto with
which our presbyter tells this scandal, the animus with which
he accuses Zephyrinus also of stupidity and venality, and the
predominance in his narrative of theological antipathy over
moral disgust, leave a painful impression on the reader re
specting the spirit then at work in the Apostolic See. And
though his scheme of belief, especially in relation to the per
son of Christ, was more rational than the definitions of more
modern creeds, yet we fear that he would be not less nice
about its shape, and intolerant of those who move about in
freer folds of thought, than a divine of the Canterbury clois
ters or the Edinburgh platform. His quarrel with the two
popes whom he abuses shows pretty clearly the stage of de
velopment which the Christian theology had then reached.
On this matter we must say a few words.
Whatever may have been the precise order of combination
which brought the Hebrew and Hellenic ideas of God into

244 CREED AND HERESIES
union, there can be no doubt about the two termini of the pro
cess. It started from the monarchical conception of Jehovah,
as a Unity without plurality ; and it issued in the Athanasian
Trinity, with its three hypostases in one essence. Of these,
the Father expressed the Absolute existence, the Son the
Objective manifestation, the Holy Spirit the Subjective reve
lation of God. In the presbyter's creed, the third term was
not yet incorporated, but still floated freely, diffused and im
personal. Leaving this out of view, we may observe, in the
remaining part of the doctrine, two principal difficulties to be
surmounted, arising from the double medium of divine objec
tive manifestation, — Nature, always proceeding, — and Christ,
historically transient. The first problem is, How to pass at
all out of the Infinite existence into Finite phenomena, and
conceive the relation between the Father and the Son ; the
second, How to pass from Eternal manifestation through all
phenomena into temporary appearance in an Individual, so as
to conceive the relation between the Son and the Galilean
Christ. Thus, excluding all reference to the Holy Spirit,
there were, in fact, four objects of thought, whose relations
to one another were to be adjusted ; viz. the Father, the Son
evolving all things, the Christ or divine individualization in the
Gospel, and Jesus of Nazareth, the human being with whose
hfe this individualization concurred. Among all these there
were, so to speak, two clearly distinct Wills to dispose of;
that of the man Jesus at the lowest extremity, and that of the
Supreme God, which the Jew, at least, would fix at the upper.
These two Wills act, in the whole development of doctrine
on this subject, as the secret centres of Personahty ; and the
remaining elements obtain or miss a hypostatic character ac
cording as they are drawn or not into coalescence with the
one or the other. The vohtional point of the Divine Agency
being once determined, it may be regarded as enclosed be
tween the Thought, or intellectual essence out of which it
comes, and the Execution by which it is realized ; or it may
be left undistinguished from these, and may be made to coin
cide with either. According to these variable conditions arise

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 245
the several modes of doctrine in reference to the Divine ele
ment in God's Objective manifestation. The differences, for
instance, between our presbyter's doctrme and Origen's, will
be found to depend on the different points which they seize as
the seat of divine volition, and the germ of their logical de
velopment. Our author, exemphfying the Hebrew tendency,
seeks his initiative up at the fountain-head, and puts himself
back before the first act of creation ; he starts from the One
God, with whom nothing was co-present, and fixes in Him the
seat of the primeval Will. There, however, it would remain,
a mere potentiahty, did not the Eternal Mind, by reflection in
itself, pass into self-consciousness, and give objectivity to its
own thought. This primary expression of his essence, in
which it enters into relation, but relation only to itself, is the
Logos, or Son of God, the agent in the production of all
things. The potentiality is thus reserved to the Father ; the
effectuation is given to the Son ; who, coming in at a point
lower down than the seat of Will, and simply bridging over
the interval that leads to accomplishment, is felt without the
essential condition of a numerically distinct subsistence ; and
has either the instrumental and subordinate personality of a
dependent being, or is imperfectly hypostatized.* In this im
personal character does the Logos manifest the Divine thought
in the visible universe ; in the minds of godly men, which are
the source of law ; in the glance of prophets, which catches
and interprets the divine significance of all times ; and first
assumes a full personality in the Incarnation. Having left
the primary Will behind in the Father's essence, the Logos
remains but an inchoate hypostasis, till alighting, in the human
nature, on another centre of volition. As if our author were
half conscious, in reaching this point, of relief from an ante
cedent uneasiness, he now holds fast to the personality which
has been realized, represents it as not dissolved by the death
* To Hippolytus and the writers of his period, Dorner ascribes the latter,
preponderantly over the former, side of this alternative ; while Hanell charges
their view with Sabellianism. See Dorner's " Entwickelungsgeschichte der
Lehre von der Person Christi," I. p. 611, seq.
21*

246 CREED AND HERESIES
on the cross, but taken up into heaven, and abiding for ever.
It is, in this view, the two extreme terms that supply the hy-
postatizing power ; of the others, the Logos has no personal
ity but by looking back to the Father ; nor the Christ, but by
going forward to the Son of Mary. This shows the yet pow
erful influence of the Judaic Monarchianism, and the embar
rassment of a mind, setting out from that type of faith, to
provide any plurality within the essence of God. Origen, on
the other hand, yielded to the Hellenic feeling, and, instead of
going back to any absolute commencement, looked for his
Divine centre and starting-point further down; and took
thence whatever upward glance was needful to complete his
view. As the Greek reverence was not touched but by the
Divine embodied in concrete life and form, so the Alexan
drine catechist instinctively fixed upon the Son, the objective
Thought of God, proceeding, not once upon a time or ever
first, but eternally, from Him, as the initiative position for his
doctrine. Here was placed the clearest and intensest focus of
Will ; and only in this ever-evolving efficient were the full
conditions of personahty realized. The Father was conceived
more pantheistically, as the universal vois, the intellectual
background, whence issued the acting nature of the Son. In
meditating on them in their conjunction, Origen would think
of the relation between thought and volition; our author, of
that between volition and execution. Both doctrines show
the imperfect fusion of Hebrew and Hellenic elements, and
illustrate the characteristic effect of an excessive proportion of
each. Where the Hebrew element prevails, the personality
of the Son is endangered ; where the Hellenic, the personahty
of the Father. Even our presbyter's doctrine of the Son,
however, gave too strong an impersonation to Him for the
party in Rome who sided with Zephyrinus and Calhstus.
These popes accused him, it seems, of being a Ditheist ; and
themselves maintained that the terms Father and Son denoted
only different sides and relations of one and the same Being, —
nay, not only of the same Being, but of the same vpoo-amov ;
and that the spirit that dwelt in Christ was the Father, of

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 247
whom all things are full. For this opinion the two popes are
angrily dealt with by our author, and charged with being half
Sabellian, half humanitarian. His rancor justifies the sus
picion, that, though he represents the party which triumphed
at Rome, his opponents had been numerous and powerful, as,
indeed, their election to the primacy would of itself show, and
that even his own imperfect dogma was superinduced, not
without a protracted struggle, upon an earlier faith yet remote
from the Nicene standard.
And this brings us at once to a question of historical re
search, which, though far too intricate and extensive to be dis
cussed here, we feel bound to notice, as far as it is affected by
the newly discovered work. How long did it take for the
Christian faith to assume the leading features of its orthodox
and catholic form, and especially to work itself clear of Juda
ism ? It is an acknowledged fact, that the earliest disciples,
including at the lowest estimate all the converts of the first
seven years from the ascension, not only were born Hebrews,
but did not regard their baptism as in any way withdrawing
them from the pale of their national religion ; that, on the con
trary, they claimed to be the only true Jews, differing from
others simply by their belief in a personaUy appointed, in
stead of a vaguely promised Messiah ; that they aimed at no
more than to bring over their own race to this conviction, and
persuade them that the national destinies were about to be
consummated, and, so far from relaxing the obhgations of
their Law, adhered with peculiar rigor to its ritual and its
exclusiveness. So long as none but the twelve Apostles had
charge of its diffusion, Christianity was only a particular mode
of Judaism, and its whole discussion a fV/rno-w rav 'lovBalav.
It is further admitted, that the first inroad upon this narrow
ness was made by St. Paul, who insisted on the universality
of Christ's function, and the abrogation of the Mosaic Law in
favor of inward faith, as the condition of union with God.
Nor, again, is it denied that this freer view met with great
resistance, and that its conflict with the other, apparent through
out the Pauline Epistles, formed the most animating feature

248 CREED AND HERESIES
of the Apostolic age. During that period, two distinct parties,
and two separate hnes of development and growth, may be
traced ; one following out in morals the legal idea into ascet
icism, voluntary poverty, and physical purity, and in faith the
monarchian idea into theocratic and millenarian expectations ;
the other, proceeding from the notion of faith to substitute an
ideal Christ for the historical, a new religion for an old law,
the free embrace of divine reconciliation for the anxious strain
of self-mortifying obedience. But how long did this struggle
and separation continue ? According to the prevalent behef,
it was all over in a few years ; and, by the happy harmony
and concurrence of the Apostles, was determined in favor of
the generous Pauline doctrine ; so that St. John lived to see
the Hebrew Christians sink into a mere Ebionitish sect out
side the pale, and their stiff Unitarian theology disowned in
favor of the higher teachings of his Gospel. Against this
assumption of so easy a victory over the Jewish tendency,
several striking testimonies have often been urged. Tertul-
lian, in a well-known passage of his treatise against Praxeas,
describes the dislike with which the unlearned majority of
believers regard the Trinitarian distinctions in the Godhead,
and the zeal with which they cry out for holding to " the
Monarchy." * In the time of Pope Zephyrinus, as we learn
from Eusebius, a body of Unitarians in Rome, followers of
Artemon, defended their doctrine by the conservative plea of
antiquity and general consent ; affirming that it was no other
than the uninterrupted creed of the Roman Church down to
the time of Victor, the preceding pope ; and that the higher
doctrine of the Person of Christ was quite a recent innova-
tion.f Nor are we without ecclesiastical literature, of even a
later date, that by its theological tone gives witness to the
same effect. The " Clementine Recognitions," written some
where between 212 and 230, occupy a dogmatic position,
higher indeed than the disciples of Artemon, but only in the
direction of Arius, and, to save the Unity of God, deny the
* " Tert. adv. Prax.," c. 3. t Euseb. H. E., V. 28.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 249
Deity of Christ.* Relying on such evidence as this, Priestley,
in his " History of Early Opinions," and his controversy with
Bishop Horsley, maintained that the creed of the Church for
the first two centuries was Unitarian. But this position was
attended with many difficulties, so long as the present canon
ical Scriptures were allowed to have been in the hands of the
Christians of that period, and recognized as authorities ; for
the narratives of the miraculous conception, the writings of
Paul, and the Gospel of John, are irreconcilable with the
schemes of belief attributed to the early Unitarians. More
over, if for two centuries the Church had interpreted its
authoritative documents in one way, and formed on this its
services and expositions, it is not easy to conceive the rapid
revolution into another. During a period of free and floating
tradition, there is manifest room for the growth of essentially
different modes of faith ; but after the reception of a definite
set of sacred books, the scope for change is much contracted.
To treat the doctrine of the Logos as an innovation, yet as
cribe the fourth Gospel to the beloved disciple ; to suppose
that justification by works was the generally received notion
among people who guided themselves by the authority of Paul,
— involves us in irremediable contradictions. Avoiding these
at least, possibly not without the risk of others, the celebrated
theologians of Tubingen have maintained a bolder thesis than
that of Priestley, including it indeed, but with it also a vast
deal more. Their theory runs as follows. The opposition
which St. Paul's teaching excited, and of which his letters
preserve so many traces, was neither so insignificant nor so
short-lived as is commonly supposed ; but was encouraged
and led by the other Apostles, especially James and John and
Peter, who never heartily recognized the volunteer Apostle ;
and was so completely successful, that he died without having
made any considerable impression on the Judaic Christianity
sanctioned from Jerusalem. Accordingly, the earliest Chris
tian literature was Ebionitish ; and no production was in higher
* See Adolph Schliemann's " Clementinen, nebst den verwandten Schriften
und der Ebionitismus," Cap. IH. ii. $§ 8, 9.

250 CREED AND HERESIES
esteem than the " Gospel of the Hebrews," which, after being
long current, with several variations of form, at last settled
down into our Gospel of Matthew. In almost all the writ
ings known to us, even in Roman circles of the second cen
tury, — the Shepherd of Hermas, the Memorials of Hege-
sippus, the works of Justin, — some character or other of
Ebionitism is present, — miUenarian doctrine, admiration of
celibacy and of abstinence from meat and wine, denunciation
of riches, emphatic assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus, and
treatment of the miraculous conception as at least an open
question. The labors of Paul, however, had left a seed which
had been buried, but not killed ; and from the first, a small
party had cherished his freer principles, and sought to win
acceptance for them; and as the progress of time increased
the proportion of provincial and Gentile converts, and the
Jewish wars of Titus and Hadrian destroyed the possibility
of Mosaic obedience and the reasonableness of Hebrew hopes,
the Pauline element rose in magnitude and importance.
Thus the two courses of opposite development ran parallel
with each other, and gradually found their interest in mutual
recognition and concession. Hence, a series of writings pro
ceeding from either side, first of conciliatory approximation
only, next of complete neutrality and equipoise, in which
sometimes the figures of Peter and Paul themselves are pre
sented with studiously balanced honor, at others their char
acteristic ideas are adjusted by compromise. The Clementine
Homilies, the Apostolic Constitutions, the Epistle of James,
the Second Epistle of Clement, the Gospel of Mark, the Rec
ognitions, the Second Epistle of Peter, constitute the series
proceeding from the Ebionitish side ; while from the Pauline
came the First Epistle of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, the
writings of Luke, the First Epistle of Clement, the Epistle
to the Philippians, the Pastoral Epistles, Polycarp's, and the
Ignatians. These productions, however, springing from the
practical instinct of the West, deal with the ecclesiastical more
than with the doctrinal phase of antagonism between the two
directions; and end with establishing in Rome a Cathohc

OP EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 251
Church, founded on the united sepulchres of Peter and Paul,
and combining the sacerdotalism of the Old Testament with
the universality of the New Gentile Gospel. Meanwhile, a
similar course, with local modifications, was run by the Church
of Asia Minor. Rome, with its political aptitude, having
taken in hand the questions of discipline and organization, the
speculative genius of the Asiatic Greek addressed itself simul
taneously to the development and determination of doctrine.
Here the Epistle to the Galatians marks, as a starting-point,
the same original struggle between the contrasted elements
which the Epistle to the Romans betrays in Italy ; while the
Gospel of John closes the dogmatic strife of development
with an accepted Trinity for faith, just as the Ignatian Epistles
wind up the contests of the West with a recognized hierarchy
for government. And between these extremes the East pre
sents to us, first, the intensely Judaical Apocalypse ; next,
with increasing reaction in the Pauline direction, the rudi
ments of the Logos idea in the Epistles to the Hebrews, Co-
lossians, and Ephesians ; and as Montanism, in the midst of
which these arose, had already made familiar the conception
of the Paraclete, all the conditions were present for combina
tion into the Johannine doctrine of the Trinity ; and then it
was, in the second quarter of the second century, that the
fourth Gospel appeared. The speculative theology thus
native to Lesser Asia was adopted for shelter and growth by
the kindred Hellenism of Egypt, and gave rise to the school
of Alexandria. In the whole of this theory great use is made
of Montanism : it spans, as it were, the interval between the
parallel movements of Italy and Asia ; and is the common
medium of thought in which they both take place. Singu
larly uniting in itself the rigor, the narrowness, the ascetic su
perstitions of its Hebrew basis, with a Phrygian prophetic
enthusiasm and an Hellenic theosophy, it imported the latter
into the doctrine, the former into the discipline, of the Church.
The Roman Catholic system betrays its Jewish or Montanist
origin in its legalism, its penances, its celibacy, its monachism,
its ecstatic phenomena, its physical supernaturalism, its exag
gerated appreciation of martyrdom.

252 CREED AND HERESIES
Such, in barest outline, is the theory which M. Bunsen
characterizes as the " Tubingen romance." Its leading princi
ple is, that the antagonism between the Petrine and Pauline,
the Hebrew and the Hellenic Gospel, which has its origin
and authentic expression in the Epistles to the Galatians, Ro
mans, and Corinthians, continued into the second century ; de
termined the evolution of doctrine and usage ; stamped itself
upon the ecclesiastical literature ; and ended in the compro
mise and reconciliation of the Cathohc Church. It is evident
that, in the working out of this principle, the New Testament
canon is made to give way. With the exception of the great
er Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse, both of which are
held fast as genuine productions of the Apostles whose names
they bear, and the first Gospel, which is allowed to have at
least the groundwork in the primitive tradition, the received
books are all set loose from the dates and names usually as
signed to them, and arranged, in common with other products
of the time, according to the relation they bear to the Ebionit-
ish or to the Pauline school, and the particular stage they seem
to mark in the history of either. This proceeding, however,
is not an original violence resorted to for the exigencies of the
theory ; but, for the most part, a mere appropriation to its use
of conclusions reached by antecedent theologians on indepen
dent grounds. The Epistle to the Philippians is the only
work, if we mistake not, on the authenticity of which doubt
has been thrown for the first time, — in our opinion, on very
inadequate grounds. In this, as in many other details of the
hypothetical history, there is not a httle of that straining of
real evidence and subtle fabrication of unreal, which German
criticism seems unable to avoid. But the acerbity displayed
by the North German theologians towards the Tubingen crit
ics appears to us unwarranted and humiliating ; and we cer
tainly wish that M. Bunsen, whose prompt admiration of
excellence so nobly distinguishes him from Ewald, could have
expressed his dissent from Baur and Schwegler in a tone still
further removed from the Gottingen pitch. At least, we do
not find the positive assertion that the Tubingen theory is

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 253
finally demolished by the " Philosophumena " at all borne out
by the evidence ; and are inclined to think that the case is
very little altered by the new elements now contributed to its
discussion. The critical offence which he thinks is now de
tected and exposed, is the ascription of a late origin to the
fourth Gospel,* and the treatment of it as the perfected pro
duct, instead of the misused source, of the Montanist concep
tions of the Logos and the Paraclete. It cannot, however, be
denied, that, in the previous absence of any external testimo
ny to the existence of this Gospel earlier than the year 170,+
the internal difficulties are sufficiently serious to redeem the
doubt of its authenticity from the character of rashness or
perversity. The irreconcilable opposition between its whole
mode of thought and that of the Apocalypse is confessed by
M. Bunsen himself, when he suggests that the proem on the
Logos was directed against Cerinthus, — the very person
whose sentiments the Apocalypse was supposed to express,
and to whom, accordingly, it was ascribed by those who reject
ed it. One of the two books must resign, then, the name of
the beloved disciple ; and, of the two, we need hardly say
that the Apocalypse is incomparably the better authenticated.
Moreover, the traditions which unite the names of James and
John, as the authorities foUowed by the Church of Lesser
Asia, render it hard to conceive that their doctrines can have
taken precisely opposite directions ; and that, while James
represented the Judaic Christianity of the deepest dye, John
* M. Bunsen must have some authority which has escaped our memory
for attributing to " the whole school of Tubingen " the opinion " that the
fourth Gospel was written about the year 165 or 170." (I. v.) We cannot
call to mind any criticism which assigns so late a date. Schwegler uses
various expressions to mark the time to which he refers ; e. g. " about the
middle of the second century " (Nachapost. Zeitalter, II. 354, and Monta-
nismus, p. 214); "intermediate between the Apologists and Irenasus " (II.
369); " previous to the last third of the second century " (II. 348) ; "in the
second quarter of the second century " (II. 345). Zeller also fixes on the year
150 as the time when the Gospel may probably have first appeared. ( Zeller's
Jahrb., 1845, p. 646.)
t The earliest testimony is that of Apollinaris, of Hierapolis in Phrygia,
preserved in the " Paschal Chronicle," probably about A. r>. 170-175.
22

254 CREED AND HERESIES
can have produced the standard and conclusive work on the
other side. In particular, the well-known fact, that the Asi
atic Christians justified their Jewish mode of keeping Easter
by the double plea, (1.) that James and John always did so,
(2.) that Christ himself had done so before he suffered, seems
incompatible with any knowledge of the fourth Gospel, which
denies that Jesus ate the passover before he suffered, and
makes his own death to be the passover. How could this
Quartodeciman controversy live a day among a people pos
sessing and acknowledging John's Gospel, which so bears
upon it as to give a distinct contradiction to the view of the
other Gospels, and to pronounce in Asia Minor itself an unam
biguous verdict in favor of the West ? These are grave diffi
culties, which, after ah the ingenuity, even of Bleek, remain,
we fear, unrelieved ; and in their presence we cannot feel the
justice of M. Bunsen's sentence, that Baur's opinion is " the
most unhappy of philological conjectures." Everything con
jectural, however, must give way before real historical testi
mony ; and, if new evidence is actually contained in the " Phi
losophumena," every true critic, of Tubingen or elsewhere,
will be thankful for light to dissipate the doubt. Now, it is
said that our Roman bishop, in treating of the heresy of Ba-
silides, supplies passages from the writings of this heresiarch
which include quotations from the fourth Gospel ; and thus
prove its existence as early as the year 130. This argument,
as stated by M. Bunsen, appeared to us quite conclusive, and
we hoped that a decided step had been gained towards the set
tlement of the question. Great was our disappointment, on
reading the account in the original, to find no evidence that
any extract from Basilides was before us at all. A general
description of the system bearing his name is given ; but with
no mention of any work of his, no profession that the words
are his, and even so httle individual reference to him, that
the exposition is introduced as being a report of what " Basili
des and Isidorus, and the whole troop of these people, falsely
say" {KaTa-^evBerai, sing.). Then follows the account of the
dogmas of the sect, with the word (prjo-lv inserted from time to

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 255
time, to indicate that the writer is still reporting the senti
ments of others. The singular form of this word implies
nothing at all ; it occurs immediately after the word Kara-^ev-
Bcrai, and has the same avowedly plural subject. The state
ment, therefore, within which are contained the Scripture cita
tions, is a merely general one of the opinions of a sect which
continued to subsist till a much later time than the lowest date
ever assigned for the composition of the fourth Gospel. If the
actual words of any writings current among these heretics are
given, they are the words of an author or authors wholly un
known, and to refer them to Basilides in particular is a mere
arbitrary act of will. The change from the singular to the
plural forms of citation in the midst of one and the same sen
tence, and the disregard of concord between verb and subject,
show that no inference can be drawn from so loose a system of
grammatical usage. All that can be affirmed is, that our au
thor had in his hand some production of the Basilidian x°P°s>
in which the fourth Gospel was quoted ; but this affords no
chronological datum that can be of the smallest use.* The
* We will give, from this very section on Basilides, and its subsequent
recapitulation, three examples of the irregular mode of citation to which we
refer: (a) of the singular verb with plural subject expressed; (J) of plural
verb with singular subject expressed; (c) of the mixture of singular and
plural subjects in the same sentence, so that the affirmation belongs indeter
minately to either.
{a)"\Ba>pev ovv iras Karafpavas BacnXel8rjs <5fio0 Kal 'icriBiopos Kal
•nas 6 rovrav xopos, oi% dnXas Karaty evBerai p6vov Mardaiov,
dXXd yap Kal rov Sarrjpos avrov. 'Hv, cprjclv, ore rjv ovBev, k. t. A.
— p. 230.
(b) Bao-tXci'finr Be Kal airbs Xeyei elval 6ebv ovk ovra, nenoi-npivov
Koo-pov i£ ovk bvrav, . . . . r) as abv raov e'xov *v iavra rrjv rav
Xpapdrav uoikiXtjv itXtjOvv, kcu tovto elvaicpao- I to toO Kocrpov o~nip-
pa, *. t. X.— P-320-
(c) kcu BiBoiKe rds Kara irpofioXijv rav yeyovorav ovcrias 6 Bao~i-
XeiBrjs .... dXXd elire, <prjcrl, Kal eyeVcro, Kal tovto ecfrtv o Xeyovaiv
oi avBpes oBroi, to Xex^iv imb TAataias, " revn&jrco (pais, Kal iyevero
fpa>s." Tlodev, (pr)0-l. yiyove to (pas ;  Teyove, (prjo-lv, i£ oijk
ovrav to anippa rov Koapov, 6 Xoyos 6 Xe^dels yevr)8rjTa <pas, Kal
tovto, (prjalv, eari to Xeyopevov iv rciis 'EvayyeXlois • " Rv to (^)<3s

256 CREED AND HERESIES
same remark applies to the use of John's Gospel by the
Ophites. That they did use it is evident ; that they existed as
far back as the time of Peter and Paul is certainly probable ;
yet it does not follow that the fourth Gospel was then extant.
For they continued in existence through two or three centuries,
dating, as Baur has shown, from a time anterior not only to
the Christian heresies, but to Christianity itself, and extending
down to Origen's time ; and to what part of this long period
the writings belonged which the author of the " Philosophu
mena " employed, we are absolutely unable to determine. We
do not know why M. Bunsen has not appealed also to a quo
tation from the Gospel which occurs (p. 194) in an account of
the Valentinian system. If, as he affirms (I. 63), this account
were really in " Valentinus's own words," the citation would
be of particular value in the controversy. For it has always
been urged by the Tubingen critics as a highly significant fact,
that while the followers of Valentinus showed an especial
eagerness to appeal to the Gospel of John, and one of the ear
liest, Heracleon, wrote a commentary upon it, no trace could be
found of its use by the heresiarch himself. From this cir
cumstance, they have inferred that the Gospel was not avail
able for him, and first appeared after his time. A single
clause cited by him from the Gospel would demolish this argu
ment at once. But the assertion that we have here "full
eight pages of Valentinus's own words " appears to us quite
groundless. No such thing is affirmed by the writer of the
eight pages. He promises to tell us how the strict adhe
rents to the original principle of the sect expounded their doc
trine (as eKelvot, BiBdo-Kovcn) ; and then passes over, as usual, to
the singular cpijo-l, returning, however, from time to time, to
the plural forms, — deXovcn, Xeyovo-i, &c, — and thus leaving
no pretext for the assumption that Valentinus is before us in
person. The later Gnostics indisputably resorted to the Gos-
to dXrjdivbv, b (parl^ei Trdvra avdpairov ip^opevov els rov Kocrpov." —
p. 232. Now can any one decide whether this comment on the " Let there
be light, and there was light," with its applications to John i. 9, proceeds
from " Basilides " or from " these men " ?

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 257
pel of John with especial zeal and preference ; and if their
predecessors, Basilides and Valentinus, were acquainted with
the book, it is surprising that no trace of their familiarity with
it has been found ; and that the former should have sought to
authenticate the secret doctrine he professed to have received
by the name of Matthew or Matthias instead of John. It de
serves remark, that the citations preserved by our author are
made, hke those of Justin Martyr, as from an anonymous writ
ing, without mentioning the name of the Evangelist; a cir
cumstance less surprising in reference to the Synoptics alone,
which present only varieties of the same fundamental tradi
tion, than when the fourth Gospel, so evidently the independent
production of a single mind, is thrown into the group. The
Epistles of Paul and the books of the Old Testament are fre
quently quoted by name ; and why this practice should inva
riably cease whenever the historical work of an Apostle was
in the hand, it is not easy to explain. The Apocalypse is men
tioned not without his name.*
For these reasons we are of opinion that the question about
the date and authenticity of the fourth Gospel is wholly unaf
fected by the newly-discovered work. On this side, no new
facilities are gained for confuting the Tubingen theory. The
most positive and startling fact against it is presented from
another direction. We know that the system of Theodotus,
which was Unitarian, was condemned by Victor in the last
decade of the second century .f Now Victor was the very
pope to the end of whose period, according to the foUowers of
Artemon, their monarchian faith was upheld in the Roman
Church, and in the time of whose successor was the first im
portation of the higher doctrine of the Logos. On this com
plaint of the Artemonites, Baur and Schwegler lay great stress;
but is it not refuted by Victor's orthodox act of expelling a
Unitarian ? Undoubtedly it would be so, if Theodotus were
excommunicated precisely for his belief in the uni-personality
of God. But his scheme included many articles ; and we

* Page 528. f Euseb. H. E., V. 28.
22*

258 CREED AND HERESIES
know nothing of the ground taken in the proceedings against
him. There was one question, however, which, however in
different to us, was evidently very near to the feelings of the
early Church, and on which Theodotus separated himself from
the prevailing conceptions of his time, — viz. At what date
did the Christ, the Divine principle, become united with Je
sus, the human being ? " At his baptism," replied Theodo
tus.* " Before his birth," said the general voice of the Chris
tians. We are disposed to think this was the obnoxious tenet
which Victor construed into heresy ; and if so, the strife had
no bearing upon the doctrine of the personality of the Logos,
which the pope and the heretic might both have rejected. Of
the Unitarianism of that time, it was no essential feature to
postpone till the baptism the heavenly element in Christ.
We remember no reason for supposing that the Artemonites
did so, though Theodotus did ; and if they knew that the ob
jection which had been fatal to him did not apply to them,
their claim of ancient and orthodox sanction for what they
held in common with him was not answered by pointing to
his condemnation for what was special to himself. But is
there, it will be asked, any evidence that the Roman Church
attached importance to this particular ingredient of the The-
odotian scheme, so that their bishop might feel impelled to
visit it with ecclesiastical censure ? We believe there is, and
that too in the " Philosophumena." In the author's confession
of faith occurs a passage which produces at first a strange
impression upon a modern reader, and appears like a violence
done to the Gospel history. It affirms that Christ passed
through every stage of human life, that he might serve as the
model to all. Nor is this idea a personal whim of the writer ;
but is borrowed from his master, Irenaaus, who gives it in
more detail, and winds it up with the assertion, that Christ
lived to be fifty years old.f Irenasus thus falsifies the history
to make good the moral ; our presbyter, by respecting the
history, apparently invalidates the moral : for it can scarcely
* " Philosophumena," p. 258. t Iren. Lib. n. c. 39.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 259
be said of a hfe closed after thirty-one or thirty-two years,
that it supphes a rule 7rdo-a ^XikIt; ; at least it would seem more
natural to apologize for its premature termination, than to lay
stress on its absolute completeness The truth is, there was
a certain obnoxious tenet behind, which these writers were
anxious to contradict, and which their assertion exactly meets,
— viz. the very tenet of Theodotus, that the Divine nature
did not unite itself with the Saviour till his baptism. Ire-
nseus and his pupil could not endure this limitation of what
was highest in Christ to the interval between his first public
. preaching and his crucifixion. They thought that in this way
it was reduced to a mere official investiture, not integral to his
being, but externally superinduced ; and that such a conception
deprived it of all its moral significance. The union of the
Logos with our nature was not a provision for temporary in
spiration or a forensic redemption ; but was intended to mould
a hfe and shape a personal existence, according to the im
maculate ideal of humanity. To accomplish this intention it
was necessary that the Logos should never be absent from
any part of his earthly being ; but should have claimed his
person from the first, and by preoccupation have neutralized
the action of the natural (or psychic) element, throughout all
the years of his continuance among men. The anxiety of
Irenaeus's school to put this interpretation on the manifestation
of the Logos, their determination to distinguish it, on the one
hand, from the mediate communication of prophets as an im
mediate presentation (airoijrel (pavepadrjvat), and, on the other,
from the transient occupancy of a ready-made man, as a per
manent and thorough-going incarnation (o-apKadijvai in oppo
sition to (pavrao-ia or rpairij), is apparent in their whole lan
guage on this subject. In the Son, we are carried to the
fresh fountain-head of every kind of perfection, and find the
unspoiled ideal of heavenly and terrestrial natures. In one
of the fragments of Hippolytus, published by Mai, and noticed
in M. Bunsen's Appendix, this notion is conveyed by the re
mark, that He is first-born of God's own essence, that he may
have precedence of angels ; first-born of a virgin, that he may

260 CREED AND HERESIES
be a fresh-created Adam ; first-born of death, that he might
become the first fruits of our resurrection.* This doctrine it
is, we apprehend, which amplifies itself into the Irenajan state
ment, that the divine and ideal function of Christ coalesced
with the historical throughout, so that to infants he was a con
secrating infant; to little children, a consecrating child; to
youth, a consecrating model of youth; and to elders, a still
consecrating rule, not only by disclosure of truth, but by ex
hibiting the true type of their perfection.f The teaching of
Theodotus, that the heavenly dKav remained at a distance till
the baptism, was directly contradictory of this favorite notion ;
and might well produce hostile excitement, and provoke con
demnation, in a church where the Irenaean influence is known
to have been powerful. The attitude that Victor assumed
towards the Theodotians is thus perfectly compatible with
Monarchian opinions, and with an attitude equally hostile,
in the opposite direction, towards the advancing Trinitarian
claims of a distinct personality for the Logos. Though only
the one hostility is recorded of Victor, the other is ascribed,
as we have seen, to his immediate successors, Zephyrinus and
Callistus, who maintained that it was no other person than
the Father that dwelt as the Logos in the Son. The facts
taken together, and spreading as they do over the periods of
three popes, afford undeniable traces of a struggle at the turn
of the second century, between a prevalent but threatened
Monarchianism, and a new doctrine of the Divine Personal
ity of the Son.
After all, why is M. Bunsen so anxious to disprove the
late appearance of the fourth Gospel ? Did he value it chief
ly as a biographical sketch, and depend upon it for concrete
* I. p. 341.
f The words of the author of the " Philosophumena" are these: ToCroi'
eyvapev €K vrapBivov crapa dveCXr)<poTa Kal tov naXaibv avOpanov Bid
Kaivrjs irXdo~ca>s Tre<popr]KOTa, iv (3ia Bid 7rdg-ns" rjXiKLas iXr]Xv06ra, tva
Trdcrn rp\iKta avros vopos yevr]8jj Kal o~Koirbv tov IBiov avQpairov ndo-iv
dvBpaTTOis imBeU-Tj trapav, Kal 6Y avrov iXey^rj on prjBiv iiroirjorev 6
8ebs nov7]pov. — P- 337.

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 261
facts, a first-hand authentication of its contents would be of
primary moment. But his interest in it is evidently specula
tive rather than historical, and centres upon its doctrinal
thought, not on its narrative attestation ; and especially singles
out the proem as a condensed and perfect expression of Chris
tian ontology. The book speaks to him, and finds him, out
of its mystic spiritual depths ; sanctifies his own philosophy ;
glorifies with an ideal haze the greatest reality of history ;
blends with melting tints the tenderness of the human, and
the sublimity of the divine hfe ; and presents the Holy Spirit
as immanent in the souls of the faithful and the destinies of
humanity. But its enunciation of great truths, its penetration
to the still sanctuary of devout consciousness, wiU not cease
to be facts, or become doubtful as merits, or be changed in
their endearing power, by an alteration in the superscription
or the date. These religious and philosophical features con
verse directly with Reason and Conscience, and have the same
significance, whatever their critical history may be ; and are
not the less rich as inspirations from having passed for inter
pretation through more minds than one. There is neither
common sense nor piety, as M. Bunsen himself, we feel cer
tain, will allow, in the assumption that Revelation is neces
sarily most perfect at its source, and can only grow earthy and
turbid as it flows. Were it something entirely foreign to the
mind, capable of holding no thought in solution, but inevita
bly spoiled by every abrasion it effects of philosophy and
feeling, this mechanical view would be correct. But if it be
the intenser presence, the quickened perception of a Being
absent from none ; if it be the infinite original of which phi
losophy is the finite reflection ; if thus it speaks, not in the
unknown tongue of isolated ecstasy, but in the expressive
music of our common consciousness and secret prayer ; — then
is it so little unnatural, so related to the constitution of our
faculties, that the mind's continuous reaction on it may bring
it more clearly out; and, after being detained at first amid
sluggish levels and unwholesome growths which mar its di
vine transparency, it may percolate through finer media, drop

262 CREED AND HERESIES
its accidental admixtures, and take up in each stratum of
thought some elements given it by native affinity, and become
more purely the spring of hfe in its descent than in its source.
If, before the fourth Gospel was written, the figure of Christ,
less close to the eye, was seen more in its relations to human
ity and to God ; if his deep hints, working in the experience
of more than one generation, had expanded their marvellous
contents ; if, in a prolonged contact of his rehgion with Hel
lenism, elements had disclosed themselves of irresistible sym
pathy, and the first sharp boundary drawn by Jewish hands
had melted away ; if his concrete history itself was now sub
ordinate to its ideal interpretation ; — the book will present us
still with a Christianity, not impoverished, but enriched. In
proportion as its thoughts speak for themselves by their depth
and beauty, may all anxiety cease about their external legiti
mation ; their credentials become eternal instead of individ
ual; and where the Father himself thus beareth witness,
Christ needeth not the testimony of man. It cannot be, there
fore, any rehgious issue that depends on the date of this
Christian record; it cannot make truth, it can only awaken
the mind to discern it ; and whether it has this power or not,
the mind can only report according to its consciousness of
quickening light or stagnant darkness. The interest of this
question cannot surely be more than a critical interest, to one
who can feel and speak in this noble strain : —
" No divine authority is given to any set of men to make
truth for mankind. The supreme judge is the Spirit in the
Church, that is to say, in the universal body of men profess
ing Christ. The universal conscience is God's highest inter
preter. If Christ speaks truth, his words must speak to the
human reason and conscience, whenever and wherever they
are preached : let them, therefore, be preached. If the Gos
pels contained inspired wisdom, they must themselves inspire
with heavenly thoughts the conscientious inquirer and the
serious thinker : let them, therefore, freely be made the object
of inquiry and of thought. Scripture, to be believed true
with full conviction, must be at one with reason : let it, there-

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 263
fore, be treated rationally. By taking this course, we shall
not lose strength; but we shall gain a strength which no
church ever had. There is strength in Christian discipline, if
freely accepted by those who are to submit to it; there is
strength in spiritual authority, if freely acknowledged by those
who care for Christ ; there is strength unto death in the en
thusiasm of an unenlightened people, if sincere, and connected
with lofty moral ideas. But there is no strength to be com
pared with that of a faith which identifies moral and intel
lectual conviction with religious belief, with that of an au
thority instituted by such a faith, and of a Christian life based
upon it, and striving to Christianize this world of ours, for
which Christianity was proclaimed. Let those who are sin
cere, but timid, look into their conscience, and ask themselves
whether their timidity proceeds from faith, or whether it does
not rather betray a want of faith. Europe is in a critical
state, politically, ecclesiastically, socially. Where is the power
able to reclaim a world, which, if it be faithless, is become so
under untenable and ineffective ordinances, — which, if it is in
a state of -confusion, has become confused by those who have
spiritually guided it ? Armies may subdue liberty ; but ar
mies cannot conquer ideas : much less can Jesuits and Jesuiti
cal principles restore religion, or superstition revive faith. I
deny the prevalence of a destructive and irreligious spirit in
the hearts of the immense majority of the people. I beheve
that the world wants, not less, but more rehgion. But how
ever this be, I am firmly convinced that God governs the
world, and that he governs it by the eternal ideas of truth
and justice engraved on our conscience and reason ; and I
am sure that nations, who have conquered, or are conquering,
civil liberty for themselves, will sooner or later as certainly
demand liberty of religious thought, and that those whose
fathers have victoriously acquired religious liberty will not
fail to demand civil and political liberty also. With these
ideas, and with the present irresistible power of communicat
ing ideas, what can save us except rehgion, and therefore
Christianity ? But then it must be a Christianity based upon

264 CREED AND HERESIES
that which is eternally God's own, and is as indestructible
and as invincible as he is himself: it must be based upon
Reason and Conscience, I mean reason spontaneously em
bracing the faith in Christ, and Christian faith feehng itself at
one with reason and with the history of the world. Civilized
Europe, as it is at present, will fall ; or it will be pacified by
this liberty, this reason, this faith. To prove that the cause
of Protestantism in the nineteenth century is identical with
the cause of Christianity, it is only necessary to attend to this
fact ; that they both must sink and fall, until they stand upon
their indestructible ground, which, in my inmost conviction, is
the real, genuine, original ground upon which Christ placed it.
Let us, then, give up all notions of finding any other basis, all
attempts to prop up faith by effete forms and outward things :
let us cease to combat reason, whenever it contradicts conven
tional forms and formularies. We must take the ground
pointed out by the Gospel, as well as by the history of Chris
tianity. We may then hope to realize what Christ died for,
to see the Church fulfil the high destinies of Christianity, and
God's will manifested by Christ to mankind, so as to make
the kingdoms of this earth the kingdoms of the Most High."
— p. 172.
We have given our readers no conception of the variety
and richness of M. Bunsen's work ; having scarcely passed
beyond the limits of the first volume. It was impossible to
pass by, without examination, the recovered monument of
early Christianity, whence his materials and suggestions are
primarily drawn ; and it is equally impossible to pass beyond
it, without entering on a field too wide to be surveyed. We
can only record that, in the remaining volumes, which are, in
fact, a. series of separate productions, the early doctrine of the
Eucharist is investigated, and the progress of its corruptions
strikingly traced ; the primitive system of ecclesiastical rules
or canons, and the " Church-and-House Book," or manual of
instruction and piety in use among the ante-Nicene Chris
tians, are carefully and laboriously restored ; and genuine
Liturgies of the first centuries are reproduced. In this ar-

OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 265
duous work of recovery, there is necessarily much need of
critical tact, not to say much room for critical conjecture.
But the one our author exercises with great felicity ; and the
other he takes all possible pains to reduce to its lowest amount
by careful comparison of Syrian, Coptic, and Abyssinian texts.
The general result is a truly interesting set of sketches for a
picture of the early Church ; which rises before us with no
priestly pretensions, no scholastic creeds, no bibliolatry, dry
and dead ; but certainly with an aspect of genuine piety and
affection, and with an air of mild authority over the whole of
life, which are the more winning from the frightful corruption
and dissolving civilization of the Old World around. That
our author should be fascinated with the image he has re
created, and long to see it brought to hfe, in place of that
body of death on which we hang the pomps and titles of our
nominal Christianity, is not astonishing. But a greater change
is needed — though a far less will be denied — than a return
to the type of faith and worship in the second century. To
destroy the fatal chasm between profession and conviction,
and bring men to live fresh out of a real reverence instead
of against a pretended or a fancied one, a greater latitude and
flexibility must be given to the forms of spiritual culture than
was needed in the ancient world. The unity of system which
was once possible is unseasonable amid our growing varieties
of condition and culture ; and the methods which were natural
among a people closely thrown together and constructing their
life around the Church as a centre, would be highly artificial
in a state of society in which the family is the real unit, and
the congregation a precarious aggregate, of existence. Noth
ing, however, can be finer or more generous than the spirit of
our author's suggestions of reform ; and we earnestly thank
him for a profusion of pregnant thoughts and faithful warn
ings, the application of one half of which would change the
fate of our churches, — the destiny of our nation, — the
courses of the world. 23

THE CREED OE CHRISTENDOM.

1. The Creed of Christendom ; its Foundations and Super
structure. By William Rathbone Greg. London :
Chapman. 1851.
2. St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians ; an Attempt to
convey their Spirit and Significance. By John Hamil
ton Thom. London: Chapman. 1851.
These two books are placed together without the least in
tention to intimate a resemblance between them, or to repre
sent either author as sharing in the conclusions of the other.
They are, indeed, concerned with opposite sides of the same
subject ; viewed, moreover, from the separate stations of the
layman and the divine ; and are the expression of strongly
contrasted modes of thought. Mr. Greg deals principally
with the external vehicle of the primitive Christianity ; Mr.
Thom with its internal essence. The one seeks in vain for
any outward title in the records to suppress the operations of
natural reason ; the other clears away from the interior every
interference with the free action of conscience and affection.
The one, in the name of science, demolishes the outworks of
ecclesiastical logic with which the shrine of faith has been
dangerously guarded : the other, in the name of Christ, ex
pels both priest and dogma from the sanctuary itself. The
one, selecting deep truths from the words of Jesus, would
construct religion into a philosophy ; the other, with eye upon

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 267
His person as an image of perfect goodness, would develop it
from a sentiment As all opposites, however, are embraced
in the circumference of the same circle, so are these works
complements of each other Mr. Greg, in common with the
Catholics and the Unitarians, evidently looks for the strength
of Christianity in the Gospels ; Mr. Thom, with the majority
of Protestants, in the Epistles. For want of some mediating
harmony between the two, each perhaps requires some cor
rection : the historical picture of Christ saved by the former
is but a pale and meagre outline ; while the Pauline ideal
presented by the latter is a glow of rich but undefined color
ing. Mr. Greg, who, in spite of particular errors, manifests
a large knowledge and a masterly judgment in his criticism of
the Evangelists, appears to have, in his own sympathies, no
way of access to a mind like that of Paul, and to be much at
fault in estimating the place of the Apostle both as a witness
and a power in the organization of Christian tradition and
doctrine. Had the acuteness and severity of his understand
ing been a little more qualified by such reflective depth and
moral tenderness as Mr. Thom brings to the work of interpre
tation, his religion, we fancy, would have retained a less
slender remnant of the primitive Christianity.
Measured by the standard of common Protestantism, there
can be no doubt that the second of these books would be
condemned for heresy, and the first for unbelief. These ugly
words, however, have been too often applied to what is fullest
of truth and faith, to express more than a departure, which
weak men feel to be irritating, from a favorite type of thought.
They have lost their effect on all who are competent to medi
tate on the great problems of religion, and are fast taking
their place in the scandalous vocabulary of professional po
lemics. It is a thing offensive to just men when divines, who
have succeeded in smothering, or been too dull to entertain,
doubts which rend the soul of genius and faithfulness, and
insist on a veracious answer, meet them, not with sympathy,
still less with mastery, but with the commonplaces of incom
petent pity and holy malediction. And the offence is doubled

268 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
in the eyes of instructed men, who know the state to which
Biblical criticism has brought the theology of the Reformation.
It is notorious that, in the revolt from Rome, the Scriptures
— like a dictator suddenly created for the perils of a crisis —
were forced into a position where it was impossible for them
permanently to repose ; that they cannot be treated as infalli
ble oracles of either fact or doctrine, and were never meant to
bear the weight of such unnatural claims ; that the authority
once concentrated in them, and held even against the reason
and conscience, must now be distributed, and a=k their con
currence. These are not questionable positions, but so irre
sistibly established, that learning of the highest order would
no more listen to an argument against them, than Herschel or
Airy to a disquisition against the rotation of the earth. When
a clergyman, therefore, treats them with horror, and de
nounces them as infidelity, he produces no conviction, except
that he himself is either ill-informed or insincere. Profes
sional reproaches against a book so manly and modest, so
evidently truth-loving, so high-minded and devout, as this of
Mr. Greg's, are but a melancholy imbecility. We may hold to
many things which he resigns ; we may think him wrong in
the date of a Gospel or the construction of a miracle ; we
may even dissent from his estimate of the grounds of immor
tal hope and the ways of eternal Providence : but we do not
envy, and cannot understand, the religion which can feel no
thankful communion with thought so elevated, and trust so
sound and real. No candid reader of the " Creed of Chris
tendom " can close the book without the secret acknowledg
ment that it is a model of honest investigation and clear
exposition ; that it is conceived in the true spirit of serious
and faithful research ; and that whatever the author wants of
being an ecclesiastical Christian is plainly not essential to the
noble guidance of life, and the devout earnestness of the
affections. It is highly honorable to an English layman, amid the
pressure of affairs, to take up a class of critical inquiries,
which the clergy seem to have abandoned for a narrower and

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 269
more passionate polemic. It is a remarkable characteristic of
the present age, that, when the most startling attacks are made
upon the very foundations of existing churches, nobody repels
them. Nothing is offered to break their effect, except the
inertia of the mass that rests upon the base assailed. For
every great sceptical work of the last century there was some
score of reputable answers ; but half a dozen books of the
same tendency have appeared within a few years, all of which
have been copiously reviewed, have spread excitement over a
wide surface, and set an immense amount of theological hair
on end, but not one of which has received any adequate reply.
Yet the slightest of these productions would favorably com
pare, in all the requisites for successful persuasion, — in learn
ing, in temper, in acuteness, — with the best of the last age,
excepting only the philosophical disquisitions of Hume and
the ecclesiastical chapters of Gibbon. The first in time, —
Hennell's " Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity," — though
the most open to refutation, was permitted to pass through an
unmolested existence ; and its influence, considerable in itself,
and increased by the sweet and truthful character of the
author, is still traceable in the pages of Mr. Greg. To the
effect of Strauss's extraordinary work, the good Neander's
Leben Jesu offers but a mild resistance, and is itself, through
the extent of its concessions, an open proclamation that the
problems of theology can never be restored to the state in
which all churches assume them to be. Parker was excom
municated by his sect ; but his " Discourse of Matters per
taining to Religion " has walked the course unchallenged, and
displayed the splendor of its gifts, within the entire lines of
the English language. Newman, Foxton, and Greg have
since entered their names on the index expurgatorius of
Orthodoxy ; but they also will be simply excluded from the
sacred circle of readers bound over not to think ; and, beyond
this, will make their converts undisturbed, and accumulate
fresh charges of threatening power in the intellectual atmo
sphere which surrounds the Church. Whence this pusillani
mous apathy ? Is it forgotten that creeds always assailed and
23 *

270 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
never defended are sure to perish ? Or is it felt that the
defence, to be sound and strong, must be so partial — so lim
ited to points of detail — as to promise a mere diversion,
instead of a repulse, and be more dangerous than the attitude
of passiveness ? Or does the Church resignedly give up her
hold on the class of earnest, intellectual men who cannot
degrade religion into a second-hand tradition, but must " know
what they worship " ? Certain it is that her whole activity
has long abandoned this class, and addressed itself exclusively
to the narrower and lower order of mind, whose vision is
bounded by the periphery of a given creed, and whose hfe is
satisfied with the squabbles and the gossip of articles forced
into neighborhood, but no longer on speaking terms. If the
efficacy of "holy orders" is called in question, streams of
sacerdotal refutation flow from the press ; but if the inspira
tion of the twelve Apostles is denied, it is a thing that neither
bishop nor priest will care to vindicate. If a word of mis
take is uttered about the drops of water on the face of a
baptized baby, it conjures up a storm that rolls from diocese
to diocese ; but if you say that pure religion has no rite or
sacrament at all, the ecclesiastic atmosphere remains still as a
Quaker's silent meeting. The deepest interest is felt about the
origin of liturgies, and the history of articles, but nobody heeds
the most staggering evidence that three of the Gospels are
second-hand aggregations of hearsay reports, and the fourth
of questionable authenticity. You deny the self-consistency
of the Church of England and call it a compromise ; and the
sudden rustle of gowns and sleeves proclaims a great sensa
tion. You analyze the accounts of Christ's resurrection ; you
ask whether they are not discrepant ; you point out that,
apparently, the oldest record (Mark's) contained, in its origi
nal form, no account of the event at all, and that the others
bear seeming traces of distinct and incompatible traditions.
You cry aloud for help in this perplexity, and hold yourselves
ready to follow any vestiges of truth ; and, except that the
creeds are still muttered every Sunday, all the oracles are
dumb. If you want to find the true magic pass into heaven,

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 271
scores of rival professors press round you with obtrusive
supply : if you ask in your sorrow, Who can tell me whether
there be a heaven at all ? every soul will keep aloof and leave
you alone. All men that bring from God a fresh, deep na
ture, all in whom religious wants live with eager power, and
who yet are too clear of soul to unthink a thought and falsify
a truth, receive in these days no help and no response. The
Church feels its interest, as an educated corporation, to con
sist in overlaying and covering up the foundations of faith with
huge piles of curious learning, history, and art, which, by
affording endless occupation, may detain men from search
after the living rock, or notice of the undermining flood.
And, as an established corporation, she relies on the lazy con
servatism of mental possession ; on the dishke felt by the
comfortable classes towards the trouble of thought and the
disturbance of feeling, and their usual willingness to hand
over these operations to the prayer-book and the priest We
are grateful to Mr. Greg for shaking this ignoble and preca
rious reliance, which he notices in these admirable sen
tences. " A more genuine and important objection to the conse
quences of our views is felt by indolent minds on their own
account. They shrink from the toil of working out truth for
themselves out of the materials which Providence has placed
before them. They long for the precious metal, but loathe
the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by the
laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the
paradise of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative,
dogmatic propositions comprises the whole mental wealth
which they desire. The volume of nature — the volume of
history — the volume of life — appall and terrify them. Such
men are the materials out of whom good catholics of all sects
are made. They form the uninquiring and submissive flocks
which rejoice the hearts of all priesthoods. Let such cling to
the faith of their forefathers, if they can. But men whose
minds are cast in a nobler mould, and are instinct with a
diviner life, — who love truth more than rest, and the peace of

272 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
Heaven rather than the peace of Eden, — to whom ' a loftier
being brings severer cares,' —
' Who know man does not live by joy alone,
But by the presence of the power of God,' —
such must cast behind them the hope of any repose or tran
quillity, save that which is the last reward of long agonies of
thought ; they must relinquish all prospect of any heaven,
save that of which tribulation is the avenue and portal ; they
must gird up their loins and trim their lamp for a work which
cannot be put by, and which must not be negligently done.
' He,' says Zschokke, ' who does not like living in the fur
nished lodgings of tradition, must build his own house, his
own system of thought and faith for himself.' " — p. 242.
The work of Mr. Greg derives its interest, not from any
thing in it that will be new to the studious theologian, but
from the freshness and force with which it presents the results
of the author's reading and reflection on both the claims and
the contents of Scripture. Adopting the ordinary notion of
"inspiration," as equivalent to a supernaturally provided
"infallibility,'' he reviews and condemns the reasonings by
which this attribute has been associated with the Bible ; and
decides that the mere discovery of a statement in the Scrip
tures is no sufficient reason for our implicit reception of it.
Having cleared away this obstacle to all intelligent criticism,
he pursues his way, chiefly under the guidance of De Wette,
through the earlier literature of the Hebrews; and adds
another to the many exposures of the humiliating attempts,
on the part of English divines, to reconcile the cosmogony of
Genesis with modern science ; attempts which we should call
obsolete, did we not remember that Buckland and Whewell
are both living, and have not yet attained the episcopal bench.
Mr. Greg adopts the views of which Baur is the best known
recent expositor, but which Lessing long ago traced out, as to
the gradual formation of the Hebrew monotheism ; and shows
the striking contrast between the family Jehovah of the Pa
triarchs and the universal God of the later Prophets. What
ever be the origin of the doctrine of a Messiah, and under
3

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 273
whatever varieties it appeared, it never pointed, the author
conceives, to such a person as Jesus' of Nazareth, or such a
product as the Christian Church ; and it is only by perverse
interpretations, unendurable out of the field of theology, that
any passages in the Old Testament can be made out to pre
figure the events in the New. In the argument, therefore,
between the early missionaries of the Gospel and the uncon
vinced Jews, Mr. Greg maintains that the latter were the
more faithful to their sacred books. The phenomena of the
first three Gospels are next examined sufficiently to explain
the several hypotheses respecting the order and materials of
their composition. The author rests on Schleiermacher's con
clusion, that a number of fragmentary records of incident and
discourse formed the groundwork, partly common, partly ex
clusive, of the triple Evangile. He thus removes us, in this
portion of the Scriptures, from first-hand testimony altogether ;
and throws upon internal criticism the task of discriminating
between the original and reliable elements on the one hand,
and those on the other which did not escape the accidents of
floating tradition and the coloring of later ideas. This deli
cate task the author attempts ; and manifests throughout an
acquaintance with the methods and models of the higher
criticism, fully qualifying him to form the independent judg
ment which he sums up in these words : —
" In conclusion, then, it appears certain that in all the
synoptical Gospels we have events related that did not really
occur, and words ascribed to Jesus which Jesus did not utter ;
and that many of these words and events are of great signifi
cance. In the great majority of these instances, however,
this incorrectness does not imply any want of honesty on the
part of the Evangelists, but merely indicates that they adopt
ed and embodied, without much scrutiny or critical acumen,
whatever probable and honorable narratives they found cur
rent in the Christian community." — p. 137.
The peculiarities of the fourth Gospel are next dealt with :
its apparent polemic reference to the gnosis of the first and
second centuries ; its absence of demoniacs and parables ; the

274 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
length, the mysticism, the dogma of its discourses, and their
uniformity of complexion with the historian's own narrative
and reflections ; the narrowness of its charity, and the apoc
ryphal appearance of its " first miraele." Without question
ing the probability that within the contents of this Gospel is
secreted a nucleus of facts, Mr. Greg thinks the book so
clearly imbued throughout with the writer's idiosyncrasy, as
to be inferior in historical value to the Synoptics ; and the
discourses of Jesus, in particular, must be regarded as free
compositions by the Evangelist. In our author's management
of this subject there seems to us to be an unfavorable change.
The style of thought peculiar to John, as well as that charac
teristic of Paul, lies out of the latitude native to him ; and
with every intention to be just in his appreciation, he fails, we
think, to reach the point of sympathy from which the fourth
Gospel should be judged. The realism of his mind makes
him a better critic of the hard Judaical element of the Chris
tian Scriptures, with its objective distinctness and its moral
beauty, than of the more ideal Gentile ingredients, where a
subjective dialectic traces forms of thought in the intense fires
of spiritual consciousness.
In a separate discussion of the question of miracles they
are restored to the subordinate position, as compared with
moral evidence, assigned to them by the early Protestant
divines. Adopting the position of Locke, that " the miracles
are to be judged by the doctrines, and not the doctrines by
the miracles," he can admit with the less pain his conviction,
that, even in the instance of the resurrection of Jesus, the
historical evidence is too conflicting and uncertain to bear the
supernatural weight imposed upon it. He admits, indeed,
that Jesus may have risen from the dead ; the Apostles mani
festly believed it ; and that the marked change in their char
acter and conduct, from despair to triumph, affords the strong
est evidence of the sustaining energy of this belief. But, in
our ignorance of the grounds of this belief, (the Gospels and
book of Acts containing no correct or first-hand report of the
facts,) it is impossible, he conceives, to form any rational esti-

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 275
mate of their adequacy. In Mr. Greg's decision on this
important point, we see the effect of his entrance on the
problem of Christianity from the historical end. If, instead
of addressing himself first to the Gospels which lie most re
mote from the source of the religion, and represent the latest
and most constituted form of the primitive tradition, he had
begun with the earliest remains of Christian literature, and
traced the doctrine of the resurrection from the Epistles of
Paul into the story of the Evangelists, we think he would
have arrived at a different conclusion. In dismissing the
testimony of Paul as " of httle weight," he throws away the
main evidence of the whole case. We can understand the
critic who, having put the miraculous entirely aside, as logi
cally inadmissible, makes light of the Pauline statements on
this matter, and appeals to their writer's openness to impres
sions of the supernatural in proof of a certain vitiating un
soundness of mind. But one who, like our author, regards
this a priori incredulity as an unphilosophical prejudice, and
upon whose list of real causes, never precluded from possible
action, supernatural power finds a place, cannot consistently
condemn another for believing in concrete instances what he
himself allows in the general ; and put the Apostle out of
court, on the plea that we have no evidence but his assertion
of his intercourse with the risen Christ. Is not his assertion
the only evidence possible of a subjective miracle ? and is
there any ground for restricting supernatural agency to an
objective direction ? No doubt, facts presented to external
perception have the advantage of being open to more wit
nesses than one ; and if it be deliberately laid down as a
canon, that in no case can any anomalous event be admitted
on one man's declaration, we allow the consistency of refusing
a hearing to the Apostle. But such a rule would only be an
example of the futility of all attempts to reduce moral evi
dence to mathematical expression. Facts of the most ex
traordinary nature have always been, and wiU always be,
received on solitary attestation ; and if so, it makes no logical
difference whether they be called " objective," or " subjective."

276 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
A man has faculties for apprehending what passes within him,
as well as what passes without ; nor do we kriow any ground
for trusting the latter which does not hold equally good for
the former. Lf it be said that the reporter of a miracle not
only announces what he sees or feels, — which we may accept
on his veracity, — but proclaims its supernatural source, —
which we may repudiate from distrust of his judgment, — the
remark is perfectly just, only that it applies ahke to all testi
mony, and not exclusively to miraculous reports. Our dis
position to receive the evidence of a witness assumed to be
veracious, depends on our having the same preconceptions of
causation with himself. In the ordinary affairs of life, this
common ground is sure to exist, and therefore remains a mere
latent condition of belief. But the slowness to admit a mira
cle arises from the failure of this common ground ; and if the
hearer reserved in the background of his mind, and in equal
readiness for action, the same supernatural power to which
the witness's assertion refers, he would feel no more tempta
tion to incredulity than in listening to some matter of course.
The reluctance to believe, is proof that his store of causation
is limited to the natural sphere ; and every jffienomenon irre
ducible to this drops away from all hold upon his mind. As
there is no such thing as a fact- perceived without a judgment
formed, so is there no belief in the attestation of a fact with
out reliance on the soundness of a judgment ; and that re
liance depends on the hearer having the same list of causes
in his mind as the witness. If, then, Mr. Greg holds, with
Paul, that the power exists whence a subjective miracle might
issue, and if from the nature of the case such miracle must
remain a matter of personal consciousness, why reject the
Apostle's report of his experience ? In choosing from among
the causes which both parties admit, it cannot be denied that
Paul alights upon that which, if there, gives the easiest and
most certain explanation ; and to find a satisfactory origin for
his impressions and conduct in natural agencies is so difficult,
that critics would never attempt it, but to escape the acknowl
edgment of miracle. On his own principles we do not see

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 277
how our author could excuse himself to the Apostle for reject
ing his testimony ; which does but communicate, in the only
conceivable way, that which is allowed to be possible enough,
and which best clears up the mystery of an astonishing rev
olution in personal character, and in the convictions of an ear
nest and powerful mind.
The whole question of miracles, however, loses its anxious
importance with those who, like our author, would still, amid
their constant occurrence, look to other sources for the cre
dentials of moral and religious truth. If anything is positively
and incontrovertibly known respecting the Apostles, — and in
proportion as we trust the synoptical Gospels must we allow
Mr. Greg to extend the remark to their Master, — it is this :
that whatever powers they exercised, and whatever commu
nications they received, were inadequate to preserve them
from serious error; and from delivering to the world, as a
substantive part of their message, a most solemn expectation
which was not to be fulfilled. This fact, no longer denied by
any reputable theologian, alone shows that, even in the pres
ence of the highest Christian authority, the natural criteria of
reason and conscience cannot be dispensed with. In the ap
plication of these to the teachings and life of Christ, our
author finds, if not any truths of supernatural dictation, at
least the highest object of veneration and affection yet given
to this world.
" Now on this subject," he says, " we hope our confession of
faith will be acceptable to all save the narrowly orthodox. It
is difficult, without exhausting superlatives, even to unexpres-
sive and wearisome satiety, to do justice to our intense love,
reverence, and admiration for the character and teachings of
Jesus. We regard him, not as the perfection of the intellect
ual or philosophic mind, but as the perfection of the spiritual
character, — as surpassing all men of all times in the close
ness and depth of his communion with the Father. In read
ing his sayings, we feel that we are holding converse with the
wisest, purest, noblest Being that ever clothed thought in the
poor language of humanity. In studying his life, we feel
24

278 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
that we are following the footsteps of the highest ideal yet
presented to us upon earth. ' Blessed be God that so much
manliness has been lived out, and stands there yet, a lasting
monument to mark how high the tides of divine life have risen
in the world of man ! '" — p. 227.
We differ altogether from our author in his notion of inspi
ration, and his reduction of Christianity within the limits of
human resource. But we must say, that while there is such
an estimate as this of what Jesus Christ was, it is a matter of
subordinate moment what is thought about the mode in which
he became so.
By a process of " Christian Eclecticism," Mr. Greg draws
forth from the Gospels the elements which he regards as
characteristic of the religion of Jesus ; distinguishing those
which make it the purest of faiths from others which appear
to him irreconcilable with a just philosophy. The doctrine
of a future life is reserved for a separate discussion ; the gen
eral result of which we know not how to describe, otherwise
than by saying that the author discards all the evidence- and
yet retains the conclusion. All the arguments, metaphysical
and moral, for human immortality, he condemns as absolutely
worthless ; he confesses that he has no new ones to propose ;
he affirms that all appearances, without exception, proclaim
the permanence of death, the absence of any spiritual essence
in man, and the absolute sway of the laws of organization;
yet, on the report of that very " soul " within him, whose ex
istence nature disowns, he holds the doctrine of a future ex
istence by the irresistible tenure of a first truth. We do not
wonder that the rigor with which Mr. Greg has pushed his
principles through other subjects of thought should relent at
this point, and refuse to cast the sublimest of human hopes
over the brink of darkness. We respect, as a holy abstinence,
his refusal to silence the pleadings of the inner voice. But
we admire his faith more than his philosophy ; and are aston
ished that he does not suspect the soundness of a scientific
method which lands him in results he cannot hold. No scep
ticism is so fatal, — for none has so wide a sweep, — as that

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 279
which despairs of the self-reconciliation of human nature ;
which flings among our faculties the reproach of irretrievable
contradiction; which sets up first truths against deductions,
conscience against science, faith against logic. Ever since
Kant balanced his Antinomies, and employed the gravitation
of Practical reason to turn the irresolute scales of the Specu
lative, this unwholesome practice has been spreading, of assum
ing an ultimate discordance between co-existing powers of
the mind. In the language of rhetoric or poetry, in the dis
cussion of popular notions on morals and religion, it would be
hypercritical to complain of the antitheses of understanding
and feehng, — sense and soul. But to an exact thinker it
must be apparent that an ambidextrous intellect is no intel
lect at all ; and that, were this all our endowment, the life of
the wisest would be but a chase after mocking shadows of
thought. The following words of our author, with all their
tranquil appearance, describe a state of things which, were it
real, might well strike us with dismay : —
" There are three points especially of religious belief, re
garding which intuition (or instinct) and logic are at variance,
— the efficacy of prayer, man's free-will, and a future exist
ence. If believed, they must be believed, the last without
the countenance, the two former in spite of the hostility of
logic." — p. 303.
This is absolute Pyrrhonism, and though said in the interest
of religion, "is subversive ahke of knowledge and of faith.
The pretended " logic " can be good for very httle, which
comes out with so suicidal an achievement as the disproof of
first truths. The condition under which alone logic can exist
as a science is the unity in the human mind of the laws of
belief, — a condition which would be violated if any first
truth contradicted another in itself, or in its deductions. The
moment, therefore, such a contradiction turns up, a consistent
thinker will either regard it as a mere semblance, and proceed
to re-examine his premises, and test his reasoning ; or he will
treat it as real ; and then it throws contempt on logic altogeth
er, and relegates it into impossibility. In neither case can his

280 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
reliance incline to the logical side. Mr. Greg, however, sticks
to his logic whenever, as in the two cases mentioned in the
foregoing extract, it loudly negatives a point of religious belief;
and abandons it only where it restricts itself to cold and dumb
discouragement. A bolder distrust of his logic, and a firmer
faith in the logic of nature, would perhaps have harmonized
the differing voices of the intellect and the soul, blending them
in a faith neither afraid to think nor ashamed to pray.
Had our author been as familiar with the Catholic and Ar-
minian divines, as with the literature of inductive science and
Calvinistic theology, he would have known that there is a phi
losophy from which the religious intuitions encounter no re
pugnance ; and would, at least, have noticed its offer of medi
ation between Faith and Reason. He is, however, entirely
shut up within the formulas of a different school, which press
with their resistance on his religious feeling in every direction,
and produce a conflict which he can neither appease nor ter
minate. With an intellect entirely overridden by the ideas of
Law and Necessity, no man can escape the force of the com
mon objections to any doctrine of prayer, or of forgiveness of
sin ; and if those ideas possess universal validity, the very
discussion of such doctrines is, in the last degree, idle and
absurd. But what if some mediaeval schoolman, or some im-
pugner of the Baconian orthodoxy, were to suggest that,
though Law is coextensive with outward nature, Nature is
not coextensive with God, and that beyond the range where
his agency is bound by the pledge of predetermined rules lies
an infinite margin, where his spirit is free ? And what if, in
aggravation of his heresy, he were to contend that Man also,
as counterpart of God, belongs not wholly to the realm of
nature, but transcends it by a certain endowment of free
power in Jiis spirit ? Having made these assumptions, on the
ground that they were more agreeable to " intuitive " feeling,
and not less so to external evidence, than the one-sidedness
of their opposites, might he not suggest that room is now
found for a doctrine of prayer ? Not that any event bespoken
and planted in the sphere of nature can be turned aside by

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 281
the urgency of desire and devotion ; not that the slightest
swerving is to be expected from the usages of creation, or of
the mind ; wherever law is established — without us or with
in us — there let it be absolute as the everlasting faithfulness.
But God has not spent himself wholly in the courses of cus
tom, and mortgaged his infinite resources to nature ; nor has
he closed up with rules every avenue through which his fresh
energy might find entrance into life ; but has left in the hu
man soul a theatre whose scenery is not all pre-arranged, and
whose drama is ever open to new developments. Between
the free centre of the soul in man, and the free margin of the
activity of God, what hinders the existence of a real and
hving communion, the interchange of look and answer, of
thought and counterthought ? If, in response to human aspi
ration, a higher mood is infused into the mind ; if, in consola
tion of penitence or sorrow, a gleam of gentle hope steals in ;
and if these should be themselves the vivifying touch of di
vine sympathy and pity, what law is prejudiced ? what faith
is broken ? what province of nature has any title to complain ?
And so, too, (might our mediaeval friend continue,) with re
spect to the doctrine of forgiveness. If men are under moral
obligation, and God is a being of moral perfection, he must
regard their unfaithfulness with disapproval. Of his senti
ments, the clear trace will be found in the various sufferings
which constitute the natural punishment of wrong. These
are incorporated in the very structure of the world and the
constitution of hfe ; and to persistence in their infliction, the
Supreme Ruler is committed by the assurance of his constan
cy. They fasten on the guilty a chain which no pardon will
strike off, but which he will drag till it is worn away. Not
all the divine sentiment, however, is embodied in the physical
consequences. Besides this determinate expression of his
thought, written out on the finite world, there is an unex
pressed element remaining behind, in his infinite nature : on
the visible side of the veil is the suggestive manifestation ; on
the invisible, is the very affection manifested. There is a
personal alienation, a forfeiture of approach and sympathy,
24*

282 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
which would survive though creation were to perish and carry
its punishments away ; and would still cast its black shadow
into empty space. This reserved sentiment, and this alone, is
affected by repentance. But it is no small thing for -the heart
of shame to know this. The estrangement lasts no longer
than the guilty temper and the unsoftened conscience ; and
when, through its sorrow, the mind is clear and pure, the
sunshine of divine affection will burst it again. In this the
free Spirit of God is different from his bound action in nature.
Long after he himself has forgiven and embraced again, ne
cessity — the creature of his legislation — will continue to
wield the lash, and measure out with no relenting the remain
der of the penalty incurred ; and he that yet drags his burden
and visibly limps upon his sin, may all the while have a heart
at rest with God. And thus is retribution — the reaping as
we have sown — in no contradiction with forgiveness, — the
personal restoration. *
How far such modes of thought as these would help to rec
oncile the conflicting claims, — and how they would stand re
lated to Mr. Greg's terrible friend, " Logic," we do not pre
tend to decide. We refer to them only as possible means of
escaping — at least of postponing — his desolating doctrine,
that intuitions may tell hes ; and in support of our state
ment, that his theoretic view lies entirely within the circle of
a particular school, — a school, morever, so little able to satis
fy his aspirations, that he is obliged to patch up a compromise
between his nature and his culture. The curious amalgama-
tion which has taken place in England, of the metaphysics of
Calvin with the physics of Bacon, has produced, in a large
class, a philosophical tendency, with which the distinctive sen
timents of Christianity very uneasily combine. The effacing
of all lines separating the natural and moral, the limitation
of God to the realm of nature, and the subjugation of all
things to predestination, are among the chief features of this
tendency, and the chief obstacles to any concurrence between
the intellectual and the spiritual religion of the ao-e.
If some of the elements in the early Christianity are too

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 283
hastily cancelled by our author, there is one sentiment whose
inapplicability to the present day he exposes with an irresisti
ble force ; — that depreciating estimate of hfe which, however
natural to Apostles " impressed with the conviction that the
world was falling to pieces," is wholly misplaced among those
for whose office and work this earthly scene is the appointed
place. The exhortations of the Apostles, " granting the prem
ises, were natural and wise."
" But for divines in this day — when the profession of
Christianity is attended with no peril, when its practice, even,
demands no sacrifice, save that preference of duty to enjoy
ment which is the first law of cultivated humanity — to re
peat the language, profess the feelings, inculcate the notions,
of men who lived in daily dread of such awful martyrdom,
and under the excitement of such a mighty misconception ; to
cry down the world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling in
terests, its glorious works, its noble and holy affections ; to ex
hort their hearers, Sunday after Sunday, to detach their heart
from the earthly life, as inane, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix
it upon heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the
loving or the meditation of the wise, — appears to us, we
confess, frightful insincerity, the enactment of a wicked and
gigantic lie. The exhortation is delivered and listened to as a
thing of course ; and an hour afterwards the preacher, who
has thus usurped and profaned the language of an Apostle
who wrote with the fagot and the cross full in view, is sitting
comfortably with his hearer over his claret ; they are fondling
their children, discussing public affairs or private plans in
life, with passionate interest, and yet can look at each other
without a smile or a blush for the sad and meaningless farce
they have been acting !  Everything tends to prove
that this hfe is, not perhaps, not probably, our only sphere,
but still an integral one, and the one with which we are-
here meant to be concerned. The present is our scene of
action, — the future is for speculation and for trust. We
firmly believe that man was sent upon the earth to live in it,
to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, — to make

284 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
the most of it, in short. It is his country, on which he should
lavish his affections and his efforts. Spartam nactus es —
hanc exorna. It should be to him a house, not a tent, — a
home, not only a school. If, when this house and this home
are taken from him, Providence, in its wisdom and its bounty,
provides him with another, let him be deeply grateful for the
gift, — let him transfer to that future, when it has become his
present, his exertions, his researches, and his love. But let
him rest assured that he is sent into this world, not to be con
stantly hankering after, dreaming of, preparing for, another,
which may or may not be in store for him, but to do his
duty and fulfil his destiny on earth, — to do all that hes in his
power to improve it, to render it a scene of elevated happiness
to himself, to those around him, to those who are to come
after him. So will he avoid those tormenting contests with
nature, — those struggles to suppress affections which God
has implanted, sanctioned, and endowed with irresistible su
premacy, — those agonies of remorse when he finds that God
is too strong for him, — which now embitter the lives of so
many earnest and sincere souls ; so will he best prepare for
that future which we hope for, if it come ; so will he best
have occupied the present, if the present be his all. To de
mand that we love heaven more than earth, that the unseen
should hold a higher place in our affections than the seen and
familiar, is to ask that which cannot be obtained without sub
duing nature, and inducing a morbid condition of the soul.
The very law of our being is love of life, and all its interests
and adornments." — pp. 271, 272.
With all that is admirable in our author's book, he contem
plates the whole subject from a point of view which exhibits
it in very imperfect lights. He professes to treat of " The
Creed of Christendom." Yet, in examining only the canoni
cal Scriptures and the primitive belief, he totally ignores the
" Creed " of the greater part of " Christendom," namely, of the
Catholic Church. For it is only Protestants that identify
Christianity with the letter of the New Testament, and settle
everything by appeal to its contents. According to the older

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 285
'doctrine, Christianity is not a Divine Philosophy recorded in
certain books, but a Divine Institution committed to certain
men. The Christian Scriptures are not its source, but its
first product ; not its charter and definition, but its earliest act
and the expression of its incipient thought. They exhibit the
young attempts of the new agency, as it was getting to work
upon the minds of men and trying to penetrate the resisting
mass of terrestrial affairs. They are thus but the beginning
of a record which is prolonged through all subsequent times,
the opening page in the proceedings of a Church in perpetu
ity ; and are not separated from the continuous sacred litera
ture of Christendom, as insulated fragments of Divine author
ity. The supernatural element which they contain did not die
out with their generation, but has never ceased to flow through
succeeding centuries. Nor did the heavenly purpose — precip
itated upon earthly materials and media — disclose itself most
conspicuously at first ; but rather cleared itself as it advanced
and enriched its energy with better instruments. The sub-
limest things would even lie secreted in the unconscious heart
of the new influence, and only with the slowness of noble
growths push towards the light ; for the noise and obtrusive-
ness of the human is ever apt to overwhelm the retiring si
lence of the divine. The disciples, who, when events were
before their eyes, and great words fell upon their ears, " un
derstood not these things at the time," are types of all men
and all ages ; whose religion, coming out in the event, is
known to others better than to themselves. A faith, there
fore, should be judged less by its first form than by its last;
and at all events be studied, not as it once appeared, but in
the entire retrospect of its existence.
No doubt this doctrine of development is made subservi
ent, in the Romish system, to monstrous sacerdotal claims. A
priestly hierarchy pretends to the exclusive custody, and the
gradual unfolding, of God's sacred gift. But sweep away this
holy corporation ; throw its treasury open, and let its vested
right, of paying out the truth, be flung into the free air of
history ; gather together no Sacred College but the collected

286 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
ages ; appeal to no high Pontiff but the Providence of God ; —
and there remains a far juster and sublimer view of the place
and function of a pure Gospel in the world, than the narrow
Protestant conception. Christianity becomes thus, not the
Creed of its Founders, but the Religion of Christendom, to
be estimated only in comparison with the faiths of other
groups of the great human family ; and the superhuman in it
will consist in this, — the providential introduction among the
affairs of this world of a divine influence, which shall gradu
ally reach to untried depths in the hearts of men, and become
the organizing centre of a new moral and spiritual life. It is
a power appointed — an inspiration given — to fetch by rever
ence a true rehgion out of man, and not, by dictation, to put
one into him.
For this end, it would not even be necessary that the bear
ers of the divine element should be personally initiated into
the counsels whose ministers they are. Philosophy must
know what it teaches ; but Inspiration, in giving the intensest
light to others, may have a dark side turned towards itself.
There is no irreverence in saying this, and no novelty : on the
contrary, the idea has ever been familiar to the most fervent
men and ages, of Prophets who prepared a future, veiled from
their own eyes, and saintly servants of heaven, who drew to
themselves a trust, and wielded a power, which their ever-
upward look never permitted them to guess. Nay, to no one
was this conception less strange, than to the very man who,
in his turn, must now have it apphed to himself. With the
Apostle Paul it was a favorite notion, that the entire plan of
the Divine government had been a profound secret during the
ages of its progress, and was opening into clear view only at
the hour of its catastrophe. Not only was there more in it
than had been surmised, but something utterly at variance
with all expectation. Its whole conception had remained un
suspected from first to last ; undiscemed by the vision of
seers, and unapproached by the guesses of the wise. Never
absent from the mind of God, and never pausing in its course
of execution, it had yet evaded the notice of all observers ;

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 287
and winding its way through the throng of nations and the
labyrinth of centuries, the great Thought had passed in dis
guise, using all men and known of none. Nor was it only
the pagan eye that, for want of special revelation, had been
detained in darkness, or beguiled with the scenery of dreams.
The very people whose hfe was the main channel of the
Divine purpose did not feel the tide of tendency which they
conveyed ; the patriarchs who fed their flocks near its foun
tains, the lawgiver who founded a state upon its banks, the
priests whose temple poured blood into its waters, and the
prophets at whose prayer the clouds of heaven dropped fresh
purity into the stream, — all were unconscious of its course ;
assigning it to regions it should never visit, and missing the
point where it should be lost in the sea. Nay, Paul seems to
bring down this edge of darkness to a later time ; to include
within it even the ministry of Christ and the Galilean Apos
tles'; to imply that even they were unconscious instruments
of a scheme beyond the range of their immediate thought ;
and that not till Jesus had passed into the light of heaven
did the time come for revealing, through the man of Tarsus,
the significance of Messiah's earthly visit, and its place in the
great scheme of things. Paul, in claiming this as his own
special function, certainly implies that, previous to his call, no
one was in condition to interpret the secret counsels of God
in the historic development of his providence. He feels this
to be no- reflection on his predecessors, no cause of elevation
in himself; steward as he is of a mighty mystery, he is less
than the least of all saints. He simply stands at the crisis
when a conception is permitted to the world, which even " the
angels have vainly desired to look into " ; and though he may
see more, he is infinitely less than the Prophets and the Mes
siah whose place it is given him to explain. He is but the
interpreter, they are the grand agencies interpreted. He is
but the discerning eye, they are the glorious objects on which
it is fixed.
In seeking, therefore, for the divine element in older dis
pensations, the Apostle would assuredly not consult the pro-

288 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
jects and beliefs of their founders and ministers. In his view,
the very scheme of God was to work through these without
their knowing what they were about ; to let them aim at one
thing while he was directing them to another ; to pour through
their life and soul an energy which should indeed fire their
will and flow from their lips in their own best purposes, but
steal quietly behind them for his ; so that what was primary
with them was perhaps evanescent with him; while that
which was incidental, and dropped from them unawares, was
the seed of an eternal good. What Moses planned, what
David sung, what Isaiah led the people to expect, was not
what Heaven had at heart to execute. Even in quest of
God's thought in the Christian dispensation, Paul does not
refer to the doctrines, the precepts, the miracles of Jesus
during his ministry in Palestine, — to the memorials of his life,
or the testimony of his companions. He assumes that, at so
early a date, the time had not yet come for the truth to
appear, and that it was vain to look for it in the preconcep
tions of the uncrucified and unexalted Christ ; who was the
religion, not in revelation, but in disguise. -If, therefore, any
one had argued against the Apostle thus : " Why tell us to
discard the law ? your Master said he came to fulfil it. How
do you venture to preach to the Gentiles, when Jesus de
clared his mission limited to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel ? No vestiges of your doctrine of free grace can be
found in the parables, or of redeeming faith in the Sermon on
the Mount " ; — he would have boldly replied, that this proves
nothing against truths that are newer than the life, because
expounded by the death, of Christ ; that. God reveals by
action, not by teaching ; that no servant of his can understand
his own office till it is past ; and that only those who look
back upon it through the interpretation of events, can read
aright the divine idea which it enfolds.
This view it was that made the Apostle so bold an inno
vator, and filled his Epistles with a system so different from
that of the synoptical Gospels as almost to constitute a differ
ent religion. He had seized the profound and sublime idea

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 289
that, when men are inspired, the inspiration occupies, not their
conscious thought and will, but their unconscious nature ;
laying a silent beauty on their affections, secreting a holy
wisdom in their life, and, through the sorrows of faithfulness,
tempting their steps to some surprise of glory. That which
they deliberately think, that which they anxiously elaborate,
that which they propose to do, is ever the product of their
human reason and volition, and cannot escape the admixture
of personal fallibility. But their free spontaneous nature
speaks unawares, like a sweet murmuring from angels' dreams.
What they think without knowing it, what they say without
thinking it, what they do without saying it, all the native
pressures of their love and aspiration, these are the hiding-
place of God, wherein abiding, he leaves their simplicity pure
and their liberty untouched. The current of their reasoning
and action is determined by human conditions and material
resistances ; but the fountain in the living rock has waters that
are divine. If this be true, then must we search for the
heavenly element in the latencies rather than the prominen
cies of their hfe ; in what they were, rather than in what they
thought to do ; in the beliefs they felt without announcing ; in
the objects they accomplished, but never planned. We must
wait for their agency in history, and from the fruit return to
find the seed.
It is not peculiar to Mr. Greg that, in estimating Christian
ity, he has neglected, and even reversed, this principle. All
who have treated of it from the Protestant point of view have
done the same. They have assumed that the rehgion was to
be most clearly discerned at its commencement ; that the di
vine thought it contained would be, not evolved, but obscured
by time, and might be better detected in ideal shape at the
beginning of the ages, than realized at the end ; that its agents
and inaugurators must have been fully cognizant of its whole
scope and contents, and set them in the open ground of their
speech and practical career. In the minds of all Protestants
the Christian religion is identified exclusively with the ideas
of the first century, with the creed of the Apostles, with the
25

290 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
teachings of Christ. The New Testament is its sole deposi
tory, in whose books there is nothing for which it is not
answerable. The consequence is a perpetual struggle be
tween untenable dogma and unprofitable scepticism. The
whole structure of faith becomes precarious. If Luke and
Matthew should disagree about a date or a pedigree ; if Mark
should report a questionable miracle ; if John should mingle
with his tenderness and depth some words of passionate in
tolerance ; if Peter should misapply a psalm, and Paul indite
mistaken prophecies ; above all, if Jesus should appear to
believe in demonology, and not to have foreseen the futurities
of his Church, — these detected specks are felt like a total
echpse ; affrighted faith hides its face from them and shrieks ;
and he who points them out, though only to show how pure
the orb that spreads behind, is denounced as a prophet of evil.
The peaceful and holy centre of religion is shaken by storms
of angry erudition. Devout ingenuity or indevout, acuteness
spend themselves in vitiating the impartial course of histori
cal criticism ; neither of them reflecting, that, if the topics in
dispute are open to reasonable doubt, they cannot be matter
of revelation, and may be calmly looked at as objects of natu
ral thought. It is a thing alike dangerous and unbecoming
that religion should be narrowed to a miserable literary parti
sanship, bound up with a disputed set of critical conclusions,
unable to deliver its title-deeds from a court of perpetual
chancery, whose decisions are never final. The time seems
to have arrived for freeing the Protestant Christianity from
its superstitious adhesion to the mere letter of the Gospel, and
trusting more generously to that permanent inspiration, those
ever-living sources of truth within the soul, of which Gospel
and Epistle, the speeches of Apostles and the insight of Christ,
are the pre-eminent, rather than the lonely, examples. The*
primitive Gospel is not in its form, but only in its spirit, the
everlasting Gospel. It is concerned, and, if we look to quan
tity alone, chiefly concerned, with questions that have ceased
to exist, and interests that no longer agitate. It often reasons
from principles we do not own, and is tinged with feelings

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 291
which we cannot share. Often do the most docile and open
hearts resort to it with reverent hopes which it does not
reahze, and close it with a sigh of self-reproach or disap
pointment. With the deep secrets of the conscience, the
sublime hopes, the tender fears, the infinite wonderings of the
rehgious life, it deals less altogether than had been desired ;
and in touching them does not always glorify and satisfy the
heart. We are apt to long for some nearer reflection, some
more immediate help, of our existence in this present hour
and this Enghsh land, where our enemies are not Pharisees
arid Sadducees, or our controversies about Beelzebub and his
demons ; but where we would fain know how to train our
children, to subdue our sins, to ennoble our lot, to think truly
of our dead. The merchant, the scholar, the statesman, the
heads of a family, the owner of an estate, occupy a moral
sphere, the problems and anxieties of which, it must be owned,
Evangelists and Apostles do not approach. Scarcely can it
be said that general rules are given, which include these par
ticular cases. For the Christian Scriptures are singularly
sparing of general rules. They are eminently personal, na
tional, local. They tell us of Martha and Mary, of Nicode-
mus and Nathaniel, but give few maxims of human nature, or
large formulas of human life : so that their spiritual guidance
first becomes available when its essence has been translated
from the special to the universal, and again brought down
from the universal to the modern application. They are felt
to be an inadequate measure of our hving Christianity, and to
leave untouched many earnest thoughts that aspire and pray
within the mind. One divine gift, indeed, they impart to us,
— the gracious and holy image of Christ himself. Yet, some
how, even that sacred form appears with more disencumbered
beauty, and in clearer light, when regarded at a little distance
in the pure spaces of our thought, than when seen close at
hand on the historic canvas. It is not that the ideal figure is
a subjective fiction of our own, more perfect than the real.
Every lineament, every gesture, all the simple majesty, all
the deep expressiveness, we conceive to be justified and de-

292 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
manded by the actual portraiture : our least hesitating venera
tion sees nothing that is not there. But the original artists'
sympathy we feel to have been somewhat different from ours.
They have labored to exhibit aspects that move us little ; and
only faintly marked the traces that to us are most divine.
The view is often broken, the official dress turned into a dis
guise. The local groups are in the way ; the possessed and
the perverse obtrude themselves in front with too much noise ;
and the refracting cloud of prophecy and tradition is con
tinually thrown between. So that the image has a distincter
glory to the meditating mind than to the reading eye.
All this, oftener perhaps felt than confessed, is perfectly
natural and innocent. It betrays the instinctive analysis by
which our own affections separate the divine from the human.
Paul was right in his principle, that in history the divine ele
ment lies hid ; is missed at the time, even by those who are
its vehicle ; and does not parade itself in what they conscious
ly design, but lurks in what they unconsciously execute. It
comes forth at " the end of the ages," — the retrospect of fifty
generations instead of the foresight of one. This doctrine is
true of individuals, in proportion as they are great and good.
They labor at what is most difficult to them, and make it
their end ; but their appointed power lies in what is easiest.
They chiefly prize the beliefs and the virtues most painfully
won ; but their highest truth dwells in the trusts they cannot
help, and their purest influence in the graces they never
willed, or knew to be their own. And it is true in history ;
Paul himself signally illustrating the rule which he had ap
plied to earlier times. He had found, as he supposed, the
Providence of the Past, which all had missed, from Moses to
Christ ; but in his turn he missed, as we perceive, the Prov
idence of the Future, from himself to us. The kind of agency
which he anticipated for Christ bears no resemblance to that
which his religion has actually exercised. The only fault
we can find with Mr. Thorn's admirable exposition is, that he
attributes to the Apostle too distinct an apprehension of
Christ as an impersonation of moral perfection ; and supposes

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 293
the purpose of the Pauline Christianity to have been the es
tablishment, as sole condition of discipleship, of reverential
sympathy with the type of character realized in the Gahlean
life of Jesus. He says : —
" In contrast with such teachers " (the Ritual and the Dog
matic), " St. Paul, in our present chapter (1 Corinthians ii.),
refers both to the matter and the manner of his own ministra
tion of the Gospel. He did not teach it as a Rhetorician, to
attract admiration to himself, and give more lively impressions
of Paul the Orator than of Christ the Redeemer from sin, nor
as a Philosopher, to raise doubtful questions on metaphysical
subjects, and become the leader of a speculative school; but
as the Apostle of Jesus Christ, he proclaimed to the hearts of
men the practical and life-giving Gospel, that ' God was in
Christ reconciling the world unto himself; that by the uni
versal Saviour all distinctions were for ever destroyed, and
the whole family of God to grow into the common likeness of
that well-beloved Son, — for that now neither circumcision
availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but the renewal of the
affections after the image of the Lord. Where could an en
trance be found for party divisions in a doctrine that pro
fessed nothing, that aimed at nothing, except to awaken the
consciousness of sin within the heart, and, through trust in
the God of holiness and love revealed in Jesus, to lead it to
repentance and life? All who felt this love of Christ con
straining them, cleansing their souls by the divine image that
had taken possession of their affections, and, through the mercy
it proclaimed, encouraging their penitence to look for pardon
from their God, must, of necessity, be one communion ; for
this Gospel sentiment and hope could create no divisions
amongst those who had it, — and those who had it not were
outside the Christian pale, and, so far, could make no schisms
within it. Now, whence comes this Gospel sentiment, this
new principle of life ? Were there any who had the exclu
sive power of communicating it? Did it require to be intro
duced by any intricate reasonings, by any subtle dialectics,
which only the Masters in philosophy had at their command ?
25*

294 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
Not so, says St. Paul ; — it is a spiritual feeling, excited by
moral sympathy, as soon as Christ is offered to the hearts
that are susceptible of the sentiment ; — and in whatever bo
som there is not enough of the Spirit of God to cause that
moral attraction to take place, neither philosophy nor outward
forms, nor aught else but the divine image of goodness kept
before the heart, can awaken the slumbering sensibilities
which are the very faculties of spiritual apprehension, and
which, as soon as they are alive, behold in Christ the solution
of their own struggling and imperfect existence, their ideal
and their rest. In regard to a sentiment so spiritual, a sym
pathy with the image of God, where is the possibility of intro
ducing party divisions, and violating Christian unity ? There
can be but two parties, — those that have the sentiment, and
those that have it not. All Christians constitute the one, —
and as for the other, in relation to Christian unity, they are
not in question. Such is the argument of St. Paul in this
second chapter." — p. 30.
It may be quite true that the essential power of Christian
ity resides in the image, ever present to the heart of Chris
tendom, of a God resembling Christ, and loving those who
aspire to approach him through the same resemblance. But
we cannot find any traces of such a conception in the writ
ings of Paul. The " faith " on which he exclusively insisted
would be very incorrectly defined, we conceive, as a rever
ence of Christ's character as morally like God. If we may
judge from the negative evidence of his letters, he appears to
have had no insight into the interior of his Master's earthly
life, and no great concern about it. There is an entire absence
of any moral picture of Jesus, who is presented in the Apos
tolic writings as an object, not of retrospective veneration, but
of expectant reliance ; not of admiring trust for personal qual
ities realized in a past career, but of hope grounded on his
official destiny in the future. One beauty of his character is,
indeed, appealed to in the Pauline writings, viz. his humil
ity and self-renunciation ; * but even this is recognized, not
* See Philippians ii. 5 - 11.

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 295
on historical, but on theocratic grounds ; it is illustrated, not
by anything in his life, but by the fact of his death, conceived
as a voluntary postponement of his theocratic prerogatives,
and an abrogation of his exclusive nationality. He was a
"spiritual" object to the Apostle of the Gentiles, not from
perception of the inner marks and graces of his spirit, but
from his being invisible and immortal, reserved in heaven
under external escape from the conditions of earthly life.
Mr. Thorn's doctrine is a happy development of modern truth
from ancient error ; but regarded as a mere interpretation, it
perhaps sets down to the Apostle's account a just moral ap
preciation of the past, instead of an erroneous conception of
the Providence of the future. The rehgion of Christ has as
suredly turned out a very different phenomenon from any
thing that was anticipated at its origin. It was announced as
a Kingdom ; as the king did not come, it became a Repub
lic. It was conceived as a State ; it grew up into a Faith.
It was proclaimed as the world's end ; it proved to be a fresh
beginning. It was to consummate the Law and the Proph
ets ; and it confounded both. It was to cover Pagan nations
with shame and destruction ; it embalmed their literature, and
was transformed by their philosophy. It was to deliver over
the earth to the pure and severe Monotheism of the Hebrews ;
which, however, it so relaxed as to provoke Islam into exist
ence to proclaim again the monarchy of God. Its subjects
were to be gathered from the Jews and half-castes of the
Eastern Synagogue ; and its most signal glories have been
among the Teutonic nations, and the then unsuspected con
tinents of the West. In every element of its internal power,
in every direction of its external action, it has burst all the
proportions, left behind all the expectations, with which it
was born ; and how can we continue to try it by the standard
of its origin ? Are we to say, that, having promised one thing
and become another, it is not of God ? That might be well,
if it had fallen short of its own professions, — disappointed us
of dreams it had awakened of glory and delight. But if it
has been far better than its word; if, instead of winding up

296 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
the world's affairs, it has given them a new career ; if for
-Messiah's tame millennium we have the grand and struggling
life of Christendom, and for his closed books of judgment the
yet open page of human history ; if for the earthly throne and
sceptre of Christ, sweeping away the treasures of past civil
ization, we have his heavenly image and spirit, presiding over
the re-birth of art, the awakening of thought, the direction of
law, and the organism of nations ; if from the dignity of out
ward sovereignty he has been raised to that of Lord of the
living conscience, not superseding the soul, but exercising it
with sorrow and aspiration ; then, surely, in so outstripping
itself, the religion should win a more exceeding measure of
trust and affection. Had it only realized its first assurances,
we should have thought it divine ; since it has so much sur
passed them, we must esteem it diviner. There is no reason
for the common assumption that a religion must be purest in
its infancy. It is no less surrounded then, than at each sub
sequent time, with human conditions, and transmitted through
human faculties ; and when delivered to the world, embodied
in action or in speech, necessarily presents itself as a mixed
product of divine insight and of human thought, — of the hv
ing present and the decaying past ; a flash of heavenly fire
on the outspread fuel upon the altar of tradition. So it is
with the Scriptures of the New Testament ; which are not
the heavenly source, but the first earthly result and expres
sion of Christianity, and which present the perishable condi
tions as well as the indestructible life of the rehgion. Only
by the course of time and Providence can these be disengaged
from one another, and the accidents of place and nation fall
away. If there dwell in the midst a divine productive ele
ment, the further it passes from the moment of its nativity,
the clearer and more august will it appear. It is like the
seed dropped at first on an unprepared and unexpectant
ground ; which in its earliest development yields but a strug
gling and scanty growth, but each season, as another gener
ation of leaves falls from the boughs, becomes the source,
through richer nutriment, of fuller forms ; till at length, when

THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. ,297
it has spread the foliage of ages, making its own soil, and,
deepening the luxuriance of its own roots, a forest in all its
glory covers the land, and waves in magnificence over conti
nents once bare of life and beauty. So is it with the germ of
divine truth cast upon the inhospitable conditions of history ;
it is small and feeble in its earlier day ; but when it has pro
vided the aliment of its own growth, and shed its reproductive
treasures on the congenial mind of generations and races, it
starts into the proportions of a Christendom, and becomes the
shade and shelter of a world.
Much, therefore, as we value all attempts to illustrate the
first records of Christianity, and to detach what was purely
human and transient in its original form, we think that the
religion itself cannot acknowledge the competency of such
investigations to decide upon its claims. From a verdict on
its first works, it has a right to appeal for judgment upon the
whole. It is the religion, not of John and Paul alone, but of
Christendom; without a comparative estimate of whose moral
and social genius, it can by no means be appreciated. The
weakness and inadequacy of all narrower methods of defence
will in the end drive the clergy to occupy this larger basis of
operations. And the change will be not more favorable to
the logic of their cause than to the charity of their disposition.
So long as the Scriptures alone are taken as the standard, no
more than one creed, at most, can be regarded as concurrent
with the Christian faith. But when the entire existence of
the religion through eighteen centuries is adopted as the meas
ure, the very interests of advocacy themselves require that
the best construction rather than the worst be put upon the
errors and eccentricities of all churches within the compass
of Christendom. The evidences would, in that case, be de
stroyed by exclusiveness, and widened in their foundations
by comprehensiveness of temper ; and the firmness of every
disciple's faith and the energy of his zeal would become as
surances, not of his limitation of mind, but of his largeness of
heart. Instead of endless divisions, multiplied in the search
after unity, we might hope to see the lines of separation be-

298 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.
come ever fainter ; and every test of Christianity withdrawn
except that of moral sympathy with the spirit of Christ; a
test which, as God alone can apply it, man cannot abuse ; and
according to which many that, in the ecclesiastic roll, have
been first, shall be last, and the last first.

THE ETHICS OE CHRISTENDOM.

The Temporal Benefits of Christianity exemplified in its In
fluence on the Social, Intellectual, Civil, and Political Con
dition of Mankind, from its first Promulgation to the pres
ent Day. By Robert Blakey. London. 1849.
Small Books on Great Subjects. Edited by a few Well-
Wishers to Knowledge. No. 19. On the State of Man
subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity. London.
1851.
The Connection of Morality with Religion ; a Sermon,
preached in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, at an Ordina
tion held by the Lord Archbishop of Dublin, Sunday, Sep
tember 21, 1851. By William Fitzgerald, A.M., Vicar
of St. Ann's, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Dublin. London. 1851.
Of these works, the third treats theoretically, the others
practically, of the relation of Christianity to human nature.
The preacher seeks in the natural conscience for the moral
ground and receptacle of revelation ; while the historians trace
its moral operation in society and hfe. Were both tasks per
fectly performed, we should be furnished with a complete image
of the religion at once in its idea and its expression ; should be
able definitely to compare its promise with its achievements
and to submit it, as a whole, to philosophical appreciation. But
the two halves of the subject are exhibited with very unequal
success. It is much easier to show the intended than the

300 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
actual influence of the Christian faith upon the character of
its disciples, — to determine by a priori methods what it must
be, than by an a posteriori induction to estimate what it has
been, and is. Mr. Fitzgerald, as becomes a professor of ethical
science, has well contended that the religion which he recom
mends from the pulpit is neither indifferent nor supercilious
towards the morals which he teaches from the University chair,
— but assumes their obligation, appeals to their authority, and,
in its mode of reconciling the human will with the Divine,
raises them into eternal sanctities. It addresses itself to man
as a being already conscious of responsibility ; and simply pro
poses to restore reason and conscience to that supremacy in
fact which of right they can never lose. How far has this aim
been visibly realized ? Are the traces of a Divine renovation
clear upon the face of Christendom ? Is there the difference
between ancient Greece and modern England, or between the
empire and the papacy of Rome, which might be expected
between an unregenerate world and a regenerate ? The his
torical answer to these questions is attempted by Mr. Blakey,
with perhaps adequate resources of knowledge, but with so im
perfect an apprehension of the requisites of his argument, that
his book, though often instructive in detail, is altogether inef
fective as a whole. He is content to select and enumerate the
most salient and favorable points in the transition from an
cient to modern civilization, and to set them down to the credit
of Christianity ; without care to disengage the action of con
current causes, or to balance the account by reference to more
questionable effects. A much finer analysis is needed, in
order to draw from history its real testimony on this great
matter ; and nothing can well be more arbitrary, than to stroll
through some fifteen centuries, and, gathering up none but the
most picturesque and beneficent phenomena, weave them into a
glory to crown the faith with which they co-exist. In Chris
tendom, all the great and good things that are done at all will
of course be done by Christians, and will contain such share
of the religious element as may belong to the character of the
actor or the age ; but before you can avail yourself of them

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 301
in Christian Apologetics, it must be shown that, under any
other faith, no social causes would have remained adequate
either to produce them or to provide any worthy equivalent.
Because Charlemagne, after baptizing the Saxons in their
own blood, displayed a better zeal by establishing cathedral
and conventual schools, therefore to put the horn-book of the
liberal arts into the hand of his religion, while leaving the
wet sword to stain his own ; because chivalry blended in its
vow '¦'fear of God " with " love of the ladies," therefore to
trace all loyalty and courtesy to the doctrine of the Church ;
because the mediaeval schoolmen imported into every science
the canons of Divinity, and decided between Realism and Nom
inalism on eucharistic principles, therefore to give the priest
hood all the honors of modern philosophy and intellectual
liberty, — is, to say the least, very vulnerable logic and very
superficial history. Of a far superior order is the little book
" On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of
Christianity." In a previous treatise, " On the State of Man
before the Promulgation of Christianity," the author had passed
under rapid review the ancient systems of civilization, — sta
tionary, progressive, aggressive ; and having seized on their
characteristic features, he now brings with him determinate
points of comparison into, his survey of the post- Apostolic
times. The view which he spreads beneath your eye of the
world, as it lay ready to afford a channel for the Christian
faith, is remarkable for breadth and truth. Conducting you,
with the wide picture in your mind, to the pure head-spring
in Galilee, and keeping close to the stream as it descends and
opens from these sequestered heights, he enables you to see,
reach by reach, where it fertilizes and where it destroys ; the
new fields of life it enters, the old landmarks of habit it over
whelms. The author is not more familiar with the Christian
Apologists and Fathers, than with the later Latin and revived
Greek literature from Trajan to Aurelian ; and by skilfully
noting the moments when Pagan and Christian life not only
stood in silent co-presence, but came into active contact, he
brings out into clear relief the new type of character which
26

302 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
formed itself within the communities of disciples. That type
is so strikingly original, its features so conspicuously express
an order of passions and ideas strange alike to the Hellenic
and the Itahan races, as to betray the creative action of some
vast moral power unborrowed from the established civilization.
When the free Roman breaks the bread of communion with
slaves, — when the slippery Syrian forswears lying and theft,
— when the heedless Greek changes his eagerness of the
moment into a living for eternity, — when a people ignorant
of Stoic maxims display a contempt of torture and death sub-
hmer than the ideal of the Porch, — an influence is plainly
at work which has penetrated to hitherto unawakened depths
of the human soul. The phenomenon is the more impressive,
when regard is had to the materials from which the early
Christian communities were gathered. It cannot be imagined
that they were composed of elements particularly choice ; and,
indeed, amid the universal corruption of morals and exhaus
tion of wholesome hfe, it is difficult to conceive how, if the
Christian doctrme had enforced a rigorous selection, instead of
indiscriminately inviting innocence and guilt, any decent ele
ments could have been collected. Without adopting Gibbon's
contemptuous estimate of the body of primitive believers, we
cannot doubt that it comprised very mixed ingredients ; we
know that it contained great numbers of the servile class, and
very few whose station and culture gave them access to the
higher ideas famihar to the schools of philosophy : yet from
these unpromising sources arose a society, which, in severity
of morals, in intensity of affection, in heroism of endurance,
reversed the habits of the world to which they belonged. It
seems to us an idle question for sceptical criticism to raise,
whether the religion of Christ comprised in its teachings any
ethical element absolutely new. If genius had conceived it
all before, life had not produced it till now ; and the more you
affirm the philosophers' competency to think it, the more do
you convict them of inability to realize it. But in morals
scarcely can there be clear intellectual conception of principles
not yet embodied in living character. As in the highest works

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 303
of art, the thing seen is far other than the thing imagined and
described ; not doctrines, but persons, are here the only ex
pression of the truth ; and till they appear, ethical forms are
but as the human clay without the vital fire. In the statement
of thought, the early Christians, not excepting the Scripture
writers, are rude and unskilled ; and a taste formed from the
study of Plato and Seneca may be offended by the rusticity of
Mark, and the abruptness of Paul. But whoever can rise
above the level of a merely intellectual critique, and embrace,
with our anonymous author, the whole phenomenon of the first
centuries of our era, will see a glow of self-denying faith, and
a deep movement of conscience, affording manifest announce
ment of a new edition of human nature.
That edition has now been extant for many centuries ; and
is variously legible in the literature, the institutions, the pri
vate manners of Christendom. The Christian ideal of human
life lies as an open book before us ; yet as a book so various
in its versions, and so overlaid with comments, that the fresh
flavor of its language, and even the finer essence of its thought,
are in danger of being lost. The actual Christianity of each
successive age, and each contemporary nation, is the express
result, not only in its dogma, but in its hfe, of two component
terms, — a given matter, and a given faculty of faith. How
ever full and constant the former may be in itself, the latter is
perpetually variable with the knowledge and passions of the
time, and the special genius of individual leaders ; nor can
this variation of insight in the mind fail to neutralize some
portion of truth, and to give disproportionate magnitude to
others. The data supplied by inspiration itself form no ex
ception to this rule. Delivered into the charge of the human
soul, they fall into the moulds of its recipient nature, take
their immediate form from the laws of its life, and are reacted
on from its independent activity. The immutable custody of
anything by a finite thinking subject, involves the most evident
contradiction ; the very contact with human intelligence re
duces universal truth to partial, the permanent to the variable,
the secure to the contingent. It is only in the essential Unity

304 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
of Reason and Conscience in every age, that we find the
means of correcting the aberrations and verifying the insight
of all particular men. Not that we are to conceive of the
human race collectively as one large person, of which individ
ual minds are vital organs, and which has a necessary growth
and development, entitling each century to boast of advance
beyond its predecessors. We know of no spiritual units, of
no personalities, except each single and separate will ; nor
do we find anything in their mutual relation which necessarily
determines them to uninterrupted improvement, and excludes
the encroachment of degeneracy and falsehood. Indeed, no
sorrier product is there of human conceit and ignorance than
the cant of " progress," which assumes that every newest phase
of thought is wisest. But if all men are endowed with radi
cally the same faculties, however various in their intensities
and proportions, there is a court of appeal in permanent sit
ting, where the normal laws of intellectual and moral appre
hension are administered against all provincial prejudices and
transient verdicts of error. In the long run, the healthy per
ceptions of good eyes will outvote the discoloring effects of
all ophthalmic epidemics, how obstinate and wide soever they
may be. And the moral vision of mankind will no less vindi
cate its natural rights, by returning again and again into clear
discernments, and settled admirations, and discharging the illu
sory forms and false tints of each separate age. To deny the
ethical competency of the mind for this office, — to say that
there is no power given for deciding what, among the claim
ants on reverence, is really noble, true, and good, — is, with
all its pietistic pretences, an act of the profoundest scepticism,
washing away, as a quicksand, the only rock on which any
faith can be built. It is to treat the durable source of truth
as evanescent and uncertain, and shut out the possibility of all
religion. On the other hand, to set up and idolize the life and
thought of any one time as an unquestionable rule for all
times, and stereotype it for unmodified reproduction, is to treat
the evanescent as the durable, and build on whatever stands
above the water, heedless whether it be the quicksand or the

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 305
rock. Yet, strange to say, this particular superstition, and
that general unbelief, — an apparent antithesis of error, —
usually meet in the same mind, and constitute together the
chief theology of most visible churches. Having deposed and
insulted the eternal sanctities, they coax and flatter the letter
of Scripture to accept the vacant throne, and exchange the
holy modesty of its administration for a universal empire of
pretence. They drain off the springs of inspiration at their
fountain-head, and turn ah history into a plain of sand, that
they may magnify their Hebrew reservoir as the world's sole
supply ; forgetting that, when cut off from the running waters,
the choicest store loses its fresh virtues, an4. the fairest lake,
shut up without exit, turns into a Dead Sea. In contradiction
of both errors, we shall assume that transitory elements can
not fail to mix themselves with the expression of the purest
inspiration, — the horizon of human relations and expressible
things around even the divinest soul being limited; and
that, as the inspiration tries itself upon age after age, bringing
into distinct consciousness now one side of truth and now
another, it becomes more and more possible to find its essence
and eliminate its accidents, to save its catholic beauties apart
from its sectional distortions. The Christian ideal of life is
not to be looked for in what is special to the Crusader or the
Quaker, — to Puritan or Cavalier, — to Platonists of the sec
ond century or Aristotelians of the twelfth, — to Aquinas or
Luther, — to John or Paul; but in such sentiment as was
common to them all, and attached to them as citizens of Chris
tendom. When this element is disengaged from all that en
cumbers it, it will be found pervading and animating still
whatever is noblest in our modern life ; while all that is nar
row, and weak, and unworthy in the moral doctrine of our
age, springs from a forced attempt to perpetuate the acciden
tal modes of the Apostolic period.
Every one is sensible of a change in the whole climate of
thought and feeling, the moment he crosses any part of the
boundary which divides Christian civilization from Heathen
dom ; yet of nothing is it more difficult to render any compen-
26*

306 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
dious account. It is easy to enumerate in detail the phenom
ena which are modified or disappear ; just as on entering a
new physical region the travelling naturalist may register the
new species of plants and animals, that, one after another, pre
sent themselves to his research. But these do not paint the
scene before even the learned eye ; they are the separate out-
comings of a great life-thrill, into whose current their roots
penetrate ; the landscape, as a whole, speaks differently to the
mind, and the whole heaven and earth seem pregnant with a
thought unfelt before. To read off that thought, requires an
apprehension the converse of the analytic vision of science.
The same difficulty occurs when we endeavor to seize the la
tent principle of a natural realm of history. Such principle,
however, there must be. Beneath all the moving tides of
Christian thought there lie still depths that supply them all,
and a centre of equilibrium around which they sweep. We
believe that the fundamental idea of Christendom may be
described to be the ascent through Conscience into commun
ion with God. Other religions have lent their sanctions to
morality, and announced the Divine commands to the human
will; but only as the laws of an outward monarch within
whose sovereignty we lie, and who, ruling in virtue of his
almightiness, has a right to obedience, ordain as he will. Other
religions, again, have aimed at a union with God. But the
conditions of this union, dictated by misleading conceptions of
the Divine nature, have missed on every side the true level of
human dignity and peace. Maniehasism, deifying the antith
esis of matter, takes the path of ascetic suppression of the
body. The Indian Pantheist, imagining the Divine Abyss as
the realm of night and infinite negation, strives to hold in the
breath and sink into self-annulment. Plato, seeing in God
the essence of thought, demands science and beauty, not less
than goodness, as the needful notes of harmony with him, and
appoints the approach to heaven by academic ways. The
modern Quietists, worshipping a Being too much the reflection
of their own tenderness, have lost themselves in soft affections,
relaxing to the nerves of duty, and unseemly in the face of

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 307
eternal law. Christianity alone has neither crushed the soul
by mere submission, like Mohammedanism ; nor melted it away
in the tides of infinite being, like Pantheistic faiths ; but has
saved the good of both, by establishing the union with God
through a free act of the individual soul. Assigning to him a
transcendent moral nature, sensitive to the same distinctions,
conservative of the same solemnities, which awe and kindle
us, it singles out the conscience as the field where we are to
meet him, — where the bridge will be found of transit between
the human and the divine. No fear or servihty remains with
an obedience consisting, not in mystic acts and artificial habits,
but in the free play of natural goodness ; and rendered, not
in homage to a Supreme Autocrat, but in sympathy with a
Mind itself the infinite impersonation of all the sanctities.
Nor are any dizzy and perilous flights incurred by a devotion
which meets its great Inspirer in no foreign heaven, but in
the higher walks of this home life, and misses him only in
what is mean and low. The place assigned in Christianity
to the moral sentiments and affections has no parallel in any
other religion. The whole faith is as an unutterable sigh
after an ideal perfection. Holiness eternal in heaven, incar
nate on earth, and to be realized in men, — this is the circle
of conceptions in which it moves. Its very name for the In
spiration which mediates all its work, expresses the same
thing. It is not simply an iv6ovcriao-pos, — not pavla, — not
Pamela, — but the nvevpa ayiov. The Daemon of Socrates —
the least heathenish of heathen men — was but an intellect
ual guide, and checked his erring judgment ; the Holy Spirit
guards the vigils of duty, and succors the disciple's tempted
will. This profound sense of interior amity with God through
faithfulness to our highest possibility, appears in the Christian
Scriptures under two forms, — the positive and the negative, —
each the complement of the other. In the Gospel, Jesus him
self, as befits the saintly mind lifted above the strife of passion,
describes the aspiration after goodness as the native guidance
of the soul to her source and refuge. In the Epistles, Paul,
pouring forth the confessions of a fiery nature, proclaims the

308 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
sense of sin to be the contracted hinderance that bars the as
cent, and against which the wings of the struggling will beat
only to grow faint. These representations are evidently but
the two sides of the same doctrine seen from the heavenly and
from the earthly position. Whether we are told what the
good heart will find, or what the guilty must lose, the lesson
equally recognizes the Divine authority of conscience. The
benediction and the curse are but the bright and the dark
hemisphere of one perfect truth. The Apostle, standing in
the shadow of the world's night, and regarding its averted
face, dwells on the gloom of alienation, — the " foolish heart
that is darkened," — the " reprobate mind " from which God
is hid. Christ, conscious of the holy light, and knowing how
it penetrates the folds of willing natures, and wakes what else
would sleep, speaks rather of the glory that is not denied, and
utters that deepest of blessings, — " The pure in heart shall
see God." To this bright side also the Pauline view in the
end comes round. For though in him we miss that recog
nition of a natural human goodness which gives such grace
and sweetness to many of the parables ; though in his scheme
the human will has not only betrayed its trust, but hopelessly
crippled its powers ; yet he does not leave it in the collapse
of paralysis, with the hard saying that it can in no wise lift
up itself, but points to a hope that bends over it from above.
The soul that is too far gone to act, may still be capable of
love ; if unable to trust itself, it may trust another ; if it can
not command its volitions, it may surrender its affections ; can
reverence, can aspire, can yield its hand, like a child, to an
angel of deliverance. Beyond the precincts of this world is
an Image of divine excellence and beauty, — one recently
withdrawn from human history, and soon to have a more au
gust return. It is but to turn the eye and give the heart to
that ideal and immortal perfection, and in the light of so pure
a love, the clouds will clear from the conscience, and lift them
selves as a nightmare away ; the lame will, forgetting its in
firmities, will spring up and walk ; and the restoration, impos
sible by flight from deformity and ill, will come through the

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 309
attraction of a Divine sanctity ana goodness. Thus does the
Apostle snatch the disciple at last into the right perceptions
which Christ assumes to be possible at first ; and in both its
primitive developments the Christian religion implies the com
munion of man with God through purity of heart.
To this sentiment, conveyed with hving realization in the
person of Jesus Christ, may be referred whatever is distinc
tively great in Christian ethics. Proposing, as an end within
their reach, the ascent of the soul to a divine life, and as the
means, a simple surrender to its own highest intimations, they
have melted away the interval between earthly and heavenly
natures, — not by humanizing God, but by consecrating man.
In treating the lower desires of sense and self as the steams
that intercept, the tender reverences as the clear air that
transmits, the light of lights, they have struck the deepest
truth of human consciousness. Hence the temper of aspira
tion, — the earnest ideality, — the sense of infinite want, with
faith in infinite possibilities, — the sorrowful unrest in the
present, with irrepressible struggle for a better future, —
which are impressed on the poetry, the art, the social life of
Christendom. Unlike the expression of the Hellenic mind,
they are rather a prayer for what might be, than a joy in
what is. Hence, too, the predominance of the psychological
and subjective element in the philosophy of modern times,
and the conversion of the ancient " metaphysics " into the form
of "mental science." Man would never have ceased to be
merged in nature, and registered merely as a part of its con
tents ; his self-knowledge would not have vindicated its inde
pendent rights ; his mind would not have been recognized as
the court of record for the moral legislation of the universe, —
had not his religion taken him deep into himself, and from a
new point shown him his relation to all else ; kindling his own
consciousness to a point of intense brilliancy, in correspond
ence with a divine centre, which must be sought on the same
axis of being, — like the two determining foci of an infinite
curve, that find each other out, while the realm of determined
nature lies around, as the configured area, or the bounding

310 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
curve. Of the external world, indeed, too little account has
oeen made in the faith of Christians. They have not cared
to recognize it as the shrine of immanent Deity ; — have
stood in uneasy relations to it ; often inimical to it ; sometimes
trying to get rid of it as an illusion ; usually regarding it as a
foreign object, like a great statue on the stage of being, with
only stony eyes and ears for the real play of passions that
whirl around. Existence, in its essence, has been felt as an
interview between man and God, at which space and nature
have been collaterally present, but in which it was not appar
ent what they had to do. Physical science and the plastic
arts may have reason to complain of the depressing influence
of this imperfect view, and of the hard necessity under which
it places them of pursuing their ends with only scanty and
grudging recognition from religion. But, for the philosophic
knowledge of human nature, and the practical regulation of
human society, this isolation of the soul within its own con
sciousness, — this concentrated personahty, — this vivid inter
change of life with God without diffusion through benumbing
media, — must be held eminently ennobling.
If, from the fundamental Christian sentiment, w« descend
to the scheme of Applied Morals which it organized and in
spired, the principle still vindicates itself in its results. The
great problems of life are supphed from two sources, — the
Persons that may engage our affections, and the Pursuits that
may invite our will. The light in which the personal rela
tions are presented before the eye of Christendom is undeni
ably benign and true. It has never been obscured without
the social spread of injustice and discontent ; nor ever cleared
again, but as the precursor of reformation. That every
human soul has its sacred concerns and its divine communion,
is the simplest of thoughts ; but so deep and moving, that,
where it is received and acknowledged, it calls up angelic vir
tues ; where it is insulted and denied, it lets slip avenging
fiends. Wherever it is sincerely held, it secures that rever
ential feeling towards others, beneath whose spell the selfish
passions sleep, and without which the precept of courtesy and

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 311
the definition of rights are an ineffectual form. Power loses
its insolence, and dependence its sting, where their mutual
relation does not carry the whole individuality with it, but
stops with the limits of social and political convenience, and
lies under the restraining protection of a supreme equahty
before God. The " Fraternity " that is the offspring of po
litical theories, and aims to neutralize by fellow-citizenship
the diversities and antipathies of nature, is often the watch
word of envy and egotism, shouted by the voice of hatred, and
announcing the deed of violence. It is for want of faith in
that highest brotherhood of worship and responsibility which
Christianity assumes, that impatient schemes are formed for
artificially equahzing the weak and the strong, and abolishing
the relations of necessary dependence. Nor, where that faith
is absent, can they ever be answered so as to satisfy the feel
ing from which they spring. They may be shown to be im
practicable, and crushed by the relentless argument of fact ;
but the fact will be protested against as unnatural, and the
impossibility will seem a cruelty. How differently is this
topic handled by the logic of science and the sentiment of
religion ! How much less justly does the former draw the
line between natural subordination among men and tyrannous
oppression, than the latter ! Aristotle undertakes the defence
of slavery on grounds both of philosophy and of experience.
Nature, he contends, pursuing a definite end in every act of
creation, assigns to some things, from their very origin, a des
tiny to rule, while imposing on others a necessity of being
ruled. Wherever a plurality of parts concur to form a gen
eral whole, dominant and subordinate elements present them
selves. Even within the inanimate realm this is apparent, as
in the case of harmony in music. But it is chiefly conspic
uous in the sphere of animal existence ; the body being, by
nature, servitor, of which the soul is lord. In the highest
stage of animate being, the constitution of well-organized men,
this law comes into the clearest light ; for here the soul sways
the body with absolute command, while reason exercises over
the passions the prerogatives of a royal and constitutional

312 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
power ; and were equality to be substituted for these modes of
subjection, mischief would ensue on all sides. Not less evi
dently does Nature announce the dependence of inferior on
superior in the rank allotted to the brutes in relation to man ;
and again, in the case of the two sexes, of which the male, as
the more distinguished, is rendered dominant. The same ne
cessary law adjusts the positions of mankind inter se. All
those who are as intrinsically inferior to their neighbors as
the body to the soul, or the brute to the man, — (and this is
precisely the case of the mere manual laborer,) — are slaves
by nature ; and for them, as for the body and the brutes, it is
better to be servile than to be free. Any man who can be
made property of by another, and who is competent to under
stand a master's intelligence without a spontaneous stock of
his own, is naturally a slave. Such a one performs functions
in the world not essentially distinguished from those of the
domestic animals ; the destiny of both is to contribute their
corporeal energies to the service of society ; and creatures fit
for this alone are brought into the slave-market by Nature
herself. Consistently with this conception of the laborer as a
living tool (SoOXor 'ip\j/vxov opyavov), Aristotle lays it down that
the relation of master and slave admits no rights, and excludes
friendship. To our modern worshippers of strength, this will
appear commendable doctrine, very much because they have
themselves relapsed into the old Hellenic way of studying the
problems of the universe ; descending, in the Pantheistic
method, from the whole upon the parts ; fetching rules from
the wider sphere (therefore the lower) to import into the nar
rower ; entering the human world from the physical, — the
olKovpevt] from the Koo-pos ; approaching society as a specialty
superinduced on a groundwork of nomadic barbarism ; and
determining the functions of the individual as member of the
vital organism of the state. So long as this logical strategy
is allowed, the Titans will always conquer the gods ; the
ground-forces of the lowest nature will propagate themselves,
pulse after pulse, from the abysses to the skies ; and right
will exist only on sufferance from might. But there is a

^ THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 313
heaven, after all, which the most trenchant giant cannot
storm, and where justice and sanctity reserve a quiet throne.
Without disputing the inequality of gifts and consequent law
of natural ranks, rehgion qualifies it by an addition which
overarches and absorbs it. Were man only the choicest, most
intelligent, most gregarious of the mammalia, — were the theory
of his affairs a mere extension of natural history, — we might
reasonably discuss, in Aristotle's way, the conditions under
which he may fitly be put in harness. But there is in him an
element that takes him beyond the range of a Pliny or a Cu-
vier, that lifts him out of the kingdom of nature and gives him
kindred with the preternatural and divine. He is not simply
an instrument for achieving a given fraction of a universal
end, but has a sacred trust which, on its own account, he is
empowered and commissioned to discharge. He is watched
by the eyes of infinite Pity and Affection, braced for his faith
ful work, succored in his fierce temptations. The conditions
of dutiful, loving, noble life must be preserved to him. Let
his task, indeed, be suited to his powers ; and if he cannot
rule, by all means let him serve ; but still with a margin and
play of spiritual freedom secure from encroachment and con
tempt. Those on whom Heaven lays the burden of duty no
power on earth may strip of rights. The conscience with
which the Highest can commune, the spirit which is not too
mean for His abode, can be no object of shght and scorn from
men. By law and usage you may have the disposal of anoth
er's lot. and labor; but in the reality of things the lord of a
province may be less than the conqueror of a temptation.
You»may be Greek, and he barbarian ; but in the heraldry of
the universe, the blood of Agamemnon is less noble than the
spirit of a saint. In thus snatching the individual, as bearer
of a holy trust, from the crush of nature and the world, Chris
tianity became the first human religion, — that absolutely took
no notice of race and sex and class. It created a new order
of inalienable rights, neither the heritage of birth, nor the
franchise of a state, but inherent in the moral capabilities of a
man. The free opening of sanctity and immortality to every
27

314 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. ,
willing heart could not fail to exercise an intense influence on
the better portion of a world, like the declining empire of
Rome, sickened with corruption and confused with unmanage
able oppressions. That it did so, is proved by the whole
tenor of the early Christian literature ; and the effect is well
described and accounted for by the writer " On the State of
Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity."
" The mockery of adoring as gods the licentious tyrants
who had occupied the imperial throne, seems to have put an
end to everything like rehgious feeling among the nations
under the sway of Rome. The free satire of Lucianus shows
how completely it had faded away, for it introduces the gods
of Olympus complaining that they were starving for lack of
offerings^ not altogether because Christian or philosophic doc
trines prevailed widely, but rather on account of the total
indifference of the people to their ancient mythology ; for
even if it ever had symbolized the truth, its meaning was now
forgotten ; and, even so far back as the time of Cicero, had
become totally unintelligible to the learned, as well as to the
multitude. It was useless, therefore, and wanted but a shght
impulse from without to overthrow it. But to the philosopher
who was in earnest in his pursuit of this truth, buried under
the rubbish of time, the doctrme of Christ afforded it ; there
he found all that the master minds whom he honored had
taught and hoped; but he found it simplified, purified, and
confirmed by sanctions such as Plato had wished for, but
scarcely dared to expect ; — to the Roman patrician, if any
there were who still looked back with fond memory to the
purer morals and stern courage of his forefathers, the Ghris-
tian simphcity of manners and firm endurance of torture and
death was the reahzation of what he had heard of and ad
mired, but scarcely seen till then; — to the slave, sighing
under oppression and condemned to hopeless bondage, the
doctrine of the Gospel gave all that was valuable in life ; the
Christian slave was the friend of his Christian master, par
took of the same holy feast, shared the same painful but
glorious martyrdom ; he was raised at once to all his intellect-

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 315
ual rank, found freedom beyond the grave, and lived already
in a happy immortality; — to the woman, degraded in her
own eyes no less than in those of the tyrant to whose lusts
she was the slave, it offered a restoration to all that is most
dear to the human race ; it offered intellectual dignity, equal
ity before God, purity, holiness. The Christian woman could
die ; she could not, therefore, unless consenting to it, be again
enslaved to the vile passions of men; before God she was
free, and with Him she trusted to find shelter when the hard
world left her none. Can we wonder, then, that Christianity
found votaries wherever a mind existed that sighed after bet
ter things ? for the preacher of Nazareth had at last expressed
the thought which had been brooding in the minds of so many,
who had found themselves unable to give it utterance." —
p. 55.
Nor was it merely within the pale of the Christian frater
nity that relations of mutual reverence and tenderness attested
the power of an ennobling faith. Intensity of internal com
bination is often balanced, in religious brotherhoods, by vehe
mence of external repugnance; and were we to accept the
fiery declamation of Tertulhan as fairly expressing the spirit
of his fellow-believers, we could ill defend them from the
charge of fierce antipathy to the persons as well as the creed
of their Pagan neighbors. But many silent mercies appear
which contradict this loud intolerance. When the Decian
persecution and its attendant tumultuary movements had filled
Alexandria with such slaughter as to breed pestilence from
the bodies of the dead, the Christians, instead of sullenly per
mitting the physical calamity to avenge their cause, assumed
the duties of public nurses, and performed the loathsome tasks
from which priests and magistrates had fled. Referring to
this occasion, the author just cited says : —
" The plague made its appearance with tremendous violence,
and desolated the city, so that, as Dionysius, the Christian
bishop, writes, there were not so many inhabitants left of all
ages, as heretofore could be numbered between forty and sev
enty. In this emergency the persecuted Christians forgot all

316 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
but their Lord's precept, and were unwearied in their attend
ance on the sick ; many perishing in the performance of this
duty by taking the infection. ' In this way,' says the bishop,
with touching simphcity, ' the best of the brethren departed
this life ; some ministers, and some deacons,' the heathens
having abandoned their friends and relations to the care of
the very persons whom they had been accustomed to call
' Men-haters.' A like noble self-devotion was shown at Car
thage when the pestilence which had desolated Alexandria
made its appearance in that city, and, I quote the words of a
contemporary, ' All fled in horror from the contagion, aban
doning their relations and friends as if they thought that by
avoiding the plague any one might also exclude death alto
gether. Meanwhile the city was strewed with the bodies, or
rather carcasses of the dead, which seemed to call for pity
from the passers-by, who might themselves so soon share the
same fate ; but no one cared for anything but miserable pelf;
no one trembled at the consideration of what might so soon
befall him in his turn ; no one did for another what he would
have wished others to do for him. The bishop hereupon
called together his flock, and setting before them the example
and teaching of their Lord, called on them to act up to it.
He said, that if they took care only of their own people, they
did but what the commonest feeling would dictate ; the ser
vant of Christ must do more ; he must love his enemies, and
pray for his persecutors ; for God made his sun to rise and his
rain to fall on all alike, and he who would be the child of God
must imitate his Father.' The people responded to his appeal ;
they formed themselves into classes, and those whose poverty
prevented them from doing more gave their personal attend
ance, while those who had property aided yet further. No
one quitted his post but with his life." — p. 1 62.
This self-devotion in times of distress, strangely contrasting
with habits and temper apparently unsocial, has too steadily
reappeared in every earnest church not to be accepted as a
Christian characteristic. During the fatal famine and epi
demic which desolated Antioch in the third century, the Pagan

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 317
governor, when urged by the inhabitants to make authoritative
arrangements for relieving the sufferings of a perishing popu
lace, replied that " The gods hated the poor " ; while the
Christians, prevailingly poor themselves, plunged .into the
centre of the danger, and carried into the recesses of fever
and despair the quiet presence of help and hope. If disciples
have thus freely rendered to " those without " services which
Pagans refused to one another, it is not simply in stiff obedi
ence to a precept of love to their enemies, but from a heart
felt sentiment of honor for human nature and consequent
tenderness of human life. There was no man who, though
he might be* a persecutor to-day, might not be a comrade to
morrow ; he had a soul susceptible of consecration ; and day
and night the gates of the Church were ready to fly open to
the touch of penitence ; and whether he throws off the mask
of delusion or not, he must be treated as a brother in disguise.
Only by reference to this conception of all men as possible
subjects of sanctifying change, can the fact be explained, that
even where the creed has opened an infinite gulf between
behever and unbeliever, the active charities have detained
in lingering embrace the persons whom the theoretic fancy
has flung into the ultimate horrors. A religion that is
superior to the external distinctions of lineage and class, and
draws its lines only by the invisible coloring of souls, must
ever be a religion open to hope, and therefore apt to love.
Even where the severest doctrine of exclusion has prevailed,
the fundamental sentiment of Christian faith has saved -the
heart from the most withering of all passions, — the blight of
scorn. Human nature may appear beneath the eye of an
austere behever in an awful, but never in a contemptible light.
The very crisis in which it is suspended can belong to no
mean existence. What it has lost is too great a glory, what
it has incurred is too deep a terror, to be conceivable except
of a being on a grand scale. He is no worm for whom the
eternal abysses are ' built as a dungeon and the lightnings are
brandished as a scourge. Accordingly, the very alienations
of intolerance itself have acquired a higher and more respect-
27*

318 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. "
ful character than in ancient faiths. The sort of feehng with
which the Jew spurned " the Gentile dog " is sanctioned by
piety no more. The Oriental curl of the lip is scarcely trace
able on the features of Christendom ; and is replaced by an
expression of tragic sorrow and earnestness, where lights of
admiring pity flash through the darkest clouds.
It seems, then, that the essential sentiment of all Christian
faith — the communion through conscience with God — carries
with it, not only noble personal aspirations, but also, towards
others, affections of singular generosity and depth ; affections
which demand for every man a position in which he may
work out the moral problem of life, which dignify every lot
where this is possible, and which soften even actual alienations
with possible reverence and hope. The sphere of action
which these feelings may shape for themselves, the particular
enterprises they may undertake, the external pursuits they
may assume, will necessarily depend on many foreign and
accidental conditions. The work which it would fall to the
hands of the same faithful man to do, if he lived on through
the changes of the world, would greatly vary from age to age.
The work which contemporary men, of equal and similar fidel
ity, will set themselves to accomplish, will vary with their
several positions. The same act, or even habit, which is inno
cent (though possibly not innocuous) in one place, may assume
quite an altered significance in another. It would be absurd,
for instance, to set down the double marriages of patriarchal
times in the same moral rank with modern cases of bigamy.
And the doctrine of Plato's Republic respecting marriage,
startling as a comment on the manners of his age, by no
means expresses the odious state of mind which would be im
plied in its substitution now for the sanctities of private life.
The devotion to studious and peaceful acts which may usually
be either blameless or laudable, may become a guilt like trea
son in an hour when the interests of pubhc liberty claim every
citizen for the council or the field. Indeed, the conduct in
such contrasted instances is in no proper sense the same ; it
has only an external identity ; it is a physical self-repetition,

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 319
with a moral contrariety ; and unless, in speaking of a human
action, we mean to shut out the soul which makes it human,
and to denote only the muscular flourish and spasm of limb,
the sameness is but a semblance with a reality of difference.
The moral values of actions, taken in this narrowest sense, are
inevitably variable ; and any code that should present a list
of them as obligatory in perpetuity, without regard to the
changes of their meaning to the mind, would mistake the
very nature of human duty. Not that we deny the existence
of permanent grounds for the adoption of some habits and
the avoidance of others. There are reasons, unchangeable as
the corporeal frame of man, why opium should not be taken
as an article of food, and why cousins should not intermarry.
But the grounds of prohibition in these cases are rational, not
moral; they are found in the outward effects, not in the in
ward sources, of conduct ; and only when its outward effects
are known to the agent, so as to enter among its inward sources
and modify its meaning, does he pass from unwise to im
moral. External action, in short, stands as an indifferent phe
nomenon, between the mind that issues it and the world into
which it goes. The thought and affection whence it springs
in the former give its moral, the results to which it tends in
the latter its rational value. Whoever makes a correct esti
mate of the several affections and impulses which stir the
will, and throughout their scale reveres the better and disap
proves the worse, possesses moral truth. Whoever perceives
and computes the real consequences of voluntary conduct,
possesses rational discernment in human affairs. The former
— an interpretation of the conscience and its sacred contents
— is the permanent essence of ethical and root of religious
wisdom. The latter — an apprehension of physical laws and
historical tendencies — is conditioned by the progress of sci
ence and the facilities for social vaticination. Errors in this
are inevitable to the limitations of human intellect. Perfec
tion in that is possible only to the highest divine insight in the
soul. The fallible judgment respecting outward relations
affects only the accidents of morals, though the essence of

320 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
scientific truth. Where the inner apprehension is deep and
true, the outward judgment contains a principle of self-correc
tion ; the miscalculation of one age is checked by that of a
succeeding ; opposite errors cancel each other ; and the spirit
of a pure faith, hke a just feeling of beauty and greatness in
art, works itself clear of the false data of usage amid which
its inspiration arose, and transmigrates into ever-improving
forms. If, however, the reverence due to the inspiration
should become a traditional affair, losing its living eye and
spiritual tact, it will extend itself as a moping idolatry to the
imperfect media and rude materials through which the new
glory first gleamed; an incapable era of renaissance will
appear ; the very works which were given as the spring of
ever-fresh creation will be used to stifle it ; in servile imitation
of an original period, its whole character will be lost, and the
moment of exactest reproduction will be that of intensest
contrast. This is precisely the way in which the spiritual life of the
primitive Christians has been dealt with. The thought and
meaning that lay at its heart are little apprehended ; its ap
plied morals, in which these are mixed up with the errors in
cident to their point of view, are distorted into a rigid code of
obligation, in which the original idea is often entirely reversed.
If it be really true that the Apostohc age was impressed
with the belief of a speedy end of the world, such an outlook
must undeniably have affected the disciples' whole estimate of
the value of human pursuits. The plan of hfe commendable
in a passage-ship may be questionable in a settled home ; and
the proceedings of an army on the eve of battle are not like
the habits of the same people tilling their fields and sitting at
their hearths. To apply to a permanently constituted planet
the rules promulgated to preserve discipline amid a general
breaking-up, is surely an eccentric kind of legislation. Yet
by just such a process have modern churches derived a num
ber of ethical extravagances offensive to the eye of chastened
conscience, and condemned by their impracticability to the in
sincere existence of perpetual talk. The manner in which

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 321
English divines conduct themselves towards this error of the
first century appears to us not simple and ingenuous. Some
still affect to deny it, and to treat its reiterated assertion as a
mere perverseness and impudence of heresy ; yet they leave
the statement without serious refutation, though well aware
that the weight of critical authority is altogether in its favor,
and though avowing their own theory of revelation absolutely
to require that it be false. Others incidentally and grudgingly
admit it, and then pass on as if nothing had happened ; imme
diately relapsing into the same authoritative appeal to Scrip
ture, the same direct and mechanical use of its precepts, the
same assumption of it as an instrument yielding on interpre
tation nothing but truth, which had been habitual with them
before their eyes were opened. Now, if anything be certain
on such a matter, it is that to suppose one's self in the world's
last year, — the admission paid to the panorama of judgment
and the spectacle only waiting to begin, — is no small and
sleepy idea, which might ineffectually turn up now and then,
and sink back below the surface without further trace. A
man who could live in presence of such a vision, and not carry
its crimsoned light upon every object that fixed his eye, could
be no apostle of truth or preacher of earnestness ; nor do we
know that anything more contemptuous could be said of him
than that, no doubt, he held such an expectation, but it wa3 of
no consequence. To convert the author of the Pauline Epis
tles into a dilettante believer of the pattern of the nineteenth
century, and say of his most tremendous gleams of thought
that they were but transitory fireworks which meant nothing,
is no less an offence against his character than a misunder
standing of his writings ; and we conceive that, in affirming
the deep penetration of his mistaken world- view into the sub
stance of his monitory teaching, we shall be vindicating the
fundamental veracity and noble clearness of his soul.
To exhibit the Christology of the Apostles with the fulness
necessary for tracing pseudo-Christian morality to its origin,
would require a volume. We can only advert to one or two
points, indicating the direction which such an inquiry would

322 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
take. It is admitted on all hands, that a second advent of
Christ is announced in almost every book of the New Testa
ment ; that, if we except the Gospel of John, it is spoken of
invariably as a real, personal return, an objective and scenic
event, to be seen, heard, and felt ; and cannot be explained
away into a spiritual access to the world, or a subjective
drama in the soul of disciples. It is further admitted, that
with this advent are integrally connected many incidents
which, however difficult to group into a complete picture, con
stitute, under every variety of possible arrangement, a final
consummation of human affairs. Indeed, the article in the
Creed which declares that Christ "shall come to judge the
quick and the dead, and at his coming all men shall rise again
with their bodies and shall give account for their own works,"
shows how the Church understands the doctrine, and conjoins
the end of the world with the advent. The nature of the
event being so far undisputed, the question which separates
the mass of scientific interpreters from the popular expounder,
refers only to its date. The Apostle Paul, it is urged by the
critics, writes to his Thessalonian converts, in answer to a
distressing doubt which could have no existence but in minds
on the watch for the return of Christ; and his answer, far
from checking this outlook, raised it to such intensity that, to
soothe their excitement, he wrote to them again to remove the
event from the immediate foreground of their imagination;
yet even then detained it quite within the limits of their nat
ural lives, and, simply interposing one or two signals of its
approach that had not yet appeared, counselled them not to
lose their composure, but maintain a "patient waiting for
Christ." The original doubt which had disturbed them seems
to have been one instructively characteristic of the early the
ocratic faith. Some member of the community had died ; his
friends, in addition to their natural sorrow, were apparently
taken by surprise, that, after enrolment among the citizens of
the approaching kingdom, he was taken from their side, and
would not be with them when they hailed the arrival of Christ.
What would become of him ? They thought he would have

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 323
to remain in his sleep till Messiah should exercise his func
tion of raising the dead, which was not to be at first ; and so,
during the great crisis, and for an uncertain continuance be
yond, he would linger behind the privilege which they enjoyed.
This" seems, at first sight, a strange subject of distress. That
the second advent should take place in the presence of the
hving only, and should leave the dead without part or lot in
the matter, is so completely at variance with the picture which
has become fixed in the common Christian imagination, that
scruples may readily be felt about attributing so mutilated a
conception to the Thessalonian church. The commonly re
ceived picture, however, is made up of elements incongruously
brought together from several Scripture writers, to whom the
expected event presented itself under different aspects ; and
nowhere can they be found combined into such a whole as the
ecclesiastical faith represents. To understand and account for
the Thessalonian state of mind, we have only to read over the
24th and 25th chapters of St. Matthew, and to surrender our
selves to the images there presented, without adding anything
of our own. These chapters contain the fullest description of
the advent, the last judgment, and the end of the world, that
can be found in Scripture ; yet the dead are not brought upon
the scene at all, nor is any resurrection found among its ele
ments. The whole idea is evidently of a return of the Son
of Man, within the limits of a generation, to take account, in
his theocratic capacity, of the very persons who had known
him in his Galilean humihation and disguise, — of those who,
having joined him in his days of trial, had been intrusted by
him with the administration in the interval of his heavenly
absence, — and of those who, after rejecting him personally,
had hardened themselves no less against the preaching and
overtures of his subsequent ambassadors. The nations gath
ered before him are furnished from the surviving population
of the earth ; and the ground of their admittance or rejection
is the reception they have given to Messiah in the persons of
his missionaries and representatives. In supposing the dead
to have lost their chance of participating in this scene, the

324 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
Thessalonians did but paint it to themselves as Christ, accord
ing to the first Gospel, had described it to his hearers. Their
misgiving plainly assumes that the advent was sure for the
hving and was lost for the dead. The Apostle answers by
denying the distinction, and putting both classes into the same
condition ere the great hour strikes: but what condition?
Does he say that the living will die first? No; but that the
dead will live first : so that the departed companion will come
back at the right moment for mingling with the troop of
friends that shall go "to meet the Lord in the air." The
same order of events is given in the sublime, but little under
stood, chapter on the resurrection in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians, where the Apostle places himself, at the advent,
not among " the dead " that " shall be raised incorruptible,"
but among the survivors that " shall be changed " into immor
tals without ever quitting life. It is a topic of praise to the
disciples at Corinth that they are " waiting for the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the
end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ." He assures his Philippian friends that " the Lord is
at hand," and prays that they may " be sincere and without
offence till the day of Christ." Having come out safe from
his examination and hearing at Rome, he avows his persua
sion that he will be similarly delivered "from every evil
work," and preserved unto Christ's heavenly kingdom. Though
amid his toils and weariness he earnestly desired to be en
dowed with his immortal frame, — to be invested, as he ex
presses it, with his house from above ; yet he was unwilling
to put off the corruptible, till he could put on the incorruptible ;
he would have his mortality " swallowed up of hfe " ; he did
not wish the great hour to find him naked, but clothed, not,
that is, a disembodied spirit, but a living man. He stands at
the era on which " the end of the world has come " ; and begs
his correspondents to let certain existing disputes he over, and
to "judge nothing before the time until the Lord come." Not
less explicit evidence is afforded in the writings of other Apos
tles. James says, " The coming of the Lord draweth nigh ; . . . .

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 325
behold, the Judge standeth before the door." Peter, " The
end of all things is at hand." John, " Children, it is the last
time ; and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even
now are there many Antichrists ; whereby we know that it is
the last time." If the author of Christianity did not himself
entertain the same expectation of an early return to assume
his Messianic prerogatives, he has been greatly misrepresented
by his biographers. For though one of them represents him
as disclaiming a knowledge of the specific " day and hour "
appointed for his " coming in the clouds with great power and
glory," the disclaimer follows immediately on his announce
ment, that at all events it will take place within the existing
generation. Does any reader doubt whether this " coming in
the clouds " really describes the judgment ? or whether " this
generation " denotes the natural term of human life ? Both
questions are answered at once in Matthew's report of a single
sentence, which simultaneously defines the event and its date :
" For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father,
with his angels ; and then he shall reward every man accord
ing to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some stand
ing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of
Man coming in his kingdom." It is certainly possible enough
that the discourses in which these expressions occur may be
incorrectly reported, and have acquired from the writer's state
of mind a definiteness not belonging to the original production.
But, at any rate, they reveal the historian's conception of what
was in Jesus's thought ; and the false coloring of expectation
which they threw over his prophecies could not fail to extend
in their reports to his preceptive discourses, and thus to have
almost the same influence on the recorded Christian ethics, as
if the error were his as well as theirs.
The evidence on this point is so positive and overwhelming,
that critics such as Olshausen, whose testimony is undoubtedly
reluctant, no longer think of resisting it. Nothing, indeed,
can be opposed to it but a kind of interpretation which is the
opprobrium of Enghsh theology ; and whose problem is, not
simply to gather an author's thought from his words, but from
28

326 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
among all true thoughts to find the one that will sit the least
uneasily under his words. Thus " the end of all things " is
explained away into the founding of the Christian Church ;
the " coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven," in
to the Jewish war under Titus ; the last judgment, which
" rewards every man according to his works," into the escape
of the Christians and the slaughter of the Jewish zealots at
the destruction of Jerusalem. No doubt, many good and well-
instructed men have persuaded themselves that by such ex-
egetical sleight of hand they could save Apostolic and other
infallibility. We can only say, that when piety supplies the
motive, and learning the means, for bewildering veracity of
apprehension, two rich and noble endowments are spent in
corrupting a nobler, which is the life of them both.
To the moral sentiments which should occupy the soul, it
may make little difference how long the world is to last. But
to the course of action which should engage the hand, it is a
matter of primary moment. AU human occupations rest on
the assumption of permanence in the constitution of things;
nor is it less true of a planet than of a farm, that mere ten
ants at will, unsecured by lease and even served already with
notice to quit, will undertake no improvements, and will suffer
the culture to decline to the lowest point. What profession
could remain respectable if society had no future? What
interest would attach to the administration of law, on behalf
of property which was not worth six months' purchase, and
life which, stripped of survivorship, had lost all sacredness to
the affections ? Who would sit down to study the Pharmaco
poeia on board a sinking ship ? What zeal could be felt by
the statesman or general in repelling from his country an in
jury that could never be repeated, or removing a grievance on
the point of supernatural death ? The fields would scarce be
tilled which the angels with flaming sword might come to reap ;
or the vineyards be dressed in sight of him " who treadeth the
wine-press alone." All the crafts of industry, all the adven
tures of commerce, are held together by a given element of
time ; and, when deprived of this, fall away into inanity. No

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 327
one would build a house on ice melting with hidden fires ; or
freight ships over an ocean which earthquakes were to drain
away ; or fabricate silks and patent-leather for appearance at
the last tribunal. And the loosened hold of these pursuits
upon human zeal, so far from implying their exchange for
anything higher and more spiritual, involves the direct reverse.
They cannot be abandoned ; the stern punctuality of hunger,
the peremptoriness of instinctive or habitual want, compel
their continuance; and Paul himself made sail-cloth for a
world on its last voyage. But they are kept up only because
there is no help for it ; they sink into mere bread-trades ; and
are thrown back many stages from the tranquil human towards
the grim cannibal level. All work in this world, no doubt,
rests at bottom on the elementary animal requirements of our
nature ; but it is then most worthily performed, not when these
requirements are most obtrusive, but when they are most
withdrawn. It is the specific moral benefit which social or
ganization confers upon man, that it enables him to retreat
from the constant presence of sheer necessity, and stand at a
sufficient distance from it to allow other and higher feelings
to connect themselves with his industry. It is a lower thing
to consult for the natural wants of primitive appetite, than for
the artificial love of order, neatness, security, and beauty ; and
a craftsman works in a better spirit when earning some un
necessary gift for his wife or child, than when toiling for the
bitter loaf that staves off starvation. An art prosecuted with
out pride in its ingenuity, without intellectual enlistment in its
methods of skill, is degraded from an instrument of discipline
into a prowling for food, — from a mode of life into a make
shift against death. To take away the future, therefore, from
secular pursuits, is simply to draw off from them whatever
redeems them from meanness ; to plant them in greedy isola
tion, as mere personal necessities ; and cut them off from the
great human system which lends to them a color of nobleness
and dignity. Among the early Christians this tendency was
greatly checked by the fresh aims and employments which
their religion created ; and in devotion to which the more en-

328 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
thusiastic spirits found ample scope for their affections. The
Church, subsisting like an intrenched camp in a hostile land,
had to make sallies in all directions for rescue of the wander
ing, and for captives to the faith. An aggressive activity of
compassion and conviction found tasks for the energies disen
gaged from secular pursuits ; and the new relations into which
their religious profession threw them towards the synagogue,
the magistrate, the Pagan worshipper, supplied them with
continual problems of conscience, severe, but wholesome to the
mind. So pecuhar, indeed, was their position, that, even if
they had reckoned on a continuance of human affairs, they
could hardly, perhaps, have mingled much with a world that
drew them with such slender sympathies. Separated in ideas
and affections, they must in any case have created a new and
detached centre of social life. Still it is undeniable that their
isolation was favored and exaggerated by their faith in an ap
proaching end of all things ; and that they withdrew from
human interests, not simply because honorable contact with
them was impossible, but because they were taught entire in
difference to them as elements of a perishing system. Not
only is no recognition given to the pursuit of art and letters,
and the citizen's duty presented only on the passive side ; but
even the relations of domestic life are discouraged, and the
slave is dissuaded from care about his hberty, on the express
ground that it is not worth while, on the brink of a great ca
tastrophe, to assume any new position, or commit the heart by
new ties. The time is too short, the crisis too near, for the
career of a free life, or the building of a human home. It is
better for every one to continue as he is ; and instead of wait
ing to have the world perish from him, to regard himself as
already dead to the world. To stand impassive and alone,
neutral to joy or sorrow, with soul intent on the future, and
disengaged from impediments of the past, earnest to keep
bright on its watch-tower the beacon of faith, but resolute to
descend no more into the plain below, appeared to the Apostle
Paul the highest wisdom.' And how could it be otherwise?
Seen from his point of view, all temporal claims sank into

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 329
negation. The constitutions, the arts, the culture, of civilized
nations were about to be superseded ; and the Christians who
had already retired from them needed no new ones to take
their place, except such provisional arrangements as might
serve during the world's brief respite. Equally natural and
suitable to their conceived position were the non-resistance
principles of the early disciples. What right could be worth
contending for on the dawn of a great day of redress, when
every wrong would be brought to its account ? Who would
carry a cause before Dikast or Proconsul to day, when Eter
nal Justice was pledged to hear it to-morrow ? Who. refuse
to resign to human coercion what a retributive Omnipotence
would soon restore ? When the great assizes of the universe
are about to be opened, it were a poor thing for the suitors to
begin fighting in the vestibule. In ah these respects the prac
tical code of the Apostolic age was inevitably influenced by
the mistaken world-view prevalent in the Church. For the
plaintiff, the hour was fixed when his suit would be called ; for
the slave, the emancipation-day was declared ; and from him
that bound himself in heart to the past, the past was about to
be snatched away. The rules of action dictated by these no
tions are mere accidents of the first age, — correct deductions
from a misconceived system of external relations. They are
wholly dependent on this misconception, and have no neces
sary connection with the interior spirit, the characteristic sen
timents and affections which distinguish Christianity as a re
ligion. If the Apostles had lived on till their mistake had
worn itself out, and they had discovered the permanence of the
world, — had they postponed all writing of Scripture till this
lesson of experience had been learned, — we apprehend that
their scheme of applied morals would have been very differ
ent ; a more genial recognition would have been given to nat
ural human relations ; the social facts of property and govern
ment, the private concerns of education and self-culture, the
personal responsibilities of genius and intellect, would have
been less slightingly dismissed, and reduced to clear moral
order ; and the sentences would have been greatly modified
28*

330 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
which now support the delusions of the improvident, the ascet
ic, the exclusive, and the non-resisting. Unhappily, Apostles
do not live for ever, so that we are denied that chance ; and
successors of Apostles, though seldom scarce, are not a helpful
race, being chiefly marks of an absent inspiration. The task,
therefore, of applying the essential Christian sentiments to a
permanent world, — though avowedly undertaken by the Ro
man Catholic Church, — remains unperformed ; and instead of
it we have, in the common Protestantism, a violent misappli
cation to human nature and aU time of the accidents and er
rors of the first age, resulting, we fear, in a caricature injuri
ous ahke to that first age itself, and to all true apprehension of
the nature and proportions of human duty.
Expressions abound in the literature of modern Christen
dom implying an antithesis between temporal and spiritual
things, between morahty and religion, between the world and
God. No one can fail to observe that this antithesis, whether
founded in reahty or not, has become a social fact. There are
two standards of judgment extant for the estimate of charac
ter and life ; one set up in the pulpit, the other recognized in
the forum and the street. The former gives the order in
which we pretend, and perhaps ineffectually try, to admire
men and things ; the latter, that in which we do admire them.
Under the influence of the one, the merchant or the country
gentleman is professedly in love with the innocent improvi
dence of the ravens and the lilies ; relapsing into the other,
be sells all his cotton in expectation of a fall, or drains his
farms for a rise of rent. On the Sunday, he applauds it as a
saintly thing to present the patient cheek to the smiter ; on
the Monday, he listens with rapture to Kossuth's curse upon
the house of Hapsburg, and the Magyar vow of resistance
to the death. He assents when the Apostle John is held up
to his veneration as the beloved disciple, but, if the truth were
known, the Duke of Wellington is rather more to his mind.
Supposing it all true that is said about the vanity of earthly
pleasures and ostentations, he nevertheless lets his daughters
send out next day invitations to a grand ball, and makes his

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 331
house busy with dress-makers and cooks. He is accustomed
to confess that in him there is no good thing, and that all his
thoughts and works are only evil continually ; yet he is pleased
with himself that he has provided for the family of his gar
dener who was killed on the railway last week. In these and
a thousand other forms may be noticed the competition be
tween two coexisting and unreconciled standards, the relations
between which are altogether confused and uneasy. Whoever
is interested in following up the genealogy of ideas, and would
search for the origin of this mixed and mischievous state of
mind, must look first to the influence of Luther, and thence to
the Pauline doctrine, which he improperly generalized and
exaggerated. We will endeavor to trace the development of
the sentiment in the opposite direction, from the ancient germ
to the modern fruit.
Paul the Apostle proclaimed Faith to be the condition of
regeneration and acceptance. To appreciate this message of
his, we must remember two things; — namely, (1.) what it
was from which men were to be rescued on these terms ; (2.)
what other conditions had been elsewhere insisted on instead
of this, and were put aside by Paul in favor of this. Now
enough has been said to show that what he feared for the
world which he labored to convert was, primarily, exclusion
from the theocratic empire which Messiah would return to
erect ; nor is it clear what ulterior consequences, if any, he
conceived this exclusion to carry with it. This banishment
was the negative of that " salvation " to which the disciples
were called ; and which consisted in their registration as qual
ified citizens of the kingdom for which the earth was about to
be claimed. The picture before his mind was so far altogether
Jewish ; not at all the modern idea of heaven and hell, —
spiritual regions to which individuals, one by one, pass after
death for moral retribution ; but a terrestrial scene, the wind
ing up of history, affecting men in masses, and completing
the purpose »for which God had created this world. While,
however, the thought of the Apostle's mind was national, the
compass of Ms heart was human ; and as the hour drew nigh,

332 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
he felt that the future could not be closed upon the great Gen
tile world ; that his own people were not so sublime a race as
to have the issues of Providence all to themselves ; that he
must get rid of their conceited pedigrees, and let the Divine
plan, which for a while had narrowed its original universality
within the current of Hebrew history, flow out at its end into
the fuU breadth of its first scope. But if so, a new qualifica
tion must be found ; one open alike to Hebrew and to alien,
yet nursing the pride of neither. These requisites are ful
filled in simple Faith, which, as a catholic possibility of every
human heart, Paul substitutes for prescriptive rights and un
tenable merits. It was the only condition which there was
time to realize. To insist instead on a mere moral fitness, on
a character of mind suitable to meet the eye of infinite purity,
would be a mockery in a state of society at once decrepit and
corrupt. The hour pressed : it was not the case of a young
and fresh generation, that might be brought back, by heedful
training, to the sanctities of nature and conscience ; but an
old and callous world, that could do little for itself, had to be
got ready in hot haste. A kindled enthusiasm, a new alle
giance, a resurrection of sleeping reverences, is the only hope.
Once fix the gaze of faith, the simplicity of trust, on the Di
vine Human Being, who, having been clad in the sorrows of
this earth, waits to bring in its everlasting peace ; and this
affection alone, comprehending in it every lesser purity, will
soften even arid natures, and enrich them with forgotten fer
tility and grace. Preach your moral gymnastics to a school
of young heroes, whose soul is noble and whose limbs are
free ; but at the baths of Baias, amid paralytics that drag the
foot, and cripples with worn-out bodies and halting wills, if you
cannot touch the spring of faith, you may spare your pedantic
rules of exercise. Thus the Apostle's demand of faith was a
generous stimulant of hope and recovery to an invalided
world, whose natural forces were broken, and which had but
httle time for restoration. It was a provision for pouring a
mountain-breath of healing reverence upon the sickly souls
and languid levels of this world. It was an attempt to meet

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 333
a quick emergency, and, by an intense action, condense the
powers of preparation. It was therefore an expression, not of
the narrowness, but of the universality of the Gospel. It
shows the great heart of the religion bursting bounds, and the
strong hand of its noblest servant tugging at the gates to get
them open, grinding off the rust of tradition and crushing the
scrupulous gravel of obstruction.
The doctrine, however, assumes quite a different significance
when snatched by Luther out of its historical connection, and
held vahd as a sufficient theory of human nature, and its only
possibility of religion. The palsy of will, the incapacity of
self-cure, the hopeless moral prostration into which long cor
ruption had brought the world, as it lay beneath the eye of
Paul, Luther assumes as the normal condition of the soul, and
treats as a congenital incompetency of faculty, instead of a
contracted depravity of state. Not that he disowns the hu
man will as an executive power, or denies it a sphere of oper
ation. It can go forth variously into action, — can do what,
in the view of mankind, is better or worse, — can commit a
murder or can rescue from it ; but in these outward doings,
however differently they affect men, there is no real good or
evil ; in the supreme view they are neutral automatic exhi
bitions, simply physical as a flash of lightning or, a fall of rain ;
their real character all lies in the inner spiritual springs from
which they issue in the soul: on these alone is the infinite
gaze fixed; and these are turbid all through, and all alike,
with the taint and poison of a ruined nature. As all natural
actions derive an equal guilt from the impurity of their source,
so, when the source is purified, is the guilt equally removed
from all ; whilst nothing which the unconverted may do can
please God, nothing that is performed in faith can come amiss
to him. Be it what men call crime or what they praise as
virtue, it makes no difference if only it be done in faith.
Furnished with this supernatural charm, the believer may
pass through any mire and come out clean.
" A Christian cannot, if he will, lose his salvation by any
multitude or magnitude of sins, unless he ceases to believe.

334 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
For no sins can damn him, but unbelief alone. Everything
else, provided his faith returns or stands fast in the Divine
promise given in baptism, is absorbed in a moment by that
faith." *
Here is a conception of faith altogether distinct from Paul's.
It is here no act of reverential enthusiasm and affection, no
kindred movement of the soul towards an object beautiful and
holy, but a mere willingness to trust a verbal assurance of
atonement, — a willingness, moreover, itself foreign to the
mind, and superinduced as an unnatural state by special gift.
Nor is its efficacy to be sought in its transforming power on
man, but in its persuasiveness with God. It does not ennoble
anything that is the worshipper's own, but simply hangs on to
it externally the compensating sanctity of another ; it is, in
deed, described by Luther as the mere vessel put into the
hands of the believer, and charged with the treasures of
Christ's obedience, — treasures so acceptable that they charm
away the foulness, and prevent the rejection, of anything that
accompanies them. Thus the effect of faith on the disciple is
not to inspire him with a God-like mind, but to prevent his
corruptions being any damage to him. By this strange theory,
both sin and sanctity are made entirely impersonal to man ;
sin, by being a transmitted inability ; sanctity, by being a for
eign donation ; and his individual character sits in the midst,
at a point of spiritual indifference, neither chargeable with
the dark hue native to its complexion, nor etherealized by the
veil of borrowed light which it wears as a robe. No room is
found, either in the child of Adam, or in the redeemed of
Christ, for any responsibility, any personal guilt or goodness
whatsoever. The misery and deformity in which the Gospel
finds him is un-moral, — the mere scrofula of inheritance ;
the redemption into which it lifts him is un-moral, — the mere
usufruct of an alien purity : and thus the whole business of
* Luther de Captivitate, Bab. ii. 264. Comp. Dispu. i. 523. Si in fide
fieri posset adulterium, peccatum non esset. Other and yet more revolting
assertions of the same principle are cited by Mohle, in his Symbolik, I. iii.
§ 16, whence these passages are taken.

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 335
religion begins and ends without approaching, and without im
proving, any law of conscience at all ; morality remains abso
lutely cut off from its contact, unaffected by it except in beino-
disowned and degraded, and losing the prestige of a Divine
authority. This consequence of his doctrine is not in the
least disguised by Luther, whose impetuous audacity never
tires of forging phrases of opposite stamp, by which he may
put the brand of insult upon Morals, and burn characters of
glory into the brow of Religion. The latter, he again and
again insists, is to be set in the heavenly realm ; the former,
on the other hand, detained upon the ground ; the two being
kept as absolutely apart as the sky from the earth, regarded
as not less incapable of a common function than light and
darkness, day and night. Do we speak of faith and our rela
tions to God ? then we have nothing to do with morals, and
must leave them behind lying on the earth. Do we speak of
conduct and our relations with men ? then we stop upon the
ground, and get no nearer to heaven and its lights. The pro
tests of our better nature against our own shortcomings, the
sadness of repentance, and the alarms of guilt, so far from
being confirmed by true religion, are shown to be mere delu
sion and idle self-torture ; and the conscience that can feel
such compunctions is a stupid ass struggling in the dust and
flats of this world beneath a servile burden it need never bear.
To trouble the heart with any moral anxieties or aspirations is
the most fatal act of unbelief, — a downright plunge from
heaven over the precipice of hell. The moral law may rule
the body and its members, but has no right to any allegiance
from the soul.* In any personal and historical estimate of
Luther there would be much to say in palliation of these
monstrous positions ; it would be easy to show their connec
tion with some of the noblest characteristics of his genius, and
their antagonism to some of the worst features of his times.
But regarded in their influence on Christendom, when de
tached from their living origin, and made the ground of a
theory for the governance of life, they can only be lamented
* See Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, passim.

336 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
as an explosion of mischievous extravagance. For in what
light do they present Morahty to us, after stripping it of ah
sacredness ? What ground is left on which its obligation may
repose, and what end is given for its aim? It exists, as
Luther himself declares, only as a provision for social order
and external peace. It is not concerned with the perfection of
the individual, but with the organization of the world ; and is
nothing but the system of rules and customs requisite for the
safe coexistence of many persons on the same field. It is
thus reduced from an inspiration of conscience to an affair of
police ; the private sentiment of duty, operating in the hidden
recess of life, keeping vigils over the temper of the mind and
habits of the home, is a mere substitute for public opinion, and
no representative of the eye of God. In this way, moral
usages are first voted into existence as matters of convenience,
and imposed by the general voice, yielding as their product in
the individual an artificial sense of obligation ; and it is a de
lusion to invert this order, and say that the natural sense of
obligation, inherent in each individual, creates by sympathy
and concurrence the moral usages of mankind. This extreme
secularization of morals places Luther in curious company
with Hobbes ; and the foUowers of both have not been alto
gether unfaithful to the original affinity of their ethical ideas.
Both schools have withheld from their conception of morality
any touch and color of rehgion ; both have been jealous of its
mingling itself much with sentiment and feeling ;' both have
applied to it purely objective criteria, and regarded it as a
statutory affair, susceptible of codification, and then needing
only a logical interpreter. This singular alliance between
sects regarding each other with the greatest antipathy, exhib
its the irresistible tendency of a wholly swjoer-natural religion
to produce an ire/ra-natural morality.
The result of this sharp separation of the ethical from the
spiritual province of hfe is, that both are deprived of elements
indispensable to their proper culture. Our devout people are
not remarkable for either clear notions or nice feehngs on
moral questions ; while the conscientious class are apt to be

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 337
dry and cold precisians, truthful, trustworthy, and humane, but
so little genial, so devoid of ideality and depth, that poet or
prophet is struck dumb before their face. Till the two classes
had discovered their mutual alienation and collected them
selves round distinct standards, — evangelical and worldly, —
the evil was inconspicuous. For some time after the Refor
mation, both coexisted, without articulate repulsion, in every
church, and each silently qualified the other extreme. Be
sides, in spite of Lutheran or other dogma, deep personal
faith, grateful trust in such a one as Christ, could not be
awakened in a people into whom God, whatever they might
say of themselves, had actually put a conscience, without
carrying the moralities with it. It might take the liberty of
calling them "stupid ass," but would nevertheless object to
have the ass abused. In truth, no sooner was the law of
Duty driven from Christianity, than the claim of Honor was
invoked to take its place ; and the believer was exhorted not
to take unworthy advantage of his redemption from legal lia
bility, but to render in thank-offering the service exacted by
penalty no more; worthless as it was, it was all he had to
give. Such appeal touches a spring powerful in noble hearts,
and is, in fact, only the awakening of a higher order of moral
feelings than before, — a fetching back, under the disguise of
transfiguration, of that very sense of duty which had been
professedly expelled. In the first enthusiasm of faith, while
men's souls, having just flung off the sacerdotal incubus of
centuries, were burning to breathe freely, and felt the healthy
throb of a new joy, this appeal would meet a full response.
The doctrine of faith was but the appointed way of bursting
through the miserable scrupulosities, the life of petty debts
and casuistic book-keeping, by which a priesthood had main
tained a balance against the world, — of seizing a Divine
indemnity and recovering the wholesome existence of devout
instinct. If the inspiration of the sixteenth century could be
permanently maintained, if all men were equally susceptible
of being snatched up by a whirlwind of heavenward affection,
if the surprise at finding that the soul had wings of its own
29

338 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
could last for ever, the principle of gratitude and pious honor
might answer every end, and human duty be all the better
done by taking no security for it ; for you may hurl as a mis
sile, in hot blood, a weight which otherwise you will scarce
drag upon the ground. But the fire of an age of Reforma
tion cannot be permanent; nor is gratitude an affection on
whose tension life can be securely built ; — you cannot edu
cate people by the force of perpetual surprise. There is a
large natural order of minds, httle susceptible of a self-aban
doning fervor, for whom you vainly bring the chariot of fire
and horses of fire by which prophets fly to heaven, and who
are content with the humble mantle of the humanities thrown
aside by more daring spirits in their ascent. Quiet, reflective,
self-balanced persons are not to be taken by storm, and brought
to betray the solid citadel of this world, and say ugly things
of the moralities with which they have lived in friendly neigh
borhood. They are capable of being led by reverence for
what is better, but not of being kindled by the rays of what is
intenser. If they are ever to be lifted into a hfe beyond con
science, where reluctance and resistance are felt no more, and
the instincts of affection may flow of their own pure will, it
must be by beginning at the other end, — by the religious dis
cipline of conscience, by pious consecration of this earth and
its instant work, by faithful and frugal care of the smaller
elements of duty, as of the sacred crumbs of eucharistic
bread, not without a Real Presence in them. This class,
whose religion, by a decree of their nature, can only exist un
der ethical conditions, are wholly unprovided for in the Prot
estant system. In the Lutheran view they belong to the
school of worldly unbelief; and though their number, as must
be the case in quiet times, has been increasing for a century
and a half, and constitutes the vast majority of educated peo
ple in this country, they are without any recognized religion ;
either veraciously disbelieving and waiting for something no
bly credible, or uneasily subsisting, suspected by clergymen,
in the midst of churches whose theory of life has ceased to be
a reality to them. With a faith traditionally shy of morals,

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 339
and morals not yet elevated into faith, we have two separate
codes of life standing in presence of each other, — one relig
ious, the other secular, — and neither of them with any true
foundation in human nature as a whole ; the secular, an acci
dental congeries of mixed customs and inherited opinions ;
the religious, the product of an arbitrary spiritualism, lax and
ascetic by turns.
It is the peculiarity of modern Christianity that these two
codes coexist within the same social body, and even rule over
different parts of each individual. The Pauline antithesis
between the world and the Church was not less sharp than
ours ; but it was a distinction of persons and classes, and no
body could occupy both the opposite ends of it. Once within
a society of disciples, he was out of the world, and belonged
to " the assembly of the saints " ; and the whole realm of hea
thendom beyond constituted the contrasted term. He did not
stand and move with one leg on holy ground and the other on
the common earth ; whatever were the principles of the com
munity he had joined, they served him all through, and did no
violence to the unity of his nature. Praying or dining, weep
ing or laughing, in the workshop or the prison, he was the
same man in the same sphere. As the circle of the Church
enlarged, we should therefore expect the world to be driven
to a distance, till it was absent from whole countries and con
tinents. But a new " world " has been discovered, not only
within the Church, but within the person of every disciple ;
his body and limbs, his business and pleasures, being under
the law of a morality quite secular ; his soul and its eternal
' affairs sitting apart in a love quite spiritual. Who shall draw
the line between the provinces, and know practically, hour by
hour, where he stands ? Living confusedly in both, a man is
apt to acquire a sort of double consciousness, and fluctuate
distractedly between Caasar and God. He believes, perhaps,
that the kingdoms of nature and of grace are destined always
to remain side by side, neither absorbing the other till the day
of doom. In that case, he will let other men create all the
secular usages, the moralities of trade, the maxims of politics ;

340 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
standing aloof from them as not belonging to his realm, and
falling in with them freely in his own case. They may be of
questionable veracity and justice ; but they belong to the
Devil's world, and are as good rules as can be expected from
legislators sitting in the synagogue of Satan. Why should he
decline to profit by them, now that they are there ? When
Eve has plucked the apple, it is too late for Adam not to taste
the fruit. The pious broker comes on 'Change as into a for
eign world, on which he is pushed by humiliating necessities,
and in which he feels an interest derived from them alone : he
has his citizenship elsewhere ; he disdains naturalization ; he
is but a temporary settler ; he wants no vote about the laws ;
but, taking them as they are, cuts his crop and retires. The
coolness with which people who live above the world some-
imes avail themselves of its lowest verge of usage is truly
.mazing. An affluent gentleman of high religious profession,
subscriber to Gospel schools, believer in prevenient grace, and
otherwise the pride of the Evangelical heart, found himself
not insensible to the approaches of the Hudson mania, spec
ulated far beyond the resources of his fortune, declined to take
up his bad bargains, and thus, at the expense of utter ruin to
his agent, escaped with comparatively easy loss to himself.
The agent, being but an honorable sinner of the worldly class,
was struck down by the blow into great depression. His
employer was enabled to take a more cheerful view, and, on
meeting his poor victim, rallied him on his dejected looks and
hopeless thoughts, so different from his own resigned and com
fortable state of mind : — " But ah ! I forgot," he added with
a sigh, "you are not blessed with my. religious consolations !"•
Where no such positively odious results as these are produced/'
there is still often observable the negative selfishness of indif
ference to political welfare and political morals, — an affected
withdrawal from temporal interests in the neighborhood or the
State, and, an insensibility to public injustice strangely dispro-
portioned to the zeal displayed against innocent amusements
and the nervousness on behalf of invisible subtilties of creed.
The false opposition, however, between the world and the

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 341
Church is not always thus passive and quiescent. It is not
always recognized by those who hold it, as being a permanent
fact to be merely sighed over and let alone. Many men are
too earnest and truthful to settle down and pitch their tent
upon a ground rocking with contradiction ; to live two lives
wholly unreconciled, one in the shame of nature, the other in
the confidence of grace; or to belong to two societies, — one
political, the other spiritual, — conducted on principles at in
curable variance with each other. That a rule of action
should be secularly good and religiously hateful, — that a sen
timent should be fitly applauded in Parliament and groaned
over in the conventicle, — is to them an intolerable unreality,
like the celebrated verdict of the University of Paris, that z
doctrine might be true in philosophy and false in theology.
In their hands, accordingly, the antithesis between the human
and the divine is not a quiescent, but a conflicting dualism, in
which their religious ideas become aggressive, and assume a
commission to drive back and humble the world. They claim
the earth for God, and think the surrender incomplete while
anything natural remains; — while any instinct is uncrushed,
any laughter unstifled, any genius, however pure, a law unto
itself. The crusade against temporal interests and pursuits,
consequent upon this state of mind, changes its forrh with the
culture and habits of the age. In the early years of the Ref
ormation, when the whole Bible was spread open beneath the
thirsting eye of an undistinguishing enthusiasm, the effect
threatened at one time to be more terrible than glorious. The
full thunder-cloud of the Hebrew prophets, stealing over a
world in negative stagnation, waked the sleeping lightnings of
the soul, and for a while streaked the atmosphere of history
with fearful portents. Everything that had been written of
the chosen people, their exodus, their law, their poetry, their
passions, — everything except the relentings of their nature
and the unsteadiness of their faith, — became consecrated
ahke. The military clang of their early history, the harp of
their sweet singer, the choral pomp of their priestly rule, the
mystic voices of their lonely men of God, — all were Divine
29*

342 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
music ahke, often more exciting than the Sermon on the
Mount, and not less piercing than the anguish in Gethsemane.
Such was the sequence and connection of the Divine dispen
sations supposed to be, that Christianity was simply the Jew
ish theocracy, only let loose out of Palestine to make a prom
ised land of the whole world. The downtrodden serfs of
Franconia had not long heard the glad tidings from Witten
berg, ere they began to draw parallels between themselves
and the old Israel when the desert had been passed. They
had been brought to the brink of new hope, and looked, as
across Jordan, to an inheritance verdant and tempting to their
eye. The earth was the Lord's, and the army of the saints
was come to take it; the bannered princes, the ungodly
priests, the " men with spurs upon their heels," all the carnal
who peopled this Canaan and perched their " eagle's nests "
on every height, must be smitten and cleared off. The time
of jubilee was come, when every believer should have his
field of heritage ; nay, the birds in the forest, the fish in the
stream, the fruits of the ground, whatever has the sacred seal
of God's creative power, should be free to all, and the noble
should eat the peasant's bread or die. The lawyers should
take their heathenish courts away, and men of God should
sit and judge the people, according to the spirit and the word.
The harvest was ripe, when the tares must be burned in the
fire and the pure wheat be garnered for the Lord. These
were the ideas which thousands of armed men, with a clouted
shoe and a cart-wheel for their standards, and a leader who
signed himself " the sword of Gideon," preached as their Gos
pel through the forests of Thuringia and beneath the citadel
of Wiirzburg. Nor was the ripest learning, much less the
most generous spirit of the time, any security against the
adoption of their doctrine. It was not Miinzer alone who
breathed the fierce inspiration, exhorting his swarthy miners
to " lay Nimrod on the anvil, and let it ring bravely with their
strokes " ; but the honest Carlstadt, too, scholar, preacher, dia
lectician as he is, lays aside his broadcloth, and appears in
white felt hat and rustic coat at the cross of Rothenburg, to

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 343
preach encouragement to the people and bring fresh sorrow
on himself. Throughout the great movement which in the
third decade of the sixteenth century spread insurrection from
the Breisgau to Saxony, the peasants were animated with the
belief that the Gospel, armed with the sword of Joshua, was
to subjugate the world, and that all the conditions of property,
of law, of civil administration, under which secular communi
ties exist, were to be superseded by institutions conformed to
a divine model. The leading Reformers, terrified by the re
ligious socialism which they had raised, were ready enough
to denounce and crush it. But in truth their own idea differed
from this insurgent faith more in form than in essence ; lodg
ing the power in different hands, and prescribing to it a differ
ent method, but assigning to it a similar trust for the same
ultimate ends. The kingdoms of this world were to be made
the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ ; and the temporal
power was everywhere to assume a spiritual function, and
make aggression on whatever opposed itself to the severity
and sanctity of the Divine Word. The converts of Knox, the
troopers of Cromwell, the town-councillors of Geneva, acting
on this doctrine, claimed the whole of human life as their do
main, and pushed the inquisitions of police into private habits,
and even the secret inclinations of personal belief. Playing-
cards and song-books were denounced and seized, as if they
came from the Devil's printing-press ; dancing prohibited, as
a profane escape of the natural members into mirthful agita
tion ; concerts silenced, as enslaving immortal souls to the de
lusive sweetness of strings and wind ; the caps of women
and the coats of men shaped to evangelic type ; and, as if the
world were a great school, the gates of cities, and even the
doors of houses, were closed at temperate hours by vesper bell
or signal gun. Asceticism grasped the sceptre and the sword,
and demanded the capitulation of the world. How vain and
dangerous this tyrannous repression of nature is, the reaction
during the seventeenth century into reckless and fatal license
emphaticaUy declares ; and the contrast shows the necessity of
finding some mediating term, some reconciling wisdom, by

344 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
which the antagonism may cease between the world and heav
en, between natural morals and Christian aspiration. Yet
under a change of form the struggle is still continued ; and
with those who most prominently assume to represent the
aims of Christianity, the present life, the temporal world, has
no adequate recognition of its rights. They have no trust in
human nature as divinely constituted, and as having no part
or passion without some fitting range. They dare not leave
it out of sight for an instant : they must draw up a dietary
for it, of sufficing vegetables and water ; they must watch its
temper, and see that it behaves with winning sweetness to all
rascality ; they must guard its purse, and teach it that to live
cheaply, spending nothing for ornament and beauty, nothing
for honor and right, but only for subsistence and charity, is
the great wisdom of man ; they must stifle its indignations,
lest it should cease to hold out its cheek to Russia, and, having
gone one shameful mile with " the nephew of my uncle,"
should refuse to go with him another. Both the ascetic doc
trine and the extreme peace principles of the present day, as
weU as its tendency to renounce all retributory punishment,
betray, in our opinion, a morbidly scrupulous apprehension of
evil, quite blinding to the healthy eye for good, — a crouch
ing of moral fear, singularly at variance with the free and
noble bearing of the Apostle, who found that " to the pure all
things are pure." As for the non-resistance principle, we
have shown that it meant no more in the early Church than
that the disciples were not to anticipate the hour, fast ap
proaching, of Messiah's descent to claim his throne. But
when that hour struck, there was to be no want of " physical
force," no shrinking from retribution as either unjust or un-
divine. The " flaming fire," the " sudden destruction," the
" mighty angels," the " tribulation and anguish," were to form
the retinue of Christ and the pioneers of the kmgdom of God.
It was not that coercion was deemed unholy, and regarded as
the agency appropriate to lower natures and left behind in as
cending towards heaven ; it was simply that natural coercion
was not to fritter itself away, but leave the field open for the

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 345
supernatural. The new reign was to come with force ; and
on nothing else, in the last resort, was there any reliance ; only
the army was to arrive from heaven before the earthly re
cruits were taken up. Nothing, indeed, can well be further
from the sentiment of Scripture than the extreme horror of
force, as a penal and disciplinary instrument, which is incul
cated in modern times. " My kingdom," said Jesus, " is not of
this world ; else would my servants fight " ; — an expression
which implies that no kingdom of this world can dispense
with arms, and that he himself, were he the head of a human
polity, would not forbid the sword ; but while " legions of an
gels " stood ready for his word, and only waited till the Scrip
ture was fulfilled and the hour of darkness was passed, to obey
the signal of heavenly invasion, the weapon of earthly temper
might remain within the sheath. The infant Church, subsist
ing in the heart of a military empire, and expecting from on
high a military rescue, was not itself to fight ; not, however,
because force was in all cases " brutal " and " heathenish,"
but because, in this case, it was to be angelic and celestial. It
is evident that precepts given under the influence of these
ideas can have no just application to the actual duties of citi
zens and states, whose problems of conduct, whose very ex
istence, they never contemplated ; and that to urge them upon
modern society as political canons is to introduce a doctrine
which, under cover of their form, violently outrages their
spirit. The mistaken antithesis between temporal and spiritual
things runs into the greatest excess, wherever the inherent
pravity of human nature is most exaggerated. There are
churches, however, — the Catholic and the Arminian, — in
whose doctrines the natural condition of man is painted in
colors far removed from the deepest shade ; and which deem
him not so much incapable of right moral discernment, as
weakened for faithful moral execution. In this view, the
function of Christianity is not to supersede and cancel, but to
supplement and guide, the native energies of the soul ; not to
raise it from a mad trance, in which all thought and feeling

346 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
are themselves but a false glare, but to apply a tonic and heal
ing power, enabling it to do the right which it has already
light enough to see. Professor Fitzgerald is an adherent to
this doctrine, and justly contends that no lower estimate of
human nature can consist with responsibility at all.
" I am not to be ranked," he says, " amongst those who as
sume that human corruption has not affected the natural power
of the moral sense. I think it has. No doubt sinful deprav
ity, wherever it is indulged, is, as Aristotle long ago remarked,
(pdapriKrj rav dpxav, — it tends to weaken or deprave the sen
timent of moral censure, and to blunt the perception of moral
evil " An eloquent but superficial French moralist has compared
the conscience to a table-rock in the ocean, its surface, just
above the ripple, bearing an inscription graven in the stone,
which a genius, hovering over it, reads aloud. At times the
waves arise and sweep over the tablet, concealing the mystic
characters. Then the reader is compelled to pause. But
after a while the wind is lulled, the waves sink back to their
accustomed level, the inscription stands out clear and legible,
and the genius resumes his interrupted task.
"This comparison might gain something in correctness if
we imagine the inscription traced upon a softer substance.
For the stormy waves of passion not only conceal, while they
prevail, the sacred characters of virtue, but, as billow after bil
low passes over the tablet, they tend to obliterate the lines.
" But in making these large concessions, (which I do very
willingly,) I do not feel that I am surrendering the cause. It
is one thing to say that the discriminating power of the moral
judgment is affected and impaired by human corruption, and
quite another to say that it is destroyed. It is one thing to say
that it sometimes goes wrong, and another that we can never
depend on its decisions. Most men's experience has often
brought them acquainted with persons who had impaired, in
some way or other, their natural powers of perceiving truth
or excellence in some respects, without losing either sound
principles of reason or sound principles of honesty in others.

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 347
And the way to correct such obliquities of intellectual or
moral judgment is, not to tell men that they should distrust
their natural faculties altogether, but to avail ourselves of so
much as remains sound to discover the mistake or imperfec
tion which we seek to remedy or supply. The appeal, in such
cases, is from the reason or conscience perverted or impaired,
to the same faculties in what physicians would call their nor
mal state. When the effaced portions of the inscription are
to be restored, the evidence of the correction results from its
harmonizing with the part which has not been obliterated;
and an interpolation may be detected by its disturbing the co
herence of the context, ¦ — ¦ an omission by leaving it imperfect
or uninteUigible." — p. 26.
On this principle alone, unhappily but little congenial with
the spirit and traditions of Protestant churches, can Christian
ity coexist with natural ethics. Faith adopts morals, purifies
and sublimes them, and especially changes the character of
their force ; — for a law of compulsion from below, substitut
ing a love of God above. The enmity ceases between the
world and heaven ; the physical earth is not more certainly
afloat in space, and on the muster-roll of stars, than the pres
ent life is plunged in eternity, and not behind its chiefest sanc
tities. There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be
slurred over as an unmanageable necessity, in the natural con
stitution and relations of men ; whatever acts they prescribe,
whatever combinations they require, are within the scope and
consecration of religion. The whole compass of the world
and its affairs, all the gifts and activities of men, are brought
within moral jurisdiction, and included in the embrace of a
genial reverence. No narrow interpretation is longer possi
ble of the province of human piety, and the true type of a
noble goodness; as though they demanded a definite set of
actions, rather than a certain style of soul, and denied a place
to any affection or pursuit which can adorn and glorify exist
ence. Divine things are not put away into foreign realms of
being, and future reaches of time, attainable by no path of
toil, no spring of effort, only by miraculous transport ; but are

348 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
met with every day, shining through the substance of life and
hid amid its hours. Whatever original endowments, what
ever acquired virtues, enrich and elevate our immediate sphere,
— the Thought which .finds its truth, the Genius that evolves
its beauty, the Honor that guards its nobleness, the Love
which lightens the burden of its sorrows, — are not mere tem
poral embellishments indifferent to its sacredness, but attri
butes that bring men nearer to the sympathy and similitude of
God. Art, literature, politics, employing the highest human
activities, and constituting the very blossom and fruit of all
our culture, are recognized as having an earnest root, and not
being the light growth of secular gayety and selfishness. We
have no sympathy with the sentimental and immoral propen
sity, which corrupts the newest Continental philosophy, to
recognize whatever comes into existence as ipso facto divine.
But we do believe that the great change for which the secret
religiousness of this age pines, and which it is sorely strait
ened till it can accomplish, is the deliberate adoption into
" heavenly places " of this world, its faculties and affairs, just
as God has made them, and man's unfaithfulness has not yet
spoiled them. The products of human baseness, hypocrisy,
and ambition, — let them remain hateful, eternally contrary to
God, things scarce safe to pity ; but believe not that they
have got this planet entirely to themselves, and have snatched
it as their peculium quite out of the Supreme Hand. Men
are tired of straining their thought along the diameter of the
universe to seek for a Holy of Holies in whatever is opposite
to their hfe ; they find a worship possible, even irresistible, at
home, and on the road-side a place as fit to kneel as on the
pavement of the Milky Way. The old antagonism between
the world that now is, and any other that has been or is to
come, has been modified for them, or has even entirely ceased.
The earth is no place of diabolic exile, which the " prince of
the power of the air " ever fans and darkens with his wing ;
and were it even, as was once believed, appointed to perish,
this would be not because its failure was complete, but because
its task was done. No vengeance bums in the sunshine which

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 349
mellows its fruits and paints its grass ; no threateniijgs flash
from the starry eyes that watch over it by night. It is not
only the home of each man's personal affections, but the native
country of his very soul ; where first he found in what a life
he lives, and to what heaven he tends ; where he has met the
touch of spirits higher than his own, and of Him that is- high
est of all. It is the abode of every ennobling relation, the
scene of every worthy toil ; — the altar of his vows, th.e ob
servatory of his knowledge, the temple of his worship. What
ever succeeds to it will be its sequel, not its opposite, will re
sume the tale wherever silence overtakes it, and be blended
into one hfe by sameness of persons and continuity of plan.
He is set here to live, not as an alien, passing in disguise
through an enemy's camp, where no allegiance is due, and no
worthy love is possible, but as a citizen fixed on an historic
soil, pledged by honorable memories to nurse yet nobler hopes.
Here is the spot, now is the time, for the most devoted service
of God. No strains of heaven will wake him into prayer, if
the common music of humanity stirs him not. The saintly
company of spirits will throng around him in vain, if he finds
no angels of duty and affection in his children, neighbors, and
friends. If no heavenly voices wander around him in the
present, the future will be but the dumb change of the shadow
on the dial. In short, higher stages of existence are not the
refuge from this, but the complement to it ; and it is the prop
er wisdom of the affections, not to escape the one in order to
seek the other, but to flow forth in purifying copiousness on
both. We have said that men are tired of having their earthly
and their heavenly relations set up in sharp opposition to each
other, and are eager to live here in a consecrated world. This
tendency has already found expression in two remarkable and
apparently dissimilar phenomena, — the partial success of the
Anglican and Catholic reaction, and the vast influence on
English society of the late Dr. Arnold's character. Both
were virtual protests against that removal of God out of the
common human life, that unreconciled condition of Law and
30

350 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
Gospel, which had made the evangelical theology sickening
and unreal. A path had to be opened for the re-introduction
of a divine presence into the sphere of temporal things. New
man resorted to the supernatural channel of Church miracle ;
Arnold to the natural course of human affairs, and the perma
nent sacredness of human obligation. Both restored to us a
solemn mystery of immediate Incarnation ; the one putting
life, in order to its consecration, into contact with the sacra
ments ; the other spreading a sacramental veneration over the
whole of life. Arnold, especially, saw the great moral evils
which have arisen from the evangelical depreciation of the
" profane " world. The secular, he was well aware, has be
come too secular, the spiritual too merely spiritual. Human
nature is permitted to have play with unchecked wilfulness in
the one, and is aUowed no place at all in the other. The ob
ligations of natural law are held in light esteem, as if, in being
social, they fell short of being sacred. The exercises of intel
lect, in the survey of nature or the interpretation of history,
are often stigmatized as a mere earthly curiosity, permissible
to reason, but neutral to the soul. The worst of it is, that
these notions, once become habitual, fulfil their own predic
tions. As there is nothing which the heart cannot sanctify, so
is there nothing which it may not secularize. Tell men that
in their natural affections there is nothing holy, and their
homes will soon be nests of common instinct. Assure them
that in their business it is the unregenerate will, and the ani
mal necessity, that labor for the bread which perisheth, and
soon enough will an irreverent greediness and a cankered
anxiety usurp the place. Persuade them that to study the
order of creation or the records of past ages is but a " car
nal " pursuit, and the student's prayer for light will become a
mere ambition for distinction, the meditations of wonder be
stifled in the dust of mental day-labor, and the tears of admi
ration drop no more on the page of ancient wisdom. This
was what Arnold could not abide ; to see religion flying off
on wings of pompous pretence to other worlds, and leaving
no heavenly glory upon the earth, but letting her very fields

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 351
be paved into a street. There was no attempt to save a spot
for any earnest reality, except the poor little enclosure behind
the altar rail. The Church will consecrate a graveyard for
the dead, but leaves the market of the living still unblessed :
you may dissolve away in benediction, when your years are
over of toil and sweat beneath the curse. To one who ac
knowledges a natural conscience and a natural element in
faith, there is a religion in little in every part of life ; it gives
at least a note in the chords and melody of worship. Hence
Arnold's curious doctrine of the Church as covering all human
relations whatsoever, and including the whole organism of the
State. He would have nothing which the laws of this uni
verse imposed on the will of man done without a clear and
pious recognition ; it was not to be illicitly smuggled in, as if
run ashore in a gale of confusion that could not be helped, but
must be steadily accounted for and stored in open day. Ethi
cally, this doctrine, though, from its adaptation to a permanent
world, it is the least Apostohc in appearance, is, of all inter
pretations of Christianity, the most true ; and if it were not
for clinging ideas of extra-moral dogma and special priesthood,
as limiting the conception of " the Church," would go far to
repeat for our age the work of Socrates for his, and bring
down our divine philosophy from heaven to earth. It gets rid
entirely of the false spiritualism which has either withheld re
ligious men from political affairs, or induced them to urge on
statesmen rules applicable only where government can be dis
pensed with altogether. It rescues Christianity from the deg
radation of being hypocritically flattered as the great persua
sive to peace by rulers whom it does not restrain from going
to war, and relieves it of an oppressive weight of false expec
tation, as though it broke its promise to the world every time
a new case of strife appeared. Nothing can well be more
damaging to a religion, than to commit it to unqualified disap
probation of anything which must exist while human nature
lasts, and to set it frowning with ineffectual sublimity on the
passions and events which determine the whole course of his
tory. The amiable enthusiasts who propose to conduct the

352 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
affairs of nations on principles of brotherly love, and who, till
that consummation is reached, can only stand by and protest,
do but weaken their country for purposes of justice and bring
their faith into merited commiseration. It is commonly said
that they are a harmless class, who may even form a useful
counterpoise to the warlike susceptibilities of less scrupulous
men. We have no belief, however, in the efficacy of false
hood and exaggeration, or in the attainment of truth and mod
eration by the neutralizing action of opposite extravagances.
The reverence for human life is carried to an immoral idolatry,
>vhen it is held more sacred than justice and right, and when
the spectacle of blood becomes more horrible than the sight of
desolating tyrannies and triumphant hypocrisies. Life, indeed,
is just the one thing — the reserved capital, the rest, the
ultimate security — on whose disposability in the last resort,
and on the free control over which, the very existence of so
ciety depends. The first and highest social bond is no doubt
to be found in a religious sentiment, a common veneration for
the same things as right and intrinsically binding on men that
live side by side ; and the worship, with its institutions, of
every community, is its instinctive attempt to get these things
spontaneously done by the force of reverence. Could this
point be really carried, nothing would remain to be accom
plished ; religion would complete and perfect the incorporation
of mutual loyalty which it had begun. But there are some
in whom the sentiment of common reverence fails, and for
whose fidelity to the moral ends of the social union there is
therefore no natural guaranty. To reach these cases, society
has no resource but coercive methods, actual or threatened ;
the threat is Law ; the actuality is Punishment; the power
to which both are committed is a Government ; the common
wealth on whose behalf they exist is a State. The very con
stitution of a state thus presupposes the possible violation of
moral right, the partial failure of religion to secure its obser
vance, and the determination to enforce on the reluctant an
obedience refused of free will. Force, however, is applicable
only to men's bodies ; it is a restraint and pressure on the

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 353
functions of their life ; and if that life be sacred from infringe
ment, the political existence of nations is itself an offence
against the law of God. AU law, aU polity, is a proclamation
that justice is better than life, and, if need be, shall override
it and aU the possessions it includes; and nothing can be
weaker or more suicidal than for men who are citizens of a
commonwealth to announce, that, for their part, they mean to
hold hfe in higher esteem than justice. Moreover, there is a
low-minded egotism often disguised in this doctrine of passive
meekness. As an inducement to quiet endurance of wrong,
we are reminded of the duty of " mutual forgiveness." Is all
the wickedness, then, that I am doomed to witness, nothing
but a personal affront ? When a rascal threatens to blow out
my neighbor's brains, or to blast his character by infamous
accusations, am Xin a position to forbear and pardon? Must
I not own myself under a solemn trust, to see the right done
and the guilty punished ? Nay, would not the injured man
himself greatly mistake the nature of the crime, and measure
it by a paltry standard, if he took it for a mere private offence
which it was his prerogative to punish or to overlook ? " Who
is this that forgiveth sins also ? " The eternal laws of justice
are not of our enacting ; and no will of ours has title to sus
pend or to repeal them. The real and only demand of Chris
tian magnanimity is, that we visit them with no vengeance,
but merely with moral retribution ; — that is, with no more
severity when directed against ourselves, than when we see
them at an impersonal distance. But to regard and treat the
guilty as if he were an innocent, — that is given to no man,
and is even inconceivable of God. Rulers, at all events, as
trustees of rights other than their own, — and each generation
of a people, as charged with the interests of successors in per
petuity, — have but a limited privilege of forbearance ; the
meekness of the saint would in them be treason to the world.
Even in international disputes, where each party may have a
conviction of right, the controversy, but for the possibility of
force, could have no end. It is a delusion to rely on courts as
a substitute for armies, and to suppose that judicial decision
30*

354 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM.
can supersede military. The judge would be of small avail
without the constable; and the arbitrator between nations
would need a European army to enforce his decrees. Where
the stake is large and the feeling strong, it is notorious that
the private disputant rarely acquiesces in an arbitration that
goes against him; but carries his case to the last appeal,
where it is stopped by a barrier of impassable force. You
might as well pull down your jails in preparation for the as
sizes, as destroy your fleets and arsenals in quest of inter
national arbitration. We speak only of the ultimate theory
of this matter, and simply affirm, that wherever law and gov
ernment exist, somewhere in the background force must lurk.
It may, no doubt, be provided in excess, and paraded without
need ; and with the progress of a civilized order, the circle
may be ever widened within which the idea of coercion, with
the habits it creates, may be substituted for the obtrusive real
ity ; till possibly a family of nations may be gathered, like a
group of counties, into a common jurisdiction. But this only
shifts the camp without disbanding it ; and, after all, the tip
staffs of your supreme court could be no other than the legions
of a grand army. We have, therefore, no more doubt that a
war may be right, than that a policeman may be a security for
justice, and we object to a fortress as little as to a handcuff.
A religion which does not include the whole moral law ; a
moral law which does not embrace all the problems of a com
monwealth ; a commonwealth which regards the life of man
more than the equities of God, — appear to us unfaithful to
their functions, and unworthy interpreters of the divine scheme
of the world. Quaker histories, written with omission of all
the wars, are not less morbid as moral mistakes, than a doc
trine of Providence, leaving out the whole realm of heathen
dom, is narrow as a religious theory ; and the misuse of Scrip
ture which has led to both, is most dangerous to its authority
in an age remarkable for the breadth of its historical survey
and the variety of its ethnological sympathies.
In other ways than those which we have indicated has a
mischievous direction been given to modern thought and feel-

THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 355
ing, by perverting the accidental and transient form of the
primitive Christianity into essential and permanent doctrine.
But our exposition must proceed no further. The alternation
of ascetic spiritualism and worldly laxity, the indifference to
natural affections and relations, the exclusiveness at once de
vout and selfish, the jealous denial of their rights to intellect
and art, the false apprehension of the true dignity of law and
true life of states, have been the more earnestly dwelt upon
from the conviction that these ethical infirmities are producing
a perilous reaction, — a distrust of aU ethical laws whatsoever,
a disposition to hold everything divine that finds strength to
realize itself, — a worship of what is, in place of an aspiration
to what ought to be. To this we cannot consent. We cannot
look on aU forms of human life and character with the neutral
eye of an equal admiration, as alike suitable products of for
mative nature. We cannot forego the right of judgment, —
of embracing with reverence or spurning with abhorrence ; or
part with the ideal type of a perfect soul, to which all others
rise as they approach. Neither do we believe with Luther,
that human nature is a mere devilish anarchy, reducible only
by supernatural irruption ; nor with the newest school, that it
is a divine anarchy, equally uncontrollable from within, and to
be accepted as a wild fact ; but that it is a hierarchy of pow
ers, each having and knowing its rightful place, and appeal
ing to us to maintain it there. To listen to that appeal, and,
in answer to it, strive to harmonize the de facto with the de
jure administration of the soul, destroying the usurpation of
mean errors, and restoring the sway of kingly truth, is the
aim of morals in action and in philosophy.

THE RESTORATION OE BELIEF.

The Restoration of Belief. No. I. Christianity in Relation
to its Ancient and Modern Antagonists. Cambridge : Mac-
miUan & Co. 1852.
We have heard it quoted as the remark of a distinguished
foreigner, conversant with the choicest society in several of
the capitals of Europe, that nowhere is the alienation of the
higher and professional classes from all religious faith so wide
spread and complete as in England. That the masses at the
other end of the social scale are indifferent or disaffected to
the institutions which visibly embody the Christianity of our
age, can be no secret to any observant inhabitant of a large
English town. It is on the middle class alone that the vari
ous forms of Protestant worship have any real hold. Re
moved ahke from the passionate temptations of the homeless
artisan, and from the mental activity of the statesman or man
of letters, the rural gentry and the urban tradespeople are
detained under traditional influences, partly by the wholesome
conservatism of moral habit, partly by helpless accommodation
to conventional standards. Men of this class, if once really
touched and possessed by earnest conviction, are the best de
fenders of a religion from political assault. But a faith ex
posed to an intellectual struggle finds among them but a pre
carious shelter ; especially if their attachment to it is less
a living persuasion than a fear of the blank which its removal

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 357
would create. Persecuted by the magistrate, they know how
to defend their worship from the oppression of law. Assailed
by the critic, they can offer but the resistance of a dumb
impenetrability ; they cannot bring their sterling personal
qualities to bear upon the contest ; they are obhged, for all
active conduct in the strife, to trust to a body of literary
Swiss, engaged to protect the Vatican of their faith, and accus
tomed never to report defeat. In proportion as the methods
of sceptical aggression become more formidable, and its tem
per more earnest, it is found necessary to improve the training
of the band of Church defenders ; — a measure at once in
dispensable and fatal; for it lifts them into an intellectual
position, which spoils the blind singleness of their allegiance,
discloses the hopelessness of the task expected from them,
and often destroys their antipathy to the noble revolutionary
foe. It is the vainest of hopes, that a body of clergy, brought
up to the culture of the nineteenth century, can abide by the
Christianity of the sixteenth or of the second ; if they may
not preserve its essence by translation into other forms of
thought, they will abandon it, in proportion as they are clear
sighted and veracious, as a dialect grown obsolete. The
number accordingly is constantly increasing, in every college
capable of training a rich intellect, of candidates for the min
istry forced by their doubts into lay professions, and carrying
thither the powerful influence, in the same direction, of learn
ing and accomplishment. The higher offices of education are,
to no slight extent, in the hands of these deserters of the
Church ; and through the tutor in the family, or the master in
the school, or the professor in the lecture-room, contact and
sympathy are established between the best portions of the
new generation, and a kind of thought and culture with which
the authorized theology cannot co-exist. College friendships,
foreign travel, current literature, familiarize all educated young
men with the phenomenon of scepticism, and in a way most
likely to disenchant it of its terrors. Thus by innumerable
channels it enters the middle class at the intellectual end of
their hfe, assuming in general the form of historic and criti-

358 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
cal doubt ; while from below, from the classes born and bred
amid the whirl of machinery, and shaped in their very imagi
nation by the tyranny of the power-loom, it pushes up in the
ruder form of material fatalism. The intermediate enclosure,
safe in the dull innocence of an unsuspected creed, is growing
narrower every day ; and, though reserved to the last for its
hour of temptation, will be the least prepared to win its
victory. No one who appreciates the real sources of a healthy
national life, and knows what to expect from the dissolution
of ancient faiths, can look without anxiety at a prospect hke
this ; especially in a country whose religious institutions, rigid
with usage, overloaded with interests, charged with the be
quests of the past, are manifestly unequal to the crisis, and,
in their attempt to train the affections of the Future, wield
every power but the right one, and are indeed already regard
ed, like the Court of Chancery with its wards, as a dry nur
sery for grown babies. A people that reverences nothing —
nothing at least that stretches a common heaven over all —
has lost its natural unity. Incipient decay is spreading
through the secret cement of its civilization, which, far from
bearing the weight of further growth, precariously holds its
existing mass together. So far we are entirely at one with
those who see something to deplore in the " Eclipse of Faith,"
and something to desire in the " Restoration of Belief." They
do not overrate the evils of a state of society in which, if you
think with the wise, you must cease to believe with the vul
gar. We would join with them, heart and hand, in the effort
to terminate this fatal discrepancy, and find some language of
devotion and aspiration, veracious alike from the lips of the
richest knowledge and the most primitive simplicity. But
when, like the author whose publication is before us, they
would abohsh the discrepancy by simply reinstating the taught
in the creed of the untaught ; when they insist on the surren
der without terms of modern philosophy and criticism to the
"unabated" authority of the Bible; when they pretend to
wipe out from calculation aU the theological researches of the

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 359
last half-century, as if they were mere ciphers made in sport
on the tablet of history, and had no effect on our computed
place at all, — we separate sorrowfully from them, largely
sympathizing with their wish, but wholly despairing of their
method. The received theory of the origin of Christianity
from agencies exclusively divine, and of the infallible charac
ter of the canonical books, can no more be " restored," than
Roman history can be put back to its state before Niebuhr's
time, or Greek mythology be treated as if Heyne and Ottfried
Miiller had, never lived. The present age is not more dis
tinguished by its advance in the material arts, than by its as
tonishing progress in the interpretation and true painting of
the past ; a Boeckh or a Grote carries in his mind a picture of
Athenian hfe in the days of Pericles more perfect, it is prob
able, than could be formed by Plutarch or Longinus ; and it
would be strange if the Christian era — certainly the object
of the most elaborated study — were the only one to escape
the work of reconstruction, or to undergo it without consider
able change. The limits of that change are at present defina
ble by no consentient estimate ; but that they are such as to
remove the old lines of Christian defence, and require the
choice of more open ground, can no longer be denied, except
by the astute consistency of a Romanist hierarchy, and the
innocent unconsciousness of English sects. When the time
shall come for a dispassionate history of the first two centu
ries, — a history which, resolving the canon back into the
general mass of early Christian hterature, shall find an origi
nal clew for tradition, instead of accepting one from its post
humous hand, — which shall detect opinions before they were
heretic or orthodox, and trace the several streams of tributary
thought to their confluence in a determinate Christianity, —
the narrowness of our present polemic will be apparent of it
self; its fears and triumphs be regarded with a smile ; and
many, both of its positive and negative results, will vanish
from the interests of religion, and be absorbed in a higher
view of the relation between the Divine and Human in this
world.

360 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
We had hoped at first that the author of " The Restoration
of Belief" was about to take up the problem of Christianity
with a real appreciation of its altered conditions, and with un
affected justice towards those who cannot solve it like himself.
His present essay is but the commencement of a series, de
signed to arrest the progress of educated scepticism, to expose
the sophistries of modern criticism, and re-establish the plen
ary authority, as oracles of faith, of the Hebrew and the
Christian Scriptures. It would perhaps be unreasonable to
complain that his argument does not march very far in this
first movement ; and engages us rather by the stateliness of
its step, than by the clearness of its direction. Nevertheless,
we do think that the discursive license of introductory expo
sition is carried by him to an extreme which promises ill for
the exactitude of his method. At the outset he declares that
the difficulties which embarrass modern faith go down to the
very depths of philosophy, and can be resolved only by reach
ing the ultimate roots of thought. Yet he remains on the
upper surface of history, and, without once hinting how this
is to lead him to the pith of the controversy, dwells only on
facts which are undisputed, and his conception of which might
be as readily gathered from Gibbon as from Neander. Like
many writers whose eye is caught by grandeur of effect, and
whose imagination is sensitive to wonder, he is fascinated by
the moment in human affairs when the Roman Empire was
exactly poised between the forces of external unity and of
internal decay, and the political organism of the Past, so
august in its mass and its proportions, held no soul but the
young spirit of the Future. Of this crisis, assigned to the
reign of Alexander Severus, our author presents an impres
sive and, we believe, a faithful sketch. Amid the splendor,
the misery, the decay of belief and hope, the universal incer
titude of that period, there emerges into notice the beautiful
and beneficent phenomenon of a real Faith, — a Faith that
can live, a Faith that can die. The inevitable conflict be
tween this new power and the Pagan prerogatives of the
CaBsars is weU brought out by the essayist ; and the victory

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 361
of Christianity is justly ascribed to the peculiar character of
the religion, as a feeling directed to a person rather than the
simple assent to an idea. It was the force of this personal
feeling which first awakened in men the sentiment of obliga
tion in regard to religious truth, and substituted faithful vera
city for indifferentism and laxity of profession. The author
thus sums up the positions which he regards the present essay
as establishing : —
" That the Christian communities did, during the period
that we have had in view, make and maintain a protest
against the idol-worship of the times, which protest, severe as
it was in its conditions, at length won a place in the world for
a purer theology, and set the civilized races free from the de
grading superstitions of the Greek Mythology.
" That in the course of this arduous struggle, and as an
unobserved yet inevitable consequence of it, a New Principle
came to be recognized, and a New Feeling came to govern
the minds of men, which principle and feeling conferred upon
the individual man, however low his rank, socially or intel
lectually, a dignity unknown to classical antiquity ; and which
yet must be the basis of every moral advancement we can
desire, or think of as possible.
" That the struggle whence resulted these two momentous
consequences, affecting the welfare of men for ever, was
entered upon and maintained on the ground of a definite per
suasion, or Belief, of which a Person was the object.
" That this behef toward a person embraced attributes, not
only of superhuman exceUence and wisdom, but also of super
human power and authority. If we take the materials
before us as our guide, it wiU not be possible to disengage the
history from these ideas of superhuman dignity." — p. 106.
These positions we certainly conceive to be unassailable.
But they he so completely out of the field of modern doubt
and controversy, that we are at a loss to imagine what possi
ble use the author can make of them. The general features
of the Christian faith, and the character of the Church, had
assumed in the third century a determinate form, about which
31

362 the restoration of belief.
there is no important question between believer and unbeliev
er. Who would deny that the disciples for whom Clement of
Alexandria and Origen wrote, whom Tertullian and Minucius
Felix defended, and to whose institutes Cyprian was a con
vert, believed in Jesus Christ as a person at once historical
and divine, and were strengthened by that belief to the en
durance of martyrdom ? The real and only difficulties lie
higher up, in the attempt to trace the sources and earlier
varieties of this belief; and if our author can show that, in
winding its way through two centuries, and traversing several
distinct regions of thought, it dropped or rounded off no prim
itive facts, and became mingled with no foreign ideas, — if he
can establish the essential constancy and uniformity, from the
first, of the tradition and doctrine which obtained ascendency
at last, — he will indeed reduce legitimate scepticism within
very narrow limits, and deserve a niche in the Valhalla of
critical renown. But if he contemplates clearing these cen
turies by an argumentative leap ; if, from the martyr faith of
an age later than the Antonines, he means to conclude the
certainty of the Incarnation two hundred years before, — then
we must say, he attempts a logical feat which puts to shame
the cautious steps of such reasoners as Paley, Marsh, and
Whately. The catena of well-linked testimonies, with its
bridge of safe footing, which they have endeavored to sling
across the chasm of the post-apostolic age, is but a paltry cow
ardice of ecclesiastic engineering to one who can pass the gulf
upon the wing of inference. An advocate is intelligible, and
proceeds upon admitted rules of evidence, who says with
these earlier divines : " Here are the writings of Paul, of John,
of Matthew, and of other men who were present at the events
they relate or assume ; whose lives were turned into a new
channel by their influence; and who went to prison and to
death rather than deny them. They positively declare that
they witnessed the most stupendous miracles, and, after their
Master had been visibly taken up through the clouds, them
selves habitually exercised the same supernatural power.
You must admit that the guaranties of testimony can go no

the restoration of belief. 363
further : surrender yourself therefore to the Gospel." This
is an argument which accomplishes all that is possible with
historical evidence in such a case ; and were its allegations of
fact sustainable, it would still be the best form into which the
reasoning could be thrown. Unfortunately, we can no longer
feel assured that any first-hand testimony exists, as a distin
guishable element, in the narrative books of the New Testa
ment ; so that we can regard them only as monuments of the
state of Christian tradition during a secondary period. Still,
this flaw is not repaired by striking into the course of belief
three or four generations lower down, and substituting the
" Martyr literature " of the third century for the Evangelist
memorials of the second or the first. And when our author
transfers to Clement and Origen the praise of unaffected sim
plicity usually awarded to the Apostolic writers, and actually
presents it as sufficient proof of divine attributes in Christ, we
can only suppose that, in his opinion, some truths are too good
to have any bad way to them. What else can be said of the
following mode of inference ?
" Much do we meet with in these writers that indicates in
firmity of judgment or a false taste ; yet does there pervade
them a marked simplicity, a grave sincerity, a quietness of
tone, when He is spoken of whom they acknowledge as Lord.
If there be one characteristic of these ancient writings that
is uniform, it is the calm, affectionate, and reverential tone in
which the Martyr Church speaks of The Saviour Christ !
" I am perfectly sure that, if you could absolutely banish
from your mind aU thought of the inferences and the conse
quences resulting from your admissions, you would not, after
perusing this body of Martyr literature, fall into the enormity
of attributing the notions entertained of Christ, as invested
with Divine attributes, to any such source as ' exaggeration,'
or ' extravagance,' or to ' Orientalism,' or ' enlarged Plato-
nism.' Exaggeration and inflation have their own style : it is
not difficult to recognize it. No characteristic of thought or
language is more obvious. You will fail in your endeavor to
show that this characteristic does attach to the writings in

364 the restoration of belief.
question ; and why should you make such an attempt ? There
can be no inducement to do so, unless it appears to be the
only means of escaping from some consequence which we
dislike."— p. 107.
Our author professedly opposes " Ancient Christianity " to
modern scepticism, because " History," as he observes, " is
sohd ground," and no region of atmospheric phantasms, births
from the refracted rays of metaphysic light. History, however,
is solid ground only so far as it is really explored ; and the
trending of the land and curving of the shore in one latitude
of time no more enables us to lay down the map of another,
than an anchorage at the Ganges' mouth would enable us to
paint the gorges of the Himalayas, and distinguish the real
from the fabulous sources of the sacred stream. To take us
into the basilicas and show us how Christians worshipped in
the days of Alexander Severus, to introduce us to the Pro
consul's court and bid us witness their refusal of divine hom
age to Cassar's image, and then ask us whether a faith like
this could have had any origin but one, — this is not history,
but the mere evasion of history. We want to know, not what
must have been the source, but what was the source, of the
great moral power that rose upon the world as Rome declined.
Whoever wishes to shut out human ideas and natural agen
cies from participation in the matter, must go patiently through
the entire remains of the early Christian literature ; must
trace the conflict between the Hebrew and the Pauline Gos
pel ; find a place for the peculiar version of the rehgion given
by the Evangelist John ; fix the limits of Ebionitism, of Chili-
asm, of Docetism ; and show that these modes and varieties of
doctrine stop short of the substance of the early faith, and do
not enter the canonical Scriptures with any disturbance of
their historic certainty. Nothing of this kind do we expect
from our author. For he entertains a conception, respecting
the logic of Christian evidence, which, however prevalent
among English divines, betrays in our judgment a mind not
at all at home with the present conditions of the problem.
He seems to think that we can first prove the historic truth

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 365
of the Scriptures in general ; and then get rid of the difficul
ties in particular ; and requires us, in obedience to this pe
dantic law of logical etiquette, to carry into our investigation
of every successive perplexity the rigid assumption that the
writings with which we deal are " inspired," and their contents
of " Divine authority."
" When a collection of historic materials, bearing upon a
particular series of events, is brought forward, it will follow,
upon the supposition that those events have, on the whole,
been truly reported, that any hypothesis, the object of which
is to make it seem probable that no such events did take
place, must involve absurdities which will be more or less
glaring. But then, after the truth of the history has been
established, and when the trustworthiness of the materials has
been admitted, as we proceed to apply a rigid criticism to
ambiguous passages, we shall undoubtedly encounter a crowd
of perplexing disagreements ; and we shall find employment
enough for all our acumen, and trial enough of our patience,
in clearing our path. And yet no amount of discourage
ments, such as these, will warrant our falling back upon a
supposition which we have already discarded as incoherent
and absurd." — p. 110.
We cannot call this a vicious canon of historical criticism ;
for it simply excludes historical criticism altogether. The
critic's work is not a process which can go on generically,
without addressing itself to any particular matters at all, and
vindicate comprehensive conclusions in blindness towards
the cases they comprise. The judgment that, on the whole,
a certain book contains a true report of events, can only be a
provisional assumption, founded on natural and childlike trust,
and can claim no scientific character, tiU it comes out as a
collective inference from an investigation in detail of the nar
rative's contents. No doubt, the bare fact of the existence of
Christianity as a great social phenomenon in the age of the
Antonines, may afford evidence enough that Jesus of Nazareth
was no imaginary being ; the genius of the religion, and the
traditional picture of its author, may indicate the cast of his
31*

366 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
mind and the intensity of his influence ; the institutions of the
Church may betray its origin in Palestine, and the approxi
mate date of its birth. But these conclusions, founded en
tirely on reasonings from human causation, can never carry
us into the superhuman ; or enable us to say more respecting
the memorials of the life of Jesus, than that they may be true,
and do not forfeit, ab initio, their title to examination by fun
damental anachronism, misplacement, and moral incongruity.
How far the existence of this prima facie case falls short of
" establishing the truth of the history," and " the trustworthi
ness of the materials," we need not point out to any one ac
customed to deal with questions of evidence. And as for the
great proposition, that " the Gospel of Christ is a supernatu-
rally authenticated gift," we cannot imagine how it is to be
proved in general, without research into a single miracle. Is
it indifferent to the fact of the Incarnation, that the only two
accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus are hopelessly at
variance with each other ? Is the evidence of the Resurrec
tion unaffected by the discrepancies on which harmonists have
spent a fruitless ingenuity ? Are we as sure that, in reading
the Apostles' works, we have to do with "inspired writers,"
as if they had not made any false announcements about the
end of the world ? What does our author mean by admitting
these things as " difficulties," yet denying them any just influ
ence in abatement of our confidence ? He may form One es
timate of their weight, and his opponent another; but in
neither case can they be postponed for treatment in a mere
appendix to the discussion of Christian evidence: they are
of the very pith of the whole question, and, so long as they
lie in reserve as quantities of unknown magnitude and direc
tion of influence, render historical behef and unbehef alike
irrational. Nor can we for a moment allow that the failure of ever so
many "German theories" to give a satisfactory account of
the origin of Christianity, is any good reason for contented
acquiescence in the received doctrine. Our author insists,
that we must make our definitive choice between some mod-

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 367
em hypothesis and the EvangeUcal tradition ; and either take
the facts as they are handed down to us, or else replace them
by some better representation. By what right does he im
pose on us such an alternative necessity ? Is the critic dis
qualified for detecting false history, because he cannot, at his
distance, write the true ? Is it a thing unknown, as a product
of scholarship, that fabulous elements disclose themselves amid
the memorials of fact ? and is it not an acknowledged gain
to part with an error, though only in favor of an ignorance ?
If a modern hypothesis as to the mode in which the religion
arose may " break down " by mere internal incoherence and
improbability, why may not the ancient account, if it should
be chargeable with similar imperfections, be liable to the same
fate ? It is surely conceivable that all the finished represen
tations we possess, — Hebrew and Alexandrine, as weU as
German, — furnish, more or less, an ideal and conjectural
history of the infancy of Christendom ; and that the repro
duction of that time may not only be now impossible, but have
already become so ere a hundred years were gone. The
baffling of one solution imphes therefore no triumph of anoth
er ; and if the tradition on which we stand be insecure, our
position is not improved by clipping the wings of every ad
venturous hypothesis on which we had thought to escape the
common ground.
Our author cannot then change the venue of the great Chris
tian cause from the first century to the third, and, on the evi
dence present there, give even preliminary judgment. The
conflict between the new religion and the old which charac
terized that period, he paints with striking and truthful effect ;
and, contrasting the severe and holy veracity of martyred dis
ciples with the careless indifference of Paganism to religious
truth, he rightly refers the superiority of the Christians to
their faith in a Person, instead of mere assent to an Opinion.
Is it, however, correct to regard this as original and exclusive
to the Gospel, and to set it on the forehead of the Church as
the very mark of her distinctive divinity? We think not.
The same feature is manifest in Judaism, to which again it

368

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.

belongs, not as a pecuharity, but in common with every faith
whose Only God is the apotheosis of humanity. It is the one
grand moral characteristic of genuine Theism, as opposed to
Pantheism ; rendering it more than the enthusiasm of poetry,
tho earnestness of philosophy, the inspiration of genius, and
constituting it, in the deepest sense, Religion. Nor is the
ground of the distinction far to seek. Religion, in its ultimate
essence, is a sentiment of Reverence for a Higher than our
selves. Higher than ourselves, however, can none be, that
have not what is most august among our endowments ; none,
therefore, by reason of size, of strength, of duration ; none
simply by beauty or by skill ; none even by largeness of dis
cerning thought, but only by free and realizing preference of
the most Just and Good. A Being of living Will can alone
be nobler than myself, lift me above the level of my actual
mind by looking at my latent nature, and emancipate me
into the captivity of worship. In other words, reverence can
attach itself exclusively to ~a Person ; it cannot direct itself
on what is impersonal, — on physical facts, on unconscious
laws, on necessary forces, on inanimate objects and their re
lations, on space, though it be infinite, on duration, though it
be eternal. These all, even when they rule us, are lower than
ourselves ; they may evade our knowledge, defy our power,
overwhelm our imagination, but never rise to be our equals,
or conspire to furnish even the symbol of our God. The
mere deification of Nature, the recognition of oneness pervad
ing her variety, the sense of an absolute ground abiding be
hind her transient phenomena, may supply a faith adequate to
the awakening of wonder and the apprehension of ideal beau
ty, but not to the practical consecration of hfe ; glorifying the
universe as a temple of Art, but railing off within it no oratory
of Conscience. In order to extract anything like a religion
of conduct from this type of belief, its hierophants are obliged
to approach as near as they can to the language of proper
Theism, and not even despise typographical aid for pushing
personification to the verge of personality ; uttering various
warnings not to neglect the " intentions of Nature," or insult

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 369
the " Relentless Veracities," and inviting sundry offenders to
blush before " the Eternal Powers." The whole force of such
expressions is evidently due to the false semblance of living
thought and will with which they clothe the conceptions of
mere abstract relations or physical tendencies. These rich
tints are no self-color, but a borrowed light reflected from a
grander Presence studiously withdrawn from view ; and when
their gloss is gone, no positive residuum is found, but a doc
trine of hope and fear, without any element of Duty. It were
a mockery, an inanity, to bid a man spend his affections on
hypostatized laws that neither know nor answer him. In his
crimes, it is not the heavy irons of his prison, but the deep
eye of his judge, from which he shrinks ; and in his repentance
he weeps, not upon the lap of Nature, but at the feet of God.
In his allegiance, his vow is made, not to the certainty of
facts, but to the majesty of Right, and the authority of an In
finitely Just ; and his acts of trust are directed by no means
to the steadiness of creation's ways, but to the faithfulness of
a perfect Mind. In short, all the sentiments characteristic
of rehgion presuppose a Personal Object, and assert their
power only where Manhood is the type of Godhead. This
condition was imported, or rather continued, from the Hebrew
to the Christian system ; and brought with it the devout loy
alty of heart, the singleness of service, the incorruptible hero
ism of endurance, which had encountered Antiochus Epi-
phanes at Jerusalem, as it now met Pliny in Bithynia, and
Quadratus at Smyrna. The Paganism of the Empire, on the
other hand, faUed entirely of this condition. It was a mere
nature-worship, expressive of the political dynamics by which,
through the award of a mysterious necessity, Rome had be
come the centre of the world. If, among the deities whose
congress was now assembled on the Tiber, there were any
which once, in their indigenous seats, had commanded the full
moral faith, and touched the true theistic devotion, of a peo
ple, that time had passed ; and the conquered tribes suffered
a more fatal loss when the victorious city adopted their re
hgion, than when she crushed their hberty. Removed to

370

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.

Rome, the rites of a provincial worship expressed nothing
except that its gods were gods no more, but had descended
from divine monarchic rights to a place among a pensioned
hierarchy. Vanquished divinities inevitably become delegat
ed powers of nature, and resign their sceptre to the sovereign
they are compelled to own. As the administration of the Em
pire embraced a congeries of checked nationalities, so did its
pantheon include a collection of extinguished religions. While
as Imperator the head of the state was the embodiment of its
unity by natural force, as Divus he represented its unity by
preternatural sanction; and the divine honors paid to him
were the acknowledgment of a necessity more than human
in the culminating majesty of Rome. These honors would
be freely rendered to him by those who looked on all realized
existence, on everything charged with force enough to come
up and be, as equally decreed by " the Eternal Powers," —
equally divine. Such homage would appear to them the
mere expression of a fact, and a graceful owning of mysteri
ous fates in its production; and no scruple could withhold
them from an act wdiich contradicted nothing in their mind,
and did but fling a breath of pious incense around the thing
that veritably was. It were absurd to expect the protest of
a martyr from a man whose religion you cannot contradict ;
who will see a God wherever you ask him ; and whose wor
ship asserts nothing but that, a phenomenon being there, an
occult power is behind it. A faith of this sort is deficient, as
an Hegelian would say, " in the moment of negation " ; it is
all unobstructed affirmation, and can strike no hght because
it thus finds nothing to dash itself against. But let the divine
element in the universe cease to be impersonal and impar
tially coalescent with the whole, let it hve an Individual Mind,
and the requisite antagonism immediately appears. To the
Jew, the worship of Cassar would be no other than high trea
son to Jehovah, whose tool, whose whip of lightning, and
whose cup of consolation the Pagan Emperor might become ;
but whose emblem and incarnation he could so little be, that
he rather stood defiantly at the head of the opposing realm,

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 371
and, even when forced to be the organ, did not cease to be
the competitor of God. For opposing realm there must be,
wherever proper Theism exists. Man feels that his personal
attributes, his will, his character, his conscience, demand con
flict for their condition, and without the possibility of ill could
never be ; and when he carries them out into the infinite re
gion, to serve as his image of the Highest, they bear with
them the inseparable shadow of evil, and give it place in the
universe, as the darkness in whose absence light would want
its distinction, the privative without which the beauty of holi
ness were nothing positive. Hence, expressed or unexpressed,
a dualism mingles with all genuine theistic faith. All is not
divine for it. It has a devil's province somewhere. Face to
face, as Ebal to Gerizim, the frown of blighted rock to the
smile of verdant heights, — hostile as the priest of falsehood
to the true prophet, — there stand contrasted in this creed
two domains of the world, — one surrendered to insurgent
powers, the other reserved as the nursing ground from which
right and truth shah be spread. To the Hebrew, the Pagan
world was given over to a false allegiance, and inspired with
diabolical delusions. For him to sacrifice to the genius of
Cassar, would have been, therefore, a desertion to the enemies
of God, forbidden by every claim of faithfulness and veracity.
Thus we conceive that the moral conditions of the martyrs'
protest against idol-worships were complete within the limits
of Judaism before the mission of Christ ; and that the essence
of it lies, not in the exclusive characteristics of the Gospel,
but in the difference between Theistic reverence for a Per
sonal Being, and the Pantheistic acknowledgment of an im
personal divineness. The peculiar function of Christianity
in this respect was to become missionary to the world of this
heroic fidelity transmitted from the parent faith, and hitherto
bounded by its limits ; and to find a place in the universal
conscience of civilized nations for the duty of bearing testi
mony, though with tortures and death, to the pricelessness of
truth and the sanctity of conviction. True it is that the Gos
pel was qualified for this office by directing human faith upon

372 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
a Person ; and would have exercised no such power, had it
been a mere philosophy presenting propositions for assent,
instead of a Living Mind for trust and reverence. But this
condition would have been attained by the simple extension
of the Jewish Theism. The Personality, which is needed as
a centre of intense fealty and affection, is found in the God
of Hebrew tradition, and, for its effects in kindling a martyr
courage and constancy, did not require to be sought in the
historical Jesus of Nazareth. He, no doubt, as the mediate
expression of the Supreme Will, as the Being with whom
the Church stood in direct contact, as the presence of the
Divine in the Human, was the object of the disciples' actual
allegiance. We do not in the least question this as a fact,
but only as a necessity, ere we can account for the moral fea
tures of a martyr age.
In singling out, as one of the grandest practical results of
Christianity, the recognition it has obtained for the obliga
tions of religious truth, our author has rightly seized a char
acteristic distinction of modern from ancient society. The
principle is a real agency of the first order in history ; we do
not accuse him of overrating its importance, but of mistaking
its genealogy. And now we must add, that if we differ from
him as to the source whence it comes, we differ stiU more as
to the issues whither it conducts. So inconsiderately does he
aUow himself to be borne away by his evangelical zeal, that he
claims for the Gospel, not only the glory of first revealing, but
the exclusive right of ever practising, the duties of religious
veracity. None but historical believers have the least title
to attach any sacredness to their convictions, or to feel any hes
itation about denying them. What business have the authors
of the " Phases of Faith," and the " Creed of Christendom,"
to any better morality of belief than Galho or Lucian ? If
they have not faUen back into the Pagan indifferentism, they
ought to have done so, and our author will continue very in
dignant till they do. He is offended with Mr. Newman for
asking judgment on his " argument and himself, as before
the bar of God " ; and with Mr. Greg for saying that, in the

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 373
process of changing cherished beliefs, " the pursuit of truth is
a daily martyrdom," and for giving " honor to those who en
counter it, saddened, weeping, trembling, but unflinching still ! "
And he is not ashamed to declare that the guileless veracity
which in himself would be a martyr's constancy, would be in
another an overweening conceit. So astonishing, logically
and ethically, are his statements on this subject, and so cu
riously do they determine his inteUectual position, that we
must present them in his own words : —
" We Christian men of this age, along with our venerated
martyr brethren of the ancient Church, in making this profes
sion, — that we may not lie to God, nor deny before men our
inward conviction in matters of religion ; we (as they did)
affirm that which is consistent within itself, and which, in the
whole extent of its meaning, is certain and is reasonable, grant
us only our initial postulate, that Christianity is from heaven.
"But how is it, when this same solemn averment comes
from the lips of those who deny that postulate, and who scorn
to recognize the voice of God in the Book? It is just thus ;
and those whom it concerns so to do, owe it to the world and
to themselves to make the ingenuous avowal.
" In the first place, the style and the very terms employed
by these writers in enouncing the fact of the martyrdom they
are undergoing, are all a flagrant plagiarism, and nothing bet
ter ! A claim, in behalf of the Gospel, must be made of what
is its own, and which these writers, without leave asked, have
appropriated. As to every word and phrase upon which the
significance of this their profession turns, it must be given up,
leaving them in possession of so much only of the meaning of
such phrases as would have been intelligible to Plutarch, to
Porphyry, and to M. Aurelius. A surrender must be
made of the words Conscience, and Truth, and Right
eousness, and Sin ; and, alas ! modern unbelievers must be
challenged to give me back that one awe-fraught Name
which they (must I not plainly say so ?) have stolen out of
the Book ; when they have frankly made this large surren
der, we may return to them the to Qeiov of classical antiquity.
32

374 the restoration of belief.
"Yet this plagiarism, as to terms, is the smaller part of
that invasion of rights with which the same persons are
chargeable. It is reasonable, and it is what a good man must
do, to suffer anything rather than deny a persuasion, which
is such that he could not, if he would, cast it off. So it was
with the early Christian martyrs ; their persuasion of the
truth of the Gospel had become part of themselves ; it was
faith absolute, in the fullest sense of the word. The same
degree of irresistible persuasion attaches to the conclusions of
mathematical or physical science ; but it can never belong to
an opinion, or to an undefined abstract belief. A man may
indeed choose to die rather than contradict his personal per
suasion of the truth of an opinion ; but in doing so he has no
right to take to himself the martyr's style. So to speak is to
exhibit, not constancy, but opinionativeness, or an overweening
confidence in his own reasoning faculty.
" Polycarp could not have refused to die when the only
alternative was to blaspheme Christ, his Lord ; but Plutarch
could not have been required to suffer in attestation of his
opinion, — good as it was, — that the poets have done iU in
attributing the passions and the perturbations of human nature
to the immortal gods; nor Seneca, in behalf of those astro
nomical and meteorological theories with which he entertains
himself and his friend Lucilius.
"When those who, after rejecting Christianity, talk of suf
fering for the ' truth of God,' and speak as if they were con
science-bound 'toward God,' they must know that they not
only borrow a language which they are not entitled to avail
themselves of, but that they invade a ground of religious be
lief whereon they can establish for themselves no right of
standing. They may indeed profess what opinion they please
as to the Divine attributes ; but they cannot need to be told
that which the misgivings of their own hearts so often whisper
to them, that all such opinions are, at the very best, open to
debate, and must always be indeterminate, and that at this
time their own possession of the opinion which just now they
happen to cling to, is, in the last degree, precarious. How

the restoration of belief. 375
then can martyrdom be transacted among those whose tread
ing is upon the fleecy clouds of undemonstrable religious feel
ing?"— pp. 92-94.
If, being orthodox, you die at the stake, you are a martyr ;
if, being heretic, — why, then you are a man burnt ; — a
doctrine which Robert Hall compressed within the narrowest
compass, when he said, " It is the saint which makes the mar
tyr, not the martyr the saint." This is the very Gospel of
intolerance ; and whoever preaches it may feel assured that
he can lend no help in any worthy " Restoration of Belief " ;
for he is himself infected with the most profound and pene
trating of scepticisms, — scepticisms of moral realities. The
rule, " that we may not lie to God, nor deny before men our
inward conviction in matters of religion," is, in our author's
view, the gift and glory of Christianity. Be it so. This rule
either holds for all men at all times, or it does not ; if there
be persons who, notwithstanding it, may lie to God, and deny
their inward conviction, then the Scriptures, in communicat
ing it, have revealed no universal principle of duty, no obh-
gation having its seat in the nature of things and the constitu
tion of the human soul, but a mere sectional by-law, an ar
bitrary precept for the security and good ordering of one
exclusive community. Then must we talk of it no more so
exceedingly proudly, as if it were a hidden truth revealed, a
latent beauty opened ; it is no part of the holy legislation of
the universe, but a statutory enactment under which we fall,
or from which we escape, as we pass in or out at the door of
a certain historical belief. Need we say that this side of the
alternative strips Christianity of every pretension to be a
moral revelation at all ? If, to take the other side, the rule
in question does hold for all men, then it is no less binding on
Mr. Newman and Mr. Greg than on our author ; and in bow
ing to its authority and owning its sanctity, they render a
homage as devoutly true as his, only different in this, that,
while they feel no disturbance from his kneeling in the sanctu
ary at their side, he cannot be at peace tiU he has sprung to
his feet and hurled them from the place. They are guilty of

376 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
" plagiarism " forsooth ! And in what? In knowing their duty,
without knowing where they learned it ! 0 shame upon this
greediness, that would turn moral truth itself, and struggling
aspiration, into a property ! As if Christ were one to stand
upon the copyright of revelation, and, unless his name were
in the title-page, would suffer neither thought nor prayer to
dedicate itself to God ! Our author, as public prosecutor in
the Supreme Court, demands that the defendants shall empty
themselves out of every earnest sentiment, and surrender
back the words conscience, and truth, and righteous
ness, and sin, and God, "as stolen from the Book"! What
then was " the Book " given for, but that it might freely fur
nish these ? — and how better can it fulfil its end, than by
opening for them a sacred welcome wherever the things are
which they disclose ? Let their spirit breathe where it listeth;
it will not be less a Holy Spirit that we know not " whence it
cometh " : nor let it be forgot how old a feature of evangelic
blessing it is, that " he that was healed wist not who it was!'
As " the Book " does not, by its presence, create the facts
which it reveals, so neither does its absence or rejection destroy
them. Conscience, as an element of human nature, does not
come or go, — God, as reality in the universe, does not live
or perish, — according as the Bible is kept in the pocket or
laid upon the shelf; even if their first witness were in Scrip
ture, they themselves are in the world, — as active, as near, as
certain, in the transactions of to-day, as in the affairs of dis
tant history. Scientific truth, once well ascertained, can take
care of itself, without being everywhere attended by the re
port of its first discovery ; it is in the safe keeping of the
objects on which it writes a new meaning, and the phenomena
amid which it introduces a fresh symmetry. And moral
truth, when once embodied and revealed, is not less indepen
dent of its earliest expression ; it finds its response in human
consciousness, its reflection from human life, and weaves it
self up into the very fabric of many souls, whose pattern
bears no motto of its origin. Thus "revelation" — just in
proportion as it is revelation, and tells us what is cognate to

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 377
ourselves, and bound up with the realities around us — passes
of necessity into " natural religion " ; and precisely according
to the measure in which it does so, will it acquire strength
and permanence, and dispense with evidence by merging into
self-evidence. Did it awaken in us no confirming experience,
did it nowhere link itself with the visible system of things, —
then, solving nothing, glorifying nothing, missed by all the
moving indices of nature and Providence, it would sit apart,
and become incredible. That could hardly be a truth at all,
which, after roaming the world and searching the soul for
eighteen centuries, has found no natural ground on which to
rest, and must wander as an ipse dixit still. And if natural
ground it has acquired, that is surely a proper basis for
its present support; it_may innocently cease to be held on
mere authority ; the very " plagiarism " so vehemently de
nounced is rather the fulfilment than the destruction of the
faith, for it is only that men no longer resort to an oracle
for things which the oracle has enabled them to see for them
selves. Our Christian advocate, however, is not content with re
serving to his side the sole power of discerning the duty of
religious veracity ; he further claims the sole right to practise
it. He teaches that it is not binding on all men at all times ;
and that its obligation is in any case conditional on the " initial
postulate, that Christianity is from heaven." He thinks, ap
parently, that the duty is not so much revealed as constituted
by the Gospel, so as to have no existence beyond the pale.
We can collect from his words two considerations, under
whose influence he seems to pronounce this strange judgment.
He evidently assumes that the duty of veracious profession is
contingent partly on the object-matter of belief; partly on the
degree of evidence. If my faith is directed towards a Person,
then, he implies, there is treachery, even blasphemy, in deny
ing it ; but if not, my disclaimer gives no one any title to
complain, and I cannot be expected to die on behalf of a
proposition. Polycarp must not renounce Christ, his Lord ;
but Plutarch might very properly recant, without at all alter-
32*

378 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
ing, his judgment against the poets, for ascribing passions to
the gods. Is it so, indeed ? Then there is no harm in a he,
unless some one is betrayed or insulted by it besides the hear
ers whom we deceive, — and we may report as falsely as we
please our persuasion about things, provided we are true to
our sentiments about persons ? With full recollection of the
questionable verdicts, on problems of veracity, which are given
by Xenophon and Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, we doubt wheth
er any Pagan morahst can be quoted in favor of a doctrine so
unworthy as this. The author seems to imagine that the
obligation to speak the truth is a mere duty of personal affec
tion ; and that in the absence of this element, its claims alto
gether disappear. Identifying falsehood with detraction and
ingratitude, he concludes that, since an abstract theory is in
sensible to what people say about it, and can have no services
owing to it, it may be blamelessly repudiated by those who
really believe it. This is tantamount to an expunging of ve
racity from the list of human duties altogether ; for it gives
importance to what is purely accidental, and slights what is
alone essential to it. The conditions of a lie, in all its full
blown wickedness, are quite complete, when there is a person
to speak it, a person to hear it, and a social state to be the
theatre of the deception ; should there be also a person spoken
of, that is a circumstance in no way requisite to constitute the
guilt, but a supplementary condition, flinging in a new element
of pravity, and turning falsehood into faithlessness. The in
troduction of this additional person into the case may doubt
less render the offence much more flagrant, especially if he
be one who has acknowledged claims on gratitude and rever
ence. Calumny and perfidy are justly held in deeper abhor
rence than equivocation unstained with malignity. But to be
unaffected by the criminality till it kindles with this diabohcal
glare, and not even to believe in it unless it smells sulphurous
and burns red, betrays a perception too much accustomed to
melodramatic contrasts of representation to appreciate the
more delicate tints and finer moral lights of the real and open
day. And so far from the glory of martyrdom being height-

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 379
ened by the presence of deep personal affection as its inspira
tion, this very circumstance renders the act a less arduous
sacrifice ; just as to fall in the hot blood of battle may need
less heroism of will, than to die under the knife upon the sur
geon's table. In proportion as the denial of Christ in the
hour of trial would be the more intolerable blasphemy, must
the temptation to it be less overwhelming, and the merit of a
good confession less amazing. And those who, in matters
touching no such deep affection, can yet be true, — those who,
in simple clearness of conscience, can dispense, if need be,
with the help of enthusiasm, and so shut their lips against a
lie, that not the searing iron can open them, — those who do
not want a grand occasion, but just as certainly use the small
est, to fling back the thing that is not, — have assuredly a
soul of higher prowess and more severely proved fidelity to
God And it is a heartless thing to turn round upon these
men, and taunt them with having no one at whose feet to lay
their offering, and no popular sympathy to redeem their up
rightness from the imputation of conceit.
There is, however, another consideration which weighs with
our author in granting to " modern unbelievers " a dispensa
tion from the duty of religious veracity. They have only a
" personal persuasion " resting on precarious grounds, and not
the certitude attaching to " the conclusions of mathematical
and physical science " ; and it would be folly to suffer on be
half of " undemonstrable religious feeling " ! Are we then to
lay it down as a canon in ethics, that intensity of assurance
is the measure of our obligation to speak the truth, — so that
we are to state our certainties correctly, but may tell hes
about our doubts ? If so, scrupulous fidelity is incumbent on
us only within the limits of deductive science and of immedi
ate personal observation ; and in the great sphere of human
affairs, in matters of historical, moral, and political judgment,
nay, in the incipient stage of aU knowledge, we may say and
unsay, may play fast and loose with our convictions, according
as the favor or the fear of men hangs over us. Newton was
bound to stand by his " Principia " ; but Locke might have

380 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
renounced his treatise on Government and taken his oath to
the divine rights of kings ! Were he indeed to refuse so easy
a compliance, it would be a great reflection upon his modesty ;
for if a man, on being threatened with death, will not belie
his own persuasion of probable truth, he is chargeable with
" overweening confidence in his own reasoning faculty " ! It
is happy for the world that it does not always except the
morals of the Church, but brings an unperverted feeling to
correct the twisted logic of belief. " Opinion," a wise man
has said, " is but knowledge in the making " ; and how little
knowledge would get made, if opinion were emptied of its
conscience, and looked on itself as an egotism rather than a
trust ! If there is one fruit of intellectual culture which more
than another dignifies and ennobles it, it is the scrupulous rev
erence it trains for the smallest reality, its watchfulness for
the earliest promise of truth, its tender care of every stamen
in the blossoming of thought, from whose flower-dust the seed
of a richer futurity may grow. To cut against this fine ve
racious sense with the weapons of unappreciating sarcasm,
and crush its objects into the ground as weeds with the heel
of orthodox scorn, is a feat which can advance the step of
Christian evidence only by betraying the Christian ethics.
Our author has entangled himself in the metaphor indicated
by the word " martyrdom " ; he thinks of the confessor as
bearing witness to something, — which is indeed quite true ;
and supposes that the things to which he bears witness must
be the facts or doctrines held by him ; and this is not true at
aU. For that which we attest in the hour of persecution is
simply our own state of mind; our belief, and not the object
believed. We are required to utter words, or to perform
acts, that shall give report of our persuasion ; this persuasion
is a fact in our personal psychology about which there is no
ambiguity ; which, as a presence in our consciousness, is
wholly unaffected by the question how it got there, and by
what logical tenure it holds its seat. Whether we have de
monstrated it into the mind or fetched it thither in a dream,
whether we had it yesterday or shall continue to have it to-

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 381
morrow, are matters in no way altering the fact that it is
there ; and if we say " No " to it, while conscious of a " Yes,"
the sin is neither greater when the behef concerns the prop
erties of a geometric solid, nor less when it touches some in
determinate problem of metaphysics. The logical ground of
our judgments is various without end, — perception, testi
mony, reasoning, in every possible combination. But the
persuasion, once attained, is a simple phenomenon, whose
affirmation, or denial, being always positively true, cannot
change its moral complexion with every shade in the evidence
now left behind. It is plain that, in our author's favorite case
of martyrdom, no testimony could be borne by the Christian
to anything but his own conviction. Polycarp and Cyprian
could only answer in the face of death, that they were Chris
tians ; it was not " on behalf of" any outward fact, but simply
because they would not belie their inward belief, that they laid
down their lives. And had Plutarch been dragged before
some anthropomorphist inquisition, and been called on pub
licly to declare his belief that the immortal gods were well
and truly painted by the poets as having passions like man
kind, the lie to which he was tempted would have been pre
cisely of the same kind; and had it passed his lips, would
have made him despicable as an apostate. He had no power,
nor had the Church confessor, over the truth or evidence of
his opinion; neither of them had any witness, in the strict
sense, to bear ; but both might veraciously scorn to deny a
fact unambiguously present to their self-knowledge. If the
heathen's firmness is an example of " overweening confidence
in his own reasoning faculty," by what favoring difference
does the Christian's escape the same imputation ? That his
faith is " absolute," his persuasion " irresistible," so far from
furnishing a vindication, only avows the fact that his " confi
dence " is intense ; whether it be " overweening " too, must
depend on the proportion between the certitude he feels and
the grounds of just assurance he possesses. But at all events
it is a confidence — in this case as in the other — undeniably
reposed " in his own reasoning faculty." How else could

382 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
any belief — except a groundless behef — reach the convert's
mind at all ? It is vain to pretend that the receivers of an
historic doctrine plant their reliance piously on God, while
its rejecters proudly trust themselves. There is no less sub
jective action of the mind on the positive side than on the
negative ; and on the soundness of that action does the worth
of the result in either instance depend. The evidence on
both sides comes into the same court of criticism ; and plead
ing and counter-pleading must ask a hearing from the same
judicial intelligence. If our author refers the Gospels to the
first century, and his opponents to the second ; if he finds a
miracle in the gift of tongues, they a delusion ; if he thinks
that the reasoning out of the Old Testament in the New is
exegetically and logically sound, they that it is in both re
spects unsound; — is he not concerned with the same topics,
conducting the same processes, liable to the same mistaken
estimates, as they ? How then can he flatter himself that
the same thing is believed on one tenure, and disbelieved on
quite another ? How affect, even while playing the advocate,
to be raised above the contingencies of the " reasoning facul
ty," and entitled to rebuke its pride ? How renounce it for
himself, appeal to it for your assent, abuse it for your dissent,
in the wayward course of two or three pages ?
Our author stands, therefore, in spite of every effort to es
cape it, on the same logical ground as his opponents ; and
they, notwithstanding his objection to their companionship,
are on the same footing of religious obhgation with himself.
He is offended to find such a one as Mr. Newman on the
same sacred pavement, and to overhear from unbelieving lips
the genuine tones of prayer; and, thanking God, apprises
men that he " is not as this publican." He prosecutes for
trespass aU who, after rejecting his Christianity, can dare to
profess allegiance to the " truth of God," and " speak as if
they were conscience-bound towards God." Are they then
not so bound ? Has no one a conscience except the approved
historical believer ? Is it not in others also a Divine voice,
— a Holy Spirit, — which to resist and stifle were the true

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 383
and only "Infidelity"? Surely the faith in God, and the
earnest acceptance of the laws of duty as the expression of
his authority, are not forbidden to men who cannot assume
the disciple's style. These sentiments, so far from waiting
on revelation for their possibility, are the pre-requisite con
ditions of all revelation, the state of mind to which it speaks,
the secret power by which it finds us out ; and if men cannot
be " conscience-bound towards God " before and without Chris
tianity, never can they become so after it and with it. It
does not take us up as atheists and brutes, and supply us
with the faculties as well as the substance of faith ; else were
there no medium of suasion across the boundary of unbelief;
— but it appeals to us as knowing much and aspiring to
more, — as already before the face, only shrinking from the
clear look of God, — as feeling the divine restraint upon us
of justice, purity, and truth, but unable, without some eman
cipating power, to turn it into freedom and joy. This spirit
of profound sympathy, not of arrogant insult, towards the
highest faiths and affections of our nature, we recognize in
the portraiture and teachings of Jesus Christ ; and when we
find one who, like our author, instead of rejoicing that the
sacred embers of nature are yet warm, instead of kneeling
over them to fan them with a breath of reverence into a
flame, flings them with scattering scorn on the damp ground
of his own moral scepticism to show how little they will burn,
— we see reversed in the "Restorer of Belief" the divine
temper of the " Author of Faith." Such a teacher wiU vain
ly endeavor to recover by severity of warning the influence
he forfeits by want of sympathy. He cannot frighten men
like Parker, Newman, Greg, by appealing to fancied " mis
givings of their own hearts " respecting the precariousness of
their convictions, and uttering dismal prophecies about yawn
ing gulfs ; which, however alarming as a shudder of rhetoric,
can disturb no quiet trust in reahty. Let us hear the words,
however : —
" Educated men should not wait to be reminded that those
who, after abandoning a peremptory historic belief, endeavor

384 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
to retain Faith and Piety for their comfort, stand upon a slope
that has no ledges : Atheism in its simplest form yawns to
receive those who there stand ; and they know themselves to
be gravitating towards it.
" It would be far more reasonable for a man to die as a
martyr for Atheism, — a stage beyond which no further pro
gress is possible, — than to do so at any point short of that
terminus, knowing as he does that every day is bringing him
nearer to the gulf. The stronger the mind is, and the more
it has of intellectual massiveness, the more rapid will be its
descent upon this dechvity. Minds of little density, and of
much airy sentiment, may stay long where they are, just as
gnats and flies walk to and fro upon the honeyed sides of a
china vase ; they do not go down, but never again will they
fly." — p. 94.
This is one of the conventional minatory arguments which
betray the absence of security and repose from the heart of
the received theology ; whose teachers could never propound
it, except from a position of conscious danger. They must
imagine in their own case that, if they were to find the Gos
pels no longer oracular, they would plunge at once into end
less depths of negation ; and that, unless they can refute an
interpretation of De Wette's, or correct a date of Baur's, there
wiU be eternal night in heaven. They feel the universe, and
life, and love, and sorrow, and the history of times and races
unbaptized, to be all atheistic through and through, — profane
to the core, — untraced by a vestige, untransfigured by a
color, of divine significance. What they can think of a Being
who creates aU reality and lives in it on these blindfold terms,
we wiU not attempt to decide ; but it is no wonder that, hav
ing once brought themselves to believe in Him, they feel how
a single move would overset them into disbelief. This thing,
however, is true of their own state of mind alone ; whose
spaces, dark throughout with scepticism but for one distant
lamp, might easily be left without a ray. It is consistent
neither with reason nor with experience to threaten with
this rule men who have opened their souls to something else

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 385
than documentary authority. It is notoriously false that
the career of historic doubt usually terminates in the loss of
all faith in God ; nor do we suppose that our author would
have awarded to the atheist, for actually reaching this point,
the praise of " intellectual massiveness," had he not wanted a
heavy weight to slide down his metaphorical inclined plane*
and outstrip the slippery believers who try to stop half-way.
The accusation against Theism, of being possible to the
light-minded and superficial, — a mere sweet-bait to entrap
the silly insects of the intellectual world, — is confuted by the
whole history of philosophy and human culture ; all whose
grandest names have connected themselves with the recogni
tion of a religion indigenous or accessible to the faculties of
the soul. Let our author collect on one side of his library
all the giants and heroes of utter disbelief, and on the other
the literature of natural faith ; nay, let him ransack for fresh
names and forgotten suffrages Lalande's " Dictionnaire des
Athees " ; and if, having weighed the various merits of Leu-
cippus and Lucretius, of Baron d'Holbach and La Mettrie,
of Robert Owen and Atkinson, he thinks them of more ster
ling mass than the pure gold of thought and life accumulated
by Socrates, Plato, Antoninus, — by Anselm and Abelard,
Descartes and Arnaud, ¦ — • by the authors of the " Theodicee,"
the " Essay on the Human Understanding," and the " Prin
ciples of Human Knowledge," — by Kant and Cousin, — by
Butler and Paley and Arnold, — we can only profess a dis
sent from his intellectual taste, not less than from his moral
judgment. The few pages on which we have been commenting were
the first — though they are near the end of the .treatise —
* The question has been raised, whether the author of " The Restoration
of Belief," who presents himself to us through the Cambridge publisher, is
really a University man? To those who are curious about such critical
problems, we would suggest this consideration, as having some bearing on
the case : " Could a person who had studied the laws of accelerated motion
at the authoritative school of English science have so forgotten his formulas
as to make his heaviest man on that account his quickest ? " The authorship,
however, is not less evident than if the book had been published by Messrs.
Longmans, or by Holdsworth and Ball.
33

386 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
that fully opened our eyes to the author's theological animus.
For a while, his large professions, and, no doubt, sincere pur
pose of fairness, — his apparent breadth of view, and his free
hand in putting down his subject on the canvas, — secured our
admiring confidence, and made us feel that here at length
justice, earnestness, and accomplishment will go together.
One feature, indeed, we noticed as giving a suspicious appear
ance to his equity of temper ; it displays itself more in cen-
soriousness towards his friends, than in large-heartedness
towards his antagonists. He readily allows faults in the ad
vocates of his own side, but is never carried away into even
a momentary appreciation of the other. This particular form
of impartiality, which consists in detracting from the merits
of alhes, instead of delighting in those of opponents, is the
ecclesiastic counterfeit of candor, — the half-shekel, which is
alone payable in the temple-service, but which nowhere, save
at the sacred money-table, is deemed equivalent to the good
Roman coin of common life. Much as we dislike the chink
of this consecrated metal, we hoped that it would only ring
for a passing instant on the ear. But alas ! it is an indication
seldom deceptive ; and we feel constrained to report that
there are, in this tract, quotations from both Mr. Newman
and Mr. Greg, which, if we were in the court of veracity, and
not of theology, we would say are unconscientiously made.
The quotations are made anonymously as weU as unfaithfully,
so that the reader, unless haunted by the checking impres
sions of memory, cannot correct the injustice of the writer.
The " Phases of Faith " describes, it will be remembered, the
gradual course of Mr. Newman's defections from his original
orthodoxy. His first movements of doubt were naturally
timid and inconsiderable, bringing him only to the conclusion,
that the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew was copied
wrong, and counted wrong, from the Old Testament. On
this step followed a second, and a third, each more important
than the preceding, and necessitating a next more momentous
than itself. The latter stages of his progress included an in
quiry into the evidence of the Resurrection, the miraculous

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 387
gifts ascribed to the early Church, the claims to credit of the
Apostle Paul, and other topics, undeniably affecting the very
essence of Christian evidence. Having traced the successive
advances of his doubts, Mr. Newman, in a recapitulary " Con
clusion, " makes a solemn appeal to his readers, to say at what
point he could have stopped, and to lay a finger distinctly on
the place at which the guilt of his scepticism began. One by
one he counts out the steps by which he had proceeded, and
asks, " Was this the sinful one ? " The whole effect of the
appeal is certainly an impression that the series, if not an in
evitable sequence, is very difficult to break ; and that, small
as the beginnings were, they hnked themselves, by close con
nection, with very momentous results. From this chapter
our author cites a sentence or two, but in such a way as im
mediately to conjoin the small initial steps of doubt with the
great ultimate conclusion, and to make it appear that Mr.
Newman renounced Christianity because he could not make
out the pedigree of Jesus to his satisfaction. The genealogi
cal difficulty is the only one which he quotes, and as to which
Mr. Newman is permitted to speak for himself. Presenting
this as a specimen, and suppressing all the rest, he says that he
could have shown " this writer " a course far better " than, on
account of difficulties such as these, to renounce Christianity " !
His citation from Mr. Greg is introduced as follows : —
" Let another witness be heard ; and in hearing him one
might think that his words are an echo that has come softly
traveUing down, through sixteen centuries, from some field of
blood, or some forum, or some amphitheatre, where Christian
men were witnessing a good confession in the midst of their
mortal agonies ! This witness is one who assures us that ' he
can believe no longer, he can worship no longer ; he has dis
covered that the creed of his early days is baseless, or falla
cious.' Yet he too takes up the Martyr Truth, that we
must not lie to God." — p. 91.
Here, then, Mr. Greg (with concealment of his name) is
represented as one who, by his own confession, can neither be
lieve nor worship any more. Turning to the preface of " The

388 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
Creed of Christendom," we find the fbUowing original to this
quotation : —
" The pursuit of truth is easy to a man who has no human
sympathies, whose vision is impaired by no fond partialities,
whose heart is torn by no divided allegiance. To him the re
nunciation of error presents few difficulties ; for the moment
it is recognized as error, its charm ceases. But the case is
very different with the Searcher whose affections are strong,
whose associations are quick, whose hold upon the Past is
clinging and tenacious. He may love Truth with an earnest
and paramount devotion ; but he loves much else also. He
loves errors, which were once the cherished convictions of his
soul. He loves dogmas which were once full of strength and
beauty to his thoughts, though now perceived to be baseless or
fallacious. He loves the Church where he worshipped in his
happy childhood; where his friends and his family worship
still ; where his gray-haired parents await the resurrection of
the Just ; but where he can worship and await no more. He
loves the simple old creed, which was the creed of his earlier
and brighter days ; which is the creed of his wife and children
still ; but which inquiry has compelled him to abandon. The
past and the familiar have chains and talismans which hold
him back in his career, till every fresh step forward becomes
an effort and an agony ; every fresh error discovered is a
fresh bond snapped asunder ; every new glimpse of light is
like a fresh flood of pain poured in upon the soul. To such
a man the pursuit of Truth is a daily martyrdom, — how hard
and bitter let the martyr tell. Shame to those who make it
doubly so ; honor to those who encounter it saddened, weep
ing, trembling, but unflinching still." — p. xvi.
Our author would snatch from Mr. Greg the right to say,
we must not he to God. Which has the better right to say,
" Thou shalt not lie to men " ?
The more ingenuously the modern Orthodoxy lays bare its
essence, the more evident is it that a profound scepticism not
only mingles with it, but constitutes its very inspiration. The
dread of losing God, the impression that there is but one pa-

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 389
tent way, not of duty, but of thought, of meeting him, haunt
the minds of men, driving some to Anglicanism to compensate
defect of faith by excess of sacrament, some to Rome in
quest of the Lord's body, and prompting others to conserva
tive efforts of Bibliolatry, conducted with ever-decreasing
reason and declining hope. We have seen, however, no such
exemplification of this radical distrust as in the treatise before
us. Already has the writer declared that the moral side of
the universe sends in, with regard to religion, an empty re
port. And now he hastens to tell us that, on the physical side,
the watchmen from every observatory of nature cry out, " No
God." He represents the natural sciences as a huge Titanic,
resistless mass of knowledge, perfectly demonstrable, and
completely irreligious ; descending, hke a glacier, from the
upper valleys of frozen thought ; sure to scrape away the
wild pine woods and the green fields of natural religion, yet
considerate enough, for some reason unexplained, to spare the
foundations of the village church. Designating every faith
except his own by such phrases as " theosophic fancies," and
" pietistic notions," he assures us that they will all be put
" right out of existence " by " our modern physical sciences " ;
and he borrows from the " Positive Philosophy " (apparently
by unconscious sympathy) the following maxim to justify his
prediction : —
" In any case, when that which on any ground of proof takes
full hold of the understanding, (such, for example, are the most
certain of the conclusions of Geology,) stands contiguous to
that which, in a logical sense, is of inferior quality, and is in
determinate, and fluctuating, and liable to retrogression, — in
any such case there is always going on a silent encroachment
of the more solid mass upon the ground of that which is less
solid. What is sure will be pressing upon what is uncertain,
whether or not the two are designedly brought into collision
or comparison. What is well defined weighs upon, and
against, what is ill defined. Nothing stops the continuous in
voluntary operation of Science in dislodging Opinion from
the minds of those who are conversant with both.
33*

390 the restoration of belisf.
" A very small matter that is indeed determinate, will be
able to keep a place for itself against this incessantly en
croaching movement ; but nothing else can do so. As to any
of those theosophic fancies which we may wish to cling to,
after we have thrown away the Bible, we might as well sup
pose that they wiU resist the impact of the mathematical and
physical sciences, as imagine that the lichens of an Alpine
gorge will stay the slow descent of a glacier." — p. 97.
Here it is alleged that Science and Opinion cannot coexist,
— that the demonstrable will banish the probable. And be it
observed, this is to take place, not simply where contradiction
arises between the two orders of belief, but in all cases, from
the mere distaste which quantitative studies produce towards
everything which evades their rules. In this allegation there
is, we believe, with much exaggeration, a certain small amount
of truth, — a truth, however, which, so far from supporting
our author's plea against natural religion, offers it a conclusive
refutation. It may be admitted that the exact and mixed sci
ences do disincline their votary to put trust in the processes
by which judgments of probability are formed, and alienate
him from thinkers who read off the meaning of the universe
by another key than his. Accustomed to deal with Number
and Space, with Motion and Force alone, — to reason upon
them by a Calculus which is helpless beyond their range, — to
exercise Faculties involving nothing beyond the interpretation
of mensurative signs and the conception of relative magni
tudes, — he owes it to something else than his peculiar disci
pline, if he has either the instruments or the aptitudes for
moral and philosophical reflection. He carries into the world,
as his sole means of representing and solving its phenomena,
the notion of physical necessity and linear sequence, secretly
defining the universe to himself as Leibnitz defined an organ
ized being, — "a machine, whose smallest parts are also ma
chines," — and naturally grows impatient when he finds him
self in fields of thought over which this narrow imagination
opens no track. With respect, therefore, to a certain class of
minds, rendered perhaps increasmgly numerous by the long

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 391
neglect of the moral sciences in England, it may be quite true,
that a spirit of utter disbelief towards everything beyond the
range of necessary matter may more and more prevail. Let
us further grant to our author, for the moment, three things
assumed by him, aU of them, however, false: — 1. That this
tendency of the " demonstrable sciences " is their only one
having a bearing on " theosophic systems." 2. That it is so
new, at least in degree, as to give " opinion " a worse chance
for the future than it has had in the past. 3. That it is a good
tendency, favorable to human knowledge and character. Still
we must ask, How is the oracular authority of the Bible to
escape the fate predicted for all probabilities ? Our author
assures us that it will escape ; but he gives no faintest hint of
a reason for so singular an exception to his own canon. It
cannot be contended that the evidences of Christianity and
Judaism belong to any of the " demonstrable " or " physical "
sciences. It cannot be denied that they he wholly within the
limits of contingent knowledge, and terminate only in " prob
abilities " ; that the authorship, for instance, of the fourth Gos
pel, the credibility of the introductory chapters of Matthew,
the correctness of the prophecies about the second advent, are
matters which, " standing contiguous " to the laws of refracted
and reflected light, occupy the position of the less sure in rela
tion to the more sure ; that the relative chronology of the
Scripture books is more indeterminate than that of the geo
logic strata, and their actual dates more uncertain than those
of the eclipses fatal to Nicias and to Perseus. What, then, is
to exempt these judgments of verisimilitude from being pushed
" right out of existence " by the " silent encroachment of the
more solid mass " of knowledge beside it ? Nothing can be
plainer than that all testimonial knowledge whatsoever, all
history, criticism, and art, the whole system of moral and
political sciences, must fall under our author's fatal sentence ;
and how the propositions which sustain the infallible authority
of the canonical books are to hold their ground against the
huge glacier on which Herschel, Airy and De Morgan, Comte
and Leverrier, triumphantly ride, it is not easy to conceive.

392 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
Amid the universal crash of probabilities, may not the Mosaic
tables of stone, broken once, be pulverized at last ? With the
abrasion of all the alluvial soil in which the growths of won
der strike their roots, wiU the garden of Eden, will the
blighted fig-tree, remain to mark a verdant and a barren spot
in history ? Will these riding philosophers from their cold
observatory find Paul's " third heaven " ? May not their icy
mountain slip into " the abyss " whence all the demons came,
and fill it up ? These questions, indeed, are answered for us
in experience. It is notorious that, whenever an unbounded
devotion to science has produced a prevalent tendency to dis
belief, Revelation, so far from being spared, has been usuaUy
the first object of attack ; and, both at the origin of modern
science in the sixteenth century, and during its accelerated
advance towards the close of the eighteenth, the widening
conception of determinate Law was found to threaten nothing
so decisively as the faith in supernatural dispensations. The
greater scepticism includes the less ; and the habit of mind
which lets slip all beliefs not legitimated by the canons of nat
ural science, cannot possibly retain Christianity.
But our author has only half described the mental effect of
studies purely scientific. They do not, in the nature of things
they cannot, simply push out of the mind aU contingent judg
ments. Human life and action are one continuous texture of
such judgments, with some interweaving, no doubt, of math-
ematic forms, which could not be picked out without spoiling
the symmetry of its pattern ; but were you to withdraw the
threads of probable opinion, still more, to cut the warp of prim
itive assumptions that stretches through it, the web would sim
ply fall to pieces. No youth can decide on a profession, no
man appoint an agent in his business, no physician prescribe
for a patient, no judge pronounce a sentence, no statesman an
swer a despatch, without a constant resort to " surmises," a
reliance on slender indications, often even a deliberate adop
tion of very doubtful hypotheses. All men are driven from
hour to hour into positions demanding combinations of thought
which can be borrowed from no natural science ; where not

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 393
the laws of matter and motion, not the equilibrium of forces,
not the properties of things, are chiefly concerned, but the
feehngs and faculties of persons, the action and reaction of
human affairs. Mathematicians and natural philosophers, be
ing in no way exempt from these conditions, are obliged to
have just as many " opinions " and " guesses " as other men ;
they cannot, if they are to keep their footing on this world at
all, have a smaller stock than their neighbors of this " logically
inferior " order of persuasions. They are unable to abdicate
the necessity of having these persuasions ; and their only pe
culiarity is, that they sometimes import into contingent affairs
the methods with which habit has rendered them familiar in
another sphere, and so find the conditions of belief unsatisfied ;
and at others, from consciousness that their own clew will not
serve, yet inaptitude for seizing a better, surrender themselves
to the fortuitous guidance of ill-balanced faculties and exter
nal solicitations. Hence their judgments are frequently fan
tastic, frequently sceptical, — not less liable to be too easy from
one cause than to be too reluctant from another ; and were a
history to be written of the most remarkable extravagances,
positive as well as negative, by which religion and philosophy
have sprung aside from the centre of common sense and feel
ing, it would contain more names of great repute in the exact
sciences than from any other intellectual class whatever. From
Pythagoras to Swedenborg, the eccentricities of mathemetical
and physical imagination have been the chief disturbers of a
natural and healthy faith. Harmonic theories of the universe,
Ideal Numbers, Geometric Ethics, Rosicrucian fraternities,
Vortices and Monads, Apocalyptic studies, New Jerusalems,
and Electrobiological Metaphysics, have all borne testimony to
the aberrant fancy of eminent proficients in the sciences. It
is, therefore, far from being universally true, that disputable
theosophies and conjectural systems of the universe are dis
tasteful to minds schooled in the " demonstrable sciences." If
to men of this order we owe the successive dislodgement of one
such hypothesis after another, to them also do we owe their
continual reproduction. Whether the unsoundness of judg-

394 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
ment which is contracted in the absence of historical, moral,
and metaphysical studies shall show itself in an excessive
slowness or an excessive facility of belief, wiU depend on ac
cidents of personal character and social position. But of this
we may be sure ; — if the sceptical temper be the direction
taken, the Bible will not be- spared ; if the credulous, " the
osophic fancies " will be copiously saved.
Can there, after all, be a more paradoxical spectacle than
that of a religious writer allying himself with the sceptical
propensities of science, in order to get rid of gainsayers of
the Bible ? It is the counterpart in logic of the Itahan game
in politics, — the Pope appealing to Parisian swords to drive
out the Republic, and save the head of Christendom. Is it
possible that our auther can approve the agency which he thus
invokes ? that he can really wish to see it in the inteUectual
ascendant, and garrisoning every sacred fortress of the world ?
Does he remember what are the fundamental canons of its
logic, — that we know nothing but Phenomena, — that Causa
tion is nothing but phenomenal priority, — or else, that Force
is the prior datum of which Thought is a particular and pos
terior development ? And what, on the other hand, are the
" theosophic fancies " against which he would plant this bar
baric artiUery of Fate ? They are such as these, — that our
faculties give us trustworthy reports, not of phenomena only,
but of their abiding ground, — Soul within, God without ; —
that the moral Law of Obligation in the one is the expression
of Holy Will in the other ; — that faithfulness in the Human
mind to its highest aspirations, brings it into communion with
the Divine ; — that as the Soul is the free Image, so is Nature
the determinate Handiwork of God. If these doctrines,
spurned by our author with so rude a flippancy, were to sur
render to the hostility on which he relies, is he unaware of the
character the conflict would assume, and of the dynasty of
thought which would reign undisputed at the close ? Fight
ing by the side of such allies against " theosophic fancies," he
may skirmish with the "fancies," but they will bear right down
upon the " Theism " in the centre ; and when the day is over,

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 395
the standard they will plant upon the conquered towers will
be, not the sacred dove he took into the field, and lost to the
defeated foe, but their own blind black eagle of necessity.
How strange is the perversion of instinctive sympathies, when
a theologian disparages the sciences of reflection and self-
knowledge, and takes his stand on the evidence of sense and
measurement alone ! — when he proposes to sweep out beliefs
that trouble him with their neighborhood, by a general crusade
against all probabilities, — and when, with this design, he vio
lates the just balance of power among the kingdoms of human
knowledge, and flatters, as if it were a virtue, the pretensions
of a mental habit, which, out of its own province, is one of
the most incapacitating, yet destructive, of intellectual vices !
There is, however, a certain secret affinity of feeling between
a Religion which exaggerates the functions and overstrains
the validity of an external authority, and a Science which
deals only with objective facts, perceived or imagined. The
point of sympathy is found in a common distrust of every
thing internal, even of the very faculties (as soon as they are
contemplated as such) by which the external is apprehended
and received. And between this sort of faith and the math
ematics there is another analogy, which may explain so curi
ous a mutual understanding. Both rest upon hypotheses,
which it is beyond their province to look into, but after the as
sumption of which, all room for opinion is shut out by a rigid
necessity. Once get your infallible book, and (supposing the
meaning unambiguous) it settles every matter on which it pro
nounces ; and once allow the first principles and definitions in
geometry to express truths and realities, and you can deny
nothing afterwards. It is the business of philosophy to go be
low the mathematics, and determine whether they are more
than hypothetical science, — whether their assumptions are a
mere play of subjective necessity, or are objectively trust
worthy. It is the business of both reflective philosophy and
historical criticism to go below "the book," and determine
whether it has more than hypothetical infallibility, — whether
the conditions, inner and outer, of such a claim, are or are not

396 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
satisfied. If even the Mathematics, which have little to fear
from the investigation of their basis, have not been on the
best terms with Metaphysics, it is hardly surprising that a
Religion of mere external authority should feel antipathy for
the studies which pry into its foundations, with the inevitable
effect of showing that what is certainty above ground is opinion
below. Nor is it wonderful that both sets of behefs are fond
of forgetting their hypothetical origin, contemplating only
their acquired semblance of security, and speaking as if they
disowned contingency altogether, and despised the detractors
who could suspect such a taint in their blood. Hence the fel
low-feeling which occasionally unites a rigid theology, and an
exclusive physical and mathematical science. It is founded
on their joint antipathy to the sources of moral knowledge, —
their common blindness to one half of human culture. Like
all alliances resting on antipathy alone, it is neither honorable
nor durable. It is the function of Religion to occupy a tran
quil seat above the contests of partial pursuits and narrow in
terests ; as, in the world of action, to hold the balance of
Right, so, in the world of intellect, to preserve the equities and
the equilibrium of Truth ; and her trust is betrayed by any
one who flings himself, as her representative, into the civil
wars of the sciences, and in her name signs away whole prov
inces of thought, and abandons them to outrage and confisca
tion as conquered lands. Human faith has nothing to fear
from the unity and perfection of all the sciences ; but much
from the blind ambition of each one. It is from this persua
sion alone, and not from any defective appreciation of physical
studies, that we have spoken freely of their' tendency, when
the mind is entirely enclosed within them. The undoubted
source of inestimable blessings to mankind, and an indispen
sable element of culture to the individual, they are mischiev
ous only when they grow dizzy with success, and propound
schemes of universal empire. The moment they undertake
either to create or destroy a religion, the sign is unmistakable
that this intoxicated ambition has begun to work.
The relation of Rehgion to History our author appears to

THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 397
us to conceive much more correctly than its relation to Science.
On this great topic, however, our limits forbid us to enter.
One remark only we will make. The author misconceives
the objection of Theodore Parker and others to the ordinary
doctrine of historical revelation. They do not, as he affirms,
" disjoin religion from history," or in the least dechne the
" travelling back to ages past " on its account. It is not the
presence of God in antiquity, but his presence only there, —
not his inspiration in Palestine, but his withdrawal from every
spot besides, — not even his supreme and unique expression
in Jesus of Nazareth, but his absence from every other human
medium, — against which these writers protest. They feel
that the usual Christian advocate has adopted a narrow and
even irreligious ground ; that he has not found a satisfactory
place in the Divine scheme of human affairs for the great
Pagan world ; that he has presumptuously branded all history
but one as " profane " ; that he has not only read it without
sympathy and reverence, but has used it chiefly as a foil to
show off the beauty of evangelic truth and holiness, and so
has dwelt only on the inadequacy of its philosophy, the deform
ities of its morals, the degenerate features of its social life ;
that he has forgotten the Divine infinitude when he assumes
that Christ's plenitude of the Spirit implies the emptiness of
Socrates. In their view, he has rashly undertaken to prove,
not one positive fact, — a revelation of divine truth in Galilee, —
but an infinite negative, — no inspiration anywhere else. To
this negation, and to this alone, is their remonstrance addressed.
They do not deny a theophany in the gift of Christianity ; but
they deny two very different things, viz. : — 1. That this is the
only theophany ; and, 2. That this is theophany alone ; — that
is, they look for some divine elements elsewhere ; and they look
for some human here. It is not therefore a smaller, but a
larger, religious obligation to history, which they are anxious
to establish ; and they remain in company with the Christian
advocate, so long as his devout and gentle mood continues ;
and only quit him when he enters on his sceptical antipathies.
This, in spite of every resistance from the rigor of the older
34

398 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF.
theology, is an inevitable consequence of the modern histor
ical criticism. Its large and genial apprehension opens for us
new admirations, new sympathies, clearer insight into human
realities, throughout the nations and ages of the past. It
melts away from our ancient moral geography the ideal con
trasts of coloring which made the world the scene of an un
natural dualism, and reinstates the great families of man in
unity. It is doing for our conception of the moral world what
science has already done for our conception of the natural : it
is expanding our notion of Divine agency within it. As, in
reference to physical nature, we have learned to think that
God did not enact creation but once, and cease ; so are we be
ginning to perceive, in relation to the human mind and life, that
he did not enter history only once, and quite exceptionally.
Whoever opens his heart to this great thought will find in it,
not the uneasiness of doubt, but the repose of faith. He will
no longer fancy that, in order to keep Christianity as the
divinest of all, he must fear to feel aught else divine. He
will worship stiU at the same altar, and sing his hymn to the
same strain ; only with a richer chorus of consentient voices,
and in a wider communion of faithful souls.

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.

" And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other
tongues, according as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were so
journing at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heav
en. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together ; and
they were confounded because every one heard them speaking in his own
language." — Acts ii. 4-6. **
In that marvellous scene, the anniversary of which coin
cides on this Whitsunday with our Centenary, a question long
pending between the Rabbis and the Holy Spirit came to an
open issue. They were Aramaean scholars, and had their
Kingdom of Heaven set forth in the best Hebrew, which, true
enough, was of no great human currency, and not strictly a
living tongue at all; but then had been distinguished by
Divine use from the earliest time. Was it not in this that the
Call had come to Abram ? and the promises been repeated to
the Patriarchs ? and the music been flung from the harp of
David? and the burdens of inspiration been treasured on the
Prophet's scroll ? Who could quote a word that God had
ever spoken in any other language ? It was the one sacred
idiom, from which all others are divergent corruptions, and
to which, when the world's confusion is over, they must again
return. However few in these decadent ages might under
stand it still, it was intrinsically fitted to be universal. And
who could call that speech provincial, at whose sound the
heavens and earth arose? or esteem it temporary, when it

400 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
persevered through the dispersion at Babel, and was present
on the world before the Flood ? So there must be nothing
else allowed in the liturgies of the Synagogue, in the reading
of Scripture, or in any intercourse between man and God.
Only when men began to converse with one another, to com
pare their human thoughts, and descend from prophetic to di
dactic gifts, might they resort to the media of profaner life.
The language of Worship was but one ; though the jargons of
Opinion were many. And so the Scribes and the Rabbis of
the written Word supposed themselves to hold the only key
of life.
But the Holy Spirit goes into no one's keeping, and is no
respecter of tongues. Free as the wind to blow where it list-
eth, it sweeps wherever souls are genial to its breath, and will
yield to it their gifts, of love, of lips, of life. It seemed to
have had enough of Hebrew, ever since it had gone into the
hands of the philologists, and been made a sacred language,
and begun to drone. It had long been fueling its way in other
directions, tempting men to pray out of the fresh heart, and
never mind the words, till now at last the secret broke, that
on any native tongue by which souls most freely flow together,
may all pass out to God ; that the home-sounds are the de-
voutest too; that the speech into which men are born, and
which has become to them as a stringed instrument answering
to the faintest touch»of their affections, is the true vehicle by
which "the Spirit giveth utterance." The prayer of faith,
ascending in the idioms of every latitude, converges into one
in heaven. And God's truth, descending to this world, breaks
into all the moulds of expression native to our various race.
One Gospel in many dialects, — that is the great Pentecost
lesson, construe the miracle as we may. And there are dia
lects of Thought as well as speech, — natural differences of
temperament and character, — to which the Gospel, still with
out prejudice to its unity, adapts itself with the same divine
flexibility. What private observer — still more what student
of history — can doubt that we are not all made in the same
mould, — that the proportions of our humanity are variously

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 401
mixed, — that not only do we individually differ in moral sus
ceptibility and spiritual depth, but fall into permanent groups
marked by distinct and ineradicable characters, and reprodu
cing the same religious tendencies from age to age ? Trans
pose the souls of Plato and Pascal into the right place and
time, and do you suppose they would turn up as Latitudina-
rian Divines ? Deal as you will with the lot of Priestley and
Belsham, and could you ever enroll them among the Chris
tian Mystics? Close in the fires of Augustine's nature with
what damps you may, and could you ever find him peace in a
Gospel of Good Works ? No ; we touch here on differences
deeper than accident, and irremovable by culture, — differen
ces that vindicate their reality by crossing the lines of dissim
ilar religions and reappearing in all times. They necessarily
give us differing wants and experiences ; they set into differ
ing shapes of faith ; and on souls equaUy faithful they fix very
differing expressions. They are so many vernacular idioms
of the inner mind: all have divine right to be: no one of
them is entitled to call itself the sacred language alone intel
ligible between man and God ; and the pretension of any to
supersede the rest, and reign alone, is not less vain than the
complaints of ignorance against foreign dialects, and the am
bition to exchange the many running waters of local literature
into the huge tank of a universal language. They may not
be able to understand each other, or even with the key of
outward comparison always bear translation into idioms other
than their own. But let them speak in their own way, and
pray their own prayer. Not only are they aU clear to Him
that readeth the heart; there will thus be more heart for Him
to read: for faith and love, large as they may be, are ever
deepest in their special tones ; and the prayer, the hymn,
which is touched with the spirit's local coloring, comes to us
like the aroma of native fields, and assuages our thirst like
the sweet waters of some weU given to our fathers and made
sacred by a Saviour's noonday rest.
On this principle, — that different types of natural genius
in men cannot but throw their Christianity into different forms,
34*

402 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
— we may not only justify the divisions of Christendom, but
even cease to wish that they should disappear. Unity no
doubt there must be : God is one; Truth is one; the Gospel
is one ; and a mind that could take in the whole, and spread
its insight and affections in all dimensions at once, would reach
the Divine equilibrium, in which nothing partial preponderates.
But from our watch-tower we can look through only one win
dow at once ; the blind walls of our mental chamber shut out
all the rest ; and as we kneel, like Daniel, at the open light,
the breeze upon our face seems sacred, because it comes from
our Jerusalem. The question is not, whether there is such a
thing as truth, rounded off, self-balanced, and complete ; in the
mind of God, — the final seat of reality, — of course there is.
Nor is it a question, whether each individual man can attain
a faith consistent in its parts, agreeable to fact, and adequate
to his nature. This also is possible. But when he has at
tained it, on what terms is it to co-exist with other faiths pre
senting parallel pretensions ? Is he in his heart to identify
his own with the absolute truth, sufficient for all as for him
self? Is he to expect them to come round to it, and altogeth
er throw away their own ? Or is he to confess to himself his
own limitations, to suspect that he may have his blind sides,
and reverently to seek something he has missed in that which
others persist in seeing? In which direction is he to seek
unity ? By antipathy to all beliefs save one ? — or by inviting
all of them to live their life and show their place in human
nature ? It is the genius of Romanism to seek unity by sup
pression ; of Protestantism, by free development ; — of the for
mer, to protect the consistency it has ; of the latter, to press for
ward to one that it has not. Are we taunted with our " Prot
estant variations " ? Why, the more they are, the richer is
our field of experience, the finer our points of comparison ;
provided, however, that we hold fast to the noble trust in a
Gospel of identity at bottom, and seek it rather in the relig
ious heart of aU the churches, than in the theologic wisdom of
our own. No man can proclaim the principle of " One Gos
pel in many dialects;' unless he is prepared to admit that his

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 403
own faith is one of the dialects, and nothing more ; to presume
a meaning in the others, however hid from him ; and while
they remain to him a mere inarticulate jargon, to ascribe it
sooner to his own incapacity than to their insignificance.
When God's truth, refracted on its entrance into our nature,
shall emerge into the white light again, not one of these
tinted beams can be spared. Let us for a moment arrest and
examine them. Let us look at the chief varieties which
Christianity assumes as it penetrates the soul ; at once recog
nizing our own place, and appreciating that of others.
There are three great types of natural mind on which the
Spirit of Christ may fall ; and each, touched and awakened by
him, " utters the wonderful works of God " in a language of
its own.
(1.) There is the Ethical mind, calm, level, and clear;
chiefly intent on the good-ordering of this life ; judging all
things by their tendency to this end ; and impatient of every
oscillation of our nature that swings beyond it. There is
nothing low or unworthy in the attachment which keeps this
spirit close to the present world, and watchful for its affairs.
It is not a selfish feeling, but often one intensely social and
humane ; not any mean fascination with mere material inter
ests, but a devotion to justice and right, and an assertion of
the sacred authority of human duties and affections. A man
thus tempered deals chiefly with this visible life and his com
rades in it, because, as nearest to him, they are the better
known. He plants his standard on the present, as on a van
tage-ground, where he can survey his field, and manoeuvre all
his force, and compute the battle he is to fight. Whatever his
bearing towards fervors beyond his range, he has no insensibil
ity to the claims that fall within his acknowledged province,
and that appeal to him in the native speech of his humanity.
He so reverences veracity, honor, and good faith, as to expect
them hke the daylight, and hear of their violation with a flush
of scorn. His word is a rock, and he expects that yours will
not be a quicksand. If you are lax, you cannot hope for his
trust ; but if you are in trouble, you easily move his pity.

404 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
And the sight of a real oppression, though the sufferer be no
ornamental hero, but black, unsightly, and disreputable, suf
fices perhaps to set him to work for life, that he may expunge
the disgrace from the records of mankind. Such men as he
constitute for our world its moral centre of gravity ; and who
ever would compute the path of improvement that has brought
it thus far on its way, or trace its sweep into a brighter future,
must take account of their steady mass.
The effect of this style of thought and taste on the religion
of its possessor is not difficult to trace. It may, no doubt,
stop short of avowed and conscious religion altogether; its
basis being simply moral, and its scene temporal, its conditions
may be imagined as complete, without any acknowledgment
of higher relations. But, practically, this is an exceptional
case. A deep and reverential sense of Moral Authority
passes irresistibly into Faith in a Moral Governor ; and Con
science, as it rises, culminates in Worship. And to such nat
ural religion, the hearty reception of the revealed Gospel is
so congenial a sequel, that Christianity has enlisted its chief
body-guard — its band of Immortals — from the writers of
this school. In the form which they give to the faith, they
are true to themselves, still keeping close to the human, and,
except to sanction and glorify this, not apt to dwell upon the
Divine. The second table of commandment has more reahty
to them than the first ; and the whole of rehgion presents it
self to their mind under the idea of Law. God in Christ
teaches us his Will ; publishes the punishment and the re
ward ; and requires our obedience ; aiding us in it by the
perfect example of Christ, and reassuring us under failure by
the offer of pardon on repentance. Now this is a true Gos
pel ; not a proposition of it can be gainsaid ; and whoever from
his heart can repeat this creed, — God is holy ; morality, di
vine ; penitence, availing ; goodness, immortal ; guilt, secure
of retribution ; and Christ, our pattern for both lives, — is not
far from the kingdom of Heaven, and has a faith as much
beyond the practice, as it is short of the professions, of the
great mass of Christians. If he has an equable, rational, and

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 405
balanced nature ; if he can depend on himself, and reduce his
will to the discipline of rules ; if he have affections temper
ate enough to follow reason instead of lead it, and to love God
by sense of fitness and word of command ; if moral prudence
is so strong in him that he can bear the idea of " doing good
for the sake of everlasting happiness " ; if no wing ever beats
in his soul that takes him off his feet ; — his wants are provid
ed ; he has guidance for the problems that will meet him on
his way, — indications of duty, ¦ — ¦ grounds of trust, — and a
path traced through every Gethsemane and Calvary of this
world, to the saintly peace of another.
But while this is a true Gospel, is it the whole Gospel ? Not
so ; unless the voice of the Saviour is to reach only a part of
our humanity, and in response draw but a " little flock." For
not many of our race are made of this even and unfermenting
clay. Who can deny that there abound, — and among the
greatest names of Christian history, —
(2.) Passionate natures, that cannot thus work out their own
salvation, but ever pray to be taken whither of themselves they
cannot go ? It is not that they are necessarily weak of will,
deficient in self-control, and unequal to the human moralities.
Rather is it, that they get through all these, and yet can find
no peace. Duty, as men measure it, may be satisfied ; but
still the face of God does not lift up its light. For want of
that answering look, it is all as the tillage of the black desert ;
digging by night without a heaven above, and sowing in sands
which no dew shall fertilize. Intense and effectuating resolve
was certainly not wanting in Luther ; what his young con
science imposed, his will achieved, — wasting asceticism, per
severing devotion, humble charities ; yet the shadow of death
brooded around his irreproachable obedience. Is it not that
the same sorrow which, in more level minds, is brought by a
fall of the will, arises in these men from the ascent of their
aspirations ? Haunted by the image of God's Holiness, drawn
to it, yet fluttering helplessly at immeasurable depths below
it, they strain after an obedience they cannot reach, and never
lose the sense of infinite failure. Measured by their aims,

406 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
their power is nothing. Did the law of Christ require nothing
but works which the hand could do, its conditions would be
finite, and might be satisfied. But its claims sweep through
the affections of the soul ; and who can make himself love
where he is cold ? who set himself behind his own thoughts,
and keep guilty intruders outside the door of his nature ? Im
possible ! the inner life, which is the special seat of our divine
concerns, evades our laboring prudence, and tortures con
science without obeying it. How then do these sufferers find
their emancipation ? They have a Gospel, according to which
Christ is not given as the Teacher of Law, but set up as the
personal object of pure Trust and Love. God sent his Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, to mitigate the Divine into gen
tleness, to elevate the Human into holiness, and show how
there is one moral perfection for both; surrendered him to
humiliation and self-sacrifice ; placed him in heaven ; and of
fered to accept pure faith and love towards him as the recon
ciling term for the human soul, — as the substitute for an
unattainable ideal of obedience. Here then is the salvation
of these passionate natures. This simple trust, this intense
affection, is precisely what they have to give. They- cannot
direct themselves; but only fix their love, and you may lead
them as a child. Self-discipline is impossible ; self-escape tri
umphant. Try from within to hold the struggling winds of
their nature with iron bands of law, and you do but stir the
sleeping storms. Set in the heavens without an orb of divine
attraction, — a new star in the East, — and you carry their
whole atmosphere away. Engage their faith ; and for the
first time they will prevail over their work. Let there be an
appeal of Grace to their enthusiasm, — a whispered word,
" Lovest thou me ?" — and the very burden that was too heavy
to be borne loses all its weight; and the drudging mill of
habit, that seemed so servile once, they pace with songs and
joy. There are men who so need to be thus carried out of
themselves, that without it their nature runs to waste, or burns
away with self-consuming fires. They are like one who, in a
dream, should set himself to chmb a far-off mountain-top ; if

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 407
he tries to run, he cannot even creep, and only wakes himself
to find that he lies still on the bed of nature. But if the
thought of his mind should be, that an overmastering power
— chariot of fire and horses of fire — lifts him away, he
floats through the clear space, till, without effort, his feet stand
upon the visionary hills.
Here then, again, — in this doctrine of Faith, — we have a
true Gospel, speaking to many hearts impenetrable by the
doctrme of Works. But have we even yet the whole Gos
pel ? Has the Good Shepherd, in these two words, made his
voice known to all that are his ? Or are there other sheep
still to be gathered that are not of these folds ? I believe
there are. For thus far we have looked only at the moral side
of Christian doctrine, — at its different answers to the problem
of Sin, — at the conditions of. ultimate acceptance with God,
notwithstanding deep unworthiness. Whether you say, Pa
tiently obey, and you shall grow into perfection of faith and
love ; or, Fling yourself on faith and love, and you will find
grace for patient obedience ; — in either case you are prescrib
ing terms of salvation ; you have the future life specially in
mind, and are anxious to make ready the soul there to meet
her God. But there are persons who cannot fix any partic
ular solicitude upon that crisis, as if all before were probation,
and all after were judgment, — as if here were only faith in
an absent, and there sight of a present God ; — who cannot
dramatically divide existence into a two-act piece, first Time,
then Eternity, and wait for the Infinite Presence, till the cur
tain rises between them ; but are haunted by the feeling that,
as Time is in Eternity, so is Man already shut up in God.
This is the indigenous sentiment of another natural type of
mind, which may be called, —
(3.) The Spiritual. God is a Spirit ; man has a spirit ;
both, Now ; both, Here ; and shall they never meet ? shall
they remain without exchange of looks ? shall nothing break
the seal of eternal silence ? is there really love between them,
and thought, and purpose, and yet all recognition dumb ?
Why teU us of God's Omniscience, if it only sleeps around us

408 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
like dead space, or at most lies watching, like a sentinel of
the universe, not free to stir ? Who could ever pray to this
motionless Immensity ? who weep his griefs to rest on a Pity
so secret and reserved ? Surely if He is a Living Mind, he
not merely remains over from a Divine Past to appear again
in a Divine Future, but moves through the immediate hours,
and awakens a thousand sanctities to-day. Urged by such
questionings as these, men of meditative piety have thirsted
for conscious communion with the All-holy ; — communion both
ways : appeal and response ; a crossing line of light from eye
to eye ; a quiet walk with God, where all the dust of life
turns, at his approach, into the green meadow, and its flat
pools into the gliding waters. They have retired within to
meet him ; have believed that all is not ours that it is ours to
feel ; that there is Grace of his mingling with the inner fibres
of our nature, and flinging in, across the constant warp of our
personality, flying tints of deeper beauty, and hints of a pat
tern more divine. And all have agreed, that, in order to reach
this Holy Spirit, and through its vivifying touch be born
again, the one thing needful is a stripping off of self, an aban
donment of personal desire and will, a return to simphcity,
and a docile listening to the whispers spontaneous from God.
They find all sin to be a rising up of self ; all return to holi
ness and peace a sinking down from self, a free surrender of
the soul, — that asks nothing, possesses nothing, that relaxes
every rigid strain, and is pliant to go whither the highest Will
may lead. Nature, of her own foolishness, ever goes astray
in her quest of divine things ; wandering away in flights of
laboring Reason to find her God ; panting with over-plied
resolve to do her work; scheming rules, and artifices, and
bonds of union for forming her individuals into a Church.
Reverse all this, and fall back on the centre of the Spirit, in
stead of pressing out in all radii of your own. Let Intellect
droop her ambitious wing, and come home ; there, in the in
most room of conscience, God seeks you all the while. Lash
your wearied strength no more ; sit low and weak upon the
ground, with loving readiness hitherward or thitherward, and

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 409
you shall be taken through your work with a sevenfold strength
that has no effort in it. Leave yourself awhile in utter soli
tude, shut out all thoughts of other men, yield up whatever
intervenes, though it be the thinnest film, between your soul
and God ; and in this absolute loneliness, the germ of a holy
society will of itself appear, a temper of sympathy and mercy,
trustful and gentle, suffuses itself through the whole mind:
though you have seen no one, you have met all ; and are girt
for any errand of service that love may find. So then, if
there were twenty or a thousand in this case, their wills would
flow together of their own accord, and find themselves in
brotherhood without a plan at all.
So speaks this doctrine of the Spirit. It matters not now
under which of its many theologic forms we conceive it ; sim
plest perhaps, that the Indwelling God, who in Christ was -the
Word, is in us the Comforter. But surely, this also is not
altogether a false Gospel. It rescues the conception of direct
communion between the human spirit and the Divine, — a
conception essential to the Christian hfe, — which an Ethical
Gospel does not adequately secure : for communion must be
between like and like, while obedience may be from slave to
lord, nay, in some sense, from machine to maker. Nor is it
a slight thing to take the scales from our eyes that hide from
us the sanctities of our immediate life ; to abolish the post
ponement of eternity ; and, wayfarers as we are, make us feel,
as we rise from our stony pillow and pass on, that here is the
abode of God, and here does the angel-ladder touch the
ground ! Yet this too is not the whole Gospel. It absorbs
too much in God. It scarcely saves human personality and
responsibility. It does no justice to nature, which it regards
as the negative of God. It melts away Law in Love, and
hides the rocky structure of this moral world in a sunny haze
that confuses earth and air.
What, then, shall we say of these three types of Christian
faith ? Do you doubt their reality ? It is demonstrated
within the century which we close this day. For while our
forefathers were dedicating this house of prayer to the first,
85

410 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
the Gospel of Christian Duty, Wesley had already become
the prophet of the last, — the new birth of the Spirit ; and
erelong Evangelicism started up, and proclaimed the second,
— the Salvation by Faith. Do you doubt their durability
and permanence ? It is proved by eighteen centuries' expe
rience, for the New Testament is not older. There, within
the group of sacred books themselves, do they all lie ; the Jew
ish Gospels represent the first ; the Gentile Apostle's letters,
the second; the writings of the beloved disciple, , the third.
Matthew, as every reader must remark, is for the Law ; Paul,
for Faith ; and John, for the Spirit. And, in every age, the
great mass of Christian tendencies break themselves into these
three forms : — Ebionite, Pauline, and contemplative Qnostic ;
Pelagian, Augustinian, and Mystic ; Jesuit, Jansenist, and
Quietist ; Arminian, Lutheran, and Quaker ; all proclaim the
perseverance of the same essential types, wherever the spirit
of Christ alights upon the various heart of man.
Is Christ then divided? Is he not equal to the whole of
our humanity ? Rather let us say, that we are small and
weak for the measure of his heavenly wisdom. Doubtless, if
we take what we can hold, and put it to faithful application,
we have grace enough for every personal exigency. But
there is, surely, an evil inseparable from all partial develop
ments of religion, which only satisfy the immediate cravings
of the mind, and leave parts, of our nature — asleep perhaps
at the moment — liable to wake and thirst again. Such sep
arate growths run out their resources and exhaust themselves
in a few generations. At first, they answer to some felt want ;
they collect a congenial multitude, and open to them a spir
itual refuge that ends their wanderings. But the sentiment,
once brought into a contented state, ceases to be importunate
and prominent ; and by its abatement gives opportunity for
other feelings to vindicate their existence. When the wound
is bound up and has lost its smart, the natural hunger begins
to tell. The children grow up other than the fathers, perhaps
quite as limited, only in different ways, — with affections
pressing into just the vacant places of an earlier age. Mean-

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 411
while, the imperfection of the original basis has provoked
reactions equally of narrow scope, — equally incapable of
permanently filling the capacities of the Christian mind.
Hence the danger, if the separate veins of thought be still
worked on as they thin away, that the sects should degener
ate into poor theological egotisms, and wear themselves in
sensibly out. It cannot be denied that all the three religious
movements of the -last century — represented by Taylor, by
Wesley, by Cowper — exhibit the symptoms of spent strength,
and are httle likely to play again the part they have played
before. Yet every one of their Gospels is true at heart ; and the
tree that holds that pith is a tree of life, which the Eternal
husbandman hath planted ; and if he prune it, it is only that
it may bear more fruit. The weakness of these faiths is in
their isolation ; and if their sap could but mingle, if no ele
ment were lost which they can draw from the root of the
vine, a young frondescent life would show itself again. Those
who think that the future can only repeat the past, will deem
this impossible ; though least of all should it appear so to us
who profess ourselves " Christians and only Christians,"
pledged to nothing but to he open to all God's truth. For
myself I indulge a joyful hope that the next century of Chris
tendom will be nobler than the last; that the great Faiths
which have struggled separately into the light of the one, will
flow together on the broader and less broken surface of the
other. If, however, this is to be, it will arise from no mere
intellectual scrutiny, whose function will ever be to distin
guish, and not to unite, and, in proportion as it dominates
alone, to trace ever-new lines of critical divergency. When
the problem of Christendom is, to deliver the individual mind
from the operation of an overwhelming- social power, then it
is seasonable to insist on the principle of free inquiry ; be
cause then you have a dead mass to disintegrate, ere any
young and living force can urge its way. But when you have
won this victory, and when individualism ceases to be devout
and tends to party self-wUl, the hour comes to proclaim the

412 ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS.
converse lesson, and break up the vain reliance on mere liberty
of thought. Depend upon it, Unity lies in profounder strata
of our nature than any tillage of the mere intellect can reach.
Sink deeply into the inmost hfe of any Christian faith, and
you will touch the ground of all. Did we do nothing with
our religion except live by it ; did we forget the presence of
doubt and contradiction; did it cease to be a creed about
God and become simply an existence in God ; did we ex
change self-assertion before men for self-surrender to him ; —
we should find ourselves side by side with unexpected friends,
should be astonished at our petulant divisions, and replace
the poor charity of mutual forbearance by the free conscious
ness of inward sympathy. For us especially, who feel the
temptations of an exceptional position, is it the prime duty to
live and move and have our being in the divine sanctities that
hold us, in that which we have not been obliged to throw
away ; else might our Gospel be no fruit-bearing branch,
drinking from the root of the vine, but a dead residuum, with
ered and hopeless. Remember that, if Sin be not original,
all the more must it be actual, and the deeper should its
shadow lie upon the Conscience, and touch us with the mood
of faithfulness and prayer. If, in reconciling man with God,
there is no vicarious sacrifice possible, so much the more re
mains over for self-sacrifice, as the only path of communion
and peace. If you will have it that Christ is only human, so
much the more Divine is your humanity to be ; you cannot
assume that as the type of your nature, without at least own
ing that its essence lies, and its glory is found, not in the nat
ural man, but in the spiritual man ; and by this very con
fession, you renounce the low aims of the worldly mind, and
take on yourself the vows of the saintly. Let believers only
be true to the grace they have, and more will be given ; and
enter where they may the many-gated sanctuary of the Chris
tian life, they will tend ever inwards to the same centre, and
meet at last in the holiest of all. • Keeping a reverent eye
fixed on the person and spirit of Christ, they cannot but find
their partial apprehensions corrected and enlarged ; for his

ONE GOSPEL IN MANY DIALECTS. 413
divine image is complete in its revelation, and rebukes every
narrower Gospel. Moral perfectness, divine communion,
free self-sacrifice, — all blend in him, — indistinguishable ele
ments of one expression. In that august and holy presence,
our divisions sink abashed, and hear, as of old, the word of
recall, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of." Or if, through
our infirmities, that gracious form, appearing in the midst as
we discourse among ourselves and are perplexed and sad, do
not suffice to open our eyes and make us less slow of heart
to one another and to him, at least in that higher world,
whither our forerunners are gone, his living look will perfect
the communion of saints. There at length the guests of his
bounty will find that, though at separate tables, they have aU
been fed by the same bread of hfe, and touched their lips
with the same wine of remembrance : there, the voices of the
wise, often discordant here, — of Taylor and Wesley, of En
field and Cowper, of Heber and Channing, — will blend in
harmony ; — and the notes of the last age will not be the
least in that mighty chorus which crowds the steps of eigh
teen centuries, and, converging to their immortal Head, sings
the solemn strain, " Great and marvellous are thy works,
Lord God Almighty ! Just and true are aU thy ways, thou
King of Saints ! "

35*

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.

The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. By the Rev. W. J.
Conybeare, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cam
bridge ; and the Rev. J. S. Howson, M.A., Principal of
the Collegiate Institution, Liverpool. 2 vols. 4to. Long
mans. 1852.
The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians: with Critical
Notes and Dissertations. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley,
M.A., Canon of Canterbury, late Fellow and Tutor of
University CoUege, Oxford, &c. 2 vols. 8vo. Murray.
1855.
The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians,
Romans : with Critical Notes and Dissertations. By
Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of BaUiol
College, Oxford. 2 vols. 8vo. Murray. 1855.
These treatises, bearing on their title-pages the names of
our two ecclesiastical Universities, give happy signs of a new
era in English theology. They show how effectually we
have escaped from the morbid rehgious phenomena repre
sented by Simeon at Cambridge, and the counter-irritants
applied by John Henry Newman at Oxford ; and come as the
returning breath of nature to those who have witnessed the
fevers of " Evangelical " conversion or the consumptive as
ceticism of " Anglican " piety. On looking back, from the
position now attained, it seems wonderful that we could ever,

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 415
with St. Paul's writings in our hands, have been betrayed into
either of these opposite extravagances : for anything more
absolutely foreign to his breadth and universality than the
Genevan dogma, or more at variance with his free spiritual
ity than the sacramental system, it is impossible to conceive.
But it is the peculiar fate of sacred writings, that the last
thing elicited from them is their own real meaning. The
very greatness of their authority puts the reader's faculties
into a false attitude ; creates an eagerness, — an inflexible
intensity, — that defeats its own end ; and, in particular, gives
undue ascendency to the uppermost want and feeling that
may be craving satisfaction. Hence the tendency of Scrip
tural interpretation to proceed by action and reaction; an
easy ethical Arminianism being succeeded by a severe Cal
vinism, and the reliance on individual grace giving way be
fore the advance of sacerdotal and Church ideas. When the
opposite errors have spent themselves, the requisite repose of
mind will be recovered for reading just the thought that lies
upon the page : here and there an eye will be found, neither
strained with pre-occupying visions, not scared by sceptic
shadows, but clear for the apprehension of reality, as God has
shaped it for our perception. At length we have reached
this crisis of promise ; and critics are found who, instead of
interrogating St. Paul on all sorts of modern questions, listen
to him on his own ; and draw from him, not a fancied verdict
on the sixteenth century, but a faithful picture of the first.
And for this historical purpose, the writings of the great
Gentile Apostle are of paramount value, and justly occupy
the inquirer's first researches. The most considerable of
them are of unimpeachable authenticity. They are the very
earliest Christian writings we possess. They are the pro
ductions of a man more clearly known to us than any of the
first missionaries of the Gospel. They are letters : abounding
in disclosures of personal feelings, of biographical incident, of
changing moods of thought, of outward and inward conflict.
They are addressed to young communities, scattered over a
vast area, and composed of differing elements ; and exhibit

416 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
the whole fermentation of their new life, the scruples, the
heart-burnings, the noble inspirations, the grievous factions,
of the Apostolic age. The Gospels and the Book of Acts
treat no doubt of a prior period, but proceed from a posterior,
of whose state of mind, whose retrospective theories concern
ing the ministry of Christ, it is of primary importance to the
criticism of the Evangelists that we should be informed ; and
on these points the Pauline Epistles are the indispensable
groundwork of all our knowledge or conjecture. In them we
catch the Christian doctrine and tradition at an earlier stage
than any other canonical book represents throughout. Al
though the narratives of the New Testament doubtless abound
in material drawn faithfully from a more primitive time, they
are certainly not free from the touch and tincture of the jiost-
Pauline age. How powerful an instrument the Apostle's
letters may become for either confirming or checking the
historical records, may be readily conceived by every reader
of Paley's " Horse Paulinas." In fine, if it be a just princi
ple, in historical criticism, to proceed from the more known
to the less known, — to begin from a date that yields con
temporary documents, and work thence into the subjacent and
superjacent strata of events, — the elucidation of Christian
antiquity must take its commencement from the Epistles of
St. Paul.
Except in its general similarity of subject, the first of the
three works mentioned at the head of this article admits of
no comparison with the other two. It is rather an iUustrated
guide-book to the Apostle's world of place and time, than a
personal introduction to himself. The authors are highly
accomplished and scholarly men, and could not fail, in dealing
with an historical theme, to bring together and group with
conscientious skill a vast store of archaeological and topo
graphical detail ; to weigh chronological difficulties with pa
tient care ; to translate with philological precision, and due
aim at accuracy of text. They have accordingly produced a
truly interesting and instructive book : so instructive, indeed,
that by far the greater part of its information would, probably,

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 417
have been quite new to St. Paul himself. His life seems to
us to be injudiciously overlaid with what is wholly foreign to
it, and for the sake of picturesque effect to be set upon a stage
quite invisible to him. He was not " Principal of a Collegiate
Institution," accustomed to examine boys in Attic or Latian
geography ; was not familiar with Thucydides or Grote ; was
indifferent to the Amphictyonic Council ; and, in the vicin
ity of Salamis and Marathon, probably read the past no
more than a Brahmin would in travelling over Edgehill or
Marston Moor. The world of each man must be measured
from his own spiritual centre, and will take in much less in
one direction, much more in another, than is spread beneath
his eye. He cannot be reached by geographical approaches.
You may determine the elements of his orbit, and yet miss
him after all. It is an illusory process to paint the ancient
world as it would look to an Hellenic gentleman then, or a
university scholar now ; and then think how St. Paul would
feel in passing through it to convert it. The indirect influ
ence of this kind of conception seems to us apparent both in
Mr. Conybeare's translation and Mr. Howson's narrative and
descriptions. The outward scene and conditions of the Apos
tle's career are elaborately displayed ; but more with the
modern academic than with the old Hebrew tone of coloring ;
and the Enghsh version, scrupulous and delicate as it is, has,
to our taste, a general flavor quite different from the original
Greek. Unconsciously entangled in the classifications and
symbols of the Protestant theology, the authors are detained
outside the real genius and feeling of the Apostle.
Of a far higher order are the other two works, — produced,
we infer from their numerous correspondences of both form
and substance, not without concert between the authors. In
deed, the same explanation of the merits of Lachmann's text
(printed without translation by Mr. Stanley, and with the
adapted authorized version by Mr. Jowett) is made to serve
for both. So clearly and compendiously is this explanation
drawn, that, in the next edition of Lachmann, Mr Jowett's
introduction might usefully be annexed to the great critic's

418 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
rather tangled and awkward preface. Of the superior fidelity
of this recension, we think no habitual reader of the Greek
Scriptures can reasonably doubt ; and the recognition of its
authority fulfils a prior condition of all scientific theology.
The text being chosen on grounds purely critical, the notes
are written in a spirit purely exegetical ; they aim, simply
and with rare self-abnegation, to bring out, by every happy
change of light and turn of reflective sympathy, the great
Apostle's real thought and feeling. How very far this faith
ful historic purpose in itself raises the interpreter above the
crowd of erudite and commenting divines, can scarcely be
understood till it has formed a new generation, and fixed it
self as a distinct intellectual type. It is not, however, an
affair of mere will and disposition ; but, hke most of the
higher exercises of veracity, comes into operation only as the
last result of mental tact and affluence. ' With the most
honest intentions towards St. Paul, a critic without psycho
logical insight and dialectic pliancy, without power of melting
down his modern abstractions and redistributing them in the
moulds of the old realistic thought, — a critic without en
trance into the passionate depths of human nature, — a critic
preoccupied by Catholic or Protestant assumptions, and un
trained to imagine the questions and interests of the first age,
— cannot surrender himself to the natural impression of the
Apostle's language. The disciple and the master are, in such
case, at cross-purposes with one another ; the questions put
are not the questions answered; the interlocutors do not really
meet, but wind in a maze about each other's loci, not to end
tiU the unconscious interpreter has set his fantasies within
the shadow of inspiration. No such blind chase is possible
to our authors. They have achieved the conditions of fidelity ;
and bring to a task, in which the truthful and sagacious spirit
of Locke had aheady fixed the standard high, the ampler
resources of modern learning, and more practised habit of
historic combination. In the distribution of their work, the
difference of natural genius between the two authors has per
haps been consulted, and is, at aU events, distinctly expressed.

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 419
Mr. Stanley's aptitude for reproducing the image of the past,
his apprehensive sympathy with the concrete and individual
elements of the world, fitly engage themselves with the com
posite forms of Corinthian society, and the most personal,
various, and objective of the Apostle's letters. For the more
speculative Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, there
was need of Mr. Jowett's philosophical depth and subtilty.
The strictness with which he restrains these seductive gifts to
the proper business of the interpreter, is not less admirable
than their occasional happy application. Instead of being
employed to force upon the Apostle a logical precision foreign
to his habit, they are chiefly engaged in detecting and wip
ing out false niceties of distinction drawn by later theology,
and throwing back each doctrinal statement into its original
degree of indeterminateness. It is not in the notes, — which
are wholly occupied in recovering St. Paul's own thought, —
but in the interposed disquisitions, which avowedly deal with
the theology of to-day, that a certain breadth and balance of
statement, and delicate ease in manoeuvring the forms and
antitheses of abstract thought, and fine appreciation of human
experience, make us feel the double presence of metaphysical
power and historical tact. The author, accordingly, appears
to us, not only to have seized the great Apostle's attitude of
mind more happily than any preceding English critic, but
also to have separated the essence from the accidents of the
Pauline Christianity, and disengaged its divine elements for
transfusion into the organism of our immediate life. Mr.
Stanley appears to have more difficulty in unreservedly ad
hering to the purely historical view, and clerically flutters,
without clear occasion, on the outskirts of " edification " ; —
the critic in his notes, the preacher in his paraphrase ; conced
ing in act more readily than in name, and apologizing for find
ing human ingredients in the Apostles and their doctrines, as
if it were he, and not God, that would have them there. This
tendency to blur the lines which he himself draws between
the temporary and the permanent in the Scriptures with
which he deals, is the only fault we can find with Mr. Stan-

420 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
ley ; whose associate, clinging less to the past, in effect pre
serves more for the present. To learn the external scene of
the Apostle's career, we would refer our readers to Messrs.
Conybeare and Howrson ; to appreciate his moral surround
ings, and the problems it presented, especially on the ethnic
side, they may take Mr. Stanley as their guide ; but for in
sight into the Apostle himself, and outlook on the world as it
seemed to him, they must resort to Mr. Jowett.
The Pauline Epistles are interesting, apart from all assump
tion of inspired authority, because the elements are seen fer
menting there of the greatest known revolution both in the
history of the world and in the spiritual consciousness of indi
vidual man. Judaism was the narrowest (that is, the most
special) of religions ; Christianity, the most human and com
prehensive. Within a few years, the latter was evolved out of
the former ; taking all its intensity and durability, without
resort to any of its limitations. This marvellous expansion of
the national into the universal was not achieved without a pro
cess and a conflict. Divine though the work was, it had to be
wrought upon men, and through men, whose character, in
terests, convictions, habits, and institutions furnished the data
conditioning the problem, and whose remodelled affections and
will supplied the instruments for its solution. The laws of hu
man nature, therefore, and the action of human events, necessa
rily enter into the study of this great revolution ; and it cannot
be detained out of the hands of the historian by any exclusive
rights of the divine. When we endeavor to trace the succes
sive steps of faith from Mount Zion to the Vatican, many parts
of the progress appear to have left but scanty vestige. We
know the beginning, in the doctrine of the Hebrew Messiah ;
we know the end, in the recognition of a Saviour of the world.
We know the intermediate fact, — that Judaism did not sur
render its own without a struggle, or readily give away the
keys of its enclosure just when it was passing from a prison of
affliction into a palace of " the kingdom." But within this
general fact lies a world of mysterious detail, — nay, almost
the whole life of the early Church. Who began the open

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 421
breach between Messiah and the Law ? how, and to what ex
tent, did the parties divide ? what was their relative magnitude
at different times and in different places ? and by what process
was the difference terminated, and the two extremes — Mar-
cion on the one hand and the Ebionites on the other — re
moved outside as heretics ? The Christianity of the third
century is so little like the doctrine of Matthew's Gospel as to
perplex our sense of identity. No one can bring the two into
direct comparison, without feehng how much must have hap
pened to shape the earlier into the form of the later. Could
we trace the flow and estimate the sources of this change, the
most wonderful of the world's experiences would be resolved.
The continuity, however, of visible causation is often broken ;
there are everywhere many missing links in the chain, and a
chasm extending through a large part of the second century.
But a generation earlier we meet with materials of the rich
est value in the Epistles of St. Paul ; and by their aid the
general direction may be found by which thought and events
must have advanced. Otherwise, the change would seem as
violent and inconceivable as a convulsion that should mingle
the Jordan and the Tiber.
No doubt, the germ of the Gospel's universality is to be
found in the personal characteristics of its Author, — in the
whole spirit of his life, and the direct tendency of his teach
ings. He who found in the love of God and love of man the
very springs of eternal hfe ; who measured good and evil, not
by the act, but by the affection whence they come ; who
placed his ideal for man in likeness to the perfection of God,
¦ — had already proclaimed a religion transcending all local
limits. Nay, if he opposed the " true worship " to the services
at Gerizim and Jerusalem, and could wish the Temple away,
that obstructed his direct dealing with the human soul and
suppressed the inner shrine " not made with hands," he
must even have placed himself in an attitude of open aliena
tion towards the ritual of his people. At the same time, his
words seem to have left not unfrequently an opposite impres
sion. He comes, " not to destroy the Law and the prophets,
36

422 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
but to fulfil " them ; " not a jot or a tittle is to fail." His
most spiritual truths and sentiments, instead of being an
nounced as novelties grounding themselves on his personal
authority, are drawn out of the old Hebrew Scriptures ; and
even the life beyond death he finds lurking in patriarchal id
ioms and phrases heard at the burning bush. His intensest
polemic against the sacerdotal party goes on within the limits
of the system which they represent and yet corrupt ; and his
bitterest reproach against them is that there is no reverence
for it in their hearts, since they hugely violate and trivially
obey it. Far from ever launching out against law as law, or
setting up faith as a rival principle excluding it, he extends
precept to the last heights of religion, enjoins the divinest af
fections, as if there also obedience was possible, and duty and
volition had their place. It was not in a nature holy and
harmonious as his, — type of heavenly peace rather than of
earthly conflict, — that the schism would be exhibited between
Will and Love ; where both are at their height, there is no
rent between them. Nor was there need, in that meek, rev
erential soul, to break with the past, in order to find a sanc
tity for the present, and leave an inspiration for the future.
Some things, once given for the hardness of men's hearts,
might be dropped, and fall behind ; but God had ever hved,
and left the trace of his perfectness upon the elder times as
on the newest manifestations of the hour. There was enough
in the Law, if only its fruitful seeds were warmed into life, to
furnish forth the Gospel. And so Christ presents himself as
the disciple of Moses, and in the Sermon on the Mount does
but open out the tables of Sinai. It was not, therefore, with
out honest ground that his immediate disciples could defend
him from the charge of being unfaithful to the rehgion of his
native land. And yet the instinct of the priests and rabbis
told them truly that he and they could not co-exist, that his
doctrine reduced their work to naught, and that, whenceso-
ever he might draw it, there was no doubt whither he must
carry it. The " witnesses " were not altogether " false "
which they brought to show his inner hostility to the altar

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 423
ceremonial ; and perhaps his enemies, with apprehension
sharpened by fear, more correctly interpreted his tendency in
this direction than his followers, entangled in the cloud of a
Judaic love. It was quite natural that the real antithesis be
tween the Law and the Gospel should thus be first felt by his
antagonists, whilst as yet it slept undeveloped in the minds of
his followers and in the habitual expression of his own
thought ; and that its earliest proclamation should be their
act, their defiance, the cross on Calvary !
This terrible challenge, fiercely protesting that the Law
would hold no parley with the Gospel, the Apostles, however,
refused to accept. They still denied their Lord's apostasy
or their own ; they had always been, and with his encourage
ment, the best of Jews : nor did they contemplate, so far, any
change. The crucifixion was a Jewish mistake, meant for
the nation's enemy, but alighting on its representative ; a
mistake, however, which God had counteracted by a glorious
rescue, in the resurrection of the crucified. The mischief
being thus undone, the day of Hebrew opportunity was re
sumed ; the ministry of Jesus was not closed ; he yet lived
and preached to them as before ; — no longer, indeed, in per
son till their better mind should re-assert itself, but by " faith
ful witnesses " ; — no longer too in tentative disguise, but now
identified as Messiah by his exaltation above this world.
Whatever conflicts of mind the disciples suffered in the mys
terious period following the crucifixion, the operation of the
resurrection and the Spirit was at first simply to reinstate
them in their prior faith, — that the kingdom would soon be
restored to Israel, and be brought in by no other than their
Master, already waiting for the crisis in a higher world till
God's hour should come. There is no evidence to show that,
on the transference of their Lord's hfe from earth to heaven,
they were carried into any greater comprehensiveness or
spirituality of faith : their convictions were more intense, but
held on in the same direction, being all included in one great
theme, — the speedy coming of Messiah's kingdom and the
end of the world. Nay, of so little consequence, in compar-

424 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
ison with this general picture of expectation, was even the
appearance in it of the person of Jesus as its central figure,
that Apollos, more than twenty years afterwards, was making
and baptizing converts, without having ever heard of any later
prophet than John the Baptist ; and these people are already
recognized as " disciples," and then informed, as needful
complement to their faith, that, besides the crisis being near,
the person is appointed.* Here had evidently been, for some
quarter of a century, two independent streams of Messianic
faith, one from a rather earlier source than the other, but
pursuing their own separate way, till thus partially confluent
at Ephesus. And what is the relation between them ? One
of them baptizes into an impersonal and anonymous hope,
the other into the same hope with the name attached. And
when these two states of mind are set side by side, they are
regarded as the same in their essence, and differing only in
completeness. Nor is there anything in their mutual feeling
to hinder their instant coalescence. This fact defines in the
clearest way the position of the early Church ; the ordinary
Jew believed that Messiah would some time come, and bring
in " the last days " ; Apollos, that he would come erelong ;
the Christians, that already the person was indicated, and
would prove to be Jesus of Nazareth. All three co-existed
within the Hebrew pale, and the two last fall under the com
mon category of " disciples."
It was impossible, however, that the contemplation of a
Messiah risen and reserved in heaven should affect all the
believers in a precisely similar manner. His personal attend
ants it would take up just where the crucifixion had let them
down ; would give new force to their previous impressions,
new sacredness to their recollections, new significance to his
words and example, new reluctance to venture where he had
not led. The whole effect would be conservative, and tend
to fix them, with an inspired rigor, within the limits of the
Master's lot and life. Quite otherwise was it with the new
* Acts sviii. 24 ; six. 7.

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 425
disciples, who had no such restraining memories of the human
Teacher. They began with Christ above, and were tied
down by no concrete biographical images, no scruples of
tender retrospect. They were free to ask themselves, " What
meant this surprising way of revealing Messiah ' in heavenly
places,' and letting his disguise first fall off in his escape from
local relations ? The scene from which he looked down, —
was it the mere upper chamber of Judaea, or did it overarch
the human world ? Who could claim him, now that he was
there ? Was it for him to examine pedigrees to test ' the
children of the kingdom ' ; or would he, as Son of David,
even come emblazoned with his own ? " The mere conception
of an ascended and immortal being, assessor to the Lord of
all, seemed to dwarf and shame all provincial restrictions, and
sanction the distaste for binding forms and ceremonial exclu-
siveness. The withdrawal of Christ to a holier sphere ac
corded wrell with all that was most spiritual in his teachings
and in himself; and could not fail to reflect a strong light
back on this aspect of his life, and give a more significant
emphasis to the tradition of his deepest words. In the mind
of many a disciple this tendency would be favored by a weari
ness towards the outer worship of the temple, and a secret
aspiration after purer and more intimate communion with
God. Especially was the foreign Jew obliged to confess
such a feeling to himself. The very speaking of Greek
spoiled him for thinking as a Hebrew ; for language is the
channel of the soul, and according as the organism is open,
the sap will flow. Accustomed to the simple piety of the
Proseucha, where God was sought without priest or sacrifice,
and adequately found in poetry, and prophecy, and prayer, the
Hellenist acquired a tone of sentiment on which the material
pomps and puerilities of Mount Moriah painfully jarred. Nor
could he enclose himself contentedly, like the Palestine Jew,
within the sacred boundary that admitted the most worthless
son of Abraham, and shut the noblest Gentile out. Living
in heathen cities, dealing with heathen men, touched at times
with the sorrow or the goodness of heathen neighbors, his
36*

426 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
moral feeling fell into contradiction with his inherited exclu-
dveness, and inwardly demanded some other providential
classification of mankind. Accordingly, it was the Hellenist
Stephen who first saw, in the heavenly Christ, a principle of
universal religion and a proclamation of spiritual worship.
When accused of defaming Moses and the Law and the holy
place, and setting up Jesus to supersede them, he boldly re
flects on the stone Temple, rooted to one spot, as at variance
with His nature who said, " Heaven is my throne, and earth
my footstool," and points to the earlier tabernacle, movable
from place to place, following the steps of wandering human
ity, as truer emblem of a faith that takes every winding of
history, and a God who goes where we go, and stays where
we stay.* This noble doctrine doubtless expressed a feeling
common among the foreign Jews of liberal culture and fervid
piety; and when consecrated by Stephen's martyrdom, it
would assume a distinctness unknown before, and become the
admitted type of belief among the Christian Hellenists. That
it was confined to them is evident from the partial effect of
the persecution in which Stephen fell. His friends, — per
haps we may say his party, — hunted from house to house,
fled from Jerusalem ; but the Jewish Apostles remained where
they were, f apparently unmenaced and undisturbed. The
hostility of the city drew therefore a distinction between such
Hebrew Christians as the twelve, and the freer " Grecians "
who proclaimed a Spirit above the Temple and the Law.
The former, constituting an inner sect of Judaism, might hold
their ground unmolested ; the latter were treated as apostates,
and " scattered abroad." The essential, but hitherto dormant,
antithesis between the Gospel and the Law, had thus burst
into expression, and embodied itself in two sections of the
Church that grew ever more distinct ; the Hebrew party con
centrated in Jerusalem, and remaining intensely national ; the
Hellenistic, spreading itself on the outskirts of Palestine,
and erelong fixing its head-quarters at Antioch. Within
* Acts vii. 44 - 49. t Acts viii. 1.

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 427
this freer circle, first as persecutor, soon as disciple, appears
Saul of Tarsus. So congenial are its tendencies and aspira
tions with his nature and his antecedent position, that his
hostile attitude towards it might well strike him, on looking
back, as a monstrous self-contradiction. A foreigner to Pal
estine, a " citizen of no mean city," familiar with a trade that
bought from the shepherds of Mount Taurus, and sold to the
Greek skippers of the Levant, he knew the human side of
the Gentile world too well to rest in a narrow Judaism. We
cannot imagine his fervid, free-moving mind, content to live
within the enclosure of Rabbinical niceties, or able to find, in
the materialism of the Temple rites, his ideal of true worship.
With sympathies essentially cosmopolitan, he could scarcely
fail to be disappointed, not to say repelled, by Jerusalem, —
so different from the dream of his young romance. Soine
higher, fresher communion between earth and heaven, some
wider monarchy for God than over a mere clan, would be to
him natural objects of aspiration. Hence his first persecuting
attitude towards the Christian Hellenists was permanently
untenable ; and as he went amongst them, words were sure
to fall upon his ear, and holy looks to meet his eye, that
would smite him with a kindred affection. Whether the
death of Stephen left on his mind images which he could not
banish, and commenced a reaction which no plunge into
fresh violences could arrest, it is vain to conjecture. That it
should be so, would be only human ; for in the life of passion,
triumph and humiliation are near neighbors, and often the
last note in the song of exultation dies down into the plaint
of compunction. Certain it is, that shortly afterwards it
"pleased God to reveal his Son in him"; that, with the
suddenness characteristic of impassioned natures, he came to
himself, and found his proper work, " to which he had been
set apart from his mother's womb " ; and that his new convic
tions were of the very same type and tendency with Stephen's,
and strongly discriminated from the Messianic doctrine of the
twelve at Jerusalem. The incipient breach between Law and
Gospel, latent in the Master, denied by the twelve, bursting

428 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
forth among the Hellenists, finally realized and defined itself
in Paul ; whose intense impulses were too great for the custo
dy of his will ; whose soul had wings to fly, but not feet to
plod ; who felt himself the theatre of hving powers not his
own, and could find no peace till, by communion with the
heavenly Son of God, he discovered a providential love uni
versal as human life, and a way of reconciliation quick and
open as human trust and reverence. It is easier to speak of
the effects than of the nature of his conversion. His writ
ings exhibit its results, but only vaguely allude to its occur
rence, and never in terms at all resembling the recitals in
the Book of Acts, or abating their discrepancies. Of these
narratives (Acts ix. 1-9, xxii. 6-12, xxvi. 12-18) Mr.
Jowett remarks, " There is no use in attempting any forced
reconcilement." (I. 229.) On the one hand, "There is no
fact in history more certain or undisputed than that, in some
way or other, by an inward vision or revelation of the Lord,
or by an outward miraculous appearance as he was going to
Damascus, the Apostle was suddenly converted from being a
persecutor to become a preacher of the Gospel." (I. 227.)
On the other, " If we submit the narrative of the Acts to the
ordinary rules of evidence, we shall scarcely find ourselves
able to determine whether any outward fact was intended by
it or not." This, however, is of the less moment, because it is
evident from the language of the Epistle to the Galatians
(Gal. i. 15, 16) that, —
" Whether the conversion of St. Paul was an outward or
an inward fact, it was not principally the outward appearance
in the heavens, but the inward effect, that the Apostle would
have regarded. Compare Eph. iii. 3 : ' How that by revela
tion he made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore
in few words).'
"It has been often remarked, that miracles are not ap
pealed to singly in Scripture as evidences of religion, in the
same way that they have been used by modern writers. Es
pecially does this remark apply to the conversion of St. Paul.
Not a hint is found in his writings, that he regarded 'the

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 429
heavenly vision ' as an objective evidence of Christianity.
The evidence to him was the sudden change of heart ; what
he terms, in the case of his converts, the reception of the
Spirit ; what he had known, and what he felt ; the fact that
one instant he was a persecutor, and the second a preacher of
the Gospel. The last inquiry that he would have thought of
making, would be that of modern theologians : ' How, with
out some outward sign, he could be assured of the reality of
what he had seen and heard.' No outward sign could, as
such, have convinced the mind of a man who fell to the
ground amazed, unless it were certain that his companions
had seen the light and heard the voice. Nor unless they had
distinctly been partakers of the supernatural vision could he
ever have been satisfied that what they saw was anything but
a meteor, or lightning, or that the voice they heard was more
than the sound of thunder. No evidence of theirs would
have been an answer to the language of some of the ration
alist divines : ' St. Paul was overtaken by a storm of thunder
and lightning in the neighborhood of Damascus.' Such diffi
culties are insuperable ; at best we can only raise probabili
ties in answer to them, based on the general tone of the
narrative in Acts ix. But we may remember that the belief
in some outward fact was not the essential point in St. Paul's
faith, and therefore we need not make it the essential point
in our own.
" It is not upon the testimony of any single person, even
were it far more distinct than in the present instance, we can
venture to peril the truth of the Christian religion: Weak
defences of comparatively unimportant points, undermine
more than they support. He who has the Spirit of Christ
and his Apostles, has the witness in himself; he who leads
the life of Paul, has already set his seal that his words are
true. Were the other view supported by the most irrefraga
ble historical evidence, — had the sign in the clouds been
beheld by whole multitudes of Jews and Gentiles, believers
and unbeUvers, — it is to the internal aspect of the event we

430 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
should be more inchned to turn, both as the more religious
one, and the one which more closely links the Apostle with
ourselves." — Vol. I. p. 230.
With the essentially inward character of this crisis, the
substance of the revelation involved in it strikingly corre
sponds. " It was spiritual rather than historical ; a revelation of
Christ in him, not external information brought to him. It
was the ever-growing sense of union with Christ, imparted,
not in one revelation, but many ; not only by special reve
lation, but as the inward experience of a long life, from which
his union in Christ with all mankind, and his mission to
preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, were from the beginning
inseparable ; as a part of which the image . of the meekness
and gentleness of Christ formed itself in him, not without the
remembrance that he had ' seen ' Him who was now passed
into the heavens." — Jowett, Vol. I. p. 216.
Since the Apostle " nowhere speaks of any special truths
or doctrines as imparted to himself" (I. 72) ; since he never
dwells on the life of Christ, the miracles, the parables, so that
it is even doubtful what he knew of them ; and since his
whole appeal is either, (1.) to the witness of the Hebrew
Scriptures, or (2.) to historical testimony, or (3.) to the as
surance of the living Spirit, — it is evident that his conver
sion chiefly gave him that inward image of Christ crucified
and risen, which attended him through all his years, and so
lived in him as to take the place of his personality, and
coalesce with his spiritual affections, and do the work of his
will. Of the Apostle's mode of thought when fresh from his con
version no memorial exists ; his earliest extant writing being
of a date fourteen or fifteen years later, and the report in the
Book of Acts not being altogether reliable ¦ — ¦ as Mr. Jowett
has shown * — for historical accuracy. But we learn from

* See especially the Notes on Paley's Horse Paulinse, Vol. I. pp. 349, 252.
We subjoin in this connection a just and striking remark of Mr. Jowett's. In

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 431
his own remarkable statement to the Galatians, that he kept
aloof from the churches in Judasa, and was unknown to
them by face ; that it was three years before he entered Je
rusalem, or saw an Apostle ; that he then made acquaintance
with Peter, and met James, but without its affecting his inde
pendent course, which ran through eleven years more ere it
brought him to Jerusalem again ; that his errand, on this sec
ond visit, was to take security against being thwarted by
Jewish jealousies sanctioned at head-quarters ; that from
James, Cephas, and John — the " seeming pillars " of the
Church — he learnt nothing that he cared to hear ; that they,
on the other hand, could not gainsay the independent rights
of so fruitful an apostleship, and agreed with him not to cross
his path, if he would leave them theirs. The emphasis with
which, in this animated passage, St. Paul dwells on the sepa
rate sources of his own faith, and disowns any obligation to
the prior Apostles, renders it certain that the biography, the
discourses, the human personality of Jesus, were indifferent to
him ; and that with only the cross and the resurrection (con
tained as data in the vision of conversion) he could construct
his scheme. The unmistakable sarcasm of the expressions,
oi BoKovvres, — Bokovvtcs cival ri — ol Bokovvtcs aruXoi elvat, —
betrays a state of mind, in regard to the twelve, out of all
sympathy with the grounds of their authority. And the ne
cessity, in order to agreement, of marking out for each, not a
separate geographical beat, but a distinct religious and eth
nologic ground, shows that, with external mutual toleration,
there is yet wanting the inner unity of an identic faith. Only
in the absence of a common Gospel would each party have to
inquiries of this sort, it is often supposed that, if the evidence of the genuine
ness of a single book of Scripture be weakened, or the credit of a single
chapter shaken, a deep and irreparable injury is inflicted on Christian truth,
and may afford a rest to the mind to consider that, if but one discourse of
Christ, one Epistle of Paul, had come down to us, still more than half would
have been preserved. Coleridge has remarked, that out of a single play of
Shakespeare the whole of English literature might be restored. Much more
true is it that in short portions or single verses of Scripture the whole spirit
of Christianity is contained. Vol. I. p. 352.

432 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
take its own, and spare the other Indeed, the difference was
so fundamental as to involve everything that St. Paul then,
and Christians now, would deem characteristic of their re
ligion. The question was this, — " How might a born Gentile be
come a Christian ? " — " By becoming a Jew first, and then
accepting Jesus as appointed to be the Jews' Messiah," was
the answer at Jerusalem. " By believing in Jesus straight
way," was the reply of Paul. With irresistible force he
contended that, according to his opponents' view, the Gospel
opened no door at all, and was simply nugatory. For it had
always been possible for a Gentile to become a Jew ; and if,
without this step, faith in Christ was unavailing, the real effi
cacy must lie in what the Jew brought to Christ, not in what
he received from him ; so that it was hard to say what good
there could be in passing on from Moses at all, or what essen
tial difference between the unconverted and the converted
Hebrew. And, in truth, they were not strongly contrasted in
Jerusalem ; and in habit, thought, and feeling, the twelve
were probably much nearer to Gamaliel than to Paul. The
altercation between Peter and Paul at Antioch is full of in
struction on this point ; proving, as it does, that the intensest
form of ritual exclusiveness — the refusal to partake at table
with the uncircumcised — was retained in the parent church,
and enforced with jealous vigilance. In the Syrian capital
the Gentile disciples were numerous, the Pauline comprehen
siveness prevailed, and the intercourses of hfe were unhin
dered by ceremonial scruples. Peter, thrown amongst them
on a visit, yields to the local impression, and, as long as he can
do so unobserved, falls in with their free ways ; feeling all the
while, no doubt, like the Quaker from home tempted into a
ball-dress or regimentals. Soon, however, the strict brethren
at Jerusalem send to look after him or the Antiochians, and
instantly his liberality is gone ; he is the prim Jew again, and
the Gentile dishes are all unclean. And who then are these
new witnesses, that he should fear their report ? They are
deputies from James, "the brother of the Lord," who, on

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 433
account of this affinity,* was the recognized head of the Ju-
daean Christians ; and of whose ascetic abstinences, and con
stant devotions on the temple pavement, tiU " his knees were
become like the knees of a camel," Hegesippus preserved the
tradition.f It was clear, therefore, that Peter's association
with the Gentile Christians was exceptional, — a violation of
his professed rule, and of the allowed usage of the Apostolic
Church. To own brotherhood with the uncircumcised believ
er, was a forfeiture of character, probably an outrage on his
own conscience, to the Christian Apostle ! This was the result,
among his first disciples, of nearly twenty years' belief of
Christ in heaven. There could be no real sympathy between
such an evangile and Paul's. It let him make converts, but
would not acknowledge them when made. It could not resist
the fact of his success, but treated his " children in the faith "
as in a doubtful case, left to Heaven's " uncovenanted mer
cies," and needing to be put in a securer state, as soon as his
back was turned, and teachers could be sent to complete the
the task. Hence the opposition that tracked the steps, and so
much marred the work of the Apostle, wherever he went ;
and in repelling which he wrote his chief Epistles, and ma
tured the form of his great theology. Mr. Jowett, whUst
allowing that this opposition was systematic and persistent,
and in some degree connived at by the twelve, is yet anxious
to lay it mainly to the charge of their followers, and defines
the relation of the two sections thus : " Separation, not op
position ; antagonism of the followers rather than of the lead
ers ; personal antipathy of the Judaizers to St. Paul, rather
than of St. Paul to the twelve." (I. 326.) These are fine dis
tinctions, and for this very reason hkely, we fear, in the rough
movement of human passions, to be more ideal than real.
True, the feeUng of a leader is ever apt to run into exaggera
tion among the followers ; nor probably was ApostoUc control
* Was it in reference to this mere family-title to a spiritual authority that
Paul says of the Jerusalem Apostles, " Whatever they were, it maketh no
matter to me; God accepteth no man's person " '> (Gal. iii. 6.)
t Ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. II. 23. 37

434 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
over the mass of believers so complete as to exclude this
danger. But the Epistle to the Galatians is written by one
leader, and speaks of the others ; and the impression it con
veys is surely one of very decided antagonism, and that, too,
not accidental, but depending on permanent differences of
principle, which discussion did not smooth away, and which
penetrated into the very organism of daily life. In the alter
cation with Peter, what was the point of Paul's rebuke?
Did he simply censure his moral weakness and inconsistency ?
Not so, or he would have exhorted him to take whichever
course he approved, and stick to it. Did he find fault with
his exceptional act, of eating with the Gentile Christians ?
Not so, for he did the same himself. The thing he blamed
was nothing less than the rule and usage by which Peter
habitually lived, and which, it is declared, virtually made
Christ of none effect. Here was a coUision of irreconcila
ble principles, and every subsequent occasion of personal con
tact, under like conditions, would be as liable to produce it as
the first. Nor have we, in fact, any reason to suppose a closer
approximation at a later part of the Apostohc age. That
Paul looked with any particular respect on the other Apostles,
is surely not proved, as Mr. Jowett imagines, by his appeal
(1 Cor. xv. 5) to their testimony respecting the fact of their
Lord's resurrection, or by his claiming (1 Cor. ix. 5) to stand
on a hke footing of privilege -with them.* To produce the
spectators of an event as its proper witnesses, is no expression
of feeling towards them at aU ; and to say, " Are the other
Apostles to have the right of taking then- wives with them at
the cost of the Church, and may not I take or decline my
mere personal maintenance as I think proper ? " institutes a

* In proof of an essential unity of teaching, Mr. Jowett quotes Paul as
declaring that what they preached against him was "not another" gospel,
"for there was not, could not, be another." (I. 340.) But far from bear
ing this conciliatory turn, which is out of character with the whole con
text, Gal. i. 6 affirms that what his opponents have been preaching is (1.)
another gospel; and yet (2.) not another gospel, (not so good even as that,)
but mere disturbance and perversion, the negation of a gospel.

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 435
comparison in which it is difficult to discover any strong sen
timent of " respect." Nor do the doctrinal agreements, of
which, as well as of the personal relations of fellowship, our
author makes the most, amount to any substantial concur
rence, when we penetrate to the essence from the form. On
both sides, says Mr. Jowett, the disciples were baptized into
the same name. (I. 340.) Yes ; but how different the object
named as present to their thought; in the one case, the hu
man life in its detail, with the resurrection as its crown ; in
(he other, the cross of Christ that stands between them, and
his hfe in heaven that passes beyond them ! Both sections,
it is again said, find their ground in the Old Testament. (I.
341.) True : but the one on Moses, the tables, and the holy
place ; the other, on Adam's nature, and the patriarchs' free
dom, and the prophets' insight ; the one, moreover, using the
ground to intrench the Law for ever ; the other, to drive
the ploughshare over its ruins, and make it a fruitful field.
Once more, it is said that on both sides there was a looking
for " the day of the Lord," an expectation of Christ's re
turn to end the world within that generation. (I. 341.)
Assuredly, but with such differences in the vision, that, in the
apocalyptic picture of the one, Paul is not among the Apostles,
or his followers among the white-robed and crowned (Rev.
xxi. 14, and ii. 2, 14, 20) ; while in that of the other, the
advent will but perfect and perpetuate a union with Christ,
already present to their consciousness, and open to all who
live with him in the Spirit. In short, twenty years after the
death of Christ, the two elements that were harmonized in
him, but are ever apt to part in our imperfect minds, the eth
ical and the mystical, the historical and spiritual, ascetic con
centration and outspreading trust, fell into determinate antith
esis, realizing their conflict in the immediate question of Jew
and Gentile, and finding their respective representatives in
the twelve and St. Paul.
Whether, besides and beyond this general development of
the Christian system, there was also a special development of
doctrine into higher degrees of spirituality within the mind of

436 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
St. Paul himself, is a question of less interest and more diffi
culty. Both Mr. Stanley and Mr. Jowett find traces of such
a change in the modified sentiment of his later writings, and
even make the Apostle himself depose to his own enlarge
ment of view. We must confess that this speculation, though
excluded by no antecedent improbability, appears to us less
weU supported than anything in these volumes. It is ingeni
ously presented and argued by Mr. Jowett in his introduc
tion to the Thessalonian Epistles ; and by means of it he ex
plains the marked absence from these letters of St. Paul's
usual topics and manner, and gets rid of the objection urged
on this ground to their authenticity. Apphed at the other
end of the Apostle's career, the hypothesis accounts for the
prominence, in the Epistles to the Ephesians, Phihppians,
and Colossians, of certain conceptions, doubtfully traceable
elsewhere, of the place of Christ in the hierarchy of the
universe, and of his union with his disciples as his -" body."
The pastorals may be left out of consideration, as their mixed
phenomena cannot be much used in the service of this theory.
The broad facts are undoubted, — that the four great central
Epistles (Galatians, Corinthians, Romans) must be taken as
our foci of authority for the characteristics of St. Paul ; that,
in the earlier Thessalonians, these characteristics are over
shadowed by the more Judaic doctrine of the " day of the
Lord," and in the later Ephesians, &c.,' by the more Gnostic
conception of a spiritual hierarchy and pleroma. But these
facts are quite overworked when set to prove our author's
thesis. In order to establish a process of personal develop
ment, they ought to exhibit certain natural links of psycho
logical and moral succession, and not mere abrupt and unre
lated contrasts of subject. To look for such organic indica
tions in the sparse productions of the Apostle's pen, is to ask
too much from a few incidental letters, bearing to his whole
life the proportion of a dozen pages of random excerpts to a
cyclopaedia. If only the matters treated be different, the
whole group of writings may very weU express, in its several
parts and aspects, one simultaneous state of mind. Lf the

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 437
types of thought be such as could scarcely co-exist, the cause
may be sought as reasonably in a plurality of authors as in a
succession of beliefs in the same author ; and only a most
delicate combination of symptoms can rescue the problem
from this indeterminate state of double solution. Nor ought
we to forget, in weighing the probabilities, that the whole set
of Epistles comprising the phenomena of difference were
written within nine years ; and that, ere the first of them was
produced, St Paul had been a convert fifteen years, and had
reached the age of fifty. The earlier and longer of these
periods is a more natural seat of mental change than the
later and shorter; especially of a change not apparent so
much in particular judgments and opinions, as in the whole
complexion of spiritual feeling and idea.
But, we are assured, the Apostle directly testifies to his
own progress in doctrine; and intimates (2 Cor. v. 16) that
there was a time when he had " known Christ according to
the flesh," — had preached him " in a more Jewish and less
spiritual manner," — though " henceforth he would know him
so no more." Mr. Stanley, explaining this much-disputed
phrase, says : —
" Probably, he must be here alluding to those who laid
stress on their having seen Christ in Palestine, or on their
connection with him or with ' the brothers of the Lord ' by
actual descent ; and if so, they were probably of the party
' of Christ.' But the words lead us to infer that something
of this kind had once been his own state of mind, not only in
the time before his conversion (which he would have con
demned more strongly), but since. If so, it is (like Phil. iii.
13-15) a remarkable confession of former weakness and
error, and of conscious progress in religious knowledge." —
Vol. II. p. 106.
Did St. Paul then ever " lay stress on having seen Christ
in Palestine"? or on actual blood-connection with him? or
on " something of this kind " ? To personal relations with
Jesus in his ministry or family he had no pretensions ; and
the spirit with which he had always treated everything " of
37*

438 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
this kind," is so apparent from his narrative to the Gralatians
as to contradict Mr. Stanley's inference. Mr. Jowett gives
the phrase a different turn. Finding (Gal. v. 11) the Apostle
charged with at one time " preaching circumcision," he accepts
this as synonymous with "knowing Christ according to the
flesh" (i. 12). This, however, would imply that he was
originaUy no " Apostle to the Gentiles," but insisted on mediate
conversion into the Gospel through the law. Feeling the
irreconcilable variance of such an hypothesis with the auto
biographical notices in the Epistles, Mr. Jowett lowers his
phraseology, and attributes to St. Paul's early teaching only
such sentiments as " might be thought " to make him " a
preacher of the circumcision." And so we lose ourselves
again in " something of the kind." Yet at last, in the foUow-
ing passage, we find the critic's finger distinctly laid on the
doctrine which he proposes to identify with the Apostle's
" knowing Christ according to the flesh."
"That such a change" (in the Apostle's teaching) "is
capable of being traced, has been already intimated. Both
Epistles to the Thessalonians, with the exception of a few
practical precepts, are the expansion and repetition of a sin
gle thought, — ' the coming of Christ.' It was the absorbing
thought of the Apostle and his converts, quickened in both by
the persecutions which they had suffered. Not that with this
expectation of Christ's kingdom there mingled any vision of
a temporal rule over the kingdoms of the earth. That was
far from the Apostle. But there was that in it which fell
short of the more perfect truth. It was not, ' The kingdom of
God is within you' ; but, ' Lo here, and lo there.' It was de
fined by time, and was to take place within the Apostle's own
life. The images in which it clothed itself were traditional
among the Jews ; they were outward and visible, liable to the
misconstruction of the enemies of the faith, and to the misap
prehension of the first converts, — imperfectly, as the Apostle
saw afterwards, conveying the inward and spiritual meaning.
The kingdom which they described was not eternal and
heavenly, but very near and present, ready to burst forth

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 439
everywhere, and by its very nearness in point of time seeming
to touch our actual human state. Afterwards the kingdom
of God appeared to remove itself within, to withdraw into the
unseen world. The earthen vessel must be broken first, the
unbehever unclothed that he might be clothed upon, that
mortality may be swaUowed up of life. He was no longer
' waiting for the Son from heaven ' ; but ' desirous to depart
and be with Christ' (Phil. i. 23). Such is the change, not
so much in the Apostle's belief as in his mode of conception ;
a change natural to the human mind itself, and above all to
the Jewish mind ; a change which, after it had taken place,
left the vestiges of the prior state in the Montanism of the
second century, which may not improperly be regarded as the
spirit of the first century overliving itself. Old things had
passed away, and, behold, all things became new. And yet
the former things — the material vision of Christ's kingdom
— have ever been prone to return ; not only in the first and
second century, but in every age of enthusiasm, men have
been apt to walk by sight and not by faith. In the hour of
trouble and perplexity, when darkness spreads itself over the
earth, and Antichrist is already come, they have lifted up
their eyes to the heavens, looking for the sign of the Son of
man." — Vol. I. p. 10.
If to announce the coming of Christ is to " know him ac
cording to the flesh," St. Paul assuredly did not keep his
resolve " henceforth to know him no more." For the expec
tation reappears, without any perceptible change, in his later
Epistles ; as in Rom. xiii. 11, 12 : " Do this the rather, know
ing the time, — that now is the time to awake out of sleep :
for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed :
the night is far spent ; the day is at hand " ; — and in Phil. iv.
5 : " The Lord is at hand." * Moreover, it is utterly impos
sible that this element of his teaching could be adduced in
proof of his " preaching circumcision." It had nothing to do
* Compare also Rom. xiv. 10 ; Phil. i. 6 ; 2 Tim. iv. 1. Nay, the yery pas
sage in which he renounces the "knowing of Christ according to the flesh,"
contains the doctrine (2 Cor. v. 10).

440 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
with the question of Jew and Gentile ; with the most opposite
solutions of which it is equally compatible.
In truth, our author has here combined two passages,
which throw no light on one another, and has extracted from
each what neither is able to yield. The words (in Gal. v. 11)
" if I still preach circumcision," do not really imply that the
Apostle once did so preach ; though in an accurate writer
this sense might be insisted on. He is not thinking of his
own former notions, but of other people's, continuing unaltered
after they ought to have changed. There were persons who,
in spite of the dispensation of the Spirit, still preached cir
cumcision after its significance was gone. This did not Paul ;
but he was charged with doing so : and he says, " WeU, if so,
I am a Judaizer like you, and I cannot be also chargeable
with teaching that the cross of Christ supersedes the Law."
The true sense is, therefore, given by the rendering, " If I
preach circumcision still" — that is, as still necessary; and
no tale is told of the Apostle's earlier teaching.
The other passage (2 Cor. v. 1 6) does undoubtedly refer
to a former state of the writer's own mind, when he " recog
nized Christ according to the flesh." But he alludes, we
apprehend, to the period when he was a " Hebrew of the
Hebrews"; and had no conception as yet of a suffering,
dying, and heavenly Christ; — when he was full of the
thoughts still occupying the twelve, who did not take in the
significance of the cross, but carried past it their old Messi
anic notions. " There may have been a time," he means to
say, " when I thought only of a national, Israelitish, histor
ical Messiah, bound by the law of his fathers, and binding
to it. Had this been the true conception of him, then would
it have been a matter of privilege and pride to be near his
person, to stand in natural relations with him, and be mixed
up with the incidents of his local career. But ever since I
understood the cross, and saw that Messiah's life began in
death, a far other truth has dawned upon me. When he
gave up the ghost, all the accidents of his humanity — his
lineage, his nationality, his earthly manifestation — were left

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 441
behind and died away ; and they must carry with them into
extinction whatever feelings had collected round them, —
family pride, Jewish exclusiveness, and the memories of per
sonal companionship. From that moment, clear of earthly
entanglements, Christ in the spirit draws to him a community
of human spirits, — one with him in self-abnegation, dying to
the earthly past ; one with him in re-birth, living to heavenly
union with God. Thus, if any one be in Christ, it amounts
to a new creation ; his old self has passed away ; behold, aU
things have become new." The Apostle, therefore, sets up
the death of Christ, as cutting off, for all disciples, the prior
time from the subsequent ; as flinging the former, with all
the human conceptions that cling to it, into eclipse and anni
hilation, and beginning a new and luminous existence in the
latter ; as breaking the very identity of the behever, and de
livering him from the thraldom of nature into the freedom of
the Spirit. The cross had already done its work ere St.
Paul became a disciple. He had never known his Lord but
in the spirit ; and the " Christ," whom he had " known ac
cording to the flesh," was the Jewish Messiah of his previous
and unconverted conception. Mr. Stanley's objection, that
the Apostle could hardly have spoken of his unconverted
state without stronger condemnation, might perhaps hold,
were the allusions to his fit of persecuting violence against
the Church. But there was no occasion for self-reproach in
describing the picture of a national Messiah, on which, in
common with his countrymen, he had permitted his imagina
tion to dwell.*

* With a curious inconsistency Mr. Stanley fixes at the Apostle's conversion
the date after which he would no longer " know Christ according to the
flesh " ; yet in the very next note declares, that this state of mind must be
referred to a more recent period than the conversion.
" dnro tov vvv, from the lime of my conversion." It is to be presumed that
this is also Mr. Stanley's interpretation of the vvv ovksti of the next clause,
which only repeats specifically of " Christ " what has just been said univer
sally. ' ' el Kal iyv&Kapev Kara o~apKa xpio-rov, even though I have known ;
granting that I have known." yivao-Kopev, i. e. Kara crapKa, " henceforth

442 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
Neither, then, from his own direct assertion, nor from com
parison of his several writings, inter se, do we learn anything
of the alleged development of the Apostle's doctrine. There
is no element in it, that, from inability to co-exist with the
rest, requires to be assigned to a date of its own. The breach
with Judaism, especially, we conceive to have been complete
from the first, and unsusceptible of degrees ; nay, to have
been the initial principle of his conversion, the secretly pre
pared condition or tendency of mind that rendered him acces
sible to the Divine call, and open to sudden change in the
direction of his character. When first released from the
formulas of a Jewish Christology, and communing in spirit
with a heavenly and universal Lord, his mind would doubt
less be met by a multitude of new problems, and would work
freely towards their resolution, with the quickening conscious
ness of new hght streaming in, and a grander landscape of
Providence opening before him. The very intensity of this
inward action, however, — the thirst it sustains for its own
completion, — forbids us to attribute to it a life-long duration;
ere fifteen years were passed, its force would be spent by
having realized its work, and attained the equilibrium of a
holy peace. Whatever subsequent changes occurred would
be of a different nature, enforced by the turn of the world's
affairs ; a mere remoulding or reproportioning of inward
faiths, in adaptation to the altered pressures of the hour. Of
such modifications, such retreat towards the background of
once favorite ideas, and advance of dim suggestions into strong
light, there are doubtless examples in St. Paul. The expec
tation of Christ's speedy coming to close the world's affairs,
and realize " the kingdom," could not but dominate at first,
and pale every other interest and belief by the terror and
glory of its light. But there is a limit beyond which the

we know him no longer  The words lead us to infer that something
of this kind had once been [prior, surely, to the "henceforth"} his own
state of mind, not only in the time before his conversion,  but since ! "
How then can the " henceforth" serve as the terminus a quo, if the same
state lies on both sides of it ?

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 443
strain of longing cannot be sustained ; as it subsides, the
present and actual recovers power, and pushes its problems
forward, and gains once more the eye that had looked beyond
them. And so, after a while, spring up questions of Chris
tian order that wiU not bear to be put off ; — how to live in a
world that, however near its doom, entangles the disciple stiU
in a web of difficult relations ; how to touch the skirt of its
idolatries, and not be tainted ; how to behave to wife and
child in this last generation of human affairs ; how to seal up
the passions that ought to die within the saints, but were not
dead ; how to prevent the gifts of the Spirit from overbal
ancing themselves, on the heights of a dizzied mind, into out
rages on nature ; how to preserve to the woman and the slave,
in their exulting reaction from degraded life, the sense of
modest reverence, and the appreciation of faithful service.
Day by day questions of this kind insisted on attention, and
brought out a fresh type of sentiments proper for their deter
mination, and offering to view a new side of the Christian
thought and hfe. Nor, again, could many years elapse, be
fore the Jew and Gentile difficulty changed its whole aspect,
and expanded, from a petty scruple compromised at Jerusalem,
into a world-wide theology, regulative of all future history.
When it became evident that it was no question about a
small sprinkhng of ethnic converts,- — -mere hangers-on of
Hebrew famihes and synagogues ; when the delay of Messiah,
and the energy of Paul, gave occasion for thousands to pour
in ; when it seemed imminent that Palestine should be out
voted and overpowered by the growth of the foreign Gospel,
the alarm of the Judaic Christians became great. They
tracked Paul's steps ; their emissaries were everywhere ;
their arguments and doctrine became more constricted, and
his more wide and free ; and as the clouds visibly lowered
over Israel, touching him as well as them with gloom, all the
more did he see the sunshine flood the lands beyond ; and his
national trust assumed this form, - — that, maybe, the outlying
heavenly light may creep back as the dark hour passes, and
again set the shadows moving on the hills it has so long glo-

444 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
rifled. The Apostle died before the question settled itself by
the mere force of the facts, — by the utter breaking up of the
Jewish nation, and the inpouring Gentile numbers. Others
waited to be driven into cathoUcity by events ; it is his glory
to have surrendered himself to the inspiration that implanted
in him its principle from the first. He hved, however, to see
a mighty growth, though not the final fruit ; and the grand
scale on which he conducts the controversy, in his Epistle to
the Romans, by converging reasonings fetched from afar out
of history, and aloft out of the perfections of God, and deep
out of human nature, shows how his thought expands with
the exigencies of experience, and advances to fill the whole
greatness of his opportunities.
There can be no doubt that the earliest Apostolic Chris
tianity consisted mainly in the faith of Christ's coming again,
" to-day, or to-morrow, or the third day." This event, with
its effect on the hving, was the one only point, Mr. Stanley
conceives, on which St. Paul, in his great chapter on the Res
urrection, professed to have a distinct revelation : —
" On one point only he professes to have a distinct reve
lation, and that not with regard to the dead, but to the living.
So firmly was the first generation of Christians possessed of
the behef that they should live to see the second coming, that
it is here assumed as a matter of course ; and their fate, as
near and immediate, is used to illustrate the darker and more
mysterious subject of the fate of those aheady dead. That
vision of ' the last man,' which now seems so remote as to live
only in poetic fiction, was to the Apostle an awful reahty ;
but it is brought forward only to express the certainty that,
even here, a change must take place, the greatest that imagi
nation can conceive." — Vol. I. p. 398.
That this behef, where held at aU, should be paramount
and absorbing, follows from its very nature. Accordingly,
St. Paul, as Mr. Jowett remarks, makes even the essence of
the Gospel to consist in it : —
"It appears remarkable, that St. Paul should make the
essence of the Gospel consist, not in the belief in Christ, or

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 445
in taking up the cross of Christ, but in the hope of his
coming again. Such, however, was the faith of the Thessa
lonian Church; such is the tone and spirit of the Epistle.
Neither in the Apostolic times, nor in our own, can we re
duce all to the same type. One aspect of the Gospel is more
outward, another more inward ; one seems to connect with the
life of Christ, another with his death ; one with his birth into
the world, another with his coming again. If we will not
insist on determining the times and the seasons, or on know
ing the manner how, all these different ways may lead us
within the veil. The faith of modern times embraces many
parts and truths ; yet we allow men, according to their indi
vidual character, to dweU on this truth or that, as more pecu-
Uarly appropriate to their nature. The faith of the early
Church was simpler and more progressive, pausing in the
same way on a particular truth, which the circumstances of
the world or the Church brought before them." — Vol. I.
p. 46.
Only it is not on " a particular truth," but on a particular
error, that the " pause " of faith was here made ; — an error
found or implied, as our author observes, " in almost every
book of the New Testament ; in the discourses of our Lord
himself, as well as in the Acts of the Apostles ; in the Epis
tles of St. Paul, no less than in the Book of the Revelation."
Mr. Jowett does not evade the difficulty. In an admirable
essay on this special subject, he frankly states the facts, traces
their influence on the early Church, accepts them as among
the limits which human conditions impose on Divine revela
tion, and shows from them, how, even in God's highest teach
ings, he leaves much truth to be drawn forth from time and
experience. "It is a subject," he says, " from which the interpreter of
Scripture would gladly turn aside. For it seems as if he
were compelled to say at the outset, 'that St. Paul was mis
taken, and that in support of his mistake he could appeal to
the words of Christ himself.' Nothing can be plainer than
the meaning of those words, and yet they seem to be con-
38

446 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
tradicted by the very fact, that, after eighteen centuries, the
world is as it was. In the words which are attributed, in the
Epistle of St. Peter, to the unbelievers of that day, we might
truly say that, since the fathers have fallen asleep, all things
remain the same from the beginning. Not only do ' all things
remain the same,' but the very belief itself (in the sense in
which it was held by the first Christians) has been ready to
vanish away."' — Vol. I. p. 96.
It is the infirmity of human nature — an infirmity irremov
able by inspiration — to translate eternal truth into forms of
time, to throw color into the invisible till it can be seen, and
look into any given infinity till finite shapes appear within it,
and it is felt as infinite no more. The soul tries, as it were,
every apparent path, from spiritual apprehension to scientific
knowledge, from deep insight to clear foresight, from perception
of what God is to vaticination of what he does ; and abides
alone with the Holy Presence, that will not tell His coun
sels, but is ever there himself. From the world of Divine
reality into that of transient phenomena, there is no bridge
found as yet ; and only He, whose footsteps need no ground,
can pass across. We know somewhat on both sides ; but the
chasm between vindicates its perpetuity against all invasion.
Vision for faith ; prevision for science : — this seems to be
the inviolable allotment of gifts by the Father of lights. And
whoever overlooks this rule, and, inspired with discernment
of what absolutely is, ventures to pronounce what relatively
will be, embodies his truth in a form whence it must again
be disengaged. The deepest spiritual insight is ineffectual
to teach past history ; it is equally so to teach future history.
The moment you lose sight of this fact, and expect the sons
of God to predict for you, you confound inspiration with
divination, and will pay the double penalty of missing the
truth they have, and being disappointed at that which they
have not. It is not always much otherwise with themselves ;
the light which they are, they do not see ; and that which
shapes itself before them, and becomes the object of their
minds, is but the shadow of human things, deepened and

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 447
sharpened, perhaps also misplaced, by the preternatural in
tensity. By its very inwardness and closeness to the soul's
centre, God's Spirit may express itself chiefly in the uncon
scious attitudes and manifestations of the mind ; especially as it
is these that often leave the most ineffaceable impressions of
character upon others, and may, therefore, be the vehicle of
a more life-giving power than any purposed teaching or more
conscious authority. The disappointment of an avowed pre
diction, or the error of an elaborated doctrine, no more affects
the Divine inspiration at the heart of Christianity, than the
miscalculations and failure of the Crusades disprove their
Providential function in the historical education of mankind.
Mr. Jowett takes up the question from another side, and
shows how the faith in a future life, though not directly given,
necessarily disengaged itself in the end from the expectation
of the coming of Christ.
" We naturally ask, why a future life, as distinct from this,
was not made a part of the first preaching of the Gospel ? —
why, in other words, the faith of the first Christians did not
exactly coincide with our own ? There are many ways in
which the answer to this question may be expressed. The
philosopher will say, that the difference in the mode of
thought of that age and our own rendered it impossible,
humanly speaking, that the veil of sense should be altogether
removed. The theologian will admit that Providence does
not teach men that which they can teach themselves. While
there are lessons which it immediately communicates, there is
much which it leaves to be drawn forth by time and events.
Experience may often enlarge faith ; it may also correct it.
No one can doubt that the faith and practice of the early
Church, respecting the admission of the Gentiles, were greatly
altered by the fact that the Gentiles themselves flocked in ;
'the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent
took it by force.' In like manner, the faith respecting the
coming of Christ was modified by the continuance of the
world itself. Common sense suggests that those who were
in the first ecstasy of conversion, and those who after the

448 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
lapse of years saw the world unchanged and the fabric of the
Church on earth rising around them, could not regard the
day of the Lord with the same feeling While to the one
it seemed near and present, at any moment ready to burst
forth, to the other it was a long way off, separated by time,
and as it were by place, a world beyond the stars, yet, strange
ly enough, also having its dwelling in the heart of man, as it
were the atmosphere in which he lived, the mental world by
which he was surrounded. Not at once, but gradually, did
the cloud clear up, and the one mode of faith take the place
of the other. Apart from the prophets, though then beyond
them, springing up in a new and living way in the soul of
man, corrected by long experience, as the ' fathers one by one
fell asleep,' as the hopes of the Jewish race declined, as ec
static gifts ceased, as a regular hierarchy was established
in the Church, the belief in the coming of Christ was trans
formed from being outward to becoming inward, from being
national to becoming individual and universal, — from being
Jewish to becoming Christian." — Vol. I. p. 99.
With the Apostle Paul, however, the "coming of Christ"
occupies the place of our " future life " ; the living mass of
disciples, waiting till then for the "redemption of their
bodies," fill the foreground and largest space in the scene ;
the rising of the dead is the subsidiary fact, needful to the
completeness of the gift of life in Christ. On this crisis, sup
posed to be so near, his eye was exclusively fixed whenever
he spoke of the Christian's " salvation " ; and could he have
been told that no such crisis would come, that, for fifty gen
erations, the present order of the world would vindicate its
stability, we cannot imagine what shape his faith would have
assumed ; whether he would have made light of all these
centuries, said that with the Eternal "a thousand years are
but as one day," and still opposed to one another the almv
ovros and the alav pJXXav ; or whether he would have found
that the distinction was evanescent, and the kingdom of God
was to be not sent hither, but to be created here ; or how, in
either case, he would have represented to himself the state of

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 449
the innumerable dead. These are questions which did not
arise for him ; and it were vain to conjecture his solution.
He is engaged with other problems ; — all, indeed, having
reference to that never doubted crisis, and arising out of its
manifold relations, yet so treated by him as to detach them
unawares from their origin, and give them a permanent place
in the religious consciousness of men. Who were to be the
subjects of that salvation? How were they qualified? By
what act of God's, and what temper of their own, to reach
the blessing ? What present assurance had they of this ap
proaching good ? It is in dealing with these questions that
St. Paul darts from his objective theology into the deepest
recesses of human experience, and fetches into expression
spiritual truths that transcend their incidental occasion, and
will remain valid while there is a soul in man.
In the Apostle's habit of thought there is a certain antique
realism which renders many of his doctrines and reasonings
almost unpresentable before a modern imagination. With
our sharp notions of personality, of the entire insulation of
each mind as an individual entity, of the antithesis of inner
self to the outer everything, we are quite out of St. Paul's
latitude, and shall be perpetually taking for figures and per
sonification what had a literal earnestness for him. The uni
verse is with him full of Agents that for us are only Attri
butes, — the theatre of certain real principles (i. e. principles
having existence independent of us), that carry out their ten
dencies and history among themselves, and upon and through
individual men, as organs or media of their activity. Thus,
Sin is neither the mere voluntary unfaithfulness of the trans
gressor, nor the person of the tempter ; but both of these ;
and that not apart from one another or alternately, but blend
ed together under the conception of a universal element of
evil, having its objective focus in Satan and its subjective
manifestation in man. In like manner its opposite, Righteous
ness (Justification), is. not exclusively human rectitude, or the
Divine justice, or ^wcm'-goodness substituted for genuine ; but
less ethical than the first, less forensic than the last, and more
38*

450 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
ontological than either ; that element, we may say, in the es
sence of God which sets man at one with Him, and is the
common ground of their harmonious relation. Around these
two contrasted principles, others, equally conceived as real
elements, and misunderstood as mere attributes or phenom
ena, group themselves on either side. With the former is
Death, — the pair being gemini, not simply joined by decree
of God in time, but inseparable in rerum natura, co-ordinates
by physical necessity ; and Flesh, the material or medium
that furnishes the endowments of sense, and instinct, and
the natural will, and affords to Sin its seat and hold upon
us ; and Law, the discriminating light that parts the mixture
of good and evil, and, on entering into us, brings the slumber
ing evil into the conscious state, and so makes it sin relatively
to us, and simultaneously shows us the good without adding
to the force for producing it. With the latter — - Righteous
ness — are enjoined Life, the positive opposite of Death, and,
like it, a function of the moral as well as the natural constitu
tion, the immortal energy inherent in sinless being; and
Spirit, the absolute essence of God, present as the vivifying
source of whatever transcends nature, — a faint susceptibility,
felt only to be overmastered, in the sons of Adam, — a con
quering power, coalescing with the personality itself, in Christ
and his disciples, — and a spontaneous flow of higher life
seizing on converted men as organs of its charismata; and
Faith, — the opposite of Law, — the passing out of ourselves
to embrace unseen relations, to make conscious appropriation
of the Spirit, and thus enter into union with Christ and God.
Even this most subjective of all the great principles of the
Apostle's theology, is more than a mere private and personal
act. As common to all the disciples, — the simultaneous gaze
that connects them as a whole with Christ, — its single threads
pass out and become a converging web. As something other
than the act (of obedience) which men were under bond to
render, it is a new institute of God, and, relatively to them,
reads itself off as Grace. As opposed to Law, in which there
is a delivery of the Divine wiU into men, it involves a draw-

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 451
ing by Divine love of an affection out of men. And under
aU these aspects it acquires something of that indeterminate
character, subjective and objective at once, which the associ
ated elements possess in a much higher degree. The same
mode of thought is traceable in another form. The Apostle
exhibits the providential scheme of the human race by dis
tributing them into two successive gentes, — the earthy or nat
ural, the heavenly or spiritual ; and lays down all the predi
cates of each direct from the personal history of their re
spective heads, Adam and Christ. Whatever is true of the
founder is considered as known of the followers ; the phenom
ena of his being spread themselves inclusively to theirs.
He is regarded, not simply as a representative individual,
while they are the represented individuals ; but as a type of
being within which they are contained, and which in its his
tory and vicissitudes carries them hither and thither. Con
demnation and redemption take place by Kinds, and fall on
particular persons in virtue of their partaking of these kinds.
Settle the attributes of the species, as found in its archetype,
and you know what to say of individuals. It is not difficult
to understand this way of thinking so long as the Apostle
applies it, as a naturaUst might, to the Adamic gens; and
argues, that, being made of earthy materials (xo'iKoi), and
having the focus of personality in o-ap£, with no adequate
counterpoise of irvevpa, it is the seat of sin and death. But
it is less easy to follow the Apostle's meaning when he simi
larly identifies Christians with Christ, and transfers, or rather
extends, to them all the great characteristics of his existence.
They are crucified to the world. They are " all dead " with
him ; they are " buried with him " in baptism ; they are " ris
en with him " ; their " life is hid with him in God." And
while this is true of living disciples, he is no less " the first-
fruits of them that sleep " ; his resurrection is but the first
pulsation of an act that next proceeds to theirs, and then com
pletes the transformation of the living. All this is meant for
more than rhetorical analogy. With Christ, and in Christ,
took place a re-constitution of humanity. Of the new man,

452 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
he was the ideal and archetype ; inverting the proportions of
o-dp£ and nvevpa, and having his essence and personality in the
latter, so as to render sin an unrealized possibility and death
a transitory accident. The spirit in him which evinced its
life-giving power in raising him from the dead, is no more
hmited to his individuality, than flesh and blood were the
attributes of Adam only. It spreads to the whole family of
souls, springing up into his kindred ; it flows into them as
they look up to him in faith, and are reborn to him ; it repeats
in them the fruits it produced in him, — the sacrifice of self,
— the dying away of passion and pride, — the heavenly love
that darts upon the wing whither the bleeding feet of con
science fail to climb, — together with many " a gift less ex-
ceUent," of healing and of tongues. The consciousness of
this new heart, set free with Divine affections, is immediate
evidence of their union with Christ, of the Real Presence of
his Spirit within them, of their substantive incorporation into
his essence, and therefore of a restored harmony and even
oneness with God. To what extent the Apostle conceived
that this transformation of nature, by partnership in the prop
erties of the heavenly Christ, might be carried in the living
disciple, it is not possible to say. It amounted to " a new
creation " ; and among the " old things " that had already
" passed away," he probably included more than the moral
habits and feelings of the unconverted state ; and conceived
that the same spirit by which these , died out was purifying
also the bodily organism of the believer, and leavening it
with antiseptic preparation for its final investiture with im
mortality. That last " change," like the resurrection itself,
is not regarded as an external miracle, suddenly forced on an
uncongenial material by mere Almightiness ; but as the last
and crowning stage of an internal development, whose princi
ple had long been active, — the emergence from all entangle
ment with " flesh and blood " of that spiritual element which
iii Jesus " could not be holden of death," and which, dwelling
in his disciples, already deadened and damped the vitality of
the o-dp£, and would at last quicken the o-apa with imperisha-

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 453
ble life. Thus it is that " Christ " is not to St. Paul an his
torical individual, but a generic nature, — the archetype of a
spiritual species, sharing his attributes and repeating his ex
perience. Cleared as a stage for these contending principles, the uni
verse witnesses their co-existence and antagonism from the
beginning to the end of time.
The great drama has two main acts, and the cross of Christ
divides them.
The first is a descending period, accumulating the force of
evil to a pitch of frightful triumph. The second is an as
cending period, at whose goal the last enemy is gone.
In the opening scene of the first, extending from Adam to
Moses, both Flesh and Spirit were there ; not yet, however,
in conflict ; but the latter sleeping as a mere susceptibility,
and the former having its own way in the instinctive life of
man. The state was not one which, had the comparison been
made, would have accorded with the Divine will. It was
therefore really, though unconsciously, a reign of Sin, as was
proved by the presence of Sin's inseparable sign, — the gen
erations died.
The next scene was marked by the introduction of Law.
The effects were, to bring into full consciousness the sin be
fore unmarked, and so make it exceedingly sinful ; to set man
at variance with himself by giving him discernment, and
quickening his longing and his fear, without any new spring
of force ; and actually to multiply transgressions by enumer
ating and suggesting them.
Hence, at the close of the period, an utter rotting away of
human society, and a confirmed moral incapacity of the
widest sweep. The spontaneous law of nature and the writ
ten law of Moses being equally set at naught by Gentile and
by Jew, any promises God might have given fell through,
from human breach of the conditions. This was the moment
seized for instituting a new creation ; the promised Messiah
of the Jews being the vehicle of its accomplishment, and the
link of connection between the old and the new.

454 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
All the Messianic conditions were fulfilled, — the right
tribe, the right family, the right personal marks and charac
teristics. But they were also transcended. Along with the
human infirmities and liabilities was present, in this arche
type of a new race, the Spirit in such full measure as to
constitute his proper self, or at least win that centre by com
plete victory over nature and temptation and surrender of all
he had and was to a Divine Love. As he had baffled and
held off Sin, Death had so far no business with him. Yet
what was to be done ? for there were conflicting claims upon
him. Sinless in himself, he was of a sin-doomed type, the
likeness of sinful flesh (opoiapa o-apKos dpaprias), and therefore
liable to the incidents of such a race. This was at least his
property by nature. At the same time, he was internally
and essentially of the opposite type ; the image of God (ehav
tov Qeoii), and so, foreign to the mortal fate, at once imperish
able and life-giving. In the person of this double nature, the
contest between the antagonists must come to an issue ; and
while both gain their due, it is the last triumph of evil, the
first opening of eternal good. Sin, recognizing in his suffer
ing and mortal frame its own physical counterpart and
shadow, strikes him with death, exerting for that end its own
" strength " and instrument, " the Law." But in thus carry
ing its course upon the guiltless, it overreached and spent
itself; and the Law, lending itself to such an act, fell into
self-contradiction, and disappeared in suicide. He died,
therefore, in virtue of what was really foreign to him, as
representative of a Sin which was not his, but which yet in
volved him, as human, in sorrow and mortality. But no
sooner had this happened, than his " Righteousness " vindi
cated its power. He came out of death, which could not keep
one so holy ; and now, escaped from nationality, and placed
aloft as the ideal of the new humanity, his vivifying spirit
penetrates the heart of men below, and, taking them on the
side of faith and love instead of will, kindles a divine fire
that burns up the dead elements of the " old man," and
wraps the " heavenly places " and the earthly in a common

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 455
blaze. By spiritual affiliation with him, his disciples enter
the essence of aU holy and immortal natures. And so it
comes to pass, that, through the incidence of sorrow and death
in the wrong place, an objective power of " righteousness " is
set free, that reconciles mankind with God, and restores them
to sanctity and life. The past and the future of humanity
were concentrated, just at the turning point between them, in
one person ; the natural element, bearing the burden of the
past, perished and feU away ; the spiritual and divine princi
ple, containing the germ of the future, asserted its inextin
guishable life ; and from heaven evinced its self-multiplying
power, making him only " the first-born of many brethren."
Thus was the second act initiated, which also presented
two successive scenes. During the first, the Christ was stiU
in heaven ; and his Spirit on earth, having the community of
disciples for its organ or " body," stood in presence still of the
opposing powers. In the world, it encroached upon the
province of evil continuaUy, and reclaimed a citadel here and
there. In the Church, if it infused as yet no perfect grace,
it left its " earnest " everywhere ; — ecstatic gifts and mystic
insights ; hearts set free from pride and scorn, and brought
to the meekness and gentleness of Christ ; the self-seeking
will surrendered ; the anxious conscience led to trust ; the
tangles of thought smoothed out by a wisdom not its own ;
and outward distinctions reduced to naught by faith, and
hope, and charity. Nevertheless, Satan disturbed the Koo-pos
still ; and even the children of the Spirit were but prisoners
yet, and felt the tent of nature but a poor abode. They had
yet to wait for their full adoption ; when the tabernacle in
which they groaned being dissolved, they should be invested
with an unwasting frame.
This was reserved for the final scene, the coming and the
reign of Christ. At this culminating crisis, the antagonism
which in Adam was as yet unfelt from the ascendency of
nature, was to die out and cease on the absolute triumph of
the Spirit. Physically, death was to disappear ; the departed
being finally reinstated in life, and the living " clothed upon "

456 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
with their new garment ere yet they were stripped of the
old. Morally, the remnant of inner strife and temptation,
that even the faith of saints might leave uuappeased, would
pass away, aspiration be harmonized with achieving power,
and in conscious presence of the objects of deepest affection
and reverence the sighs of separation would cease. As soon
as resistance was over, and there was nothing to subdue, the
separate function of God's redeeming and sanctifying Spirit
would find no work ; " the kingdom would be resigned to the
Father " ; " the Son would be subject " ; and " the Trinity
would cease."
Whether the Apostle's vision of trust was really of univer
sal success, and included even those who should still be found
astray at last, is a question difficult of direct determination ;
but not very doubtful when tried by the general scope of his
doctrine. Mr. Jowett's judgment, given in the following pas
sage, truly seizes, we think, the feeling of St. Paul. The
author is commenting on the parallel drawn between Adam
and Christ, especially on the words, " As by one man's trans
gression sin entered into the world, and death by sin," and has
shown that they do not teach any imputation of Adam's sin.
" It is hardly necessary to ask the further question, what
meaning we can attach to the imputation of sin and guilt
which are not our own, and of which we are unconscious.
God can never see us other than we really are, or judge us
without reference to all our circumstances and antecedents.
If we can hardly suppose that he would allow a fiction of
mercy to be interposed between ourselves and him, still less
can we imagine that he would interpose a fiction of ven
geance. If he requires holiness before he will save, much
more, may we say in the Apostle's form of speech, will he
require sin before he dooms us to perdition. Nor can any
thing be in spirit more contrary to the living consciousness
of sin of which the Apostle everywhere speaks, than the
conception of sin as dead, unconscious evil, originating in the
act of an individual man, in the world before the flood.
" On the whole, then, we are led to infer that in the Au-

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 457
gustinian interpretation of this passage, even if it agree with
the letter of the text, too little regard has been paid to the
extent to which St. Paul uses figurative language, and to the
manner of his age in interpretations of the Old Testament.
The difficulty of supposing him to be allegorizing the narrative
of Genesis is slight, in comparison with the difficulty of sup
posing him to countenance a doctrine at variance with our
first notions of the moral nature of God.
" But when the figure is dropped, and allowance is made
for the manner of the age, the question once more returns
upon us, — ' What is the Apostle's meaning ? ' He is arguing,
we see, kot dvdpamov, and taking his stand on the received
opinions of his time. Do we imagine that his object is no
other than to set the seal of his authority on these traditional
beliefs ? The whole analogy, not merely of the writings of
St. Paul, but of the entire New Testament, would lead us to
suppose that his object was not to reassert them, but to teach,
through them, a new and nobler lesson. The Jewish Rabbis
would have spoken of the first and second Adam ; but which
of them would have made the application of the figure to aU
mankind ? A figure of speech it remains still, an allegory
after the manner of that age and country, but yet with no
uncertain or ambiguous interpretation. It means that ' God
hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth ' ; that
' he hath concluded all under sin, that he may have .mercy
upon aU ' ; that life answers to death, the times before to the
times after the revelation of Jesus Christ. It means that we
are one in a common sinful nature, which, even if it be not
derived from the sin of Adam, exists as reaUy as if it were.
It means that we shall be made one in Christ by the grace
of God, in a measure here, more fully and perfectly in anoth
er world. More than this it also means, and more than lan
guage can express, but not the weak and beggarly elements
of Rabbinical tradition. We may not encumber St. Paul
with the things which he ' destroyed.' What it means further
is not to be attained by theological distinctions, but by putting
off the old man and putting on the new man." — Vol. II. p. 166.
39

458 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
On surveying the picture of time and the history of human
ity that lay beneath St. Paul's eye, the question naturally
arises, What is its significance and value for us ? Manifestly
not those of an absolute guide through the labyrinthine depths
of the Divine counsels. " We can scarcely imagine what
would have been the feeling of St. Paul, could he have fore
seen that later ages would look not to the faith of Abraham
in the Law, but to the Epistle to the Romans, as the highest
authority on the doctrine of justification by faith ; or, that they
would have regarded the allegory of Hagar and Sarah, in the
Galatians, as a difficulty to be resolved by the inspiration of
the Apostle." * We cannot say of him less than Mr. Jowett
says of a greater than Paul, that in many places " his teaching
is on a level with the modes of thought of his age." (I. 97.)
The ultimate point towards which all the lines of his expec
tations converged, and all the history of the past appeared to
gaze, we know to have had no existence where he placed it ;
and as the whole scheme was laid out to lead up to this, it
might seem to disappear as the fabric of a dream. Yet it is
not so ; and the very fear implies that we look in the wrong
place for the permanent amid the evanescent in the Gospel.
Religion — revealed or unrevealed — is no production of
the systematizing intellect, — inspired or uninspired. The
workings of constructive thought foUow, not lead it. Their
function is not creative, but simply adaptive ; — to find a settle
ment and orderly method of being and growing for some new
principle of divine life, or for some old principle in an altered
scene ; to ward off from it uncongenial elements, remove
dead matter that chokes it, and surround it with conditions
whence it may weave its organism around it and send deep
roots into the mellowed soil of humanity. Divine truth is
the coming of God to man, pathless and traceless : theologic
thought is the retrogressive search of man after God, not by
" His ways which are past finding out," and invisible as
night, but necessarily by such tracks as the age has opened
and another age may close or change.
" Jowett, II. 142.

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 459
The manifestation of supernatural realities to the human
soul involves so much which is mysterious and unique, that
only under great qualification can we compare it with the
known mental processes. But were we to conceive of it less
by the analogy of scientific discovery, and more by that of
artistic apprehension, many an embarrassment would be
saved. In a work of high art, you give a Phidias or a Raf-
faelle his subject; he necessarily takes it from that which
stirs the heart of his time, and has a solemnity for his own ,
and you do not find fault that there is mythology in the
group, or Mariolatry in the picture. Through the concep
tions of one time there speaks a feeling for all ; and the rep
resentation may be immortal, when the thing represented
has long been historical. Nor is it that it only reflects
honor on its author's name. It springs from an inner har
mony with the very heart of things, and it gives a new
expressiveness to life and nature, and leaves behind a self-
luminous spot in the world, where there was " gross dark
ness " before. Hence it looks into the eyes, and finds the
soul of one generation after another ; and, amid the change
of materials and the succession of schools, keeps alive the
very sense by which alone " materials " can be wielded and
"schools" exist. With just the same result do the accidental
and temporary media fall away from early Christianity ; dis
engaging a residuary spirit that takes up the life of all times,
touches a consciousness else unreached, and breathes upon
the face of things, till the meanings writ there with invisible
ink come into clearness before the eye. If it pleases God,
instead of spreading at our feet the things to be seen, rather
to quicken our vision till we see them where they are, it is
revelation all the same, only deeper and more various ; not
an incident of position, but a power that can migrate in place
and time, and read the Providential jDerspective everywhere.
This profounder insight into divine relations it has been the
especial office of St. Paul to awaken ; and none the less that
the flashes by which he gives it are incidental, and do not
proceed from the Rabbinic lamp which he holds up to his

460 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
apocalyptic pictures. Indeed, it is he, in great measure, that
has carried Christendom into regions other than his own.
His thought is everywhere penetrated with an intense heat,
leavened with lightning, that fuses the mass containing it,
and runs off alive for other media to hold it. The revelation
to him of Christ in heaven set in action all the resources of
his nature, and gave them a preternatural tension. The
sentiments which found satisfaction, the intimations which
came into expression, in his form of doctrine, are now for
ever human, fixed in the self-knowledge of men by his faith
ful words, and sure to transmigrate into other forms, when
their first embodiment will hold them no more. And so much
is the Apostle's later exposition of his hope divested of what
is special to himself, that to all ages since it has struck upon
the ear of mourners along with the very toll of the funeral
bell ; and though often indistinct to their mind, it has jarred
with no falsehood on their heart, but sounded like an anthem
in the dark, — great music and dim words. It needed only
time and events to transmute the doctrine into that of a future
hfe. For it included — in order to meet the case of those
who had " fallen asleep " — the conception of a path, through
death before the time, " to depart and be with Christ " ; only
that this was the minor provision, the by-path of the early
few. Reopened, however, as it always was when a disciple
passed away, it became an evermore familiar track ; and ex
perience had but to negative the opposite direction by leaving
it untraced, in order that the upward track should become the
via sacra of human faith. And can any one doubt what the
justification by faith means, when construed into the language
of universal experience ? It means that God wants more
from us, and also less, than the anxious wiU can do ; more,
because he wants ourselves ; less, because he does not want
our niceties of work. It means that we are called to spiritual
heights we strive in vain to climb ; that the most patient feet,
step after step upon the ground, will but stand upon the
earthly mountains after all ; and it is the fiery chariot of love
and trust that must bear us into heaven. It means that there

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 461
is an affectionateness in God that looks to what we are,
rather than what we do, and more readily speaks to us of
communion than of obedience. True, this is but another
way of saying what our religion elsewhere more ethically
expresses, that God requires our perfect service, and yet has
forgiveness for what is imperfect. But this statement, though
it means also that heaven is open to the pure, intent, and
single heart, touches a spring less deep and strong. It
divides the integral and living fact, even in regard to God,
by describing it as a demand of the whole, and then a sub
traction of a part ; and so exhibiting it rather as a dissolution
of justice, than as truth and wholeness of love. And the
Pauline doctrine appeals with far more immediate power to
human consciousness, especially to that third of mankind
whom a fervid enthusiastic mind renders little accessible to
the cold solemnities of duty. And, finally, if we are insensi
ble to the grandeur of St. Paul's teaching as to the univer
sality of the Gospel, it is not more because it is entangled
with the question of Jew and Gentile, than because the sen
timent has become the common atmosphere of Christendom,
and we feel not its freshness, because it blows not on us as a
breeze, but only as our breath of life. Let Mr. Jowett re
move from us the spell of our indifference.
" Let us turn aside for a moment to consider how great this
thought was in that age and country ; a thought which the
wisest of men had never before uttered, which even at the
present hour we imperfectly realize, which is still leavening
the world, and shall do so until the whole is leavened, and
the differences of races, of nations, of castes, of religions, of
languages, are fully done away. Nothing could seem a less
natural or obvious lesson in the then state of the world ;
nothing could be more at variance with experience, or more
difficult to carry out into practice. Even to us it is hard to
imagine that the islander of the South Seas, the pariah of
India, the African in his worst estate, is equally with our
selves God's creature. But in the age of St. Paul, how great
must have been the difficulty of conceiving barbarian and
39*

462 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
Scythian, bond and free, — all colors, forms, races, and lan
guages, — alike and equal in the presence of God who made
them ! The origin of the human race was veiled in a deep
er mystery to the ancient world, and the lines which separat
ed mankind were harder and stronger ; yet the ' lover of
Christ constraining ' bound together in its cords those most
separated by time or distance ; those who were the types of
the most extreme differences of which the human race is
capable. " The thought of this brotherhood of all mankind, the
great family on earth, not only implies that all men have cer
tain rights and claims at our hands ; it is also a thought of
peace and comfort. First, it leads us to rest in God, not as
selecting us because he had a favor unto us, but as infinitely
just to all mankind. To think of ourselves, or our Church,
or our age, as the particular exceptions of his mercy, is not a
thought of comfort, but of perplexity. Secondly, it links our
fortunes with those of men in general, and gives us the same
support in reference to our eternal destiny, that we receive
from each other in a narrow sphere in the concerns of daily
life. Thirdly, it relieves us from all anxiety about the con
dition of other men, of friends departed, of those ignorant of
the Gospel, of those of a different form of faith from our own,
knowing that God, who has thus far lifted up the veil, ' will
justify the circumcision through faith, and the uncircumcision
by faith ' ; the Jew who fulfils the law, and the Gentile who
does by nature the things contained in the law." — Vol. II. p.
126. What the doctrine of universality in the Divine govern
ment was to that age, — as new and transporting, — is in our
own " the clear perception of the moral nature of God, and of
his infinite truth and justice." This is one of the many deep
sayings, sad and wise, quietly dropped by our author in a se
ries of disquisitions, that show, among other things, how well
he understands its scope. Everywhere his care is to disengage
Christianity from the theological conceptions fastened on it by
a coarser age ; and, having restored the purity of its moral

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 463
vision, to enlarge its horizon to the whole extent of modem
knowledge and experience. Penetrating beneath the figures
natural to St. Paul, the very changes of which show them
to be figures, he finds that nothing can be more abhorrent
from the Apostle's thought than the doctrine of " satisfaction,"
which is hunted down, in every form, with exhaustive and in
dignant logic ; that even the analogy of sacrifice " rather
shows us what the death of Christ was not, than what it
was " ; and that to draw us into union with Christ, to fix
our eye on his pure self-renunciation as " the greatest moral
act ever done in this world," to keep us in a mood that har
monizes our trust in God with our distrust of ourselves, and
to suggest more than it can explain of hope and peace to a
reconciled world, are the real functions, as of his death, so of
all the stages of his existence. This pure type of faith emer
ges, we venture to affirm, without straining the rights of the
interpreter. The rest and freedom it gives to the mind is
singularly evident in the fine essay on Natural Religion.
The author sets forth from the Christian centre, and, conscious
ly marking where he passes the boundary of the apostolic
view, surveys and brings to its religious place the whole out
lying realm of nature, history, and life, that was unknown to
Scripture, but is fact to us. The great Gentile religions, now
discriminated and interpreted, and ascertained to follow cer
tain laws of development ; the breadth in philosophies, purer
and brighter as history passed on ; the Natural Religion,
which is the counterpart of these in Christian times, and holds
its place by the side of revelation ; and the ordinary state of
character in moraUy good but unspiritual persons, (state of
" nature " rather than of " grace,") — are reviewed and esti
mated with a breadth of observation and a delicacy of reflec
tion singularly impressive. Indeed, the literature of religious
philosophy affords few nobler productions than this essay.
With how true a hand and bright a touch is the following pic
ture drawn ! We will but hang it up in our reader's imagina
tion, and leave him to commune with it alone.
" It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons,

464 ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS.
— may we not say the majority of mankind ? — who have a
belief in God and immortality, have nevertheless hardly any
consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They
seem to live aloof from them in the routine of business or of
pleasure, ' the common life of all men,' not without a sense of
right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to what
our Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following him,
or what St. Paul meant by ' being one with Christ.' They
die without any great fear or lively hope ; to the last more
interested about the least concerns of this world than about the
greatest of another. They have never in their whole lives
experienced the love of God, or the sense of sin, or the need
of forgiveness. Often they are remarkable for the purity of
their morals ; many of them have strong and disinterested
attachments, and quick human sympathies ; sometimes a sto
ical feeling of uprightness, or a peculiar sensitiveness to dis
honor. It would be a mistake to say they are without relig
ion. They join in its public acts ; they are offended at pro-
faneness or impiety ; they are thankful for the blessings of
life, and do not rebel against its misfortunes. Such men meet
us at every turn. They are those whom we know and asso
ciate with ; honest in their dealings, respectable in their lives,
decent in their conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of
two classes, represented by the Church and the world, the
wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and
enemies of God. We cannot say in which of the two divis
ions we should find a place for them.
" The picture is a true one, and, if we change the light by
which we look at it, may be a resemblance of ourselves no less
than of other men. Others will include most of us in the
same circle in which we are including them. What shall we
say to such a state, common as it is to both us and them ?
The fact that we are considering is not the evil of the world,
but the neutrality of the world, the indifference of the world,
the inertness of the world. There are multitudes of men and
women everywhere who have no peculiarly Christian feelings,
to whom, except for the indirect influence of Christian insti-

ST. PAUL AND HIS MODERN STUDENTS. 465
tutions, the fact that Christ died on the cross for their sins has
made no difference ; and who have, nevertheless, the common
sense of truth and right almost equally with true Christians.
You cannot say of them, ' There is none that doeth good ; no,
not one.' The other tone of St. Paul is more suitable :
' When the Gentiles that know not the law do by nature the
things contained in the law, these not knowing the law are a
law unto themselves.' So of what we commonly term the
world, as opposed to those who make a profession of Chris
tianity, we must not shrink from saying, ' When men of the
world do by nature whatsoever things are honest, whatso
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,
these, not being conscious of the grace of God, do by nature
what can only be done by his grace.' Why should we make
them out worse than they are ? We must cease to speak evil
of them ere they will judge fairly of the characters of relig
ious men. That, with so little recognition of His personal re
lation to them, God has not cast them off, is a ground of hope
rather than of fear, — of thankfulness, not of regret." — Vol.
H. p. 416.

SIN: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT.

" Now the end of the commandment is Charity, out of a pure heart, and of
a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." — 1 Timothy i. 5.
The Apostle gives us here a very simple formula of
Christian perfection. He was not fond of long lists of the
virtues, such as the moral philosophers draw up ; and though
he does sometimes pass through a series, it is with a peculiar
result. Look at any book upon human ethics, and you are
astonished at the number of qualities that go to make up a
good man : the ramifications of duty seem never to terminate :
you scarcely know how a soul like ours can hold so much :
the further the author proceeds in his enumeration, the less
does he seem able to stop, — his divisions breaking into sub
divisions, and the subdivisions opening new varieties, — till
life appears to pulverize itself under his definitions, and be
come an infinite complexity of moral detail. St. Paul's enu
merations, on the contrary, instead of running down into
multitude, run up into unity ; each term is apt to be larger
than its predecessor ; he seems impatient of scattering his
exhortations, as if each had a business of its own, and rather
forces them as he proceeds into denser compression, tiU he
flings out some term of power that holds them all. The
graces with him do not present themselves apart, like garden
plants that may be tended and watered one by one ; but all
on the same organism, as the leaves and the blossoms of a
single shrub. He felt that in reality the virtues do not add
themselves up and subscribe to the final result of a holy soul :

SIN: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT. 467
but the one simple soul lives itself out into the direction of
all the virtues ; and there is a certain mood, a temper, a
climate of the soul, which grows everything beautiful at once,
and without which, while one adornment is elaborately nursed,
the rest will be apt to droop and die. This blessed and pro
ductive mood, felt to be one thing, ought to have one name :
and the Apostle calls it Charity or Love; and presents it
sometimes as the greatest of graces, sometimes as . the unity
of them all.
But this simple grace is to have a triple source. In the
midst of the garden of the Lord the Apostle plants but a sol
itary tree of life, — his divine and fruitful Charity. Only it
must be nursed by the threefold root, of which should any
part be wanting, the beauty of the form and the healing of
the leaves will soon be gone. " Charity out of a pure heart,
— and a good conscience, — and faith unfeigned." The
Heart, the Conscience, the Faith, must all be right ; and it is
no Pauline Charity that is not sustained by concurrence of
them all. And, observe the order. In the centre, striking
its fibres deepest down into the substance of our world, is the
Conscience, the Moral element of Ufe ; and on either side,
held to their due balance by its intermediate power, we find
the Heart, — the fresh human affections, — and the Faith, —
the heavenly trust and aspirations, — of our nature. Ten
derness and pity on the one hand, devotion and hope on the
other, are to hold on to the sense of duty in the midst ; and
there only will a noble and majestic Love arise, casting no
baneful shade upon the earth, and in its branches giving no
shelter but to birds that sing the songs of heaven. A charity,
therefore, that flows only from the genial heart, that looks
with kindly complacency on all things and persons, and with
a sort of animal sympathy licks every sore of humanity that
lies at its gate ; — this is not the " end of the commandment " ;
— for it has in it no moral, no religious element : it condemns
nothing ; it worships nothing : its eye neither flashes in re
buke, nor lifts itself in prayer : it is sensitive to suffering, not
to sin : and, if it can but wipe out pain, will do it even upon

46b SIN: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT.
guilty terms, and charm away a God-sent remorse as freely
as it would an anguish of the innocent. And, on the other
hand, a charity that flows only from the sincerity of faith,
and limits itself to the fellowship of belief ; that feels perhaps
for many, but only with a few ; whose warmest sympathies
are little else than a partnership of antipathies ; that transfers
to the infinite God the narrowness of its own consecrated
circle, reduces the universe to a temple of orthodoxy, and
turns the Heaven of Immortals into the May-meeting of a
sect ; — this also misses " the end of the commandment " : for
it abuses the true power of religion over life, and flings in the
branch of faith only to embitter, instead of sweeten, the waters
of natural affection; it blinds and bewilders the moral dis
cernment, overlooks undeniable nobleness, and glorifies not a
little meanness ; and, applying its perverted admiration to the
past as well as the present, crowds the statue-gaUery of his
tory with ill-favored and questionable saints, whose features
have so grown to the mould and pressure of a creed, that
they look like casts of an abstract theology, more than em
blems of a living humanity. Take away the wisdom of Con
science ; and Charity, surrendered to jnere affection, will fail
to see sin where it is ; or, constricted by Faith, will suppose
it where it is not. Both errors will shape themselves into
deliberate doctrines, deviating on either side from the simple
creed of our moral nature and of Christ. Let us look for a
few moments at the central truth on this matter ; and then
glance from it at the lateral heresies.
The central truth may be described under the phrase, Hie
Personal nature of sin. In affirming this, I mean both that
each man is a person, and not a thing ; and that his sin is his
own, and not another's. If there is anything within the com
pass of heaven and earth which we can be said to know from
ourselves, and to have no need that another should tell us, it
is the nature of sin. There is no arrogance, — there is only
sorrowful confession, — in protesting that this is a matter on
which we cannot be mistaken. It is the nearest of all things
to us ; the shadow that follows us where we go, and stays

sin: what it is, what it is not. 469
with us when we sit ; the clinging presence that penetrates
the very folds of our nature, and is known only from within,
where its fibres strike and draw their nutriment. No external
observer, though he have the divination of a prophet or the
glance of an archangel, can add one iota to our insight into
this sad fact, unless by sharpening our sensibility to feel and
interpret it better for ourselves ; or by any testimony, any
miracle, take one line away of the handwriting of God that
burns and flashes on the inner walls of the soul. Here at
least our apprehensions are first-hand ; and to trust them, to
cast out as Satan what tampers with them or contradicts them,
is not scepticism, but faith, — not infidelity, but faithfulness
to the ever-Uving Word of God. What the finger of Heaven
has written, neither the tapestries of ancient theology nor the
varnish of the newest philosophy can permanently hide ; the
light is ahve, and will eat through, clearing its everlasting
warning and consuming our perishable work.
What then does this first and last revelation declare human
sin to be ? In the moments when we know it best, — when we
cover our face because we can hide our transgression no more,
— when we cannot bear the placid silence of things, and cry in
our agony, " Smite us, O Lord, but tell us what we have done,"
— does He not answer us, " You have abused your trust ;
I showed you a better, and you have taken the worse ; I drew
you by a secret reverence to the nobler, and you have sunk
by inclination to the baser ; I gave you a will in the image
of my own, free to realize the good, and you have yielded
yourself captive to the evil; therefore have you a burden
now to bear, that none can lift off, — a burden which you
wUl feel it more faithful and wholesome to carry than to lose."
This is surely the tone in which the voice of God's Holy Spirit
speaks to us when we have grieved it : and if we believe it
not, I know not whither we should go ; it is the highest
oracle of truth below the skies, having authority more posi
tive even than the eye that assures us of the sun above us,
and the feet that tell us of the earth beneath.
According to this oracle, then, the essence of the sin lies in
40

470 sin: what it is, what it is not.
the conscious free choice of the worse in presence of a better no
less possible. And to make us guilty in its commission three con
ditions are required ; — (1.) Our mind must be solicited by at
least two competing propensities ; (2.) We must be aware that
of these one is worthy and has a claim upon us, and the other
not ; (3.) It must be left to us to determine ourselves to either
of these, and we must not be delivered over by foreign causes
to the one or to the other. Take away any of these condi
tions, and guilt becomes impossible. If the mind has not the
option of two propensities, but is possessed of only one, that
single impulse, being its entire stock and constituting its only
possibility, affords no scope for good or ill, and leaves the
being a mere creature of instinct. Or if, while rival passions
struggle at his heart, he knows no difference among them, or
only this, that some are pleasanter than others, then also he
is blameless, though he takes only what he likes. If, finally,
while he is drawn by conflicting tendencies and taught to
regard some as his temptations, and solemnly set in the midst
to choose, the whole appearance of option turns out a sem
blance and a pretence, and the matter is long ago determined
outside of him and now only performs the ceremony of pass
ing through him, — then, as before, he is irreproachable : the
strife within him is the illusion of mimic passions wrestling
for a dreamer's soul ; and while the tragic agony goes on
within, — a dance of fiends, a rescue of angels, — he is
stretched all the while sleeping on the bed of nature, and
cannot wake but to find remorse and responsibility a dream.
Accordingly, whenever we want to make excuse for our
wrong-doing, the false plea takes the form of a denial of one
of these conditions. " Blame me not," we say, " for I knew of
no other course " ; or, " I did not think it signified which I
did" ; or, " I saw it all, but I could not help it." Often the
gnawings of self-reproach are felt upon the heart at the very
instant that these excuses escape the lips. But sometimes
they are the suggestions of sincere self-deception, and proceed
from men who are their own dupes : and whenever this is the
case, the sense of responsibility is entirely dissipated ; remorse

sin: what it is, what it is not. 471
is extinguished ; the confession of guilt is turned into com
plaint of a misfortune; and the offender considers himself
rather as the injured of nature than the insurgent against
God. These excuses then must be wholly excluded, if the
sanctity of the moral life is to be preserved. They are the
various forms under which the personal nature of sin may be
denied. They all assert that the person either did not con
tain within him the requisite conditions, or was hemmed in
by natural preventives, of true obligation. Whoever offers
us such pleas is justly regarded as self-condemned, and in
deed as presenting a sadder spectacle in his defence than in
his transgression. Nor are they improved in their character
when they are expanded from excuses of individuals into
doctrines of churches ; for they explain away the essence of
sin, and leave us without intelligible faith in anything holy
in heaven or on earth. Thus : —
Whoever maintains that the human heart is invariably
wicked, and can think no thought and prompt no act, except
such as are odious to God, mistakes the whole nature of
moral obligation, and virtually excludes it from the entire
system of things. Confront this assertion with the facts of
life, and ask what it really means. Do you mean, I would
say to its defender, that, whenever two principles contend for
the mastery in a man's mind, he always abandons himself
to the lower ? — that no one, in short, was ever known to resist
a temptation ? Such a position is surely too bold for the par
adox of cynicism itself, in a world where there are many in
want that do not steal, and in suffering that do not complain ;
where a Pericles could administer the revenues of a state,
yet die without having added to his little patrimony ; and a
Socrates could live pure amid corruption, and truthful amid
lies, and die the martyr of injustice rather than offend his
reverence for law ; where not a school nor a family can be
found that has not its annals and anecdotes of conscience.
You allow, therefore, that victors there have been in many a
temptation. Did it make then no difference to the sentiments
of God respecting them whether they were victors or van-

472 sin: what it is, what it is not.
quished? Was it neutral to him whether they nobly held
their post, or basely betrayed it ? Then you simply deny the
holiness of God ; for you allow the greatest contrasts of char
acter on earth, with no responsive feeling, no variety of esti
mate, in heaven; and make our human discernment, our
natural admirations, more susceptible as moral barometers
than the Omniscient Perception. Or wiU you say that, al
though men differ in moral effort, and withstand temptation
in various degrees, and the Infinite Eye sees through the
whole history with unerring exactitude, yet the entire scale of
human character lies below the point of Divine acceptable-
ness, and in the view of perfect purity is equivalent to mere
variety of guilt ? Then do you deny again, only with a
change of form, the personal nature of sin ; for you try the
soul by the law of another nature, and not her own, — by a
law beyond her ken or beyond her power ; and while she is
striving to be faithful to her best thought against the seduc
tions of the worse, — in which alone the essence of all goodness
dwells, — you tell her that her God despises a conflict so far
down, and that " this people that knoweth not his law," how
ever true to their own, " is cursed." What is this but to
make Moral Excellence something quite different in heaven
and on earth ? — not veracity, not justice, not purity of thought,
not self-sacrificing love ; nothing that here makes our hearts
burn within us as we look at the dear face of long-tried
friends or saintly strangers, or leaving the Jerusalem of the
noisy present pace the quiet road of history, talking by the
way with the saviours of nations and the prophets of a
world ; — not this, but some hidden charm that finds neither
place nor answer in our souls ; so that the God who loves it
leaves us herein without a point of sympathy with him, or a
possibility of approach. In that case, he is a Being without
moral perfection ; for, however you may apply to him a circle
of holy names, the things you denote by them are a set
of unknown quantities bearing no relation to our types of
thought. Or, finally, do you allege that the distinctions of
character are not entirely different in heaven and on earth ;

sin: what it is, what it is not. 473
only that through all their varieties in the natural man there
is interfused a certain invariable taint, an irremovable tinge
of guilt, — a stain of self, a thought of pride, a want of faith ?
Even were it so, still, if this be the constant coloring of the
soul, pervading it by nature and not personally incurred, it is
but a sad condition under which it is given us to work out
our problem, and not any unfaithfulness in dealing with it as
it comes : it is an inherent incapacity, which, however unlike
the beauty of God's holiness, he can no more regard with
penal disapproval, than he can hate the deformed or persecute
the blind.
Again, whoever teaches that men are, through and through,
the creatures of circumstance, with no more voice as to their
character than as to their birth, but are the predestined pro
ducts of nature, working partly within them and partly with
out, — no less surely insults all moral convictions, and denies
the -reality of duty. For he abolishes entirely the distinction
between a person and a thing ; and conceives of every man
as a mere growth or development from the physiology of the
universe, no more responsible for his place in the scale of
excellence, than the plant which, according to its seed and
soil, becomes the hyssop of the waU, the lily of the field, or
the stately cedar of Lebanon. All moral ideas vanish in
stantly at the touch of this doctrine ; and the solemn language
on which Law and Conscience have stamped their venerable
impress, and ruled among the nations " by the grace of God,"
is defaced in the revolutionary mint of fatalism, and made
current with the superscription of a pretended equality where
all are low, and liberty where none is free. It is quite clear,
that, if the soul has no originating causality, but in every step
she takes is simply disposed of and bespoken by agencies
provided and set in train, without any question asked of her,
she can have no duties, she can win no deserts; she can
incur no guilt, merit no punishment ; she is deluded in her
remorse, and suffers a vain torture in esteeming herself an
alien from God. All that remains is this : that by natural
laws there may be pain consequent, and known to be conse-
40*

474 SIN: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT.
quent, on some of the directions which we may take ; and it
is at our peril that we enter on these paths. But so is it at
our peril if we go up in a balloon, or put to sea in a small
boat to save a drowning crew. You can get nothing out of this
consideration but more or less of Prudence ; hope of happi
ness, fear of suffering, can consecrate nothing as a Duty, but
only present it as interest ; and if a man chooses to disregard
his interest and risk the result, I know not who, in heaven
or earth, can tell him with authority that he has no right to
do it, or can say more to him than that he is a fool in his
folly. Who on these terms could cast himsetf, in tears of
penitence, upon the bosom of Infinite Mercy, and sob out his
prayer that he might be reconciled to God? Who would
ever tremble beneath the lash of a fiery reproach, and own,
as it quivered over him, that there was justice in the terror
of its look ? Rather must the sinner feel himself the victim
of a cruel doom ; whom it is as little suitable to punish, as to
chastise the patient in fever, or torture the cripple in the
street. A doctrine which reduces duty to interest, retribu
tion to discipline, guilt to disease, hohness to symmetry and
good health, and God to the neutral source of all things good
and ill ; — which frightens us with fears we may defy, but
awes us with no authority we can revere ; which pities iniqui
ty and smiles on goodness, but only in order to patronize en
joyment ; — whose faith in human nature is a reliance on the
ultimate docility of the wild animal man ; and whose worship
of God is taken, like a morning walk, for the sake of exer
cise ; — is so alien from the whole spirit of religion, and such an
affront to the first instincts of conscience, that it can only es
cape indignant condemnation by withdrawing altogether into
the sphere of natural history, and quitting as a foreign prov
ince the domain — whose language it corrupts — of Morals
and of Faith.
Finally, those who teach that guilt and merit, with their
penalties and rewards, can be transferred, deny in the direct-
est way the personal nature of Sin. That men should find a
foreign remedy for their perpetrated wickedness, is not less

sin: what it is, what it is not. 475
shocking than that they should trace it to a foreign source. If
they know what it is at all, they feel it to be inalienably their
own ; which none could give them and which none can take
away. And nothing is more amazing than that good Chris
tians, who seem truly cast down in humiliation, oppressed with
the sense of their short-comings, penetrated with the sadness
of baffled aspiration, — and who therefore, one would think,
must really have a consciousness of the personality of sin,
and know how it is chargeable only on their individual will, —
can yet obtain relief by flying, as it is said, to the cross, and
persuading themselves that the evil has been stayed and cured
by transactions wholly outside themselves, and belonging to
the history of another being. What can possibly be meant
by the statement that Christ has borne the punishment, some
eighteen hundred years ago, of your sins and mine, — of people
non-existent then, and therefore non-sinful ? Can the punish
ment precede the sin ? Can it be inflicted and gone through
before it is even determined whether the sin will be perpetrat
ed at all ? Or can merely potential sin, which may never be
come actual, be dealt with at ages distant, and its accounts- be
settled ere it arise ? If so, what is the death of Christ but the
provisory accumulation of a fund beforehand, ready to be
drawn upon as the everlasting " treasure of the Church," for
the free discharge of guilty debts and the release of divine
obligations ? And in what respect does this differ from the
Roman Catholic doctrine, — except that the treasure is at the
discretion of no chartered sacerdotal company, but is open on
more popular and looser terms ?
Moral relations, by their very nature, exclude all vicari
ous agency ; you cannot fall, you cannot recover, by deputy :
the ill that haunts you is the insult you have put on the divine
spirit in your heart, and it is as if you were alone with God.
An interposing medium can as little divert the retribution, as
it can intercept the complacency of the Infinite and Holy
Mind. What more fearful charge could you bring against
any government, than to say that its penalties may be bought
off? A judge who accepts the voluntary sufferings of inno-

476 sin: what it is, what it is not.
cence in acquittance of the liabilities of guilt, shocks every
sentiment of justice, and does that which the worst judicial
caprice would never dare to imitate. A law that does not
care whether the right persons feel its retribution, provided it
gets an equivalent suffering elsewhere, is an affront to the
most elementary notions of right. And an offender who can
welcome his escape by such device, permits his moral percep
tions to be blinded by personal gratitude, and is content to
profit by a transaction which it would fill him with remorse
to repeat upon his own children.
A Mediator may do much indeed to reconcile my alienated
mind to God. He may personaUy rise before me with a pu
rity and greatness so unique as to give me faith in diviner
things than I had known before, and by his higher image turn
my eye towards the Highest of all. He may show me how,
in the sublimest natures, sanctity and tenderness ever blend,
and so touch the springs of inward reverence that, in my re
turning sympathy with goodness, all abject and deterring fears
are swept away. He may direct upon me, from the hall of
trial or the cross of self-sacrifice, the loving look that pros
trates the impulses of passion and the power of self, and awak
ens the repentant enthusiasm of nobler affections. He may
renew my future ; but he cannot change my past. He may
sprinkle my immediate soul with the wave of regeneration ;
but he cannot drown the deeds that are gone. From present
sinfulness he may recover me ; but the perpetrated sins —
though he be God himself in power, unless he be other than
God in holiness — he cannot redeem. These have become
realized facts ; and none can cut off the entail of their conse
quences : whatever the Divine Law has avowedly annexed to
them will develop itself from them with infallible certainty.
The outward sufferings by which God has stamped into the
nature of things his disapprobation of sin, and made it griev
ous here and hereafter, stand irrevocably fast, chnging to
guilt as shadow to body, as effect to cause. This debt of nat
ural penalty is one which must be paid to the utmost farthing ;
by penitent and impenitent, by the reconcUed and the unrec-

sin: what it is, what it is not. 477
onciled alike : miracle cannot cancel, nor mediator discharge
it. In this sense, — of rescue from the penal laws of God, —
I know of no remission of sins ; nor would Christians have
retained so heathenish a notion, had they not frightfully ex
aggerated, in the first instance, the retributions of God by
making them an eternal vengeance ; and so created a neces
sity for again rescinding the fierce enactments of their fancy,
that hope and return might not be quite shut out. It is only
in man, however, and not in God, thus to do and undo. His
word, whether of warning or of promise, is Yea and Amen ;
and his great realities will march serenely on, and, heedless of
our passionate deprecations and fictitious triumphs, rebuke
our unbelief of their veracity.
But while the past can never be as though it were not, the
present may lie in the shelter of reconciliation, and the future
in the light of boundless hope. The outer burden we have
incurred we may still have to bear ; but once brought by
Divine conversion to an inner sympathy with God, and see
ing by his Ught rather than our own, we can suffer our
wounds with a patient shame, and scarcely feel their anguish
more. The averted face of the Infinite has turned round up
on us again ; and the pure eyes look into us with a mild and
loving gaze, which we can meet with answering glance, and
feel that we are at one with the universe and reconciled with
God.

PEACE IN DIVISION : THE DUTIES OE CHRIS
TIANS IN AN AGE OE CONTROVERSY.

" Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay, but
rather division." — Luke xii. 51.
Such was the account which the Saviour himself gave of
a religion whose promise was hailed by angels as an occasion,
not only of " glory to God in the highest," but of " peace on
earth, and good-will to men." The contradiction between the
two passages is so obviously merely of a verbal nature, that
it can perplex only the blind interpreter who penetrates no
further than the letter of the sacred volume. I should only
be giving utterance to your own spontaneous reflections, my
friends, were I to tell you that my text speaks, not of the de
sign, but of the consequence, of the dissemination of the Gos
pel ; and that it indicates no more than a prophetic knowledge
on the part of Christ of the diversities of sentiment and feel
ing which would spring from the diffusion of his religion.
This prophetic knowledge, however, it does clearly indicate ;
and this is a fact of no mean importance. The unbeliever
objects to Christianity, and the Roman Catholic to Protestant
ism, the endless catalogue of discordant opinions which have
resulted from their prevalence ; and to both we are furnished
with one reply. This infinite diversity indicates no failure in
our system ; it is not an unexpected effect which startles and
alarms us ; it was foreseen by the Author of our religion, and
announced by him as the necessary consequence of the genu
ine preaching of his Apostles. And though he had this evU

PEACE IN DIVISION. 479
(if such it be) full in view, he did not retreat from the office
he had assumed, nor feel it at variance with his deep and ten
der philanthropy, to implant among mankind a faith that
should break up their united mass into a thousand repulsive
groups. He must then have known that his Gospel would carry
with it blessings which this seeming disadvantage would not
cancel, — blessings far surpassing the evils of division, — a
peace which no jarrings of controversy could disturb, — a good
will that could triumph over the alienations of party. Were
it my object, it would be easy to show that the distribution of
the Christian world into sects has achieved incalculably more
good than it has inflicted injury ; that the rudest conflicts of
a militant theology are preferable to the hollow peace of uni
versal thraldom ; that the fluctuating surface of human opin
ion, with all its restless lights, is a fairer object than its dark
and leaden stagnation ; that discussion multiphes the chances
of truth, diffuses the thirst for knowledge, leads forth reason
from the mist, converts prejudice into conviction, and gives to
a dead faith a moral and operative power. It would be easy
to show that our religion, especially since it has issued from the
cloister into the light of day, has accomplished a vast amount
of good, with which no controversy has been able to interfere;
that it has imparted nobler sentiments of duty, given to con
science a more majestic voice, raised the depressed portions of
society; that it has enabled moral refinement to keep pace
with the intellectual advancement of mankind; that it has
given modesty to the sublimest exercise of reason, by erecting
towering and eternal truths beyond whose shadow reason can
not fly. It would be easy to anticipate the time when the be
nign principles of Christianity shall mellow down the rugged-
ness of party feeling, and extract the lingering selfishness that
poisons discussion with its bitterness ; when the unrestricted
and disinterested love of truth shall no longer be an empty
fiction ; when the differences between mind and mind will be
but so many converging paths by which mankind, with one
heart and one speed, hasten to the same goal of certainty.

480 PEACE IN DIVISION.
But it is not my object to insist on the advantages of contro
versy, or to predict its future triumphs ; but rather to warn
against some of its dangers, and to suggest a few thoughts
which may throw light on the duties of Christians in an age
so controversial as ours. To me, reflecting on the principles
of the Association at whose anniversary I speak, no topic
seems more appropriate. Our grand uniting principle is, the
rejection of all creeds and human formularies of faith, and a
simple adherence to the sacred volume, as being " able," with
out comment or interpretation, " to make wise unto salvation."
We think confessions enough have been tried, and been found
wanting ; that every such attempt to produce uniformity is ut
terly chimerical, and an impotent rebellion against the laws of
the human mind. Believing then that unanimity is one of the
weakest dreams of the visionary and the fanatic, we expect to
see diversity of sentiment among Christians ; we cannot be
surprised, and ought not to be displeased, to see the religious
world full of the activity of discussion. But since we agree
to abandon mankind to their divergencies of opinion, it is pe
culiarly incumbent on us to consider what new moral aspect
society assumes, when distributed into differing denominations,
and what new duties arise in an age of doctrinal debate.
I. It is the duty of Christians to remember how many are
their points of union.
Is our religion, my friends, a matter of the inteUect only, —
a mere mine of inexhaustible speculation ? I grant that it is
in perfect unison with the dictates of enlightened reason, and
that it administers the noblest stimulus and worthiest employ
ment to the faculties of the mind. But are not its ultimate
dealings with the affections ? Does it not present to us new
objects of love, new scenes of hope, a new system of desires?
Does it not unlock the springs of human feeling, and pour the
full tide of emotion upon the soul ? What else can so melt in
penitence, so solemnize with awe, so prostrate in fear, so en
kindle with joy? What else can impart such majestic power
to human will to trample in the dust peril and anguish and

PEACE IN DIVISION. 481
temptation, to conquer the solicitations of self-love, and pursue
with meek inflexibility deserted and solitary ways of duty?
For the greatest triumphs of our faith we must go where it
is matched with the passions of the heart, the impulses of un
regulated nature, and see how it prunes their exuberance,
enriches their sterility, purifies their pollutions, expands their
littleness, refines their ruggedness. Now these influences are
common to every form of Christianity ; its appeals to the af
fections are not uttered in the vocabulary of sectarianism, but
in the universal language of the human heart. Some may
prefer to deck the form of our religion in the gorgeous colors
of an imposing ritual ; some may throw round it the ample
folds of mystery ; others may love rather the grace of its prim
itive simphcity ; but beneath all these varieties the same living
figure breathes, the same radiant features smile. Where is the
system of Christianity that does not present to our affections
an Infinite Being, who has shadowed forth his invisible glories
in the splendors of the universe, who rolls the silent wheels of
time, whose presence, felt in other worlds, is secretly shed
around each human home, who traces the tear of grief and
lights up the smile of peace, who has an eye on every heart,
and carries on his parental discipline in scenes beyond our vis
ion and without an end ? Where is the system of Christiani
ty which does not lead us to the Saviour as the image of the
invisible God, as the bright reflection of his character, and the
noblest assurance of his love, — which does not trace to Jesus
innumerable moral blessings, and call us to reverence him for
guidance amid the intricacies of duty, for light in the chamber
of grief, for power of endurance amid the struggles of suffer
ing nature, and prospects of attractive grandeur beyond the
grave ? Where is the system of Christianity which does not
cast upon this state the shadow of an eternal tribunal, — which
does not associate with sin the horrors of the outer darkness,
and impart an infinite value to every pure tendency of the
soul, by inviting virtue to a never-ending progression replete
with ineffable joy ? What Christian has not enshrined in his
memory and his admiration the most beautiful and touching
41

482 PEACE IN DIVISION.
portions of the volume of our faith ? Is there a Christian
parent that can read the invitation of the benevolent Jesus,
" Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,"
without a heart of love to the Heavenly Teacher, without a pu
rified conception of that kingdom which infantine docility alone
can enter, without an uplifting of prayer that no rude world
may ever brush from the mind of his child the morning dews
of his innocence? Is there a Christian sister that has not
blessed the Divine Teacher, who, himself touched by the sor
rows that he queUed, restored the lost Lazarus to his weeping
and defenceless home ? IsJhere a Christian mother who has
not lingered with the bereaved Mary around the cross, won
dered at her awful sorrows, and thought how in the watches
of the night memory would bring back upon her ear that last
appeal, " Woman, behold thy son" ? The tears which flow at
passages like these, the admiration with which they burden the
heart, the images of moral loveliness with which they fill the
imagination, are not the exclusive possession of any sect ; they
are the unrestricted boon of God to the human soul. In pri
vate, then, we all ponder the same book, gather from it the
same refreshing influence, the same impressions of duty, the
same impulses to prayer. And on our Christian Sabbath,
while we tread the threshold of differing temples, are they not
all dedicated to Him " who dwelleth not in temples made with
hands," and regardeth not their trivial distinctions? While
the worshipping multitudes utter a various language and iU-
harmonizing thoughts, are they not addressing a Being to
whom language is but a breath, and human thought but like
an infant's dream, and who looks only to that heart of love
that animates them both ? It is an exhilarating thought, that
though on that sacred day Christians may be separated by
land and seas, gathered around myriads of sanctuaries, and
speaking in a thousand tongues, their praises blend like kin
dred fires as they rise, and burst into the courts of God, one
brilliant flame of incense from the universal shrine of the hu
man heart.
These, my fellow-Christians, are thoughts which we should

PEACE IN DIVISION. 483
cherish, to convince us how much, amid aU our diversities, we
have in common ; to show us that the best, the hving portion
of our faith, is others' as well as our own ; and to soften those
strange animosities that embitter our weak tempers, and en
feeble the heavenly ties that encircle the whole family of God.
If there be any truth in the remark of a philosopher, that the
essence of friendship is to have the same desires and aversions,
how much ground have all Christians for mutual love ! Wide
ly as their speculations may diverge, the great concern of all
is with God, the Infinite Father; with Christ, the commis
sioned prophet, the merciful redeemer, the inspired teacher,
the perfect model, the heavenly guide ; with eternity, the seat
of our deepest and most permanent interests, the receptacle of
our lost friends, the grave of virtuous sorrow, the home of the
tossed and faithful spirit. No one can live habitually under
the influence of these grand and affecting objects, and turn
from them to condescend to the littleness of a polemical tem
per. They will impart their own greatness to his soul, and
give him that best of powers, — the power over himself. Such
a one may use the pen of controversy without fear.
II. But I confess that the contemplation of these points of
union would impart httle peace to our minds, or serenity to
our tempers, if at the .same time we believed that the differ
ences of our faith would follow us into the eternal future, and
determine, our condition there. I therefore observe, in the
second place, that, amid aU our controversies, it is of moment
that we should remember the moral innocence of mental error.
This principle, my friends, seems to me to be intimately con
nected with our right of private judgment. We might claim
for men the privilege of free investigation, and affix no tem
poral rewards or punishments to any system ; yet this would
be but a worthless boon, if we upheld over any creed the pe
nal menace of eternity. We should thus only transfer the
bribe from men's interests to their fears ; we should push our
exclusion from earth, only to give it a vaster theatre in heav
en. As many Christians, not otherwise disposed to be narrow

484 PEACE IN DIVISION.
in their spirit, have some lingering doubts respecting this pri
mary principle of Christian charity, suffer me to say a few
words with a view to establish the perfect innocence of men
tal error. The exclusionist rests the burden of his argument
on one text, which, unhappily for Christian love, has been left
somewhat elliptical in its expression. " He that believeth and
is baptized, shaU be saved ; he that believeth not, shall be
damned." Believeth what? Transubstantiation, says the
Catholic ; miraculous conversion, says the Wesleyan ; the
vicarious atonement, replies the Calvinist; the Trinity, says
the Athanasian Creed. Every one has an anathema for the
opponent of his favorite tenet ; and the still, small voice of
charity is swept away by the conflicting winds of controversy,
and dies unheard. Let us see whether our Heavenly Father
will not permit us to open those gates of mercy which others
have so sternly closed.
It is not necessary for our present purpose to inquire what
are the salvation and condemnation of which the passage in
question speaks. It may be conceded without injury to our
argument, that they have reference to the destinies of a future
world. Every reader of Scripture will acknowledge that the
unbelief which our Saviour menaces, is unbehef in his Gos
pel, as preached by his Apostles, and confirmed by visible mir
acles ; — it is a rejection of Christianity. From this it would
seem clear, that no form under which the religion of Christ is
professed, however erroneous it may be, can be comprised
within the sentence of condemnation. But the argument of
the exclusionist is this : — My own system is, in my view, the
only one that is identical with the Gospel ; therefore I must
believe that those who reject my system are exposed to the
penalties annexed to the rejection of the Gospel. It is sur
prising that so many should fail to detect the fallacy of this
reasoning. Compare the case which our Saviour is supposing
with that of the man who, in preferring one profession of
Christianity, rejects all others ; and you wiU find that there
are two most momentous points of distinction, — the motive of
the rejecter is different, and the thing rejected is different.

PEACE IN DIVISION. 485
What can be more obvious, than that our Saviour refers to
the hearer's intentional rejection of the Gospel, — a rejection
of his own Christianity, not of his neighbor's. When punish
ment is held forth as the consequence of any act, is it not al
ways implied that the act must be intentional ? Is it not an
understood principle of every law, human and divine, that a
deed of accident and inadvertence is exempted from the pen
alties which, were it designed, it would deserve? To con
demn for murder the man who through mistake should admin
ister a poisonous draught for a restorative, would be as just as
to put the erring believer and the wimil unbehever on the
same level. To charge this enormous immorality on God,
would be the height of impiety. Widely as the professing
Christian may err, remote as his faith may be from the truth
as it is in Jesus, his intent is to believe ; he yields his assent,
no less heartily than his wiser brother, to the evidence which
God has placed before him; he only mistakes what it is
which that evidence proves; he reverences, no less than
others, the authority which Jesus claims ; but he does not dis
cern all the truths which that authority establishes. Strange
would it be, brethren, if God, who in all other cases look-
eth at the heart, should in this look at the understanding
only. But perhaps it will be urged that the same perversion of
mind which Jesus condemns is displayed by the modern in
quirer, who does not discern in the Gospel the great essentials
of Christianity ; that his disbehef in them, in short, is not
wholly involuntary. A few words to this objection.
I admit that faith is a compound result of the will and the
understanding ; connected indeed most obviously with the lat
ter, but determined more remotely by causes having their seat
in the former. In the process of investigation, the last step,
of weighing arguments and making up the mind, is undoubt
edly involuntary. When the evidence is once placed before
the inquirer, no energy of will can repel the conclusion which
is forced upon the judgment. When, however, we perceive
that the very same reasoning produces different results on A\f.
41*

486 PEACE IN DIVISION.
ferent persons, that one man is forcibly impressed by an ar
gument which to another appears weak and worthless, it be
comes necessary to account for these varieties in the effects of
evidence. And there can be no doubt that the perception of
truth is very materially influenced by the moral condition of
the mind. How powerful are the arguments in favor of the
Gospel derived from the moral beauty and symmetry of the
system, from the originahty and loftiness of our Saviour's
character, from the adaptation of his religion to the wants of
the human mind under all its countless varieties ! And yet
this species of evidence will be wholly without effect on those
whose minds are destitute of moral sensibihty and refinement.
Moreover, it is notorious that the sanguine are always apt to
believe what they hope, the timid what they fear ; and the
hopes and fears of conscience will exert this influence on be
hef no less than any other. Prejudice which might be con
quered, indolence which ought to be shaken off, passions
which blind and corrupt the judgment, uneasy conscience
which ahenates the desires from God, all these may exercise
a powerful moral sway over the faith ; and for the influence
of these every man is certainly accountable.
But at the same time there is no reason to doubt that God
has created us with intellectual differences which are wholly
involuntary, and which must tend to fix the determinations of
the judgment. There are some men who, from their earliest
years, seem incapable of admitting a truth without double the
evidence with which others would be satisfied. Who then
among us is to determine what mind is most correctly strung ?
Is the man who admits a proposition on one degree of evi
dence to condemn his brother who requires two ? And is it
credible that God will accept of none but him whom he has
himself placed at the only true point in the gradation ? Im
possible ! As well might we say that his heaven is closed
against the insane or the deformed.
It appears then, my friends, that belief flows from causes
partly moral, partly intellectual. But can any human eye, I
ask, discern in what proportion they are mingled in any one's

PEACE IN DIVISION. 487
faith ? Dare you say of your differing brother, that he differs
from a prevailing depravity of heart, and not from constitu
tional causes ? If not, then is there no human tribunal to
which opinion may be caUed. We are not forbidden to love
any feUow-creature, however remote his views from ours. As
we are unable to discover how far diversities of sentiment flow
from the will, we are bound to treat them all as if they were
entirely involuntary, and to leave to the Searcher of hearts
the award of approbation or displeasure.
Again, the faith rejected in the case which our Lord con
demns, is not the same that is renounced by the erring Chris
tian. What is the Christianity, the disbelief of which is pro
nounced by Jesus to be so dangerous ? Is it the Christianity
of Luther, of Calvin, of Arius, of Wesley? No, but the
Christianity of the Apostles, which they were " to preach to
every creature." Now in this all professing Christians be
lieve ; and from it they derive those views which, when once
severed from their origin and entering the province of human
reason, so rapidly diverge from each other. It is in vain to
urge that all these systems, contradictory as they are, cannot
coincide with revelation ; and that there must, therefore, be
some that do not constitute Christianity. The Gospel itself,
considered as a revelation, bears the same relation to all the
rival creeds whose credit hangs on its authority ; like the beam
of the balance, which determines the scale neither way. Let
me not be mistaken, my friends. I mean not to say that all
systems of Christian faith are equally true, or equally accord
ant with the sacred writings ; but that their relative truth is
undetermined by the authority of revelation, and dependent
on the correctness of the reasoning by which they are deduced
from Scripture. All begin with reverencing the Gospel ; and
this screens them from our Saviour's condemnation. They
then employ themselves in reasoning on the sacred writings
that lie before them ; and if they then separate from each
other, it is through the same fallibility of mind which multi
plies opinions on other subjects, and for which assuredly God
will bring no man into judgment. The various systems of

488 PEACE IN DIVISION.
Christian faith are but the diverging streams which flow from
the fountain of living waters : some may take a straighter,
others a more devious way ; some may receive a scantier,
others a more copious admixture from a different source ; some
may roll over a purer, others over a fouler bed ; but all con
tain the healing current which gushed from the smitten rock,
and all, I doubt not, are bearing onwards to meet at last in the
ocean of eternal rest.
Why then, my brethren, must we be handling terrors which
it is not ours to distribute, and sending forth into the dark
these fearful guesses at judgment? Why must our feeble
hand be playing with the lightning, and letting loose the hur
ricane ? Rather let us imitate God. Does he brand the her
etic with his curse ? Does he pour the elements in fury
around his dwelling ? Does he set a mark on him, that any
one finding him may slay him ? See, the sunshine still smiles
upon his roof; the shower still refreshes his field ; the chari
ties and hopes of life are still poured upon his heart. And
cannot we cheer with our human love the creature whom our
Father disdaineth not to bless ? Are we so sinless as to stand
apart in our holiness from the being with whom the Majesty
of heaven can condescend to dwell, whom Infinite Purity stoops
to cherish ? At least let us wait for the disclosure of those
secret counsels which we dare to scan. It will be time
enough to hate when God condemns, to shun when God driv-
eth away. Be assured, my brethren, no soul ever perished
for too much charity. " Be ye therefore perfect, as your
Father in heaven is perfect."
III. It is the duty of every Christian in an age of contro
versy to make an open, undisguised statement of his opinions,
and of the evidence which satisfies him of their truth. How
seldom do you see that union of courage and charity which
the spirit of the Gospel should impart ! Here you find one
who discovers nothing in the religion of his brethren but
errors to controvert ; who cannot perceive any Christianity
beyond the peculiarities of his own creed, and thinks that all

PEACE IN DIVISION. 489
the evils of society are to be traced to the opinions of which
he has discerned the fallacy. There, on the other hand, is one
who, without perceiving the difference between discussion and
wrangling, entertains a foohsh dread of all controversy, and,
as if the mutual good-will of mankind depended on their uni
formity of faith, suppresses his own views, and melts down
the distinctions which separate them from the views of others.
The enlightened Christian will acknowledge that both these
are in the extreme. Against the exclusive spirit of the for-.
mer the preceding part of this discourse may be a sufficient
remonstrance ; and I will conclude with a few remarks in ref
erence to the latter. It must be admitted that the fear of
making an open profession of faith is a not unnatural fruit of
the despotism with which society persecutes those who deviate
from its established modes of thinking. A vast machinery of
refined intimidation is prepared, to awe down every rising
spirit that seeks to emerge from the thraldom of authorized
custom into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. The
charge of singularity, the smile of wonder, the sneer of aris-
tocratical derision, the cold recoil of suspicion, and the open
upbraidings of bigotry, are the keen weapons by which the
world hastens to assault the conscientious openness which it
ought to hail and venerate. Assailed by so many enemies, it
is little wonder that the weak and timid should fall into that
" fear of man which bringeth a snare " ; and that this should
often lead them to act where they should keep aloof, and to
be passive where they should act ; to speak when they should
be silent, and oftener to be silent when they should speak ; to
think within the barriers of established rules, or, when more
convenient, not to think at all. But however natural may be
the origin of this accommodating flexibility in the intolerance
of society, it receives no justification hence ; it is utterly in
compatible with that Christian simplicity which is ever the
same to men and to God, which unfolds the character to the
view in harmonious proportion, and would scorn to appear
other than it is. It can exist only in the mind that loves the
praise of men more than the praise of God.

490 PEACE IN DIVISION.
I cannot leave this concluding part of my subject, without
remembering that I am animadverting on a fault which has
been peculiarly charged on my own sacred profession. The
ministers of the Gospel, it has been said, the veiy men who
should live under the constant eye of God, have ever afforded
the most signal examples of the fear of man. My brethren,
I confess it with shame : and it is a truth to which I can
never revert without feelings of indignant sorrow. Happily
there have been many noble exceptions, and in this place it
is not difficult to bring many before the view. But the more
I read the past records of the Church, and the more I study
its secret history at the present day, the more painfully strong
is my conviction that the ministers of the Gospel have been
the most temporizing class of men. They are the appointed
investigators of sacred truth, employed expressly for the pur
pose of opening the treasuries of divine wisdom and knowl
edge ; and yet from none has society gained fewer accessions
of truth and light. Though stationed by their office between
heaven and earth, they have gathered upon their souls more
influences from below than from above ; though ordained to
declare the whole counsel of God, they have more often
studied the taste than the wants of their hearers ; though en
circled in the discharge of their duties by an arm almighty to
uphold, they too have felt afraid. My beloved friends, I know
not how it appears to others, but to me it seems that in the
whole Christian code there is not a duty of more clear and
paramount obligation than the honest, simple avowal of Chris
tian truth. The first natural dictate of the mind is to speak
what it thinks on any subject of deep interest and importance ;
and I am persuaded that a man must sophisticate his con
science, must fill his judgment with forced reasoning and false
excuses, before he can come to the conclusion that he had bet
ter keep truth to himself. Do you ask me, " What is truth ?
Amid the conflicting sentiments of mankind, how is it possi
ble with confidence to take up any as exclusively just ? " I
answer, every man's own convictions to him are truth, to him
are Christianity ; and that to conceal them is to act the part

PEACE IN DIVISION. 491
of the wicked and slothful servant who buried his master's
talent in the earth. It signifies not that men may obtain ac
ceptance with God without thinking as you think ; God for
bid that I should for a moment doubt that ! But do you be
lieve that truth is better for man than error ? Do you believe
that they are not both alike to his mental and moral condi
tion ? If so, it is selfishness, it is sinful exclusion, to wrap
yourself up in the solitary enjoyment of your own convictions.
For my part, I see nothing but hypocrisy in the elaborate at
tempts which are sometimes put forth, to make opinions look
like popular creeds, by slurring over grand points of distinc
tion, by pushing forward apparent resemblances, by a dexter
ous use of ambiguous phrases, and other arts equally worthy
of a Christian's scorn. Indeed, my fellow-Christians, we
ought never to be content till this great principle has been
established, — that, in obeying the noble law of Christian open
ness and sincerity, it is not the business of the human being
to calculate consequences at all; that temporal expediency
must in no degree enter into the consideration. God is the
author of truth, and he will take care of its consequences ;
and I am well satisfied that, let appearances be what they
may, honesty will bring after it nothing but good. Even sup
pose that we should be found to be in error : then, the sooner
it is exposed the better ; and nothing is so likely to lead to
its exposure as the undisguised publication of its evidence.
" Opinion in good men," it has been beautifully remarked, " is
but knowledge in the making " ; and it is by sifting thegrounds
on which opinions rest, by bringing them into close compari
son, and setting many minds to work upon them, that truth is
at length elicited ; and he is no enlightened lover of truth,
who is an enemy to the avowal of opinion. It is to be la
mented that the world has been so successful in circulating
the feeling, even among the well-meaning of mankind, that
there can be anything to be ashamed of in opinion ; for hence
has arisen an association of fear, and almost of conscious guilt,
with one of the noblest and first duties of the mind, the duty
of thinking for itself. Let the inquirer and the teacher keep

492 PEACE IN DIVISION.
their eye steadily fixed upon the Scriptures, make it their
single object to know and to communicate what they contain;
let them utterly forget that there are any inspectors of their
conduct, any hsteners to their words, except God and their
own conscience ; and I am satisfied that truth and charity will
spread together, and more union be produced among the now
widely dissevered portions of the Christian world, than any
timid mediators, striving to be all things to all men, will ever
be able to effect. The alarmed reconciler of inconsistencies
may seem for a while to be successful ; he may keep together
in temporary harmony those dissimilar elements which more
fearless spirits might separate; he may persuade men that
they agree when they are wide as the poles asunder;
he may surround himself by numbers, and multiply the di
rections in which his immediate influence extends. On the
other hand, the reformer who cannot conceal, and who dare
not pretend, who interprets most strictly the law of Christian
simphcity, may lose many supporters who ought to stand by
him in the hour of trial ; he may be looked on with suspicion
and avoided as dangerous ; he may be the centre at which a
thousand weapons are directed ; he may seem to have been
imprudent and premature, and to have baffled his own cause
by his indiscreet openness ; he may go down to the evening
termination of his labors, accompanied only by a faithful few,
and cheered by no multitude of approving voices. But wait
till a generation has passed away, and then come and look
into the field occupied by these two laborers. Then you will
find it proved that numbers are not always strength ; when
gathered together by the feeble bond of private influence,
they are scattered when that influence is withdrawn. The
timid man has left no permanent trace behind him ; he has
inspired no courage, provided no security for the future, and
the grass has grown over the road that leads to his temple.
But the man who has not feared to tell the whole truth is
remembered and appealed to by succeeding generations ; his
name, pronounced in his lifetime with reproach, becomes a
familiar term of encouragement ; his thoughts, his spirit, long

PEACE IN DIVISION. 493
survive him, gather together new and more powerful advo
cates, and are associated with the records of imperishable
truth. Finally, the great evil of this disposition is, that it con- ¦
strains the natural action of the mind, and produces a weak
vacillation of character which paralyzes every virtuous en
ergy. The grand secret of human power, my friends, is sin
gleness of purpose ; before it, perils, opposition, and difficulty
melt away, and open out a certain pathway to success. But
alas ! brethren, our Christianity has not taken from us the
spirit of fear, and given us in its place the spirit of power,
apd of love, and of a sound mind. We still put duty to the
vote. We shrink from being singular, even in exceUence,
forgetting how many things are customs in heaven which
are eccentricities on earth. We fix our eye, now on the
tempting treasures below, then on the half-veiled glories
above ; we open our ears, now to the welcome tones of human
praise, then to the accents of God's approving voice ; and in
the vain attempt to reconcile opposing claims, we sacrifice our
interest in both worlds. It is melancholy to think what a
waste of human activity has been occasioned by this weakness ;
how many purposes which, if concentrated, might have left
deep traces of good, have been applied in opposite directions ;
how many well-meaning men have laid a benumbing hand of
timidity on their own good deeds, and passed through life
without leaving one permanent impression of their character
on society. It is not want of an ample sphere, it is not pover
ty of means, it is not mediocrity of talent, that makes most
men so inefficient in the world ; it is a want of singleness of
aim. Let them keep a steady eye fixed on the great ends of
existence ; let them bear straight onwards, never stepping
aside to consult the deceitful oracle of human opinion; let
them heed no spectators save that heavenly cloud of witness
es that stand gazing from above ; let them go forth into the
struggles of life armed with the assurance, " Fear not, for I
am with you " ; — - and each man will be equal to a thousand ;
all will give way before him ; he will scatter renovating princi-
42

494 PEACE IN DIVISION.
pies of moral health ; he will draw forth from a multitude of
other minds a mighty mass of kindred and once latent energy;
and, having imparted to others ennobled conceptions of the
purposes of life, will enter the unfolded gates of immortality,
breathing already its spirit of sublimity and joy. Brethren,
" how long shall we halt between two opinions ? "

THE END.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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