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OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
T. <fc T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, . . GEORGE HERBERT.
NEW YORK, . . SCRIBNER ASD WELFOItD.

OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY.

A CONSTEUCTIVE CEITIQUE.

EEV. J. B. HEAED, A.M.,
* '' o
AUTHOR, OF "THE TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN," ETC.

"Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of
heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth
out of his treasure things new and old." — Matt. xiii. 52.

EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET.
1885.

£o tbe TRevcreD /ifeemor*?
OF
ALEXANDRE VINET OF VEVAY,
AND
THOMAS ERSKINE OF LINLATHEN,
MY TWO MASTEBS IN THEOLOGY,
TO WHOM I OWE THE THOUGHT OF A " CONSTEUCTIVE CRITIQCE OF THEOLOGY,"
EASED ON KANT'S METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY,
AT ONCE DESTRUCTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE,
I DEDICATE
THIS ATTEMPT TO FIND THE OLD IN THE NEW AND THE NEW IN THE OLD.

" Ceux qui auront et& intelligents brilleront comme la splendeur de
Vetendue: et ceux qui en auront amene plusieurs a la justice luiront
comme les etoiles a toujours et a perpetuite." — Daniel xii. 3.
INSCRIPTION ON VINET's GRAVE AT CLARENS.

PREFACE.

The oft-quoted remark of Vinet, that " even now, after
eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved
in some tremendous error of which the Christianity of
the future will make us ashamed," must be my excuse
for attempting what will seem alike to dogmatists and
sceptics a presumptuous task. A " constructive critique
of Theology, old and new," implies that there is both
a constant and a variant element in faith : dogmatists
deny the latter and sceptics the former. As a result of
this, our age stands between these two Theologies, that of
the past and that of the future, in an attitude of indecision
which reminds us of the phrase applied to the political
deadlock of Germany a few years ago, Gehemmter Fort-
sehritt, Gefordeter Ruchtritt, " Progress hindered," " Eeaction
forwarded." This is the mocking comment of our age
on its theological guides, who can neither break with the
past nor throw themselves forward into the future. We
stand where two ways meet, uncertain which course to
take. Theology sits like Theseus turned to stone, " sedet
seternumque sedebit, Infelix Theseus."

viii Preface.
It is this fossilized aspect of spiritual truth, 'fixed in
form instead of clothing itself in fresh form at each fresh
age of the world, which leads men to ask whether there
can be a living truth of God at all. If God has " more
light to break out of His word," as Eobinson told the
Pilgrim Fathers at Leyden, it must be said of our day as
of his, that no one seenis on the look-out for it.
Much of our modern scepticism is accounted for by
this attitude of divines. This age, like other ages, has its
own ruling ideas, its Zeit-geist, which is summed up in
the humanitarian phrase of the " greatest happiness of
the greatest number." Medicine and jurisprudence have
revised their teaching in harmony with these ruling ideas.
Theology alone holds back under the fear of unsettling
men's minds. But men's minds are already unsettled,
and it is this fear of change which only widens the breach
and deepens the existing unsettlement. When Beccaria,
on the eve of the great reform of jurisprudence, described
the story of human progress as " presenting the picture
of an immense sea of error in which only a few, in
confusion, and at a great distance from each other, emerge
to the surface of truth," he had no thought of dogmatic
Theology with its wrecks strewed on a sea of error ; and
yet the same criticism which detected error in law
may also detect error in Theology. It is upwards of
twenty years since I first set myself to trace out what
seemed to me to be the missing link in our popular
Theology. A spiritual Theology seemed to presuppose
some spiritual faculty in men ; I was led in this way to

Preface. ix
trace the error of all dogmatic Theology to its one tap
root in a defective psychology. In a previous work on
the Tripartite Nature of Man, I pointed out that with the
exception of the Alexandrian school of Platonizing
divines, theologians in general have neglected Christian
psychology, and so have lost the key to such dogmas as
original sin, conversion, regeneration, and the restitution
of all things. So true is the phrase, Eheu ! paupertina
philosophia desinit-in paupertinam theologiam.
The poverty-stricken Theology of the West dates from
the time when a shallow unscriptural conception of man
became the " ruling idea " of Latin divines. We do the
great Augustine injustice when we make him exclusively
responsible for this. He was incomparably the greatest
Church teacher of the school of the North African dog
matic divines, who were all moulded on a bad model. It
is Tertullian, more than any one else, who is responsible
for having given the Theology of the West a wrong set
with his crude literalism and sensuous misconception of
future rewards and punishments. Uneasy suspicions, it
is true, have stirred the best minds of all ages to seek out
this root error, and to detect the leaven hid in the three
measures of meal. But whether it was the leaven of the
Pharisees as formalism, or of the Sadducees as scepticism,
or both combined, the Pietists of the past have been unable
to say. They have failed to strike their finger on the defect
of Theology, and while using the Pauline contrasts between
flesh and spirit they have not gone deep down to the
root of the difference between the first and the second

x Preface.
Adam, and so to explain what we commonly speak of as
the Fall. For want of a sound psychology to supplement
Theology, these very divines who denounced the Baby
lonian captivity of the Church either to Popish or prelatist
errors have, with a few insignificant exceptions, bowed the
neck uninquiringly to a tradition of North African Theo
logy, which they accepted as Paulinism pure and simple,
when in reality it is a strange perversion of the good
news of which the great apostle of the Gentiles was the
chief messenger.
Educated men have long seen this, and trained divines
have always had their seilicets and distinguos with which
to slip out of the knots of a too crabbed and scholastic
Theology. But the laity have felt that a system burdened
with so many difficulties and contradictions, with limita
tions on the right hand arising from God's decrees, and
on the left hand from man's free will, was scarcely worthy
of its Divine Author. The comment of Alphonso of
Castile on the Ptolemean astronomy, " with cycles and
epicycles scribbled o'er," that if called in, he could have
suggested a much more simple system, is what men have
said of the current Theology. There has sprung up, then,
a deepening impression on all sides that a new Theology
is called for by a new age. The " ruling ideas " in
jurisprudence and medicine have all been silently revised
and renewed, and it is only in Theology that the same
" ruling ideas " pass on from age to age unquestioned and
unchallenged. The assumption that Paulinism and the
popular Theology are inseparable is the root of much

Preface. xi
current unbelief. It explains the attacks of its open
enemies, and also accounts for the failure of its ablest
apologists. As a matter of fact, neither the attack nor
the defence touches the real point in dispute. The one
assumes that the source must be tainted from whence such
turbid waters flow, the other that the river must be pure
whose source proceeds from " the throne of God and of
the Lamb." Both sides are thus contending on wrong
issues, and so they tilt on for ever without touching each
other's shields.
The remedy lies deeper, and in a direction which, as
a people, we are constitutionally indisposed to take.
Goethe, who was no unfriendly judge of the English
character as a whole, described us "a practical people
but pedantic, and that our vision was limited in all
directions outside affairs." This is a true witness, and
the price that we pay for our genius, for the affairs of
real life, is a certain speculative timidity, and a distrust
of any root-and-branch criticism of our theological
traditions. The modern Englishman has the same
-contempt for what, in his conceited ignorance, he
describes as cloudy German metaphysics, as the rough
Eoman of the early empire had of the starveling Greek,
the Grceculus esuriens of Juvenal's time. Hence his dis
trust of such a phrase as a " New Theology." He has
no objection to verbal criticism of such phrases as the
" Fall," or " Imputation," or " Satisfaction," but then they
must be verbal only.
But in Germany, where, for a variety of reasons,

xii Preface.
Dogmatik has long since passed into Dogmen-Geschichte,
there is less distrust than with us of a thoroughgoing
criticism. Ever since Kant led the way as a Bahn-brecher,
pathfinder, and pioneer in one, as we should read the
phrase, philosophy first, and after it Theology, have in
Germany moved in this path of constructive criticism.
The ruling ideas of an age, such as that of the Deists, is
felt to be inadequate to express the beliefs of an age
which is not deistic at all, and whose very way of
looking at the supernatural differs in toto from that of our
fathers. In America as well as in Germany, though for different
reasons, a critique of religion at once destructive and con
structive will not have to break through so thick a crust of
prejudice as in this country. The American intellect is set
in some respects in a different mould from ours. There is
not the same distrust of novelty. On the contrary, the same
inventive skill which is let loose on mechanical novelties,
some of them only " notions " at best, runs also out into
mental and moral inventions. In a new world, a new
Theology does not perplex the mind with fear of change as
much as it would in the old world. There is another
reason for this greater openness of mind in America. As
it was there that the Theology of Calvin was pushed to
the last point of logical consistency by Jonathan Edwards
and his school, so the reaction has set in there with the
most rigorous consistency. New England Theology has
long had its " old lights " and " new lights," its " hard
shell " and " soft shell " Calvinists : but now that

Preface. xiii
Unitarianism and Universalism have stepped in to
claim some of the spoils of war, and are the residuary
legatees in many cases of the old ultra -Calvinistic
Churches now defunct, there is a disposition and a desire
on all sides to reconstruct Theology out of its ruins.
No such necessity having arisen, as yet at least, in this
country, -we shall be told that we are only unsettling
men's minds by raising such questions at all. But our
answer is, that men's minds are unsettled already, and
that the very worst state that a Church could fall into is
when men outwardly conform to it while they dissent
inwardly. We are not, happily, sunk so low in this
respect as they are in France, where one sex are divots
and the other sex libres penseurs. But we are fast
approaching it, and this too pedantic adherence to
antiquated phrases, out of which the primary and spiritual
import has been evacuated by constant iteration, is only
hastening on the crisis. It is not too late to avoid
this eclipse of faith, or as we may describe it, this
glacial epoch of the world when faith dies down into
agnostic indifference, if we only have the courage
of our convictions. To do this, we must brush
aside as irrelevant the cautions of the timid and time
serving, the warnings of the narrow and dogmatic,
and harder still to bear, the sneers of the indifferent
and the sceptical, who are the most dangerous by far of
the three classes with whom we differ. As for the timid,
who think they take their religion straight out of their
English Bibles, and are unconscious how much muddy

xiv Preface.
metaphysics enters into the popular Theology, we can
only ask them to pass the subject by altogether. A
critique of philosophy is written for philosophers, and
equally so, a critique of Theology for theologians.
Turning to those unnatural allies, the dogmatists and the
sceptics, we may leave their objections to answer -each
other. It is more than we dare expect that this, or any
other work of apology, will slay these hydras of doubt
and dogmatism sent to strangle the infant spiritual con
sciousness. But our standpoint and aim may be summed
up in a word, as the attempt to restate the truths of the old
Theology in the light of this spiritual consciousness. The
pneuma, or God-consciousness, is dormant but not dead in
every man. It has been said by Dean Stanley that there
are three ages of Church history. — the Petrine, or that of
Dogmatic Catholicism ; the Pauline, or of Dogmatic Pro
testantism ; and the coming age of Johannine of mystical
aud spiritual thought which we are now entering on.
This contrast is fanciful if carried too far, and certainly
none but the Tubingen school would pretend that these
contending types of Theology were not harmonized among
the apostles themselves. But it is not saying too much
to observe that as there has been a dogmatic hierarchical
and a dogmatic Biblical type of Christianity, so the type
we are entering on to-day is at once freer and more devout
than the two former. The Theology of the future, as we
may call it, aims at absorbing all that was good in the
old Eationalism, and also in the old Mysticism, long and
widely divided. The new Theology is thus distinct from

Preface. x
the old, and yet it is its legitimate descendant and its heir-
at-law. Parent and child may misunderstand each other,
as is often the case, and busy flatterers and mockers on
both sides may make mischief by widening the breach
which they should desire to close. But we need not be
shaken in our faith in an ultimate reconcilement of old
and new forms of truth by these alarms. When did a
new truth ever enter the human mind unless under
storm and stress ? It is so with the kingdom of heaven.
It is taken by violence, and the violent take it by force.
Hence we have no wish to minimize these contrasts, or
to tone them down to the level of the platitudinarian
party, who first denounce the use of such a phrase as a
new Theology, and then end when it has won its
way by saying sapiently, " we always thought so." The
late Dr. Whewell used to say, that every new view of
science had to pass through these three stages, and he
added that he had lived through all three experiences
himself. 1. It was absurd. 2. It was contrary to the
Bible. 3. We always thought so.
It will not be long — the writer himself may live to
see it — when this new Theology will pass into the third
stage, when its opponents will say, " we always thought so."
This will be the sure sign that its work is done. It
will then be time for it to give place to some fresher
" type of thought. So, let us add, in conclusion, each
age may and should construct its own Theology. Let
the twentieth century outgrow the ruling ideas of the
nineteenth as much as we do those of the eighteenth.

xvi Preface.
'We shall be the last to complain that our work has become
obsolete. It was so with that now forgotten but once
famous work, Abraham Tucker's Light of Nature. Tucker
did good yeoman's service for the eighteenth century, as
it is our desire to do for our own age. For both him
and me it should be enough if we can make some
crooked places straight and some rough places smooth
before the coming of Christ, and to remember " He must
increase, but I must decrease."

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION-.
PAGE
Limits of the Inquiry — Theology has four Divisions : Bibliology,
Theology Proper, Soteriology, Eschatology — Bibliology out
side this Inquiry, which assumes the truth of Revelation and
Miracle — The new Theology proposes to subject to Criticism
the popular Teaching on the Being of God, the Plan of Re
demption, and the larger Hope for the Race here and hereafter, 1-24
CHAPTER I.
RULING IDEAS IN THEOLOGY.
Theology defined as a Science of Inferences based on a Revelation
— Ruling Ideas of Old Testament the Key to its Exegesis —
This equally true of the New Testament — Sir Henry Maine
on the Growth of the Idea of Law — Theology and Juris
prudence must advance together — What are the " Ruling
Ideas " of the Age we live in ? — The Theology of the Future
must do as Jurisprudence has done, and conform its Teaching
to this Spirit of the Age, [  25-40
CHAPTER II.
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES.
The Error of putting new spiritual Truths in the old and shrunk
Forms of the Past — Kant's Critique our Model in this respect
— Destructive only to reconstruct — All Truths, without excep
tion, must be so passed through the fires of Criticism, and so
tried by fire,  41-54

XV111

Contents.

PAO.K

CHAPTER III.
THE BEING OF GOD.
The Theology of the Past rested on Dualism— Cartesian Dualism
led up to Deism— The Theology of the Future must rest on
Monism— One God, one Law, one Element  55-73
CHAPTER IV.
MIEACLES AS PROPHECIES.
All Miracle : the Anticipation of Powers latent in Nature and
Man  74-S1
CHAPTER V.
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.
A spiritual Psychology the basis of a spiritual Theology —
Mechanical and Governmental Ideas of God now out of date
with the Age of Deism,  S2"96
CHAPTER VI.
THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
The Key to this Truth is the Kenosis— This forgotten Aspect of the
Incarnation is better understood in our Day— Its Bearings
discussed  97-119
CHAPTER VII.
THE NEW AGNOSTICISM.
How the Agnostic Tendency of our Age to be met by Appeal to
the spiritual Instincts in Man  120-136
CHAPTER VIII.
ELECTION NOT SELECTION.
The Key to Election is Multitudinism, not Particularism — The
Error of the old Theology on this subject arose from taking
a part of God's Counsels for the whole,  137-152

Contents
CHAPTER IX.
RECONCILIATION WITH GOD.
Three progressive Theories of the Atonement— Advancing Ideas

XIX

PA OR

in Jurisprudence point to the same growth in Theology, 153-171

CHAPTER X.
THE P.FLE OP FAITH.

Theology rests on these three Supports— Conscience, the Bible,
and Catholic Consent— The Rule of Faith is in their agree
ment  172-186

CHAPTER XI.
INTUITIONAL THEOLOGY.

Tho old Theology Introspective only— The new Theology In
tuitional as well — Our Intuitions the base of a spiritual
Theology,  187-204

CHAPTER XII.
ON LIFE AS A STATE OF PROBATION.
Augustinian Doctrine of Original Sin criticized— Objections to
Probation Theory — It is false to Experience, . . 205-226
CHAPTER XIII.
INDIVIDUALISM.
Individuality and Individualism — The two Tendencies contrasted
— Vinet's Distinction discussed,  227-246
CHAPTER XIV.
ESCHATOLOGY.
Various Theories of Existence after Death — Swedenborg's Theory
of a " Formative Principle " the mediation point between
Faith and Philosophy  247-278

PAGE

xx Contents.
CHAPTER XV.
ANGELS.
Evolution points to an ascending scale above Man as well as
below— What this Link in the Chain is, 279-289
CHAPTER XVI.
THE SECOND ADVENT.
The Personal Appearing of Christ intended to supplement the
defective Proof of His Resurrection as seen only of some, 290-302
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NEW CRITICISM.
The New Criticism will be constructive, not merely destructive —
Its Bearings on the Theology of the Future, . . . 303- 334
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONCLUSION.
Summary of leading Points of New Theology— The constant and
the variant Truths of Theology, ..... 335-364

Introduction.

LD and New Theology, — many will not admit
the existence of such a contrast at all, much
less that a revealed Theology can ever belong
to the class of things which " decayeth and
waxeth old, and is ready to vanish away." Is not Theo
logy, they say, the vesture of that Church which itself is
the body of Christ ? Who will dare to rend away that
seamless coat woven from the top throughout ? There
are minds to whom the -presumption of offering a new
Theology in place of the old will seem as great as that
of Baxter, who undertook, at the Savoy Conference, to
compile a new liturgy, and in a few days actually drafted
the outline of it. The more grave and important the
subject is, the less we relish novelties. In religion,
beyond anything else, we are ready to say that what
is true is not new, and what is new cannot be true.
Even innovations in religion must come in marked with
a certain archaic air, and stamped with a sham mark
of antiquity. Hence the very term a " new Theology "
seems to strike a jarring "note. Prescription, called in
as early as Tertullian, and when the Church was in its
comparative infancy, seems to cry out against novelties
A

2 Introduction.
in Theology, and more than all against the presumptuous
attempt of setting up a new body of divinity in place
of the old.
We have to meet this objection in limine, and to point
out how far and to what extent the old is to give place
to the new. For this reason, and not to raise unneces
sary alarms, we may at once begin by laying down the
limits within which this inquiry is carried out, and what
we propose to touch, and what we propose to turn aside
from. Theology may be said to fall under two great
divisions : the one we call its documentary side, and the
other its dogmatic. The documentary side of Theology
we propose to pass by, and to confine ourselves to the
dogmatic. In so far as Christianity is a book religion,
we may leave it to stand or fall on its own merits. It
is not the book itseK or its contents, but the dogmatic
inferences drawn frdm that book, which are out of date in
our day, and call for revision. Lastly, it may help to
lighten the charge of presumption if we go on to point
out the spirit in which we write and the object we aim
at. The term " new Theology " has long been regarded as
a ground for all that is vague, negative, and indefinite.
"Neology" is the term by which it is waved away as
an impertinence by men who hate indefiniteness in
matters of faith. We are reminded that even Goethe
once remarked that he was tired of hearing of men's
doubts. If you have any clear-cut convictions he will
listen to them, but as for doubts and difficulties he had
enough of his own already. There is so much sound
sense in this remark that we shall act upon it and not
remove a single barrier against unbelief without offering
to set up a better in its stead. The teachers, in a word,
of the new Theology must take at least as high ground
as those of the old, if they are to gain the ears of the

Introduction. 3
majority of busy men who have no time for weighing
doubtful propositions. To them religion is an affair of
daily life, the guide of conduct, the ultimate standard of
right and wrong. Such men must be shown that the old
Theology has fallen into disrepute, not merely because it
is crabbed and scholastic, and does not fall in with the
Zeit Geist, whatever that means, if it means anything at
all better than the doctrine fashioned to the varying hour.
The true reason for calling for a new Theology is because
the old is in many cases arbitrary, and does not meet the
deeper demands of conscience. Some of its dogmas, such
as that of vicarious punishment, are based on conceptions
doubtful even according to the ideas of the old juris
prudence, and which no jurist of our day would admit to
be justice. The contradiction, again, between the dogma
of man's total corruption by the Fall, and his accounta
bility for sin, which is the inherited taint and corruption
of our nature, is too great to be got over by any patching
up of the old Augustinian dogma. It must be restated
from beginning to end, and the primitive truth set free
from the additaments of later ages. If this can be done
with any degree of success, then we may hope to raise
men from the state to which they have settled down, which
is a despair of any definiteness in Theology, the end of
which can only be agnostic indifference. The Hobbism
of our day is Hegelianism, or the attempt to retain old
dogmas after a new meaning has been put into them.
In opposition to this, which is the most deadly form of
scepticism, we desire boldly to face the question, and,
instead of dishonest evasions and insincere compromises,
to survey the whole field of Theology, removing all that
is obsolete, and retaining only such truths as will stand
this test, that they are derived direct from Scripture and
commend themselves directly to the conscience.

4 Introduction.
Setting out thus within the limits prescribed, we pass
by all that we may call the documentary part of religion
and confine ourselves to the dogmatic. Divines have
usually summed up the Corpus Theologice. under four
divisions : Bibliology, Theology proper, Soteriology, and
Eschatology. The first includes all questions concerning
the Scriptures as the historical revelation of God to man
kind. The second sums up all that we know concerning
the Divine Being. The third unfolds the history, method,
and philosophy of Eedemption or Salvation ; and the
fourth seeks to unveil what will be the future lot of
mankind as good or evil. Of the first of these divisions,
Bibliology, we shall have little or nothing to say. The
new Theology sets out as much as the old with the
assumption of a revelation of God's will to men, conveyed
by inspired messengers and through two special channels
known as Prophecy and Miracle. With regard to ques
tions of inspiration, or the psychological mode of action
of the Divine Spirit on apostles and prophets, the new
Theology, unlike the old, maintains a wise reserve. As
for such a phrase as verbal inspiration, it regards it as a
contradiction ex vi terminis. It is based on a shallow
Nominalism, which assumes that words are the mere
counters of thought. We forget that between thoughts
and things there is only one bridge, and that no ideas
ever could arise unless clothed in speech. Much more
near to the mark is the German saying : Braid ist das
Wort : Brautigam der Geist. Nor has the new Theology
much more respect for the second phrase, "plenary inspira
tion," since it sees that the term "plenary" is only a relative
term. It has no meaning beyond " authoritative," since,
if we once admit that revelation is a progressive scheme
we must also allow degrees of inspiration. We do not
know any divine who now pretends that revelation is

Introduction. 5
not pitched on a progressive scale of inspiration, alike of
matter and manner, from Moses to Christ. There must
be very few left of the old mechanical school who would
place the inspiration of the Apostle Paul, for instance, on
a level with that of his Master. The scribe theory of
inspiration is losing ground even among those who held
it most rigidly. It is felt to be as unfounded an assump
tion as the rival attempt to define the infallibility of the
Church by assigning it to the Pope speaking ex cathedra
and as its visible head. When the Eomanist has got
his dogma of an Infallible Church he does not know what
to do with it, since, if the Church is infallibly right,.
then of course all argument falls to the ground, and
it is an idle attempt to prove or to disprove the truth
of any of its dogmas. It is equally a case of reasoning
in a circle of vicious assumption with those who set
up the dogma of an infallible book, and make it their
point of departure. It is idle in that case to attempt
to commend its truths to every man's conscience. In
the one case, an infallible Church has not to produce
her reasons, but simply to say Roma locuta est, and the
question is finished. It is equally so in the other
case, when the book is said to be its own warrant
and to admit no appeal to any court, such as that of
conscience. For these reasons in brief, we set aside the dogma of
Book Inspiration. It assumes, as we have seen, certain
psychological inquiries into the mode of action of the
Divine Spirit on the minds of those to whom a revelation
in the first instance came. It is enough for us that holy
men of old spake as they were moved, and so, as a matter
of fact, were recipients of the lively oracles. We, on our
part, are led to believe any truth of the Bible, not merely
because it is found in the Bible, but because it is felt

6 Introduction.
to be true on its own proper grounds of evidence as seen
in the light of conscience.
The ultimate court of appeal must ever be the con
science, and though conscience and the Bible need not,
and never do really conflict, yet when we come to deal
with the question of our true grounds of belief, the new
school theologian says he is bound to put conscience first,
since, if he sets it aside, he takes away the very founda
tions which supports his faith in the Bible. The fallacy
of the old school was to make the Bible its own witness,
and thus to vitiate one of the first laws of evidence which
Christ Himself submitted to : " If I bear witness of
myself, my witness is not true."
Assuming then a revelation as vouched for by prophecy
and miracle, the three branches of Theology on which the
new differs from the old are Theology proper, or our con
ception of the character of God ; Soteriology, or the plan
of redemption ; and Eschatology, or the ultimate triumph
of good over evil. On all these three branches of truth,
the differences between the old and the new will be seen
to be serious and far-reaching. With regard to the first
of the three, or Theology proper, it is here that the
contrast is most marked. It is not too much to say that
our conceptions of God's character have undergone a
silent revolution during the last fifty years. This will
seem a h'ard saying to many, since we should be ready to
say beforehand that the consideration of what God is
in Himself was the one branch of Theology upon which
no fresh light could break in from without. Are we to be
told that we must borrow, as Israel did from the Egyptians,
jewels of gold and silver ; or that the modern humani
tarian views of criminal jurisprudence are to suggest any
deeper conceptions of the Divine character than those
which were the support of God's people in past ages ?

Introduction. 7
To this objection we can only reply that it is so. There
are truths which lay on the surface of Scripture, and yet
though " he who runs may read " them, it appears as if they
were passed by. The relation of God to men as the Father
of spirits is one of these truths which, in a sense, we may
describe as the fellowship of the mystery which in other
ages was not made known to the Church of the past ; nor
need we be surprised at this. It is a truth of such far-
reaching and almost revolutionary bearing on our relation
to others, as well as of such transcendent importance in
our relation to God, — it carries with it consequences so
vast, and lifts the mind, as the new astronomy did, into
a new world-centre ; and, lastly, it upsets so many of our
firmest prepossessions, that it is easy to see why the
Fatherhood of God lay like a barren and neglected truth.
This is not a solitary instance of what Bishop Butler long
ago noticed, that truths in revelation, like discoveries in
science, may have to wait for ages till the discoverer
arises. The mystery that the Gentiles should be fellow-
heirs and of the same body in Christ, was implied in
passage after passage of the Old Testament prophets —
yet none could see it, till it was seen in the light of the
accomplished fact. Even the chosen Twelve were slow
to recognise this truth in all its breadth and bearing on
the future, till it was given to the Apostle of the Gentiles
to make all men know what was the fellowship of this
mystery. Hence it is, that instead of feeling any sur
prise that it should have lain hidden so long, we should
rather rejoice that to us, in these days, it is given to see
that " covering that is cast over all nations " removed. The
Fatherhood of God is no longer a barren truism, such as
it was when " Jehovah, Jove, or Lord " were alike regarded
during the age of Deism as epithets of the All-Father.
We mean something much more definite when we speak

8 Introduction.
of the general Fatherhood of God than the phrase of
Pope's universal prayer —
" Father of all, in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, or by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."
The teaching of the new Theology is more definite ;
and, let us add, it is founded on spiritual convictions
quite as clear cut as those of the old Particularism which
it is intended to replace.
Besides, it is important to see that, since man is made
in the image of God, any deeper knowledge which we
attain to of our own constitution must lead to deeper
discovery of the true character of God. The psychology
of Scripture is a clue to its Theology ; and by this light
we are led to explore Scripture afresh, and so to rise out
of the old Theology, whose keynote is creation up to
emanation, which is the keynote of the new Theology.
A distinct spiritual faculty in man, sometimes vaguely
described as " God-consciousness," seems to assume as its
basis a certain peculiar relationship of man to God,
beyond that of creaturely dependence. This deeper
and tenderer relationship is only to be described- by one
term, which is sonship. This sonship is, as we hold, an
inalienable birthright of all, it is inherent in our descent
from the first Adam ; and however it waits for the spirit
of adoption by union with the second Adam to enable us
to realize it as a privilege, it may be said to be dormant
in all, but not extinct. This is the very ground and
sufficient reason for the incarnation, on which the new
Theology rests its belief in that mystery. The old Theo
logy reversed the order in which it viewed the incarnation.
This doctrine was first in order of time, but second in
logical importance to the atonement, as we see in the

Introdtiction. 9
celebrated treatise of Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, in which
he argues for the necessity of the incarnation to give worth
to the atonement. The new school, in opposition to this
mode of viewing the question, rightly or wrongly tries to
carry the question one stage farther back, and to see the
ground of the incarnation in the original constitution of
man as made in God's image and after His likeness.
Hence it is that redemption is in their view of the
divine dealings no mere afterthought. It is more than a
merely remedial provision. It is part of the eternal pur
pose of God, by which He planned to gather up all in Christ.
So it is that Theology proper, or the doctrine of the
character of God, will have to be treated afresh, when
we make the Fatherhood of God our point of departure
and not merely His sovereignty, or His absolute decrees,
as the old school habitually did. If man is made in
the image of God, then we can see how our conceptions
of the All-Merciful or the All- Wise become clarified, in
proportion as we pass out from an age of barbarism and
rise to the conception of the general reign of law, not
in nature only, but also in man's relation to God. Here
let us add as a caution, that we must not be led away
with the fallacy that because God's character in itself
changes not, consequently our conceptions of the divine
character do not need to undergo any change with the
ages. And yet this transparent fallacy is the explanation
of one of the most rooted errors of divines, who hold
that Theology is a constant and not a variant body of
truth, because its subject is the Being of Him who
changes not. We might as well argue because the sun
is the same king of day that shone on the Greeks, who
thought it to be only a ball of fire not larger than the
Peloponnesus, that our conceptions of the sun are the
same as theirs. Why are we to say that progress is the

io Introduction.
law of life in all other directions, but that in Theology
alone we are to fall back on the sapientia veterum argu
ment ? No great improvement in jurisprudence was ever
made until jurists like Beccaria dared to face the dogma
that our administration of justice must be the same from
age to age, because the primitive instinct, on which the
conception of justice rests, is the same in all ages. It was
his saying, that " the story of human progress presents to
us the picture of a vast sea of error, in which only a few
in confusion, and at a distance from each other, emerge
to the surface of truth." This is as true of Theology as
of Law. We can bear to hear then without surprise, that
the Fatherhood of God was the treasure hid in the field,
which some men in our day have found, and for joy have
sold all that they before knew of the gospel, in order to
possess it. It is to them a new gospel, as much as when
Berridge on his conversion declared, that it seemed to him
as if the Bible, which he had read all his life, had been
lifted off the table, and a new one laid down in its place.
Such is our altered point of view when we look at a
central truth, that it is not easy to recognise that it is any
longer the same truth. Mont Blanc, as seen from the
valley of Aosta, is so unlike the Mont Blanc which the
ruck of tourists see only from Chamounix, that it is difficult
to believe that we are looking at the same mountain at all.
Instead of a dome there is now a peak in view ; and the
shoulders and supports of the mountain are so changed,
that for all purposes of the sightseer it is a new moun
tain. So it is with Theology, when the Fatherhood of
God is made the distinct point of departure, and not a
mere inference from His redemptive work
The second branch of our subject on which the new
Theology diverges from the old is Soteriology, or redemp
tion from sin as a whole. It is easy to see where the line

Introduction. 1 1
of cleavage occurs between the old and the new. In the
old Theology the ground taken up was that nature had
undergone such a disruption by the Fall that redemption
was equivalent to a new creation. Pelagianism being
regarded on all sides as the fons et origo of all error on
the redemptive scheme, to push anti-Pelagianism to the
farthest point was to emphasize as it was said the
peculiar doctrines of the gospel. The evangelical " Three
R's," as they have been called, " Euin, Redemption,
Regeneration," were laid such stress on, that in their
blind zeal divines sometimes failed to see that they were
cutting away the very supports of theology by impairing
man's responsibility. Luther, in his passionate way, replied
to Erasmus and laid down a counter theory of his own
which he styled de servo arbitrio ; and though Melanch
thon came to the rescue and qualified the doctrine of his
chief in this headlong and sudden attack on the doctrine of
" merit," it cannot be said that Melanchthon's compromise
helped to clear up the confusion on the subject. On the
contrary, like Baxter a century later, his attempted sj*n-
cretism only made confusion worse confounded. It threw
on men all the responsibility for the evil in life, while all
the good was of God. The high Calvinists were at least
more consistent than this, since they got rid altogether of
the statement that life was a state of probation. They
did not tantalize men who were a inassa pcrditionis with
offers of mercy which were only efficaciously procured for
the elect
The new Theology, then, differs from the old in its
mode of approaching this subject of redemption. It does
not set out with two such contradictory statements as the
utter ruin of man by the Fall combined with such respon
sibility as leaves him in a state of probation, free as it is
said to do evil, but not free to do good. We may leave

1 2 Introd^tction.
divines of the old school to reconcile such contradictious
by a quibbling distinction between inability and disability,
as if by this device of transferring the defect from
the intellect to the will, we could plear God from the
appearance of being in some sense the author of evil.
Such are only a few of the pitfalls which the old Theology
dug for itself by pressing too far the contrast between
nature and grace. We forget that Augustinian theology, as
it was in the case of its author, was a recoil from Mani-
chseanism, and so it easily falls back into the "hole whence
it was dug." To exaggerate grace at the expense of nature
is quite as dangerous as to exalt nature to the point that it
can dispense with grace. Later Augustinians like Pascal
have seen this and denounced, as he has done in a memor
able passage, the mistake of letting man know his dignity
apart from his baseness, or his baseness apart from his
dignity. But the prevailing mistake of Theology has
generally been of leaning, as if from fear of error, in the
direction of what is indulgently called the mistake on the
right side. Hence it is that Pelagianism has been cast
out as a heresy, and the counter doctrine of grace, whether
through the sacraments as by one school, or through con
version as by another school, has been set up as the one
aspect of truth which is orthodox. The result has been a
rejection of the doctrines of grace on the part of philo
sophic minds in general, under the impression of their
latent but scarce suspected tendency towards Manichsean-
ism, and also because these doctrines are supposed to
undermine the foundations of morality. Swedenborg
went a step farther, and because he was unable to dis
tinguish between the dead Lutheranism of his day and
the Pauline doctrine from which he supposed it to be
derived in direct descent, he went so far as to reject
Paulinism altogether, and to assert that he was a false

Introduction. i %
apostle. With a kind of Dantesque ferocity he had a
vision of the great apostle, whom he supposed he saw
deep down in the nethermost hell of his diseased brain.
But these osgri somnia, these freaks of a diseased fancy,
at least point to some serious error in the popular
theology which must be set right before the age can
return to the doctrines of grace, and receive a gospel
which is no good news at all under the top load of
harsh predestinarianism with which it has been weighed
down. The whole scheme of salvation, or the plan of
redemption as it is called, must be presented afresh.
Our Soteriology like our Theology proper must be revised,
and the clue to the former is to be found in our right
apprehension of the latter.
Setting out as we do with the Fatherhood of God
as the " ruling idea " of our Theology, all flows out of
this deductively, since if it is a science at all Theology
must be deductive. Our objection to the old school
is not to their "logic in theology," such as Isaac
Taylor found fault with, but to the assumptions
themselves from which their logic set out and then
drew its conclusions by processes of reasoning quite
unimpeachable. Granted their premises, we have no
complaint to make of the remorseless vigour with which
they went on to the bitter end. On the contrary, the
most merciless divines are those whom we feel most
respect for. Jonathan Edwards, ultimus Augustinorum, as
we may call him, undoubtedly must be admitted to
have provoked the reaction and so have given birth to
the new Theology. On this account alone his name
should be held in honour even by those who regard his
Deity as little better than that cloud-compelling Zeus
against whom Prometheus -Vinctus utters his vain
laments.

1 4 Introduction.
With the Fatherhood of God for our lode-star and man's
inalienable sonship as our base line, Redemption now
becomes a measurable truth, and not a kind of mystery
at which we alternately despair and wonder. If man
be the son of God, and above all a lost son, then that the
Son of man should come to seek and to save that which
is lost is consistent alike with the character of God which
is loving and pitiful, and also with the spiritual needs of
man, which craves for communion with God as the eye
does for light or a plant for the sun. Hence it is that
the new Theology, unlike the old, sees the atonement in
the light of the incarnation, not in the reverse order.
There is a " reverence of reason," which will ask for the
moving why of this manifestation of God's love ; and so,
when we attempt to give what Leibnitz would call its
" sufficient reason," we are led to trace it to the original
constitution of man as made in the image of God.
Soteriology thus grows out of Theology proper, and this
one postulate of the Fatherhood of God sets before us
the work of redemption in a light which has this unerring
mark of its truth, viz., simplicity and self -consistency.
We now turn to the last and most important of the con-'
trasts between the old Theology and the new. This is
Eschatology, or the doctrine not so much of " last things "
or " latter days," on which many too often prophesy out
of their own fancy as of the " larger hope," which is a
fit subject of contemplation to every serious mind, " What
can I know?" "What should I do?" "What am I to
hope for ? " These, according to Kant, are the only three
categories on which the human mind can ask questions
and can expect an answer to. Knowledge, duty, and our
hopes of a hereafter, the three are so linked together that a
revelation which professed to give some knowledge of the
being and perfections of God, and to lay down what are our

Introdtution. 1 5
duties towards Him, and there broke off, would be worse
than deceptive. The old Theology does not shrink from
producing a scheme of the hereafter, and it does so in severe
and strict consistency with its postulates. Christ has
come, as the old school teaches, to procure or rather to
purchase eternal life for all those that believe, whether as
elect of God or as the elect of their own will, it matters
not, as on the question of this limitation to salvation by
faith alone the ¦ two subsections of the old school of
Theology are agreed. What follows from this limitation
of Christ's redemptive work, whether we set up the bar in
our will or in God's desires ? In either case it follows
that for those outside this pale there remains nothing but
the blackness of darkness. Some divines, it is true,
hint at what are called " uncovenanted mercies," and
Tillotson and his school threw out the caution that
God was pledged by His own perfections to carry out
His promises, but not pledged to carry out His
threatenings. Here divines of the orthodox type who
had leanings to the larger hope fell back on the
Kantian distinction of a speculative and regulative
knowledge of God. We were told with great pomp of
phrase that our knowledge of God's purposes was
regulative only, and that we were to govern our con
duct as if certain terrible consequences might follow
in case we did not believe. Even Bishop Butler, most
serious of thinkers, is not above this attempt to lure men
on into faith by an appeal to a vague fear of the bare
possibility of an infinite loss. The old believers in the
old dogma of a never-ending punishment were more
consistent than these Latitude men of last century. They
at least held by the old terrorism, and used it as a kind
of scourge to " whip the offending Adam " out of those who
lingered like Lot on the brink of the city of Destruction.

1 6 Introduction.
But the men of the mediation school, who have set up
various kinds of compromise, as all thoughtful divines
have been doing for the last two centuries, for lack
of a spiritual psychology have found refuge in silence, as
they had no counter conviction with which to meet those
who held the old dogmas. They have held aloof from
the discussion and practised a judicious reserve on
Eschatology. The consequence of this timidity, arising too
often from want of spiritual insight, is that in the long
run they have only made the unbelief which they now
vainly desire to stem. For what has followed ? The field
of Theology, being handed over in too many cases to a
class of half-educated dogmatists whose crude literalism
is not relieved by a single ray of light from the higher
criticism, the impression has spread among intelligent
laymen that divines practise a kind of reserve and use
creeds as theological passwords. Can we wonder that as
the result of this suspicion educated men have left theology
on one side as a subject too forbidding to be touched on ?
As it is infidelity to question reigning dogmas, they
resign themselves to a kind of Hobbist conformity for
the sake of the weaker vessels of society. As for their
own real beliefs, they hold with the celebrated author
of the Characteristics, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, that
the true religion, is that which all men of sense are
agreed on, only they take care not to say what that is.
We all know what that means, and therefore hold that the
only remedy lies in a restoration of belief by removing
the dead wood of old dogma and putting living fibre
in its place.
The Eschatology, then, of the Church of the future
must be a doctrine which reconciles us to its rierhteous-
ness. We must have, the courage to look traditional
opinions in the face and not be deterred by the plea of

Introduction. 1 7
sincere but narrow-minded Pietists, that we are unsettling
the foundations of their faith. We must arraign the old
doctrine of last things before the court of conscience,
and there test it, as we do all truths of Theology,
by its commending itself to men's conscience in Goal's
sight. This last expression is an important qualifica
tion, since conscience is at best a primary, but not
a final court of appeal. When we so cross-question
conscience, it gives up the two following verdicts : that
evil unless infinite, which is an absurdity in a finite
agent, must be dealt with both retributively and remedi-
ally. The latter must supplement the former. The
Platonic dogma is that " all punishment is remedial ; "
but this is one-sided, or at least only a half truth — for
punishment can only become" remedial when it does not
renounce its root idea, which is retribution. The con
science cries out for some Nemesis either here or hereafter ;
and the fact that Nemesis too often seems to miss its
mark here, is the strong support in the popular mind for
retribution in the world of spirits. Hence it is that
heavens and hells enter into and form a leading feature
in all religions, not so much because these beliefs are
the inventions of priests in order to support their priest
craft. This was the eighteenth century account of the
matter. In our day we see that the reverse is the true
state of the case. Priests may be induced to make up
mythical heavens and hells, but it is so because the
common conscience of men demands it of them. There
is a deep desire, amounting in the case of crime to an
unquenchable thirst, for compensation hereafter. Men
who are oppressed with the burden of life, long for some
thing to redress the inequalities of the present life. They
desire to reach a place, in the pathetic words of Job,
" where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary
B

1 8 Introduction.
are at rest." The worst that can be said of priests
with regard to the popular hells and heavens is that
their sin has been that of cowardice. It was the people
who brought their earrings of gold to Aaron : the priest
only made the mould into which the molten metal flowed
of itself. In a word, the fire and the gold came from
the people, the fixed form into which the belief was
moulded was prepared for it by the priest. To this
extent, and not for the entire belief in retribution here
after, is priestcraft responsible.
What the new Theology, then, has to do with regard
to Eschatology, is to take the molten image back, re-melt
it, and then re-shape it in a form which, instead of con
tradicting, shall confirm our spiritual instincts. Any
doctrine of future punishment which is to commend
itself to a humanitarian age like ours must have these
two characteristics : it must be retributive and remedial ;
also, the one must pass into the other. In an age only
emerging from semi-barbarism, when society stood like
the poet on a bridge of sighs, " a palace and a prison on
each hand," it scarcely shocked the popular conscience
to meet with the same lights and shades in the divine
government which met them every day in secular life,
and which nowhere were so sharply-marked as in Venice.
In the great hall of the Doge's palace, Tintoretto's canvas
of the plains of heaven covers the wall from side to
side. A few feet across a narrow canal, the visitor is
plunged into dungeons so deep and dark, that the wonder
is, not that prisoners ever lived to come out and tell the
tale of horrors, which was seldom the case, but that
they could exist even for a few days walled into cells
where they could neither lie down nor stand, but could only
crouch and cower in cold and darkness. These contrasts
shock the conscience and revolt the humanity of our

Introduction. i g
age ; it was otherwise three centuries ago. Divines have
to remember this, or they will learn when too late that
a reformed jurisprudence will not allow us to put up
any longer with an unreformed Theology. The popular
Theology is tardily making certain concessions, and is
working on towards a compromise such as that of the
Conditional Immortality School, which is ready to admit
that the old Cartesian dogma of the natural immortality
of the rational soul is as good as dead, while the new
doctrine of life in Christ is not yet fully embraced in
all its bearings on the future. This is the explanation of
much of the popular scepticism of our day, which finds
itself forlorn, as one of its own poets has said —
"Betwixt two worlds — one dead, one powerless to be born."
The new Eschatology, then, if it is to be abreast of
the age, must reflect its best and deepest convictions as
to the highest wisdom and the highest love. Justice and
mercy are often so handled by divines as if God's ways
were unequal because ours are. Our very language on
the divine attributes is often tainted by human imper
fection. We sometimes speak of mercy as tempering
justice, and the phrase implies that such is our limitation
of character that we are compelled to do one wrong in
order to repair another. Even in Theology such phrases
have stolen in ; and preachers will sometimes speak of the
" merits " of Christ as if they had the effect of inducing
God to lay aside the sword of justice. Is it strange that
divines, who thus bring themselves to think of God as
a "man to repent," should go on to hold a doctrine of
indulgence " for the penal consequences of sin " ? One
error thus makes way for another. The divines who dug-
one pit which they called Hell, dug another which they
called Purgatory. The Reformers stepped in and closed

20 Introduction.
up one pit, after shooting into it whole cart-loads of medi
aeval rubbish — the doctrine of indulgences and masses for
souls, on which the priesthood made a trade until Luther
knocked a hole in Tetzel's drum. But the Reformers did
not go on to deal with the mediaeval Inferno as they had
dealt with the Purgatorio. What the former means, we
have only to judge by such a doleful book as Boston's
Fourfold State, which some religious societies still print
and circulate.
On this subject of Eschatology the caution of educated
divines of the orthodox type has been carried too far.
It has taught us the lesson that suppressio veri is the
next step to suggestio falsi. Thoughtful men of the
Bishop Butler type argue that since the whole subject is
veiled in mystery, and they have no counter dogma to
set up against the popular Theology, they had better be
silent. This is an interim position, and fair as far as it
goes, but it fails as the Interim offered by Charles V.
and accepted by the Reformers in 1535, when it was
found to be kept in a one-sided way. Hence the popular
saying, "The devil is in the interim." If both sides
would drop their arms, and leave the whole question of
the hereafter and of retribution as it is left in the solemn
shade of reserve in which the Old Testament regards it,
this perhaps would be the best attitude in regard to the
question — Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?
This suspense of judgment before the time would be an
honest and even-handed interim. But single texts of the
New Testament, and particularly of the Apocalypse, torn
out of their connection, and mangled in order to fit into our
dogmatic Theology, this is the Eschatology which has to
be removed, and it is almost as great a task to pull down
the ruins of the old fabric as it is to lay the foundations
of the new.

Introduction. 2 1
All we can say in conclusion is that there are many
builders willing to work, and a growing number of lay
minds who do not despair in the not distant future of
seeing a Theology arise which shall be worthy of that
future. The agnostic, and the dogmatic divine who
clings to a petrifaction which he calls orthodox Theology,
are acting together, though they little suspect it, and in a
kind of informal alliance. Both agree in despairing of any
Theology of the future ; the one because he holds that the
problem is insoluble, the other because, as he holds, it
has been already solved once for all. The answer to both
is the same, that the restlessness of the age proclaims
that man cannot live by bread alone, as the Secularists
and Agnostics hold, or on the " old loaves and musty "
which these theological Gibeonites hold out to them.
What the age craves for is bread from heaven, and bread,
moreover, which is fresh-baked, and not turned to stone
like the lava-covered relics of the bakers' shops of Pompeii,
still to be seen in the museum of Naples. The last
charge of the late Archbishop of Canterbury bore the
suggestive, and for Theology unfamiliar, title of "the
Church of the future." The phrase was one which theo
logical circles are too little familiar with. It at least
gave the impression that the good archbishop was one of
that small, but let us hope increasing, class of divines
who see before and not merely into the past. There are
men whose eyes are apparently so set in their heads as
those of such timid animals as the hare and the horse,
and who are adapted to see behind better than before.
Too long has this been the temper of Theology, until the
secular mind has taken Theology at its word, and left it
to a class of ecclesiologists, the Old Mortalities who live
to rub brasses and correct palimpsests. The undertone
of contempt which the Macaulays and Buckles of litera-

22 Introduction.
ture have adopted, would not have made the impression
which it has if the temper of Theology had not been
as reactionary as it is. For this the only remedy is a
bold assertion of some counter position — an assertion
which will shock the conventional, and call out sharp
criticism from the educated class of critics who affect
some fashionable archaism in Theology. It is a fashion of
the age, but a passing one, to sentimentalize over patristic
Theology. It is one of the affectations of our day, which
the theological aesthete of young Oxford indulges in. He
girds at Protestantism as a form of Philistinism. A cer
tain archaic flavour of the past without narrowness, this
is his ideal. How to pour into the rigid Anglican mould
of the far past the large and liberal thoughts of the near
future — this is the feat of the Broad High School, which
but for Hegel, that master of ambidextrous word-juggling,
would be simply impossible. It is better to deal frankly
with this unnatural and even Mezentian union of dead
and living. It is enough to leave the dead to bury their
dead. Historical continuity is to be carried out, if
possible, in doctrine as well as discipline ; but this will
be secured quite as well by those who say out plainly
that a new age calls for a new Theology, as by those who
shudder at the very thought of re-dressing old truths in
new forms. Are men to learn only after defeat the lesson
of the defeated and dying King Arthur ?
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
It seems that it is so. The majority are fools, in the
sense that any man is a fool who is only wise after the
event. In the old legend, those who refused to take
Prometheus for their guide had to put up with the
peevish reproaches of that old dotard Epimetheus. We

Introduction. 23
should despair of Theology if we were to judge by the
temper of the oracles of the religious world and of what
is called Church opinion in our island. Happily, in
America the dead hand, whether of endowment or apos
tolical succession doctrine, as it is called, does not weigh
" heavy as frost and deep almost as life." The result is
that as, in the colonial stage of their history, English
home-grown Puritanism passed into hyper-Calvinism, so it
passed on through TJnitarianism into the new Transcen
dentalism which is at present the reigning Theology of
New England. But at last there are signs of a return in
many cases to the old paths, and a revival of something
like orthodoxy. This movement, which is represented by
preachers of note like Bishop Huntingdon and Philips
Brooks, is one which we can heartily sympathize with. It
has gone so far as to draw up the outlines of the new
Theology, and some of its contrasts with the old. This
has been very successfully drawn up for the general reader
in a few pages of introduction to his sermons by the
Rev. Theodore Munger. The new Theology seems to be
gathering itself up into a systematic whole in the
voluminous writings of the late Horace Bushnell, the
Rev. Newman Smith, and others too numerous to men
tion. To gather these scattered rays into a focus, such
is the task of the present writer. It is when the general
desire is felt, and a breath of the Zeit Geist seems to fill
our sails, that we launch out on the daring enterprise of
revising Theology, bringing it into harmony with the
" ruling ideas " of our day. If it fails, as it may do, no
other reputation but that of the writer is staked. It is a
private venture, and if, like the merchant adventurers of
the heroic age of England, we go out to explore and
remain to conquer and civilise, we shall only have done
what they did who sailed Westward Ho, and on their

24 Introduction.
way to reach the old Continent discovered a new. So it
is that past and future are linked together. In any case,
our allegiance to truth compels us to say that the day of
compromise is over, and that a spiritual religion must
reconcile herself with scientific truth, or else close in a
deadly duel in which one or both must perish. In the
last place, we are encouraged to go on by the word of our
Master, that truth must ever be militant here on earth.
From henceforth the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,
and the violent take it by force.

CHAPTER I.
RULING IDEAS IN THEOLOGY.
Theology may be defined as the science of inferences
deduced from a revelation of God's will to men. Its
exactness as a science accordingly depends on the care
and correctness with which these inferences are drawn
from the fountain of truth in the lively oracles. To
assume that this has been correctly done once for all by
antiquity, and that little more remains for us to do than
to pick out whatever comes to our hand out of that huge
drag-net of antiquity, patristic or scholastic, this is
dogmatism in its extremest form. There are many milder
varieties of the same tendency, but partly from indolence,
principally from fear of change, only a few have the
courage to challenge this method of authority. Few are
bold enough to admit that these inferences were in many
cases wrongly drawn, or were at best only partial approxi
mations to a great and primitive verity. We must begin
over again, and with a new Organon of criticism draw up a
fresh list of inferences. It is to be regretted that, with
biblical criticism advancing every day, the new hermeneutics
are not yielding up as they should a new Theology. Divines
are content with stereotyped phrases. They speak of the
Fall, the Atonement, the Final Judgment, for instance, as
if all were agreed to accept these terms as the expressions
of some fact, instead of their being only obscure infer-

26 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
ences from a few obscure passages of an old Book, at best
but imperfectly understood. This is the dogmatic method,
unhappily not out of date, and its root lies in the Realism
which still infests Theology. If such phrases as the
Church, or the Atonement, or the Fall are, properly
speaking, only mental conceptions, varying with each
age, and at every moment even in the same age, we
cheat ourselves with words when we try
" To draw down a cloud, and in it
To catch the changing Cynthia of the minute."
This is what Theology has been doing from the beginning,
in complete oblivion of the fallacy that mental concepts
are not entia realia. The Nominalism of the Schoolmen,
which was only Protestantism in its incipient struggles
against Church authority, saw and dimly suspected this,
but it was powerless to discern the remedy. We have,
in our day, to get beyond scholastic Nominalism. We
have to call in sound exegesis to point out on what a
slender basis, even of biblical authority, much of our
dogmatic Theology rests. To make out a fresh set of
inferences, drawn direct from the fountain-head, from
Scripture, entirely discarding the old, this would seem
presumptuous, and perhaps would end in driving out one
type of dogmatism by another. It is not in this way
that the error is to be combated, but by the simpler but
surer method of pointing out what are the reigning ideas
of our age, and how far our inferences from the New
Testament may be brought into harmony with them.
The late Professor Mozley wrote an apology for the Old
Testament on the only lines which we think are legiti
mate, and which an age like ours will accept. He
pointed out that as our moral conceptions were subject to
the same law of progress as our intellectual, it was con-

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 2 7
ceivable that a certain class of actions might be excusable,
and even right, in one age and under one covenant, which
would be inexcusable under another. The sacrifice of
Isaac, for instance, can only be explained to our moral
sense by reference to one of the reigning ideas of the
early world, the patria potestas of which we have only a
kind of bare survival in what we call fatherly authority.
Not to enumerate other instances of the same thing, we
may conclude that every revelation of God is more or less
of an accommodation. As the narrative of Creation and
the story of the Fall are described in terms abreast of the
intelligence of the age to which they were given, so it is
throughout. These " reigning ideas," as Professor Mozley
aptly describes them, are the key to explain that what
seems to us to be non-moral or even immoral actions, are
apparently sanctioned by Jehovah in the Old Testament.
We have only to extend this thought of " reigning ideas"
into the region of New Testament criticism in order to
account for the Theology of one age seeming immoral, or
at least non-moral, to another age. ' Doctrines of the
Atonement, for instance, based on a forensic fiction of the
transfer of guilt which did not seem to a primitive age to
be repulsive to our moral instincts, are felt to be highly so
to ours. The reason, of course, is that our juridical concep
tions under the general humanitarian movement of the
age have enlarged and widened. Instead of regarding
guilt as gelt, as our Saxon forefathers did when the blood-
money of a thegn, a franklin, and a churl were all
assessed at different sums, we have reached a stage in
which crime is a conception distinct from that of a mere
tort or personal wrong, for which a money compensation
can be given. Sir H. Maine points out, in his Lectures on
Ancient Law, that the penal law of ancient communities
is not a law of crimes. The person injured proceeds

28 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
against the wrong-doer by ordinary civil action, and re
ceives compensation in the shape of money damages. In
the infancy of jurisprudence, as he elsewhere observes, a
citizen depends for protection, not on the law of crime, but
of torts. He thus traces three stages through which juris
prudence passes in primitive society, which may be marked
by the terms * Sins," " Torts." " Crimes." The conception
of offence against God produced the first class of ordinances,
the conception of offences against our neighbours the
second ; but, he adds, the idea of offences against the State
or aggregate community did not exist at all in primitive
society, and hence it did not at first produce any oiminal
jurisprudence in the modern sense of the term.
It is easy, then, to sather from these remarks that advanc
ing ideas in jurisprudence call for a revision of our theo
logical concepts. It is a misfortune that Theology as a whole
has been studied and taught by a professional class apart,
to whom history, science, and jurisprudence have only
been taught incidentally, and as throwing at best only a
side light on Theology proper. As a "role, divines have
little or no conception, for instance, of this important
truth, which is the keynote to the philosophy of history,
that all progress is co-ordinate. The consequence of this
is, that a barbarous age must have a barbarous jurispru
dence, and consequently a barbarous Theology. We must-
see and admit that culture in one direction presupposes
culture in every other. The dogma, for instance, of Tran-
substantiation, or which comes to the same thing, of the
Corporal Presence in the elements, instead of striking the
Christian consciousness of the tenth century as an absurdity,
ex vi terminis, was so entirely in harmony with the rise
of one of its scientific conceptions, viz, the transmutation
of metals, that it was little more than the translation of
bad science into terms of bad Theology. It was, to use

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 29
Professor Mozley's terminology, the application to Theology
of one of the " reigning ideas " of the age in chemistry,
then known only as alchemy, magic, or the black art.
The divines of that day, to do them justice, only reasoned
then as Rowland Hill once did about music, and asked
why the devil should have all the good tunes. A raid
into his domains to carry off a new miracle, rightly called
Tran substantiation, was only a pious work in an age when
stealing old bones from one shrine for the profit of another
and rival holy place was regarded by monks as a pious
fraud. To a later age all this seems immoral; and the
modern * mind echoes the remark of C. J. Fox, that
he could see the fraud but not the piety of these pious
frauds. But other ages had their own standards of
morality as well as ours, morality being nowhere the im
mutable thing which some students of ethics, who shut
the page of history, suppose it to be.
Theology, then, has its phases like other truths, and it
is only to be studied scientifically with reference to this
phrase of the reigning ideas of the age under which it
has grown up. If we were to study Theology historically,
we should say that it has passed through a juridical or
Roman stage, in which classical conceptions of law formu
lated the Theology of the Patristic period. This extends,
roughly speaking, from Constantine to Charlemagne, and
in this, if we may name one divine, Augustine, Bishop
of Hippo, was the formative mind of the systematic
Theology of that age. The second period, the scholastic,
extends from the eighth to the sixteenth century. It
is the sceculum scholasticism of which Aquinas is the
angelic doctor, as Augustine was of the age preceding.
The third age, which carries us over three centuries, from
the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, is the age, as we
may describe it, of a new scholasticism under the alternate

30 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
but opposing sceptres of Calvin and Luther. Other
Reformers, as Zwingli, Knox, and Cranmer, were local in
their range of teaching, and their Theology accordingly has
a certain provincial and insular note which is wanting in
the teaching of the Saxon monk who shook the world, and
of the French scholar who found an asylum in a free city,
placed in a kind of angle between France and Italy and
Germany, and who, from that point of vantage, for a
century or more, governed the world as a new Pope over
a new Rome.
Theology, in a word, if she is to make good her claim
of being the queen of sciences, can only do so by a two
fold process. She must lay all other sciences under con
tribution to her, and she must also as well reflect every
truth borne in on her in all directions. She must be as
London is, the mart and exchange of the world. It must be
a case of free trade on both sides, and no mere reciprocity
with a balance of trade in the background. If she thus
freely gives and takes and acts on the Roman rule, quisquis
es noster eris, she may yet recover her lost ground. As it
is, Theology, on account of the subject being sacred, is
treated as if it were sacred ground. It is exempt from
the law of change, and the condition that it lends and
borrows from other sciences. Divines are not willing to
allow that the Theology of any age has owed much to the
juridical conceptions of that age, and hence that a doctrine
of the Atonement may seem immoral to one age which
was not so to another. In the same way, the crude and
magical conception of Transubstantiation, which revolts
our age, instead of revolting, seemed highly reasonable to
the age which coined that phrase, as the outcome of its
scholastic philosophy. The ignorant outcry against Dr.
Hampden for stating what seems to us such a truism as
the dependence of Theology for its technical terms and

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 3 1
dogmatic framework on the reigning philosophies of the
age in which it grew, is a test of what the divine thinks
to this day on this subject. He resents the remark that
the Lutheran dogma of forensic imputation is a concept of
old-world jurisprudence, which was indifferent law when
first taught, but which is neither law nor justice to the
ideas of our age. So with Calvin's dogma of sovereignty,
out of which the whole scheme of federal Theology has been
built up, logically enough if that is logic at all which is
pure deduction from an unproved assumption. It fell in
well enough with the reigning ideas of the age in which
it grew, and which it fitted into. It was not then, as it
is now, a dead formula, since this mental concept of a
mighty Allah, whose will was resistless and whose word
was the law of the universe, could nerve men like William
the Silent and Oliver the Protector to face peril and
fight for what they held to be the cause of God against
fearful odds. This was the grand side of Calvinism ; and
where it is held even as a survival, as it is held by such
soldiers as Havelock and Gordon, we can judge what the
root of such faith is from its fruits.
To lay down, then, on what lines the new Theology
should be drawn up, we must ascertain what are the
reigning ideas of the age we live in, and then decide
whether Theology will admit of such an accommodation.
Clearly all will admit that there are some types of
philosophical thought to which any Theology deserving
the name must be opposed. In such a case we can only
conclude that, if these ideas are true, then Theology, even
under its broadest aspect, is a doctrine only of the past,
and with no future. The Comtists have reasoned rightly
enough from their assumptions, and equally so Strauss has
argued in his last despairing plunge into blank negation,
that the notions scientific and ecclesiastical are absolutely

32 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
incompatible with each other, and that only the so-called
pure science, which starts without presuppositions of any
kind, deserves the name of science.1 Clearly here is a
type of thought with which we can hold no terms. To
borrow Bacon's metaphor, this is the Egyptian whom
Moses must slay, not the Israelite who is to be set at
one with his brother. But the reigning ideas of our age,
which Theology must reconcile itself with or become
obsolete, are those inferences from God's plan of the
universe which a wider and deeper survey of science has
forced on our attention. We have learned to measure
time not by solar revolutions only, but by epochs of
creation. A new geology has added to a new astronomy
conceptions of time and space which even to a Leibnitz
or a Newton would have seemed as blank drafts on our
credulity. The sum-total of these extensions of the
geologic scale of life, and the increase of creative days
from six to a series practically infinite, amounts to this,
that we are forced to use a new phrase foreign to the
old Theology, which rests on creationism pure and simple.
We now speak of evolution ; and divines, who a few
years ago would have shuddered at the phrase, now
complacently see Charles Darwin laid in the abbey
hard by Isaac Newton, and regarded as the Newton of
the nineteenth century. All the while, Theology seeks
to use the old phrases, or feebly tries to piece together
the old and the new garment, and to put the new wine
of evolution into the old wine skins of creationism. In
this direction Theology must take a new departure,
and modify its terms to express new conceptions of the
universe. Again, on the subject of " sovereignty," as the
underlying conception of the Divine Personality, Theology
has undergone a silent revolution. We have now to
1 Vid. Martensen's Dogmatik, Introduction.

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 33
face a new order of conceptions of spiritual truth. It is
assumed, we know, by many that the Fatherhood of
God may be easily reconciled with His character as
Governor. They see no contrast between the two ;
and we admit that the reconciliation is easy, if, as
Englishmen who pride themselves on being practical, we
do not go far with either. If we keep close to the shore,
and never sail beyond the shoals of Theology, we can
easily do this ; but if we launch out as the old Calvinists,
who were more logical and consistent, did, into the
great deep of God's councils, then Sovereignty becomes
the keynote of a Theology quite irreconcilable with the
Divine Fatherhood. Here the old and the new Theology
join issue, and it is clear to any logical mind that the
truth of the one implies the error of the other. Unless
we are to drift into scepticism, and Theology in despair
is to throw up the task of reconciling the higher thought
of the age to its teaching, we must make a bold volte-
face in Theology, and make a clean sweep of the past
with regard to all that is currently taught in federal
Theology. The whole of what were known as the five
points of that Theology, and which reached the last
stage of definiteness in the Synod of Dort, are now
past criticism. It is not so much that men disagree
with this mode of thinking, as that they pass it by as
obsolete. Mr. Lecky pointed out that popular errors,
based on theological explanations of scientific facts, are
not disproved, but lived down. The demonology of the
seventeenth century died down in the light of common
day, which the eighteenth century began to pour on such
conceptions. Sir Thomas Browne, for instance, taught
that to disbelieve in witchcraft was to disbelieve in
spirits, which was only blank Atheism. But a few
years brought a change. John Wesley, for instance,

34 Ruling Idtas in Theology.
began hfe as a devout believer in ghosts and apparitions.
He lived on into the last years of a century whicli
had parted company with these conceptions, not so
much because they were proved to be false, as because
they were felt to be irrelevant. Black's discovery of
the nature of gases laid more ghosts than all the argu
ments of divines for or against the reasonableness of
these modern miracles. In the same way, the Calvin
istic Theology of the seventeenth century has passed
out of view, not so much because disproved as unproved. -
It was seen to be logical enough in itself. Once admit
its fundamental postulates in the conception of a Being
who is Almighty Will, and whose goodness and love
are only the mode of action of one who is a law to
himself, and the result is that logically compact chain
of five links, beginning in arbitrary predestination and
ending in an ultimate salvation of some and a damna
tion of others equally arbitrary. It is no use, as divines
do who call themselves " moderate," to admit the postu
lates, and then to kick at the conclusions which irresis
tibly grow out of those conceptions which the Calvinist
sets out with. The only thoroughgoing method is to
go back to these postulates, and to question their validity
as assumptions. We must test the foundations of so
high a house as that whicli deductive Theology has pre
sumed to rear. Unless Theology belies its very name, it
must be the science of God. The character of God in
itself, and not merely His dealings with the children of
men, must be our starting-point. Error in the premises
implies, of course, error in the conclusions. We may
test our Theology as science does the chemical com
position of the stars by a spectroscope. Certain lines or
bands in the spectrum betray the presence of certain
gases; so, if we detect in Theology that it leads to a

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 35
conclusion such as Wesley once said to Whitfield he
detected in Calvinism (your God is my devil), we need
go no farther. It is not enough, as semi-Calvinists do,
to fall back on some Baxterian compromise, which only
lays one load of difficulty on the back of another ; our
only safe course then is, as Hales of Eton did, to " bid
good-bye to John Calvin," and to turn from compromises
which remind us of the practitioner who ordered ice to
his patient's head, and then, afraid of the shock, gave
directions that the ice should be warmed.
For this reason Arminian Theology, as it is taught by
Wesley and his followers, is only a halting-place set up
in the eighteenth century for those who are coming out
of seventeenth into nineteenth century Theology. To be
consistent, men must go farther; they must part with
forensic and federal Theology alike. And here we may
say with Hamlet, here's the respect, that makes calamity
of so long life. Men fear that when they have parted
with the popular Theology, which is a kind of dilution of
Calvin and Luther's teaching, that there is nothing left
but what Cardinal Newman, in one of his most piquant
essays, describes as the nebulous Theology of latitudi-
narians. Of the popular Theology he observes, in its con
trast with what he calls Latitudinarianism, " Suffice that
it has all the external extravagance of Latitudinarianism,
without any gain in consistency. It is less consistent,
because it is morally better. Latitudinarianism is less
inconsistent, because it is intellectually deeper. Both,
however, are mere theories in theology, and ought to be
discarded by serious men." * Such is the spectre by
which men are to be frightened into one of the only two
folds, the Anglican or the Roman, where the apostolic
succession is held, and grace is dispensed to the faithful
1 Vid. Newman's Discussions and Arguments, p. 141.

36 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
from orthodox hands. As a matter of fact, laymen treat
such alarms with the contempt they deserve. At the
same time, it must be admitted that the term Broad
Church Theology is much too nebulous for the majority,
who, if they think at all, must think on definite lines,
and cannot endure a sic et non in Theology. It is our
desire, then, to show to the satisfaction of sincere minds of
this type, that a man may hold large and hopeful views
of God's character and purposes to our race here and
hereafter without dissolving into a nebulous mist all his
old opinions, either as to the meaning of Christ's death in
itself, or of the efficacy of the Holy Spirit acting in some
way mysterious to us on the human will. Too often it
is said that we must give up the Atonement if we demur
to certain Lutheran or rather scholastic formulas of merit
imputed. Too often, again, it is said that we must de
prave the doctrines of grace if we decline to hold some
magical notion of conversion, acting antecedent to the
strivings of the human will after holiness and conformity
to the Divine Will.
For these reasons we desire to describe the new
Theology in its positive rather than its negative aspects.
As to criticism of the negative school, we may say of
Theology as of the drowned Ophelia, " Too much water hast
thou had already." We should like to set forth a Theology
on deductive lines, since all Theology must be deductive.
The profession of an attempt to construct an inductive
Theology shows that writers are using terms the precise
meaning of which they do not know. All Theology is
deduction or inference from certain premises or postu
lates, the first ground of which is in the written word
of God, but the verification of which ultimately rests on
conscience. What we mean is, a man who uses the light
of conscience aright, by no amount of text affirmation

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 37
could be induced to believe that God could lie, or " repent
as a man " that He could pass by the least transgression,
or regard any of His children, however erring, as other
than outcast members of His family to be brought in, if
there is any meaning in the term grace. But while Theology
is thus deductive from certain postulates of Scripture and
conscience, we cannot be too careful to see that our
postulates are rightly assumed, and that our inferences
do fairly flow out of them.
This is the task which lies before us, and on our
candour in drawing these inferences will depend the
truth or error of that which claims to be the new
Theology. Lastly, we have to remember that dolus latet
in generalibus. A slight error in calculating such orbits
as the heavenly bodies will lead to errors incredibly great
in their results. The equation of light, as astronomers
call it, has also to be considered. We have to allow for
the time which it takes for the light to traverse the
small space between the object on the glass and the
retina of our eye. Much in the same way there is an
amount of unconscious aberration of every judgment,
even the soundest and the most cautious. None of us
can be too much on our guard against the prwjudicia
of self, which may bring in postulates of our own devising
along with those which we certainly derive from the
fountain of God's word. The danger of idol-making is
even deeper, because more subtle than that of idol-
worship. For one man in our day who bows down to a
god of ,his own or his neighbour's making, there are ten
who first make a god to themselves, and then bow down to
it. We do not even wait for a priest like Aaron to
do the founder's work for us, and make the calf of which
we supply the golden earrings. In our day it is one step
from image-making to image-worship, since we break the

38 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
first and second commandments together at a bound.
For this reason we cannot be too cautious how we
proceed, and should advance step by step. If the new
Theology is to deserve the distinction of replacing the
old, it must be taken in hand by men as serious, and
penetrated with a sense as deep of a divine calling and
consecration to their task, as those who drew up the old.
No one can read Calvin's Institutes, for instance, that
masterpiece of fearless logic, as well as Calvin's apologetics
for the Theology which was new in that day, without
feeling that in its tone and temper lay the success of its
appeal to the consciences of men. The new Theology of
our day is demanded as loudly, let it enter then as devoutly
and advisedly on its task. The Reformation itself must
be reformed if it is not to lose itself in its own sands,
as the Tridentine Church did with the scholastic Theology.
But to do so thoroughly it must be done seriously, and
by men whose ideas are filiated by historical continuity
on the ideas of the Reformation Church, as that Church in
its turn was filiated on the historical past of Christendom.
For this reason no mere philosophical protest is enough.
The solitary thinker may see, with Sir William Hamilton,
that no opinion in Theology but has first emerged in
philosophy. It is true that the Schoolmen and Reformers
only carried on controversies on fate and freewill as old
as Kapila the Hindu, as modern as Kant the German, or
Comte the Frenchman. But what of that? the difference
of manner more than makes up for a certain resemblance
of matter between the discussions of the philosopher and
those of the divine. The latter, when he attains to
truth, handles it with a touch of certainty not given to
the former. . At best the philosopher breaks off with a
" sic cogitavit," and at his best the divine ends with an
"0 altitudo!" This alone accounts for the common

Ruling Ideas in Theology. 39
instincts of mankind going to the divine rather than to
the philosopher for an account of God and His dealings to
men. But out of this very craving for definiteness and
certainty grows our greatest danger. Dogmatism in a
philosopher is not expected, and therefore this is not his
snare, though he not seldom falls into it. But with the
divine, pressed on all sides, and bound not to strike an
uncertain note, it needs much of the meekness of wisdom
not to speak when in doubt on the oracles of God. He
should be silent where he feels that they are dumb, and
not cover over and disguise from the laity his own doubt
with dogma. It is in this temper that we desire to
enter on our task, which is partly critical, but also partly
constructive. We shall pass under review a few of
the central truths of Theology, and point out how far
the old modes of expression fall in with the reigning
ideas of former ages, but are fallen out of date at present,
and wait to be replaced by terms taken, in their turn,
from the reigning ideas of our own day. If this task
should seem presumptuous to some who are satisfied
with the past, it will equally seem absurd to others who
have broken entirely with the past, and who regard any
restatement of Theology as a case of the dead burying
their dead. Between the idolaters of the past and
those who are waiting for some unknown God of the
future, we shall probably fall in for blame on both sides.
We have counted the cost of this, and are prepared to
pay the price. As a rule, the professional class stand out
against any thoroughgoing reform of the profession itself.
It is so in medicine ; it is so in law ; and we must not
expect an exception in divinity. Among lawyers, as a
lucid writer on the land laws remarks, " A considerable
number are hostile to change, and a greater number
indifferent. Those who make the shoe do not feel it

40 Ruling Ideas in Theology.
pinch, and those who feel it pinch do not know how
shoes are made."1
Mutato nomine : this is more true of Theology, because
the subject-matter is the God who changes not, and
hence by a natural fallacy of thought we argue that
our conclusions about Him must be unchangeable as well.
The unsettling of men's minds on such a subject is
regarded as a sin almost against nature. Hence it is
that a blind conservatism does the work of a destructive
radicalism. It is the case of Bacon's rule, morosa
retentio antiquarum morum maxima innovatio est. For
this reason we go forward regardless of professional
prejudice, and taking such objections rather as arguments
to urge us on to our task. To the laity, after all, the
appeal is made. They do not make shoes, but they wear
them, and so feel where they pinch. If they shall read
and reflect, divines, not a few in the same state of
discontent with our present suspense and half faith in
half truths, will also lend their support. In any case, we
go forward relying on the assurance that in all ages
Wisdom is justified of all her children.
1 The Land Laws, by F. Pollock, M.A., etc., p. i.

CHAPTER II.
NEW WINE IN NEW BOTTLES.
If we may trust a teacher whose sayings are true, alike
yesterday, to-day, and for ever, we are ever to be on our
guard not to put the new wine of a fresh and fermenting
spiritual conviction into the old and shrunken skins of a
dried-up ceremonialism. It scarcely needed divine wisdom
to point the moral of this lesson; and yet that which
men in everyday life see the folly of, that theologians
will do and continue doing in spite of experience.
Instead of seeing that new ideas require fresh forms in
which to contain them, they bring out the old bottles
and make a great show of the elasticity of these shrunken
skins, because they are not instantly burst. They forget
that it is only after the wine has begun to ferment that
the skin begins to distend and crack. That which
follows is that both the wine is spilled and the bottles
are burst. The loss is complete. Both the new faith
and the old forms suffer from the unnatural attempt to
combine them. It is another illustration of the truth of
the French saying, autres temps autres mceurs. The ideas
of one age do not fit in with the institutions of another.
What are called revolutions in history are only violent
attempts of the old to put down the new, and in most
cases the instinct of self-preservation explains, if it does
not excuse, the attempt. So it was with the Stuarts in

42 New Wine in Ne-w Bottles.
England and the Bourbons in France. They argued,
not quite unreasonably, that the old skins of absolute
monarchy would not contain the new wine of liberty of
conscience and the rights of man. Hence they resisted
with fatal consistency the endeavour to reconcile old and
new together. They failed, and were swept away, and
we blame or pity them according as our sympathies go
with or against the torrent of new ideas which they vainly
sought to stem. But it is only just to their memory to
add that they were at least logical and consistent.
They argued with the General of the Jesuits, when urged
to compromise and so avert a decree of suspension, Sint
ut sunt aut non sint. There are cases of this kind in
which the new and the old will not meet and match.
When such irreconcilables meet, then there is nothing
for it but an open conflict. Reform is no longer possible,
but rebellion ending in revolution more or less complete,
as in this country two centuries ago, and in France
rather less than a century since.
It is only in Theology that the majority of men fail to
see that new ideas and old forms of thought are like new
wine in old wine skins. The reason for this unreasoning
conservatism of old forms of expression in Theology, out
of which the meaning has long since died out by senseless
iteration, is partly ignorance and partly indifference.'
Superstition and Secularism, these are the two serpents
sent to strangle religion like the infant Hercules in his
cradle. Some care nothing whatever for the hereafter,
and so call themselves Agnostics. Others care a great
deal for what they suppose is their soul's salvation, but
their care takes a wrong direction. They lay stress on
sound formulas of belief or right ceremonials of worship,
and the result in both cases is that the external kills the
internal. Religion shrivels into formalism. It becomes

New Wine in New Bottles. 43
a thing of shreds and patches, — shreds of old-world
philosophy and patches of modern scientific thinking, ill
assorted together, — and so the rent is made worse.
Can we wonder that the result of this archaism in
religion, this obstinate clinging to old forms which will
not hold the new ideas, is a general scepticism on the
part of men of the world ? They distrust Theology on
account of its timid conservatism or rather antiquarian-
ism, which values a ceremony or a doctrine in an inverse
ratio to its bearing on modern life and thought. Let it
be shown that it is patristic or mediaeval, or let it shelter
itself behind the name of one of the fathers of the
Reformation, all is then well. It is orthodox, and to
edification ; and with this stamp on it, like the duty paid
on some quack medicine, the public is satisfied. The
nostrum is safe, or else it would not have paid duty
at all. Such is the way in which Time sets his seal on
old theological formulas ; and they pass as orthodox with
the majority, because they are old.
But what of the minority, whom religious teachers
pass by, as the priest and Levite did, on the other side ?
They are called hard names, and are regarded as sceptics,
agnostics, and so forth, because in most cases they are,
as Milton was, " church-outed by the prelates." We do
not say that dogmatic Theology is responsible for all the
scepticism that is in the world. But Burke's paradox,
that vice, in losing all its grossness, loses half its
malignity, is not inapplicable to this case. It is con
ceivable that, with all the dogmatism, at least half the
scepticism would disappear. By dogmatism let us add
that we mean not so much a definite form in which to
put a definite truth, since, if we hold a truth distinctly,
we must express it clearly; but what we condemn as
dogmatism is rather the temper which forbids a new

44 New Wine in New Bottles.
idea until it is fitted into the old framework. Dogmatism
is, in a word, the tyranny of phrasemakers, who put upon
us the conceptions of the past, regardless of the question
whether they are abreast of the conscience and common
sense of our age or not. Theology, it cannot be too
carefully remembered, must have dogmas, i.e. the out
ward and definite expression of an inward and definite
truth. Here all are agreed; but divines too often
forget that this dogma is a kind of Tithonus union of a
mortal and an immortal — a variant quantity with a
constant. The spiritual truth which is constant clothes
itself from age to age in the forms, philosophical or
juridical, which are current in that age. This is the
mortal element wedded to the immortal, and hence the
discord and confusion which springs up when the im
mortal element demands a new vesture and form of
expression which the old and unyielding dogma is
unable to give. Then the piece of new cloth is sewn
on to the old garment, till the rent is made worse. Then
the new wine is poured into the old skins, till the wine
is spilled and the bottles are marred. The truth is, that
with new ideas, a new Theology is needed in which to
invest these ideas with their true meaning as spiritual
phenomena. The old jurisprudence and the old philo
sophy sufficed to express the thoughts of a Theology
which rested on the governmental, not the parental, con
ception of God and on His relation to the universe, which
was dualistic and not monistic. But the old dualism of
mind and matter is now obsolete, and hence it is that,
for want of restating the terms of Theology, the best
minds are drifting fast to Pantheism, seeing they find no
holding ground to faith in the old anchorage of Deism.
In the same way the magisterial conception of God and
duty is out of date, and a religion which rests and is

New Wine in New Bottles. 45
supposed to rest entirely on it suffers perilously. The
best minds of the age cannot put up with a doctrine of
the Atonement which rests on a forensic transaction and
a metaphor of the transfer of guilt and vicarious punish
ment which the conscience of the age regrets.
This all intelligent divines have long since seen and
tried to meet by various expedients and compromises.
The Broad Church movement, as it is vaguely called, is
only the well-meant attempt to piece together the old
and the new, and to put some of the new wine, well
diluted with the old, into skins not too shrunk to bear
the process. So it is that we meet with a type of
thought known as advanced Protestantism, which com
bines a kind of respect for old and new. The attempt
is praiseworthy ; but it fails from the suspicion that it
is merely a compromise based on prudential grounds, and
lacking the support of a firm conviction. These New
Light divines, as they are called, partly from fear of pre
sumption, but principally from fear of alarming timid and
ignorant minds, fail to lead the movement which they
put themselves at the head of ; they minimize their own
action, and so add to the alarm which they wish to
allay. They fear to be constructive, and so are regarded
as merely negative. If they boldly set out with pro
claiming that Theology, like an old house, must be pulled
down and built up again from the foundation with the
same or new materials, as the case might require, they
would actually alarm less than they do at present ; men
would know what they mean, and allow the destruction
for the sake of the reconstruction. As it is at present,
they cling to the old house, with all its defects, from
fear of being left out in the cold. Nor are they to be
blamed; till the new school clear themselves from the
suspicion of being merely destructive, and show that they

46 New Wine in New Bottles.
can be constructive as well, can we wonder that men say,
" Let this new wine ferment as it may, we prefer the old
wine in the old vessels " ?
Hence it is that the " new Theology," as it calls itself,
must get beyond its merely negative and critical attitude
if it is to commend itself as adapted to the wants of the
a<?e. It must say what it means as to Miracles and
Prophecy, Inspiration, the Atonement, and, above all,
Eschatology, if it is to escape the charge of being merely
critical. The difficulty arises at this point, that the men
who are critical are generally not constructive ; while the
constructive class of divines are, as a rule, blindly con
servative of the past, and dread the critical temper as
Rationalism thinly disguised, if disguised at all There is
a call in our day for some one to step forward and offer
to do for English Theology what the " Mediation School "
of Tholuck and Neander were supposed to do for German
Theology, when naturalists and supernaturalists had said
their say, and the deistic controversy of the last century
had died down like a fire smothered in its own ashes. The
new Theology must be constructive, not merely critical; and
who is to set the example and lead the way ? Learned men
of the professional type naturally shrink from doing so.
The most competent, perhaps, are the most reluctant ; for
those who have lived in libraries know the presumption
of attempting to re-write Theology. Even a "body of
divinity," in the sense that a Wardlaw or a Watson
attempted to throw their lectures to students into book
form, would seem to our age so much surplusage. Dog
matic divinity is out of date, and, in its stead, German
professors now write their Dogmen-Geschichtes, which are
critical only, but not the least constructive. So the want
is felt ; but none step forward to meet the need, and in the
end scepticism and dogmatism are left face to face in the

New Wine in New Bottles. 47
field alone and to themselves — the one to carry off one
class of our people, and the other the other. Society
all the while sinks deeper each day into the slough of
agnostic indifference, because neither Priestism nor Piet
ism — the two current forms of thought in this country —
has the courage to step in and stay the plague.
The restatement, then, of the leading truths of Theo
logy, in terms consistent with modern conceptions of God
and the universe, this is the one great desideratum, of
our age. In one sense we may compare such a work
to the Novum Organum of Bacon. Like Chiron the
Centaur, who taught Achilles the use of arms which he
was never himself to wield, so Bacon pointed out the
true path of discovery which he was himself unqualified
to enter on. He had little of the specialist himself, and
thought meanly of those who were, and underestimated,
as we know in the case of Gilbert, the anticipations of
modern science ; but he was at least able to detect the
fundamental error of the old scholastic philosophy, which
argued from principles instead of up to them. Bacon at
least pointed out the hindrances, and suggested some
few of the helps, to discovery. In the same way it is
conceivable that the, outlines of the new Theology may
be laid down by one who would be unable to fill up
details. This would be the work, not of a single life
time, but of the lives of several competent and critical
minds. It is enough if we indicate, in the briefest
possible terms, the four leading truths on which Theology
needs to be restated ; it will remain to follow up, in
succeeding chapters, such details in these truths as we
have space to enlarge on.
Put in the briefest terms, these terms are : The Being
of God and His relation to the universe ; 2. The mode of
our acceptance with Him, and of redemption, its plan and

48 New Wine in New Bottles.
purpose ; 3. The nature of revelation and the mteraction
of the human and divine will in what is known as
Inspiration ; 4. The destiny of man here and hereafter,
with the larger hope of the human race as a whole.
These, in a few words, are the landmarks within which
inquiry must move. It is on these questions that the
age is exercised and waiting some Ductor Dubitantium.
There may be a false modesty in holding back from these
subjects as well as a rash presumption. If fools rush in
where angels fear to tread, they are also sluggards who
stand back when many on all sides are saying, who will
show us any good ? In some respects, a private and
obscure person has an advantage which some one with a
high position or a professional reputation at stake cannot
possess. Heresy-hunting has happily died down within
the last few years. As a rule, it finds its only retreat
among the smaller and more obscure sects, whose leaders
are loud-tongued in proportion to their ignorance of their
own ignorance. On the other hand, eminent men, whether
as prelates or professors, shrink from going deeply into dis
cussions such as those we have glanced at in outline. They
limit themselves too generally to a few critical hints, and
leave the constructive work of re-writing Theology to the
Church of the future. This would be all very well if the
lay readers of these critical hints were content to remain at
their critical point of view. But negative views as to the
Theology of the past soon pass into positive. Men make
up their mind that if the historical Scriptures are admitted
not to be historical, then they cease to be Scripture in
any emphatic sense of the term. The descent, for in
stance, from the old Rationalism to the new Theolo°y of
the absolute religion, of which Christianity is only one of
many realizations, is so rapid that we have already seen
this Rubicon passed in the case of many Unitarian

New Wine in New Bottles. 49
Churches, and the same tendency is at work among
Churches which cling more closely to the old form of
sound words.
For all these reasons, then, we dure not hesitate any
longer to attempt a reconstruction of Theology on its new
bases. Our task will be positive and not merely negative ;
it will build up and plant, and not merely pull down
and destroy. If it fails altogether, as it may do, or comes
lamentably short of its ideal, as it certainly will, no one
is prejudiced ; no reputation risked and lost ; no scandal
caused, as when some leader in the religious world has
to make a concession to the demands of advancing science
which he had loudly repudiated in his younger years.
This is not a Concordat, let us add, like those many well-
meant attempts now becoming fewer to "reconcile," as it
is called, Science and Theology. For our part, we have
scant faith in these Concordats, and think they fail, since
the writers set out with a wrong assumption and so lead
up to a lame and impotent conclusion. They set out
with a dogmatic assumption that a certain book, assumed
to be infallible, contains statements which do not har
monize with the conclusions arrived at by modern science.
It strikes the ingenious mind of these harmonists that
by a little concession here and a little compromise there,
the two accounts of the universe, the one geocentric and
the other heliocentric, may be pieced together, and so a
certain accommodation be patched up, a truce, at best,
until the next war breaks out.
It is not on these lines, as we think, that Theology must
be re-written, but rather on those of a frank recognition
that the Theology of a past age could only suit a past age.
Of all fixed delusions one of the most mischievous is the
popular error, still held in many quarters, that in a world
of change Theology is to be the one truth which, like the
D

50 New Wine in New Bottles.
laws of the Medes and Persians, changeth not. It was one
of Lord Macaulay's specious sophisms, which even deeper
thinkers than he was have repeated, and so lent to it the
sanction of their names, that moral and material science are
contrasted in this respect, that the latter was progressive
but the former not. As a matter of fact, the advances
made in ethical truth are immeasurable from the super
stitions of primitive men to the calm and well-balanced
actions of a Christian philanthropist of our day. " How
vast the contrast is," a modern writer truly remarks, " from
the blind and selfish superstition of the Shetlander who
runs away from a drowning seaman (under the notion
that he who saves a drowning man will receive at his
hands some injury) to the enlightened benevolence which
plants a lifeboat on the sea-beach to succour the stranded
ships ! " (vid. Bailey, Essay on the Pursuit of Truth, p. 7).
Moral progress is as constant, in a word, as material. In
a rude condition of society, actions are broadly classified
as right or wrong, good or bad. It is only in proportion
as society advances that finer moral judgments are formed.
The neutral tints of the colours of good and evil begin to
stand out into distinctness, and what we may call our
natural colour-blindness to disappear under careful moral
training, and habitual attention to moral distinctions which
at last becomes instinctive in all advanced races. To
suppose, then, that there is growth in moral, but no
advance in theological truth, is to suppose a state of things
the most damaging of all to Theology. It would be to
assume that Theology had no concern with human pro
gress, and was like some binary star which might have some
orbit of its own, but at such an immense distance from our
system that it might be safely disregarded as non-existent.
Theologians, in their blind zeal for what they call a
supernatural revelation, have often given this non-natural

Nc:u 71 'im in Nxo Bsttlts. 51
account of religion. But Theology lias, hke other truths.
to be fought for twice over. It has first to be rescued
from its foes and then saved from its friends, the latter
often the harder task of the two. The trained theologian,
who has fought stoutly and long to rescue Theology from
a perilous confusion with philosophy, is seldom as much
on his guard against the philosophy falsely so called, and
which creeps in by a back-door under the specious name
of dogmatics. It is this dogmatic Theology which is only
philosophy under another name, and all the more danger
ous for being a wolf in sheep's clothing, which causes all
the confusion that we complain of. If the Reformation
had made the clean sweep of school divinity which it pro
fessed to do, we might be spared the necessity of having
to draw up a new Theology, to express the enlarged con
ceptions of God and His universe which modern science
has unfolded to us. But the Reformation soon sank back
into the arms of a dogmatism more slavish if possible than
that which it had just rescued us from. More Lutheran
than Luther, more Calvinist than Calvin, more Anglican
than the Fathers of the Anglican Reform, this is the
pitiable comment of history on our boasted Reformation.
Strangely enough, many saw this, none more acutely than
Bacon himself, but with his cool and too pliant intellect
he could only hint to the royal pedant on the throne that
the new school divinity was not a whit less tyrannous than
the old. The sharp sword of persecution helped, it is true.
to open the eyes of some. " For my part," John Robinson
of Leyden said in his address to the Pilgrim Fathers when
embarking for a new world in 1620. " I cannot sufficiently
bewail the condition of the Reformed Churches, who are
come to a period in religion and will go no farther than
the instruments of their Reformation. The Lutherans
cannot be drawn to so bevond what Luther saw ;. what-

52 New Wine in New Bottles.
ever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin,
they will rather die than embrace it ; and the Calvinists
you see stick fast where they were left by that great man
of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery
much to be lamented, for though they were burning and
shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into
the whole counsel of God, but were they living now would
be as willing to embrace further light as that which they
first received."
This wise advice to remember that the Lord hath yet
more truth to break out of His holy word, was no sooner
given than forgotten. What these descendants of the
Pilgrim Fathers did when, changing places with the perse
cutors, they in their turn became a dominant Church, is
written in what is known as the Blue Laws of New Eng
land. Between old Prelatist and young Puritan there was
so httle to choose on this score, that but for the continued
dissidence of dissent as we may describe the Seekers and
New Light followers of Fox, it is impossible to say what
was gained on the side of liberty by the Reformation.
All this has been impressed on our age in a hundred
forms already, and yet it has not struck the majority,
even of intelligent critics, that there is only one remedy.
The axe must be laid at the root of the tree of theological
dogmatism. Every one of its dogmas must be challenged,
and their authority questioned. It was Kant who saw
clearly that to Hume's philosophical scepticism there
was only one reply, which wa3 the Critique of Reason.
In his Prolegomena to the Critique he observes proudly
enough, but the event has justified his boast, that if Hume
awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers, it was to give his
researches in the field of speculative philosophy a new
direction. " Hume," as he goes on to observe, " never
dreamt of a possible final science of this nature, and in

New Wine in New Bottles. 53
order to land his ship in safety, he ran it aground on the
shore of scepticism, where it might lie and rot, instead of
which it is my purpose to furnish a pilot, who, according
to certain principles of seamanship derived from a know
ledge of the globe, and supplied with a complete map
and compass, may steer the ship with safety wherever it
seems good to him."
This was bold language, but the event has justified the
boast. Since Kant's Critique mental science has taken
a new departure. The dogmatic method on such subjects
is a thing of the past, and later Kantians are now taking
Kant at his word, and criticize the Critique. They are so
far on the right track by following up a method of
approximation and gradual bit-by-bit verification, such
as has at last brought astronomy, for instance, to the
positive stage on which we reason alternately, deductively,
or inductively, and so reach the highest stage of certainty
conceivable. In Theology alone, of all the sciences, this is not so
much as thought of by the majority whose dogmatic
slumbers continue unbroken, as Kant's were in meta
physics, till Hume's scepticism on the causal nexus forced
him to ask himself, Are there any laws of thought at all,
and what are its limits ? Dogmatists and sceptics still
have the field to themselves in Theology. A minority
have a suspicion of the evil, but have not clearly pointed
out the remedy. The Inductive Method of Christian
Inquiry, an essay by Percy Strutt, contains some useful
hints as to erroneous methods in the past, but we search
in vain for the Novum Organum. Induction is no more
an instrument of discovery than deduction. We may
cheat ourselves with phrases as Bacon apparently did, as
if by setting the mind on the right track it would go on
of itself, and discovery come of itself like the figures in a

54 New Wine in New Bottles.
table of logarithms or the result in Babbage's calculating
machine. The truth is, that the qualities needed for
discovery are as much ethical as intellectual. We need a
deep distrust of our present attainments, an impatience
of half truths, and a disquiet under the twilight of
existing compromises which is so rare that only a
minority even feel any discomfort at a sense of the
ignorance of their own ignorance. To become as little
children, and so to enter the kingdom of heaven, this is a
phrase the deep meaning of which few suspect. On the
contrary, what they dread much more is what they call
unsettling their minds before first asking themselves if
they have any fixed opinions to unsettle beyond that
" base authority of others' books which every earthly god
father of heaven's lights " can pretend to give. That
saying of Beccaria is more often quoted than understood :
" La storia del progresso umano ci da l'idea di un immenso
pelago d'errori, in quale pochi, e confusi, e in gran distanza
verita sopranuotano." The story of human progress gives
us the idea of an immense sea of error, in which only a
few in confusion and at a great distance from each other
emerge to the surface of truth.
Were we so impressed with our own ignorance, Theology
would advance as other sciences, instead of lingering on
in a dead past, and under the blind authority of fathers
and doctors, whose chief claim is that they are of the
past. We should act on the rule that a new age must
have a new Theology— at least we should submit its
judgments to a critique not less searching than that of
Kant, and perhaps the result would be the same.

CHAPTER III.
OX THE BEING OF GOP.
Tin: age of Deism, as it has been called, passed away with
the rise of the critical philosophy. The justly celebrated
KHti.'; of Bmson of Inimanuel Kant gave it its deathblow.
The so-called proofs, ontologieal, eosmologieal. teleologieal,
of the Being of God never survived the searching tests of
the Critiqtu. It was a favourite thought of Sir W. Hamilton,
that the Theology of every age must bear a certain relation to
its philosophy. Hence it is, that as no error can emerge
in Theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.
so the truths and discoveries of the one react on the
other. The application of this remark to our subject is
obvious. A century ago. it may be said that Deism or
Theism, whieh is only the scientific expression of Deism,
was the admitted basis of all serious thinking on all sides.
Deists were divided between the naturalists and super-
naturalists, but the basis of thought was the sauie for
both. Natural and revealed religion, as it was called,
divided the field between them. As for the so-called
Free Thinkers, against whom by far the most convincing
part of the Analogy was directed, they were only the
Uhlans of an invading host of Atheists and Agnostics, of
Pantheists and Positivists. who were not yet seen in
force. They jested at truth, as Bishop Butler mournfidly
observed, as if by way of reprisals fox Christianity having

56 On the Being of God.
so long restrained their vices, and his tone of solemn
reproof at these mockers at the sanctities of life and the
safeguards of duty shows that he did not regard them
as more than the same rabble rout that Milton's Lady
of Cornus rebukes. We have spoken of them as the
Uhlans of an advancing host of more serious opponents.
In a different sense we may speak of them as the last of
the anti-Puritan reaction of Charles II.'s reign. The
Free Thinkers of our day are of a different and more
serious type, and with a change of opponents there must
be a change in our attack and defence. Theology has now
to ask itself whether the old deistic basis on which our
scientific conceptions all rested being gone, we can go on
building our proofs of the Being of God on the old supports
of design and adaptation which suited our fathers, instead
of the one which we now set out from. We need not
allude here to Mr. Picton's paradox of Christian Pan
theism, by which the last thoughts of advanced science and
the devoutest thoughts of Christian mysticism are seen to
touch, extremes meeting as in that rarest of phenomena
a circular rainbow. A Christian pantheist is a contradic
tion in terms. Hence we must be careful not to make
entangling alliances, or to restate the old theistic argu
ment in such a way that our sense of the presence of
God as the light and life of the world is melted away
into a dreamy Pantheism. We dare not in this way let
go the thought of a Being who is unique and tran
scendent, and so " make one of all Theology " as the
Mystics succeeded in doing. At the same time, it is
important to recognise what was the error of the old
Theism which lays it open to the charge that the best
scientific minds of the age are in a reaction against
it. The old Theism was adequate to express the
scientific conceptions of a Newton or a Leibnitz, a Locke

On the Being of God. 5 7
or a Boyle, but it fails to content the scientific thought
of our day, and it is no use for the theologian to evoke
the names of these " dead but sceptred sovereigns who
still rule our spirits from their urns," and to insist
that the fault must he with the scientists and not with
the theologians.
When we look into the question more closely, we see
that the old Theism rested on a mechanical conception
of the universe. Such was the Newtonian philosophy.
His laws of motion set out from the axiom of the inertia
of matter until acted on by an impulse from without. The
world was a billiard ball, the table was the universe, and
hence the line of its motion could be stated in mathe
matical terms taken from the laws of number. Beyond
this point the science of last century did not go, hence
there was no serious breach between its philosophy and
its Theology. But the scientific ideas of our day are
taken from a diverse order of phenomena. We have
gone back in one sense to the old Platonic conception of
the universe as a great living thing. What in Spinoza
was an evil dream of science yet unborn, is now a sober
reality. Instead of conceiving of God as a Being above
and outside the universe, the transcendent Deity of the
past, men now think of Him as the immanent and living
centre of Force, the battery, so to speak with reverence,
whence proceed all the forces of the universe. In a
word, we no lqnger speak of laws as acting on matter
from without, as overcoming its inertia and directing it in
the course it shall take. We now speak of forces acting
from within, and evolving one form out of another by
some biological law of growth which we call evolution.
Hence it is that our conception of the Deity has been
profoundly modified by the altered attitude in which we
regard the universe. Pantheism is a phrase of such an

58 On the Being of God.
equivocal meaning, that we shrink from using it at nil
unless we explain how we use it, and with what reserva
tions. At the same time, there is nothing gained by
shutting our eyes to the fact that unless we can make
an approach to what, for want of a better term, we must
call Christian Pantheism, our Theology, on the most funda
mental question of all, will strike a note to which modern
science will have no response. The old Theology, like
the old philosophy, was built up on what we may call
the basis of philosophical dualism. There were two, and
only two, modes of existence, commonly called mind and
matter, and the problem of Theology was how to bridge
over the gulf fixed between the two. How could matter
act on mind, and mind on matter ? and what was tho
relation of God to both ? It was Descartes who in reality
was the father of the deistic philosophy that reigned
without a rival till Kant came to demolish it. 1 )esoartes
had dug a trench broad and deep between these two
categories of mind and matter, and then left it to his
followers to bridge it over as best they could. Spinoza
declared it insoluble, and fell back on Pantheism ; but
Malebranche in one way and Leibnitz in another offered a
solution of how God acted on both. Berkeley tried the
a priori road, and Locke and the Scotch school tho
common-sense solution until Hume arose, and with his
¦ searching criticism put an end to both these quiddities
of mind and matter. In our day, and indeed ever since
Kant, we have ceased to trouble ourselves with the
problem. We accept the mystery, and do not go behind
a certain phenomenal mode of speaking of the laws of
thought and the laws of things. Our philosophic nescience,
of which Hamilton and Mansel, after Kant, have almost
made an idol of, leaves us in face of a great Unknown.
What thought is in itself, or what the thing is in itself,

On the Being of God. 59_
the ding an sich of the Hegelian, this is now rided to be
out of court and iiltra vires; and so content with our
philosophic nescience, we leave off in a kind of despair of
ontology. *
But the human mind will not sit down for ever con
tent with a ne plus ultra formula ; it scoffs at such
pillars of Hercules as those which Kant set up, and
within which the late Sir William Hamilton insisted
that research is bound to limit itself. But philosophy,
which has no goal and no zone, has moved on in our
day. It is bound by the law of its being not to make
nescience its terminus, hence it must go on to resolve
the problem whether mind and matter are original
entities, or only different manifestations of some original
force, which is God. We must at least lift a corner of
the veil of Isis, and ask, are matter and mind twain or
one ? The new philosophy teaches what we should call
monism, as opposed to the old dualism, of mind and
matter. We owe, perhaps, more to Swedenborg than
many are aware for educating us to see that mind and
matter are only varieties of the same primal entity, which
is force, and which, whether as Hfe or light, is only the
manifestation in a creaturely form of that which is the
Eternal Wisdom or Word of God. Using the two terms
influx and efflux, Swedenborg shows that " the physical
universe is merely the visible costume and representation
of the spiritual universe which, from the central Sun of
Deity, passes through the substantia- prima of the inner
universe to the soul a spirituous fluid, which is the
inmost hfe of rational beings, and so out into the
external organism and outer world." There is thus
no radical difference between the so-called material and
spiritual world; they are simply different stages or
degrees of energy of the one stream of efflux or influx,

6o On the Being of God.
which, coming out from God, reaches at length its
ultimate form, or is exhausted as the outermost re
presentations of the visible world, organic and in
organic.1 Such is in outline the new philosophy, which, in
contrast with Cartesian Dualism, we may describe as
Monism. It is needless to add that the soundest
thinkers on the side of exact science are all enrolled,
more or less, on the side of monism. Not to refer to
others, this is the keynote of the authors of The Unseen
Universe, who have done more than any theologians we
can name to reconcile reason with faith, and to bridge
over the abyss between the natural and the supernatural.
It is a hopeful sign for that ultimate harmony between
science and religion, which never can be forced on, but
which we may gently lead up to, that the most exact
thinkers in science now loudly repudiate the term
materialism as much as they do spiritualism ; they
deny that they belong to either school. As for what
formerly was called " matter," they deny its existence as
an entity as stoutly as Berkeley did, but with better
reasons. Ever since Boscovitch described the atom as a
centre of force, the germ theory of existence has become
the dominant one. The old ab ovo omnia theory lies
at the basis of all our biological inquiries. Matter is
simply the form in which some formative principle,
which is force in its primary conception and God in its
ultimate, clothes itself. The correlation of these forces,
as it is called, or the way that light passes into life and
heat into motion, still further strengthens our conception
of the universe as, in a sense, a living whole, or rather
as the vesture of One who decks Himself with light as
with a garment. That phrase in Faust —
1 See Swedenborg's True. Christian Religion, p. 449.

On the Being of God. 6 1
" A web ever growing,
A life ever glowing, —
Thus at Time's whizzing loom I spin,
And weave the living vesture that God is mantled in,"
aptly enough expresses what the best modern thought
now represents the universe to be as a whole.
It is needless to observe that the first tendency of this
new line of thought is directly hostile to the old Theism.
Hence it is that such loud complaints were and are still
raised by the old school of divines of the spread of
Pantheism ; but may it not be that the fault is with
ourselves. We have failed to go with the times, and
to revise our theological conceptions, so as to bring them
up abreast of the best thoughts of science. The remedy
for this is, as we have seen, to recast our terminology,
and to draw out a new set of conceptions in theology in
harmony with these ruling ideas in science. Could we
plant ourselves at the new point of view, we should
find not only the old antinomy between mind and
matter disappear, but also with it the standing difficulty,
which is unsolved by Descartes and Leibnitz, of con
ceiving how the Deity can operate on matter by one
set of laws and on mind by another. As for the old
contrast between the natural and the supernatural, this
would disappear of itself, and with it all difficulty as
to the place of miracles in a universe where the reign
of law extends without a break. We should see
that Creation, instead of a six days' operation, which
was only a gracious accommodation to the conceptions
of mankind in their intellectual infancy, is a continuous
process the days of which are aeons, and those aeons
are as many as there are stages upward from the monad
to man. Our conception of God as Creator would be
that of the text, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I

62 On the Being of God.
work." God is ever going forth out of the abysmal depth
of His perfection and overflowing as Creator, because it
is His nature and property so to overflow, because, in
the beautiful simile of the Psalmist, " He openeth His
hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness."
Light, Life, Love, — this is the Trinity of manifestation
of God in the lower, middle, and upper worlds of His
universe, the first one reaching down to the mineral, the
second passing up from the plant to the animal, and the
third beginning at man, and passing on upward into the
angelic world, till it returns back by influx of praise
and worship to God, who is its original fount of Being.
We may call this a spiritual philosophy, and make it
the groundwork of a better, because a spiritual, Theology ;
but it is only spiritual in the sense that it is not
material. Its first axiom is this, that, discarding the
term matter as a phrase without meaning, we should
set out with the term force; and as force is only a
relative term, it implies some form on whichitacts,
some vesture which it is ever weaving rotrnd~ltsel£ It
is the life which sleeps in the mineral, dreams in the
plant, wakes in the animal, and rises into consciousness
at last in man. This is that restless, ever-rushing vis
viva of nature which leaps from the sunbeam into the
soil, there quickens the sleeping germ of plant hfe, and
so passes from stage to stage in the scale of existence,
till in man it reaches the last term of what we may
call the boundary line between mind and matter.
Now Theology must be blind indeed to the true
teachings of its own Book if it does not see in these
ruling ideas of our age, which are monistic, not dualistic,
a class of conceptions which are in deeper harmony with
the old Book than the Cartesian dualism of mind and
matter. Accustomed as we are to read the Book in the

On the Being of God. 63
light of the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter, we
are inclined at first to say that the Book teaches this
dualism ; there are passages which certainly look that
way. Thus, when it is said that God took of the dust
of the earth to mould man's body, and then breathed
into that frame of clay the breath of lives, what is this
but the old dualism of mind and matter ? but a closer
study brings us back to the deeper view, which is also
the simpler. The creation hymn of Gen. i., and also
the proem to St. John's Gospel, both point to the same
thought, that the Word went forth, and all things began
to exist in and through and by Him. In Him was life.
He was the life of all lower lives, and at last in man
that life rises into something spiritual, which we call the
light of men.
In passages such as these, of which it is unnecessary
to accumulate proof texts, it is clear that the sense of
Scripture is against the old dualism of mind and matter
on which the deistic philosophy and Theology of last
century rested for its chief support. It would be foreign,
of course, to the simplicity of Scripture to go to it for
proof for or against a mere philosophical thesis, such
as the distinction between monism and dualism ; but it
is fair to say that, while Scripture is neutral on such
questions as long as they are purely scholastic, it cannot
be said to speak with uncertain sound on such a question
as the eternity of matter, or its pre-existence as the
materia prima out of which a Deus opifex moulded the
universe. All that mountain of learning which Cud-
worth in his Intellectual System has piled up, like Ossa
on Olympus, in reply to the Materialists of his day,
crumbles away of itself as soon as we see that the
mode of discussing these questions has changed its char
acter since his time. The Epicurean Atomist of that day

64 On the Being of God.
has disappeared so completely, that it would be difficult to
meet with a Materialist in the sense that Cud worth dis
cusses the term with his opponents. There are Scientists,
like Buchner and Moleschott, who deal with such phrases
as kraft und stoff as if stoff, or matter, were endowed
with a certain inherent potentiality, which they describe
as kraft, and which rises from scale to scale, till in man
it reaches the height of self-consciousness, and then like
the fountain rising in foam and falling in spray, so the
circle goes round, much as the Buddhist conception
of the wheel of life. This is the type of modern
Materialism which we have to deal with, and to which
there is only one reply, which is this, that it leaves out
the one single factor which determines the whole problem,
viz. the existence of moral good and evil, and the eternal,
ineradicable contrast between the two. If there be no
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then we readily
admit that there is no tree of life, and then man's
existence is as cheap as that of brutes, and as worthless.
But once we admit a conscience of good and evil, the
existence of a God is involved in that admission, without
which the terms good and evil and their eternal contrast
become unmeaning. Hence it is that Theists and
Atheists alike reason consistently with the premises
which they set out from, and the controversy rises up
into that upper region of first principles and a priori
postulates where the conscience has free play, and man
is a law unto himself.
Dogmatic divines are here seriously to blame for their
suicidal distrust of what they describe as the intuition
Theology. The two classes who hold by an infallible
Book, and those who fall back on an infallible Church,
alike regard with ill-disguised suspicion the intuitional
school ; they forget that but for these instinctive goings

On the Being of God. 65
forth of the soul after goodness, we should be simply
incapable of any consciousness of God, who is the Supreme
God. Again, they forget that without a conscience, which
is a law unto itself, no amount of dogmatic teachino-
would impress us with a sense of One who is the fountain
and source of that law within. Divines, in a word, in
denouncing the intuitional school of morals, are guilty of
the inconsistency of calling a witness into court and then
stopping his mouth, or bidding him sit down. We
must either believe in the testimonium animas naturaliter
Christianas or not : we cannot combine opposites.
The Jesuits have tried to erect a strong house of
authority by discarding all support for conscience by the
interior light, and we know the result of their teaching.
There is no Atheism so desolating as that of those who
have been taught that all is evil in man, unless what he
has learned on the lap of the Church.
Idolatry of old phrases somewhat musty, or, as Bacon
would call it, of the idols of the forum, is one of the dangers
of Theology in its controversy with modern science. The
weapons of the past are out of date, and we must recast
our very conceptions of the Being of God and His relation
to creation as continuous, not occasional, if we would be
abreast of science. We must, moreover, set out from a
monistic, not a dualistic standpoint, and regard creation
as continuous and without gaps, not a succession of
fresh starts of creative energy, as in the Hindu myth of
Brahm awaking from a long sleep of ages only to relapse
into that sleep of Nirvana again. It is by the light of
the doctrine of the Trinity that we should be directed to
retrace our conceptions of creation. The Deity is Will,
Word, and Work, or the process between an Idea and its
intelligent execution, which we describe as Spirit. Such has
been the going forth out of those abysmal depths, which we
E

66 On the Being of God.
call Deity, into nature which is His workmanship. What we
call the Incarnation is thus a manifestation of God, unique
in one sense but not in another. The Schoolmen first raised
the question, on which Thomists and Scotists took sides
for and against, as to whether without a Fall there would
have arisen any necessity for the Incarnation. Their
mode of approaching such a question must have been
erroneous, or they would have seen the folly of assuming
an element of contingency at all in the divine dealings.
Whatever God doeth, He doeth it for ever. Hence it
argues a kind of obtuseness to the fundamental con
ception of a Deity, to suppose Him to be surprised or
disturbed in His plans, or compelled to modify them as
inferior artists must. Evil is no accident, much less a
surprise to the great All-good. It is something more, it
is true, else it would not be evil, than the process on to
a higher good — the shadow out of which the light of a
higher spiritual freedom emerges. But what that some
thing more is, we shall only know when we reach the
eternal world, and know the true meaning of heaven and
hell, concerning which there are all shades of meaning,
from the crudest materialism to the most attenuated
spiritualism. Hence it is, that as creation is continuous and for
ever, so at all its stages it is the operation of the
Eternal Will, the Eternal Word, and the Eternal Spirit,
the primal, the efficient, and the final cause of all things.
Hence we see that with an increasing manifestation of God
we must reach the stage at which a being is to appear on
the scene made in God's image and after His likeness. It
is out of this conception of man's spiritual dignity that the
Incarnation follows as a necessary sequel. This being who
for some reason has failed to reflect God's image and
likeness, must be led on to realize his high destiny which is

On the Being of God. 6j
God's design, unless God is to fail of His purposes. In this
way we have succeeded in finding the missing link between
creation and redemption, which is not arbitrary as in the
old Theology, but necessary, and resulting from the per
fections of God. The old Deism, which was the substratum
of the old Theology, having lost its force, we must seek a
new ground-principle on which to rest the Theology of
the future, and this we find in that conception of God
which describes Him as the hidden centre of force, the
ultimate source of a threefold manifestation, which is
Light, Life, and Love, according as it rises in the scale of
being from matter to mind. This which we call a
Trinitarian view of creation as contrasted with a mere
Deistic, would go far to reconcile to many minds this
mystery of mysteries, the Christian doctrine of Incarna
tion and the Trinity.
The Theology of the future must combine in one, and
so resolve in a higher generalization that distinction
between natural religion, based on what is known as
the truths of Theism common to all mankind, and
revealed religion, based on those higher mysteries which
are peculiar to the Christian revelation. This contrast, like
that between natural and supernatural, will not stand
the test of modern criticism, since all revelation implies
nature, and the natural leads up to a revelation as its
goal and ultimatum. We cannot put reason and faith in
this way into separate compartments of thought, and throw
open the former only to free inquiry, while we regard the
latter as a kind of sacred enclosure into which reason is
not to enter at all, or only under certain limitations of its
free exercise which are fatal to its very existence as reason.
All these forced contrasts are things of the past. It is
harsh and arbitrary to lay down the existence of one
Supreme Being, God, as the basis of all sound thinking, and

68 On the Being of God.
yet to say in the same breath that we can know nothing
apart from revelation of the mode of His existence. Unless
God has already revealed Himself in us, we do not see
how He can reveal Himself afterwards to us. If the age is
agnostic, it is because theologians have pointed the down
ward path by denying that God is knowable at all by the
light of our interior consciousness. This agnostic temper
of indifference to all higher mysteries is a warning to our
selves that perhaps something is wrong in our own modes
of apprehension of truth, and that our very conceptions of
the Divine Being need revision. Divines of the old school
speak much too confidently of the Being and Attributes of
God as if certain qualities of the Godhead were inherent
in our very conception of the Great Supreme, and others
were not. In this vain distinction between the natural
and revealed character of God, the old Theology made its
first downward step into error, and any correction of
Theology must begin at this point, to which we now turn.
, The excuse for theologians using such an expression
at all of God as His "attributes" is, that, it seems an
equivalent to that grand old Hebrew phrase, the " name "
of Jehovah, such as it was proclaimed to Moses. But
is it so ? Here it is that the old Theology laid itself
open to attack from borrowing its conceptions of God
from a dry and scholastic Deism now defunct. These so-
called attributes of God are, as the term truly implies,
mere abstractions taken from an imperfect draft of human
nature, and applied to the divine nature inconsiderately,
as if there were no middle point between describing God
as a Being altogether such as we are, or altogether unlike
us. We forget that when we predicate infinity, we at
once take a Being out of the limitations under which
character is formed, at least as far as we know of moral
agents at all. More than this, as Kant points out, we

On the Being of God. 69
are involved in contradiction even in attributing will
to the Supreme Being. " For I have this conception
only," he adds, " in so far as I derive it from my inner
experience, and thereby from the dependence of my
satisfaction from objects whose existence we require.
But at the foundation of this lies sensibility, which
wholly contradicts the pure conception of a Supreme
Being. The objections of Hume to Deism are weak,
touching no more than the proofs, and never the pro
position of the deistic assertion itself. But as regards
Theism, which must be arrived at by a closer determi
nation of our merely transcendent conception of the
Supreme Being, they are very strong, and according as
the conception is constructed in certain, indeed in all
ordinary cases, are irrefragable." 1
Such, then, being our limitations of thought, we must
be careful how we limit the Holy One. It would be
better not to speak of Him at all than to speak of Him
as partial, unjust, vindictive ; as old Plutarch reasoned, it
were better that men should say there was no such man
as Plutarch, than to say that Plutarch is a man incon
stant, fickle, easily moved to anger, revengeful for small
provocations, vexed at small things. " When Timanthes,"
he adds, " at Athens was singing a hymn to Artemis,
and calling her ' wild runner, fanatic, mad, infuriated,'
Cinesias, the songmaker, got up from among the audience,
and cried, Mayest thou have a daughter like her." 2
The lesson to us is to be slow to attribute to God
qualities which we should be ashamed of even in a man.
This lesson, we remark with regret, has even yet to be
learned by theologians. Calvin seemed to suppose that
the bare predication of omnipotence to God had the effect
1 ^ Vid. Kant's Prolegomena, sec. 57, p. 105, Eng. trans.
' Vid. Plutarch, Superstition.

jo On the Being of God.
of turning qualities which we should regard as beneath
man's dignity into attributes worthy of the all-blessed
One. It is a strange confusion of thought arising from
divines putting the majesty of God above His moral
qualities. They argue that a thing is right because com
manded, instead of commanded because right. They
begin at the wrong end ; and if the conclusion which they
arrive at is repulsive to our deepest instincts of right and
wrong, it is too late to invoke the divine Sovereignty to
cover over the confusion of our reasoning.
Discarding, then, the term attributes as an unworthy
and all too anthropomorphic way of speaking of the
Great Supreme, Theology should revert to the grand old
Hebrew equivalent for the Being of God, His name.
The name Jehovah is " He who was, who is, and is to
come," who is wisdom, power, love, all three, and three in
one, these qualities coexisting in such a way that we
cannot conceive of His power as acting at all except
under the direction of wisdom and love. Such a Being
will be no longer regarded by us as the Almighty of the
Theist, much less as the God who, according to theologians,
is a God in Christ. to some, and a God out of Christ to
others. Language like this is only not impious, because
the good people who use it mean no impiety by it. What
they mean by the phrase is the weak though well-meant
attempt to impress on others that if we do not accept
the God who is in Christ, we shall have to face the bar
of the terrible God who out of Christ is a consuming
fire. In the fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine
Chapel, the Christ of the Gospels is depicted as a Jupiter
Tonans, who can only be propitiated by His virgin mother.
Our Reformed theologians stop short of this, but the differ
ence is only one of degree. They hold rather that the
Father is conciliated by the Son, instead of the Son by the

Onjjie Bein? ot God. 7 1
virgin mother. But the mode of thinking is the same in
both cases. Its root principle is a coarse mode of terrorism
which, if it startles minds in a certain stage of sensual
slumber, can go no farther than this, and then leaves them
a prey to deeper doubts than ever. Happily this mode of
representing the divine character has almost disappeared
from the pulpit, and we shall be only thrice slaying our
slain if we return to it again. But the root of the mistake,
which is all we have to deal with at present, lies in that
old habit of theologians in defining what they are pleased
to describe as God's attributes. Even " Person," a phrase
which we use of the Trinity, is only an accommodation at
best arising from the infirmity of speech how to touch an
ineffable mystery. But all these misunderstandings arising
from the Latin phrase Persona, or its Greek equivalent
Hypostasis, are light in comparison to those errors which
spring from this phrase of modern divines, " the attributes
of God." Attribution is in logic the converse of distribu
tion, and is a form of definition. But we forget that to define
we must first know the thing which we are dealing with.
This at once convicts of presumption those who describe
the Divine Being as if we were admitted into the secrets of
the presence chamber. Such is not true reverence. b^-^r
If Theology is to be regarded as a term with any
meaning, it must rise above that cold and philosophical
abstraction known as Theism. Divines must recast
their expressions, and not invent a caput mortuum, known
as natural religion, which is supposed to be at the base
of another caput mortuum,' which we describe as revealed
religion. These contrasts, which were current in the
age of Deism, must disappear with that age. The
rubbish of the old building must be removed, as Wren
did in the case of the rebuilding of St. Paul's, before we
proceed to reconstruct that true temple of the living

72 On the Being of God.
Jehovah, which may be said to need no light of the sun
of reason, neither of the moon of fancy to shine on it,
for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the
light thereof. The Theology of the future will have to
efface the distinction between natural and revealed
religion, and also to get beyond these contrasts between
God in creation and God in redemption, the natural and
the supernatural, which were the landmarks of last
century. All such distinctions are out of date in our
day, when Rationalism on one side and Spiritualism on
the other call out for a freer intercourse between the
lower world of sense and the higher world of spirit. A
far-off God, acting directly in the past by miracles, and
in the present only indirectly and through general laws,
this was the reigning idea of the eighteenth centuiy
Theology. The reigning idea of the nineteenth century
is so different, that to fall. back on the apologetics of that
age, or even to borrow its theological phrases, is like
going into battle with old weapons out of date and rusty.
The authors of the Unseen Universe have pointed this
out more clearly than any other writers we can name.
" The truth is," as they observe, " that science and
religion neither are nor can be two fields of knowledge,
with no possible communication between them. Such an
hypothesis is simply absurd. There is undoubtedly an
avenue leading from the one to the other, but this
avenue is through the unseen universe, and unfortunately
it has been walled up and ticketed with No road this
way, professedly alike in the name of science at one end,
and in the name of religion at the other." To open that
way, even if as a Bahn-brecher, is the object of this work.
We may not succeed, but we shall at least clear the way
for those who are to follow, and who will break down the
middle wall of partition between science and faith. No

On the Being of God. 73
conception of God which is unscientific can hold its
ground finally and for ever even among religious minds.
On the other hand, no conception of the universe
which shuts out the thought of a spiritual centre of all
things can hold its ground finally and for ever among
scientific men. The old Theism, which was more of a
philosophy than a faith, and which rested on Dualism,
not on Monism, must be- given up if a reconciliation is
to take place. At present, religious minds cling to
Theism, as . they see no alternative but this from a
Pantheism finally dying down to Positivism. But this
is our error and mistake. It arises from a contracted
view of the question. The universe is, in the eyes of
science only, a vast battery of forces passing one into the
other, as light, life, and lastly self-consciousness rising
into love. This is all that we ask, for this is the ground
of the new Theism. To use the term Force is to concede
the whole point in question. This is the fulcrum of our
lever, on which we lift the world on to a new plane of
spiritual thought. Light, life, love — in the passage upward
of these, the one up to the other, we have the shadow on
the dial of that truth which, in the Scriptures of truth, is
the Son proceeding from the Father, and the Spirit from
the Son. A triune God is a necessity thus of science as
much as of faith.

CHAPTER IV.
OF MIRACLES AS PEOPHECIES.
If the old Deism is a dead giant, slain, as we have seen
is the case, by the sling-stone of Kant's Kritik, we may
infer reasonably enough that discussions which spring
out of Deism, such as the relation of miracles to a reign
of law, should disappear with the Deism which gave rise
to them. As the age is no longer a Deistic age at all,
why raise the discussion which divided the Deists of
last century into naturalists and supernaturalists ? We
should gladly then pass by the question of miracles
altogether, holding, as we do, that as each age has its own
scientific conceptions, so its Theology must from time to
time be reconstructed in harmony with those conceptions.
The day is probably not far distant when many of the
objections to miracles will disappear with the apologies
for miracles by which they were buttressed up. Attack
and defence will thus come to an end together, when we
cease to use the old contrasts between the natural and
the supernatural. Indeed, the success of such a work as
the Reign of Law in the Spiritual World leads us to see
how much leeway has to be made up before science and
Theology can melt into one. The book is either a truism
or a paradox. If the author only means to say that
there prevails a reign of law in the spiritual world, as
also in the lower world of nature, we thank him for

Of Miracles as Prophecies. 75
nothing. Even those who use such a phrase as the
"dynamics of prayer," only mean that in some way
prayer sets in motion unknown forces in the universe.
On the other hand, if the author means that the same
laws reign throughout, this is a paradox. Chemical
affinity is not the same law as that of life, but its exact
contrary. The definition of life, indeed, is the power of
holding this chemical affinity in suspense. Hence the
" reign of law in the spiritual world " leads us no farther
than the old analogy argument, from certain phenomena
in the lower to that of the higher world, which is true
to a great extent, since similar laws, not same laws,
should proceed from God if He be the one Ruler of the
universe. But the question of miracles lies deeper than
this. The difficulty will disappear of itself when the
age has been brought to see that either there is no God
at all, or that He must be all in all. Hence it is that
we offer no rationale of miracles, holding, as we do, that
the time has not come for this. We can at best hold
out a kind of a Concordat, which is of no more logical
value than that of Faraday, who seems to have placed
his reason and his faith as if in distinct lobes of his
brain, and trusted to some future light, which should
break on the question, perhaps in the future life. For
the present, all we can say is, that the old rationale of
miracles, which satisfied the orthodox in the days of
Deism, and which with many modifications is substan
tially repeated to this day, is now quite out of date. In
our day no educated mind could speak of a miracle as a
violation of the laws of nature. We even shrink from
the phrase, a suspension of the laws of matter. The
favourite mode of representing miracles in orthodox
circles is, as the anticipation of some higher law, as part
of a redemption scheme by which all things are to be

76 Of Miracles as Prophecies.

made new. It is the restitution of all things to their
original and ideal perfection, before death and disease
had entered the world. We have nothing to say against
this anticipative view of miracles. They may be in this
sense prophecies in deed, as Christ's teaching was a
prophecy in word of good things to come. But it is
only too clear that this view of miracles leaves them thus,
so to speak, in the air. They are either regarded as
solitary events in a far-off past, and out of harmony with
all that we know of the laws of the. universe in the
present, or, as in the other view, they are bare anticipa
tions of some law as yet undiscovered in the future.
In either case, whether they belong to the past or to the
future, they are out of harmony with what we know of
the reign of law in the present. So much is this felt
by the orthodox of all schools, that the Christian argu
ment has silently shifted its centre of gravity during the
last half century. The latest illustration of this is the
removal of Paley's Evidences from the place of honour
which it held in the curriculum of Cambridge, where
Paley's Utilitarian Ethics, and Paley's matter-of-fact
Jury-box Evidences, naturally held their ground longeT
than at Oxford or any of the Scotch Universities. In
stead of our religion resting on miracles, as Paley put
it, it is the miracles which rest on the general credit of
the religion itself. We now can see the reasonableness of
Christ's miracles, because His unique Personality was
the miracle of miracles ; and until we can account for a
Galilean peasant attaining that wisdom, we feel compara
tively little difficulty in accounting for His making the
lame to walk and the blind to see.
From the Deistic standpoint, indeed, a miracle is
conceivable or not, according as we have grasped the
idea of the Reign of Law or not. Paley went a great

Of Miracles as Prophecies. yy
deal too far when he said that, admitting a Personal
Ruler of the universe, the whole question of His sus
pending the laws of the universe resolves itself into a
question of testimony. A miracle is thus no more than
an extraordinary class of facts, resting on better evidence
than any ordinary fact, and so he boldly faces the two
horns of Hume's dilemma, and says it is more probable
that a miracle should be true than that such unimpeach
able testimony should be false. But the age has left
behind alike Hume and his opponents. We are no longer
at the standpoint of Deism, hence the old contrast between
the natural and the supernatural should vex us no
longer. On the contrary, all that our new conception
of the reign of law in the universe seems to point to is,
that there are forces latent at present, the result of which
would, if suddenly let loose and developed, compel us
to cry out — a miracle. As a matter of fact, science
comes on us with feet shod with wool as Nemesis in
the Greek symbol, so silently, though swiftly, that we
pass through the phase of wonder into that of the higher
law, without allowing ourselves time to utter the adoring
word, and to say this is the finger of God. We may
take the telephone as the latest instance of our being
able to evoke forces latent in matter. It has been
generalized on so rapidly, and the subtle laws of the
conduction of sound by the same channel as light have
been reached, as it were, at a bound, and as a result we
at once class.it among other phenomena which fall under
the general reign of law. The telephone has passed over
with the telegraph into the class of things which, if
beyond sense-perception, are not beyond science. But
there still remains "telepathy," or the mysterious action
in some way of one will on another acting through a
medium and at a distance. Is it too much to suppose

78 Of Miracles as Prophecies.
Unit telepathy will some day or other follow tho course
of tho telegraph mid the telephone in passing over from
tho occult side of science to that which is la.w-regula.led.
On this supposition we baso our theory of miracles. They
are anticipations of the latent forces of the universe not
yet evoked by man. "We see not jet all things put
under man." As yet he is in his minority, mid no!, lord of
tho universe. All its laws do no!, yield to his touoll —
all its hidden forcos uro not summoned by the Prosporo
wand ol' science. " Hut we seo Jesus" — in tho model
man, the archetype Adam — all was subject to His will,
but only en account of His profound subjection to His
Fathor's will. Ho walked on the soa and rebuked tho
winds — at His word disease puled, and death dropped
its prey. For why ? not merely because, as the orthodox
hold, lie was the lord of the dead and the living, but also
beoauso as the representative man lie was lo foreshadow
in His own porson all that reign of man over nature which
is only, when rightly considered, and under tho limitations
of the ease, another name for tho reign of law, It
is ft childish conception of a miraelo to represent it as a
mere display of power, a freak of omnipotence. In this
sonso it is as impossible ibr our age to believe again in
miracles of this kind as in a Jupiter Tonans with the
thunderbolt as his doomster. Until tho question of miracles
is removed altogether from tho region of mere marvels,
and they are given their signaoulur character as prophecies
of a millennial reign of man as God's vicegerent on earth,
there will bo a standing dispute between our reason and
our faith. We may gloss over this dil'lerenee by com
promises, but tho inward bruise is not healed by
parmaceti of this kind. It breaks out again, and the
nicer of the new Rationalism in the end will bocoino
worse than that of tho old.

Of Miracles as Prepheeies. 79
What then, it will be asked, is tho remedy, and is
there any \ None, as we think, but in faciug the facts
of the ease, and removing the dead wood of old Deism,
with its contrasts between natural and supernatural.
It is this Deism, with its dogmatic contrasts between
some things within law and others above or beyond it,
which is tho mother of heresies and the fountain of
unbelief. We must have no reserve as to the reign of
law — " For ever Thy word is settled in heaven."
But then, again, there are no limits that we can see
to the potentiality of will in the universe, or in other
words, of the reign of mind over matter. A new force,
we call it electricity, causes ptrtieles of carbon to fly
off and to fuse in a blaze that we call the electric light.
At any day we may light on the force which shall
crystallize carbon so as to make a diamond. Where is
this to stop \ Are we outside the bounds of the natural,
and already beyond the Ulctmmantia mcenia mundi in
the supernatural ? Apparently so ; and yet how idle
this distinction I What is to-day a miracle may be
to-morrow a market produce. Hence we say of these
prophecies of a science yet unborn, —
" They might not wm his prophecies.
But spiritual presentiments.
And that refraction of events
Which often rises ere they rise."
This is the true and only ratUmak of miracles. They
are unspoken prophecies, spiritual presentiments of a
reign of law and a reign of man, when God shall be
all in aU, and our misleading and only verbal dualisms
between science and faith, mind and matter, shall be
swallowed up in the one great universal synthesis, —
"On* GvhU vw law, one element."

80 Of Miracles as Prophecies.
With this glance at miracles we close our discussion
of the Being of God. Deism, or the bald conception of
a God who governs the world ab extra, is now defunct.
Hence if we reject revelation we are driven to the dreary
alternative of a- poetic and nature- worshipping Pantheism
of the Shelley type ; or, still worse, of a world- will, as
Schopenhauer has called it, that rises slowly into con
sciousness at last in man. Turning from these two
refuges from blank Atheism, all that remains is to believe,
in the God of revelation, whose three manifestations,
corresponding to His trinal Being, are Light, Life, Love.
As light He is the fountain of all force, and the universe,
which is only a vast battery of force, is thus full of the
presence of God. Again, as life He is the fountain of all
being, from the plant to man, rising up in slow stages of
nerve-consciousness, till in man we see reason rounded
into an orbit of self-consciousness. Nor does the process
stop there. He is also love, as well as light and life.
By that we mean that when life becomes self-conscious,
it would be misery could it find no object worthy of
its love. This is what the old Book means by the
phrase, that for Adam there was not found an help-meet
for him. It is the mystery of love ever since, of love
losing itself in another, and so finding itself. None but
those who love know what it is so to lose, and find the old
self in a new. All this is answered in that other mystery,
a God in Christ, that the Father loveth the Son, and that
the Son manifests the Father through the Spirit. Hence
we hold that the new Theology must be Trinitarian, or
it must cease to be a Theology at all. With Deism,
Unitarianism also disappears, the greater heresy swallow
ing up the less. There is no future for thought in the
Being of God, unless on the lines of Pantheism, i.e.
the co-eternity of God and the universe, the universe

Of Miracles as Prophecies. 81
being the eternal Son to the eternal Father; or of
orthodox Trinitarianism, in which the eternal Father and
the eternal Son have existed in and through the eternal
Spirit in unbroken communion before the world was.
Hence the purpose of creation was the manifestation of
this triune God; and as all evil is only the instrument for
the production of higher good, man and his fall became
the platform for a higher manifestation still, which we
call redemption. Thus creation and redemption are in
reality only stages of one great process, which is the
successive manifestation of God as Light, Life, Love, or
as we say in the language of Scripture, the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. Theism, which is not triune,
is thus no Theism at all, but a mere idol of the tribe,
to perish as all idols must.

CHAPTER V.
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.
Among the lost truths which the new Theology has
recovered from oblivion, there is perhaps none so central
and none so vital as that of the Fatherhood of God ; it is
the keystone of the arch on which the whole Theology of
the coming age is to spring up. The different points of
view in which the old Theology regarded this truth are not
to be explained away as mere differences of degree. Divines,
for instance, like the late Dr. Candlish, would admit in a
certain adoptive sense the Fatherhood of God for those
who were grafted by a hving faith into union with the
Father through the Son ; but it was of the eternal Son
alone that they predicated true sonship. Men were
only sons of God in a certain relative and derived sense.
It was only after their conversion, and in virtue of
regeneration through water and the Holy Ghost, that
they entered, not by birthright at all, but only by
adoption into the divine family, and so became heirs of
God and joint-heirs with Christ.1 In a word, it was
only an adoptive, not a real sonship ; it had no relation
to their original constitution in the image of God,
1 It may be remarked that this modern type of Adoptionism is not
unlike the theory of those Spanish bishops of the eighth century who held
that Christ was according to His Godhead a true Son of the Father, but
according to His manhood only an adopted. This western type of
Nestorianism was condemned by the Council of Frankfort in 814 a.d.

The Fatherhood of God. 83
but began with the new covenant relation which they
entered on at their conversion.
It is needless to point out that between this teaching
and that of the general Fatherhood of God there is a
difference too deep to be bridged over by a few phrases
of accommodation. To get down to the true conception
of the Fatherhood of God and of man's original relation
ship of sonship, we must get beyond the old Deistic
conception of creation. When we meet with a being
breathing thoughtful breath, we come to the last term
in the ascending scale of Naturalism. We must abandon
the old point of view, and take our stand on a new class
of conceptions. We are now launched on a new order
of existence, which we must describe as the spiritual
order, and the old governmental conceptions of God
dealing with man as His creature and setting up one
and putting down another, must give place to a new
class of conceptions.
In a word, the " ruling ideas " of our age with regard
to man's original relationship to God are changed with
the change of the age of Deism. Our sense of God is
immanent now, not merely transcendental, and hence it
is no light and secondary matter whether we proclaim the
name of Jehovah as the Father of all men or as the
Father only of those that believe, and in their case only
by adoption. Men of compromise seek some way of
reconciling these two conceptions, and so bridging over
the contrast. But they must fail, since the point of
departure is fundamentally different in the two cases.
The general Fatherhood of God is either no truth at all,
or it is a truth of such moment that it calls for a recon
struction of the whole of Theology. It is intolerant, as
all ruling ideas are, of such mere adjustments as will
admit of two divergent theories being held with a certain

84 The Fatherhood of God.
reserve of both. The Salamanca doctors, who taught what
they called natural philosophy, laid down the dictum that
nature as a rule abhorred a vacuum, and hence water
rose in a pump in obedience to this " abhorrence ; " but
that beyond a limit of thirty-two feet the abhorrence
ceased in the case of water. Such is the compromise
which some attempt between the old and new school on
the subject of the Fatherhood of God. To say that He
is the Maker and Judge of all men, and then enters into a
new relationship with a favoured few, and which by a fiction
of Roman law known as adoption we may call Father
hood, this was as far as the old school was prepared
to go on this subject. But the new school carry this
conception of Fatherhood as far back as the original
constitution of men as made in the image and likeness
of God. They make this the base line of their whole
Theology. As a building, it stands or falls with the
foundation on which it rests; and this being so, it behoves
us to see whether that foundation is stable, and whether
it will bear the weight of the superstructure laid on it.
We turn then to this point and ask ourselves on what
scriptural support we base the statement that all men
are originally, and by their very birth into the world,
and as beings breathing thoughtful breath, entitled to
look up and address God as Abba, Father. It is no
objection to this truth that mankind in its present
fallen state is unconscious of its high original, and
that unlike the pattern man, the second Adam, he is
unable to say that he comes from God and goes to God.
Every day we meet with men living below their
privileges, heirs but outcasts, and we only pity them
the more when we contrast what they are with what
they ought to be. We have no right to base a
Theology on the low ground of man's slavish fears and

Tke FaiAerhood of God. 85
distrust of his heavenly Father. It comes with bad
grace in those who deny our right to base a Theology on
man's spiritual iutuitions, to argue from the absence of
these intuitions in the ease of savages who axe only half
human at best Men may be either brutalized by long
barbarism ox sensualized by living as some of our would-
be scientists do, exclusively in a world of things which can
be seen and handled. Drones who reason in this way
feil to see that it is not easy to prove a negative. They
actually appeal to mans consciousness not at its best,
but at its worst state. They land like sailors on the
shores of an unexplored country, see a barren region
before them, and report home that all is barren.
It is not in this way that we can fairly deal with the
question of man's original sonship. The apostle, iu
addressing cultured Athenians on Mars HOI, did not
appeal to men at their worst but at their best He took
a statement from one of the most spiritual of the later
Greek poets, after philosophy had purified the concep
tions of Godhead from the grossness of anthropomorphism
which made the Homeric poems, as Plato complained of,
such corrupters of morals. The usual line of argument of
divines of the old dogniaticschool has been to assert the
necessity cf a revelation from the utter defect of the
inner hght in men; hut they forget that this kind of
argument if pushed too fer becomes self-contradictory.,
since, if men are without the spiritual faculty altogether,
how can we appeal so it ? Hence with charming incon
sistency divines make use cf this kind of compromise.
They appeal to mans spiritual consciousness to vouch
for the A priori need of a revelation, hut shrink from
applying this Terifying fecultr to test the contents of that
revelation when given. They are -in sueh fear of con
science being raised up :o a co-ordinate rank with the

&6 The Fatherhood of God.
Bible, that they fall into a double inconsistency : first,
they call in conscience to attest by its very blindness for
the need of a revelation, and then set aside that con
science when it dares to demur to any of the inferences
which divines have drawn with regard to God's plan of
redemption. We must cut away all these inconsistencies by laying
down at once the position on which we take our stand.
It is this, that a spiritual Theology presupposes as its
basis a spiritual philosophy. The old school of divines
made the mistake of erecting a superstructure of theo
logical truth on the shaking foundations of utilitarian
morals. The prudential view of an appeal to self-
interest to believe and be saved may be the threshold
of the moral and spiritual, as Coleridge tried to show in
his Aids to Reflection; but the prudential can never
raise us above its own level. Appeals to self-interest are
not to be despised in religion, since unless I am true to
my own self-interest, how can I be true to higher
interests which are out of my keeping ? In this sense he
that is faithful in the least will be faithful also in much.
But it is also true that to get at a spiritual religion, we
must set out with a spiritual philosophy. It is in
religion as in commerce, he who would get the wealth of
the Indies must set out with that wealth. In all exchange
there is profit; but we must have something to begin
with in the first instance.
We must set out, then, by postulating a spiritual
psychology as the basis of a spiritual Theology. We
must look out for some element in man's nature in
which soul, or our intellectual self, is sublimated into
spirit, and which is as much above self-consciousness as
sense is below it. In. this upper air of God-consciousness
there is borne in us instinctively the sense that we too are

The Fatherhood of God. 8 7
His offspring. The remark of an American writer is here
very much to the point : " According to the gospel of the
spirit, Adam is the son of God ; according to the gospel
of the senses, man is the son of an atom. The two
genealogies become contradictory only as either is regarded
as the sole account of the descent of man."1 There need be,
and indeed there is, no contradiction between these two
tables of man's descent and ascent. But we must set out
from this position, or else all attempts at any later point of
men's history to bring in the sense of his being a partaker
of the divine nature lead to lamentable contradictions.
Here it is that the old Theology is at fault. It was so
desirous to emphasize the contrast between creature and
Creator, that it at last lowered man to the point where
it seems only figurative language to speak of him as
made in the divine image. To the old Theology it
seemed bordering on Pantheism to be told of our birth as
a sleep and of " those trailing clouds of glory which come
from God who is our home." In the oldest Theology of
all, that of the Alexandrian Fathers, this doctrine is
not effaced. But the struggle for life which Christianity
waged with Neo-Platonism in Alexandria in the third and
fourth centuries led to a fierce reaction of dogma, when
Christianity prevailed over philosophy, and the schools of
philosophy were finally closed. The victors paid a dear
price for their victory in the pitiless proscription which
they ordered of the very philosophy which had once been
the foster-mother, if not the true mother, of the infant
Church. The result of this proscription of Platonism was
a hard and external contrast between nature and grace,
the Church and the world. The borderland between the
two was treated not as a neutral zone to be respected
1 Vid. Tlie Religious Teaching : a Study from Faith, by Newman Smyth,
author of Old Faith in a New Light.

88 The Fatherhood of God.
by both, but as the marches of an enemy's coimtry to be
held down by a military garrison and raided over in
order to exterminate the last of the old inhabitants. The
result was, that such a truth as this of the general Father
hood of God and of our filial relation to Him was treated
as a dangerous opinion, opening the door to the entry of
the old idolatry. This narrow psychology gave a tone in
the West, and decided the course of its Theology, in
which the distinction between psyche and pneuma, for
which the Latin tongue had no precise equivalent, was
regarded as merely verbal and amounting to nothing.
Nor did the loss end there ; it tended to contract into a
single channel the theological conceptions of the whole
West, which laid almost exclusive stress on certain
forensic and federal conceptions which, whether true or
false (we do not discuss that here), had at least no root
in the deeper relations of human nature, but were derived
from the arbitrary arrangements of Roman law and life.
Such is the tribute which psychology exacts from Theology.
We cannot with impunity pass by its essential truths.
Man being made in the image of God, we cannot make an
imperfect draft of human nature without its reacting on
our conceptions of the divine nature. The result has
been that during the whole of what we may call the
Augustinian age of Theology, which has reigned without
a rival in the West for fourteen centuries, the Divine
Fatherhood has been virtually a lost truth.
We do not, of course, imply that the Western Church
ceased to hold the fatherly character of God, but it
dropped out of its pre-eminence as a primary, and was
held as a secondary and derived truth. Men became
sons of God after and as the result of the new birth ;
they were not entitled to that new birth in virtue of
original sonship. Hence it is, that for want of a sense of

The Fatherhood of God. 89
the true doctrine of Fatherhood, baptism itself lost its true
and primary significance. It was turned into something
magical and external, a kind of charm, a viaticum at the
opening of the journey of life, as the other sacrament was
conceived to be a viaticum to begin our journey into the
unseen world. All these unrealities of the sacramental
school might have been avoided, if the true and primitive
idea of baptism had not been distorted by a false and
semi-Manichsean conception of birth-sin. Infants were
baptized not to declare that they are fit subjects of the
kingdom of heaven, but in order to make them so. The
signacular character of baptism, which is its true virtue
as a sacrament, was replaced by a kind of opus operatum
theory. The baby which was supposed to have come into
the world with some birth-taint which was more than
human, and even diabolic in its malignity, could only
enter the Christian covenant by the lustral water
touching its brow, and after, as in the later Roman ritual,
salt and oil had been applied to exorcise demons who
had polluted in some way the very fountain of our being.
So it was that a mystical conception of original sin led to
a magical conception of regeneration, and as is always the
case, one error confirmed and strengthened the other.
Hence it is that a return to the true conception of
God's Fatherhood disposes at once of these assertions of
later Theology. That we are born into the world
"children of wrath," and naturally exposed to His
displeasure here as well as to eternal damnation here
after, is one of those hasty inferences of theology from a
few texts uncritically pieced together. The two passages
in the Ephesians and the Colossians which are said to
prove it, only suggest, as we read the expression reicva
opyr}?, not that we are objectively the children of God*8:
wrath, but only subjectively of a wrathful disposition. This

90 The Fatherhood of God.
genitive of the quality is a well-known Hebraism, which
the commentators in most cases better read in Greek
than Hebrew scholarship have overlooked. Assuming,
then, uncritically that we are the objects of God's wrath,
and not merely the subjects of our own passionate dis
position, divines mistook the true meaning of opyrj, which
is a phrase descriptive of violent sensual passion, and unfit
to apply to the great and holy God. Hence, on an
uncritical interpretation of this phrase, there grew up
a Theology commonly known as Augustinian, and built
upon a material view of original sin and its descent
by generation. Half-Manichaean in its origin, the laity
readily embraced it, as it fell in with their slavish sensuous
thoughts of God and the eternal world: the clerical
order naturally made much of it, as it magnified the
importance of their ministrations. It exalted clericalism,
and made the sacramental reception of grace through one
of the sacerdotal caste an essential condition for admis
sion into the kingdom of heaven. The Pietist party, it
is true, as much before the Reformation as after, have
uniformly protested against all sacerdotalism, and with
it have rejected much of the mischievous errors of
sacramentalism. But their protest has generally been
feeble and one-sided, because they did not set up some
counter truth to this error or exaggeration of the taint
of birth-sin. Had they affirmed the general Fatherhood
of God, infant baptism would have returned to its true
meaning as a tender and expressive rite, signifying not
the guilt, but the innocence of childhood.
But in that case the formal Theology of the Pietist
school would have been fundamentally different from what
it is, and baptism would have acquired a deeper meaning
as a declaratory act on God's part, and an act of dedica
tion on the part of the parents.

The Fatherhood of God. 9 1
Again, how different would be our motive for missions
if the general Fatherhood of God became the keynote of
Theology, as it ultimately will be ! Instead of a mere
society for saving souls from some unknown peril in the
future, the missionary Church would become a great
educational instrument, leading men on from a lower to
a higher platform of truth. It is not unimportant to
glance at some of the bearings of the question. At
present, under the current notion that life is a state of
probation, it is held inconsistently enough to be no proba
tion at all to the majority who are the slaves of habit,
and who live and die under hereditary beliefs which they
have neither will nor desire to shake off. But the concep
tion of the education of the human race is slowly gaining
ground, and gradually displacing the old conception of life
as a state of probation. The latter is unmeaning and
even self-contradictory, since, if original sin has decided
the fate of the race, how can we speak of life as a state
of probation ? On the other hand, if there is any room
for the formation of moral character, the extreme dogma
of a birth-taint derived from our first parents becomes
untenable. We may thus leave Pelagians and Augus-
tinians, Arminians and Calvinists, to answer each other.
Their doctrines are mutually exclusive, and the popular
Theology which tries to combine the two is reduced to
a mass of contradictions. On these grounds, instead of
the phrase, a state of probation, we lean to the educa
tional theory of life. Ever since Lessing's well-known
tract on the education of the human race, this summary
of the philosophy of history, based as it is on the
argument of the apostle in the Epistle to the Galatians,
has been gradually displacing the probation theory of
life in all thoughtful minds. It explains the facts of
the case, and minimizes the apparent harshness of God

9 2 The Fatherhood of God.
in seeming to pass by some races, and His seeming
favouritism in making others His chosen vessels. National
election has this advantage over the same doctrine of
election as limited to individuals, that it does no violence
to our moral instincts. As a nation, in a sense, has no
day of judgment, so its election to privilege is clearly no
matter of favour with regard to the future life. The
Jew is called into the kingdom of heaven first, and then
the Gentile ; and even if the Jew is for the time cut
off and the Gentile grafted in his place, we know that
it is only for a time, and that ultimately God will have
mercy upon all.
On these grounds we incline to take that view of life
which teaches that all the world is a school, and all the
men and women merely scholars, seated on higher or
lower forms, and set to tasks light or easy according to
their standing in the school. This harmonizes with our
conceptions of the Fatherhood of God, which the doctrine
of probation certainly does not. It is no objection to
it that at present in the case of the majority of mankind
there is little or no sense of sonship on their part, and
no desire apparently on God's part to lead them on
to a sense of His Fatherhood. This is only what we see
every day in life where sons are undutiful and parents
consequently estranged from them, but we are none the
less convinced of the sacredness of the parental tie. We
are sure, in spite of these lapses on both sides, that the
family is a divine institution; hence if the family is so
sacred on earth —
" For there are spun
Around the heart such tender ties,
That our own children in our eyes
Are dearer than the sud,"
much more must this be true of Him of whom the

The Fatherhood of God. 93
whole family, or rather all family relationship in heaven
and earth, is named. We do wrong to ourselves when
we approach God with any name less dear and tender
than that of Abba our Father. If it is our privilege to
draw near at all with such a claim, it is surely our duty
to do so. Since the privilege carries with it a corre
sponding duty, it must be a false humility to say on
the one hand, that God is our Father, and yet to stand
aloof as if it were presumption to take God at His
word. This is not humility at all, but that unbelief
which excuses itself under the plea that God is not
an indulgent Father, but an austere taskmaster. It
is to make God a liar so to dishonour Him by denying
the tenderest and dearest relationship which can exist
between us and Him. " If I then be a Father, where is
my honour ? " — this is God's plea with us, and we are
bound to hear it and act on it.
Thus it is that a spiritual psychology calls for a
spiritual Theology as its correlative. So long as the old
Theology was content to think of man as the Cartesian
school did, as body and soul only, this dualism of man's
nature was met by a dual relationship of God as the
Creator of our bodies and the moral Ruler of our intelli
gent and moral nature. But if there be a triad in man's
nature, if there be an inner consciousness as much
beneath that of self as self is beneath that of sense, this
seems to postulate a new relationship of God to us, for
which we have only one adequate phrase, that He is the
Father of our spirits. As in the Jewish temple and
tabernacle alike there were three approaches, — an outer
court, a priests' court, and a holy of holies, — so corre
sponding each to each is the body, soul, and spirit of man.
Hence there must be some special relationship of God
with these three parts of our nature. We rise, in the

94 The Fatherhood of God.
words of an old writer, ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab
interioribus ad superiora, and at each advance our rela
tionship to God becomes deeper and more clearly marked.
He is the Maker and Preserver of our bodies, the King
and Judge of our souls, and so to our spirits what term can
we apply but~that of Fatherhood*!- Here the creaturely
relation is not lost, but absorbed in something deeper and
more tender. Do we lose the sense of reverence and
dependence under this advance in privilege ? Quite the
contrary. It is no mere Pantheistic sense of emanation
by which our spirits are said to come from God, who is
our Home. The Christian is still the servant of Jehovah,
nay more, as we see in the one perfect Son, His perfection
of Sonship is that which gave perfection to His service.
The higher relationship, so far from annulling the lower,
actually gives dignity and meaning to it. Man, who is
God's creature as to his body, and his servant as to his soul,
becomes a son as to his spirit, and in each stage of this
ascending scale of privilege, the higher takes up the lower
into itself, and instead of annulling it, gives it a depth
of meaning it had not before. Man is not less God's
creature, but infinitely more so than the cattle of the
field, because he is also conscious of a higher relationship
than that of mere creaturely dependence. We owe to
God both duty as Lord, and allegiance as King. So in the
same way the second stage leads up to a third and higher,
in which we are conscious of something more than
service, and we feel our spiritual likeness to God, which
we can only describe as sonship. In this last relation
ship of all, the two lower are only intensified. Man is
more dependent as a creature, and more dutiful as a
servant, because he is also a son. Indeed, until the filial
relationship is entered into and understood, the creaturely
is missed, and that of service is lamentably slighted and

The Fatherhood of God. 95
lamely performed at best. All religion stands and falls,
then, with this fatherly conception of God. Hence it is
that the law made nothing perfect, because our spiritual
nature, which links with God as the Father of our
spirits, was then kept in shadow. Men then stood in
awe at the base of Sinai, and entreated that the word
should not be spoken to them any more. Not so with
us, who are come to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the
spirits of just men made perfect, and who, in idea at
least, if not in full fruition, have entered into the very
holy of holies, where the rapt spirit dwells in calm
ecstasy, in the light which is the glory of God as seen in
Jesus Christ. In Him there dwells all the fulness of
the Godhead bodily, and beholding that light, we are
changed into the same image, from glory to glory.
On these grounds we regard a full psychology and a
full Theology as complementary each to the other. The
doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, scarcely to be under
stood as a pure theological truth, is all the more clearly
seen when it comes out as the logical sequel of the
existence in us of a special organ of God-consciousness.
Why, we may ask, was such an organ given at all unless
— to reason teleologically — its true function is to hold
deep communion with God — a communion deeper than
a mere sense of dependence, deeper even than the mere
sense of duty ? Hence it is that with perfect consistency
those whose ideas of life and religion are merely deistic
pass this subject by as mystical. They even shrink from
such an expression as the Fatherhood of God, unless in a
figurative sense, such as that by which God may be said
to be the Father of lights or the Father of the dew. But
this will not satisfy any truly awakened mind. Filled
with the sense of a special relationship with Him, and
which the incarnation vouches for, we feel after and find

96 The Fatherhood of God.
what that relationship is. It is adoption when described
experimentally, but actually it is the reception back of
one into the family who was a son, but who was dead
and is alive again, who was lost and is found. If the
Theology of the future is to have any hold on the
consciences of men, it must build on these foundations.
It must get rid of makeshift explanations of mere adop
tion, which do not go to the heart of the question.
Modern Theology must be real, and touch each of our
deepest moral interests. Hence the true ground of the
Fatherhood of God lies in our spirits, of which He is
specially the Father, and so psychology and Theology
answer to each other, as face answereth to face in water.

CHAPTER VI.
THE PERSON OF CHRIST.
Is it possible, we shall be asked, that the new Theology
can have any fresh aspect of truth with regard to the
Person of Christ ? If there is a subject which may be
said to be exhausted in the past, it is this. We only
tread on the ashes of extinct fires as we pass down the
six centuries during which the Eastern Church attempted
to define this mystery of the union of Godhead and man
hood in Christ, pursuing the question up to the last
point to which inquiry can go. There are three stages
of the discussion, all traced out by Dorner, to whose
exhaustive study of the controversy, in all its bearings, it
is presumption to suppose that we can add anything.
The coexistence of two distinct natures in one person,
this is the first stage of the discussion, and covers the
entire ground up to the Council of Nice. The second
stage is the mode of the union, whether the Godhead
replaced the manhood, or was subordinated to it during
the days of His flesh, — this covers the entire ground of the
Eutychian and Nestorian controversy, extending from the
fourth to the sixth century. The third and last stage of
the discussion was reached when Church doctrine began
to lose itself in subtleties, from a vain attempt to define
mysteries beyond the grasp of our poor faculties. When
we reach the stage of the Monothelite and Duothelite

98 The Person of Christ.
controversy, we do not need the solemn sneer of Gibbon
to be reminded that the Church has lost its way in a
morass of muddy metaphysics. In its passion for pre
cision of statement and verbal distinctness, it has let
dogma range free, there to lose itself in a region far
beyond and above experience, and where we are unable to
argue from the analogies of our own nature. " Man, proud
man, most ignorant of what he's most assured, his glassy
essence," in presuming to define whether there was one
will or two wills in the God-man, is wandering in a
mighty maze without a plan. Indeed, our definitions of
will in human nature are little more than verbal, hence
it is better to be silent with regard to the mode of action
of the divine will on the human in Christ. Here we
should draw rein. Dogmatism has at last silenced itself
by impinging on an insoluble mystery, and when the
Eastern Church had sunk to this stage of useless refining,
it was time for the trumpet to sound, and the sword of
the Saracens to cut short such verbal trifling.
Such, in brief, are the three stages which the discussion
has passed through. Is Christ human or divine ? And
if both, what is the nature of the union ? And lastly, in
this union is there a suspense of the human will through
the action of the divine? Each of these stages is an
advance in refinement on the preceding. The second
logically grows out of the first, and the third out of the
second, and to some extent seems a kind of sequel to
it : it is a necessity of the human mind in search of some
consistent explanation of what is already affirmed. Christ
is both human and divine, so far for His nature : but this
God-man is not the union of two Persons in one nature,
but of one Person in two natures. This is the second
stage of the discussion, when Nestorian and Eutychian
controversies had exhausted themselves by mutual con-

The Person of Christ. 99
tradiction. The third stage is only the consummation
of the two previous, in which we close up tho discussion
by affirming that the two natures in one Person are so
indissolubly one, that He is no longer God or man ; but,
to use the Athanasian metaphor, as water and wine when
mixed are no longer water or wine, but a terlium quid
of the two, ho it is with Christ. It is unorthodox to say
any longer, as the Monothelites or Duothelitcs did, that
this or that act of Christ was done in virtue of His God
head, this or that in virtue of His manhood. " Though He
be God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ,"
so the Quieunque Vult words it ; and with that solution,
which is the last word of six centuries of strife, the
question may be said to have been set at rest.
We should be the last to wish to disturb a composition
which is not a compromise. When rightly understood
and cleared from later glosses, the true doctrine of the
great Athanasius is all that we should desire to stand by.
But it is a question whether the old Theology, in its
fear of the error on one side, has not leaned too much
to the error on the opposite extreme. Certain teachings,
we are told, are " painfully humanitarian." This arguing
ex abundanti canteld on the side of the old orthodoxy
has brought with it a certain indistinctness of teaching,
if not the actual effacing of the true humanity of our Lord.
The Church in too many cases has held this doctrine in
word only, but not in deed and in truth. She has
shrunk from taking the true meaning out of the plain
statement of the evangelist : " Jesus increased in wisdom
and in stature, and in favour with God and man." She
held it to be " painfully humanitarian " to think of Jesus
as growing up to the consciousness that He was the
Christ by slow degrees and under effort, as other men, and
so attaining the consciousness that He had any special

ioo The Person of Christ.
mission in life. But the inspired evangelist evidently
was not weighed down with this Saul's armour of dogmatic
prepossession, when he described the increase of Jesus
as one which was inward as well as outward. To the
extreme dogmatist, whose views unconsciously or not
are semi-Docetic, the growth of Jesus must be of the
body alone. The mere anti- Arian easily drops into the
Apollinarian. As a dogma, he allows that Jesus was very
man, body, soul, and spirit, and also in His case as ours —
" That nature crescent doth not grow alone,
In thews and bulk, bur as this temple waxes ;
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withaL"
But there are unconscious heresies even among the
orthodox, and this is one. The old Theology as a rule
had lost the sense of the growth of Christ, for it had
lost the true meaning of the KepaxrK (PhiL ii *I).
This doctrine of the exinanition of the eternal Logos
as the correlative of His incarnation in the man-Christ
is one of those lost truths which the Church of our day
has recovered like buried treasure from the depths of the
sea of time. It is the fate of all such truths, when
fished up at last, to appear unmeaning at first. They
are hke the statue of the marine Glaucus of the well-
known myth of Plato, they are encrusted with the shells
and seaweed of a dead past It needed the storm and
stress of Irving' s preaching, and the pathetic fact that he
was solemnly deposed as a Scotch presbyter for pro
claiming this long-forgotten truth, before the Docetisni of
the old Theology began to give way. But now the best
minds in Scotland, as elsewhere, recognise the Kinosis as
the true key to the Incarnation. In our day the
doctrine of the Kinosis only needs to be stated in terms
to be accepted. In one sense the controversy of fifty

The Person of Christ. 101
years ago has died down. No trained theologian any longer
pretends to question the exact meaning of the text, that
Jesus increased in wisdom as well as in stature and
favour or grace ; and that as the result of this perfect
and harmonious growth there was an increase of wisdom,
which is of the soul, of stature, which is of the body, and
grace (mistranslated favour), which is of the spirit, and
so His whole tripartite humanity grew in equal propor
tions, as the lily and the rose do, root, stalk, and flower
all maturing together.
But it is one thing to admit the Kenosis as a bare
truth of scientific criticism, quite another thing to
reconstruct our Theology on this basis. This is the
mistake of the men of compromise which we have again
and again to complain of. They admit in so many
words that the old Theology let slip certain vital and
fundamental truths, and then having made this concession
as a kind of salve to criticism, they go on repeating the
old phrases as if old cloth and new could be patched up
together, or as if the new wine would not burst the
old and shrunk wine-skin. If the Kenosis is the only
account of the Incarnation which explains the facts of
Christ's life, we must consistently carry it out. It is a
great central truth which bears on every other truth of
Theology, and compels us to mould our conceptions
of the Person of Christ in harmony with this view of
His birth as a " sleep and a forgetting." This is the true
relation of Christ to us, and the point where the Gospels
bring before us the Incarnation of the eternal Word.
What the Logos is in Himself, and what relation He held
to the everlasting Father before the worlds were, who
shall dare to say ? The subject is too high for us. Any
definition of His pre-existence as against the Arian
hypothesis is only excusable on the ground that of the

102 The Person of Christ.
two theories concerning the pre-existence of Christ, that
of Arius, if more plausible than that of Athanasius, is
in reality the less reasonable. Nay more, it actually
impugned the Fatherhood of God, and reduced us to
a dreary Deism ; since, if there is no eternal Son begotten
before the worlds, how can there be an eternal Father ?
We do not presume to inquire into the nature of the
eternal Son in Himself ; but we must ask and know what
that Son is, and what He becomes when He touches the
plane of human nature. Here the Arian attempt to
rationalize a mystery finds its counterpart in the
Apollinarian. The one taught that Christ was a little
less than God, the other that He was a little less than
man. We see in both the Arian and the Apollinarian
hypothesis the attempt of a matter-of-fact and
rationalistic intellect to smooth down a mystery by
taking off some of the edges of the difficulty. If we
are to use such a phrase as the generation of the eternal
Son, then it must, in a sense, have had a beginning
in time. So Arius reasoned. Then came Apollinaris to
throw light on and explain the mode of Godhead in
dwelling in manhood, by teaching that the Logos in
Him replaced the human spirit. It was in this sense
that Apollinaris, if we assume the pneuma to be an
integral part of man, made Him to be a little less than
man, as Arius had made Him a little less than God.
To both these errors the Kenosis is the true reply.
It is said that He emptied Himself in so far as He could
empty Himself, i.e. He laid aside, as good critics have
defined and limited the Kenosis, the outward glory, the
majesty, as we should say, of Godhead, retaining only
that which is inherent and intrinsic to our very con
ception of Godhead. We are here at once face to face
with a great mystery, the very kernel of the doctrine of

The Person of Christ. 103
the Incarnation. But are there, we ask, certain attributes
inherent to Godhead and others less so : are some intrinsic
and others extrinsic ? Apparently so, if we are to set forth
the full meaning of the Kenosis as taught in that proof
passage, Phil. ii. 7. Indeed, but for this element of the
Kenosis, the Incarnation would be the most unmeaning
of phrases, as we suspect it still is to the majority.
Unless He laid aside the divine, we do not see how
He could have partaken of the human, unless we hold
to a Pantheistic confusion of human and divine, as
in all Hindu mythologies is the case where the Incar
nation is Docetic only. In the case of the historical
Christ we are taught that in some way inconceivable
to ns, and of which we only cover over our ignorance
by the phrase communkatio idiomatmn, the abyss was
crossed once for all between Godhead and manhood.
How, it is not for us to say, whose duty it is reverentlv
to accept the annunciation of the truth as the virgin
mother did. Behold the handmaid of the Lord ! In
her case there was no " How can these things be ? " as
a kind of challenge of incredulity. In the same wav.
there should not be in us a disposition to traverse a
truth which transcends experience. As we believe in
His pre-existent Godhead, so we are bound to believe
as distinctly in His perfect humanity.
In the days of His flesh, this expression is the true
key to the Kenosis. There were the days of His flesh
when He was less than He had been, and also less
than He was to be and now is. In His htirniliation
His judgment was taken from Him. When in mockery
He was once blindfolded, buffeted, and then bidden to
prophesy who it was who smote Him, little did the
soldiers suspect how exactly they were falling in with
and helping to fulfil the words of Isaiah, " Who is

104 The Person of Christ.
blind as my messenger, and deaf as my servant ? "
These things then the soldiers did, and we have little
more to do than reverently to try and spell out their
meaning. We see that the child Jesus, who was in all
points like us, sin only excepted, grew as other children
grew. We only add the phrase " sin excepted " for form's
sake, since sin, so far from being an integral part of our
nature, is a dreadful disease, an unnatural deterioration
from our true standard. It is the vitium which, like the
vine disease in the end, kills the vine unless extirpated.
So far the real difficulty of the problem is as yet
not touched. All will allow that He was perfeetus homo ;
but when we take divines at their word, and insist on
His perfect humanity, they ask us for certain exceptions,
such as omniscience, if not omnipotence, which brings us
back to the old Docetism. In our present nature there
are not only limitations of knowledge, but also of goodness
itself. As far as we know of moral perfection in man, it
is a plant which only blows under the nipping frosts and
bracing breezes of temptation within and of trial without.
In a sense, even the old school of divines who overlook
the Kenosis will admit that the knowledge of Jesus was
limited and partial. They see that to a Jewish peasant
the philosophies of Greece and India were, from the
nature of the case, a sealed book. But what of that ?
Milton, as we know, ingeniously turns the edge of the
difficulty when Satan, in the Fourth Book of Paradise
Regained, phes the Messiah with the temptation of
wisdom. The answer of Christ shows that although
Milton had exchanged his old dogmatic Docetism for
Arianism, yet still he could not see to the bottom of the
question, and left off in much the same perplexity as he
seems to have been as to whether the Ptolemsean or the
Copernican astronomy was the true one.

The Person of Christ. 105
' ' To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied :
Think not, but that I know these things : or think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought. "
It is difficult to gather from the long speech which follows
what Milton thought of the subject of Christ's increase in
wisdom. An expression in Satan's speech to Him, where
he reminds Him that He once sat alone in the temple
among the gravest Rabbis, disputant on points and
questions, filling Moses' chair, " teaching not taught,"
seems to suggest the thought of the old Theology.
It is Docetic in spirit if not in form. The late Frederick
Robertson was one of the first to point out the true
meaning of this incident in the life of Christ. That
a child of twelve years of age should teach instead of
learning, did not strike those who conceived of the child
Jesus in infancy, as He is painted by Rubens. He repre
sents an infant prodigy with a halo round His head to
mark the contrast between His superior wisdom, which was
that of innate Godhead, to that of these doctors of the law,
which was only the result of laborious study. The modern
conception of " Christ among the doctors " has been painted
by Holman Hunt, and any one who has seen and can con
trast the two pictures will at once seize the point of the
distinction between the old Theology and the new.
The conclusion we come to is the same in the old
Theology and the new. But the point of departure is
not the same, and a good deal of the soundness of our
conclusion depends on the point from which we set out,
and the steps by which we reach it. The old method is
dogmatic ; it assumes on Church authority, and from a
few texts dogmatically interpreted, the very point in
dispute, and having settled the question of His Person
in this way it proceeds to argue from it deductively.

106 The Person of Christ.
It ascribes certain acts of His most holy life as the
outcome of His Godhead, and certain others as the pro
duct of His manhood. If the result does not create the
impression that we believe in " two persons in one nature "
instead of two natures in one person, it is only because
orthodoxy is happily inconsistent with itself. The other
method, which is that of the new Theology, assumes
nothing, and sets out from the base line of His perfect
humanity. It sees that, given only His manhood, we arc
shut in to the conclusion of His Godhead, if we carry the
argument fairly out to the end. This the author of Ecce
Homo has not done, and it is not for us to say why he has
long delayed and ultimately shrunk from doing it. Much
less do we feel disposed to sew a patch to his garment, as
the author of Ecce Deus uncritically attempted to do. The
late Mr. Young, the author of the Christ of History, is
the ablest of several writers we could name who has
traced the argument from the manhood to the Godhead
logically to its legitimate conclusion. The life of Christ
is only a confused cry, a vox clamantis, like that of His
herald the Baptist, unless it rises to full self-conscious
ness. All superior minds reach this if they live beyond
what we may call the " inarticulate wailings of spiritual
infancy." There are the Chattertons and Keatses of genius
who are " the inheritors of unfulfilled renown far in
the unapparent." The phrase is more apt than even
> Shelley thought it. There are these Infanti Fcrdati
whose " throne is a thought and whose world an idea."
They dwelt in mist like the storm-wraith, because the
idea has not lived long enough to clothe itself in form.
Such is genius when it dies untimely, and before it has
reached full self-consciousness. Such is the Christ which
some of our modern critics go after into the wilderness,
and only end in hearing an echo of their own thoughts,

The Person of Christ. 107
which they confuse with His voice. Such is not the Christ
of history, or of the Church's faith. To us the Christ
rises from spotless manhood up tlirough Messiahship iuto a
height of glory which His pre-existence can alone explain
and justify. Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him
(vnT-epvyjfcoa-ev). The force of the vTrep is not temporal, but
ethical. It is exaltation beyond all that we can ask or think,
unlimited glory, unbounded majesty, and exhaustless grace.
If this is not Godhead, then language fails to convey
meaning. Such is the true faith of the Church in her Lord.
We reach, then, the same conclusion as the old orthodox
believer, but we do so by a safer and more scriptural
method. We have the highest conviction that His perfect
manhood involves and implies His perfect Godhead, and
that all midway theories, Arian and Apollinarian alike,
reproduce all the objections of the Docetism which they
seem to explain away. Our conviction of His Godhead is
thus seen. It is based on the law that the opposite of it
would imply self-contradiction. We must insist on the
man Christ Jesus growing up to full self-consciousness.
The period over which such growth extended seems
intentionally marked by the Gospels. This consciousness
dawned at twelve years of age ; it was mature when He
readied thirty years of age, and then, as we are significantly
told, He was led up of the Spirit to be tried or tested of
the devil. This is the Alpha and Omega of His spiritual
growth. After that He had reached the time of action,
and no longer needed testing. We must face, then, the
alternative which Renan shrinks from, but ultimately is
forced to, that with full self-consciousness He was either
the Messiah or a deceiver. There is really no middle
term. The Jews take one horn of the dilemma and
Christians the other, and between the two, negative
critics miserably oscillate as men who dare not take

108 The Person of Christ.
sides. They are like those Pharisees who could not or
would not say whether the baptism of John was from
heaven or of men. Such are the unworthy shifts of the
critics who begin with the humanity, and when self-
consciousness is reached do not know what to say of the
Messiah. It is at the Temptation that the two roads
fork off, and the mere humanitarian and the believer in
the God-man part company. Up to this point humani-
tarianism is not painful, because it is not forced and
untrue to facts. But after that point we rise to a
growing conviction that either Jesus is a false Messiah,
or something more than a mere Messiah. Thus we see
that the true conception of Messiahship carries with it
the thought of Immanuel (God with us).
This is the representation of the Person of Christ
which the new Theology should teach, and which gains
ground on every side. It is not enough to recognise
His humanity in phrase, and then pass it by, as divines
of the old school are in the habit of doing, since a divine
truth is always more than a mere truism. It implies at
least a change of front — a new mode of conceiving a
blessed mystery. That manhood could grow up into
Godhead through self - consciousness must imply pre-
existence on His part, else the abyss between manhood
and Godhead was spanned by what we should describe
as an act of assumption, the aptrar/fiov, the robbery of
the E. V. Hence, of all hypotheses the Arian is the
most plausible but the most irrational, and would have
been better left to be met and overcome by calm argu^-
ment than by Conciliar authority under the patronage of
a Byzantine Caesar. We cannot fail to recognise in the
self-consciousness of Christ an admission on His part
that He came from God and went to God. How and by
what stages the Christ reached this conviction, which was

The Person of Christ. 1 09
either true, as we hold it to be, or rank blasphemy, as
the Jew held it, it is idle to ask. The fact itself, and not
the how or the when, is all that we care to insist on.
But this growing self-consciousness, which is the key
to His Messianic character, also opens the wards of all
the locked secrets of His life. In this way we account
for the apparent absence of initiative or self-will in a
character so strong as His. His dependence on His
Father's will throughout His ministry is the secret of His
miraculous power. The old divines were in the habit
of referring His power of working miracles to the in
herent might of indwelling Godhead. In this respect
they contrast Christ's miracles with those of Moses,
Elijah, and others. But this contrast arose from an
ill-regulated reverence, which fails to explain the true
dignity of Christ as all taught Christians will now admit.
There is a sense, and that the deepest of all, in which
Christ as the eternal Son of the Father was not less
dependent, but even more so, than any mere servant or
messenger could be, for special illumination at each
moment. He waited, as they did, for the signal from
His Father when to work a miracle and when to
forbear. The evangelist is careful to record His prayer
for direction on the eve of His greatest miracle, the
raising of Lazarus. This thought has such wide bearings,
that space only forbids our tracing it farther out. But
the conclusion which we take our stand on is this, that
in the Person of our Lord Jesus the Godhead grew out
of the manhood through the intermediate stage of His
Messiahship. His self-consciousness, in a word, rose by
these three stages of manhood through Messiahship up to
that of full union with the Father.
In this way, and in this only, is the true meaning
of the Kenosis brought to light. Incarnation is only the

i io The Person of Christ.
half truth. The Kenosis is its full- orbed presentment ;
whereas the phrase " Incarnation " admits of a Docetic
sense or an Arian sense. He may have thrown manhood
over Godhead as a kind of temporary veil. Too many
are content thus to think of the subject to this day, and
that view passes in many circles as orthodox. But so
far from this being the adequate conception of the union
of two natures in one Person, we may remark as a warn
ing, that this crude external mode of apprehending this
truth produces the very error it is supposed to check.
That the popular Theology is crudely Tritheistic, we
gather from Milton's college exercise, his " Ode on the
Nativity." Such Tritheism leads to a reaction, as we see
in Milton's case, the first step of which is Arianism, and
the last mere Psilanthropism. As the term Incarnation
has rooted itself in the language, we have no wish to
expel it, much less replace it by so technical a phrase
as Kenosis. But to those who care more for truth than
the popular phrases in which that truth is embodied, it
is important to note that the term Incarnation, if retained
at all, should be understood in the full sense of the " Word
becoming flesh." To reach this we must add the con
ception of that self-abasement which is implied in the
term Kenosis or Erniedrigung. A poem of Archbishop
Trench, taken from an Eastern source, may assist some
in getting at the true thought of this Erniedrigung —
' ' A dewdrop falling on the ocean wave,
Exclaimed with fear, I perish in the grave ;
But in a shell received this drop of dew,
Unto a pearl of wondrous lustre grew,
Until at last it learned to magnify
The grace that thrust it forth as but to die.
But now again I perish quite, it said,
Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed :
Oh, unbelieving ! so it came to gleam
Rich jewel in a monarch's diadem."

The Person of Christ. 1 1 1
This imagery of the dewdrop failing on the ocean
wave, and yet not lost there, though fanciful, illustrates
the first stage, which we may describe as the exinani-
tion of the eternal Logos lost in the shell of humanity.
The next stage of the wondrous mystery is that this
manifestation of the Word by self-effacement having
begun in this way, should go on until the dewdrop grew
into a pearl of wondrous lustre. The last and crowning
stage of the mystery is that from this new home in its
ocean-bed it should pass through the sharp agony of the
cross and grave into final glory, and gleam as the richest
jewel in the crown of Him who is seen wearing many
crowns. The sober truth is that when we approach this miracle
of miracles, the bush burning but not consumed, God
head indwelling in humanity, we must loose the shoes
from off our feet. It is holy ground, and all our usual
phrases, such as Incarnation, are not only inadequate, but
when pressed too far, actually misleading. The phrase of
the Quicunque Vult is in this way only negatively true ;
it opposes an error, but it fails to affirm the counter
truth, " not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh,'' so
far so well, " but by taking of the manhood into God ; "
this is unmeaning, or at least it fails to emphasize the
exinanition. The truth is that the exinanition is a mystery of love
which is too deep to be sounded by any plummet of the
mere intellect. As long as we stand and speculate we are
met with one logical contradiction after another. Even
the philosophical Deist fails to conceive, as Kant admits,
in what the Personality of God consists, since personality
implies limitation, and how can we limit the Absolute ?
Much more is this the case when we begin to think
of the Logos becoming flesh (<?ap!; iyiveTo). The

112 The Person of Christ.
phrase is a verbal contradiction ; it is beyond us and
past finding out. The old school of Theology, Greeks,
Latins, and moderns, all have erred in this respect.
They have confidently let down their shallow plummet
of dogma, and the only answer has been, " the depth
saith, It is not in me." In the wisdom of God the
world by wisdom knew not God, and the Church has been
repeating this mistake of the world. There were
rationalizing minds even among the early believers ; and
then the orthodox went out to fight the enemy with his
own weapon, and with what sorry result patristic
Theology is one melancholy comment. The men who
led the Reformation were no wiser; they repeated the
mistake of meeting error with dogma. The second age
of scholasticism has been as barren of result as the first ;
and in the end, the true doctrine of the Person of Christ
has to be restated, although, as we have seen, six centuries
of controversy had brought to view every conceivable
phase of error on the subject of the union of human and
divine in the Person of Christ.
The conclusion, then, we come to is that the new
Theology must go to another school than that of
the dialectical and dogmatic temper to get the true
conception of the Kenosis. It is Pascal who observes
that the heart has its logic as well as the head.
Intuitional Theology, as we describe the Theology of
the future, will find a rationale of this mystery, but it is
revealed unto babes. By babes we understand those
who follow their spiritual intuitions, and who cry out as
lost children to their heavenly Father for light and
direction. "An infant crying in the night — an infant
crying for the light " — this is the spiritual account of man
which one of our own poets has given. This is our base
line, our point of departure. That one who is not ashamed

The Person of Christ. 1 1 3
to call us brethren, and whom we may call our " elder
brother," should out of absolute love and exhaustless pity
be found in fashion as a man, this is an act of self-
abasement unique of its kind and God-like. It is an
act which, for that very reason, if conceivable at all, is
conceivable only as proceeding from the fountain of all
goodness. It has been truly observed that such extreme
self-abnegation is out of character with a creature nature
altogether. To suppose of the highest archangel that he
could under some resistless internal impulse of self-
sacrifice offer to descend the scale of being so low as
to be found in fashion as a man, is to assume a dignity
altogether beyond a creaturely nature. Angels could at
best look on and pity a fallen race like ours. To step
down to our low estate would imply powers of self-
abnegation which, out of its very surrender would give
rise to a contradiction. There are types of goodness, and
some of the mediaeval saints bordered on it, in which
mortification of self passes extravagance, and so falls
into the pride which apes humility. So we should think
of an angelic nature were we told of such a self-abase
ment. In the case of a Being who is said to be one
with God, and who was God, this is conceivable,
because He is the Highest. But in the case of any one
who was below the greatest to become less than the least,
carries with it too violent a contradiction. We may say
of this with the psalmist, " None of them can by any
means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom
for them."
We can look at the humiliation of the eternal Son
of God, then, in only one light. He is the Lamb in
the midst of the throne. He is either the Only-begotten
in the bosom of the Father, or else (for all Arian
hypotheses are too irrational to be even argued with) on
H

114 The Person of Christ.
the humanitarian hypothesis we must see that the man
Jesus of Nazareth attained a height of God-consciousness
absolutely destructive to His true sense of creaturely
dependence. As in the legendary after-growths of Sankya
Muni's story we read how he became Gaudama and
Buddha even before his death, and that death finally
released him from the wheel of life, and translated him
into that world of Nirwana, where, as in Hegel's philo
sophy, Being and non-Being reach the point of identity.
It is in no such light that we read the Gospel narrative.
At every moment of the wondrous story of Christ we
meet Him at a stage of God- consciousness of which
dependence on His Father's will was the one prominent
element. Not my will but Thine be done, is more than
a single cry wrung from Him under the agony in the
garden. It is the keynote to His whole career ; His
inner existence was set to this thought from the first dawn
of self-consciousness.
A psychological study of the life of Christ is desirable,
but none has attempted it, and perhaps it is better
not attempted, for we are confronted with an initial
difficulty never to be overcome. We can understand a
pure and sinless nature rising from one height of God-
consciousness to another, until at last all sense of separate
creature-life is lost in the blaze of God's glory. In this
sense, as the apostle says of himself, " the life which I
live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave Himself for me." But then this
God-consciousness can never exclude self- consciousness.
He must always feel his creaturely dependence, and at
the very height of spiritual rapture his sense of depend
ence will only deepen, and he will say as this same
apostle exclaims, " Not as though I had already attained,
either were already perfect." In Christ there is this

The Person of Christ. 1 1 5
perplexing element, that self - consciousness is not
merely sunk and subordinated as it is bound to be,
but in a sense it may be said to have disappeared
altogether. He is so lost in His sense of oneness
of purpose with God, that He says, " I and my
Father are one." That this sounded blasphemous to the
ears of those who heard it we can easily understand,
even if the narrative was not careful to say that it
was so understood as making Himself equal with God.
How are we to account for this on any other supposition
but the one of His pre-existence ? Still, it was a pre-
existence, as we are endeavouring to point out, in which
some solution of continuity was made by the Kenosis. If
He had entered on His earthly existence under a full
sense of God-consciousness, as the old Theology implies,
and that expression of the Te Deum certainly suggests,
" When Thou didst undertake to deliver man, Thou didst
not abhor the Virgin's womb ; " then we do not see how
the human will could have been called out at all as it was.
Then the prayer is unmeaning, " Not my will, but Thine
be done." On the other hand, if He began with self-
consciousness only, and slowly grew up as others do
to God- consciousness by acts of prayer and faith, there
would have been a limit beyond which His self-conscious
ness never could have risen into God-consciousness. In
Christ, on the other hand, there is the singular and unique
phenomenon of a Kenosis, or the quenching of a full
God-consciousness, only to grow up under self-conscious
ness into a sense of His pre-existent glory. The whole
psychology of Christ is touched on by St. John in
a metaphor which, for felicity of phrase and distinctness
of touch, leaves nothing to be desired.
At the supper, when He washed His disciples' feet, it is
said that " Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all

116 The Person of Christ.
things into His hand, and that He was come from God
and went to God : He riseth from supper and laid aside
His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself."
In this symbolic action we have the three stages of the
Kenosis as marked out by the Apostle Paul. (1) He
riseth from supper, which is the equivalent to being in
the form of God and equal with God ; (2) He laid aside
His garments, which is equivalent to, He made Himself
of no reputation, the true central thought of the Kenosis ;
(3) He took a towel and girded Himself, which in the
language of St. Paul is, He took upon Him the form
of a servant. He not only took, but also girded Himself
with the towel of the slave, who waits at the door to
wash the feet of the evening guest. To say that all
this was done to teach us an example of humility, is to
read only the surface of Scripture, as too many do. It
had a dogmatic purpose in the record of St. John the
Divine, who is the theologian par excellence. It is there
introduced to teach us the true meaning of His self-
abnegation, which was so extreme that we fail to go
down into its depths until we discern the sublime
thought, that in His case Godhead lost itself in manhood,
as the dewdrop in the poem referred to is lost in the
shell into which it falls. It was lost — this is the
Kenosis — in order to find itself again. In this sense
none as He ever could realize the thought, "He that
loseth his life shall find it." Birth in His case, as it
certainly is not in ours, was a " sleep and a forgetting."
When He awoke to self-consciousness, as we find He
did at twelve years of age, He was feeling after, as genius
always does, with a blind instinct His true Fatherhood.
" He must be about His Father's business," and is
surprised that others could not see it in the same distinct
light in which He did.

The Person of Christ. 117
We do not know where to point to a divine of the
old school who has realized this conception of the
Kenosis ; if we could do so, we should not ask for a
reconsideration of the whole question of the Person of
Christ. The humiliation of His servant form is only
half the mystery, the other and more essential element
is that in not abhorring the virgin's womb, He entered
on a stage of being in which He had to climb to the
height of God-consciousness from the low level of the
unconscious babe. The new Philosophy of the Uncon
scious has tried with indifferent success to point out
how and by what stages the unconscious passes into the
conscious stage in men. It is an application of evolution
to psychology. But we are no wiser when we leave off
with these theories than when we begin. They merely
describe in a new set of phrases borrowed from physiology
what every psychologist knew already, that all our early
acts are automatic and pre-conscious, and that instinct
grows up into reason as night passes into day through
dawn. How the night dies and the day is born we
know not ; the precise moment of dawn is not so easy
to fix. So it is with the passing of pre-consciousness
into full consciousness.
All this was passed through in the Person of Christ.
If the Kenosis means all that we imply by Erniedrigung,
then He lay a babe in the manger as other babes would
lie, and the swaddling-clothes of which, not unintentionally,
we are told symbolized the same swathing of the spirit —
" Thou who didst wrap the cloud
Of infancy around us, that alone
Thyself with our simplicity awhile
Shouldst hold communion. "
This may be too much to say of others, but not of
Him in whose case there was a kind of death of self-

1 1 8 The Person of Christ.
abnegation preceding His birth — a death, as we may
describe it, burying with it all previous consciousness,
and leaving room only for the building up of it again ;
as Socrates held that we got our knowledge by reminis
cence. What He spake of the temple of His body, that
when destroyed He would raise it again in three days,
we may say the same of His pre-existent glory. It was
surrendered when He came, not to do His own will,
but the will of Him that sent Him; and so entirely
was it surrendered, that He had to grow up into self-
consciousness under all the limitations of a Jewish
peasant. The devout mind willingly turns from the
question as to how far He was ignorant of all that lay
outside the narrow circle of His home as the carpenter's
son. We think of the " dyer's hand " that Shakespeare
refers to in his sonnet, and shrink from asking, Did His
life so get a " brand from what it worked in" ? Milton, as we
have seen, only throws out a cloud of phrases to escape a
decision on the subject of the limitations of human ignor
ance and even error in Christ, in so far as a sinless nature
can err through ignorance of facts. The expression of the
prophet is, as we have seen, the true key, " Who is blind
as my servant, and deaf as my messenger ? " A cloud lay
over the Redeemer in the days of His flesh, not only
that through this limitation He might be laid open to
temptation, but also that He might ever exhibit the true
lesson of life, that man is great neither from what he
knows, or has, or does, but only from his perfect,
unfaltering affiance in his Father's will.
If this is the true conception of the Kenosis, with its
three stages of unconsciousness, self-consciousness, and
God-consciousness, then He is the perfect and the pattern
man, and all errors, Arian and Apollinarian, are alike
avoided. In this the old Theology has much to learn

The Person of Christ. 1 1 9
from the new, and if we candidly admit this, we see where
our orthodoxy has misled us. In the reaction against
humanitarian error we have fallen into the error in the
opposite extreme. This is the too common mistake of
dogmatism ; it is the price that we pay for our contro
versies. On the whole, it was better that the Church
should have sided with Augustine against Pelagius, and
equally with Athanasius against Arius. But the price of
victory was a certain distortion of truth. It came out
of the conflict wounded, as it were, in the house of its
friends ; and this is our excuse for what otherwise would
seem a presumptuous attempt to recast the old Theology
in forms of thought which the modern mind can accept.
The intuitional Theology is after all only the old
experimental Theology of our fathers, but it is stated
in terms which are those of modern psychology. If the
good old experimental divines of the Wesleyan and
Evangelical revival of last century had not been chained
down by the conceptions of a mechanical philosophy,
they would have seen as we do, that man as made in the
image of God contains in him the germ of God-conscious
ness, and with it the means for attaining to right concep
tions of God's fatherly character, and also of the true
Person of Christ. But they were afraid to go as far
as this. Their phrase " experimental " was limited to
the particular experience of those who had passed through
the Pauline stage of conviction and conversion. They did
not go on to take an intuitional view of Theology,
and probably would have considered it presumption to do
so. In our age psychology is regarded as the handmaid,
not the rival of Theology ; and as our survey of human
nature teaches us the true Fatherhood of God, so it leads
us on, as we have seen, to right conceptions of the
Person of Christ.

CHAPTER VII.
THE NEW AGNOSTICISM.
It is Agnosticism, not Atheism, which the Theology of
the future will have to face. This is the last enemy
which the Church will have to combat and overcome,
and the reason for this change of front is obvious.
When Deism or Theism was everywhere dominant, and
men only disputed, as Lessing's Nathan did, as to which
of the three rings was the true one, or whether all alike
were not varieties of the same truth, it is obvious that
Atheism was the last and only form of negation. It was
enough to question the dominant Deism or any of its
inferences for a divine to lampoon his opponent as an
Atheist. This should teach us caution and . charity in
judging those who have been branded in Church history
with this hateful epithet. We have come to see that
the Atheists of one age were often only the Iconoclasts
of another. In denying the Being of God they were
only trying to break some grim and immoral idol which
was worshipped as God. But Agnosticism goes a stage
farther than Atheism. It does not stop at the mere
stage of Iconoclasm. It takes the a priori road by
denying the subjective elements of religion in human
nature, or explains them away as Herbert Spencer and
his school do on the ghost theory, as mere survivals of
fetishism. In this way it strikes at the foundation of

The New Agnosticism. 1 2 1
all worship by denying the genuineness of those spiritual
instincts on which religion grows as a plant out of
the soil. Hence it is that of the two forms of negation
this is infinitely the more subtle and deadly. We have
also to add, that if the old Theology opposed Atheism,
by arguments from design in the world about and around
us, the new Theology will have to encounter Agnosticism
in the field of human nature, and by an appeal to some
divine element the divines particularis aura innate in
every man.
This change of front from the bolder negations of
Atheism to the well-bred air of philosophic nescience
which the Agnostic assumes is regarded by some with
complacency, almost with satisfaction. It is an index,
they say, of the more reverent and cautious temper of
our age. Men are not prepared to deny roundly where
they cannot prove dogmatically. There is a disposition
to suspend our judgment, and to place oneself, as the
true sceptic professes to do, on the tongue of the balance,
and to wait till the scales begin to incline of themselves.
All this is a plausible excuse as far as it goes. The
intolerant temper of the orthodox party in past times
certainly tended to draw out a counter spirit of fierce
negation. Men, hunted down like wolves, turned like
wolves on their tormentors. The dogmatism of belief
was met by the dogmatism of unbelief. The Agnostic,
on the other hand, may be regarded as the outcome of
an age like ours. He is of the times we live in. . In
the same way as the earth is cooling down in view of
some new glacial epoch, so the theological fires of the
past have burned down, and left us cool and unconcerned
about all spiritual problems, not excepting even the
question of the existence of a personal God, and of
our own survival after the second sleep of death.

122 The New Agnosticism.
There is much that is plausible in this indulgent
temper of our age, and which is described as the Zeit-Geist.
It is this tolerance of indifference which explains the
change of front we refer to. A tolerant age is always
in danger of passing into an age of indifference. But
we shall be greatly mistaken if we set down this change
of front from active Atheism to passive Agnosticism as
entirely owing to the temper of the times, and to the
spread of that "wise indifference of the wise" which
passes for toleration in our times. There are other
causes at work to explain the spread of Agnosticism,
and it is to this that we now address ourselves.
It is often said that of the two evils or errors,
Atheism and Agnosticism, Agnosticism is the less.
It is said in its excuse that it is only a state of
suspense ; and this cannot be so dangerous as to commit
ourselves to a direct negation. But is this so ? We
should say that the very reverse is the case. The man
who says there is no God, is generally reduced to say
it in his heart ; for, if he utters the daring assertion aloud,
the common conscience of mankind will cry out against
him for trying to outrage the common instincts of man
kind. In his case the " stone shall cry out of the wall,
and the beam out of the timber shall answer it." Every
fane of prayer, every priest, and every altar, in lands
savage and civilised, in times remote or recent, will rise
up in witness against this wild attempt to controvert
the universal experience of all ages of mankind and all
stages of culture. Atheism, moreover, when brought to
the test in its most offensive form, is often nothing more
than a passionate protest against some false form of
Theism, which, like all passion, exhausts itself in mere
negation. The popular Theism professed by the majority
is often hard and unspiritual, and consequently awakes

. The New Agnosticism. 123
no response in those who say, " Show us the Father, and
it sufficeth us." It is in many cases a stone given for
bread ; and when human nature declines to call this food,
we should be careful not to describe this protest as
worse than it is. Such was the Atheism of Shelley,
when, as a raw undergraduate, he took this boyish way
of emphasizing his dislike to the God of the Optimist
and the Anti-Jacobin, which was all that he had learned
under the regulative ideas of religion then current at
Oxford. The Atheism which is mere anti-Theism, is
better met by extracting out of our popular Theism such
elements as are unspiritual, and which are dishonouring to
the Being whom we approach as the Father of our spirits.
When God is represented as He really is, gracious and
good, we shall be surprised if much of our popular
Atheism, and which is little more than the revolt
of such as rankles in the bosom of some artisans,
such as the shoemakers of Northampton, will not diminish,
if not actually disappear.
It is otherwise with Agnosticism. The evil here lies
deeper, and is more insidious, precisely because it is
not so blatant. It does not shock ears polite, as open
Atheism is supposed to do ; but its roots go down into
the very subsoil of our nature, and there dry up our
springs of action precisely at the point where the religious
instincts may be said to take their rise. The Atheist
may say, " I know of no God ; " he may protest, like
Pharaoh, " Who is Jehovah, that I should serve Him ? "
But the Agnostic goes farther ; he adds that God is not
only unknown, but unknowable. The former denies
the bare fact, but the latter strikes at the very
foundations on which that fact is supposed to rest.
For this reason we are led to regard Agnosticism, rather
than Atheism, as the last enemy which the Christian

1 24 The New Agnosticism.
Church will have to overcome, and with new weapons.
In our day we have witnessed the rise of a school
of anti-spiritual philosophy, which, denying the very
conception of causation, makes short work, of course,
of a supreme cause. It is this sensualist psychology
which, if not met on its own ground and answered there
by a fresh analysis of human nature, and the recognition
of our spiritual instincts or intuitions of primary truth,
we may as well give up the whole question as to the
truth or falsehood of any Theology ; psychology is thus
the real battle-ground of the Theology of the future.
Hence we are compelled to face the question in our
day which teachers of religion too generally set out
with assuming instead of proving. Is there any original
instinct in man, — a faith-faculty as we should call it
in the language of the old Scotch psychology, now out
of date, — and which, from its ineradicable presence in all
men, proves that man is intended to worship and adore
some numen, to name him when known, and. to feel after
and find him if unknown ? The question of worship
is, whether it has its roots in our nature or is an
entirely factitious product, a presumptuous attempt of
primitive man, ignorant of his own powers, to overleap
the bounds of space and time, and to explain phenomena
by a chain of causes outside the phenomena themselves ?
The only answer, then, to Agnosticism lies in the
appeal to human nature. If there are spiritual instincts
in man, so deep-seated and so unappeasable that nothing
but God, the living God, can supply them with that
which they crave for, then we have proved our point.
On the other hand, if all these high instincts are mere
morbid fancies, and nothing more than the brooding of
unhealthy minds on their own indoor thoughts, we shall
then have nothing to reply to those who urge us to throw

The New Agnosticism. 125
our study windows open, and to let in the daylight of
common sense on the dormitories of the soul, where a
sick conscience crouches away, like an incurable invalid
in his cubicle. The appeal, in a word, lies to our
spiritual intuitions. If they are genuine and ineradicable,
then we may leave Agnostics to themselves. The
argument which they can best understand is that the
facts are against them. It is they who are diseased, and
not we. On the other hand, if they are correct in
drawing such a Chinese draft of human nature, with no
perspective and no shadows from the Invisible and Infinite,
then we may say, as the Israelites to the Philistines, that
if their champion can overcome ours, " then we shall be
your servants and serve you." On these lines the lists
are drawn, and with this issue we are prepared to leave
the duel between Theism in all forms, and Atheism in
its last and most deadly form of Agnosticism.
Before entering on a survey of our spiritual instincts
as evidence for a revelation, let us add only one pre
liminary remark. It is this, we do not pretend that
these instincts, singly or combined, could prove either
the Being of a God or His character and purpose to us.
That would be to go too far. No man hath ascended up
to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the
Son of man which is in heaven. But we do say that
these instincts are as the young unfledged nestlings, which
open wide mouths, and flap their as yet downy wings,
in token, not that they are able at present, but that they
are destined at no distant time, to become denizens of a
wider home, and to breathe ampler air than that of the
nest in which they at present only chirp and peep. It
is this prophecy of immortality in our embryo powers
on which Chalmers has enlarged in his Bridgewater
Treatise, and which an American poet has described as

126 The New Agnosticism.
the meeting point between a stimulus acting on us from
without, and the stirring of the instinct from within : —
' ' As blind nestlings unafraid,
That ope wide mouths at every shade,
With which their downy dream is stirred,
Taking it for the parent bird.
So when God's Spirit, which is light,
My sleeping senses comes across,
Silent as footprints over moss,
In my heart's nest those helpless things
Stir, with a feeble sense of wings,
Lift themselves up and tremble long
With premonitions loud of song."
This is a just and fair account of the case. It leads
us on to inquire what these instincts are, and what they
foreshadow of our future, but it does not go to the length
of the Transcendental School of New England, who
resolve all religion into a form of intuition, and so
sublimate all faith, as Schleiermacher did, into a dim
sense of dependence of the finite on the infinite. Our
spiritual instincts do not constitute religion, but they
make religion possible by laying a basis for it in our
nature. These are the needs to which a revelation from
God is the adequate and only reply. Thus the best
argument for the truth of revelation lies in the sense of
correspondence. The adaptation of the gospel to the
felt needs of our nature, this has always been a favourite
line of evidence ; we sometimes call it the internal as
opposed to the external. But in reality, instead of being
one of two distinct chains of proof, it is the support of
the historical itself. It is the one constant and unchang
ing proof on which the whole Christian Church rests in
the past as much as the present. Unless the gospel has
met all the needs of all the many minds of many men in
all ages, how can it be worthy of all acceptation ? We
lay stress on the universality of this adaptation to all the

The New Agnosticism. 127
needs of all men, since some men's needs are of one
character and others of another ; but in every case the
question to be first considered is, whether they are
genuine needs at all, or only the diseased cravings of a
few, and the passing fancies of a particular age. Unless
we can use the quod semper quod ubique quod ab omnibus
kind of test, no adequate evidence is forthcoming for the
truth of the gospel. On the contrary, the fact that the
gospel was accepted only by some, and in special and
exceptional cases, would be damaging to it rather than
otherwise. We have to analyse these spiritual needs,
and to determine which are truly and genuinely spiritual,
before we can see any fitness in the acceptance by man
kind of a revelation from God.
Turning, then, to our subject, we may name at once
three instincts in man which are deep and inalienable,
and without which no revelation would be possible, but
which, when they are once stirred, lead man to feel after
God and find Him. These three are — (1) the sense of
dependence ; (2) the craving for righteousness, including
in that the deliverance from personal and indwelling sin ;
and (3) the sense of beauty and the longing for an ideal
of which art is at present our only and imperfect expres
sion. These three instincts taken together, and allowing
that some natures feel the first most deeply, some the
second, and others the third, while few or any equally
feel all three, give us the groundwork on which we may
raise up the superstructure of a spiritual religion.
1. The earliest and the most ineradicable is the sense
of dependence. The apostle glances at this thought in a
passage which our version fails to render the, force of.
For this cause I bow my knees to the Father from
whom all that we can call family relationship (iracra
irarpta), whether in heaven or earth, is named (Eph.

128 The New Agnosticism.
iii. 16). The thought is this, that all fatherhood, all
sense of dependence of one man on another, all, in a
word, which we can describe as the family, and without
which society itself would go to pieces, has its source in
God's fatherhood. He is the fountain of all fatherly
relationships, and of the family tie in general ; and as He
setteth the solitary in families on earth, so out of this
family relationship there springs the sense of our relation
ship to One who is the fountain-head of this sense of
dependence. This is the true source of all religion ; were
this dried up or wanting, men would become the God-
defying Titans of science, which some timid souls seem to
fear that the age is fast drifting towards. Such the age
would certainly become, if we had knowledge without
wisdom, a science-faculty with no faith-faculty to teach
it humility. But happily man cannot cut himself
loose from his instincts as easily as some suppose.
Supplication is nature's symbol everywhere ; we lift
up our hands in intercession as we lift up our
eyes in thought to One who dwells above, and whose
eyes behold and His eyelids try the children of men.
Modern science dashes itself in vain against these instincts
of the soul. They are too strong for it. Even the
hardest Positivist once knelt on his mother's lap while his
little hands were folded in prayer. True — alas that it
should be so ! — there are mothers who have been false to
this true vocation of womanhood. It • is because the
tendency of the age is to unsex woman by prating more
about her rights, educational and political, than her
privilege and duty as the model of true wifehood and
motherhood, that mothers fail to foster the spark of
infant piety. They commit infanticide in its worst form
when they quench the smoking flax of this instinct of
dependence with which we all come into the world, and

The New Agnosticism. 129
which rises by easy gradations from reverence to the lower
to reverence for the higher parent, from the fathers of our
flesh to the Father of our spirits. Such is this instinct, and
so deeply engraven is it in the mind of man, that it lies at
the root of all religions. The nature-worships of the old
heathen world reflect it quite as much as the covenant
religions of the Old and New Testament. The Great
Supreme is the Father of gods and men ; and much as the
poets have done to debase this conception by their coarse
amours and crude anthropomorphisms, they have not
succeeded in banishing even from philosophy the concep
tion of some relationship between God and man which
we may speak of as congenital. This was the verse of
Cleanthes — we are also his offspring — which the apostle
seized on as the only plank amid the general wreck of
the old-world religion on which as on boards and broken
pieces of the ship men could all come safe to land. This
sense of filial dependence, leading up to a full conscious
ness of God's Fatherhood, dies down, we must admit in
too many cases, either into slavish superstition, or still
worse, dull indifference. But this is not the reproach
of the spiritual instinct itself, but of those who do not
use it as all our instincts are intended to be used. An
instinct is not to be set up as against intelligence, as
some do, but as that which starts intelligence on the
right track, leaving intelligence then to work the question
out for itself. If men do not rise on nature's altar-stairs
from the earthly to the heavenly Fatherhood, it must be
from causes lying outside the nature of man, and which,
in the language of Theology, we should describe as the
Fall. But it is only fair to add that our original nature
is not to be held responsible for this defect or failure ; so,
whether men respond to it or not, we may appeal to the
sense of filial dependence in all men ; since God's image
I

1 30 The New Agnosticism.
and superscription is stamped on the piece of money
which we may describe human nature to be.
2. Next to the sense of dependence on a great Father
of all, there is another instinct in our nature quite as
ineradicable, and which also leads us to a revelation of
God in Christ. This is the conviction of righteousness.
Our nature craves for Tightness in all its forms, either of
justice as between man and man, of holiness as between
man and God, or of purity as between man and himself.
In all these three directions, as regards God, ourselves, and
others, there enters a disturbing sense of shortcoming, for
which we have no better name than sin. It is this, whether
we call it positive or merely privative, which enters in and
disturbs all these three relations. As between man and
man, sin enters in and makes us unjust, as between man
and. God it makes us unholy, as between man and himself
it makes us impure. It thus defiles the conscience in all
directions, and leads the best and the most saintly natures
to cry out, because they are the best and the most saintly,
" Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death ? " It is not the coarse and the
sensual, but those who are the most opposed to self-
indulgence in all forms, who groan the deepest under the
bondage of indwelling sin. We are brought then to
this strange paradox of our nature, that the best are those
who feel themselves to be worst. It is the purest and
most abstemious of men who have the deepest sense of
evil. The ideal and the actual in their case fall the widest
apart, and they see the chasm between what they are and
what they ought to be. The superficial and the self-
righteous, those who are " content to dwell in decencies
for ever," cannot get to the point at which the actual falls
short of the ideal. They are like dwellers in a plain
country, to whom mountains, with their peaks and passes,

The New Agnosticism, 131
their ice domes, and their glaciers whose crevasses have
to be crossed with our life in our hand, are the mere
romance of travel. The saintliness which would scale
these sacred heights, and stand alone on the mount with
God, seems as idle as the wish to fly.
To such it is of no use to appeal to the threefold
conviction summed up in the three terms, sin, righteous
ness, and judgment. But it is none the less true that
there is this instinct in our nature, this deep and
ineradicable craving after peace and purity. We wish to
lay the tumults within, and to rise to the height of
calm self- consistency : culture and philosophy offer
themselves as teachers of this secret of self-respect ; but
after trying them we are constrained to say of them, as
the depth saith of wisdom, " it is not in me." It is only
in God, as He has revealed Himself in Christ as the
Reconciler and the Healer of the disease of our nature,
that we obtain this inward peace, and know that we have
the satisfaction to this hunger and thirst after righteous
ness. How Christ, who is the Bread of Life, supplies
our need and feeds the soul, we need not here describe.
It is enough for our present purpose to point out the
strength of the instinct, and its felt presence, in every
man in a more, or less active state, in proportion as he
has begun to develop his nature, and to rise above the
mere animal.
3. The third instinct which we turn to as witnessing
for man being made for God, is the sense of beauty or
ideal perfection. It is this which lies at the root of all
Art effort. It is the one spiritual element without which
Art would deserve all the reproach that has been heaped
on it, as tending to debase and sensualize human nature.
We stand here at the meeting of two ways, and according
as we turn upward or downward will Art rise to be the

132 The New Agnosticism.
handmaid of religion, or sink to be at first its rival and
afterwards its implacable enemy. It is because, too
often, Art has misunderstood its true vocation, and has
lent itself to the harlotry of sense, that it has been
denounced in such severe terms as the parent of all
idolatry. There has been much excuse for the icono
clastic temper which breaks out at every fresh revival of
religious zeal, and which explains the Puritanism, as we
may call it, of Moses, of Mohammed, of Savonarola, and
of our own Cromwellian Ironsides. The cry has always
been the same, " Cast out the bondwoman and her son,
for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the
son of the free."
But this need not be so, and ought not to be so. The
day is coming when this strife of ages between the beauty
of holiness and the holiness of beauty shall cease. Art
shall take her true place as the second, not the first, the
handmaid, not the mistress, and so this long rivalry shall
end in a happy concord and community of aim. For the
present, however, the sense of beauty, or the ideal in form,
must work itself out as a blind instinct. It cannot tell
who implanted it, and for what object. Few of those who
are born artists, and whose genius the world has long
since acknowledged as supreme, know their true mission
as Art evangelists, and that they are unconscious prophets
and messengers sent before the face of the Christ that is
to be. In most cases they work "as some wild poet
works, without a conscience or an aim." In some few
cases, as of the greatest artist of all, of Michael Angelo
Buonarotti, there is a sense of their true vocation. Some,
as Mendelssohn, feel they have an Art-conscience in music,
which to sin against would be to sin against light. But
these are the exceptions. Milton was an artist of this
type, but the world has many Drydens for one Milton,

The New Agnosticism. 133
many Rubens for one Raffaele. Seldom has Art risen to
her true vocation. Even ecclesiastical Art, more often than
not, has failed to express the spiritual idea she was
intended to embody in form. If, as is the case, she has
escaped the taint of the fleshy school, it is only to fall
under the yoke of the dogmatic and conventional. We
have only to go through the galleries of the Vatican to
feel the force of this. We are not offended by the nude,
but instead, we are presented with designs like those with
which the late Pope tried to signalize his unfortunate
reign, by decreeing in his early Pontificate the Immacu
late Conception of the Virgin, and in his later years his
own official and ex cathedrd Infallibility. It is impossible
to glance at these bold attempts of Art to glorify these
two dogmas, without feeling how Art has left her true
vocation, which is the worship of the ideal in the form of
beauty, when she thus hires herself out as the handmaid
of dogmatic theology.
It has been said, with justice, that the good, the true,
and the beautiful are three distinct modes of God's mani
festation in His works. If we put it the other way, we
shall be nearer the mark. The good, the true, and the
beautiful are the three modes of approach, the three
channels through which man rises up from the seen to
the unseen, and so reaches at last the sense of one
Eternal and uncreated Fount of Being. There are thus
three primitive instincts in man, which we may speak of
as spiritual, since they are implanted by Him who is the
Father of spirits, and are intended to lead us up out of
this maze of sense-perception into the pure upper air of
spiritual perception. These are the sense of the good or
moral Tightness, the sense of the true or intellectual
harmony, and the sense of the beautiful, of which Art is
the channel of expression. These are all original and

i 34 The New Agnosticism.
ineradicable instincts, and according as one of the three
is the master passion of our nature, are we said to have a
genius, as the case may be, either for saintship, or science,
or Art expression, in one of its three forms of poetry,
painting, or sculpture. The term genius is misleading,
and may lead to a dangerous delusion, as if we can
safely indulge one of these instincts at the expense of
the other two. This cannot be, and the shipwreck of
genius is only more certain when this is attempted.
Critics have said, and their shallow dictum has done
much to lower Art, that Art, as such, has nothing to say
to ethical considerations. The true artist, we are told,
should hold the glass up to nature, with grand indifference
whether virtue or vice throws its shadows there, provided
only that he faithfully reflects the age as it is. He has
nothing to say to things as they ought to be, but only to
things as they are. It is when Art, calling itself Realism,
but in fact becoming Sensationalism, sets up this canon
that she is preparing the way for her own downfall, of
which the decay of Italy, when she took up the
Renaissance without the Reformation, should be a
sufficient warning. In Germany, Luther came first and
Lessing second, and the result is that, with many slips
and shortcomings, the primacy is with the German, not
the Latin type of culture. This alone should settle the
question as to the priority in importance of these instincts,
the good, the true, and the beautiful. It also should
teach us that, like the Graces, they are sisters and
inseparable — " Facies quibus omnibus una,
Nee diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum."
The three instincts, then, of our nature which pos
tulate a spiritual Fount of Being are the sense of good
ness, of truth, and of beauty. In our apperception of

The New Agnosticism. 135
these three distinct aspects of life we get up into a
higher region in which they are seen to meet and blend.
The harmonies, for instance, between the higher mathe
matics and music point to this conclusion ; and if for
the present, Art and worship are not reconciled, but stand
aloof from each other in a suspicious and half-defianb
attitude, this arises, not from any defect in the instincts
themselves, but from the distorted medium into which
they pass as the result of sin. Were man sinless, his
sense of goodness, of truth, and of beauty would be
developed in equal and harmonious progression. This
may perhaps be one meaning of the intermediate state
to make up for defects of culture in our present im
perfect state of being. Our men of genius, whose
development has been one-sided here, will find the
balance righted hereafter. Art and science, of which
music and mathematics are the most prominent types,
will then find their true place. They will find that they
are the second, not the first. Wisdom, which is to fear
Jehovah, and understanding, which is to depart from
evil, will then be seen to have the primacy among our
spiritual instincts, but it is only a primacy inter pares.
It is on the harmonious development of all three, and
by these three agreeing in one, that we rise to the
instinctive sense of a spiritual ruler of the universe,
the God and Father of all, who is above all, and through
all, and in us all. If our nature were not disturbed
and shattered by the ruin of what we call the Fall for
want of a better term, we should then rise on these wings
of instinct into a world where the good, the true, and
the beautiful would be seen to be only refracted beams
of one uncompounded light, which is God. Hence we see
how Agnosticism is possible, based as it is on a denial
of the truth of these instincts. Men who are dimly

136 The New Agnosticism.
conscious at best of the beauty of holiness and the
holiness of beauty, may go on to deny these instincts
altogether. They may thus cut away the ground
altogether on which a spiritual religion is to spring up.
So true is it, that to kill religion we must first deaden
down the instincts which nourish and support it. An
unspiritual philosophy prepares the way for the negation
of all religion. Hence it is that what is called Agnosti
cism is in the air, and that to encounter it we have to
appeal to these instincts, which, however deadened and
degraded, do assert their presence in man, and demand
some satisfaction, as all instincts do, some bread from
heaven, which they " ope wide mouths " of desire to
be satisfied with. So true is it, that a poverty-stricken
philosophy ends in a dry, rationalistic, and in the end
negative Theology, Eheu paupertina philosophia desinit in
paupertinam theologiam. The true reply then to Agnosti
cism is, as we have pointed out, to appeal to these
spiritual instincts in our nature, and if their cry is
only that " of an infant crying in the night — an infant
crying for the light, and with no language but a cry,"
still it is enough for our purpose. It is the proof that
we are in search for, that God, if unknown at present,
is at least not ultimately unknowable.

CHAPTER VIII.
ELECTION NOT SELECTION.
" Even now after eighteen centuries of Christianity we
may be involved in some tremendous error, of which
the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed."
We set out with this saying of Vinet, because while
applicable to other truths of Theology, it is particularly
applicable to that misrepresentation of the divine
character which grew up around the doctrine of election.
If we can mark where the truth passed into an error,
we shall succeed in pointing out one of the chief
contrasts between the Theology of the past and the
future. The old Theology, in a word, was not as care
ful as it should have been in guarding the character
of God. " Of all beings God has been most misunder
stood — misrepresented by many who have not wished
to do His will, and misunderstood ofttimes in the bosoms
of His chosen friends. It is a coarse, and yet too
common remark, that the creed of the Churches sets up a
demon in the place of God, a being who conforms more
nearly to our idea of devil than of a God."1 This is strong
language, and yet Wesley's remark to Toplady, '' Exactly
so ; your God is my devil," points out where the truth
of God may diverge into a lie. Nor let us be surprised
at this. The grander the subject, the wider the door
1 Orthodox Theology of To-Day, by Newman Smyth, p. 29, Eng. ed.

138 Election not Selection.
for the entrance of error. The vaster the orbit, the
easier it is for us to miscalculate it. Even a second
of time in the observation of some distant star may
mean spaces not to be expressed in our arithmetic.
Astronomers are on their guard accordingly, and allow
for the equation of time, or the slight difference between
the moment of visual perception of one eye and another.
It would be well if divines were equally on their guard.
They would understand that it is no light mattes to
deal with the character of the " High and Lofty One
who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy." The
aberration of spiritual light as it passes down the
telescope of faith has to be allowed for ; and as the
truth enters the dim and passion-stained chamber of
our soul, it becomes still further distorted, till it is
difficult to recognise at last the character of God at all.
So it has been with the doctrine of the divine
sovereignty. Originally, and as handled by the Apostle
Paul, it was a simple and spiritual account of the mode
of action of all divine grace in overcoming the resistance
of the carnal mind. The inference from it should be,
that if God's grace is mighty enough to reach any, it
is mighty enough in the end to reach all. But this
doctrine of sovereignty was given a twist as it entered
the logic-loving intellect of certain divines. God is
light ; hence, if we begin to refract the beam of white
light, we can pass red or violet rays out of either end of
the spectrum. God may become to us either a consuming
fire, or a God too tender and pitiful even to chasten
His children, much less to cast them off. Generally
speaking, we may say that one extreme leads to the
other. The doctrine of particular redemption and the
full salvation of an elect few only, by a rebound easily
understood, passed into the doctrine of the All-Father

Election not Selection. 139
who needs no blood ransom at all, and whose very pity
anticipates our need of pardon. Hence it is that the
ultra-Calvinistic Churches, whether in Geneva or New
England, are, without exception, the Churches where
Unitarianism and Universalism most readily spring up,
and the result of the reaction is in both cases the same.
It takes the form of a call for a new Theology. The
old affirmation and its modern negation of semi-Deism
are felt to be equally bald and one-sided. Men feel
the need of a God who is to be both loved and feared
at once ; and they feel themselves to be as much
orphans, when told that the All-Father is a God of
bland benevolence, as when taught by the old Theology
that His redemptive love is limited to those who are
the objects of an elective decree in eternity and a
personal call in time.
The doctrine of election is by no means the only New
Testament truth which has been turned into an error, if
not a lie, in the course of ages ; but it is perhaps the most
striking instance of that perversion which led Mr. Froude
in his antithetical way to say, " Christ gave the gospel, and
the father of lies gave Theology." The perversion arose
in this way. The Pauline doctrine of election grew
out of the Old Testament conception of the " remnant."
Through Israel as a race the election after the flesh
perished and were cast off; there was always a remnant
who were preserved, and who were to become the first-
fruits of a new harvest. Election in this aspect looks
backward as well as forward. In this sense the apostle
quotes the prophet, " Esaias also crieth concerning Israel,
Though the number of the children of Israel be as the
sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved." Here the root-
idea of election is the Shearith or remnant, which in its
turn becomes a first-fruit, in the same way as a sack of

140 Election not Selection.
the chosen and best ears of last harvest is specially
reserved as the seed-plot of next year's harvest. The life
of the wheat plant is in that seed-bag, and according as
the best is reserved for seed and not consumed for food,
so will the staff of life be preserved in the land.
This is the true and Pauline doctrine of election. It
is the promise to Abraham, In thee and in thy seed shall all
the families of the earth be blessed. The only change in
the promise is that it was given at first to the seed after
the flesh, and is given now to that seed which is after the
spirit. Israel after the flesh drifted away into captivity
as the sand of the sea. Was God's promise to Abraham
then to fail ? Certainly not. God must be true, though
every man were a liar. Hence, as Isaiah saw partially
and the Apostle Paul more deeply, the promise rested
with a " Shearith," an elect remnant — the remnant of
one harvest, the elect or first-fruits of another.
Hence the legitimate inference from the Pauline doctrine
of election is the very opposite to that which Calvin and
his school drew. The promise to Abraham was multi-
tudinist, not particularist ; as the stars in the sky and
the sand of the sea, so was his seed to be. When the
promise failed after the flesh, it was to be fulfilled after
the spirit, but certainly not to a less extent or on a more
limited scale. God, who always gives as a king largely
and liberally, cannot be supposed to cancel His promise,
or to give it again under reservations and limitations.
He does not act as if it were the same to Him whether
to display His love or His wrath, His glory in the
salvation of the elect, and His glory in the pretention or
reprobation (it comes to the same thing) of the non-elect.
This is that strange distortion of Pauline teaching which
we usually identify exclusively with Calvinism, but which
Lutherans and also Anglicans hold with some reserva-

Election .not Selection. z\\
tions which do not go to the root of the question. The
Westminster Confession is thoroughgoing: "By the de
cree of God for the manifestation of His glory, some
men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life,
and others foreordained to everlasting death. These
angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are
particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number
is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased
or' diminished." 1 This at least is logical. It is pre
sumptuous in the last degree, and twists a generous
thought of God's sovereign mercy, boundless as God Him
self, into a narrow arithmetical parcelling out of the race
into two heaps, a small heap of the saved, and a great
heap, a massa pcrditionis, of the damned. But the
Church of England article on the subject, which is also
substantially the Lutheran doctrine, Art. XIX. of the
XXXIV., limps to a lame and impotent conclusion. It
asserts and then retracts the doctrine, holds it up and
then holds it back. It reminds us of the ordeal of the
girl blindfolded who has to pass over the hot plough
share. She does not burn her foot, but she only singes
it. In the same way, this article on election does not
put its foot down on a position which, in the Westminster
Confession, burns to the bone as a hot iron would do.
But it only escapes this at the cost of logical consistency.
A doctrine so safeguarded becomes innocuous, but then
the question occurs, Was it worth asserting at all ?
Predestination strictly considered is a truism. It is a mere
explicative phrase for God's omniscience and omnipo
tence. In the Kantian phrase, there are analytical and
synthetical judgments. Election is of the former class.
It brings us no farther into the deep things of God. It only
amounts to the proverb che sara sara, adding, of course,
1 Vid. "Westminster Confession, chap, iii., of God's Eternal Decree.

142 Election not Selection.
the obvious truism that it will be, because God in Christ
wills it.
The error of Theology has arisen out of a confusion more
than verbal between election and selection. Calvinism
teaches that God selects of His sovereign will and pleasure
alone to which of two heaps, each spirit of man or angel is
to belong. It is all equally for His own glory, whether
a Pharaoh or a Moses, a vessel of wrath or a vessel of
mercy, is so ordained. This is selection, and this is the
popular Theology to this day. Is it strange that men
prefer Deism to this, and reject the whole of evangelical
Theology, based as it is on a few texts in the Romans
uncritically interpreted ?
The only remedy lies in going to the fountain-head
of the error, Melius est peter e fontem quam rivulos sectari.
When we go up to the fountain-head and draw water from
the living well of Pauline Theology, we find a truth
which streams out free and full to all. It is not like the
tank limited to a few, as in the Augustinian and Calvinist
Theology. The doctrine of election runs through the whole
Scripture from first to last, but it is invariably stated
to be an election to service, and that service with regard
to others. Selection is the opposite. It implies prefer
ence, an invidious setting aside of one to the advantage
of another. Favouritism is a quality unworthy of God ;
but when we find it combined with harshness, we have
then a presentment of the Divine Being who is like Isaac,
unjustly indulgent to one son and unjustly indifferent to
the other. As if to guard us against this mistake, we
are told how terribly the fault of favouritism was visited
on the sons of Isaac, and the whole after history of Jacob
is one long lesson that divine blessings are not to be
wrested by fraud and double dealing. Indeed, we should
be careful how we use the term God's -sovereignty. One

Election not Selection. 143
man's meat may be another man's poison. So it may be
if in describing God as our King we pass on to raise the
conception of a despot. Sovereignty, so used, is a phrase
harsh enough to numb the young faith, as it has often
done. That God is our " King of old " is a truth quite as
essential to recognise as that of His Fatherhood. But kin"--
ship or chieftainship denotes something widely different
from sovereignty. The chieftain is the head of a clan, all
having kinship with its head, and to whom " spend me and
defend me " is the note of loyalty. But a despot, this is
not a Hebrew, but rather an Arab conception of Godi
According to Palgrave {vid. his Journey through Central
Arabia, chap, viii.), " God is one, not only numerically
and without plurality of nature or person, but as the only
Agent, the only Force through the universe, leaving
nothing to any other beings but unconditional passive-
ness. The sole motor power and energy is God, neither
loving nor enjoying. He is thought of as an absolute,
lonely despot, dispensing felicity or damnation according
to His will, and alike unsympathizihg with either fate."
This may be the God of Islam, but He is not the God of
the New Testament, who is the Father of spirits, and
who, as the sun of the universe, is not only the fountain
of light, but also the centre to which all must gravitate.
The doctrine of election calls for restatement, not
for rejection. The new Theology must take higher
ground than the merely negative school, which in
avoiding one error falls into the other ; out of
Calvinism into Deism, is often only a single step. The
Unitarian and Universalist theory, which is only a short
cut out of the difficulty, seems to us to call in one error
to expel another. By election we understand the mighty
and energizing grace of God which, when it lays hold
of any character, especially one of some marked indi-

144 Election not Selection.
viduality, separates them from the mass of mere con
formists to the traditional faith of their fathers, and in
this way raises them up to saintship and service. This
election springs not so much from any hidden grounds,
either of foreseen merit, as the Arminian, or of bare
sovereignty, as the Calvinist holds. In either case we
confound election with selection. But this preference
has its root-idea in the point of priority of time, as
some nations are civilised before others. In this sense
election is in profound harmony with God's government
of the world. It is like the sun, as Pitt once said in
a speech on slave emancipation, which rises first in
the east, but also enlightens the west —
' ' Hic ubi primus equis Oriens afflavit anhelis
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper."
Hence the election of one, so far from implying
the rejection of another, points to the very reverse.
Newton was elect to write the Principia, and Milton
the Paradise Lost; and instead of any poor preference
in this, the world is all the richer for this proof of
God's distinguishing grace to a divine astronomer and
a divine poet. Hence, when the doctrine is put in this
light, instead of raging against it and saying " your God
is my devil," men accept the mystery with devout
thankfulness. Men see that God's saints and the world's
heroes are only different chapters of the same great
book of biography, whose beginning and ending alike
is of God. No explanation ever was or can be given
why the child of a Lincolnshire farmer, who was so
puny as a baby that he was put into a quart jug,
should grow into the mind that measured the pull of
the sun on the earth, and of the earth on the moon,
who analysed the properties of light, and rising step by
step in the scale of inductive reasoning, at last drew

Election not Selection. 145
order out of chaos, and rejecting hypothesis or guesswork,
co-ordinated the scattered laws of astronomy. We can
only describe this miracle of genius in the phrase of
Pope's epigram —
" Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, Let Newton be, and all is light."
In this sense Longfellow's line is even more true than
the glittering conceit of Pope — ¦
" One accent of the Holy Ghost,
This foolish world hath never lost."
Theologians who cut history into sacred and profane,
fail to see that election, so far from being a mystery
peculiar to the doctrines of grace, is in reality a philoso
phical postulate, inseparable from our primary conception
of the Being of God. Every thinker who is a Theist at all,
must insist on the truth that all things are of God. He
must eliminate contingency; he is a necessitarian ex
necessitate rei. The only fresh light which Theology can
throw on this doctrine is by pointing out that as some are
elect to eminence in science and art, and in this sense
may be spoken of as the elect Newton and the elect
Raffaele, others are elect to the still higher privilege of
saintship and service here and hereafter. In this sense,
while there is election in the case of every birth, there
are degrees of dignity ; so the apostle who was separated
from his mother's womb and called by God's grace, was
a chosen vessel, as the text goes on to explain, " to bear
my name before kings and Gentiles." In this sense we
can see at least one edge of the mystery, as in certain
positions of its orbit we can catch a glimpse of the
obverse side of the moon. St. Paul's fitness for that
mission, as of Jewish birth, of Greek training, and with
Roman citizenship, has been often remarked on. This
is much to the point, as helping us to see that God's
K

146 Election not Selection.
sovereignty is the outcome of infinite counsel as well
as might. It is much more than a mere decree of a
despot — le roi le veut. It is wisdom and counsel. It is the
fiov\r/v tov deXrniaTo<; (Eph. i. 11), a phrase the double
meaning of which must not be missed, as the divine
decree is that outcome of Deity which is not originant,
as the Calvinist holds, but only efficient. The original
principle is love, which acts in a fiovkr) or counsel held
within the Deity, as in the phrase, " Let us make man."
The result is a sovereign decree, which, as it is the first
in our experience, we erroneously describe as the original
principle with God. We have, however, to add, that if
election looks back to the choice of the agent for his own
good, it also looks forward to his fitness to bring good
to others. Election, in a word, is never to privilege;
this is an immoral, if not unmeaning phrase when
applied to the divine government, for God can have
no privilegia or private laws for a favoured few ; election
has reference to duty here, not to distinction hereafter ;
it is for service, and regards others. In this sense the
Messiah is truly described as the elect servant of
Jehovah, and the Father delights in Him for this very
reason. " Therefore doth my Father love me, because I
lay down my life that I may take it again." He is the
corn that dies, and so brings forth much fruit. He came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give
His life a ransom for the many. As Christ is the great
pattern then of the elect, so the inference from this
truth of election is something much more than the
arbitrary act of an absolute will, such as the West
minster divines conceived of God. To them He was
like that king of Babylon, " whom he willed he
slew, and whom he willed he kept alive." A relative
truth was turned into an absolute. Overwhelmed

Election not Selection, 147
.with the one thought of the hereafter, — with an eternal
heaven and hell awaiting all of Adam born, — the divines
of the seventeenth century lost their balance, and could
only see two outlets for souls — one above and one
beneath. "The souls of the righteous being then, i.e.
after death, made perfect in holiness, are received into
the highest heavens, and the souls of the wicked are
cast into hell. Besides these two places for souls
separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth
none." * This is plain language, but it certainly goes
beyond the solemn reserve of Scripture. As for
the mediasval doctrine of hell, it is unknown to the
Old Testament, where instead we read of a Sheol or
Hades, Job xxxviii. 17; Gen. xxxvii. 35, xiii. 38, et
passim. On the other hand, there are hints in the
New Testament of an intermediate state which is not
obscurely referred to in such passages (1 Pet. iii. 18 and
iv. 6), — passages which we need not here exegetically
enter upon. Had the Reformers been more distrust
ful of dogma, they might easily have rejected the
grosser errors of purgatory, such as that pain purifies,
and that masses for souls carry indulgence for sins
committed here ; and the result would have been that
the Church would have believed in an intermediate
state after death. The subject might have been left
in shadow, as the Sheol of the Old Testament Scriptures
is only hinted at. But, unfortunately for the cause
of truth and charity, all the Reformers, we must add,
with the honourable exception of Zwingli, were quite
as dogmatic as the divines they replaced. They were
only too ready to close the gates of mercy on mankind,
leaving open certain doors of covenant Theology, of
which they were the assumed janitors, after displacing
1 Westminster Confession, chap, xxiii.

148 Election not Selection.
the traditional janitor, St. Peter, from that post of door
keeper. Election thus seen in the lurid light of this
heaven and hell Theology, soon assumed quite a strange
and forbidding aspect. The divines of the age after the
Reformation succeeded only too well in adding a new
terror to death, when they extracted from Calvin's Insti
tutes a predestinarian view of our eternal state. This was
declared to be the marrow of Theology by all the more
logical Reformers. But how short-sighted this terrorism
was ! There may have been other causes for it, but it is
remarkable that the Reformation stood still from the
moment that an apology, such as the Institutes originally
was meant to be, was turned into a new code of dogma.
Soon the Jesuit reaction recovered all the ground lost in
South Europe, and much even in Northern Europe. It
would be too much to say that the Jesuits fought
Calvinism, and beat it back solely by the aid of the
doctrine of purgatory. But it has more to say to the
success • of the counter-Reformation than many suppose.
Between the extreme Left of Deism and the extreme
Right of the Roman doctrine of indulgences, the Reforma
tion, a century after Luther, came to a point where two
seas met ; and the fore part, the dogmatists, stuck fast,
while the hinder part, the Deists, was broken by the
violence of the waves. This account of St. Paul's ship
wreck illustrates to the letter the fate of the fore and
hinder part of the body of the Reformers. There were
Protestants who went to pieces as Freethinkers, and
others who stuck fast on the shoal of dogmatism. But
the ship was broken, and hence the need of a new ship
in which to launch out, freighted with a new Theology.
Hence it is that, in common with almost every other
doctrine in the circle of Theology, this truth of election
has to be cleared from those incrustations of particularism

Election not Selection. 149
and predestinarianism which have thickened around it
ever since Calvin's mind, impressed with God's particular
call of Himself, laid such exceptional stress upon it.
The fact is too often overlooked that Calvin's was a
typical intellect of the logic-loving type, which insists on
symmetry, and- is impatient of a single hazy thought.
His was a French intellect of the anvil and hammer
type for beating out dogma ; and if truth is to be forged,
not moulded, then Calvin certainly was the workman to
do it. But what a poor piece of work conies from this
welding together of predestinarianism — a truth held
even by Deists — with the Pauline truth of our election
to special service ! There is nothing then for us but to
break up this welding, and restore these doctrines of natural
and revealed religion respectively to their right owners.
Predestinarianism is an obvious truth, or even truism of
all who are Deists ; election is the special Pauline aspect
of grace. In Paul's case it is cast and not hammered at
all. Election is run hissing-hot out of the tapped furnace
of his own exceptional experience of conversion. He
discovers that the last and most unlikely of men was
selected as the very fittest to proclaim the truth which he
had once persecuted. In this sense all spiritual minds im
plicitly, if not explicitly, agree to hold election in common.
In this view of grace, as seizing on us and specializing
us for some work at conversion, Wesley is at one with
Whitfield, and Arminius with Calvin. Hence it is
because our age is trained to see that this is a truth
where Theology and philosophy touch, that our differ
ences on this dogma are dead. We may add with
thankfulness, that the Arminian and Calvinist contro
versy has died down very much, since it is seen that
there is no more fuel to throw on the flame. The two
chief disputants on either side seem to have seized on

150 Election not Selection.
a half-truth, and hammered it out as those peasant
warriors did when they beat their ploughshares into
swords. Their dogmas were at best clumsy weapons, either
for attack or defence ; and our age, which is above all
a practical age, recalls these divines from their cut and
thrust polemics to the direct and pressing duty of
evangelizing the masses. To the true evangelist, election
in the technical sense of the term is a dogma laid on
the shelf. He finds that in the work of appealing to
the masses it is more of a hindrance than a help. He
can make no use of it ; and hence, with the instinct of
a revivalist, John Wesley rejected it for himself, and
also insisted on his preachers rejecting it as well.
Whether he was wise in describing himself as an
Arminian because opposed to Calvinism is another
matter ; but who is always wise ? His excuse is that
Toplady goaded him into employing this partisan phrase,
as Luther in his day was goaded into many indiscreet
words and deeds.
But enough of the past. The new Theology must be
careful so to re-state election, that it shall fall in with,
instead of going counter to, the record of conscience in
its conceptions of the ethical character of God. We
must not allow our spiritual instincts to be denied and
then crushed by the text, "Who art thou that repliest
against God?" We must not be told that we are to
silence the pleadings of the heart : that God is Sovereign,
and that therefore conduct which no earthly father could
justify becomes right because the Eternal Father is
omnipotent. These are the crudities of the popular
Theology, which every critical mind has long seen and
secretly deplored. Unfortunately, as a rule, most critical
minds confine themselves to mere negative criticism of
the popular Theology, without going on, as Kant did,

Election not Selection. 151
to a philosophy with a constructive as well as a destructive
side. If it is presumptuous to attempt this constructive
criticism of Theology, then we are guilty of presumption,
but our excuse must be that the Pauline doctrine of
election is much too deep and divine a truth to be
rejected because of the glosses of later divines. As in a
palimpsest we have to scrape off as carefully as we can
the patristic in order to get at the classic inscription
which is covered over, so we have to do in getting the
old truth which was from the beginning, but is hidden
underneath the later glosses of divines. It is well worth
all that we have written, if we can succeed in convincing
men that a Theology may be very Biblical yet very
wrong, for "words, like nature, half conceal and half
reveal the soul within." The apostle's words, which have
been half revealed and half concealed by later Theology,
when treated like a palimpsest, point to a bright future
for mankind, far off it may be, but at last to all. The
true teaching of God's sovereignty should impress us with
the thought that He is not frustrated when man fails.
The potter has power over the clay, and when one vessel
is marred on the wheel, then he instantly makes another.
As for these vessels of wrath, — God's failures, if the
metaphor may be applied without irreverence, — it is of
the unbaked clay that the apostle is speaking. In this
case, we suppose, they are cast back into the lump to be
again moulded.
This view of the future of the non-elect seems to come
near Universalism, but the distinction may be made clear
to every candid mind. We can suppose the case of some
souls, how many it matters not, which even under
discipline here or hereafter (the iEons are all His)
may become hardened in sin, and so, like the potsherds
baked and broken, be cast out to swell some Monte

152 Election not Selection.
Testaccio of the universe, like that hill of broken
pottery beyond the Tiber, in which ancient Rome has
handed down to modern those relics which are mere
rubbish. Here we draw breath, for we have reached the
term of all thought on such a supreme mystery. In any
case, election looks out in the direction of multitudinism
and not of particularism. In this sense, the election of
Abraham, whose name was most significantly changed
into father of a multitude, is the keynote to all right
understanding of this truth. The particularism of
Calvinism resembles the particularism of Judaism ; both
are alike a dwarfed interpretation of a broad and blessed
truth. It was not to put an oak into a flower-pot, or to
save a small sect or tribe, that God elected Abraham.
Election was never intended to dwarf down to selection,
as rivers in the interior of Australia are said to lose
themselves in the sand. Let us hope that as all rivers
reach the ocean, so all instances of God's particularism
in the present are but as preludes to the grander music
of the future, in which the multitude that no man can
number join with the hundred and forty-four thousand
in singing the same song of Moses and the Lamb, of
redemption from sin here, and of admission into the
kingdom hereafter, where sin is not.

CHAPTER IX.
RECONCILIATION WITH GOD : THREE PROGRESSIVE THEORIES.
Next to the Being of God, and second to it only, if
second at all, is the question of the mode of our approach
to Him, " since he that cometh to God must believe that
He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently
seek Him." It is admitted on all sides that redemption
or reconciliation with God must take a leading place in
any scheme of Theology. It stands in the very front of
all the old theological systems. It must hold the same
place of pre-eminence in the new, if the new Theology is
to take the place of the old, and to satisfy to any extent
the spiritual needs of men. In the old Theology, whether
Roman or Reformed, Lutheran or Calvinist, sin, and the
satisfaction for sin, holds the first place. This is the
distinctive Theology of the West, where Soteriology is the
prominent aspect of all systematic divinity, as we may
say Christology is of the East. On this aspect of redemp
tion, which touches our personal wants as sinners needing
deliverance, the more practical Latin mind laid stress,
as the Greek intellect, which was speculative, inclined to
rest on conceptions of the Divine Being. The Western
mind, on the other hand, partly from natural aversion to
mere points of speculative divinity, but also partly under
the leadership of one commanding mind, the great Church
Father. St. Augustine, turned to the doctrines of grace, as.

154 Reconciliation with God :
they are called, and systematized them into a compact
body of teaching, which is the basis ever since of all that
is known as systematic divinity in the West. Not to
understand this contrast between the course of Theology
in the East and West, is to fail to know and to
trace to their source that class of truths which we
distinctively call the doctrines of grace. Further, not
to agree with these doctrines is to put oneself off into
a kind of position of semi-Pelagian isolation from what
is emphatically " the Gospel " to all instructed minds who
take Augustinian Theology as a whole. It would lead
us into too long a digression if we were to discuss how it
came about that Augustinianism became possessed of the
entire field of thought, and moulded into one fixed fonn
of belief the entire Theology of the West. There were
many favouring circumstances which led to this, not the
least being the fact that Augustinian Theology traversed
the whole range of inquiry and experience, from the
extreme right of sacramental to the extreme left of
intuitional Theology. It was based, in Augustine's
case, on a deep personal experience of sin, and of the
need of a personal deliverance from sin. In this sense
it met the needs of the awakened conscience. It was
Protestantism in the germ. On the other hand, it fell in
with the sacramental system, it laid great stress on the
external Church and the outward channels of grace. We
need go no farther than this to understand the reasons
why Augustinian Theology has reigned without a break,
and certainly without a rival, for twelve centuries, from
the fifth to the eighteenth inclusive. The Reformation
brought with it a revolt against the scholastic Theology,
but it was only to begin a new scholasticism under the
shadow of the same great name. The only result of the
Reformation was that Augustinianism was rent in two, as

Three Progressive Theories. 155
Rome was in her decay, into East and West ; but each
divided limb of the empire claimed to be the legitimate
successor of the great Julius, the first Csesar. So it
was with Augustine. He was the only Church Father
who rather gained than lost ground by the Reformation in
the general favour of the entire West. Romanists were
more anxious even than the Reformers to claim this great
doctor as on their side. In Spain, to this day, no sermon
is supposed to have the right ring of orthodoxy unless
the preacher brings in from his compendium of Theology
a tag of Augustine, as in the Spanish cuisine there would
be no dish without a whiff of garlic. Sin Augustino nul
predigo is a proverbial saying in the Peninsula, and every
priest's library has a commonplace book of sentences from
this doctor. The leaders of the Reformation were equally
careful to proclaim their implicit acceptance of Augustine's
Theology. In this, Wittenberg, Geneva, and Lambeth all
struck the same note. The Dutch Remonstrants raised a
feeble note of protest, in the second generation after the
Reformation, but it was quickly silenced by the sharp
sword of persecution. To differ with Augustine and to
side with Pelagius, was to have fallen from grace. It
was to. go over to the philosophers, which in the
seventeenth century was virtually a sentence of exclusion
from Church membership, with all its attendant pains
and penalties. In an age when Unitarianism was con
sidered so deadly an error as to deserve the death penalty,
the Pelagian tendency was supposed to be only its out
work. It was considered to be the first step in the
downward career into soul- destroying heresy to decline
from the high standard of primitive Augustinianism. The
few who attempted to find a middle path, such as the
Cambridge Platonists, or the Latitude Men of Oxford, as
the friends of Falkland were vaguely called, were all too

156 Reconciliation with God :
few in number, and quite too uninfluential with the mass
of mankind, to draw attention to themselves and their
Theology. They owed their escape from persecution to
their obscurity. They were a mere band of students,
men before their time. They had the misfortune, as it
has been said of Milton, to be born too soon for their
age.. In a world deafened with the jarring notes of rival
theologies equally dogmatic, they tried to nurse a noble
independency of mind in an age when independent
thinking in Theology was generally regarded as the
mother of all heresy. But time, which brings its revenges
with it, and redresses, the wrongs of those whose misfor
tune it was to be before their age, has brought a general
change of attitude in our way of looking at what we may,
for convenience, describe as the plan of salvation. In
our day, it would only seem like raking up the ashes of
extinct controversies if we were to point out how com
pletely the age has moved on. Even Scotland has receded;
from the standpoint of the old dogmatic school, as repre
sented by the General Assembly which expelled Irving
for teaching that our Lord's humanity was not merely
Docetic, or which deposed Campbell for holding that
assurance is of the essence of faith. The new Theology
has carried the day along the whole line, not merely on
these particular points of school divinity, but also on the
deeper questions which underlay these controversies.
The question at issue between the old and the new
Theology runs up, as all discussions do between men who
are in earnest about divine things, to the central-point of
all, in which all Theology pivots. Our conception of
salvation will be modified by our conception of the
Being of God and of His character ? Such as we consider
the Divine Being to be in Himself, such we shall consider
our relations to Him, and with it our conceptions of the

Three Progressive Theories. 157
plan of salvation. To borrow the technical terms of
school divinity, our Soteriology will always depend on
our Christology. Hence it is, that when God was appre
hended rather as the moral Governor of the universe
than as the Father of men, whose likeness and ima«e as
spiritual beings we were intended to reflect, Theology
drew up a class of conceptions of the plan of salvation
which were based on this rectoral character of God. It
has been said with some justice that the forensic theory
of the Atonement, which from Anselm to Grotius has
been the current conception of reconciliation by pardon,
only took definite shape in the Latin Church as the out
come of Roman law. It was Theology expressed in terms
of jurisprudence — the legal conception of God as King
and Judge overshadowing every other. There is not only
much truth in this remark, but it is also one which
divines have overlooked altogether, and even when
it was apprehended they have still failed to see the
importance of this inter-dependence of Theology on
law, and vice versa. Sir Henry Maine's great work on
ancient law is based on the principle that all positive
law embodying itself in a code is historically the out
come of some unwritten law or custom, which, in its
turn, is the expression of the ruling ideas of the com
munity from which it springs. This account of the
rise of law as the result of custom, the mos pro lege
principle of positive law, does not stop there. What we
call school divinity takes its rise in the same unconscious
way by fitting our thoughts into the framework of the
ruling ideas of the day. In our simplicity, we profess
that our theological conceptions are derived or deduced
directly from Scripture; Theology being nothing else
than the science of inferences, as we have already
described it. If this were so, we should hear less of

158 Reconciliation with God:
the word disputes which make Theology such a tangle
of crabbed propositions. The fact is, that there is
another factor in Theology which is unsuspected, and
all the more powerful because men do not see its source.
That is the silent and unobserved influence of juridical
conceptions on theological terms. The term BiaBrJKrj,
for instance, is uniformly understood to express the idea
of a covenant in the Old Testament, whereas in the New
(as in that equivocal passage in Heb. viii.) we find
another conception which is not so much of a covenant
through the death of a victim, but of a testator, and by
the testamentary disposition of property. We see in
this single instance the transition of thought between
two conceptions differing widely from each other. This
is only one instance, by the way, of the tendency of law
and Theology to act and react on each other. Is it
reasonable to say in one breath, as divines do, that
Christianity has entered into and moulded our legal con
ceptions, unless we admit, on the other hand, that this law
has reacted on our theological conceptions, and in its turn
helped to mould them ? If it be true that Theology has
helped to mould our modern jurisprudence in its advance
from its first vindictive stage to its present recognition of
the reformatory system, can we suppose that law, in its
turn, has not reacted on Theology ? The truth is, as Sir
H. Maine points out, society, if progressive at all, is so
not in one direction at a time, but in all. Its jurispru
dence and its Theology are alike products of the age, and
the outcome of its mental concepts. There are three
stages of law and three of Theology corresponding each
to each, and alike marking the advance of society. In
the first stage law is vindictive, purely and simply. It
wipes out the offence, if it can, by making a clean sweep
of the offender. All crimes are torts or personal injuries

Three Progressive Theories, 159
to be personally avenged. It is a debt to be paid either
in purse or person. In the next stage society has risen
to the sense of something more than a wrong done by
one person to another, or even than a blood-feud to be
avenged by the tribe as a whole. It has begun to con
ceive of crime as an offence against the majesty of the
law. The satisfaction, in that case, becomes due, not so
much to the person offended as to the offended majesty
of law. Crime is no longer a case for compensation,
which is exacted from the offender, and merely on the
lex talionis principle. A new conception of society, as a
whole, enters in to give a new colour and aspect to crime.
It is accordingly on the in terrorem principle that punish^
ment is now inflicted, lest by undue laxity the law
should be abused. This is the stage which English law
had reached about the middle of last century, when a
judge could sentence a man to death for horse-stealing,
with this strange comment from the Bench : " You are
to be hanged, not so much for stealing a horse, but in
order that horses may not be stolen." It was only when
it was seen that this reign of terror was not the reign of
law, and Beccaria had pointed out that it was not so much
the severity as the certainty of punishment which acted
as the true deterrent from crime, that the administration
of English law took a new departure. Our hanging code, as
it was called, was laid aside step by step, and we are now
entering on the third and last stage of law reform, in
which crime is not so much a wrong done to another, or
even to that abstraction which we call society, as it is a
wrong to the man himself. Crime is now regarded as
culpa, and it is a mea culpa: it is an offence against
human nature itself, a kind of disease or insanity for
which retribution, it is true, is required, but a retribution
which carries with it something reformatory.

160 Reconciliation with God:
There are thus three stages of jurisprudence, in which
law is vindictive, retributive, and reformatory respectively,
and corresponding to the growth of society — the second
being an advance on the first, and the third on the second.
There is a corresponding growth in Theology. Our con
ceptions of sin, and of the dealings of the Divine Being
with sin, must advance with the advance of society from
a barbarous to a refined code of jurisprudence. In a rude
state of society, men are able only to regard evil as a
personal affront to the All-Good. We are at the " avenger
of blood" stage of Theology, and our conceptions of the
mode of satisfaction for sin are accordingly crude. The
Anselm and Grotian conception of the Atonement is an
advance on this primitive view. Men with the Roman
ideas of the administration of law, which, if severe, were
on the whole just, began to think of Christ's death not
so much as a mode of appeasing the wrath of an offended
and angry God on the " stripe for stripe " and " burning for
burning " principle, as on the better ground that the broken
law requires a satisfaction. God, according to Grotius
and the jurists, was the moral Governor of the universe.
He had other orders of moral creatures to consider as well
as man ; and hence, were He to admit the impunity of
sin, it would be to let in a fatal principle of indulgence
into the moral universe subversive of the very principle
of obedience. Hence it is that a satisfaction is demanded
to the broken law. During this second stage we are still
on the same old ground of the in terrorem argument, but
it is regarded as a terror to society at large, and not merely
to the particular offender. Punishment is regarded as
the one deterrent to crime, but the fiction is now brought
in, that as the vindication of the broken law is for the sake
of others, — angels as well as men, — so the penalty may
be borne by another who, in virtue of his Godhead is

Three Progressive Theories. 161
as much above angels as, in virtue of His manhood, He is
below them. Were punishment merely vindictive on the
lex talionis principle, we do not see how we could justify
at all in the court of conscience the doctrine of Atonement
by vicarious suffering. How could a God of justice
inflict stripe for stripe and burning for burning on the
innocent in the stead of the guilty ? This is an objection
to the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice which, on the crude
vindictive theory of personal retribution, is insuperable.
We have never seen it answered. But it must be .said,
in justice to the Grotian doctrine of the Atonement as
a satisfaction, not so much to God as to the law, this
objection does not apply. As the law is impersonal, and
does not look beyond exacting a penalty, so it is con
ceivable that there may be a transfer, not of guilt, but of
punishment. So far the Anselm and Grotian doctrine of Atonement,
which is still the current one in orthodox theology to
this day, is not so immoral as it is made out to be by those
who reject in toto what they call the " blood Theology."
It does not satisfy our deepest spiritual desires, which;
go much farther than mere escape from punishment, but
at least it does not shock them as the older doctrine,
which was held in pre-Anselmic theology. Divines then
held that God was an angry God, the avenger of bloody
in hot pursuit of His victim, and whose wrath only
could be slaked and diverted from man by the satis
faction of His Son's death. Abraham stretching forth his
hand to slay his son was long considered as the true
symbol of the Eternal Father exhausting His infinite
anger against sin by the infinite merit and worth of the
voluntary substitution of His own Son. In this sense,
the Incarnation was represented as giving worth to the
Atonement, and,* indeed, divines up to and including

1 62 Reconciliation with God :
Anselm, in his Cur Deus Homo, taught that the purpose
of the Incarnation was to lead up to the Atonement.
The end is always of more importance than the means :
hence, with perfect consistency, all Theology after Anselm
laid stress on the purpose of the Incarnation only as
giving dignity and worth to the Atonement. The centre
of gravity in the West lay in the second of these truths,
as in the East it lay in the first.
But Theology cannot rest on the merely retributive
doctrine of the Atonement, which is the second stage of
advance, any more than it can on the vindictive, which
is the earliest stage of thought on this subject. As
jurisprudence has led us on to regard crime as culpa, a
misfortune as well as a fault, a disease no less than a
debt, so a corresponding advance has been made in
Theology. The vindictive and retributive stages, alike
in law and Theology, are giving way to the reformatory,
and the question occurs whether our school divinity
is to take back its doctrine of the Atonement and
recast it according to the ruling ideas of the age
which we live in, or to fossilize in old forms and so
be swept away.
To make such a demand a few years ago would have
been, regarded as equivalent to giving up the doctrine of
the Atonement altogether. There is a vicarious element
in the death of Christ which all admit who go beyond
the old exemplary theory now felt to be defective, even
by Unitarians. But what is the true meaning of that
vicarious element ? The vindictive idea of satisfaction to
the person of an angry God is now as good as given up
on all sides. There only remains the retributive theory,
that the spectacle of satisfaction to the broken law was
necessary before a public pardon of the race could be
pronounced in the face of the universe. God, it is said,

Three Progressive Theories. 1 63
must be just even in justifying the ungodly, and how could
this be unless a punishment of some kind were inflicted
which would be in some sense an equivalent \ So in this
way two infinities were set off the one against the other.
The infinite demerit of man was supposed to be purged
by the infinite merit of the Son of God. His Deity gave
worth to the sacrifice, as well as made the substitution
possible. But here it is clear that we are on the ground
of the old jurisprudence, where a jurist of our day would
tell us that this was bad law, and therefore bad Theology.
Owing to Beccaria and Bentham's teaching, punishment
inflicted for example's sake is regarded as no longer
deterrent. Even on utilitarian grounds, such as Bentham
stood at, such retribution is immoral, because it fails of
its effect. This being so, we must look out for some
new ground in the reformatory jurisprudence of our day ;
nor shall we have long to seek for it.
The modern jurist seeks to deal with crime, it is true,
vindictively, but he also aims at producing a deterrent
effect on others as well as a reformatory effect on the
offender. In a word, all that is good and true in the two
lower stages of the repression of crime, are taken up into
and incorporated with the higher. So we should proceed
to reason in Theology. The only complete and adequate
doctrine of the Atonement is one which is comprehensive,
and which exhibits all these aspects: (1) God's infinite
hatred of sin — this is the first stage ; (2) the necessity
arising out of His being the moral Governor of the universe
to find a satisfaction to the broken law — this is the
second ; (3) the reformatory aspect of the Atonement,
which, though the last to be reached experimentally, is in
reality the ground of the two former, and the only sound
basis on which the ethical argument for the Atonement
can be erected at all. Sin in its deeper and truer aspect is

164 Reconciliation with God:
something more than a personal affront to the Divine
Majesty, calling for some avenger of blood, and some
"daysman" to stand between. This wild justice of
revenge might seem an adequate argument to men in the
nomad state of society when the call came to Abraham.
To an Arab Sheikh in the stage of civilisation at which
Job and his friends stood, such a presentation of the
doctrine of the expiation of a blood-feud by the substitu
tion of an unoffending substitute, instead of seeming
immoral, would seem a gracious condescension on the
part of a Being who is El Shaddai, the Absolute and
Irresistible Will of the universe.
So, again, the forensic doctrine which falls in with the
second stage in jurisprudence would seem just and
merciful to a class of minds trained to the fictions of
Roman law, in which even the State only undertook to
punish crime by calling in, in a kind of collusive way,
the person wronged as promoting the suit, which the
State then took out of his hands and prosecuted on its
own account. To the modern mind, the exaction of a
penalty, due not so much to the person wronged as to
that abstraction the law, is clearly a transition from the
old vindictive lex talionis to the purer conception of
wrong as evil, a kind of plague from which society must
rid itself by putting the offender in quarantine. But the
Anselm and Grotian theory of a transfer of punishment as
a certain quantum of suffering from the sinful to a sin
less substitute, labours under a load of moral difficulty
which has never been fairly faced or honestly met with
by argument. It is quite enough to account for the
rejection of the doctrine of Atonement in toto by all who
from Socinus onward have openly broken with Catholic
tradition. The forensic Theology of an Atonement by a
transfer, not so much of guilt as of punishment, has

Three Progressive Theories. 165
always seemed to minds of this order as worse than
immoral. The old ransom theory of the early Church,
by which a redemption price was paid to Satan, who was
regarded as a great slaveowner, was not so immoral as it
seems to us, to whom slavery has long been a doomed
institution. It conveyed the thought of redemption
from bondage into liberty. It had at least a moral
side : an element in which justification passes into
sanctification, which the forensic theory, held with
out break by the orthodox in the Western Church
from Anselm to Grotius, failed to exhibit. Hence,
as we might expect, where the truth was presented in
its most distorted form, there the reaction against it
has been most pronounced. Calvinism has been unfairly
enough described as the parent of Unitarianism ; but it
is certainly a remarkable circumstance that the most
Calvinistic Churches, as those of Geneva and New England,
are also the Churches where the reaction against the
harsh, commutative dogma of Atonement by penalty
inflicted on a substitute has been most marked. But
it is only fair to add, that Lutheranism has also had
its extremes of dogmatism also leading to its reactions
as well as Calvinism. The forensic theory of a double
imputation, i.e. of our sin to a sinless substitute, and
of His righteousness to us on the obedientia activa et
passiva principle of scholastic Lutheranism, has pushed
the theory of Atonement to its farthest limits, and has
also led to a corresponding reaction. It is impossible
not to see, in what is known as the rationalistic move
ment in Germany, an attempt on the part of the
conscience to break the shackles of a Theology which
had ceased to exhibit the character of God in a Light which
the conscience could accept. Pietism, and what was
afterwards derisively known as Pectoralism, or the

1 66 Reconciliation with God :
theologia pectoris, tried to evade the intellectual difficulty
by passing it by. But errors cannot be ignored. They
must be answered and met, and for want of intelligence
in facing the problem and sounding its speculative
difficulties, all based on an obsolete jurisprudence, the
Pietists of our day, whether here or in Germany, have
to bear the weight of an antiquated Theology. It is
no use for the Pietist to plead that he knows nothing
of such phrases as forensic and federal, and that he
contents himself with the language of Scripture, which
is also that of his own experience, that Christ is his
Saviour, and that He has bought us with that precious
blood. The answer is that our experience may be real, but
our intellectual mode of apprehending it false ; and it is
no use forcing the mind through a theological quick-set
hedge by this appeal to experience. The revival hymn,
" I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me,"
indicates well enough this hesitating, undecided state of
mind, in which we force the limping intellect through the
gap. But emotionalism is not argument, and so when it
dies down, as it ultimately does, the old difficulty remains
to be answered as we best can.
Hence we are brought to the third and last stage
of the doctrine of Atonement, in which the difficulty is
fairly faced, and a solution offered which is not out of
harmony with the jurisprudence of our day. We have
seen that society has long since moved away from the
vindictive to the retributive stage of justice, and that
the retributive is seen to contain in it the germ of a
reformatory system. No judge now inflicts punishment
merely in a retaliatory spirit, but as a warning to society
that crime cannot be committed with impunity, and
also as a lesson to the offender himself. In the purely
vindictive treatment of crime there is no lesson at all

Three Progressive Theories. 167
to the wrong- doer. But when the retributive rises
into the reformatory stage, the lesson to the offender
becomes the leading thought of the two. The stage we
are now entering on in the doctrine of the Atonement
corresponds to this third stage of jurisprudence. All
intelligent teachers of Theology now seek to find a
moral basis for the doctrine of the Atonement. They
may use as they do the old phrases about substitution
and satisfaction ; but, as is usually the case with divines,
they slip into the old phrases a new meaning. They
speak of a vicarious Atonement, but they mean a moral
Atonement. Nothing is more significant of the change
than our reluctance to take the language of our old
hymns, and use them in the old dogmatic sense. Such
hymns as " Rock of Ages," or " 0 Christ, what burdens
Thou didst bear," are only the old dogma turned into
verse ; but we shrink from reversing the process, and
turning them back into dogma. The truth is that
Theology, following in the wake of jurisprudence, has
silently, and in most cases unconsciously, on the part of
divines, moved up to a new platform. It is not so much as
a debt, but as a disease, that we now think of sin. Hence
we do not speak of satisfaction or substitution, but of
union with Christ : His death is our death to sin, His
resurrection is our new life to righteousness. Rom. vi.,
not Rom. v., torn out of its connection, is now the
keynote to the best teaching in almost all schools of
Theology ; and the fact being so, we have not to acknow
ledge our debt of gratitude to one section of the
Christian Church more than another for having first led
us on into the deeper aspect of the subject.
But in entering on this we are bound to be consistent,
and as we have more than once pointed out, we must
not put new wine into old bottles. If the vicarious

1 68 Reconciliation with God :
theory of punishment in the person of a substitute is
seen to lead to immoral conclusions, we are bound also
to show the courage of our convictions. If sin be a
disease more even than it is a debt, then we can
see how that Atonement by the death of Christ must
bear a remedial character. Its reformatory aspect is to
take the place of the old retributive dogma. Christ in
His death paying the ransom price of our redemption is
a perfectly unobjectionable metaphor, if we are careful
to drop out of sight any legal right of Satan to his
satisfaction, or compensation for disturbance of right as
a slaveowner. This was the pitfall of mistaken in
genuity into which Origen and certain writers of the
Eastern Church fell. Avoiding this error, the ransom
doctrine of the Atonement, as it is the earliest, may also
be held to be the latest aspect of this truth. But the
one essential element of all is the presentation of this
truth in such a hght that it shall not shock our moral
instincts, and then force us to fall back on a dogma
of divine sovereignty, representing that to be right
with God which would not be right between man and
his fellow. This dreadful perversion of Theology, which
leads us on to contradict conscience, and then silences its
protests by the plea, " Who art thou, O man, that repliest
against God ? " is now abandoned by all intelligent minds.
The minority who use such phrases do so as often as
not in pure ignorance that they are playing fast and
loose with the very elements of all morality, in asking
us to believe that there can be two conceptions of right,
one between God and man, and another between man
and his fellow. Such minds, as a rule, are intellectually
unable to see that they are making the infidelity
which they complain of. Setting faith and reason at
issue in the court of conscience, they then complain of

Three Progressive Theories. 169
reason for demurring to their one-sided deliverance on
the subject.
The conception of sin as disease instead of debt brings
with it a doctrine of the Atonement, not only in harmony
with our modern reformatory code of jurisprudence ; it
also explains the resurrection of Christ as well as His
death. The old dogmatists explain His resurrection in
virtue solely of His Godhead. He had paid the price,
had borne the penalty, and (assuming the descensus ad
Inferos, as Calvin with dreadful consistency held to be a
descent into hell, in place of the hell-deserving body
of the elect) His resurrection then followed in virtue of
His Godhead, and because He could not be holden of
death after paying once for all the ransom price for His
people. But in the New Testament teaching the
resurrection of Christ has much more meaning than
this. It is a part of, and not a mere consequence from,
His redeeming death. Sin being a form of diseased
self-hood, we can see how the right remedy must be in
the death of the old self and the birth of a new and a
better self. The one Ego is to be laid in the grave, and
another Ego raised out of its ashes, as the buried seed-
corn is the germ of the new plant, the same, and yet not
the same, as the old. What could teach this truth like
Christ's painful lingering death of agony on Calvary, and
His resurrection after a three days' sleep in the tomb of
Joseph of Arimathea ? In this aspect, the spiritual and
the historical, the doctrine and the fact, admirably
harmonize and throw light on each other. In this
aspect the Atonement, instead of being a transaction
between two Persons of the Trinity for the benefit of
man, with scarcely any moral aspect whatever, becomes
a deep opening up of the secret of every man's heart.
In this sense the sword that pierces the heart of Christ

170 Reconciliation with God :
reveals the thought of many hearts. With this doctrine
of the Atonement we can meet that person much spoken
against by theologians, the "mere moralist," in the
gate, and answer him on his own ground of intuitive
truth. We can go with him into the court of con
science and appeal for a verdict, whether the aspect
of the death and resurrection of Christ does not
commend itself to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. To conclude this survey of the Atonement, seen in
the light of modern thought, we have traced out that
Theology, hke jurisprudence, must pass through two
stages, the vindictive and the retributive, before it
reaches its present reformatory stage. Our censure, then,
of the Theology of the past begins and ends with the
remark that it is of the past, and that we must leave
the dead to bury their dead. It is no censure to a rude
and barbarous age, which held the wild justice of
revenge, that it regarded sin quite consistently as a
blood -feud passing on, as in Arab tribal life, from
generation to generation. It is no censure, again, to the
age of Grotius that he reasoned with the jurists of that
day that, provided a penalty was exacted as a satisfaction
to the broken law, it was not an immoral conception that
this penalty should be borne by a substitute. The
"ruling ideas" of our age now detect the non-moral
element in this fiction of punishment transferred from the
sinful to the sinless. We have tacitly abandoned this
ground, and there are many — only too many, we regret
to add — who hold in consequence no doctrine of Atone
ment whatever, and simply regard Christ's death as
exemplary, and the highest act of obedience of the
pattern man. But the third and last aspect of sin as
disease, the dementia of self-hood attempting to make

Three Progressive Theories. 171
itself its own centre of being, throws a light on Christ's
death and resurrection which explains it in all its
bearings. We see the dogma in the light of experience,
and also experience in the light of dogma ; and as deep
answers unto deep, we feel that at last we understand
God's nature in the light of human nature, and also
human nature in the light of God, who in Christ is both
God and man.

CHAPTER X.
RULE OE FAITH.
A rule of faith is a necessity for every theological
system. The new school on this subject is bound to be
as definite as the old ; the only difference between them
is as to what is that rule of faith. The phrase, Regula
Fidei, was understood in patristic times of the Creed.
This was the pattern or norm according to which men
moulded their belief. In later times it has been under
stood of the two rival types of authority, according to
which men since the Reformation have governed their
faith. The note has been either "hear the Church" or
"believe in the Book," according as men have leaned
against or towards the Reformation. But in any case,
both sides have agreed that there must be some external
authority in matters of faith, some tribunal whose decision
must be final, and from which there was no appeal.
This is the question which we have here to discuss.
Is there any final authority in matters of faith, or are we
to leave differences in dispute to the private judgment of
each ? There are three tribunals to which very different
degrees of authority are assigned by different kinds of
Christians. To some the Church, to others the Bible,
and to a third and smaller class still, Conscience or the
Inner Light is the only tribunal to which the appeal is
laid. Which of these three is the final court of appeal ?

Rule of Faith. 1 7 3
Or is it conceivable that a compromise might be struck
up, and a kind of co-ordinate authority allowed to all
three ? Just as in a well-balanced Constitution, the
sovereignty or absolute power is in a kind of commission
between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
Whether lex is rex or rex is lex was the matter in dispute,
when seven judges against five decided that ship-money
was lawful in Charles I.'s reign, but in the England of
our day each of the three is supreme in its own depart
ment. It is only by a coup d'dtat, a kind of phrase for
which happily we have no equivalent in the language,
that a law could be passed by one of the three against
the independent jurisdiction of the other two. We
should wish to regard each of these three " rules of faith "
in this light : neither the Church, nor the Bible, nor even
the enlightened Christian conscience, should have dominion
over our faith, while we are to look for direction from all
three. Faith by itself, and rightly understood, is personal
affiance in a living Lord. It is in Him she trusts, and
when she has found Him, she has got beyond all con
ceptions of mere regulative religion. This would have
been a question not so much as mooted in the Christian
commonwealth had it retained the simplicity of its
primitive faith and the purity of its first love. If there
had been no invasion of our liberties by the hierarchical
principle in the first instance, then there would have been
no reaction demanded, as at the Reformation, to set our
faith on a new basis. We should then have been saved
those psychological puzzles on the nature of Inspiration,
and heard nothing of an Infallible Book as a set-off to
an Infallible Church. In the last case of all, the new
doctrine of the Christian Consciousness, which Neander
and the Mediation school set up and invested with a
kind of appellate jurisdiction, would not have been

174 Rule of Faith.
given the prominence which it has gained unless as a
reaction against the discordant cries of rival claimants,
the Bibel Bubel Babel which Luther scoffed at in his day,
and which has been one of the weak points of popular
Protestantism ever since. Bossuet was not the first, as he
certainly will not be the last, of Roman controversialists
to gird at the variations of Protestantism. A hundred
sects all derive with equal confidence their dogmas from
the same source, and as the conclusions which they come
to are in many cases widely different, the only inference
is either that the Book itself gives an uncertain sound,
or that those who take it for their guide have failed to
interpret its obvious meaning. In any case, the taunt is
too well deserved —
" Hic liber est in quo querit sua dogmata quisque
Invenit et pariter, dogmata quisque sua."
This is one of the melancholy results of our long reli
gious wars, and of the standing armies of controversialists
by whom these wars have been waged, that the very con
ception of faith has lost its true spiritual significance.
Instead of being the affiance of a living soul to the
living God, the ring which Christ gives, and which His
Church wears in token of His espousal, faith has been
regarded as the apprehension more or less intellectual of
a complicated system of dogma. We have got to talk of
" the faith " as if the subject-matter of our faith or affiance
had been turned into an object, and as if the bride had
some new object of affiance besides the bridegroom.
"The bride eyes not her garments,
But her dear bridegroom's face ;
I will not gaze on glory,
But on my King of Grace."
This is a paraphrase of one of Rutherford's letters, but
this is not the temper of the dogmatic divine. To him,

Rule of Faith. 175
Ui© ftiith consists ol! a certain body of credenela and
agenda, and these must bo safeguarded in some way, mid
for such a faith there must necessarily bo sonio ngula
Jidd, The question fchon at onoe arises, What is this rulo
of faith, to bo? Is it to be tin Infallible Church or an
Infallible Book ? Before the Ro fori nation, and when tho
monks wore the only copyists, and the only Scriptures in
use were those wliioh oiuno out from tho smiptorium of
Home monastery, it is needless to say that the question
did not admit of dispute, The Church was the witness
and keeper of Holy Writ, and as the Book never passed
out of her keeping, no question oould arise of its inter
pretation. , Biblical oriticism was as yet not born at the
Reformation. However, the same question began to be
asked, timidly at first of the Theology of that day which
is asked of the Theology of our day. The Reformers
were challenged to produce their rule of faith in opposi
tion to an Infallible Church, and they naturally appealed
to an Infallible Book. Strangely enough, it was Chilling-
worth, who in reality was a latitudinariau before his
time, but who had been caught in the meshes of Jesuit
sophistry, who defined tho Protestant rule of faith in
opposition to that of the Roman Ohuroh — " The Bible,
tho religion of Protestants." This was the way in wliioh
the point of difference between the two Churches was
expressed all through the seventeenth century. The
ultimate principle of Romanism, and we must add of
Anglicanism in its more rigid forms, is tradition and the
Ohuroh authority. But if we can no longer hold by an
Infallible Book any more than by an Infallible Ohuroh,
the question ooours, Is there any rule of faith remaining?
And this is the question asked in our day, and by con
sistent thinkers on all sides. We are bound to say,
What is tho ultimate principle of Protestantism ? Has

176 Rule of Faith.
it any rule of faith ? For if none, it must submit to
the taunt of being an invertebrate and low type of
organism, a religion without a Church being nearly as
bad as a Church without a religion in the eyes of all
dogmatists. It was easy to parry this lunge of a two-
handed sword as long as men held the old dogma of
verbal inspiration. They had only to set up its counter-
dogma of an Infallible Book as the end of controversy
to Protestants, as the Infallible Church was the same
ultimate principle to Romanists. But times are changed!
Criticism has compelled all candid minds to modify their
conceptions of what we may call the Scribe theory of the
Scriptures. The books of the Hebrew and Christian
canon contain the " word of God." It is all there, but
in different measure in different parts. Here in history,
there in prophecy, in one book in gnomes of proverbial
philosophy, in another in psalms and spiritual songs
which have been the keynote of all praise in the Church
down to the latest times. The Bible is thus, as a whole,
made up of Law, Prophets, and Psalms, of Gospels and
Epistles. The same that it ever was, it is still the norm
or pattern of faith. No doctrine can be taught, no duty
enforced, unless it be drawn plainly and directly from
the well-head of God's word written.
In this sense the new Theology takes its stand with
the old. But it does so with a difference, and it is this
difference which we have now to indicate. When men
say that we evade the difficulty by not at once setting up
one of the three authorities, the Church, the Bible, or
conscience, as the one supreme tribunal, we answer by
reference to the key of political stability in any well-
ordered Constitution such as ours. There is one point, it
has been said, in which we have an advantage over our
American cousins, that our Constitution, unlike theirs, is

Rule of Faith. i

1 1

nowhere set down on paper. It is none the less definite
for this reason ; on the contrary, it is probably all the more
stable. It is impossible to say, in the case of the British
Constitution, where the sovereignty lies. Each of the three
branches is sovereign within its own limits, and powerless
beyond. With the Legislature lies the exclusive function
of the working of our laws, while to the judicial is con
fined the interpretation of these laws : and lastly, to the
Executive is left the exclusive responsibility of the police
by which these laws are enforced. An Act of Parliament,
for instance, however carefully drafted, lays itself open to
a certain width of construction, and hence to our judges
is left not only much of the interpretation of these
statutes in the first instance, but also a certain discretion
iu the infliction of the penalties which are prescribed by
that Act. Lastly, to the Executive is reserved in certain
extreme cases the right to suspend these Acts altogether,
though it is bound in this case to come to Parliament
for an indemnity. It was not all at once, and without a
sharp dispute and appeal to the sword as to whether its
or rer was sovereign in England, that we came at last to
the happy compromise which, on account of its very
indefiniteness, seems to be the perfection of human
wisdom in the difficult art of government. Strictly
speaking, power belongeth only unto God. It is too
awful a trust to be put, like a naked s^vord, into the
hands of any* man or body of men. As for autocracy in
the popular sense of the term, as absolute lord of others, it
has been truly said, no man can be autocrat vrb? is not
first absolutely lord of Mniself. The man who is above
law becomes, for this reason, not merely a law unto him
self, which in many cases he is incapable of being, but
more than this, he becomes a mere figurehead of the
machine of State. The Pope and the Ciar are the only

178 Rule of Faith.
two potentates who even pretend to be autocrats, and we
see in the case of both that the mos pro lege rules so
strongly in both cases, that even their very wish to
descend from the giddy height and reduce themselves to
the level of ordinary mortals is hindered by the limita
tions of custom. The result is, that those who are the
tyrants of others are the slaves of the very system which
they are supposed to control and not merely administer.
For this reason the best government is one like ours,
in which, by a succession of , fictions, one branch of the
administration is called in to check and control the other.
For instance, in theory, the sovereign directs the march
of every regiment and the course • of every ship in the
service. In effect, this is the act of the Minister of War
or Marine, without whose signature no warrant of the
sovereign would have any force of law. But even this
minister is checked in his turn, for he is accountable at
every step to the two Houses of Parliament, as they also
in the last appeal of all are to the country at large ; and
so power and responsibility with it, like the circle in the
water, by wide spreading at last is dispersed to nought.
This balance of power in the Constitution should teach
us where to look for what we must call the ultimate
principle of authority in matters of faith. It is easier to
say where it is not than where it is. The Church, the
Bible, and the conscience, these we may describe as the
three supports of faith, which rests, like the sacred tripod
of the oracle of Delphi, on these three props. In one age
of the Church's history, one of these supports was the
more prominent, and at a later another. In the Conciliar
age of Church teaching, i.e. from the fourth to the
fourteenth centuries, it was an agreed point that a
General Council was the true solution of theological
differences. Even the Reformers agreed to this, and all

Rule of Faith. 179
that they demurred to was that a bare majority of Italian
priests, meeting on the Italian side of the Alps, and
dominated over by the Bishop of Rome, could presume
to represent Catholic consent.
In the next age, from the Reformation to our day, the
Scriptures, as a whole, have replaced the Church as the
ultimate principle of Protestantism ; but now the new
Theology steps in to vindicate the supremacy of con
science, and to set it up on a kind of pinnacle superior
to Church Councils, and even to the letter of the inspired
Book itself.
At this point, then, we are asked to arbitrate between
the three claimants ; and here we fall back on our illus
tration from civil government, where the best type of
Constitution is the one like our own, where the sovereignty
rests on a kind of balance, as it were : it is in perpetual
cpmmission. Under the guidance of public opinion, the
Imperial Parliament passes an Act, which then becomes
law. The instant that it is law, it passes from the
Legislature to the judicature for interpretation ; and even
the Executive dare not carry out that Act one step beyond
the interpretation laid down for it by the judges sitting
in banco. In matters of faith we should act under the
same threefold restraint. It is pure tyranny to set up
any one absolute tribunal, whether objective or subjective.
We see from Church history how soon religious reactions
pass into formalisms worse than those which they pro
tested against. Within a century we see in three types
of faith the falsehood of extremes. At the Reformation an
Infallible Church was superseded by an Infallible Book.
But the hard literalism of the Calvinistic and Presby
terian party in the middle of the seventeenth century
provoked a reaction in favour of the Inner Light, and of
the extreme subjectivism of conscience. This was the

1 80 Rule of Faith,
doctrine of the early Independents and Seekers, in which
Cromwell, Fox, and Milton, from very different points of
view, may be said to have sought and found common
ground. But soon, only too soon, the fine gold became
dim. Independency became another name for Calvinism,
and as for the Seekers or Friends, they hardened into a
sect which, with many grand qualities, has at last died
down into an insignificant minority, whose archaic dress
and speech is a gentle memento of reUgious strifes long
since composed. All that was vital in the Quakerism
of the past has long since been taken up by other
Churches; and, except their protest against war and
slavery, there is little to recall to us the special truths
which Fox and Barclay so fervently impressed in the
letter-worshipping divines of the seventeenth century.
The lesson which this hasty survey of our variations
of Protestantism during three centuries should teach us
is the danger of trying to fix on any one " rule of faith "
as absolute and indispensable. It is not in the Church,
or in the Bible, or in conscience singly, but in some
combination and composition of all these forces, that we
should look for the true normative principle. When we
fasten it down to one, we let loose on ourselves one of
three forms of spiritual despotism. Faith withers away
under an objective tyranny of Church authority, or of
Bible literalism, or of that worst fanaticism of all, the
promptings of private men, who deliver as oracles the
fancies of their own excited brain.
From all these tyrannies faith must be protected, and
the new Theology should be well on its guard, lest in
escaping the second it does not leave us under the
dominion of the third. The history of Transcendentalism,
as it is called in New England, is a warning how easy
it is to pass out of the old-fashioned, and now out-of-

Rule of Faith. 181
date Theology, of proof texts of the Westminster
Catechism type, into Theologies so wide of the mark,
that it is a stretch of charity to describe them as
lying within the pale of Theology at all. We have no
desire here to turn aside and discuss how much of
Christianity remains in this new absolute religion of the
Theodore Parkers, and others of that school. It is
enough if we indicate where the error lies. It may be
described as the attempt to take the balance of the tripod
of faith off from one of its three supports, and to rest
it on two alone. Conscience and the Bible, or the Bible
and the Church as co-ordinate authorities, these are the
Protestant and the Catholic ways respectively of limiting
the rule of faith, and so of shutting out what may turn out
to be an inconvenient witness. The dogmatic divine
who rules conscience to be out of court, because the
verdict of conscience would not support his assertions
by this act of exclusion, clearly convicts himself of one-
sidedness. It is the same with the mystical school, who
are willing to put the Bible and the conscience together, and
to draw out of them a Theology of their own, in which
antiquity and Catholic consent alike go for nothing.
In opposition to all this one-sidedness of Protestant
Bible Christians on the one hand, and the historical
Churchman on the other, we are bound to lay stress
on the point, that if faith has any rule at all, it must
bear to be judged by the three tests we have referred
to, and not comply merely with two only, to the exclu
sion of the third. But where, it will be asked, is the
Church or communion which has always held up these
three tests in all their co-ordinate importance ? To this
we have to answer that, alas ! we know of none. Such
is the tendency to one-sidedness in Theology more than
anywhere else, that the majority of Christians spend

1 8 2 Rule of Faith.
their strength in banking out one class of error, while
they make no defence, or next to none, against its
opposite. The Protestant securely entrenches himself
behind his Bible and his awakened conscience, and looks
with scorn on those who are seeking support for their
faith in Catholic consent and the unbroken tradition of
antiquity. On the other hand, the Catholic or Church
school of doctors regard it as a kind of profanation to
admit the testimony of conscience into a kind of partner
ship with the Bible, as interpreted by Catholic consent.
This, they say, would be like letting in natural religion
to divide the honours with revealed, and they are ready
to say with Dryden, in his sophistical apostrophe to
reason as subjected to faith —
" If, then, our faith we for our guide admit,
Vain is the farther search for human wit ;
As when the building gains a surer stay,
We take the unuseful scaffolding away ;
Reason by sense no more can understand,
The game is played into another hand. "
The dogmatic school, consistent enough in this, admit
reason only into the outer court of the Gentiles. Its
place is evidential only, and as soon as faith has got
its warrant that the truths most certainly believed among
us are at least not unreasonable, then reason has done
its part. It must presume no more. It is not for
conscience to ask whether certain dogmas commend
themselves to the conscience or not. Dryden, in his
vigorous sledge-hammer style, deals out hard measure
to the Inner Light school —
" To take up half on trust and half -to try,
Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry. "
To a mind like Dryden, who could only conceive of
faith as a kind of composition with Heaven for the sins

Rule of Faith. 183
of a loose life, the less said about calling in the
testimony of conscience the better. Even men of purer
lives than his have failed to see that faith and a pure
conscience are too closely connected to admit of their
being. sundered. It is essential that all three should be
called in as a test of religious truth. The first, or
Church authority, is a check and restraint to novelty.
An opinion which has never been heard of before must
prima facie be wrong. The presumption against it is
at least enormously strong, and before it can be over
come there must be a weight of Scripture proof, and
also of argument on the side of our spiritual instincts,
which makes it strange, to say the least of it, that no
one has ever struck on it in the past. Hence it is, that
within certain limits the argument of prescription is
good in Theology. The quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus, is a question-begging test of truth, if taken
too literally ; but as a way of beckoning off novelties as
too weak to bear argument, and too subjective to stand the
test of whether they have ever occurred to other minds,
to this extent, the appeal to antiquity is legitimate.
We have said enough to point out why all three testi
monies, the written word, the faith of others, and our own
personal convictions, must concur before a truth alleged
to be revealed can be said to rest on its true foundations.
The new Theology in this respect will build higher than
the old if it consents to go down deeper, and to lay
these foundations on a broader basis. We must be pre
pared to take every truth which we hold dear and to lay
it before these three assessors. It must come up, in the
first place, with the letter of Scripture on its side. It
must rest on no forced or fanciful interpretation. It
must not have that suspicious air, of being a house in the
water built on piles. Much of our proof-text Theology

184 Rule of Faith.
will not stand the test of textual criticism. Trinitarian
proof-texts, for instance, out of the Old Testament, or
expressions in which the Sheol of one dispensation is
confounded with the Gehenna of another, — the doctrines
of election and utter corruption picked out of certain
passages in the Romans, where an uncritical use is made
of the argument ad hominem, — these are only a few of
the dulcia vitia of the old school Theology which we
must avoid >if we are to hope to gain acceptance for the
new Theology.
Again, in the next place, we must be careful how we
establish the truth of our convictions, even in foro con-
scientice. Sometimes its verdicts are quite as misleading
as those of Scripture misinterpreted, or of Catholic con
sent, falsely so called, when instead of consent there is a
wide divergence of opinion. It was a great and notable
advance when the best minds of the seventeenth century,
the Chillingworths and Hales, the Mores and Cudworths,
turned from the jangling of dogmatists, Presbyterian and
Prelatists, to seek light and leading in the testimony of
conscience. But the inner light, as understood by
ignorant sectaries, soon became as great a Babel of sounds
without meaning as the old dogmas did, when Pro
testant and Catholic were the only war-cries. There is
little doubt that weariness was the cause of the long
spiritual stupor of last century, the sceculum Deisticum
which reigned without a break till the Moravian and
Wesleyan revival had opened up fresh springs of spiritual
life alike in Germany and England. All three rules of
faith, the Bible, the Church, and the Conscience, had
been singly and separately tried and found wanting, and
then men began to despair of revealed religion, and
settled down to natural as the best substitute for it.
They did not see that the fault lay in themselves, and iu

Rule of Faith. 185
the partial and exclusive way in which they had set up
and used their rule of faith. The Puritans, the Protes
tants, and now the Seekers or Inner Light men, had all
offered a panacea for unbelief ; but the public conscience
turned from them, not because of what they held, but
because of what they refused to hold. Even the broad
divines of that day would be considered narrow, accord
ing to our modern standard of thinking, on account of
the want of a certain sweet reasonableness, that " give
and take" disposition which perhaps was not to be
expected when men had to answer for their faiths with
rack and boot. Milton could not argue with Salmasius
without indulging in fierce invective, which not only
sours the temper, but also dims our sense of truth.
How could the doctrine of the supremacy of conscience,
and the directness of the inner light, commend itself to
the world who heard the doctrine discredited by one class
of divines, and so doubtfully understood by another that
the light which was in them seemed to be darkness.
The Cambridge Platonists were such scholastics in style,
and so steeped in a verbiage which is English only by
courtesy, that it would have been a miracle if they had
been understood by any one who only knew his mother
tongue. These were not the men to replace Bunyan and
Baxter as the lights of the people, and, indeed, they
never dreamed of doing so.
It has been an interesting discovery to the Broad
Church school of our day to find that they have any
ancestors at all in Church history, and are not, as
Napoleon once said with proud humility, "the first of
my family." For this reason the Cambridge Platonists
have been exhumed and set up as progenitors of the
school whose central thought is the supremacy of con
science. But none would have been so much surprised

1 86 Rule of Faith,
as these worthies at the posthumous honours paid them.
They would have shrunk from it, and claimed to be no
more than links in the long chain of mystical divines
reaching down through the Middle Ages, and who affected
an air of philosophic pietism in order to escape the
dreaded charge of heresy, and to shield themselves within
the Church against the tests of dogmatism from which
they shrank.
Here we may conclude. The Church of the future
has no such reasons for reserve, and so we may fear
lessly go on to apply these three tests as our rule of
faith. Is a doctrine scriptural ; does it meet the needs
of the conscience ; and has it any roots in antiquity ?
Building on these foundations, the new Theology may
fearlessly claim to be both new and true ; it is also more
than a philosophy, it is part of the faith once delivered
to the saints.

CHAPTER XI.
INTUITIONAL THEOLOGY AND INTROSPECTIVE.
The old Theology was introspective, the new Theology is
intuitional. The distinction is more than verbal. It is
a difference in their point of departure, and the contrast
widens the farther we pursue it. The purpose of the
present chapter is to point out this contrast, to note the
limitations of the old Theology, and the larger horizons
which open on the new. Both were experimental, i.e.
both went to human nature to find a verification of its
inferences from Scripture. But the old Theology went
to human nature to establish its truth in one single
aspect only; the new is bolder, and lays its appeal to
humanity as a whole. The one sought its foothold in
the conscience, in the sense of sin, a single experience,
and the deepest of all, as we admit, but still only one. The
other takes man as it finds him, and as neither better nor
worse than the average, and appeals to him on the broad
ground of humanity. Homo sum, humani nil alienum
puto — this is its base line of experience. It is not
Pauline, or Augustinian, or Lutheran, in its reading of
the human heart. It rather inclines to say there are
many pedagogues or preceptors preparatory to Christ.
The law of Moses was one of these, and the only one of
the many which we can describe as authorized to lead
up to Christ. But as Christ lifted-up draws all men

1 88 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
unto Him, so there are many schools of thought, and
many pages of human experience, all introductory to the
one Teacher and the one Book. The human heart is a
harp of a thousand strings. The old Theology played,
and played admirably, as we admit, on one single string,
the sense of sin and the need of forgiveness. But a
gospel, to commend itself to all men, must be a gospel
like Christ Himself, in whom there is neither male nor
female, wise or ignorant, bond or free.
The old Theology then was introspective, as we have
seen, the new is intuitional. Let us now proceed to
point out a few of the contrasts between these two
preparations for Christ. By an introspective type of
Theology we mean one which, consulting itself, discovers
in human nature, by the light of the word of God, a
great gap or defect. It finds the presence of something
which, for want of any more definite expression, it names
sin. That deepest of all intuitionalists, the Apostle Paul,
tells us that he found in himself two laws, or rather
two natures, warring within him, a law of obedience
and self-restraint, and a law of disobedience and self-
indulgence, so that he was brought to a stand at
every moment, and felt himself in a state of miserable
inconsistency. If he had been thoroughly bad or
thoroughly good — a Satan of pride, such as Milton has
grandly conceived, or a seraph lost to self-consciousness
in the adoring sense of the holiness of God — he would
have been happy because self-consistent. But his misery
lay in this, that he could not do the things that he
would, and worse than all, that when he would do good
evil was present with him. His best moments were thus
his worst ; his holiest aspirations were those that were
blended with the darkest sense of despair. His thoughts
were harpies, unclean birds, descending on the sacrifice

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 1 89
and defiling with their touch the burnt-offering from which
the sweet smell of incense had already begun to go up.
It is easy to describe all this as morbid, and to
compare Saul of Tarsus to a melancholy Hamlet, wise in
vain, and with the native hue of resolution sicklied over
by a Pharisaism which had turned in on itself, instead of
exhausting itself outwardly, as was the case with others,
his equals in the law. The experiences of Saul of Tarsus
are admittedly the most profound prazparatio Evangelii
that God ever gave His Church, and has been regarded as
the norm or pattern on which several, if not all, the most
distinguished Church teachers have been since moulded.
Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Wesley — these are only four
names, but all of the first rank in Church history, born in
different ages and reared under various conditions, but
who all reflect this same sense of indwelling sin, this
deepened and even morbid introspection of the evils of
their own heart, which in Saul of Tarsus went down into
the dark under-world of inner despair and mental misery,
such as wrung from him the cry, " Wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? "
There is no such experience, it is needless to say, in
Greek and Roman life. Hellenism has nothing like it ; we
may even add that Hebraism, unless in one or two of the
Psalms, never strikes such a dirge as this. The Domine
dirige of one or two of the penitential psalms approaches
it, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah are quite as
plaintive. But then it is Israel as a whole in the
person of its poet and prophet. It is a collective, not a
personal wail; it is the experience of one who, like
Isaiah, typifies some anointed Messenger on whom the
Lord has laid the iniquities of us all. But in the case of
the Apostle Paul, recording his past experiences of this
sense of sin, it is personal and individual. He is alone with

190 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
God and supremely miserable, because he has learned in
his solitary musings that there are two opposite tides of
feeling in his breast; the one bears him on towards
saintship and the other towards self-hood. He loves at
one time what he ought to hate, and hates at another
what he ought to love. He is a puzzle to himself, as
Augustine was in his ever-memorable Confessions, the
strangest chapter of human history after Romans vii. ever
written by human pen. This unique character of the
Apostle Paul's preparation for Christ has dominated
Theology ever since. On the whole for good, but truth
passes into error, as food becomes poison if laid up too
long and left to ferment. We must beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy ; and Paulinism, which
is Pharisaism regenerated, soon passes back into its former
self, when it is drawn out into system, and the part is
taken for the whole. A single experience of the human
heart, even the deepest, must not overshadow all the rest.
One string of the harp, with its plaintive wail of
sorrow, " Oh wretched man that I am," leading up to the
jubilant note, "I thank God through Jesus Christ," must
not drown all others. We must not be selfish in our
very protests against self-hood. God fulfils Himself in
many ways. He is the Father of a large family. There
are other schools of Christ besides the law, and other
pedagogues besides Moses.
The earlier and better apologists all without exception
maintained this. Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata,
recurs to the thought that Plato no less than Moses is a
preparation for Christ. In some respects Platonism is
even a better preparation of the gospel. It singles out
at least one aspect of truth, our longing for an ideal of
goodness and truth in human form, which the law with
its dumb types failed to teach, and which prophetism

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 191
only dimly touched on in the ideal " servant of Jehovah."
The old Theology, as a whole, shut itself in to one single
school of experience, and that we admit the very best of
all, but for that very reason not equally adapted for all.
It was the monkish or rather Old Testament theory of
sanctification by separation over again. " In Jewry is
God known : His name is great in Israel ; " but this truth
becomes a lie if we add that nowhere else can God be
known. To this tendency towards monastic asceticism
monkery in one age of the Church and Puritan asceticism
in another, we owe those frequent reactions, one of which
we are passing through. The age we are in is an age
of anti-Puritanism quite as marked as the Renaissance
was a reaction against the dominant asceticism of the
Church for five centuries. The Renaissance had its
Rabelais laughing at monkery in his easy-chair ; it had
its Bacon to write down scholasticism; its Erasmus to
herald in humanitarianism, even while himself wearing a
monk's hood. Our age, in the same way, has its critics
of the " sweetness and light " school to write down the old
Theology of our popular Protestantism, and to describe
it as Philistinism ; it has its fleshy school of sensualist
poets of the Swinburne type. We rejoice that in our
day we have seen the rise of a new and serious school
of manly thinkers, who can mate secular and spiritual
together, and " so make one music as before '' of the
jarring notes piped and harped by so-called prophets of
the Hebraist and Hellenist type. Our age also, since
one extreme engenders another, has its aesthetic and
spiritualizing poets, in whom all sense of form is lost,
as in Browning's case, in the attempt to convey a thought
too subtle to bear description. These and others are
only a few results of reaction. They are the outcome of
our anti-Puritan age, they are the humanitarians of the

192 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
nineteenth century, and rank among its leading lights,
as Ficinus, and Pico de Mirandola, and other Florentine
friends of the new learning were the heralds of the
coming Reformation, the morning star of a dawn which
had not yet risen in Europe.
We may make too much and also make too little of
what has been called by an unmeaning adjective " broad
Churchism." The epithet "broad" loses its meaning
when we are no longer under the yoke of the narrow
Church, which blindly clings to the past. The contro
versy, happily, out of which the Broad Church school took
its rise, has died down in our day. The muscular Chris
tian no longer calls for a Charles Kingsley to write
poems in praise of athleticism, as if, like cleanliness, it
was next to godliness. We now smile at these extra
vagances. Among the theologians of our day that kind
of apology is no longer needed. The best divine is the
man who sweeps before his own door, and so takes away
the reproach from orthodox circles, that Christians are
anti-humanists. The fair humanities of Greece and Rome
(a phrase so unmeaning to those who know the true
genius of the classics) only gets force, and awakes a
response as the cry of the stifled conscience of humanity.
It is a voice heard in the fifteenth century from the cell
and from the cloister, calling out for fresh air and free
thought. On the nititur in vetitum principle, men who
had been reduced to the sorry diet of breviaries and
missals longed for the forbidden fruit of Homer and
Horace. Four centuries ago there were too many
palimpsests in the libraries of the convents. Too many
parchments had been scribbled over with patristic writ
ings, in many cases not worth the copyist's ink. This
provoked a reaction, and that reaction has been called
the Renaissance or intellectual revival. It was strongest

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 193
in Italy, where the little finger of clericalism was thicker
than its loins elsewhere. But the reaction ran its course
all over Europe, and lasted as long as the necessity for it
existed in the resistance of the clergy to the new light of
classical learning.
We shall understand our own age all the better from
this reference to the Renaissance of a past age. We
are in the full ebb tide of anti-clericalism all over the
world. In the Protestant West we describe it as anti-
Puritanism, and the Rabelais of our day raises the laugh
against those Philistine-Protestants of the old dogmatic
school divines who have turned Pauline Theology into a
new form of spiritual despotism. But reactions are only
short-lived. They have no root in themselves. They
are parasites, and wither with the old tree in whose hollow
bole they take root, while they live on its decay. The
time has come for something better than reaction. The
age calls out for something not merely negative but
positive. It asks for a conviction instead of the east
wind of empty criticism. It has begun to weary of those
sneers at the Philistine-Protestant which is the entire
stock-in-trade as a theological critic of that "polished
icicle," the author of St. Paul and Protestantism. Our
endeavour then should be, before touching a stone of the
old Theology, to prepare a home for the people in a new
Theology which shall be quite as home-like and far more
stable. The demolishers of old rookeries are properly
restrained by the Legislature from beginning their work
as demolishers. They may not clear a whole quarter of
a town at a time, and so make a solitude and call it
peace. The same restraint should be put on divines who see
the defects of the old, and are not prepared to offer the
people something better instead. Of God it is said in
N

1 94 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
the psalm, " His desire is towards life," as Luther's
version well puts it, " Sein Lust ist gegen Leben." In
God all is positive, and even the privative and punitive
aspects of His dealings with men is a preparation for
a better and a new order of things. For this reason we
have called the Theology of the future " Intuitional,"
and our antithesis with " Introspective '' is more than a
play on sound. It is as real in its way as the contrast
of a diphthong and vowel of the Homoousion and
Homoiousion of Nicene times, at which Gibbon flings
a solemn sneer. The mistake of the " Introspective "
was, that it was too limited and partial. It regarded
human nature under a single aspect, the sense of sin,
and made this the single school of preparation for Christ.
It was deeply and devoutly BibUcal, and for aU that
it taught we cannot be too thankful. But if its strength
grew out of its very limitation, so also this was the
cause of its weakness. It provoked a reaction which we
are at present suffering from. Some of these reactions,
such as " Broad Churchism," " Muscular Christianity," and
such-like newspaper phrases, show how short-lived the
reaction is in itself; and unless something better is
provided, the age will drift on into Agnostic indifference.
In the case of many persons trained in strict evangelical
piety of the hereditary type, this has unhappily occurred,
casting a slur, in this way, on the Pietism which led to
such sorry results.
What, then, are we to do 1 To go back is impossible.
Of all reactions, the reaction against a reaction is the
most hopeless. This is the midsummer madness of men
who have no philosophical outlook, and who lack even
common sense to understand the temper of the age
they live in. All who remember its rise know what
the Oxford movement has resulted in : in the same way

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 195
the attempt to call up from the dead the old Puritanism
would have results quite as melancholy. A sturdy soul
here and there among the old leaders of the experimental
school of Theology, known as evangelical, may stand like
Cato, brought to bay at TJtica, and prepared to die,
sword in hand, against a world in arms. This is magnifi
cent, but it is not war. We must do better than this,
if we do not wish to be cut to pieces ourselves, to
see our camp taken, and our cause left to the survivors —
two or three at most — of a forlorn hope.
The positive ground, then, that we take up is this,
that our intuitions, if truly sounded, are aU alike
spiritual, and lead up to God. That men do not in
terpret their intuitions aright, is no objection against
their existence. Of the wicked it is said, " God is not
in all his thoughts ; " but what of that ? This only con
vinces us the more that such men are the wicked. This is
part of the definition of the man who first walks, then
stands, and lastly sits in the seat of the scornful. Turn
ing then from those who are moral monsters, and who
are spiritual only in the sense that men may have eyes
and see not, and ears and hear not, we lay our appeal
before mankind at large. Take any crowd of men and
women streaming along the streets to their business and
pleasure, a thousand taken in this way at random out
of the many thousands which fill our great cities, and
who throng our churches on one day of the week, and
our theatres on another. It is to such that we lodge
our appeal, and it is from their response that we attempt
to construct what we call the Theology of intuition.
The answer of that crowd is that they are men and
women with a multitude of wants, a few wishes, more
or less articulately felt, and a will, the centre of their
nature, the citadel of their character. This will or character

1 96 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
beats so feebly, that, like the heart, the pulse of the machine
of Ufe, they can only feel its beating now and then, at
a moment of deep sorrow or joy. Now, this " still, sad
music of humanity," as a whole, has a meaning, or ought
to have, for others beside poets. Preachers, if they were
prophets at all, should know who touched them, as was
once said in taunt, but untruly, to One who knows
only too tenderly who touches Him. We take man as
a whole then, and sound his intuitions, holding, as we
do, that the Gospel is the divine response to all those
needs. The only stipulation which we make is that
these intuitions must be met in their true order. It
would be of no use to appeal to men's intuitions, if in
answer to this demand for the deepest desire of their
soul they only say that they are conscious of a number
of wants mostly of the animal type, "What shall we
eat ? what shall we drink ? wherewithal shall we be
clothed ? " The divine Teacher, with all His tenderness,
rebuked His disciples for beginning at this the wrong end
of human nature, and while He fed five thousand, He also
warned us to seek first the kingdom of heaven and His
righteousness. Reversing the rule of taking care of the
pence and the pounds will take care of themselves, He
bids us take care of the one thing needful. He calls for
a law of proportion in life : our temporal interests are to
claim a certain amount of our thought ; but our eternal
interests are those which call for our best thoughts, and
which, like God's law, we are to meditate on day and
night. The intuitional Theology, then, as much as the intro
spective, calls on us to begin at the right end. We may
dismiss our wants, or rather postpone their consideration :
but we have now to ask what place are we to give to our
wishes ? Here we are on more debateable ground. Here

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 197
we are at the meeting-point between the animal and the
spiritual in man, and here, accordingly, it is that too
many men make provision for the flesh (the irpovoia
<rapKo<s, an antithesis lost in the English), which lies at
the very root of evil in man. If our wants are a swarm
as of ants, our wishes are a cloud as of flies, little, winged,
buzzing, stinging things ; they goad us on to concu
piscence in all directions. We must bring our wishes
as well as our wants into subjection to some principle
more central and near the seat of government in man.
This is the will or conscience, God's masterpiece, if we
may use such a phrase of comparison without irrever
ence. No want ever rises or can rise in the lower parts of
our nature, no wish ever flit out of the place where fancy
is bred, whether in the heart or in the head, but this
want or this wish must come up into the presence of the
will to be stamped with the government stamp before it
is issued as a fiat of our nature. Hence it is that we
are what we will. " We are what we eat," says the cynic,
who wishes to laugh at himself — Man ist was man isst.
" We are what we wish when we put on our wishing cap,"
says the idealist, who only half believes his own state
ment, and never seriously acts on it unless he is on the
road to Bedlam. But in opposition to these false accounts
of human nature, which place the centre or governing
principle of man either in our bodily desires or our intel
lectual fancies, it is true that the conscience is the rightful
lord, and that " we are what we will to be." The moralists,
with Kant at their head, have laid down this supremacy
of will, and the only objection to their account of the
matter is felt as we read the first page of Kant's Ethics.
He is quite unanswerable in the thesis with which he
sets out, that there is only one real, intrinsic, and in
alienable good in the world, which is a good will. But

198 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
having correctly described the central governing and root
principle of our being, he leaves us in the dark as to how
the supremacy of the will over the lower nature is to be
asserted and made good. It is here that all moralists
hold the word of promise to our lips, and cheat us in the
deed. They tell us what the governing principle ought
to be, but they do not point out how it is to make good
its rule. The wiU, in fact, may be compared to a child-
king with a crown on his baby brow. He reigns, but he
is unable to govern, and, as we see from the examples
only too common in history, he is the prey of favourites.
There is a council of regency, and at its head a queen-
mother, who, from the nature of the case, is the worst of
aU advisers, as she is usually herself the slave of her con
fessor or her court favourite. The result of this prolonged
minority is that " two authorities are up, neither supreme,"
and a state of society results like that which led to the
wars of the Roses in England, or of the Fronde in France.
Our wills, in a word, are ours, but we know not how.
The line goes on truly to add, " our wills are ours to make
them Thine." This is the defect in the Kantian, as in all
Stoical Ethics, which leaves them so barren of teaching
to mankind. As far as they go they convey a great
truth, or rather a protest against a great lie. They re
pudiate the brutal theory —
" I bow to ne'er a god except myself,
And to my belly, first of deities,
To eat and drink your daily food and drink."
It is not in his wants or wishes in which the true centre
of manhood lies; it is in the noumenal as opposed to
the phenomenal life. But the abstract question of the
rightful supremacy of will is not enough. We have to
set it up as ruler de facto, not merely de jure. We

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 199
have to see how we can use conscience as the voice
within, the oracle of God in every man's breast, and to
get from it some decisive answer as to the true needs of
man. Can we lay our appeal to every man's conscience,
and say, with the saintly Augustine, Fecisti nos tibi, et cor
irrequietum. semper, donee requiescat in te — Thou hast
made us for Thyself, and the heart is restless till it
rests in Thee. The usual answer to this difficulty of the
Theology of intuition is that we must appeal from PhiUp
drunk to Philip sober, i.e. from the careless and sense-
loving mass of mankind to those who walk by faith and
not by sight, whose eyes are turned away from beholding
vanity, and whose ears are purged from the Babel notes
of a godless age.
But what is this but to admit that in the case of the
majority these intuitions out of which a spiritual religion
is to be built up are virtuaUy non-existent. De non
apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. For our
part, we must feel that if we have to concede as much as
this, that which remains is not worth standing out for.
We may as well, in that case, go back to the position of
the old Theology, that man is so far bUnded by the Fall
that we may as well give up the claim for there being
any inner light at all left.
But is it so ? " Our wiUs are ours." Here at least is
a fact, whether we go on or not to say, " to make them
Thine." Now, if our wills are ours in the sense that not
one want can stir in the lower, or one wish flutter in the
upper chambers of the soul without a consent more or
less expUcit of the will, what is this but to admit the
very point in question ? " Our wills are ours ; " we are
lords of ourselves. Must we not go on with Byron to
describe this as a " heritage of woe " ? None of us can
feel that we are ends in ourselves. All our lower faculties

200 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
are means to an end, which is self-control and self-culture ;
but none, not even Kant or Goethe, the one the Stoic of the
Will and the other the Stoic of the InteUect, can pretend
that culture and self-control is our final end. This self-
command, in its turn, must be the means to some higher
end. We cannot conceal from ourselves that we must
die. This is the great arbiter in such discussions, and
without some outlook into eternity what is culture but
laborious trifling, and what is seff-control but turning
the crank of a treadmill in a prison of despair ? If in
this life only we have hope, we are one and all, prnlo-
sophers as weU as Christians, of all men most miserable.
Our intuitions, then, push us on in this way tiU we
reach the shore of time, where God and eternity Ue
before us. Our wants lead up to our wishes, and our
wishes to our wills, where we touch the true point where
the phenomenal passes into the spiritual. At this point
our intuitions force us to some conclusion with regard to
God and eternity. Here the index on the dial points to
the unseen and unknown, and here we may break off and
make the great decision a happy or a fatal one, in propor
tion as we elect to hold, either that God is to be
known in Christ or that He is unknowable. Looked at
from without, and by the aid of phenomena only, all
that the Agnostic says is true. But is this a complete
induction ? Are there not spiritual instincts in us ? Are
there not voices in the night, whispers of conscience and
echoes from the presence chamber which we dare not
slight on our peril ?
It is in proportion as men make this induction that
they reach the ground on which a spiritual religion is
conceivable. It is here that we ask the question to
which revelation at once provides us with an answer — " If
any man wiU do my will, he shaU know of the doctrine."

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 201
It is in the ground of an honest and good heart that we
must seek the true seed-plot of all our spiritual intuitions.
Faith and conscience are so related, that to slight the
conscience, which is the compass, as passion is the sail
of the soul, is to make shipwreck of faith. In the
Theology of intuition, then, we begin by consulting our
nature aright, and rising from the outer to the inner,
from our wants to our wishes, and again from our
wishes to the will, we at last reach the point where our
wills, which are ours, lead us up to God. The true
function of the will is to exert control over all the lower
nature, and to yield submission to that which is above
nature. This craving of the will to enforce submission
in one direction and to yield it in another direction,
seems to point to the revelation of a God who is the
Father of our spirits as well as the Redeemer of our
souls from the evil of sin, and who is also the Sanctifier
of the whole nature, body, soul, and spirit.
Is it too much then to say that our intuitions, if truly
consulted, would lead us on step by step into every truth
of Theology which, regarded singly and dogmatically, seem
to be so remote from the range of our nature ? The old
introspective Theology, true as far as it went, found in
fallen human nature the sense of sin and the correspond
ing need of a Saviour. This was enough for it, as it
certainly is enough to bring comfort and peace to any
awakened and contrite soul. " I am a great sinner, but
Jesus is a great Saviour " — this is a short creed, but it is
a saving one, and any soul cannot be far wrong who can
make this confession of faith. But consciousness rightly
consulted has other deliverances besides this sense of
defect within, which we call sin. It has its own ideals.
It longs for perfection, it desires the open vision of God,
and is dissatisfied until it can reach a condition of being

202 Intuitional Theology and Introspective.
in which every organ of our nature may develop itself to
its utmost perfection. These are intuitions after God,
holiness and heaven, all of which are met in the Christian
revelation. The promise, moreover, of the Comforter exactly meets
the case of our spiritual intuitions and their gradual
unfolding. It is said that He shall guide us step by
step into the whole truth. It is more than the leading
of a kindly Ught, whether without or within — whether of
conscience or the written word. The promise of the
Comforter impUes the presence of some one who is a
Person — of one who is to stand to us in the same relation
in which Christ stood to His disciples during the days of
His flesh, when He guided them by His eye, taught them
by His mouth, and led them by the hand of example.
Such is the office which the Holy Ghost is said to dis
charge in this dispensation. He is, moreover, able to
give us an assurance that we may know aU things : and
when we ask what this inward witness of the Spirit is,
the answer is very simple. Here it is that intuitional
Theology is on its true ground. Here we take our stand
on experience, which, however strange it may seem, is so
attested by the language of all beUevers that the dog
matist and the doubter, who are often strangely akin to
each other, cannot dislodge us from it by the mere objec
tion that it is foreign to bim The witness of the Spirit is
the same as that inner Ught about which so much confusion
has arisen from inattention to the truth that Christianity
is the reUgion of the enUghtened conscience. Christ is
the answer to aU our spiritual intuitions or needs. The
strength of the Christian evidence Ues, then, in this sense
of correspondence between the subjective and the objec
tive A mere historical religion on the one hand is a
caput mortuum ; on the other hand, these yearnings of

Intuitional Theology and Introspective. 203
soul which we call intuitions are CToaninss which cannot
be uttered, until He who searcheth the heart and makes
intercession for us, according to the wiU of God, descends
and takes up His abode in our hearts. This indwelling
of the Holy Ghost is the consummation of all our internal
training, as it is of aU that Christ came to do and suffer
in the flesh. Here objective and subjective meet, and <
unless our intuitional Theology leads up to this, it is
Uke a labyrinth without a clue, a path with no outlet,
but ending in a bUnd alley. There is too much of
this mock spiritualism in our day, which, as one extreme
produces another, took its rise in opposition to the
dogmatic or mere historical school of Christianity, and
is, the one as much as the other, a defective draft of the
whole truth. To paraphrase a celebrated thought of
Pascal, we should say that it is not good to teach man
that he is a spiritual being, without also teaching him the
way by which those intuitions are met and directed to
Christ as their true goal and aim. Again, it is not good
to teU him of Christ, without pointing out how He is the
true supply of all the needs of our nature. It is a worse
thing still to withhold the knowledge of both these truths
from us, but it is the best of aU teaching to teach them
in their direct and indissoluble connection. This is the
aim of the intuitional Theology of the future, and if we
have succeeded in showing where the old Theology of
introspection was partial and this is perfect, we shall
perhaps have succeeded in making good our case for
suggesting a Theology of the future as an advance on
that of the past The criterion of a new truth is
that it is at once new, and yet not new. This St. John
"lances at when he reminds his followers that the com-
mandment which he gave them was the old command
ment which was from the beginning, and yet which was

204 Intuitional TJuology and Introspective.
new in them, as every old truth is when it comes back to
us with fresh sanctions, as the law of Sinai itself was a
new law when taught with the better promises of the
Sermon on the Mount. This is aU that we mean by the
contrast between introspective and intuitional Theology.
The one consults human nature under one single aspect,
but the other under every. The one takes the experience
of one apostle, PauL the other of aU the apostles. The
one takes conscience as it is in some, the other as it is
in aU men, unless by rejecting conscience they quench
the Ught that is in them, and then how great is that
darkness .'

CHAPTER XII.
ON LIFE A STATE OF PROBATION.
That life is a state of probation, and that character once
formed here is formed and fixed for eternity, this is the
assumption of the popular Theology which we have now
to criticize. The problem presents itself to us, as every
other problem in Theology, in a mixed form. It is
partly a spiritual intuition which lies at the basis of all
our moral consciousness, but also partly a formula of
scholastic Theology which the moral sense only imper
fectly vouches for, and which is based in the main on
certain slender and arbitrary inferences from the letter of
Scripture. That there is some probation in life no one
will dispute who admits that character, if at aU, is formed
here ; but that Ufe as a whole is a state of probation
seems too wide an inference from the facts of the case as
vouched for by the joint Ught of consciousness and Scrip
ture. To disentangle what is primitive from what is
factitious in this doctrine of probation, is the object of
this chapter. We do not turn aside here to discuss any
of the many pre-existence theories of life which, under
one disguise or another, are profoundly modifying the
course of speculation in the West. It would seem as if
the East had for the first time in history changed sides
with the West, and instead of passively resisting our
ideas had in its turn become aggressive. Buddhism, as

206 On Life a State of Probation.
if retaliating on Christianity for having broken in on her
dream of Quietism, has apparently become miUtant. We
have molested the ancient soUtary reign of these moping
owls of opinions, pre-existence, and the Buddhist ideal of
life : and now this sad day-dream of aU existence being
an evil, and that death is better than Ufe, is invading us
in return for our disturbing its slumbers.
This mode of explaining the evU of present existence
by throwing back the mystery into the pre-conscious
past is gaining ground in the West, partly because it is
an old theory presented in a new dress, and as such
attractive to a large class of minds on the look-out for any
new aspect of the burden of Ufe : but principaUy because
it is a reaction against the hard and clear-cut dogma of
Western thought that Ufe is a state of probation, and that
we carry with us the entire load of responsibiUty for our
conduct in Ufe into the eternal world. Individualism,
based on the Cartesian dogma that each human being is a
separate " soul," has long been regarded as the basis of aU
sound thinking on the subject of Theology, and as such
was not so much as to be questioned. Now the ground
is opening aU at once under our feet, and instead of
Individualism we are catching glimpses of another truth —
viz. the solidarity of the race and of coUective conscious
ness. Some would push this as far as the Buddhist
conception of pre-existence. They see in this the only
explanation of the miseries of life ; it accounts to them for
that law of vanity to which the creature is now subject.
Others see in physical evil only the shadow projected by
good : it is the striving after an ideal which we faU to
attain to at first, and in failing fall into a lower level. AU
evil is from this point of view only imperfection, " the desire
of the moth for the star, of the dawn for the morrow, — the
striving for something afar from the scene of its sorrow."

On Life a State of Probation. 207
We do not mean here to discuss these bypaths bv
which men turn aside from the old Theology. The dis
tinct and clear-cut assertion of individuality on our part
seems to be a correlative of our belief in a personal God.
One God — one separate soul in each human unit, and
one term of existence by which to determine its final
relation to God — these may be said to be the "Three
Unities " of aU Christian thinking on this subject. We
should be the last to question these ; but if they are to be
upheld in their integrity as fundamental truths on which
Theology is to rest, they must be cleared from certain
misconceptions which have gathered around them as the
result of that mixture of iron and clay which we call
modern Theology.
The probation theory of life stands out in marked
contrast with the Buddhist theory of pre-existence. It
is clear that if the former be true, the latter is false. It
is needless to add that we take our stand with the
former. But with a watchful enemy at our gate, and
while many who have broken with the Christian tradition
in aU its forms are proclaiming that the Buddhist account
of the entrance of evil into the world is more logical and
self-consistent than the Christian, it behoves us to see
that we are not surprised and our position stormed. The
old truth must be restated, and one of its most startling
inconsistencies cleared up, if Christian Theism is to hold
its ground against Pantheism and Pessimism, the two
forms of Oriental thought which are now arraved
against it.
In the first place, how are we to reconcUe extreme
IndividuaUsm with the doctrine of original sin ? If each
soul came into the world like a sheet of white paper on
which, as Locke maintained, each of us in Ufe is able to
write what he pleases, and to make his own character as

208 On Life a State of Probation.
we should say, setting it down in his own handwriting,
then this account of Ufe would be self-consistent. This
is the logical outcome of Cartesianism. But the white
sheet of paper theory is far too shallow to account for the
facts of the case. Not only are there mystic traces of
heredity in each of us by which character is, as it were,
formed for us beforehand by the character and conduct of
our parents, but also there is a strange defect in us all,
and a bias to self or passionate impulse (the opyr/ of SS.),
by which we show what is caUed by the apostle the
" carnal mind." Whether we describe this inherited bias
to evil as original sin or not, whether we hold it to be
a birth taint inherited from our first father Adam or a
defect of grace, the penal consequence of his original lapse,
it comes to the same thing. The fact is the same, what
ever our explanation of it may be. There is undeniably
something which bars us from saying that we enter life
as a whole as a state of probation.
New Theology has to deal with the same problem in
our day as the old Theology had. It has to face the
Sphinx and answer its riddle, it has to explain how life
can be a state of probation in face of that fault and cor
ruption of our nature that we call original sin. It is
clear that the more rigidly we hold to this " vitium et
depravatio " doctrine of the Ninth Article of the English
Church, in which Calvinist and Lutheran are agreed, the
less we can consistently admit that we enter life in a
state of moral equUibrium, and therefore able to meet the
test of the formation of character such as the probation
theory of life supposes. What we put into the one
dogma we must take from the other. The Tridentine
Theology is more consistent in this than the Reformed.
It holds with Aquinas and the scholastics, that Adam was
originally created mortal, but had the superadded gift of

On Life a State of Probation. 209
immortality. Hence the result of the Fall was simply a
withdrawal of certain spiritual gifts, and a reduction of
man to the state in which he would have been in without
them. Bellarmine thus enunciates this theory : " The
state of man after the fall of Adam differs from the state
of Adam in what was purely natural to him (in puris
naturalibus) no more than a man who is stripped differs
from a naked man." From this point of view original sin
is not a positive quality or an inherent evil disposition,
but simply an absence of the original righteousness.
Thus the scholastic account of original sin, which is
semi-Pelagian, escapes the dilemma into which the more
rigorous Augustinianism of the Reformers is involved.
Those who hold that original sin is something positive,
and not merely privative, and who go as far as the
Westminster Confession in holding the imputation of
the actual guilt of Adam's transgression to his posterity,
are led to this contradiction. They advance and retract
at the same time the doctrine of man's responsibility.
They hold that life is a state of probation — a preparation
for a higher life ; and yet, in any serious sense of the
term, it is no probation at all, since the race is judged
and condemned already. The whole human family is
alike, a massa perditionis ; they are aU alike hell-deserv
ing sinners. The covenant of works, as it used to be
called, was made with our first parent. In him the race
stood or fell germinally, and when he fell, " the guUt
of their sin was imputed (so the Scotch Catechism words
it), and the same death in sin and corrupted nature
conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by
ordinary generation."
Now the old Theology was not able to reconcile this
contradiction between an imputation of original sin and
the significance of Ufe as a place of probation. No
0

210 On Life a State of Probation.
rigorous thinker has ever attempted to throw a bridge
over the abyss which rolls between these two contradic
tory statements of original sin and man's responsibUity
for the formation of character. The popular Theology
has loosely held the two by oscillating between Arminian
and Calvinist, one class of divines leaning to the Augus
tinian side and the other to the Pelagian. The school
men, as we have seen with Aquinas, boldly cut the knot
by teaching a semi-Pelagian view of the FaU, in which
human nature only lost what we may describe as its
theological gifts or graces, which it recovers in baptism.
But the Reformers, who swept this figment of baptismal
grace with its donum supernaturale away, had to fall
back on a theory of the positive as well as privative
character of original sin, and so the dilemma started up
afresh. Either we have to hold a strict theory of man's
utter ruin, and then probation becomes an unmeaning
term, or we must hold by the significance of life as a
state of probation, and then we must admit to the full
man's natural abUity to do good and evil. As a matter
of fact, this difficulty has never been bridged over, and
never can be. Divines have had to stand on one side
of the ravine or the other with an impassable gulf
between. The first generation after the Reformers, with
some exceptions, all took the view of man's utter ruin,
and in this case with perfect consistency, little or
nothing is said of life being a state of probation. But
after the middle of the seventeenth century, and as the
result of the Arminian controversy in Holland, a new
departure was taken, and Theology began to employ the
language of phUosophy. Life was described as a state
of probation, and long before the Deistic controversy had
culminated and died down in the compromise to which
Bishop Butler lent the authority of his great name, it

On Life a State cf Probation, 211
may be said that the old Augustinianism was as good as
extinct even in orthodox circles.
As yet, as we have seen, no rational solution of this
contradiction has been proposed by the old Theology ;
and we have now to ascertain whether the new Theology
is able to solve the Sphinx riddle. The solution which
we venture to offer is as follows. We should begin by
discarding alike the two contradictory and naturally
exclusive phrases of the imputation of Adam's guilt to
his posterity, and of life being a state of probation. These
are irreconcilable opposites ; and since it is feeble to com
promise them by alternately paring down the one in order
to hold the other, we propose impartially to reject both,
and 10 set up in their stead the expression which since
Lessing's rime has become current, of the education of
the human race. We do not deny that tins theory, like
the other, is inadequate to all the facts of the case.
since the education of the race is not carried on at
present under the same favourable conditions as if
Adam had stood in his original innocence. But even the
phrase the Fall, which is not a scriptural term, but only
an inference from certain Pauline reasonings on the
headship of the two Adams, must not have more mean
ing forced into it than it can fairly bear. That which
in one aspect was a fall on Adam's part, in another sense
may be described as a rise. He was tested, it is true,
and failed to meet the test ; and so far his narore w?.s
impaired for himself and all his posterity. But, on the
other hand, by his very disobedience he learned sorae-
tbiag. In a sense it was true, " Te sh£l be as gods,
knowing good and evil" Had he not asserted his selr-
wflL and made the painful but -wholesome discovery by
which good comes our of evil, taat his self-hood, vrrdch
seeraed so strong, was weak without grace, the deeper

2 1 2 On Life a State of Probation.
lesson of submission to the divine will would never have
boon learned at. all. There is a sense in which we must
Ml before we can rise. Wo must, rebel and resist
before we learn to submit Kvory little child repeats
Adam's transgression when it sets up its puny will
against tho command of its parent. Who has not
watched tho tirst struggles of a child, learning only
by defeat which is tho stronger of tho two i Wo
are half pleased at the arch look of doliaueo ; and instead
of taking it as a dangerous mark of infant depravity, wo
like our two-year-old darling all tho more when it tries
how " naughty " it can bo. Is there not a deep under
tone of satisfaction and motherly prido in tho budding
power of will, when the mother tells us how stubborn
and like a bull calf her young boy has boon, and how
it has cried itself to sleep after its tirst. battle for the
mastery with its mother or nurse? In this there is ft
truer picture of our lirst father's transgression when in
his spiritual infancy, than on that strange and distorted
account of tho Fall of the lator Theology. Its theory
of a probation undertaken for his posterity by our
representative iu tho garden of Kdon-it.s imputation
of Adam's guilt to his innocent offspring, and lastly,
its dark picture o\' hell opened wide, and heaven closed
by man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that for
bidden tree, of which lUillon .sang, arc all additions
to tho narrative. Later divines have gone on to pile
up the horror by representing, as South did, Adam as
a kind ol' miracle of foreknowledge, and able to forecast
and calculate the consequences to himself and all his
unborn posterity us lie hung (>Vor tho abyss which
opened on the lirst taste of that forbidden fruit. It is not
in the least surprising that Milton, who had reasoned
out this federal Theology to its last conclusions, should in

Oh Life a State of Probation. ^13
later years have rejected it altogether, and in rejecting
Augustinianism have ended in embracing Arianism.
There was no r»« media open to him, as to us. between
Deism and the old Theology, and so. unable to support
the burden of the old Theology, he sank back into Deism.
This need not be the fate of the new Theology, to whom
the education theory of the human race is now no
novelty. The old probation theory, with its many in
consistencies and contradictions, was an attempt weU-
meant and true, as far as it went, to explain the deep
significance of Ufe. Anything was better than the
despair which would settle over the soul if life was but a
poor player, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It is our last plank ; and to save the cause of moraUty
alike and religion, we must cling to the continuity of
character in some shape or other. The eternal law, that
as a man sows so he reaps, must be asserted at aU hazards,
and better a thousandfold the harshest form of the
assertion than a dreary descent to some Oriental form
of pessimistic Pantheism. We may demur to Dr.
Pusey's extreme statement, that the fear of heU has
filled heaven ; but a doctrine of heavens and hells as
articulate, even in its matter-of-fact minuteness, as that
of Swedenborg, is infinitely better than this new senti
mental UniversaUsin. behind which lies a Pantheism
in which aU distinctions of character and aU colours of
good and evil are lost. For this reason much may be
said to explain the growth of the old probation doctrine
out of the union of Cartesian and Calvinist ideas.
Indeed, were it not for the harshness with which it was
held as a dogma by those who deny an intermediate
state, and the possibility of any fresh discipline there, we
might have passed it by as an archaic mode of expressing
an important truth

214 On Life a State of Probation.
But the exigencies of modern controversy compel us
to replace an expression inadequate to meet the better
thoughts of our age with one which is. Probation, in the
first place, is a term which, strictly speaking, applies to
the testing of metals, but which is scarcely adequate to
express our conception of the way in which the Divine
Being elicits the eternal contrasts between 'good and evil.
He may put a character to the test, as He is said to
tempt Abraham. Even Christ Himself had to pass
through the same ordeal at the time of His entering on
the fuU consciousness of His Messiahship. It is only by
passing a character through the fire that the dross can be
separated from the true metal. In this sense probation
is a condition of our reaching a higher stage of moral
exceUence ; but we make a great mistake if we make
the condition into the cause. Probation, strictly speaking,
is only a part, not the whole of the discipline of life.
It is a part precisely as examinations are an important
part of school education, but only a part. The same
relation that examinations at the end of school term bear
to the daily teaching of classes, that our probation by
God at certain crises of our being is to the whole discipline
of life. Unfortunately for truth, the popular Theology
has taken the part for the whole ; a mere phase of our
being here is taken for its entire orbit from birth to death.
The discipline of life is a term both tender and true. It
does not belie our conceptions of God as a Father. The
God whom we adore does not bring beings into the world
to mock them with a false sense of responsibility. He
does not require of them a perfection impossible of
attainment, because they enter Ufe weighed down under
the curse and condemnation of their first parent,
which it is vain to hope they can escape the con
sequences of. To maintain at one moment the dogma

On Life a State of Probation. 2 1 5
of an inherited curse and bondage to sin, and then to
turn round nnd teach that men are placed hero in a
state of probation, this is one of those contradictions of
dogma which shows that, in many cases, divines neither
understand what thoy say nor whereof they affirm.
It explains the use of dogma, which is not so much to
assort what is true uh to guard against what is supposed
to be error. But divines forget that in the mystery of
iniquity which sits in the temple of God the parent of
all heresies is the lie for the truth; tho false, because
distorted account of God, as the austere man reaping
where ho has not sown, and gathering where he has not
strewn. Rejecting the phrase "probation," with the wrong asso
ciations whicli it connotes, let us turn to the other phrase,
the education of mankind. We see, in the first place,
how it lits in with our truest conceptions of the Father
hood of God. From tho birth to the training of a child
the.ro is but a single .step. The parental instinct which
is beforehand with us, and begins with our birth, grows
also with our growth ; strictly speaking, it nevor dies
down, and the true parent never disinherits ; he may let
the prodigal go for a time, but it is from his home, not
his heart, that he is banished. He will never give up
the training of the child as long as there is any lesson
which the parent can teach and the child can learn.
Education has thus many stages, as George Herbert well
puts it — " Lord, with what nam Thou lnwt begirt us round 1
I'aninlH Ili'Ht season uh, thou schoolmasters
Deliver us to luws, limy send us bound
To rules of reason, holy monitors."
Hut the schoolmaster only takes the place of a parent,
because ho is in a sense the representative of an unseen

216 On Life a State of Probation.
and spiritual parent. If the father of our flesh could teach
as weU as train us, could he instruct and also form our
character under home influence which universal experience
shows to be impossible, there would be no need for the
teacher. But the schoolmaster, although often himself
no more than a pedagogue, has to answer that purpose for
which, according to the apostle, the law was given to Israel.
The case of man is unlike that of other animals, to whom
what we caU nature or their environment, the struggle
for existence with survival of the fittest, is their only
discipUne. In man, who has many schoolmasters besides
the rough and ready discipUne of Ufe, the parental tie is
strongest at the two extremes of Ufe. The young wiU
revere their parents for one reason, and the fuU-grown
for another reason. Memory comes to replace hope,
and gratitude suppUes the missing Unk of infant
dependence. It is only the freakish boy or girl, fuU of
seU-wiU and impatient to see Ufe for themselves, who
chafe at parental control. The young need the school
master, because parental authority is a delicate tie ; it is
easily snapped, and hence is often strained too tight.
The fond father, afraid of being thought indulgent,
becomes harsh, and so falls into the very error he wishes
to avoid. But although we commit our sons early to
tutors and governors, and then send them out into the
world to sink or swim for themselves, it cannot be said
that true fatherhood ever dies down or disappears, as in
the case of animals, with the instinct out of which it
sprang. It is only changed into something higher. In
nothing is man more distinctly a being made in the
divine image than in this wondrous prolonging of the
parental tie on into advanced years. In all other animals
the storge or parental instinct is soon replaced by indiffer
ence, and the parent bird would even kill its young which

On Life a State of Probation. 2 1 7
refused to leave the nest. So of all other animals ; but
with man, as if to shadow forth one divine mystery, the
Fatherhood of God, as marriage does another, our union
with Christ, the tie of tenderness springs up afresh in
middle age between parent and child to replace the
merely selfish tie of dependence. As there is nothing
so divine and so sacramental as marriage, since it
symbolizes the union of Christ and His Church, so
equally with marriage, and second to it only, if second,
there is nothing so sacramental of God's eternal Father
hood as the tenderness of a full-grown son or daughter
for aged parents. In this case the tie of dependence is
reversed, and instead of being snapped, as in the case of
the lower world of animal life, in the spiritual world it
springs up under reversed conditions. Our parents
cherish us in childhood, and we cherish and fondle them
in old age.
In all this there is a shadowing forth, a sacrament, as
we should phrase it, of the Fatherhood of God, and of the
education of the human family. The only objection to
this theory is, of course, the painful fact that at present
the vast majority of mankind know nothing of God as
the Father of their spirits. They are not even dimly
conscious of being under education to Him ; scarcely even
are they conscious of the "law as their schoolmaster."
All this is true, but it only confirms what the parable of
the younger, or prodigal son as we commonly call him, is
intended to teach. God fulfils Himself in many ways.
His purposes do not fail because our poor interpretation
of facts does not come up to the good pleasure of His
will, the great predestinating purpose of heading up all in
Christ, or in the ages to come. His QovKr\, i.e. His secret
counsel, is not yet a 6iXt)fia or the decree gone forth, which
is to gather up all things in Christ. The two phrases

2 1 8 On Life a State of Probation.
(Eph. i. 11), "good pleasure of His will," seem to suggest
this contrast between a present revealed will and another
stiU hidden. The fulness of time is not yet, and we have
only to walk by faith at present, not by sight. For this
reason we consider that there is only one key to the
philosophy of history in the story of the two sons, the
one the prodigal son of home life, the other of the far
country. It is the education of the human race, with an
increasing purpose running through it, which explains all
history, although many of the chapters of that history
seem to us " secular " and even " profane," and to have as
little to say to the eternal purpose of God as the scuffling
of kites and crows in the air, as Hume contemptuously
described that which modern historians describe as the
making of England. The early apologists, who laid
stress on the Preparatio Evangelii in the rise of Greek
philosophy, recognised that God was teaching the Gentiles
by one law as He taught the Jews by another. They
saw that there were two pedagogues, not one only. To
Clement of Alexandria, Plato was " Moses Atticizing ;"
Sibyls were the Isaiahs of Rome, and inspired only in a
lower degree. These are indications of a Une of thought
in which the early Church was in advance of the modern.
They had not drawn the line as sharply as the Church,
when she became ascendant and intolerant under Con
stantine, did between those within and those outside the
pale of the covenant. God was the Father of aU men,
and gave gifts unto men, yea, even to the rebellious.
Would that we could return to this point of view,
which is both deeper and simpler than the later dogma
of probation 1 Then we should understand the true
method of conducting missions to the heathen as only
an educated minority see it.
The true missionary is one who, instead of beginning

On Life a State of Probation,. 2 1 <>
ut tlin wrong end anil enlarging on the contrasts between
Christendom and linafhnnilom, should be^in by seeking
points of ugrwmniiL If in when the (iiliie.n.fion of tho
human ra.cn deepens info a. conviction that we lon.rn to
HUO points of unity in the human race never HUHpecfeil
bnl'orn. There is a unity amid {•oul'iminn alike of tongues
anil cults. Men arc ono oven in proclaiiiiing that they
are not no. Nor do I.l 10 bearings of 1.1 1 ih i|iienl,ioii end in
tiino only, Wo luivo no mason to Hupposo, if God is
educating the race in time, that lie will not carry on this
discipline perhaps under still morn favourable conditions
in tho world of spirits. J I' wo think of the unfold
myriads, doubfloHH the vast majority of the human race,
who arc cut off in infancy, and besides those who die
babes in yoii.rH, we think also of that still larger multitude
which no man can number, who live ami die as sheep,
who iu unilnrHfamting, if not in nuiiien, are children, what
arc wo fo say of all this? Dogma may cut uh short with
it peremptory command fo keep minima Hut the heart
will lint be ho turned do HfoiiO ami all pity pefrilied, and
Niobo-lilio the conscience be hushed fo il,H own maternal
pleadings. There iri Homo inissing truth here wanting
which leaves a. blank iu all our thinking on the hereafter.
I'ormal Theology, iu Hpifo of many bold a.ffeinpfs, has not
been able fo Hiipply tho missing link on account, of our
igiioranoo of what the iulormndiufn sl.afo may bo.
Hut if wo sot out with the h'athorhood of God, and
thonen go on to hold His education of the moo, thorn
I'oIIowh a e.omieefioii between these two thoughts which is
nowhere belter expressed than in the conjunction of fheso
two lines -
" Tlnm will. iiol. Iimivii Mill In liii' iliist.,
Ami Thou haul, niiuln lilin, Tliini unjust.."
We put those two together, and read them in tho light of

220 On Life a State of Probation.
the education theory thrown forward into the dim future,
and which shines, we admit, only as far as shines a candle
in the dark. Still we are not left without hope. In ways
to us uninteUigible at present, the Father of spirits may
discipline spirits which sometime were disobedient. There
are many classes in the school of Christ, and it is not
necessary that all the children should be graded together
and taught in the same class-room. It is enough for us
to know that for all men who do not die in moral and
spiritual infancy there is a certain discipline in this Ufe,
and that we are placed under tutors and governors until the
time appointed by the Father. But how God will deal
with others it is best for us to forbear to ask either the
" how " or the " where." What shall this man do ? is like
the other question, Lord, are there few that shall be
saved? a question which He is not pleased to answer;
and where revelation does not draw back the veil, it is
our wisdom also to set a watch on our mouth and keep
the door of our lips. A solemn suspense of judgment
on the whole question of the hereafter, and as to whether
many, few, or all should be saved, is the true attitude of
mind. Our only reason for breaking sUence must be the
rashness of the old school of dogmatists in their short
sighted zeal for what they caU conversion to their views,
or what they think is soul-saving truth. But for the
assertion that life as we know it is our only state of pro
bation, we would have preferred to have left the counter
assertion of education here or hereafter in shadow. It is
better far to break off on these questions at the point
where Abraham exclaimed, Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right ? But the one misleading phrase " proba-,
tion," coupled as it has been with that other ill-assorted
dogma of hereditary guilt, make up such a mangle of our
popular Theology, that like cross lights, so set as to pro-

On Life a State of Probation. 221
duce darkness, they neutraUze each other. The result is,
that we are compeUed to reconsider the whole question of
the intention and purpose of God in the creation of man.
Theologians have descanted far too much on the purpose
of God in filling heaven with redeemed men who are to
replace the ranks of faUen angels. The result is, that having
invented the faU of angels, they go on to explain, in the
same conjectural way, the exact meaning of the phrase
the " faU " of man, when instead of being a " faU " at aU,
a phrase unknown to Scripture, it may have been the first
step in the education of the race — an education such as
we give our chUdren when they learn to walk by falling,
and to obey by refusing to obey. Instead of that
favourite dogma of seventeenth century Theology, the
covenant of works entered into with the first Adam, we
incline to the view, that if Adam feU at aU, as in a
sense he did, the only result was that the heavenly
Father undertook his education under severer discipUne
than he would have otherwise enforced. Adam was
driven out of Paradise for wise and good reasons, lest, as
we are told, he should eat of the tree of Ufe and live for
ever, implying, as we think, that a separate Ufe without
God would be heU in heaven. God at the same time
" clothed " our first parents, which symbolizes much more
than a mere covering of skins to their naked bodies, and
so the education of the human race began, and is carried
on to this day in sundry times and divers manners. An
elective or partial dispensation, with the elder brother
taken into covenant to the exclusion for the time being
of the younger, is the mystery of the relation of Jew to
GentUe in the Old Testament. It is reversed at present,
when the GentUe is blessed to the exclusion of the Jew,
but by and by God is said to have mercy on all.
So far the Ught of revelation helps us to see our way.

222 On Life a State of Probation.
It is only as the darkness of Hades falls on us, with
regard to those who perish out of Christ, that the light
fails us. AU we can do is to say that we cannot discard
one theory because it does not clear up the mystery at
once and account for all the contradictory facts of the case.
Newton did not so reason when he sat down to write the
Principia. As soon as he had struck out a theory which
on approximation even seemed to explain the universe, he
drew his lines like a general besieging a town. He sat
down before the problem, and looked at it in this light or
that, directly or obliquely, using only steady attention
and that power of concentration which is genius in its
highest form. Bishop Butler weU described the mode of
discovery, alike in Scripture as in science, as that of
" thoughtful men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were,
dropped by nature accidentally, or which seem to come
into our minds by chance." We set out with the
Fatherhood of God, and are led on naturally, and by
easy steps, to the next stage of inference, in which we
adore Him in a higher relationship in which the Son has
revealed the Father. If He be our Father, then He must
have some educational discipline in store for us. We wish
we could say that this was the true meaning of what the
old school Theology understood in describing life as a state
of probation. There are two explanations, and only two
possible, of the evils of existence. Either we hold with
the whole Eastern type of thought, that existence is an
evU, and consequently that life is a purgation or retribu
tion for sins committed in a pre-existent state of being,
or we hold with the entire West, that there is no pre-
conscious sense of evil. We start fair at birth, and life
is a preparation for a higher state of being. As for the
troubles that we meet with and overcome in life, they
are chastisements sent by our heavenly Father to disci-

On Life a Slate of Probation. 223
plino uh and fo purge our Hpiril.H from tho droHH of lloshly-
niinileilneHH. TIiohii two flieorieH of the Mast and the
Wont cover the entire ground, and on the assumption
of a moral purpoHn in life leave nothing to cIiooho
between flioin. Wn are <)oni])olled to take miloH, anil
either accept the theory of life an a pant or a present
Hfate of probation. I'etweeii tho two if is needless fo say
that the latter la immeasurably the more HeU'-couHisfiiut
as well uh Hiuiplnr theory of the two. As wo have no
moral eoiiHcioiiHiiOHH of our pro-ex I'stonco, ami of sinn
Committed in that Hfate, to nay that wo suffer huro for
sins coin milted there, is like puniHliing the wrong boy at
school. Vioa.rioiiH punishment is not oimily reconciled at
best with any e.oiic.option of distributive justice; but wliaf
shoulil wo nay of the judge who lirst gave tho culprit to
drink of the wafers of Lethe, and then awoke him up in a
now sfiige of being fo undergo his punishment for which
ho had 110 so n ho of the desert? It is needless fo Hay
that the Huihlhist theory of retribution hero for wrong
doing elsewhere in so deeply immoral, that ipiife con
sistently fhoHo who hold it go on to pessimism. They
lose faith in the moral order of the universe. The Being
who allliefs them sniifoH thein for Hins of which they are
not conscious. If is but one step more to go on to hold
that this Doily in ropoHing erosH-legged on a bed of lotus
leaves with eyes closed, bunds folded, and that our
heaven will bo liko bin, a heaven of ono long undreaming
sloop. I'Voni this Theology the whole West, instinctively turns,
ami we can only hhIc ourselves with surprise, how if
is conceivable that any thinkers could have turned to
Huililhisni as a better explanation of the ills of life
than Christianity holds out ? The only answer must be
that tho true explanation had been so distorted by tho

224 On Life a State of Probation.
dense medium, that it has passed through that at last,
on the corruptio optimi pessima principle, even Buddhism
was apprehended as something better and more merciful
than Christianity so fearfully misapprehended. Even
starUght is better than daylight, when, as is sometimes
the case, the sun can only reach us through the thick
blanket of a London fog.
We must remember that a distorted truth soon passes
into an error, and when this is upheld in opposition to
the lights of conscience, it soon becomes a lie. This is
the meaning of Vinet's remark, that " even now, after
eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved
in some tremendous error of which the Christianity of
the future will make us ashamed." To say that men
coming into the world, maimed in character, are yet
wholly accountable for the formation of their character
here, is to turn the truth of God into a lie. But for
repeating this parrot phrase that life is a state of proba
tion, the Divine Being would never have been described
as an " austere man, reaping where he had not sown,
and gathering where he had not strewn." If, instead
of "probation," men had spoken of life as a state of
discipline or preparation for a higher state of being, in
which in some cases the discipline is complete and in
others only inchoate, we could only here say —
" Et sapit et meoum faeit et Jove judioat tequo,"
this would be the education theory of the human race,
which, ever since Lessing gave vogue to the phrase,
" Erziehung ist Offenbarung," has been the keynote to
the philosophy of history. In contrast to the Bossuet
theory, if theory it deserves to be called which is only
a modernized version of Augustine's City of God,
Lessing taught that " what we caU education in the

On Life a State of Probation. 225
individual is revelation in the race." Was die Erziehung
bei dem einzelnen Menschen ist, ist die Offenbarung bei dem
ganzen Menschen Geschlechte. In a hundred short gnomes
or pithy sayings Lessing works out this thought that
education is revelation, and revelation education, and he
ends by asking in the last of these pithy aids to
thinkers, whether, " If we have lost our opportunities in
time, is there not eternity lying before us ? " Ist nicht die
game Ewigkeit mein ?
It is at this point that we caU a halt. At this
point of the vision Lessing in his preface compares
himself to a traveller who has gone up a height to
catch a glimpse of a glorious prospect seen in the light
of a setting sun. " Much is lost in the haze of evening,
but enough is seen to transport him with a sense of
the vision of God ; but," as Lessing adds, " he does not
wish to call a single wayfarer out of his way to
stand on that Pisgah height with him." There is to
plain men a plain path of duty. They are labourers in
life's vineyard, to receive each man, if called early or late,
his penny a day. The equal Judge of all wiU do right with
all. This is enough for the mass of mankind to know.
But Theology has thought otherwise, and thus forced on
thinkers to open their minds on the subject of the
" larger hope." The ground, then, which we take up is
that God's general Fatherhood impUes a general dealing
with the race as a whole, corresponding to what we call
education in the individual. This is a view of universal
history which history itself only partially confirms ; and
therefore we can only say with Lessing, " Beyond the
veil ; beyond the veU." If this is the phrase, not so
much of philosophers as of prophets, we can only answer,
that sometimes the prophet is the best phUosopher.
Even Bacon, least spiritual of men, had his Pisgah
p

"226 On Life a State of Probation.
glimpses of a coming age of discovery by the inductive
method as soon as the old scholasticism had come to an
end. This is all we ask for. If God is educating His
elect, as we know is the case, may we not hope that
He will also take in hand His younger born children ?
Is there not a deep meaning in that passionate cry of
the father of the faithful, " 0 that Ishmael might live
before Thee " ? Who can say when and in what way
that cry may be interpreted ? All that we know of the
hereafter is that it wiU present us with many strange
surprises, for many that are last shaU be first, and the
first last. God has many children who are now regarded
as outcasts. In the significant phrase of the Hebrew
prophet, Lo-Ammi is to become Ammi, and Lo-Ruchamah
to become Ruchamah. To aU there is a testing time. In
this sense we must speak of probation ; and further, it
certainly seems as if this life were the fittest testing
time, when flesh and spirit meet, as it were, on common
ground, for to all there is given the choice of Hercules.
But seeing that some, either through dying in infancy or
from other causes, are not tested at all, we can only then
fall back on some larger hope, and feel sure that in spite of
our systems God must bring His truth to bear on every
conscience in some way or other, here or hereafter.

CHAPTER XIII.

INDIVIDUALISM.

Another of the contrasts between the Theology of the
past and the future lies in the point of IndividuaUsm.
This is the last word of the old Theology ; but so far
from being the last word of the new, it is only a
means to an end, the starting-point to a higher coUectiv-
ism. What is the relation of the Church to the world ?
This is a question which all forms of Christianity alike
must face. The controversy is by no means new, or
the solution which we offer in the least original. At
the same time it must be said that the old Theology,
which as much before the Reformation as since taught
Individualism, has never clearly pointed out how this
Individualism, which is the result of conversion and
separation from the world, is to lead up to a new
Collectivism. The necessity for some change out of a
condition or state which we call the world to the other
condition known as the Church, through regeneration, has
been affirmed in some sense by all sects of Christians ;
but while this contrast between the Church and the world
is admitted in terms, Theology has almost invariably
failed to point out what relations might exist beween
the Church and the world, and to describe the way in
which the Church should act on the world, until in a

228 Individualism.
sense it has succeeded in leavening life and society to its
standards of duty.
Let us begin by defining Individualism, and in the
first stage point out what is its true side. Individualism
is an important aspect of that truth of conversion
which, but for the old Theology, we should never
have learned at all. That aspect of Individualism is
this, that any living soul which has come to know God
as the living God is by this act of affiance (the soul's
espousal, as we may call it) at once raised into a new
plane of thought. It is advanced in spiritual dignity —
it no longer belongs exclusively to the lower world of
nature. So much is this the case, that it is able to say
all things have become new — old things have, as it were,
passed away. Any lower view of conversion than this
is a mere watering down of the doctrine on the part of
divines to whom this truth is unpalatable, or out of the
range of their experience. To do divines of the Catholic
school justice, they see this almost, if not quite, in the
same light. Conversion, as distinct from an external
regeneration or baptism, is by no means the specialty
of Protestantism that many assume it to be. We may
measure, indeed, how much the age of the Deists had
lost its sense of primitive truth when Wesley had to
proclaim the doctrine of the new birth as a kind of
alarm to the unconverted, the very meaning of which had
been lost to the age. The doctrine was ' thus given a
pre-eminence by Wesley's preaching which it has happily
never since lost. But in all essential particulars it was
the same truth which has been held by the Church
universal from the beginning.
That truth is, that each soul on its second birth
is brought into a fresh and living relation with God,
such as it never had before ; it is given,, in a word, an

Individualism. 229
individuality by which it is separated from the crowd of
common men. It is made in the full sense of the term
a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor
of the kingdom of heaven. It has seemed to many
Christians so essential to mark this out as the true
baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, that they have
declined to use the baptism of water at all in the case of
unconscious infants. Not to enter on the well-worn track
of the Psedobaptist controversy, it seems to some a mistake
to baptize with water until we are conscious that the
higher or fire baptism of the Holy Ghost has been given.,
But strictly speaking there are three baptisms, and so far
from all three being synchronous, two are entirely divided
by a space of time, and analogy would point to the same
interval in the case of the third. The three are the
baptism of water, of fire, and of blood. The last is the
, bath of final suffering, whether active or passive, which all,
or at least the great majority, pass through, and that only
at the very end of their lives. This baptism of blood is
clearly distinguished in time from the second, or baptism
of fire, and by parity of reasoning we should say that
the first baptism of water may be applied to the uncon
scious infant, as the last baptism by blood is to the
scarcely conscious saint, who, in dying, seals his testi
mony with his blood. The first is pre-conscious, and
the third post-conscious : it is only the second of the
three in which the subject can be said to be fully
conscious. For this reason we strongly incline to the
Ptedobaptist side in the discussion, holding at the same
time, as we do, that so far from the second or higher
baptism of fire attending on the ordinance of water
baptism, it is wanting from the nature of the case. An
infant is as incapable of being the subject of the baptism
of fire as it is of the baptism of blood. In grace as in

230 Individualism.
nature, everything is in its own order, first the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. First the dedi
cation by water — symbol of the first, and partial separation
from the world ; then the dedication or baptism by fire —
symbol of a still deeper separation from the world ; and
lastly, the baptism of blood — symbol of the final and
complete separation from the world.
Individualism, then, or separation from the world by
the giving of a new name, is a truth which has never
been lost to the Christian Church. In an age of for
malism it has fallen into the background, but at each
revival of religion it has sprung again into its old
importance. Indeed, the chief use of revivals in the
Church has been to emphasize this truth, as often as it
has degenerated into a kind of truism, by men taking
for granted that aU baptized Christians are believers,
and all professors are in deed and in truth followers of
the crucified and risen Saviour. The old Theology has
held Individualism quite as emphatically as the new
would desire to teach it. What correction or addition do
we then wish to attach to the term ?
Vinet, to whom we owe more than to any other
writer on the distinction between Individualism and
Multitudinism, has succeeded, by a distinction which is
merely verbal, in pointing out what is the use and what
the abuse of Individualism. The use he calls Individu
ality, and the abuse Individualism. The difference seems
a mere word-quibble ; and yet there is an important point
in the distinction which the history of later Protestantism
has made only too apparent. There is no good without
its attendant evil, no use without its abuse. So it is
with the thought that the soul which receives Christ is
separated from the world and joined to the Church,
which is the body of Christ. When men held this

Individualism. 231
truth in all its intensity, as they did during the Middle
Ages, the result was that it cut society into two unnatural
extremes. There were ascetics who Uved only in and
for the New Jerusalem, and whose last word was
de imitaticme Christi, and de eontemptu omnium vani-
tatum mundi. When the world was thus given over
to Satan, those who were lacking in the spiritual passion,
and who could not abandon the world, were supposed to
be peculiarly in danger of the assaults of the evU one.
This delusion, which lay at the foundation of demonology
and witchcraft, once it found acceptance, soon gathered
around it phenomena taken from facts to confirm it. Men,
as in the Faustus legend, were actually supposed to make
pacts with Satan, and the result was a contrast between the
New Jerusalem and the evils of the present world, such
as the old monk Bernard of Morlaix has depicted in
his melancholy but exquisite hymn, fragments of which
have stolen into our modern hymnals.
" The world is very evil," but it is no Ught danger to
set up such an unconscious semi-Manichseism as this. It
makes the meat it feeds upon. It begins by exaggerating
the contrast between the Church and the world, and
ends by effacing it ; the world has been smitten as if with
the taU of the great red dragon, and hence it is drawn
through fear to rush blindly into the Church. So in this
way the monastic system broke down during the dark ages
beneath its own incubus of the fear of heU. The world
became one vast monastery, the end of which, of course,
was that at last the monastery became the world over again.
Individualism, in this way pressed too far, invariably
reacts on itself. A similar reaction has set in in our
day, when Puritanism, pushed to its extreme, as in the New
England type, has brought with it a reeoU quite as marked
as that of the Renascence. Two centuries ago, in conse-

232 Individualism.
quence of the unwise attempt of the Stuarts to give a
festive character to the day of rest, and to enforce this
Darius-like decree by a Book of Sports, a reaction arose
in favour of a Jewish Sabbath, the last traces of which
are only dying out in our day. Sabbatarianism, as it
deserved to be caUed, is a phase of thought peculiar to
the English and Scotch Reformation, but unknown in
Germany and Switzerland. This cannot be owing to the
influence of Calvin, seeing that the authority of this great
Reformer was nowhere greater than in Switzerland, where,
on the whole, Sabbatarianism has never prevaUed. We
must look elsewhere for the cause, nor is it far to seek.
The true cause was political. The Laudian party had
staked their authority on one view of the question, so
the Puritans took, as we might expect they would, the
opposite. They pushed their hostility to the prelatist
view of the Lord's-day rest into the opposite extreme.
They actuaUy distorted their conceptions of pleasure and
pain. All pleasure became sinful, solely because it was
pleasure. As Macaulay crisply puts it : " Bearbaiting
became a sin, not because it gave the bear pain, but
because it gave the spectators pleasure." All stage plays
were condemned, not because, as was too often the case,
the plays themselves were lewd and demoralizing, but as
if aU spectacular effect, aU dramatic art and Ulusion, were
sinful per se. The result was the same, as we have seen,
with the monkery which taught that the world was very
evil. The world took these men at their word, and
became as bad as they were reported to be. It was as
with the publicans in the times of Christ, because morally
outcast they bettered the instruction that was given
them, and behaved as the ceremonial Jews supposed
they would behave. When eccentric old women were
supposed to be bewitched, any old woman who felt the

Individualism. 233
oeoeritrioitioH or ago creep on her began to act an if she
wcro a Hubjoct of Satan, arid when accused of this horrible
form of poHHeHHi'on, did not take the pains to deny the
charge. So the, del union spread, as myths do when the
idea begirm to take shape in fact, and each fresh fact
lends strength to the original myth.
Such are a few of the evils of Individualism, or the
Strained contrast between the secular and tho spiritual.
It begins by separating tho two, and out of the separation
there grows a perilous confusion ; Hinee, in fact, tho
Church and tho world, the sacred and the Hooular, never
can. bo long forcibly Heparutod in our present mixed Htnte
of being. Nor was thin tho only evil; the second and
more dangerous form of thin confniHt we have now to
doHcribo. Individualism in itn I'rotcHfant and I'uritan
type throws the idea of the collective typo of redeemed
humanity entirely info tho background, or rather it post
pones it altogether to what it calls the millennial, age, of
the world. In this ilispeiiHafion the Church, anil tho
world are opposed, or at bent doubtful allies, since in
most cases the State either oppresses tho Church or is
oppressed by it. All hopon of any alliance, or any
rational form of live-und-lot-livo, neems to bo out, of the
(|uesfion, and men are either extreme HcparalistH, or if
they are in favour of tho union, they only consent to it
on what arc known as Erastian grounds.
This j'h a melancholy state of things, and only leads fo loss
and confusion on both sidos. We do not see the remedy
at present, and do not oven attempt to point out in what
direction it lies. But wo fail to seo why Individualism
should efface the thought of a redeemed humanity.
We hold that the effacement of tho other, or good side,
of Multitudinism, loads to that miserable half truth or
compromise in which one error is brought in to counteract

234 Individualism.
another. What is known as the Catholic reaction is only
an attempt to bring in the lost or half-forgotten truth
of a redeemed humanity, or in a back-door kind of way.
Writers like Mr. Baring Gould and others of this type,
of which there are not a few, gird at what they describe
as Protestantism, and set up a Catholic ideal, as they call
it, of Christianity in its stead. In many cases they mean
by this only what we should call a broader, freer concep
tion of God's work in the world, than that which the
ordinary Bible Christian will allow of. They crave for a
jsacramental view of life and religion, and by that they
mean the liberty, not only to use symbolism in worship,
but also to call in art as an auxiUary teacher of truth,
subordinate to, if not side by side with, the written word.
How are we to meet this Neo-Catholic reaction ? How
are we to reply to it ? The mere negations of traditional
Protestantism are simply powerless against it : the spread
of Ritualism, in as far as it has been opposed, and
prosecuted by the Protestant party, should teach us a
wholesome lesson. The true antidote to error is to draw
out the precious from the vile, and to point out what is
the one-sided element in the old Theology.
This is the Individualism we have been pointing at.
Any Theology which begins and ends with a soul-saving
system has no place for art, and no love for symbolism,
and no need for the sacramentalism of nature, which sees
no sermons in stones, no tongues in the trees, no books in
the running brooks, and good in everything ; that type of
religion is stricken with sterility. It must move on to
some higher plane, if it is not to be overtaken and swept
away by the demand for symbolism of an art-loving age.
The remarkable growth and spread of Irvingism and
Swedenborgianism, which are both protests in their way
against the hard doctrinal Protestantism of the past, is

Individualism. 235
too significant not to be noted as one of the signs of the
times. Differing, as they do, widely from each other in
details, they have this note in common, that they both
protest against the dry and hard notional religion of the
past as deduced out of certain phrases of the Pauline
Epistles. The one is an anti-Lutheran protest and the
other an anti-Calvinist, but both draw their strength from
this protest, and gather recruits from the ranks of the old
Protestant party. What makes their protest all the more
significant is that disagreeing, as they do, in details, they
both agree in laying down as the reason for their claim
Church principles as opposed to Individualism. That a
ritualistic and symbol-loving system, which strikes the
looker-on as Aaronism revived, should have grown out
of the Scotch Kirk seems more like a freak of passionate
protest than the calm and coherent evolution of one
serious type of religious thought out of another. Milton's
scorn of scorn for " deformed and fantastic dresses, palls
and mitres, gold and gewgaws, filched from Aaron's old
wardrobe or the Flamens' vestry," has been a tradition
of popular Protestantism ever since. What would he have
thought if in the very seat and citadel of Protestantism
a new type of worship had sprung up, which not only
went as far as Anglican symbolism, but even overpassed
it. But this is Irvingism, and that it has had any
success, however partial, can only be accounted for on
the ground of intuitional Theology, that it meets certain
spiritual instincts which our doctrinal Protestantism has,
to its own hurt and loss, passed over.
The same is true of the system which calls itself by
the name of Swedenborg. That a Church and not a
school of philosophy should have called itself by the
name of Emanuel Swedenborg is one of the strangest
vagaries of the human mind. He was a philosopher,

236 Individualism.
who from a scientist passed on into a seer, and so by a
kind of salto mortale sprang at a bound from the sensible
world of things we can measure and weigh, to the super-
sensual world of things to be known only by the touch
of the inner sense. Whether Swedenborg was mad is
the same question as whether Hamlet was mad, and we
can only say, as in the latter case, we must have some
inner knowledge of madness ourselves to give an opinion
on such a subject. But the strange part of the story is,
that his foUowers have agreed to found, not a new school
of philosophy, but a new Church, on assent to his
teachings. The year 1759 is fixed as the exact date
of this ~New Jerusalem coming down from heaven. The
lesson of all this is the same as we have seen in the case
of Irvingism. There must be some widely-felt craving
for collective or Church life which our popular Pro
testantism, based as it is on Individualism, fails to
recognise. A man is converted, for instance, by an
itinerant Methodist preacher, he " gets good," as he calls
it in his own phrase, from the sermon, and he forthwith
joins the sect where sermons of this kind are preached.
He then takes a pew in the chapel, fits it up with a
cushion, if his means allow of it, he buys a hymn-book,
and so is set up in his little stock-in-trade in reUgion.
We shaU be told this is only a caricature of the religion of
the lower middle class in our times. Those who know it
best will not deny that it has some points of resemblance,
and consequently will not resent our account of the way
in which some of our popular preachers fill their chapels,
not by deepening the thoughts of their people, but only by
dinning into them the old aspects of our popular Theology.
The late Alexander Knox, who was said to have been the
bridge in the Oxford movement between Wesley and
Pusey, had noticed this more than seventy years ago.

Individualism. 237
When he lived and wrote those memorable letters which
are theological treatises in aU but name, Individualism
was at its height. What are now known as Church
principles did not even exist, and Oxford, as in Pope's
Une, "Alma Mater lies dissolved in port," had not a
suspicion of what was coming to it.
Reactions take such sudden and strange twists, that
the surprise of the old orthodox party was great to find
themselves called to embrace, first the old Anglican
standpoint, and then when driven from that to accept the
position of Rome. This Anglican movement has run its
course, and the most inteUectual minds, like the author of
John Inglesant and Mozley in his Recollections of Oxford,
now confess themselves disillusioned. But the cause
of this sporadic outbreak of Church principles among
English sects and Oxford dogmatic divines, and even in
the Scotch Kirk, must have some general cause deeper
than the formulas of any particular Church. When
milk or water is tainted, the educated sanitarist now
goes to work and tracks the mischief home to some
particular dairy or weU, where the poison germ has found
its nidus. We must do the same in Theology. When
we do this, we shall find that our popular Protestantism
has laid stress on one truth at the expense of another.
That missing truth is the " Church of humanity," and so we
see, as Vinet the great teacher of Individualism pointed
out, that what we caU Individualism or personal
reUgion is not an end in itself, but only the means to a
higher end.
That higher end is a new Collectivism, which we may
call the Church of the future. A Theology of the future
must look to a Church of the future, as a Theology of
the past naturaUy enough looks to a Church of the past.
The new CoUectivism, unlike the CathoUc Church of

238 Individualism.
antiquity, wUl not rally itself behind a bulwark of creeds
of which a hierarchy are supposed to keep the key.
This has been the weak point in this Neo-Catholicism,
whether we call it Anglican, or Irvingite, or the Church
of the New Jerusalem. Apostolical orders, as they are
called, or even the revival of the apostolate itself, as the
foUowers of Irving pretend, wiU not meet the wants of
the age. The Church of the future must be compre
hensive, and for this reason must not articulate dogma
too far, much less should it play the contemptible part
of poor relation to the Church of Rome, and ape its
hierarchical claims without being able to show that it
stands on the historical ground for doing so. The
Anglican claim for an autonomous Church, which was
never in bondage, at least de jure, either to the papal or
royal supremacy, and which is supposed to have come
down to our day with a life of its own, like the " milk-
white hind" of Dryden, this is a fiction so startling that
we must lay all historical criticism on the shelf before
we can believe it. It is as widely improbable as the
Munchausen story of the man at the river-bank, between
a tiger and a crocodile, who escaped them both by
ducking his head, and so leaving those two tyrants of
the land and deep to devour each other. We can smile
at the simplicity of those who make history in this way,
but the secular world wUl take its version of EnsUsh
history from the Froudes, and Gardiners, and Macaulays
of secular life, not from the uncritical compilations of the
Oxford school of divines.
The Church of the future must be left, we admit, for
the future to shape. For us to lay down the lines on
which it is to be built up, would be to act as these
Anglican, Irvingite, and New Jerusalem Churches are
doing, and to repeat their dogmatism without its excuse.

fmdrcidna/ism, 259
We may- he sure of tins, tks: all our existing Churches
are too stiff and narrow ; they are oH wine-skins, and
would bars* vita the new vine of the kingdom. All we
desire to 1st stress on is the present discress for want ol
a true Collectivism, deserving the name of a universal
Church. The boldest pretenders, for tins reason, some
times succeed, as he who "peppers the highest pleases
the meet" The Church of Roane has gained not a few
recruits in our day, on the plea of its breadth and
comprehension. "From the rising of the s^a." they say-
by a strange twist of a text in Makehi, "to the going down
thereof," the same sacrifice of the Mass is put -.:-.-¦ in she
same latin tongue. It is mam wpafaw, it is true alike
in East and West, from India to Indiana, :ct iHs
jg/m&mmi is jure atanaffiwt Anglicans at a long interral
pat np the same plea of Pan-AngBeaniaa, and we have
even heard of a Pan-Presbysersan Council of the sass?
sort. These cecnmens-al windbags, swollen with their
own emptiness scarcely need a prick from the pen of
ridkalr to let the wind oat of them. They contract as
they inflate by the force of that rery Individualism
against whkh they seem to protest. The most Protestant
thing a man can eta, it has been said, is te join the
Charch of Borne, as seine do, azul then ©sne back again
a sadder sad wiser man. The very renundatsm of the
right of private jadgment is not done without a saprezEse
act of private jadgment. Pt is die same along the whole
fine. The Eaasft sectarian people in the worM are db-ree
who are always »«g™g the changes as to Cathohe
consent and the Yoke of aaaqaity. Tins xoiee 5s like
the hollamey echo, that always x=sw<ks back what it is
asked, only with a copped note, the first syllahfe fs mn&led,
and doe second only distinct
For this reason we do nos sappose thai Indrridaahsm

will disappear under any of the three protests against it,
vhich base themselves on a revival of antiquity. The
lead past is not to be called up, as the witch of Endor
jailed up Samuel, in this way. We must look elsewhere
;han in a fantastic revival of Church life for the new
Collectivism. Positivism, again, with its Church of
nimanity, is a strange and sickly dream of the future.
[t has caught one or two of the signs of the near future,
Dut it has missed the most essential. Tt is right in its
ittempt to rally to it all that is good and great in the
oast, and its Church calendar, with such saints as
Confucius, Zoroaster, Mahomet, and Moses, all grouped
;ogether, seems like a dream of a half-insane man of
genius, from which more is to be learned than from the
sober thoughts of more commonplace men. The age has
i dream of the universal religion, some call it the absolute,
which is to be an amalgam of all the old faiths. Com
parative religion has become a favourite study during the
last few years in America, and for this reason it is
partly a reaction from, and partly the outcome of, the
Transcendental philosophy of New England. The very
descendants of the hard school of New England Theology
had lost faith in the old Calvinism, and also even in the
new TJnitarianism which was its outcome, and at last
drifted on, as Emerson did, into a kind of half poetical
Pantheism, in which the Church of humanity was to
become the Church of the future. This falls in well
enough with the Comtist ideal, and so we have in
two instances of ultra-idealism and ultra-materialism,
Pantheists and Positivists coming together on the common
ground of founding a Church, and not merely a sect or
school of phUosophy.
These phenomena are all too remarkable to be passed
over as merely accidental. When on all sides men are

Individualism. 241
seeking some Church of the future, it must have some
explanation in a spiritual craving which our popular
Theology fails to satisfy. We infer the same as apolo
gists do, that the expectation of a Messiah marks the
time when the Messiah actually appeared. Men looked
for the coming One, because He was to come at that
time. The subjective expectation and the objective
fulfilment of that desire of all nations is not accidental
We reason in the same way with regard to the Church
of the future. All these Church theories, from the
Papacy to Positivism, up and down the whole gamut
of belief, must have some meaning, unless we are to
Uve with the dry and dull school of divines who, like
the Bourbons, learn nothing and forget nothing. Pro
testantism, like Catholicism, has a grand past; but the
future is not with this or any form of Individualism.
The reason is that which "Vinet pointed out in his
contrast between Individuality and Individualism. * They
are," he says, K two sworn enemies ; the first being the
obstacle and negation of all society, the second that to
which society owes all it possesses of divine life and
reality. Kowhere does Individualism prosper more
easily than where there is an absence of individuality ;
and there is no more atomistic policy than that of pure
despotism." What Yinet means hy tins contrast, which is more
than verbal, is this, that individuality is the spring of
all character, and hence of all energy for good. But
this spring soon runs down, or under summer heats is
dried up in us. Some one has said, " We are born
originals, and die copies." This is the sting of the
French epigram, " Born a man, died a grocer.** This is
that hberty. in other words, to form our character which
is our native birthright and which none should filch
Q

242 Individualism.
from us. Unfortunately this is too often parted with,
and the loss of it passes into a selfish submission to the
collective will, which is the Individualism in which all
seek their own. Egotism is the bane of each man's
existence, unless resisted and overcome ; and so we sink,
and become at last, as a whole, a nation of shopkeepers.
So our very virtues pass into vices. Thrift and industry
become merely forms of money-grabbing, and in the last
extreme of all, public spirit has so died out, that we
should be ready to accept a Csesar if he were rich enough
to buy us all up with the suitable bribe in a society
where every man has his price.
This type of Individualism in Theology turns into
a snug, middle-class, soul-saving system. To get to
heaven with our wife and children, and perhaps cousins
and collaterals, as far as the legacy tables go, this
is as far as some people can see into _ God's purpose
in sending His Son into the world. The Jews, or at
least those who happen to be alive at that day, are
to be converted during the millennium, and out of
this a great blessing is to flow to the mass of the
heathen. But here their simple hopes of heaven end.
It is not much better than the Indian's heaven, where
his faithful dog shall bear him company. Such is
Individualism here and hereafter. To sit on a damp
cloud, playing a harp, may be only a caricature of the
popular heaven. But the conventicle view of Isaac
Watt's hymns, " where congregations ne'er break up, and
Sabbaths never end," shows how poor and thin the
conception became of that place, where at God's right
hand there are pleasures evermore. In this Christians fell
below Jews. Is it surprising that we revolt against
this half-monkish, half-Puritan type of Individualism,
and that the age will have none of it ? It is the poor

Individualism. 243
and etiolated type of Pietism, which explains both Broad
and High Church attempts to get hold of some Collec
tivism of the future Church of humanity, and of a
unity worthy to be called His body, who is the Head
of redeemed humanity.
We do not for our part attempt to draw on the
future, and depict what society will become, when the
Church and the world, instead of contrasted as at present,
shall only be different aspects of the same idea of
redeemed humanity. We have no Pisgah height to
climb to, and behold the land which is stiU very far off.
But we are sure of this, that as our heaven will be
something much more than a repetition of earth, so
the Church of the future will be something more
than a reproduction on a large scale of any of our
existing communities. In this respect we see how it
is that IndividuaUsm fails to grasp the conception of
a Church of the future, which shall embrace the whole
of humanity. What the hereafter may unfold it is
impossible to say, but we know that heaven will be a
state as much above our present consciousness as the life
of a grown man is beyond that of a babe in its cradle.
We have been introduced by Hartmann and othefs into
what "they describe as the philosophy of the pre-conscious.
It is possible that we shall go on to a Theology of
the post-conscious. Who can say how far our present
feelings may be sublimated, so that consciousness in the
resurrection body wiU no longer be the same complex
action of mind on matter, the reflex of sensation stirring
in the sensorium, which is the condition of its exercise
at present ?
There has been a childish taking for granted that
life in heaven wUl be little more than a continuation
of what our life on earth has been. There is a class

244 Individualism.
of American writers among whom this thought of heaven
being a continuation of earth has taken the form of
a coarse and familiar way of describing the glories of
the unseen world. Writers like the author of the " Gates
ajar" seem to have solved the problem of existence after
death very much to their own satisfaction. It is true
that they have long since discarded the dreary conception
that heaven is a kind of latter-day tabernacle, in which
the worthy Dr. Watts is for ever preaching long sermons
and singing divine and moral songs. Let us be thank
ful for this deliverance at least. But when we ask what
is the heaven that we are to be introduced to instead of
the old, the answer is disappointing in the extreme. As
far as we can judge, it consists of New England homes, in
which the sweetness and light of modern culture is
supposed to compensate for the old Puritanism which,
if severe, was at least grand. The writer of "A Little
Pilgrim," Mrs. Oliphant, has also attempted to picture
what the after-death scene is to be, and while the senti
ment is gracious and womanly, we are by no means
sure that it is not quite as wide of the mark as Defoe's
satirical account of the apparition of the worthy Mrs.
Veal of Margate, who came to give an account of herself,
and to recommend a dull book, known as Drelincourt
on Death, as the most authentic account of the unknown
world. Individualism, in a word, is responsible for much of
this semi-materialism in connection with the other shore.
By a strange conversion, Swedenborg, the mystic and
spiritualist, when he turned seer, saw heavens, hells, and
intermediate states as minute and particular as the
visions of Dante. He went even beyond Dante, since
he saw not only the same men and women whom we
meet with in this life, but also he placed them, as Dante

Individualism. ^45
certainly did, not in a situation and with surroundings
such as wo are familiar with on earth. When we are
told of spiritual recks and rivers and mountains in a
spiritual heaven, our understanding is unable to follow
Swedenborg into that inner world of allegory, or to
figure to itself what a spiritual rock or river can mean.
Hence we are brought to a standstill on the whole
subject of the hereafter, and prefer to stand without the
veil in an attitude, of reverent waiting, and to content
ourselves with the language of the apostle, " It doth not
yet appear what we shaU be." We are content here to
leave the question of IndividuaUsm and of our separate
existence after death. We kuow what personality here is,
'• Siuoc though the frame that binds us in
Our isolation grows defined —
Such use there is in Mood and breath,
"Which else were fruitless of their due ;
Had man to learn himself anew.
Beyond the second birth of death."
The poet, who is also a philosopher, has here struck
the right note. He has carried IndividuaUsm to the
last point, where we may leave it. We gain the sense
of personality through the body, and presume we shall
not lose this when we leave the body, and begin exist
ence under new conditions But this existence will
certainly be a collective one, in a sense not to be
explained by any forms of corporate life existing here
either in Church or State. The white rose of Paradise
which Dante saw in vision is, on the whole, the truest
conception, perhaps, of the way in which our present
Individualism will be lost in a higher Collectivism —
•• In fashion, then, as of a snow-white rose,
displayed itself to me the saintly host,
AVhom Christ in His own blood has made His bride."

246 Individualism.
This brings us to the point where we lose ourselves in
light. Our restless self-hood, with its ravenous desires,
its wanton wishes, and its will, tormented between these
two tides of the lower life, and chafed alternately by both
winds and waves, shall then be at rest. It will be the
rest of rapt contemplation, like the motion of a planet
in its orbit, singing as it shines, and at rest because in
perfect balance. It will be at once society and soUtude ;
a city with a garden in the midst of the city, instead of
a park or Paradise planted outside the city, teaching us
this, that the central part of the second Paradise of the
redeemed is a solitude, and that it has society on the
circuit of its walls. At present we go outside the city
into the park to be alone : then we shall go through the
city to reach the garden, in whose midst is the river
of God, clear as crystal. What a striking symbol this
is of the highest ends of man, and of his blessed destiny,
when we shall hold converse with others, and then carry
that converse to the central region of all, where the river
of God proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb !
This is heaven, truly consummated in the twofold bliss
of a collective and individual life, not as at present,
when we rise from the individual to the collective, but
when we pass from the collective to the individual ; since
in Thy presence is the fulness of joy, and at Thy right
hand there are pleasures for evermore.

CHAPTEE XIV.
ESCHATOLOGY.
Eschatology is the last and perhaps the gravest point of
contrast between the old Theology and the new. It is a
subject so beset with difficulty on account of its touching
on the unknown future, concerning which we are all alike
so much in the dark, that to correct the old Theology,
seems as presumptuous as for the bUnd to lead the blind.
It is a case where both are likely to fall into the ditch,
and perhaps it would be wisdom on all sides to stand and
wait. The day will reveal it. For our part, this is the
position we are disposed to take up ; and if any one,
discarding all dogma, will say, from the honest inquirer's
point of view, that they are content to leave the subject
in shadow, sure that the Judge of all the earth wiU do
right, no one wiU rejoice more than we do at this
interim position.
But it is useless to shut our eyes to the fact that the old
Theology of both Confessions, Eeformed and Unreformed,
aUke has assumed the necessity for very definite teaching
on the subject of heaven, hell, and an intermediate
state. It has also held unwaveringly that any Theology
deserving the name of dogmatic, or even definite, must
lay a firm foundation for itself in the fixed belief of man
kind, in the finaUty of probation in this Ufe, and the
eternal state of happiness or misery awaiting us after death.

248 Eschatology.
In his reply to Dr. Farrar, the late Dr. Pusey admits that
this is his starting-point, and lays stress on an expression
of Faber's, that the " fear of hell has filled heaven."
We do not care to enter at this early stage on the
discussion as to the place of fear in a code of ethics
whose keynote is love. In so far, no doubt, as repentance
and faith are of the subsoil of the soul, which must be
turned up before love will grow at all, we may say, that
fear is an intrinsic part of the gospel scheme as a
whole. A certain element of fear springing from
enlightened self-love is not only admissible, but further,
we do not see how the good news of God could pierce
the hard crust of resistance, and make a lodgment in
corrupt selfish natures such as ours, unless it began
with motives of self-interest. Disinterested morality
must take its rise in that which is interested. The
prudential must precede the moral, and the moral so
leads up to the spiritual, as Coleridge wisely pointed out
in bis Aids to -Reflection.
So far well ; and we have no wish, for our part, to cut
away either fears of hell iri hopes of heaven from the
popular Theology. The failure of the Neo-Platonists
should warn us not to attempt to inculcate disinterested
morality by doing as Hypatia did, who went through the
streets of Alexandria with a torch in one hand and a
pitcher in the other, symbols of her wish to burn heaven
and quench the fires of hell, that man might love virtue
for its own sake. All religions, in the common opinion
of mankind, have their sanction in a system of future
rewards and punishments ; and if Christianity does not
lay the same stress on this appeal to self-interest, it
cannot be said that it passes it over altogether. At the
same time, it must be admitted that as the governmental
view of God and the eudamionist scheme of ethics have

Eschatology. 249
di^a_ppeared with the age of Deism, as a result of this a
changenas also come over the Christian consciousness on
the subject of the hereafter, and in view of this change
the old Theology, with its clear-cut lines and menacing
dogmas, has become simply indefensible to those who hold
that a spiritual phUosophy must lead up to a spiritual
Theology. The question then occurs, what we are to put in its
place. It is certain that the old dogmas have lost their
force, and the age is in that miserable state of indecision
unable to shake off some of the old terrorism, and yet
with no fresh and deep-cut convictions to put in their
place. The result of this state of half-belief is simply
deplorable. Dr. Pusey, in his reply to Dr. Farrar,
describes the "four last things as death, judgment,
heaven, hell, which were subjects of daily meditation,
but are so no longer." " Faber," he adds, " says in his
glowing way : We cannot doubt but that hell has sent
into heaven more than half as many souls as it contains
itself. Such sayings would scare us for not having
preached it more, but that one hopes that God's Holy
Spirit has repeated our Lord's words, and the faith of the
Church within to hearts to whom we have not spoken His
truth." But this is a strange inconsistency on the part of
divines of the old school, for which there must be some
reason, if not excuse. Dr. Pusey ingenuously admits, as
too many do, that they practise a kind of reserve on
this subject, and only hint of hell to ears trained to the
right theological ring. But surely this is not to deal
fairly with truth. " I have not shunned to declare to
you the whole counsel of God," is the apostle's record of
his ministry, and the same should be our rule of action.
" He that hath the word of the Lord, let him speak it."

2 50 Eschatology.
Clearly, then, to hold this doctrine as a tradition, a deposit
of the Theology of the past, and yet to hold it back or not
proclaim it from the pulpit, is worse than cowardice. It
is to incur the guilt of not being clear from the blood of
all men. The explanation of this contradiction between
the muffled tones of the modern pulpit and the plain
language of the old dogmatic confessions, is that this is a
doctrine held regulatively, as the late Dean Mansel taught
the clergy to hold their Theology, carrying out in this a
Kantian distinction between absolute and regulative
truth very much farther than Kant himself would have
approved of. This distinction of regulative truths in
Theology, which might have come from the Parent of
lies, has, like all two-handed weapons, recoiled with
dangerous effect on those who used it. It has been
made the point of departure of an Agnosticism leading
on to Atheism. Nor is it strange when divines, setting
out with the old contrasts between natural and revealed
Theology, go on to teach of two aspects of the Deity.
They tell us of a God in Christ whom they wish to drive
men to, and of a God out of Christ who is such an
object of unreasoning terror that in the end He is not
believed in at all. When we analyze this religion of
terrorism and trace it to its source, we find it springs from
the crude opinion that God's attributes of justice and
mercy may be and are separable, because, as a matter of
experience, men learn to fear the wrath of God before
they taste His love. Hence we rashly presume to cut
the character of God in two, and distribute Him as if
what was separable in our experience were separable in
His Being, and as if to one class there was dispensed
mercy without justice, and to another class justice
without mercy.
That such crude representations of the Divine Being

Eschatology. 2 5 1
should actually foster Atheism, whicli it vainly tries to
crush and confute by argument, is only too apparent in
our day. It has been said without contradiction that the
old Theology teachings on the subject of doctrines of
heaven and hell have caused more infidelity than all the
other dogmas of divines put together. With curious
inconsistency, Dr. Pusey turns round on those who take
him at his word, and claims that there is a salutary use
in this doctrine. It is the fear of hell, as he tells us,
which fills heaven. But for this background of fear, he
assures us, there would not be the foreground of joy and
hope. It is clear from his use of this argument that he
cannot get rid of the opinion that in the case of the
majority of mankind he must act on some mercenary
motive of this kind, and that men only believe in God
and serve Him through hope of reward and fear of punish
ment. The result of this is that this slavish view of
man in its turn reacts on our conception of God Him
self, since God, who is the author of our motives, must
be Himself mercenary. He could have no adequate
motive for sending His Son into the world, unless, arising
out of some pre-existing necessity, there were an eternity
of suffering awaiting all souls which had sinned in Adam,
unless delivered from this sentence by the ransom price
paid by Christ on the cross.
In the old Theology there was thus a severe con
sistency throughout. It hangs all together, and the result
is that if criticism has pierced it in one direction, it
becomes powerless either for attack or defence in every
other. That criticism has pointed out the defect of the
old forensic doctrine of the Atonement, and so pierced the
old Theology in its vital part, no one now doubts. That
all souls are naturally and necessarily immortal and
destined to live, if not in an endless happiness, then in a

252 Eschatology.
condition of endless misery, this is that postulate of the
old Theology which has been demolished ex abundanti by
writers too numerous to name.!' It rests on certain texts
of the Old Testament uncritically applied. It is like
thrice slaying the slain to show that certain proof texts
in Genesis as to man being made a living soul, teach if
anything the direct opposite to the Cartesian dogma of a
dualism of mortal body and immortal soul on which the
popular Theology rests. Man was created mortal, but
with a capacity for becoming immortal by tasting, or
rather by feeding on, the tree of life. But when he made
the fatal mistake, typical of that which all his posterity
do, and chose the tree of knowledge before that of life,
or, in other words, preferred, as we all do, his sensual to
his spiritual life, he was driven out of the garden lest he
should take of the tree of life, and so add sin to sin, and
by becoming spiritual, become capable of spiritual wicked
ness, and sin as the angels. He chose the animal part of
his nature, and taking the narrative by itself, we should
say, he passed under a sentence of eternal death on the
day he sinned, so that dying he should die. Hence it
is written that the first Adam was made a living soul
(Nephesh Chayah), a phrase applied to all animals alike.
It is only the second Adam who is a quickening spirit.
As to the phrase " Annihilationism," it is a misleading
one, and wholly inapplicable to those who hold the doctrine
of " life in Christ." It actually begs the point in question,
since it assumes that man is inherently immortal, and
only becomes mortal by a fiat of Omnipotence, who in
mercy to His victim acts as the executioner at some
auto da fe , of the Inquisition, and gives the coup de grace,
and puts an end to his suffering. Such a phrase as
annihUation is, if possible, a deeper reflection on the
Divine Being than the old dogma of eternal suffering,

Eschatology. 253
since it suggests that future punishment is of the nature
of torture, not retribution only, but vindictive, so that we
have the double inconsistency to clear up, that God
should inflict such torture at all, and then, like a Spanish
inquisitor, huddle it up at the end as if ashamed of His own
ferocity. All this comes, we have seen, from theologians
importing without question certain conceptions of justice
from the old barbarous jurisprudence of past ages. When
kings and priests were capable of incredible acts of cruelty,
and added the rack to the stake, the knife to the fire, we
can see that the last and only act of mercy was when the
executioner was permitted to give what was called the
coup de grace. In days when "Luke's iron crown and
Damien's bed of steel " were not unusual instruments for
protecting the majesty of kings from the madness of
private revenge, we can understand how easily mankind
slipped into a false analogy from a corrupt human to a
corrupt divine tribunal. To men who have not shaken
off these notions it wiU not seem revolting to speak of
annihilation as a merciful provision on God's part to get
rid of the remainder of suffering in the case of the
incorrigible. But this view of the subject will not bear
to be listened to by those who hold that God is a God of
inflexible justice and truth. " Fury is not in me," is a
precious truth concerning our God ; and Dr. Chalmers in
a celebrated sermon on this text had reached the negative
aspect of the new Theology, and like some bold explorer
there stood stub, as if afraid to face the consequences of
his own admissions. In this respect perhaps he was not
to be blamed. No man can be altogether before his age,
and it must be said that the old Theology harmonized
with the old jurisprudence and medicine : both were
vindictive and sacrificial, and had to depart together.
It is for us in our day to take the one step farther,

2 54 Eschatology.
and to assert the doctrine which clears the divine dealings
of all vindictiveness, and sets the whole question of retri
bution here and hereafter free from all those confusions
between our conceptions of justice, which are corrupt, and
God's, which are pure. The very term "punishment"
must first be cleared of the dross of human error before
we are able to take up the question of the finiteness or
not of suffering hereafter. Bightly considered, all divine
punishment grows out of the nature of the sin itself. It
is not so much a penalty, as we should say, arbitrarily
approved by an external law, as the poison in a poison
plant, active as soon as the berry ripens. Bishop Butler
had a glimpse of this truth, that punishment is natural,
not arbitrary, and we can only regret that so profound a
thinker did not make better use of his own deep insight,
instead of writing a mere tu quoque against the Deist
based on a great " perhaps," which is the tone of the
Analogy, and which makes it unsatisfactory reading to
modern thinkers. Punishments, as he well describes
them, are " natural," and are not " penalties," but part of
the offence itself. This is the true meaning of the phrase,
"In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die."
In the day, not as the old school taught, at the end of
his life, and when at last he stood before the bar of God,
and was there tried at the great assize, and awarded a
sentence either of heaven or hell.
If punishment is then "natural," as Bishop Butler
rightly describes it to be, the consequence must be, that
when we speak of the remission of sin, what we truly
mean is deliverance from it, and that is the only way by
a death of the old evil principle, and the new birth of a
new and better self. This is the true meaning of the
redemption which is in Christ, and we have only to
extend our horizon into the spiritual or aeonian world of

Eschatology. 255
the ages which lie beyond us, in order to see the doctrine
of future punishment in its true light. All sin is a state
of spiritual death, it is self-hood which is hell begun, and
we have only to extend this thought into the far-off
future to get the true conception of hell as a state, not
a place. Milton's Satan finely touches on this —
" "Which way I fly is Hell, myself an Hell,
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven."
The spiritual phUosophy of our day calls, then, for
some revision of the whole doctrine of eschatology, and
it must begin at its starting-point. If punishment be
natural and necessary, we see at once that attack and
defence of the popular doctrine of eternal punishment are
alike beating the air. At present there are three schools
of thought on the subject, and their divisions may be said
to cover the whole ground. There are the old Literalists,
of an eternity of hell torments ; there are the Annihila-
tionists, so called, who hold the life in Christ doctrine ;
and lastly, there are Restorationists of one kind or
other, usually classed, though they deny the phrase, as
Universalists. It is certainly a hopeful sign of the times
that the two extremes of opinion are coming much nearer
than they would have admitted to themselves a few years
ago. Dr. Farrar, on the one hand, distinctly disclaims
Universal ism, and Dr. Pusey, in the opposite extreme,
admits that the vast majority, or all but a finally
impenitent residuum, will be reached by God's grace
either here or hereafter — either now or in some inter
mediate state of being. This new phrase of repentance
after death, if not purgatory, is only the same thing
under another name. It is the mediaeval notion purged
of its corruption of the efficacy of masses for the souls of j

256 Eschatology.
the dead as well as the living. There are Anglican
divines in our day who speak approvingly of prayers for
the dead, but who would scruple to go on and teach that
masses can avail for a soul.
Far be it from us to compose between such litigants,
or to say which of the two extremes comes nearer to the
true Eschatology. We have so little light on the subject,
that our safest course is to hold fast by the few fixed
principles on which we can take our stand. One of these
is that punishment is of the character of the offence
itself, not of the nature of the being against whom the
offence is committed. We may be sure of this, that God
is not mocked ; whatsoever a man sows, that he shall also
reap. Again, we may be sure that instead of sin being
an infinite evil, because committed against an Infinite
Being, the reverse is the case. It is a finite evil,
because it is the vitium or fault of a finite being. Hence,
instead of that terrible conception of " salted with fire,"
the urit et reficit of Lactantius, we may take our stand on
the thought that evil carries in it its own principle of
dissolution. Thus it is not out of the mere sentimental
thought that God is too merciful to inflict endless suffer
ing that we revolt from the popular doctrine. We do
not suppose that even the durus pater infantum ever held
so harsh a doctrine as that God could from any necessity
of His nature continue to bring beings into existence who
must go on sinning, and therefore suffering, for eternity.
The iron chain of necessity lay in another direction.
Divines taught this because they could not rid themselves
of the Cartesian dogma, that conscious thought is as
indestructible and eternal as God Himself. With the
decline of Cartesianism there has been room for the
growth of a new class of conceptions with regard to the
hereafter, and we can let go with the greatest com-

Eschatology. 257
posure the old dogma of the necessary immortality of
the soul.
What we cannot surrender is the ver)' opposite truth,
that evil is something inherently self-destructive, and
carrying with it the principle of its own dissolution. If
men could see this truth, half their difficulties as to the
duration and ' extent of future punishments would melt
away. They would lift off as the mists do at sunrise.
All evU is destructive of the organism it attacks ; whether
it be plant or animal or man, in any case disease is
incipient death. Between life and death there is a
borderland, broad or narrow as the ease may be, and
in that borderland or marsh between life and its opposite,
death, disease plants its flag, and leads over its victims one
by one to the other shore. There are cases, it is true,
but they are the exception, in which health may expel
disease, and so death is now and then balked of its
victim. Life makes a rescue, and for a time men return
as Hezekiah's sun-dial went back ten degrees as it had
gone down. But physiology teaches us that disease, as
a rule, is the monitor of approaching death, and that
dissolution follows disease as certainly as decay in plant
life strikes it at the moment when it has reached
maturity. The law of disease as the prelude of death passes on
from the lower to the higher world of moral and spiritual
life. It is not conceivable that any organism can con
tinue its functions when they have begun to work in a
disorderly way. The plant withers, the animal sickens,
and man — the last work of aU — faUs into incipient decay
the instant that his spiritual organism has taken up the
seeds of death. In any act of disobedience, even the
least, the bare tasting of a forbidden fruit, there was
incipient death. In that very day man truly, if not
K

258 Eschatology.
entirely, died. This is the ground we stand on, and now
its application to the doctrine that evil is self-destructive
is only too apparent.
The only objection to this view is the fact that, in
spite of the sentence, the race has lived on and propa
gated itself. But, on closer reflection, it will be seen that
the objection is in reality a confirmation of the truth we
are insisting on. Did we hold that Adam's " fall," as it
is called, was a complete probation, and that he had
committed by this one rash act of his spiritual infancy
what amounted to spiritual wickedness, or the sin against
the Holy Ghost, then we should suppose the sentence,
" dying thou shalt die," would have instantly asserted
itself to the fall. Instead of that, Adam only passed out
of one educational stage, which was in reality a state of
grace, into another. He came under a sentence, it is
true, but he was instantly taken up as an erring chUd,
obstinate but not impenitent, and corrected by his
heavenly Father. A new discipline was prepared for
him outside the garden instead of in it. Earth may be a
" desert drear," but it is our home and school, with its
class-room and playground side by side ; but it is not
our prison, much less the penitentiary and reformatory of
moral waifs and strays. It sometimes becomes all that
and even worse, for there are possible hells even on
earth ; but this is not the true conception of our state
here as the preparation for a higher state of blessedness
hereafter. Such is man's state of being here. He is born in sin,
in the sense that this vitium or vine-diseaseS-is inherent
in him, and has the tendency to kill the plant unless the
parasite is itself killed and the disease extirpated. This
is the problem -of "grace;" and while we cannot explain
the limited action of grace, and that so few are apparently

Eschatology. 259
saved here, we have no reason to suppose that we know
the whole of God's dealings with the race. It may be
that grace tarries with some tiU the death hour, — of
which one dying thief is the type, — and with others
begins beyond the veil of which — dare we add — the other
thief is the type. Where Scripture is silent we should
be the last to intrude into things not seen, and so we draw
the line between the penitent and the impenitent thief.
We say with Augustine, " One was converted that none
might despair, and only one that none might presume."
So far well ; but to affirm the opposite, and pronounce on
the eternal destiny of the one who died impenitent is
equally beyond our thought. We are dogmatizing in
the dark when we affirm or deny the possibility of grace
ever reaching any spirits in the world of spirits. The
literal meaning, which is always the simplest, of such a
passage as that (1 Pet. iii. 18, iv. 6), is one which
almost commits us to hold that there is some ministry
of Christ ad inferos.
We only allude to it here as a ground for supposing
that much remains that is unrevealed —
" Behold a man raised up by Christ,
The rest remaineth unrevealed ;
He told it not, or something sealed
The lips of that Evangelist."
Here we should stand, or rather halt, on the border
land, sure only of this, that " His mercy endureth for
ever;" and that as we can put no term or bound to
His mercy to men in the flesh, there is no bar either in
reason or in the character of God why the spirit- world
may not be a prolonged or rather a reserved state of
grace, perhaps under more favourable conditions than the
present. Nothing but what is called the practical argument

260 Eschatology.
would ever hold back multitudes from embracing this
merciful solution of an appalling difficulty. They are
told from the pulpit by preachers, who are more pulpiteers
than painstaking divines, that now is the accepted time,
— and this phrase "now" is taken uncritically in the
sense of now or never. In this connection the apostle
is pointing out that it is now a parte ante not a parte
post, and this even the context points out. But "now
or never " has the right ring of earnestness ; it is the
categorical imperative which few can resist while the
spell of the preacher is over them, and so an uncritical
use of this passage is brought in to check the wavering
resolutions of many. It is this kind of argument which
succeeds in the case of the weak, but fails with the strong.
Hence it is that our most dogmatic Churches are too
generally supported by a narrowing circle of devotees,
while the stronger intellects, as a rule, are conspicuous
for their absence from pulpiteering divines, whose appeals
are chiefly made to the weaker and more sentimental side
of our nature. In too many cases preachers argue with
themselves, and their audiences tacitly accept the argument
as if it had force, that unless we are shut in to a decision
in this life, we shall never come to the decision at all.
We are told that it is practically dangerous to hold out to
men the hopes of repentance beyond the grave ; and then
they will certainly defer repentance, as Constantine did
his baptism, in order that he might step direct out of the
laver sea of regeneration in white robes into a world where
all walk in white.
To those who argue of heaven and holiness in this
external way our only answer is, that this motive of fear
and self-love acts so feebly that the thing is clear either
that the author of human nature made a mistake in set
ting this as the mainspring of the watch, or that we are

Eschatology. 2 6 1
mistaken in describing it as if it were so. The latter is
by far the most likely mistake of the two, and so it is.
So far from human nature being made, as Paley would
describe it, as an Epicurean calculating machine to sum
up its pleasures and pains here and hereafter, and strike
a balance of the sum-total, the very opposite is the case.
Even educated men are unable to resist a pleasure which
is near in view, or to avert a pain which is far off.
Every day we meet with men, not without character in
other respects, but wanting in this power of prudential
self-restraint. We cannot, then, bring ourselves to be
lieve that the author of our being intended to hang our
eternal happiness on so frail a thread as this. In every
act of faith there is, we admit, a certain act of choice ;
there is the preferring of the future to the present. So
Moses accounted the reproach of Christ greater treasure
then the riches of Egypt ; but this preference is not of
the essence of faith. The essence lies in affiance to a
spiritual Lord or Master whom we serve, not for the good
things which He has prepared for those who unfeignedly
love Him, but for His own sake. It is for His dear
sake, and that alone, that we endure reproach, and which
is therefore rightly called the reproach of Christ. The
utilitarian and Eudaemonist theory of virtue, practised
for the sake of the benefits it brings with it, has so
infected English thinking, that even our Theology has
taken a taint from it which it is not easy to get rid of.
No Theology, it has been truly said, is stronger than
the philosophical supports on which it rests. If we
raise, as the popular Theology has done in this country,
where Locke and Paley were long its leading lights, a
superstructure of spiritual truth on the sandy foundations
of utilitarian Eudsemonism, can we wonder that the
building gives signs that it is a house whose foundations

262 Eschatology.
are on the sand ? The Wesleyan appeal to conversion on
the Paleyan ground that it is worth our while to believe
in God, for we shall be damned if we do not ; this, in
blunt terms, is the mainspring of much of our modern
preaching. It is the keynote to a large majority of
the tracts in circulation. Anecdotes such as those of
the boy who went out boating on Sunday and was
drowned, or of another who went on the ice and fell
in, — when gospel appeals start from such a base of
terrorism, we are reminded of the story of the Tower
of SUoam, and we are warned not to draw a moral from
special judgments unless we know aU the facts of the
case, which we certainly do not. There is no question
that much of the coarser forms of infidelity of our day,
which jibe at the whole doctrine of heaven and hell, would
lose its point with the artisan classes if it were not
for their revolt at the crude; external way in which
heaven and hell are represented as places, not states.
If we add to this the immoral conception that a bare act
of deathbed repentance and faith will, in some magical
way, waft a soul clean out of one state into the other,
can we wonder that the hard-headed artisan turns from
this Theology ? An interviewer the other day was
sounding Barnum, the American showman, as to his
views on life in general, not excluding his religious
opinions. This was Barnum's . shrewd, mother- wit con
ception of the immorality of that which passes for
sound teaching in orthodox circles : —
" A pirate who has killed in cold blood a hundred
men is caught, repents on the gallows, and says, ' I am
sorry for what I have done, and I am going to Jesus.'
A certain proportion of those he has killed, say fifty per
cent., having been cut off in their sins without time for
repentance, are supposed to be damned. Is it conceivable

Eschatology. 263
as consistent with the justice of God, that the repentant
pirate should look over the battlements of heaven down
upon these fifty whom he sent to heU, and complacently
congratulate his redeemed soul upon his luck in having
had time to repent before he was hanged ? " x
Now this is crudely and even coarsely put, but the
common conscience of mankind is tested by extreme
cases of this kind. Intuitional Theology should never
shrink, as the old dogmatic school often did, from test
ing its doctrines, by laying them before the common
people. If rejected with contempt because they lead to
revolting conclusions like the foregoing, the Theology
of the intuitional school, with whom conscience is final,
should be ready to take them back and revise them,
and ascertain where the lurking error may be. It does
not ask mankind to do as Hobbes, in his cynical way,
said is best done with religion, to be taken like pills
whole, and not chewed. Deathbed repentance, with
what the Jesuits caU attrition, or the fear of its penal
consequences, substituted for contrition or real sorrow
for sin; this is the immoral element in the popular
Eschatology which must be struck out, and something
better put in its place. The true criterion of the
doctrine of future punishment is whether it emphasizes
that great Old Testament truth, that every transgression
and disobedience must receive at one time or another,
here or hereafter, in the flesh or the spnit, its due
recompense of reward. Some men's sins go before to
judgment, and some they foUow after. This is enough
for us to know without our attempting to adjudicate
when and in whose case the retribution is complete here,
and in whose case the judgment tarries for the unseen
world. As a rule, it may be said that believers, Uke
1 Pall Mall Gazette, April 1, ISSi.

264 Eschatology.
Lazarus, receive their evil things here, and are comforted
hereafter, while unbelievers are comforted here and
tormented there. If we throw in the element of
infinity into the compensation, it seems to us to disturb
the balance ; but this we have no right to do. Certainly
there is no hint of any term to the sufferings of Dives ;
but the silence is equally explicit on the other side, and
we have no right to make any meaning out of the
silence of Scripture in one sense and not in another.
Here we should wish to leave the question, and
should do so if the dogmatic school would allow us
to drop the veil. But when Dr. Pusey brings forward
a catena of patristic authorities all bearing in one direc
tion, and sums it up with " hear the Church's appeal
as to what is of faith as to everlasting punishment,"
we are inclined to raise a protest in the name of
conscience, and on the ground that we are at least
as good judges of the mind of God as they were. We
probably live in a world which has far more enlightened
and humane conceptions both of God and man than a
society stricken with moral leprosy, and carrying in it
the seeds of its own dissolution, as the later Eoman
Empire was.
For these reasons we refuse to allow these so-called
Fathers to be lords over our conscience. We look else
where to the spiritual intuitions of an age which has
emancipated the slave, has mitigated the ferocity of war,
and softened our criminal code, until punishment is no
longer merely vindictive, but solely retributive and
reformatory. This century which we live in is far from
a golden age, but it is an advance on all preceding, and
hence we stake our hopes on a Theology of the future
rather than of the past. In all probability there are
crudities of conception as well as crudities of practice, in

Eschatology. 265
which the twentieth century will be as ashamed of the
nineteenth as the nineteenth is of the eighteenth. But
if so, this only teaches us not to speak of our present
standpoint as finality. In all probability the escha
tology which we glance at as ours, will be superseded a
century hence as too crude for that age. We shall be
quite content to see it so, provided only that the dead
in every case bury their dead. Let us consign to the
grave the dead conceptions of our age, when terrorism
reigned alike in Theology and law : we shall regard with
great complacency the time when our turn comes to
be so carried out and buried by the men of a coming
age. As we have said, none of the three usual hypotheses,
Particularism, Universalism, and the old doctrine ,of a
never-ending place of punishment, exactly commend
themselves to us as the Eschatology of the future.
What, then, it will be asked, is the position which we
take up ? Is not the logical distribution complete
between these three hypotheses ? and is there room for a
fourth, distinct from any of these three ? Our answer is
that there is. The fourth position which realizes all
that is true in the other three hypotheses, and rejects
their error, is this, that life is a discipline, but that the
term of discipline does not necessarily end with our
present life in the flesh. If there be a spirit-world
at all, may it not be a place, not of a lesser, but a
higher discipline than the present ? What is to forbid
the education of all spirits when brought into the light
of the Father of spirits ? This was the keynote to all
the later teaching of the late Thomas Erskine; and
though, like a wise master-builder, he laid a founda
tion only, and left others to build on it, there can be
no doubt as to the direction of his thought, and the

266 Eschatology.
fruit it is bearing among many thoughtful minds.
Naturally enough, he rejected that American type of
Universalism which is only a crude and sensuous re
action against old school Calvinism, and of which
thoughtful Americans of almost all schools are already
ashamed. The truth which Erskine taught, and which we desire
as his disciples to lend emphasis to, is, that education,
not probation, is the keynote to God's dealings with
mankind. If we discard the latter for the former term,
the gain for Eschatology is enormous. We at once get
rid of an inadequate and misleading term, and replace it
by one which is consistent with all we can conceive of
the Fatherly character of God, and which also harmonizes
with our advanced ideas of jurisprudence. The juris
prudence of our day has begun to recognise the necessity
for abandoning a vindictive for a reformatory code of
punishment. We no longer regard the debtor as the slave
of the creditor, to be locked up and, perhaps, left in
danger of being starved to death, as was not uncommonly
the case a century ago. The Algerine corsairs were not
more cruel than the creditors of last century ; and there
are charitable trusts now lying idle for the relief of the
victims of these land pirates as well as sea pirates. We
have changed all this. Are we to suppose that our con
ceptions of God's vindictive dealing with sin in the
debtor's prison of eternity are to remain the same in an
age which has sold the very sites on which debtors'
prisons once stood.
In all these aspects of the divine character, the age
caUs for change ; and the theology which will not bend
must break. In halls of so-called science, where popular
infidelity sets up its rival temples, this is the usual jibe
against Christians ; and the Christian advocate who takes

Eschatology. 267
up the challenge should go with a better doctrine than
the popular one if he expects to be listened to.
But with the education of the human race as our key
note, and the concession that " defects of doubt and
taints of blood," which place too many beyond the reach
of education here, shall all be redressed hereafter, our
course is clear for laying down a juster and truer type of
Eschatology. " All souls are mine," and " that the soul
that sinneth — it and it only shall die ; " this is the
correction by Ezekiel of the unjust conceptions of the
Jews of his day. "Are not my ways equal, are not your
ways unequal ? " we may go on to say of the harsh and
partial schemes of salvation which pass current in ortho
dox circles. They impugn as much the justice as the
goodness of God, since, by a bare act of repentance, a
long score of sin is supposed to be wiped out in the case
of some. In the very teeth of this immoral doctrine we
see, in the case of David, how God teaches us that repent
ance may lead to reformation of character, but never to the
cancelling of the eternal law that sorrow dodges sin as
the sleuth-hound the track of blood. The Greeks had
their Nemesis, and Hebrew theology was equally stern
and unsparing. No Eschatology, then, can be true or
will stand which leaves the least loophole of escape for
the natural law of retribution following up even the
repentant sinner. Our God is a consuming fire ; where
the carcase is, there must the eagles be gathered together.
If there is the smallest flaw of character even in the
brightest saint, it will be tried by fire, and that fire of
God's love — which is also wrath — will destroy the dross
and save only the gold. Even divines of the old school,
such as Bengel, saw and recognised this, and hence the
Eschatology of the future will at. once be more stern and
also more merciful than that of the past.

268 Eschatology.
Lastly, with regard to the resurrection of the body and
the judgment to come, we have much to learn and not a
little to unlearn. The old doctrine was, and is, that till
the last day our bodies lie sleeping in the grave, and that
at the last trump we shall all rise together, and then and
there instantly be clothed again with our bodies, which
will be the same, and yet not the same, as the actual
bodies of flesh which are laid in the grave and are turned
to dust. There was supposed to be some material point
of identity between the two : hence the desire to be
buried on holy or at least consecrated ground. If, as on
the campo santo of Pisa, we are laid on earth actually
fetched from Palestine, this was best of all; the next
best thing was to lie under a chancel hard by the place
where the staled priest brought Christ down from heaven
in the similitude of bread and wine. Not far off from
this, either in church or churchyard, our bodies could
rest in hope; but to lie in unhallowed ground, as the
unbaptized or suicides were, as in Ophelia's case—
' ' Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her, "
this was a hard case.
The Eschatology of the future will emancipate itself
from this last shred of Materialism — the resurrection of
reUcs. No one has helped on that true conception of the
resurrection body so much as Swedenborg, who, from
the spiritual point of view, taught that man is not a soul
in a body, but, instead, that the soul or spirit is the for
mative principle of that body. The old conception was,
that God built up a physical framework of the laws of
physiology, and then breathed into itr— as a kind of ad
junct — what we call the living soul. The very reverse
is the true order. The soul — a formative principle, how
or in what way we cannot say — proceeds from God, and

Eschatology. 269
at the birth, then, or conception, this soul begins to build
around itself a body or temple of flesh and blood, and
during life the soul is ever building and renewing this
fabric of clay. Then death comes and destroys the
temple, and what is left then for the spirit to do ? It
begins again, as we conceive, its old work of building up
a body, but on new lines and with fresh materials.
" Destroy this body, and in three days I will build it
again," was the challenge thrown out by Christ. In His
case the formative principle rebuilt the spiritual body
literally in three days. Thirty and three years in His
case was this temple of flesh in building, and when
violently destroyed on the cross, as the first temple had
been, with axes and hammers, we should not have sup
posed that it would be reared again in three days. In
deed, the popular doctrine of the resurrection of the body
fails to realize this at aU. Strictly speaking, the death
of Christ in their view is only a case of suspended
animation. He yielded up the ghost : in this sense He
truly died. So far they are not Docetists. But they
lay stress on the thought that His holy body saw not
corruption. They suppose that because wrapped in
spices, and so far preserved from outward contamination
or the defilement of material decay, that the same material
body rose which had been laid in the grava To our
thinking it was the same, and yet not the same. The
law that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God appUes, of course, as much to the flesh of Christ as
of other men of women born. But how, and in what
way, flesh was transmuted into spirit, and the buried
seed-corn absorbed into and taken up by the resur
rection plant during the few short hours that He lay in
the grave, it is idle to inquire. Thus is the miracle the
same as when water was changed into wine, or five loaves

2 jo Eschatology.
multiplied into the bread of five thousand, — both alike
in a moment of time. There are some who are said to
be changed in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump,
as there are others in whose case the change is spread
over the long interval between death and the general
resurrection. All flesh is, we know, not the same flesh ; and there
are different ages of growth and of the duration of life
even among animals otherwise not very unlike. Why
parrots and crows should live so much longer than other
birds, why an elephant's life should be at least five
times that of a horse, no law of physiology seems to
point to. It may be so, in the same way that there
are reasons why the transformation of a natural into a
spiritual body through the process called death should be
retarded in some cases and accelerated in others. Conjec
ture on this question is idle, — all that we lay stress on
is, that every man is to rise in his own order. Christ is
the first-fruits, then they that are Christ's at His coming,
then cometh the end.
Hence it is that this doctrine of the resurrection of
the body both clears up the true meaning of death and
the intermediate state, and also reconciles a standing
difficulty between those who hold the immortality of the
soul and those who assert the resurrection of the body.
The majority of Christians hold both, but hold them in
the crude external way which the Latin Fathers taught
and the Church of Rome has adopted in the creed of the
Council of Trent. According to Augustine, there are
two distinct sources of immortality in man. There is
a soul inherently immortal, and also an immortalized,
because resurrection, body. With a strange perversion
of Scripture, through a hard literalism which killed its
spirit, Augustine and the Latin Fathers generally held

Eschatology. 271
a doctrine equivalent to the resurrection of the flesh.
The phrase the " flesh " was too unscriptural to escape
condemnation at the Council of Rimini ; but though for
mally a heresy, the popular, and indeed the orthodox,
doctrine was little better than the Egyptian notion of the
soul's exodus, which was to return at the Apocatastasis
and revivify the mummified body. The fable of the
phoenix was supposed to symbolize this, and in the usual
way that myths grew, there was first the idea sug
gesting the fact, and then the fact brought forward to
corroborate the idea. To illustrate the soul's return to
the body, the fable was invented of a bird which, at the
end of five centuries, set fire to its own nest, and then
sprang alive out of its ashes. In return, this fable once
set going helped to strengthen and confirm the Egyptian
notion, which was the last degradation of Materialism,
that the soul in the same way was bound to return to
its mansion of clay.
This was the patristic doctrine of the resurrection of
the body, or rather of relics which, however modified,
is substantially the popular doctrine of the Anastasis to
this day. That the Anastasis begins at death, and not at
the last day, whatever that means, has not been taught
by any section of the Christian Church, so far as we are
aware, until Swedenborg. He was the first to throw a
bridge between philosophy and Theology on this subject.
Till his time the two stood opposed. There were on the
one hand the philosophers, teaching the truth that man is
an immortal soul placed in a mortal body, and on the other
hand there were the theologians proclaiming the other
truth, that this mortal body was to be one day or other
immortalized, so as to live on as asbestos does in a fire
never to be quenched, or in eternal felicity. This resur
rection, or rather this re-collection of the scattered particles

272 Eschatology.
of our individual dust, was, ' of course, the miracle of
miracles, and naturally added another to the many
stumbling-blocks of philosophers in the way of the
acceptance of the Christian revelation. So it came
about that philosophy and religion had each its own
Eschatology. The faith of phUosophers was the old
animula vagula blandula theory of the Stoics, the vital
spark of heavenly flame which, in quitting this mortal
frame, hovered about as the psyche or butterfly until it
found some new flower to fasten on in Elysian fields. As
a set-off to this, Christians till the other day held a kind
of churchyard doctrine of the hereafter. Men's thoughts
on the grand theme of existence after death went down
among the tombs instead of up into the heights, and were
accordingly and constantly leaning to a materiaUsm of
which the Chiliastic errors of Papias and others were only
the logical outcome. This type of thought lasted almost
down to our day. The classic revival of the Renaissance
did nothing to purge the Reformation of this gloomy
medisevalism. On the contrary, it only set up as a rival
Theology a kind of revived paganism, against which
Christianity had to fight for its very existence, and the
result was a struggle between Deists and the orthodox
party, in which no quarter was asked or given.
Such was the state of thought down to the age of
Swedenborg, who seems to have struck out by a kind of
spiritual intuition that the soul is a formative principle,
and if immortal at all must create for itself a new and
a spiritual body. He laid this down as the true
reconcning point between faith and philosophy. We
see the contrast between the old and the new in this.
The old school taught the dependence of the soul on the
body. If, instead of this Materialism thinly disguised,
we reverse our order of conception, we then see how the

Eschatology. 273
soul is a formative principle, and that the body only
grows and lives as the form or manifestation of an inform
ing spirit, a vital power which is vegetative in plant life,
is animal in animal Ufe, and becomes rational and moral
in man. With much that is mystical in Swedenborg as
to correspondences, and of each organ being made up of
a number of infinitely little organs, which was a strange
anticipation of homoeopathy and the germ theory of
disease, there was a profound truth in his doctrine of the
dependence, not of the soul on the. body, but of the body
on the soul. The soul, as he held, is " subtle and all-
pervading, has an ethereal envelope; and is in the perfect
shape of the human body."
Such a doctrine as this lends itself obviously as the
reconcUing point between faith and philosophy. There
were spiritualizing philosophers- of the Cartesian and
Spinoza school, and there were materializing believers
of the orthodox type. But between them there could be
no common ground, nor can there be: unless we hold that
soul and body are not twain, but one; The dualism of
the old school left nothing but a wrangle, between faith
and philosophy as to whether the entire man. was an
embodied or a disembodied spirit. To the philosopher
body was an incumbrance, and the resurrection of the
body accordingly an absurdity. It was as- retrograde a
step as if we put man back among animals, or reduced
the animal to the sponge state of existence, half-plant
half-animal. Two rival theories, both dualistic, contended
for supremacy ; the one laid stress on the immortality of
the soul, the other on the resurrection of the body, but
in both cases the assumption was duaUsm: The philo
sophy of the future is monistic, and so far as we know
Swedenborg was the first to teach it. He scouted the
notion of a soul in a body, or a soul out of a body.
s

274 Eschatology.
The one was a chimera or creature of fancy as much as
the other. Disembodied spirit and an unspiritual body
were equally unmeaning phrases. Body and soul, or
rather spirit, are related to each other as a plant is to its
vital formative principle. To every seed its own body,
this is a law running throughout the universe. In man
there is a breath of lives. He has, strictly speaking,
three souls or lives ; he has a vegetative soul, an animal
soul, and a rational soul, but the higher always con
ditions and shapes the lower. Bichat, the physiologist,
first pointed out the duality of lives in men. He has a
plant life which is unconscious, and a sentient life which
is dimly conscious. But here Bichat, as a physiologist,
stopped. We go on to hold a third kind of psyche, which
is moral and rational, and this psyche in man, which is
the soul of his soul, is also a pneuma, something which
is God-inspired, and consequently has in it the germ of
immortality. Thus, unlike animals, man at death does not faU into
dissolution and render back his whole being into the
tomb, which is the womb of nature and. perchance its
grave. He retains the psyche-pneuma, and this with its
inherent vital power raises itself after a brief trance,
which we may call the passage from one life to another, into
a new form of activity. It begins to prepare to itself a
body, and this we may say is the true meaning of that
second birth which we call death. Hence, from this
point of view, which is substantially Swedenborg's
doctrine of the Anastasis, it is a process which begins at
the moment of death, though it is impossible to say and
indeed to conjecture when it is consummated. In any
case, and on this alone, we desire to lay stress ; this view,
based as it is on the philosophy of monism, puts an end
to the conflict of ages between the dualism of mortal

Eschatology. 275
body and immortal soul. That ill-united pair, between
whom faith and philosophy have failed to tie the
mystical knot, are now united and are no longer twain,
but one flesh, and so we may say with the Church Father,
0 felix connubium si non admiserit adulterium,. The true
meeting-point of soul and body is the monistic philosophy
which Swedenborg so strangely anticipated. It is summed
up in the Spenserian lines —
" For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the body make. "
When we hold that the soul is not merely the
tenant of the body, but is the formative principle of
the house itself, the resurrection is not only cleared of
unnecessary difficulties, such as the re -collection of
the scattered particles of dust, but it also falls in with
all the analogies of nature. In plant and in animal
life the seed is a formative principle. It has a power
beyond other cells of building around itself an infinitude
of organisms, which are more than reproductions of the
same primitive cell. The higher the life the greater the
differentiation. Heart, lungs, liver, brain are not only
distinct organs, but also with distinct secretions in all
animals of higher type ; and all we know of the mystery
of life is this, that the soul as a vital principle has this
strange power of collecting around it particles with very
various chemical affinities, and holding in suspense the
natural tendency of those particles to fly off and seek
some new affinity. Life is thus a continued miracle —
it is a long suspense of the law of chemical affinity.
If this be so, we have the less difficulty in seeing
how in the unseen world the soul or formative principle
can begin to build around itself a new and spiritual
body. All is in perfect analogy with what we know of

276 Eschatology.
the operations of nature. The base line of physiology
is ab ovo omnia, and psychology must take the same
base line too. Why not unite them together as Sweden
borg has done, and so the soul as a formative principle
is seen not only to be immortal, but also the germ of
what we describe as the immortality of the resurrection
body. The phrase, a spiritual body, is unmeaning on
the supposition of the resurrection of the flesh. But
we assume that soul can build around itself one kind
of body here, i.e. of flesh, and another hereafter, which
is a body of spirit, and our analogy is complete.
Here we may pause, and review the ground which we
have gained in the Eschatology of the future. We have
seen — (1) That future punishment is not arbitrary but
natural : whatsoever a man sows, that shaU he also reap.
(2) We have also seen that this being so, the question is
idle whether few or many are saved. Universalism and
Particularism are aUke unwarranted assumptions of an
unknown hereafter. The world to come wUl be much
more like the present than many suppose. Death is
but a narrow stream between a lower life in the flesh
and a higher life under conditions of being infinitely
more favourable for the development and growth of
moral character. (3) This leads us, in the third place,
to discard the term probation, and to speak instead of
the education of the human race. Hence, if we are led
on to think of future punishment as bearing a reforma
tory character, not a vindictive, we can still hold the
doctrine of God's retributive justice, rendering to every
man the due reward of his deeds; but in measure, and
with every allowance for hereditary taints and defects.
(•4) We are led in the last place to review the old
contrast between mortal body and immortal soul, and
to see how shallow this contrast is, based as it is on

Eschatology. 277
a philosophy of the dualism of mind and matter now
out of date. The soul is not the tenant of the body,
with a lease of years to run here in the flesh, and then
to be renewed on a perpetuity grant at the resurrection
morning. This crude dualism must give way to the
monistic conception of matter being only the outcome
of mind and of body, as the form of which soul is the
formative principle. When we have once grasped this
thought, the Anastasis may be said to begin at the
moment of death — the resurrection of the body and the
life everlasting, which are two distinct clauses in the
Apostles' Creed, are in reality one, and the same,
determined not, as we may say, at the day of judgment,
but at the day of death, which is in fact the beginning
of judgment to each one of us. Whether the highly
symbolic language of Christ and His apostles really
requires us to hold that there is one great day of gaol
delivery and assize for the whole human family, or
whether it is a continuous process extending on inde
finitely through the ages, it would be unwise to decide.
As often as not, a day in Scripture means an extended
period, and the day of the Lord is too often used in
that sense to make us at aU determinate as to any
one point of time beyond the hour of death marking
the eternal condition of any of God's creatures. But, as
we have said, we have no strong deliverance to offer
on this subject. If any cling to the notion of a great
day of assize, they may do so if it assists them more firmly
to grasp the great truth that " we must aU appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ." This is the essential
thought on which we cannot be too explicit, and indeed
in truth it may be said that all Eschatology turns on it.
If men are to be judged at all for the deeds done in
the body, it clearly must be a state in which we are

278 Eschatology.
in a sense " naked," absent, i.e. from the body and present
with the Lord.
Such, in brief outline, is the Eschatology which seems
to us to be the Eschatology of the future. It corrects
the old Eschatology only in those points where the old
is clearly defective, from its being based on unscientific
conceptions such as that of " the bodies of men howso
ever corrupted, wheresoever in their parts dispersed, how
long soever dead, shall hereafter be re-collected in them
selves, and united to their own souls " (see Pearson on The
Creed, Article xi.). Again, it corrects the old Eschatology
on the important doctrine that the eternity of future
punishment rests on the necessary immortality of the
soul, the one statement being as unfounded as the other.
In all these respects the old must give place to the new,
and in proportion as divines consent so to revise their
teaching, will they be able, like the scribe instructed, to
bring out of their treasure things new and old.

C II A l'TK i; XV.
OK ANliKI.S.
KvouiTKtN has conquered along the. whole line. To use
tho phrase ol' one of its ablest exponents, " There lies
in the 4*wrosiH'<wrrr--trf""iife the ]iromi.se and the potency
'(Tf- ¦tho "hjgtrBst.'' The scale of existence in a ladder,
wlio.se base in laid in the lowest form of plant life, bill.
whoso .summit reaches u|) into the heaven of .spiritual
being, among natures whose perfection it is to awake up
in God's likeness, anil to bo satisfied therewith. We
have no rigid, lo limit the phrase evolution to that
series of growths upward, from the cell of the plant to
the soul in man, and then to assume that the series
I hero abruptly ends, or that, like a recurring decimal, life
returns on itself. This would bo little bettor than the
Buddhist conception of the wheel of life, each birth
being only a. fresh migration, and out, of which there is
no escape but in non-being. If we use the phrase
evolution at all, we have us good a right to assume that
there is an upward series above mini, as well as a. down
ward .series below man. Kvory lower form of life eon-
tains iu it the promise and potency of the higher; wo
may surely go on to see a. promise and potency of the
a.ngelie, world in the soul of man, as the evolutionist sees
the promise and potency of the highest forms of organic
life in the humblest form of tho plant cell. Does not

280 Of Angels.
the phrase evolution mock us with its half-meaning,
unless it goes up into the spiritual world ? Should we
not then say of man in despair —
" Man, his last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of useless prayer. "
Are we to close with the words in which despair and
hope strongly mingle —
" What hope of answer or redress,
Beyond the vaiL beyond the vail ? "
The old Theology had its own vision of angels ; the
new Theology also must set up a Jacob's ladder reaching
from earth to heaven. It is the Son of man who is the
meeting-point between all lower forms of life on' earth
and the higher forms of life that may people, for aught
we know to the contrary, those worlds beyond number
which look down on us nightly as the stars. We have
no right, in a word, to take up the term evolution and
use it up to a certain point, as if we are to say with the
Greek sophist that man is the measure of aU things.
This phrase of the sophist is worse than misleading, if
we aUow the modern scientist free use of the word
evolution, and then break off at man as if the last term in
the ascending series absolutely ended in man. We should
then get no farther than the Buddhist, to whom life is a
fountain, leaping up in spray, and faUing in foam around
its own basin of material existence. It is a wheel, or
rather a treadmill, in which incarnation or the imprison
ment of mind in matter goes on for ever, until some
happy spirits fly off as sparks into Nirvana, and emanci
pate themselves thus at once from evil and from existence
together.

Of Angels. 281
Such are some of the false conclusions that we arrive
at if we allow ourselves to use the term evolution of
all lower life up to man, and then profess ourselves
agnostics, or indifferent to any promise or potency of life
in natures higher than man, or in worlds beyond the
present. The new Theology, then, should plough with the
heifer of science, and so guess the riddle. We should
take up the phrase evolution, and go on to ask whether
it is not reasonable to suppose that man may be only
the middle term of a series in an ascending as well as
a descending scale. Virgil describes the roots and
branches of a tree as corresponding exactly in depth,
breadth, and height. As far down as the roots go, so
high up spring the branches ; as wide as they spread out
underground, so wide do they extend outward from the
trunk alone. This may be a mere fancy, but it has a
root of truth in it. In any case, we may argue from
analogy, reasoning, as all analogy does, from the known
to the unknown. We may fairly assume, till we have
proof to the contrary, that the ascending series does not
abruptly terminate in man. The presumption lies the
other way, and, like Columbus, we refuse to stand at the
shore of the ocean and pronounce that no land lies
beyond ; that there is no life above the present, no series
beyond man.
The old Theology cut the knot of the difficulty by its
doctrine of creation, which was Deistic. To the old
Theology it was as simple to conceive of the Deity
oeginning at one end of the scale as at the other. Its
theory of angels, accordingly, was that they were spiritual
)eings struck off by a fiat of Omnipotence, perfect and
;omplete, peccable it is true, else the fallen angels could
lave had no place in their system, but notwithstanding

282 Of Angels.
their fall, inherently and essentially immortal. How far
this Miltonic conception of angels has its roots in
Hebrew revelation, and how far in a Theogony like that
of Hesiod, it is needless to inquire. But the old Theology
is defunct for other reasons than this, that it grew out of
an uncritical fusing together of Greek and Hebrew tradi
tions of cosmogony. Milton himself, were he among us,
would be the first to admit that the ruling ideas of the
seventeenth century are not the same as those of the nine
teenth. Creationism, based on a bare and bald conception
of Omnipotence, was the ruling idea of the seventeenth ;
evolution, or the law of growth from within, is the ruling
idea of the nineteenth. We are bound, then, to reshape
our conception of angels in accordance with the change
of ruling ideas. To the modern mind, angels are little
more than the " spirits of just men made perfect." We
can no longer think of them as beings struck off, and
complete at a single fiat of Omnipotence. They are
beings who, like ourselves, have passed on from some lower
to a higher platform. Swedenborg may have gone too
far in affirming, with a dogmatism which none but a
seer could presume to, that angels and devils are only
men perfect either in goodness or wickedness, and so
fixed in their final state of eternal heavens or hells. But
the Swedenborg conception is at least a better departure
for the new Theology than that of Milton, which is only
Hesiod's Theogony set in Biblical phrase. Over the
whole subject of the hereafter there hangs a thick veil
of solemn mystery, and our truest wisdom is to stand and
wait. But since conjectures have been offered, and a
patchwork theory of the rise and revolt of angels has
been made up by theologians piecing together Hebrew
traditions with those of Greek mythology, we are boun<|
at least to discard this, even if we have nothing better

Of Angels. 283
to put in its place. The new science of comparative
philology, which has almost created for us the science of
comparative religion, has explained to us the growths of
these myths of the wars of the gods, and the revolt of
the lower gods or Titans against the Olympian deities.
It was the Greek way of explaining the supersession
of the gods of the aborigines or conquered race by
those of the conquering Dorians or Hellenes. But this
higher criticism, based on ethnology, was not known in
the age when the old Theology constructed its angelology.
Hence, excusably enough, men leaped to the conclusion
that the legends of Prometheus and the Titans pointed to
the same thought as the Hebrew tradition of the angels
who kept not their first estate. We have since learned
caution in this respect, and as the Greeks confounded the
Sanscrit Pramantha or fire - drill with Prometheus the
discoverer of fire, so by the same mistake Bryant and his
school confounded the Titans of Greek with the rebel
angels of Hebrew legend. But, rejecting all this, we can
at least say that the ruling ideas of Creationism, which
underlay the angelology of the old Theology, must be
replaced by those of evolution, which are the base line
of the new.
Our point of departure, then, is this. All Ufe is a
process upward from beneath. It has reached its last
and highest term, so far as we know at present, in man,
and there science breaks off with no further promise or
potency beyond the ultimate perfection of the race through
culture and science. At this point faith takes up the
problem. It stands Columbus-like on the shore of the
ocean of death, nor does it fear to launch out into the
deep. It looks up at night and sees worlds on worlds
above it. These specks of light glitter like beads in
the midnight sky; they stand out there like stepping-

284 Of Angels.
stones inviting us across the ferry, and raising our hopes
that this is only one of many worlds either habitable
in the future or inhabited in the past. We ask, is all
this promise and potency in vain ? Why this waste, we
say, since the Being who is infinitely wise, and who acts
under the law of parsimony, or the fitting of means to ends,
cannot have made all these globes of light simply to hang
out as beacon fires at night for man's sole use during his
short sojourn in the flesh ? As far as animal existence
on this globe is concerned, these stars seem apparently
useless. But to the astronomer these worlds of light
seem to belong to one of two classes. Either they are
like the moon, mere cinder-heaps, the ashes of some
burnt-out world, or as the nebulae, they are worlds in
course of formation. We thus seem "to stand forlorn
betwixt two worlds — one dead, one powerless to be
born." But faith does not lay down the problem in
despair, because science has no solution to offer at
present either through telescope or spectroscope. It
returns to the task, and asks whether angels may not be
glorified men, and the stars the homes of beings who,
like ourselves, have come up higher out of a flesh
condition into one of emancipation from the burden of
the flesh. In the stellar worlds we are oppressed with the
sense of space infinite, and with bodies such as ours it
is impossible even to conceive of passing from star to
star — " From luminous world to world, as far
As the universe spreads its naming wall."
When light itself is supposed to take centuries, or even
millenniums, to pass from one fixed star to another, we
are as much confounded by the telescope as by the micro
scope. We stand on a narrow isthmus of knowledge,
with two unbounded oceans of ignorance on each side.

OfA/ige/s. 2$ 5
The only point to reassure us is this, that, as the micro
scope shows us organic Ufe beneath us, all leading up to
man, so we may assume at the other end of the scale
that man is the first point of the macrocosm, as he is the
last point of the niicrocosin.
Faith, then, looks up into these worlds of light, and
connects stars and angels together by a Unk of thought,
which the Hebrew expression Jehovah-Tsabaoth throws
some light on. As Jehovah is the Being who was, who
is, and who is to come, so there may be worlds which
have passed out of being and are burned out scenes of
Ufe, as we conjecture the moon is. Again, there may be
worlds whicli are the homes of intelligent beings, as this
earth of ours at present is. What is to forbid the last
supposition of all ? There may be homes preparing
for us, — " in my Father's house are many mansions," —
and though much that has been written on this subject
by the late Stanley Faber and others is purely conjectural.
we are not to conclude that it has no foundation in sober
thought. Into the discussion of the plurality of worlds,
on which Whewell and Brewster in our day took sides,
as Fontenelle and others have done in past ages, we need
not here enter. The question is one beyond our present
powers, since astronomy, even aided by the spectroscope,
tells us only too little of the stellar worlds, as again we
know only too little of what a spiritual body means,
and what material conditions may be necessary for its
existence at aU. What is it to us to know whether,
as Whewell contends, all other worlds than ours are
utterly uninhabitable, or as Brewster inclined to think.
the planets at least show indications of something like
summer and winter, and changes of climate, as well as
other conditions of life ? What do we know about a
spiritual body, whether it depeuds on light, as aU Ufe at

286 Of Angels.
present does, or whether it may not be self-luminous, and
a giver instead of a receiver of light ? It is idle, till we
have solved this previous question of the spiritual body,
to waste time on discussions of the pluraUty of worlds
which, ever since Fontenelle's day, have only been taken
up to be laid down again as insoluble.
We then leave the question at the point where the
Scripture leaves it, among the things of which we cannot
speak particularly. It tells us about angels, and that
they are ministering spirits sent forth to those who shall
be heirs of salvation. It also holds out to us the hope
that we too shall be equal with the angels, when, as
chUdren of the resurrection, we neither hunger nor thirst,
marry nor are given in marriage. But here the record
breaks off, and Faith is left to wait and watch with her
sister Hope through the night-time of existence here.
But till the end comes, Faith should take Hope by the
hand, and not bate one jot of expectation that the gate of
the grave opens to us upwards into an existence as wide
as the starry universe which we see at night. Sir David
Brewster may have used rhetorical language when he
spoke of the plurality of worlds as the " faith of the
philosopher and the hope of the Christian." Quid philo-
sophes ac Christianus, we may say of those ill-assorted
adjectives. But it is none the less true that there are
many mansions in the Father's house, and that Christ
is both preparing us for the place and the place for us.
On this point the new Theology takes its stand as firmly
as the old. What, then, is the contrast between the two
on the subject of angelology ? It confines itself to this
one point, that the old Theology is Creationist and the
new Evolutionist. Hence the new demurs to the
thought that angels were created as molten metal is run
into a mould, — aus einem Guss, as the Germans would

Of Angels. 287
say. We incline to the view that angels, if not glorified
men, — on which Swedenborg is far too positive, — have at
least passed through conditions of being similar to, if not
quite the same, as men have. On no other terms could
we see how we shall be equal with the angels, unless
their probation grew in some sense as ours did out of a
contrast between Jlesh and spirit. In this sense we see
the point of the expression — the elect angels. The fall
of the angels through pride alone is assumed on fur
too narrow grounds to be glanced at by the apostle
(1 Tim. iii. 6) as if pride alone was the condemnation of
the devil. But not to notice other objections, it would
never do to build a doctrine of the unseen world on a
passing allusion even of an inspired apostle. The
foundations in this case would not bear the superstruc
ture. We confine ourselves, then,, to the thought that
angels, like men, have passed up the scale from one height
of being to another, and what is to - forbid other advances
beyond those. This may be the meaning of the heavenly
hierarchy : angels, principalities, powers, dominions, and
thrones, — all of which are abstractions, terms purposely
so employed, since we do not know the precise form
in which this hierarchy of beings above man is con
stituted and whence it sprung clothed.
It is enough to see the whole subject in the light of
analogy, and to translate the old angelology of the Church
into terms such as the reigning ideas of our age will
allow and let pass. Ab ovo omnia is the reigning idea
of our day. Evolution, or the law of growth from within,
is demanded everywhere. When the Church, then, de
clares her belief in an order of beings exalted above men,
and the claim is allowed by all who are not Sadducees
or sceptics, we have to take care that the claim is made
reasonable by being translated into a class of conceptions

288 Of Angels.
based on the biological law of growth, and so in harmony
with the reigning ideas of an age. This we do when we
speak of angels as akin to glorified men, if not quite the
same ; and here we may leave the subject. It has been
treated with much originality by Godet in his chapter on
angels, — the first in his series of Old Testament studies.
His argument amounts to this, that there are four cate
gories or orders of being. The lowest is plant life, in
which the species is all and the individual nothing. In
the next stage we find in the animal the species is strong,
and the individual life is there, but in its lowest form.
In man we find something like a balance between nature
and person. The race is not aU in all in the individual,
but the person is there coming up out of the race. The
inference obviously is, that to these three proportionals
there must be a fourth, to find which should be as simple
as a sum of rule of three. In the angelic world the
relations which we see in the plant of the individual to
the species should be exactly reversed. The species
should be absorbed in the individual, as we find actually
to be the case if we put together the few intimations of
Scripture as to the existence of a race of beings above
sex distinctions, and raised beyond the limitations which
make us members one of another, and part of a whole
which we call the human race.
To this theory of Godet we have nothing to object.
The only . remark which we need add is, that analogy
would seem to suggest that angels have passed through a
lower stage of being, and were not perfected as we are,
not without trial, under conditions of a flesh existence
similar to, if not quite the same, as we have to pass
through. This may be so or not, but if we are to reason,
as Godet does, from the law of continuity, then it is
more reasonable to suppose angels to have risen in the

Of Angels. 289
way described, than to have sprung into being, as a
diamond is formed, at a single flash of creative power.
So little is told us of beings above us in the scale of
creation, and so little is gained by launching out into
crude conjectures, that we had better here pause. All
we would say in conclusion is, that the new Theology is
as opposed to the Sadducean denial of angel and spirit
as the old. But it has learned greater caution in dis
cussing the whole subject of spirit, and beyond anything
else, it is averse to holding any theory of pure spirits, or
disembodied spirits as they are sometimes called. " Eternal
form shall still divide " the eternal mind of each, and
the most reasonable hypothesis therefore is, that angels
are beings who, like us, beginning in the flesh, are
perfected in the spirit. In any case, at this point we
cross the border-line between flesh and spirit, and
recognise the truth of the apostle's words, " Howbeit that
was not first which is pneumatical, but that which is
psychical, and afterwards that which is pneumatical."

CHAPTER XVI.
THE SECOND ADVENT.
The new Theology should have some teaching on the
subject of the second advent, as it is a doctrine which
has had to bear the reproach of that most distorted and
crude literalism which we commonly associate with what
is known as millenarian opinion. It is only then what
we may expect that the subject of the latter-day
reign of Christ, and the final setting up of His kingdom
with power among men as a kind of theocracy, has been
set aside, if not actually rejected, as a form of Judaizing
heresy, by nearly all sober and serious thinkers. Before
we turn to the inquiry as to what we mean by the Lord's
second advent and personal reign, it is perhaps as well to
ask the previous question, What do we understand by the
Lord's Person ? If we cannot conceive the glory of His
resurrection body, and lose ourselves, as the Lutherans
do, in mere verbal subtleties as to its ubiquity and
infinite divisibility, would it not be as well to pause
before we go on to discuss what we mean by His
personal reign ? Clearly we must see that such as the
Person of Christ is, such must be His personal reign.
The second advent must lie in the same region of " things
hoped for," that the first advent lay in to those devout
souls who, before Christ's coming, were waiting for the
consolation of Israel. They had no conception of the

The Second Advent. 291
depth of His humiliation, and so equally to us the height
and depth of both advents are beyond any measuring reed
of man's conception. It is best to be silent, and to nurse
our hope of coming glories on the same promises which kept
the faith of waiting patriarchs and prophets alight and alive
for long centuries. The Simeons and Annas, who prayed
in the temple, at least were not scandalized when the
Lord suddenly came to His temple in such mean guise
that to the eye of sense it must have seemed incredible
that the Galilean babe could be the Messiah. Who can
say but the outward conditions of the Lord's second
advent may not be the same surprise as those of the
first ? They will be at least as disappointing to sense-
perception. The kingdom of heaven will come as little
with observation and outward pomp at the second
advent as at the first.
On these grounds we might leave the subject of the
Lord's second advent the same subject of hope as the
nature of the resurrection body is : in both cases " it doth
not yet appear what we shall be." But the need of some
definite doctrine on the subject grows out of the nature
of the new Theology itself. We have said that a new
age caUs for a new Theology. But we are not so
sanguine as to suppose that by restating some of the
old truths and removing a few of the incrustations of
traditionalism, we shall succeed in so presenting the
truth in a light that the age will accept.
The hope of a reconciliation between reason and faith
lies deeper than in a mere concordat or compromise.
It points to the far-off future, and is based on the
belief in Christ's second coming and personal reign on
earth, whatever that means. But for the present all we
can do is to point out a certain inner harmony between
reason and faith ; others have succeeded in doing this, and

292 The Second Advent.
we too need not despair ; and being able to point out
that, we can show that in the voice of the awakened
conscience there lies the true meeting-point between
faith and philosophy. But when all this is said and
done on our part, there will still remain the standing
resistance of the flesh to the spirit. These are contrary
the one to the other, for there is an abyss of radical
contrariety, not broad but deep, between flesh and spirit,
which never1 can be bridged over in our present condition
of being ; it is this which marks the limits of grace in
this dispensation. Particularism can never pass into
Universalism so long as this root of unbelief, arising
from the contrast between flesh and spirit, remains
uneradicated in human nature. This unbelief breaks out
in the form of that evil heart of departing from the
living God to which the carnal mind is ever prone.
This carnal mind is enmity against God.
Flesh and spirit are not thus to be united merely by
throwing some flying bridge across the abyss, such as we
should describe the new Theology to be. The new
Theology, if it is to be true, must not only recognise
the eternal contrast between flesh and spirit as the old
Theology based on Particularism did : it must also point on
to the time when the contrast between flesh and spirit
will cease. It is on this point of the consummation of all
things that we see the bearing on . this question of the
Lord's second advent.
Without defining the term Christ's second advent too
precisely, we regard it as the time — when and how we
cannot say — when this old antagonism between flesh and
spirit will be reduced, if not quite overcome. At present
the Church has been living for eighteen centuries, and
may live, for aught we know to the contrary, for eighteen
centuries longer, on the single spiritual momentum given

The Second Advent. 293
to it by one mighty impulse at Pentecost, and that as
the direct result of the death and resurrection of Christ its
Lord and Master. On this first Pentecost, believers have
lived, and will continue to live, as heirs of an estate
which they have encumbered, but have never added to.
This is so true, that, as believers in a crucified and now
exalted Saviour, Christians are able even to glory in the
cross, knowing as they do that the shame of the cross
was swallowed up in the glory of the resurrection.
With the Gospel of the Ascension in their hands, Chris
tians can glory in the cross with the greatest reason as
, the Apostle Paul did, since the cross was a brief eclipse
of the sun of their hopes. The shame was but for a
moment, while the eternal weight of glory which began at
His resurrection goes on heightening into His session at
the right hand of God, there to reign as a king and priest
in one on His throne for ever. All this believers know,
and it deepens their faith as they contrast together the
shame and the glory of the suffering and the triumphant
Messiah. But what about the mass of mankind who
have not attained this conviction, and do not see that
the shame of the cross has been swallowed up in. the
glory of His resurrection ? It is different with the
world, which, unlike the Church, knows of the shame,
and is at best only dimly conscious of the resurrection,
if at all, and only by report of others, or by what we
must call second-hand testimony. He is declared to be
the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the
dead. But this is a line of evidence which escapes the
world, and appeals to no tests such as the world can
accept and understand. Nearly all writers on the evi
dences strangely overlook the text that God " gave Him
to be manifest not to all the people, but to witnesses that
were chosen before of God" (Acts x. 40). We are not

294 The Second Advent.
told the reason for this limitation of proof, and feel that
since the crucifixion of Christ was public the resurrection
should also have been public. The shame was notorious
and open, and we ask with some surprise why in the
same open way God did not roll back the stone from the
sepulchre in the sight of all men, and to the confusion of
those who had put Him to an open shame. It is on
account of this defect of palmary proof that the Jewish
people as a whole have uniformly rejected Jesus as the
Messiah. His death was to them a " scandal," as it is
foolishness to the Greeks ; and, perhaps for the same
reason in both cases, because they are not given any
proof of the resurrection compensating for the shame of
the cross. To us who believe both in His death and
resurrection, and to whom the full evidence is vouchsafed
by the best of all witnesses, — the witness within, — it is
different. In our case, His resurrection is a cause
producing in us a corresponding effect, in that we too are
raised from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.
We do not stand as the world does — where two ways
meet — unable to face the shame, because we do not
know the glory of the Messiah on whom our hopes rest.
But with the world the case is different : they stand in
doubt because they want the one proof without which
all the usual evidences faU like sparks on water, or as
seed cast on barren ground. The defect, it is true, is of
their own causing, and in this sense the responsibUity
should rest with them. Unable to see the contrast
between flesh and spirit, and not desiring for themselves
deliverance from the flesh, but only indulgence to it, how
can they see that Christ suffered in the flesh but was
quickened in the spirit, and now lives the Lord of hfe
to give life from the dead to all who caU on Him ? This
is the root of all unbelief, ancient and modern, and we

The Second Advent. 295
have never seen a way by which dogmatists of any
school are able to get over it. As far as human nature
goes at present, the obstacle is insuperable, and we are
shut in to the sad and somewhat harsh conclusion that
this dispensation of the Gentiles is only elective and
particular, as much as that of the Old Testament was.
Against the ground taken up by the ultra- Calvinist, much
as we may dislike it and disagree with him in his general
conclusion, nothing can be said until we know the whole of
the matter. The only flaw that we can see in his logic
arises from his mistake of taking the part for the whole,
and assuming that we know the whole of God's dealings
with the human race. Gentile exclusivism is thus con
victed of the same presumption in taking the part for the
whole as Judaism was. To both alike the true answer
is the reply of the apostle in the 5th of Romans, where
the iroXXol, who are included in the redemption of the
second Adam, must be as wide' as the 7roXXol, the
multitude (mistranslated as the many in both cases) of
the first Adam.
It is at this point that we begin to see the Ught
which the Lord's second advent throws on this perplexing
problem. At present, for failure of proof of His resur
rection, not so much on the historical side as on the
experimental, the world, Jewish and Gentile alike, stands
in doubt and waits. But the balance which now inclines
against faith might easily be righted, and it wUl be at
His glorious appearing. His second epiphany will be a
manifestation, not to a few shepherds and sages only, but
before the eyes of the whole world, of that spiritual power
which at His appearing will overcome the last lingering
doubts of the world. Too many are still in the position
of some of the five hundred to whom He appeared on a
mountain of Galilee, and who still doubted. We cannot

296 The Second Advent.
say how the last mists of doubt will be dispersed. All
that we insist on is that there will be such a manifesta
tion to sense, so decisive that the balance, as in Thomas's
case, will be set right. We know that the blessedness of
those who only believe when they see can never equal
that of those who, having not seen, yet have believed.
This is the distinction, as we suppose, between those
who are God's elect and those who are only His saved
but not His elect children. But we know that if the
first-fruits are holy, so also the lump is to be after
wards holy.
On these grounds we see the purpose of the second
advent, and what a lift in the direction of faith it is
intended to effect. In a sense, Christ's resurrection is
incomplete until He has manifested Himself in His resur
rection glory to all men. Hence it was that He appeared
to the apostles one by one, and last of all to the Apostle
Paul as to one born out of due time. But the world
waits for this supreme demonstration to sense, and for
want of this crowning evidence the flesh prevaUs against
the spirit, and some are scoffers and some are sceptics.
All that is called Secularism by one class, or Agnosticism
by another, will go on unchecked during this dispensation,
and instead of the Church prevaUing against it as earnest
revivalists of all schools desire, this sceptical temper is
likely to prevail against the Churches. For why ? The
drift of science, and also the drift of modern philosophy,
is all in a direction opposed to spiritual truth. As for
science, instead of limiting herself to mere quantitative
conceptions, as it is her duty to do, such as weight,
number, and other relations, she makes a false alliance
with what she calls philosophy, and sets up some half
truth of mere evolution from lower forms of animal life
as the whole account of man's being. Man is, we admit,

The Second Advent. 297
half-God, half-brute ; but science takes the half for the
whole. Philosophy in our day is only too content to
take these idols of science and set them up for its gods.
Much which passes for metaphysics and prima philosophia,
the Pan-Idealism of SchelUng and the Pan-Logicalism of
Hegel and his followers, are only ingenious forms of
word jugglery, by setting up an abstraction instead of
the living God. It is trying to make such phrases as
the Infinite and the Absolute do duty for the living God,
who is both Father and King. All this is melancholy to
those who see to the bottom of this reigning unbelief. It
is all the more melancholy because even the Churches
do not see the extent of the mischief. They are so
intent on their dogmas, that they do not understand that
one idol never had power to cast out another. On the
contrary, in our modern pantheon of opinions, Hegel and
Luther, Calvin and Kant, are all amicably set up side by
side. One theory of the universe is considered to be as
good as another, and the most thoroughgoing thinkers
are those -who openly say so, and instead of mourning
over this eclipse of faith, rather exult in it. In
Comte's phrase they regard the emancipation of man
from his last enemy to be not from death, but from
the hope of a hereafter. If we could only sink our
sense of personality, this conception of immortality,
as attaching only to humanity as a whole, might pass
muster: but being as we are, we shrink from it with
abhorrence. Escape there ' is none from this deadly descent down
the steep of Secularism. It is Only when the age has
rushed violently down this abyss of unbelief that it will
discover what it ends in. They will see that Secularism
is only the swine's philosophy, and must have a swinish
ending. But as long as the balance between flesh and

298 The Second Advent.
spirit is as ill- adjusted as at present, Adam's sin will be
the sin of all his posterity. They will take and eat, they
will know and die. When Mephistopheles, disguised as
Faust, puts the book into the student's hand after playing
with his victim, the student opens and reads —
" Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum ; "
the student then closes the book reverentially and retires,
while after him Mephistopheles hisses in his ear —
" Take for your law the ancient saw,
And that cousin of mine the snake,
And with that likeness of yours to God
Your heart is like to break. "
Such is the affecting summary of life. It is the old story,
old as Adam, new as the new-born babe of yesterday.
But what then ? Is this all ? Happily we have the
encouragement and the promise, " for this cause the Son
of God was manifest, that He might destroy the works of
the devil." At present we see not yet all things put
under Him, either in the heart of man or the universe.
But soon it will be otherwise, and for this reason the
Church, which has failed to convince the world by the
Lord's first advent, falls back as her last reserve of
power on the hope of the second advent.
The coming of Christ with power wUl result in the
victory of the spirit over the flesh. Multitudes who do
not believe now will believe then, when the last hindrance
to faith is taken out of the way, and the dead weight of
Secularism which now lies on the soul, " heavy as frost and
deep almost as life," has been rolled away, as the gravestone
over the sleeping Christ was. Christ's second advent
will thus be the resurrection of many, who otherwise
would not rise at all from the lower life of sense to the

The Second Advent. 299
higher life of spirit. We do not suppose that souls
quickened only in this way ever can rise to the same
heights of holiness as the elect of this dispensation. All
flesh is not the same flesh, — in the same way there are
spirits who are of the first-born, the hundred and forty-
four thousand who are virgins and follow the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth. But besides these, the sealed
twelve thousand of the twelve tribes of the mystical
Israel, there are the great multitude that no man can
number. Clearly, then, Multitudinism has a dispensation
or iEon of its own, as Particularism has in the present.
This age of the Church is the dispensation of the elect,
but the age which is to follow after the Lord's second
coining is to be the dispensation of the multitude, the
saved nations.
The old Theology, so far as we are aware, has not laid
the full stress on this contrast which it should do. Divines
have been far too anxious to lay stress on the birthright
and blessing to those that believe, and so they have failed
to see that the Father has reserved a blessing even to the
Esaus of the world. We are not making salvation easy,
or opening a door wide to all ; but we are desirous to
point out where the Church has failed to see its future
relation to the world. She has preached the cross and
the doctrine of redemption by Christ's blood. But the
resurrection, and its bearings on the masses of men who
walk by sight and not by faith, she is unable to set
forth. Nor is the fault whoUy caused by the Church.
The evidence itself is, for reasons which God has kept in
His own counsels, defective as evidence. That phrase,
that " He hath given assurance to all men, in that He
hath raised Him from the dead," is strangely mistranslated,
and, as usual, the Revised Version passes it over. " Hold
ing out faith to all," i.e. making the resurrection credible,

300 TJie Second Advent.
is the true sense of the passage (Acts xvii. 31). The resur
rection of aU, to be followed by a judgment to come, is
now credible by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Before
it seemed incredible that God should raise the dead :
now it is no longer incredible, since, if death has been
robbed of its prey in one instance, it may be so overcome
in the case of all men. Such is the argument of the
apostle in the 15 th of Corinthians. Our faith, as a
whole, hangs on the historical certainty of Christ's resur
rection, and to stand in doubt of that is to stand in
doubt of the whole truth of Christianity. This precisely
marks the difference between the Church and the world.
But the two societies are so mixed up at present, and
so many nominal Christians are only half believers, that
it is impossible to say who believe and who do not
believe. It is for the mass in the middle state, between faith
and unbelief, that the Lord's second coming wiU be the
crowning demonstration to disperse the remaining mists
of unbelief. The cry of the multitudes wiU then be
that of the Apostle Thomas, " My Lord and my God."
They will exclaim, like the people assembled on Mount
Carmel, "The Lord He is the God, the Lord He
is the God." It wiU be possible (we do not forget this)
for this mUlennial faith, so propped up on this side by
sense, to end in a millennial apostasy, spoken of in
apocalyptic language in the last great battle of Arma
geddon. Into the meaning of this last duel of God and Satan
we do not mean to enter, as the new Theology must keep
to the plain- beaten path. It should only revise the
teachings of the old Theology on points on which the
old proclaims a truth which has gained something like
Catholic consent. Such is the general doctrine of a

The Second Advent. 301
second advent. It is embalmed in creeds as well as
endorsed by all orthodox pulpit teaching. The only
point which is defective is that it gives no special
reason for the Lord's personal reign, such as we are
laying stress on. The old Theology, it must be said,
never got beyond Particularism, and whatever larger hope
it had of the salvation of all men, it was only a hidden
hope. It was unable to set forth articulately the reasons
why only some men are saved in this dispensation, and
why all will be saved in the coming dispensation. Flesh
and spirit were not contrasted by it in the same way as
law and gospel, faith and works were ; for want of this
first antithesis men failed to see why a gospel of
Particularism was a part only, and not the whole of
the everlasting gospel. There are three pairs of anti
theses. The Church took account only of two of these ;
but from a defective psychology it has not seen where
the root of the evil of unbelief lay, in the flesh lusting
against the spirit. This is the defect congenital with
men for which they are very partially, if at all,
responsible, and which will be set right with the mass
of men only by the Lord at His second coming.
It is not more difficult to see how His coming will
change the spiritual climate in which the masses live,
than it is to see that an inclination of the earth's axis
would change Nova-Zembla into a Madeira. It will
come about at His appearing as spontaneously as those
changes in the earth's surface when new fauna and
flora spring up with an accession of sunshine. So will
it be at the coming of the Son of man with power; we
must wait for His coming as the signal of the first dawn
of that kingdom of righteousness which all look for, and all
feel to be impossible under present conditions. Between
Optimists and Pessimists the Church of our day stands

302 The Second Advent.
as Paul did, between Stoics and Epicureans on Mars Hill,
and asserts as he did the resurrection of the dead and
the second advent, the two being so indissolubly connected
together, that philosophic doubt with regard to the one
generally leads to religious doubt with regard to the
other, and so the veil of the covering cast over all nations
lies like a kind of face-cloth over a dead and unbelieving
world.

CHATTER XVII.
THE NEW CKITrClsiM.
Last of the many questions on which the new Theologv
has to take up a distinct position, we now turn to the
new criticism. It is not saying too much when we poiut
to the results of comparative philology as having intro
duced us into a new order of conceptions on history. It
is as if a subterranean world had been opened to our
view, and we were led into galleries and corridors which
resemble the catacombs of Rome. We grope our way
through the chambers of the dead. aU lighted with
their funeral lamps, and Ulustrated by the epitaphs
whicli we can read but scarcely trace fuU and true.
Such is the new criticism, which from the negative
stage of general scepticism aU round, whicli was the
temper of last century, has now passed into a constructive
stage, in which some of our early beliefs about Greek,
Roman, and Hebrew antiquities are almost if not quite
rehabilitated. It was about the middle of last century that historical
criticism was born, and with it a shock was given to all
our early beUefs in the historical eredibiUty of the past.
The alarm was great, but after aU it was not so severe as
that which beUevers in the Bible had to face when the
old astronomy had to give way before the Newtonian.
It was a hard struggle, harder than we are now aware of,

304 The New Criticism.
before mankind was able to leave behind the geocentric
theory of the universe. In comparison with this shock
given by science in the seventeenth century, that of
historical criticism in the eighteenth ought to seem
comparatively mild. If we are compelled to give up
the Mosaic cosmogony, it seems no great sacrifice to give
up the Mosaic chronology, and the Mosaic account of the
rise and civilisation in Egypt and Assyria. The parallel
between these two concessions is instructive, and the path
of recovery is the same. Faith, wounded in both cases
as to its belief in the letter of the Bible, has recovered its
strength by turning from the letter which kUleth to the
spirit which giveth life. This recovery of faith from the
attacks of science two centuries ago, may point out what
we may come to when a philosophy of history and a
philosophy of the Bible are seen to point to the same
conclusion. The geocentric place of the earth in the
universe corresponds to the Judaeo-centric place given
by Moses to Israel in the midst of the two cradles of
civilisation, which were laid for the human race in the
river-beds of the Nile and the Euphrates.
In the Hebrew narrative, Israel is placed as the third
with Egypt and Assyria, in the same way as Palestine
lies about midway between the two river-beds, the Nile
and Euphrates, where the earliest forms of civilisation are
supposed to have arisen.
Now this Judaeo-centric theory of history corresponds,
as we have seen, to' the geocentric theory of the Mosaic
cosmogony. We have discarded the latter, and therefore
should be able to get beyond the former without losing
faith in a divine purpose running throughout the Mosaic
narrative. Criticism calls out for some deeper as well as
broader philosophy, of history than that in which Bossuet
drew up his baldly Biblical epitome of the relation of

The New Criticism. 305
sacred to secular history. Be it so : but this should
not compel us, in the opposite extreme of reaction from
priestcraft, to fritter away, as Voltaire and his school did,
the world-wide significance of the call of Abraham and
the exodus of Moses into mere local legends, swollen by
national vanity and the arts of priestcraft. They are
events of universal history, and we are constrained to see,
as modern criticism is doing, that these two incidents were
in truth the turning-points of the world's history. They
were the protests of the spiritual, and so of the intellectual
side of our nature against the two types of slavery to sense,
of which Egypt and Assyria are the respective types.
Criticism is thus coming on to see that the old distinctions
of secular and profane history are alike shallow and
misleading. Our conclusion, then, is that the new criticism
is already getting touch, and seeing into the heart of the
Mosaic narrative in a way which the hard negative school
of last century little suspected. It will use its right of
inquiring to the utmost, as science now does, on all
questions of geology and astronomy, and in the end
come back, as men of science do, to see that if the
cosmogony was misleading the Theology of Genesis is
as simple as it is sublime.
For this reason we cannot fall back upon some half-
belief, such as that which contented the professional mind
of Germany a century ago, when the Semlers and
Eichhorns of that day caught up some of Lessing's manner
without Lessing's spirit and genius. We dare not fall
back on the compromises of the older and so-called
Rationalist school, who took their stand on a kind of
half- belief in inspiration and miracles. The divine
element in the Book was so minimized in the old
Rationalist scheme of interpretation, that it called for
some quartz-crushing machine to extract the few grains
tj

306 The New Criticism.
of gold in the mass of gravel or granite. In the same
way they admitted that there were records of miracles in
the old Book, but in most cases they were legendary
additions to the narrative, which hung together quite as
well without them as with them. ' The makeshUts and
expedients of the older school of RationaUsts to treat the
Hebrew narrative as Euhemerus did the legendary age of
Greek history, has gone the way of all such half-measures.
Euhemerism, as it is caUed, has left its mark on the
history of criticism and comparative reUgion, as the one
mode of interpretation which is equally scouted by both
sides. It only adds to the difficulties which it attempts
to explain. Instead of turning the sea of fable into dry
land of fact, it actually makes a marsh of these parts
where we before had some kind of footing. Instead of
throwing back the dividing line between legend and
history, it leaves us more uncertain than ever as to what
is fact and what is fiction. It is not by these expedients
that the new criticism must be met. Indeed, the old
Rationalism is so dead that Strauss' contemptuous con
trast between the half and the whole may be said to
have given it the happy despatch. It is only those in
this country who wear German old-clothes, not knowing
how out-of-date they are, who would trouble either to
attack or defend the Bible on the lines of the old
Rationalist school. Defence and attack on these lines
are alike out of date.
What, then, is the new criticism, and what should be
the attitude of the new Theology towards it ? The
answer is a simple one. Criticism must be left freely
to take its course as much in sacred history as in
secular, and it wUl be found that if its first issues are
destructive, its second and final are reconstructive. We
have seen this in every fresh history. We see an instance

The J\ t':.' CrUicism.

so;

of this iu a public-school history of Greece, written onlv
a few years ago. like that of Sir George Cox. It is a
popular simimarv of the results of criticism, and yet could
pass over the wars of the Had as wholly legendary. He
notices only to pass it by. that "' Thucydides has as little
hesitation in assigning dates to events following close on
the Trojan war. or to the successive settlements of non-
Hellenic and Hellenic inhabitants of Sicily, as to the
expulsion of the Peisistratidai from Athens, or the
formations of the confederacy of Delos."1 And now.
since Sehliemann's unexpected discovery of the actual
site of Troy, a reaction in the other direction has set in.
The world is now preparing, as it is always inclined, to
pass from one extreme to the other. It is ready now to
rush back almost into the arms of a credulous beUef in
the fables of childhood, as a few years ago it was to treat
the Homeric legend and the authorship of the I'. '.ad itself
as whoUy unhistorical. Tins may be a passing reaction
towards conservatism, and to be distrusted, as all reactions
justly are. But when all is said, there is a sense that
there must be a substratum of solid truth in early
history winch subsequent discovery, as in the case of
the cuneiform inscriptions and roU cylinders of Nineveh,
confirms. We are thus suddenly ushered as if into a
subterranean world of history which we never suspected
as long as we moved over the surface of things. We
are laying bare these buried cities, which the lava-flood
of tune has rolled over, and our recoveries are as much
discoveries as Herculaneum and Pompeii were to the
eighteenth century critics. The course of criticism is
everywhere the same. Always, and to aU time, there
will be three ages of thought — first, the infancy of
1 A Gt-nerai Ji'.Jorjfty'Grttit. By $ir Ge^rg* Cox. M.A. Lousrauns.
i$r<s.

308 The New Criticism.
uuinquiring faith, then tho youth of storm and stress, the
upheaval of old beliefs, the calling out for something
manly and rational to put in their place. But there is a
third and last stage which we are entering on, alike in
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman antiquities, of which tho
watchword is the same as that of the hero of the *Eiiritl —
" Antiquum oxquiiilo niiitivin."
In the old legend there is a. kernel of truth which all
the corrosive acid of criticism cannot dissolve into nothing,
On the contrary, a reaction is setting in, ns wo havo seen.
It is clear that there is n kind of law in the descent of
mortals from immortals through u descending sculo of gods,
demigods, heroes, chiefs, and warriors. It is tho same
law by which invariably the earliest rulers are king-
priests, the Cohen of the Hebrews, the Archon of tho
Athenians, and tho Uex-sacriliculus of the Romans. Tho
law of differentiation, as .Herbert Spencer calls it, leads
in timo to separation of functions formerly combined in
ono person. The king-priest becomes a consul and
pontiff, and this perhaps explains tho legend of the
expulsion of the kings from Romo, and the aversion
of the people even to the name of Rex. Wo see the
same evolution or differentiation of functions, formerly
combined in one, in the ease of Israel, when tho sons of
Eli, the Cohen or king-priest, abused their power, as
Tarquin did. We can understand why Samuel, though a
priest himself, and reluctant as one ol' the ruling race to
see the necessity for the change, nevertheless had to
give way to the people's desire for a warrior -king in
place of a priest-king. Now it confirms the truth of the
legendary history of early Home, when wo lind fact and
fable mixed up together about seven kings, the earliest
mimes of whicli, Romulus, Remus, Numa, Pompilius, arc

The .Ye;o ( VvV/ww.

309

clearly eponymio, but, all explained by the same law of
evolution in which the snored and secular are dilVerentialed
11s time goes on, nnd Chnreh and State each takes its
own eourse. This legendary history of Rome must have
some truth ; it, is at least true fo the law of the evolution
of tho secular out of a snored. The legend of early kings,
afterwards expelled, can be explained in no other way.
Hut. it is only since sociology has taken seienti lie shape as
a brunch of the general law of evolution that we begin
to see what a solid residuum of truth there is in early
Greek and Roman history, if we would only ohsorvingh
distil it, out, as has been said of ether problems quite as
perplexing as the rise of early institutions. There have
been the same turns of opinion to Hebrew history as well.
It. has passed through the same three stages — 1 ,>.-/, of
uneritieal acceptance throughout before any dividing line
was drawn between tact, and table; '2nd, of the early
critical spirit, when every document is passed through the
tiro, and the general impression is that, the whole narrative
is the invention of designing men to promote the ends of
priestcraft ; Jie./, the bust stage of all, when negative
eritieism has done its worst, and there is a recovery el'
credit in the eld records. This is the result of a closer
study of the rise oi' early institutions, when it is seen that
society has ft law of evolution from sacred to secular
which is the .same everywhere, and of which Hebrew
history is only the most, remarkable instance. Whether
we have reached the thin! stage of rehabilitation of the
credit of the old Book as historical in the main, we may
at least be reasonably certain of this, that the new critical
standpoint, is no longer the same as the old Rationalists.
The i\»d<t»KriHh as it is called by the Tubingen school,
has had its day, and like our little .systems it has ceased
le be. This tendency criticism sprang from a false ooneep-

310 The New Criticism.
tion of the factitious rise of early institutions, as if they
were made instead of growing. This we now see to be
unscientific ever since evolution has become the key
note of the new historical school. A century ago, when
Rousseau based his Contrat Sociale on the famous but
false aphorism that everywhere man is born free, but
living in chains, it was assumed that laws and religion
were alike the invention of kings and priests. But men
forgot to ask the previous question, who invented kings
and priests ? This uncritical theory of the rise of early
institutions, through positive enactment or contract, and as
the artifice of kings and priests to enslave mankind, passed
on to Theology, and men began to read into the Hebrew
records the same prejudices and antipathies of the
eighteenth century, the age of Illuminism, as it conceitedly
called itself. As men were everywhere enslaved, it was
thought that these chains were forged, not so much by
their own traditional fears as by the cunning of the early
race of world conquerors, the Nimrods and Pharaohs who
set up as priests and kings. It was priestcraft which was
everywhere the "enemy." Men saw or suspected conscious
design where we only see a law of evolution. The reign
of law had not extended its all-embracing sceptre over
sociology, and so the conception grew that Moses was
the mythical founder of actual institutions, but himself as
unhistorical and as pragmatic as Manu, Lycurgus, Nunia,
and the other supposed " lawgivers " of mankind in early
times. The conception of the rise of written law by evolu
tion out of unwritten custom had not occurred to writers of
the old Rationalist school. Such a work as Sir. H. Maine
On the Rise of Early Institutions, could not have been
written a century ago in the then state of knowledge.
We can only look back and wonder at the ingenious
efforts which writers then made to go wrong.

The New Criticism. 3 1 1
The Tcndcnz-Kritik, though its authors never saw or
suspected the fact, are the legitimate descendants of
Rousseau and his school. They forgot the true rise alike
of tyranny and priestcraft, and they put the effect for the
cause. Priests and priestcraft, as we now know, are
possible only when a whole people renounce their rights
and throw away the birthright, and with it the blessing
of a walk by faith, such as that of Abraham and the
patriarchs. Baur and his school could not or would not
see this. Their inteUectual defect was that of the age,
for which they are only partially responsible, but we
must add that they were spiritually blind to the real great
ness of the heroes of Hebrew history. No more painful
proof of this is seen than in Gesenius, the prince of
verbal critics, but with no kind of insight into the genius
of the race whose records he spent his life in deciphering.
Ewald, who was a kind of one-eyed man, and so a king
among the bUnd, seems to have seen farther. But he
had not strength to shake off this Tendenz-Kritik temper.
His piecing together of Deuteronomists of the first, second,
and third degree of credibility is one of those portentous
blowing of critical air-bladders which burst with their own
emptiness, and which we now regard as learned trifling.
This style of criticism is now so discredited in Germany,
that we should only rattle dry bones without waking the
dead, if we turned to the Rationalists of that day for either
light or leading, on the problems which the new Theology
must give some answer to. That problem is this, whether
Mosaism was merely the outcome of some specific race
peculiarity, called by Renan and others the Semitic
instinct towards monotheism, or whether God spake by
Moses. If the Hebrew monotheism can be explained by
race peculiarity, we are at once reduced to the level of
naturaUsm, and there is not only a philosophy of religion,

312 The New Criticism.
which no one desires to dispute, but also a purely natural
explanation of what we call revelation. That God spake
to the fathers by the prophets is the old explanation.
The new scientific account of it is that religion so called
rose by slow stages of evolution out of fetishism into
polytheism and so up to monotheism. This monotheism
in its turn is bound to be sublimated away into humani-
tarianism, and end in the cult of a certain diesse which is
only deified self-hood, and the last substitute for personal
immortaUty. Now criticism should have something to
say about these two theories. It is on the answer of
criticism that the course of the Theology of the future will
depend. We should only waste our time by crossing
swords with any lesser theory than that of entire humani-
tarianism. The naturalists of the Leyden school, Kuenen
and others, who desire to retain some sense of a spiritual
and divine element in Mosaism, but who refuse to trace it
up to that one historical kernel of the whole matter, the call
of Abraham, seem to us to labour under a twofold incon
sistency. They are neither complete scientists, nor do
they stand with their feet firm on the primitive ground,
that God spake to the fathers by the prophets. Like all
middle theories, they labour under the difficulties of both,
without the compensating advantages of either.
As we think, the new criticism is bound to take
account of this new rehabiUtation of Bible characters which,
when negative criticism was at its height, were held to be
utterly unhistorical. Chief of these we should put the
character of Abraham. The critic who, like Goldzieher,
regards Abraham as a form of the sun-myth, and the
sacrifice of Isaac as another variety of the Isis and Osiris
legend, deserves no answer but to be treated as the
uncritical survival of a mode of thinking completely out
of date in our day. We have not returned,' nor is it

The New Criticism. 313
possible we ever should return, to the age of childish faith
in supernaturalism eo nomine, but the third and last stage
of criticism will be more like the first than it is to the
second. It will be constructive and not merely destruc
tive. It will build up and not merely pull down ; in any
case it wUl abandon that bad habit of seeinp- " tendencies
of conscious deception" in every fresh throb of the
spiritual life of humanity. This would - be criticism
which sees in Abraham only an Arab Sheikh, the true
Nomad, who broke loose from the restraints and false
culture of the young civilisation of the East to get back
to the shepherd life in Palestine — this heartless artificial
way of reading into primitive history the complicated
and far-fetched notions of modern society, is beginning to
pall on us. We are weary of hearing of priests and
prophets in Israel as championing rival tendencies, as if
the High and the Broad Church schools of our day
existed in Levitical times. In the same way Baur has
harped on one string in his contrast between Petrinism
and Paulinism in the early Church. We are inclined to
say to the tendency school that it is time to give over
attributing such petty personal motives to men who may
have been fanatics and fools, but who were at least not as
modish and given to whims as our egotistic and self-
important modern professors are. Such excessive artifi
ciality answers itself. Early ages did not act under
such complex motives. Men were unconscious then, and
were either storm-driven by passion in one extreme, or
guided by the leading star of God's eye and counsel in
the other extreme. In any case they did not invent
institutions and draw up codes as Lycurgus and Solon
were supposed to do. Hence their inspiration, if we
believe in it at all, was of a different kind from that
which Warburton described as the Divine Legation of

3 1 4 The New Criticism.
Moses. It was spiritual, intuitive, spontaneous. It was
the light of God's favour falling on the enlightened
conscience, and leading it up to say : " Whom have I in
heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth I desire
in comparison of Thee." This, in its essence, is the
nature of the call of Abraham. It was not magical or
external (here the new school leaves behind the old
supernaturalists of the childish days of faith) ; but it was
internal, and the outcome of some trait of character in
Abraham, which was both nature and grace, and in fact
their meeting-point. There is this in every conversion,
that it is, if we only could see into the heart of things,
the fruit of all that is best in our past, and the bud of
all that is best in our future. The call of Abraham is in
a sense pre-historical. Even the Exodus, although history
has been said by Stanley to have been born on the night
when Israel went out of Egypt, is anterior to the age of
written documents. Still we can never admit that the
life of Abraham is not historical. We must have little
external sense of the contrast between fact and fable if
we do not feel our feet planted on the solid ground of
history, as we read of the wanderings of Abraham the
Hebrew from his early home beyond the river to his grave
in the burying-place of Machpelah.
We should only insult our reader's intelligence in
attempting to prove this. One incident alone, the sacri
fice of Isaac, would decide this. It is just the kind of
temptation which would occur to such a character and
at such an age of the world's history. Later, it would
have been inconceivable for one reason, and earlier for
another. No one less exalted than Abraham as the hero
of faith could have felt such a temptation at all, and to
no one less elevated would such a way of escape have
been offered, when the spirit of self-sacrifice, seen in the

The New Criticism. 315
readiness to slay his son, had come to its climax. On
the whole, then, the character of Abraham stands out as
historical in the highest degree. The story of the sacrifice
of Isaac could have been no afterthought of a later age,
for human sacrifices are so abhorrent to the Mosaic law, and
the later prophets so emphatically condemned such acts
as Moloch- worship, that we can only see it to be a true
incident which occurred in the very morning of the world's
history. It carries, moreover, this internal evidence of its
truth, that it has been a stumbling-block to criticism ever
since. Those who regard it as a mistaken impulse akin to
Moloch-worship miss the mark as much as the old inter
preters in the opposite extreme did, who saw in it only a
divine suggestion, typical of a higher sacrifice in the
far-off future. It belongs to the age when it occurred, and
is to be understood, as the late Professor Mozley, who was
the acutest of critics, pointed out, by reference to the
" ruling ideas " of that age. But our very misunder
standing of the sacrifice, arising from our having lost the
key-thought of it in the forgotten ideas of a remote age,
is a voucher for its not being an invention of any later
age. It stands like some shapeless monument of the past,
with Runic characters scarcely to be seen under the moss-
covered stones, and which witnesses by its immense
antiquity that it is part of an order of things which has
long since passed out of mind. We make, then, the call
of Abraham our point of departure, and desire to read
the Bible and all its later manifestations of the religions
life in the light of that one personal fact of the world's
history. Theology sometimes speaks of dispensations
and contrasts, as for convenience we may and must do,
the patriarchal, the Mosaic, the prophetic, and other
dispensations. But when we go to the heart of the matter,
we find the whole of Jewish history, and further than

3 1 & The New Criticism.
that, even the Gentile dispensation, all folded up in the
call of Abraham. As the oak sleeps, germinally at least,
in the acorn, so Jew and Gentile are alike called in the
call of faithful Abraham, El Khalel, the friend of God.
Even in the under-world there are echoes of its deep
meaning. " Abraham's bosom " is to the pious Jew the
deepest conception of the rest and reward laid up for
them that love and serve God in this life.
On all grounds, then, the call of Abraham is the one
fact whose deep significance cannot be overestimated.
Not to understand this is to miss the keynote to all that
follows. To see it in its true light is to understand aU
those contrasts between nature and grace, flesh and spirit,
law and gospel, faith and works, which make up in one
form or other nearly the whole of all the later teaching
of the Bible. Now it is important to see that in one
character-study we have an epitome of the whole Bible.
We may safely say that if this is historical, all that
follows is historical : again, that if this is legendary, we do
not know where we can plant our feet.
The new criticism should bring to the study of the
Bible some such temper as this. We have had too
much of a different temper. The Mosaic narrative has
been put on the rack by minds of an arithmetical turn
like the late Bishop Colenso. Its discrepancies, contra
dictions, and other departures from verbal veracity have
been laid bare, and then we are asked to say if with so
many marks of interpolation it deserves to be considered
as genuine, to say nothing of the higher claim to be
inspired. Like its Master it is blindfolded, buffeted,
and then bid to prophesy who smote it. The modern
criticism, if it is wise, will leave the dead to bury their
dead ; it will give up defending the letter of the Bible
on any mere theory of inspiration. Rationalists and

The New Criticism. 3 1 7
Literalists fought their fight ; the laboured replies of the
Hengstenbergs and Havernicks of a past age did good
service in their day. They sat down with German
seriousness to defend the book against its negative critics,
who made out that if not an imposture, it was at least the
outcome of priestcraft. The truth is, that attack and
defence are here alike wrong. Both made the mistake
of seein" the old world in the light of the modern. As
an instance of the root mistake, both sides, from want
of the true historical faculty, forgot that the Hebrew term
for a book, " Sepher," was originally a stone-inscription.
It connoted probably a totally different class of concep
tions in an age when the pen was only a chisel, and such
writing as existed at all was only hieratic, and reserved
for the records of royal exploits. It is half-clnldish to
use the one word " book " for both ancient and modern
ideas of writing. As for our tests of authorship arising
from identity of style, the use of certain set phrases,
literary form, and all that makes up the apparatus of a
modern critic, and by which he detects an imposture like
those of Macpherson and Chatterton, — these are modern,
not ancient tests. They are not only modern, but also
tests whicli would never occur to an age earUer than
printing, and when the fabrication of ancient MSS. was
as out of the reach of a forger as to steal the crown
jewels would be impossible in our da}'. It cannot be said
that even the Great Synagogue, when it set its stamp on
certain books as canonical, and others as deutero-canonical,
seems to have proceeded on any fixed principle beyond
that of languaga Though so much nearer the prophetic
age of Hebraism, even they had a modern way of looking
at the problem. They made more of external than of
internal tests. That certain odes and songs all contained
in a single Sepher or roll of a book, were traditionally

318 The New Criticism.
named the Chazon or vision of Isaiah Ben-Amos was
presumption enough for them. In an uncritical age
prima facie evidence is enough. They had as little
thought of two Isaiahs as of several authors of the
Psalms or of the Proverbs of Solomon, which the men
of Hezekiah wrote or probably copied. They would
have thought it presumptuous to raise critical questions
as to a first and a second Isaiah. Indeed, the difficulty
did not press on them with the weight which it lays on
us who have to fight the battle of a book religion. Even
at a much later age, and when the art of writing and
multiplying copies had made a great advance, we find in
a simple society such as that of Islam the same con
fusion about the order of the Surahs or chapters of
Mahomet's Koran. The prophet left these scraps of
revelation scattered as Sibylline leaves to the wind. To
collect them and set them in their true order is a task
which almost defies later criticism. But what of that ?
No one doubts the genuineness of the scattered leaves of
Mahomet's mind ; and as his is a book religion quite as
much as ours, his followers are known everywhere among
uncivilised tribes in the interior of Africa as " men of the
book." We see in this instance how small the difficulty
is if looked at in the true light.
The new criticism, then, will leave on one side these
questions on which a past generation fought such battles
in the air as to the genuineness and authenticity of
certain truths in the Hebrew Canon. It will confine
itself, if it is wise, to two questions, and only two.
1. Is the narrative on the whole historical, for which
the tests are the usual ones, viz. self-consistency and the
corroboration of other testimony, such -as travellers and
antiquarians ?
2. There is beyond this the spiritual test. The Bible

The New Criticism. 3 1 9
is a revelation of God's good-will to man. In this good
will there is an increasing purpose running through it.
The best summary of what that is, is found in the
preface to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where we read
that the same God who spake little by little and in a
variety of ways to the fathers through prophets, has in
the last dispensation of all spoken to us by a Son. This
is the increasing purpose of revelation. In this sense
the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and to
fail to see this is to miss the meaning of the whole.
The fact is, harsh as it may sound, the Bible is a sealed
book to all who are unspiritual. It is only to purged
eyes that it opens up its meaning at all. Take such a
narrative as Jacob wrestling at Peniel tiU the breaking
of the day. Is this allegory or fact, or are we on the
higher ground on which a fact of sense has no meaning
at all unless seen as symbolic of the higher world ? In
this point of view there is a meaning in those lines —
" When love interprets what the eye discerns,
When mind discovers what is truly meant,
When grace improves what man from nature learns,
Each sight and sound becomes a sacrament."
The criticism of the future will have to work up to
this level, in which the mystical and the Rationalist, who
are the extreme Right and Left of modern exegesis, shall
meet and form a higher unity. Under the electric
current two diverse gases combine to produce water,
but the force which brings them into combination is
itself a new thing, a spiritual or a dynamic fact (if you
like that word better), without which the universe would
become the chaos of which poets feign that it arose. It
is the same with the new criticism. It must combine in
it all that is best in the Rationalists, the AUegorists, and

320 The New Criticism.
Mystics. Each of these schools of itself is sterile and
barren. The Mystics, as we see in Swedenborg and his
followers, go off into the cloudland of endless subtleties,
in which the thread of the historical narrative is hope
lessly broken. Down to the bedstead, for instance, of
Og the king of Bashan, which was in Rabbah, nothing is
too insignificant on which to hang a cobweb of allegorizing
criticism. This vein of allegorizing, in which Patristic,
Scholastic, and to some extent Puritan divines all took
part, showed how much ingenuity could be wasted to no
useful purpose. It is now out of date with all but the
followers of Swedenborg. But extremes touch in our
day, when the Rationalist who handles the Bible like
any other book, and the allegorizing divine who handles
it as we never should any other book, are often found in
the same camp.
The explanation of this apparent inconsistency is, that
the old historical faith in the old Book has fallen
through, and apparently we have nothing to put in its
place. When Niebuhr made a clean sweep of early
Roman history, it was not to be expected that Hebrew
would escape the corrosive acid of general scepticism
in all ancient history. We have now to see whether,
the negative school having done its worst, we have any
thing positive to put in its stead. The spirit of negation,
that Geist der stets verneint of the modern Mephistopheles,
has now run its course, and the reaction in favour of
finding a residuum at least of what is historical in early
records has set in. The Theology of the future is bound
to avail itself of this reaction, and to point out certain
historical landmarks which no deluge of negative criticism
has1 or can submerge. We have glanced at the one which
seems most prominent of all in the call of Abraham ;
but there are others in the sojourn of Israel in Egypt

The New Criticism. 321
quite as important, and on which contemporary history
throws much side light. The details of all this we leave
to those specialists who set up often on a very slender,
critical apparatus as Egyptologists. But whatever the
amount of side light thus brought in to confirm the
historical veracity of the early books which go by the
name of books of Moses, we must get on to a point of
view in which questions of mere authorship sink into
the background. It raises a smile to note the readiness
of divines of the old school to assign the first five books
to the penmanship of Moses. Then, as we are told,
Joshua became the autobiographer of his own exploits,
and then Samuel, Gad, and Nathan are called sometimes
as eponymous, but more often as pseudonymous, authors
of certain "books" which probably never existed as
separate written records at all till centuries after. Much
of this modern antique way of looking at early history
has passed away ; but too much- of it remains. As long
as it lingers on as the base and substratum of what is
known as the popular Theology, we shaU have Colensos
to undo the good that Maurice has done in deepening
our faith in the Bible, as a real record of the deepening
relations of the living God with living man. The writer
of the work is probably only one of many who are ready
to look on Maurice's "prophets and kings of the Old
Testament" as doing much to deepen their faith and
to restore the old book to its position for credibility, from
which it had been rudely shaken down by the blind
zeal of dogmatists and sceptics, the attack and defence of
which were alike wide of the mark. It will not be easy
to lead on the popular mind from one standpoint to
another. But it must be done if we are not to make
shipwreck of faith altogether. Sunday-school teaching is
responsible for much uninteUigent iteration of old and
x

322 The New Criticism.
n^!w exploded views of the Bible as minutely accurate in
all its details. The fear that it should be found out to
be not minutely accurate in all its details, seems to haunt
the crass and uncritical mind of the average Sunday-
school teacher as a kind of evil dream sent from
Germany, which is supposed to be the land of . theo
logical dreamers. The average Sunday-school teacher is
not educated enough to turn round on the critics of the
Colenso type and to say, " You are perfectly right, but
what then ? " Such teachers need a helping hand to be
led on to a higher faith; and if sermons like those of
the late F. D. Maurice on the Old Testament could be
popularized, the evU would be met better than in any
way we can think of. It is unfortunate that no writer
with a popular style, and who would strike the mind of
the average reader, has as yet turned his attention to
this subject of lifting the popular Theology off from the
old ground of an infaUible Book to the new level which
criticism must take in the future if it does not make
forfeit of its name as criticism. A writer like the late
Charles Kingsley might have done it, if he had been
more of a divine and less of an artist and poet. But the
writer will arise, and the need that is felt for such a
constructive critic may perhaps lead some one to come
forward and at least make the attempt.
In any case our course is clear. The new Theology
can only buUd up a system on the foundations of the
new criticism. It can never go back, it must only go
forward. It must set aside the old scribe theory of
inspiration root and branch, and treat the question of the
authorship of the books of the Old and New Testament
as an open one. , It must go farther; and while it
admits that in historical times, such as the Christian
Church grew up in, we have some data for determining

The New Criticism. 323
the authorship of Epistles and Gospels, and so for
deciding their authority with their authenticity, it is other
wise with the books of the Old Testament. Nay more,
we must go farther, and admit that those records
mount up to ages of such vast antiquity that it is as
uncritical to speak of the Mosaic authorship of certain
books as to speak of the codes of Lycurgus and Solon.
This uncritical view of Greek history passed away with
our grandfathers, who in most cases took their ideas of
early Greek and Roman history from such an uncritical
source as Plutarch. We should not think much of the
scholarship which professed to set out in our day with
this gossiping old Boeotian as its guide through the mazes
of early Greek myth and fable. It is the same with
Hebrew antiquities. We can hold on the one hand the
historical reality of such a leader as Moses without going
to the extreme of holding the traditional view of his
authorship of certain books which pass by his name.
There is no need to hold either extreme. The midway
view which, unless we are mistaken, the criticism of the
future will take up is this, that God spake to the fathers
by the prophets. Inspiration which is only revelation in
fact, as revelation is inspiration in idea, is the continuous
process by which Israel as the covenant people rose to
the full consciousness of the Messianic idea. This was
effected in " sundry times and in divers manners," as we
render it : the real meaning of which phrase is, that by
many types, each and all varied and intricate, and by the
scattered hints of prophecy which in every case sprang
out of some temporal incident in the prophet's life, there
grew up the Messianic thought of One who was a prophet
greater than Moses, and a Son of David seated , on a
throne greater than that of Solomon. This is the only
conception of inspiration which meets all the facts of the .

324 The New Criticism.
case. Israel, as the covenant people, carried inspiration
in it potentiaUy. This latent spark of God-consciousness
rose and dwindled, and in prophetism was more or less
irregular; it blazed out as the occasion called for it. In
this way, as one religious reformer arose after another,
they came to be recognised as prophets. At first the
prophet was only a Roeh, or seer ; afterwards he became the
Nabi, or prophetic teacher proper. As for this contrast
between Roeh and Nabi, the simple and common-sense
explanation is the obvious one, that the term Roeh, or
seer, carries us back to the time when all prophetic
communications were limited to those by vision, or in
some symbolic act. The Nabi, or later type of prophet,
marks the age of written communications, as Jeremiah is
distinctly said to have made his. It is probable that
Isaiah's visions were of both kinds, as he lived about the
transition time, when the simpler form of sight visions or of
oracular utterances began to give way to written forms of
prophetism. Isaiah's were in all probabUity only visions,
and afterwards transcribed, just as the Rhapsodists of
early Greece, not excepting Homer, passed on their epics
to be polished and put into literary form by the critics
of a later age. The scribe theory of inspiration is in
fact quite a late one among the covenant people ; but it
illustrates how, from want of the historic faculty, we are
disposed to judge the past by the present, and are unable to
see that they had any other standards of literary form than
these which we bow down to in our day. In Mahomet's
time the idea of a book religion was so familiar to the
world, that it seemed incredible that a religion could take
its rise in any other way. Accordingly, we read in the
4th Sura of the Koran, "Whosoever believeth not in
God, and His angels, and His books, and His Apostles,
and in the Last Day, he verily hath erred with far-

The New Criticism. 325
gone error." Thus, of the five articles on which his reli
gion rests, the book and its messenger are two of the five.
This is quite the modern way of looking at inspira
tion ; but between Moses and Mahomet there rolls a gulf
of two thousand years, and we do not cross this by
repeating uncritical phrases about all religions taking
their rise in a book revelation. For our part, we prefer
to use the phrase, vague as it sounds of the spiritual
consciousness of the oovenant people, " In Jewry is God
known ; His name is great in Israel." If the covenant
means anything, it means a good deal more than a bare
promise, barren of fulfilment till the birth of Christianity
and the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. That
the Holy Ghost as Christ Himself was in a sense with
the Church in the wilderness we are bound to hold,
unless we suppose, as too many do, that the Old Testament
is the dispensation of the Father, and so is distinct from
that of the Son, which in its turn is distinct from that of
the Spirit. Discarding such crudities, which have only to
be named to be scouted as heresies, we hold that the
Spirit was with the Church of the Old Testament as well
as with that of the New Testament. The difference is
only one of degree, as explained by the apostle in his
well-known contrast between the time of spiritual child
hood with the law as our pedagogue, and that of maturity,
when Christ is our only schoolmaster.
This being so, we hold that the scribe theory of
inspiration must give way to that of the continuous
education of Israel and of a succession of great teachers
known as prophets, — the series beginning at Moses
and ending with Malachi. A book is too impersonal
for us to trace in it the first channel of communication
between God's Spirit and man. It may be the record of
how that communication was kept up ; in this sense the

326 The New Criticism.
Church party are right, though we are not sure that their
theory, in its turn of teaching by Church authority, does
not also break down under difficulties of its own. In
truth, neither the Protestant nor the Catholic theory of
religion quite explains all the facts of the case. Each is
one-sided, and is only true in so far as it is a negation of
the errors of the opposite theory. The true theory, as no one
has seen better than Maurice, is that God being spirit and the
living source of all inspiration in man, can so communi
cate with man in and through the open door of conscience.
In this way man is, as Hegel taught, the point of identity
between the finite and the Infinite. We need not be
Hegelians to see that by his composite nature, man
is intended to be the true meeting-point between sense
and spirit, time and eternity. We have thus the
philosophical ground of the incarnation in the thought
that in man the Infinite could so unite Himself to the
finite. It is only what we may expect that a Son of
man is revealed as the covenant meeting-point of God
and man. This is the root-idea of that Messiahship which
seems to run like a golden thread through the whole Bible,
from the first page to the last. The seed of the woman,
the promised child of Abraham, the Son of David, the
Son of man, of Daniel's visions, all point to the same
thought of God in union with man through the God-man.
Instead of the bald phrase, the Theophany, which the old
Theology called in to explain such strange incidents as
those of Melchizedek and the Captain of the Lord's host
appearing to Joshua, it would be more in harmony with
our conceptions of the covenant people to see in these
the normal, not the exceptional and half magical modes
of Jehovah drawing near to man. We live in an age
when, as one of our poets has said, 'tis little gain to think
that heaven is far off and beyond the tree-top of our

The New Criticism. 327
boyhood, and so we conclude that God was near the
primeval world as He would be near us, if we would not
put certain cold abstractions of Deism between us and
our loving Father in heaven.
For these reasons we conclude that Israel, as the
covenant people, received a revelation in and through the
enlightened conscience of the spiritual heroes who were
then called prophets, and whom we now describe in
modern phrase as inspired men. That they were men
of the book, and penned what the Spirit breathed into
them, is the mere sequel of the story ; but as this is the
last in a long Unk of providential preparations for the
Messiah, it strikes us as the most important. But this
modern antique idea of a book religion must be got rid
of, and if negative criticism has done nothing more, it
has made it impossible for critics who are not men of a
dead past. The future lies with the school who seek
inspiration in the Church or collective idea of Israel as
a whole. The covenant people had a genius for true
worship, as the Greeks had a genius for art and the
Romans for government. Did the Elizabethan age make
Shakespeare, or did Shakespeare make the Elizabethan age ?
Undoubtedly the former ; the man is the product of the
age, though as its last and highest expression he certainly
acts and reacts on his age. So with Israel and her
prophets. Even if the call was internal and divine, it
was only possible for a prophet to discharge the office of
a prophet within the pale of the covenant. The criticism
which sees this will have the privilege of moulding^ the
Theology of the future. How important this is it is
impossible to say. In any case, we cannot overestimate
it. The age has fallen into cold Agnosticism because it
has lost the faith of chUdhood, and we have nothing to
put in the place either of inspiration or miracle. The

328 The New Criticism.
old beUef in a book religion is past, going the way of the
still older belief in a Church religion. We are in the
position of the Humanists' age before Luther, who, pro
testing against the Church, had nothing to put in its
place. We have reached a crisis, then, with the falling
through of the old supports of faith in authority, and
must seek a revival of faith by setting it on surer founda
tions. After giving up the credit of the book as an
infallible authority on the scientific side, the popular
theology has clung obstinately to the belief in its in
spiration as a historical record. And now that we are
called on to give this up, .we are asked what is there
left to contend for ? Our answer is, that when the
documentary details of the Bible, as well as its scientific
accuracy, is surrendered, there is stiU that spiritual
element— the voice of God to the conscience, and which
is the " word of God " as contained in the sacred canon.
That " word of God " is, as all spiritual minds see, the
sharp two-edged sword which sleeps in its scabbard of
the text, like the sword of Goliath wrapped in the
priest's ephod till it is drawn and wielded by the hand
of faith. Then it glitters in almost every page, and
pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.
Then those who came within the " whiff and wind of this
fell sword" feel that it is critical — a discerner, as we
render it, of the thoughts and intents of the heart. In
sitting down to read the word of God, many have found
to their surprise that it is the word of God that is
reading them through, when at the very time they
thought they were only reading some dry and musty
records of a dead history of a long dispersed Jewish
people. In the prophets and psalms this "word of
God," or Bible within the Bible, seems to gleam as stars
do in the milky way, which are too thickly strewn to be

The New Criticism. 329
seen as separate stars, and create the sense of one un
broken blaze or rather haze of light. But even in the
other books, as in other parts of the sky, though the
stars are not so thickly sown, there are " lessons " to be
learned — if we like to use such a term — even from the
long records of the crimes and follies of Jewish kings and
courts. The Old Testament is a vast lectionary of political
and social philosophical history : they are the warnings
of a wise and loving teacher, not the cynical comments of
a Mephistopheles. When we discard the mechanical view
of inspiration, which could set the Book of Chronicles on
a level with St. John's Gospel because both are bound
up between the covers of the Book all of which is
canonical, there still remains another and better theory
of inspiration. We can fall back on Luther's test, which
was thought too subjective for a later age of Literalists,
ob sie Christum treiben (such is the force of treiben, which
is our drive and drift), the unexpected surprise of finding
Messianic and spiritual thoughts in books so special and
limited in their interest as Kings and Chronicles ; this
is the view of inspiration of which later criticism will
recognise the reasonableness, and which the New Theology
may accordingly stand on. We have therefore, in laying
down the lines of the Theology of the future, deliberately
placed the question of the canon of inspiration as last,
not first, on the list of truths to be restated. All the
Reformation confessions set out, as the XXXIX Articles
of the English Church and the Westminster Confession
of the Scotch Church do, with a formal acceptance of the
canonical Books as a basis to be laid preliminary to the
discussion of Theology. We prefer to reverse the process,
Tor the reason seen above, and experience shows that our
method is the only safe one. The canon is, after all,
only the string which ties cut flowers together, and is a

330 The New Criticism.
proof that the formative age of inspiration is over. It is
the modern mode of treating a book as a dead thing; it
is the polished shell we put on our shelf, from which the
life has gone, and from which echoes only pass of that
sea-shore from which it was taken, perhaps, ages ago.
We moderns have somewhat weakened our perception of
the spiritual and self-evidencing force of truth by laying
too much stress on the intellectual side of religion. We
apply in this age of printing the wrong tests by which
to discern it, and we put the eye before the ear as the
organ of spiritual perception. To the ancients, viraKoi],
or obedience, literally meant the bending the ear down to
the earth, as the slave does to catch his master's whisper ;
this was their symbol of the obedience of faith. We
have lost this prostrate attitude, and prefer with bent
brow and critical eye to pore over a document, and so to
road, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. Both eye and
ear are no doubt adapted to become channels for divine
communication, but the ear is the better of the two. All
instruction, to be complete, must be catechetical, for
without a stage of discipleship by attending on the
footsteps of a teacher there is no higher initiation into
the company of those who know not by book-lore only,
but by the inward touch of truth ; when we shall have
grasped this, we shall take a new departure in our view
of the Book and its contents. What at first will seem a
loss, will turn out to be a gain. Instead of putting
duodecimo gilt - edged Bibles in invisible type into
children's hands, and assuming, as indolent traditional
Protestants do, that they are now Christians armed at
all points, we shall learn the lesson we are intended to
learn from our rivals the Romanists. We shall try to
conquer the world, as Loyola and Xavier did, by personal
love and sacrifice, since as often as men work with these

The Nczo Criticism. 331
weapons they succeed. But in doing so we shall under
stand tho Book itself better than we ever did before.
Tho prophets who were touched with a live coal from off
the altar of sacrifico will then become living men
to us: this is what Sir Edward Strachey has pointed
out in his lessons on Isaiah, in which the politician has
a deeper insight than the theologian. We shall then be
no longer scandalized at the question whether there was
one Isaiah or two of the same name. This is a not unlikely
hypothesis to those who know how impersonally names
are used, and pass from one to another as titles of honour
in the Old Testament. We shall thus in this way see
the Bible to be the living record of a living Church in
the past, and this will lead us on to ask whether we,
as living men, have any lively oracles to compare with
those lively oracles of old. Are there no prophets in
our day, no evangelists, no martyrs ? It rebukes our
scribe religion of a dead past with its Bibliolatries and
Hierolatries, that we have even to ask such a question.
Is not the name of Thomas Erskine that of a prophet to
some? and are not names like Moffat and Livingstone
names which make us feel that there are evangelists in
our day ? To these we may add a noble army of martyrs,
not only among missionaries abroad, but also among
philanthropists like Howard, Fry, and others who were
spent in the service. On these grounds we conclude that
the now Theology has nothing to lose but much to gain
from the new criticism, and when the destructive age of
the old criticism has said its last word, it is only to
remove the rubbish of the old dogmatism and raise a
fairer temple of the new faith in its stead.
The conclusion, then, that we come to with regard to
tho new Theology and the new criticism amounts to
laissez-nous-fairc on both sides. It is impossible to say

332 The New Criticism.
what final settlement criticism may arrive at with regard
to the authority of the documents on which- early Hebrew
history rests. Released from the repressive weight or
the salutary restraint of authority, as the two sides
respectively regard it, criticism will take its own course,
blind and deaf alike to remonstrances on both sides.
The new criticism is destructive of old dogmatisms, but
also, to a large extent, it will be reconstructive. What
residuum of historical truth will remain, after all that
is legendary has been eaten away by the corrosive acid
of criticism, we are unable to say. All that we here
contend for is that the residuum will be far more
precious and rich in spiritual ore than either side is
willing to admit. It may be that the word of God
within the word of God wUl come out like silver purified
seven times from the fire. What that " word of God " is,
which the Bible as a whole is said to " contain," it will
then be for the new Theology to say. At present it is
premature to say more than this, that a philosophy of
history has not as yet been reached, though there have
been many attempts by a line of writers, extending over
three centuries, from Bodin to Buckle. Hence it is not
to be expected that we are able to produce a philosophy
of the Bible, for it is a book in which, as Max Miiller
well observes, there is the mystery of all mysteries, as
well as the history of histories.1 This being so, we must
wait for the results of the higher criticism, till we know
the exact place and importance of Israel in a scheme of
universal history. This relation of the Bible to history ¦
wUl certainly be different from the position of Bossuet on
one hand and of Voltaire on the other, the two poles
ibetween which the two sections of critics osciUate to this
day. A century ago, and to a great extent even to our
1 Contemporary Review, October 1882.

The New Criticism. 2>2>Z
day, orthodox and unbelievers alike see the Bible through
the coloured glasses of theological prejudice. In an age
to which the supernatural was either all true or all false,
when the sun either stood still or it did not over the valley
of Gibeon at Joshua's word, it was impossible to say what
was the meaning of this or any other legend of early Jewish
history. The time has not come even yet for getting at the
philosophy of the Bible. But it is fast approaching, and
we begin to see the landmarks of a new age emerging out
of the deep of Rationalism. The old Testament exegesis
of Germany has not attempted to solve this controversy.
When this has made good its claim to be regarded
as the new criticism, it will be possible for the new
Theology to say what its interpretation of the Old
Testament is to be. At present it may be said that
exegesis is in a chaotic state of transition, of which such
a commentary as the " Speaker's " is not an inapt index.
The real difficulties are prudently shelved and passed
over with the safe remark, that if we had all the facts
of the case before us, we should probably see the true
solution. As it is, the exegete slips the knot of the
difficulty, or passes it over with a few judicious remarks
which leave the unpleasant sense of reserve in the
mind of the " intelligent layman " of the Speaker type,
for whom this commentary was professedly written. As a
reply to the negative school of Germany this old orthodox
standpoint satisfies no one : it is felt to be a mere
transition point of view, and as such doomed to pass
away. The sentence under which it is doomed to die is
summed up in the lines —
" Come back, come back ! and wherefore, and for what ?
To idly finger some old Gordian knot,
Too weak to unravel and too faint to cleave,
And idly clinging to some make-believe."

334 The New Criticism.
Such is the interim position taken up by orthodox
English scholarship, and it can have only one issue.
" After me the deluge " is all that divines of the Speaker's
Commentary school can say of their labours. There is
no quickening breath of the philosophy of history in
their dry and pragmatic account of the story of the
judges and kings of IsraeL If there were, perhaps they
might see that faith and fanaticism run into each other
and form strange combinations, and that much which we
baldly call the supernatural is only human nature
working under exceptional conditions, and under the
mighty inspiring influx of God's Spirit, which is the
inspiration of the Almighty, and the secret of all that is
great and heroic in man. In this sense the story of the
Maid of Arc and of Sampson might be read, for instance,
side by side. We glance at this only to note defects, not
to suggest the remedy. In any case, the future is with
a criticism which, beginning as destructive, becomes
constructive, which sees " God in history," and His Spirit
moving over the face of the waters on ways to us past
finding out. When this broader view of inspiration and
this deeper view of faith shall have ceased to be regarded
as mere catchwords of a few divines of the intuitional
school, we may hope that there wUl be room for the
new criticism, and that with it the new Theology shall
build up an exegesis of the Old Testament against
which modern unbelief will direct its assaults in vain.

CHAPTER XVIII.
CONCLUSION.
We have thus briefly surveyed the whole field of
Theology, and pointed out some of the leading con
trasts between the old and the new. The changes whicli
the age calls for arise from its changed conceptions in
other regions of thought besides Theology. We have
pointed out that in every age of the world there are
certain " ruling ideas " which are the common stock and
property of all men, as much as the air they breathe
and the water they drink. These " ruling ideas " are
part of its common consciousness. The age does not
possess them, but instead they may be said to possess
the age. This is why we call them " ruling ideas."
They may be fallacies, and even commonplaces, as many
of the ruling ideas of the French sentimentalists were,
who together make the age of Rousseau and Voltaire,
and which spoke in the seven thunders of the French
Revolution as soon as thought had leaped forth to wed
with fact. So, again, the ideas of the age of the Crusades
may seem to us extravagant and chimerical, but they
ruled that age with a rod of iron. This tyranny of one
master idea, which masters us when we least suspect
it, is strikingly seen in the case of Dante. Up to middle
age he was a fierce pohtical partisan, and by nature
the farthest removed from a mystic. Yet such was the

336 Conclusion.
mastery of Theology over his age and himself, that he was
compelled, in spite of himself, to throw his fierce passions
and political partisanships into a theological crucible,
and there melt them up and bring them out as trans
formed as the rings and earrings of the Israelites were into
the mould of the golden calf. Quite as strange is the
theological mould of his poem, which to us seems so
artificial, that we have to give it in many cases an
allegorical meaning. This is the crux of the commenta
tors, that we scarcely know when Dante is stating his
real beUef and when he is allegorizing. Much of our
enjoyment of that weird comedy of hell arises from the
sense of its being the tragedy of Dante's own Ufe of
exile turned into a wail of woe from the eternal world.
The poem gathers calm as it goes on from heU to heaven
through purgatory, much as Dante himself settled down
to his fate. But the true key to the poem is the
mastery of the ruUng ideas of his age, which were
intensely theological, over a mind in the opposite extreme,
which was intensely poUtical. Hence the strange amal
gam of such contradictory ideas. Dante was a preacher
to the times, as Knox and many of the early Puritans
were, who took texts from the Old Testament to thunder
at the Jezebels and Athaliahs of their day. They pro
duced the same unnatural compound as Dante's so-called
comedy, in which politics and Theology are fused into
one in the fire of an absorbing enthusiasm.
To understand an age, then, we must know its ruling
ideas. They are to it what a young man's ideals or
castles in the air are to his future life. Such is their
strength, that a shrewd judge of character has said, " Tell
me what a young man's castles in the air are, and I will
tell you what he will be." It is the same with an age.
Its Theology, its politics, its law, even its exact science,

Conclusion. 337
which is the last of all to feel this breath of specu
lation, are all affected by what we may call its prima
philosophia. To assume, then, that the Theology of the
age of the Crusades, of the Reformation, or of the Puritan
movement, can be made to fit the age we now live in, is
only what a very stupid or a very ignorant man would
do ; it is to take a dull and pedantic view of Theology.
We may smile at the worse than useless attempt of
Church teachers to put the fresh young wine of this
year's vintage into the shrivelled skins of last year's.
But such attempts to revive the past, or even to conserve
it rigidly in one unbending external type, not only fail ;
they carry discouragement with them to others who have
the same cause at heart, but who would not stake the
battle in the same way on a single combat. Believers
who are not formalists always suffer when those who are
only formalists — or little more-;— set up as champions of
the faith against the world-power, whether in science,
politics, or other directions in which new light is stream
ing in on the age, and this new light is formulating itself
in new ideas. Too often the ark of God is taken, and
the cause of God seems to suffer.
For this reason we hold that the ruling ideas of every
age must be understood by those who undertake to draw
up its Theology. The trained theologian, as a rule, is
defective, on account of the narrowing effect on his
temper of the truths he deals with : hence he has ever
to be on his guard lest he should let the statement of
his own convictions betray him into a dogmatic temper
to others. But his chief danger arises from his want of
outlook into what is going on in other departments of
thought. He is therefore the last to see that each age has
its own Zeit Geist. Indeed, he thinks it a point of honour
to do battle against the spirit of the age. He denounces
Y

338 Conclusion.
it as worldliness, but he forgets that the mere opposite to
worldliness is only other-worldliness, and that the worst
secularist is the ecclesiastic who tries to chain the age to
the past. He is like a case-lawyer who, having mastered
the dry technicalities of the old practice, cannot under
stand the call for law reform. On the contrary, he
opposes, with the instinct of self-preservation, the simpli
fication of technicalities. He is no leveller of barriers
between the professional and the non-professional classes.
This is the priestism of all professions. To suppose
Theology to be specially exempted from this Magism
would be to suppose a continued miracle of interposition
by the Head of the Church, which He is not pleased to
grant. We must, then, take the world and also the Church
as we find them. We shall not better either by setting
the one against the other, or by taking up either cause
in a spirit of blind partisanship. Too much theological
writing is pitched in this key, and is for this reason
simply out of date. Theology fossilizes sooner than any
other studies, and chiefly for this reason, that it almost
always sets its golden age of the Church, its so-called
age of faith, in the past, not in the future. The archaic
mould of thought, sometimes even of language, is an
indication that the majority of divines have only a feeble
conception of the inner harmony of reason and faith.
These two, rightly considered, are only different names for
the same faculty, which is the power of transcending
sense-perception and of transforming concepts of the bare
understanding into those of that higher intelUgence
which is God-Uke, and which deals with immutable truth
of which mathematical and moral concepts are the
readiest iUustrations.
If we have made out our case, we have so far cleared
the ground on which to lay the foundations for a

Conclusion. 339
Theology of the future. We have boldly met the
dogmatism of divines with a counter- dogma, which is
this, that a new age with a new class of ruling ideas
calls for a new Theology. The senseless conservatism
of the outer form or wrappage of truth when its inner
spirit is changed ; this is, as Bacon pointed out, only the
cause of stiU more revolutionary changes. To harmonize
outer and inner, and to take care that " as this temple
waxes, the inward service of the mind and soul grows
wide withal ; " this is wisdom, which, as a rule, is beyond
the range of the professional divine. He has to be
educated as political parties are by their chiefs, and so
has to learn from defeat, and in the cold shade of
opposition, lessons which the sunshine of success never
taught him. Hence the dry, dogmatic divine, like the
reactionary poUtician, has to let schisms deepen into
heresies. He must look on helplessly and bleat his cry of
" the Church in danger," while neglected truths, church-
outed from the camp of orthodoxy, come back like
Coriolanus from Veii to Rome ; and then he makes
his submission, and admits that these heresies are often
the disguised form of despised and rejected spiritual
truths. Our political conservatism is the measure exactly
neither more nor less of our ecclesiastical. We had
to lose the brightest jewel in the British crown before
we could see that colonies are not to be treated as draw-
farms. We are now erring in the opposite extreme, and
for fear of repeating the folly of the Grenvilles and
Norths of unhappy memory, we are regarding our
colonists as so many step-children, whom we may neither
advise nor cherish. It is much the same with our treat
ment of theological truths. If they cannot be drawn up
and defined on one archaic pattern of the past, then it
is denounced as no Theology at all. Dogmatism passing

340 Conclusion.
rapidly into doubt and despair, this is the temper of the
age ; and for this agnostic indifference, Church teachers
are responsible more than any class. The popular divine
of our day is a broad High-Churchman, who proclaims
very definite dogmas as he moves in one circle of society,
but who becomes quite hazy and comprehensive as soon
as he passes out among the people. Is it strange that
under this class of teaching the age should be ready to
slide into that worst form of scepticism, the conservatism
of the outer, when the heart of belief is eaten out of
the inner ?
For this disease of dogmatism as degenerating into
scepticism, and halting at conformity as a half-way house,
there is only one remedy, which lies in plain speaking.
The age must be told what its popular organs, alike in
the press and the pulpit, do not tell it ; that with all its
sham attempts to galvanize a dead past, it has lost the
faith alike of the age of Dante and Milton. Its boasted
Individualism is only that poor and dwarfed doctrine of
" self-help," or the new gospel of the self-made man of
the money-market type. Those kings of industry, as we
call them, are as a rule ignorant, and therefore timid
in all directions but that of their own kind of business.
Hence, when they give their money to build churches
and endow new chairs of Theology, they indulge the
pleasing delusion that they have found defenders of the
faith who will act as barriers against unbelief. But too
late we shall see that it will be with us as with
the men before the flood, "They ate, they drank, they
bought, they sold, until " — and probably there were
orthodox Agnostics of that day who said " it will last
my time," " after me the deluge." This is God's way of
writing finis to a chapter of history in which the outer
form is put above the inner spirit.

Conclusion. 341
If we do not care to raise Cassandra cries all in vain,
it is because we do not think it too late even yet to
put Theology right with the age. But it must be done
in terms which the age will listen to. The "ruling
ideas " of our day and not those of the past must be the
condition of the new concordat. What these are we have
now to describe, or rather to summarize what we have
already written. In the first place, the age has pro
foundly modified its conceptions of the relations of God
to the universe. The " First Cause " and the " Supreme
Being," — these were the phrases which satisfied the age
of Deism. It no longer satisfies ours. Either there is
nothing behind phenomena but the law or order of their
sequence, which is itself only a mathematical formula,
and has no more entity than the binomial theorem, and
of which we can report nothing but that this sequence
exists, or else this law and order is itseK a kind of Welt-
wille, as Schopenhauer conceived of it, — the wilie becom
ing Vorstellung, or manifestation, and coming up to con
sciousness in man as we mount up the successive stages of
life. To meet this new form of scientific Agnosticism we
must change front. We must begin at the other end of the
series, with man, and take him as our point of departure.
New Theology, in a word, must set out with a psycho
logical affirmation. We are conscious of wUl or causa
tion, and, at the same time, profoundly conscious that
our wills are finite and limited, and hence the outcome
of a Supreme will. This is the old ontological argument,
but based on new grounds in psychology. As for the
old Deism of last century, which professed beUef in a
God who governs by general laws, and who is Himself
transcendent over nature and is its First Cause, that has
fallen through. Instead of that, we must incline to the
view once regarded as pantheistic, and hold the belief in

342 Conclusion.
a God who is immanent in and through nature. In Him
was life, and the life was the light of men : this text must
be our keynote. The old Theology read that deep re
ference to the Logos in the light of a solitary dogma —
the pre-existence of Christ as the second Person of the
Trinity. But the Deism of later days soon took all mean
ing out of this phrase, — the Logos, — and rationalized it
down to a mere abstraction, and so we have to reconstruct
Theology in this respect on a new basis. The Deistic
foundation having failed, we must look out for some new
supports which shall be at once more scientific and more
spiritual. Nor need we look in vain. With the authors
of the " unseen universe " we may hold a scientific concep
tion of the universe, which shall also be more spiritual.
What we sometimes describe as matter is only a mani
festation of mind, or at least of force, which is, strictly
speaking, a mental concept. The earth we walk on is
one vast electric battery energized probably from the
sun, but in its turn setting up new forces which — as
light, heat, motion, life — are constantly changing the
appearance of things. This is the old psalmist's account
of things. We call it pre-scientific ; but it is spiritual,
and is the point which the new science is working up to.
" Thou renewest the face of the earth ; " " Thou takest
away their breath, and they die ; " " if He do but touch
the mountains, they smoke." This is anti-Materialism
in its most pronounced form ; and the new science,
like the new Theology, is anti-Materialist. It knows
nothing of the old dualism of mind and matter on which
the Deism of the past constructed a Deus Opifex. Mon
ism, or " one God, one law, one element," — this is the
Theology, as clearly as it is the science, of the future.
On this point a new note must be struck, and the old
defences and outworks of revealed religion be taken away,

Conclusion. 343
as the old lunettes and bastions of those fortifications
which are now out of date.
Passing on from the Being of God to His Fatherhood,
we note the next point of departure of the new Theology.
It is not enough to recognise, as all are now disposed to
do, the fatherly character of God. There is this kind of
compromise between the old and the new which is in the
air, and which seems quite a proper concession to make
on the part of divines who are quite prepared to take a
leaden mediocrity when they cannot get a golden. God,
we are told, is the Maker and Judge of all men ; but He
is the Father only of those who believe. In this sense
the old high Calvinists were right in regarding such a
compromise as a weak attempt to slip the knot of the
difficulty. They say, in the language of Milton's Satan :
" The Son of God, which bears no single sense.
The Son of God I also am or was.
And if 1 was I am, relation stands.
All men are sons of God." — Par. Reg. iv. 512.
Such casuistry is worthy of the father of lies, and
those who quote Milton should be careful to verify their
quotations, and to see into whose lips Milton has put the
sentiment. In this instance it is the plea of the arch-
sophist who wishes to wrest from Christ the sense of His
filial duty and dependence on His Father. He sneers at
His Sonship. " You a Son of God — true, but so are all
men ; the phrase is an empty one — all are sons of God.
Even I, a fallen angel, cannot lose this dignity. I was
or am, relation stands ! "
No phrase can be conceived better fitted to sap the
Saviour's faith in God's Fatherhood. All are sons, there
fore he is. But here is only another hiss of the serpent.
It is like Faust's advice to theologians to stick close to
words ; and that he is the best divine who can chop logic

344 Conclusion.
with no real meaning in it. Truths when often used in a
cant sense may be evacuated of all their inner meaning.
So it has fared with the Fatherhood of God. If He is
only in a vague and general sense, as Jupiter was father
of gods and men, the All-Father, the Father of the dew, or
the Father of ages, why not of man only in a sense ? It
is at this point that a sound psychology lends help to a
sound Theology, and one truth, as is often the case in
science, reaches hands to another to give it the last point
of verification which it wanted. The Pneuma in man, or
organ of God-consciousness, is the butt and derision of those
who, with Confucius and Comte, say that human nature
gets on very well as it is by troubling itself as little as
possible with these vexed questions of God and the here
after. There is that " superstition about one Jesus who
was dead, and whom Paul affirmed to be alive." But to
those who are not Confucianists or Comtists, this ques
tion of God and immortality is the one problem which
preserves man from being the improved ape which some
scientists tell us we are. To this ape ancestry we have
only one reply, it shall be that of the Stoic poet : " We,
too, are His offspring." But how to prove our parentage,
and how to trace our descent from the unseen Father of
our spirits, this is the problem which Theology passes on
to psychology for solution. The true evidence for the
Fatherhood of God is drawn from within. Our spiritual
intuitions, when rightly consulted, lead us on to a sense
of some faculty of God-consciousness. This organ of the
spiritual is in every man in a latent and undeveloped
state. But it is stUl there, and on this we may base our
argument for the Fatherhood of God.
In itself this proof arising from consciousness is too
simple to need to be stated at length here. Its validity
depends on the strength of the argument for a faculty

Conclusion. 345
in man, which carries questions of right and wrong into
the inner sanctuary of the spirit, where they are judged
by the standard of God's will.
We pass on to the third great truth of Theology,
which calls for some restatement, and it leads out of the
two former. The Being of God and the Fatherhood of
God, this leads us on to the Person of Christ. So in the
order of spiritual experience we rise from one height to
another, and are led on to feel that if man's relationship
to God is that of original sonship, some manifestation of
God in our nature becomes in this way antecedently
probable. In turning to the Person of Christ we are
struck with this thought, that after six centuries of
subtle discussion on the part of the metaphysical Greek
intellect, the question is not exhausted in word-fence. Let
us begin by admitting to the full our obligations to the old
school of divines. It would be mere prejudice not to do
so. In form, nothing can be added to the old controversy,
extending as it does from Nice to Chalcedon. But in
our mode of approaching this mystery we have much to
learn. Orthodox Theology has yet to acknowledge its
debt of obligation to that type of Theology which is not
orthodox. But for the Humanitarians, as they are
caUed, the Fatherhood of God would have slumbered on
in the lumber-room of dead dogmas among other Church
muniments. It is on this side that we must modify
in modern times the doctrine of the Person of Christ.
His manhood leads the way to our conception of His
Godhead. The author of Ecce Homo would not have
stirred the age with a sense of freshness in his way of
viewing the story of Christ, if this had not been his
point of departure. Our only hostile criticism of that
book is, that it is a departure which leads nowhere ; and
this the writer himself seems to feel by leaving off, as it

346 Conclusion.
were, with a literary fragment or torso, which, if we
may judge by his long silence, was never intended to
take shape and finish as a perfect piece of sculpture.
The true teaching with regard to the Person of Christ is
to be learned from an argument like that of the author
of the Christ of History, who makes the humanity the
basis of an argument for His Godhead, and so he reasons
upward on lines which are those of experience, and
which the evangelists are careful to follow.
The next truth of the new Theology is the mode of
our reconciliation, which leads us at once to the contrast
between .the old and the new doctrine of the Atonement.
Here we glance at the thought that the three stages
which jurisprudence has passed through are the same
which also must be followed out by Theology. They
are these — the vindictive, the retributive, and the refor
matory. Our conception of crime as a personal tort,
as a crimen, and as a culpa or wrong done to self
and humanity in the person of the offender, — these are
the three stages which jurisprudence and Theology alike
must pass through. Our conceptions of the Atonement
are determined in every case by that particular stage of
moral culture in which we are. Hence it would be as
much out of date for us in this day to insist on the
Avenger-of-blood conception of God, as it would have
been premature to have taught twelve centuries ago that
sin was rather a disease than a debt. The latest doctrine
of the Atonement is based on the conception that what
Christ came to procure by His meritorious death on the
cross, was not so much a ransom - price, or even a
satisfaction due by the sinner to the offended majesty
of law, but a personal deliverance from the plague of
self and that heU on earth of passions boiling over to
the destruction of all that is good and pure in our

Conclusion. 347
nature. The Theology of the future will teach a doctrine
of the Atonement which is not theological only, whether
forensic or federal, but which wiU set forth the moral and
spiritual relations of the Father to His erring children
on earth. It is all summed up in the last words of the
parable of the prodigal son : " This my son was dead
and is alive again, he was lost and is found." The death
of Christ explains how and in what sense we were dead,
as His resurrection explains in what sense we too are
made alive.
The next step in our argument for a new Theology is
in pointing out what our rule of faith must be. All
forms of faith must have a norm or pattern according
to which they are moulded, unless this faith be a mere
sentiment without any articulate form, or any expression of
definite belief. We lay the more stress on this, as the
new Theology has been sometimes charged with being
"invertebrate," because it lays little stress on old dogmas,
and even less on old and now obsolete types of Church
discipline. "Invertebrate" is a mere question -begging
epithet, which we can easily fling back on those who
use it. But declining such personalities, we turn to the
question of what our rule of faith is to be, and ask our
selves whether we are shut in to choose one of two
infallibilities — either an infallible Book or an infallible
Church ; or whether we are free to escape the dilemma,
and to reject both. We endeavoured to point out that
this attempt to find a short and easy way out of our
own spiritual difficulties by setting up some infallible
tribunal either of the Church or the Bible, only leads us
into a blind alley. There is no end of controversy such
as Roma locuta est of the Ultramontane school, or the
verbal inspiration theory, which is an attempt in the
opposite extreme to lay living faith to sleep on the

348 Conclusion.
pillow of some external authority. Faith refuses these
false props alike of the Roman and Protestant type.
Sursum corda — " Lift up your hearts " — this is her call,
and the answer of the believing heart is always the same, —
We lift them up to the Lord." Living communion with
a living God can only be kept up in one way ; still, in so
far as faith has an intellectual element which can only
be expressed in propositions, as well as a spiritual
element to be expressed only in the language of spiritual
experience, it is desirable to point out what the true norm
or pattern is according to which faith is to be ruled.
This is threefold. Faith rests, as it were, on a kind
of tripod, the three supports of which are conscience
or the inner light, the written word of God, and the
historical Church or the general Christian consciousness.
Attempts have been made to set up one of these to the
exclusion of the other two. The Mystics, the Reformers,
and the Romanists have all tried to find a wayside rest on
the road to God in some infallible oracle, — either the voice
within, or the voice of the written word, or the voice of
the chair of Peter speaking ex cathedra. But all have
failed. These short cuts are found to be blind alleys.
They lead nowhere. These wandering fires of infallibUity
— struck out from Church, Bible, or Conscience — are lights
only leading to a quagmire. We have no other test of
faith than this, by asking of each article of belief these
three questions : — 1. Is it true to the light within ? 2. Is
it supported by the authority of God's written word ? 3.
Does it find support in the consent of the Christian con
sciousness, taking Catholic consent in the widest sense
of the term '{ There are a few truths of Theology, and
only, as we admit, a few which come up to these three
tests ; but in proportion as a truth will bear to be tested
in this way, have we the highest assurance of its truth.

Conclusion. 349

In this sense will the new Theology use its rule of faith,
and if it does not come to us with great sweUing words
of infaUibility as the old Theology did, it wiU be infi
nitely more secure. The three combined are at least an
infallible test, winch is more than can be said for any
one of the three by itself.
The education of the human race instead of its pro
bation : this is another note of the new Theology. It
mai'ks a new departure. It is one of those " ruUuc;
ideas " which will not admit of being put into the old
framework. This is a conception of the divine purposes
which is quite revolutionary of our old modes of think
ing. Hence, with perfect consistency, those who resist
the inferences of the new Theology with regard to a
larger hope and possibUities of redemption in worlds and
feons beyond the present, take their stand here on the
" now or never position. They feel that concession
here is to surrender the whole Une of defence. AU the
more philosophic divines — to name only two, Bishop
Butler and Bishop Newton — have thrown out hints —
they are hints only in the Theology of the ISth eentnry
— that we know so Uttle of the hereafter that it is safest
not to dogmatize. But they argue that if continuity of
character is to mean anything, the salvation which we aU
look for in Christ cannot be a sudden transformation.
It must imply discipline and moral growth. The laws
of the universe are the same from the highest to the
lowest. It is first the blade, then the ear. then the fuU
corn in the ear. We may hold the doctrine of conversion,
and, indeed, cannot hold it too distinctly. The passage
from nature to grace may be sudden, it may be a change
as instantaneous as that of those whose bodies are to be
changed in a moment, " in the twinkUng of an eye," at
the last trump. But stUl, all the same, it wUl be a

350 Conclusion.
change, and as such it is a process like any of the
changes of nature which scientific chemistry can accele
rate, but which, nevertheless, require a certain interval of
time to carry through to completion.
The education, then, instead of the probation of the
human family, is the keynote of the Theology of the
future. It is obvious that with the Fatherhood of God
for our point of departure, no other conception than this
of the divine work of dealing with the race is pos
sible. The very term " probation," with its mechanical
conception of testing the strength of wood or iron up
to the breaking point, is misleading on the very outset.
Besides, it suggests a contradiction ex vi terminis. The
very divines who hold that life is a state of probation,
and that all probation, as they term it, is strictly limited
by life, are the same who hold the dogma of original sin ;
and that this taint and corruption infects our natures so as
to create in us such a state of moral inability that we
are by nature children of wrath. The contradiction be
tween this Augustinian Theology and the theory that life
is a state of probation, is too glaring not to be seen by
divines of the old school, and they get over it character
istically enough, by making a kind of see-saw between
the two dogmas. At one time they assert our moral
inability, and then they retract this and, instead of it,
assert our responsibility. To smooth down the contra
diction between these two statements, they go to the
Kantian armoury for a distinction between contraries
and contradictories, and tell us, as Dean Mansel has
done, that there is no law of excluded middle in the case
of contraries, but only of contradictories. This seems to us
to be only ingenious word-fence, like the distinction of the
old school divines between man's inability and disability.
We are responsible, they say, for the latter, but not for

Conclusion. 351
the former, which is as idle as the old quibble, that man
was free to do evil but not free to do good. We might.
as well say that water is free to flow down-hill but not
free to run up-hill, and then turn round and blame the
water for causing an overflow and flooding our fields.
Such are the vain distinctions which the old Theology
set up in order to escape from the toils in which it had
entangled itself. The only way out of this maze of con
tradictions is to get back to the simplicity of divine truth
as seen in the light of living experience. A Theology of
experience teaches us that there is a perplexing puzzle
in our nature arising from the warring within us of two
tendencies, which are described as the flesh and the
spirit. The Bible is by no means alone in testifying to
these two natures : if it were, we should lack the grand
evidence to its truth in the correspondence between our
spiritual intuitions and the historical revelation. On the
contrary, all the deeper thinkers alike in Greece, Rome,
and India have testified to the presence of this contra
diction between the ideal and the actual in man. The
only point in which the Scripture account of man differs
from that of other records is, in showing how God has
never left Himself without a witness. Grace has always
overtaken erring, fallen human nature, and either has
found and brought it back, or is about to find and bring
it back. The stages of man's fall are many, and so are the
stages of redemption. The Son of man has come to seek
and to save that which is lost. That sweet expression—
"until He find it " — opens up vistas in the future which can
only be explained by that other expression — that in the dis
pensation of the fulness of times He might gather together
in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and
which are on earth. We have no measure of these two
infinities reaching beyond both time and space. There

352 Conclusion.
are iEons lying beyond to which the geological days are
approximations, or, at best, faint foreshadowings. Man
is the last work of nature in a retrospective series, and
here science finds and leaves him. But he is the first term
in a prospective series such as the heavenly hierarchy
seems to shadow forth; and here, too, revelation leaves
him. Our prospective glimpses are as dim as our retro
spective. It doth not yet appear what we shaU be ; much
less does it appear what the race, as a whole, is intended
to rise to.
Here, then, we must leave the subject with the thought
that we are saved by hope, but that this hope is like our
faith, dim and indistinct. It is the evidence of things
not seen, and whose only logic is a spiritual conviction.
To some it is given to put forth more of this larger hope,
and to feel that what has been already done for the
redemption of the race, is but a mere foretaste of what
will be done in the future. In a sense, the straitest
sect of the Predestinarian party indulge in some larger hope
for mankind at some millenarian period, limiting it, how
ever, to the favoured generation which shall be alive at the
Lord's second coming. Then all Israel shaU be saved,
and by their conversion, and as the result of it, the
abundance of the sea and the forces of the Gentiles
shall be gathered in. Such are the millennial visions
of those who hold that at present " straight is the gate,
and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it ; "
while to those who fail to find it in this life, there
remains nothing but the blackness of darkness for ever.
There is something ingenious in its unconscious simpli
city, in the well-known story of Pope Gregory praying
for, and succeeding in getting the soul of Trajan the
Emperor out of hell. The clemency of Trajan was a
well-known legend of that emperor, who on going to

Conclusion. 353
the wars was entreated to redress a widow's wrongs.
This he consented to do at once, and the incident is
recorded on his column. The Pope, noticing this good
deed of the heathen emperor, was so moved by it that
he prayed that Trajan's soul might be released from
hell, and the prayer was granted. At the same time it
was intimated to him that he must not repeat requests
of this kind by praying for the souls of lost unbaptized
heathen. The simplicity of this story Ues in its sequel.
The implication that Gregory the saint was more pitiful
than the Father of spirits, and that his charity reached
beyond the bounds of the everlasting covenant itself,
marks the age in which it arose, and the class of minds
who could believe it. Their conceptions of God evidently
never rose above those of the old Jupiter Tonans, who
was in, some way propitiated by his Son for his elect
people of the Church. In any case, the story is as good
an iUustration as any of that habit of mind which
marks the childhood of religion everywhere, and which is
nowhere more seen than in patristic Theology. It is in
reality anthropomorphism in its crudest form. We Umit
God with our own limitations of thought, and then
go on with rare inconsistency to set up our cold and feeble
desires for the salvation of others as if they were deeper
even than those of God, the great Father of spirits, and
who has said that all souls are mine. " Can a mother
forget her sucking child 1 yea, she may forget." This is
God's answer to such childish, if not presumptuous
comparisons between human and divine pity for the lost.
We may charitably assume that Pope Gregory's breach
of orthodox propriety in overflowing only once in com
passion for those whom Theology had put out of the
pale of salvation, is not the only one of those happy
inconsistencies by which men break loose now and
z

354 Conclusion.
then from the fetters of system, and so become better
than their creed. The rigour with which divines have
barred the gates of mercy on mankind would sometimes
lead one to think that they, like the majority of laymen,
hold on this subject a kind of regulative faith. They
hold up to themselves a creed of blank terrorism, more as
a kind of safeguard to themselves. But the creed has so
many loopholes, and so many kindly exceptions, that the
discovery dawns on us, that probably it is only intended
as a kind of way-mark set up with " No road here,"
to keep stragglers in the narrow path of orthodoxy, and
to warn against the laxity of an immoral universalism.
Against this error in the opposite extreme — for par
ticular redemption generally reacts as universalism — the
doctrine of the education of the human race seems to be
the only safeguard. If God has a purpose with regard
to all, an eternal purpose, reaching far beyond the bounds
of time and space, then that purpose can only come to
pass in some stage of being beyond the present. Much
of our modern thinking, which is little else than
Buddhism taken over and translated into Western modes
of thought, is only the outcome of this longing for life
in forms beyond the present. The transmigration of
souls is only the Oriental way of expressing the deep
thought, that evil with us in our present life is no mere
contingency, no accident to be repaired in time, but
instead, has its roots in the past and the future. We see
that it is shallow to shut up the whole of our existence to a
one-act drama, with the curtain rising on our birth and
falling on our death. We come to the conclusion, that
as there are ages beyond the present, so there are dis
pensations in which God can deal with these spirits
which pass out of time, either morally unborn, or still-born.
It is a great mystery, and we are content to wait ; but

Conclusion. 355
we are not to be shut out from the devout contemplation
of it by such a phrase as that life is a " state of probation,"
or such a text misunderstood, as that " where the tree
falls, there it must lie."
This leads us in the last place to Eschatology, by
which the circle of new aspects of truth is rounded off.
For our part, we are not to be led away by such phrases
as Particularist and Universalist. The late Dr. Pusey
and Archdeacon Farrar, after crossing swords on this
question, seem to have come together on the basis of
a compromise, in which the former surrendered all
that was offensive in his Particularism, and the latter
much that seemed lax in his Universalism. They ended
as controversialists often do, by admitting that there was
more in their agreement than in their differences. Dr.
Pusey, in his admission of an intermediate state not unlike
the mediaeval doctrine of purgatory, was prepared to
meet Archdeacon Farrar at least half-way, and the duel
between these two divines ended like that of Sir Richard
Strachan and the Earl of Chatham :
" The Earl of Chatham with sword drawn,
Was waiting for Sir Richard Strachan ;
Sir Richard longing to be at 'em,
Was waiting for the Earl of Chatham."
The doctrine of last tlnngs does not admit of solution,
since it lies beyond our present horizon, and we have
no data with which to determine the problem. All we
can say is that the judge of all the earth must do right ;
we are sure of this, and of nothing beyond this. Here
we might leave the question but for the unwise attempt
of the ' old school of divines to push men on into belief
by a peremptory stand and deliver challenge. " Believe
and live," we are told, to which, of course, the opposite
is, " Disbelieve and be damned." This is so simple that

356 Conclusion.
it has naturally enough claimed to be " the gospel," and
not to preach this " now or never " doctrine, was not to
know and hold gospel truth. We are told to this day
by many devout but timid minds, that writers who
touch on the larger hope in the reverent strain of the
late Thomas Erskine and his school are "mystical,"
" hazy," and so forth. The fear of this reproach of in-
definiteness holds back many sincere minds who do not
see any counter-dogma to set up against the old and now
popular Theology of " believe and live." It is our wish
to. supply certain convictions on the new lines as definite
as those of the old, which it is high time to remove as
not adequate for the age. The one article of faith in the
old Theology which we must retain in the new is, that
sin being a definite evil must have a definite retribution,
punishment must be proportionate to offence ; and hence,
that unless we play with the term infinity in a sophistical
sense, or speak of sin against an infinite Being as con
tracting a quality of infinity from the Being sinned against,
we must look on all sin as finite, and carrying with it the
principle of self-extinction. Sin being in its essence self
hood, carries in its own bosom a fire and a worm which
must eat into its very vitals. This at once sets us on the
true track of thought with regard to the hereafter. There
wiU be retribution most just and exact, so exact, indeed,
that many will come under the judgment of God who have
said, " Lord, Lord," and have even done wonders in His
name. On the other hand, this retributive justice of God
wiU have nothing vindictive about it. We have seen how
jurisprudence has risen from the vindictive to the retribu
tive, and from that at last it has moved on to the reformatory
stage. The Eschatology of the future must be at least
abreast of our new and more humane jurisprudence. For
Theology to faU behind in its conceptions of God, and to

Conclusion. 357
set up representations of His character which, from a
judge on the bench, we should describe as a relic of
barbarism, this is infidelity of the orthodox type, and
the parent of a worse infidelity in others. We must
teach a doctrine of the future which shall not err in
opposite extremes as the popular doctrine to this day
does. The old Theology is at once too hard and too
indulgent. Its penalties are so inconceivably harsh and
terroristic, that, like the penalties of the old hanging
code, they are seldom enforced. When one kind of theft
is punished as felony without benefit, and another is only
petty larceny, the temptation is great to judges and juries
to strain the law, and so redress one wrong by creating
another. This was what the old Theology did with
regard to future punishments. The result is a general
laxity of belief all round on the subject. The, age is not
Universalist only because the old creeds are against it
in name, and men dislike to oppose dogma with dogma.
Men in our day doubt a truth which is not instantly
verified by the common conscience of mankind, and at
last reject it. The end of this collision between con
science and dogma is that both lose their authority, and
a state of indifference ensues which is not openly agnostic
in fact as well as in form, only because the term is
one at present of evil repute in respectable circles, where
church-going is still a family tradition.
Again, with regard to the resurrection of the body our
Theology needs restatement. The Scripture doctrine is
not the resurrection of the dead, but an Anastasis from
the dead, — and the distinction is more than verbal. The
old doctrine which Pearson on the Creed evidently held to
is, that at the last day, by some fiat of Omnipotence, " all
that are in the graves shall come forth," as we take the
expression in its crude literalism. This is that Egyptian

358 Conclusion.
doctrine of the resurrection of relics, the re-collection of
the scattered particles of our animal frame, which we
may describe as churchyard Theology. Between that
doctrine and the old dogma of immortality of the soul
there is no connection whatever : on the contrary, there is
the sharpest possible contradiction. And yet the two
are held together in the popular mind, bombinating from
one to the other in the inconsiderate way of a bee in a
bottle. The true doctrine first taught by Swedenborg is
that which reconciles the old philosophic, and the new
Christian doctrine of immortaUty ; it is this, that the body
is only the form or envelope of the spirit, which is, and
always must be, a formative principle.
That every seed has its own body is the law of the
universe, from the lowest form of being up to man the
last link in the long chain of life. In man the formative
principle builds around him a body of flesh, when, as
we read, he is curiously formed in the lower parts of the
earth. Then death comes to destroy this temple, and
either, as in Christ's case, it is built again in three days,
or, as in the case of the majority who pass out of existence
here, the new life has its beginning only after the entire
dissolution of the body. The seed then escapes from its
husk and, in some way unknown to us, begins to build to
itself a spiritual body, a house not made with hands, so
that at the Lord's appearing — whether that be subjective
or objective it matters not — we are not found naked.
This is the new doctrine of the Anastasis which, unlike the
patristic doctrine of the resurrection of relics, reconciles
such opposite and contradictory truths as the immortality
of the soul and the resurrection of the body. So it is
that truths which, when held separately, seem to be
discordant, come together and harmonize when we look
at them in the right light and see their inner connection.

C onclu

siun. 359

We have lastly to glance at what we should say is the
central thought of tho whole, and without which the
term new Theology would bo at best an unmeaning
phra.se. There are certain intuitions which we may de
scribe as spiritual, and which, if consulted aright, may be
said to contain the germ of all those truths which are in
deepest correspondence with all that we specially describe
as the gospel scheme. The difficulty, of course, lies in
determining what are and what are not genuine ami
original intuitions. Wo arc iu great danger of taking
the afterthoughts of Theology for its primitive teaching.
In tho same way we are in equal danger of confounding
what are not with what are genuine intuitions.
This question of intuitions may be frittered away in
mere verbal discussion, as the similar question of innate
ideas was a century ago, when it was said that if these
ideas, as they were called (images painted on the cere
brum, as they wore crudely described by the school of
Locke), truly wero existent, wo could go to primitive
human nature and detect them there. Locke wrote
against this, and Hume at last demolished this theory of
innate ideas; and so Kant awoke from his dogmatic
slumbers to recast psychology on new lines altogether of
the laws of thought.
In the same way we have to deal with our spiritual
intuitions. It will only mislead us if wo begin by as
suming tho existence of certain innate convictions such
as the sense of sin, the desire for holiness, and the
craving for communion with God, and to describe these
as spiritual intuitions, and so to build on this foundation
u structure of spiritual Theology. Many writers have
done so; but however interesting and ingenious a Theo
logy built upon a basis of sjiiritual intuitions, it is only a
house of cards which they have erected. Tho I'ositivist

360 Conclusion.
will say he knows nothing of this sense of sin or of longing
for the unseen, and for him this intuition is explained away
by reference to the case of the late J. S. Mill, who described
it as the dwarfed and mutilated sense of poetry asserting
itself late in life. To this we have no reply to give but
one : that there are powers latent in human nature which
it is a long time before we are fully conscious of. The
spiritual in man does not come to the surface of con
sciousness often till late in life, if at all. Hence the
truth of the apostle's words : Howbeit that was not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and after
ward that which is spiritual.
The true order must be to begin with our external
life, and so on to our interior until we reach the spiritual
in the last recess of all. We are made up, as we pointed
out, of wants which are purely animal, of wishes which
are partly animal and partly intellectual, and of a will
which is spiritual in its germ and essence. Wants and
wishes alike have to be submitted to the will and regu
lated in subjection to it. This is the discipline of life,
and in proportion as the will can restrain the lower
desires of the flesh — which are our wants — as well as the
vaguer and vaster desires of the mind — which are our
wishes — and hold them in control, can it be said that
there is a healthy moral nature. The will is sovereign,
— i.e. it is the rightful over-lord of our nature. But it is
never a final law in itself. At every act of the will we
are conscious that it is alternately lord and vassal. It
is lord of the lower nature, but in its turn it is the
vassal of a power higher than itself, to which it owes
fealty and allegiance.
It is at this point, then, where the will reaches the
stage of God-consciousness, that our spiritual intuitions —
properly so called — begin. Man is a being conscious of

Conclusion. 36 1
dependence, and the sense of dependence begins at the
point where he feels his superiority to aU life below him :
he is also conscious of his own subjection to the will of
God. This new sense of dependence is the root of all
reUgious feeUng. But for this, it could not be said that
man had a religious nature at all ; but on this ineradi
cable conviction that he is not an end in himself, but
only the last link of one being and the first of another,
— the fibula duarum naturarum, — we are able to affirm
that he is a spiritual being, and in a direct relation of
dependence to the Lord of life and the Father of spirits.
On this argument we ground the statement that there
are spiritual instincts on which we can rear up what we
may ultimately describe when we have set them in
their true relation to each other, as the Theology of in
tuition. The old Theology was experimental, and laid
o-reat stress on an introspective sense of indwelling sin.
But this introspective Theology, which was emotional
only, often took its rise from a morbid view of life and a
narrow and partial conception of evil. It was good as
far as it went, but it did not go far enough. It did not
draw out aU our intuitions. It harped too much on one
string, and the consequence was that for want of breadth
and sympathy with life in all its bearings, it has been
left behind, and is now very much a thing of the past.
This decline of Pietism is to be regretted on many
o-rounds, as this introspective Theology, with aU its nar
rowness, was the means of moulding some of the finest
types of Christian character. It ran too much into excess
when it laid such stress on its frames and feelings ; and
in such diaries as those of Henry Martyn we find it pro
ducing a morbid and self-questioning type of character.
But as this is certainly not one of the faults of the
Theolooy of our day, we need not complain of it on that

362 .Conclusion.
score. Introspective Theology has done good service in
its day, but like all truths by painful iteration it has lost
its freshness, and is now laid aside or has fallen into the
background. We can no more revive Puritanism than
we can Anglicanism : the dead must bury their dead.
But what we can do is to draw out that which is its
modern substitute and equivalent. This is intuitional
Theology. When we cross-question consciousness, we
find that there are at least three high and original
instincts of our nature, for which a remedial scheme like
the gospel seems a special provision. We have a sense of
defect, we have a desire after holiness, and also a longing
for union with God through the putting away of sin and
the imparting of holiness. These are genuine instincts
not equally felt, it is true, by all, but struggling into
consciousness in every case ; and if smothered at all, as
they too often are, then visiting us with a sense of inward
misery and dissatisfaction, for which all men suffer who
thus do wrong to their true nature. The best and purest
souls are those who feel all these three convictions, of sin,
righteousness, and judgment, as we may describe them in
Scripture language. In their case the spiritual nature is
fully unfolded, and they are led and taught of God's
Spirit. In the case of the majority, however, these in
stincts are only dim and indistinct, they are at best little
more than " Blind nestlings unafraid,
Who ope wide mouths at every shade
With whieh their downy dream is stirred,
Taking it for the parent bird."
Such are these spiritual intuitions in the case of the
majority of mankind. But the fact of their existence at
all is the evidence that we are in search of. It is the
proof of man's true relation to God, which is that of a

Conclusion. ^6

ouo

child, but of one who is an orphan, of a great unseen and
unknown Father. The promise of Christ is, " I will not
leave you orphans, I will come to you;" hence the promise
of the Spirit to be given to remove this sense of orphan
hood, and to implant in its stead the sense of sonship —
lor this is the purpose for which the Holy Spirit is given
to us.
To sum up, these intuitions by themselves would not
constitute a Theology any more than appetites can satisfy
themselves. There must be bread for the hunger of the
body, and, similarly, there must be bread for the hunger
of the soul. But without an appetite, of what use, in
either case, would the bread be ? as conversely, without a
supply for these instincts or desires, of what use would it
be to point to their existence ? God never mocks His
children in this way, by implanting spiritual instincts
and then leaving them to starve or to feed on themselves.
If we, being evU, know how to give good gifts to our
children, much more wiU our heavenly Father give His
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. It is a case of
those that ask having, those that seek finding, and to those
who knock it is opened. The Theology of intuition is
thus only the old Theology purged of some of its too
introspective character, and extended so as to include all
that is genuinely spiritual in human nature. Here we
may conclude. It is presumptuous to expect that any one
draft of Theology can be complete, nor do we expect or
desire that the Theology of our day wiU meet the wants of
some unborn age and generation of men. Enough for us
if it is abreast of the convictions of our day, as much as
the Puritan Theology was abreast of the best thinking of
that day, and the scholastic in its turn was abreast of the
age of the schoolmen. We only find fault with the old
Theology in so far as it is forced upon us through the

364 Conclusion.
timidity and sequaciousness of the divines of our day, —
too indolent to think out the problem afresh for them
selves, and too sceptical of truth to admit that truth is
one, but the moulds into which it is poured are as many
and various as the successive ages and generations of
men. Till divines come to see that the essence is con
stant and the form variant, they will continue to raise
vain laments when they see the form perishing and the
inner essence renewing itself in some fresh form. " Thou
turnest man to destruction ; again, Thou sayest, Come
again, ye children of men." Such is the course of all
human affairs, alike in politics and religion. The form
perishes, but the inner life renews itself in a wonderful
way. All Church history is one long comment on the
law of decay and renewal, and those who glory in the
Reformation and boast that they inherit the birthright
of Protestantism in the right of private judgment, should
reflect that rights and duties are correlative. As Pro
testants they have less excuse than others for that timid
traditionalism which cannot bear even to admit the need
of a new Theology to express the changed ideas of a new
age. But in spite of these unmanly laments, eppur si muove,
the world moves on in spite of these conservatives of a
dead past, and when a new and living faith has clothed
itself with a new form adequate to express its best con
victions, none are so surprised as those who said that the
dewdrop fell into the shell only that it might perish,
or that the pearl was torn from the shell also to its
destruction, —
' ' Oh, unbelieving, so it came to gleam,
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Prof. John Petek Lange, D.D., in connection with a number of eminent
European Divines. Translated, enlarged, and revised under the general
editorship of Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, assisted by leading Divines of the
various Evangelical Denominations.

OLD TESTAMENT — 14 VOLUMES.
1. Genesis. With a General Introduction to the Old Testament. By Prof. J. P. Lange,
D.D. Translated from the German, with Additions, by Prof. Taylkr Lewis, LL.D.,
and A. Gosman, D.D.
2. Exodus. By J. P. Lange, D.D. Leviticus. By J. P. Lange, D.D. With GENERAL
INTRODUCTION by Rev. Dr. Osgood.
3. Numbers and Deuteronomy .—Numbers. By Prof. J. P. Lange, D.D. Deuteronomy.
By W. J. SCHEOEDEB.
4. Joshua. By Rev. F. R. Fat. Judges and Ruth. By Prof. Paulus Cassell, D.D. '
5. Samuel, I. and II. By Professor Ekdhann, D.D.
6. Kings. By Karl Chr. W. F. Bahu, D.D.
7. Chronicles, I. and II. By Otto ZBcklkr. Ezra. By Fr. W. Schultz. Nehemiah
Br Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D. Esther. By Fn. W.. Schultz.
8. Job. With an Introduction and Annotations by Prof. Tayler Lewis, LL.D. A
Commentary by Dr. Olio Zockler, together with an Introductory Essay on Hebrew-
Poetry by Prof. Philip Schaff, D.D.
9. The Psalms. By Carl Bernhardt Moll, D.D. With a hew Metrical Version of the
Psalms, and Philological Notes, by T. J. Conant, D.D.
10. Proverbs. By Prof. Otto Zockler, D.D. Ecclesiastes. By Prof. O. ZSckler,
D.D. With Additions, and a new Metrical Version, by Prof. Tatler Lewis D D
The Song of Solomon. By Prof. 0. ZBckler, D.D.
11. Isaiah. By C. W. E. Naegelsbach.
12. Jeremiah. By C. W. E. Naeqelsbach, D.D. Lamentations. By C W E
Naegelsbach, D.D.
13. Ezekiel. By F. W. Schroder, D.D. Daniel. By Professor Zockler, D.D.
14. The Minor Prophets. Hosea, Joel, and Amos. By Otto Schmoller, PhD
Obadiah and Micah. By Rev. Paul Kleinert. Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and
Zephaniah. By Rev. Paul Kleinert. Haggai. By Rev. James E. M'Curdy.
Zechariah. By T. W. Chambers, D.D. Malachi. By Jose™ Packard, D.D.
The Apocrypha. (Just published.) By E. C. Bissell, D.D. One Volume.
NEW TESTAMENT — 10 VOLUMES.
1. Matthew. With a General Introduction to the New Testament. By J P Lange
D.D. Translated, with Additions, by Philip Schaff, D D '
2. Mark. By J. P. Lange, D.D. Luke. By J. J. Van Oosterzee.
3. John. By J. P. Lange, D.D.
4. Acts. By G. V. Lechler, D.D., and Rev. Charles Geeok.
5. Romans. By J. P. Lange, D.D., and Rev. F. R. Fat
6. Corinthians. By Christian F. Kling.
7. Galatians, By Otto Schmoller, Ph.D. Ephesians and Colossians. By, Karl
Braune.D.D. Philippians. By Karl Brauni, D.D. *
8. Thessalpnians. By Drs. Auberlen and Riggenbach. Timothv Bv J J Van
Oosterzee, D.D. Titus. By J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D. Philemon: Bv J ,j Van
Oosterzee, D.D. Hebrews. By Karl B. Moll, D.D ' n
9. James.^ By J. P. Lange, D.D., and J. J. Van Oosterzee, D.D. Peter and Jude Bv
,„ &-F-C..FRONiiuLLER,Ph.D. John. By Kakl Bbaune, D.D. y
^„v6t uV.°nTf J?rhT' By DrYJ- 1" Lasoe' T°K<>ther with double Alphabetical
Index to all the Ten Volumes on the New Testament, by John Hi Woods. """l

T. and T. Clark's Publications. 11

In One large 8v© Volume, Ninth Enghsh Edition, price 15s.,
A TREATISE ON THE GRAMMAR OF
HEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
REGARDED AS THE BASIS OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS.
Translated from the German of Dr. B. G.. WINER.
With large additions and full Indices. Third Edition, Edited by
Rev. W. F. Moulton, D.D., one of the New Testament
Translation Revisers.

We need not say it is the Grammar of the New Testament. It is not only
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ot reference on the subject. Ho other could be mentioned with it.'— Literan,
Churchman. J

In demy 8vo, price 8s. 6d.,
SYNTAX OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE OF
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Br HEINRICH EWALD.
TRANSLATED FROM THE EIGHTH GERMAN EDITION
Bv JAMES KENNEDY, B.D.

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reflection. Another striking feature of the work is the regularly progressive
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tion from the simplest elements to the most complex forms.' — British Quarterly

'It is well known that Ewald was the first to exhibit the Hebrew Syntax
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AN INTRODUCTORY HEBREW GRAMMAR:
WITH PROGRESSIVE EXERCISES IN READING AND WRITING.
By A. B. DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, etc., in the New College, Edinburgh.

12 T. and T. Clark's Publications.

WORKS BY THE LATE
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FKISCIPAI. AND rROFESSOR OF THEOLOGr IN THE FREE CIIUSC1I
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EZEKIEL, AND THE BOOK OF HIS PROPHECY:
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T. and T. Clark's Publications. 13

In Three Vols. 8vo, prico £l, lis. 6d.,
A HISTORY OF CHRIST/AN DOCTRINES
Translated from the Fifth and Last German Edition of
Dr. K. R. HAGENBACH
(With Additions from other Sources).
have* nnTnSo0lSilU almS.St^nlque Value as a hist01'y of Christian dogma. Wo
Rniew 8 °an b6 comPared with ^-'-British Quarterly
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION
IN
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Translated from the Fourth Revised Edition of the German.
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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GERMAN RATIONALISM
IX ITS RISE, PROGRESS, AND DECLINE. A CONTRIBUTION TO THE
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COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE
TO THE ROMANS.
Br FRIEDRICH ADOLPH PHILIPPI.
Translated from the Third Improved and Enlarged Edition.
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' A commentary not only ample for its critical stores, but also valuable for
its sober exegesis.' — John Bull.
'If the writer is inferior to Meyer in critical acumen, he is at least equal to
him in theological learning and religious insight; and his commentary has
independent worth — it is no mere repetition of other men's labours.' — Church
Bells.

14 T. and T. Clark's Publications.
In demy 8vo, Third Edition, price 10s. 6d.,
THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE;
OR,
EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS EXHIBITING
THE TWELVE DISCIPLES OF JESUS UNDER
DISCIPLINE FOR THE APOSTLESHIP.
BY
A. B. BRUCE, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW.

' Here we have a really great book on an important, large, and attractive
subject — a book full of loving, wholesome, profound thoughts about the
fundamentals of Christian faith and practice.' — British and Foreign Evangeli
cal Review.
' It is some five or six years since this work first made its appearance, and
now that a second edition has been called for, the author has taken the oppor
tunity to make some alterations which are likely to render it still more accept
able. Substantially, however, the book remains the same, and the hearty
commendation with which we noted its first issue applies to it at least as much
cow.' — Rock.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

In demy 8vo, Second Edition, price 10s. 6d.,
THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST,
IN ITS PHYSICAL, ETHICAL, AND OFFICIAL ASPECTS.

SIXTH SERIES OF CUNNINGHAM LECTURES.
1 These 'lectures are able and deep-reaching to a degree not often found in
the religious literature of the day; withal, they are fresh and suggestive.
The learning and the deep and sweet spirituality of this discussion will com
mend it to many faithful students of the truth as it is in Jesus.— Congrega-
tionalist. ' We have not for a long time met with a work so fresh and suggestive as
this of Professor Bruce  We do not know where to look at our English
Universities for a treatise so calm, logical, and scholarly.'— English Independent.

T. and T. Clark's Publications.

WORKS BY DR. I. A. DORNER.

In Three Volumes, 8vo, price 10s. 6d. each,
A SYSTEM OF CHRIST/AN DOCTRINE.

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"i'J*?^'* "System of Christian Doctrine" is likely to prove, when com
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this magnificent work.'— Baptist Magazine.

In Five Volumes, 8vo, price £2, 12s. 6d.,
HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST.

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In Two Volumes, 8vo, price 21s.,
HISTORY OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY,
PARTICULARLY IN GERMANY,
VIEWED ACCORDING TO ITS FUNDAMENTAL MOVEMENT,
AND IN CONNECTION WITH THE RELIGIOUS,
MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE.
With a Preface to the Translation by the Author.

' This masterly work of Dr. Dorner, so successfully rendered into English
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1G T. and T. Clark's Publications.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.

a Jicin Eoition tfjotougljln ftcbiscS ana Enkrgto.
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'No student, and indeed no critic, can with fairness overlook a work like
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so thorough a knowledge of the sources of early Christian history.' — Scotsman.

In Three Volumes, demy 8vo, price 12s. each,
HISTORY OF THE COUNCILS OF THE
CHURCH.
FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
C. J. HEFELE, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg.

VOL. I. (Second Edition) TO A.D. 325.
By Rev. PREBENDARY CLARK.
VOL. II. A.D. 32S TO 429.
By H. N. OXENHAM, M.A.
VOL. III. A.D. 429 TO THE CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL OF
CHALCEDON.

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orm. — Guardian. °
' A work of profound erudition, and written in a most candid spirit. The
book will be a standard work on the subject.'— Spectator.
' The most learned historian of the Councils.'  Pere Gratry
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Bull.