The Christian ministry at the close of the nineteenth century

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By the Same Author.

CONCi:;I4ES AD CLERUM. 1879-1880. 12mo.

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INDIVIDUALISM: Its Growth and Tendencies,
with some Suggestions as to the Remedy for
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The Bishop Paddock Lectures, 1884

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY

AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY

BY

/

RT. REV. A. N. LITTLEJOHN, D.D., LL.D.

BISHOP OF LONG ISLAND

NEW YORK
THOMAS W H I T T A K E R

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE

1884

Copyright, 1884,
By THOMAS WHITTAKER.

FRANKLIN press:

RAND, AVERT, AND COMPANY,

BOSTON.

THE
BISHOP PADDOCK LECTUPES.

In the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis of
Brooklyn, N.Y., moved by his sense of the great good which
might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ, and to the
Church of which he was an ever-grateful member, gave to
the General Theological Seminary of the Protest.int Episco-
pal Church certain securities, exceeding in value eleven
thousand dollars, for the foundation and maintenance of a
Lectureship in said seminary.

Out of love to a former pastor and enduring friend, the
Right Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of
Massachusetts, he named the foundation " The Bishop
Paddock Lectureship."

The deed of trust declares that, —

'■'■The subjects of the lectures shall be such as appertain to the
defence of the religion of Jicsus Chkist, as revealed in the Holy
Bible, and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer, against the
varying errors of the daj', whether materialistic, rationaUstic, or
professedh' religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in
respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Jus-
tification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such
central facts as the Churches Divine Order and Sacraments, her
historical Reformation, and her rights and powers as a pure and
national Church. And other subjects may be chosen if unanimously
approved by the Board of Appointment as being both timel}' and
also within the true intent of this Lectureship."

Under the appointment of the board created by the trust,
the Right Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of
Long Island, delivered the Lectures for the year 1884, con-
tained in this volume.

PEEFACE.

The subject chosen for these Lectures is, on the face of
it, a practical one. It will deal with questions of authority,
office, administration, conduct, and character. It will show
how earthly stewards, human trustees, have used, in a gen-
eration of unparalleled activity and change, the Divine gifts
committed to them. We are neariug the close of by far
the most eventful of the Christian centuries, — one that
includes the beginning and the consummation of forces
that have radically modified the drift of modern life, and
with that the internal, as well external, relations of insti-
tutions ordained to be permanent factors in the training
and development of mankind. It is of the utmost practical
moment, that we see as clearly as we can the effect of these
forces upon the most obviously and vitally representative
agency of Christianity, and through that upon Christianity
itself. But, while in these respects intensely practical, the
subject will, at the same time, oblige us to consider from
the Christian standpoint many issues yet lying within the
province of theory and opinion, — issues which, though now
wrapped up in the inner thoughts of men, may, any day, leap
forth into the arena of agitation and controversy. Indeed,
it will be impossible to conduct with any degree of thor-
oughness such an inquiry as is here proposed, without cross-

viii Preface.

ing at many angles the deeper speculative tendencies of the
time. There could scarcely be any truer test of what is
best and what is worst in these tendencies, than the influence
which they have already begun or are likely to exercise,
upon the Office and Ministry ordained to show forth and
plead for the Christ unto the end of the world.

Of the twelve Lectures now published, five, and consider-
able parts of the others, were not delivered, for lack of time ;
though the continuity of the series was maintained by pre-
senting a syllabus of each lecture or part of a lecture

omitted.

A. N. L.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AT THE BAR OF CRITICISM.

PAGE.

Why the Christian Ministry should give an Account of its Steward-
ship at this Time. — Views of tbe Present Status of the Ministry
reducible to Three. — Alleged Decline of Influence. — Power dis-
tinguished from Influence. — The Latter takes us into the Province
of History and Experience. — Tone of Sentiment now Prevalent, —
Changed Relation of the Clergy to Society and to Liberal and
Popular Education. — The Ministry and the Press. — The Ministry
no longer the Chief Dispenser of Charity. — The Ministry blamed
(1) for adhering to any Theology not approved by the Modern
Spirit, (2) for an Alleged Decline in the Power of the Pulpit, (3)
for its Want of Readiness to endure Hardship and Denial, (4) for
Lack of Boldness and Independence in Thought and Action, (5)
for allowing the Church and the World to be on too Good Terms ;
(6) Charged with Feeble and Shallow Methods in the Cure of
Souls, (7) with Lack of Enterprise, and a Feeble Faculty of Or-
ganization; (8) Faults imputed (a) by the World of Letters and
Science, (6) by the World of Politics, (c) by the World of Social
Reform. — These Faults examined, and shown to be Exaggerated
or Groundless 1

LECTURE II.

THE CAUSES THAT HAVE HINDERED OR IMPAIRED THE
INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY'.

Declining Faith in the Supernatural. — Unscriptural and Unchurcbly
Notions. — Three Characteristic Fruits of them. — Primitive and

■ X Contents.

PAGE.

Traditional Teaching in its most Positive Form needful to People
and Clergy if the Powers of the Holy Office are to be saved from
Decay and Disesteem. — Enormous Development of Sectism. —
Disastrous to the Influence of the Ministry. — In what Ways espe-
cially so. — The Influence of the Ministry hindered and impaired
by the Decay of Discipline. — Causes of this Decay. — Evidences
of it in nearly all Branches of the Church. — The Discipline of
the Early and the Discipline of the Modern Church compared.
— Why has the Church so sadly fallen away in this Eegard? —
Special Evils inflicted upon the Ministry 73*

LECTURE III.

EVIDENCES OF INTELLECTUAL VIGOR AND ACTIVITY IN
* THE MINISTRY.

The Subject of Little Interest to two Extreme Wings of the Clerical
Body. — Evidences to be found in the Deeper and more Methodical
Studies of the Clergy. — In Theology. — Movements in the History
of Modern Thought adverse to the Claims of Theology. — How
These have been met. — Positivism. — Its Various Phases. — The
N"ew Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. — The Several Schools of Sub-
jective Idealism. — Physical Science. — The Worst Wounds of The-
ology in the House of its Friends. — Coleridge, and the School that
sprang from him. — The Literature of Scepticism. — What the
Theological Mind has done. — Two Objections. — Theology shown
to be (1) a Science, (2) to be the Foremost of Sciences. — Problem
of the Limits of Human Thought. — What the Priesthood has done
to keep alive in this Age the Sense of the Supernatural as a Prac-
tical Motive. — The Theistic Argument. — Its Various Forms . 114

LECTURE IV.

THE ACTIVITY OF THE CLERICAL OR THEOLOGICAL MIND
IN CHRISTIAN AND SCIENTIFIC ETHICS.

Christian Morality and Christian Theology. — Their Organic Connec-
tion. — Efforts to divorce them. — Efforts to absorb the One in the
Other. — Work of Christian Teachers as Expounders and Defenders
(1) in showing the Present Attitude of Christian Ethics toward

Contents. xi

PAOE.

the Ethics of Philosophy, and the Indehtedness of the Latter to the
Former; (2) in meeting Charges turning upon the Alleged Weak-
nesses and Defects of Christian Ethics; (3) in establishing the
Grounds of Superiority of Christian over Natural Ethics in the
Development and Discipline of Character 171

LECTURE V.

INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY OF THE CLERGY IN APOLO-
GETICS AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM,

Apologetics now a Compact Body of Learning and Logic. — Results
reached,^ — The Present Aim of Apologetics. — Its Methods. —
External Evidences, their Place and Value. — Biblical Study the
most Comprehensive of Intellectual Pursuits. — What it has ac-
complished in our Day. — Biblical Criticism, when it began in the
Modern Sense. — Increased Attention to the Languages of the
Bibk'. — Researches and Conclusions touching Inspiration. — The
Canon of Holy Scripture. — The Text of Holy Scripture. — " The
Higher Criticism." — Its Aim and Scope. — Historical Retrospect.

— Contradictory Conclusions. — Present Outlook. — Not always to

be Destructive. — Summary, — The Moral for us .... 207

LECTURE VI.

MATERIAL AND TRAINING FOR THE MINISTRY.

Material not what it ought to be. — Causes which have crippled the
Supply, and lowered the Standard. — Present Methods of Train-
ing. — Poorly Equipped Schools. — The Drift and Forms of Living
Thought not sufficiently cared for. — How this can be done. —
Protestant, Roman, and Anglican Methods of Training compared.

— Virtues and Defects of our own. — Low Views of the Morale of
the Ministry. — Our Young Life in training for the Ministry to be
lifted up to a Purer and Loftier Standard of Thought and Feeling . 241

LECTURE VIL

PREACHING.

Undue Craving for Popularity. — Adulterations. — Originality. — The
Dramatic Tendency. — Humor. — Causes of Declining Interest. —

xii Contents.

PAGE.

Hold upon the Common Mind which Nothing can shake. — Weak
and Barren Use of the Holy Scriptures. — Consequences. — En-
forced Brevity of Sermons. — Individualism. — Doctrinal Vague-
ness.— New Cycle of Religious Thought. — Its Influence. — The
Teacher in a Dogmatic Church must be a Believer in a Dogmatic
Faith 265

LECTURE VIII.

THE CLERGY AS EDUCATORS.

Not a Waste of Time to discuss the Subject. — Unwise Attitude of
the Church. — Principles that underlie the Claims of the Clergy
as a Teaching Order in the Work of Popular Education. — Subject
viewed from a National Standpoint. — Highest Right of the Indi-
vidual not provided for. — Religious Training having ceased in
the Schools of the Nation, Moral Training is neglected. — The
Nation educating only a Fraction of its own Life. — A Re-action
inevitable. — The Church's Duty to prepare for it .... 296

LECTURE IX.

IMPROVED METHODS IN THE CURE OF SOULS.

What the Cure of Souls in the Catholic, Scriptural Sense implies. —
Little of it in this Sense. — The Clergy inefficient. — The People
estranged. — The Causes historically traced. — What is needed to
effect a Change for the Better. — The Subject to be regarded from
Another and Higher Point of View. —How affected by the Drift
of Modern Thought. — Deeper and Truer Teaching as to the Na-
ture of Moral Evil, and of the Soul's Relations to it. — Special
Training of the Priesthood for the Guidance and Care of Individual
Sovils. — Casuistry. — Its Relation to Ethics. — A Manual needed.
— Principles to govern in the Composition of it. — Conclusion . 313

LECTURE X.

DOGMATIC TEACHING AND THE PRIMARY ENDS OF THE

GOSPEL.

More not less Dogmatic Teaching required. — Aversion to Dogma
explained. —- Dogmas that excite, and Dogmas that escape this

Contents. xiii

PAGE.

Aversion. — The Uses served by Doguia. — The Dogmatic Decis-
ions and Definitions of the Early Councils necessary to guard the
Complete Doctrine of the Second Adam. — Various "Ways in which
the Church has disintegrated or diluted her Dogmatic Teach-
ing. — The World's Religious Life changed, not by Ethical or Sen-
timental, but by Dogmatic Preaching. — Primary and Secondary
Ends of the Gospel compared. — Tendency now to substitute the
Latter for the Former. — The Effect of this on the Priesthood . .328

LECTURE XL

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND "THE NEW THEOLOGY."

Claims of the New Theology. — Its Arraignment of the Early Latin
Theology. — Greeks and Latins held substantially the same View
of the Divine Immanence. — The "Renaissance" View of it and
of Human Nature. — Sources of this View. — Alexandria and
Antioch. — Particulars Illustrative of the Temper and Attitude of
the New Theology. — Traditional Consensus. — The Scriptures. —
Solidarity of the Race. — Gospel of the Secular Life. — Sacred and
Secular all One and the Same. — How Christianity ought to be
presented to this Age. — The Universal Priesthood the only Priest-
hood. — The Sacraments to serve Moral and Rational Uses. — The
Church not a Divine Institution, but a Social State. — Conception
of God's Mode of dealing with Sin. — The Atonement, — Influence
of these Views upon the Christian Ministry 349

LECTURE XIL

CHARACTER.

Character needed to work upon Character. — Type of Charactor in-
herent in the Ministry the Gift of Pentecost. — The Ideal of it
behind us. — Priestly Character amid all its Variations has never
forgotten this Ideal. — To be studied under the Twofold Light of
this Id.-al and of its Providential Relations to the Present and
the near Future. — Salient Features of Both placed side by side. —
In what Directions Priestly Character needs to be developed and
strengthened to meet the Wants of our Time. —The one Source
of its Wider and Nobler Influence. -Conclusion .... 303

LECTURE I.

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AT THE BAR OF CRITICISM.

The centuries are only so many chapters in the
volume of time. They conveniently mark off the his-
toric spaces behind us, for purposes of observation and
study. But for the breaks and rests they supply, events
would be without grouping or perspective, and the past
would close in after us like a single horizon on a
boundless plain. And yet, however they serve our con-
venience, they are of our own making and arrangement.
The world's life and movement have in them no corre-
sponding chapters. The forces that govern them have
as little regard for our modes of scoring the lapses of
time as the organic activities of our bodies have for
the great days in our civic or ecclesiastical calendar.
My theme, therefore, "The Christian Mmistry at the
Close of the Nineteenth Century," neither asserts nor
implies any relation of cause and effect between the
Christian Ministry and the close of this century; but
is intended rather to call attention to the ftict, that, as
we are nearing the end of one of the larger measure-
ments of time recognized by history, it is the dictate of
an intelligent curiosity as well as of a sober Christian
thoughtfulness, to inquire how it has fared with this

2 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

God-given but man-kept agency ; what is said of it by
others ; what it has to say of and for itself.

This is not only the last, but, as commonly believed,
it is the most remarkable, of all the centuries. Moved
by this belief, the minds of men in all the higher walks
of thought are now turning aside from special studies,
to look at the mould and drift of the age taken as a
whole. The sciences of mind and matter, of society
and civil government, of law and medicine, the arts of
utility and the arts of imagination, the skilled indus-
tries of the soil, the sea, and the factory, — all things,
in short, into which men have, in these latter times,
thrown their best mind-power or will-power, — seem to
be making up their record, and, as the shadows deepen
with the setting sun of the century, to be preparing to
give an account of their stewardship. For no possible
reason can the Christian Ministry refuse to do likewise.
If it be foremost in dignity and power as the representa-
tive of an eternal kingdom, then, by so much the more
as it transcends all other offices ordained for the well-
being of man, is it bound, at this time, to account for
the talents committed to it.

Neither the purpose nor the scope of these thoughts
demands any formal statement of the doctrine of the
Ministry. It is enough, perhaps, to say that what the
Church has taught in all ages respecting its origin, con-
stitution, and transmission, is taken for granted. And
yet there are Ministries which in the light of this teach-
ing we must hold to be defective, whose existence and
work it would be idle to ignore in such a discussion as
is now proposed. While, therefore, as a rule, when

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 3

speaking of the Ministry, I shall refer to what we under-
stand by the Catholic and Apostolic Ministry, I shall
not hesitate, in all cases that may require it, to include
the fruits of other Ministries organized upon a different
basis.

The characteristics of our time, whether religious or
ii-religious, repeat themselves in the current views of the
Christian Priesthood. As men think of religion gener-
ally, so they think of the official class commissioned to
represent it. The Priesthood belongs to a system of
gifts, powers, ordinances, and institutions, organically
bound together ; and the conception which determines
the place and value of the whole determines the place
and value of every part. In forming this conception of
the whole, or of any part, many minds are swayed by
habits of thought, both speculative and practical, that
sweep widely beyond the subject in hand, and deal with
interests that have no immediate connection with it.
Some are influenced by that elastic and often intangi-
ble thing, — the spirit of the age ; some, by opinions or
prepossessions derived from certain schools of science
and literature, or from theories of social and political de-
velopment, or from historical studies ; while still others,
consciously or unconsciously, take their bias from some
pronounced trend in theology, or some dominant phase
of Christian life and organization. However we may
account for the many and divergent estimates of the
Christian Ministry in these closing years of the century,
it is a fact that they exist ; nay, more, that they assert
themselves boldly in the popular as well as the critical
judgment of our time. While sonic of thciu may sad-

4 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

den, none of them ought to surprise us ; for there is not
one of them whose way has not been prepared by some
definite drift of modern thought. While there is scarcely
an aspect of the unbelief or liberalism or genuine faith
of the day, that has not repeated itself in one or more
of these, they are reducible, without loss of any essen-
tial feature, to the following.

1. We have the view of the Ministry taken as mat-
ter of course by the agnostic, who neither affirms nor
denies the being of God, relegating with philosophical
complacency the whole question to the region of the
unknown and the unknowable ; by the secularist, who,
sure of only this world, deems it a waste of thought and
care to divide his attention between that and some other
only possible world, dismissing without reserve the spirit-
ual life, with its inheritance of immortality, to the limbo
of dreams and fictions ; by the extreme liberal, who,
though flaunting the badge of a spiritual philosophy,
and talking in a large way about God and the human
soul, about duty and the grandeur of an endless moral
development, about the hid treasures and wonderful
possibilities of the great ethnic religions, and about
all affiliated themes, yet, so far as Christianity or the
Church is concerned, can give us no better proof of his
solicitude for our welfare than by warning us of the
approaching collapse of faith, of the increasing shallow-
ness of the crust of modern piety, of the loosening hold
of the Cross on all forms of intellectual and ethical
development, and of the consuming flame driven by
advancing science over the stubble field of worn-out
creeds and sapless traditions. By all these, the Chris-

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 5

tian Ministry is declared to be a dying function, retaining
the show without the reality of life, and kept afloat only
by habits of thought and usages of society gradually
dwindling away before the advancing dawn of a new
era of light and progress.

2. Next there is the view of the Ministry taken by
not a few Christian people. For one reason or another,
they have come to listen to disparaging allusions to the
Sacred Office as though they were in good part well-
grounded. It has become the fashion to speak of it
slightingly, and as though it has had its day ; and sadly
enough it has equally grown to be the fashion, among
too many, to be silent or timidly apologetic, as though,
if they attempted any defence, it would be reluctant and
half-hearted. I am not concerned just now with the
causes of this state of mind. Speaking generally, it has
been one effect of the recent movements in religious
thought, to make many within the Church timid and dis-
trustful in regard to the future of the faith and order in
which they have been trained. To them, the outlook is
clouded ; old landmarks are passing away ; the very foun-
dations seem to be threatened; strange doctrmes, claiming
to be the latest voice of Christianity, are in the air ; the
facts of the Gospel are made to shake hands with modern
conceits and speculations, in a Avay that forces a suspicion
as to the integrity of the facts themselves; while the
stability of the best-known Christian dogmas and insti-
tutions is disturbed by the passion for new departures
in rehgious teaching and organization. Now, to minds
mainly occupied with these aspects of the religion of
the time, the Ministry very naturally appears to be in a

6 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

decline. They see no help for it, and strive not to find
any. There is a great deal of spiritual wreckage afloat,
and this is only a part of it.

3. Finally, there is the estimate of the Ministry
prevalent, I would fain believe, among the great body
of the faithful. With them I affirm that the essential
elements of Christianity were never pushed more boldly
to the front of human thought and human life than they
are to-day ; that the religious impulse of the race was
never so deep and strong as now ; that the faith once
delivered never had a more vital hold on the reason and
conscience of mankind, or was more likely to lift them
to higher orbits of truth and power, than at this moment.
All this may be claimed without denying much that
seems to make against it. Some are terrified by the
apparently sweeping and radical character of the changes
going on in the beliefs of the time. But these are not
what they seem. The material of all doctrines in any
way fundamental to our religion is drawn from the facts
of revelation and the facts of our own consciousness.
There is and can be no change in these. But when we
consider the forms into which these facts are to be cast,
the verbal shapes they are to take, there is scarcely any
limit to the possibilities of change. The mind, guided
by the Spirit of all truth, will go on stating and re-
stating them generation after generation ; and will be
sure to exercise its liberty, as it ought to do, to the full
extent needed to make its statement of eternal wisdom
as large as the sum of knowledge and the actual experi-
ence of the human soul at any given time. This process
may often disturb, but need not alarm, the people of

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 7

God. The very fact that it is now so widely operative,
thrusting upon us so many signs of change, and here
and there giving off ugly portents of agitation and con-
vulsion, is at bottom the strongest possible proof of the
unwasting vitality of the facts with which it deals. It
is because Christianity is made up of these facts of
revelation and consciousness, that it is ordained to be
the crown of the moral order of the world. As such,
neither itself as a whole, nor any thing instituted by its
Author to represent it unto men, — as Priesthood, or
Sacraments, or Worship, or the mystical Body itself, —
can permanently wither or really perish. We know,
then, as we know Him in whom we have believed, even
the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, that the
priesthood eternally His as the one Mediator, and com-
mitted by Him unto men called by the Holy (zhost and
formally set apart by the Church, — though still as thus
exercised only a more special and authoritative form of
the one royal priesthood diffused among all the members
of His Body, — is an inherent and imperishable part of
the supernatural instrumentality by which God, in the
order of grace, seeks to reconcile mankind unto Himself.
Such is the essentially Christian conception of the Priest-
hood; and thus regarded, we may trace it, as we now
purpose to do, through its later historic fluctuations,
marking its losses and perversions occasioned by the
progress of events or by the faults of its administrators,
as well as its victories and gains achieved in times when
most intensely conscious of the grandeur of its mission
and of the indwelling energy of the Holy Ghost.
Standing on this vantage-ground, we may listen with

8 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

sorrow to all that modern criticism can tell us of its
negligences and aberrations, its shallownesses and puer-
ilities, its failures and forfeitures ; but also in the full
assurance of faith in its inherent power of recuperation
and renewal.

Nothing relating to the Christian Religion is more
characteristic of these closing years of the century than
the allegation, pressed every day with increasing empha-
sis, that the influence of the Christian Priesthood on the
thought and life of the time has not only changed in its
form and direction, but that it has declined in bulk and
force. Whatever the Clergy themselves may think of
the question, it is clear that the world at large has not
been backward in making up or in announcing its ver-
dict. Strangely enough, the minds that seem to be most
confident of the moribund drift of the Priesthood are
the very ones that, as a rule, are most powerfully drawn
to it as a subject of inquiry and criticism. Somehow
they are constantly endeavoring to prove what they
wonder that anybody should doubt. As they read the
logic of events, it ought to be visibly wasting away ; and
yet the best intelligence of the day treats it as though
it had a long lease of life. Certainly the free thought
of the time handles it with scant courtesy, and waves it
one side as a thing whose destiny was long since suffi-
ciently settled. But free thought, as it is called, is not
the highest or the most abiding thought. It is only
from the thought that is highest and most abiding, that
the Christian Ministry can expect a judgment that will
include all the facts. Sure we are that the origin and
historic descent of this Ministry, its intimate relation

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 9

with mpst of the leading moral forces of life, its place
and office in the world of intellect, its permanent guard-
ianship and habitual employment of the noblest ideas
that sway the human mind, its vast and continuous work
in moulding individual character, its admitted control
over many of the most powerful and yet intangible
influences that affect society, — sure we are that these,
aside from its directly religious ministrations and its
official stewardship of the Divine mysteries, will always
recommend it to truth-loving and earnest minds, though
they be without the pale of formal Christian belief, as
a subject of supreme importance, if not of absorbing
interest.

We speak sometimes of the power, and sometimes
of the influence, of the Ministry, as though they were
synonymous ; whereas they relate to different aspects of
it, and suggest widely divergent lines of inquiry. Power
denotes what inheres in the very nature and constitu-
tion of the Holy Office ; what is conveyed by the Holy
Ghost in ordination, — that grace of orders which is
absolutely God's own gift. Influence denotes the sway
which the power thus conferred gains over those on
whom it was intended to operate. It represents practi-
cal direction and actual control. It brings up the whole
question of results arising from the exercise of this
Divine agency. Power stands for the original authority
of the sender, and the derived authority embodied
in the commission of the sent. It is an impersonal
Divine virtue, committed by God's appointment, and for
a defined purpose, to human instruments, chosen and
called by Himself. Influence, on the other hand, meas-

10 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

ures the extent to which this force accomphshes its
end; how far as salt it purifies, how far as light it
illumines, how far as leaven it pervades the lump of
humanity.

As the inquiry now proposed relates solely to the
influence of the Ministry, the distinction just drawn
will take us at once into the province of history and
experience. In support of the assertion that the influ-
ence of the Ministry is decHning, substantially the follow-
ing statements meet us at every turn. We are told that
institutions and offices resting on authority have been
damaged in their pretensions ; that the spirit of the age
is bent on levelling the old eminences of power and
privilege, and on bringing all hereditary rights and suc-
cessional claims down to a point where the popular voice
can deal with them ; that there is a grooving disposition
among the masses in all countries of any mental activity
to challenge any law, ordinance, or function in Church
or State, that does not approve its reasonableness and
expediency at the bar of popular opinion. We are told
that the time has come, whether for good or evil, when
mankind in most civilized lands think and know too
much to endure any longer priestly dictation in matters
of the family or of society, or priestly teaching as a
reliable expression of eternal truth. There was a time
when the Priest's position and influence were accepted
as things of course ; when no one dreamed of intruding
into functions universally conceded to him and touching
In some way all sides of life. But all that is radically
changed. Now the Priest's authority amounts to no
more than the moral power won by force of character,

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 11

or the intellectual power created by superior discipline
and attainments. With most people his teachings and
opinions go for what they are worth as products of
individual judgment. Favors, immunities, special con-
fidences and attachments, no longer, save in rare excep-
tions, gather around him as the spontaneous fruit of a
friendly social order. Still further, we are told, that, in
the current opinion of the day, the Priesthood has, as a
whole, fallen off in elevation of moral and spiritual tone,
and, consequently, in those rarer and nobler qualities of
character which need only the opportunity to crystallize
into brave leaders and heroic witnesses, to whom a for-
lorn hope or a perilous crisis in a great cause is as an
inspiration from God, and by whom all things, verily
and indeed, are counted loss for Christ. Such, in gen-
eral, is the tone of sentiment now widely prevalent in
regard to the present status, work, and influence of the
Clergy. I have stated it just here as a fitting introduc-
tion to the more formal and detailed consideration, now
to be undertaken, of positive losses or serious dilutions
and abrasions of clerical influence, whether caused by
the progress of events, working inevitable changes in
the whole fabric of modern life, or by the faults, actually
verified or simply alleged, of the Clergy themselves.

As history tells us, the Clergy once, and for a long
period, wielded a very wide-spread and powerful influ-
ence as the exclusively learned class. As such, they
were pressed in many ways into the service of the state,
and of general society. With the first beginnings of
modern civilization, they emerged into prominence as
recognized leaders in fashioning the chaotic and recon-

12 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

ciling the conilicting elements of social and political
life. It was not of their seeking, that so much was
devolved upon them in addition to their proper spiritual
charge. It was a necessity of the times, that they who
had the faculties needed for so great a task should
assume the guidance of rude and only partially amal-
gamated races in their exodus from barbarism. They
were the founders of the schools in which modern
Europe learned many of its earliest lessons. They
were law-makers and magistrates, because law-making
and magistracy would have fared badly without them.
They were masons, carpenters, workers in metals, tillers
of the soil, road-makers, conquerors of wildernesses,
scriveners, composers and transcribers of books, — men,
in short, of all work demanding intellectual ability,
patient energy, and a disciplined will. All things con-
sidered, it is wonderful that such variety and pressure
of secular work, with the temptations to ambition and
self-aggrandizement which it created, should not have
more completely overlaid and demoralized their special
vocation as priests of God and servants of the Church.
The hold thus acquired on all leading interests of the
world was not easily relaxed. Custom retained them
for centuries in well-nigh the same general relation to
society and the state in which necessity originally placed
them. But at last, as the result of the slow but steady
operation of causes set in motion by the versatile genius
of modern civilization, the time came when the Clergy
fell back as naturally into their own divinely appointed
sphere of work, as, ages before, they had accepted re-
sponsible secular trusts, and exercised important secular

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 13

functions. The change has been one of the most
remarkable in history. It has been going on visibly
since the dawn of the seventeenth century. Our day has
completed it. And as the total result, in the world's
judgment, the Clergy have lost seriously in prestige and
influence. They are now only one of many learned
orders and professions. Civil government, whether in
monarchies or republics, no longer needs their extra
help ; society has learned how to care for itself; and
the great modern law of the subdivision of labor has
relegated them to what many regard as a condition of
hopeless mediocrity among callings destined to leave it
far behind in the race for publicity and influence.

Again, at a period not far distant in the past, the
Clergy were the accepted guides and masters in all lib-
eral and popular education. When they ceased to act
as judges, legislators, cabinet-ministers, and to dii'ect
mankind in practical arts and skilled industries, they
did not cease to be the accredited instructors of the
human mind and the foremost builders of individual and
national character. Themselves men of thought and
culture, or, at least, impelled to become such by the
instincts of their calling, they habitually identified them-
selves with all existing methods for promoting intellect-
ual interests ; and when such methods were wanting
they considered it their duty to supply them. They
founded schools and seminaries and universities, wherever
they could secure the favor of princes and the patronage
of the rich. They gathered libraries, endowed fellow-
ships, and built quiet retreats for men of scholarly tastes.
They assigned to theology the first place among the

14 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

subjects of human thought ; but they behoved that
no science, no department of learning, could extend its
borders without doing something to illustrate afresh the
wisdom and glory of God as well in redemption as in
creation. In the times to which I refer, the Clergy
made mistakes, wandered often far away into fields of
profitless speculation and controversy, were not seldom
narrow in their estimates of the services of great think-
ers and discoverers ; and yet not by any means to the
extent asserted by minds of nineteenth-century breadth.
Whatever even may be said of them in these respects,
it is certain that beyond any other class they were the
sponsors and tutors of the generations which prepared
the way for whatever is most distinctive and valuable
in the attainments of recent times.

In this country, especially, the Clergy have a noble
record in the history of education. There was not a
college, and scarcely a school, founded in colonial times,
or, indeed, up to within forty years ago, that was not
indebted for its existence to the sympathetic interest
and active co-operation of the Clergy. In those early
days they everywhere planted the school beside the
church, and hailed the fullest and freest intelligence as
the handmaid of religion, and the buttress of a free
state. It seemed then only the natural and necessary
thing, to give them the controlling voice in all school
boards and academic faculties.

In Europe, until twenty-five years ago, it is not too
much to say that nine-tenths of the primary, and by
far the larger share of the higher training, intended for
the learned and professional classes, were directly or

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 15

indirectly controlled by clerical inflnence. Even the
free-thinking portions of Germany furnished no excep-
tion, save in a few of its gymnasia and universities.

But now, look where we will, at home or abroad, and
we are confronted with the evidences of a radical change.
The movement for secular, as against all avowedly
Christian education, has, in this country, been entu-ely
successful. The Clergy of all names have been gradu-
ally retired from the field in which they were once the
acknowledged leaders ; and any attempt on their part
to meddle with, far more to manage, our public schools,
or even seminaries and colleges in any degree depend-
ent on state aid, would be greeted in most, perhaps all,
of our communities, not merely with distrust and cen-
sure, but with determined opposition. The battle has
been fought, and, as everybody knows, won by the
secular power. From being the rule that the Clergy
should predominate in all school-committees and college
trusteeships, it is now not only the exception, but it is
growing more and more rare, to find their names in
any such connection at all. There are still schools and
colleges where they govern, but they do so as the imme-
diate representatives of the religious bodies to which
these institutions belong. Nowhere among us in the
general educational work of our land which represents
the tone or is obedient to the will of the people, does
any distinctively clerical influence linger, except by
courtesy or by forbearance toward its admitted weakness.
In Europe, in all schools partially or wholly under state
control, the same tendency is intensely aggressive. In
England, clerical influence in every grade and depart-

16 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

ment of education is on the decline. The Estabhshed
Church is putting forth a mighty effort to retain her
influence over the nurture and training of her children.
The contest has its fluctuations, and now and then in
some parts of the land she seems to score a victory ;
but, taken as a whole, the national mind seems to be
steadily sagging toward the temper and policy of avowed
secularism. It is a fact of special significance in this
connection, that in the universities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge, with their total of more than forty separate
colleges, the old statute declaring Clergymen as alone
eligible to the office of masters or heads of colleges
has been repealed. This, with other equally marked
changes in the religious regimen of these centres of
learning, attests better, perhaps, than any thing else,
the present attitude of the English people. Certain it
is, that the drift of legislation and of public thought,
as expressed in the current discussions of the hour, is
adverse — strongly, profoundly so — to the Clergy as
educators of the nation. In Belgium, where the Clergy
held undisputed sway over the training of the people,
they have lost their hold on the gymnasia and mid-
dle schools ; and since the dogma of infallibility was
decreed, they maintain a precarious position in the
primary schools. In France, the controversy on this
great question has, within twenty years, traversed all its
aspects and bearings. At times it has shown so much
heat and bitterness as to attract the attention of the
civilized world. Nowhere else have the elements in
this contest been set against each other in such uncom-
promising and turbulent antagonism. The result is

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 17

known to all : the State is triumphant ; the Clergy, after
fighting long and bravely for so much as a modus vivendi
on the question, find themselves driven to the wall. So
late as the close of Napoleon Third's reign, they held
with a firm hand the mastery over popular education ;
but within five years after the inauguration of the
Republic, in a council of thirty-nine members, the
Clergy were reduced to five representatives, — one arch-
bishop and four bishops ; and to-day they are absolutely
excluded from the national deliberations on the subject.
In Spain, there are abundant signs of a growing im-
patience of priestly control over the education of the
people. In Italy, the course of things has been so
plainly marked by new laws and new measures, taken
together almost subversive of the old system, that there
can be little doubt as to the early and complete expul-
sion of the Clergy from the national schools and uni-
versities ; while, in Austria, the radical modification
of the concordat between the State and the Church has
left the nation free to deal with this question, as it
could not before. In Germany, this same issue has
been forced to the front by the old struggle between
Church and State, again revived by the new and extraor-
dinary claims of ultramontanism. The ultimate action
on this question is generally believed to be a foregone
conclusion. In view of these facts, it is plain that the
Clergy have lost altogether in some quarters, and are
losing in others, the control, once overwhelmingly theirs,
over the education of the masses. This loss is so deep
and so serious, that it is not too much to assert that it
indicates a change well-nigh consummated in the value

18 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

and force of the Christian Ministry as a factor in the
present and future civilization of the world.

It will be said, perhaps, that the Clergy did not give
to the nations the education they needed ; but it remains
to be seen what the nations will do for themselves. This
solemn trust has changed hands, and with what results
the future alone can show. There are those who have
studied this problem down to its roots, and have brought
to the task a profound knowledge of the human mind,
of the structure and wants of society, and of the law of
God. They do not claim any special wisdom as inter-
preters of the dark things of our day ; nor are they men
who have lagged behind the age, and whom a timid
conservatism has converted into croakers of coming evil.
They tell us that a re-action from this now irresistible
drift of secularism in the training of this generation is
inevitable ; that disintegration and anarchy will befall
the nations that attempt to govern after they have ex-
pelled from their own organic life the authorities and
ministries which God has ordained to represent His
spiritual empire evermore in the affairs of the race.
They assure us that what the Christian Priesthood has
lost by the cleavages of the modern spirit will be re-
gained ; but not until the dominant peoples of the earth
shall have had another Red Sea baptism, and another
desert exile.

But there is another product of modern life that has
been pushed into competition with the Clergy as a teach-
ing order. To the versatile vigor and enterprise of the
press, there seems to be no assignable limit. More than
any thing else among us, it gathers into itself the fabled

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 19

powers of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. In its
many-sided faculties, Jupiter and Apollo, Mercury and
Minerva, seem to be reproduced for practical service.
Day by day, without pause or rest, it throws off its mar-
vellous photographs of the thought and movement of the
world. It has built up an empire of its own, with pur-
poses and laws peculiar to itself. All this, and much
more in the same strain, may be said without over-stating
its achievements ; and yet it is not easy to see why this
agency should be forced into comparison with the Chris-
tian Priesthood as the chosen vehicle of sacred truth.
The press and the pulpit both command a hearing, but
in very different ways and for very different ends. The
Church uses the press as a means to an end ; as a subor-
dinate agent which the progress of discovery and inven-
tion has gradually developed into the common servitor
of all human interests. But the press never so uses the
Church : to do so, were to reverse the order of things.
With matchless skill and insight, it may read the signs
of the times, and detect the symptoms and issues of change
in society, in the state, in the Church, and in the world
of letters ; and yet it is itself only an instrument ordained
to serve powers and institutions sacred and secular, which
in a certain commanding sense are themselves their own
ends and reasons for existence. Accordingly, after the
manner of every leading interest of mankind, the Church
has, from the date of its introduction into modern life,
employed the press in countless ways and with immense
advantage. By it, as well as by her living Ministry, her
sound has gone out into all lands, and her words unto the
ends of the world. And yet, however great the service

20 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

it has rendered to Christianity ; however necessary, as
things now are, it may be to all present plans for dis-
seminating the Gospel, it would be an idle boast to affirm
that it had either supplanted or weakened any part of
the original equipment of the Ministry of the Word and
Sacraments. In the nature of things, no such result
could happen. As well imagine one of the elements of
nature superseded by some new mechanical invention,
or the occupation of the moon and stars gone because
we have an abundance of gas. Undoubtedly the press
has vastly multiplied the readers, as compared with the
hearers, of Divine truth. By what it prints and circu-
lates, it can virtually set up the pulpit in countless spots
all over the world where no regular ministration of the
living preacher could be had. And yet it must be re-
membered, that printed truth and spoken truth, when
addressed to the will and conscience, are two widely dif-
ferent powers ; and that ordinarily many who receive the
words of truth and life conveyed to them by the press
will sooner or later find their way to the care and bless-
ing of priestly ministration, and so will enlarge more
and more the area of priestly influence.

While I believe this to be a fair estimate of the com-
parative influence of the press and the pulpit within the
sphere of religion, I know that a considerable portion
of the general public regard the former as much the
more effective agency, and as destined to encroach grad-
ually upon the functions of the lattei until it will be
accepted by the masses of the people as a satisfactory
substitute for it.

Again, the Pastoral Office has lost a powerful auxiliary

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 21

in ceasing to be the chief dispenser of chanty. Until
recent times the poor derived most of their relief through
the Clergy as the ordinary almoners of the Church and
of the wealthy classes. It will be remembered with
what tenderness of sentiment and beauty of language
George Herbert brings out the meanings and uses of
the relation subsisting between the Parson and the poor
of his flock. He had a care for their daily bread, as
well for the body as for the soul. The alms he brought
never left his hand unseasoned with prayers and godly
counsels. The bestowment of them was made, when
required, the occasion for admonishing the ungrateful,
restraining the unruly, rebuking the vicious and disobe-
dient, and equally for instructing the ignorant in matters
of practical duty and comforting the weary and heavy-
laden. This side of the pastorate has been rendered
almost obsolete by the altered methods of relief. What
was done aforetime by the alms of parishioners dispensed
through the Clergy, is done now by taxes levied by the
civil authority, and applied by agents whom it appoints
for this purpose. The State has taken into its hands the
education of the people ; and, as part of the same general
expansion of its power and responsibility, it has assumed
the care of its poor. In both ways the Church has been
impoverished, and virtually set aside. No doubt, most
parish Priests still consider it a duty to do something in
the line marked out for George Herbert's ideal Parson ;
but it is certain that this function, save in rare excep-
tions, has ceased to be what it once was, and it is equally
certain that the disuse of it has entailed upon the Clergy
a corresponding loss of pastoral influence.

22 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

It appears, then, from these facts, that, in the com-
mon judgment, the Christian Ministry in the closing
decades of this century has lost ground : —

(1) By sharing with other callings, and with the
people generally, the learning and technical skill of
which it once held a monopoly ;

(2) By being deprived of its once controlling au-
thority over both liberal and popular education ;

(3) By what the press has done to relieve it of a
portion of its traditional work, if not in some degree,
as is claimed, provide a substitute for that work ;

(4) By the substitution of poor-rates or taxes for
alms, civil functionaries for the Clergy, in the relief of
the poor.

Now, if this conclusion be sound, it follows, that, rela-
tively to the whole mass of forces operating upon the
life of to-day, the influence of the Ministry has not only
been modified in its form and direction, but has fallen off
in its dimensions. But may it not be that this influence,
in becoming less diffused, and less mixed with secular
interests, the care of which has passed into other hands,
is destined to revert more nearly to its original. Apostolic
simplicity, and so to grow more fervent in spirit, more
positive in its teaching, and more definite and concen-
trated in its aims I And so, too, may it not come true,
that in the end its gains will outrun its losses, and the
great spiritual harvest of the future be enriched by this
merciless handling, in the present, of the secular prun-
ing-knife ?

Thus far all parties to this discussion are substantially
agreed. I come now to aspects of the subject on some

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 23

of which there is little and on others a very radical diver-
sity of opinion. In dealing with theni my inquiries will
very naturally take their form and direction very largely
from the adverse rather than the favorable criticisms of
the time. The Church may be left to guard and main-
tain its own conception of the necessity of the Priest-
hood, and of the value, under all possible fluctuations
of energy and faithfulness, of the service it performs.
What my theme makes it chiefly desirable to know is
the degree of truth and force to be conceded to the gen-
eral view of the office and work of a Priest in the Church
of God, taken by the average man of the day ; in other
words, what these closing years of the most remarkable
of centuries have to say about it. Now, it is a fact, that
the current thought of the hour is turned upon what are
believed to be the weak, rather than upon what the
Clergy themselves believe to be the strong points in
their calling and work. It is well, therefore, to con-
sider alleged faults, rather than claimed vhtues ; and
with a frank and fearless eye to scan the picture of the
Ministry drawn by the world at large, with all its mix-
ture of faith and doubt, sympathy and hate. St. Paul,
in drawing an inspired portrait of the ideal ISIinister of
Christ, tells him to " give no offence in any thing, that
the ministry be not blamed." ^ Now, the average Priest
of to-day must have offended beyond all calculation,
judging from the frequency and severity of the blame
cast upon him. Let us see for what he is blamed, and
then ask how far he is blamed justly.

1. A majority of the Clergy of this and all the

1 2 Cor. vi. 3.

24 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

Clergy of the Latin Church, and, I may add, all the doc-
trmally conservative Ministers of the more stable and
conservative Christian Denominations, are blamed for
adhering to any theology on which this last quarter of
the Nineteenth Century has not put its imprimatur. The
theology that will not wear this label is disparaged be-
cause of what it is, and of what it does, or rather fails to
do, for those who accept it. What is said of it is said
of its disciples and teachers, and substantially the follow-
ing is said of both. The theology which is the product
of the clerical mind, the old theology of books and sys-
tems and seminary lecture-rooms, has visibly receded in
recent years from its once proud position among the
sciences. Its prestige is broken ; its erudition is lean
and consumptive; its leading schools and faculties are
no longer the centres they once were of critical learning,
speculative subtilty, and profound study. It no longer
imposes its law upon inferior or collateral departments
of knowledge, and what it does or leaves undone attracts
constantly decreasing attention. No philosophy, it is
charged, can live peaceably within its borders, that •at-
tempts any real advance in handling the great problems
of being, or the root principles of scientific morality.
To be true to its instincts and to the instincts of its
guardians, it must be narrow, timid, unenterprising,
tied to the old ruts of tradition, and averse from the
well-ordered highways of modern thought. And then,
it is added, how can any body of educated men, thus
trammelled, help declining in vigor and freshness and
breadth, and consequently in ability to interest and
guide others?

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 25

Comment upon this censure will be reserved until
another stage of the discussion, when something will be
said touching the theological and ethical labors of the
Clergy.

2. The Ministry is blamed because of an alleged
decline in the power of the pulpit. The preaching of
the day, it is said, does not hold its own in logic, or
unction, or eloquence. It has lost the power which
compelled the hearing, stirred the souls, and shaped the
opinions, of the best men of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. But, what is worse, it lacks boldness
and fire in rebuking sins that are eating out the heart
of this generation, — sins of ambition and vanity, sins
of selfish and profligate riches, sins of lust, sins which
defile our business, our government, our churches, our
homes. Now, I question the truth of such statements.
It is much easier to make them than it is to prove them.
I know the critics and the secular press say they are
true ; but they would not be up to their vocation if
they said otherwise. Our modern life has developed
agencies for moving public opinion, which, whatever
their merit, are not over-modest in rating their own
power, or in challenging comparison with the pulpit. It
may be that our preaching is as strong as it ever was,
and yet not seem so, because thrown into competition
with more pretentious methods for shaping popular
sentiment.

But why, it is asked, the present dearth of great
preachers ? It may be asked also, what is the standard
of greatness in this function] The fact is, none of the
Christian ages has been prolific in preachers whom after-

26 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

times declared great in the highest sense of the term.
" The truly great preacher is one of the rarest products
of the human mind. The combination of gifts requhed
to produce one is so extraordinary, that that generation
is fortunate which gives even one to the Church and to
mankind. Neither the poet, nor the civic orator, nor
the painter, nor the sculptor is so rare." No trait of
intellectual or moral greatness can be spared. Even the
physical man must be the fitting organ of the great soul,
while the spiritual man must be at one with God in
Christ Jesus. If you rate greatness by a lower standard,
so as to bring under it preachers really eminent in learn-
ing and eloquence, — preachers who influence multitudes
of wills by their words of power, and yet men who will
be little heard of thirty years hence, and totally forgotten
in two generations — if we do this, then I am bold to
affirm that i|p age has had a stronger, more gifted, and
versatile pulpit than the present. Nay, I am bold to
say that the Christian religion has never had so large
and well-equipped a body of men to propagate it at
home and abroad as now. And, if there be no corre-
sponding results in the hearts and lives of men, it may
be due to causes which lie beyond the power of any
ministry to remove, though made up of Augustines and
Chrysostoms. There is, I know, a great deal of preach-
ing that misses the mark because its arrows are poorly
aimed ; a great deal, too, that is mere wind, that panders
to a morbid taste, that is sensational and vulgar ; a great
deal that has no doctrinal backbone, and is spongy with
liberal and humanitarian vagueness. I know, moreover,
not a little of it is hard and heavy and dull, — the lame

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 27

issues of prosaic, plodding, feeble souls, whom Provi-
dence, for some inscrutable reason, has transferred to
the sacred desk fiom the highways of hopeless medioc-
rity. And yet it is my belief, that in no previous period
of our religion has so much of talent, culture, unction,
and eloquence been devoted to the proclamation of God's
truth to a sinful world. No censor of the pulpit has a
right to demand, or to expect, that every preacher will
be a genius, any more than he has a right to demand
that every one devoted to law, or medicine, or educa-
tion, or journalism, shall be a genius. The fact is, the
INIinistry is fully on a level to-day with any other call-
ing of educated men. There are qualities that have
become the special idols of this generation, and without
which no preacher especially can hope to pass current.
I mean smartness, pungency, vivacity. But in these is
not the greatest power of a great preacher. The main
thing is, that he shall he what he asks others to become ;
and, if he be that, the really great qualities — depth,
fervor, sincerity — will be likely to go with it ; also that
highest intellectual art, — the art of saying great things
.in plain words. Many there are who are growing
weary of rhetoricians, fine talkers, pulpit gymnasts ;
many who feel that they have had already too much
chaff and too little bread.

Preaching is God's ordinance : it has become too much
man's contrivance. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we
are now passing into a period of Church life when great
words will not produce great effects, and men will crave
the inner heat, rather than the outer sparkle of lan-
guage. It has been well said, that "the day of flocking

28 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

after great orators is not gone by, but the day of seeing
through them is come." " The crackling thorns of fine
speech " may arrest the crowd for a brief moment ; but
the only power that can hold them is that of him who,
fired with the flame from God's altar, preaches simply,
earnestly, —

" Those Christ-like ways which lead to peace.
The hearts of men follow his word as leaves
Troop to wind, or sheep draw after one
Who knows the pasture."

3. But, again, the Ministry is blamed for its want of
self-sacrifice and readiness to endure hardship. Cer-
tainly a Ministry without these would not be worth hav-
ing. It would be a shell without the kernel, a pretence,
a deceit, a sham. It would be as unlike the thing Christ
instituted, as this earth is unlike heaven. It would be
as an arm of power bereft of its main sinew. God
would disown it. The Church would die under it. The
world would despise it. The mere fact that it lives and
works proves that it is not to-day altogether false to the
law of its being. This charge, then, on the face of it,
can be only partially true. How partially, can be known
only by knowing what is going on every day in a thou-
sand homes and parishes. I may not here undertake to
lift the veil, and tell all that lies behind it, — what bur-
dens cheerfully borne, what labors faithfully performed
in storm and frost and summer's heat, what distresses
and humiliations of poverty, what anxieties as to the
fate of wife and children when voice and sight shall
fail, what buifetings by vulgar wealth, what contradic-
tions of the ungodly, what insolence and contumely from

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 29

coarse tongues and coarser hearts, what coldness and
what Shylock exactions by the flock, what lonely days
and uncheered toil ; and all confronted and endured by
men whom a slight wounds like a blow, and an insult
cuts like a knife ; and this, too, with a calm courage,
an heroic patience, a life-long submission, which gives
us martyrs for whom neither the Church nor the world
ofl"ers a crown. True, darkly, sternly true, is ^11 this
of some of the Clergy. Of how many, I may not say.
They may be, we may concede that they are, a minor-
ity, — a small minority, if our judges so insist. But,
thank God, there are enough of them to preserve the
honor and to exemplify the true genius and the lofty
aims of the Christian Priesthood. Not all the Clergy are
given over to easy living in this age of luxury, not all
arc self-seeking in this age of selfishness, not all have
bowed the knee to Baal in this age of idolatries. Some
think there is no self-sacrifice, no willingness to endure
hardships, because a majority of the Clergy do not at
once offer themselves for missionary work in heathen
lands ; as though we had no heathen at home, to work
among whom tries a man's nerve and endurance and
self-forgetfulness as much as to work among Hindus
and Chinese, Zulus and Patagonians.

Others, again, would not be convinced of the exist-
ence of these qualities of character, except they saw the
Clergy in hair-shirts and feeding on locusts and wild
honey ;

" Making the dust their beds, the loneliest wastes
Their dwelling, and the meanest things their meat ;
Clad in no prouder garb than outcasts wear ;

30 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

Fed with no meats, save what the charitable
Give of their will ; sheltered by no more pomp
Than the dim cave lends, or the jungle bush." ^

But, on the other hand, is there no truth whatever in
the charges ? Alas ! with shame be it said, our Minis-
try, as a whole, is not free from reproach. There is too
much ground for blame in this regard. Let a call be
given to some distant field, and how painfully familiar,
how sadly prominent, are the questions : What is the
salary? Is it near a railroad? How far is it from the
city? Is there good society? Is there a parsonage?
Is there any provision for six weeks' vacation? What
is the custom about donations ? Is the church-edifice
well warmed in winter and properly ventilated in sum-
mer ? Do the people object to repeating a good sermon
within the year? Is there any malaria in the neigh-
borhood? Are exchanges with brethren easily made?
Are the vestry kind and considerate, and quite willing
to give the rector his own way? Such questions, taken
together and pressing for immediate answer, do not,
it must be admitted, tend to recall either the temper
or the work of the Apostolic Ministry. They imply
very little inclination to forget self and do all for the
glory of God. They have a very unheroic and worldly
flavor. No strongholds of sin, no citadels of the Devil,
will be carried by the men whose decision turns on the
answer they get to such questions.

4. Again, the Ministry is blamed for a lack of bold-
ness and independence in thought and action. Boldness
and independence, — what is meant by these words ?

1 " The Light of Asia," by Edwiu Arnold.

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 31

All, I take it, would not agree in their definition. In
one school they mean one thing, in another school quite
a different thing. The Church has her own idea of
these quahties, and of their Kmitations ; and she has
shown what it is by the leaders whom she has embalmed
in her memory. St. Paul prayed for utterance, that he
might speak boldly the message given him to deliver ;
and he did so speak when he withstood St. Peter to the
face, and preached to the men of Athens, of Corinth, and
of Ephesus. Athanasius was sufficiently bold and inde-
pendent when he stood against the world, for the faith
once delivered ; so was Chrysostom when with words of
fire he rebuked the vanities and vices of his flock, from
the altar-steps of his cathedral ; so were Ridley and
Latimer when they assailed the false doctrine and ec-
clesiastical corruption of their day, and accepted the
fires of Oxford as the penalty. So, in our own day,
were Selwyn and Patteson, when they carried the word
of life to the savages of New Zealand and Melanesia.
So, too, was the fearless Grey in his vindication of the
faith in South Africa. These men, and others like
them, were bold in declaring what had been committed
to them. They were regardless of all things that hin-
dered them in doing so. But they were neither bold
nor independent in the sense now so popular. They did
not deem themselves superior to the system under which
they worked. They did not invent new formulas of
belief, nor recast the traditional moulds of teaching and
of polity. There was about them none of the cheap
glamour of what the world calls originality. They were
not ambitious of founding new sects to perpetuate their

32 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

names, nor to overlay the old paths with new ones
whose signboards should tell how they had hewn down
the thick cedars of the early Councils, and bored through
mountains of speculation. But nowadays no man can
be bold, no man can be independent, who does not lay
the axe at the root of venerable traditions, or cast over-
board some portion of the cargo which, we have good
reason to believe, God stored away in the ark of grace
and salvation. Boldness has become recklessness, and
independence rashness ; both alike counting it a merit
to scorn consequences. With us, the system is greater
than the private judgment ; the kingdom greater than
any individual ; the ancient creeds, than any man's spec-
ulation ; universal consent, than any man's dissent ; the
old and well-worn liturgies, than any man's notion about
an edifying worship. All this may be our misfortune,
but certainly it is our characteristic. It cuts off many
and much-coveted chances of intellectual fussiness and
conceit, dries up many sources of excitement, narrows
the arena of gladiatorial displays among theologians,
and generally contracts the bounds of what passes for
original thought. There are minds that cannot be happy
under such conditions ; that are at peace only when at
war, and see no use for the intellect except in showing
what fools our fathers were. There is a sense in which
it is our strength to sit still, to accept what has been
handed down, to stand fast in the old ways. If, for
doing so, this generation will not think us sufficiently
bold and independent, there is no help for it. There is
a type of these qualities that we admire, and do what
we can to embody. There is another that must be left

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 33

to others who walk not with us, and for whose devel-
opment, I may add, neither earth nor heaven is large
enough.

5. Again, we are blamed for allowing the Church
and the world to be too much intermingled, and com-
promises of principle and practice to take root in our
average life. This complaint is not from the world, for
the world is flattered by our imitation of its ways ; but
from the Church's own heart. Her best thinking and
purest living give voice to the censure ; and we have no
answer for it, save a jjeccavi and a conjiteor. We have
discipline enough for the Clergy, but next to none for
the people. Here the fences are down, the lights are
out, the watch is asleep. The only law is that of law-
lessness, the only standard is what each chooses to ac-
cept. I may not enter upon the causes : I stop with
the fact. God's Word has a great deal to say on the
subject ; so had the Church in her early days. From
both we have gone adrift ; and so far adrift, that even to
recall the Scriptural or the primitive rule of the Chris-
tian life, is to bring upon one the epithets of purist,
ascetic, sour censor of morals, stoic, Pharisee, hypo-
crite. And yet there are the old commands bedded
and wedged into the Word of Inspiration : —

" Abstain from all appearance of evil." ^

" Be not deceived : evil communications corrupt good manners." -
"Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by
the renewing of 3'our mind." ^

" Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. "^

1 2 Thess. V. 22. 2 1 Cor. xv. 33. 3 Rom. xii. 2.
* First Epistle of St. John, ii. 15.

3i The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

' ' Be ye not unequally 3'oked together with unbelievers ; for what
fellowslrip hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what
communion hath light with darkness ? " ^

" Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate,
saith the Lord." ^

" That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, with-
out rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among
whom ye are lights in the world. ' ' *

And so on, almost without limit. There, too, are the
Canons of the early Church, in keeping with these Scrip-
tures. Both point to a gulf between the Church and
the world, too deep and too broad to be crossed ; and yet
our modern religion has bridged it, and multitudes cross
and recross with an impunity which justifies in their
minds a doubt whether or no there be any such gulf.
Professedly we stand on a higher plane than that of the
world. Baptism, Confirmation, the Sacrament of Christ's
Body and Blood, put us there. But somehow it melts
down by easy stages into that of the world, the flesh,
and the devil. Do I speak too strongly ? Recall the
pleasures, the amusements, the occupations, the luxuries,
the pomps of society, the vanities of fashion, the ex-
travagances of wealth, the self-indulgence of the time.
That is a sharp eye which can detect in any of these
things a radical difi"erence between the children of God
and the children of the world. There have been some
foolish and superficial attempts of believers at asserting
their separateness from the world. Quakerism tried it
with cut-away coats and broad-brimmed hats and neutral
tints. Divers monastic orders, at sundry times, have

1 2 Cor. vi. 17. 2 2 Cor. vi. 14. ^ ^hW. ii. 15.

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 35

tried it with cowls and cords and unsandalled feet.
Better such expedients than none at all. But the true
distinction is grounded on feeling, conduct, character ;
on voluntary abstinence, and simple silent conformity to
a higher rule, a loftier tone of life. Now, if the rank
and file are to be reclaimed from worldliness, their leaders
must set the example. The Clergy, in this matter, must
bring forth works meet for repentance, if we expect the
people to do so. We are on a current which sets
strongly toward a wdping-out of the boundaries between
the sacred and the secular. A subtle pantheism is in
the air, which by making God all things, and all things
God, eliminates from all moral life the God of our wor-
ship, the God of the moral law : the God in Christ, who
speaks through the Church, which is His Body ; through
the Priesthood, which is His witness unto the ends of the
earth ; and through the lives of Christians, which are
ordained to be His living epistles unto men. According
to this gospel, our houses and our sanctuaries, our count-
ing-rooms and our altars, our every-day work and our
acts of adoration, our indulgences and our denials, our
politics and our religion, our dinners and our Eucharists,
our sensual pleasures and our struggles of conscience, are
all equally sacred and divine. This theory with some,
this sentiment with others, has fastened like a cancer
upon the vitals of our Christianity. It must be cut
away with knife or burnt out with cautery, if we would
save the poAver as well as the form of godliness.

G. The Ministry is charged with feeble and shallow
methods in the cure of souls. It deals too much, it is
said, with assemblies, and too little with individuals.

36 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

There is excess of preaching, but neglect of personal
guidance. We exhort and admonish, but do not edify.
There is much hewing of timber, and not much building.
The sheep are folded, but are not known by name.
Strictly pastoral duty has degenerated into bell-pulls,
and card exchanges, and family chats on all subjects
save the one for which the pastorate exists. The herd-
ing together of the young on the Lord's Day, under
teachers who themselves need to be taught the elements
of the faith, has taken the place of priestly guidance
and authority in expounding the Word. All this is said,
and who will deny that there is reason for saying it ?
How many souls need help that do not get it ! How
many are fighting temptations, every nerve of the con-
science, every sinew of the will, tense with the agony of
the strife, and yet with no hand from without to press
home the Cross, and no voice to cry, " By this sign shalt
thou conquer " ! How many are plunged first into the
shadows of doubt, and then into the darkness of despair,
with no arm of strength at hand to unbar the shutters
and let in the light ! Never before were there so many
minds in the Church in which the joints of faith were
loosened ; never before, so many afloat upon the unsteady
and turbid sea of speculation ; never before, so many
inquirers, or so many in painful suspense. Sermons say
too much or too little in such cases. The individual
soul, in the deep separateness of its own personality,
must be grappled with, and a rope thrown to it from the
solid banks through which sweeps the current of passion
or of doubt. And yet it is just at this time, and amid
this want, that we are told by a distinguished authority

The Christian Mimstrij at the Bar of Criticism. 37

in the Church, that " the last thing which a thinking
man will do in spiritual perplexity is to consult his
clergyman ; because he knows that his clergyman has
neA'er been trained to minister to a mind diseased ; be-
cause he feels that he shall probably be snubbed for his
doubts, and told that difficulties which are to him A-ery
real are no difficulties at all." ^ I state the case, and
there leave it. Let those that have ears to hear, hear.

7. But, to take up another ground of censure, the
Ministry is arraigned for its lack of enterprise and its
feeble faculty of organization. The facts are before us,
and there is no dispute about them. Let us look at
them as they are, and profit by what they teach. In
platform addresses, in Convention reports, and in con-
gratulatory speeches,, we now and then wax happy over
our achievements, and make the most of what material
we have for eulogy and mutual admiration. But such
moods, however enjoyable, do not change the facts. It
is a fact, that we have in this century octupled our
Bishops and Clergy, our dioceses and parishes, our com-
municants and offerings. It is a fact, that we have in a
yet greater ratio advanced in social influence and public
prominence. But it is also a fact, that in the same time
the population and resources of the country have nml-
tiplied, not eight, but eighteen fold. It is a fact, too,
that we have had not only unexampled opportunities of
growth, but equally unexampled incentives to make the
most of them. In footing up the results, we may justly
claim that our difficulties shall be duly considered. To
recite these in detail would be a familiar story. It is

^ Dean Alford's Essays and Addresses, p. 147.

38 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

enough to recall in a general way the extra weights im-
posed upon us by the logic of events. It is known that
this Church had a bad start in the ecclesiastical race ;
that it began with a polity stifled and mutilated by the
folly and neglect of the Mother Church ; that it came
out of the Revolution saddled with popular prejudices ;
that it took one generation to establish the fact that it
had a right to exist on American soil, and to prove that
its growth would not necessarily endanger the liberty of
the Republic. It is known, too, that it required another
generation to soften the rancorous hate of sectarian op-
position to prelates and prayer-books. All this is known
and admitted. And yet, let our hinderances and trials
be rated as they may, who will claim that the growth,
the power, the influence of the Church, are to-day what
they ought to be I That would be an uncandid tongue
that would portray our past as one of glory and might,
or that would represent it as abounding in tokens of
aggressive enterprise, or of strong and energetic meth-
ods for rallying the hearts and wills of God's people, or
for turning to the best account sources of power always
latent in Christ's Body. We find proofs enough of a
quiet, orderly, conservative spirit, and of a due sense
of corporate dignity ; but, alas ! how few of the con-
sciousness of a great mission to the rising empires of
this continent, or of a solemn and resolute purpose to
achieve it! Certainly the retrospect is not inspiring. It
is almost barren of kindling memories, and quite devoid
of freshening, salient enthusiasms, that roll up against
adverse winds and a darkened sky, flooding torpid souls
and waste places with holy fire.

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 39

8. I have now to notice a group of faults imputed to
the Ministry by the world of letters and science, by the
world of politics, and by the world of social reform.

It is alleged by the first, that the Clergy, as a rule, are
deficient in culture, and have too little sympathy with
the aims or the methods or the results of science. The
first thing to be settled about culture is its meaning.
" The Greeks had their 7rat8eta. The Latins had their
humanitas. The modern Germans have their Bildung.''
We attempt to express the same thing by " culture."
Substantially it is the full and harmonious development
of the whole man. But the great underlying question is,
How is such development to be reached? Shall it be by
taking the road travelled by the Greeks and Komans, or
that so well worn by German feet in these later days %
Shall Goethe be our guide, with his subtle intellectu-
ality and sensuous a^stheticism ; or Matthew Arnold with
his revamped Attic theory about "sweetness and light;"
or Spencer and Huxley, who confine the means and ends
of our development within the area of the phenomenal
world ? Or shall it be the Galilcean Teacher who said,
'* Seek ye first the kingdom of God," and, " Be ye per-
fect as your Father in heaven is perfect"? It is, in fact,
the old issue " between the grace that went forth from
Jerusalem, and the gifts that radiated from Athens ; "
between man starting from and returning to himself,
and man beginning with God and ending in God. If
this notion of culture, now so strongly pushed, aims at
the complete and proportionate evolution of all our fac-
ulties, so does the Christian religion. But as the object
of religion is Godlike perfection, and the object of cul-

40 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

ture human perfection, so it may be argued that religion
is greater and more all-embracing than culture, by so
much as God is more so than man : if this be so, reli-
gion includes culture as the greater includes the less.
In theory, certainly, religion legitimates and encourages
the most exhaustive development of human nature on
all sides and in all w^ays. To all natural, it superadds
many supernatural incentives ; it provides for the intel-
lectual, the moral, and the aesthetic ; it opens out and
stimulates the highest, by holding in subjection the
lowest. Spirit, soul, flesh ; conscience, intellect, appe-
tite ; will, understanding, sensibility ; holiness, thought,
beauty: the right, the true, the graceful, — this is the
gradation, starting with the highest, of what is in man
approved by the best philosophy as well as by Christian-
ity. The man struggling to become the perfect man in
Christ Jesus must be trained according to this order,
and all the time with a conscious reference to a type
of completeness which as far transcends the loftiest ideal
of cultiu'e as the mfinite the finite, the eternal the
measures of time. Theoretically, then, the Christian
believer, and especially the Christian Priest, ought to
aim, not only at the grace and symmetry of character
which culture so habitually magnifies, but at other and
higher tastes and faculties, which culture has neither
the power, nor in its pagan and in many of its modern
forms the desne, to confer.

But our critics, when forced to admit the superior
breadth and elevation of the Christian ideal as compared
with their own, turn upon us, and challenge us to show
them the lives that verify the Christian theory. As

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 41

matter of fact, say they, what one-sided, angular, narrow,
hard characters, are those of most religious people and
of most Clergymen ! There may be much piety, but
there is little sweetness ; much devotion, and but little
grace and refinement; a loud clamor about light, and
little of one very needful and lovely sort of light, —
the light which brings into . relief and glorifies the
rounded fulness to be seen in the actual life of nature
and in the ideal life of man. Scan, say they, the
list of names which have been canonized ; run over
the roll of saints and worthies, scholars and preachers,
priests and pastors, thinkers and leaders, nearest and
dearest to the ecclesiastical mind ; and point out one
to be compared for fulness, completeness, symmetry,
and grace, with Pericles of old Athens ; or for geniality,
refinement, and versatility, with the poet of Weimar.
Of will-power, of earnestness and fervor, of deep con-
victions and noble aspirations, of self-denials and sacri-
fices, of heroic courage and undaunted purpose, they
had all that mortals can have. But these qualities, be-
cause of the narrow, sharp lines on which they wrought,
and of the things which they excluded or underrated,
issued in deformity. To some of them, this life was
a lean and shrivelled thing ;

"A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."

A world of Raphaels and Angelos would have been
wasted on some of them ; a world of Wordsworths and
Tennysons, on others ; and a world of Beethovens and
Handcls, on the rest. They lived so much in the other
world, that they had little time and less inclination to

42 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

know much of this except its sin and sorrow. And yet,
if there be that other world, it is no more God's world
than this.

(^ Now, to all this there is a twofold answer. The
Christian ideal is perfect ; the ideal of culture, only an
attempt, a vague guess, at the perfect. As is a man's
ideal, so, on the whole, will be his life ; at least, toward
it will be the drift of his life. It is better to be on the
road to the perfect, though standing afar off from it,
than to struggle toward and finally realize an ideal that
is as far beneath the perfect as the clouds are beneath
the farthest sky. J

Again, the present limitations of our being render it
impossible that one man can be complete in every thing.
To choose one vocation is to turn away from other
vocations. Success is possible only by concentration.
Greatness was never won by scattered energies or di-
vided purposes. To burn up the barriers that hedge in
genius, its rays must focalize. Luther could not have
been Tintoretto and Luther besides. Pusey could not
have been Ruskin and yet be Pusey too. All gifts and
faculties are not marshalled under any one will. There
are many moulds of character, but no one character
can fill them all. The symmetry and fulness so much
glorified by culture are a dream, and the man who at-
tempts them will ooze out into feebleness and defeat.
This is as true of the clerical as of other callings. It
has its own line, and to follow it many things must be
put aside. And so the Clergy may not be artists, and
yet be fond of art ; may not be musicians, and yet be
lovers of music ; may not be votaries of literature, and

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 43

yet be alive to the best issues of literary genius ; may
not be naturalists, and yet thrill with nature's sweetness
and beauty ; may not be society-men, and yet be open
to the charms and graces of genial fellowship. And so
they generally are, becfiuse they are men of educated
tastes and trained powers. If they be narrow, they are
so only as all men are narrow who have a supreme
object in life. If they be hard and angular, they are so
only as intensity of aim interferes with the softness and
roundness possible only to natures that bask in the sun-
shine and float with the current. In thus faulting the
Clergy, I hold that this new gospel of culture, masked
as it is in old pagan tastes and Athenian longings, is
guilty of a silly impertinence. We may not be Goethes
or Matthew Arnolds, but surely we are not " philistines "
because God's priests and Christ's deputies.

But the Clergy are charged also with having too little
sympathy with the progress of science. This is an old
charge, and will be disposed of in few words. "What
passes for science, they may not always admire ; but
over the genuine progress of science, none rejoice more
than they. To say that they are not friendly to all true
knowledge, is a foolish and wicked libel. The Clergy
are nervous, it is said, over new discoveries, lest some-
thing turn up which will undermine the house they live
in, and put an end to their occupation. On the con-
trary, if they have no special liking for much of the
science of the day, it is for the best of reasons. They are
offended, and justly so, at its meddling with things that
do not and can not fall within its range, at its supercilious
dogmatism, at its frequent substitution of imagination

44 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

for induction, of guesses for ascertained truth, at its rash
and hasty generaUzations, at its ever-changing front, and
its ever-shifting testimony. -"^ Why should we not be
disgusted, when it tells us of effects which have no
adequate cause, of wonderful adaptations which have
no intelligent source ; of the reign of law, when what it
calls laws can be so called only by courtesy, or by the
jugglery of language ; of the eternity of matter, and

1 A noteworthy example of this is the evolution theory. It is amaz-
ing, with what assurance the advocates of this theory presume upon the
credulity of unscientific minds ; and it is still more so, to see how many
educated minds are ready to accept as ascertained truth an unproveu
hypothesis. We are made to feel every day, that they are to be regarded
as of a very slow turn of mind who prefer to wait for more light ; and
yet here is some of the latest and most trustworthy testimony on the
subject : At the recent annual meeting of the Victoria Philosophical Insti-
tute, held in London, it was reported, after careful analysis of the various
theories of evolution, by Professor Stokes, F.R.S , Sir J. Bennett, vice-
president, R.S., Professor Beale, F.R.S., and by others of equally high
standing in the world of science, that as yet no scientific evidence had
been met with giving countenance to the theoiy that man had been
evolved from a lower order of animals ; that Professor Virchow had
declared that there was a complete absence of any fossil type of a
lower stage in the development of man ; and that any positive advance
in the province of prehistoric anthropology had actually removed us
farther from proof of such connection, — namely, with the rest of the
animal kingdom. In this Professor Barrande, the great palaeontologist,
has concurred, declaring that in none of his investigations had he found
any one fossil species develop into another. In fact, it would seem that
no scientific man had yet discovered a link between man and the ape,
betweeu fish and frog, or between the vertebrate and the invertebrate
animals. Further, there was no evidence of any species, fossil -or other,
losing its peculiar characteristics to acquire new ones belonging to other
species: for instance, however similar the dog to the wolf, there was no
connecting link; and among extinct species the same was the case, —
there was no gradual passage from one to another. JSIoreover, the first
animals that existed on the earth were by no means to be considered as
inferior or degraded.

The Christian Mimstry at the Bar of Criticism. 45

the nothingness of spirit ; of moral liberty as a fiction
of the brain or a delusion of the heart ; of life self-
created out of death ; of organization produced by that
which is incapable of organizing itself; of no God save
one that shall be the counterpart of ourselves, — the
phenomenal reflection of a phenomenal universe ; of no
truth save that of things as they appear ; of no obliga-
tion to believe any thing which cannot be proved by
logical demonstration ? What wonder, I say, that they
who are set apart by conviction and by formal ordination
to widen out and deepen life by keeping it abreast of
the infinite and everlasting, and to fill it with a sense
of obligation and reverence toward a supreme Law-
giver as well as toward law ; toward a God whom the
heart can love and adore, as well as toward intellect
and matter, — what wonder that such men should not
be drawn into relations of friendly sympathy with such
aims, such methods, such results ? It would be treason
and cowardice to profess what it is impossible for them
to feel. Let science rise to its true mission, stick to
its own business, bear itself with becoming modesty in
the presence of mysteries beyond its reach : let it make
room for the Providence of a moral Governor, as well
as for the fatalism of law ; for faith, as well as for
demonstration ; for cumulative probability in the moral
world, as well as for the logic of induction in its own
world ; for will-force and spirit-power, as well as for
mechanical and chemical energy ; for life as the parent,
not the child, of material organization ; for the instincts
and functions of human consciousness, as well as for
cells and fossils and gases ; for sin, its penalties and

46 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

remedies, as well as for protoplasm ; for religion, as
well as for sociology ; for man seeking after immor-
tality, as well as for man seeking to conquer nature
and turn it to the best practical account, — let it do
these things, and so develop into a larger and nobler
power than it now is, and it will find no more admiring
and ardent friends than among the Clergy. This,
briefly, is their position. There can be no other unless
they renounce their vocation, and throw their birth-
right to the winds.

But the Clergy have no sooner run the gauntlet of
culture and science than they are confronted by that
of political ethics. Their censors are as numerous as
the interests which are influenced by their action. The
nation, it is said, has a conscience, as well as the indi-
vidual ; and it is asserted that the Clergy have not dealt
with it as faithfully as they ought, and hence its dete-
rioration. It is not as honest and resolute as it once
was ; and they, it is charged, are largely responsible for
the decline. The highest form of moral power is vested
in them. They are commissioned to speak, and it is
their business to speak with authority, not only on
religion, but on morals ; and for the reason that the two
cannot be divorced either in the treatment of the in-
dividual or of the nation. If then* claim be just, they
have special gifts from God which are intended to make
their pleading eff"ective. It is for them, beyond all
others, to discern right from wrong, and to give warning
of the approach of evil. If there be special tempta-
tions, it is for them to show the people how to grapple
with them. And if things go wrong, if the moral sense

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 47

of the people fall off in purity and vigor, if life grow
corrupt, and iniquity multiply, and society drift into the
downward path, on the Clergy must be laid the chief
responsibility for such results. Now, it so happens, that,
in the general belief, our life has of late years been
changing for the worse ; and if our fathers could see us,
they would be not more astonished than ashamed at the
extent of the change. True, the Clergy may plead that
the State does not sanction their existence as an order,
nor provide for their support, nor formally invite their
co-operation. But, on the other hand, it is true also
that they have full liberty to exercise such sway over
the national will as their high moral authority ought to
wield. They are none the less guides and conservators
of the public conscience, because they are not paid
functionaries of the State. Let this be granted, and
let it be granted also that a scapegoat is needed to bear
the sins of the people, the Ministry, I contend, do not
deserve to be singled out for that purpose. They may
not have done all they could to avert the moral disasters
which have befallen us, but they are not mainly respon-
sible for them. Where many causes have been at work
to produce a certain result, it is illogical and unfair to
say, that, if one of these causes had worked differently,
the total result would have been radically different. It
is undoubtedly true, that the great object of the INIin-
isters of Christ in dealing with the nation is to implant
righteousness, and to expel whatever opposes it; and yet
laboring, as they do, in the midst of many forces which
they can, at the best, only partially control, it were at
once foolish and wrong to declare their work a failure,

48 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

and themselves false to their trust because they have not
succeeded. If it is said that no land ever presented to
the Church such opportunities for great and enduring
conquests over the minds and hearts of men, it may be
said also, and with equal truth, that no land ever threw
obstacles so formidable in the way of such conquests.
The sudden greatness and unprecedented prosperity of
the nation have developed equally sudden and unprece-
dented temptations. The lust of wealth and the lust of
power have been followed by ambitious luxury and the
coarse greed of pleasure. Our very liberty of speech
and action has spawned a brood of perils and vices
peculiar to itself. In other times and in other lands,
the idolatry of kings and oligarchies and aristocracies
may have crippled, debased, and cursed the masses ; but
we have found to our cost a worse danger, a more por-
tentous vice, in the self-worship, the self-adulation, the
proud self-sufficiency, of the people themselves. A self-
idolizing democracy, tolerating no check save that of its
own will or its own passion and caprice, involves in itself
the worst evils that can threaten a nation. There is no
tyranny so unreasonable, reckless, and exacting as the
possible tyranny of such a power. It allows itself to be
plundered by monopolies and corporations who begin as
its creatures, and end as its masters. It delights in the
flattery and tamely acquiesces in the corruption of the
demagogues whom it has educated ; and, as for minorities
who dare to oppose it, there is but one fate for them, —
either to change their ground, and go with the current,
or to submit to any spoliation of rights and property
which the strong may choose to inflict upon the weak.

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 49

Theoretically our democracy magnifies the individual :
practically it swallows him up in the multitude. There
is a delusion in it which often flings a dark shadow on
its path, — a delusion as to man's real nature ; a delu-
sion as to his willingness to do the right when he sees
it, as to his intelligence being the measure of his mo-
rality, and as to the cleansing power of a purely mental
development. Some of the results are before us, — a
bright, sharp, scheming, ambitious, but morally irresolute
life, swayed by convictions of expediency rather than of
duty, and almost swamped in the worship of mammon,
the coarsest and meanest idolatry under the sun ; the
social and political conscience spotted with gangrene ;
the nation's soul sagging toward lower standards ; the
decline of domestic purity going on side by side with
the boasted safeguards of universal education. Now,
these mischiefs and disasters are apparently part of the
harvest being gathered from seed planted long since ;
and if they are, then no possible boldness, fidelity, or
self-sacrifice on the part of the Clergy could hold them
in check. It is idle for them to expose and rebuke vices
and corruptions, unless they are free to expose and re-
buke the tendencies and principles of government which
produce them. It may be said that they are free to do
so ; but it must be added, that, if any of them are rash
enough to use the freedom, they will encounter a storm
of popular wrath which would drive them from any
community in which they ministered. Finally, let it be
declared once for all, that, so long as the Nation's or-
ganic law has no room for God, the Christian Priesthood
cannot hope to make any very profound impression on

50 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

the Nation's conscience. Shall I be told that public
opinion is omnipotent, and that the Clergy have as good
a chance to shape that as any other class ? I reply that
public opinion, like the government and social life
which it sways, is moulded by forces born of the system
which they in turn irresistibly control. It cannot be
lifted above its average sources, or be held amenable to
the Christian standards which those sources formally
disavow. Our politics have become a muddy stream,
and the Church is told that she only befouls herself in
her attempts to purify it. No, she must not meddle with
statesmanship, must not discuss what belongs to Con-
gresses and Legislatures, must hold her tongue except
on the abstractions of political ethics, must stand aside
and be grateful for the protection she enjoys at the
hands of the Hepublic ; and yet, when the evil day
comes, and degeneracy sets in, she must meekly consent
to be reproved for her silence and her unfaithfulness.
Let the Clergy take their share — no more, no less —
of the blame for what has come upon us ; but let them
protest, as they have a right to, against being singled
out as the chief sinners, but for whose supineness and
negligence our life would be more hopeful than it is.

But, again, the Ministry has been blamed for its
apparent indifference to what are called the social prob-
lems of the age. Labor, as we hear, is in the midst
of a determined struggle with capital. The poor are
demanding that something shall be done to redress the
inequality between themselves and the rich. Those who
have nothing are insisting that those who have all shall
consent to some equitable division of the wealth accu-

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 51

miilations of society. The landless demand a share of
the land-ownership. Then there is the war of .the
masses with privileged monopolies and selfish corpora-
tions. And quite equal to any of these in the discussion
and excitement it engenders is the unsolved question of
what are called woman's rights. To these must he added
the plans and methods proposed for the permanent amel-
ioration of pauperized wretchedness, and the sufferings
of the hundreds and sometimes thousands in many com-
munities who are thrown out of employment by the fluc-
tuations of industry and the encroachments of labor-saving
inventions. Besides there are the vices of drunkenness,
gambling, and licentiousness, which roll a never-ceasing
tide of iniquity through the arteries of social life. It
is a formidable list, certainly ; and it is a formidable
charge, too, that those who are the ordained servants of
Christ, and therefore of humanity, are backward in their
duty toward questions which are agitating our civiliza-
tion to its centre. Time is not allowed for examining
the attitude of the Ministry toward each of these prob-
lems. I can speak only in general terms.

Now, if we look into the matter carefully and candid-
ly, it will be found, I believe, that, so far as the criti-
cism has any color of truth, it relates rather to the way,
than to the spirit, in which the Clergy work. "What-
ever their convictions, they cannot join trades-unions, or
communistic societies, or other outside secular methods
of agitation and reform. What they do must be done
ordinarily within thek own sphere, and by means not
inconsistent with their own vocation ; and for this they
are often harshly, but unwisely, censured. As for their

52 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

aims and wishes, as for the spirit in which they work,
it were nothing less than a cruel slander to say that
these are not in accord with the hopes and designs of
the best and truest advocates of reform. Does any man
yearn to see removed from our human lot all needless
and artificial inequalities, and the sufferings engendered
by them ? They yearn for it still more. Does any man
strive for the things which shall give to humanity the
unity and peace, the comfort and happiness, which it
craves \ They are ready to lift that striving to an agony
which has in it too much of conscience and charity to
allow any room for dreamy sentiment.

" So many woes they see in many lands,
So many streaming ej'es and wringing hands," —

that they are habitually falling back for fresh inspira-
tions of love and duty, upon One who said, as no other
ever did or could say it, " Come unto Me, all ye that
are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Because of the unwillingness of the multitude to heed
these words, the Clergy see, as few others do, why

" The sad world waiteth in its misery ;

The blind world stumbleth on its round of pain."

By its constitution the Sacred Office is designed to exer-
cise many functions, but eminently that of consolation ;
else it could not reflect the mind that was in Jesus
Christ, or be the organ of the Eternal Comforter, the
Holy Ghost. It is its special charge to know and to
soften

" The aches of life, the stings of hate and loss,
The fiery fever and the ague-shake,

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 53

The slow, dull sinking into witheved age,
The horrible dark death, and all the pangs
That go before."

This is part of its very being, — pervades it as blood
pervades the body ; and to say that it has shght sym-
pathy with man in his wrongs and griefs, or with all
reasonable measures for his relief, is to say that it has
neither a right nor a name to live. Is the mechanic
pledged to his craft, the lawyer to the law, the physi-
cian to the healing art, the man of letters to literature ?
So in a still stronger, because more binding sense, is a
Priest of the Son of God pledged to the healing of the
sin-sick soul and the sin-cursed body. There can be no
doubt, then, as to the spirit in which the Ministry must
view all questions relating to the well-being of mankind.
In a large sense, then, it must be true, as has been said,
that whatever censure is visited upon the Clergy in
this direction must refer to the 7node rather than the
temper of their work.

But in regard to the mode, — the best mode of deal-
ing with the ills of life, — there must always be a radical
difference of principle between the Christian Ministry
and the world at large. As by its own w^isdom the world
knew not God, so by its own wisdom it knows not itself,
nor the true basis on which to build its schemes of
amelioration and reform. Now it pushes toward its
favorite aim, and seeks to uproot inequalities of lot
among its contending classes, by revolution and anarchy ;
and now it crowds forward to the same result by changes
in the framework of civil government and of general
society ; and now, again, it presses into its service the

54 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

powers of literature and science, superadding the trained
combinations of associations and unions. At one time
it wields the arm of physical power, at another the
energies of a public sentiment more or less moulded to
its will ; and then, again, it appeals to convictions of
interest and expediency. But it finds a cold, hard heart
to deal with, because it is its own heart. Itself incur-
ably selfish, it vainly urges individual men to be and to
do what they can be and do only when lifted to a higher
plane, and by a power higher than themselves, — the
power of love. So it comes to pass, that it agonizes
from age to age, with baffled purpose and defeated ener-
gies. It seeks for unity, and finds discord ; for equality,
and finds inequality growing with the growth of the
most advanced forms of society ; for the elevation of
the poor, and finds the gulf between them and the rich
yawning deeper and deeper as civilization multiplies its
resources and increases its wealth.^ And so it will be,
so long as the world relies upon itself. Its morality
rises no higher than the doctrine, " Every man for him-
self ; " and it is impossible to reach the coveted goal
along this path. As well expect that water will run
up hill, or that gravity will forget its own law.

1 A recent very able American writer declares, that, " Taking Europe
as a whole, and comparing the prices of labor with the cost of living, —
food, clothing, and shelter, — it can be proved that the average European
peasant of the fourteenth century, as also of the fifteenth, was better off
relatively than the average European peasant of the nineteenth century."
A well-known English authority has put the matter somewhat differ-
ently, but with substantially the same conclusion: "The upper classes
have moi"e luxuries, and the lower classes moie liberty; while, in regard
to the substantial comforts of life, they are farther apart than they were
three or fom- centuries ago. The greater the wealth of the nation as a
whole, the greater the inequality between its upper and lower classes."

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 55

The world has never seen but one enthusiasm for
humanity that can cure its hurt ; and that was an enthu-
siasm born not of the will of the flesh, not of letters or
philosophy or industrial reforms or political expedients,
but of the Spirit of God and the mission of his Eternal
Son. It was the Gospel of Christ that first taught a
man who is his neighbor, and how his neighbor should
be treated. It was the Gospel of Christ that first under-
took the reconstruction of society on the twofold basis
of individual regeneration, and of the brotherhood of aU
men. It was the Gospel of Christ that first insisted that
mere justice could not right the wrongs of mankind,
that the world can never realize its dream of general
happiness until it shall learn how to love mercy as well
as to do justly. As the deputies and representatives of
Him who first published these principles, and for the
spread of which His Church was instituted, the Clergy
are obliged to shape all their efi"orts for the amelioration
of human life. They have no choice. Their own judg-
ments and speculations have no place. This is theu*
commission, and they must follow it or abandon it. But
it so happens that experience demonstrates its wisdom,
and leaves no reasonable doubt that it is the panacea
to which the world must resort at last, or perish in its
sin and sorrow. What charity and benevolence, what
retreats for the poor, what hospitals for the sick, what
mutual-benefit societies and homes and asylums and pro-
tectories, Avhat stated and regular provisions for the relief
of the sufi"ering, — what of any or all these there are in
our modern life, are directly or indirectly the fruits of
that love of which our Lord gave the supreme example

56 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

in giving Himself for the salvation of all men. The
Christian Priesthood is often roughly handled because it
has not made the world better than it is. Would it not
be well for its censors to inquire what the world would be
to-day without it \ The worst that can be said of it is,
that it is like the sun in the short, dark days of winter,
which, tempering but not preventing the frost, continues
to shine, though not with sufficient intensity to pierce
the clouded atmosphere that envelops the earth. There
may be a chill in the air which searches the bones, and
yet there is warmth enough to keep the blood in motion,
and the seeds of life in the wintry soil. The Priesthood,
because it is the Priesthood of Christ, can never satisfy
the world. It is and it will be faulted, not so much
because of what it fails to do, as because of the princi-
ples and methods to which it is bound to adhere. ^

In conclusion, there are two general considerations
on which it may be of use to dwell somewhat, because
they are related to the topics that have been under
review, and will serve to define yet more clearly the
attitude of the Clergy toward some of the leading social
and political tendencies in these closing years of the
Century. The Clergy, if they know themselves, desire
to be en rapjwrt with the watchwords of the time. They
are well enough schooled in history and in human nature
to know that the ideals of every generation are embodied
in the words and phrases oftenest upon the lips of the
multitude. Their cries, their mottoes, their bannered
inscriptions, whether amid the clash of arms, or the
passionate conflicts of revolution, or the more peaceful
strifes of current politics, tell, beyond all else, the

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 57

thoughts seething in their brains, the aims and resolves
that gird up their wills. Liberty, equality, fraternity,
progress, honor, reason, nature, science, country, — these
are thrown out from the common heart, as the red
cinders are thrown from the heated iron when drawn
from the furnace. So far from being ^mpty words, they
are revelations of what lies deepest in the hearts and
minds of the people. It is their weakness, that they
leave out religion, and therefore are fated to move on
a plane below that of the noblest powers which have
been ordained of God to shape the life of man. It is
not so much opposition to Christianity, as the matter-
of-course way of ignoring it, in the attempted solution
of the problems of the day, that constitutes the most
melancholy feature of modern society. Whatever the
masses think in their better moments, they act as though
Christianity were of little consequence to them in their
struggles to lift the burdens that oppress them. In the
attempts to recast the framework of society and civil
government, so as to check the encroachments of the
favored few, and to protect the rights and liberties of
the unfavored many, they seem to have concluded that
they have little to expect from the Gospel of Christ.
And yet no message ever fell upon the ear of man that
did so much for the individual, as against all forms of
organized power, as that same Gospel. If we go deeply
enough into it, it has more to say about the rights and
liberties of man as man, and does more to protect and
extend them, than all the philosophies, all the systems
of social and political ethics, that have figured in his-
tory. In reality, then, as, on the one side, the great

58 The Christian Ministri/ at the Bar of Criticism.

task of the Church, speaking through the Clergy, is to
reconcile modern knowledge with the Gospel: so, on
the other, it is her great task, speaking through the
same instrumentality, to reconcile modern society with
the Gospel ; to explain and justify from the Christian
standpoint the very watchwords which are so dear to
the masses of men ; to lift them into a nobler, larger
meaning ; to bind together and energize them as the
motive powers of a progress which shall include the ad-
vancement and purification of souls, hearts, consciences,
as well as of bodies and intellects. Liberty, equality,
brotherhood, honor, reason, nature, country, individual
development, rights, duties, — compare what these are
upon the tongue of the rationalist, the socialist, the
communist, the pattern reformer, or revolutionist of the
modern type, with what they were upon the lips of
Christ, or with what they are to-day as interpreted by
a Gospel and a Church of average faithfulness. The
words are the same, but how immeasurably greater the
meanings and uses found in them by the latter than
those discerned in them by the former! What is the
freeman of the freest country to-day, compared with the
freeman in Christ Jesus '? or the votary of reason and
nature in the noblest school of living thought, compared
with the devout and intelligent disciple of the incarnate
Logos'? I have spoken of the representative watchwords
of the time: they are significant as uttering the dominant
popular impulses of the time. Now, as God is the foun-
tain of all lawful activities and movements emanating
in a secondary sense from the heart and brain of man,
so God is the source of the power and generally of the

The Christian Muiistry at the Bar of Criticism. 59

drift of these impulses. He is not more the author
in outward nature of gravity, affinity, magnetism, elec-
tricity, than He is the author of the forces which sway
humanity in all the normal spheres of its development.
It is God who created them ; it is man that by his
ignorance and waywardness misinterprets and perverts
them. Now, it is part of the mission of the Church of
Christ to correct the errors, to remedy the evils, to check
the rashness and violence, into which the multitude, in
every age, fall by misdirecting an impetus that has its
origin in man's eternal Maker and Father. In per-
forming this mission, the necessity is laid upon it of
affirming, from generation to generation, certain deep
and momentous truths, — an office, but for which the
favorite reforms, the wide-sweeping changes, the great
revolutions, of which we read in history, and about
which we are thinking to-day, would have ended, or will
end, in barrenness and defeat ; their fruit withered as by
an invisible curse, or turning to ashes on the lips that
would eat it.

None other foundation can any man lay than that is
laid, even Jesus Christ. He is the only foundation,
because He is God manifest in the flesh ; and, because
He is so, no man, no society of men, no nation, no
systems of reform, no attempts at progress, can build
safely or wisely, except as they build on this foundation.
History is a continuous commentary on this law.

"Whosoever has sought glory, save through Him,
has only succeeded in letting loose the deadly spirit of
battle-strife upon the world."

" Whosoever has sought to make wealth, apart fuom

60 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

Him, has only succeeded in brutalizing men, by turning
immortal souls into a tortured, frenzied machine, toiling,
blasj)heming in its darkness."

" Whosoever has sought science without Him has
been ingulfed in the quicksands of false reasoning."

" Whosoever has clutched at power without Him has
been plunged amidst revolutionary victories ; and who-
soever has sought liberty without Him has waked up,
throttled by a military force which, while loading him
with fetters, has derisively asserted, ' I am Liberty ! ' "

I add the following from the same source : " It is God
Himself, it is our Lord Jesus Christ, who wills the grow-
ing freedom of all men of all nations in justice and
truth, and that with a will which becomes ever stronger
as the world goes on. Unquestionably the evil of our
day perverts all Heaven-sent movement in a hundred
ways ; but we must resist the perversion, not the move-
ment itself. And if any one thing is certain, it is that
we shall never overcome that perversion save by means
of the very movement itself, and of its first principle,
which is God ; even as St. Paul did not attempt to cast
down the shrines of idols, save by setting up among
them the True God, hidden and unknown."^

The attitude of the Clergy is more or less determined
by a view of the evil that is in the world, which many
thinkers, and nearly all the existing schools of reformers
and humanitarians, refuse to accept. W^ith the latter,
the injustice and disorder that have existed from the
beginning are simply an accident, a disease of the skin
or at most of the blood, a discord occasioned by some

1 Henri Perreyve, pp. 136-141.

The Christian Mitiistrj/ at the Bar of Criticism. 61

chance mal-adjustment of the strings of the instrument.
But if the evil that confronts us be only an accident,
a disease, a discord, the removal of it is feasible, and it
is only a question of time and of improved conditions
and arrangements of human life. It will be accom-
plished by and by, through the united efforts of govern-
ments and peoples. Social progress tends toward this
result, and proposes it as its grand aim. Every im-
provement and advance of the age, every new move-
ment of thought, every broken and discredited tradition
of the past, every upheaval of existing forms of civil
polity, are hailed as symptoms of approach to it. Sat-
urated with sentimental idealism, this tone of thought
fondles this material world, and expects perfection to
issue out of it. Rousseau, the first great master of this
school, at the close of the last century laid the founda-
tions on which many a passionate dreamer has since
built superstructures of hay, straw, and stubble. He
began with a belief in the absolute purity of human
nature. In his view, man's original tendencies are all
good, and the evils of society are nothing more than the
results of bad systems of education. From the start,
adverse circumstances, in no way inherent in the nat-
ural order of things, thwart the noble aspirations of the
human heart. If there be crooked growths, or alien and
discordant notes, it is an enemy's hand that has done it,
and an enemy, too, which man on his own proper plane
is able to deal with. And so, consistently with his
theory, Rousseau invented a scheme of human training,
run out into elaborate detail, which provides a remedy
for the evils by the removal of the bad systems. The

62 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

first thing to be done, therefore, was to shut out the
influence of these systems upon the pupil's mind. There
was to be no interference by established forms of con-
duct, opinions, creeds. No bias either way was to be
allowed. There was to be an absolutely fair start in
the race. Nature was to have free course, and to bring
out its originally good tendencies without let or hin-
derance, and so to develop its perfect proportions, and
consummate its designed growth. This rose-colored con-
ception of human nature did not have long to wait for
its translation into a chapter of terrible realities. It was
practically formulated and applied by the first French
Revolution, whose lurid glare fell like the hue of a
wide-wasting plague on the civilized world. No one
needs to be reminded of the silly, extravagant expec-
tations, or of the wild fanatical cries of that movement,
or of its dreams of the grandeur of human benevolence,
the adorable majesty of human reason, and the near
advent of an era of social perfection ; nor need it be
told, how, having escaped the nightmare of the old doc-
trine of human corruption, the age rose indefinitely in
its self-estimation, as well as in its belief that the time
had at last come when the possibilities of human nature
were to be vindicated, and one scheme of universal love
was to embrace all mankind, as one people and under
one law, — divisions of race, class, interest, language,
all swept away into the sublime amalgam concocted by
the illustrious Swiss dreamer.

But if this side of the story need not be recited in
detail, neither need the other. The common memory
of the world shudders even yet at the horrible ferocity

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 63

that accompanied and consummated this sentimental out-
burst. The flame once started burnt down to the root,
and kept on burning until it made it quite clear at the
bar of reason, that the ferocity and the sentimentalism
were the joint, inseparable progeny of the self-same error.
As has been well said, " That which keeps men patient
under the evils of this present state of things is the idea
of their necessity, — the notion, indistinct, but still real
in their minds, that injustice and disorder are fundamen-
tal in this visible system. That idea removed, all evil,
civil and economical, becomes so much gratuitous and
superfluous wrong ; and the apparent authors of it, so
many monsters of cruelty, and wanton tyrants, delighting
in inflicting evil for its own sake. Ketaliation to any
extent upon such appeared simple justice, and the same
theory which produced extravagant expectations pro-
duced horrible anger at the facts."

Nearly a century has elapsed since this remarkable
experience occurred ; and yet there are among us unmis-
takable evidences, that, while all mankind revolted at the
consequences of Rousseau's conception of human nature,
and of the evil that is in the world, a vast number have
clung to the conception itself. Various as are, to-day,
the philosophical and humanitarian schools of reform,
and diverse as may be their special tenets, that same
conception in one form or another is the common root of
them all. The " accident," the " disease," the " discord"
theory of evil, and with it the theory of the perfecti-
bility of human nature latent in its own consciousness,
and self-sufficing in its own power of self-evolution, under-
lies them all. Without dwelling upon the more mod-

64 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

erate and reserved of these schools, which have not yet
developed quite far enough to break down and revoke
the old concordat with Christianity as a recognized and
helpful auxiliary, it is enough, perhaps, to show how
the two most advanced ones are teaching and working
out the same irporov tto-ci^So? that brought upon France
the terrors of that stupendous frenzy of a century ago.
Modern society is, no doubt, too wise to repeat the
frenzy, though it may not altogether escape the fever
that precedes and follows it. The socialism of the time
embodies what are known as the advanced ideas relating
to the reconstruction of society on what is claimed to be
a more equitable basis. It presents itself in two forms,

— communistic and anti-communistic ; the former being
vastly more radical and visionary, and therefore more
dangerous.

Communistic socialism has begun to figure very prom-
inently as well in the New as in the Old World. There
is no longer any mystery or doubt in regard to its
characteristic teachings and plans. It advocates the ab-
sorption of the individual in the community, the citizen
in the state. It declares the individual as such to have
no rights, and the community to possess all rights. The
state directs and determines all things, — what every
man must do and leave undone, the number and character
of employments and industries. It is to own every thing,

— lands, houses, factories, banks, railways, vessels. Pri-
vate property, private business, is to cease ; and if these
cease, the present motives to labor and to save also cease
to operate. Under such a regime^ there will be neither
the ability nor the desire to better one's condition. The

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 65

individual man is of no account except as he is tributary
to the organized whole. Minorities vanish before the
power of majorities. There is no such thing in the heart
or the life of man as sin, and so there is no need of
atonement and regeneration. What we call sin is only
an unfortunate accident, a curable disease, a short-lived
discord. The trouble that is in the world is created by
inequality of social condition. Level down the hills and
valleys, and only a smooth even surface remains, over
which every man can travel with equal ease. Break
down the partition-walls, and Paradise rises into glory
and happiness as a matter of course. For the present
this gospel is only preached ; but when its disciples be-
come sufficiently numerous, the preaching is to be fol-
lowed by an armed and violent propagandism. Equality
is to be enforced upon each generation as it takes its place
on the stage. Under such a system, says a late writer,
" We need no pity, only an equal chance. Humanity
is sufficient unto itself, involving both Providence and
Grace. There are no families any more, not even a
family, but only a herd. Human brotherhood is cant
and nonsense where no child calls any man father on
earth, and there is no Father in heaven. We are not
brothers, only companions, — oarsmen together in the
galley, oxen together in the furrow. W^e have no favors
to ask of anybody. All we want is wages for our vrork.
As for work, organization takes care of that, both to find
it for us, and to keep us at it. There will be no more
play, and there will be no more heroism. Moral char-
acter is of no account, so long as the work goes on.
Genius is of no account, where the brightest must fare

66 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

no better than the dullest. Competition is the name of
a lost art. The arts are all lost. Coarser production
grows more coarse. Production declines ; every thing
declines. The alarm is sounded. We are going to
ruin ; we must all of us work more, work better. Who
shall make us work more and better? One another.
And so our Paradise bristles with bayonets. So the
cu'cle is completed, the evolution ends. The animal
began it ; the animal man, made tenfold more a beast,
finishes it."

Comment is needless. It is too monstrous for logic,
too abhorrent for conscience to touch; and yet just this
is one of the voices of modern social science. Between
the lines we see peering out the features of Rousseau's
face, only a little enlarged and distorted. He said,
" Human nature will be all right if you will only let
it ; " and this is one of the schemes for letting it unfold
its inherent purity and loveliness.

Let us now turn to the other scheme, — anti-commu-
nistic socialism. The former painted its own portrait
amid the horrors that befell Paris in 1871. The latter
is doing the same thing under the guidance of the
positive philosophy of Comte, only with more sober and
subdued colors. According to this. Communism pure
and simple is an exploded heresy, and its views about
property, the individual, and the state, radically wrong.
Frenchmen may speak of it in this way, because they
had a taste of it which they will not be likely to forget.
But as matter of fact, heresy though it be, it certainly
is not an exploded one. Italy, Germany, Russia, would
rejoice to-day to be assured that it is so. Even this

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 67

country would be glad to know that it has run its career.
A system which counts its adherents by the huudreds
of thousands, and prints a score of widely circulated
journals in half a dozen languages, and employs a small
army of emissaries to stir up strife and bitterness among
the laboring classes, can hardly be said to be obsolete.
The type of socialism which assumes to have supplanted
it is undoubtedly far less radical and revolutionary in
its attitude toward society and the state, but scarcely
less so in its attitude toward Christianity and the rem-
edies which Christianity offers for the ills of mankind.
It is essentially nothing more than the current material-
ism of the time, embodied in a scheme of social reform.
It exalts the individual, magnifies his rights, respects
private property, narrows rather than enlarges the
sphere of state-power, relies but little on legislation as
an instrument of amelioration, and a great deal upon
public opinion, glorifies the sentiment of human brother-
hood, and depends for what is best in the future upon
the increasing power of love and benevolence between
man and man. If this be true, it might be thought,
that, having adopted practically the great central thesis
of Christianity, it would have some word of reverence
and good-will for the system from which it has borrowed
all in itself that challenges sympathy or respect. But
on the contrary, it is, if possible, more bitterly hostile to
Christianity than the most bald and blatant Communism.
It contents itself with the morality of Christianity, while
boldly rejecting all the fundamental principles on which
that morality is grounded. It uses the sentiment of
religion, but spurns religion itself. It declares theology

68 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism.

to be an impossible science in the future, and a mel-
ancholy failure in the past. The Church has exhausted
its ethical life in two weak and impertinent messages
to man, — alms-giving to the rich, and resignation to
the poor. In a single sentence it outlines its view of the
final era: "Labor shall take the place of war, science
of theology, and humanity of God."

Now, to the full extent that these and similar notions,
however modified or held in reserve, enter into the so-
called reform movements of the age, or inspire the
masses in their disorderly, ever-shifting schemes of social
amelioration, it is impossible for the Clergy to do other-
wise than oppose them, and, by opposing, to incur
sneering or angry imputations of coldness and indifi'er-
ence toward what some have come to regard as the
noblest outcome of the modern spirit. Their answer to
such allegations can be stated in few words. The truth
of it must be left to time to determine.

Injustice, disorder, social inequality, and many of the
evils arising from them, have such a hold on this visible
order of things, as to forbid our treating them as acci-
dents, or as any thing else than part and parcel of this
world, and therefore to last as long as the world itself
lasts. If they are so, then they cannot be removed by
schemes devised in the same spirit in which reforms
in finance, or commerce, or jurisprudence, or police are
devised : we must drop the over-sanguine view, for a
sober and matter-of-fact one, and, by doing so, renounce
delusive futures and imaginary probabilities. Men's
expectations must be measured by their experience, not
by their desires ; and they must be taught to be just

The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticism. 69

before they are generous, to be wise before they are
prophetic. The Gospel condemns sentiraentalism, and
rebukes a hixurious and carnal faith that spends its
strength in fondling and caressing human nature ; and
they who speak for the Gospel are false to their office
and their trust if they fear or fail to say so. The bad
tree brings forth bad fruit. It is no use to try to make
the fruit better until the tree itself has been purged of
its vicious sap. Personal character is the crown of life,
the supreme fruitage of all that man is and does. It is
the delusion of the time, that character is the product of
social conditions. It is so in part ; but there is another
and higher part which is the product of man himself.
Equilize absolutely all external conditions, but this will
not equalize character. Good characters will still
emerge from bad conditions, and bad characters from
good ones. Poverty, it is said, is a great temptation to
dishonesty. Sometimes it is, but not as a rule ; for,
to say the least, the rich steal, in one way or another,
quite as often as the poor. It is the old question of will
on the one side, and circumstances on the other. And,
in every generation, the instinct, if not the reasoning
of mankind, has settled it in favor of the former; so
settled it, that no man has been accounted truly strong
and great whose personality has not triumphed over
adverse conditions.

Again, as part of the reply of the Clergy to their
accusers, it may be laid down as a fact approved by
experience, and not disproved by any philosophy of
life, — far less by the latest one, called positive because
claiming to deal only with facts, — that inequality of

70 The Christian Ministrif at the Bar of Criticism.

condition, the scape-goat on which the most popular
schemes of reform would lay the sin and sorrow of the
time, is only in part avoidable^ only in part deplorable.
It has its advantages, as well as its evils. It is wedged
into the social framework by the power that made that
framework. It is as much a feature of society, as eyes
and ears, arms and legs, are organic parts of the body.
Some of it results from inequality of natural endow-
ment ; some of it from inevitable casualties, and is,
therefore, Providential ; some of it is the sad heritage
handed on by a vicious, idle, diseased parentage. Some
of it, again, is produced by industrial, commercial, mon-
etary fluctuations; and quite as much, if not more, by
the vices, extravagances, and caprices of men themselves.
Exactly how much is curable, and exactly how much
must be accepted and endured as being incurable, it is
impossible to tell. But so much of it as is curable,
Christianity, unless faithlessly represented, is always
ready to help cure. So much of it as the Gospel
declares to be needless and oppressive, the Clergy are
bound to do what they can to remove. And it is my
belief, that, as an Order, they are loyal to this obligation ;
and that this loyalty is proved by what they preach, and
by what they do, in vast numbers of individual cases, to
lift up the fallen, to encourage the hopeless, to relieve
the distressed. If they fail to walk arm-in-arm with so-
called reformers, or decline to carry the banners of social
doctrinaires, or to play the part of advocates and orators
on the platform in behalf of schemes that propose to
clean only the outside of the platter, to wash bodies
without washing the filthy souls which they cover, or

The Christian Ministri^ at the Bar of Criticism. 71

to strike down all inequalities of life as so many mortal
enemies to the well-being of man, or to go to the very
verge of a violation of natural instinct and natural law
in abolishing differences of function, right, privilege,
education, service, between the sexes, — if the Clergy do
this, it is because they refuse to trifle with the sacred-
ness of their commission, with the dignity of God's
truth, with the honor and consistency of the Church of
Christ, and with the rational hopes and aspirations of
the souls given into their charge.

If now we survey the whole field of fact, suggestion,
and inference, over which we have travelled ; if we make
due allowance for what must be admitted, and for what
may be doubted or denied, — we are brought, I think,
substantially to this conclusion: viz., —

(1) That in some relations to modern life, and in
some of the traditional and ordinary means and modes
of work, the influence of the Christian Ministry has
declined ;

(2) That in others it has been seriously hindered or
sadly perverted ;

(3) That in none has it been of such range and power
as to fill out the ideal of the Sacred Office, whether we
have regard to the very definite one contained in the
Holy Scriptures, or the less lofty and severe and more
general one floating in the traditions and hopes of the
people of God.

But, though the conclusion thus broadly outlined be
granted, it will be seen, after due reflection, that it does
not charge the Ministry of the present generation with
any unusual betrayal of trust, or unusual feebleness in

72 The Christian Ministry at the Bar of Criticisnio

the exercise of its gifts : but simply with that measure of
fault which commonly attaches to human agency when
wielding Divine powers, — the fault of yielding too
easily to adverse forces, and of failing to seize at the
critical hour great opportunities for service to the King-
dom of Christ ; the fault of not studying and under-
standing the signs of the times, so as wisely and
promptly to adapt what is mutable in the polity, wor-
ship, and practical methods of the Church, to the ever-
changing conditions of individual and social life ; and,
finally, the fault of coming short of the highest attain-
ments in Christian knowledge and the noblest motives
of Christian duty.^

1 "It is curious to see how complaints have been made, in all ages,
of remissness in supporting the faith, of negligence in the cure of souls,
of degeneracy from primitive times. S. Hildebert, in addressing the
Clergy of Angers or Tours; S. Fulbert, in his Diocesan Synods of Chartres;
S. Norbert, preaching before the Priests of Magdeburg ; S. Anselm, in
Normandy and at Canterbury ; S. Arnoule at Soissons ; S. Frederick at
Utrecht, — all bear witness to the same thing." — Rev. J. M. Neale:
Mediceval Preachers, Introduction, p. 74.

LECTURE II.

THE CAUSES THAT HAVE HINDERED OR IMPAIRED THE
INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.

Having set forth, in the preceding Lecture, the pres-
ent status of the Priesthood, as estimated by the current
criticism of the day, I now proceed to consider the causes
that have hindered or impaired its influence in our time.
Some of these causes have akeady been alluded to when
examining the faults imputed to the Priesthood by the
popular judgment. I begin now with that which lies
deepest, and reaches farthest. Nothing is so much
opposed by what passes for "the modern spirit" as
that one thing which the Priesthood chiefly represents,
— Christianity as a supernatural force working through
the Church continuously in history.^ The ground as-

1 The loose, unintelligent way in which the term " supernatural " has
been used has helped to give currency to not a few of the errors of modern
popular infidelity. It has a definite sense, and when employed by the
teachers and apologists of Christianity should be used in that sense. It
is, however, often associated with the ghostly and the marvellous; with
apparitions and wonders belonging to the category of vulgar superstitions,
or to the jugglery and legerdemain of necromancy and spiritualism ; or
with actions of divine agents wliich could not be explained, or reduced
to any system. The scepticism of our time has traded largely on the
misleading, and to thoughtful minds offensive, use of the word.

Briefly, the supernatural, whether used religiously or philosophically,
and understood in the broadest sense, expresses any force which acls on

74 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

snmed is so sweeping and radical, that all minor ques-
tions affecting special claims and prerogatives of the
Priesthood drop out of sight. The enmity that assails

the chain of cause and effect in nature from without the chain, whether it
be the will of man, or angel, or God. Christian supernaturalism signifies
that God is acting from ■without on the lines of cause and effect in our
fallen world, and in our disordered humanity, to produce what, by no
mere laws of nature, will ever come to pass: i.e., " as a power of regen-
eratio7i and new creation, working to repair the hurt which the laws of
nature, by their penal action, would otherwise perpetuate."

To hear some of our wise men (as the world accounts wisdom) talk,
one would be forced to regard Christianity as not merely a superfluity,
but an impertinence in the universe of souls; and this simply because it
comes to quicken and to purify humanity by powers which it were indeed
an impertinence to look for in nature. When shall we have a science of
our world large enough to make room for the real system of God, in its
two grand divisions of the natural and the supernatural, — the empire of
necessary law, and the empire of will and liberty, — acting and re-acting
one upon the other under His direction, just as easily and certainly as one
property of matter acts upon another ? If ever there be such a science,
it will allow for, if it does not actively teach, two methods of arriving at
truth, — the one assuring the understanding by demonstrative certainty;
the other, the method of faith, which verifies tlie higher truths of reli-
gion by the heart, and not by the notions of the head. Such a science,
moreover, will recognize the great underlying fact which Christianity pre-
supposes, and, as it were, repeats in every exercise of its redemptive
power; viz., that as Christ the Lord "is before all things, and in Him all
things consist," or stand together, so His Mediatorial work was "not an
afterthought, but a forethought of God," — a plan foi-med anterior "to
the foundation of the world." As a profound thinker has remarked with
singular clearness and force, —

" Instead of coming into the world, as being no part of the system, or
to interrupt and violate the system of things, they all consist, come to-
gether into system, in Christ, as the centre of unity and the head of the
imiversal plan. The world was made to include Christianity; under that,
becomes a proper and complete frame of order; to that, crystallizes in
all its appointments, events, and experiences; in that, has the design, or
final cause, revealed, by which all its distributions, laws, and historic
changes are determined and systematized."

Lifiaence of the Christian Ministry. 15

the whole makes itself felt in every part. Men will be
influenced by the Priesthood only as they accept its
authority to teach and guide, and are convinced of the
reality of its gifts and powers. To those who reject its
claims, it is not merely an idle, or a useless, or a dead
function, but an imposture. It is either God's ordinance
or man's device. There is no middle ground of partial
good and partial evil. Now, the Christian Priesthood
plants itself in all essential regards absolutely within the
domain of the supernatural. It sets forth a supernat-
ural Head and a supernatural Kmgdom. It announces
supernatural gifts and sanctions. It offers a supernatural
life to the individual, and affirms a supernatural life in
the Church. It works upon nature, but with motives,
instruments, and results that transcend nature. Cer-
tainly, such a power will tell upon men oidy as they
trust its authority and capacity to do what it professes.

Now, as matter of fact, it is largely hindered and
often nullified because it demands, from those on whom
it works, a faith which exists only partially in some
cases, and in many others not at all. There is an open
unbelief, that simply shuts its ears, and refuses to hear ;
and there is a secret distrust, that, in the minds that
cherish it, paralyzes the word and work of the Priest-
hood. This is at once the most and the least reli-
gious of generations. It is the most so if judged by its
interest in the discussion of religious questions, and the
least so if judged by its actual reception of the positive
teachings of religion. What faith there is, outside tlie
cii'cle of earnest believers, exists in all possible stages
of decay. There is the suspense of faith, the eclipse of

76 Ivflumce of the Christian Ministry.

faith, the atrophy of faith. Starting with the faith that
hangs dreamily on the edges of Christianity, too timid to
let go, and yet too weak to hold fast, we have all varie-
ties and stages of repudiation of the supernatural, down
to that which accepts the final thesis of the pagan ration-
alism of the Greek Sophists.-^ This temper of the time
envelops us like an atmosphere. If we take up the
public journals, it confronts us there in current notices
of men and things, in criticisms of books and periodicals,
in discussions of political and social questions, in anti-
Christian views of marriage and divorce, and conse-
quently of crimes against the purity of domestic life and

^ Justin Martyr says of the Sophists of his time, " They seek to con-
vince us that the Divinity extends his care to the great whole, and to
the several kinds, but not to me or to you, not to men as individuals.
Hence it is useless to pray to him, for every thing occurs according to the
unchangeable law of an endless cycle." (Nkander, vol. i. p. 9 ) There
could not be a better statement of the fundamental idea of that numer-
ous class of minds to-day who flavor their speech with some of the famil-
iar terms of a supernatural faith, and yet deny in detail every principle
of such a faith. They tell us of a religion which is to prove the solvent
and absorbent of all other religions, — a religion universal, philosophic,
scientific, content to dwell and to do its work within the domain of
nature; a religion without miracle, or incarnation, or resurrection, or new
birth, or new creation, or new heavens and new earth, but with certain
sublime sentiments of love, brotherhood, and worship; reciting the Orphic
hymns, the Sibylline verses, and the Sermon on the Mount with equal
veneration ; abandoning prayer, except as a passionate utterance of the
soul toward the unknown and unknowable, or as a means of keeping
before the soul a grand ideal, itself but a product and an idol of the soul;
recognizing no Providence that knows any thing of individuals, or cares
for them save as it cares for all being in its totality and through
changeless laws which gi-ind on as so many soulless wheels of a soulless
machine. Justin Martyr met the same sort of thinking in his day.
The tyjje has not changed. The religion of the pagan Sophists is the
religion of the Huxleys and Tyndalls of to-day.

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 77

the sacredness of home sympathies and obligations. But
above all does it confront us in their mode of handling
whatever relates to the Faith, Order, and Worship of the
Church ; to the mysteries and miracles of Religion ; to
the Christian doctrine of Prayer, of Divine Providence,
of the retribution of sin, and of the Revelation of God's
will. And then, if we examine the various schools of
fiction for the people, or the sensuous poetry intended
for the delectation of the select few, or many of the
widely circulated manuals of the sciences of mind and
matter, sadly abundant evidence will be found of the
pervading influence of this tone of thought. It is not
so noticeable in the older men and women of the time,
as in the young of both sexes, — a fact which plainly
discovers the drift of the reigning systems of education.
Now, in more ways than I can stop to mention, this
state of feeling, this style of culture, this bias of char-
acter, are hostile, habitually and often bitterly so, to the
work of the Ministry.

But, disastrous to the normal influence of the Ministry
as this may have been, it has hardly been more so than
certain unscriptural and unchurchly notions widely prev-
alent among large bodies of Christian believers. I shall
not attempt to trace the origin and history of these no-
tions, nor to point out their logical connection with the
systems of religious life and thought with which they
are almost universally associated. It is enough, perhaps,
to say that they are part of the unfortunate legacy from
sixteenth-century extremes, and have their common
I'oot in a theory of Christianity which makes much of
it as a force, and little of it as an institution ; which

78 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

magnifies the life of the individual, at the expense of the
life of the Body ; which, in cases of doubt, esteems the
verdict of each member of the Bod)^ as of equal, if not
superior, value to the verdict of the whole Body ; and
which, in effect, makes each member, in the last resort,
practically independent, not merely of the governing
authority, but, what is much more serious, of the life-
giving and life-feeding offices of the Body. Under this
theory, there is and there can be no proper Church life.
What seems such is only the nerveless and diluted prod-
uct of modes of Christian association, which, lacking all
continuous, corporate, historical life, fluctuate with the
circumstances of each generation. It is the inevitable
result of this view, to cleave Christianity in twain, and
then to array the parts which are alike divine in destruc-
tive antagonism. Now, there have been some theories
of religion which have been saved from their final con-
sequences, held midway in then* course of development,
by moral or intellectual instincts which work on in a
region too deep to be reached by the subtleties of schools,
or the narrownesses and anarchies of sects, or the vision-
ary guesses of speculative philosophy. Such has not been
true of this theory. The liberties of modern life have
given it full scope, while special causes have been at
work to stimulate its growth, and tempt it to push on
to the last consequences of its principles. Of all the
Christian Bodies in which this theory has prevailed,
there is not one, whatever may be its piety and. zeal,
which does not exhibit evident symptoms of disintegra-
tion. It is not, however, eff"ects in this direction that
it falls within my purpose to notice ; but, rather, those

Ivflaence of the Christian Ministry. 79

which detract from the dignity, assail the authority, and
undermine the influence, of the Priesthood.

There are three characteristic fruits of the general
view to which I have alluded. They are separable in
thought, but ordinarily go together in practice. The
mind that holds one will be apt to hold all. Theologi-
cally considered, they are only diiferent phases of the
same fundamental idea.

1. It is held, that, as Christianity saves the race by
saving the individuals of which the race is composed,
therefore its virtue is chiefly exhibited in a series of
individual redemptions ; the completeness of each being
promoted by contact with the ministrations of the
Church, though not necessarily prevented or utterly
defeated by the absence of such ministrations. Church-
membership is expedient, not essential. The Church
has nothing to offer the soul, which the soul may not
secure in some other way. The Sacraments are wit-
nesses and seals of something already done, or to be
done in the future. Baptism certifies the pious resolu-
tion, publishes and records the solemn pledge of the in-
dividual ; but of itself and in itself as Christ's ordinance
conveys no positive gift or blessing from Him. The
Sacrament of His Body and Blood is simply a memorial
which appeals through imagination and memory, and
the moral sensibilities, to the higher spiritual affections.
It is neither the channel through which life-giving grace
flows into the soul from without, nor the pledge to as-
sure the soul of any actual indwelling presence of its
Lord. Neither of these two Sacraments, nor any nor
all means of grace, do any thing which faith and repent-
ance could not do without them.

80 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

2. But as a corollary from this, the notion prevails
widely in the popular religion of our time, that the soul
has no wants which may not be satisfied by its immedi-
ate personal communion with God ; consequently, that
the Ministry in no way, except figuratively, mediates or
stands officially between God and the soul; that all
ministerial acts are merely supplementary to what each
soul can do for itself, and therefore are to be regarded
as a convenience, a help, a means of edification, but in
no respect essential to the soul's health and salvation.
Under this view, no one need be troubled about ques-
tions as to what constitutes valid Sacraments, or valid
ministrations of any kind. They are among the acci-
dents of a life which may be benefited by, but is not
dependent on them.^

3. But all who accept this definition, or one sub-
stantially like it, of the soul's relation to Christ and His
Church, fall inevitably into low views as to the source
and nature of the authority of the Sacred Office of the
Priesthood. They are quite consistent in treating as of
secondary importance, or with absolute indiff'erence, the
origin of its commission, or the means of transmitting
it from age to age. Very naturally they entertain no

1 " When a man has risen from his lower nature, so that he sees God
face to face ; when, by invisible truths, he learns to love God and man,
— it makes no difference to him whether he observes this and that custom
or ordinance, or not. He is not affected by baptism one way or the other.
He may take it, or he may neglect it. He may partake of the ordinance of
the Lord's Supper, or he may go without it. . . . In regard to all outside
things pertaining to religion, and to churches, and to the whole economy
of ordinances and doctrines, you may have them if you can make any thing
out of them, and if you do not want them you may go without them." —
Plymouth Pulpit, sermon, "The Liberty of the Gospel," vol, vi. No. 2.

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 81

higher idea of Ordination than as a formal recognition
by the people or by their Ministers of a call already
complete in its essentials, and of certain personal gifts
and acquirements which qualify for the exercise of the
Holy Office. To such minds, it savors of — if it is not
really — a superstitious fiction, to speak of Ordination
as Christ's own act, performed through His accredited
deputies, and conveying the gift of the Holy Ghost with
all its heavenly retinue of priestly, prophetic, and kingly
graces, — the gift without which no man, whatever his
learning, or genius, or piety, or fervor, may " take this
honor unto himself." If the Christian Ministry has
witnessed a decline of late years in its official influence
and in popular regard ; if it has, as some contend, suf-
fered in the common judgment of the people even unto
occasional degradation and contempt, — we need not go
beyond such opinions and such teachings for the cause
which has produced results so lamentable to religion,
and so disastrous to the work of those who, as an Apostle
declares, are to be so accounted " as the Ministers of
Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God."

Encompassed as we are, in these times, by errors so
hurtful to the moral sway of the Priesthood, it is well that
we not only recall, but that we be doubly persuaded of
the fact, that the primitive and traditional teaching of the
Church, even in its most positive form, goes no farther
than is necessary to protect from decay the powers of the
Holy Office, and to save from general disesteem its or-
dinary functions. That teaching, sharply cut in its out-
line and firmly grasped in its substance, is alike needful to
the people of God and to the Clergy themselves. As for

82 Injlaence of the Christian Ministry.

the people, it tells them these plain and salutary truths.
" What can be more evident than that we cannot be
obliged in conscience to own any for our spiritual gov-
ernors^ and pay them suitable regards of obedience and
submission, if they have not our Lord's commission to
govern us ? Whosoever pretends to act as a magistrate
in any temporal kingdom, without the king's commission,
is reckoned a usurper. If the standing of all other so-
cieties requires that subordinate governors should have
authentic commissions from the supreme head, how much
more must the standing of the Church require it?
Church governors are God's representatives ; they preach
in His name ; they make covenants, and append seals to
them, in His name ; in His name they receive into and
thrust out of the Communion of His Church. In a word,
in His name they must do every thing, if they would do
it warrantahly. But how can they do any thing in His
name? how can they represent him any manner of
way ? how can they in any sense be called His ambas-
sadors, His proxies. His vicegerents, — without His com-
mission?"^ But, if this commission be so necessary,
does it not seem equally so that there should be in the
Church some prescribed and authorized method for trans-
mitting it from age to age ? " There is not in the world
a greater presumption than that any should think to
convey a gift of God, unless by God and in God's way
he be appointed to do it." ^

1 Bishop Sage's Reasonableness of a Toleration of the Episcopate,
p. 208.

2 Bishop Taylor's Ductor Dubitautium, b. iii. ch. iv., Rule 12.

It might be inferred by reason alone, that such an institution as that
of rulers and ministers, intrusted with the gifts of grace, would necessarily

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 83

Let the people be settled and grounded in this prin-
ciple, and there will never be a question among them
who are the parties empowered to decide on doctrine, to
administer discipline, and to send forth laborers into the
vineyard.

To this principle of Catholic and Apostolic order there
is only this one alternative, which has its sad and im-
pressive illustrations on all sides of us.

" If the existence of a permanent ministerial succession
down from the mission of our Lord be denied, then there
can be but the mission of man ; and that mission can
ultimately be nothing else than the fact of a number of
persons agreeing to accept the ministry of one who con-
ceives that he has had an inward call to it. They may
ordain, they may institute, they may regulate and organ-
ize a well-ordered, well-officered body, a model of com-
pact government; yet all is the mere work of man, the

imply a succession unless the appointment were always to be miraculous.
*' We can conceive no other method by human agency possible without
being exposed to all the excesses of imposture and licentiousness. Such
is the nature of the Christian Priesthood, that it can only be continued in
that method which God has appointed for its continuance. This con-
sideration is of great importance, because the Priesthood is in its nature
& positive institution, that is, one which is of no significancy but as it is
of divine appointment, and can no otherwise be continued except as God
has appointed. Apostolical practice, therefore, under this view, shows us
what is the order or method that is appointed; but it is the nature of the
Priesthood that assures such order or method ia unalterable." — Law's
Reply to the Bishop of Bangor.

For, says Hooker, ' ' if the reason why things were instituted may be
known, and being known do appear manifestly to be of perpetual neces-
sity ; then are those things also perpetual, unless they cease to be effec-
tual unto that purpose for which they were at first instituted." —
Ecclesiastical Polity, b. iii. ch. x.

84 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

creation of his will, the platform of his architectural
ingenuity; and all will sooner or later be resolved into
its original elements of his self-will."^ j~-

But a clear perception of and firm hold upon this prin-
ciple are as needful to the Clergy as to the laity. On
no lower ground can they hope to maintain permanently
their due place in the reverence and affection of their
flocks, or to have acknowledged by them the dignity and
necessity of their vocation. This question of a properly
authenticated commission is too serious and too prac-
tical to be left to antiquarians and theorizers. It in-
volves much more than the continuity of history and
the truth of the records of the past, — even the estima-
tion in which the Priest of God shall hold his own gifts
and prerogatives ; the temper of mind with which he
shall habitually contemplate his work, and confront the
trials and failures which will attend it. It is only saying
what experience and the nature of the case amply prove,
to affirm that no Priest is likely to be to his people, or to
demand from them, what he ought, whose call and mis-
sion rest upon mere sentiment or inward conviction, how-
ever benevolent and sincere, or upon a sense of personal
fitness, or upon popular choice. To be and to do what
is required of him, to rise to the highest grade of moral
power in his work, to feel the noblest and most unfail-
ing stimulus to exertion, to bring strength out of weak-
ness, to be ready for self-abasement and yet not unwilling
to be personally prominent in all duties and offices of
public administration, to endure hardness, to live near
the source of true consolation and courage under disap-

1 Bishop Hall's Episcopacy by Divine Right.

Injiaence of the Christian Ministry. 85

pointments never wanting in the most snccessful career,
to combine the softness and meekness of the saint with
the aggressive boldness and energy of the Christian
soldier, — to do all this, and thus to fill up the ideal
of the Christian Priest, the feet of Christ's Ministers
must be planted firmly on the rock of a veritable war-
rant and commission from God provable by plain historic
testimony. He alone is sufficient for these things, whose
life is animated by the faith that the man whom God
prompts and palpably commands, he also will enable.^

1 In what has been said on this point, there is no room for the contro-
versy sometimes evoked by the mere naming of the doctrine of " Apostolic
succession." The truth of a transmitted commission has a practical value
■which is independent of all controversy ; and for the i-eason that it does
not t'.iiii on the necessity of the succession, but on the historical fact that
it exi<ix. This view has been set forth by W. Archer Butler with his
characteristic eloquence and vigor. " j\Ien have dared to speak slightingly
of this conception of a transmitted commission. I appeal from hearts
imbittered by controversial disputings, to every unprejudiced mind, when
I ask. Is there not, after all, something unutterably awful in the thought
of a mission inherited thus directly from the Incarnate God ? When, in-
stead of the vague inference that guides the proof of a commission in the
utility of the office or the necessity of the time, the Minister, however humble,
can actually trace along the page of history the unbroken succession that
ends in the mighty Twelve and their mightier Master ; when the voice
that bade him tend the flock of Christ is felt to be the echo — after many
a reflection, indeed, yet still the echo — of the voice which spoke on the
evening of the resurrection, *' Receive ye the Holy Ghost," and that,
again, itself an echo from the central recesses of the Father's eternity ;
when thus, by no ideal connection, however true to the meditative reason,
but by plain and tangible links, we see ourselves bound to the living and
suffering Christ, — I ask you, does it not give an impression o^ reality, of
awful and awakened reality, to our whole oflace ? Does it iiot seem to
bring Christ fearfully near us ? Must not a man thus empowered feel
himself sent with a force and directness nothing else can supply, charged
with a work from which he dare not withdraw, and ' straitened till it be
accomplished'?" — Visitation Sermon by W. Archer Butler (2 Cor.
iii. 6).

86 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

But another prolific source of hinderance to the Min-
istry has been the enormous development of sectism in
modern Christendom. It is no longer necessary to prove
the evils it inflicts as though any one denied them, or
to expose them as though there were a disposition any-
where to conceal them. We no longer hear the apolo-
gies once so familiar. Happily, though the evils are not
diminished, nor the power which creates them abated,
it is a great gain to know that they are recognized and
deplored as among the bitter fruits of the confusion and
license consequent on the great religious upheaval of
the sixteenth century. They who are not yet prepared
to acknowledge that the rending of Christ's Body is a
crime, and that organized sects are in their final results
organized sins, are, at least, under the pressure of expe-
rience, forced to admit that they are mistakes, and that
by them the work of the Church is sadly obstructed and
in many cases utterly paralyzed. Time was when the
zeal, energy, enterprise, and competitive rivalries which
they generated were themes of praise and admiration,
and the eyes of good men seemed to be closed to conse-
quences which have since been proved to be inevitable.
But it is now seen that their zeal has not been accord-
ing to knowledge, and therefore largely misdirected;
that their energy and enterprise have been attended
with a destructive friction and a melancholy wastage of
all kinds of power ; and, finally, that the rivalries long
ago lost all that is wholesome in the feeling of emula-
tion, and degenerated into painful and sometimes scan-
dalous strifes for denominational fame and triumph.

Now, whatever the hurt done to the Church as a

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 87

whole, or to any of its parts and functions, by the sect
principle, it can scarcely be doubted that the Ministry
has been the chief sufferer. This will appear from the
following considerations : —

The Ministry is, by its constitution and appointment,
the most demonstrative, obvious, and continuous means
of contact between the Church and its members, also
between the Church and the world. It is representative
officially and actually of all that the Church is and
does. It lives and works, teaches and guides, serves
and suffers, in Christ's stead. It concentrates in itself,
in vhtue of its mission from the ever-living Head, all
powers and gifts of reconciliation between God and
man. It is the living tongue to the written Word, the
voice of deputies and ambassadors sent from the court
of heaven to a world dead in trespasses and sins ; calling
upon it to accept the life which the Lord and Giver of
life offers it through "the spirit-bearing organs" of the
Church, — the Body of Christ. It is the pastorate which
was ordained to keep alive among men, not merely the
memory of the Great Shepherd of souls, but a sense of
the very presence and operation among them of the
Divine power and love of His eternal Pastorate.

Whatever, then, assails the unity of the one Body, the
unity of the one Faith, the unity of the one Spirit, cor-
respondingly assails the Priesthood in the highest range
of its influence. AVhatever divides Christ, divides every
thing that flows from Him, and especially ever}' ordinance,
every institution, purposely created to represent Him. It
is and must be true, then, that the Priesthood has been
shorn of its normal power over men, and of the reverence

88 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

and affection which it has a right to demand from them,
to the full extent that sectism has injured and marred
the relations of Christ and his Church to the world they
came to redeem.

But let us glance briefly at some special aspects of this
evil. One disastrous effect of the prodigious outgrowth
of sect-life in recent times has been, to contract more and
more the boundaries of universally accepted truth, and
to expand the margin of doubtful or clashing opinions.
It is one of the most painful features of the times, to
see how steadily and insidiously this double process has
been going on ; how the area of faith has been yielding
inch by inch, first to the encroachments of controversy,
and then to the settled usurpations of doubt. Some
minds have, in this way, parted with so much that they
were once taught to believe needful to their souls' health
and salvation, that they begin to question what will be
left. One limb after another of the body of the great
Christian tradition has been cast to the lions of unbelief,
until the quiet and simple folk of the Kingdom are forced
to ask : What and where are the foundations which
cannot be uptorn \ Where is the barrier which shall
at last hold in check these conflicting surges of dissent
and secession % Now, in no direction does this state of
things tell more powerfully for evil than along the whole
circuit of priestly labor. It chills the fervor and ties
up the tongue of the Preacher, because he knows that
they who listen have been inoculated with the spirit of
challenge and denial. It cuts under and undermines
the Christian nurture of the young in the family, the
school, and the Church ; for they too, though they fail

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 89

to catch the flavor and virtue of the Church's work in
their souls, will not fail to absorb into then- life-blood
the latent infection of a possible uncertainty clinging to
what they have been taught as most certain truth. The
ethics of the Gospel, moreover, suffers with its doctrine ;
and the Clergy are deprived of the weight of authority
which should belong to them as public teachers of moral-
ity, when it is widely suspected or believed that in mat-
ters of faith they set forth as the doctrines of God what
are only the commandments of men, or the opinions of
a school, or the shibboleths of a sect.

Again, the issues of the sect spirit affect the Clergy
injuriously in other ways. If those issues impair the
moral tone and weaken the nerve-power of their office,
they work precisely the same results on their personal
character, their Christian manhood, theu' inner religious
life. The comprehensive soul shrinks into narrow
methods and narrow aims. The large mind, that should
have fed habitually on sublimities of thought, work, and
worship worthy of the grandeur of the whole Catholic
Body, is dwarfed into an adroit and disciplined organ of
the peculiarities of a sect ; the tender and loving heart,
that should have expanded without limit under the
boundless love and tenderness of its Lord, pines and wilts
under the intense but unhealthy heat of sectarian zeal.
This is an effect of which comparatively little note is
taken, and yet it is one of grave importance. Our libra-
ries abound in biographies of strong and learned and
earnest Christian men, which no thoughtful reader can
go over without being struck with the cramp and chill
and deterioration inflicted upon them by the work and
training of a sect.

90 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

And then, how can we sufficiently estimate the loss of
influence to the Clergy produced by the same cause
through wastage of gifts and resources of every kind \
Who shall measure the time, the talent, the learning,
the power of all sorts, given up to religious disputes in-
tended to establish the credentials of rival bodies, or to
snatch a brief triumph over a defeated foe which served
only to bring forth a harvest of conceit, prejudice, and
bitterness, and then lapsed forever into nothingness and
oblivion ? This, however, is a side of the subject which
needs only to be named, to open up a very world of
illustrations and inferences too evident to need any
mention here.

In a previous place, I alluded to the evidences of the
decline of Clerical influence over academic and popular
education in Europe and this Country. This is not due
so much to the hostility of the State, as to disagreements
and divisions among Christians themselves. The State
is not, as some argue, necessarily irreligious because it
is secular. There is a profound instinct in all wise civil
governments, which recognizes and is glad to receive the
powerful support of religion in the maintenance of
rightful authority. This feeling may not find formal
utterance in organic laws, or written constitutions, or
special statutes, or in public proclamations from chief
magistrates ; but it is nevertheless a power in the body
politic, which rulers are not likely to ignore or to de-
spise. It has in more than one case, in late years, been
strong enough to hold in check wayward statesmen who,
in view of the confusion, not to say anarchy, now pre-
vailing in the relations of religion to the State, felt

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 91

quite safe in proposing educational schemes with a pro-
nounced atheistic flavor. No modern State has been,
or is now, or is likely to become, wantonly infidel. The
risk is too great. Deliberately and under the forms of
law to assume such an attitude, would be to cast to the
winds the strongest of all the admitted securities of peace
and order, to say nothing of the inevitable damage that
would be inflicted upon all social and material interests.
Accordingly in no case, it is believed, except where the
preposterous claims of ultramontane Popery have been
so pushed as to become a just occasion of suspicion
and fear, has any living State repudiated the help and
sympathy of Christianity, or declined to consider, and
where practicable to act upon, all judicious overtures of
its representatives looking to the preservation of its in-
fluence over the education of the masses. The difficulty
is not altogether in the State, but largely among the
Clergy. The State has been in this matter a homo-
geneous unit, ready to consider any scheme for combin-
ing religion ^vith education which could command a
substantially unanimous assent among Christians. But
Christians have been irreconcilably divided ; they have,
both here and abroad, been unable to agree upon any
definite plan to be recommended to the State. And
thus the sorest of calamities has come to pass. Religion,
ordained by Him who created it not more truly than
He created the complete being of man, to be the inner
life, the saving virtue, of all human education, wanders
among our State schools, and looks forward to the same
fate in some countries of Europe, as an alien and an out-
cast ; and this simply because its friends cannot agree as

92 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

to the dress it shall wear, and as to the message it shall
deliver. No more lamentable, no more perilous result
of the divisions of Christendom, can be named or im-
agined ; and very naturally no class is so disastrously
affected by it as the Clergy, — educators ex officio, called,
trained, set apart by solemn commission, to deal with
humanity in all its parts and aspects, required as matter
of sacred obligation to uphold and teach all that is pur-
est and best in character and life, and amid the supreme
difficulty of their task as teachers and fashioners of in-
tellect, conscience, and will, authorized of God, as His
own deputies, to draw upon Heaven's treasury of super-
natural helps : and yet here, as the bitter fruit of re-
ligious dissensions, practically disabled from wielding
any portion of the vast machinery provided by the
nation's wealth for the culture of the nation's intelli-
gence, and the development of the nation's life !

I come now to speak of still another, and, if possi-
ble, more serious injury, done to the Ministry by the
sect spirit ; and this, too, in a sphere of work around
which gather the most momentous responsibilities. The
Church, in the complete scope of its work, may be said
to be charged with a twofold stewardship, — that of
building itself up from within, disciplining and ripening
in the graces of the divine life its own members, and that
of delivering unto those who are without, and especially
unto the heathen, the message of its Head to a dying
world. The one is its internal and domestic mission,
the other its external. But what is true of the Body is
true of its officers. Now, to what extent the Ministry
has been hindered and thwarted in this external mis-

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 93

sion to heathen races, God only knows. AVe can judge
only by such limited and partial consequences as have
revealed themselves on the surface. But these are so
grave, as, when we think of them, to oblige us to pause
in grief and astonishment. Sect divisions, sect competi-
tions and antagonisms, are bad enough where the Church
is firmly established, and enjoys the support of the cus-
toms and traditions of centuries. But they are immeas-
urably worse in regions where it has only entered in, but
has not taken root : where it offers itself to races sunk
in darkness and barbarism, as a new and original power
given of God to lift them up into the blessed unity of
the gospel, and the glorious liberty of the Incarnate
Lord ; and yet finds itself, in the presence of those
races, half paralyzed by alienations and oppositions bred
in its own bosom. The missionary work of the Ministry
during the past hundred years has in many respects
been characterized by a certain grandeur of aim and
achievement. Its record is full of labors which would
have reflected honor on the Church in its best ages.
It has been abundant in zeal, hardship, self-denial,
courage, patience, and martyrdom. It has shown an
unfailing readiness to confront with bravery and forti-
tude the perils of all climates, the privations of all lands,
and the hostilities and obstinacies of all forms of pagan-
ism. And yet it is the settled and universal conviction
of Christians themselves, that the results attained are so
utterly disproportioned to the vast resources employed,
as to excite not merely disappointment but mortification.
As to the cause of it there is little or no disagreement,
as well among the friends and supporters of Roman

94 Ivjiuence of the Christian Ministry.

Catholic missions (some of these now more than three
hundred years old) as among those of Reformed Catho-
lic and Protestant missions. Missionary teachers, mis-
sionary priests, and missionary bishops, all of whatever
name, tell the same story of hinderance and partial
defeat, of shame and bitterness of soul, arising from sec-
tarian rivalries and collisions.^ Thus the Ministry has

^ " In the East India, for instance, twenty different churches and sects
are laboring to convert the Hindus; each endeavoring to encroach upon
the rest, destroy their settlements, and gain over their proselytes. And
what is true there is true elsewhere: so that Christianity presents itself
to the intelligent heathen under the repulsive aspect of division and un-
certainty. In Tahiti the French Government, years ago, took possession
of the Protestant missions, and handed them over to French Catholic
emissaries. In Madagascar the emissaries of the rival churches, (Ro-
man) Catholic and Protestant, brought matters to such a pass that King
Radema oscillated for a year between them, and when he was murdered
each party charged the other with the crime ; and the mutual hatred and
endeavors to supplant one another still continue. In 1845 the Protestant
missionaries were ejected from Fernando Po by the Spaniards, who laid
claim to the island. That is the spectacle presented by Christians to the
gaze of the heathen world. Christ says that every kingdom divided
against itself shall be destroyed. We understand the failure of mission-
aries. And that is not all. "What is to Christians the holiest and most
venerable of all places, the birth-land of our faith, where Christ taught,
lived, and suffered, is now the meeting-place of churches that hate one
another. Greeks, Russians, Latins, Armenians, Copts, Jacobites, Prot-
estants of various names, all have their fortresses and intrenchments,
and are intent on making fresh conquests for the rival churches To the
shame of the Christian name, Turkish soldiers have to interfere between
rival parties of Christians, who would else tear one another to pieces in
the holy places; and the Pacha holds the key of the Holy Sepulchre.
The strife between Latins and Greeks for the possession of the chapel in
1852 was the immediate occasion of the Crimean war.

" Truly every one who values the name of Christian should daily pray
to God for a fresh outpouring of the spirit of unity, that we may keep
a new Pentecost of enlightenment, peace, and brotherly love." — DiJL-
linger's Lectures on the Re-union of the Churches.

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 95

been crippled and driven back, ay, smitten with weak-
ness and dismay, in its attempts to obey the great com-
mission of its Lord to go forth and disciple all nations.
And thus, too, as the necessary consequence, the Church,
though it has sown in tears, has failed to reap in joy.

But, of all the causes which have helped to weaken
and obstruct the proper influence of the Priesthood,
none has wrought more powerfully than decay of disci-
pline in the Church. The relaxation of dogmatic belief
is not a more marked feature of our present Christianity
than the relaxation of Church discipline. The two have
a very intimate connection, and it is only natural that
they should advance pari passu. Discipline has steadily
declined among all branches of the Catholic Body, and,
when the facts are remembered, to a degree most singu-
lar among the various organizations whose origin falls
within the post-Reformation period. Roman Catholic
discipline has fallen off notoriously in most Roman Cath-
olic countries. The old system in its main provisions is
still in use. It is very effective over the Clergy, holding
them sternly in its grasp, and causing the rank and file
to feel that death is to be preferred to any form of
apostasy. But among the laity it is another matter. It
is well known that in Italy, Spain, France, Germany,
and Austria, and especially in Romish populations in
North and South America, the men, particularly, can be
counted by millions who submit outwardly to the forms
and requirements of ecclesiastical discipline, but in-
wardly despise and reject them ; while other millions
can be found, who, in spite of the hidden power of
" latticed ecclesiastics " and the impressive demonstrations

96 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

of Pope and Council, openly repudiate the very points
of faith and obedience which it is the primary object of
discipline to enforce and preserve. Regarded as a sys-
tem for controlling the opinions and conduct of men in
the interest of an absolute Church authority, there can
be no question that Romish discipline is almost a mka-
cle of ingenuity. It has been slowly evolved from the
experience of centuries. Its anatomy of human nature
has left nothing to be discovered. Its diagnosis of
spiritual disease is remarkable for its thoroughness and
subtlety ; while those who work the system are not
allowed to touch it until they have been well instructed
in the knowledge of casuistry as a distinct science or
rather art. And, then, besides, there is a veil of secrecy
thrown over the working of the system in individual
cases, which greatly heightens its power in dealing with
both the strong and the weak points of those subjected
to its sway. But matchless as the Roman discipline is
in ripeness of experience, ingenuity of adaptation, and
fertility of resources, it has not proved itself a match
for the relaxation and license, as some will say, or the
emancipation and liberty, as others will put it, of this
age. The evidences of its diminished influence are to
be found in every civilized country. Votaries in abun-
dance it still has, and over these the old sway continues
unabated ; but over vast multitudes of nominal adher-
ents who swell the tables of Romish statistics, it is
steadily declining both in actual power and in public
estimation.

Substantially the same may be said of the present
condition of discipline among the leading Protestant

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 97

Bodies, all of which started originally with the avowed
purpose of tightening up and purifying the Christian
profession beyond what the average of Catholic Christi-
anity had deemed possible or necessary. It were need-
less to go into particulars, or to cite the numerous
corroborative statements that might be found in the offi-
cial documents of Synods, Conferences, and Assemblies.
The fact is notorious, and it is spoken of in terms of
mournful regret, that these Bodies have declined utterly
from what they regard as the once healthy stringency
of control over the faith and morals of their members.

As for the American Catholic Church, it is in some
respects scarcely, if at all, better off. It has kept the
faith sharply and firmly ; but this has been done, not
by the discipline of the Church as technically defined,
but in spite of its growing relaxation and inefficiency.
The faith among us has enjoyed a certain Divine guar-
anty of perpetuity by the maintenance of Apostolic
order, which, in a large sense of the word, must be
regarded as the corner-stone at once of the Church's
discipline, and the Church's witness to the truth. And
then it has derived an almost equal advantage from
the fact, that, amid the changes and the tumults of
these later times, it has been safely anchored to a per-
manent liturgical worship, and thus rescued from the
errors incidental to the fluctuating expositions of indi-
vidual teachers. But as regards any habitual and ac-
knowledged disciplinary restraint upon the every-day
life, the current morals of its people, it is no better
off than the several Denominations, and much worse off
than Romanism.

98 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

If we turn to the Church of England, whose strength
and weakness repeat themselves of necessity, more or less,
in her lineal descendant, we find, that notwithstanding
she has all the appliances and forms of discipline, and
has given all through her practical theology the strong-
est witness to the indispensable need of discipline to a
living Church, discipline itself has in fact fallen away
into almost hopeless confusion and weakness. Whatever
old precedents and customs and even statutes may say to
the contrary, there is no discipline for the laity. Under
the broad segis of membership in her as the National
Church, every man does, so far as law goes, what is
right in his own eyes. There is practically no authority
to call any layman to account for what he thinks or
does in the sphere of religion. And yet, though he
may deny all amenability to discipline, he may act as one
of the Church's masters, as a steward of her revenues,
as a ruler of her Clergy, as a judge of her doctrines
and practices, as a member of her Vestries, Synods, and
Church Courts. Nowhere else has the Church and
State connection hatched such a. brood of evils as in
this matter of discipline. The theory on which this
connection rests obliged the Church to surrender what
never can be given up without mortal injury, — the
right to govern herself. The Church still adheres to
the compact, though the State has in many ways set it
at naught. The Church is bound, the State practically
free. The Church, having so long intrusted her proper
work of discipline to the State, now finds herself con-
fronted by these two mortifying facts: (1) Long disuse
of the powers of self-government has created a timid

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 99

reluctance, if not an actual incapacity, to resume them;
(2) The State refuses any longer to wield them, and is
not ready to restore them. And the result is, there is
nothing to forbid the unbelieving and the dissolute, vio-
lators of her laws and despisers of her doctrine, from
not only calling themselves but acting as her members.
There are, in fact, no tests of Church-membership that
can be enforced against such as choose to resist them.

AVith the Clergy, the case is different. They make
subscriptions and promises ; they assume in various ways
obligations which bind them as the laity cannot be bound.
And yet in practice, so tedious and costly is the admin-
istration of discipline in the Church of England, that
there is great reluctance among the authorities to pro-
ceed against an offending Clergyman, except it be a
case of such extreme unsoundness of teaching, or such
gross departure from the Ritual of the Church, or such
manifest immorality, as to give it the character of a
public scandal.

With us, there is no lack of discipline for the Clergy
in theory or in fact. A singularly large proportion of
our Canons, General and Diocesan, is devoted to setting
forth the mind and will of the Church on this subject.
Offences are carefully specified, and the forms of judi-
cial proceedings are plain and easy. The ecclesiastical
courts being entirely independent of State regulation, and
amenable to civil jurisdiction only when they violate the
Church laws by which they profess to be governed, they
are simple in their constitution and inexpensive in their
administration. Under our system, it is difficult neither
to enforce nor to obtain justice. The only anomaly in it

100 Injiuence of the Christian Ministry.

is the absence of courts of appeal. The trials in the
American Church have been surprisingly few when we
consider how numerous and widely scattered the Clergy
have been, and, owing to the remoteness of the central
governing authorities, how great has been the temptation
to substitute license for liberty and self-will for obedience.
So far as the Clergy are concerned, it cannot be ques-
tioned that a commendable vigilance has.been exercised
in maintaining purity of faith and morals. The one
grievous fault of our discipline, as already intimated, is
in its loose and inefficient dealings with the laity. In
this direction little more is attempted than can be accom-
plished by pastoral advice, warning, and rebuke. Sus-
pension from the privilege of the Sacrament is provided
for in the case of notorious evil livers ; but practically
the scandal must be very great which induces a Eector
to publish and enforce the suspension of a communicant.
It is the general habit, to be ignorant of what is going
on in the private lives of Church-members, and to trust
to the purity and soundness of the individual conscience
as a safeguard against offences worthy of discipline.
But clearly such ignorance is tolerable only because of
the prevailing slackness, and such trust is proved to
be most unsafe by the increasing demoralization of the
average type of Christian character.

And this leads me to observe, that there is no more
suggestive or profitable study, in these times, than that
which leads us to compare the discipline of the early
with that of the modern Church. This alone can open
our eyes to the extent of our degeneracy in this par-
ticular, and to one of the chief causes of the diminished

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 101

influence of the Clergy and of the slow progress of the
Church of the nineteenth century as compared with that
of the first three centuries. Even a hurried glance at
the history of the primitive Church shows us that the
Christians of that period grasped firmly and acted reso-
lutely upon all the fundamental principles of ecclesias-
tical discipline, as being one of the necessary marks of
a true Church. No special guidance or inspiration was
needed ; for common-sense and universal experience
taught them (1) that no society or association could live
without its own laws and regulations, and without an
inherent authority and conceded power to enforce them ;
and (2) that the privilege of membership in any cor-
porate body involved the duty of obedience. But they
knew also that the Church, as a Divine institution,
organized for the noblest and most difficult of ends,
deriving its charter and constitution from Jesus Christ
its living Head, and intended to outlive the ages, was
designed to be the most compact and eff'ective of all
possible corporations or kingdoms. There was nothing
necessary to the perpetuity of any secular corporation,
that was not far more so to the perpetuity of this. If
societies and states must have rules and laws to define
and enforce the conditions and duties of membership,
the terms of admission and exclusion, the punishments
of the evil and the rewards of the good ; much more
must the very Body of Christ have them, — the Body
whose members were to be as salt to the world's cor-
ruption, and as lights set upon a hill amid the world's
darkness ; the Body whose purity was to clothe aU
evil with a darker hue, whose heavenly order and

102 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

concord were to rebuke the anarchy of a world lying
in wickedness, and whose matchless standard of conduct
was to lift sins which the world winks at, to the rank
of grievous crimes against God and man. And all this
was intensified vastly in their minds by the fact that the
governors of this Body were to rule in the name and
authority of Jesus Christ, and that the members of it, if
they offended against each other, would offend chiefly
against Him.

Acting upon these principles they believed the Church
to possess a wide discretion in its disciplinary legislation.
Clearly quite unknown to them was the narrow theory
urged by some, that its power to enact laws was limited
by the express or implied directions of the New Testa-
ment. With loyal reverence they obeyed Apostolic
precedent where it plainly touched the case in hand;
but where what was on record in the brief history of
Christian discipline, such as synodical judgments, or
the rulings and sentences of individual Apostles, did not
help them to meet new difficulties and exigencies, they
seem not to have hesitated in accepting the guidance
of a sanctified yeason. And this they did on the broad
ground that the Church has authority from its Head to
do whatever is needful to its welfare and efficiency, if
it do not contradict the spirit or the teaching of God's
written Word.-^ When, in the great forty days, Christ
taught the disciples the things pertaining to the King-
dom of God, we must believe that he could not have
omitted to instruct them in the elementary principles

1 This is the ground which the great Hooker defends with such master-
ly reasoning and profound learning in his Ecclesiastical Polity.

Influence of the Christian Ministry/. 103

of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. These principles, fii'st
applied by the inspired Apostles, were handed on, and,
with the promised illumination of the Holy Ghost, were
gradually wrought up, under the pressure of ever-vary-
ing contingencies, into a more or less complete digest
of Church law, which has descended to us as a precious
inheritance, and which, in every intervening age, has
given tone and shape to all sound ecclesiastical legis-
lation.

But what is of quite as much consequence to observe
is the impartial and resolute administration of the early
discipline, whatever may have been its details. Abun-
dant illustrations are at hand from the practice both of
the Apostles and of the Church of the Fathers. The
rich and the poor, the titled and the obscure, rulers
and subjects, the teachers and the taught, transgressors
of every grade, sinners against truth, sinners against
purity, honesty, and charity, fornicators, covetous men,
idolaters, railers, drunkards, extortioners, litigators in
pagan courts, even the idle and the lazy, were made to
feel the presence and power of the law, and to dread
its penalties. Here and there all through the life of
St. Paul, whose mission lay among the Gentile Chris-
tians, we light upon evidences of his energy and rigor
as a disciplinarian. Much as he loved the brethren,
ready as he was to sacrifice himself for them, tenderly,
importunately, as he entreated offenders to turn from
the evil of their ways, he did not hesitate to strike when
the blow was needed, and with a vigor and decision
which drove into submission or into banishment all
hardened violators of the Church's rules. And then

104 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

later on in the sub- Apostolic Church how vigilant, firm,
and discriminating was the penitential system it estab-
lished ! Offenders were not massed together and treated
as though there were no gradations of guilt and punish-
ment. They were carefully distributed into four classes
or grades of penitents ; each with its own badge of dis-
grace, its own mode of purgation and restoration. To
all this was added the most patient care and oversight
in regard to Christians who had lapsed under the terrors
of persecution, or the enticements of ordinary tempta-
tion. The whole attitude of the Church in this matter
of discipline was, indeed, that of the Good Shepherd
who knoweth his sheep and is known of them, and who
is perpetually mending the fold wherever broken down,
and guarding it wherever threatened by the wolf of an
ungodly world.

But here the question arises : Why did the Church
so sadly fall away from that primitive and illustrious
example of fidelity? How did it happen that she so
censurably relaxed her discipline for reclaiming sinners
and correcting vice \ Why this loss of vigilant super-
vision, and consequent loss of moral power? Strangely
enough, there are those who account what the Church
generally considers a deterioration, as a higher develop-
ment. The advocates of " broad" or "liberal" Chris-
tianity, so far from regretting, rejoice over this decay
of ecclesiastical discipline. They find in it the signs of
growth in the corporate body, and of emancipation for
the individual conscience from the restraints of arbitrary
authority. They accept it as proving the overthrow of
sacerdotalism. They philosophize on the matter very

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 105

much as might be expected from those who utterly
misconceive the nature, the work, and the purpose of
the Church of God. Their reading of history, and their
reasoning upon its facts, seem to have conducted them
to these three resuUs : —

(1) That the discipHne which was necessarily minute
and severe when Christianity was making its way against
the aggressive and persecuting opposition of the old
pagan order with all its affiliated vices and corruptions,
was no longer indispensable, or even desirable, when
that opposition ceased, and the Church obtained general
recognition.

(2) That Christianity assumed the education and di-
rection of the individual conscience when it was in its
spiritual childhood, and therefore demanded tutors and
governors and stringent penitential arrangements to
pilot it through the entanglements growing up on all
sides out of the intermixtures of the old heathen and
the new Christian conditions of life ; but that now, inas-
much as the individual conscience has developed into
the ripeness of sphitual manhood, and has put away
childish things, it is abundantly able to stand alone,
and ought to do so for its own health ; dispensing with
props and guides and restraints once acknowledged to
be necessary.

(3) That we are now living under an order, — the
precious fruit of all past progress, — which has lifted
the individual out of slavish subordination to political
and ecclesiastical corporations, and, in every way, made
him a larger and more self-centred being ; and that, as
a consequence, he has acquked the right and the habit

106 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

of self-control ; and hence, that he no longer requires
what the Church once so efficiently and abundantly
supplied. Doubtless there is a degree of truth in this
view. It sets forth, in a very partial and misleading
way, one side of the result which has been produced by
the Christian training of mankind. But there can be
just as little doubt among sober minds, who make room
for all the facts of the case, that, conceding to this view
all that it can really claim, we are very far from the con-
clusion that it supersedes or diminishes the permanent
necessity of some authoritative and thoroughly enforced
system of discipline in the Church over its individual
members. To declare the contrary, would be to declare
obsolete one of the sovereign attributes of the Church,
than which none enters more essentially into its original
constitution. It may be admitted, that under Christian
civilization the individual has been wonderfully advanced
in culture, prerogative, and opportunity, and that an
importance now attaches to the obscurest member of
society never dreamed of by the far-off ancients. But
unless we are to fall into the delusion of a shallow
optimism, we cannot admit that man has now reached,
or that he is likely to reach, in this world, a condition
which, either in Church or State, will enable him to
dispense with an external discipline for his sins and
infirmities, or with governors authorized to enforce it.

But turning from these sophisms I proceed to notice
some of the facts of history which help us to account
for the Church's decline in discipline. These have been
stated with clearness and cogency by an able English
writer. Among many causes more or less operative, he

Influence of the Christian Ministry. 107

names three. The first " was the policy by which the
Papacy reduced the Bishops to nullities. By continually
withdrawing people from canonical obedience to the
Bishops, the Pope rendered them useless in the man-
agement of their dioceses. Wherever an appeal to
the Koman court lay, the Bishops naturally avoided the
contest. Such things, as now, cost money ; and the
largest purse was sure to win the day, for at Rome at
that time every thing was, as the old proverb had it,
put to sale." " A second cause was the power of the
nobles, who not only led vicious lives themselves, but
encouraged vice in their followers. Holy Church pre-
vailed not against them, save in the hour of death, when
a life of sin was scarcely redeemed by cessions of broad
lands, which at last evoked the Statute of Mortmain."
" A third cause was the fusing the civil and ecclesias-
tical judges together, which had much the same look
as when a clerical magistrate sentences a laborer for
poaching, or interferes between labor and capital, or
takes a strong line in politics. Then came what was
called the handing over ecclesiastical offenders to the
secular arm, and the burning of heretics. What seemed
to be an augmentation of strength, was really a confes-
sion of weakness on the part of the Church. At no
period of her existence was the Church so powerful in
the service of God, as when she relied on her own
intrinsic ability to deal with evil ; and at no period of
her life has she shown such weakness, as when she
looked to kings and princes for aid and maintenance." ^
Externally, the Church in this country, from a period

^ Ecclesiastical Essays.

108 Influence of the Christian Ministri/.

coeval with the beginning of our nationality, has been
entirely free to legislate on all matters affecting its cor-
porate interests or its control over its members. There
was nothing in the way, so far as the State was con-
cerned, to forbid its resumption, to the fullest extent,
of the primitive discipline. But internally its life was
bound hand and foot by the traditions and usages of the
Mother Church. It accepted without challenge, almost
without consciousness, as part of its inheritance, the
chronic and enfeebling laxity of discipline which had
grown up in and fastened upon the Church of England
under the influence of various causes (some of which
have been named) developed in pre-Heformation times.
As we have seen, this laxity no longer exists in regard
to the Clergy. The Church has resumed its full author-
ity over them in faith and morals, and has embodied
this authority in a system of discipline which leaves
little to be desired either in its canonical arrangement
or in the moderated rigor of its administration. But
with regard to the laity, the discipline, if such it can be
called, of the American Church, is practically on a level
with that of the English Church ; and the fact that it
is so is fraught with mischief and hinderance to the
Ministry in the following ways : —

(1) The Ministry is brought into discredit by its
great claims and its small performance ; by the substan-
tial powers theoretically conveyed to it when receiving
its official warrant to teach and rule in the Church of
Christ, and by the very imperfect and often absurdly
weak exercise of those powers under the stringent limit-
ations imposed by custom and by the temper of the

Influence of the Christian Ministrj/. 109

times. The Ordinal presents an inspiring outline of au-
thoritative guidance and supervision. Its noble words,
borrowed mainly from Scripture, have the ring of real
power. They stir the heart of the waiting candidate
for the honors and the dangers of the Holy Office. They
speak to the people in tones that cannot be mistaken.
They bear with them the breath of the Holy Ghost, and
the divine prerogatives of a Kingdom which is not of this
world. They revive the memory of what an Apostolic
Ministry once was and did. Somehow the glory and
might of a great spiritual ancestry, stretching back to the
day of Pentecostal gifts, overshadows them. They could
not have been placed where they are, except by men
whose souls had been baptized into the spirit of our
Lord's commission to His Apostles, and to all whom
through them and their successors He would be pleased
to send out into the vineyard unto the end of the world.
It will be recollected in what solemn and pointed lan-
guage the Bishop is instructed by the Church to address
the candidates for the Holy Office of Priesthood, before
putting the series of questions which compass the whole
round of official and private duty. And then, after the
Veni Creator Spirifus and the prayer of thanksgiving, fol-
low the momentous words : " Receive the Holy Ghost for
the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God,
now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.
Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and
whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be
thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and His
Holy Sacraments : In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

110 Injiuence of the Christian Ministry.

Such is the outUne of the commission. As to the
filling of it up, it were needless to speak in detail. If we
look to the practical working of the average pastorate,
we are almost forced to exclaim, How grand the ideal !
How poor the reality ! The Priest, as he gets into the
thick of his work, soon sees that gifts conveyed in his
ordination lie dormant at the very heart of his Ministry,
and that powers then conferred he, somehow, is not per-
mitted to use. He is pained with a sense of shrinkage ;
and whether it be in himself, or in his conception of the
office, or in the office itself, he is puzzled to decide.
On the other hand, the people are quick to perceive
what the Priest so keenly feels; and not seldom they
are prone to attribute to timidity or unfaithfulness what
he knows to be due to their own restiveness, not to say
insubordination, under any exercise of real authority in
dealing with individual souls by one appointed to be an
overseer and ruler of the flock of Christ. The truth is,
the Church in ordaining her Priests puts them on one
plane of prerogative and responsibility, while by the loose
discipline which the free and easy temper of modern
religion has in part forced upon her, she has allowed
the life of her members to drop to a lower one ; and the
result is a disastrous blow to that very side of the Priest-
hood which theoretically is supposed to be in habitual
contact with every soul that looks to it for food and
guidance.

(2) But our lax discipline obstructs and damages the
work and influence of the Ministry, because it cheapens
and degrades the privilege of Church-membership. It
is scarcely too much to affirm, that, as one fruit of the

Influence of the Christian Ministry. Ill

sharp sect rivalries and competitions in the matters of
wealth and numbers, the multitude have come to regard
admission to the communion of the Church as much
more of a favor to the Church than to themselves. The
Church is patronized, rather than obeyed ; and so with
her Clergy. Men give their money and influence, help
to build churches, support services, pay for the luxury
of fine oratory and showy music, make their way into
vestries and conventions, legislate and dictate and gov-
ern, and all in a spuit of worldly ambition and vanity ;
and then count upon, and, if they do not get it, demand,
easy treatment, smooth words, cunning glosses of fash-
ionable sins. Threats of suspension or excommunica-
tion for gross scandals fall upon the ear as idle pastoral
thunder. If driven out from one fellowship, offenders
are assured in advance of a welcome into some rival
Christian Body, provided they bring with them an
equivalent. So far has this evil gone, that certificates
of good standing are, in many cases, neither asked for
by religious itinerants, nor demanded by those whose
fellowship they seek. The fences are down ; the eccle-
siastical world is all open where to choose ; boundary-
lines are wiped out ; the world and the Church have
come to a friendly understanding, or at least a kind of
truce on that vast battle-field, from the centre of which
rises, as an undying protest, the blood-stained cross of
the Son of God. And so it has come to pass, that
though the Priests' lips keep knowledge, though the
ordained deputies of Christ minister at the altar, and
speak from the pulpit on the old themes of the Gospel,
they are treated by the mass of believers as wearing the

112 Influence of the Christian Ministry.

semblance of official power without the reality ; and if
under provocation they venture upon bold, sharp words
of rebuke, they are regarded only as giving a pungent
equivalent for their professional hire. When one recalls
all that is in the moral atmosphere about us ; when one
thinks how Christians on all sides ravel and bleach
out in a matter-of-course way into the amusements and
pleasures and luxurious sensualism, if not open ungodli-
ness, of the world, and how all this re-acts upon the life
of the Church and the work of her Priesthood, he must
be a very blind or ignorant man who will consider what
has been said as the language of satire or exaggeration.
Would to God that it could be justly so characterized !
The time has come when the credit of the Priesthood,
the honor of the Church, the integrity of the Gospel,
demand that judgment shall begin at the House of God,
and shall not cease in its goings forth until, armed once
more with the scourge, and it may be the sword, of a
revived discipline, she shall purge the host of God's
elect, driving out from the camp the deserters, the
hangers-on, hypocrites in saintly livery, cowards in sol-
diers' uniform, men who think to buy the gifts of God
with money, unclean traders in the temple, despoilers
of the treasures of Israel. Mere strength of numbers is
a delusion ; popularity is a snare of the Devil. Better
the few who are true and tried, than the useless dis-
orderly rabble. Better to go back into dens and caves
of the earth, and be pure and strong, than to dwell in
shame and weakness amid the glories of our modern
architecture. Ay, it were a blessing, if nothing else
can bring back the old tone and nerve of Christianity,

Influence of the Christian Ministry, 113

that the world, grown weary in its proud selfishness of
the chiding voice of the religion of the Cross, should
once more breathe on the smouldering cinders of its
hate, and rekindle the flames of persecution, which, in
burning away the dross, would leave the fine gold meet
to adorn the Spouse of Christ.

LECTURE III.

EVIDENCES OF INTELLECTUAL VIGOR AND ACTIVITY IN
THE MINISTRY.

At the most, it is only a few of the leading aspects
of a subject so vast and varied, that I can hope to treat.
To find the evidences which my theme obliges me to
produce, I must in a free and sketchy, though not in-
accurate manner, travel over the lines of mental activity
along which the Clerical mind has moved with the most
power. Mere summaries of results will not answer. It
seems rather to be incumbent on me, to reproduce in a
fresh and living way the processes of thought, and the
uses and adaptations of old and new learning, by which
results have been reached. We want to know not only
the intellectual aims of the Clergy, but the intellectual
energy displayed by them in reaching these aims. I
give the inquiry this turn, because it is so often alleged
that the Clergy, as a body, have declined in intellectual
force. As it was once considered the right thing to
rate this force at the highest, so now it is coming to be
the fashion to rate it, if not at the lowest, at least as
on the decline aS compared with that of other learned
classes. I hope to show that the facts give no counte-
nance to this opinion, and that the opinion itself, so far
as it exists, is due not to any such decline of mental

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 115

power and enterprise among the Clergy, but to a decline
of sympathetic interest among mankind generally, in
the distinctive truths which the Clergy are set apart to
teach.

There are two extreme wings of the Clerical body
(I use the phrase " Clerical body" in the broad, popular
sense) which take little interest in this inquiry, and for
reasons characteristic of each. The very liberal and
progressive class among the Protestant Clergy hold so
diluted a conception of the Ministry as a Divine voca-
tion, that they are quite indifferent to encroachments
on its prestige. They rather prefer to be spoken of as
thinkers and reformers, as a moral and intellectual leaven
pervading the mass of living thought, than as men or-
dained to a holy function. With this view of their call-
ing, it is not strange that they should feel no special
concern in the preservation of its traditional dignity and
influence. If any one says that the Christian Priest-
hood is growing more and more circumscribed in its
power to guide the mind of the age, or to restrain the
more doubtful tendencies of modern life, it is no offence
to them. They have graduated into a wider calling.
They belong to the great, universal priesthood of knowl-
edge, civilization, and philanthropy ; and, provided that
the age be held to the path of safety and progress, they
are indifferent to the source of the influence that does
it. Indeed, some of the more advanced of this class
count it an occasion of congratulation when they see,
or think they see. Clerical influence ravelling out, and
being overlaid or absorbed by forces wliich are general
and undistinctive. This is a noteworthy symptom of the

116 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

times. It has its origin in a low view of the Ministry,
that, in its turn, is the inevitable product of a self-made
and anarchical type of ecclesiasticism, which, as it has
no honored lineage reaching back into the distant past
to maintain, blends easily with every thing that hap-
pens to be stronger and more positive than itself.

On the other wing are the Clergy of the Church of
Rome. They have little interest in this subject, because
they allow no doubts to be raised among themselves, or
among their adherents, as to the security of their posi-
tion and the undiminished extent of their influence.
They wield an authority which they will not permit to
be questioned by those who submit to it at all. They
have a hold on the individual conscience which enables
them to control nearly every thing else connected with
individual life, and so to exclude from their flocks most
of the sources of agitation and resistance. As them-
selves are taught from the start, so they teach the souls
whom they guide, to turn a deaf ear, as to the voice of
the arch-tempter, to all exciting and threatening ques-
tions that hover over the skirmish-line between religion
and modern thought. Their professional drill is so
severe as to weed out every bias of will or intellect to
which such questions could appeal. They teach and
minister as they are ordered, with no apparent concern
about the possible effect of extraneous forces upon the
system which they represent. Their priesthood in its
practical power flows through, without mixing with, the
surrounding water-courses of the age.

But though this subject may be deemed unimportant
in the two quarters named, it is of vital concern to

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 117

those who believe in a Scriptural and Apostolic Priest-
hood, and who, while protecting it against the dilutions
of a false liberalism and the dangerous accretions of
Romish prerogative, would rejoice to see it moving in
the fulness of its strength upon a world dead in tres-
passes and in sins. In treating the subject, I shall not
refer to the matter-of-course labors of the Clergy in their
every-day occupation as teachers, — labors which aim
to utilize the results of recondite studies, or to simplify
and illustrate material already at hand. Diversified and
necessary as these labors are, and much as they draw
upon the best learning and mental skill, they do not
exhibit the sort of mental activity and culture needful to
establish what it is now proposed to prove. The evi-
dence needed must be found, if at all, in the deeper
and more methodical studies of the Clergy, the fruits of
which appear in the Christian literature of the time.

Very naturally, theology is the first to claim our
attention. How, then, let it be asked, have the Clergy
acquitted themselves in this their own especial domain ?
What is there here to attest the industry, zeal, and learn-
ing of their order, or to prove that they have shared as
fully as they ought in the characteristic enterprise and
movement of the age ? In one respect this inquiry puts
them at a disadvantage at once. Unlike most other
departments of knowledge, theology offers no room for
discoveries. It stimulates speculation on the deepest
themes, but does not encourage the speculator to hope
that he can produce any thing original. It rejoices to
have its contents handled with freshness and vigor, but
it holds out no prizes for novelty of matter. Its attitude

118 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

on the whole is that of the old, the continuous, and the
settled, seeking to keep its foot-hold amid the new,
the temporary, and the fluctuating. As a consequence,
the true theologian neither covets nor expects, however
profound his erudition, or however valuable its practical
fruits to thousands of schools and pulpits and libraries,
the applause which the general mass, even of the edu-
cated, bestow only upon those who startle them with a
new invention, or with a fresh and tangible contribution
to their stock of knowledge. The work of the theolo-
gian, whether in itself or in its results, cannot be judged
by the same standard as that of the scientist, the meta-
physician, the man of letters. With this fact duly recog-
nized, I ask, what have the Clergy to say for themselves
as thinkers and students in theology \

I affirm then, generally, that theology, as pursued and
expounded by the Clergy, has, during the past genera-
tion, lost no substantial ground amid its conflicts with
opposing forces. Considering how many of the oracles
of modern learning and criticism have been busy in
heaping obloquy upon it, or in reviving hard stories
about its narrowness and bigotry in the past, and its
hostility in the present to free inquiry and the progress
of knowledge ; nay, considering the efforts put forth to
discredit it altogether as a recognized member of the
family of sciences, — it would be strange if its prestige
had not suffered. And yet its x^lace among the great
departments of knowledge remains undisturbed. As a
science it now attracts, to say the least, as much atten-
tion, excites as much discussion, creates as much habit-
ual and cultivated intellectual activity, as any other.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 119

Even the most advanced thinkers, who claim to have
driven it into exile, are constantly recalling it. They
cannot handle any of the deeper problems touching
God and man and nature, without crossing its domain ;
nor, as they do so, without paying tribute to its sove-
reignty even in the realm of disciplined intellect. That
theology, in spite of all that has been said and done
to abolish or undermine or disintegrate it, should have
held its own, viewed simply as a science, is an incon-
testable proof of the learning and ability of its special
teachers and guardians.

Bat to appreciate even slightly the force of this sort
of evidence, we must glance somewhat more in detail
at the influences which have combined to disparage or
override the claims of theology. It is not individuals,
however eminent for genius and erudition, that I care
to mention, but rather certain great tidal movements
in the history of recent thought. The first of these to
arrest attention in this connection is what is known on
its scientific side as positivism, and on its practical side
as secularism. This system of thought, the product of
French speculation, after running through the well-
known schools of materialism, eclecticism, and socialism,
as expounded by De Tracy, Cousin, and Fourier, is not
merely anti-Christian, but atheistic. It is the portentous
amalgam of all that was bad in the previous dreams
and eccentricities of the intellect of France. Silent
about God, spmt, personal immortality, it regards " sci-
ence as the only revelation, demonstration as the only
authority, nature's laws as the only Providence, and
obedience to them as the only piety." It aims to

120 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

destroy Christianity by destroying the possibility of its
proof. It views religion as the product of an unscien-
tific age, for which a belief in the laws of nature and
the discoveries of science is a sufficient substitute. The
order in nature which we are wont to regard as the
result and the evidence of a designing intelligence, it
admits ; but refuses to infer from that order the exist-
ence of any such presiding mind, except so far as it
can be verified by proof resting on our own sensible
experience. The whole history of thought records no
grosser type of materialism. It is worse than a return
to the lowest grade of the old Pagan speculations.
Indeed, few thinkers could be named in ante-Christian
times, who, if this system had appeared in their day,
would not have been shocked and disgusted at its idola-
trous worship of mere phenomena, and its scorn for the
very conception of an original or a final cause. It is its
avowed aim to tear up and scatter to the winds, as so
much hoary superstition and illogical sentimental trash,
the whole frame-work of theology. Christianity at best
is only the latest and ripest of religions, the already-
decaying symbol of a higher truth towards which hu-
manity is tending ; and theology shares of necessity in
the nature of that which it expounds. Positivism is
not merely a thing on paper, or the quiet dream of
minds that are content to die and make no sign. On
the contrary, it has a practical side where it is boldly
aggressive and sternly dogmatic in the assertion of
what it teaches. No school has ever shown a more
passionate desire to propagate its teachings. It openly
aspires to be considered as a philosophy of life, and a

Intellectual Vigor and Activitj/ in the Ministry. 121

substitute for religion. It accepts with evident relish
the title of secularism, because, as the name implies, it
asserts it to be the great business of man to attend to
the affairs of the present world which is certain, rather
than of a future which is uncertain.

Different in some respects from positivism, and yet
identical with it in its tendency to sweep away the
foundations of theology, is the system of philosophy
elaborated -and expounded by Mr. Herbert Spencer.
In considering the present relations of theology to the
general thought of the time, it is impossible to ignore
those features of his system which antagonize its funda-
mental principles. In his " First Principles of a New
System of Philosophy," he begins with an attempted
reconciliation of religion and science. But unfortu-
nately the reconciliation consists in eliminating religion
from the field of rational thought. He admits the ex-
istence of the religious sentiment, but denies the possi-
bility of constructing a religion which shall rest upon
absolute truth. Human nature needs religion, and will
have one of some sort ; but it must be content with
religions which are as likely to be false as to be true.
The religious sentiment, instead of being regarded as
an inherent and indestructible element in the moral
constitution of man, is represented as a gradual growth
or accretion starting in a certain vague feeling of awe,
which, in turn, is the product of the perpetual contact
of the human mind with the unknown and unknow-
able Infinite. From this almost formless germ, the
religious sentiment has been developed by orderly, con-
secutive stages, from fetichism — its first manifestation

122 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

— up to the plane of monotheistic worship. This de-
velopment has been the work of science : the lower and
cruder faiths yielding to the higher and more elaborate
under the compulsory pressure of advancing knowledge.
If it be strange that a truly great mind, claiming, in an
extraordinary degree, the faculty of accurate and pro-
found thought, should take refuge in a psychology which
so utterly fails to account for religious emotions, it is
still more so, that such a mind should, with vast pains,
build up a theory of the development of those emotions
which is contradicted by indisputable facts of history.
It is undeniable that the Old Testament, regarded simply
as history, is the record of a monotheistic worship reach-
ing back to the dawn of the historic ages ; and, to say
the least, the evidences bearing on the subject justify
the belief that it is quite as probable that all lower and
grosser religions are corruptions and degradations of the
higher and purer, as that the latter are developments
from the former.

Were we not living in the midst of the experiment,
and witnessing daily its increasing success, we might
think it impossible that the " New Philosophy" of Spen-
cer should meet with favor among the more thoughtful
classes, or be regarded by any as a formidable antago-
nist to the Christian religion. It declares that the Infi-
nite and Absolute is utterly inconceivable by us ; that it
cannot become the material of human knowledge ; that
to beings like us, whose consciousness is cast in the
moulds of time and space, it is unthinkable, unknown
and unknowable : and yet it does not hesitate to tell us
with dogmatic assurance and almost logical precision

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 123

what the Infinite and Absolute cannot do or become in
its relations to us. It says that our belief in an omni-
present and eternal cause of the universe has a higher
warrant than any other behef, — that the existence of
such a cause is the most certain of all certainties ; and
then asserts that we can have no knowledge whatever
of its attributes, — that it is absolutely beyond any possi-
ble human cognition. It puts forth a statement of the
ultimate cause, which, while affirming oiu' utter inability
to conceive of its mode of existence or of its character,
compels us by a logical and moral necessity to assign it
at least six attributes, and these the very ones which
form the staples of natural and revealed religion; viz.,
being, causal energy, omnipotence, eternity, wisdom, and
love. It traces the feeling and need of religion to a
certain awe arising from the habitual contact of the
mind of the race with the unknown and unknowable.
But surely what is altogether unknown and unknowable
to the race as a whole cannot impress itself on the
consciousness of an individual. What is absolutely un-
known and unknowable is to us as though it did not
exist. No sentiment of awe or of any thing else can
arise from that of which we are entirely unconscious.
Again, this " New Philosophy " admits the existence of
an ultimate cause, and admits the manifestation of this
ultimate cause in effects the sum-total of which is the
universe : and yet it tells us that we cannot reason from
the effects to the cause ; that the work reveals nothing
as to the qualities of the workman ; that in the law we
see nothing of the nature of the lawgiver ; that " by
the things which are made " we can know nothing of

124 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

" the invisible things " of the maker : that order, intelli-
gence, beneficence, beauty in the creation prove nothing
whatever as to the true character of the creator. Such
are some of the weaknesses of the " New Philosophy."
Like many systems gone before it, it will have its day,
and then take its place in the great gallery of specu-
lative curiosities. The grounds on which it menaces
theology with expulsion from the fellowship of science
are futile. They are at war with the very elements and
conditions of valid thinking on any subject. The funda-
mentals of natural theology can no more be denied than
the main facts and affirmations of our own consciousness.
Both are known by direct intuition ; and we cannot sup-
pose there is any uncertainty concerning them, with-
out supposing that certainty is impossible in any thing.
" The only ground, in fact, on which the vaUdity of the
inductions and intuitions of natural theology can be
assailed, is that of the relativity of knowledge ; and to
make the assault seem successful, the position of the
assailant must be taken so far to the left as to leave him
in utter and complete scepticism, doubting the axioms
of mathematics, and uncertain of his own existence."
Just this is the position of the " New Philosophy " of
Herbert Spencer; and, whatever others have done to
expose its fallacies, the students and teachers of theology
have not been barren or idle in the same task.

But from this I turn to notice a formidable adversary
of theology, on the opposite side of the world of specu-
lative thought. I refer to the various schools whose
common foundation is subjective idealism, or the alleged
supremacy of the individual consciousness, or the suf-

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 125

ficiency of reason as the test and measure of truth, or
the infalUbility of the intuitions of man's rational na-
ture, — all only different expressions of the same thing.
Now, as characteristics of a certain tendency of thought,
we find these, in one shape or another, re-appearing
at nearly all points in the line of recent speculation ;
beginning — not to go too far back — with Lessing
and Kant ; cropping out most influentially in Christian
Baur and the Tubingen school of criticism ; attaining a
still more luxuriant growth in such thinkers as Strauss,
Theodore Parker, Francis Newman, and Renan ; and
culminating in the sceptical coterie of the " Westminster
Review." Starting, as they do, with substantially the
same premises, these idealists, intuitionalists, rationalists
(the name is of little consequence), arrive at substan-
tially the same conclusions, however they may diverge
on minor points. These conclusions are, in the main,
utterly subversive both of the matter aud the form of
Christian theology. It is impossible to accept them, and
retain any respect for theology as a science, or for theo-
logians as men of high intellectual character. As the
necessity and authority of revelation are denied ; as
inspiration is only a higher form of the reason ; as it is
quite practicable to construct God out of the ideas of
consciousness, and to find the surest revelation of truth
in individual insight ; as the current faith of the time
is not only the transient expression of the soul's wants
and worship, but the ever-changing utterance of the
soul's aspirations to realize an ideal which the progress
of the ages is constantly mending, — as all these things
are so, what else can be done with religion except to

126 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

resolve it into ethics, or with faith except to absorb it
in moral sentiment, or with Christian dogma except to
merge it in philosophy, or with Christian theology
generally, except to banish it out of sight as an obsolete
tradition? And such, in fact, is the disposition made of
theology, as an object of thought, by all the affiliated
branches of this school. Whether, then, we consider
opinions which rely upon sensation as the ultimate test
of truth, as in the case of positivism in all its various
modifications from that of Comte to that of Herbert
Spencer ; or upon the metaphysical conception of the
unknowableness of the Infinite ; or opinions which rely
upon the faculty of insight as the sufficient basis of
authority, as in the case of the various phases of the
subjective school, — the result is the same : the former
in tending towards atheism, and the latter in its drift
toward pantheism, or naturalism, wherein no chance for
interposition by miraculous revelation is retained, alike
cut away the very ground of theological science.

But, emerging from these regions of speculative in-
quiry to the solid ground of physical science, we find
here an influence quite as hostile to the claims of the-
ology. The attitude in this regard of physical science,
as defined by some of its most popular exponents, is
too familiar to require either comment or illustration.
Flushed with the sense of its alleged as well as real
triumphs, in late years, it has fallen into a tone of
almost insolent contempt at once for the matter and
methods of theology. Putting on the air of conceded
superiority, it has borne itself as though theology were
the common repository of the dreams and fables and

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 127

idols of the race, thrown up to the surface by the human
mind in the periods of its ignorance and immaturity,
and as though itself alone dealt with the only knowledge
worth having. Because, in the progress of discovery, it
has taken some things out of the province of the super-
natural, and carried them over to the domain of uni-
versal law, thus step by step narrowing, as is alleged,
the field of theological inquiry, it argues that, in due
course of time, it will remove all the fences enclosing
that field, and finally take possession of the field itself,
thus consigning theology, as a science, to irrevocable
bankruptcy, and leaving behind nothing but its name to
keep alive in the records of the world's thought the
memory of its once undisputed sway.

I cannot leave this branch of my subject without a
few words on certain schools of thinkers within the
Church, some of them bearing her Orders, or holding
chairs in her great seats of learning. It is a sad thing
to say, but it is nevertheless true, that theology as a
science, seeking to hold its own amid the cross-currents
of modern thought, has received its worst wounds, not
from its avowed enemies, but in the house of its
friends. There has been among us a class of minds
both learned and influential, who, in their efforts to
reconstruct or modify theology with a view to its better
adaptation to the altered tone of thought in our time,
have, in one way or another, loosened its hold on the
general mind, and thus afforded aid and comfort to its
professed adversaries. It would be difficult, if not im-
possible, to give a just impression of this class of minds
without some notice of the origin and history of their

128 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

characteristic tendencies. The general type of thought
which they represent began with Coleridge, through
whom filtered into the English theological mind many
of the peculiarities of German speculation and criticism.
Coleridge started with the conviction that religion lacked
a philosophical basis. He attempted to supply one dif-
ferent from that of the last century. He found it in
those intuitions of reason which were supposed to rise
above Scripture and tradition, and to form the ground
and measure of both. He came upon the stage at what
he deemed a critical period. In politics, literature, and
religion, there were manifest symptoms of a determina-
tion to break away from the past. On all sides were
the signs of impending revolution. It was his desire to
stand by the ancient inheritance of truth, and at the
same time to make way for all that should be valuable
in the later acquisitions of knowledge. In reviewing the
past beliefs of mankind, he saw much truth and some
error in all. He undertook to preserve the former, and
eliminate the latter. But some sure, comprehensive
guide was indispensable to the performance of so grave
and difficult a task. He found this guide, or believed
that he did, in a certain faculty of the human mind
which he called " the impersonal or intuitional reason,"
the organ in man which interprets the absolute truth,
whether in the form of the true, or the good, or the beau-
tiful, — that eternal reality of life and being after which
all systems had searched, and for which all earnest
spirits had yearned. With this for his pilot, he set out
on his voyage over the wide ocean of existing thought.
There was nothing, in Coleridge's method, of the older

Intellectual Vigor and Actimty in the Ministry. 129

rationalism. He magnified rather than pared down the
supernatural in Christianity. He explained the divine
mysteries by raising the mind to a height where they
ceased to be mysteries. He did not depress revelation to
the ordinary plane of the intellect, but strove, however
vainly, to elevate the intellect to a level with the plane
of revelation. It was in the effort to do this that he
was led to define inspiration as only an elevated form of
" the reason," and so to hatch a whole brood of errors in
the field of Biblical interpretation and theological study.
His system — if system it can be called — drew, as is
w^oll known, upon the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Alex-
andria, and borrowed still more largely from the think-
ing of Kant, Jacobi, and Schelling ; a fact which of
itself might — had it been clearly understood — have
enabled his contemporaries to forecast the tendencies
and ultimate fruits of his method of inquiry, now so
familiar to the present generation in the teachings of
the disciples who sat at his feet. The movement of free
thought in English theology abreast of which we stand is
the resultant of the Alexandrian and German elements
of speculation which met, mingled, and crystallized in
the genius of Coleridge. Its tendency, to use the well-
chosen words of another,! is "to require that the human
soul shall apprehend divine mysteries intellectually, as
well as feel their saving power emotionally ; the reduc-
tion of inspiration theologically, as well as psychologi-
cally, to an elevated but natural state of the human
consciousness ; the inclination to regard the work of
Christ as that of the divine Teacher of humanity, and

^ Farrai-'s Critical History of Free Thought.

130 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

human history as the longing for such a divine voice ;
the description of the work of Christ as a divine mani-
festation of a reconciliation which previously existed, in-
stead of being the mode of effecting it, — all of which,
as they are corollaries from the philosophy of the Neo-
Platonists, so they find their parallel in the school of
the Alexandrian fathers."

Now, the drift thus described not only pares off and
abrades the edges of dogmatic theology, but strikes at
its very core. It works not from the outer rim toward
the centre, but begins at the centre, and spreads like a
subtle poison in all directions. Its influence is appar-
ent in much of the most taking literature of the time.
It has spoken mildly through Maurice and the elder
Arnold, and Charles Kingsley up to within ten years
of his death, and then through Dean Stanley and the
growing school he represented. But it has made itself
heard in a more resolute and aggressive tone in most
of the authors of " Essays and Reviews," and with espe-
cial boldness in the writings of Professor Jowett and
Matthew Arnold. In all of them, though with varying
degree, may be discovered the same ear-marks of the
system whose historic lineage was revived in England by
Coleridge. They are not in all respects mutual in-
dorsers ; but there is an evident sympathy among them
all with the effort to remove or drive in the existing
boundaries of dogmatic religion. The more pronounced,
such as Professor Jowett and Matthew Arnold, repudiate
all disguise, and tell us plainly that God gave his Son not
to reconcile God to man, but man to God ; not to pur-
chase Divine mercy for man by the blood of the Cross,

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 131

Dut to make way in man's heart for the spontaneous flow
of that mercy ; that Christ is to be accepted as a Teacher
and a King, but not as a Priest ; that the main purpose
of Christ was to work out a higher type of life, not a
scheme of redemption ; that the dogmatic is but the ever-
changing shell of the moral element of Christianity ;
and that, looking forward to the religion of the future,
Christianity can become such only as it will cease to be
the reHgion of form and dogma, and become the highest
type of ethics. It need scarcely be added, that, under
the influence of such views, the very foundations of the-
ology as a definite and methodical body of divine truth
are resolved into quicksand. It is no longer a science,
but a nomadic speculation, half real and half visionary,
according as each age may see in it more of truth or
more of falsehood.

But finally, in order to complete the list of influences
conspiring to degrade theological science from its hered-
itary dignity, I must not omit the agency of the litera-
ture of scepticism. This opens up too wide a field to
be traversed or even outlined here. No one, familiar
with the higher reading of the million, needs to be
reminded how largely it has been flavored not so much
with the logic as with the sentiment of unbelief; nor
how much of its graver and more scholarly thought-
fulness has been furnished by such minds as Carlyle
and Emerson, Buckle and Lecky, Michelet, Renan, and
Taine, whose surpassing ability and culture, combined
with the immense popular attraction of the special
themes to which their labors have been devoted, have
won for any thing they might say, not merely the atten-

132 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

tion, but very generally the assent, of the masses.
When such writers, in elaborate essays, habitually slur
and scorn the most learned and strongly reasoned apol-
ogies for Christian dogma produced by the theological
mind of the day, what else than a settled temper of
unfriendliness toward Christian theology can be looked
for, not only amid the numerous company of copyists
and parasites that hang upon their path, but among the
vast audience whom they address in Europe and
America ?

Such, then, are the adversaries against which the
Clergy, as the special organs and conservators of theol-
ogy, have been called to contend. With these in our
eye, we can judge somewhat of the quality and extent
of the intellectual activity which has been exhibited in
theological inquiry and defence during the present gen-
eration. It will be quite impossible for me, in this
connection, to follow out, or even to name, all the lines
of investigation which have been pursued within the
wide field over which this activity has been diffused.
To do so with any completeness, would require at least a
summary of all the processes and results of the sacred
learning of recent times. It will be quite sufficient
for my purpose, to advert only to those efforts of the
theological mind which furnish special illustrations of
its readiness and ability to deal with the more salient
questions of the day, so far as they affect the claims or
embarrass the progress of Christianity. But, before
proceeding further in this branch of the subject, it may
be well to notice briefly two objections urged, with some
frequency and spirit, against these efforts.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 133

(1) It has been alleged, that they evince little original
constructive power ; that they are mostly explanatory of
material already in existence, or apologetic as against the
attacks of modern criticism and discovery which forced
the Clergy into a defensive attitude. The answer is easy.
The theological activity of the time has been thrown, as
common-sense required, in the direction where it was
most needed. And yet, though largely given to defen-
sive work, it has not been lacking in constructive energy.
It has not undertaken, as a mere intellectual exercise, to
resolve the existing theology into its elements, and out
of them to build a new theology. Such an attempt
would have been superfluous, in the presence of other
work more imperatively demanded. But it has re-
examined to its foundations every doctrine, every prin-
ciple of theology, which the altered tone of the age
rendered it needful to re-state with more clearness, or
to guard against modern objections. As examples, take
the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement ;
or of the Church, the Ministry, the Sacraments, the
Scriptural and primitive theory of worship ; or, which
has been the chief battle-ground, the authenticity and
genuineness of the Holy Scriptures. On each of these,
to name no others, almost a new literature has been
created ; and if little absolutely original has been added
to the previous treatment of them, certainly no resource
of historic induction, or logic, or biblical learning, or
general knowledge, has been neglected in their defence
or their exposition. Eighteen hundred years of thought
and teaching, on these and kindred subjects, by minds
as illustrious for power and erudition as any to be found

134 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

in the past, have, mdeed, left Httle room for positive
discovery, and still less for absolute originality of han-
dling. And yet it may be doubted whether any period
in ecclesiastical history has witnessed a more comprehen-
sive grasp of the subject-matter of theology, or a more
complete mastery of its complex relations with other
departments of inquiry. It is too soon to pass upon the
theological work of the last thirty or forty years. The
din and dust of the conflict still raging make it impos-
sible to correctly estimate its value ; but I have little
doubt that minds have flourished among us whom the
judgment of the future will deem not unworthy of
companionship with the best that have been produced
in the most energetic and fruitful eras of the Church's
life.

(2) It is alleged that the work done in this field,
whatever it be, has not been exclusively clerical work,
and therefore that the Clergy may not claim all the
credit. In the last fifty years there has been an ex-
traordinary growth of lay talent and learning in the
department of theological study. Not a few laymen of
piety and culture have engaged with vigor and success
in the religious discussions of the time, or in collat-
eral investigations having an important bearing on the
issues raised in those discussions. Keligion has abundant
cause of gratitude for the labors of such men as the
Duke of Argyle, Rawlinson, Henry Rogers, St. George
Mivart, and Drummond, not to add many others whose
names will readily occur to the reader. But, as with
other vocations demanding varied attainments or assidu-
ous and methodical study, so with this. Take law, or

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 135

medicine, history, or physical science. Each has had
its professional corps exckisively devoted to its interests,
and each has had its non-professional auxiliaries who
have stepped aside from other callings to elaborate
special questions falling within its particular province.
Discoveries have been made by men who could not be
called discoverers ; inventions, by men who did not rank
as inventors ; contributions to history, by those who were
not historians ; philosophical, legal, and medical explora-
tions, by those who were neither philosophers, lawyers,
nor physicians. And yet, very properly, we attribute
whatever progress may have been secured in any one of
these vocations, to the minds professionally engaged in
them. The same rule, in all fairness, should apply
to theology, and to those whose duty and calling it is to
cultivate it.

These objections disposed of, I turn now to note some
instances of a high order of intellectual activity in
theological studies.

I. These studies have helped to establish on a more
solid basis the claims of theology as a science having a
distinct aim and work in the sphere of human knowl-
edge. They have shown what it is not, as well as what
it is. It is not, as some would have it, merely an orderly
reflection from nature, with a divine glow on its face ;
nor, as others would have it, a capacious wallet in which
are assorted and packed with much learning and care
the traditional but unverified guesses of the human
mind on the problems of being and destiny. Sacred
polemics and Christian evidences fall within, but do not
fill up, its province. It is not synonymous with what is

136 Intellectual Vigor and Activity/ in the Ministry.

vaguely kno^vn as " our common Christianity," nor with
what schools of thought or individual inquirers may
gather from the Holy Scriptures. It is simply the
science of God, or what we know of God put into
system ; and has its own place and function as positively
and definitely as any one of the family of sciences built
up by the purely inductive method. What we know
of God includes aU that outward nature, all that rea-
son on its moral as well as its intellectual side, all
that revelation, can teU us ; nay, more, all that can
be gathered from the history of man, whether regarded
as the simple record of his searches after God, or as a
testimony to the reality of the wants that compelled him
to be a seeker. If what we know or can know of the
heavenly bodies is the material of astronomy; if what
we know or can know of the crust of the earth is the
material of geology : so what we know or can know of
God is the subject-matter of theology. And, as has
been already remarked, it may be doubted whether any
past age has excelled the present either in the quality
or the amount of the intellectual force with which this
subject-matter has been handled. This force has been
applied in many ways, but conspicuously in the follow-
ing.

(1) In proving, by du'ect argument or by necessary
inference, that theology meets every test of a veritable
science : —

[a) As to the reality and genuineness of its sources
of knowledge ;

{h) As to the validity of the premises drawn from
those sources ;

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the 3Iinistry. 137

»

(c) As to the logical soundness of its reasonings from
those premises ;

[d) As to its permanence ajid continuity as a depart-
ment of human thought ;

{e) As to the universality of its fundamental principles,
and of the ethical conclusions deduced from them ;

( /') As to the unsurpassed intelligence devoted, in
every age, to its cultivation.

(2) In proving that theology is not only a science,
but that it is in reaUty the foremost of sciences : —

[a) Because, from the subject with which it deals, it
is not so much one sort of knowledge as the condition
of all knowledge. For, if there be that behind nature
which Christianity reveals, and which, in some form, all
healthy thought admits without a revelation ; then what
we know of that power or that personality must condition
all that we can know inductively or metaphysically of
its operations, or of the phenomena they produce in the
world of sense.

(h) Because, if it be and have what it claims, it
supplies a living root to all other sciences, by exhibiting
to them the life-power that pervades all of which they
take cognizance.

(c) Because it is part of its rightful function, to ex-
plain the other sciences in their ultimate meanings each
to each, and each to all combined, and to correct their
exorbitances and defects, individually considered, by the
unity and equilibrium of the whole body of knowledge,
of which each science, taken by itself, is but a fractional
part ; and of which theology, as the science of God, is
and must be the central light to the full extent that it

138 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

9

is able to interpret by the voice of nature, of reason, of
revelation, His eternal will, infinite wisdom, and bound-
less love. For, just what history would be if it left out
the volitions of man in its summaries and explanations
of events, — that, if there be a God, all science is that
merges not its last generalization in the effulgence of
His being, and traces not its ultimate root to His life-
giving power.

II. These studies have done much toward solving the
problem of the limits of human thought on the subject-
matter of religion, — a problem which antedates and
underlies every other in the field of religious inquiry. I
do not say that they have solved this problem to the
satisfaction of all schools of thought, or even that the
result they have arrived at commands the assent of any
set of thinkers outside of the pale of theology. What I
afiii-m is, that, in theu* handling of the problem, they
have kept abreast of the deepest and subtlest philo-
sophical reasoning of the day.

The terms of the problem are these. Given a pro-
fessed and duly authenticated revelation, is the human
mind competent to sit in final judgment on its contents ?
Can the human mind be so far exalted, or revelation be
so far depressed without losing its character, as to confer
such a power upon man ? If we answer in the affirma-
tive, then we must admit that the finite may sit in judg-
ment upon the infinite, the relative upon the absolute ;
and, if we admit this, then it follows, that, in the sphere
of religion, God may be compressed into the measure of
man, or, which amounts to the same thing, that man
may be expanded into God ; or, to adopt a formula of

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 139

advanced German speculation, that Christ — in whom,
according to revelation, dwelt the fulness of the God-
head bodily — is only man sublimated into deity by the
religious consciousness. Now, there are but two ways in
which it is possible for the human mind to bridge the
gulf which separates the Absolute from the relative, the
Infinite from the finite. The one is by the pure intel-
lect, which is forced to shape all its conceptions under
the limitations of time and space ; the other is by the
intuitions of the moral reason or the spiritual conscious-
ness, which, as they are capable of comprehending the
immutability of moral distinctions, and appreciating
what is eternal in the ideas and laws of moral obligation,
constitute the only faculty of human nature which can
rise above the limitations that condition all the thinking
of the logical intellect. Now, the utter and hopeless
failure of the fii'st method — that of the speculative
reason — has been admitted by most metaphysicians
since Kant, whose analysis of the functions of the pure
reason has been regarded by nearly all subsequent schools
of thought as the final settlement of the boundaries of
human intelligence, in its relations to the Absolute.
But if philosophers have proved the impossibility of
mapping out the divine nature, and discovering or con-
structing its attributes by any process of the intellect —
that is, by any scheme of logical induction or deduction ;
so thinkers in the interest of revelation have proved,
over and over, that if it be not impossible, in the nature
of things, for the human mind to elaborate a satisfactory
conception of Deity by its faculty of moral reason or spirit-
ual insight, yet, that, in point of fact, it has never done

140 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

so. Nay, more : they have demonstrated psychologically
that it is impossible to secure any satisfactory agreement
as to the number, the quality, and the range of those
intuitions of the moral consciousness of man, which have
been so much relied upon by some as competent to
unveil the foundation principles of religion, and thus
to supersede the necessity and contradict the fact of a
revelation. And then, still further, they have shown
by the undeniable testimony of history, that those intui-
tions, under all grades of knowledge and culture, have
proved to be little better than the ignis-fatuus of the
religious aspirations of humanity, ever keeping alive the
desire to attain to the Christian conception of God, but
ever powerless to realize it. But if such be the limits
of human thought in the sphere of religious truth, as
shown by history and by analysis of the human con-
sciousness, then certain consequences of vast moment
inevitably follow. If man cannot, intellectually or mor-
ally, arrive at a philosophy of the Infinite, he cannot
find within himself an infallible criterion of religious
truth ; and, if he have not such infallible criterion
within himself, then all his reasonings on religious
truth, the substance of which is God's voice speaking
through finite symbols, are exposed to error ; and, if
this be so, then it follows that human reason, though not
without its necessary ofiice and work in religion, is not
entitled to sit in final judgment upon all the contents of
a duly authenticated revelation. As matter of fact and
experience, the criterion built up out of the intuitions
of the moral sense in man finds itself at sea the moment
it attempts to account for many of the admitted phe-

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 141

nomena in the course of God's natural providence ; e.g.,
the infliction of physical suffering, the adversity of the
good, the prosperity of the wicked, the crimes of the
guilty involving the misery of the innocent, the tardy
appearance and partial distribution of moral and religious
knowledge in the world. Now, these are facts recon-
cilable, though we know not how, with the infinite
goodness of God. But they are facts which baffle and
silence any criterion that can be erected by the human
mind ; and, if this be so, what possible right has any
human being to assume that a criterion which thus
signally fails to account for what certainly happens in
the order of nature can be applied unqualifiedly and
universally to the statements of revelation'? Such,
substantially, has been the process and the result of the
reasoning of the theological mind on the great question
of the limits of human thought in this direction.

The following is another view of the same question.
There is in man a sense of the Infinite and Absolute.
Precisely how it works in bridging the gulf between the
conditioned and the unconditioned ; whether it exists
simply as feeling or intuition, or as a mental conception
or cognition capable of expressing itself under the ne-
cessary laws of thought : is still, and probably always
must be, an open question. Between these two views
the current metaphysical thought of our time is about
equally divided. If we accept the former, we must
confine human thought on the deep things of God within
a small circle. If we accept the latter, the limits of
thought are indefinitely extended, and we have to deal
with pretensions that in their final development may deny

142 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

the necessity of revelation ; or, admitting it as a fact, may
invest man with absolute authority to sit in judgment on
its contents. It is against the former theory that we have
to defend the knowableness of the Infinite and Eternal,
and so to give the Divine, whether in nature or revela-
tion, a hold on the human mind, and the obligations of
religion a sure foundation in the soul of man as well as
in the will of God. It is against the latter theory that
we have to assert the necessity of revelation, and the
subordination of human reason to its authority. Grant-
ing the knowableness of God by rnan, the question
arises, how far it extends, and what are the boundaries
of our valid judgments on divine things.

It is admitted that our thoughts of the Infinite have
the character of knowledge ; and that, like all other
knowledge, it is a relation between our faculties and
their object. It is admitted, that, so far as it goes, it is
real knowledge, i.e., a knowledge of the object; and,
moreover, that it has a certainty of its own, i.e., the
certainty, not oi formal demonstration^ but of assured con-
viction of truth. It is admitted that the only alternative
to this is nescience with all its negative results, — a
thing double-edged, and cutting both ways. For, if it
be true that the infinite severed from all relation to the
finite is unthinkable, incognizable, it is equally true that
the finite apart from all relation to the infinite is un-
thinkable, incognizable. If we cannot trust the veracity
of our faculties when dealing with the ground of phe-
nomena, we cannot trust their veracity when they deal
with phenomena themselves ; and so all processes of
differentiation, without which no knowledge is possible.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 143

are alike untrustworthy. The report of the sounding-
plummet is as sure in deep water as in shallow, provided
it makes any report at all. The necessary relativity of
knowledge does not, therefore, discharge knowledge of
its hold on the absolute. Conditions in us do not bar
all access by us to the unconditioned. But if this be
admitted, then, among other consequences, it must be ad-
mitted, to come at once to the point in hand, that, as
Bishop Butler declares, " Reason can, and it ought to,
judge not only of the meaning, but of the morality and
evidence, of revelation." ^

And yet this admission must be limited and qualified
by the facts of the case. To treat it otherwise, would
be to convert revelation into a ladder whereby reason
could climb to a plane above itself, — God's voice into
the mere prelude of some nobler harmony to be con-
structed by man himself. What, then, are the limita-
tions of Bishop Butler's statement? Apart from these,
it is sweeping enough to satisfy the extremest rationalist
who finds in his own consciousness the highest possible
authority in all matters of religion, if not the ultimate
source of religion itself. Man, then, because made in
the image of God, may determine whether or no the
voice that reaches him, taken as a whole, is God's voice ;
i.e., may determine by its internal character a true reve-
lation from a false one. But specifically, while he may,
for example, pass upon the morality of revelation, he
may not pass upon the truth and fitness of all doctrines
of the Divine nature and economy that constitute the
ground, the sanction, and motive-power of that morality.

1 Analogy, part ii. chap. 3.

144 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

He may apprehend what he cannot comprehend; he
may accept, and be obUged to act upon, what he can-
not measure ; he may grasp as most real and necessary
truth what he is incompetent to criticise and unable to
prove. As therfe is a limit to his knowledge of physi-
cal phenomena, so there is a limit to his knowledge of
spiritual phenomena. He may describe nature's pro-
cesses, and catalogue its elements, its species, its genera,
without knowing why it does what it does, or wheth-
er what it does is done in the best possible way. So
with what he knows of the economy of God's spiritual
kingdom. He may judge of moral facts in the Divine
administration, but he may not judge of the whole
plan of which they are only individual and perhaps
isolated parts. The Incarnation of Christ is a fact and
also a mystery. He must accept the fact, though he
cannot fathom the mystery in the sense of deciding
whether it was necessary or not, whether it accords with
the internal and absolute subsistence of the Godhead
or not, whether or not it violates or harmonizes with
reason. So with the Atonement and the Resurrection
of Christ. As facts they must be accepted, whether
above or within the scope of reason. So, again, if God
be revealed as Triune, he must deal with the fact in its
practical consequences, though as a doctrine it refuse
him rational satisfaction. Revelation, because it is reve-
lation, comes to him with authority ; and to this author-
ity, if he accept revelation at all, he must bow. If, as
far as he can go, all be consistent with reason, he must
believe what lies beyond to be equally consistent with
reason, though he cannot see it to be so.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 145

Of late years some metaphysicians have assailed with
vigor, if not with success, Kant's famous demonstration
of the impossibility of attaining to any positive cognition
of the absolute by any purely intellectual process. They
claim to have opened the passage from the finite to the
infinite, which Kant had closed by his iron logic ; and,
as a result of their effort, they claim not only that the
absolute and the infinite are cognizable by the human
mind, but that, inclusively, all that enters into religion
must be considered as the legitimate subject-matter of
thought ; and consequently they have helped to place
the intellect in an attitude of superiority to revelation.
This new phase of speculative thought has given to ad-
vanced rationalism a new lease of influence, and quick-
ened it into fresh activity. This drift, however, having
had its day, will doubtless give place to a re-action ;
and this re-action, when it sets in, will in all probability
swing back toward a re-acceptance of the logic of Kant
and of the school which he founded. Certainly, while
asserting their right to criticise religion as a whole and
each of its constituent parts, this school has developed
no constructive power worthy of the name. What they
would destroy in the sphere of revealed truth, they are
unable to replace with any device of their own. They
are shut up to negations, and travel over and over the
weary, fruitless round of abstractions which have proved
too vague and thin to offer a solid footing to anybody's
faith, or a message of peace to anybody's mental or
spiritual anxieties. The structure they have built in the
realm of religion is an inverted pyramid.

On the other hand, those who think with Kant that

146 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

the intellect, if obedient to the laws which condition
thought, cannot cross the gulf which divides the abso-
lute from the relative, but that the moral faculties can,
have fared scarcely better. Starting with the asserted
"imperatives" of the moral reason, — i.e., God, immor-
tality, and the moral law, — and relegating revealed
religion to the inferior position of a mere auxiliary to
the moral reason, they too have equally failed in con-
structive power. Having dragged Christianity from its
throne of sovereignty, they cannot agree upon any satis-
factory substitute. The moral reason, so self-sufficing
according to their theory, cannot do the work or bear
the strain put upon it, but breaks down utterly under
the final, crucial test. When analyzed and sifted it is
found to be powerless to give shape and vitality to the
raw material which it furnishes for the structure of
religion. Nor does the material so furnished cover the
whole ground which religion must occupy if it is to
be of any practical service to mankind. Moreover this
theory of the moral reason does not square with the
facts. The theory assumes that the light it sheds is
pure light ; that it is a faculty free from flaws and frac-
tures ; that it is now what it was at its creation, upright
and undefiled, the one governor of man's nature whose
supremacy may not be questioned. But the facts prove
that the exact opposite is true : that what light it gives
is mixed with misleading shadows ; that it is seamed
and scarred as by some great catastrophe ; that it is
fallen and corrupt ; and that in reality, while proving
its title to command all the elements of human life,
whether passional or intellectual or moral, it is often

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 147

disobeyed and set at naught. Psychologically consid-
ered, it is supreme, and its authority ought to be the
very highest. Ethically and practically considered, it is
weak and fallible. The moral reason, then, — the sole
faculty, according to this school, competent to take hold
of the Infinite and Absolute, of God and His truth, the
sole power adequate to the construction of a religion,
or to the criticism of any religion coming to it ab extra,
— is, as matter of fact, out of joint with the life it was
ordained to govern ; speaks with a stammering tongue,
where, if it speak at all, it ought to speak with a clear-
cut emphasis ; is bound by fetters where it should exhibit
an unchallenged freedom ; gives scarcely light enough
to drive back the pursuing, hovering darkness. And
yet this is the reason, this is the conscience, that is to
be enthroned above revelation, and to sit in final and
all-comprehending judgment on its contents. However
these views may stand when an exhaustive metaphysical
analysis shall have subjected them to its final test, it is
certain that it was no ordinary or rudely equipped type
of the theological intellect which worked them out, and
won for them the respect of modern thought.

in. As further illustrating the theological vitality of
the Clergy, observe what they have done to keep alive,
in the popular mind and in every-day life, the sense of
the supernatural as a practical, habitual influence upon
character and conduct, as well as upon thought and
feeling. The causes tending to weaken this sense are
so familiar, that it will be enough to name without
enlarging upon them. Men in our time live in the
present in the sense of living for the present. There

148 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

have been times -when men lived in the present in the
sense of Hving for the future, and living also in the
past in order the better to live for both. The past to
them was full of great memories, and the future full
of inspiring hopes, while the present was flat, sterile,
unprofitable. But now the things that absorb heart and
brain and hand, the passions and conflicts, the sorrows
and joys which throb along the arteries of life are in
and of the present. As comparatively little value is
attached to what is distant, so comparatively little im-
portance is attached to what is unseen, or to what does
not come to us as self-evident or as demonstratively
certain. A thing that is doubted is subject to heavy
discount. Every thing must be verified, and most things
are held to be of little worth that do not on their face
show the uses to which they can be put. Immediate
pay and profit is the watchword of the day. There is a
hard realism in business of all sorts ; but not more of
it than there is in science, history, and letters. Men
still talk about the ideal, write prose and poetry about
it, dream about it, on rare emergencies find in it a
certain glow of feeling and imagination ; but all that is
the by-play, not the serious work, of the age. Abundant
proofs of all this are at hand in our politics and educa-
tion, in our judgments on passing events, and in our
estimates of what is chiefly good and enjoyable in life.
Then there is the depressing weight of our marvellous
material greatness, arising from the large ascendency
which has been acquired over the resources and powers
of nature. Connected with, or rather resulting from, this
dominion, is an average of comfort and luxury such as

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Mitiistri/. 149

tbe world never saw or dreamed of before, — an average
so high as to breed in the common mind indifference to
any other or better heaven than what can be found now
and here. In such a state of things, the still voice and
the veiled glory of the supernatural are at a discount ;
and it need scarcely be added, that the extent to which
they are so measures the decline from the sources of the
truest and best life, and signalizes the sweeping-away
from the soul's firmament of the surest lights which God
has set there. Crush in man the practical belief in
the supernatural, and you crush in him the very possi-
bility of permanent moral power and greatness. This
is God's ordinance, and the reason for it is wedged into
the core of humanity.

In such times, and amid such tendencies, too much
credit cannot be given to those who make it the fore-
most duty and chief aim of their life-work to chafe into
vitality and power the dormant or dying sense of the
supernatural in all the modes of it which God employs
for the salvation of man, — the written Revelation, the
Church with its means of grace, the living Christ with
all that came forth from Him, and the Holy Ghost, the
Lord and Giver of life. Now, speaking generally, next
to the undying conviction in the soul of the existence
of God and of a future life, which, however it may be
crippled or hid beneath deep shadows, never utterly
forfeits its power, nothing has done so much to save the
sense of the supernatural as an element of the common
faith from blight or torpor as the Christian Priesthood,
appointed of God and acknowledged of man to be
the teacher and guardian of an authentic message from

150 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

heaven, which is the substance of things hoped for and
the evidence of things not seen. It is needless to argue
the value of such a service to humanity. It does not
now, and never will, make an item in the statistics of
the nineteenth century. There is no arithmetic to com-
pute it, no logic to formulate it, no poetry to glorify it
to the million, no oratory to blazon it at the seats of
national power or along the highways of the world's
thought. For vastly inferior services the canvas glows
and the marble breathes, and the nations lift glad
shouts of grateful praise. And yet this sublime minis-
tration of things supernatural goes on with no thought
of pause or defeat, of the world's praise or blame ;
though as necessary to the life of man, and as much
unthanked and unheeded, as the daily sun or the vital
air.

IV. But, again, the vigilance and activity of the theo-
logical mind are impressively exhibited in what has
been done for the re-adjustment, illustration, and en-
forcement of the several lines of the Theistic argument,
with a view to meeting the altered phases of modern
thought. The existence of God is the foundation of
theology. In all theological reasoning there are two
points of departure; i.e., the being of God, and the
human soul. If either be granted, the rest follows.
Christianity begins with the former, and out of it devel-
ops the scheme of redemption, and then, by what it was
appointed to do, measures the spiritual wants of man.
God's purposes toward man tell what man is, more surely
and more exhaustively than any possible statement by
himself of his own condition. Therefore, as might be

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 151

expected, nearly aU the deeper thought antagonistic to
revealed religion assails, before all else, its teaching as
to the existence of God. While the arguments for His
existence, as Christianity represents it, have not changed
materially in their character or substance, the mode
of putting them has changed with the changes in the
sceptical theories that have of late questioned either
their validity or their relevancy. The answers have
kept pace with the objections, the lights with the
shadows. The theistic reasoning of a century ago —
true now as it was then — has been greatly extended
and diversified. The progress of knowledge has been,
to say the least, as serviceable to Christian as to free
thought ; and in discovering difficulties, and exciting
doubts, it has also discovered the means and excited the
intellectual power needed to grapple with and remove
them. If this be so, then clearly one test of the mental
energy and vigilance of the theological mind is to be
found in the way in which it has handled, amid the
exigencies of the times, the materials of the theistic
argument furnished by both the old and the new learn-
ing. It is not proposed to go into details, but merely
to outline in the most general way the more salient as-
pects of the argument, and this with a view to bringing
out the fresh light thrown upon it by Christian advocates
(belonging mostly to the ranks of the Clergy) in their
efforts to answer the objections of modern thought ; and
unless we are greatly mistaken, the result of our inquiry
will prove that the Church has no reason to be ashamed
of the breadth, acuteness, and versatility of its ordained
servants in one of the highest fields of disciplined in-
tellect.

152 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

It was one of the advantages of Christian apologists
in the past age, that they were at liberty to take some
things for granted. There were at least a few inches
of common ground in the arena of controversy between
themselves and their antagonists. They could assume
the existence of a Creator, and man's conscious relation
to him ; and, these facts being admitted, they could
assume that religion of some sort had a solid standing-
place in human reason. Neither Butler nor Paley, for
example, attempts to go behind these postulates. Not
so now. To-day even these are challenged ; and the
defence must start as though nothing were established
save tlie mind's capacity to think, and the worlds within
and without on which that capacity is to be exercised.
Whether or no there is a Supreme Being ; whether or
no He made the universe, and still governs it with
intelligent purpose ; whether or no man is so related to
Him as to be justified in regarding Him as an object of
worship ; whether or no, if such a Being exist. He is
will, and therefore can be moved, or fate, and therefore
cannot be, — these are open questions, and around them
the debate rages with a persistency and momentum that
forbid all thought of truce ox concession. Many, more-
over, are the substitutes offered for the doctrine of
" me living and true God."" One school tells us of " the
latent potency of matter ; " another, of "a stream of
tendency under the guidance of a power not ourselves
which makes for righteousness and order ; " another, of
abstract formulae of reason embodying the final generali-
zations of science and metaphysical speculation, — each
in turn being chartered to rule the kosmos, and work

LiteUectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 153

out its perfection. In dealing with these and all kin-
dred theories opposed to Christian Theism, it has not
been deemed enough to prove a negative, or to drive
them into a reductio ad ahsurdum. Our doctrine of God,
and of the origin and relations of the universe, must be
as positive as that of revelation, or nothing. In stating
this doctrine, recent apologists have done good service
in pointing out distinctly, (1) what it is proposed to
prove ; and (2) what are competent proofs ; and (3) how
much the force of these proofs depends on the condition,
the training, and habits of thought, of the minds to
which they are offered. In doing this they have ad-
mitted that the theistic argument is not what scientists
will accept as absolute demonstration, nor what strict
logicians would regard as entirely without flaws ; but at
the same time they have insisted, and in terms defying
successful contradiction, that the argument is precisely
of the sort that mankind universally accept as decisive
in the ordinary affairs of life, and as abundantly suffi-
cient in all issues affecting the moral or voluntary as
well as intellectual nature of man. They have shown,
too, that all strictly scientific or demonstrative reasoning
rests on assumptions rooted in unfathomable mysteries ;
and that, if there be no valid and convincins: use of
reason save such as excludes from its processes every
element of doubt, then no trustworthy work can be done
by reason among the facts of human history, human
conduct, human society, and the moral consciousness of
man. But the knowledge based on this class of facts is
a higher knowledge than the knowledge which admits
of absolute verification. It is every way of more con-

154 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

sequence to determine a duty, though it can be done
only by probabilities, than to determine a chemical
affinity or a mechanical force, though it be done with
the certainty of demonstration. A given fact is valu-
able, not in proportion to the facility with which it can
be referred to the laws of thought, or to the exactness
with which it can be analyzed and classified, but rather
in proportion to its bearing on the life and character of
responsible beings.

Such are some of the considerations that have been
urged as needful to give the proper tone and attitude of
mind in handling the various arguments for the exist-
ence of a personal God. These arguments are either a
priori, or deductive as founded upon necessary, axiomatic
truths of reason ; or a posteriori, or inductive as built
upon materials provided by observation and experience.
In fact, when reaching their greatest force, they combine
both processes, involving equally the study of particu-
lar facts, and the application of laws, intuitions, truths,
said to be universal because inherent in the constitution
of man and nature. However much these two lines of
reasoning differ in other respects, they differ greatly as
to their practical use and value. A more definite classi-
fication is that of Kant, — and, probably because more
definite, more generally accepted in all recent theistic
inqumes, — viz., (1) the Metaphysical or Ontological;
(2) Causation, or the Cosmological; (3) Design, or adap-
tation of means to ends or final causes, or the Teleologi-
cal ; (4) not falling altogether under the last, though
partly within its province, the Anthropological, or the
argument arising from the facts of human conscious-

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 155

ness and history. Now, the Church of this generation
has found among its Clergy, some engaged in the active
duties of the Priesthood and some occupying Divinity
chairs and lectureships, no lack of ability to review^ these
arguments, to determine their comparative force, to repel
the objections and solve the difficulties alleged by the
several schools of free or positively sceptical thought.
If their calibre and culture, and general faculty for deep
and solid thinking, are to be estimated by what they
have done in this direction, the Clergy have little to fear
as to the ultimate verdict of all fair-minded men.

The least valuable of the theistic arguments is the
metaphysical. It belongs to the region of abstractions ;
and from Anselm and Descartes down to Hegel it has
proved to be little else than a series of mental gymnas-
tics. It would lift the mind above itself, and put into
it more than it can hold. Its conclusions outrun its
premises. It vainly attempts to conceive being in the
abstract, and then to convert what is an impossible
conception into a definite term in logic ; and the result
is a process of reasoning that turns not on differences of
things, but on distinctions of words. Such a process can
add nothing to ^the knowledge of man, however it may
delude him into believing the contrary. From the time
Kant proved that " the unconditioned necessity of a
mental judgment does not form the absolute necessity of
a thing" (i.e., that an idea of God in the mind does not
certify the reality of His existence ; or, generally, that
the actual being of an object can never be shown by
thinking about it), this argument has been pushed higher
and higher into the empyrean of speculation, until its

156 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

pure idealism culminated in the metaphysical postulate
of Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, who affirmed that
the subject contained the object, the ego the non-ego, —
in other words, that thought and being are identical, and
constitute an organic unity ; nay, still further, that the
intellectual intuition of the absolute is resolvable into a
logical idea, and that this in turn, and by necessary con-
sequence, takes on the form and authority of a supreme
law of thought. It is true that in every finite we have
an idea of the infinite, and vice versa ; it is true that of
nature and self, of the infinite and the finite, of God
and man, we have an intuition on which reason rests.
But metaphysically considered, and as matter of strict
logic, correlative ideas do not certify one another. The
negation implied in the infinite indicates not existence,
but non-existence. As has been well remarked, " the
chief importance of the metaphysical arguments for the
existence of God does not lie in their metaphysical
validity, but in their testimony to the tendency of human
thought." If they do not demonstrate His existence, they
certainly prove that the idea of such a Being is coincident
with the loftiest exercise of reason. In other words,
their value is not in what they accomplish as demon-
strations, but in what they do toward establishing an
antecedent probability of the truth of other and less
pretentious lines of reasoning looking to the same end.
This, so far as the writer is able to judge after much
inquiry, is a fair statement of the estimation in which
the later and more ambitious forms of the ontological
argument are held by the soundest Christian thinkers of
the dav.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 157

We turn now to the other arguments, whose individual
force can be fully appreciated only when we reach the
final result to which, by widely different paths, they lead
us. They do not claim the virtue of absolute demonstra-
tions, but that which after its kind is scarcely less, — the
virtue of cumulative intellectual and moral probabilities
based on the primary intuitions of consciousness, on the
suggestions and demands of the practical reason or
conscience, and on the testimony of history and human
experience.

The Chi'istian position in respect to the several forms
of the theistic argument cannot be more exactly or
comprehensively stated than in the words of St. Paul :
" The invisible things of him from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, heing under stood hij the things that
are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." ^ We
know God by what he has made, and only more per-
fectly by what he has said in a Revelation that verifies
itself by appealing pre-eminently to the moral and
spiritual nature of man. We see the works, and by
them know the workman. This is the rock of our con-
fidence in the validity of this great argument ; and it
cannot be broken or dislodged without involving in the
same fate the most rudimentary and instinctive judg-
ments of the human mind. If we look at ourselves, or
at the outward world, certain inferences are irresistible ;
and these inferences, by the necessary and universal tes-
timony of our intelligence, imply a power, wisdom, and
goodness that it is impossible to conceive of apart from
an infinite personality. Metaphysical speculation weaves

1 Rom. i. 20.

158 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

about these inferences no end of difficulties ; but some-
how all healthy minds, when they think upon them as
they think upon all matters relating to life and conduct,
fail to see the lion in the path that proves so formidable
to the votaries of abstract thought. There is scarcely
any mental process, that, if pushed far enough, does not
land us in puzzles ; and if we must set aside as worthless
all conclusions not absolutely proof against every plau-
sible subtlety of metaphysical reasoning, it is hard to say
what would be left us. Fortunately the average sense
of mankind holds on its way, and seldom mistakes sand
for granite, or tapers for stars.

In the cosmological argument, or that from cause and
effect, the objections advanced by recent thought have
added little to those of Hume. For causation he sub-
stituted uniformity of succession, and argued that one
thing follows another simply in the relation of antece-
dent and consequent ; experience, beyond which we
cannot go, limiting the mind to this relation. Later
objectors have so far qualified Hume's notion as to ad-
mit the principle of causality ; but they render it useless
as one of the grounds of theistic proof, by defining it as
nothing more than the transference of force from one
thing to another, and then by asserting that the cause
is always contained in the effect, and that the effect
measures the cause from which it proceeds. From
these premises it is argued, that, if we regard the physi-
cal world as an effect, we have no right to infer a cause
greater than itself; and, next, that the law of causality
" forbids a stop in its numeric precession which is to be
designated as a first cause, itself having no precedent

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 159

cause," for, to make such a stop in the process would
be to subvert the foundation of the structure so reared.
It is claimed, moreover, that, as both cause and effect
are physical, neither can be invested with qualities, as
moral or intellectual, not found in the other. And so
it is argued that we cannot get beyond the physical
order by the use of a law in which that order is con-
stantly implied ; i.e., we cannot reach the being of God,
or the Infinite, by tracing back or heaping together
finite changes however countless. Granting the prem-
ises, the logic is unanswerable. But the fault of the
logic is that it leaves out some important elements of
the problem, and involves what the instinctive judgment
of the mind is not slow in declaring a reductio ad absurd-
um. In all causation there is the conception of power
as well as the conception of succession of phenomena ;
and of power, moreover, superior to the phenomena that
manifest it. Man himself acts freely on nature. He
cannot originate new laws, but he can originate new
combinations of things and forces. He is conscious of
an energy that stands apart from, asserts itself upon or
independently of, passive nature. The very idea of cau-
sation is a product of mind, not of matter. It carries
with it, as matter of consciousness, the attributes of
universality and necessity, as well as the quality of
power or force. It is not true, too, as a matter of con-
sciousness, that every effect contains its cause in the
sense of being the measure of it. An effect manifests,
attests, represents, its cause; but does not exhaust it.
If we find in causality only transference of force, it does
not follow that one thing regarded as cause transfers to

160 Intellectual Vigor and Activiti/ in the Ministry.

another thing regarded as effect ail its force. It may
retain more than it imparts. Every cause must be ade-
quate to its effect ; but every effect need not be equiva-
lent to its cause, though it must partake of the character
of its cause. With the innate idea of power as superior
to phenomena is associated, with the certainty of an
intuition, the idea of personality, — of will and intelli-
gence. This holds true of our own thought upon the
works of our hands ; and it holds true equally of our
thought upon the universe as a totality of works. We
can no more conceive of it as self-originated, or as the
result of chance, than we can conceive of it as proceed-
ing from nothing ; and, if we cannot do the latter, we
must fall back on something eternal. Change, as sci-
ence tells us, is the condition of all things that appear ;
behind them the mind is forced to seek the unchange-
able. And so we are driven upon one or the other of
these two conceptions : either the succession of finite
causes and effects is eternal, or beyond this succession
there is a7a infinite cause or reason of all existence —
itself uncaused. Both, metaphysically considered, are
incomprehensible by the logical understanding, but both
are not alike in their hold on the primary instincts of
the mind ; for these affirm that it is more reasonable to
believe that the finite has proceeded from the infinite,
than that the finite is eternal, and so to co-ordinate it
with the infinite. If we reject the theistic conception
of the origin of the universe, modern thought allows
us but two other theories, — that which traces the uni-
verse to one eternal principle, manifesting itself phe-
nomenally to consciousness in the dual form of matter

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 161

and mind, though necessarily neither the one nor the
other, unknowable in itself because transcendental, and
therefore at best only an inference of reason ; and that
which regards the universe as the product of material
forces that have eternally existed, working out by their
own inherent laws, and through countless cycles of time,
the effects that we see, — these effects being wrought
up into cosmic order by the human mind itself. The
former theory figures in living thought as agnostic
monism; the latter, as absolute materialism. Both,
though in different manner, equally violate the primary
laws of human thought. As has been shown over and
over, — too often to make it worth while to repeat the
process here, — the principle of causality taken by itself,
and as only one branch of the theistic argument, proves
that there is no resting-place for reason, save in the
conception of a personal Creator, from whom all things
proceed, and by whom and for whom all things consist.

But next we have the teleological argument, or that
from final causes. And here, again, speculation has
thrown itself across the path of our instinctive, common-
sense judgments. The waters that float this argument
would be clear enough apart from the mud cast into
them by metaphysical digging. We cannot look at the
world without seeing in it endless proofs of intelligent
foresight and wise purpose. There is not only power,
but power directed by wisdom. Intermediate means
and ends work toward a fore-ordained issue. There is
a combination, — a harmony of phenomena. Past and
present are plainly determined in relation to the future.
Innumerable and virtually infinite forces are at work,

162 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

and yet they are so marvellously adjusted as to subserve
the promotion of order and progress. The mind seeks
not only to explain things individually, or in mass, but
demands, beside, some rational account of the order that
pervades them. To say that this order merely happened,
that it is the creature of chance, not only explains
nothing, but is an insult to reason. To say that nature
is the sufficient account of itself, is only to give up the
question as a hopeless enigma. It were needless to go
over ground so often traversed, and to cite from the
vast mass of facts illustrative of this argument gathered
especially from organic functions and animal instincts.
Kationally man cannot help applying to the universe
the same principles which govern him when he judges
his own work and the work of his fellow-men. He
refers to intelligence, to design, to a final cause, what,
in his own sphere, could not have been produced save
by an intelligent, forecasting mind, looking in all its
operations to a determinate end ; and as he sees in
nature unspeakably more wonderful adaptations of
means to ends than any of which himself is capable, so
he infers, and with a cogency that carries with it the
axiomatic, irresistible affirmations of his reason, that
the cause which produced them is to all intents and
purposes infinitely more wise, as well as powerful, than
himself. Left to the guidance of his own reason, and
apart from speculative perplexities which amuse, or at
most exercise without instructing, the human mind, he
sees just what St. Paul declared that he must and ought
to see, — even God's eternal power and Godhead in the
things which are made, the universe as it appears.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 163

The objections to this argument, however ingeniously
worked out and persistently urged by modern thought,
have not weighed much in the estimation of the bulk
of mankind. They seem content to let the metaphysi-
cians try their teeth on this file, and for their own diver-
sion to keep on rattling the dry bones of their logic ;
themselves resting meanwhile securely on the intuitive
conviction that things made must have a maker, that
order in nature must have an intelligent source, that
where intelligence is there must be personality, and
that where personality proves itself by effects practically
infinite, itself must be practically infinite.

Hume said that man had a right to reason in this way
only within the limits of his own experience and obser-
vation ; that, to judge correctly of one world, he must
know all worlds. But every advance of science is help-
ing to answer this objection ; for, the farther it moves on
into the universe, the more clearly does it discover an
all-embracing unity. It is said that the argument rests
on analogy ; that man takes too much for granted when
he reasons from what he is and does to the power — if
there be one self-existent and eternal — that works in
and through the universe. Because he may think a law,
it is no sufficient proof that such a law really exists :
because he thinks a God, it does not follow that the
God so thought out really is. But we answer : Unless
we are to sever all intelligible connection between our-
selves and that which is not ourselves, we must believe
that the non-ego has its truthful counterpart in the ego.
Our own conceptions are not, and cannot be, the measure
of the Absolute Being ; and yet we cannot but so far

164 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

confide in his veracity and goodness as to believe that the
laws of thought in us have a legitimate and necessary
relation to things as they are in themselves ; and if we
can accept the fact of a supernatural revelation which
enables us to see God face to face by a direct and imme-
diate vision, as theologians affirm to be the case, then is
this instinctive confidence only another name for a moral
demonstration. As has been strikingly remarked, " If
we are not to throw away all idea of homogeneity and
proportion between cause and effect, between instinctive
tendency and fulfilment, then the rational and the moral
in us can neither have then- beginning nor reach their
end apart from Divine reason, — from an intelligent, in-
finite, personal cause. We find not an appetency, affec-
tion, or energy of our being, that fails to meet its fitting
object : through the range of the animal, the domestic,
the social life, the several relations, of which one term
is within us, complete themselves by hitting upon the
other in the external scene. Is, then, this analogy to
be first broken when we reach the highest levels of
humanity ? Are we there fleeing out of all relations,
though still furnished with their inward drift and cry ?
still sent to seek, with pre-judgment that we shall not
find ] If we are to assume any oneness or any harmony
of our nature with its theatre of being, such disappoint-
ment of its ends carries in it an improbability revolting
to the reason." ^

Spinoza's objection to the argument has been revived
and expanded. He faulted it, because, if true, it would
destroy the perfection of God; inasmuch as it would

1 Dr. Martineau's Ideal Substitutes for God, p. 29.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 165

represent Him as looking for an end outside of Himself,
and therefore as lacking something which, if perfect, He
must possess. The answer is, that God does not complete,
but simply manifests, Himself by what He creates.

The materialist objects, that we need not look beyond
the forces at work in the universe in order to account
for what we see. But a material force capable of effects
involving an intelligent purpose, is not what we under-
stand by a material force. If such a force work by law,
there must be a precedent power to prescribe the law.
It is impossible to conceive of an atom self-impelled,
self-directed, by a law inherent in itself. If it could
originate its own law, it would not be what it is ; and
what is true of a single atom is true of any mass of
atoms, — of the universe.

Another school antagonizes the argument because of
the anomalies, imperfections, and dim gropings of na-
ture, which are inconsistent with the idea of a perfect
governing intelligence. Much has been made of useless
or rudimentary organs in nature ; of adaptations that
work harm, that convulse, rend, poison, burn, drown,
and in countless ways destroy life, and mar the harmony
and beauty of the world. But this really does not make
against the principle of the argument, except so far as
our ignorance of the whole plan of nature hides from
us the final cause. Shut up to efficient causes, the world
is a hopeless riddle. Its discords have no solution. Its
power is blind and pitiless ; its strifes and angers are
those of fate ; it builds only to destroy, and nourishes
life only for the grave. But once concede a purpose,
an ultimate end, an intelligent directing mind ; and

166 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

forces that seemed at war fall into unity, things afloat
drop into their orbits, mountains of difficulty are brought
low, and valleys of mystery are filled up.

Still another school, — the school of sceptics who tell
us, " It may be as you say ; the universe may have in it
the mind and upon it the hand of God : but you cannot
prove it," — speaking through its ablest disciple,^ admits
that " there is a balance of probability in favor of crea-
tion by intelligence," but insists that it is only " prob-
ability." As no one has claimed for the teleological
argument the character of a demonstration, this admis-
sion answers the purpose of the argument.

But, finally, a few words must suffice on the foremost
opponents of the argument from design, the evolution-
ists. Starting with an attempt to account for the origin
of species, they have step by step passed on to astron-
omy, geology, zoology, history, politics, and social statics.
They hold that a process of development from some
unknown and inconceivable beginning explains all that
can be explained ; and that this process is simply one
phase of the universe, considered as a totality of force
acting and re-acting with continuous energy, and accord-
ing to uniform and unchangeable laws. The theory
is harmless or harmful, according to the use made of it.
It may be theistic or atheistic. If it be allowed that
God directs the evolution, as well as originates it, we
need not quarrel with the theory as being necessarily
fatal to Christian Theism, though it eliminate special
interventions of creative power. " The genesis of an
atom," says Herbert Spencer, " is no easier to conceive

1 J. Stuart Mill.

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 167

than that of a planet. Indeed, far from rendering the
universe less mysterious than before, evolution makes
a greater mystery of it. Creation by fabrication is
much lower than creation by evolution."^ Evolution
with a presiding mind and a final cause is no stranger
to theology. On the contrary, it is as old as the
thought of St. Augustine, who, when he declared that
God might have created all things potentialiter et cau-
saliter, — the universe from a germ or germs in which
were latent and alive in anticipation all possibilities of
life and being, — declared all that theistic evolutionists
claim to-day. But the contention not merely of theol-
ogy, but of sound reason, is with a more radical notion
of evolution, — that which leaves neither place nor occa-
sion for creative intelligence, for a governing person-
ality, but leaves the origin of nature as a primary force
or collection of forces in the fathomless abyss of the un-
known and unknowable. As such it is, when stripped
of all verbiage, merely the doctrine of chance under
a more learned name, and dressed up in the livery of
science. Passing over its minor characteristics as an
attempted account of the world's origin and develop-
ment, it is enough that its incurable weakness be exposed
at the bar of reason, and, by necessary inference, its
antagonism to the fundamental principle of Christian
Theology. Things have come to be what they are by
evolution ; but how did the evolution begin ] Whence
came the power that enabled things to produce their
like, and to vary just so much and no more, as the
theory presupposes ? Without this power, the whole

^ Essays, vol. i p. 298.

1G8 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

process would have been impossible. Whence was de-
rived the life of organized beings \ It is life that organ-
izes ; life is the parent, not the child, of organization.
Again, to bring the world where it is, with all its count-
less adjustments and adaptations, there must have been
a concurrence of an infinite succession of lucky chances,
each happening at the right time and place. In affirm-
ing tliis, the theory affirms what it is impossible to
believe. Still again, when it is reminded that there is
no adequate basis of fact for its inferences within the
precincts of history, it shoves things back on what is
practically an infinitude of years ; and so evades the
question, not solves it. " All things, in fact, are possible
to those who can draw cheques without limit on the
bank of eternity, for it cannot break ! " Such a theory
may for a time, and to some minds fascinated with its
stupendous generalizations, obscure, but it cannot dis-
place, the foundation-truth of Christian Theism.

We come now to the most telling of the arguments
for the existence of a personal God, — that derived from
man himself.

(J) From self-consciousness, or personality ;

(2) From the moral nature and the moral world ;

(3) From the universal consent of mankind ;

(4) From the evidences of a moral government, wise,
benevolent, and perfect.

Self-consciousness defies analysis. It escapes in the
attempt to define it. It is not to be found in this or
that quality or faculty of our nature, nor in all qualities
and faculties. Self is behind and above all ; and that
self is personality, and that personality is a free force,

Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry. 169

— free though subject to law, one in the midst of mul-
tiplicity, continuous and permanent in the midst of
change. This is the primary truth of our being. It
admits of no proof, because it is its own proof. All the
metaphysics that has fluttered around this central core
of our being in the ages all along, like a moth around a
candle, has only darkened counsel. Now, in virtue of
this personality we hold communion with our fellow-men
as free personalities. But it is impossible to conceive
of our own or of theirs as the source or cause of the
conscious self. That self must have a ground ; and so
step by step we are carried up irresistibly to an Infinite
self whose being is its own law, whose freedom is ab-
solute, and whose end is the fiat of its own perfect will.
In the existence of such a Being we have not only an
instinctive faith which is the source of a regulative
knowledge, but a reasonable faith, a faith grounded on
the reason, a conviction rooted in an intelligible idea,
and, when developed, taking the form of a positive
cognition, a form too elementary to be analyzed, and
too broad to be comprehended in a definition. No
question has been more thoroughly sifted in late years
by Christian scholars and thinkers. We give results,
and outline the drift of inquiry, with no attempt at
describing processes.

So with the other branches of the anthropological
argument, which we have no space for discussing how-
ever briefly. In all, the intellect of the Church, as pro-
fessionally exercised, has exhibited a dialectic as well
as didactic ability, that has left no phase of thought on
the theistic argument unexamined, no objection to the

170 Intellectual Vigor and Activity in the Ministry.

Christian view of that argument unanswered. When
the issue has been pushed into the region of abstract
thought with all its affiliated subtleties, or handled by
the processes of inductive or deductive logic, or debated
at the bar of intuitive judgments and common-sense
beliefs, or thrown out among the concrete facts of his-
tory and experience ; it has been boldly and thoroughly
met, and by minds betraying no unfitness for the task
because of their habitual intimacy with the mysteries
of revealed truth, or their reverence for the standards of
a traditional faith. It should be observed, moreover,
that, if these minds have not in all respects approved
themselves to the average scientist and philosopher, it
has not been because they could not walk in the deep
waters of speculation, but rather because of a certain
instinctive habit of estimating the value of thought by
its bearing on life and character, on the moral respon-
sibility and spiritual destiny of mankind, and a conse-
quent impatience of metaphysical guesses and scientific
hypotheses that seemed to lead nowhere save into outer
darkness. To name the minds that, in this field of
thought and in this generation, have won honorable
distinction for themselves and for the Church by theii*
erudition and intellectual power, would be to catalogue
a large share of the current Christian literature of our
time, a task that does not fall within our purpose.

LECTURE IV.

THE ACTIVITY OF THE CLERICAL OR THEOLOGICAL MIND
IN CHRISTIAN AND SCIENTIFIC ETHICS.

I SHALL now ask attention to some of the more note-
worthy evidences of the thoughtful activity of the theo-
logical or clerical mind in the sphere of Christian and
scientific ethics. For convenience of handling, ethics
may be separated from theology ; but in substance it can-
not be. Theology and ethics are only different phases
of the same body of revealed truth. Christian ethics is
the doctrine of the Christian life : Christian theology
is the doctrine of Christian knowledge. The one treats
of action under the aspects of duty : the other treats of
faith as an object of intellectual apprehension. The
one handles God's truth in its relations to the will and
the conscience ; the other, in its relations to reason.
The one aims to show how man is to be educated and
trained for time and eternity ; the other, what he is to
believe, and why he is to believe — the what and the why
being regarded as inclusive of the principles on which,
and the methods by which, that education and training
are to proceed. Christian morality, then, and Christian
theology, are bound together by an organic, not a tech-
nical connection. They were joined together in an

172 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

indissoluble marriage by their eternal Author ; and what
God has joined together let no man put asunder. And
yet the history both of dogmatic and ethical thought
tells us how often the attempt has been made to divorce
them, or rather to absorb the one in the other. The
latter process, which may be traced in some of the great
masters of religious thought, Schleiermacher and Rothe
for example, has arisen from a conviction of the sub-
stantial identity, as of thought and purpose, knowledge
and action, so of faith and morals. The attempts to
divorce them, as parties not necessarily bound together,
may be traced either to a severely speculative bias of the
mind, or to an avowed determination to eliminate the
dogmatic altogether from the ethical, the latter being
regarded as alone important. For the sake of definition,
let us go a step farther, and inquire how Christian ethics
differs from philosophical or speculative ethics. It dif-
fers from the latter " in its subject, which is not man,
but Christians ; in its principle, founded on the recog-
nized relation between man and God ; in its source,
being derived not from the reason, but from the teaching
of Christ and the Apostles ; and, finally, in our percep-
tion of it, which is not by any analytical process, but by
the Christian consciousness."

Now, as in the topics previously discussed, so in this,
it is my purpose to deal only with such aspects of it as
will best exhibit the tone and drift of the studies and
writings of Chiistian teachers considered as its expound-
ers and defenders. What, then, in late years, has been
the work of the deputies of Christ in this direction?
Has it been a work which has improved or damaged

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 1 73

their credit as men of intellectual culture, vigilance, and
energy? The answer to this question will be given
under the following heads, as embracing the characteris-
tic points of the recent ethical literature of the Church.

1. The present attitude of Christian ethics toward
the ethics of philosophy, or the natural reason, involving
the indebtedness of the latter to the former.

2. The alleged weaknesses and defects of Christian
ethics.

3. The grounds of the superiority of Christian over
natural ethics, in that greatest of tasks, the development
and discipline of individual character.

It is well known, that, when Christianity supplant-
ed the heathenism of antiquity, ethics, which had pre-
viously for many ages been cultivated as a province of
philosophy, or in its practical relations as a branch of
politics, was merged into theology. It so continued until
after the Reformation of the sixteenth century, with the
exception of what was done toward maturing a system
of casuistry for the confessional ; but this could scarcely
be regarded as an exception, for it was done under the
auspices of the Church, and with a ^'iew to purely reli-
gious uses. At the opening of the seventeenth century,
there were some signs of a disposition to revive ethical
studies as an independent branch of inquiry ; but these
studies did not assume a distinctly scientific character
until after the famous disputes excited by the writings of
Hobbes. Toward the close of the seventeenth century,
ethics first assumed in our modern thinking the position
as a separate science which it has maintained ever since.
During a century and a half it drew to itself a very fair

174 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

proportion of the best speculative genius in England,
France, and Germany. Many illustrious names adorned
its history during that period. But it is noteworthy,
that of late it has not commanded the interest it once
did, and that it boasts of little progress in our day, when
almost every other science has pushed its claims to an
increased share of public attention. Many causes have
conspired to produce this result. The higher thought
of the time has been diverted from it by physical science,
and still more by the wide and deep range of literature
which handles many subjects once deemed foreign to it.
It is certain that no masters of ethical inquiry are now
produced who at all approach the great names of other
days. When earnest and anxious spuits need help and
guidance in the higher walks of thought or amid the
ever-recurring perplexities of life, they go not to philoso-
phers, but to poets, to giants in letters, and to great
preachers. Wearied out in the profitless pursuit of
noble but impalpable spiritualities, many have dropped
off into a style of thought and teaching, which, though
less pretentious, promises more that is tangible and cer-
tain. Confining themselves to the world of phenomena,
to their co-existences and successions, thev do not care
to vex themselves with problems that lie deeper. It is
admitted, moreover, that the true basis of moral studies
regarded in their purely scientific aspect is psychology ;
and, further, that these studies cannot be exhaustively
prosecuted without crossing the domain of certain ab-
stract metaphysical questions which can never be defini-
tively settled. But it so happens that psychology, though
assuming a decided physiological bias of late, has not

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 175

adequately re-enforced itself with fresh views of the facts
and processes of the human mind; while metaphysics,
so far as it relates to moral subjects, has been quite
barren of any practical fruit. Thus the interest in eth-
ical inquiries has been considerably diminished. But this
can be only of temporary duration. The great and ever-
pressing problems connected with these inquiries will
compel a revival of the old interest in them. Some
new turn in the current of thought, like that now being
pushed by Herbert Spencer and his school, will bring
them to the front again ; and it is not at all unlikely that
the time is rapidly approaching when the best minds of
the age will return to them with renewed sympathy,
having grown weary of pursuits which, though promis-
ing more immediate and tangible results, confine them
to mere phenomenal sequences and correlations. Judg-
ing from the past, as well as from the instincts of the
higher intellect, it is impossible to suppose that it will
be content to grind much longer in the mill of inquiries
which ignore the causal instincts of the mind, when an-
other and grander realm of investigation is open to it,
even that of the will and the moral sense, which are the
surest outlets for thought into the region of the absolute.
Now, the ordained teachers of Christian morality have
exhibited signal mental activity and acuteness in recent
times, not merely at this or that threatened point, but
along the whole boundary-line between the ethics of
revelation and the ethics of the natural reason. They
have steadfastly and successfully maintained the superi-
ority of the former over the latter in many test cases,
and against the most powerful and erudite objectors.

176 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

Let us glance at some of the grounds on which this
assertion rests.

It is generally conceded, that the root difference
between ancient and modern ethics, scientifically viewed,
consists not in the superior methods of the latter, nor
in the superior intelligence devoted to its cultivation ;
but in the higher plane on which it has moved. In
closeness, subtilty, and depth of analysis, the old Greek
masters have never been excelled ; while their methods
of investigation, both a priori and inductive, left little
for modern ethical thinkers to supply. The wider
range of experience afforded by the lapse of more than
two thousand years has provided the moderns with
more facts, and has thrown upon all facts in the moral
life of man a greater variety of lights and shadows ;
but all the elements and most of the results of modern
ethical knowledge, apart from the contributions of
Christianity, were as well known by Plato and Aristotle,
as by any utilitarian or intuitional or evolutionary mor-
alist of to-day. In the power to handle facts for the
purposes of analysis and classification, or in searching
and profound insight into the meaning of facts, there
has been no perceptible advance. But unquestionably
modern ethics enjoys a vantage-ground, moves on a
plane of thought, to which the moralists of antiquity
were strangers. If this be so, it brings us face to face
with the crucial question. How was this nobler van-
tage-ground, this higher plane, reached? Was it by the
orderly and consecutive development of natural ethics
regarded as a science, strictly confined within its own
limits, and attending to its own business"? Was it by

The Activitj/ of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 177

the continuous march of reason from lower to higher
ground ? Was it by the discovery of some new point
of departure, or some original and more fruitful method
of research? Or was it by the wider experience and
expanding progress of humanity? I answer: By none,
nor by all, apart from outside help. Modern ethical
science has, in the main, been lifted to its present ele-
vation, as has all modern life, by a force from without ;
by a force which it did not originate, which it cannot
destroy, and which it were a shame and a damage to
ignore ; and that force is the religion of Jesus Christ,
doctrinally as well as morally considered. This exter-
nal lifting power has operated in many ways, but in at
least three with especial energy.

1. It has been well said, " If the thought of Plato
and Aristotle was ' conscious ' as compared with that of
the Seven Sages, the thought of modern times might be
called ' self-conscious ' as compared with theirs." The
ancients dealt profoundly with all conceptions relating
to the object of moral action, the good or happiness, and
the beautiful or virtue. But they rather lingered at
than crossed the threshold of the moral suhject. Thev
treated vaguely and uncertainly the deepest questions
on the subjective side of morals. They never stated
fully and satisfactorily the relation of the individual will
and consciousness to the good in life and action ; they
left no sure word about a moral faculty in the soul, to
whose authority all other powers were to be subordi-
nated. They had but a dim notion of what we mean
by duty, by individual responsibility, by the moral affec-
tions as related to an outward moral law that always

178 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

and everywhere " makes for righteousness." Now, it is
this side of morals, the inward, subjective side, which
in modern times has assumed paramount importance.
When we speak of duty, right, moral obligation, we
mean things which bring home to our inmost conscious-
ness the moral quality of actions, and which force us to
determine the relations of accountable beings to God
and the world around them. The old problem whether
man can realize the absolute, the supreme end-in-itself,
by means of noble actions and moments of profound
contemplation, has little interest for us. It has been
superseded by another, — even whether the absolute, the
supreme end being given, revealed in the Triune God,
man will, with all needful aids afforded him, obey Him.
The first thoughts of ethics now are not about how
much happiness can be got out of life, but. How far can
this present life be brought into conformity with a per-
fect will? It is all well enough to ask in a philosophic
temper, What is happiness? What is the chief good"?
But it is a vastly sublimer thing to ask. What constitutes
duty? Why is this thing right, and that thing wrong?
and why ought we to do the one, and to leave the other
undone? Doubtless, as has been remarked, we may
find in the thinking of the wisest of the old masters of
moral speculation suggestive hints and intimations, and
sometimes a phraseology, which prove that they were
not altogether strangers to such questions. The tw SeW,
ws Sei, etc., of Aristotle, imply a certain consciousness of
the connection between responsibility and the freedom
of the will. But he did not develop the conception.
He seems to have gone little beyond the average human

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 1*79

instinct which says we " ought " to do some things,
and not others. Clearly it was not a leading conception
with him, and, if not with him, then with none who
preceded or immediately followed him.

Says an eminent authority on this point : —

"The foundation of the ethical notion of duty is parti}' owing
to the Stoics ; but undoubtedlj- the whole idea of moral obligation
and individual responsibility, which goes to make up its full sig-
nificance, has taken hold of the thought of mankind through and
by reason of the long influence of religion and theolog}'. This
deep conception is now an heirloom of moral philosophers ; and
the}' cannot get rid of it, any more than a man can return to the
unconsciousness of a child. However comparatively feeble mnv
be the tliought of any modern thinker, there is yet a sort of
background to his system, provided by the spirit of the age, a con-
ception which he cannot help availing himself of, which, through
no merit of his own, is on the whole deeper than any thing which
Aristotle (and, I may add, any writer unaided by revelation) had
attained to." ^

2. Again : natural ethics, as we are acquainted with
it, is indebted for its present standpoint to Christian
Theology on another ground. The freedom of the will,
individual responsibility, is assumed in all its reason-
ings. But how did it happen that this fundamental
truth came to be so well established as to allow of its
being thus taken for granted ? Metaphysical thought
has done much, but theological thought has done more,
to place free-will in the category of accepted truths.
Democritus touched on the question when he said, " In
the whirl of necessity, man is only half a slave." Plato
asserts what is equivalent to it, at the conclusion of his

1 Sir Alexander Grant: Ethics of Aristotle, vol. i. p. 313.

180 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

" Republic : " notwithstanding he made it of no effect
by teaching the transmigration of souls. Aristotle
treated the question neither metaphysically nor theo-
logically. It was mooted by the Stoics, but not devel-
oped or established by their thinking. In the dawn
of modern speculative ethics, it was taken up with
great vigor and earnestness by those two masters of
metaphysical inquiry, Spinoza and Leibnitz. They,
however, worked at the problem under the strong light
thrown upon it by ten centuries of theological discussion.
They, in fact, took it up in its theological form : the
wdll of God, — how can it be reconciled with the free-
will of man? They attempted to harmonize the two
conceptions by finding some higher one in which they
might both be solved. Logically they both failed.
Spinoza drifted into the mazes of pantheism ; and
Leibnitz, after a vast outlay of learning and subtilty,
ended in assuming what he set out to prove. It would
be idle to enumerate the writers w^ho came after them.
The result was the same. They either proved too much
or too little. Free-will is a fact of consciousness, and
falls within the domain of man's moral nature, — a
domain where many things are true which cannot be
demonstrated.

This question of the freedom of the will has two
forms, — either theological, in relation to the will of
God; or metaphysical, in relation to the law of cause
and effect in the order of nature. It may be asked.
How is this freedom compatible with the sovereignty of
God \ or how can it be reconciled with the unalterable
sequence of cause and effect in nature ? Is the will a

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 181

cause only, or is it also an effect ? Now, I shall not
stop to inquii-e how far the ethics of reason, of science,
is indebted to the discussion of the metaphysical side of
this question. It is enough to say that it owes far
more to the discussion of the theological side of it ; and
for these reasons. The question in all its far-reaching
consequences was forced upon the theological mind by
the collision in the Church of rival theories of the origin
and nature of the religious life ; and this some ten cen-
turies before it was deemed of sufficient interest to the
general philosophic mind to induce any elaborate attempt
at its independent treatment. St. Augustine, in his
famous controversy with Pelagius, exhausted the ca-
pacity of the human mind for dealing with it. He
touched the limit of human thought, and all beyond the
boundary he reached was unknowable. He handled it
with the intense fervor of a Christian who believed that
the verities of his religion were staked on the issue ;
and, at the same time, with a subtle insight and keen
analysis which no modern thinker has sui-passed. He
may be said to have been the founder and master of the
literature of the will. The schoolmen eddied around
him as the fountain-head of all safe thinking on the
subject. Calvin only repeated his conclusions with some
damaging exaggerations ; and Jonathan Edwards did
little more than recast his thoughts in a modern mould
and in the interest of Calvin's theology. When the
ablest metaphysicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries grappled with the problem, they could not
escape his influence, nor rid themselves of the forms
of language which he had indelibly graven upon the
common memorv.

182 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

Again : it must be admitted that the theological side
of the question is the higher and more difficult one, and
that to handle this side of it with thoroughness is to
include the substance of all that can be said on the
metaphysical side, and vastly more. Metaphysics treats
it as a purely speculative question. Theology treats it
as the most intensely practical one imaginable, and,
therefore, in such way as to make its conclusions imme-
diately available to ethics, which is the science of conduct
as well as the science of moral thought.

3. But there is still another debt to be charged to
the account of natural ethics, arising from what Chris-
tian morality has done to define and fix the ultimate
ground of moral obligation. This is a wide subject,
and I regret to be compelled to treat it with the brevity
which the limits assigned to this branch of the dis-
cusion render necessary. The fundamental points in
moral science, around which all others may be grouped,
are the moral standard and the moral sanction. The
former answers the question, How do we ascertain what
is right '? The latter answers the question, What con-
strains us to do it 1 Every one is persuaded that he
ought to do what is right ; but every one is not clear
as to the answer when he asks himself. Why ought 1 1
or. Why is this right, and that wrong % Now, all cri-
terions of rightness in an action are reducible to four.
The first, that of the inductive or utilitarian moralist,
consists in the tendency to promote the general well-
being or happiness, — a criterion resting on man's own
experience of the effects of human action, and appeal-
ing to motives which, however refined and expanded,

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 183

are still those of self-love and prudence. The second,
that of the intuitive moralist, springs from instinctive
preferences, and an inborn consciousness of obligation,
which incline us to what is right, apart from all reason-
ing or experience. The third, that of the evolutionist,
substitutes in all moral development the operation of
natural law for the exercise of free-will ; affirming, that,
as the fitter organism survives the less fit, so must
moral conduct in the natural course of things gain the
upper hand, and immoral conduct tend more and more
toward extinction ; that conduct is good as it is adapted
to the preservation of self and the race, and bad as it
makes for the opposite result ; that by necessary and
immutable laws, excluding all permanent or fatal inter-
ference of will-power, higher forms of conduct and
character must be evolved from the successive ante-
cedent stages of conduct and character, precisely, and
as part of the same necessary action of nature, as
higher organisms are evolved from lower ; that virtue
and happiness are the one inseparable goal which man
approaches by a steady, irresistible advance, free at
every step from the struggle and the pain of conscious
choice : or, briefly, that the evolution of nature is also
the evolution of morality, and that, as nature in and of
itself produces better and better crops of vegetable and
animal life, so by an equally certain law it produces in
and of itself, in the sphere of humanity, higher and
higher forms of moral life. Fourthly, and finally, there
is the criterion of the Christian moralist, grounded upon
the will of God as expressed in revelation and in the
providential moral government of the world. Accord-

184 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

ing to this, what is right for us to do is what God wills,
and the ultimate reason why we ought to do it is be-
cause God wills it. In Christian ethics there is nothing
more fundamental or ultimate than these two principles
which thus coalesce into one. Thus Christian morality
finds its ground or criterion, and with this its constrain-
ing energy, in one and the same thing, — the perfect
will of the only perfect Being in the universe, — the
one God and Father of all ; and thus, too, it is enabled
to give the simplest and completest answer possible to
both the ever-recurring questions. What is right ? and,
Why ought I to do what is right ?

Now, it is reasonably certain, that none of these crite-
ria of natural ethics could, independently of the Chris-
tian, have ever lifted man to the moral plane on which
he now stands ; and it is equally certain, that none of
them when developed into a practical system could,
without the Christian, permanently sway the conduct
and character of men in their present stage of intellect-
ual and moral development. There is little doubt, that
many thoughtful minds are content to rest in one or
the other of these speculative theories, because to do
so gratifies the philosophic instinct and longing for a
plausible, rational solution of the problem ; and because
they know, that, when driven to it by the perplexities
and mysteries of life, they can find a safe refuge from
the shortcomings of speculation, in the bosom of that
Divine rule in which there is no variableness nor shadow
of turning, — a rule whose statutes rejoice the heart,
and give light to the eyes ; a pure and undefiled law,
which converteth the soul, and giveth wisdom to the
simple.

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 185

It has been in fundamental matters like these, that
Christian has given a helping hand to natural ethics,
lifting it to the high ground which it now occupies, and
holding firm the moral convictions of mankind, amid
all its gaps and fluctuations, its marches and counter-
marches, in the wide field of speculative or inductive
inquiry. The service thus rendered is not the less
certain or valuable because it has been often disowned.
Ingratitude is a crime not confined to the every-day
world of feeling and action. The pride and self-suflfi-
ciency of the human intellect make it possible wherever
they prevail. While rejoicing in every successful ven-
ture of the human mind in the department of ethical
thought, the teachers of the ethics of revelation could
not shut their eyes to the inherent defects and weak-
nesses of the systems elaborated by unaided reason ;
and they have not, as in duty bound, hesitated to
expose them. They have performed this task with a
candor and charity worthy of the lofty vantage-ground
they occupy, but only very imperfectly appreciated by
those in whose behalf they have been exercised.

The scheme of inductive or utilitarian morals can
never escape criticism, because it can never cover up its
radical weakness. It is a wavering, one-sided transcript
of the facts of consciousness, and a lame copy of man's
moral experience. By no possible jugglery of logic, by
no manipulations of language however adroit, by no re-
finements of metaphysical distinctions, can pleasure and
duty, the calculations of prudence and the spontaneous
mandates of the voice within, be made to change places,
or to appear as only opposite sides of the same thing.

186 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

There is a gulf between them which may be bridged,
but cannot be ignored. It may be true that pleasure in
some form attends all virtuous action ; but it does so as
the consequent, not the antecedent, of choice. The
higher the soul advances in virtue, the more it delights
in it. But it is no less true that in our present mixed
and struggling condition there are many acts enforced
by conscience in which there is but the faintest trace of
pleasurable satisfaction. The acts are done at the bid-
ding of simple duty, and not because they are pleasant.
To give self-love the foremost place in moral conduct,
whether as entering into its nature or operating as its
mainspring, is to rob such conduct of every vestige of
unselfishness. Dr. Newman in a few sharp-cut sen-
tences goes to the core of this whole theory of utility
or pleasure as the ground and sanction of moral action.
" All virtue and goodness tend to make men powerful
in this world, but they who aim at the power have not
the virtue. Again, virtue is its own reward, and brings
with it the truest and highest pleasures ; but they who
cultivate it for the pleasure's sake are selfish, not reU-
gious, and will never have the pleasure because they will
never have the virtue." No principle in ethics is better
established than this ; and our every-day experience
furnishes abundant illustrations of its truth. The world
over, the pleasui'e-seeker is not the pleasure-finder, and
the happiest men are they who think least about happi-
ness. If any thing is demonstrably certain in morals, it
is that the motive on which the utilitarian, the epicu-
rean, the pleasui'e-seeking moralist, chiefly relies, is the
attendent shadow of moral action, not its substance, not
its end, nor its propelling power.

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 187

On the other hand, the theory of moral action which
rests upon the intuitions of the moral nature, or upon
the authoritative and spontaneous mandates of the con-
science, is scarcely more satisfactory, though it is clothed
with greater dignity, stands on higher ground, and ap-
peals to the nobler side of our nature. Practically, it
is weak and inefficient in spite of its lofty claims and
unselfish aspirations. It is impossible to agree upon the
number, or the exact quality and range, of these intui-
tional judgments. They vary widely in different indi-
viduals, and are absolutely dependent on the fluctuating
attainments of the intellect. There ai'e many things
about them in regard to which we have little definite
knowledge. We know not, after all the current wis-
dom on the subject has been sifted, the exact nature of
conscience, or how it pronounces, or to what extent it is
infallible, or precisely in what ways it is related to the
will and the reason.

As for the evolutional theory, — just now, because the
latest, attracting most attention from the students of
ethics, — its radical and sweeping generalizations leave
scarcely standing-ground for its natural rivals. The
lineal descendant, in its hedonistic proclivities, of utili-
tarianism, it ruthlessly lays hands upon its progenitor ;
while out of the intuitional theory, whether in its looser
forms or under the rigorous treatment of Kant, it cuts
the very heart by substituting for the free play of the
will and conscience, the operation of necessary natural
law. But in doing so, it discloses certain fatal gaps in
itself. If nature evolves morality as it evolves every
thing else, choice has nothing to do with it ; and so the

188 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

moral nature and all moral action cease to be what the
thought and experience of mankind have hitherto uni-
versally believed them to be. Moral liberty is gener-
alized out of existence ; and we are are shut up, in the
explanation of all ethical phenomena, to necessity as the
only motive-power. Herbert Spencer tells us plainly
that " the sense of duty is transitory ; " ^ that as evolution
progresses, man will do or forbear simply out of regard
for the intrinsic effects of acts ; that as he advances in
the performance of the right, — i.e., what tends to the
improvement and preservation of himself and the race,
— the pleasure of doing so will increase, and that the
sense of duty as obligation will disappear as it becomes
pleasant for him and natural to do right. So that we
have hedonism as the ultimate goal of evolution, and
necessity as the one power that impels man toward it.

But, further, Mr. Spencer and all the ethical scientists
of his school — as well as of other schools that, how-
ever they differ, agree in the attempt to bring all moral
phenomena under the sway of universal and necessary
natural law — ignore the chasm between conscious life
and unconscious life as though in reality no such chasm
exists. In doing so they beg the whole question, and to
the full extent that they do so, vitiate, philosophically
considered, from top to bottom the results at which they
arrive. Deep as this chasm is in biological and psycho-
logical science, it is, if possible, still deeper in ethics; or,
if not deeper in reality, it makes itself more deeply felt.
Conduct, we are told, has as its essential mark the adap-
tation of means to ends. But if this be all, or even the

1 Data of Ethics, p. 127.

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 189

chief mark of conduct, conduct may be predicated indif-
ferently of a dog and of a man ; though as matter of fact
a dog's adaptation of means to ends is unconscious, a
man's conscious. A dog's cannot have a moral end, a
man's may. The gulf between is absolutely incommen-
surable. The human mind can never accept the moral
life as the development of the natural, or allow the free
to be swallowed up in or confounded with the necessary,
until it shall be able to unthink its own spontaneous
judgments, and to unlearn the meaning and force of
language which is at once the echo and utterance of its
own laws of thought.

Again : evolution no more explains the primal cause
in ethics than in the sphere of cosmical and biological
phenomena, or in the world of thought and history. It
deals solely with sequences in their serial form, without
a beginning and without an end. And yet Mr. Spencer,
when he would overthrow the posivitist formula of Comte,
does not scruple to say that " the idea of cause will gov-
ern at the end, as it has done at the beginning. The
idea of cause cannot be abolished except by the abolition
of thought itself." ^ And so a late writer,- after a glow-
ing eulogy on the transcendent merits of "The Data of
Ethics," is forced to admit that its author, the greatest of
living explorers in this field, has failed to solve the one
problem most needing solution, — the fundamental prin-
ciple of absolute ethics, the ethical criterion of action, the
ultimate ground, the primal cause, of moral obligation.

^ See Spencer's Reasons fov dissenting from the Philosophy of M.
Comte, third edition, 1871.

2 Frederick Von Baerenbach: Popular Science Monthly, June, 1883.

190 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

At the same time, while Christian ethics discovers
such radical defects in the systems set up to compete
with it, it is not insensible to their value, nor slow to
appropriate the good they contain. In many of the de-
tails of life involving issues of duty and in regard to
which the general rules of conduct resting upon the will
of God admit of a doubt as to their practical application,
it is ready to accept, within certain limits, the criterion
of experience as fully and freely as any utilitarian could
desire ; while in other directions it is glad to call to its
side, in battling with man's lower nature, whatever con-
fii'mations of its divine mandates his higher nature may
be able to furnish through its moral intuitions, together
with all supports afforded by the inherent trend of
nature as explained by evolution.

But here it should be noted, that Christian ethics,
however ably handled by its expounders, has not itself
escaped criticism. It has been summoned to appear at
the bar of modern thought to answer for its own alleged
shortcomings. If there was any one thing within the
range of human inquiry, that, up to very recent times,
was considered faultless, and therefore exempt from
challenge, it was the morality of the Christian religion.
That it should have been called in question at last, is
perhaps the most striking of all proofs of the unsparing
and remorseless temper in which the criticism of the
day has attacked all things within its reach. Whatever
stray insinuations might have dropped from gainsayers
in times gone by, it was reserved for one of the most
distinguished metaphysicians and philosophic moralists
of this generation to formulate them.^ He declares,

1 John Stuart MiU.

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 191

strangely enough, that Christian morality is negative
rather than positive, passive rather than active ; that it
enjoins abstinence from evil, rather than the energetic
pursuit of good ; and, therefore, that it has the imper-
fection of one-sidedness, and cannot guide humanity to
a full-orbed development of its moral nature, but must
be supplemented by the teachings of systems which,
because they are of human origin, it complacently affects
to patronize. To refute this, we have only to cite cer-
tain indisputable facts. At least one-half of the New
Testament is given to the inculcation of positive moral-
ity. It rings with appeals to mankind, not only to be
good, but to do good ; not only to save themselves, but
to save others ; not only to abstain from evil, but to be
habitually active in works of love and mercy ; not only
to obey the Divine will, but to be energetic in teaching
all men to know and obey that will. If it magnifies
what are called the passive virtues, it does so because it
is the tendency of the world to depreciate them ; but in
doing so it utters not a word which, fairly construed,
disparages the active virtues. It is, indeed, the oracle
of the most aggressive of all religions, — of a religion
which must move on or perish ; which must conquer all
adversaries, or be driven from the field. Energy, action,
conflict, struggle, expansion, are the life of the faith it
preaches. Its disciples are not only servants disciplined
into submission, but soldiers sent forth to battle. In
soft and tender natures, unequal to the solemn strife, it
tolerates, but does not encourage, a life of quietism and
contemplation. Over and around all the tranquil haunts
in which such natui'es have sought refuge from outward

192 The Activity of the Clerical Mitid in Ethics.

tumult and contradiction, has been heard from the be-
ginning the trumpet of the great militant host sounding
to the charge. There is nothing in all history so aston-
ishing or so sublime as the sustained and indomitable
courage and persistency with which Christian believers
have, from the start, toiled and fought and suffered to
change the face of the world. Their philanthropic love
has, time and again, melted the cruel frost of the world's
selfishness. Their missions have gone out into all lands
and among all races. Their homes, asylums, and hos-
pitals are now, and have been during all the Christian
centuries, the only solid and safe barriers lifted up
between humanity and the thousand forms of wretched-
ness whose despairing wail has been the sad song of
its earthly pilgrimage. And their schools of learning,
always the spontaneous fruit of their reverence for all
that can ennoble human reason, as for many ages they
were the only centres of intellectual light, so have they
been, in later times, the originators and patrons of nearly
all the great educational movements which have fash-
ioned the moral and intellectual elements of modern
civilization. A religion of submission and resignation,
indeed ! a religion of passive obedience and mystic
fervor ! a religion of abstinence from evil, and retire-
ment from the glare and heat of the world's favorite
ambitions ! All this it is ; but it is also the most
unresting, the most revolutionary and aggressive force,
ever brought to bear upon the life of man.

But there yet remains to be mentioned one fact
which of itself sufficiently refutes Mr. Mill's assertion.
It was undeniably the chief work of Christ as a moral

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 193

teacher, to change the negative law of the Jews into the
positive law of Christians. In doing this he radically
transformed the whole spirit of morality ; and wedged
the lesson into the inmost consciousness of his followers,
that, to glorify God and to serve Him, they must, as the
habit of their lives, be doers as well as teachers of
righteousness. To enlarge on so elementary and uni-
versally admitted a fact as this, would be sheer waste
of words. And with this one fact staring him in the
face from so many pages of the New Testament, it
passes comprehension how a writer, generally so candid
as Mr. Mill, should have been tempted to make a state-
ment so groundless, and yet so very comforting to the
gainsayers of Gospel morality.

But the strong point of Christian ethics, that around
which gather the homage and admiration of truth-loving
souls of every name and every creed, still awaits our
notice. I mean the superiority of Christian over natu-
ral ethics in that greatest of tasks, — the development
and formation of individual character. This, after all,
is the real object of moral science. What makes char-
acter, what mars it, its perfection and destiny, — these
are the supreme aims of every ethical system that man-
kind have cared to remember. On them all moral
speculations, investigations, and reasonings converge.
And it is only when we duly consider these aims, and
the various means employed to attain them, that we
fully realize how immeasurably the moral system of
Christianity transcends every scheme of human inven-
tion. Here we are on ground where we can tread
firmly and fearlessly in the presence of all adversaries.

194 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

It has been said that "the chief good is a good will."
The highest type of human character is the flower
whose root is a completely fashioned will. How, then,
in contrast with all other schemes of moral nurture, does
Christian ethics plant this root, and grow this flower?
The answer is twofold : first, by the ideal it presents ;
and, second, by the moral and spiritual tonic which it
supplies, to enable man to grow up into a likeness to
this ideal. The ideal and the tonic, the end and the
energy to attain it, the perfect life and the road that
leads to it, are exclusively the property of the religion
of the Son of God. When I speak thus of the Chris-
tian ideal, I do not forget the worth and grandeur of
the only ideal ever put in competition with it, — that
of the ancient Stoics, which, as we study it in history,
appears all the nobler from its contrast with the more
languid and sensuous ideal framed by the school of
Epicurus. The aim of the ideal wise man of the Stoics
was not the pursuit of wisdom for its own sake, but
rather to incorporate the results of wisdom with the will
and character. He conceived of life as a progress, a
conflict, a good fight between " the law of the spirit "
and " the law of the members." His dominant purpose
was instinct with the spirit of aspiration and effort, and
affiliated spontaneously with a tendency to asceticism
and a constant striving after the victory of the will.
He was regarded as infallible, impassive, and incapable
of harm from any external cause. He was alone free,
alone king and priest, alone capable of friendship and
affection. At first, as portrayed by Zeno, he was a
stern and pitiless being, who waged unsparing war

The Activiti/ of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 195

against every softer emotion as a weakness. He for-
gave no one, and hated the doer of evil more than the
evil done. Later on, he vras toned down, during sub-
sequent transmutations of the stoical principle, until the
rough hardness and lofty isolation of the earlier type
were blended with the firm but gentle self-discipline
of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Speaking gener-
ally, this ideal, the grandest ever conceived by unaided
reason, preferred the delights of an inner life to all
sensible enjoyments however innocent. It drew the
mind away from external things, and absorbed it in the
contemplation of moral ideas and abstract principles.
It rejoiced in the conception of moral progress, and the
triumphs of the soul over outward crosses. It fore-
shadowed rather than developed the thought of duty,
and the responsibility of the individual, as we under-
stand them. It had inspiring glimpses of the sublime
conception of mankind as one brotherhood, and of each
member as standing in direct relation to God ; and, as
it more and more filled itself out in thought and ex-
perience, it became at last intensely theological in its
views. It went as far as any thing human can go
toward supplying the needs of the soul, and the crav-
ing for a spiritual religion. It was the nearest ap-
proach made by the Pagan mind to the sunlit summit
of the Mount of God. And yet it was very far from
scaling the solemn height. Fruitful as it was of moral
greatness, amid the world's dreary mediocrity and its
passionate scramble after the grosser pleasures of sense,
it could not hide its inherent one-side dness and un-
natural and paradoxical character. The print of the iron

196 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

shoe was upon its feet, and the marks of the band of
steel were upon its brow. It was a hotbed of egotism
and pride. It fostered narrowness, and harshness, and
gloominess of temper, and was at war with the ameni-
ties and geniahties of life. It stimulated men to live
above the world, but could not teach them how to use
the world as not abusing it. This ideal has passed
away, but the spirit of it has continued and will con-
tinue to reproduce itself in the world. It survives
to-day in every known form of religious asceticism ; and
breathes gently, not only through the fatalistic gloom
of pure Calvinism, but, in some sense, through the lives
of all who are content to " shun delights, and live labo-
rious days." But it must be added, that, whatever
their picture of the ideal man, the Stoics were obliged
to confess that such a character did not exist, and that
it never had existed. Imperfect as we see it to have
been, it was yet too perfect to be realized.

Now, alongside this place the Christian ideal of char-
acter, the Christian conception of a perfectly moulded
will. This has been described too often, and is too
familiar, to require its reproduction here in detail. It
is only as we gaze upon this until our moral perception
burns with the rapture of adoration, that we can esti-
mate the fulcrum on which has rested the spiritual
leverage of Christianity.

But without dwelling on this, I pass on to speak of
the dynamic gifts which Christian ethics has conferred
upon man in his efforts to realize the ideal life exem-
plified by our Divine Master. We can hardly appreciate
these gifts, so peculiar to our religion and so transcend-

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 197

ent in themselves, without first taking a hui-ried glance at
what has been done or attempted in the same direction by
other systems, ancient and modern. And here we must
recall a fact of commanding influence in this line of in-
quu'y; a fact, too, whose existence none will presume to
question. Confused and imperfect as men's notions of
right may be, it is not knowledge of right they lack :
it is the will and power to do it. St. Paul formulated
this fact with an accuracy and completeness which leave
nothing to be amended or added: " To will is present with
me, but how to perform that which is good I find not."^
It is not difficult to portray ideals of goodness, or to set
up the imaginary wise man. The separate elements of
the perfect life may be found here and there, — one in
this character, and another in that. It is easy to collect
them, and organize them into an abstract unity, over
which philosophers may wax eloquent, and poets may
dream in lofty verse. But it must be the main question
in every moral system that proposes to unfold and shape
the character of man, how is human life in its every-day
aspect to be raised to the level of such standards, to be
moulded after such a pattern? Now, it so happens that
the weakest point in every scheme of natural ethics is
the answer which it gives to this question ; while the
answer given by Christian ethics is its peculiar and dis-
tinctive strength, — the one chief ground at once of its
theoretical and practical superiority. Let us see, then,
how this question of moral dynamics has been handled.
Plato found the motive-power, such as it was, in the
simple beholding of the good and true, in the education

1 Kom. vii. 18.

198 The Actwity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

and elevation of the reason. But he confessed that this
could be the privilege only of the few, not of the many.
Only here and there did he expect to find a soul that
could be kindled into spiritual fervor by the ecstatic vis-
ion of the absolute. Of the mass of men, he imagined
no better fate than that they would be left to then- swine-
troughs. As for an ideal common to all men, or a
power competent to lift them toward it, there is no trace
in his writings that he even dreamed of the possibility
of such things. In his view, it would be as unreasonable
to hope that the average man would soar to his bright
heaven of contemplation, as to expect that he would lay
hold on the stars whose light fell dimly on his eyes.

Aristotle gave a higher place to intellectual excellence
than to moral virtue. His famous doctrine of virtue
was that of a mean or a balance between extremes.
Throughout this elaborate theory, there is no provision
for creating or increasing motive-power, other than that
which each soul could evolve out of itself. He exhorts
men to cultivate a habit of doing right, and so to make
it easier to do right ; but points to no outward help or
inspiration which will supply the inward strength needed
for the formation of such a habit. There is no cure in
his system for man's inherent moral weakness, save that
to be drawn from the teachings of himself and other
moralists, or from the discipline afforded by domestic
and political institutions. But no man found the hurt
of his soul healed by any remedy from these sources.

The school of the Stoics — as represented by its great
masters, Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius
— discovered no source of power over the will, outside

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 199

of itself. They delved and mined and explored in all
directions, they cast their line into all waters ; but all
to no purpose. In their weakness and despair, while
confronted with an ideal which they confessed them-
selves powerless to verify, the bitter cry again and
again rose from their lips, in substance if not in form,
" Wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death T'^

Coming down to modern systems, and referring only
to the noblest and best, we have in Bishop Butler's and
Kant's theories the highest help available to man from
natural sources. The former dilates on the authority of
conscience ; and in this, and in the alleged coincidence
of duty and interest, obligation and happiness, for the
most part here, aud perfectly hereafter, finds the only
moral dynamic to act upon the will, — a force which he
sublimates and expands in his sermons into the love of
God ; but does so only by leaving the domain of ethical
speculation, and crossing over into that of Christian
thought. The latter starts with the assertion that the
only real and absolute good in the whole world is a
good will ; and a good will he defines to be one purely
and entirely governed by the moral law. This law is
not human experience generalized, rests not on sup-
posed harmonies of interest and obligation : but tran-
scends all that can be known here about the eff'ects —
happy or otherwise — of moral action ; is wide as the
universe ; and imposes upon all beings who can think or
conceive it, the duty to obey it. Conscience is nothing
but the translation of this objective law into the lan-

1 Rom. vii. 24.

200 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

guage of the individual consciousness. Out of this root-
principle are developed the three fundamental moral
ideas vv^hich are the pillars of all moral life, — freedom,
immortality, and God. Now, in this scheme, which reso-
lutely excludes from its borders all the emotions of love,
pity, reverence, sympathy ; all mixtures of the ideal
and actual; every thing but the pure and absolute law,
with its stern imperative demanding the obedience of
the will, — what practical, available motive-power can be
found ? There are but two factors : the law on the one
side, strong and terrible ; the will on the other, smitten
along the whole circuit of its action with a hopeless
sense of poverty and weakness. Why, it is as though
the world without, standing on its own plane, were to
enter a grave-yard, and call upon the dead to come forth
by the exercise of an energy inherent in their sleeping
dust. Kant's theory is Stoicism gone mad. When he
is through with it, he admits that it can have no place
or function in actual life ; but leaves it to float, like
a thousand other waifs spun from human brains, upon
the outer sea of speculative thought, as bright and as
useless as an ice-mountain from the pole.

The various schools of utilitarianism remind us, as
the great message they have to deliver, that pleasure
and pain are the only objects of choice, the only motives
which can determine the will. Now, as has been well
remarked, if by the pleasure or pain which is said to
be the end of action is meant merely the happiness or
misery of one's self, the dynamic is the most obvious
and the most surely operating that can be imagined.
But then, with most men, exclusive self-interest is not a

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 201

moral motive at all, but rather something from which
they look to morality to save them.

Without pushing further this review of natural ethics
in regard to this point, we have abundant warrant for
saying that in what have been called the intuitional
theories, the motive presented, — the spiritual dynamic,
— if exalted, is too remote and impalpable to be brought
home to the hearts of ordinary men ; while in the
simpler and narrower theories built up on the concep-
tion of pleasure, or self-love, as the supreme dynamic
of the will, the motive is clear and strong enough, but
it is a motive which most men of any moral yearning
reject as degrading to their higher manhood. This
motive, to be sure, is made, by those who would relieve
it of its grossness, to combine with benevolence, and to
include the interests of the human race. This elevates
the motive, but robs it of most of its power. Self-love
is strong only up to a certain limit : when carried
beyond, its propelling power is gone.

Now, two things are plain. Natural ethics in every
form draws all help from within. Men are in search of
help from without. Their cry is, " Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I ; " ^ " Set my feet upon the rock,
and order my goings ; " ^ " Lord, be Thou my helper." ''
Crushed on the one hand by a sense of the infinity of
duty, and on the other by a sense of their spiritual
poverty, they are driven out of themselves, and forced
to search through the surrounding gloom for an arm of
strength to rescue them from the very borders of despair.
Philosophic ideals, with all their elaborate pictorial

1 Ps. Ixi. 2. - Ps. xl. 2. 3 Ps. XXX. 11.

202 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

dreams of perfectibility, are to them only as pitiless
ghosts stealing forth from the outer darkness to mock
at their calamity, and jeer at the rags of natural virtue
wherewith they would fain cover their nakedness. The
soul well knows the gap between its own condition and
the " thou shalt " of the commandment ; and its supreme
need is not "dead diagrams of virtue," but living powers
of righteousness. What it craves is not the faculty to
know the right, but the power to do it. The moral
reason commands what the will cannot do.

Now, what neither science, nor the moral law, nor
any innate faculty can do, Christian ethics does. It
points to a living, personal. Divine Will, which reveals
itself as the needed object and luminous centre of the
heart's warmer and devouter emotions, — a Will which,
for this very end, has clothed itself in our flesh, and is
touched with a feeling of our infirmities ; a Will which,
in human guise, salutes us in accents of tenderest
brotherhood, saying, " Come unto Me, and I will give
you rest."^ "Seek, and ye shall find;" "Ask, and it
shall be given unto you." - " Whosoever cometh unto
Me I will in no wise cast out." ^ " God is love ; and
he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in
him."^ " Every one that loveth is born of God, and
knoweth God." ^ " In this was manifested the love of
God toward us, because that God sent his only begot-
ten Son into the world, that we might live through
him." ^ " Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the
Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God."^

1 Matt xi. 28. - Luke xi. 9. » John xvi. 24. * John vi. 37.

5 1 John iv. 16. « 1 John iv. 9. ^ 1 John iv. 15.

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 203

" Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed
upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." ^
Such is the seminal truth of Christian ethics. Here is
the arm of power put forth from the darkness. Here
is the everlasting rock amid the unsteady waters. Here
is a realm of feeling and truth into which the most
favored of men, apart from revelation, have never been
able to penetrate. It was the dream, but no more, of
Plato and Marcus Aurelius. It requu*ed the advent of
Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
to put the conception of all this as a vital power before
men. Himself — even the Lord Jesus — is the supreme
and original dynamic force which alone can take the
plague-spot of weakness and disease from the human
will. His method is not that of the philosophers. They
addressed the reason : he speaks to the heart. They
fumbled about among the debris of a ruined nature, and
busied themselves in constructing out of them a fleshless
skeleton of impossible vii'tue. He pours into the soul
the living fire of Divine love fresh from heaven, and
provides the fuel to feed it until it returns to the source
whence it came. They sought to make men pure,
generous, humane, righteous, by logical influence. He
seeks the same end, but by bringing them into contact
with his own Person, with the scenes of Bethlehem and
the mount of His passion and the grave of His resurrec-
tion, — all of them the tokens of his unutterable love.
And then Christian ethics, besides showing how the
motive or virtue-making power was increased by Christ's
character, shows also how this same power is augmented

^ Johu iii. 1.

204 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

and kept alive through all the ages by the transcendent
doctrines of the atonement, the resurrection, and the
indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Herein, then, are the glory and triumph of Gospel
ethics ; and herein, too, is the sure testimony which
silences the gainsayers of its perfection. In Emman-
uel— God with us — " all the principles of man's com-
pound nature find their ultimate end : the natural desire
for happiness, the craving of the aff'ections for the un-
changeable and the perfect, the moral needs of the con-
science, the deep and passionate yearnings of the will
conscious at once of its liberty and its frailty," — all
here find their satisfaction ; all are wrought, as separate
strands into the cable, into one grand composite motive-
power, and so arranged that each lower and more selfish
element is gradually subordinated and absorbed by the
higher and more godlike.

Such in our day have been the attitude and work of
the theological or clerical mind in dealing with these
themes of ever-engrossing interest, — the loftiest that
come to us through the channel of revelation, or that
can claim the attention of the human mind. Surely
there is no evidence, in all this, of feebleness or decay.
On the contrary, may we not see in it another proof, in
a period of doubt and conflict, of God's steadfast purpose
never to leave His Priesthood, whatever the ebb and flow
of human culture, without the intellect and learning
needful for the defence of the incomparable treasure
committed to thek keeping? The task now laid upon
the Clergy as ethical thinkers and teachers is the direct
product of the dominant philosophical tendency of our

The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics. 205

time. The reigning philosophy of the day is the parent
of the ethical systems that now excite most attention.
These systems, true to their source, account it their chief
merit, that they have been built up in absolute inde-
pendence of the religious, supernatural, divine basis, on
which it has been held and believed in all ages that
true morality rests. It is only natural that their authors
should seek to discover and establish morality apart from
the sanctions of a Supreme Being, when they imagine
that themselves or others have accounted for the crea-
tion without a Creator.^ As to the line to be taken in
combating these latest ventures in ethical speculation,
there is no doubt. Enough has been done to make this
clear. In substance it is as old as Christian morality
itself; and the duty laid upon the Clergy is simply to
re-state and expand it in forms of thought familiar to our
time, and to enforce it by illustrations drawn from the
latest knowledge and experience. It has been shown
(and the argument will be amplified and invigorated as
ckcumstances may require), that man's duties to God
comprise his duties to his fellow-men and to himself;
that our moral conceptions, whatever their origin, lose
their proper sanction and cogency unless held in obedi-
ence to the authority of a Supreme Being ; that an Al-
mighty and All- Wise external Power ordained the moral
conditions of the world, as evidently as he ordained the

^ Of the recent ethical literature, the following may be taken as apt
specimens of this drift : —

1. The Data of Ethics, by Herbert Spencer, London, 3d ed., 1881.

2. The Methods of Ethics, by Henry Sidgwick, London, 2d ed., 1877.

3. Lectures and Essays, by W. K. Clifford, London, 1879.

4. The Science of Ethics, by Leslie Stephen, London, 1882.

206 The Activity of the Clerical Mind in Ethics.

physical conditions of the solar system and of the globe ;
that the universe exists for a moral purpose, and that a
moral purpose can be accomplished only by obedience
to moral laws ; that the moral accountability of man is
a part of this purpose, but that he can be accountable
only to a moral Being superior to himself; that the
sense of duty springs from obedience to law, and not
from theories of the schools on the origm of conscience
or the evolution of humanity ; that, in discarding the
theistic principle as the foundation of morals, no writer,
however profound and ingenious, has shown himself able
to provide a tangible substitute, an available working
basis, grounded upon any other principle ; and, finally,
that the terms of recent speculation cannot escape the
charge of vagueness and confusion, as well as of utter
impotence to control and regulate the conduct and the
passions of men. But if all this can be shown, — and
in good part it has already been shown, — then it follows
that this latest phase of natural ethics will be made to
appear as unsound as the philosophy on which it rests.

LECTURE V.

INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY OF THE CLERGY IN APOLOGETICS
AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

I SHALL now ask attention to Apologetics and Biblical
Criticism as affording striking examples of the energy
and fruitfulness of the theological mind in the closing
decades of this century. By the labors of recent Chris-
tian thought, Apologetics has been advanced to the
dignity of a science. Judged by the severest tests, it
is no longer to be regarded as an inchoate, unformed
literature, composed of isolated monographs and frag-
mentary contributions ; but as a compactly built body
of learning and logic. Both Apologetics and Biblical
Criticism have grappled boldly and successfully with the
deepest and hardest problems falling within their reach.
In whatever quarters Christian students and thinkers —
their adversaries being the judges — may have shown
timidity or vagueness or looseness in their intellectual
work, they have not shown them here.

Religious doubt has a history as well defined as that
of any of the leading manifestations of the human mind ;
and it has been one office of Apologetics, considered
as a science, first to write up that history, and then to
analyze and classify its fiicts. Among^ other results, it

208 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

has been found that living doubt has nothing substan-
tially new to oifer. However divergent its lines of
attack, it has been shown to be almost identical with
that of the second and third centuries. The family
likeness is marked and suggestive, "There is the same
spirit of naturalism ; the same indisposition to rise to
the belief of the interference of Deity ; the same feeling
of contempt for positive religions ; the same sensation
of heart-weariness, — the utterance, as it were, of the
despairing feeling, ' Who will show us any good ] ' the
same lofty theory of Stoic morality, and disposition to
find perfection in obeying nature's laws, physical and
moral; the same approximation to the Christian ideal
of perfection, while destroying the very proof of the
means by which it is to be acquired." Further, it has
been shown, that, as the difficulties of the human intel-
lect in both periods have been much the same, so the
modes of meeting these difficulties have been much the
same. In fact, the two main lines of apology taken at
the beginning of the conflict are the lines taken now,
changed only in being widened and deepened to meet
the wider and deeper thought that up to this time
completes the evolution of scepticism. One of these
lines is that of philosophy, the other that of history :
the former showing the capacities and wants of human
nature, and how perfectly Christianity meets them ; the
latter proving that the events by which Christianity was
introduced and established are as much a part of au-
thentic history as any series of events connected with
the planting and development of any of the leading
kingdoms of the world.

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 209

Another aim of Apologetic Science has been to show
how these lines of proof, while neither has at any time
been entirely overlooked, have changed places at the
front of the Christian argument according to the fluc-
tuations of doubt.

" In arguing with the heathen in the first age, the philosophical
method was adopted ; the School of Alexandria trying to lead men
to Christianity as the highest wisdom. In the Middle Ages, the
same method was adopted, but with the alteration that the philos-
ophy was one of form, not of matter. In the later Middle Ages,
the appeal was to the Church. In the earl}' contests with the
English deists, the appeal was to the authorit}- of reason, and to
the Bible reached through reason ; in the later, to the Bible reached
through history- and fact. In opposing the French infidelit}', the
appeal was chiefly to authorit}". In the earh' German, the appeal
was the same as in England ; in the later German, it has been a
return in spirit to that of the earl}' Fathers, or that of the English
apologists of the eighteenth century, but based on a deeper philos-
ophy, which appealed to feeling or intuition, and not to reflective
reason, and through these ultimately to revelation." ^

It is on this method that Apologetic Science mainly
relies to-day ; with this difference, that the area of the
argument has been so far expanded as to include some
of the profoundest questions in psychology and meta-
physics. The chief effort now is to prove : —

(a) The reality of knowledge, as against the theory
of phenomenalism or relativity ; the reality of knowledge,
as well of God, the Absolute and the Infinite, as of the
world and of human consciousness.

{h) The capacity of man to know God, as against all
theories of agnosticism.

1 Farrar's Critical History of Free Thought, note 49.

210 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

(c) What and how much man can know of God ; in-
volving at once the extent and the limitations of his
knowledge, and in such way as to establish the necessity
— and, if the necessity, the probability, or even the
moral certainty — of a revelation to remedy the defects
of such knowledge.

(d) That the foundations of religion are laid, in the
consciousness of man, on the twin pillars of a meta-
physical and a moral sentiment : the former binding him
to the eternal and unchangeable, to that which is true
in itself, the essential Being; the latter leading him
forth in his sin and suffering (as the former led him
forth in his mental weakness and imperfection), in
search of a Father who loves him, and who will there-
fore be his saviour, his deliverer, his consoler.

Emerging from the domain of natural religion as
proven by the witness of man's intellectual and moral
consciousness, Apologetic Science, true to the present
exigency, and moving on the same general line, passes
up into the domain of Christianity, and, appealing again
to what is truest and best in man, presents to him, as
the sufficient evidence of the reasonableness and truth,
as well as of the Divine origin, of Christianity, the
Christ, its author and finisher ; exhibiting Him, in His
person, work, and character, as the supreme moral
miracle, in whom all other credentials centre, and from
whom they derive their authority and explanation.
And then, advancing a step farther, it claims to prove,
that, as the character of the Christ could not have been
produced by any or by all moral and spiritual forces
working in or upon ordinary humanity, or by any possi-

Activity/ of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 211

ble combination of types of human nature, as Hebrew,
Greek, and Roman, it must be supernatural, divine ;
and, next, that the Christ was a real person, as against
the two theories, the mythical and the legendary, the
only ones having the semblance of plausibility yet de-
vised by human ingenuity to account for his origin and
his place in history ; and, finally, that the Christ of the
Church and of the Scriptures is also the historic Christ,
the Christ of whom the best thought of the ages and
the authentic records of the past speak in this wise.^

1 " We talk, indeed, with admiration of His being the one standard to
the endlessly differing conditions of society, — to rich and poor, the wise
and ignorant, the strong and weak, the few and the many ; but what is
this to the wonder of his having been the constant standard to distant
and different ages? In the same Living Person, each age has seen its
best idea embodied. But its idea was not adequate to the truth : there
was something stUl beyond. An age of intellectual confusion saw in the
portraiture of Him in the Gospels the ideal of the great teacher and
prophet of human kind, the healer of human error, in whom were brought
together and harmonized the fractured and divergent truths scattered
throughout all times and among all races. It judged rightly, but that
was only part. The monastic spirit saw in it the warrant and sugges-
tion of a life of self-devoted poverty as the condition of perfection. Who
can doubt that there was much to justify it? Who can doubt that the
reality was something far wider than the purest type of monastic life?
The Reformation saw in Him the gi-eat improver, the breaker of the
bonds of servitude and custom, the quickener of the dead letter, the stern
rebuker of a religion which had forgotten its spirit ; and doubtless He
wafi all this, only He was infinitely more. And now, in modern times,
there is the disposition to dwell on Him as the ideal exemplar of perfect
manhood, great in truth, great in the power of goodness, great in His
justice and forbearance, great in using and yet in being above the world,
great in infinite love ; the opener of men's hearts to one another, the
well-spring, never to be dry, of a new humanity. He is all this, and this

infinitely precious. We may ♦ glorify Him for it, and exalt Him as
much as we can; but even yet will He far exceed' (Eccl, xliii. 30).
That one and the same form has borne the eager scrutiny of each anxious

212 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

Much as has been made of the method resting upon
philosophical and moral evidence, because of the recent
drift of sceptical thought, it must not be inferred, as is
done in some quarters, that what are known as the ex-
ternal evidences have been disparaged or set aside by our
best apologists. The tide of battle has sent them to the
rear only for the moment : they are of the same value
as they have always been. In the early centuries, mira-
cles were discussed as an historical, and scarcely at all
as a philosophical, question. In our day this has been
reversed. The question now is not so much what his-
tory may say of them as events, as what science may say
of them as possible facts, and as possessed of rational
credibility. So far has this been pushed, that it is
now commonly said, that, so far from miracles proving
Christianity, it is part of the extra burden put upon
Christianity to prove the miracles. Of late, Apologetics
has encountered a difficulty which, like so many others,
reminds us of its experiences in the early centuries.
The agnostic of to-day who denies the validity of all
knowledge of the supernatural, and utterly discredits
reason as an organ of absolute truth in rehgion or in

and imperfect age; and each age has recognized, with boundless sympa-
thy and devotion, what it missed in the world, and has found in Him
what is wanted. Each age has caught in those august lineaments what
most touched and swayed its heart. And as generations go on, and un-
fold themselves, they still find that character answering to their best
thoughts and hopes ; they still find in it what their predecessors had not
seen or cared for. They bow down to it as their inimitable pattern, and
draw comfort from a model who was plain enough and universal enough
to be the Master, as of rich and poor, so of the first century and the last."
— Sermons preached before the University of Oxford iy R. W. Church,
Dean of St. PauVs, London.

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies, 213

any thing else, thus foisting upon modern thought a
new phase of philosophical scepticism, corresponds at
bottom with the Pyrrhonist of Pagan thought. Minu-
tius Felix, one of the early Christian apologists, ran
against this type of doubt, and dealt with it as we must
deal with it to-day. He told the Pyrrhonist, "You have
dethroned reason as the faculty of truth, and therefore
there can be no appeal to reason in behalf of the rea-
sonableness of Christianity. It is idle to debate with
you about the functions of reason, as you have thrown
the validity of its conclusions out of count. I therefore
affirm, on the authority of a Divine Revelation, and as
a dogma which you will reject at your peril, the super-
natural origin and claims of the Christian religion, and
defy you to disprove them. I cannot prove them to
you, because you have disbarred the only authority in
you to which an appeal can be made : so neither for the
same reason can you deny them." This, in substance,
must be our line with the agnostic of to-day. To
this issue he must be held, until human nature itself
di'ives him from his position, and forces him to restore
reason to its rightful throne. Modern apologetics has
accepted reason as an authority in the great debate,
and has marshalled before it the Christian evidences for
judgment. And so the acknowledged aim has been
to show the reasonableness of Christianity. So far has
this been carried by some, that our apologetics has
incurred the charge of rationalism by undertaking to
do its work apart from the supernatural elements neces-
sarily bound up with it. It has relied too much upon
reason to prove what transcends reason ; too much

214 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

upon nature to prove the supernatural ; and not enough
upon the supernatural, the infinitely greater thing, to
vindicate itself as entering of necessity into the system
of nature. It has, for example, puzzled itself to
account for miracles consistently with universal laws,
forgetting that both miracle and law are but different
expressions of one and the same will-power ; miracle
being a special and individual expression of this power,
and law but a prolonged, uniform repetition of what, in
its inception, was of the nature of a miracle. " When
science explains a law, theology will explain miracles.
The mistake has been in putting miracles upon proof,
instead of putting law upon explanation. Law and
miracles are essentially the acts of one and the same
Absolute Will. The will of God has general manifesta-
tions, called laws; special manifestations, called miracles.
But there was a miracle before there was law, just as
the beginning of a line is before its prolongation, as the
special goes before the general, and the general is only
many specials in succession. When law is accounted
for essentially, then miracles are accounted for ration-
ally."

Again : the evidence arising from the fulfilment of
prophecy was often successfully appealed to by the
first apologists. This evidence, though greatly strength-
ened by the lapse of centuries, has been comparatively
little used in modern discussion. The tide of conflict
has swept by it, because it has been seldom the object
of attack. It has shared, moreover, in the general dis-
credit which modern unbelief has endeavored to fasten
upon the whole family of external evidences ; a discredit

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 215

that many Christian apologists have tacitly assented to,
under the conviction that the only available and effec-
tive proof is to be found in the internal relations of
Christianity to the individual soul. Undoubtedly such
proof suffices in all cases that demand its application ;
but the Christian religion, in order to be able to pre-
sent itself in this way to individual inquirers through
the successive generations of mankind, must, before all
else, maintain its title and place as an historic religion,
supernaturally introduced into the historic development
of the race. This it cannot do apart from the external
evidences which God has affixed as a visible seal to its
Divine origin and commission. And if there be one
lesson that recent infidelity, in its extravagant idealism,
has impressed upon the Christian mind more deeply
than any other, it is the value, in this connection, of
the external evidences.

But a wider, and in some respects more important
field, is that of the critical study of the Holy Scriptures,
in which we find perhaps the most striking and abun-
dant proofs of the energy and learning of the theological
mind of this age. It may be said that no small share of
the best work done in this field has been done outside
theological and clerical circles. Let this be granted to
the full extent of the facts ; yet such is the vast bulk
of the scholarship and labor expended on this branch of
study, that the most liberal allowance for outside help
does not sensibly affect it. In a subsequent lecture I
shall have occasion to allude to the feeble and still
declining use of the Scriptures in the pulpit. But if
the preacher has fallen oflp, the student has advanced.

216 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

The critical may not be as important as the didactic or
devotional use of the Word of God, but in recent times
it has certainly been the more. pressing and prominent.
I am not now concerned with Biblical study, whether as
destructive or conservative, as rationalistic or mystical,
or otherwise : I have to do with it only as it discovers
and illustrates the range and quality of the intellectual
work performed in the last and in the present generation
by ordained men, whether pastors or teachers. And yet
in some cases the results of this work may not be over-
looked, if we would do justice not only to the intrinsic
value of the work, but as well to the depth and breadth
of the mental power thrown into it.

Biblical study as pursued of late has proved itself to
be, more than ever before, the most comprehensive of aU
intellectual pursuits. Not only in theory, but in practice,
it has put under contribution, and treated as auxiliaries,
all sciences and literatures and histories. In extend-
ing and enriching itself, it has extended and enriched
archaeology, philology, chronology, geography, general
history; while, as a result of its more elaborate and sys-
tematic examination of the great ethnic religions, it has
created the new science of Comparative Theology. To
theology in its exegetical, biblical, historic, and dogmatic
aspects, it has given a new impulse, and advanced it to
higher grades of attainment. Among its other achieve-
ments, the following may be named as the most far-
reaching and decisive. It does not, indeed, claim them
as original with itself, but points to them as topics which
it has thrown into bolder and stronger lights, as against
the shadows cast upon them by nineteenth-century doubt.

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 217

Thus understood, I may cite the following as giving the
most emphatic testimony to its enlarged spirit and mani-
fold activity. It has shown more clearly than ever that
the Holy Scriptures contain the revelation of mysteries
inseparable from the relations of God and man, for which
no process of inductive or deductive reason could furnish
a solution. It has familiarized, and at the same time
exalted, the Bible in popular estimation ; destroying what
.is known as Bibliolatry, while making it more the book
of every-day life, — the people's book. It has treated it
as a literature subject to the accepted rules of criticism
and exposition, and yet has carefully discriminated be-
tween its Divine and human elements ; insisting with an
intensified emphasis, that, however interesting it may be
as a series of historical documents, affording information
nowhere else to be found, it stands alone and unap-
proached as the rule of faith and life for mankind. By
a double process, representative of two opposing schools,
reaching the same end, each by its own method of
thought, — the one inductive and synthetic, evolving
unity from variety, the universal from the particular ;
the other deductive and analytic, evolving variety from
unity, the particular from the universal, — it has traced
the One Infinite and Eternal Mind announcing itself on
evei'y page as a continuous and progressive revelation of
perfect love and justice. Nor has it failed to make the
most of the obvious and pregnant inference from the suc-
cess of this double process, viz., the organic character of
the Scriptures, binding together by living ligatures every
part with the whole, and the whole with every part;
and this in spite of the widest diversity of envu'onments

218 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

as to time and place, as to social and political modifica-
tions, and as to the moral and intellectual temperament
of the sacred writers. As against all theories of prog-
ress, or evolution, or education of mankind, which assume
the gradually unfolding human consciousness as the only
and sufficient source of religion, it has shown that the
test of a revelation is to be found, not in its beginning or
its middle, but in its end; not in "the ruling ideas" as
they are imperfectly developed or feebly asserted in the
early ages of the race, but in " the ruling ideas " as they
are consummated and perfected in " the fulness of time."
It has handled consistently and exhaustively, if not to the
satisfaction of all minds, that most difficult of questions :
in what sense are the Scriptures the inspired record of
God's communications to man ? The literature that has
grown up around this question, it has examined, not only
with profound attention, but with the advantage of hav-
ing in plain sight the dangerous and untenable positions
assumed by the two extreme schools that have discussed
it with varying fortunes since the Reformation. The
mechanical infallibility which Romanism had claimed for
the Church, and which was one of the causes of the
Reform movement, was, under the necessities of their
position, transferred by Calvin and his followers to the
Bible. Losing sight of the true office of the Church as
the pillar and ground of the truth, while re-acting from
Romish error they drifted out into the unchecked individ-
ualism of private judgment, and accepted as their battle-
cry, " The Bible alone the religion of Protestants ! " One
result of this was the extreme theory of mechanical in-
spiration, which represents the inspiring Spirit as work-

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 219

ing on, not through, man ; using him as a pen, not as a
penman; dictating not only the thoughts of God, but the
words in which they were inscribed, irrespective of the
personal characteristics and surroundings of the several
writers. Thus the Scriptures were regarded in matter
and form as the absolute echo of the Divine voice ; and
the mind of the inspired writer, as a passive, colorless,
impersonal medium, — a soulless machine, mechanically
responding to the force that moves it. This theory ab-
sorbed the human element in the Divine, and made
every word of Scripture equally necessary and equally
authoritative, whether relating to matters belonging to
the domain of physical science, or to those within the
sphere of faith and morals. Thus the life and its dress,
the kernel and its shell, God's voice and the human utter-
ance of it, were put absolutely on the same plane. There
is no sanction for this view in the Scriptures themselves
or in historical testimony. It was not long before it
began to give way before the extravagances of fanaticism
and the steady advance of knowledge, until finally its
utter demolition was completed by the progress of mod-
ern criticism and the profounder analysis of the human
mind. Parallel with it ran the opposite extreme, devel-
oped by the subjective tendencies evoked by the altered
philosophy of the times. So soon as it became the in-
tellectual habit to study all things from within and not
from without, and to subordinate the organic to the indi-
vidual, external authority to reason or intuition, the world
was absorbed in man, and revelation itself was forced to
accept his judgment as its ultimate criterion. As part
and parcel of this movement, the consensus of historic

220 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

Christianity — the testimony of the Catholic Chnrch —
was disparaged more and more, until, with the whole
fabric of external evidence, it was sent to the rear as
powerless and useless, if not irrelevant. That alone was
divine which every man in his own way could feel to be
so, and the inner consciousness of each individual read
into or read out of the Scriptures what it pleased.
This tendency had free course, until the conclusion was
reached, that the Bible was merely "the book of Hebrew
legends, which will yield to the skilful inquirer their
residuum of truth, like those of the Greeks and Romans
and other ancient peoples ; " and that inspiration is but
another name for " that poetic faculty which embodies
whatever is of typical or permanent import in things
around, and invests with a lasting form the transitory
growths of time."

After demonstrating the untenableness of both these
theories, the soundest recent thought has discouraged
all theorizing on the subject, and fallen back upon the
view always held by the Historic Church, treating in-
spiration as a fact too deeply rooted in the mystery of
God's dealings with man to be satisfactorily accounted
for at the bar of human reason. And yet much has
been done to simplify the subject, and thereby to lessen
the difficulties that environed it. That was a great
step taken by the theological mind of the time, when
it so defined inspiration as to exclude from its proper
subject-matter all outside the moral and spiritual world,
the world of belief and duty ; allowing it, indeed, a cer-
tain hold on the physical order, but this only so far as
might be necessary to supplement the teaching of natu-

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 221

ral theology touching its creation and moral govern-
ment. It was another great step, when it was affirmed
that the human powers of the sacred writers acted ac-
cording to their natural laws, even when most under
supernatural direction ; and that, for Him who created
these powers, it was quite as easy to quicken them into
more exalted states of consciousness, and to endue them
with forces not inherently theirs, without disturbing the
conditions of their normal action. Thus it has been
showii how we could have a revelation that would be
authoritative as being God's voice, and intelligible as
being in the thought and language of men ; the Divine
agency so operating as neither to neutralize the nature
of the human medium, nor to impair the absolute truth-
fulness of the message from God. It has been shown,
too, that, while unity is the characteristic of God's
teaching, uniformity is not ; thus providing for the im-
mutability of truth amid all the changes incident to the
progress of humanity, and so leaving to truth such
ample play as would enable it to assume spontaneously
such forms as would best adapt it to the age in which
it was revealed, whether it be the age of patriarchal
simplicity, or the age of national vigor and maturity, or
the age glorified by the ministry of the Christ, or the
age in which the infant Church struggled into historic
form. Thus, too, it has been explained how the Bible
proves its inspiration as a whole, not by the contents of
particular books, but by the final result which deter-
mines the quality and value of every stage in the series
leading up to it.

But finally, to use the weighty language of one of
the ablest of living Bible-students : —

222 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

" To speak of the proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures,
involves an unworthy limitation of the idea itself. In the fullest
sense of the word, we cannot prove the presence of life, but are
simply conscious of it ; and inspiration is the manifestation of a
higher life. The words of Scripture are spiritual words, and as
such are ' spiritually discerned.' The ultimate test of the reality
of inspiration lies in the intuition of that personal faculty (Trvevfxa)
by which inspired men once recorded the words of God, and are
still able to hold communion with Him, Ever}' thing short of this
leaves the great truth still without us, and that which should be a
source of life is in danger of becoming a mere dogma.

" At the same time, it is as unfair and dangerous to reject the
teaching of a formal proof of inspiration, as it is to rely upon it
exclusively. It cannot be an indifferent matter to us, to bring into
harmonious combination the work and the writings of the Apostles ;
to follow and faithfully continue the clear outlines of scriptural
criticism as traced in the writings of the New Testament ; to rec-
ognize the power which the Bible has hitherto exercised upon the
heart of the Church, and the depths which others have found in it."

It may be regarded as now definitely settled by the
sounder tendencies of Christian thought, that no sepa-
ration of outward from inward, of logical from moral
proof will be tolerated. Though the former may, with
the progress of time, acquire no fresh force or wider
application, it is yet of great value, because it can be
transmitted, in all its formal completeness, from one
generation to another, and without appreciable fluctua-
tion in the testimony it offers ; while the latter, though
it may change with changing modes of thought, must
always have the utmost value, because its vitality and
strength will increase with the growing fulness and
power of ever-accumulating individual experiences of
the internal meaning of God's revealed Word. That

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 223

this conclusion has been reached after three centuries
of discussion, and that it is not likely to be disturbed by
any new turn of thought on the subject of inspiration,
afford a happy omen of the character of all future
dealings with this aspect of the Holy Scriptures.

But, as before remarked, the scientific study of the
Scriptures has in our day, and in response to the spirit
of the age, taken mainly the form of criticism ; and
in this form, therefore, demands our chief attention.
Criticism in general has been defined to be a method
of knowledge, or a method of testing the certainty of
knowledge by discriminating between the true and the
false, the proven and the hypothetical. Biblical criti-
cism in the modern sense began with the general
awakening of the human mind which accompanied and
followed the Reformation. It started as one phase of
the spirit of inquiry, which permeated all branches of
thought ; it has grown and spread with the progress
of knowledge. In our day it may be said to have
reached the climax of boldness and versatility. By way
of consolation to those who look timidly and regretfully
on the fruits of its destructive zeal, it is often said, as
the sufiicient answer to all fears, that its growth falls
within the limits of the centuries most remarkable for
intellectual progress, and that the day is only beginning
to dawn when its constructive work will supplant the
ruin it has wrought among the cherished traditions of
the past. However this may be, my purpose will be
met by noting its present characteristics so far as they
affect my theme.

And, first, I note the increased attention given to Ian-

224 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

guages of the Bible. This is due in part to the recent
advance in all branches of philological study, but still
more to the newly awakened interest in the Scriptures
as the earliest and most important of historical docu-
ments. Whatever the cause, it is certain that the study
of the Bible tongues is now being pushed as it never has
been. The more we know of thek history and struc-
ture, as well as of their relations to other families of
speech, the more we desire to know of them. The in-
terest deepens on all sides, with the progress of investi-
gation. It is no longer merely the belief that these
languages embody the loftiest and purest religious and
ethical thought, that attracts the learned ; but as well
the energy, vividness, and majesty of the embodiment
itself. It has now become evident to all minds willing
to see God in the processes of nature and history, that,
as it was His purpose to reveal Himself to man, so it was
equally His purpose to prepare the vehicle by which the
revelation should be conveyed. The deeper we go into
the history, the more carefully we examine the peculiar
characteristics of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lan-
guages, the more striking are the traces of this Provi-
dential preparation ; and the more plainly, moreover, do
we see that it was the Divine intent, that, having " run
their career as living tongues, they should lapse into
the unalterable form of dead ones ; so holding mean-
while, and for all coming time, in their fixed embrace,
the message of eternal redemption," as to lift it on its
human side above the possibility of material change,
amid all the inevitable changes of the world's life and
the world's speech. The more, too, our best students

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 225

have observed the subtle and essential connection be-
tween language and thought, — a connection as of body
and soul, — the stronger is their conviction, that, of all
tongues ever spoken or written by the human race, the
best were chosen for the sacred uses of revelation ;
whether regard be had to the simplicity and grandeur,
or to the fulness and variety, of its contents. There has
never been a time when scholars have not felt that no
translation could take the place of the original Scrip-
tures ; but now this feeling is so positive, so earnest,
that all second-hand versions are reckoned as second-
hand appliances of study, and none are counted even
in the inferior rank of Biblical students that have not
handled with a living interest the languages in which
the life and spirit of God originally took shape. Nor
is this the highest point reached by the sacred studies
of the day : for not only has it been shown that the
Hebrew in the earliest forms known to us was the
fruit of a still earlier literary development, and that
the whole family of Shemitic languages, eleven in num-
ber, were derived from an original mother-tongue, of
which all traces are gone ; but, what is vastly more
important, that the Shemitic group, however great the
contrast in their respective features, crystallized into a
higher unity, in order to perform more perfectly the
task of conveying to all ages the Divine Revelation. To
work back to this higher unity, has become one of the
higher aims of our best Oriental scholarship. But this
is impossible without an acquaintance with the lan-
guages cognate to the Hebrew. This accounts for the
extraordinary interest (attributed by some to mere curi-

226 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

osity, or to the desire to escape intellectual ennui by
going in search of yet unconquered difficulties) taken
more and more in the study of the Arabic, Ethiopic,
Syriac, Chaldee, Phoenician, Assyrian, and Babylonian.
It is a noteworthy fact, that the most advanced philol-
ogy of the day, without by any means abandoning the
Indo-Germanic group, is throwing its chief efforts in
this direction ; and it is equally noteworthy, that the
leading centres of learning in England and America (as
those in Germany and France did long ago) are making
provision for this rising taste, — a taste, be it observed,
originally excited by Scripture studies, and now chiefly
cultivated by the votaries of these studies.

However interesting, it does not fall within my limits
to point out in detail what the enlarged criticism of the
Bible has done in late years to bring within the reach
of those who have no time to be scholars, not only the
Hebrew's marvellous power of expression, and intense
realism in grasping the concrete, phenomenal side of
nature and human life, but how it influenced, while it
yielded to, the Aramaic, the vernacular of our Lord, and
through the Aramaic the Greek, which enshrined the
teachings of the God-man in forms so perfect that no
possible culture of the race can outgrow them.

The next thing to be noted in the Biblical criticism
of our time is its researches and conclusions touching
the Canon of Holy Scripture. There is nothing original
or specially characteristic in the thought and learning of
the day on this subject. Criticism here has taken sub-
stantially the old lines, only working them out with more
fulness as the matters in debate have been successively

Activity of the Chrgy in Sacred Studies. 227

pushed into prominence. Avowedly rationalistic criti-
cism has regarded the Canon as a purely historic and
literary question. Considering inspiration as simply an
exalted form of ordinary consciousness, with no super-
added gifts of spiritual insight, and with no truth from a
source higher than itself to convey, it has attached no
other moral authority to any of the Sacred Writings than
can be found in any of the nobler efforts of the human
mind. As for the traditional consensus of the Church, it
has reduced that to the least possible value ; resolving
every issue, as it has arisen, into one of dates, author-
ship, style, and relations to similar documents. It has
torn the Old Testament into shreds, rejecting as spurious
or unauthenticated at least one-third of its contents ;
while scarcely a book of the New Testament has escaped
its disparaging doubts. And yet few of its verdicts have
been accepted by the general scholarship of the time as
more than plausible, while the most of them have been
set aside as unsupported by competent evidence.

Next comes the half-mystic and half-rationalistic line
taken by critics and theologians boasting their loyalty
to the Puritan rule of judgment announced by the
ultra-Reformation thought of the sixteenth century.
This determines the canonicity of the received books
by the inward light imparted to the individual mind by
the Holy Spirit, speaking through the books themselves.
Thus every part of Scripture proves its right to be
where it is, by the impression it makes on the judg-
ment of the individual believer. But, as matter of fact,
this impression has proved to be variable and contradic-
tory. The Song of Songs, for example, has often been

228 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

declared by the isolated individual Christian judgment
to be disgusting when interpreted literally, and blasphe-
mous when treated as an allegory. The Epistle of St.
James crossed Luther's track ; and he did not hesitate
to pronounce it a thing of straw, and unworthy of its
place in the Sacred Canon. And so, too, the individual
Christian judgment, even when guided by historical
testimony rather than by the inward light, has fre-
quently challenged the canonical authority of St. Jude,
of Second St. Peter, and of Second and Third St. John,
and even the Revelation of St. John the Divine ; and
this simply on the external ground of the omission of
these books in the New Testament of the Syriac Church,
the earliest collection of Christian Scriptures for the
East. The Puritan rule magnifies inspiration to the
utmost, but confers upon the individual believer the sole
and supreme right to pass upon the signs and proofs of
its presence ; setting aside as of inferior moment the
uniform consent of Catholic Christendom, this being es-
teemed as little more than a loose aggregate of opinions
vitiated more or less by ignorance and prejudice, or by
the bondage of tradition.

Next, there is the Roman-Catholic view of the Canon,
which treats the dicta of private judgment as an im-
pertinence, and leaves the whole matter to the infallible
Church, — or rather, since the Vatican decrees of 1870,
to the infallible Pope.

Finally, there is the Anglo-Catholic teaching. This
rests the Canon, to begin with, on the witness of the
undivided Catholic Church of the fii'st five centuries,
during which it was framed and established as we now

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 229

have it and as it has been ever since. With the Canon
thus grounded upon external testimony which, by virtue
of its authorship and the mode of its dehvcrance, is only
the voice of the Holy Ghost speaking through the whole
organic Body of Christ, this view encourages and author-
izes the individual believer to examine the several books
for himself, guided by " the inward light" given by the
same Holy Ghost, according to the measure of his fac-
ulties. AVhere he can attain to certainty, it bids him
rejoice and be strengthened : where he cannot, it bids
him leave the doubt to the consentient judgment of the
Divine Body of which he is a member. As matter of
fact, no book of Scripture was admitted into the Canon
until tested by use, and formally approved by the whole
Church. The Church, acting in council, simply bore
witness to such use and approval, and gave to the books
so tested the seal of its authority. The only question is
as to the nature of this authority, and the extent of our
obligation to accept it. But this is only another form of
the question as to the reality of the promise made to her
by the Church's Divine Head, that the Holy Ghost, given
on the Day of Pentecost, shall guide her into all truth.
Consider it as we may, to doubt the bestowment of this
gift, or the power and authority that went with it, is to
doubt the Incarnation itself. As to then* place in the
scheme of Christianity, they are on the same super-
natural plane, and have an identical historic credibility.
As these several vievv's of the Canon, or rather of its
authority, are the products of wide moral and intellectual
differences among men, so it is scarcely to be expected
that any one of them vvdll ever command general, far

230 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

less universal consent. But even though this be true,
it is of interest to inquire which of them is likely to do
the better service to Christianity amid the religious up-
heaval and anarchy of these times. I leave the inquiry
with the single remark, that as the soul of man and the
world without, the faith once delivered and the sum of
human knowledge, will never be at unity until, both in
religion and philosophy, the objective and the subjective,
being and thought, the real and the ideal, shall be recon-
ciled by seeing, the one in the other, only opposite sides
of the same organic whole ; so these conflicts of opinion
relating to the authority of the Body of Christ and the
authority of the individual reason will not be even in
the way of ultimate settlement until our nineteenth-cen-
tury thought, ceasing to put its weakest emphasis on the
former and its strongest on the latter, shall grasp more
reverently and practically, not merely the natural soli-
darity of the race considered as of one blood, but the
supernatural unity of all men in Christ, and therefore of
all men as members of the Church of the living God.

Returning for a moment to gather up the result of
recent criticism on the Canon of Holy Scriptures as
wrought out in the main by ordained representatives of
the Church, it can be claimed, without fear of contradic-
tion by the best scholarship of our day, wherever found,
that there is a general consent as to the books commonly
received as canonical, and that there is a decided pre-
ponderance of testimony in favor of those concerning
which there has been any question.

I come now to the work of criticism on the text of the
Sacred Writings. How wide and difficult a field of in-

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 231

vestigation this opens, they only know who have given
to it the labors of a lifetime. Within this field has been
piled up a mass of minute technical learning, which it
would be idle to speak of save in bulk and in some of its
leading results. All things considered, the preservation
of the Scriptures, as we have them, attests the wonder-
ful care of Divine Providence, and a singular devotion
and fidelity on the part of their custodians through all
the ages of the two dispensations. And yet mistakes
and corruptions have crept in through copyists and
heretics and over-anxious believers; these have multi-
plied with the lapse of time, and have been concealed
or exaggerated according to the interests of conflicting
schools of scholarship and theology.

The importance of a genuine, original, uncorrupted
text has always been felt ; but it has been only in mod-
ern times, and chiefly in the past and present generation,
that Christian scholars, in Orders and out of Orders,
have addressed themselves to the task of securing it in a
resolute, continuous, and systematic manner. In spite,
however, of the vast amount of labor given to this task,
we have not yet the ideal text. In fact, none has been
produced, up to this time, which satisfies the critics them-
selves. So true is this, that the chief fiiult found with
the recent Revised Version of the New Testament is
grounded upon the imperfection of the standard text
from which its translation was made.^ In the sixteenth

1 Whatever may be thought of the probability or desirableness of the
general adoption of the Revised Version for practical use, it must be
regarded on all hands as a remarkable exhibition of critical erudition
and ability. It may be doubted whether any thing surpassing it in
minute, patient, and varied learning, has appeared in any department of
study in this generation.

232 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

century, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin undertook work
which compelled them to be translators and critics.
They dealt some rough blows to the texts and versions
that fell into their hands. They were by no means
backward in taking liberties with the grammar and logic
of the sacred authors, often raising the question as to
how far they went in their belief in verbal inspiration.
They certainly rejected the Massoretic traditional point-
ing, and accepted as inspired only the unpointed Hebrew
text. The first decided impulse to profounder and closer
textual study was given by Maronite scholars in the
seventeenth century, who threw down a wealth of Ori-
ental learning at the feet of Christian scholars. This
impulse was quickened by Pocock's journey to the East,
-crowned as it was with priceless treasures of Arabic
literature ; the first practical use of which, in France,
Holland, and England, was the renewed study of the
Hebrew Scriptures, and the memorable conflict with rab-
binical tradition, ending in the denial of the inspiration
of the Hebrew vowel-points and accents, and the com-
mon Massoretic text. Coincident with this was the
appearance of those monuments of textual learning, the
great Polyglots of Antwerp, Paris, and London ; the last
having been regarded ever since as the foremost critical
work of the seventeenth century, and, as every scholar
knows, continuing until the present day as the acknowl-
edged basis for the comparative study of versions. In
the eighteenth century we have the noteworthy labors, in
the same field, of Mill, Pichard Bentley, Bishop Lowth,
^nd Kennicott, with whose passing away this branch of
learning migrated to the Continent, there to stay until

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 233

our own time. The great textual critics of Germany
and Holland from 1734 to 1870, ending with Tischen-
dorf the greatest of them all, are as household words
to all who have any interest in this line of study. This
brief review will prepare us to appreciate the advance
in textual criticism, both of the Old and the New Testa-
ment, accomplished in our day by divines and Christian
scholars, especially by those in England. From England
alone, in the last thirty years, we have had at least five
works in this department, of the first rank ; and to
Drs. Westcott and Hort, honored names of Cambridge
University, the distinction is universally conceded, of
" having advanced the textual criticism of the New
Testament beyond the mark reached by the best Conti-
nental scholars." And yet it remains to be said, as
showing how much is still to be done, that, in the
remarkable work of Ginsberg on the Massora (London,
1880), we have only a good start toward a correct text
of the Old Testament.

Finally we come to the most prominent aspect of Bib-
lical criticism, — that known to us under the name of
" the Higher Criticism," whose chief aim is to study the
Scriptures simply as literature, to inquire into the origin
and development of the material contained in the Bible,
into questions of authorship and of environments, and
into the interior structure and relations of the several
books. The subject is too large and intricate for details,
and yet without a brief review of its history we cannot
properly understand the phase which it presents to-day.
This review will lead us up to facts of great interest and
importance in the present outlook of sacred literature.

234 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

It will show us that many of the agitating questions now
pressing upon us, so far from being new questions, have
occupied the attention of Biblical scholars in one way or
another for at least three hundred years, though thrown
into greater prominence by the critical work of the last
hundred jears. It will show us, that, as in the past, so
to-day, the studies of the Clergy must be so conducted
as, while making room for all ascertained truth, to defend
the Divine authority of the Scriptures against both a
diluted and a consolidated rationalism. It will show us,
too, that battles which have been fought in other days
and in other lands, and only the far-off noise of which
we have heard, have been renewed at our own altars
and firesides. English and American Christianity is
just beginning to feel the fires that have scorched to
the very bone and marrow the faithful in Germany and
Holland ; and the sooner our schools for the training of
the Ministry prepare to meet them, the better it will be.
The germs of the Higher Criticism can be traced to the
Eeformers of the sixteenth century. They broke in upon
the traditional theory of the Canon, by casting out the
Apocrypha. They examined the received versions of
their day, and threw out as uninspired the Septuagint
and the Vulgate, falling back on the original Hebrew
and Greek texts. They denied the inspiration of the
Massoretic pointing of the Hebrew Scriptures. They
attacked the allegorical method of interpretation, and
insisted on the surface or grammatical sense. Luther
and Calvin and Zwingli, and their immediate disciples,
expressed themselves on questions of Scripture author-
ship with a freedom hardly surpassed in later times.

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 235

Luther denied that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, that St.
John wrote the Apocalypse, that St. James was an Apos-
tolic writing, that St. Jude was an independent Epistle,
and, not hesitating to go as far as the boldest criticism of
to-day, raised doubts as to the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch. Calvin waxed equally bold, and challenged
the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews ;
questioned whether St. Peter wrote the second Epistle
credited to him ; declared that there were many parts of
the Psalter not written by David, and that the book as
we have it was compiled by Ezra, that Ezra wrote the
prophecy of Malachi, and that the only really important
part of the Mosaic legislation was the Ten Command-
ments. What these leaders said was echoed, with divers
additions, by their followers. Since the Reformation,
there have been three distinct revivals of what may be
called critical enterprise: the first taking in hand the
Canon of Scripture ; the second, the original texts and
versions ; and the third, that of our own time, the pure-
ly literary characteristics of the Bible. Among other
fore-runners in the seventeenth century, of the Higher
Criticism, were Spinoza, the apostate Jew and panthe-
istic philosopher, and Richard Simon, a Roman Catholic.
The former asserted that Moses could not have written
the Pentateuch ; that the Old Testament, from Genesis
through the Books of Kings, was one historical work ;
that the Books of Chronicles belong to the Maccabtean
period, and the Proverbs to the time of Josiah ; that the
prophetical books are a mere conglomeration of frag-
ments ; and that the Book of Job was translated into
Hebrew from a foreign tongue. The latter bent himself

236 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

to the task of elaborating the proofs of the non-Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, and far excelled the for-
mer in extent and thoroughness of investigation. In
the eighteenth century, several Koman- Catholic divines,
including Vitringa and Abbe Fleury, advocated the
theory of a second-hand composition of Genesis by
Moses, or what was known as the documentary theory ;
while Astruc, a physician of the same faith, announced
what he claimed to be a great discovery, which Eichhorn
and the majority of Biblical scholars subsequently con-
ceded to be such, — viz., that the Book of Genesis is
divided, by the use of the Divine names JElohim and
Jehovah, into two large and several lesser memoirs. But
it was Bishop Lowth's work on Hebrew poetry, that gave
the renewed impulse to the literary study of the Scripture
in this century. This work, translated into German,
awoke the genius of the poet Herder, who, saturated with
the Oriental spirit, compelled the attention of German
scholars to the unrivalled beauties of the Old-Testament
literature. But it was the work of Eichhorn, in 1780,
that gathered up and organized the critical labors of all
his predecessors in this field, and won for itself the title,
made so familiar in after-days, the Higher Criticism.
The next chapter of the movement was opened by
De Wette, who gave himself to the investigation of the
origin of the documents alleged to have been used by
INIoses in writing the Pentateuch, and by other Scripture-
writers in their respective works. Of theorizing on this
subject there was no end ; but if the clashing conjectures
brought forth no other fruit, because of the paucity of
the facts on which they proceeded, they at least made

Activity of the CJergi/ in Sacred Studies. 237

themselves memorable by paving the way for the next
chapter of the Higher Criticism, inaugurated for the New
Testament by the Tubingen school, and for the Old by
Eeuss and his school, both reaching the climax of destruc-
tive scholarship by their attempts to rebuild, on a basis
of absolute naturalism, the entire series of the Sacred
Writings. They exaggerated discrepancies to an extent
that rendered their reconciliation impossible ; and boldly
advanced the theory, that the literature and religion of
both Testaments could be accounted for by antagonistic
forces struggling for the mastery. The story as to how
they were answered by Neander, Hofmann, and Ewald,
and their disciples, as regards the New-Testament litera-
ture and faith, is too familiar to be repeated here. The
substance of the answer was, that all the alleged diver-
sities and antagonisms met, and were reconciled, in a
higher unity of thought and life.^ The Higher Criticism
having exhausted its resources, or become weary of the
long series of attacks and counter-attacks, in Germany,
crossed the English Channel, and stirred up the Anglo-
Saxon world by Bishop Colenso's assault on the histori-
cal character of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua,
and still more by the rationalistic virus of the "Essays
and Reviews." The authors of the latter simply paraded
in the faded finery of defunct schools, — notably in that
of the old deists and of the later anti-supernaturalism of
De Wette and Baur. Colenso's work has not died as

1 For a learned and luminous treatment of this and kindred topics, to
which I have been able to allude only in a passing way, see Biblical
Study, its Principles, Methods, etc., by Professor C. A. Briggs, D.D.,
New York, 1S83.

238 Activity of the Clergy hi Sacred Studies.

easily as " Essays and Reviews." Curiously enough, as
for another sort of work Bishop Lowth begot Herder,
and for still another Hume begot Kant, so Colenso, in
order that the most advanced radicalism might not be
without its file leader, begot the Dutch scholar Kuenen,
who just at this time is the bright cynosure of the
Higher Criticism. Of the further cropping-out of this
movement in diluted forms in Great Britain and Amer-
ica, of the threadbare reproduction and second-hand
scintillations of it in some of our pulpits and professional
chairs, it were useless to speak ; if for no other reason,
because it were idle to attack the tyros and novices of
rationalism when more formidable antagonists are to be
looked after.

We should remember, however, that while the Higher
Criticism has been thus far destructive, it is not in itself
necessarily so, and may not prove so in the near future.^
Alford and Wordsworth and Lightfoot and Westcott and

1 It is sad to recall the wrong-headed and wrong-hearted temper often
displayed on the destructive side of the so-called Higher Criticism, and
interwoven with it the vast wastage of intellectual power amid the bottom-
less quicksands of learned conjecture and speculation. It is hard, indeed,
to suppress a feeling of righteous indignation, when one examines in
detail the more radical positions successively held and abandoned by Ger-
man extremists under the guise of progressive scholarship and candid
investigation. They have treated the Sacred Writings with all the less
reverence because of their claim to a Divine origin. Time and again they
have torn to pieces and reconstructed the life of the chosen people of
God, drawing the materials of their artificial fabrics not so much from
credible historic records as from their own consciousness. So with New-
Testament history and the early Christian life associated with it. Their
dogmatism has surpassed, by a long way, that of the so-called traditional or
scholastic theologians ; while their contradictory conclusions on matters of
vital concern, each announced in turn as a positive discovery, make one

Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies. 239

Ellicott, to name no others, illustrate what it may be
when pursued in a reverent and devout spirit. Antipa-
thy to the supernatural is its accidental, not its essen-

wonder at the hold they took on the sober thought of the time. As
examples, take the following : —

IMoses wrote parts of the Pentateuch. — Moses had no hand at all in
it : it was a compilation, at a much later date, from primitive documents
preserved in the national archives.

Moses, in forming the Hebrew ritual and in many other things, bor-
rowed largely from the Egyptians. — The Mosaic legislation, so called, as
a whole did not emerge until after the Captivity.

Deuteronomy was the earliest of the five books. — Deuteronomy was
the latest of the five books.

The Hebrew worship M^as designed to shut out idolatry, and was
relentless in the execution of this design. — The Hebrew worship, in many
of its ritual and symbolic ari'angements, was intensely idolatrous.

Moses did not write the books ascribed to him, but he may have
written the Book of Job. — The authorship of the Book of Job is abso-
lutely unknown, and Job himself is a myth.

The prophets, by a special exaltation of their spiritual consciousness,
were able to forecast events. — The prophets were no moi-e than earnest
and fearless teachers of fundamental moral duties, in times of forgetful-
ness and disobedience : their predictions were after-thoughts credited to
them in order to give them greater authority, or they turned out to be
mistakes, and in either case were fictitious.

As for the New Testament, the writers were genuine historic men, and
set down honestly and simply what they saw and knew. It is very doubt-
ful whether St. John wrote any thing more than one Epistle. The Four
Evangelists were so warped and colored by education, by local prejudice,
and by race-feeling, that they were incompetent to give a true account of
the real teaching and work of Christ. St. Paul was such a mixture
of the Jew and the Greek, that all doctrine in his hands was seriously
deflected from its proper line. St. Jude did not write the Epistle that
bears his name, but some one else extracted it from the writings of St.
Peter.

As for the Christ, he founded a Divine society. He introduced only
ideas, principles. He, in some mysterious sense, came forth from God.
Rationally considered, he was a time-growth, and embodied the ideal of
humanity as a time-growth out of its own progressive consciousness.

240 Activity of the Clergy in Sacred Studies.

tial characteristic. As the day of faith returns, as it
certainly will, more faith and less doubt will enter into
its work. But persistent and mighty as have been its
assaults during the century past, and profound as have
been the fear and agitation it has excited, the net
result, when brought down to its actual substance, is
thus summed up by the majority of our best Biblical
scholars: "While some of our traditional teachings will
have to be modified to a considerable extent in the
several departments of Biblical study, nothing has been
established by modern critical work that will at all dis-
turb the statements of the orthodox dogmatic symbols of
our day with reference to the authority of the Word
of God." But there is another moral to be pointed.
If in the past the theological and clerical mind has
displayed immense learning and intellectual activity in
meeting the adversaries of the truth, what a call have
we in the present, and w^hat a call shall we have in the
near future, as the ordained deputies of the Christ, to
so advance in sound learning and godly zeal as that the
ark of true religion committed to our keeping shall
suffer neither miscarriage nor spoliation by the hands
of its enemies !

LECTUEE VI.

MATERIAL AND TRAINING FOR THE MINISTRY.

In the remaining lectures, our attention will be given
to the positive, or constructive, side of the general sub-
ject; i.e., to showing what is needed, and what it is in
our power to do, for the renewal and invigoration of the
gifts and functions, and with these of the influence of
the Sacred Office.

The Church has of late had, in some respects, an
unhappy experience in the period previous to ordina-
tion. It is believed by many, that the best material is
not offered as freely for the Ministry as for other learned
callings. The Church is not privileged with a ^vide
range of selection. It is commonly understood, that,
failing to secure the young life which the dignity and
importance of her work ought to command, she is forced
to take what she can get. The demand for recruits so
far exceeds the supply, that, though maintaining towards
those without, the traditionally lofty attitude as to tests
and requirements, she more than winks at a rule in the
choice of candidates which may be mildly characterized
as generously easy and conveniently blind. To fend off
ignorance and mediocrity, and the low ambitions which
may put on the disguise of pious desires, she builds

2-12 Material and Training for the Ministry.

the canonical fences very high ; and then, under one
plea or another, she allows the functionaries of volun-
tary societies, her Clergy and Standing Committees, and
even her Bishops, a dangerous discretion in taking them
down. Looking back over the past twenty years, it is
not too much to say that only very marked disabilities
of mind and body could have discouraged any one from
applying to be received as a candidate for Holy Orders.
Certainly any ordinary weakness, any open question
of perceptible fitness, any grade of mental inferiority
consistent with the possession of common-sense, has
apparently operated to the disadvantage of no pious
single-hearted soul who could persuade himself that the
Christian Priesthood offered a nobler sphere of influ-
ence than private life. There has been no Aaronic or
Levitical line to choose from ; and owing to the temper
of the time on the one hand, and to the solemn urgen-
cies of her mission on the other, the Church has been
in no condition to demand the firstlings of the flock or
the lambs without blemish. Failing to command at will
the gold and silver of intellect and culture, she has been
constrained to accept, not seldom, the humbler talent of
coarser metals.

The causes which have crippled the supply, and low-
ered the standard of the recruits for the Ministry, are
strengthened, rather than weakened, by the present drift
of things. The expense and difficulty of a complete
academic and theological education ; the new profes-
sions and employments introduced by our many-sided
life, all requiring a thorough training and a vigorous
intellect, and offering inviting opportunities to secure

Material and Training for the Ministry. 243

wealth and promotion ; the meagreness of clerical sup-
port, aggravated by the more costly scale of modern
social life ; the unhappy divisions which have disquieted
the Church ; the doubtful and shifting opinions, even
upon the most vital theological issues ; the consequent
hesitancy and embarrassment in the minds of many
thoughtful and conscientious youths ; the persistent
purpose of some within, and more without, the Church,
to make the most of her troubles and imperfections,
whether real or imaginary ; the alternating fortunes of
ecclesiastical parties ; the unsettled relations between
Christianity and the more advanced schools of thought,
— these, together with other admitted symptoms of a
period of transition, are influences which, there can be
little doubt, will combine to hinder many choice spuits
from seeking to serve at our altars ; while they will also
bring to the surface many more not so choice, who, in
such a time of change and agitation, will be only too
ready to accept any opening to ecclesiastical employ-
ment which promises respectability and support. Now,
no training, however perfect, can create a high order of
clerical character and service out of such material. The
more of it we put in surplices, the weaker we shall be,
and the louder will be the complaint, already so preva-
lent among the laity, and so often echoed by the secular
press, of unfledged divines, shallow theology, crude dis-
courses, and perfunctory ministrations. I say, then,
antecedently to the question of training, that, if the
influence of the Ministry is to be maintained at even its
past average, and not allowed to shrink away gradually
into feebleness and obscurity, the Church must hence-

244 Material and Training for the Ministry.

forth exercise more care and vigilance in the selection
of the raw material on which her theological schools
are to work.

Again, and for the same reason, assuming that the
raw material is of the right quality as to native tex-
ture and vigor, the Church must bring to. bear a more
scrupulous judgment in determining what constitutes
a valid call to the office and work of a Priest in the
Kingdom of God. It is to be feared that loose views
and a looser practice have obtained a foot-hold among
us on this vital point. I allude, of course, to the indi-
vidual, subjective side of a call. One has only to go
over the subject with the majority of young men offering
themselves for the Sacred Office, to discover the evil and
the danger now threatening us from this quarter. Some
think themselves justified in looking forward to the Min-
istry if they have become seriously interested in, and
have learned to reflect soberly on religious questions.
Others imagine themselves duly persuaded in this solemn
matter if they are conscious of a strong desire to be
useful in promoting the interests of the Church and of
humanity. Still others arrive at the same conclusion
through the suggestion of friends who see in them gifts
and abilities which they fancy would insure them power
and reputation in the pulpit, or popularity in the pastor-
ate. On all sides we encounter a state of feeling which
makes it easy — altogether too easy — for the mechanic,
the tradesman, the farmer, the lawyer, the physician, to
abandon their callings, and attempt the functions of the
Sacred Ministry, which, beyond any thing else in life if
they are rightly discharged, take hold on the strongest

Material and Training for tne Ministry. 2i5

convictions and profoundest experiences of the soul. It
is a state of mind often produced by consciousness of
failure in secular work, or by native restlessness of tem-
perament, or by the ambition to figure in a more conspic-
uous sphere, or by the desire to enjoy what is supposed
to be the easy dignity and comfortable respectability of
a vocation which surrounds itself with an atmosphere
of quiet thought and sympathetic fellowship. But men
lifted into the Ministry by such motives can never rise
above the lowest grade of moral power. The first wave
of tribulation that strikes them will draw from theu*
lips the cry of cowards and time-servers. Never will
be heard, even in any chance moment of spuitual exal-
tation, trembling on their tongues in pathetic, victorious
earnestness, the words, " Woe is unto me if I preach
not the Gospel," ^ " I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." ^
Never need the Church expect from such any personal
sacrifice, that " no offence be given in any thing," and
" that the Ministry be not blamed." ^ To them, afflic-
tions, necessities, distresses, tumults, labors, watchiugs,
fastings, obscurity, isolation, poverty, are sources of
death, not life. They may abound in great words, but
they will be barren of great deeds. The fire that tries
them will prove them dross, and the furnace will cast
them out as the refuse of God's Kingdom. If the
Church is to have a Priesthood worthy of the Word she
has been commissioned to preach and of the work she
has undertaken to do, she must teach more and more
the men whom she ordains, that they must rise above

1 1 Cor. ix. 16. 2 pli^, iii, 8. s 2 Cor. vi. 3.

246 Material and Training for the Ministry/.

all secondary motives grounded in mere taste or prefer-
ence, or general intellectual and moral bias, and pass
wholly into the region of those primary and fundamental
motives which are alone spoken of and relied upon in
the Scriptures of the New Testament. She must have
the witness of the Holy Ghost working with and work-
ing through the judgment and volition of the individual
soul.

Clearly the time has come when the Bishops of the
Church must exercise greater care in selecting and
receiving postulants. No duty can be more important
than this, and none requires more pains-taking discrimi-
nation for its due performance. If the morale of the
Ministry is ever to be made what it ought to be, and
must be in order to sway the mind and heart of this
generation, the random, hap-hazard method of dealing
with this interest, so prevalent in the recent past, must
cease. Much good material has come to us by what
seems like a happy accident, but more of another sort
has been imposed upon us by the lack of suitable vigi-
lance. We must abandon the notion that candidates
will drift in upon us as they are wanted, like waifs
from the outer world. The manhood we want must be
sought out in early youth, and the Church's seal fixed
upon it at the start. The Church must help to fashion
the lives and characters of those who farther on are to
be trained in her theological schools. We may believe
with all our hearts that " Almighty God, who has pur-
chased to Himself an Universal Church by the precious
blood of His dear Son, will " in this matter " mercifully
look upon the same." We may believe, as we ought,

Material and Training for the Ministry. '247

that the Holy Ghost, who perpetually applies to the
Church's needs the virtue of Christ's indwelling pres-
ence, and who, through this, oils the joints and repairs
the wastage of the Church's organic machinery, will not
fail to provide in some way a due supply of " stewards
of the mysteries of God." We may pray statedly, as
we are bound to do, that God will "so guide and govern
the minds of His servants the Bishops and Pastors of
His flock, that they may faithfully and wisely make
choice of fit persons to serve in the Sacred Ministry."
But we must remember that all such believing and
praying, as in other cases, so in this, will amount to
little unless accompanied and followed by the active
and habitual circumspection which they are intended to
inspire. Certainly the guiding and governing sought
for, even if granted in most liberal measure, do not
excuse the Church's responsible officers from the most
watchful and scrupulous exercise of their own conscience
and judgment. I have dwelt on this point the more at
length, because no careful observer can fail to trace
some of the most serious deficiencies and inaptitudes
of not a few of our living Clergy to the source I have
indicated.

I shall now ask attention to some thoughts on our
present methods of training candidates for the Priest-
hood. This work is done mainly by institutions built up
and endowed for the purpose. Some of these institu-
tions are officered by able, experienced, and earnest men,
— men keenly alive to the gravity of their task and
to the demands of the Church. But to the discredit,
and I had almost said the shame, of the Church, it

248 Material and Training for the Ministry.

must be admitted, that, in this age of remarkable fore-
thought and liberality in general and denominational
educational interests, not one of these Schools of the
Prophets has been furnished with the appliances essen-
tial to any successful attempt at building up and main-
taining a high order of sacred learning. This is not
the place for details on this subject : I say therefore,
generally, that neither the Church collectively nor any
of her individual officers or members has a right to
complain of, or, except in the most considerate manner,
to criticise, the work actually done in such schools, until
they shall have provided them with a much more com-
plete and effective equipment than they now possess.
It is not my purpose either to complain of or to criticise
our Schools, but to deal in a broad spirit with the gen-
eral subject of theological training.^ The best of them
are capable of abundant improvement. And yet, when
we consider their disadvantages ; when we remember
the quality of much of the material they are required to
work upon, the crudeness and meagreness in many cases
of its previous academic preparation, the unrebuked
hurry and impatience of candidates to push through the

1 Of this (the General Theological Seminary), the oldest, best-
known, and most influential of om' Schools of the Prophets, I rejoice to
say, ill this connection, that the present outlook is most encouraging.
Ten years more of the same large-minded, conciliatory, judicious, and
enterprising administration that has of late quickened and blessed it,
will not only win for it the affectionate good-will, and justify the best
liopes, of the Church, but will assuredly advance it to the very front rank
among the few really first-class theological institutions, in the land.
Speedily may it lead the way to the higher learning, the riper scliolarship,
the loftier standard, of priestly attainment and outfit, now sorely needed
by the Church, but to be still more needed by her in the next generation!

Material and Training for the Ministry. 249

prescribed curriculum of study, the half-endowed profess-
orships, the chronic poverty which sometimes obliges
one teacher to do the duties of two, the ill-appointed
libraries, half-starved for lack of stated income to feed
them, in some cases complete in nothing, and thinly
sprinkled with the treasures of patristic and modern
learning, — when we recall these facts, we cannot but
wonder that these Schools acquit themselves as well as
they do, or that the men whom they graduate do not
give the Church greater cause to mourn over the short-
comings of her Ministry.

To invigorate and expand the influence of the Minis-
try, to make it in quality and degree what the interests
of religion in this age demand, certain things must be
done, certain results attained, not yet found in any exist-
ing system of clerical training, Romish or Protestant or
Anglican. They relate not to technical studies, or to
modes of prosecuting them ; they are not, and cannot
be the offspring of class-room drill. They pertain to the
normal animus of the Priesthood. They are to the char-
acter and manners and work of the individual Priest,
what the atmosphere is to the picture, or expression is
to the human face. Beyond all else save the immediate
operation of the Holy Spirit, they determine the tone of
the Ministry ; giving it individuality without individual-
ism, a large sympathy without loss of intensity of feeling
for special ends, a lofty purpose without pride of office,
and the power to endure hardness without being soured
or chilled by trial and privation. If we examine the
preparatory collegiate training of young men in our day,
whether intended for the Ministry or not, we shall find

250 Material and Training for the Ministry.

that the tendency in Roman-Catholic schools is to ex-
clude the intellectual and religious forces of the present,
and to fashion the mind and heart only by the past ;
while in most so-called Protestant institutions among
ourselves, the tendency is rather to make doubters and
thinkers than believers. The result in the one case is
to make men powerless to understand modern life ; in
the other, to make them powerless to direct it in whole-
some channels. If this alternative were inevitable, we
might despair of all efforts to educate the complete
Christian or the well-furnished Priest. Men may acqui-
esce in it, but it is idle to say that it is forced upon them.
The problem before us is to rear minds that will sympa-
thize with life as it is, and yet not be dominated by it ;
that will exhibit scholarly vigor and freshness in han-
dling the issues of the time, and yet bear themselves in
all inquiries and controversies as though the fundament-
al principles of morals and religion were settled, and so
settled as not to admit of successful impeachment ; that
will welcome all the light the age can shed on any and
all subjects, and yet abide steadfastly in the conviction,
that, on some subjects of chiefest moment, faith casts a
surer light than reason ; that will admit that there is
nothing too sacred for investigation, and yet affirm that
there are some things with regard to which belief is the
only inlet to knowledge ; and, finally, that will challenge
authority when it plays the tyrant, or usurps the pre-
rogative of personal infallibility, and yet will lovingly
accept, as the ground of all thought in matters of duty
and faith, the ancient and catholic traditions which
enshrine, alongside the Word of God, the best thinking

Material and Training for the Ministry. 251

and purest living of the Christian centuries. This is no
impossible problem. It belongs to the genius of this
Church to produce such minds, and it ought to be her
care to gather more of them into her IVIinistry. It
should be the aim of her colleges to plant the germs of
such a culture, as it should be the duty of her Semi-
naries of theology to foster them, and of her Chief
Pastors to endue their ripened fruit, in Christ's name,
with the gifts and graces of Ordination.

And here I venture a word upon the question, now
so often mooted, whether our training sufficiently recog-
nizes the drift of living thought, and duly qualifies the
average Priest to deal with it. It were easy to state the
desiderata in this direction. It is said that the faith of
the Church is now on trial before the most critical and
unsparing court that ever sat upon its claims ; that the
common mind of the day is leavened with doubts born
of its knowledge, not of its ignorance ; that objections
to Christianity, many of them originating from the
recent advances of science and speculation, were never
urged with so much learning, acuteness, and argumenta-
tive force. In a certain large way, too, it is said, that
as from natural science, philosophy, history, and litera-
ture, the adversaries of religion draw their weapons of
assault, so no training for the Ministry can be worthy of
the name which does not, from the same sources, supply
the Clergy with the means of defence. And so in the
same strain we are told, in gross and in detail, what, in
view of the extraordinary mental development of these
times, and especially in view of their intelligent, wide-
spread scepticism, the Clergy ought to know, to com-

252 Material and Training for the Ministry.

mand respect for their vocation. Some of us may see
a slight dash of exaggeration, a little of the ever-recur-
ring " crisis " cry, in all this ; but all of us who have our
eyes and ears open must admit that there is truth enough
in it to justify a re-examination of our methods of train-
ing, in order to ascertain how they can be so modified
and improved as to cope more successfully with these
aspects of the times.

In the present exigencies of the Church, we cannot
hope to extend the time — the canonical three years —
given to theological studies ; but all who are competent
to speak on the subject declare that no more work than
is now done can be crowded into this space. It is cer-
tain, moreover, that no part of the present curriculum
can be safely displaced or even abbreviated. As things
noAv are, no branch of study can be exhaustively treated
by the teacher, or thoroughly handled by the student.
Both do their work with an irritating sense of imperfec-
tion. Some suggest an easy way of dealing with the
dilemma. They raise the issue between fast and j^resent
in quite the same spirit in which it is now being venti-
lated in the circles of academic training. The time is
too short for the classics and for modern languages.
The former are important, but not so much so as the
latter : therefore their lines must be driven in, to make
more room for what represents the life of the present.
In other words, the past is well enough in its place and
degree, but it must not interfere with the franchises
and liberties and utilities of the present. Little as we
sympathize with this view, it may be allowed to pass
unchallenged in the sphere of merely intellectual train-

Material and Training for the Ministry. 253

ing. Not so, however, in that of theological training.
It may be that here we should give more attention to the
present, but surely no well-grounded Churchman will
advise us to give less to the past. It may be that we
should be more as men of understanding, discerning the
signs of the times, and taking frequent soundings in the
cross-currents of living thought ; but the fact remains,
that for us, all Ritual, Ecclesiastical, Sacramental, Dog-
matic, Priestly life has not only its roots, but its matured
growths, in the distant past. The faith we teach was
once and forever delivered. As it came to us, so we are
to hand it on. It can gain nothing in its substance, and
it must lose nothing of its substance in our keeping. It
enters the life of this age as it has entered the life of
each of the nineteen centuries behind us, — as a finished
force from without ; by some of them, indeed, rent
in twain, by others sadly corrupted and obscured, by
others restored to its early purity, but by none advanced
beyond its original type. Religiously considered, we
have no possible solution for the problems of the pres-
ent, save as it is furnished by the lights streaming over
us from the far-off sunrise of Judaea. It is idle, then,
to suggest in matters of theology any discount of the
past in favor of the present. But if this be forbidden,
there is something we can do. We can do more than
we have done, to so shape the studies of the Christian
past as to give them a more vital hold upon the diffi-
culties of the present. The matter in our hands is
unchangeable ; but it is for us to show, not only what
forms it assumed to meet the wants of this or that age
behind us, but eminently the form it must take now

254 Material and Training for the Ministry.

to bring into unity the verities of revelation, and the
healthy, genuine thought of living minds. It is incum-
bent on teachers of theology to concentrate their best
learning on the points where the doubts of the hour
impinge with greatest force. It is for them to show
how the pen-and-ink sketches of early scepticisms, here-
sies, and infidelities, done by the vigorous hands of the
Fathers, have their exact counterparts to-day ; and in
doing this, to prove not only the continuity, but as
well the substantial identity from the beginning, of all
the oppositions of human learning and speculation to
the Gospel of the Son of God. It will doubly arm the
student of to-day, and so the Priest of to-morrow, in
his eiforfes " to convince the gainsay er," and to prove his
" aptness to teach " truth doubted or denied, if he can
be made to see beyond all question, in the spiritual-
ist, the materialist, the anti-supernaturalist, the agnostic,
the atheist, now vexing and disquieting the faith of
God's people, the lineal descendants of the same types
of character in the Church's infancy, and only repro-
duced from age to age by a law of heredity operating as
surely and widely in the world of thought and belief
as in the physical world. But I need not labor the
point further. The present curriculum is sufficiently
comprehensive and elastic. Without adding scarcely a
feather's weight to their bulk, hermeneutics, ecclesias-
tical history, Christian evidences. Christian ethics, and
dogmatic divinity can be so handled, independently of
all inventions, novelties, and re-adjustments, as to meet
the demands of the time. And the mental energy, the
fresh learning, and didactic skill are not, we may well

Material and Training for the Ministry. 255

believe, wanting in those whom the matter most imme-
diately concerns.

Again, in the matter of theological training we may
note several contrasted methods, as to the comparative
value of which there are wide differences of opinion.
There is nothing more peculiar in the whole practical
system of the Church of England, than its method of
educating the Clergy. A competent witness has re-
marked, that there are no Clergy in the world so well
educated as those of the Church of England, and yet
there are none whose education has so little reference
to the special duties of their profession. "The study
of theology, with the sacred languages and literature, is
almost entirely neglected, or, at the most, extends only
to attendance on one or two short courses of routine
lectui-es. A student destined for the Church is scarcely
ever called upon to write sermons or homilies until the
Bishop's examination, and his first effort at reading or
speaking in public is not until after he has taken
Deacon's Orders. The result is, that the Clergyman as
a public teacher is unable, with all his education, to com-
pete with the most uneducated preacher that harangues
in the neighboring Bethel or Bethesda. These are
facts (says this writer) admitted alike by all parties in
the Church and out of it."

By the same authority it is stated, that, " as a rule,
the Clergy come from the middle and higher classes of
society. They are sent to the great public schools and
universities, where they mix with those of their own age
who are destined for other professions or for no pro-
fession at all. They pursue the same studies, indulge

256 Material and Training for the Ministry.

in the same sports, and fall into the same sins, as their
fellow-students. Their testimonials are signed, as a
matter of course. Their Si qiiis is read, to which no
one pays any attention. They are examined by the
Bishop, — an examination which is often the merest
imaginable pretence. They are ordained, and go to
work in their parishes, often to preach a Gospel which
they have never learned, to expound Scriptures which
they have never studied, and to address, as consolation
to the sick and dying, words that would bring no conso-
lation to themselves." ^

It is difficult to imagine that any advantages could
grow out of such looseness and negligence of training.
And yet the very authorities that are severest on the
evils are foremost in claiming a certain superiority for
this training. They tell us that this largely non-pro-
fessional training is of great value to the Clergy in
many ways. It avoids the danger of gradual consolida-
tion into a priestly caste. It keeps the Clergy abreast
of the social and civil life around them, gives them a
manly and intelligent interest in all that is of moment to
other men, reminds them that they are citizens as well as
Priests, that they are to enjoy the comforts and discharge
the responsibilities of husbands and fathers. Thus such

1 Contemporary Essays in Theology, by Rev. John Hunt, p. 507. I
should scarcely have presumed to quote such a description of the slovenly
and neglectful preparation of the average theological student in the
Mother Church, if it were not abundantly confirmed by testimony from
other sources. In some of the debates on the supply and training of
Clergymen, in the reported Proceedings of more than one of the Church
Congresses, within the past ten years, language is used quite as strong as
that quoted above.

Material and Training for the Ministry. 257

a training widens out the sympathies, enriches the expe-
rience, and multipUes the influence of the Clergy ; im-
parting a breadth and versatihty of culture, and a ready
perception of the symptoms and tendencies and wants
of the various forms of life around them, which a more
strictly professional preparation could not give. The
model Clergyman of England may fail in every thing
else, without necessarily losing his position ; but he
must not fail to be a gentleman. Society and the State
have claims upon him, as well as the Church, and claims
which his education must qualify him to meet.

But all this amounts to saying that the Priest of the
Church of England must be trained for other than cleri-
cal service ; and the result of this is, that the Clergy
who mean to be faithful in their vocation, and to acquit
themselves in all its duties as workmen that need not
be ashamed, must learn after Ordination what they ought
to have learned before it. They must be apprentices
while they wear the title and occupy the position of
masters. Such a theory could hold sway for any length
of time only in an Established Church ; but it will not
do so much longer even there. With the rising life and
energy of the Church of England, her foremost minds,
her real leaders, are becoming more and more impatient
of the glaring deficiencies of such a system; and the
last twenty years have witnessed some very determined
efforts to modify it.

The Roman-Catholic method is in all respects the
exact opposite to the Anglican. It sets out with a radi-
cally different aim, and adheres to it rigidly to the very
end. The preliminary training of the Romish Clergy

258 Material and Training for the Ministry.

allows no side-issues, and is encumbered with no mixed
purposes. It pays no heed to matters of social status
and political citizenship. It bears steadily and continu-
ously on the strictly professional work to be done. It
cares for nothing that does not help to inspire its sub-
jects with a supreme and absolute devotion to the
Church. It handles them, from beginning to end, as
material to be shaped into tools, not to be developed into
men of breadth and self-poise. Its conception of the
Priesthood is that of an army, every soldier of which is
educated into the habit of unquestioning submission to
the will of his commander ; or that of a hierarchical
caste, fenced in by a celibate life, and isolated as much
as possible from all contact with men and things which
does not serve to increase its power over the world
around it. The Priests of the Church of Rome, in
nearly all countries where it holds sway, are chosen from
the humbler classes. They are singled out for the holy
office while mere boys. They are under the Church's
eye from the start. They undergo a long and severe
course of training in schools and colleges and seminaries
of theology, and special care is bestowed upon them at
the time of their Ordination. The results of this con-
ception of the priestly character and work, and of the
training devised to put it in force, are too familiar to
require comment.

Our method of clerical education is neither so loose
as the Anglican, nor so rigid as the Eomish. It is more
strictly ecclesiastical than the former, and less so than
the latter. The special duties of the office are kept
constantly in view, and yet a knowledge of men and

Material and Training for the Ministry. 259

things is recognized as necessary. The training is secu-
lar in the college, and professional after candidateship
begins. It aims to combine the scholarly with the prac-
tical, devotion to the Church with a healthy interest in
general affairs. It seeks to foster the esprit de corps.,
or class attachments, which give to the sacred profession
a certain necessary power of corporate cohesion, without
neglecting any true characteristic of a large-hearted,
sound, and sympathetic manhood. Our type of the
Priesthood is in most regards the outgrowth of our cu'-
cumstances. In the nature of the case we might expect
that it would, as it does, come short of the Anglican in
breadth of general culture, and of the Roman in inten-
sity of purpose and thoroughness of drill. We could not,
if we would, reproduce the ideal Anglican or Roman
Priest : our work could not be done or our ecclesiastical
system be administered by either. And yet there is one
respect, to name no others, in which our training, and
the type of ministerial character which it creates, might
be improved. We may not think it wise to imitate the
peculiar devotion of the Roman-Catholic Priest to his
Church or to his Order. We may condemn this type
of Priesthood for its hard and narrow ecclesiasticism.
We may say that it lacks freedom and fervor, that it
has in it the lurking antipathy and selfishness which
external pruning and compression always leave behind
them, that it is largely nurtured by caste feeling and
caste interests, and therefore that it cannot be really
noble in spirit or truly great in any of its manifestations.
Still it is capable of producing what to the common eye
appear to be the fruits of self-sacrifice, the tokens of a

260 Material and Training for the Ministry.

frame of mind which can rise above personal ease and
self-indulgence, which can obey in spite of hardship and
denial, and march steadily on iti the discharge of duty,
caring neither for the world's praise or blame. Account
for the qualities as we may, strip them of merit as far
as the most hostile criticism may demand, there is yet
left in the best specimens of the E-omish Priest a certain
intensity and directness of purpose, a sustained, habitual
indifference to the minor accidents of life, which de-
serves, and ordinarily wins, the respect if not admiration
of impartial observers.

Now, it would be well if we could infuse into our
young men preparing for Holy Orders more of these
qualities ; enough of th^m, at the least, to lead them
to dwell less on what this ease-loving, pleasure-hunting
generation has come to regard as the hardships and
privations of the Ministry, and more upon the intrinsic
greatness of the work to be done, more upon the in-
comparable dignity of their sacred vocation, more upon
the value of souls to be saved, more upon the Church
they serve, more upon God's grace in choosing them
out of the world to be the vessels of so glorious a
treasure as the Gospel of His Eternal Son. Too many
of our candidates enter the Ministry with such low views
of its morale as to make it seem to them quite consistent
with the solemn purpose which they profess of entire
consecration to their work, to forecast, not only in day-
dreams and visions, but by definite, preliminary engage-
ments, the comforts of wives and homes, of quiet studies
and attractive pastoral surroundings. So far has this
gone, that it is no unusual thing for the candidate to

Material and Training for the Ministry. 261

arrange simultaneously for his wedding and his Ordina-
tion, and occasionally to take a wife before he takes duty
in the Church. We get little enough out of the Diacon-
ate in its best estate; but in many cases the Church gets
next to nothing out of it, because of the rash and un-
seemly haste to snatch the joys of matrimony, at the
expense of the Church's just claims and expectations.
In all such cases, the fault and the trouble arise from
the fact, that, while a candidate, the Deacon fell into the
habit of thinking too much of what concerned his own
comfort, and too little of what he would owe to the
Church, and to Christ her adorable Head, after taking
the vows and receiving the gift of Ordination.

There is a purer and loftier atmosphere of thought
and feeling on this whole subject than most of our
young life in training for the Ministry has attained ;
and yet, up to which it must be lifted if the Ministry
is to recover the ground it has lost, or to extend that
which it still holds. I advocate no special enthusiasm.
I would portray as the needful thing no spasmodic
exaltation of soul, possible only to the few. There are
cant phrases, coined by minds in the white heat of re-
ligious frenzy, which I have no wish to repeat. And
yet there are views relating to this aspect of the Chris-
tian Ministry, which ought to be made more of than they
have been. If there be danger in feeding a false fervor,
there is much greater danger in having no fervor at all.
The tendency is very strong, just now, to treat the Min-
istry as one of the professions to some one or the other
of which liberally trained young men will naturally turn.
From this standpoint its prospects are discussed, and its

262 Material and Training for the Ministry.

liabilities estimated. They are set down as needlessly
exacting, who refuse to pause in the search for motives,
until they have touched the tests uniformly pressed in
Holy Scripture whenever it speaks of those fit to be
called the Pastors and Prophets of Jesus Christ. There
are times and occasions on which we may be practical
and business-like in speaking of the Ministry, without
being selfish or worldly. It is entitled to consideration in
various ways, from the laity, which we may justly demand.
It is a vocation whose sacredness and elevation do not
relieve it of the necessity of competent support, and
circumstances may render it needful to urge this fact
upon those whose duty it is to attend to it. It has rights
and franchises in law and custom, which no fear of mix-
ing in temporal matters should prevent us from asserting
when they are denied, or defending when they are as-
sailed. There may be a lawful readiness to exchange a
worse for a better position. There may be an honorable
and legitimate desire to rise in professional influence, as
well as to advance in professional usefulness. All this
is consistent with the noblest ideal of the Ministry.
But it is easily overdone, and allowed to run over into
a pronounced worldliness, which drops blight and mil-
dew on the character and work of the Priest of God.
Enough of human nature is carried into the Ministry to
make it certain that this side of it will never be for-
gotten. Would that it could be said that enough of
God's grace, enough of the mind that was in Christ
Jesus, is carried into it to make it equally sure that the
other side will always be remembered !

Too generally we have fallen into the unhappy way

Material and Training for the Ministry. 263

of clwellins: too much on the minor trials and accidental
annoyances of the Ministry, and too little on its real
burdens and tribulations. A well-meant but unfortunate
sentimentalism has given to the former too large a place
in the attention of candidates, while an undue fear of
discouraging those who might be thinking of the Minis-
try has tempted us to make less of the latter than truth
really demands. It is time this were all changed. The
great question now is, not how much but what sort of
material is to be put under training. Numbers, if they
be of the wrong sort, will only still further weaken and
demoralize us. The Church wants no one in her Min-
istry who will be likely to turn back when confronted
by a full knowledge of what is in store for the faithful
deputy of Chi'ist. Let it be declared, then, over and
over, and let it be understood, that in a true Priesthood
heavy toil, wasting care, constant self-sacrifice, saddening
disappointments, and often the uncomfortable straits of
poverty, are inevitable. Let it be known that he who
takes up the work must take up the burden; that he
who accepts the Master's service must accept the enmity
and reproach visited upon Him. Burden-bearing, self-
denials, strivings, hardships of every name, are insepara-
ble from the task of converting the world to God ; and
they were meant to be so. To shun them is to shun
the Cross we preach. These things are the glory and
crown of the Ministry. Its elevation, its honor, its joy,
its strength, is in its union with Christ, and participation
in what He was called to endure. It is a wanton and
wicked profanation of the Sacred Office, to even think
of it as the avenue to worldly honor and personal ease.

264 Material and Training for the Ministry.

Granted that the heralds of Christ are often poor, over-
weighted, neglected, despised ; granted that they are
often in conflict, often in peril, — was it not so with
Himself? It is enough for the disciple that he be as
his Master, and the servant as his Lord. The cause is
too great, the blessings to be conferred too inestimable,
the ultimate reward too glorious, the present commission
to go forth and sow beside all waters too divine, to per-
mit any such drawbacks to palsy the wills and hearts
of those whom the Holy Ghost draws to the standard of
the Lord of lords and King of kings. The stuff out
of which confessors and heroes and martyrs are made is
not worn out, nor is the mould in which it may be cast
into these grander forms of Christian service broken.
Both are with us, but they can be found only by the
electric touch of a soul in the Church as great and
unselfish as that which dwells in its heavenly Head.
Once restore to the Ministry the prestige and power of
such sentiments, and there will be no more speculations
and inquiries about the decline of its influence, or
assertions of its inferiority to other agencies thrown to
the front by modern life.

LECTURE VII.

PREACHING.

Though it may be shown that the influence of preach-
ing has not really declined, it will hardly be asserted
that a just criticism will not find in it much that needs
amendment. When we consider the sort of truth com-
mitted to it, the promises by which it is upheld, the
Divine gifts with which it is endowed, and the sublime
purpose it was ordained to accomplish, we must admit
that it is far below its proper ideal, and that a more
thorough discipline would disencumber it of not a few
side-weights that now hinder its power. It is not in-
tended to repeat what has been more or less well said
by writers on homiletics, from Guibert de Nogent and
Humbert de Romanis, the foremost medieeval authori-
ties, down to those of our own time. To do so would
be quite foreign to the object of the present inquiry.
Nothing more will be attempted than to point out such
actual faults and harmful tendencies in our preaching
as mar its present and seriously threaten its future
influence.

1. The pulpit is thought by many to exhibit an un-
due craving for popularity. Popularity is not always an
evil or a danger, though on ^orae sides of our life it has

266 Preaching.

figured of late as any thing but a boon. Whatever it
be, it is the idol of individuals, parties, and communities.
Enthroned by our social and political training, it holds
powerful sway in the domain of religion. It would be
uncharitable to charge the pulpit with consciously and
openly courting such a fickle divinity. The road that
leads toward it is ingeniously and piously prepared. A
famous help to this is the Apostle's example of becoming
" all things to all men," when freely rendered. Still an-
other help is the wide-spread, often well-meant, demand
for further adaptations of the Church's ministrations to
the wants of the people. There is no end to the dis-
coursing on what are esteemed to be the unprecedented
needs of these times. It is insisted that the modes of
dealing with them must be quite as extraordinary as
the needs themselves. The customary tools in the past
will not answer in these fresh mines. The old salt has
so far lost its savor, that its virtue must be restored by
the inventions of our modern chemistry. And then,
lest the Church should be dull of apprehension, she is
reminded of the stifi"ness and blindness which have dam-
aged her prestige at sundry times in the past. Puritan
secessions in the seventeenth and Methodist outbreaks in
the eighteenth century are recalled, to frighten her into a
more flexible compliance with the alleged requirements
of the age. Practically the voice of the people is held
to be omnipotent, as well in the Church as in the State.
It may be full of passion, prejudice, and ignorance; but,
with whatever hesitation, it is in the end obeyed. To
an extent greater than is supposed, it moulds the style
and dictates the topics of the pulpit; with too little re-

Preaching. 267

gard for the fact that the Gospel was sent, not to gratify,
but to reform, human nature. Without question it is
the common opinion, that the Church must conform her
ways, more than she has yet done, to the popular taste,
or the places that have known her will know her no
more. Now. to this view in its extreme form may be
traced not a few of the worst characteristics of much
of the preaching of the day.

Our generation is inflated and self-asserting. It has
done a great deal, and it means that all the posterities
shall know it. The silence of reserved force, the mod-
esty of balanced power, the humility of true greatness,
are alien to its spirit. This restless, feverish life sur-
ging by us is itself a stupendous sensation, and will so
appear in history. The pulpit has sucked in the in-
fection, and unconsciously reproduces it in the familiar
and abnormal development known in our vocabulary as
" sensationalism." It needs no analysis or description :
to name it is to suggest a thousand monstrous possibili-
ties of thought, speech, and manner.

The age, intellectually considered, has far more sur-
face than depth. It is many-sided, but disinclined to
thorough work. It does not believe in hidden treasures
of learning and wisdom : what it owns, it wears as part
of its every-day attire. Spiritually it will not bear what
Master Ridley called " deep spading," nor, farther on,
what honest Latimer called " weeding," for the sake of
a better crop. ]Much of our preaching is of the same
stamp. It is not cumbered with any extra weight of
learning or of logic. To be very deep or very elaborate,
to draw out the more hidden juices of theology, to

268 Preaching.

import into a sermon the terms in which the severer
and more precise thought of the most thoughtful of the
Christian centuries took shape, — to presume upon any
sustained active attention on the part of the hearers to
matter of this sort is to scatter them. The preacher
who makes a conscience of putting into his sermon
the study and culture of a ripe and disciplined mind is
often no match for the washy, flashy extemporizer who
makes up in wind what he lacks in sense. He who
would preach to a crowd must not crowd his preach-
ing with what our common-school training would style
fossilized learning. Strong men, indeed, here and there
hold the multitude ; but in too many cases they do it
by cheapening, in some way, their manner or their
matter.

2. Again : this age is largely given to adulterations
of every sort. Its food and drink, its clothing and fur-
nishing, its literature, its politics, its legislation, and
even its justice, are very much mixed with alien ele-
ments. Trade-marks and guaranties are no protection.
What wonder that religion, regarded as a thing of and
for the people, and as bound to be in all ways accom-
modating to the prevailing customs, should be more or
less adulterated also? What wonder that the most de-
monstrative organ of religion, the pulpit, should have
its mixture of truth and heresy, of unity and schism, of
godliness and worldliness, of high-toned theory and low-
toned practice, of independence and servility, meekness
and vanity? To keep any thing in religion as God
made it, is to be exclusive. To maintain the truth
sharply and firmly in its purity, and as God gave it, is to

Preaching. 269

be morbidly sensitive to petty distinctions, and to forget
" the infinite breadth of the Divine Mind."

3. As might be expected from the traits ah'eady
mentioned, onr time is keenly alive to the charm of
originality. Apparently it would sacrifice almost any
thing, rather than be thought lacking in this. It may
be originality of a cheap and thin sort, — originality in
confounding evil with good, or even in inventing new
forms of wickedness, as well as new forms of power and
wealth and beneficence. Its capital in hand is an in-
heritance. The ideas and forces, the laws and insti-
tutions, the controlling impulses in art, letters, politics,
and religion, are in the main a legacy from the past.
Though constantly denying it, no generation, no coun-
try, was ever more thoroughly dominated by traditional
influences. The solidarity of the centuries, the unity
of the race, and the continuity of the work laid upon it,
compel a strong family likeness among all the historic
ages. Still this age has views and tests of progress,
has modes of working out results, and of doing things
generally, which are peculiar to itself, and which it is
no stretch of language to characterize as original.
Whatever the grounds on which it rests, there is no
doubt of its claim to this quality, or of its noisy pride
in pushing the claim. Now, very naturally much of our
most admired preaching takes tone and manner from
this feeling. Few preachers can hope to be really
original, but many can put on the semblance of it.
There is a certain petty cleverness of thought and
speech, not unattainable by most men who are willing
to work for it, which with the multitude passes for the

270 Preaching.

freshness and vivacity of genius. It is a poor counter-
feit, but it is none the less harmful. It makes the
preacher self-conscious and vain ; it enfeebles his sense
of obligation to the truth as God gave it ; it fills him
with a low ambition for striking but transient effects ;
and nothing is surer than that the pulpit which habitu-
ally courts it will decline in all the nobler sources and
attributes of power. This spurious imitation of origi-
nality has been overdone. Symptoms are not wanting
to show that all the magic-lantern tricks of mere rheto-
ricians will ere long be rated at their real worth.

4. Again : our time is spectacular. It is fond of
shows. It loves to see its own life reproduced in dra-
matic form. It is charmed with living exhibitions and
literary portraitures of its own ideas and habits, its
own faults and virtues. Amid all its " Philistinism," it
has much of the old Athenian craving in this direc-
tion. Now, there is much in our religion, much in the
Church's tone and ways, that readily sympathizes with
this tendency. The life of our Lord was essentially a
drama, for it was Godhead in action visibly before the
world. The Church's history has been one continuous
drama from the beginning ; for, among other things it
was to do, it was to show forth, by a perpetual and sol-
emn Sacrament, the Lord's death until He come again.
Certainly the Ritual and Calendar of the Church have a
large dramatic element. They recite the past as though
it were now happening, or were yet to come. They make
the hidden visible, the absent near, the ancient new.
Their office is that of an ever-recurring rehearsal of
what has been and of what shall be. The highest order

Preaching. 271

of preaching cannot be reached without this element.
Accordingly it has been the aim of most of the truly
great preachers in the past, to enforce the truths they
delivered, not only with clearness of argument and ful-
ness of learning and felicity of illustration, but also and
eminently with a certain dramatic vividness which should
cause them to live on the eye and the ear. Right and
desirable in itself, there are some signs in the modern
pulpit which admonish us to guard against its running
into extravagance and eccentricity. Those who need
this caution most are unfortunately just those who grow
up and work under ecclesiastical systems which deprive
them of the wise and moderated guidance of the Church's
worship and Christian year. Our own Clergy are safe
enough from any extreme of this sort : their fault is,
that they do not infuse into their ministrations more of
the dramatic animation and freshness with which the
Church's mode of handling the events and teachings of
Christianity so richly abounds.

5. Our time, not only in spite, but perhaps as a
consequence, of its busy, prosaic life, has a marked turn
for humor. It has an almost childish fondness for
amusement ; so much of it, indeed, as to render it care-
less of what it gets in this way. The fun may be rude
or refined, select or vulgar, highly moral or dubiously
so : it is all the same. The supreme want, in many cir-
cles, is something to laugh at. If that something can
be had in connection with sacred acts and sacred places
and sacred persons, it is all the more highly esteemed,
because the incongruity of the association gives a keen-
er relish at once to the enjoyment and to the occasion

272 Preaching.

of it. No one will be so stupid as to question that real
humor is a good thing in its place, or that it deserves
well of all who know how to appreciate the sunny side
of human nature. The only point here raised is its use
in the pulpit. To exclude it altogether, or to denounce
it as, under all circumstances, an impertinence, would
be to bar out from the preacher's function not a few
most gifted minds. There is now and then a mind of
rich endowment and exuberant spirit, that can scarcely
move in the world of ideas or among the facts of life
without evolving flashes of humor, and doing it as natu-
rally and inevitably as the steel, clashing with the flint,
drops sparks of fire. Such a mind may be exposed to
peculiar risks and temptations in the pulpit, but it is not
to be silenced or expelled because of this liability. We
know that some preachers who did a noble work in their
day did not hesitate to employ any means, whether ludi-
crous or serious, to arouse the sluggish attention of their
auditors. " In all countries and in all ages," as has
been remarked by an eminent authority, "the most cele-
brated popular preachers have felt a tendency to excite
laughter in its turn, as well as other emotions." Still,
in an fege and among a people so given to levity and
irreverence as ours, it must be admitted that this faculty
of humor is a very dangerous one in the. pulpit, very
easy to abuse, and very likely to offend most minds of
churchly training and sentiment. Two things may
wisely be said of it : those who have the gift should be
cautious how they use it, and those who have it not
should beware of attempting lame and insipid counter-
feits of it.

Preaching, 273

Much is said about the declining interest in preach-
ing ; and many reasons are given to account for it,
such * s the loss of novelty in the matter, the higher
education and wider information of the people, the
weakened sense of the claims of the moral law and
generally of the reality and importance of the truths
dealt with, the complacent self-satisfaction of modern
life, the multiplication of topics of intellectual interest
outside the sphere of the pulpit. But these things, so
far as they are true, should only drive the preacher
back to what still remains to him the source of highest
power in this and every age ; viz., his ethical relation to
the people. Next to proclaiming the truth, his. chief
duty growing out of this relation is to do so with the
intense fervor of personal conviction ; arousing the heart
and the conscience to the message he delivers, by cloth-
ing it with a living fire drawn from his own soul. To
this sort of power, no congregation is indifferent ; and
perhaps it is the only sort of power, normal to the pul-
pit, that no widening of popular knowledge, no eleva-
tion of mental tone produced by advancing culture, no
change in the conditions of social life or other cause,
can diminish or nullify. Clearly, then, the more our
preaching is shut up to the exercise of this power, the
more it should study how to find it, and, when found,
how to use it. As life grows more settled and com-
posed, and inclines to the well-worn grooves of custom,
the preacher is apt to fall off in this quality. He so
much dreads the risk of running into or of being
charged with fanaticism, that he quenches, little by
little, the healthy heat of a decent enthusiasm. And

274 Preaching.

yet such regulated fervor is essential to the ordained
teacher of the duties of life. For the truth he preaches
is only duty in solution ; the moral order he expounds is
only another name for God in Christ, in contact with
the individual will, and supplying to it, in its vacillation
and weakness, the spiritual dynamic which it cannot
find in itself. Thus the highest task of the preacher is
to translate universal truth into specific personal obliga-
tions ; and this he can do successfully only by the ardor
of his own conviction and experience, and by the burn-
ing energy of his own speech. Here is a hold upon the
common mind, that nothing can shake. There is always
intrinsic strength, as well as popular interest, in per-
sonal earnestness ; and the more the pulpit has of it,
the greater will be its attraction, especially in times of
arrested faith, or positive doubt, or dogmatic indiffer-
ence. The very influences that tend to destroy earnest-
ness of conviction among the masses will tend, at the
same time, to render them more sensitive to its power
when wielded apart from doctrinal differences and dis-
sents, and exclusively in the spheres of moral duty and
spiritual aspiration.

I proceed now to notice another fault in much of our
preaching, which deserves to be sharply criticised, and
which, strangely enough, attracts less attention than it
ought in quarters where it might be expected that no
effort would be spared to cure it. I refer to what most
careful observers regard as the lame, weak, and barren
use of the Holy Scriptures. That person must have
been very blind or very careless who has failed to notice
this defect. I speak of what is common, not universal.

Preaching. 275

There are exceptions, but they are all the more remark-
able because they are so. If the Church's large experi-
ence touching the temptations which have corrupted the
taste and warped the judgment of her preachers, in one
way or another, in ages gone by, did not prepare us for
it, we might deem this fault of all others the most un-
accountable. With so many things to bind the preacher
to the Scriptures, how, we are ready to ask, could he
ever fall away from them? What is the ministry of
the Word, apart from the Word as its own food, as well
as the food of the flock ? Preaching as Christ ordained
it, and as alone God has promised to bless it, ist he
public explanation of His Word, and its application to
the people's use. The terms of its original commission
distinctly prescribe its subject-matter to be " all things
whatsoever I have commanded you." ^ The Apostles
and their successors were to preach nothing else than
that which they had themselves received. St. Paul ex-
pressly declared, " I delivered unto you that which I also
received ; " ^ and warned all whom he taught, not to listen
to himself or any other teacher who might go beyond
these limits. He charged Timothy, as an Apostle, to
" keep that which is committed to thy trust." ^ " The
things that thou hast heard of me among many wit-
nesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall
be able to teach others also.""* And so the Church,
catching the mind and purpose of our Lord and His
Apostles, ordains no Priest without reminding him that
his " doctrine and exhortation must be taken out of the
Holy Scriptures ; " how " studious " he " ought to be

1 Matt, xxviii. 20. 2 j (jor. xv. 3. s 1 xim. vi. 20. * 2 Tim. ii. 2.

276 Preaching.

in reading and learning the Scriptures ; " and how, "by
daily weighing the Scriptures," he " may wax riper and
stronger in his ministry ; " ^ nor this only, but demand-
ing of him the solemn promise that he will be " dili-
gent " in " such studies as help to the knowledge of the
same."

Now, express as Christ, his Apostles, and his Church
are on this point, yet in fact the Scriptures have been
a variable quantity to the Clergy in various periods ;
sometimes their sole spiritual diet, sometimes so only in
part, and sometimes scarcely so at all. The past teaches
one lesson on preaching to which there is no exception.
Always and everywhere its influence has been gauged
by its knowledge and use of the Scriptures. It may be
impossible to give the average of clerical studies in
God's Word in our own day : certainly, if judged by our
preaching, it would not be very high. The old power
of handling the Scriptures with striking popular effect
has declined. The contrast in this respect between the
preachers of the patristic and mediaeval times, and those
of our own day, is remarkable. The Scriptural knowl-
edge of the former was immense and almost intuitive.
They often pushed the spiritual and figurative method
of interpretation too far. Sometimes they were betrayed
into extremes whose absurdity has been the sport of
modern critics. Their mysticism may have been ex-
travagant, and their passion for detecting fanciful types
and analogies may have degenerated into a scholarly
weakness worthy of rebuke and even of ridicule. But
they did one thing which gave to their preaching singu-

1 Priest's Ordinal.

Preaching. 277

lar depth and freshness and power : they filled every
nook and corner of the Old Testament with the life of
the New ; they found the spirit and beheld the glory of
Christ in a thousand places where, perhaps, our duller
sense fails to see them. Whatever faults may be charged
to them, they were at least saved, by their mode of
studying the Word, from the spiritual barrenness caused
by that wretched invention of a later age, — the hard
and harsh canon of the school of Calvin, — which re-
fused to find a type of Christ anywhere except where
it is distmctly pointed out in the New Testament. It
was one consequence of their method of interpretation,
that they could not conceive of any preaching worthy
of the name, whose warp and woof were not spun and
woven out of the Word of God. If we take any two
standard sermons, the one of the early and the other of
our own time, we shall find that the Scripture quotations
and references in the former are as nearly ten to one in
the latter. Those old preachers diff"ered from modern
ones in another respect : they knew nothing of the fash-
ion of these days in quoting almost exclusively from cer-
tain books or chapters of Holy Scripture, which happen
to be deemed most important by the reigning schools
in Biblical criticism or dogmatic theology. Equally
imbued with the spirit of all parts, and citing from all
parts alike, they unconsciously erected the surest safe-
guard against openly violating or ignorantly wandering
from the analogy of the Word.

Again : how weak in the Scriptures is our preaching,
as compared with that of the divines and casuists during
and subsequent to the Heformation. It is impossible to

278 Preaching.

read their discourses without being surprised at the in-
genuity, closeness, and insight with which they handled
them. They had to be deep and strong in the Word,
or be nothing. Their sharp and versatile controversial
training did for them what the mystical style of thought
did for the ancient and mediaeval divines : it obliged
them to cultivate an accuracy and fertility of Biblical
knowledge which made them giants in dealing with the
Word of God and with the consciences of men.

Now, the reasons for the decline of which I am
speaking are neither obscure nor remote. The times,
it is said, are changed. For ages the Bible was a sealed
book to the peoi:)le. When read in public services, it
was read in a language not " understanded " of the
people. What little they knew of it, they were obliged
to learn from their preachers. Thus preaching became
almost the sole vehicle of sacred knowledge, and it nat-
urally made the most of y\ hat rendered it most attrac-
tive and popular. But now the Bible is in everybody's
hands, or may be, and the ability to read it is universal.
The habit of drawing from it so largely, as was once
the case, has passed away with the necessity for doing
so. The preacher, therefore, it is claimed, has the right
to presuppose the existence of considerable Scripture
knowledge among the people, and to address them ac-
cordingly. This may explain the fact, but does not just-
ify it. The preacher's commission binds him to deliver
a message equally needed in all times and places ; and
the more his hearers know of that message, the greater
his power to drive it home, and the greater his duty
to do so. But the wider circulation of the Scriptures,

Preaching. 279

and their translation into all spoken tongues, have not
been followed by a corresponding knowledge of them.
It is a great mistake to think otherwise. The blessing
has been made so free as to cheapen it. The easier it
is to get at the Scriptures, the less, in reality, they are
used. The feeling that they can be read at any time,
that they can be found everywhere, prevents many
people from reading them at all. Undeniably there is
among us a wide-spread respect for the Word, and of
necessity an equally wide-spread ignorance of it. Be-
sides the cause above named, there is another, operating
in the same direction and among vast numbers of peo-
ple. It has crept even into the Church, and it works,
there with a force as secret as it is fiital. I refer to a
latent scepticism as to the authority and genuineness of
the Holy Scriptures, engendered by the modern tone
of thought, — a scepticism which paralyzes faith with-
out killing it ; which breeds inward distrust and indif-
ference while maintaining outward reverence ; which
consists with a certain willingness to hear the Scriptures
read and explained, and also with liberal mental reserva-
tions as to their truth. As a rule, this temper of mind
regards with distaste, not to say repugnance, the free
use of the Scriptures in preaching. It is painful and
ominous to see how influential over the pulpit this feel-
ing is. Good and earnest and orthodox men are often
swayed by it more than they are aware, or would like to
own. Without doubt, that preaching is commonly re-
garded as most in accord with the times, and most likely
to be rewarded with flattering audiences, which humors
it most.

280 Preaching.

Again: not a few of the Clergy have, without intending
it, fallen off in the close and habitual study of the Word
which characterized the beginning of their Ministry, and
correspondingly in their ability to handle the Word with
a sympathetic interest and with a fair degree of scholar-
ship. So wide has become the area of knowledge over
which a man of culture is expected to travel, that only
-specialists and experts can hope to tarry long on any
one portion of it. But a Parish Priest who hopes to
accomplish much among his people cannot afford to be
ignorant of the leading branches of useful knowledge, or
of the current additions to the standard literature of the
day. Though not scientific, he must know something of
the sciences. Though not literary, he must be imbued
with the spirit, and acquainted with the changing fash-
ions of letters. Though not a profound and accurate
theologian, he must be at least respectable in theological
attainments. But whether he attain to all these or
to none, there is one thiug in which it will be held
unpardonable for him to fail, and that is knowledge of
human nature, — tact in dealing with men, capacity for
.affairs, aptness for making the most out of a little,
whether in money, or brains, or religion, or ecclesiastical
influence and attachment. It must be a man of unusual
resources, who, after meeting such requirements, can
find time to study the Scriptures as they were studied
by successful preachers in the great historic periods of
which I have spoken. The most the busy and over-
worked Clergyman can do is to make an equitable divis-
ion of his time among the claimants on his attention.
But he is bound, by every recollection of his Ordination

Preaching. 281

vow, to give the first and highest place to the "Word of
God. It may be inexpedient that any of them should
be neglected, but this is the only one that cannot be
neglected without sin.

Besides these causes so discouraging to the free and
full handling of God's Word in preaching, there is
another, so obvious to all that it needs only to be named.
I mean the present enforced brevity of sermons. Popu-
lar feeling on this has developed into a canon which no
one may violate with impunity. Life runs fast, and
speech must do likewise. The demand is for the great-
est amount in the briefest space. The bulk of every
popular assembly are impatient of nice points, critical
details, delicate shadings. They want the lights and
shadows thrown up into bold relief. The taking style
in the pulpit must avoid the elaborate finish and rounded
unity of the Raphaels of art, and cultivate the chiaro-
oscuro enchantments of the DorJs. The conventional
twenty-five minutes requires a bold, free, and sketchy
tongue, piercing at once to the marrow of the subject,
and wasting no breath on minor distinctions, or on at-
tempts to be acute, or subtle, or learned, or exhaustive.
There is time only for hints at Scripture, not citations
and expositions of it.

Account for it as we may, the fact is indisputable,
that our preaching, as a whole, is no longer mixed and
seasoned with God's Word, as it was in the days of its
greatest power. That it should have declined, therefore,
in influence, was inevitable. It has experienced pre-
cisely the sort of damage and loss which is seen sooner
or later in any function that neglects its original end,

282 Preaching.

or drops below the^ primary conditions of its health and
strength. By feeding on weaker food than God meant
it should, it has grown weaker itself, and has helped to
weaken the life it was ordained to feed. Whatever the
fashion of the hour may say, the green slopes of heavenly
truth nourish richer blood in preachers and hearers than
the arid fields of human invention. There is only one
bread that satisfies the hunger of the soul, and that is
of God, not of man.^

Having endeavored to show how and to what extent
our preaching has been enfeebled by the evils conse-
quent upon its attempts at popular adaptation, and by
its partial disuse of the Holy Scriptures, I shall next
inquire how far and in what ways it has suffered from
an excess of individualism. Individualism is now a rec-
ognized phasis of life in all its spheres of development.
More than any thing else, it indicates the tendencies,
measures the growth, and, in the judgment of many
thoughtful minds, describes and sums up some of the
most serious evils which already aflfiict or threaten the
existing order of things. There are those who see in it
the consummation of some of the fondest hopes of the
past, and the promise of some of the noblest blessings
which we are wont to associate with progressive knowl-
edge and advancing civilization. And it is proper to
add, in speaking of this type of thought and character,
that what one school fears and denounces as excess, is

^ For some fine examples of how the loci communes of Holy Scripture
may be touched, not dwelt upon, leaving the hearer's own mind to follow
out the various threads of thought, and generally of the ready and skil-
ful handling of the Word, see Bluut's Parish Priest, pp. 165, 166, passim.

Preaching. 283

welcomed and praised by another as a healthy modera-
tion. By individualism is meant self-will as opposed to
authority ; private opinion as opposed to tradition ; in-
dividual life rising above organic life ; the reason of one
man asserting itself against the common, consentient
reason of all men ; speculation against settled truth ; in-
vention against testimony. These are all only different
forms of the same thing ; and one or the other will be
adopted according as our inquiry may pass within the
limits of the State, or of society, or of the Church, or
of abstract philosophy.

It has already been remarked, that the individualism
which is deemed excessive by some, is esteemed mod-
erate or even deficient by others. The latter remind us
of the fact that the external forces at work upon the
individual are always immeasurably greater than those
working from within him. They recall the older and
the later theories of civil and ecclesiastical government,
which have treated the individual as though he existed
only to be absorbed into a life larger than his own ; the
supreme fact in his citizenship, whether in the Church
or the State, being the absolute claim of both on his
service and obedience. They tell us, too, of the undue
repression of all healthy boldness and strength of indi-
vidual character by the upstart tyrannies of custom and
opinion, warmed, strangely enough, into unprecedented
vigor by the very excesses of modern freedom. The
most illustrious apostle of this school says, " In this age
the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal
to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Pre-
cisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make

284 * Preaching.

eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break
through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric." ^
" Custom" and " opinion" as here used are meant to be
broad enough to include the established order, whatever
it be, as well in religion as elsewhere. To break away
from it, to develop some novel and decided type of
personal peculiarity, to encourage dissent from what
others believe, to violate the general concord of habits
built up on the average good sense of the majority, is
thus elevated into a cardinal virtue, and declared to be
the main spring-head of a strong and fresh life. There
are multitudes who are not quite ready for so bold a
theory, and yet who are travelling on the road that leads
to it ; their views on social and religious problems logic-
ally tend that way.^

Now, in the judgment of others (the writer included)
evidences are not wanting to show that this individualism
has already advanced farther than is safe or desirable.
It is filling our young with conceit and pretension. It
is telling sadly on the proper respect for the authority
of parents, teachers, pastors, and civil magistrates. It
is pulverizing the cement of law and order on all sides.
It is the ally of sectarian disintegration and religious

1 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, p. 129.

2 Froude, in his Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 172, well re-
marks, " Mr. Mill demands for every man a right to say out his convic-
tions in plain language, whatever they may be ; and so far as he means
that there should be no Act of Parliament to prevent him, he is perfectly
just in what he says. But when Mr. Mill goes from Parliament to pub-
lic opinion ; when he lays down as a general principle, that the free play
of thought is un wholesomely interfered with by society, — he would take
away the sole protection which we possess from the inroads of any kind
of folly."

Preaching. 285

radicalism. It challenges every thing as liable to over-
throw, and assents to nothing as finally closed against
doubt. It does not fall within my purpose, to trace its
effects generally on the Church's faith and order, but
simply to note its vicious influence on the pulpit.^
Our preaching is measurably saved from this influence,
by the fixed, objective character of our ecclesiastical
system. It cannot invade our worship, for that reso-
lutely bars out all individual peculiarities. It ought
not to invade our theology, and will not, if its historic
safeguards be understood and respected. It can, with
due vigilance, be excluded from the prevailing tone and
methods of our practical Christian work. But preach-
ing is the vital centre around which all the influences
of the time revolve, and it is sure to be swayed by the
strongest. It is an office whose force is largely depend-
ent on what the individual puts into it. To be strong,

1 Dr. Dollinger, in his Re-union of the Churches, quotes these words
from a distinguished Protestant divine, Bruckner : " Our Church is in
many respects reverting to the condition of the age before Constantine.
Public opinion is again, on the whole, enlisted, not on the side of Chris-
tianity, but against it," etc. ; and then goes on to say, " Mere naked un-
belief, or hostility to positive religion, will not explain the phenomenon:
the mischief lies deeper. The general superintendent and court-preacher
at Berlin, Hoffman, has lately written on the Causes of the Antagonism
to the Church in Germany. He enuraei'ates many, but above all the un-
certainty and discordance of the doctrines delivered in the pulpit. The
impression left on one's mind is, that the evil lies in the want of confi-
dence and respect of the laity for their preacher, in whom they see a man
teaching simply according to the measure of his attainments and/rowi/jis
own subjective point of view. They have no feeling that he is supported
on the broad stream of Christian tradition flowing down through eighteen
centuries, and that his message is but the echo of the voice of the whole
Church reaching up to Christ."

286 Preaching.

it must be free. To reach, the intellects and wills of
men, it must draw upon the elastic vigor and freshness
of manly and earnest thinking. That preaching is com-
paratively worthless that is not saturated through and
through with the individuality of the preacher. He
must mint the gold that comes into his hands, before
he can circulate it. Without his image and superscrip-
tion, it will be of little account in the exchanges of
thought.

There are limits, however, to this individual force,
necessary as it is. Within these limits, it remains a
healthy individuality ; beyond them, it degenerates into
individualism, with its attendant evils. These limits are
generally respected by the Clergy of this Church ; and
yet, under the example and influence of what the lead-
ing religious bodies around us consider the model of a
popular pulpit, they are sometimes so far forgotten or
transgressed as to invite a word or two of warning.
The limits to which I refer have been, perhaps, suf-
ficiently indicated by naming the things with which in-
dividualism antagonizes. I will only add, that, besides
the order and worship and faith which the Church has
received as a precious legacy from the Christian past, she
has a temperament of her own, — a certain genius eccle-
sice, — a flexible and yet tolerably well-defined tone of
thought and life, which shapes and colors all she says
and does. As she has a purpose and a work of her
own, so she must and does have a way of her own in
studying events and treating the questions of the day.
It is needful to her health and peace, as well as to her
corporate unity and power, that her Clergy shall habitu-

Preaching. 287

ally respect this characteristic ; and it should be un-
derstood, that self-will can work quite as much harm by
ignoring or despising this, as by the more open scandal
of a dii-ect assault upon her doctrine and discipline.

It is claimed, I know, that we cannot have great think-
ers and preachers under a system which has so much to
say about landmarks and boundaries. Mediocrity can
plod on without complaint under the extra weight of
traditional teaching and traditional order ; but to real
genius, to high, strong, and discursive natures throbbing
with almost more than mortal sympathies and aspirations,
such things, we are told, produce an insupportable sense
of constraint and suffocation. If we would have minds
that shall mount as eagles, and catch the bright sun-
light of the coming glory, they must not be caged within
the narrow bounds of hereditary customs, or tethered
by creeds and liturgies, but must be allowed the range
of the mountains and the sea and the fields of au\ If
history did not teach us something on this subject, we
might submit without a protest to the doom to which
our more liberal friends would consign us, — that of
dwindling into dwarfs, if not pygmies, under the press-
ure of a traditional influence, — a transmitted heritage
which we are weak enough to consider our strength and
glory.

But it so happens, that substantially the same system
as that which has reared and fashioned us has, in the
past, produced a large share of the admitted masters of
thought and eloquence. As matter of fact, the vast
majority of those who have adorned the Church by their
genius, as well as piety, have grown into greatness while

288 Preaching.

toiling in this very harness of tradition. It would be
idle to name even the most noteworthy among them :
the list is too long for that. This age may have consid-
erably widened out, and altered generally the conditions
of attaining to marked eminence and power in the sphere
of sacred learning and eloquence ; but clearly it has
not done so to such an extent as to oblige those who
aspire to be strong and influential to cast off, as leading-
strings which the time has outgrown, the honored guides
and wholesome restraints of the Church's system of
intellectual and theological training, — a system, be it
remembered, which in its fundamental principles has
been identical through all the Christian centuries.^

^ " Petulant impatience, disdainful of control, intolerant of contradic-
tion, and contemptuously neglectful of limitations, belongs rather to the
fretfulness of an intellectual childhood, than to the quiet self-respect and
reverent love of truth characteristic of intellectual maturity. Not such
has been the spirit of the great discoverers of nature's laws. . . . These
men have been, without exception, believers in the dogmatic faith."
( Vide Astronomy and General Physics considered with Reference to Nat-
ural Theology, by the Rev. W. Whewell, M A., London, 1833. Book iii.
pp. 307-309.)

Again: " Most certainly the complaint that a dogmatic faith cramps
the freedom of thought, and narrows the progress of knowledge, is singu-
larly at variance with the history of the past. . . . Freedom of thought,
largeness of affection, nobility of character, and political liberty, have all
been nursed beneath the shadow of dogma. The sole exceptions to this
f^ct are to be found in the corrupt periods of the Chui-ch, when she had
departed from the teaching of the inspired Scriptures, and substituted
dogmas of man's making for dogmas of God's revealing. The persecut-
ing spirit displayed toward Galileo in one department of inquiry, and
toward Erasmus in another, was only an effect of the policy of suppres-
sion necessitated by the unfaithfulness of the Church herself. But so
long as the Church has been faithful to her trust, and has taught no
dogmas but what are contained in or may be proved by Holy Writ, she

Preaching. 289

I pass now to another aspect of the subject, of serious
moment. INluch of our preaching is too vague to be
strong. Indefiniteness of matter and purpose, in any
mode of speech, is weakness. The teaching that is
not positive and determinate ; that timidly or falteringly
feels its way ; that moves on in hazy uncertainty ; that
utters itself as though not quite sure whether the ground
on which it rests is rock or quicksand; that has no aim
of such overmastering intensity and directness as to
draw to itself every energy and resource of the living
teacher; that in every conviction makes room for a
doubt, and in every attempt at swaying the thoughts
and wills of others regards the chances of success and
failure as about even; that wanders over large spaces
of feeling and belief with no defined, authorized map of
doctrine to guide it ; that, in default of settled princi-
ples, drops easily under the welcome shelter of nega-
tions and compromises, — such teaching in any branch of
knowledge must be without value or influence, but emi-
nently so in a department of truth whose primary object
is to reform human character and conduct. How far
this quality of vagueness prevails among us, we may not
be able to determine. Very likely it will be overrated
by some and underrated by others. Hut unquestionably
there is enough of it to justify some allusion to its disas-
trous influence on the pulpit. By common consent, our
preaching, as a whole, has not the sinewy firmness of
tone, or the clear, ringing articulation of the dogmatic

has ever proved herself the nursing mother of free inquiry, religious lib-,
erty, and an ever-advancing civilization." — Gakbktt's Bumptun Lectures,
pp. 30, 31.

290 Preaching.

and ethical principles of the faith, or the resolute, inci-
sive bearing on the field of controversy, which the gen-
eral latitudinarianism of the time demands. Now, this
fault if we consider preaching in itself, or this evil if we
consider it in its effects on those who hear it, can be
understood and remedied only by careful study of the
causes which have produced it. It will not be easy to
mark out these causes with precision, or to place them
in such bold relief that all alike will feel their force.
They shade off into other things. They operate so
gradually and silently as to baffle detection by minds
not accustomed to watch the shifting phases of our in-
tellectual and religious life. 1 hey are not tied to one
spot, but float with the tide. They are not as fixed cogs
in the wheel of influence, but rather as gases and exhala-
tions taken up into the common air.

And first, the Church, as represented in the beliefs
and lives of its members, does not stand out against the
world with a firm, sharp-cut edge : here and there its
outline wavers and disappears. The age dislikes dogma,
and is restive under discipline. From the drift of things,
one might suppose that the Church now and then grew
weary or hopeless in the task of teaching the one and
enforcing the other. Evidently it finds its chief comfort,
amid the present conflict between the secular and the
sacred, the speculative and the theological, the things of
sense and the things of spirit, in throwing its energies
more than ever into the practical work of missions and
charities. The half-repressed utterance on the dogmatic
side breaks out with the power of an enthusiasm in prac-
tical affairs. It expands, if it does not deepen, its life.

Preaching. 291

It carries its creed to new races, if it does not do much
to fortify it among old ones. So far is this true, at any
rate, that a resolute determination to push its dogmas at
all hazards on the world's attention is not now the fore-
most fact either in its consciousness or in its work. The
Church is not timid, it is not indifferent, it is not forget-
ful of the deposit committed to it by its Head : rather,
with a memory that grasps the experiences of eighteen
centuries, it watches and waits for the tide to turn, for
the blind eye to be opened, and the deaf ear to be un-
stopped. Now, naturally but unconsciously the Clergy
fall in with this mood. It affects thek teaching more
than their work. It is at the root of a preference, not
always easily explained, of one class of subjects before
another. It makes not a little of our preaching pleth-
oric on the ethical, the sentimental, and humanitarian
side, and very lean on the side of positive dogma. It
produces a certain reserve and hesitancy in declaring the
whole counsel of God.

But again : some part of the doctrinal vagueness of
our preaching has arisen from sectarian exaggerations
and controversial distortions of what the religious anar-
chy of the age has reduced to the disjecta membra of the
body of truth. It has been one result of their unhappy
influence, to constantly lessen the number of truths to
be regarded as of vital importance in the current in-
struction of the people. But to depress a truth below
its proper rank ; to change its place in the scheme ; to
convert the necessary into the contingent, the essential
into the expedient; to say of a given doctrine, "It is well
enough, but not of very great consequence, a harmless

292 Preaching.

opinion not to be forgotten, and yet not claiming special
remembrance," — to do this, is to rob the truth so treated
of all power to kindle the tongue or to stir the heart.
It must soon drop into the dead lumber of the pulpit.
But every time this is done, it adds a new stammer to
the preacher's voice, and helps to spread a hazy indefi-
niteness along the entire horizon of God's truth. To
drop out or slur this or that dogma, does not end with
the loss of the particular dogma so handled : every liga-
ture of the system to which it belongs, all the nerve-
centres of the one faith, feel the hurt, and resent the
loss. And this is as true of the preacher's power as it
is of the preacher's message.

Again : the age is in love with free discussion. The
freer it is in theology, the better it is pleased. It enjoys
the excitement of an open and familiar canvass of all
difficulties in religion. Liberty of opinion is the life of
knowledge. Better, it is said, a wrong opinion freely
chosen, than a right opinion passively held. The winds
are unloosed on the old anchorages of the Christian
mind. The Clergy are treated to some sneering and a
good deal of attempted browbeating by the proud intel-
lectualism of the more advanced schools. They are
charged with " still refusing to look their difficulties in
the face, with prescribing for mental troubles the estab-
lished doses of Paley and Pearson, with declining dan-
gerous questions as sinful, and with treading the round
of commonplace with placid comfort." ^ Men are tossed
to and fro, it is said, between the authority of the Church
and the authority of the Bible, the testimony of history

1 Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 194. "

Preaching. 293

and the testimony of the Spirit, the ascertained facts of
science and the contradictory facts which seem to be
revealed. Sad and touching pictures are drawn of the
painful condition, on these and kindred subjects, of the
average man of the day on one side, and of the heavy,
stupid ways of the Clergy on the other. Now, we may
resent this tone of remark as insulting ; we may declare
it impertinent ; we may denounce it as part of the dread-
ful masquerade of modern unbelief; we may boast our-
selves beyond its reach. And yet it does affect many of
the Clergy. It drives them in from the outposts ; it
tempts them into silence or feebleness on all save the
most essential points ; it leads them to concentrate all
thought and speech on the effort to rescue something
where all is brought into peril. In this way vagueness
creeps over much of their teaching, and the light at the
centre is fringed with shadows, which deepen as they
stretch out toward the circumference.

Again : the most sober and conservative among us
must admit that wc are far on in a new cycle of reli-
gious thought. A transition is going forward. The old
questions of theology have not changed, nor can they
while the Word of God and the human mind remain as
they are ; but the modes of viewing the old questions
have changed. We are in the midst of an effort, put
forth more than once in the history of the Church, to
re-state the grounds of Christian belief, and to adjust
its proofs to the altered tone of modern inquiry. This
effort, before consummating its task, has influenced the
Clerical mind in four ways : it has given it more play,
lifted it out of some hereditary grooves, knocked away

294 Preaching.

some conventional props, and inspired it with more in-
dependence. In doing this, it has led some to feel less
concern for the maintenance of a definite faith, and to
give currency to the notion, that the larger a man's
mind, and the broader his grasp of the great facts of
life, so much the more cloudy must be his creed.

Again : this effort to lay bare the foundations of our
religion for the inspection of the faithful, as well as the
faithless, has wrought some change in the living sense
of the theological terms which we use. " Into the
work which God gave those terms to do in the ages
which framed them, holy men threw their yearnings and
their lives. They were sharp and clear-cut as cameos.
When they were used, it was by men who knew exactly
what they meant, and who meant exactly what those
terms expressed. But time works changes in language.
Words often survive their first fervid meaning, and out-
last, not the reality, but the form, of their original work."
It has been so measurably with the theology of the pul-
pit, if not that of the schools. The result of this has
been to render some of our more elastic and inquisitive
minds a little careless in the use of theological terms,
and somewhat vague in their statements of doctrine.
They have drifted off from the old and still customary
terminology, and are themselves unable to invent a new
one, and unwilling to trust the Church to do it, even if
she showed a disposition that way.

But, finally, this effort to re-state Christianity, and in
part to re-build its defences, has thrown many enter-
prising minds into the double attitude of inquirers and
teachers. But how can a man teach what he does not

Preaching. 295

know, or persuade others of that which is doubtful to
himself? How can he offer as a guide and comfort
to other men's souls, that which is neither a guide nor a
comfort to his own] Such a man, if he be honest, will
teach his own struggles and difficulties, his own guesses
at truth. He can do no more. As an inquirer, he can
pronounce no doctrine " erroneous and strange." The
teacher must be a believer, and " a teacher in the min-
istry of a dogmatic Church must be a believer in a
dogmatic faith." What else than an uncertain sound,
what else than words as feeble as they are loose, can
issue from the lips of one who proclaims, under the
solemnity of an official oath, that to be settled truth,
which he knows to be afloat in his own mind %

LECTURE VIII.

THE CLERGY AS EDUCATORS.

In the two previous lectures, I have inquired what
can be done in the training of candidates for the Min-
istry, and in preaching, to enable the Clergy to regain
ground that has been lost, or to advance to ground
not yet occupied. In the present and following lec-
tures, I shall consider other means looking to the same
end. I have shown, in my second lecture, how dama-
ging was the blow inflicted upon clerical influence by
the general mthdrawal of popular education from the
control of the Clergy, — a result due, as has been
shown, not to the hostility of the secular power, but
in the main to the divisions of Christendom. In view
of the present attitude of public sentiment and of State
legislation, some may think it a waste of time to dis-
cuss the possibility of recovering for the Clergy the
field from which they have been driven. But it can-
not be a waste of time to discuss any subject involving
principles of vital moment and of perpetual applica-
tion, however uncertain and remote may be the practi-
cal results. The chief obstacle to-day, in the way of
a discussion that would lead to such results, is not so
much in the arrangements of the State or in the tone

The Clergy as Educators. 297

of public feeling, as in the apathy or matter-of-course
acquiescence of the Church herself. It is bad enough
that she has abandoned the field, but it is vastly worse
that she has lost all hope of recovering it. With a
strange unwisdom does she read the signs of the times,
and especially those indicative of the future of our pres-
ent civilization. She seems not, either in her thinking
or in her practical policy, to recognize the fact, that
modern life, so far from having become fixed in its
mould or unalterable in its tendencies, is actually fluc-
tuating and transitional, dimly groping, amid hovering
shadows and apprehended convulsions, after some better
and firmer order than it has yet reached. The loud cry
to-day resounding through its borders, for the absolute
separation of Church and State, may die out before its
desire is consummated. It is the cry of a now dominant
secularism ; but this secularism — like rationalism in
religion, with which it is closely affiliated if not its lineal
ofishoot — is only a chapter in human experience, whose
last pages are now being written out. Its cure will be
in its own shallowness and one-sidedness. As a move-
ment, it is travelling too far away from the normal cen-
tres of a salutary and balanced development of human
life not to be driven back by a law of social and political
as well as of moral and religious gravitation.

If this be so, the Church, so far from resigning herself
supinely and hopelessly to her present enforced exclu-
sion from the work of educating the masses, should do
what she can to hasten the coming of a re-action that
in any event is inevitable ; and to prepare herself, by
the eff'ective marshalling of her resources and the proper

298 The Clergy as Educators.

training of her Clergy, to take advantage of the re-action
when it sets in.

Educationally considered, the present outlook is dis-
couraging as to any probable change, in our day, in the
attitude either of the State or of the Church. What
the former is doing, is shown by a formidable array of
statistics open to all who desire to know them. What
the latter is doing, is shown by statistics that it would
be hardly worth while to gather, except for the purpose
of giving a sharper edge to the moral which they teach.
Our Christianity, save so far as it is represented by the
Church of Rome, which in this matter bears itself with
energy and decision, and with absolute consistency with
its own principles, is doing scarcely enough to keep alive
even a theoretical recognition of its duty. Beyond a
few schools and colleges, most of them with a brittle
hold on the future so^ far as adequate endowment and
support are concerned, there is little to show that it feels
any responsibility for the general training of the people
of this land. It will be idle, in the way of rejoinder,
to cite its Sunday-school work. Limited to an hour a
week, with no power to compel attendance, and reaching
only a moiety of the children of the nation, what it
does in its own sphere of moral and religious training is
necessarily iramethodical, often vague and superficial, and
everywhere inadequate to the requirement. The only
apology for this work is, that our Christianity is doing
the best it can to occupy the only field left to it by the
present educational policy of the State. But, when most
charitably judged, what it is doing amounts to little more
than throwing a few buckets of water here and there

The Clergy as Educators. 299

upon millions of acres requiring constant irrigation.
Some may demur to this figure as being unduly exag-
gerated ; but that it is not so, is amply proved by the
sort of character now being worked up into citizenship
all over the land. By common consent, it has more intel-
lect than heart, more knowledge than conscience, more
ambition for power than love for duty, more greed for
money and the things that money buys than for the
virtues that build up individuals and communities into
strength and glory. But my theme does not require me
to go into consequences in this direction. Its concern is
for the restoration of the Clergy, as a teaching order, to
their due place in the work of popular education, and,
a fortiori^ for the principles involved in all attempts to
effect this restoration. Passing over practical measures
needed for this end, as belonging to the Clergy and laity
to determine in Diocesan and General Councils, I shall
confine myself to principles which can never perish
because we forget them, or cease to be binding because
we fail to apply them.

But, before proceeding to the statement of these prin-
ciples, I would say, that, as they lost their power in
modern life by the long-continued disagreements and
schisms of Christendom, so they can regain their power
only by the re-union of Christendom. And when I say
Christendom, I mean, not sentimental or doctrinal Chris-
tendom, or any thing for which the so-called " common
Christianity of the day " is deemed an equivalent : but
Christendom organically, historically one, — the unity of
the one Catholic and Apostolic Church. Every step
toward this is a step toward the restoration of the Church,

300 The Clergy as Educators.

and of the Clergy as representing the Church, to theii-
normal and ideal function, as educators of the people.

Let us now inquire into the principles, that, from a
Christian standpoint, underlie this whole subject.

1. If the Christ took our nature upon Him that He
might make it a partaker of His Divine nature, if He
became the light and life of humanity that He might
become its regenerator and Saviour, then is He the
supreme educator of man, and what He does in this
capacity must include the whole life of man. For, as
He regenerates and saves the whole life of man, so on
the basis of this regeneration, and with a view to this
salvation. He must educate the whole life of man ; the
whole life, too, not as an aggregation of parts capable
of being quickened and fashioned part by part, but the
whole in its organic unity.

2. Every thing that enters into the re-formation of
human life in His image falls within His use and con-
trol, — as truth which is the object of faith, and truth
which is the object of reason, and law which speaks to
the conscience, and worship which directs the affections
in their acts of adoration, and earthly ties and callings
which develop and discipline man as a social being ; in
short, all things that help to bring man, for time and
eternity, in all the relations of life into conformity with
the Divine will.

3. As, next to the Holy Spirit of God, truth, which
is but the reality of being, is the highest agency in the
education of man, so wherever truth is, and in whatever
form it is, it is Christ's instrument for this end. But as
He holds in Himself the reality of all that is, and so the

The Clergy as Educators. 301

truth of all that is, He holds the truth as an organic
whole, which is but the reflection of the unity of all
being, and of the still higher unity of the Triune Divine
Nature. To Ilim truth in being one is also many, and
in being many is also one. We may break truth up
into parts, separate it into divisions and groups, give it
names expressive of our human conceptions of its di-
verse aspects. AVe may call one phase of it science,
another literature, another religion, another morality,
and so on to the end of the categories of human
thought ; and for the sake of convenience, or because of
the necessity of subdividing the labor of searching after
it, or of teaching it when found, we may handle it in
fragments and sections according to the labels we put
on them. But with Him who made all things, and
without whom was nothing made that was made, truth
is indissolubly one as His own will is one. And if all
truth in the universe is not needed for fashioning the
character of man into the image of Christ, the oneness
of all truth given to us is needed. And so, in fact,
Christ, in His training of human character, makes the
force and value of every particle of truth, so to speak,
depend upon its organic connection with the whole
body of truth; i.e., with the unity of all being. Now,
if this be so, several results follow : —

(a) We cannot cut up truth into parts, and teach one
part as though it had no vital relation with other parts :
i.e., as though truth for the intellect, and truth for the
heart, and truth for the conscience, and truth embedded
in man's personal relation to God, in which all worship
and spiritual love and obedience are rooted, could be

302 The Clergy as Educators.

adequately taught in their isolated individuality ; sending
the same human life to one school for one sort of truth,
to another school for another sort of truth, and so on
until all the varieties of truth originating in our surface
conceptions of it had heen compassed. Truth can be
distinguished according to the aspects it assumes, but it
cannot be divided.

{h) Truth must be used, in the education of man, as
the Divine Educator uses it ; viz., in conformity with its
own inherent gradations, and in conformity with the
gradations in the structure of human nature. First and
last must come spiritual and ethical truth grounded upon
what God has revealed of His own nature and purposes ;
next, truth discoverable by the faculties of man, and
resting upon an ascertained congruity between human
thought and th^ objective or subjective reality of things,
and taken, moreover, in its order, as truth in the world
of duty, truth in the world of riiental conceptions, truth
in the world of social and political relations, truth in
the world of matter. In correspondence with this order
in the work of education, must be taken, first and last
the spiritual and voluntary, and next the intellectual and
aesthetic faculties of man ; all being treated as parts
distinguishable one from another, and yet as parts of
an indivisible, organic whole.

(c) As all power is lodged in the Christ, the highest
being exercised in His divine and supernatural King-
dom, it follows that the kingdoms or states organized
in the natural order are only lower expressions of His
power, and are intended to act in harmony with the
Kingdom which embodies the highest power. If this

The Clergy as Educators. 303

be true, it follows that there can be no properly edu-
cated citizenship in the secular state, that does not lead
up to the nobler citizenship of the civitas Dei which is
not of this world ; the earthly and the heavenly train-
ing being only different phases of one and the same
discipline.

{(i) Again : if, as the Christ, the supreme educator,
teaches, the present earthly life of man be only the
beginning of an eternal life ; and if, as the beginning
or the seed-time of such an endless life, it be also the
period of probation and discipline for that life, — then it
follows that there can be no education, worthy of the
name, that does not from first to last proceed upon this
fact. To train man as a time-creature, when in reality
he is meant for eternity, is to do the least, and to leave
undone the greatest part of his education.

Now, these, beyond all question, are among the prin-
ciples (and I have named only such as immediately per-
tain to my subject) that determine the ti-aining of man
by the Christ, who, because He is his regenerator and
Saviour, must also be his educator. How they cross and
contradict the principles that determine the education
given by the State to the masses of this land, I forbear
to inquire. It is self-evident that either the Christ of
the Gospel, the Christ of history, is a vain theorizer, or
this Republic is building its life on rottenness and deceit.

4. But if such be the principles of the Christ -as the
supreme educator of humanity, it remains to be asked,
what means He in his infinite wisdom devised to apply
them ; for truth asserts and establishes itself, not so
much by formal or abstract proof, as by doing the work

304 The Clergy as Educators.

for which it was given. As matter of fact, He did not
leave these principles to operate merely as so many
ideas, or as a generally diffused influence working like
leaven in the measures of meal. No : to give them prac-
tical effect and abiding power, He for this, as well as for
other closely related purposes, founded an institution, a
Church, that would embody them, and so assure their
perpetual application. "As Head over all things to the
Church," ^ He invested it with power and authority to
continue among men all the essential offices of his
earthly ministry, and, among them, that of educating
the race on the basis of an accomplished universal re-
demption of the race. And then, to guard against any
radical failure to administer these offices on the lines
marked out by Himself, He gave to this Divine society
His Holy Spirit, to guide it into the way of all truth, to
keep it in remembrance of whatsoever things He had
commanded, and to enable it in all needful ways to
perfect its organization and equipment in accordance
wtih instructions given during the great forty days when
He spoke " of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of
God."^ In whatever sense a universal Kingship and
Priesthood may be predicated of this society, it is cer-
tain, that, acting under this guidance, it constituted and
ordained for all time a Ministry, as most Christians be-
lieve of threefold rank, to whom it gave power and
authority to execute the offices conferred upon itself,
and so to represent officially its eternal Founder and
ever-living Head as Mediator, Regenerator, Educator,
Saviour, through all the ages of history. Thus broadly

1 Eph. i. 22. 2 Acts i. 3.

The Clergy as Educators. 305

commissioned, it is impossible to regard the Clergy as
fully discharging the functions committed to them, if,
besides their ministrations at the font and the altar and
in the pulpit, and to the individual sheep of their flocks,
they fail to care for the training and nurture of the
lambs of the fold. They are not only Priests, Preachers,
Pastors, but, because they are such, they are also of
necessity and in the broadest sense educators. If any
thing be more noteworthy than another in the ministry
of Christ, it was His tender love for childhood, His
sympathetic care for all its wants and capabilities. His
boundless solicitude that it should be adequately trained
on all sides for the one continuous, immortal life in time
and eternity. Clearly it was this feeling that dictated,
as the supreme test of St. Peter's love, his constant and
faithful feeding of the lambs of the chief Pastor of
humanity everywhere and in all ages, — a test of minis-
terial fidelity as fit and true now as it was at the dawn
of Christianity. Nor was this feeding restricted to this
or that want of human nature : on the contrary, it was
to be as wide as the empire of truth, and as varied as
the mind and spirit of man.

It may be said that this view of the duty and work of
the Clergy throws them into a larger sphere than any
one class of men can possibly fill. Knowledge, it may
be said, has become too vast and diversified to be com-
passed, even for practical purposes, by one order of men,
however exclusively they may give themselves to the
double task of teaching, and of gathering and assorting
the material to be taught. But surely they may do the
duty here assigned them, even though theu- attainments

306 The Clergy as Educators.

be not co-extensive with the domain of knowledge, or
their skill in handling different kinds of truth fall short
of that of experts. One may teach science without be-
ing a scientist, letters without being a litterateur, poetry
without being a poet, art without being painter or sculp-
tor. But the notion here dealt with proceeds on a mis-
taken view of what can be reasonably expected from the
Clergy as educators. As such, thek chief office is not to
be accomplished in all things, or to be intellectually full
beyond other men : their highest function in this work
is to have such oversight and direction as will enable
them to bring all knowledge falling within the limits of
the instructor's task into moral relations, to develop and
insist upon its moral significance and moral uses, to make
it in a practical and vital sense an auxiliary to the will-
power and the conscience-power of human nature in its
efforts to cease from evil and to do good, and so to lift
it where all knowledge, in the final sweep of its influ-
ence, is intended to be lifted, — to the plane of the spir-
itual life, where, so far as it fulfils its noblest office, it
will help to broaden out into steady and luminous rays
the casual, flitting gleams of Divine light shot through
the soul from nature's own lamp. And, I may add, it
is just this work that our generation especially needs.
Knowledge increases faster than the trained sense of its
moral relations, faster than it is turned to account in
guiding and strengthening the moral liberty of man,
faster than it is brought to bear as a quickening element
in the process of his spiritual and eternal salvation.
Were the Clergy, in their oversight of the education of
the masses (should they be called upon to exercise it

The Clergy as Educators. 307

once more), to do nothing beyond this, they would do the
task, perhaps, most needed in modern life, even though
thev never entered a laboratory, or traced things " within
the rocks," or things from deep-sea soundings, or things
of abstraction drawn from the bottomless depths of spec-
ulative philosophy.

I have discussed the subject entirely from a Christian
standpoint, and my conclusions rest on purely Christian
grounds. But it may be well to view it from a national
standpoint, if only to show, to those who believe the pres-
ent educational system of the nation to be established
for all time, how fallible and insecure are the grounds
upon which this belief is planted. In thus viewing the
question, I leave out of the account popular caprices
and vacillations, popular fondness for novelty and change,
popular re-actions that sometimes as suddenly as inscru-
tably reverse or shatter state systems and policies appar-
ently lacking in no element of strength and stability.
I rest the case upon now generally admitted principles,
principles that the best and deepest thought of the day
declares to be essential to the organism and work of the
modern nation. To see how these principles apply to
this nation, the fact must be kept clearly in view, that
this nation, speaking generally, while it assumes absolute
authority over what are known as its public schools,
holds itself responsible only for mental training, and in
no formal and definite way for moral training ; religious
training being, of course, out of the question.^ It nei-

1 May 28, 1884, the superintendent of public instruction in the State
of New York made an important decision, affecting every school in the
State. It is all the more important because it may be regarded as the

308 The Clergy as Educators.

ther forbids nor requires its teachers to inculcate moral
precepts. In the eye of the law, moral teaching as such
is not obligatory, and mental teaching alone is formally
recognized as the foremost, and, if they choose to regard
it so, as the exclusive business of the instructors whom
it employs. Now, if this be the fact, and, being the fact,
if it must be accepted as the determining factor in the
nation's educational system, I affirm that this system is
not and can not be permanent ; and I do so on the indis-
putable ground that it is narrower than the nation's own
life, that it fails to reflect what is deepest and strongest
in that life, that it leaves out of the reckoning the most
distinctive and essential bond between the individual and
the nation. The bond to which I refer is distinctive
and essential beyond all others, because it is distinctively
and essentially moral. 1 he individual has personality,
has duties and rights, has freedom of choice, is bound

received interpretation of the law touching the subject of religious teach-
ing and worship in the public schools of every State in the Union.

The Board of Education of District No. 4, in Orangetown, Rockland
County, N.Y., brought before the State superintendent a case which
elicited the following decision: —

"If it were possible to devise some limited measure of religious
instruction for adoption in the schools, upon which all these diverse
classes and sects could harmonize, it would be a gratifying result. But
this is manifestly impracticable and impossible. The only alternative,
therefore, to preserve the benefits of the constitutional guaranties in
letter and in spirit, and to secure to all absolute equality of right in the
matter of religious predilection, must be, however reluctantly the conclu-
sion is arrived at, to exclude religious instruction and exercises from the
public schools during school-hours. These principles have been followed
by every one of my predecessors in office, no distinction having been made
between Scripture-reading and prayers, but each having been held to
constitute no legitimate part of the business of the public sclwols."

The Clergy as Educators. 309

by moral law, only because he is a moral bcinp:. This
personality comes forth under one set of conditions in
the family, under another in the nation, and under still
another and the highest in the Church. To the full
extent that it is ordained to realize itself in the nation,
the nation is bound, if it assumes the task, to educate it
with a view to its fullest realization. Now, the individ-
ual's right to this is a moral right, because it grows out
of his personality, which is moral, and relates to an end
which is moral because it is the end of the personality.
Therefore the individual has a claim, that may not be
denied, to be morally educated as a moral integer of the
nation ; to be disciplined and developed in the essentials
of his personality, all of which are moral. Now, so far
as the nation educates only the intellect, it denies this
claim. It educates what belongs primarily to the indi-
viduality, only subordinately to the personality of man.
In confining itself to mental, to the neglect or exclu-
sion of moral training, it not only puts the cart before
the horse ; but, to the extent that it does so, it throws
out the horse, the living power, altogether, and retains
only the cart, a will-less, choiceless mechanism, carrying
any load, whether of good or evil, that may be put
upon it.

Such, beyond contradiction, is the conclusion to which
we are forced when we measure the duty of the nation
as an educator by the standard of personal rights.
Turning the subject round, and starting with the nation,
we shall be brought to the same result. As with the
individual, so with the nation, the point of departure is
the fundamental postulate that the nation is a mora

310 The Clergy as Educators.

person. If it be so, then, underlying and overtopping
all other relations that it may have with the individual,
there is of necessity a moral relation. But if there be
such a moral relation, then it is the parent of moral
duties ; and among them the highest, the most urgent,
and far-reaching must be the duty of training, develop-
ing the moral being of the individual. Its intellectual
work in his behalf is of moment in the long-run only as
it is preceded and accompanied by its moral work in his
behalf. Now, there is no escape from this except by
denying the nation's personality. But that the nation
has personality is proved by its moral attributes and its
moral functions, and above all by its recognized place
in the moral order of the world. It is so important
to my argument to establish this, that it may be well to
fortify it by the strong, clear thoughts of one who has
made himself an authority on the subject : —

" The nation is a moral person, since it is the organized life of
societ}^, and society is formed in the spirit and in the power of a
personal life. It is to be governed in the conscious determination
of the will, and to act as one who looks before and after. The
strength which is to be wrought in it exists only in rectitude of
thought and will. Wisdom and courage, steadfastness and rever-
ence, faith and hope, are attributes of it ; the highest personal
elements become its elements, and are moulded in its spirit. The
relation of the individual to the nation presumes, as its necessary
condition, the existence of the nation as a moral person. The
individual becomes a person in the nation : and this involves the
existence of the nation as also a person ; for personality, as it is
formed in relations, can subsist only in an organic and moral
relationship, — a life which has a universal end, even the develop-
ment of a perfect humanity. It is by reason of its moral person-

The Clergy as Educators. 311

alit}- that the nation can be treated in the sense that it is, as the
power and minister of God in history-, at once representing and
executing in its own sphere an authority delegated from Him." ^

Both parties, then, — the individual and the nation,
— are moral persons ; and if the nation assumes the
responsibiUties and powers of the supreme educator
within its own limits and for its own purposes, it must
bear itself as a moral person toward a moral person. It
must have regard to the moral elements in its own life,
as well as the moral elements in the life of the individual.
But, if it do this, the nation must engage in moral as
well as mental training ; must care for the will and con-
science, as well as for the intellect ; must busy itself with
the formation of individual character, as well as with
the advancement of individual culture. But this is just
what the school-system of this nation is not doing ; nay,
more, what the nation, through and in its schools, declines
to do. Therefore these schools leave undone more than
they do ; they fail to meet their weightiest requirement ;
they in no other than a one-sided, superficial way reflect
what is best in the individual or the nation. Sooner
or later the moral instincts of the nation will radically
modify them, or will sweep them away as utterly inade-
quate to the life of a people that means to be a great
moral power in the world. When this crisis shall come,
the nation will recall the Church (it must be a re-united
Church) to its old task. The Church in idea includes
the nation on its moral side, and is, under God, the only
authorized and competent custodian of its moral life.

The Nation, p. 21, by E. Mulford, LL.D., 1872.

312 The Clergy as Educators.

The Church has renovated and enlarged the moral life
of the nation, by bringing that life in its nobler moods
Tinder the sway of our Lord's own life, the one true
redemptive force working upon humanity. The Church
can do every thing the nation can do for the training of
the individual, and vastly more ; and the time will come
when experience (it may be a long and bitter one) will
prove to the nation that its best course will be to com-
mit this mighty interest to the agency that can best care
for it. Whether this shall happen or no, the foundation
on which rest the right and the duty of the Christian
Ministry as the chief educator of the people standeth
sure. The State under the forms of law, or the people
themselves by the force of public opinion, may suspend
both ; but they can destroy neither. They can be re-
voked only by Him who ordained them. They have
entered into all life permeated by the leaven of Chris-
tianity ; they are among the abiding factors of that life,
and can perish out of it only as the authority that gave
them shall perish. Therefore no adverse ruling, no neg-
lects or denials of to-day, can shake my conviction,
that sooner or later they will re-appear in the ordained
circuit of their power, as stars re-appear that have been
long lost to view by reason of the vast but unerring
sweep of their pathway through the heavens. When
the day of their return shall come, God grant, that,
purged of the grievous faults and errors of the past, the
Clergy may resume their educational functions with a
quickened sense of the gravity of the trust, and a pro-
founder insight into the character and example of Christ,
the supreme educator of the ages.

LECTURE IX.

IMPROVED METHODS IN THE CURE OF SOULS.

Another indispensable condition of the revival of
clerical inflnence must be sought in improved methods
in the cure of souls. This phrase contains more than
many in this or in the past generation of clergymen
have cared to see. In the proper, catholic, Scriptural
sense, it reaches far beyond all public ministrations to
organized assemblies. It embraces indeed, as essential
to it, teaching and preaching, leadership in worship, and
the performance of sacramental offices, — marriage, the
visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead; but it
also embraces, as equally essential in its way, the official
contact of the Ministry with individual souls, for pur-
poses of instruction, guidance, strength, comfort, as the
need may be. Hitherto this contact has been loose and
ineffective. One cannot criticise its method, for method
it has had none. This is the barren side of the pastor-
ate,— so barren, indeed, that we have shrunk from
discussing the causes of it or the remedy for it. It is
no satire, but simple truth, to say that the cure of souls,
save in ministrations to congregations, has come to mean
little more than personal acquaintance with the mem-
bers of the parish, conventional greetings in the sane-

314 Improved Methods in the Cure of Souls.

tuary or the street, and social chats in the parlor or
at the table. As for any direct, systematic, searching
dealing with individual lives, in order to help them in
their temptations and doubts, or to throw the guiding,
strengthening power of a living Priesthood into their
struggles with vicious habits eating into the soul like a
canker, or to apply to their heart-weary, sin-sick experi-
ences the medicine of Christ, — there has been so
little of it as to be hardly worthy of mention in the
round of clerical duty.

How we have been brought into this evil case, is no
mystery ; but how we are to escape from it, is a problem
that becomes more difficult, the more we think upon it.
I say it is no mystery how both Priests and people have
drifted into the present inefficiency on the one side
and the present estrangement on the other. Both have
their root in the theological systems and the theolo-
gical tendencies of days long gone by. The Calvinistic
theology, by making every thing in the Christian life
turn on the doctrines of election and predestination and
efficacious grace, helped to produce an increasing shal-
lowness of religious experience, to tone down the in-
tensity of the soul's battle with sin, and to diminish the
craving for outside help, especially from the Ministry,
in this spiritual warfare. Elected to be saved ; predes-
tinated unto life eternal, irrespective of personal right-
eousness ; once in grace, always in grace, — these points
determined, why should any soul be profoundly disturbed
by its oscillations to one side or the other of the powers
of good and evil ? or why should it be concerned to open
up the secrets of its inner life, and to have its hurts and

Improved Methods in the Cure of Sotds. 315

griefs touched by priestly counsel and guidance? In
any event, the question of ultimate salvation was settled ;
and victory must emerge, by the power of sovereign
decrees, from the present strife. Thus, too, the Minis-
try was beguiled into dealing more and more with doc-
trines to be preached, and less and less with souls to be
helped and healed. On the other hand, the Arminian
theology, leaning as it did strongly toward the Pelagian
view of " every man his own saviour," and hence of the
ultimate sufficiency of the individual will for all grapples
with evil, tended to evacuate sin of its guilt and power,
and to make it in all respects a less terrible adversary
than it is represented either by God's Word or by ordi-
nary human experience. This, too, worked itself out
in both ways. First, it habituated the individual soul to
think that it needed no special help ; and, next, it per-
suaded the Clergy to confine themselves more and more
to the proclamation of the conditions of the conflict in
every human heart between the truth and the Spirit of
God on the one side, and the world, the flesh, and the
Devil on the other. Further on arose, by way of protest
against both these theologies, the fervid, emotional reli-
gion of Methodism, issuing in oft-recurring recitals of
private experiences, gradually shading ofl" into cant and
formalism, and in inquisitorial tests of vital Christianity,
that, in a mechanical way, busied themselves in turning
the soul inside out for the inspection of the brethren.
Like all extreme methods, this in due time was followed
by a re-action that carried with it at once the dissent
and the disgust of sober Christians. Alongside of this
ran the methods of the Romish confessional, with its

316 Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids.

sifting, prying examinations, dragging to the light, in
common with sins needing help for their extirpation,
much else of the soul's inner life, which, for spiritual
ends, no tongue need tell and no ear should hear.
Both systems, each in its own way and degree, helped
to alienate Clergy and people ; the one from the duty
of giving counsel, and the other from the exercise of
the right to be counselled and directed in conflicts too
sharp for the private conscience to cope with, or in
sins too deep and subtle to be reached by ordinary re-
pentance.

Such are some of the causes that have worked out
the present unhappy state of things ; depressing, on the
one hand, the proper influence of the Priesthood, and
hindering, on the other, the healthy growth of spiritual
life among the people of God. These causes must have
due consideration in all attempts at reform in this mat-
ter. It is evident, that, in whatever may be devised to
impart to the cure of souls greater meaning and vitality,
we can use both the Methodist and the Romish modes
of procedure only as buoys to warn us ofi" the shoal-
spots in the ■ channel of inquiry along which we must
move. To effect a change for the better, to bring the
individual soul and the Minister of Christ into more
intimate and helpful relations, much careful and patient
work will be required on two parallel lines. So gener-
ally has private, priestly direction ceased, both as an
idea and as a fact, as an inward need of the soul and as
an outward function, that there can be no hope of its
revival, except as it shall come to us through a new crop
of religious feeling and association. And there is no

Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids. 317

possibility of this save by an amount of deep spading
or subsoil ploughing that we seem as yet unwilling to
attempt. The standpoint whence our religion looks at
itself, estimates its own character, needs, bcsetments,
and dangers, must be radically changed. A vital and
profound iMerduoLa must sweep over its walls and through
its inner courts. It is idle to think of breaking down
the present popular theory of Christian life and disci-
pline by direct assault : it has too many side-props, and
is too firmly buttressed on the common thought of the
day for this. So long as the average Christian is taught,
and loyally accepts the teaching, that, given the truth
and the grace of God in their ordinary measures and
by their ordinary means, and an open field of combat,
the individual soul should for its own sake be left alone
to meet its adversaries and to work out its salvation,
the only way to supplant such a theory is to put along-
side of it the deeper, wider, truer one, which for spe-
cial crises in the soul's experience provides special helps,
and for chronic sins and infirmities applies, in connec-
tion with all other means, the steady pressure of liv-
ing authority in the person of the Priest of God and
deputy of Christ. But, as has been said, to succeed in
this, a new point of view must be gained. To gain this,
something like a revolution must be wrought in the
Christian consciousness of our day. The drift of modern
thought has clouded it with a false and shallow notion
of the struggle between good and evil as it goes on in
the individual soul and throughout the moral universe,
and it has done it by blurring the lines that divide them.
This cloud must be dispersed by turning upon it the

318 Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids.

fire of God's wrath against all iniquity, and the only-
less intense fire of the human conscience when educated
up to the meaning of this struggle.

Again : this same drift, clothed in the sober, well-knit
formulas of philosophical speculation, has lulled the con-
science into a false peace by narrowing the measure of
human responsibility for the sin that is in the world,
and by lessening the guilt and terror of sin itself, under
the plea that man's moral liberty is a feeble, superficial
thing when compared with the devouring sweep of the
fatalism of law and the omnipotent force of external
environments. From this false peace the religious con-
sciousness must be aroused by taking it down, through
truer processes of thought, to the centre of its own in-
divisible and indestructible personality, and, above all, by
converging on that centre the blaze of light reflected
from the pages of Divine revelation, where man is taught,
that, in spite of all time or earth limitations, and of all
sophistries spun from his own thinking, he is free to
choose after the manner of God's freedom.

Still again : the same drift has dropped a veil between
man and the coming world, and between man and God
as the judge of all the earth : in the former case, by
substituting a punishment for the wicked, of indefinite
for one of endless duration, and by replacing the one
probation in time by any number of required probations
in eternity ; in the latter, by giving us a God immanent
in all nature for purposes of physical evolution, but only
dubiously and remotely present in the sphere of our
moral freedom, and positively absent in respect of any
supernatural interventions. This veil, already to some

Improved Methods in the Cure of Souls. 319

minds distressingly dark, and to others the lurid back-
ground of mental and moral despair, must be rent in
twain by unveiling behind it the continuous, catholic
interpretation of Divine revelation touching the future
destiny of man, and with this the double witness of the
human soul and of the same revelation to the living,
universal presence of the God and Father of all in na-
ture, and in the vaster, more real world of the super-
natural, the one world of freedom and personality.

But, besides meeting these issues raised by scientific
and speculative thought, there is other and more con-
crete work to be done by our pulpit, catechetical, house-
to-house teaching. That teaching must be made more
searching and profound, both as regards the nature of
moral evil and the soul's relations to it ; and this with
immediate reference to strictly spiritual ends. We must
revive and enforce, with fresh energy and earnestness,
the old doctrine as to the nature of sin; its overwhelming
])ower, its unspeakable guilt, its eternal consequences,
its selfishness, its anarchy, its corruption, its pain, its
wretchedness, — in short, the whole dreadful analysis
of- its being, the whole appalling record of its ruin and
desolation. And, on the other hand, we must tell anew,
and in more burning language, with a more fearless
fidelity to facts, the story of man's weakness when in
conflict with this enemy, — how feeble he is in his use
t of the helps Christianity offers him ; how blind he is,
amid the light streaming down upon him from the
opened heavens ; how vacillating he is, in spite of the
firm grasp upon his will and conscience, not only of
the moral law pleading for duty as the central fact and

320 Impromd Methods in the Cure of Souls.

supreme dignity of life, but of the Gospel of the grace
and truth of the Son of God fairly flooding his soul
with the power and the glory of a humanity lifted into
oneness in Christ with the infinite and eternal source of
all truth and life, as well as of all power and glory. We
want, I say, a revival of the old doctrine on these and
kindred subjects. For of this sort was the teaching of
the first Apostles and Confessors ; bound up, indeed, with
the fullest and tenderest exhibitions of the pitying,
redeeming love of God in Christ, but always keeping
boldly at the front the perfect justice of God as a con-
suming fire to all unrighteousness, and enforcing at all
points the call to repentance and remission of sins.
Such has been the doctrine preached in all the great
missionary crusades of the Church ; and preached, too,
without attempts to flatter the heathen into receiving it
because of some faint shadow of resemblance to it in
their own religions. Such, too, has been the doctrine
uppermost on the tongues of Priests and Prophets in all
the great revivals and reformations of the faith after pe-
riods of sloth and corruption ; boldly, irresistibly driven
home to the common heart without a thought of com-
mending it to men as only in myth or legend coming
from God, while in reality only a mixed and somewhat
shadowed evolution from the higher consciousness of
humanity. Give us a generation of teaching and work
keyed on this note, warmed by the glow and invigorated
by tile strength of this aspect of God's truth, and there
will be no lack of souls trooping, like storm-driven
birds to their shelter, to the Priests of God for counsel
and life. The deeper life will be followed by the deeper

Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids. 321

discipline. The life more sensitive to the touch of sin,
more profoundly shaken by the onsets of evil, and more
terrified at the risks and chances of the awful struggle
with the world, the flesh, and the Devil, will not need to
be asked to lay open the hurts and bruises itself cannot
heal, to those whose office it is to lead the burdened and
wounded to Christ, the Healer and Saviour of man, be-
cause He came forth from the Father, and, as incarnate
God, made known the love and mercy as well as the
justice and holiness of the Father.

But if there is work to be done on this line to awak-
en souls to a deeper spiritual life and to an adequate
sense of the needs of that life, there is also quite as
much to be done on a parallel line to prepare the Priest-
hood for a fuller and more effective performance of their
duty as spiritual guides. The training which makes the
theologian, the preacher, the catechist, the sacramental
ministrant, is not the training for this function. It may
be more comprehensive ; but it is not so minute and
accurate in its knowledge of the human heart, or in its
knowledge of sin, or in its knowledge of the ways and
means for dealing with both. The one is inclined more
to the study of the truth and grace of God objectively
considered ; the other, to the study of them in their
subjective uses, and in immediate connection with all
the trials and vicissitudes of inward experiences which
are never the same to any two souls. Here the Priest
that would do good service must acquire faculties of
penetration, discrimination, sympathetic tact, balanced
judgment ; so disciplined and matured that they will
operate, in the world of human motives, human weak-

322 Improved Methods in the Cure of Souls.

nesses, and human sinfulness, with something like the
intuitive quickness and precision of instincts. If we
mean to prepare the Clergy for this sort of Work, — and
without it their preparation is one-sided and fragmen-
tary, — we must train them not only in the science of
Christian ethics, but in casuistry, which is the art of
applying it. The word has an ugly sound to so-called
Protestant ears, and generally to our English-speaking
race. The name has left a bad odor in history, and is
synonymous with much that we have learned to dislike.
But it does not fall within my scope to recall the ways
in which it has been abused, or the ignoble ends that it
has been made to serve. It is enough that we bear in
mind, that, as every science must have its corresponding
art through which it can pass into practical use, so with
Christian ethics. It gives us the ascertained principles
of right conduct, of right character, of a life brought
into harmony with God's will ; and casuistry is the art
of bringing them to bear on cases of conscience involv-
ing doubt and difficulty. Two things are needed to
meet the requirements of practical work in this branch
of clerical duty. First, we must have a wisely prepared
manual of examples and rules for the examination and
direction of burdened or enfeebled consciences, covering,
as far as may be, the wants of souls seeking help and
guidance, and the ways for meeting them sanctioned by
God's Word, the Church's discipline, and the Christian
experience of all the past. To construct such a manual,
will be a task of great delicacy and difficulty. No one
mind, nor any one set of minds, will be equal to it. It
must, indeed, be a growth, rather than a construction ;

Improved Methods in the Cure of Sotds. 323

a growth bearing a catholic impress, and at the same
time carefully adjusted to whatever is characteristic or
peculiar in the religious life of the American people.
For such a work, ample materials are at hand, both
in the Holy Scriptures and in the varied literature on
the subject already existing. As might be expected,
the Latin Church, in its Gallican, Spanish, and Italian
branches, has contributed most largely to this literature.
But we are by no means restricted to the authorities of
that Church. Certain divines of the Church of England,
especially in the seventeenth century, did far more for
moral theology than is commonly supposed. And then
no one can tell how much might be looked for, in this
line of inquiry and analysis, from the mind of the living
Church. Once fairly turned in this direction, the same
acumen and versatility and patient research displayed
elsewhere could not fail to produce important results.
Besides, there are some new helps to a more accurate
understanding of the phenomena of the will, the con-
science, and of the whole passional nature of man, put
within our reach by the recent advances of the psycho-
logical and pathological sciences. So far have these
been carried, that it might almost be said that the
strictly moral casuistry of the past is to be supplemented
by a casuistry of the emotions and passions ; starting
at the boundary-line, over which travel to and fro and
often blend together the moral and aesthetic elements
of our nature ; and ending at the opposite line, running
with fluctuating curves between reason and instinct on
the one side, and between feeling with a moral trend
and purely animal appetite on the other. ^

324 Improved Methods i?i the Cure of Sotds.

Passing over details, I shall at present attempt no
more than a statement of some of the fundamental prin-
ciples that ought to govern in the composition of such
a manual, and in the training of the Clergy for its prac-
tical use.

1. It must contain nothing that will undermine or
dilute the sense of personal responsibility to God. This
is the central fact in our moral being, and it must be
protected and upheld at all hazards. The Gospel mag-
nifies it, the Church develops it, God Himself respects
it as part of the foundation on which the works of His
grace and providence are built up, and also as part of
the dignity of a nature made in His own image. The
soul that seeks help must be made to understand that
the help given will not put another will in the place of
its own will, or another conscience in the place of its
own conscience.

2. It should be clearly and strongly taught, that the
ideal spiritual life, the perfected life in Christ Jesus, is
the life that draws nearer and nearer to the great end
which the Gospel aims at; viz., the gradual substitution,
in every soul, of a character for an outward law, the
steady progress toward a habit of loving obedience to
God's will, which supersedes external rules and statutes.

3. It is of moment, that it be shown to those who ask
for special counsel, that, in many cases of real difficulty,
the ordinary means of grace provided in the Church are
sufficient ; that it is often rather a craving for some new
expedient, a desire of change and novelty, than a real
want, that puts souls upon the search for special reme-
dies aifd extraordinary means.

Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids. 325

4. Nothing should be left unsaid or undone that will
serve' to show what does and what does not belong to a
healthy mode of self or of priestly official examination.
As to the former, there is always danger of a morbid
kind of introspection, which leads to brooding over sin
apart from any honest efforts to overcome it, or to exag-
gerating sin for the sake of magnifying the difficulty of
repentance, or to excusing sin in order to prove that
no repentance is necessary ; while as to the latter, the
examination by the Priest, a prying, curiosity-mongering,
meddlesome, hair-splitting method may be adopted, that
sifts and inverts the inner life, without a spiritual end,
and barren of spiritual profit.

5. There must be clear and definite teaching, —

(a) As to the terms and conditions of forgiveness of
sin, so far as they relate to the transgressor.

(6) As to the ground and meritorious cause of for-
giveness.

(c) As to the channels, pledges, and assurances of for-
giveness : how far, especially in the matter of assurance,
the forgiven penitent inai/ accept the witness of his own
feelings ; and how far, by Divine arrangement, he must
rely not only upon the witness of the Holy Spirit wit-
nessing with his spirit internally, but witnessing also and
eminently through the one Baptism for the remission of
sins, and subsequently at stated times all through the
Christian life in the Sacrament of Christ's Body and
Blood, which, besides its other offices, is also the pledge
and seal of forgiveness.

6. In treating the general subject of the forgiveness
of sin, confession and absolution must have their due

326 Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids.

place. The time is coming when these will be discussed
in better temper and with larger intelligence than they
can be now. This, however, will follow rather than
precede a profounder, more sensitive spiritual life. The
closer discipline will be the child, not the parent of such
a life. First the felt needs, then the remedy.

7. There must be a comprehensive and discriminating
treatment of the various phases of religious experience
as produced either by various temperaments or by vari-
ous moods of the same temperament. There are the
emotional and the unemotional, the quick and the slow,
the fervid and the cold, the hopeful and the despond-
ent, the reticent and the demonstrative ; and each very
largely governs the Christian's inner life. And, besides,
there are the shifting moods passing over each one of
these types of character. All Christians are not Chris-
tians after the same manner.

8. As introductory to all special training, the Priest
must be taught clearly and definitely the nature and
scope of his authority. There are two kinds of author-
ity, the disregard of either of which will impair his in-
fluence and hinder his work. There is moral authority,
the essence of which is love, and the outward form of
which is character shaped by love. This is the highest
sort of power that one soul can wield over another.
But there is also the authority of a Divine commission,
of a sacred office, in virtue of which Christ's Ministers
are required to exhort the people " to obey them which
have the rule over them." The two authorities, so
blended together that we cannot tell precisely where

Improved Methods in the Cure of Soids. 327

the one begins and the other ends, make the perfect
guide of souls. -^

In conckision, allow me a word or two of exhortation.
Let no distaste for, no prejudice against, no ignorance
of the subject, let no recollection of abuses in the past,
or possible mistakes and perversions in the future, turn
aside our attention from it. Let us do what we can to
teach Clergy and people the importance of a closer and
more searching discipline of the spiritual life. Let us,
with as little delay as may be, incorporate with the
present curriculum of ministerial training, suitable pro-
visions for methodical instruction in this department of
clerical duty. And finally, let the Church, in her organic
capacity, mark the close of this century of her life by
entering with vigor and earnestness upon the task of
lifting her Priesthood and her laity to higher concep-
tions of the help and guidance to be given by the one,
and of the need of such help and guidance among the
other.

1 For a fuller treatment of these and kindred points, see the author's
Condones ad Clerum, third edition. Thomas Whittaker, ^New York,
1880.

LECTURE X.

DOGMATIC TEACHING AND THE PEIMART ENDS OF THE

GOSPEL.

In the present lecture, my subject will be the influ-
ence of the Christian Ministry in the closing years of
this century as affected by a more positive teaching of
certain aspects of " the faith once delivered " now least
in favor with the popular mind.

The subject will be handled with a view to show-
ing: —

I. The kind and degree of dogmatic teaching now
needed.

II. The evils arising from the undue exaltation of
the secondary, at the expense of the primary, ends of
the Gospel.

I. In discussing the kind and degree of dogmatic
teaching now needed, I shall confine myself to such
of its bearings as fall within the limits of the general
inquiry proposed in these lectures. More, not less, of
dogmatic teaching, I believe to be the demand of the
time, provided the teaching be dogmatic in the right
sense and in the right direction. Certainly this opinion
is not the popular one ; and it requires, I am aware, the

Dogmatic Teachijig. 329

courage of one's convictions thus to cross the grain of
the common wish, to stem the current of the common
thinking of the day. It may be that I am the victim
of a sentimental dehision or of a theological fallacy.
With such a risk before me, it becomes me to speak
with all humility and subject to correction.

The present aversion to Christian dogma is not so
much a phase of the general insurrection against au-
thority, supposed to be characteristic of our time, as it
is dislike of authority in its special opposition to the
present pronounced bias of reason on religious issues.
That is said to be the aptest, wisest teaching, that does
most to commend Christianity to the rational judgment
of men, and to bring out at the greatest number of
points its intrinsic reasonableness. The aim seems to be
to make Christianity sit as lightly as possible on human
nature, fret and worry as little as may be its normal
action, conform itself in all respects to tlie intuitions or
spontaneous verdicts of man, delivered especially in the
form of his higher hopes and sentiments touching the
dignity and destiny of his being. Now, it is the element
of authority in Christian dogma, that stands most in the
Avay of such a mode of presenting Christianity ; and so
dogma is berated and disliked, not so much because of
the particular truth it contains, as because it so embodies
and exhibits the truth as, on the one hand, to depress
the plastic, sympathetic reasonableness of Christianity,
and, on the other, to restrict the freedom of reason
considered as the faculty which, in responding to that
reasonableness, helps to develop it as the essential if
not the exclusive ground of personal conviction. It is

330 Dogmatic Teaching.

not, then, all authority in religion that excites repug-
nance among many professed believers, but the particular
form of it which just now checks and irritates certain
intellectual rights that happen to be uppermost in the
common mind.

Again : we must discriminate between the dogmas
that excite and the dogmas that escape this antipathy.
Of the former sort are the dogmas mainly of mediaeval
and post-Reformation origin ; of the latter sort are those
framed by the undivided ante-Nicene Church. It is
evident, that, the more the latter are pressed upon living
thought, the less they are antagonized by all who pro-
fess and call themselves Christians ; whatever may be
the feeling among ultra-rationalists, who, while clinging
to a Christian nomenclature, have really degraded Chris-
tianity into a mere product, like other religions, of the
human consciousness. The only dogmatic hostility of
practical moment to us as teachers of the truth is that
within our own lines ; and, as has been said, this is
directed against dogmas that sprang up after the Church
Catholic fell into schism. These, we know, had a two-
fold parentage. Some were the products of scholastic
thought running in speculative channels ; and some, of
" private judgment " interpretations of the Scriptures,
and of " private judgment " inferences from such inter-
pretations. They were for a time the badges and
shibboleths of rival schools of theology, first heated
and then hardened by the fires of controversy. Sub-
sequently they were pressed into service as the founda-
tions of sect organizations, and further on were sharply
maintained to gratify and perpetuate the sect impulse.

Dogmatic Teaching. 331

In affiliated groups, they one by one consolidated into
isms^ and crowded more and more into the background
the great body of Catholic verities. Throughout this
process, the tendency was to convert opinions into arti-
cles of faith, and prejudices into principles, and non-
essential differences of all sorts into Ufe-and-death con-
victions. Thus, as the area of bondage to the inventions
and traditions of men was expanded, the area of lawful
Catholic liberty was contracted. A re-action from all
this w\T,s inevitable, and to-day we are in the midst of
it. Christian men are outspoken and resolute, in many
quarters, in their opposition to a dogmatic faith, when
they really mean to oppose only those forms of it which
are of mediaeval or post-Reformation growth. If we
go deep enough into their feeling, we soon find that the
strength of their hostility to these only, measures fairly
the strength of theii- instinctive leaning to the Church's
witness and teaching during the first five hundred years
of her existence, when she affirmed nothing as of the
substance of the faith that could not be traced back and
identified as part of her testimony from the beginning.
And when I say, that, to advance the influence of the
Clergy as a teaching body, more dogma is needed, I
mean dogma of the primitive CathoUc stamp as contrast-
ed with dogma worked out by schools and schisms and
sects, — the disjecta membra of the body, and therefore
the fragmentary progeny of a dismembered progenitor.
Now, so far as dogmatic Christianity is concerned, this
is the phase of living thought with which we ha^•e to
deal ; and we can deal with it successfully only as we
become more definite and positive in our witness to this

332 Dogmatic Teaching.

aspect of Christianity. What we want, and what our
time wants, is more of the authority and force of dogma
thus understood, — dogma as the plain, simple expres-
sion of the historic facts and historic teachings of the
faith formulated by the undivided Church while she yet
felt the thrill of the fh'st impulse of her Divine Head,
and bore the impress in her visible unity of the original
Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost. And now, to go a
step farther, I claim that more of this dogma is needed
— or rather a stronger, bolder utterance of it — for rea-
sons which I can only state, and not attempt to argue.

(«) A definite Christian belief is the only solid basis
of a positively Christian practice. But it is the tend-
ency of the time to supplant belief by ethical sentiment
or by spiritual sympathies and aspirations. Dogma is
essential to belief, as the backbone and ribs are essential
to the body. Without a fixed framework there can be
no aclhering tissues.

(h) Dogma is essential to the conservation of the nor-
mal type of the Christian life. It supplies, not only the
anchorage of that life, but the perpetual mould in which
all its fundamental elements are shaped after the image
of Christ.

(c) Dogma is essential to Christian morality. It fur-
nishes, in portable, concrete form, at once the perfect
standard and the perfect sanction of duty : the one
telling us what we ought to do or leave undone ; the
other telling us why, supplying the vital, dynamic energy
which alone can sufficiently invigorate the will and
quicken the conscience.

{d) Dogma is essential to the Church as an ecclesia

Dogmatic Teaching. 333

docens. The truth is committed to her to teach as,
through the operation of the Holy Ghost, the principle
of a new life. But she can teach the truth only as she
can give it form. Formless truth is an airy nothing to
the intellect and the heart. To be available for use, it
must put on the dress of language, and, with the dress,
the inevitable limitations of language. There must be
a creed to have a credo.

(e) Dogma is essential to the continuous maintenance
of intellectual activity in the Church working for spirit-
ual ends. It presents truth as the subject of analysis
and synthesis, of evidence and logic, of exposition and
illustration ; in order to evolve the unity and harmony
of the revealed testimony of God, and the testimony, in
philosophical form, of the natural reason.

But it may be asked. Why rely upon Christian dogma,
at best a derived and secondary product, for these pur-
poses, when the Christ, who is its root and ground, is
available, — the Christ offered to us in the definiteness
and positiveness of an historic person '? I answer, His-
torically definite and positive as the Christ was, man-
kind, when left to themselves, have differed radically
as to who He was and what He came to do ; as to
whether He was very God or very man, or both in one
person ; as to whether He came only to show us the
true life and how to live it, or, besides this, to offer
himself as an oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the
whole world. In fact, we have the Unitarian Christ,
the Socinian Christ, the humanitarian Christ, the Christ
of philosophical idealism, the pantheistic Christ, and
the Chi'ist of the Nicene Symbol, — the Cluist of the

334 Dogmatic Teaching.

Holy Catholic Church. Now, to disprove and set aside
the fragmentary Christs, originating in a rationalistic
handling of revelation ; to hold and teach the com-
plete Christ of the Gospels and of the Catholic Church ;
to present Him to men, not only in the fulness of
His Divine offices, but as well in the integral force
of his human example. He must be held and taught,
and men must be persuaded to accept him, as he is
embodied in the dogmatic consensus of the whole
Body of which Himself is the ever-living Head. Indi-
dividual minds are constantly shifting their point of
view, and with this their reasonings and conclusions.
Schools of thought are as constantly modified by fresh
infusions from systems of speculation that never con-
tinue in one stay, and so with their Christology. The
only rock that will hold our feet amid the unsteady
waters is the unchangeable testimony of the once undi-
vided Church, the dogma of the Catholic creed. There
never has been a time when more than now the Clergy
have been required to maintain this dogma with inflexi-
ble firmness. The old time-worn assaults upon it are
giving way, only to make room for new ones, better
adapted to the half-religious, half-speculative temper of
our day. A movement is upon us, self-christened as
the Theological Renaissance, of which I shall speak
more fully later on, but just here only so far as my
immediate purpose demands. This movement is relax-
ing the traditional dogma of Christ on two sides. On
the one, it has cut off and thrown aside all that part
of it relating to the death of Christ as (according to
Catholic teaching) an expiation, a satisfaction, a pro-

Dogmatic Teaching. 335

pitiation, offered to God for the sins of the world ;
while on the other it is casting out the consentient,
orthodox definitions of the two natures and one person
of Christ as so many clogs and incumbrances to the
fuller and freer exhibition of His human example. It
holds that the living power of this example has been
straitened and damaged by the sharp dogmatic lines
within which tradition has forced it. It is now de-
manded that this pattern life shall be emancipated from
the trammels of oecumenical councils and petrified
creeds, and be brought forth into the common air of
every-day needs and aspirations. Such is the claim,
such the purpose, of this renaissance of theology, this
reformation of Christianity. Now, as for this latter
cleavage of the ancient Christian tradition, it can be
shown, with an irresistible force of reasoning, from all
the facts and issues involved, that this new movement
will hinder, not help, the object it has in view ; that in
clipping the old creed-roots of Christ, driven deep into
the Church's consciousness by the witness of the indwell-
ing Spirit and by the experience of the Christian cen-
turies, it will end in giving us an imperfect Christ, and
so an imperfect, partially powerless, human example of
Christ. It can be shown, too, by the same reasoning,
that this movement fails to present an adequate motive
for the incarnation of Christ, or a satisfactory view of
the universality of Christ's human nature, or a true
doctrine of the immanence of Christ m his Church, as
the life of her life, and the life of every soul grafted
into her and joined to Ilim by a living faith. It can
be proved, moreover, that the dogmatic decisions of the

336 Dogmatic Teaching.

Universal Councils, so far from being an incumbering,
needless surplusage, are necessary to guard the complete
doctrine of the second Adam.

"Christ must be absolutely' God; otherwise, in becoming in-
corporate with Ilim we should not really be made one with the
source and end of our being. Here is the justification of the
Nicene Creed. Christ must have all parts of our human nature,
must be completelj^ man ; for our whole nature needs renewing,
and what shall renew it save the whole humanity of Christ?
Hence the condemnation of ApoUinaris. Christ, once again, must
be permanently and forever distinctly man ; for it is here and now
that fallen men need from the high heaven a true humanity to be
their new life. Hence the Chalcedonian decree. Christ, lastly-,
must be no individual man, one of many taken up into oneness
with God, two persons, man and God ; otherwise the very indi-
vidual personality of His human nature isolates Him from us, and
keeps Him separate. But He is the very and eternal Word, the
author of life to all men, the underlying sustainer of all lower
personalities, who has taken a human nature into His own person,
to quicken it with new fertilities of life, and to impart it as a com-
mon principle of restoration to the whole race of redeemed man.
Here is the justification of Cyril and of Ephesus. All the decrees
of the (Ecumenical Councils are exempt from the charge of being
pieces of unnecessary dogmatism, to any one who reall}' appreciates
what lies hid in the title of Christ, ' the second Adam,' and the
spiritual relation of Him, the Head, to us His members." ^

I repeat, then, that, instead of wanting less, the age
really demands more of Catholic dogma touching all
the essential verities of the faith ; and, besides more
dogma of this sort, it demands from the Clergy, if they
would show due regard to their office and influence as
a teaching order, a more decisive and explicit utterance
1 The Church Quarterly Review, 1883.

Dogmatic Teaching. 337

of it. The Church at sundry times has disintegrated
or dikited her dogmatic teaching by various styles of
handhng the faith, as well in the formal, didactic duty
of the pulpit as in her devotional and practical litera-
ture. She has had the mystical style, the sentimental
style, the ethical style, the rationalistic style. Each
in its own way has wrought harm ; and, if history
teaches any lesson with more emphasis than another,
it teaches us what the harm has been.

I believe it to be historically certain that the world
has been, in its religious life, profoundly and perma-
nently changed, not by preaching " the inner light," or
by preaching Christian sentiment, or by preaching
morals, or by preaching the conclusions of human
reason, or even by preaching the perfect example of
Christ ; but by preaching dogma as the underlying
substance and concrete form of what is highest and best
in all. Take the strongest line, — that of example.
This, so far as it consists of the details of Christ's life,
was not the foremost theme of the early teachers of
Christianity. This was not the line they took in deal-
ing with the Jewish or the Gentile world. Indeed, as
has been truly said, " if all the personal allusions in
the Epistles of the New Testament were gathered to-
gether, we should fail utterly to obtain from them a
picture of the Man." The world was converted, not by
the example of Christ's life, but by the dogmas of His
Incarnation, of His essential Divinity and His essential
Humanity, of His atoning death, of His all-sufficient
sacrifice, of His Resurrection and Ascension, and of
His second coming again to judge the quick and the

338 The Primary Ends of the Gospel.

dead. In these lay the core, the substance, the pre-
vaiHng power, of the first preaching of the Gospel.
How strangely, how widely, how disastrously, is this
lesson now forgotten ! Quite another gospel is the
fashion and the craving of these days ; and we see how
this gospel is walled in and driven back in impotence
by doubt, by worldliness, by wickedness. The essayist
of morals, of sentiment, of reason, is a common presence.
He charms by his literary finish, by his grace of diction,
and by his richness and freshness of ideas. " He never
shocks or frightens men, for his gospel is that of
modem culture. So it was with Menander and the
genteel comedy of the Greeks and Romans, when the
stage had given up all idea of reforming mankind, and
confined itself to pictures of human life. Great lessons,
no doubt, are to be gained by such portraiture, and by
the graceful but forcible exposure of the weakness and
folly of men." But such is not the work of the Clergy
as leaders of earnest men, or as striving for the regen-
eration of individual and social life ; and, when their
divine function shrivels up to such a task, it becomes
simply a human power wearing a heavenly mask.

II. But this brings me to another angle of thought,
the second division of my subject ; which will lead me
to consider the duty of the Clergy, if they are to ad-
vance their influence, to fall back more definitely on
the primary ends of the Gospel and on the primary
motives to its propagation. Our Lord never merged the
primary in the secondary aims of his work : he held all
parts of it in their due place ; nothing in excess, noth-
ing in defect. What was fundamental, unchangeable,

The Primary Ends of the Gospel. 339

universal, was uniformly lifted high above what was
accidental, transient, and local. He was the light of the
world ; and He saw all things in the light which presents
them as they are, not as they seem. " He always struck
through the external forms of evil, to the moral root.
He always passed on to the spiritual end to which
external betterment points. He was no reformer play-
ing about the outward forms of evil, — hunger, poverty,
disease, oppression, — giving ease and relief for the
moment. He does, indeed, deal with these ; but he
puts under his work a moral foundation, and crowns
it with a spiritual consummation. Dealing with these.
He was all the while inserting the spiritual principle
which he calls faith, and striking at the sin which is
at the root, and at the misery which is its fruitage."
An incident, common in its details and surroundings,
was the occasion of an act that practically illustrated
the chief purpose that brought Him into the world.
A man sick of the palsy was laid at His feet to be
healed ; and when the bystanders expected Him to say
first, " Be whole of thy plague," He said first, " Thy
sins be forgiven thee." ^ It was as though He had said,
I am not unwilling to heal all manner of sickness and
disease, but these in their order. Souls must be touched
first, afterward bodies. I am come before all else to
deal with sin and with sinners ; to offer pardon and
release to guilty and dying men ; to publish the gift of
eternal life, and to place within human reach the means
of attaining it ; to do what I can for tlie life that now
is, but most of all, and before all, for the life to come.
1 St. aiark ii. 3-12.

340 The Frimary Ends of the Gospel.

It would seem as though mankind had seen and heard
enough of the gospel to save them from forgettmg what
it was chiefly intended to do ; and yet in every age they
have forgotten it, and in tjfis age they are especially
inclined to do so. It is curious to observe among our-
selves how much of the praise bestowed upon Chris-
tianity arises from its supposed great services to some
of the temporal interests of society ; and, on the other
hand, how much of the blame put on it is due to its
alleged failure to help others. The question that presses
is not what it can do for and in some distant world, but
what it can do now and here. " Seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall
be added unto you," does not answer it, for the simple
reason that mankind want " the other things," but not
" the kingdom of God." Two causes have helped on this
feeling of late.

1. The materialistic temper of the time inclines men
to value all things according to their immediate and
tangible uses. Religion, to be worth much, must prove
its capacity to be utilized in providing for needs of which
the average of the race are most keenly conscious. The
cry is for a gospel of comfort, success, material achieve-
ment ; a gospel that builds better houses, gives higher
wages, grows more wheat, coins more gold, secures
quicker transit for thoughts and cargoes, establishes
more schools to sharpen and brace the intellect in its
struggle with the forces of nature and society ; a gos-
pel of the sinews and the brain, of knowledge, wealth,
and empire. And if, among the thronging crowds, some
chance to be poor and sick and forsaken, dropping off

The Primary Ends of the Gospel. 341

into the bruised, bleeding, starving rubbish which mod-
ern hfe piles up along the highway of its progress, then
it is desirable to have a gospel follow after, as the Good
Samaritan, with a liberal stock of oil and wine ; with
Dorcas societies to clothe paupers ; with refuges and
reformatories, hospitals and orphanages, nurseries and
dispensaries, and alms-chests; with all the various minis-
tries of help and consolation. But as for the spmtual
rock whence living waters flow ; as for the spiritual
manna for hungry souls ; as for the spiritual home for
those who account themselves pilgrims and strangers
here ; as for the Christ who, through His Church, must
needs press incessantly certain dogmas about sin and
guilt and punishment, about the saved and the lost,
about faith, repentance, righteousness, and the judg-
ment to come, — as to all these, if they may not be
turned over to the visionary few who cannot abide the
heat and dust of the race for the prizes of the world,
then the less said about them the better.

2. The second cause I referred to has arisen from
the well-meant efforts of the advocates and defenders of
Christianity to commend it to popular approval on the
ground of its practical beneficence. Themselves some-
what weary of reciting, and believing the world to be
weary of hearing, about the external and internal evi-
dences ordinarily adduced to establish the Divine origin
of the Christian religion, they have in late years come
to rely more upon the good things it has done for man
on the temporal and social side of his life. It is not
strange that many of us should seek to make the most
of this line of argument amid the angry cross-currents

342 The Primary Ends of the Gospel.

of living unbelief. " The enthusiasm of humanity " is
just now one of the catch-phrases among the masses.
They admire not only the fruits of this enthusiasm, but
the enthusiasm itself as they understand it. What
attests love to God is not of so much matter, for that
is abstract, remote, unseen : the whole stress is laid on
love to man, the visible and concrete expression of the
moral sympathy that blossoms into helpful mercies and
humanities.

Now, so entirely and beyond all parallel was Christ
the exemplar of this enthusiasm, that without Him it
would never have had a name among men. And so
entirely, moreover, and beyond all rivalry, does the
Church of Christ take the lead in this enthusiasm, that
it has been quite in the line of our feeling and duty to
point the gainsayer to the very sort of evidence which,
from the habit of his mind, would be most likely to tell
upon him. Thus we have been tempted to turn aside
from the old paths of testimony, into new ones promis-
ing a shorter cut to popular conviction. And thus, too,
we have been tempted to say less about what the Gospel
claims from man, and more about what the Gospel does
for man in this life ; less about the God-ward and more
about the man-ivard aspects of the faith ; less about
eternal redemption in Christ Jesus, with its corre-
sponding implications of human sinfulness and human
helplessness, and more about the intelligence, freedom,
power, and dignity of human nature. There are signs
of the times which admonish us that we have already
drifted perilously far on this tendency of thought and
speech. It may well alarm any Minister of Christ, to

The Primary Ends of the Gospel. 343

be told, that, while he is engaged in elaborate demon-
strations of the temporal beneficence of Christianity, he
may, by his one-sided leaning, be putting in jeopardy its
most essential and distinctive message to man.

This tendency does harm in many ways. For the
present I shall notice only two, and both these relate to
the Priesthood, Let me preface what I haA^e to say in
both directions, by stating two or three axioms. Had
there been in man no disease himself could not cure,
there had been no remedy from God. If the disease
goes down to the very roots of his being, sending its
poison, or the fruit of it, into every moral and physical
tissue, equally deep and wide and searching must be the
remedy. As part of the means for bringing the remedy
into contact with the disease, God instituted the Chris-
tian Priesthood. This Priesthood is of account only as
the disease is real, and the remedy is real ; only as the
disease is hopeless apart from the remedy, and the
remedy is absolutely necessary to the healing of the dis-
ease. Now, to weaken and dwarf the Priesthood, you
have only to weaken and dwarf either the disease or the
remedy. If you can show that the disease is not hope-
less when left to itself, it follows that the remedy, how-
ever good or well-meant, is not necessary ; and to the
full extent that the one is not so bad and the other not
so necessary as they have been made to appear, to the
same extent, the need, and, if the need, the influence
of the Priesthood is impaired. Now, these are all self-
evident propositions, — so self-evident that I have not
hesitated to call them axioms. If they are, there can
be no risk of unsoundness in building upon them. Now,

344 The Primary Ends of the Gospel.

I hold that the tendency ah-eady dwelt upon, to substi-
tute the secondary for the primary motives and aims of
the Gospel in the way and in the degree I have alleged,
bears directly upon both man's disease and God's rem-
edy, and through these upon the office and work of the
Christian Ministry.

First, let us examine its view of the disease. It is
doubtful what sin is, and it is doubtful what may be its
remote consequences in the way of judgment and pen-
alty. It is certain, however, that it hinders, disturbs,
and imbitters human life. It is certain that its near
consequences are painful and destructive, and that
Christianity, so far as it helps us to cope with them
and with their uncertain cause in the soul, is a very
needful auxiliary. But, according to the line of battle
here drawn up, our Lord blundered in striking at the
sin before he struck at the palsy of the sick man.
What He did, and what the disciples of this other
gospel would have asked Him to do, throw into the
sharpest outline His estimate of sin, as compared with
the estimate of all, of every age, who have been of this
way of thinking. He, and the inspired men that spoke
in His name, exhausted the energy and emphasis of
language in describing it. No imagery was too intense
or too dreadful to deepen the sense of its power and
guilt in the conscience and the imagination. It is alien-
ation from God, the Giver of life ; it is the corruption
of the life God gave ; it is bondage, darkness, death.
The blight and the mildew are as nothing beside its
power to curse and destroy. It kills body and soul ; it
is war within and misery without ; it is a fearful look-

The Primary Ends of the Gospel. 345

ing-for of fiery indignation and wrath. None other
than the Son of God can bring dehverance to its
captives, or sight to those whom it has made bhnd,
or light to its darkness, or heaUng to its curse, or Ufe
to its dead. The water of regeneration cleanses, the
blood of a Divine sacrifice washes, the fire of infinite
love purifies, the very Judge of heaven and earth takes
His throne, with ten thousand of His angels marshalled
around Him, to pronounce its final doom. Now, all
these references to sin may be thinned away into ex-
aggerated metaphors of the Oriental mind, or resolved
into so many phases of a morbid anatomy of the darker
facts of life. Treat them as we may, they are undeni-
ably part and parcel of our Lord's conception of sin, or,
rather, of His mode of conveying that conception to us.
And we may well suppose that this, like other Divine
conceptions, lost, not gained, in intensity and depth by
putting on the limitations of human language. While
true, absolutely true to the thing itself, — the moral
disease of man, — it magnified the remedy both as to its
efficacy and its necessity, and with these magnified the
means, the Priesthood among them, for carrying the
remedy into eff"ect.

On the other hand, compare with this the concep-
tions of sin, and of the instrumentalities (notably the
Priesthood) appointed to represent the Christ in deal-
ing with it, embodied in all secondary-motive theories
of Christianity. There is the evolution conception, that
the miseries of sin are only the growing-pains of life
as it breaks through the limitations imposed upon it by
imperfect development ; and that what we call sin is in

346 The Primary Ends of the Gospel.

itself only another name for such development. Next,
there is the notion which has survived the mass of Pla-
tonic speculation, and continued to hold sway over minds
that by intellectual instinct are inclined to trace the
ills of life to defects of knowledge rather than defects
of will and moral sense, — the notion that sin is the
child of ignorance, and consequently that man is a
sinner only so far as he fails to know the truth.
Finally, we have the theory, so much in favor with
minds of a pantheistic turn, that evil is only good in
the making ; that things are good or evil, as they
chance to be related to one another and to ourselves ;
that the distinctions between them are unreal and
fugitive ; and that our own liberty of choosing the one
rather than the other is at bottom a delusion, — a drop
of water shut up within walls of crystal, moving, but
powerless to get over them. For sin thus conceived, —
in the first and last of these notions, emptied of its guilt
by first emptying the soul of its responsibility under
the implications of fatalism and a confused whirl and
jumble of all being ; in the second, attenuated into a
question of knowing or not knowing what is truest and
best, — for sin thus conceived, surely Heaven need not
have stirred itself to find a remedy. The cross, the
blood, the agony, the darkness of Calvary, were a super-
fluous tragedy, and the Church of God, its Word, its
Sacraments, and its Priesthood, are only logically and
consistently treated, when they are declared non-essential
to the salvation of man, and transient adjuncts to the
mechanism of human progress. Let the Clergy of to-
day beware how they borrow "jewels of thought" from

The Primary Ends of the Gospel. 347

this quarter, or transplant from it into their own teach-
ing what much of our Utcrature for the people parades
as so many precious mosaics of philosophical breadth
and intelligence. Friendship with all these notions of
moral evil is enmity with God, and in the end treason
to the Gospel of His Eternal Son.

Thus the Gospel as a remedy, with all its affiliated
agencies, the Priesthood included, is weakened and
dwarfed by shallow notions of sin, the moral disease of
humanity. A like result may be worked out, starting
from the other side, and beginning with the remedy as
an objective reality. This can and will be divided and
impaired, and so with all that is bound up with it, just
so far as, in teaching it, we substitute its secondary
ends and motives for its primary ; its variable and acci-
dental aims, for those which are immutable and uni-
versal ; what it may and can and ought to do for the
life that now is, for what it must do before all else for
the life to come ; individual amelioration, for individual
regeneration ; temporal beneficence, social blessings, for
the law of righteousness that speaks for a holy God, for
the everlasting sacrifice that taketh away the sins of the
world, and for a spiritual salvation of man that embraces
eternity. After an earnest and prolonged study of the
current on which our time is moving, I am more and
more persuaded that it is impossible to emphasize too
strongly the duty and the danger of the Christian
Ministry touching these issues. If it would be a power
more than it is now, here it must concentrate its fire,
here it must focalize its gifts and energies. If it would
have what it offers to men, itself with the rest, more

348 The Primary Ends of the Gospel.

profoundly esteemed, it must, rising for the time above
all lower things belonging to the category of ecclesias-
tical organization and machinery, above varying but
allowable schools of religious thought regarded as occa-
sions of controversy, address itself to the task of incul-
cating a Gospel whose burden is the story of Christ
crucified ; of the life hidden with Him in God ; of the
Holy Ghost as the Giver of this life ; of the Church
as its home and guide ; of the Sacraments, the one as
its initial channel and formal seal, the other as its
perpetual food; of the Priesthood as in a vital and
essential sense the ordained representative of Christ's
everlasting mediation between God and man. Nay,
more : it must not only deliver such a Gospel, but it
must see that it is duly formulated, in harmony with
the processes of our best living thought, into a theology
which shall make it systematic, concrete, portable for
the practical uses of instruction and discipline. Let it
understand, the sooner the better, that its official claims
will be respected, that its pulpits will kindle with light
and throb with power, that its altars will be thronged,
and its sanctuaries vocal in every part with praise and
adoration, only as it shall fall back for its themes and
its authority on the original and fundamental ends
and motives of Christ's coming into the world ; dealing
with sin in the deep, searching, awful way that He
dealt with it ; causing men to feel, as with a burning
thirst, the need of rescue^ by first causing them to feel
the curse that blights, the poison that corrupts, the
death that threatens them.

LECTURE XL

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND "TEE NEW THEOLOGY."

I NOW propose to examine " the New Theology " so
far as to ascertain what helps, if any, it offers toward
lifting the Ministry from its present alleged low estate
to a higher plane of influence. It is claimed that *the
fresher lines of thought on the problems of religion,
together with all the recent side-lights thrown upon
them by the modern mind, have their common centre
in this " New Theology." Its advocates seem to be
sanguine in their conviction that the Ministry would
enter upon a new era of power and usefulness if it
would ascend or descend, as the case may be, to then"
platform. It has been their mission, we are told, to
present to this age the old faith in a new light ; and
they claim to have done their work so well that Chris-
tianity will henceforth be relieved of many inherited
obstructions to its growth.

In my second lecture I noted, at some length, several
of the characteristic features of this theology, and traced
it back to its English founder, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and to its ablest English expounder, F. D. Maurice.
For our present purpose, we are fortunate in having,

350 The Ministry and ^'the New Theology."

beside those abroad, several distinguished authorities at
home, whose erudition and abihty entitle them to the
highest respect.^

The expounders of the New Theology claim, that, in
its underlying principles, it is a " Renaissance " of the
earlier Greek theology, which in their judgment was
not only older, but " more mature and refined in the
expression of its thought, and more true to the idea of
Christianity as presented in the New Testament," than
the theology of the West as formulated by St. Augus-
tine. The fundamental principles of "the Renaissance"
are supposed to embody the characteristic differences
between the two theologies of the East and of the
West. These diff"erences, it is said, turned upon the
mode of God's presence in the world and in the Church,
and upon the condition of man as requiring the inter-
vention of a supernatural redemption."^ Starting from
these two points, the two theologies diverged through-
out their entire course. Claiming to follow the early
Greek theology, " the Renaissance " holds that God in
Christ is immanent in humanity as a continuous, living
process, as " a Divine and ever-present teacher speak-
ing to men made in the Divine image and constituted
for the truth ; while reason, conscience, and experience
were the ordained and competently endowed recipients

1 Rev. p]lisha Mulford, LL.D., The Republic of God; Rev. Newman
Smyth, D D., Old Faiths in New Lights, etc.; Rev. Theodore T. Mun-
ger, D D., The Freedom of Faith, etc ; Rev. Professor Allen, D.D., The
Theological Renaissance, etc. ; Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Canon
of Canterbury, The Gospel of the Secular Life.

2 The Theological Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century: Professor
A. V. G. Allen, D.D.

The Ministry and ^'the New Theology" 351

of the message." This more intimate and omnipresent
immanence of God is constantly set forth as the govern-
ing idea of the New Theology. Indeed, one of its
expounders has, from this standpoint, undertaken to
re-write the history of theology, considering it alone as
quite sufficient to account for nearly all the departures,
in the course of the Christian centuries, from pure and
primitive Christianity.

The early Latin theology, as formulated by Tertul-
lian, Cyprian, and Augustine, is charged not only with
gross anthropomorphism in its conception of Deity, — a
fault from which, it is said, the Greek ideal was exempt,
— but with conceiving of God as extra-mundane and far
oiF from man, communicating with the world and the
Church only through agencies of formal and arbitrary
appointment, and setting forth a Christ who, so far
from being ever present to guide the education of
human souls, "left behind only a last will and testament,
of which the Episcopate was the executor and adminis-
trator." Thus the theology of the West, we are told,
came to regard revelation as a mechanical method of
Divine communication, and to treat it as a deposit em-
bodied in a rule of faith whose integrity was assured
by the Church's witness. Thus, too, we are told, Latin
thought changed the Sacraments, from symbols of a
universal Divine process, into rites possessed of a magi-
cal character, and of exclusive power to convey God's
grace to men. By the same cause, moreover, it is
affirmed that the New-Testament doctrine of eternal life
was so disturbed and corrupted that it ceased to be " an
ethical and spiritual relationship with God," and became

352 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

a synonyme " for endless duration of existence in a state
of bliss or in a state of misery." It is admitted, that,
after the middle of the fifth century, Eastern theology
fell away from its first estate, under the influence of
Neo-Platonism and some Gnostic systems of theosophy.

Now, without attempting any detailed argument on
the subject (our space does not allow it), we affirm, as
the result of our reading and inquuy, that there was
no root difference between the early Greeks and Latins
in their conception of the Divine immanence. With
the plain and emphatic teachings of Holy Scripture on
the subject equally open to both, it is most unlikely
that any such radical difference should have been de-
veloped ; and certainly there is no satisfactory evidence
that it was. Both held and taught substantially the
same truth ; the Greeks, because of their peculiar
intellectual environment, only more strongly and fully.
They differed, not as to the freeness and efficacy of
God's grace, only another name for his supernatural
immanence, but as to the character and extent of the
means ordained of God for dispensing it to man ; the
Greeks dwelling more upon the grace itself, the Latins
accepting the grace as a fact beyond dispute, and insist-
ing more upon the means by which it is made operative,
because these were constantly open to dispute, to perver-
sion, and neglect. " The Renaissance " is not as sound
on this very fundamental question as the early Greek
thought which it professes to follow. If the early
Greek could not, in spite of its struggles, altogether
emancipate itself from the philosophical drift of its day,
this has yielded itself without a struggle to Hegelian

The Ministrt/ and ''the New Theology^ 353

speculation on the universe and its immanent Deity.
Inspired by this school of speculative thought, rather
than by the teaching of the New Testament or of the
sub-apostolic age, it makes the historic Church one
thing and the Body of Christ another ; in fact, knows
no Church of Christ in history, save the fluctuating
organization evolved by the Christ-idea out of the ever-
changing life of the ages. In keeping with this view of
the Church is its view of the Holy Scriptures and of the
Sacraments, and, indeed, of all kindred means of grace
of Divine appointment. In fact, so radical and sweeping
is its doctrine of God's immanence in the Church and
the individual soul, as well as in the processes of nature
and of history (the revival of which doctrine in modern
theology it asserts as its great distinction), that the
agencies instituted by Christ to show forth and give
effect to liis mediatorial work seem to be quite emptied
of then- virtue, and classed with the superfluous and
impertinent mediation contrivances which had their
origin in the Neo-Platonic and Gnostic heathenism of
the fifth century, — a type of heathenism that " the
Renaissance " declares became, under the disguise of
a Christian dress, the actual basis, for many centuries
after, of Christian thought in all parts of the Church.
The inevitable logical outcome of this teaching, should
it find any considerable currency, will be another and
intenser phase of mysticism in theology and of Quaker-
ism in practical religion. If this be so, the bearing of
" the llcnaissance " on the authority and work of the
Christian Priesthood is too evident for comment.

Again : professing to move in the track of the early

354 The Ministry and ^^the New Theology.''

thought of the East, the " Renaissance " view of human
nature is quite as much open to doubt and suspicion as
its view of the Church, the Sacraments, the Priesthood,
etc. When it tells us that St. Augustine's dark and
tragic thinking on man was suggested by the dissolving
fabric of social and political life in his day, and the
terrible disorder consequent upon it ; when it treats his
doctrine of original sin as a sort of spectral horror
thrown off by a mighty genius in a nightmare of logical
compulsion and ethical despau*, the wiser and calmer
theologians of the East meanwhile, it is said, " protesting
against its dishonor to God and injustice to man," —
our curiosity, rather than our fear, is excited as to the
terminus ad quern of such criticism on the founder of
the theology of the West. So far as we can see, it has
more to say of God's image in man, than of the effect
upon that image produced by the fall ; of man's capacity
for righteousness, than of his depravity and corruption;
of his inherent ability to rise from his natural estate,
than of supernatural grace to enable him to do so.
As might be expected, its profound dissent from the
Augustinian doctrine of man carries it so far in the
opposite direction, that only a shadowy line seems, at
some points, to divide it from the well-known teaching
of Pelagius. If it was the fault of St. Augustine that
he built up theology too much on absolute decrees and
original sin, it is not less the fault of this " new depart-
ure " that it builds on a conception of God's immanence
that has in it a decidedly pantheistic flavor, and on a
conception of man that makes more of his perfectibility
than of his sinfulness, more of his union with God as a

The Mlnistri/ and ''the Neiv Theology.'' 355

fact already accomplished by the Incarnation of Christ,
than of his alienation from God as a fact of experience
generally operative in spite of the new life offered
through the Incarnation. If we have not mistaken the
New Theology in its doctrine of human nature, this
side of it will be no more favorable than that already
commented upon, to the deeper work and higher claims
of the Ministry. It is its often-expressed wish, to be
regarded, not as seeking to introduce any novelty into
the domain of living theological thought, but as aiming
to revive what was most healthy and true in the oldest
Christian thinking of the East. Freely as it may have
ranged over, carefully as it may have studied that think-
ing, what it has actually given us is mostly traceable to
two sources, the mere naming of which will go far
toward determining the character of the gift. I refer
to the school of Alexandria as, for our present purpose,
chiefly represented by Clement, the disciple of Pantse-
nus, the first catechist of that school of whom we have
any knowledge ; and the school of Antioch, the lineal
offshoot of that of Alexandria, as represented by its
greatest light, Theodore of Mopsuestia. It seems to
have been the mission — certainly it was the aim — of
Clement, in the birthplace of Christian theology, to
show to the Greeks, the foremost seekers after wis-
dom, that Christianity was not to be despised as a blind
faith that shunned the light of reason, but, on the con-
trary, that it rested on a basis, and could be made to
assume a form, capable of scientific exposition ; that, as
the highest and truest knowledge, it rightfully claimed
the subordination to itself of aU other knowledge ; that

356 The Ministry and ^^the New Theology J'

it fulfUlcd, enlarged, and harmonized into a nobler
nnity, whatever was true in all the forms of the Gentile
or heathen gnosis. With him, indeed, the true gnosis
fused into one the light of revelation and the light of
reason, and issued, as its final fruit, in a spiritual, Divine
life for the soul, a life such as the mystic in every age
opposes, as the true, inward Christianity, to a mere his-
torical faith. He aimed to make knowing and living
one process, science and faith interfluent aspects of the
same reality. To incorporate in a rationally satisfactory
shape the Divine principle of life imparted by Chris-
tianity, he sought to throw around it the whole wealth
of human culture. His thought working for this end
was, as we now see it, a marvel of energy and grasp and
versatility. It has never failed, and it never will fail, to
attract, and largely to dominate, minds hungering and
thu'sting after the same result at which he aimed : there-
fore it is all the more needful that we keep distinctly
before us those characteristics of it that encourage a too
liberal infusion of the purely intellectual element into
expositions of the faith once delivered.

As it was Clement's avowed purpose to conciliate
philosophy in the interest of religion, he did not hesitate
to avail himself with the utmost freedom of the current
philosophical tools of his day. The misfortune was, that
he was not always their master, but sometimes their ser-
vant. While far from intending to be a rationalist in
the modern sense, he not seldom dipped his logic in the
many-colored dyes of rationalism. While seeking to
place the contents of faith only in the clear light of
consciousness, and to develop the unity of the theoreti

The Ministry and ''the New Theology." 357

cal and practical, the objective and subjective elements
of Christianity, he, in adopting a form for the expres-
sion of his meaning supplied by the Neo-Platonic doc-
trine concerning the identity of subject and object, of
the voovv and the vo-qrov., was carried perilously far out
on the sea of speculation, and merged the authority of
the Divine Aoyos too much in that of Gentile thought.
Confident as he was of the completeness and sufficiency
of the doctrine of our Saviour as the power and wisdom
of God, he could not refrain from making that doctrine
work in the harness and accept the trammels of Grecian
philosophy. The ultimate outcome of this style of
handling truth was a conception of Christian doctrine,
not as a Trapaooo-t?, a transmitted, unchanging deposit,
but as a developing process, going forth from the Chris-
tian consciousness, and exhibiting itself, with more or
less purity, in all forms within and without the Church.
Practically this view, when pushed to its logical conclu-
sion, enthroned reason above revelation as the test and
measure of truth, — substantially the very thing done
by " the Eenaissance " in its attempted reconstruction
of theology in order to put it en rapport with modern
thought. Thus it will be found that this new Christian
gnosis not merely reproduces, but, under the lead of
Hegelian philosophy, expands and intensifies the ration-
alistic tendency of the old Alexandrian gnosis.

But apparently the " Renaissance " theology has
drawn more freely upon the school of Antioch than
upon that of Alexandria. Of the two schools, that of
Antioch was the bolder, more energetic, and versatile in
general intellectual activity, and especially in Bibhcal

358 The Ministry and '■'-tlie New Theology"

and theological studies, as Avell as in handling the issues
raised between the philosophy and Christianity of that
day. The Alexandrian school stood alone in Egypt :
it was the sole centre of learning and thought for the
whole patriarchate. Authority measurably held in
check the spirit of inquiry and criticism when inclined
to extravagance. But Syria and Asia Minor abounded
in populous and luxurious cities, each with its own
schools for the cultivation of Greek letters and art, and
many of them with their own schools of sacred learning,
w^orking on quite independently of any common bond
of authority. Whatever the cause, it is certain that
speculations for which Origen was banished from Alex-
andria were taken up and pursued with impunity in
many of the schools of Syria and Asia Minor.^ By the
middle of the third century, the school of Antioch had
attained a commanding celebrity, and in the person of
Theodore of Mopsuestia produced a scholar, critic, and
thinker whose influence over Christendom for centuries
was second only to that of Origen and Augustine. The
evidences of this influence are, we think, plainly dis-
cernible in the New Theology of to-day. Whatever
this theology may think of other distinguished names
on the roll of the early Greek theology with which it
claims to be in such cordial sympathy, or however it
may have consulted their writings, it can scarcely be
doubted that the foremost name among them all has
excited its warmest admiration, and left upon it the
profoundest impression. And, what is very significant,
the fact that this leader of the Antiochene school, with

1 Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century, passim.

The Ministry and ''the New Theology" 359

his writings, was condemned by the fifth CEcumenical
Council, and the closely related fact that the books of
this chief doctor of Antioch, with those of his master
Diodorus, translated into Syriac and into Persian, were,
beyond all else, the immediate instruments of the for-
mation of the great Nestorian school and Church in
farther Asia, do not seem to have operated to his
prejudice with the I*sew Theology.

It is of moment to recall in this connection some of
the characteristic teachings of this famous doctor. In
Biblical interpretation he anticipated the free handling
of the Holy Scriptures by the " Higher Criticism " of
our day. He diluted inspiration to such a degree as to
make it easy to include, in the same catalogue with the
writers of the Old and New Testaments, the most emi-
nent writers of Pagan antiquity. He maintained that
the real sense of the Scriptures was to be determined,
not by the scope of a Divine Intelligence, but by what
was in the minds of the human organs of inspiration.
Not content with discarding the allegorizing method of
the school of Origen, he insisted absolutely upon the
literal, one-sense meaning of the sacred text. He held
that sacred and secular compositions were amenable to
the same rules of criticism. " Insisting that the Cant-
icles must be interpreted literally, he advocated the
exclusion of the book from the Canon. He treated
the Book of Job as a Gentile drama, and threw out the
Books of Chronicles and Ezra, also the Epistle of St.
James, though it was contained in the Peschito Version
of his Church. He limited the Messianic Psalms to
foui-, denying that the twenty -second and sixty-ninth

360 The Ministry arid ''the Neiv Theology"

applied to Christ. St. Thomas's words, ' My Lord and
my God!' were only a joyful exclamation; and our
Lord's ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' simply a fore-
shadowing of the day of Pentecost." lie explained
the doctrine of original sin very much as a modern
free-thinker would, and openly denied the doctrine of
everlasting punishment. In determining the drift of
Syrian theology, he overmastered the sounder thought
of St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, and Theodoret, and, by his
learning and logical power, obtained a wide acceptance
for errors of which Paul of Samosata had been the fore-
runner; while from his teaching on the Incarnation
was derived the germ of the Nestorian heresy, which
separated the Divine Person of Christ from His man-
hood.

Precisely how much of the formal teaching of the
school of Antioch, of which Theodore of Mopsuestia
was the acknowledged head, "the Renaissance " has
imported into its theology, it may be difficult to tell.
It is enough for our purpose, that we find abundant
evidence of a strong family likeness between them, in
the spirit in which the deepest problems of theology
are handled, and in the principles which are to govern
the new interpretation of the Christian faith now
deemed inevitable, and for the furtherance of which
this new school claims to have a special mission. His-
tory recounts the scars inflicted upon the Church some
fifteen centuries ago, by its battles with this spirit and
with these principles ; and it seems now as though his-
tory were soon to repeat itself on the same lines, in the
battles to be fought and the scars to be borne by the

The Ministri/ and ^^the New Theology." 361

Church of the mnetecnth century. However this may
be, it is quite certain that the Cliristian Priesthood of
our time is not likely to be stimulated to greater sacri-
fices, or to be encouraged to nobler ventures for Christ,
by a larger infusion into the Gospel it preaches, and
into the institutions it administers, of the modern type
of that old Greek wisdom which both in Alexandria and
Antioch first beguiled, then compromised, and finally
corrupted the religion of the Cross.

But from this general view let me proceed to some
particulars illustrative of the temper and attitude of
the New Theology as bearing upon the theme of these
lectures. The New Theology professes to attach great
value to the traditional consensus of Christian judg-
ment on all matters of faith. AVere this so, we miglit
hope to derive some benefit from it ; for it would
go far toward giving us the rare, and, in the opinion
of some, impossible alliance of energetic and enter-
prising nineteenth-century thought with Catholic tra-
dition. But this profession, when examined, turns out
to be quite meaningless. The consensus is regarded
simply as an aggregation of opinions, to be respected as
many other things are that have outlived a long series
of ages, but with no authority save what may arise
from the favorable verdicts of individual thinkers.
That there is no thought of accepting it as a formative
or guiding principle, is evident from the fact that this
theology claims, as one of its distinguishing notes, to
have introduced into all religious inquiry a wider and
freer use of reason, understanding by reason the whole
moral as well as intellectual nature of man; so that,

362 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

however promising the start, we may in the end see
repeated the familiar license of rationalism, sobered
down somewhat by a more cultivated reverence for the
old learning, and a more respectful handling of Catholic
consent. Its attitude comes out more clearly in its
view of the general relation of reason to revelation, and
of the function of reason as the interpreter of revela-
tion. It tells us that the only consensus of any use or
authority is that which can be shown to exist between
revelation and the normal action of human nature. The
Scriptures are not the revelation of God, but the history
of such a revelation, — a history with a core of truth
hedged about with accidental surplusage, a mass of an-
thropomorphic accretions ; and it is the office of reason
to disentangle the one from the other. This history,
moreover, is an evolution, a development of the higher
from the lower, of ethical ripeness from ethical crudity,
of race-maturity from race-infancy, of civilization from
barbarism, of Christianity from Judaism ; and it is the
prerogative of reason to determine the successive stages
of this evolution, and the meaning of each, and this in
such a sense as logically to justify the inference that
the whole process is simply a subjective, self-ordered
development of humanity, and in no authoritative, ex-
clusive sense originated, guided, and consummated by
an external Divine Will — even God Himself. In other
words, revelation is reason evolving itself under the
conditions of history. God is in the process only as
He is in reason, and the contents of revelation are only
the original and inherent contents of reason. Thus it
follows that the only authority which obliges any man

The Ministry and '■''the New Theology."" 363

to accept revelation is not an authority inherent in the
revelation, but the authority of reason to adjudge the
reasonableness of the revelation. The only binding
consensus, therefore, is the consensus of reason with
itself; or, to attenuate still further the obligation of
belief, of the individual reason with collective reason as
it has spoken in history. Quite consistently, therefore,
the New Theology curtly dismisses all hitherto accepted
methods of interpreting the Scriptures, and, in spite of
its sympathy with the old Greek thought, rejects the
allegorical and mystical methods as visionary and fool-
ish, and holds up to ridicule the " literal-meaning "
method as dry and mechanical, besides being overladen
with the superstitious rubbish of the '* verbal-inspira-
tion " theory. According to its dictum, all rational in-
terpretation resolves itself into the question. How much
is shell, and how much is kernel? When this "Re-
naissance," therefore, offers to pour new blood into the
so-called shrunken arteries of our Ministry, let us un-
derstand its source and quality. It is the oft-cited story
over again of " fearing the Greeks even when bearing
gifts."

Enough, perhaps, has been said to show, that, in the
effort to secure to the Ministry a fresh lease of power
at this time, little real help is to be looked for in this
direction. And yet we are so persistently admonished
by what passes for the higher thought and literature
of the day, that, unless we can find it here, we can find
it nowhere, it may be well to follow the New Theology
somewhat farther. On the theistic side, and as against
all phases of scientific materialism, the New Theology is

364 The Ministry and ''the New Theology."

outspoken and emphatic. The notion of the Absohite
Being as unknown and unknowable, as without person-
ality, or, if with it, existing possibly apart from con-
scious relations to the human soul ; the notion of law
without a Lawgiver, of creation without a Creator, of
matter as self-originated and self-moved, of mind as a
sublimated gradation of matter, and the product of
organization, of the free will of man as only one form
of the by-play of necessity, of human society and human
history as fast-bound in the meshes of immutable and
universal law, of physical evolution, though accepted as
the probable solution of the world's growth, without an
immanent God to begin and fashion it, of all life as a
game of battledoor and shuttlecock between opposing
necessities, — against all these and kindred dogmas of
materialism, it bears witness with hot energy and dis-
dainful indignation. And, further, it may be justly said
that it has sifted and discussed and refuted these aspects
of modern thought with a fulness and versatility of lit-
erary power worthy of all admiration. It may have said
nothing on this subject not elsewhere said, and well said,
by Christian thinkers of the traditional school ; but cer-
tainly it has given its testimony in a style so fresh and
stimulating that no live Ministry can help being profited
by it. Would that it had done for us in the sphere
of revealed religion what it has done in the sphere of
natural religion !

Coming back to the former, I would ask you to note
its deliverance on the organic life, or, to use its own
favorite phrase, on the solidarity of the race. Its view
is captivating because of its comprehensiveness, but it

The Ministry and ^^the New Theology^ 365

is not true to the facts as Catholic theology understands
them. It teaches not only a natural solidarity of man-
kind, — a solidarity growing out of the same physical,
mental, and moral constitution, out of the same origin
and blood, the same common trend, — but a supernat-
ural solidarity ; as though redemption were not only
an accomplished fact, and either actually offered or in
the way of being offered to all men, but as though it
had already taken effect upon all men, were now their
possession as well as their promised inheritance, and in
moving a part had moved also the whole race, and this
quite independently of the question whether or no the
proper fruits of this moving, this new solidarity, be ap-
parent in external life. If I have correctly stated the
idea, it would seem to involve the further idea that the
spiritual and supernatural unity of the race, w4iich our
Lord came to re-create by imparting to men His life,
was accomplished by the fact of His coming, or by the
fact of His publishing the conditions on which His life
could enter into the life of humanity ; without regard to
the actual gathering of men through the one Baptism
into His Body, the Church, whose unity or solidarity
is the only supernatural one represented by the Gospel
as possible under the exercise of its power. It is right
in protesting, and it has our hearty sympathy in doing
so, against the theory that holds to " an absolute soli-
darity of evil, relieved only by a doctrine of election of
individuals ; " that the world is not a saved as well as a
fallen world ; that Cnrist is less to it than Adam ; that
"the links that bind the race to evil are not correlated
by links equally strong binding it to righteousness ; " that

366 The Ministry and ''the New Theology.''

the redemptive and delivering forces have not a sweep
corresponding with the forces that work for the bondage
of humanity ; that the family, society, the nation, the fields
of honest labor whether of mind or body, are outside
the operation of the Spirit of God. The fault is, that
it pushes the asserted solidarity of the race, in good as
well as evil, so far that it gives us a notion of imputed
supernatural unity which seems very like another form
of the old notion of imputed righteousness. The ex-
treme form of the foregoing protest is due to a re-action
from New-England Calvinism, and to a too-stimulating
draught of " the enthusiasm of humanity." Catholic
theology, true to the Gospel, and to the constitution and
commission of the Church, has always declared their
field to be no narrower than the world ; and that the
family, the nation, society with all its normal interests,
are divine, not only because ordained of God, but as
well because God works in and through them by His
Spirit, who in turn works by the Church, constituted
of God to be the organ of all redemptive forces. In
taking human nature upon Himself, Christ changed a
lost into a saved race in respect of the opportunity, the
privilege, the capacity, the power, and the means of sal-
vation. In all these regards, humanity as a whole was
born again, and the sweep of redemptive virtue was uni-
versal ; but absolutely, in fact and deed, eternal life is
the property of the race only as its individual members,
in the exercise of their moral liberty, and apart from
all arbitrary election, accept it on conditions annexed to
the gift by Christ Himself. Ideally, potentially, the
Church, which is His Body, includes all men, as it was

The Ministry and ''the Netv Theology." 367

made for all men, and strives to become that for which
it was made. Actually, historically, it is bounded by its
membership, and is the Church of the race only so far
as the race has entered it. And thus, as the new super-
natural unity or solidarity of grace can be predicated only
of Christ's Body, so it can be predicated of the race only
to the extent that the race in its individual parts has
been re-created by the life of Christ, and so joined unto
His Body. This notion of the New Theology seems to
be little more than unregenerate naturalism, wearing the
livery and. claiming the inheritance of a supernatural
regeneration. In effect, by transferring from the Church
to humanity at large the solidarity which is and must
be the fruit of an appropriated, not a merely purchased
or proffered redemption, it strips the Church of its
raison d'etre ; reduces it to an aggregation of voluntary
societies, representing only in a fragmentary way the
unity of a redeemed race, no longer the equivalent of
the unity of Christ's Body ; and forces into the same
degradation the Sacraments, the Worship, and the
Priesthood of Christianity. Certainly no help can come
to the Ministry from a view that thus radically cuts the
ground from under its feet.

But in adverting to this aspect of the New Theology,
I have stated the basis in philosophy and theology on
which it rests its much-vaunted " Gospel of the secular
life." ^ This opens up too wide a field of discussion to
be compassed here. I shall traverse only such parts of
it as have a bearing upon my subject. No one who has
watched the tendencies of the more advanced thought

1 Canon Fremantle's Sermons (1883).

368 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

of the day can have failed to observe the comcidence
between the gradual narrowing and occasional disap-
pearance of the distinctions which mark off the natural
from the supernatural, and the like process in the dis-
tinctions which separate the secular from the sacred.
The two processes have gone on pari passu, and seem to
stand toward one another in the relation of cause and
effect. As we are told in the one case that the distinc-
tions have no ground in reason or in the world's real
order, so we are told in the other that they are not
warranted by the Hebrew or the Christian Scriptures
or by man's nature, and that no good end is served by
retaining them. It is argued that their disappearance
from our current thought and language would be
followed by certain happy results; e.g., spiritual pro-
cesses affecting the individual soul in its relations to
the higher life would assume a moral in place of a
magical character ; faith definitions would be so modi-
fied and enlarged, and theology generally so broadened,
as to take in the whole of human life and the whole
of the world's knowledge ; and thus the sympathies of
religious thought would be as wide and elastic as those
of literature, which, because it has been free to range
over both, has stimulated if it has not directed the
present revolt against modern theology. The argu-
ment is plausible, and the results to which it points
might follow in the way it describes, if the way itself
were possible without a radical change in the world
regarded as representing the natural and secular, and
in Christianity regarded as representing the supernatu-
ral and sacred. If the lines between the secular and

The Ministry and ''the Neiv ThtoJogy" 369

the sacred are to be treated as unreal, either the world
must be raised to the plane of Christianity, or Chris-
tianity must be depressed to the plane of the world. If
any thing be clear, it is the ground taken on this issue
by the Scriptures and by the moral intelligence of man.
Both by uniform implication and by explicit statement,
the Scriptures declare the world and the Church of
God to be moving on radically different planes of mo-
tive, and to represent radically different sets of forces ;
while men themselves, acting from instinct as well as
educated reason, have in all the Christian centuries
recognized this difference in their ordinary thinking
and in their ordinary language. When I speak of the
world in this connection, I mean the world as we see
it ; the world as it is, with its natural laws and pro-
cesses working in the family, the nation, society at
large, and in the necessary industries and callings of
men ; and the world in its wickedness, disorder, and
moral ruin.

Again : as part of the general plea for the further
obliteration of the lines between the sacred and secular,
it is said that the hitherto over-strained emphasis put
upon these lines has tended to fasten upon the com-
mon mind the notion that God reveals Himself, and
that His Spirit works, in ways helpful to man, only with-
in the limits and under the conditions of a formally
established covenant, of which the Scriptures, the Sac-
raments, the Priesthood, the Church, are the witness
and mouth-piece ; whereas, in fact, God reveals Him-
self, and His Spirit operates, with equal fulness and
power, outside any special covenant or dispensation, in

370 The Ministry and ''the New Theology."

the on-goings of all life and intelligence, in the affairs
of human society, and in all history ; guiding, helping,
blessing man, whether within or without covenants and
dispensations : in the one case, perhaps, by formal
promise, but in any event in the other by the law of
His infinite love, which embraces alike all being as the
atmosphere embraces the earth. If this be true now,
it has always been true ; and, if it has always been true,
it was true of the ages of the world more immediately
preceding the advent of Christ, in whom a radically
new order of intervention in the affairs of the world
was revealed. God was divinely, supernaturally pres-
ent and operative in those ages, no doubt, in the broad-
est sense ; but that presence, that operation, whatever
it was, so far from superseding the necessity of the
profounder presence, the mightier operation of God
through a covenant of His own making with man,
through an Incarnation in which very God became very
man, through a Church which was to publish that cove-
nant, and to diffuse the new life springing from that
Incarnation, — so far from the wider antecedent pres-
ence of God in all life taking the place of or dimin-
ishing the necessity for the latter, it was in reality the
preparation for it. The two modes of Divine operation
are not incompatible, but mutually complementary. In
virtue of the one, the world's order did not cease to
be what it had been, a secular order ; in virtue of the
other, a new order was introduced, which, because it
was not of the Avorld, but a gift, a force from without,
whose first actual contact with man and history was the
transcendent miracle of the ages, has been named, by

The Ministry and ''the Netv Theology" 371

a necessity of human thought and human language, the
sacred order, — the order of redemption by the Incar-
nation of the Son of God ; of sanctification by the Holy
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Ufe ; of sacramental as
well as vital union with God by the Son, through the
Spirit, in the Church ; and of Hfe eternal as the result
of all these. By the secular, then, we understand the
world with God in it as a governing Providence, imma-
nent in all its processes, but apart from the redeeming
Christ, apart from organized Christianity, apart from
the Divine Body constituted and ordained by Himself
to be His chosen instrument for making Himself known
unto men. By the sacred we understand, not merely
what is Divine and supernatural, — for these, as we have
seen, have entered, after a certain manner, into the
secular order, — but what relates to God's covenant with
man in Christ, of which covenant the Holy Scriptures
are the record, and the living Church is the witness,
and, because related to this covenant, intended before
all else to show forth the holiness of God as the crown
of His attributes, and to promote holiness in man as
the final fruit of his redemption. The secular may
exhibit God's power, justice, love, beneficence ; but
the sacred alone can exhibit God's holiness. Times,
places, things, ministries, lives, characters, are by God
Himself declared sacred, set apart, devoted, to the ex-
tent that they serve holy uses and holy ends. It is
not the orderly, or the beautiful, or the useful, or even
the right or the true, that transmutes the common into
the sacred, but the end and the use ultimate with God,
and by Him treated as the crown of perfection to all
being, — the holy.

372 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

The issue here raised by the New Theology is really
none other than the issue between nature and grace ;
an issue as old as Christianity itself, or rather as old as
the attempts of human reason to dovetail into its own
processes whatever in Christianity claims to be an im-
mediate and distinctive revelation from God. If we
go back to the early days of the theologies of the East
and the West, Alexandria and North Africa, we find
that the former was inclined to enlarge the idea of
inspiration so that it would apply to all, in every age
and every land, who had rendered important service to
the cause of truth ; while the latter was quite as decid-
edly inclined to limit the idea to those through whom
God had spoken in the order of grace. The two did
not antagonize. The East, in taking the broader view,
held, with the West, that God had spoken in the Holy
Scriptures as He had not elsewhere, in respect both to
the quality and the degree of the knowledge communi-
cated. The West, in insisting upon certain limitations
of the idea, held, with the East, that there was a sense
in which the Divine Spirit had wrought in the minds
of the leaders of the old humanity. Their differences
were reconciled in a higher unity. The attempt of the
New Theology to put the ancient East and the ancient
West at variance on this point is futile. Both were true
to a common tradition as to the fundamental distinction
between nature and grace : only the East, because of its
environments, went to the farthest verge of concession
to the demands of reason ; while the West, differently
situated as to external surroundings and as to intellectual
temperament, shaped its course more exclusively within

The Ministri/ and ''the New Theology." 373

the lines of o^race. Tendencies difficult of reconcilia-
tion then have continued so ever since. To-day we are
familiar with the school — nay, we are now dealing
with it — that finds it easy to so widen out the Divine
gift of inspiration as to include in the same category
with Christ, Plato and Socrates, Buddha and Zoroaster ;
while to the general feeling of Christians it is only less
than profanity to regard the so-called ethnic but really
pagan religions as proceeding from God. Christianity
itself is the only successful mediator between these
opposing camps. It cannot explain or defend its rai-
son d'etre without making room for and adjusting the
two economies, — the one, that of the Spirit proceed-
ing from the Father ; the other, that of the Spirit pro-
ceeding from the Father and the Son. In the order of
nature, God as the Father of all is immanent in all.
Whatever lives, lives in and through His life. Science
is at its highest and best when it presents nature to us
by demonstration and illustration as a living organism.
The old Greek thought proclaimed the idea without the
proof: the newest modern thought gives us both. Of
this organism, man himself being the crowning because
the conscious, rational part, God is the vital principle, the
all-governing and sustaining force. The Holy Ghost
as the Sphit of God is this principle, this force. The
Holy Ghost is in all spheres, all grades of life, the
Lord and Giver of life, as well to matter and intellect
as to spirit. If poets, philosophers, sages, great moral
teachers in any age, have spoken well and wisely of the
deep things of God and of humanity, they have spoken
as the Sphit of God has given them utterance. But

374 The Ministry and ''the New Theology."

this Eternal Spirit, this Lord and Giver of Hfe, has His
procession from the Son as well as from the Father : and
so He works after one sort in nature, and after another
in grace ; after one sort upon the old and fallen life of
the first Adam, after another upon the new and risen
life of the second Adam. The afflatus of the Spirit —
the inspiring, energizing impulse communicated to man
by Him on the plane of nature — within a world dead
in trespasses and sins, and not yet stirred by a throb
of redemptive power, differs from what He does in and
for man as the subject of that redemptive power, pre-
cisely as God the creator, the governor, and sustainer
of all, differs from God manifest in the flesh, — God in
Christ unveiling the hidden glory of His being, and
moving as redeemer and reconciler upon humanity in
its sin, alienation, and wretchedness. The life dis-
pensed by God in Christ is said to be the new life,
because it is the fruit of a new moral creation. The
source of this new creation is the Eternal Son of God,
in whom the two natures. Divine and human, were for-
ever united. And it was the miracle of Pentecost, that
He sent the Holy Ghost to communicate the new life
springing from this new creation, to a race spiritually
dead. The Christ, the author of the new creation, is
careful to tell us that in this work the Holy Ghost,
though the Lord and Giver of life, takes not of His
own, but of the things of Christ ; takes not what was
His before the incarnation, — the things of the Father
in the order of nature, the things made known to men,
breathed into them as a divine afflatus under that order,
— but the things of the new order of grace in Christ

The Ministri/ and ''the Neiv Theology.'' 375

Jesus. So original, so radically unlike any thing seen
before, was the work of the Spirit under the economy of
Christ, that the Word of God speaks of Him as a new
power, and men, when asked if they knew Him, were
constrained to say that they had not so much as heard
whether there were any Holy Ghost However, then,
the two economies, the sacred and the secular, may be
correlated or interfused or superimposed, they are dis-
tinct, and cannot be confounded without violence to the
nature of things, to the common thought and language
of mankind, and to the plain teaching of God's written
Word.

Again : this " gospel of the secular life " has another
chapter worthy of our notice. It tells us that the the-
ology it seeks to displace, the religion it aims to widen
out, has massed human life too much in a few ideal
conditions ; has balanced itself too much on successive
pivotal points, as sin, the Divine sovereignty, the atone-
ment, justification, sacramental grace. Church authority ;
and, as a consequence, has " touched human nature and
human interests generally as a sphere touches a plane,
— at one point only at a time," and so alongside their
breadth has put its own narrowness and angularity.
Thus Christianity has withdrawn into its own little
round of dogma and worship, and squandered both its
opportunity and its power to establish its supremacy
over science and art, literature and politics, and all the
recognized avocations of men. It were easy to show,
that, so far as this is true, it is true of modern religion
when rent by schism and organized into sects, thus
presenting itself of necessity in fragmentary forms, and

376 The Ministry and ''the New Theology:'

pressing upon life at only a few isolated points ; and,
further, it were easy to show that wherever and just in
proportion as modern religion has reverted to the prim-
itive Catholic basis, it has drawn to itself larger areas
of society, mingled with more varied interests, and de-
veloped a living sympathy with the labors and aspira-
tions of men in every department of their life. But I
pass on to the cure which this new gospel prescribes
for these failures of modern Christianity.

1. We are to present religion so as to antagonize
human nature at as few points as possible. To this end,
we are to eliminate as much as we can its mysterious,
and rely upon its moral aspects. The Cross of Christ
was an offence to the Jew, the Greek, the Roman, — the
three generic types of character to the end of time.
St. Paul, indeed, could devise no mode of preaching it
that would make it otherwise. But the world moves ;
humanity grows ; the Cross takes on new adaptations
and new meanings under fresher lights ; and because it
was once an offence, is no reason why it should not be
so taught now as to conciliate rather than repel the nat-
ural man. Acting on the same line, we are to bring the
Sacraments down to a purely moral and rational basis, by
showing how they fit into and serve certain moral and
rational uses in religious training ; and the Priesthood
we are to reduce to the same basis, by denying any grace
of orders or God-given authority for prescribed func-
tions, and finding in it just the amount of grace which
the goodness of the individual Priest wdll yield, just
the amount of authority which his character and attain-
ments entitle him to as a man among men. But this is

TJie Ministry and ''the New Theology" 377

not Christianity, except in the " Renaissance " concep-
tion of it.

2. We are to teach Christianity, not as a faith to be
believed, as well as a rule of life to be obeyed, the
belief and the life being only opposite sides of one and
the same principle ; but as a cluster of sympathies and
aspirations, with a life growing out of them, and con-
formed to them as its roots. But this, too, is not
Christianity.

3. We are to regard " the Church as a social state,
in which the spirit of Christ reigns ; " a social state
asserting itself as well without as within the recognized
field of the Church's energy, and into which state men
in every calling — scientists, men of letters, artists, poli-
ticians, soldiers, tradesmen, it matters not who — are
to be considered as having entered, and as properly be-
longing to it, who in their work or vocation exhibit the
spirit of Christ, i.e., as here defined, the spirit of self-
sacrifice ; and this, though they confess not Christ before
the world by receiving the one Baptism for the remission
of sins, and by submitting themselves to the discipline
of his Church. The Church may continue to teach, to
maintain public worship, to ordain a Priesthood, to
watch over souls in their sin and sorrow, to uplift the
Cross as the symbol of the one atoning sacrifice ; but
these, so far from being its foremost aims and functions,
must all give way to the idea of the Church "as a
social state," to be entered independently of Creed, Sac-
rament, or Ministry, and with no acknowledgment or
practice of worship as a fundamental duty. This, too,
is not Christianity, whatever else it may be.

378 The Minlstrij and ''the New Theology:'

4. But the above conception of the Church, as " a
social state permeated by the Christ-spu'it," is expanded
and intensified by an apphcation of the doctrine of the
universal Priesthood of believers, which affirms that
every man exercises a function or ministry of the
Church who carries into his calling or sphere of influ-
ence an unselfish motive, love toward his fellow-men, a
desire to be useful, honest, industrious, for the sake of
others as well as for his own sake, and to imitate Christ
generally so far as he can do it without obedience to
some of Christ's most explicit commands. In other
words, a man may take his place in the universal Priest-
hood of believers, and exercise a function or ministry of
the Church, though he has never recognized the Church
itself, but has always lived outside of and apart from it.
This, again, is not Christianity, however it may aff"ord
the New Theology a basis for its gospel of the secular
life.

The remedy is worse than the disease. Better that
Christianity should cover less of human life, and retain
its essential type, than that in the effort to cover, in this
nineteenth century, the whole of it, it should part with
so much of that type as to endanger what little might
be left. This is simply the last of the series of attempts
in history, to popularize religion by cheapening it ; to
convert pagans by dropping out what pagans dislike ; to
win over unbelief by watering the faith down to its
requirement ; to conquer the world by going down,
through big words about ethics and humanity and
science and eternal laws and human progress, to its own
plane. Doubtless it would be well if our Christian

The Ministry and ''the New Theology:' 379

teaching had more breadth ; but to have more breadth,
and to have it safely, it must first have more depth and
more height on the God-ward side. Sect-Christianity
may have presented religion as balanced on its own par-
ticular dogmatic pivot, and so as an inverted pyramid ;
but in this scheme we have the same process over
again, only the pyramid is inverted by a philosophical
idealism, under whose guidance the individual reason
strips Christianity of its organic constitution, its organic
force, its organic authority as the Kingdom of Christ,
and resolves it into the person of Christ, concerning
whose attributes it breeds the most radical diifcrences
of opinion ; or into the spirit of Christ, which every
man is free to interpret for himself: individualism, in
either case, being the small end of the pyramid, and the
chief point of contact between the Christian faith and
human life.

I come now to another deliverance of the New
Theology, — another of its conceptions of Christianity,
which is of vital moment to the office and work of the
Ministry ; a conception, not so much of sin, as of God's
mode of dealing with it, which cuts sheer through Cath-
olic tradition, especially as to the latter; empties our
Eucharistic Office in particular of a large share of its
meaning ; makes nonsense of much of the language that
the Church, following the use of Holy Scripture, puts
into our mouths ; and strips the Ministry of every linea-
ment of priestly function or prerogative. If I have
rightly interpreted the conception I am about to bring
to your notice, it makes it only additionally certain that
we are to be hindered, not helped, by this latest revision

380 The Ministry and ''the New Theology:'

of theology, in any attempts we may put forth to recu-
perate and advance our sacred vocation. This theology
is strong and explicit, but not complete in its view of
sin. It emphasizes the power, the anarchy, the misery,
the death-dealing property of sin ; describes it as aliena-
tion from God and from humanity ; as self-seeking and
self-isolation, variance from the moral constitution of
the world, rejection of the law of righteousness, defect
and defeat of personality ; as a universal taint and cor-
ruption of human nature, imposing upon that which is
free in itself bondage to that which is external to the
sphere of freedom. And yet, while so full in all these
particulars, it has the least to say of that aspect or
quality of sin, its guilt, on which the Word of God and
Catholic theology have most to say. There is, some-
how, a disposition to regard the will of man as only in
part responsible for its own corruption and enslavement,
— to plant, so to speak, one foot of human responsi-
bility in outward environments, leaving the other rather
weakly poised on the soul's self-determining power ; and
consequently, to lessen the enormity of the guilt of sin.
Certain it is that its handling of this feature of sin
causes it to appear as a much less dreadful thing than it
is made to be by the older theology. When I recall
how strong and full is its characterization of sin in all
other respects, I might suppose this to be my own infer-
ence, rather than the fact, but for its views of punish-
ment and penalty, — punishment being regarded as
emanating from the Divine Lawgiver, and as an expres-
sion of His wrath against the guilty in the form of
adequate suffering to meet the demands of justice ;

The Ministry and ''the New Theology." 381

while penalty is simply violated law, working out, in the
sphere of cause and effect, its own reprisals and re-
venges. Punishment as thus understood is treated as a
forensic, extra-mundane conception, growing out of the
old traditional idea of God's absolute authority as Sove-
reign of heaven and earth, and of a direct personal
rulership that intervenes in each case requiring judg-
ment and sentence. This conception is set aside entirely
in favor of another, which, in making God immanent in
the order of nature (an order that puts the will under
law, as well as every thing else), makes the operations
of nature the sufficient expressions of God's personal
feelings in their punitive office. " When a man breaks
a law of God, a sense of the wrath of God at once
asserts itself if the conscience is healthy ; if it is hard-
ened, it slumbers, but sooner or later it awakes. And
thus the wrath of God against sin is wrought into the
very automatism of the body and the mind. We do not
know that there is any other way in which God can lay
hold of a sinner to punish him. He is not limited in
Himself, but in the offender, who can be reached only
through law ; " because, I add, in keeping with this view,
his only relation to God is a relation of law, and if he
breaks law, his only punishment, or rather penalty, con-
sists in the fact that he is shut up with the violated law
and its inevitable effects.

But if man's only relation to God in the matter of
bis sin and its punishment be one of law, the same
must be true of his relation to God in the matter of his
sin and its pardon. If this be so, the whole scheme of
redemption must not only in its operation be under

382 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

law, but in its inception and introduction into the world
must have been the creature of law. But if this be
true, then it follows that the Incarnation, Atonement,
and Resurrection of Chi'ist, the pivots on which the
whole scheme swings, so far from having been miracu-
lous events through which God, in the exercise of His
untrammelled freedom and in the plenitude of His infi-
nite love, injected a new and supernatural force from
without into human life moving on in the framework of
natural law, were themselves only so many stadia in the
march of law, so many evolutions from an immutable
and universal order. Thus the doctrine of God's im-
manence in law turns out to be little better for human
thought and human uses than the old hard and fast
conception of law as the ultimate and unchangeable
term of all activity. Practically God is so blended with
law, in itself only a mode of His action, as to merge
His free personality in law ; the outcome of which is,
to the common sense of mankind, but a very slight
improvement on the notion of necessity, the law lifted
above the lawgiver. Thus, too, we have a theology,
which, starting with the largest conception of God's self-
determining personality, ends by leaving to that person-
ality no room outside the mechanism of law for the free
exercise upon the sinner of its providential power, either
in the form of wrath and punishment, or of mercy and
forgiveness ; and, still further, sweeping away the eter-
nal Judge and eternal judgment, by absorbing both in
the self-executed processes of law, and making no pro-
vision for judicial as well as natural penalties, on the
ground that Divine justice, when off"ended, needs no

The Ministry mid ''the New Theology:' 383

other vindication or satisfaction than the future good
behavior of the offender.

Still wider, however, is the departure of the New
from the Old Theology in its view of God's plan for
reclaiming to obedience and love our fallen race. In
avowing what it wishes to find in this plan, it forecasts
the results at which it arrives. It sets out with a pur-
pose ; and this purpose predetermines as well its logic
and its intuitive convictions, as its interpretation and
general use of the Holy Scriptures. It beghis by insist-
ing upon a redemption governed and shaped by the
laws of eternal morality, and therefore disencumbered of
all arrangements resting on a " mechanical legality," and,
as far as possible, of all mysteries that God only can
solve. It will have a moral atonement that violates no
human instinct of justice, that calls into play the known
laws and sentiments of human nature, " that saves men
by a process that reason can trace, imposing the least
burden upon faith," and securing oneness with the Christ
without troubling itself about dark problems concern-
ing the counsels and decrees of God, or the inherent
demands of eternal justice considered as the foremost
interest of the Divine government.

There is no doubt that all this falls in admirably with
the current of modern thought, and that, in the race for
popular favor, it is far outstripping the older view of the
atonement. But currents of thought are quite as sub-
ject to change as currents of air, and popular sympathy
really decides nothing in faith or morals. It is well,
then, to ascertain whether the result foreshadowed by
this liberal and comprehensive prospectus, and, indeed,

384 The Ministry and ''the New Theology^

already consummated and advertised from many pulpits
and by much of our religious literature, covers all the
facts ; and whether, as a consequence, the old Catholic
teaching on the one Sacrifice once and forever offered
for the sins of the world has been hopelessly breached.
The last word has by no means been spoken on this
subject. The man-ward side of it has had free course
of late ; the God-ward side must re-appear. Signs are
not wanting, in the higher circles of devout as well as
learned thought, of its renewed agitation. The New
Theology has cut up and thrust aside, as so much under-
brush, some of the x^lainest, and, both ethically and doc-
trinally considered, some of the most fundamental parts
of God's Word. It has put its own prejudiced gloss on
the moral intuitions of human nature which are involved
in the matter. It has not gone to the bottom of moral
evil in its relations to Divine justice, nor has it com-
passed the requirements of Divine justice in its dealings
with sin. It has undertaken to lift the Cross of Christ
out of " time relations," into the realm of universal and
eternal laws ; and in doing so has muddled the whole
subject with notions that break down or evaporate in
the attempt at intelligible formulation. It has put too
heavy a strain on what it calls the vindictive aspect of
God's government, as interpreted by the traditional
dogma of the atonement, and has relied too much upon
its clever satire in stigmatizing that dogma as the com-
mercial conception of redemption, — so much sin, and
so much blood to wash it out ; so much wrath of God
against sin, and so much sacrifice to conciliate Ilim.
And, finally, it fails to satisfy that darkest and perhaps

The Ministry and ''the New Theology" 385

deepest instinct of the soul, — contrition for wrong-doing,
remorse for crime, which cannot be made to believe, and
in earthly courts is not allowed to believe, that repent-
ance alone will put all things square, or that man alone,
by any thing he can do, can restore to theu* normal place
moral relations which he has breached and outraged.

Justice is as much an essential of God's goodness as
love. Indeed, God is perfect love only because lie is
perfect justice. Justice is only truth applied to rela-
tions of which a moral government must take cogni-
zance. It is the principle of order, as love is the
principle of beneficence, in the universe. Justice is
that attribute of God which gives each thing its due,
each thing its place and relations. It is at once the
constructive and conservative principle of the universe.
This new notion seems to suppose that the justice of
God came into play only as a correlative or consequence
of moral evil, and, therefore, that if man had not sinned
it had found no cause for its being, no sphere for its
operation. So far from this being true, the vindictive,
punitive function of justice toward moral evil presup-
poses a justice universal, eternal, and absolute, of which
this punitive function is only a time-phase developed by
the disobedience and transgression of our fallen nature.

The whole trend of this new, and, as it claims, more
rational theology of our day, throws into shadow this
side of God's being and moral administration. So far
from being new, it is as old as the oldest of the heresies
that have vexed the Church of God, as old as one of
the loosest and most speculative of the Greek schools
of Alexandria. It is trying now, as it tried then, to

386 The Ministry and ''the New Theology."

make Christianity easy and satisfactory to reason by
paring down its mysteries. It is trying now, moreover,
as it tried then, to make it easy to the conscience, by
thrusting aside God's justice in order to surrender the
whole field of moral obligation and moral guilt to God's
love.

For these reasons, I say, the great debate has not
ended ; and I believe it will yet be shown at the bar of
our modern Christian judgment, that the greatest theo-
logians of the past, in nearly all the branches of the
Catholic Church, understood as well as any of their
class to-day, all the elements, Divine and human, in-
volved in this doctrine, and particularly the inspired
handling of these elements by Prophets, Evangelists,
and Apostles ; and moreover, that, as with regard to
God's sovereignty and man's depravity, so with regard
to the atonement, St. Paul's utterances, so vivid, so
strong, so frequent, on these points, were not so warped
and colored by the corruption of Roman society, or by
the Roman sense of authority, or by Roman forms of
justice, as to make him an unfaithful or incompetent
vehicle of the mind of the Holy Ghost.

But I must not wander too far from the purpose that
led me to take up the subject in this connection. That
purpose will be served by a very brief outline of the
Atonement dogma as now presented by the new think-
ing, and of its effect on the office and work of the Priest-
hood. The dogma is given to us in the following
statements (redemption being considered synonymous
with atonement) : —

" The Christ redeemed the world by the manifestation

The Ministry and ''the New Theology" 387

and realization, in the life of humanity, of the coming
and life of the Spmt."

" The Christ redeemed the world by the realization
of a perfect life, in the fulfilment of perfect righteous-
ness, in oneness with humanity, and in the conquest of
all the forces by which humanity is alienated from God,
and men are alienated from each other."

" The redemption of the world in and through the
Christ was the manifestation of the will of God, the
manifestation of the love of God for the world, the mani-
festation of what is eternal in the being of God.

" The redemption of the Christ is wrought in his
oneness with humanity in and through the life of
humanity. Through the relation of the Christ with
humanity, the redemption of the world has its continu-
ous realization in the life of humanity. The law which
was fulfilled in the Christ is the law of the life of
humanity ; " or, in plainer phrase, Christ as the second
Adam, the head of the body, imparts to the whole hu-
man race, through the union of their nature with His,
a new principle of life ; so that in His death all die, in
His resurrection all are made alive. Thus we are told,
" The sacrifice of the soldier who dies in battle for the
nation is not the mere conformance to a law of historical
necessity, but in such suffering and sacrifice there is the
redemptive life of the world ; " ^ and this irrespective
of the soldier's knowledge of Christ, or faith in Christ,
or having in any way been united with Christ save as a
sharer of the human nature which Christ took upon

^ These quotations are from tJie chapter on the Atonement in Dr.
Mulfurd's Republic of God, " An Institute of Theology."

388 The Ministry and ''the New Theology:'

Himself: so that, wherever there is self-sacrifice, what-
ever the motive, — be it fame, patriotism, any thing that
takes a man out of himself, — there is the redemptive
life of Christ, the atonement of the Cross.

Now, we gather as plain inferences from these state-
ments, and they cover the whole teaching of the New
Theology on the subject, that, whatever the effect of the
sacrifice of Christ upon the relations between God and
man, it was limited to man. It was offered solely to
enable him to overcome sin, and to live a life acceptable
to God and beneficial to his fellow-men. In no sense
did Christ take upon Him our sins, except to show us
how to turn away from them, how to escape their bond-
age and misery. In no sense was Christ bruised for
our transgressions, except to teach us how to be rid of
them and of their consequences. In no sense did He
who was holy, harmless, and undefiled, die for us, the
just for the unjust, save to educate us to become holy,
harmless, undefiled, and just. He did not suffer for us
to release us from the suffering due to our sinful nature.
In no form or way, either as regards death, or punish-
ment, or pain, or any other consequence of moral guilt,
did He offer Himself to God as a substitute for man.
His death and sacrifice were in no sense a propitiation,
except to win the favor of man. They expiated noth-
ing, because there was no demand for expiation. They
reconciled no one but man, because there was no one
else needing to be reconciled. Christ died, not as a
satisfaction to Divine justice, because Divine justice has
all the satisfaction it requires by the establishment of
justice : all wrongs, all iniquities, all crimes, are con-

The Ministry and ''the Keiv Theology" 389

cloned and forgotten the moment they cease, and their
opposites take their place. Justice has no back scores,
no unpaid debts, that are not cancelled by resolving to
make no new score, to contract no new debt. There
is nothing needed to wipe out misconduct in the past,
except good conduct in the future.

I may not dwell upon the grave difficulties thrown in
the way of this conception of the atonement by God's
Word, whose authority ought to be supreme upon one
of the central, fundamental facts of revelation, — a fact
shading off on all sides into mystery ; a fact confessedly
undiscoverable by reason, and transcending all explana-
tions of reason. It is enough, perhaps, to say here
that this theory can hold on its course only by throw-
ing one side, as useless and unmeaning Hebraisms, or
Latinisms, or some other isms, certain Scriptures, on
the face of them as clearly the inspired utterances of
the Holy Ghost as any other parts of the revealed
Word. And I may add, not as an argument, but as a
fact, that this theory would demand a reconstruction of
much of the most frequently recurring language of our
Ritual, or a radical revolution in our ideas of its mean-
ing. But the chief point just now is the bearing of this
theory on the Christian Ministry, — a point of surpassing
interest to us while we listen to the persuasive calls of
the New Theology to abandon the stifling fens of old
traditions, and mount up to its breezy, bracing aii'S.

Now, whatever takes from or disintegrates a function
of the Sacred Office, does the same to the Office itself.
In this case, the function of the pulpit and the function
at the font are spared ; nay, the former is magnified,

390 The Ministry and ''the New Theology:'

while the latter, if touched, is not directly assailed. It
is the function at the altar that suffers most. The
Ministry (or I might say the Priesthood: but things, not
words; verities, powers, virtues, graces, not phrases, are
now in mind), — the Ministry and the Sacrament of
Christ's Body and Blood rejoice or suffer, live or die,
together ; for in this Sacrament the Ministry shows forth
unto men, after the institutional, incorporated method
of Christ's appointment, as it cannot do in the pulpit
or at the font or in the pastoral office, his perpetual
mediation between God and man, of which his Incar-
nation, Sacrifice, and Resurrection are the triple foun-
dation. This mediation has a twofold purpose, — the
reconciliation of God, and the reconciliation of man to
God; the former by the oblation and satisfaction made
to God by the death of Christ ; the latter by mani-
festing the love and mercy of God, and by conveying to
humanity, through Christ as incarnate God and as the
second Adam, a new principle of life. This twofold
purpose has its continuous and visible exhibition in the
Sacrament. In and through the Sacrament, the Minis-
try not only remind men of what Christ did and suffered
for them, and what he demands from them; but plead
before God the slain and offered Christ as the propitia-
tion for the sins of the world, as the eternal and all-
sufficient advocate with the Father of a race dead in
trespasses and in sin. This, briefly, is the, teaching of
Catholic theology, and of God's Word when allowed to
speak in its integrity. It runs through our Eucharistic
Office, and through our worship generally, as the life-
blood through the body. It is woven into them, thread

The Ministry and ''the New Theology" 391

by thread, as the nerves are woven into our flesh.
More than any thing else, it explains and justifies the
office and work of the Ministry as ordained of God for
the salvation of man. But here is a theory, new chiefly
in its terminology and in its literary form and philosophi-
cal basis, which cleaves asunder the twofold purpose of
the holy Sacrament and of the holy Priesthood, consign-
ing the one part to the rubbish of dead superstitions,
and leaving the other, as we believe, to go on its way as
a fractured and bleeding limb torn from the body of the
faith once delivered.

We cannot turn from this inquiry into the relations
of the Xew Theology to the Christian Ministry at the
close of this century, without cordial acknowledgment
of its service in recalling the attention of the various
Ministries of the inorganic Christianity of the time,
from the modern dogmas of schools and sects, and from
all theological litigations and controversies as the subject-
matter of preaching, to the preaching of the Christ in
the essential, all-pervading personality of his life, char-
acter, and work, beginning with the primal fact of the
Incarnation as the key to all the subsequent facts. In
this mould was cast the preaching of the Apostolic
Fathers and Saints of the undivided Church in the first
five centuries, — preaching that, for its power over the
hearts and minds of men, no after-period of the Church
has matched ; preaching that did its mighty work apart
from speculative philosophies of religion ; preaching
that has never died out from the memory or the use
of loyal and intelligent disciples of the Catholic faith ;
preaching that the Church has always made a necessity,

392 The Ministry and ''the New Theology"

not merely a preference, by her Sacred Year, with its
vivid; continuous, almost dramatic recital, in her ritual
for the people, and in her forms of the altar, of the
facts of our Lord's life.

The New Theology, however, has as yet only partially
done its work in this direction. It will have to enter
on a fresh stadium of its education, before it can do it
fully. It remains that it learn for itself, and that it
teach all who are inclined to follow its lead, that this
sort of preaching can take permanent hold, and become
a living power, only as it shall put at its back an order
of worship that rehearses day by day, in creed and
prayers and sacrament, the historic facts which it han-
dles.

Finally, then, it may be said in all soberness and
candor, that the really good fruit of the New Theology
is as old as the Church itself, and that all the rest must
be classed with the new philosophies of man and nature,
and the new phases of religious thought springing out
of them, containing much that is attractive, curious, and
profound, but whose ultimate uses and fortunes are yet
things of the future.

LECTURE XII.

CHARACTER.

Character is the highest expression of the whole
man. It organizes for practical influence the vital
forces of our personality. It gathers into itself, and
combines for present uses, together with all lower ele-
ments of thought, life, and temperament, whatever there
may be in us of knowledge, culture, will-power, expe-
rience, moral conviction, spiritual sympathy, devout aspi-
ration. Character is needed to work upon character.
As it is an effect of all influences that have wrought in
us, so it is the most powerful cause, under God, of all
changes to be wrought in others. And as it is the chief
end of the Ministry of reconciliation to lift individual
character more and more out of what is worst, and tow-
ard what is best, as God sees the worst and the best, so
the power of that ministry will depend upon the amount
of individual character baptized into its own spirit which
it can bring to bear upon its chief end.

In the foregoing lectures, I have discussed the con-
ditions which help or hinder the development of this
highest human force in the sphere of the Christian
Ministry : now I am to examine the force itself, and with
special reference to what is demanded of it in the closing

394 Character.

years of this century. The subject, however we may
regard it, cannot be too often in our thoughts and our
prayers. Time was, when this Ministry, and the type
of individual character intended always to be an inherent
part of it, were absolutely new to the world. Both were
among the gifts of Pentecost, and began with the first
Apostles. Anterior to these, mankind knew nothing of
a stewardship, an office with a character to match it,
devoted, as to its governing object, to a perpetual warfare
against human ignorance and human sin. It was one
of the great innovations of Christianity, to assign to a
permanent and definite place among the recognized pur-
suits of life a call and mission which set before a man
as his appointed work the teaching, comforting, warning,
elevating of human souls, by the communication of the
grace and truth and peace of Christ. We can imagine,
but, save in rarest instances, can scarcely hope to re-
produce in the fervor and energy of its first appearance
among men, the type of character spontaneously gener-
ated by this sublime vocation. What was once new is
now old ; what once appeared as a creative, original
force, has now an established and familiar place amid
our habits of thought and life. It might have been
expected that this force would improve with the lapse
of time. Its varied fortunes through the Christian
centuries have, indeed, vastly enriched its experience ;
but they have not raised it to a higher level. Use
and custom have dulled its finer edges. In taking on,
as was inevitable, a professional cast, and falling into
lines of activity running on parallel with those of the
ordinary pursuits of men, it dropped into routine and

Character. 395

commonplace, and through these into poverty and dete-
rioration of motive. Earnest purpose and commanding
service have not saved it from the lowered tone and
dulness of spirit which invade sooner or later all the
callings of real life : so that to-day we have to deal with
it, not only as a thing of noble uims and inspirations,
bearing on its face the traces of a heavenly origin, but
also as subject to the torpor and slackness that human
nature is sure to carry into its highest employments.

We have not to construct a new ideal of priestly
character, or to set up a fresh standard of priestly duty.
Both these are behind us. They began with the Chris-
tian Priesthood, and have lived on unchanged by the
changes among which it has done its work. Whatever*
the improvements, the innovations, or the special urgen-
cies of this generation, it has nothing to add to the
original ideal or the original standard. Both emanated
from the perfect Ministry of our perfect Lord, and both
are as perpetual as the Sacred Office which he instituted.
Mankind, when left to themselves, and even when under
the sway of Christian influence, modify, from age to age,
their ideal of moral character, however they may leave
unaltered the standard of right and wrong. But the
Christian Priesthood, because of its source, its authority,
its purpose, can essentially change neither. We have,
then, a fixed ideal and a fixed standard ; and these not
merely in the form of a written record or historic por-
traiture, but definitely and unchangeably embodied in
the Son of man, the Great Shepherd and Bishop of
souls. Thus the subject is lifted at once out of the realm
of a fluctuating moral taste, and equally out of that of
speculative imagination.

396 Character.

My next thought is, that, while character in the long
line of the Priesthood has shown wide variations, it has
never for any considerable time radically fallen away
from its primitive type. It has, so to speak, shifted its
centre of gravity, as the Church has shifted hers, amid
the vicissitudes of history. It has been active and con-
templative, aggressive and stationary, missionary and
pastoral, itinerant and parochial, educated and ignorant,
refined and .rude, energetic and lethargic, zealous and
indifferent, watchful and careless, self-denying and self-
indulgent, living in the light and life of the Master, and
living, too, under the broken and shadowed reflection of
both. And yet, whatever its variations or accretions, it
has never been without the image and superscription of
Him who gave it being.

Now, what we have to do with this character is to
disentangle it from these variations and accretions in
the past, and to study it afresh under the twofold light
of its own Divine ideal, and of its providential relations
to the present and to the near future. The light is two-
fold, because it is the light from Christ as the author
of the Ministry of reconciliation and of the character
bound up with it, — both given to the Church at a cer-
tain time and place; and because it is the light from
Christ as He works perpetually through the Church in
history, ordering thereby the needs and the duties of
His ordained deputies, as He orders the relations to
the world and humanity within which they must work.

The question, then, before us, is to ascertain, in view
of these relations, what aspects, what gifts, what graces,
of the priestly character, are now to be chiefly relied

Character. 397

upon to advance it to a higher level of power and in-
fluence. In this inquiry, philosophy, science, art, litera-
ture, society, the nation can help us only as they enter
into the relations under which this character is to per-
form its tasks. Before all else we must study the Divine
ideal after which it was patterned at the start, and in
virtue of which it is the property of no one age, but
equally of all ages, with an aim as universal as the re-
demption of man combining a faculty of adaptation as
varied as the needs of man.

To see how the character of the living Ministry, as
representing this ideal, should speak to this age, let us
place side by side some of the salient features of both.
Whatever we find in the ideal, we ought to find in some
degree, broken and diluted though it be, in the charac-
ter that represents and pleads for it before the world ;
and whatever we find in the age needing reconstruction
or amendment, describes the wants which that character,
with its cognate forces, was ordained of God to remedy.

I. First, then, this age is overweighted and blinded
by an excess of the time- and world-spirit. It clings to
the seen and earthly, as opposed to the unseen and
eternal. When it speaks of the spmtual, it commonly
means simply matter so refined as to elude the senses ;
and, when it speaks of endless duration, it means the
eternity of matter. Its thought and feeling, its moral
convictions are often treated as only sublimated forms
of matter, or as outgrowths from experiences whose
roots reach down into the material organism. It is so
doubtful whether or no there be a soul, that it prefers
to take the risk of losing it if it can be sure of gaining

398 Character.

the world that now is. Or, again, to put it in another
shape, it places nature above the supernatural, and
knows no real world outside the former. It inclines to
the belief that moral liberty, or man's self-determining
power, is a delusion, and that the only real guardian-
ship is to be found in immutable law. Naturalism is
its favorite touchstone of truth in religion, in morals,
and in all the processes of life. Its general attitude is
radically the reverse of that which Christianity declares
to be the only true one for man constituted as it repre-
sents him to be. Therefore, of necessity, it not only
narrows the domain of faith, but drops a blind at every
turn over the eye of faith ; and in this sense it may be
said to be a pre-eminently faithless age, doing its work
as best it can " without God and without hope." And
so it has come to pass, that the only really positive
service is that for humanity and the present world, and
the only uncertain and indefinite service is that for God
and the world to come. Practically the idea is largely
abandoned, of attempting to maintain any proportion
between the claims respectively of the two worlds;
because, in the common estimate, there is really but
one world. Such is the thought of the reigning philos-
ophy, and the moral temper of the multitude responds
to it. Its chill penetrates beyond its own lines, and is
felt in our average Christian life. Too many are there
among us, who, without any formal surrender of their
belief, or open departure from habits and associations
built up on their belief, have fallen away, under the
dominant influence of the time, from all vital trust in
the covenant promises of God as revealed in his Word

Character. 399

and witnessed to by his Church. Certainly intense
religious convictions, fenent experiences of the soul's
wants and of God's gifts, a profound sense of things
invisible and eternal, are not among the marked char-
acteristics of our prevailing Christianity.

Now, there is wanted in the character of our Chris-
tian leaders and pastors more of that quality which
shall be to this aspect of the times what water is to
the thirsty ground, or flame to the frost, — even faith,
the new sense, the second-sight of the soul, that gives
us the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen ; not without relations to reason and
conscience, but really an intuitive perception which
habitually pierces the veil of sense, and rests on the
Invisible and Eternal Personal God. The word is often
enough on the popular tongue. Men have much to
say of faith in the future, faith in their destiny, faith
in progress, faith in humanity, meaning thereby little
more than faith in themselves ; but that is quite an-
other faith which is wrought in us by the Holy Spirit,
and joins us to Christ the living Head. The one is
only a vague and dreamy grasp on things hoped for
from an earthly stand-point, with no thought of sacrifice
for things the other side the veil ; the other kindles
into activity the inmost energies of the soul, and puts
them at the service, not only of the fortunes of our
race on this planet, but of the destiny of its individual
members in the eternal world. This faith is in itself
the highest form of power, because it makes us sharers
of God's power in the discipline and development of
humanity. It was by this power that the men of old

400 Character.

" subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out
of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens." ^ This was
the power that upheaved the fabrics of Judaistic race-
selfishness and of Greek and Koman paganism, and on
their ruins built the foundations of Christianity. This
was the power that evolved from the barbaric anarchy of
the after-ages the characteristic elements of our modern
life. This was the power that fought the great fight of
the Reformation, reviving in some measure the Gospel's
original impulse and the Church's primitive order. This
was the power, that, working in the great Plantagenet
kings and statesmen, made England what it has been
as a bulwark of authority, order, and liberty. This
was the power, too, that planted and nourished, with
toil and tears and death, the beginnings of our American
life. Indeed, apart from it, there has been no beneficent
greatness of any sort in the past eighteen hundred years.
Now, the world-spirit, whether in the form of scep-
ticism, or mammon-worship, or light-hearted pleasure,
takes it for granted, in all its estimates of the Christian
religion, that there has been a loss of this power in the
Christian body generally, and eminently in the Chris-
tian Ministry, and a corresponding loss in the influence
of both. Says a brilliant anti-Christian writer, " We
laugh at the scholastic nonsense of Irenaeus, and are
disgusted at the unseemly violence of Tertullian; but
these men were ready to die for their beliefs, and we
1 Heb. xi. 33, 34.

Character. 401

are not " — as well we the priests of infidelity, as you
the priests of Christianity. This assumption would not
be put forth in this matter-of-course way, were it alto-
gether groundless ; and the only way to meet it, and the
diminished respect for our order that it implies, is to
prove that the old power still lives, that " all things
are " still " possible to him that believeth," that faith in
God and in the supernatural agencies of His Kingdom
is still the greatest of forces that can move the human
soul, and that the sense of the Unseen and Eternal can
still fire our energies with irresistible enthusiasm for
truth and righteousness. And I may add, this side of
Christian character in general, and especially of Minis-
terial character, demands a fresh stimulus, not only
because of the vagueness and lassitude that have crept
over our Christian motive-power, but also because of
the evils that threaten our Christian civilization. We
are on the verge of grave changes in the industrial,
monetary, and social order of modern life. The revo-
lutions at the beginning of this century related chiefly
to the structure of civil government, the extension of
civil rights. How these loosened the bands of order,
and stirred the passions of men, we need no one to re-
mind us ; and we as little need any prophet to tell us
how the revolutionary movements at its close Avill be
kindled into frenzy by questions of wages and property
and social rights. To surmount these coming perils
with safety and honor, will task, as they have scarcely
ever been tasked before, the devotion, the unselfishness,
and courage of both Church and State. And it belongs
to us of the Christian Ministry to decide whether the

402 Character.

productive cause of the highest moral force shall be
there, and equal to the emergency.

I have not dwelt on the need of a stronger and
clearer faith, to enable us to work on hopefully and
earnestly in the use of means in the Church that have
no obvious or traceable relation to their ends, and to
meet the kindred trial arising from the long delay often
interposed between the planting and the harvest. This
falls so obviously within the ordinary range of our dis-
cipline, that it can best be left there without comment.

How, then, is clerical character to re-enforce itself
with this commanding power of faith demanded so
imperatively by the tendency of taese times ? I reply,
By a closer and more devout study of its own Divine
ideal, the character of the Son of man. To Him alone
can we go for the light, the life, the energy, the grasp
on the unseen and eternal, and with them the intre-
pidity, patience, humility, and fervor, required by the
environments of the Sacred Office. He only perfectly
combined the work of time and human life with that
which is beyond sight and time ; dwelling on earth, yet
never for a moment divided from heaven ; in perpetual
and most intimate communion with God, and yet en-
grossed in the rude, hard work and sufferings by which
He set up among men the Father's Kingdom ; pressed
by the labor and care, the details and calls, of the busiest
Ministry, and yet eternity, like a luminous background,
looming up behind all that He says and does ; " living
a life of unwearied service, and yet a life of absolute
heavenly-mindedness ; habitually devoted to his brethren,
yet always one with the thought and will of God ; "

Character. 403

with a faith so perfectly balanced, so transcendently
clear, that it recognized all in the world that could claim
a human interest, and yet that ranged on unfettered
wings over the ages, and beheld issues in eternity as
already realized in time. It is not in us to mount to
such a height; but it is allowed us to breathe its at-
mosphere, to feed on its inspiration, and so to grow
toward it.

II. Again : it is now apparently more than ever the
besetting temptation of mankind, to take false views of
what alone is real and great in life ; to reverse the pro-
portion that God has estabUshed among the objects of
human pursuit ; to mistake shadow for substance, dreams
and visions for facts, and things that are to pass away
for things that are to endure. Thus the souls of men
are given over to cheats and delusions respecting what
it most concerns them to see and know as it is ; and at
critical moments in the lives of individuals and peoples, a
cry, as of pathetic despak, fills the air. Who will show
us any good^ Who will lead us to the rock that is
stronger than we ? This, it is often claimed, is, more
than any other that has gone before it, a truth-loving,
truth-speaking age ; an age bent upon getting at facts,
and averse to all shams ; an age passionately devoted
to criticism and investigation, with a view to making
an end of prejudices and superstitions and false idols
of every name. No one will dispute this claim when it
is confined to things that fall in with the dominant
impulses and favorite ends of the age ; that flatter its
pride of achievement, minister to the exaltation of intel-
lect, promote riches and power, pleasure and glory,

404 Character.

and generally help on man's control over the world
that now is. On the other hand, this claim has to be
seriously discounted when the age is confronted by the
highest ends of life, and the discipline of belief, motive,
and self-restraint needful for the attainment of these
ends. Start the old problems of duty ; apply the old
tests of obedience to an authority not of its own crea-
tion, and of a righteousness transcending its own stand-
ards ; challenge its ownership of the world ; scale the
relative importance of the objects of human pursuit con-
trary to its tastes ; invade its lust of the flesh and lust of
the eyes; curb its pride of life; smite the idols of its
ambition; let in upon its gathered treasures and its
haunts of revelry the warning from an unseen world of a
judgment to come, — try this, and see how it will crowd
into the forum of the great debate, special pleadings,
sophistries, equivocations, false apologies. On all this
side of its life, so far from being better, it is really
worse, than its predecessors ; and it is only a silly
optimism that would speak of it as truth-loving and
truth-speaking. So far from being inclined to either,
it loves darkness rather than light on most subjects on
which God has revealed His mind to man. The intel-
lect of the day puts forth special pretensions to candor
and breadth in its opposition to the dogmatic statements
of the essential truths of Christianity. It gives many
reasons for this opposition ; but, when sifted, these rea-
sons point to another deeper than themselves. The
statements are disliked, not because they are dogmatic,
but because of the truths they embody. It is idle to
arraign them as involving the " stagnation of thought,"

Character. 405

or " the imprisonment of thought," or " the paralysis of
thought." The real grievance is, that they demand a
submission of thought which much of the intellect of
the time will not yield ; and yet the submission is the
same in degree with that demanded by all other ascer-
tained truth. The trouble is, the submission is different
in kind, involving, as it does, the will as well as the
intelligence.

But this reference to the bearing of the age toward
Christian dogma is only by way of illustrating its gen-
eral estimate of the contents and aims of life so far as
they are affected by the inherent truth of things, and
especially of the highest things. As we have seen how
in this relation it comes behind, and in what it fails, so
we see what, in the same relation, the character of the
Clergy must be expected to supply. They are ministers
of God only as they are ministers of truth, and they are
ministers of truth only as they are witnesses and exam-
ples of truth, and they are these only as they are ready
to be so at any risk, at any cost, even though they be
driven to the desert and the caves of the mountains, or
to the sackcloth and ashes of personal abasement, or to
the locusts and wild honey of personal denial. They
must be simply, severely true in the search for truth, in
the proclamation of truth, in the guardianship of truth,
and in the application of truth to themselves and to
others ; and this as opposed to all the hidden dishon-
esties of conviction, and hypocrisies of profession, and
adulterations of motive, which mankind are quick to
condone because so few are in a position to cast the
first stone. They are to be simply and severely true as

406 Character.

reflecting the unspeakable seriousness and earnestness of
the Gospel's view of life, and as exhibiting a mind and
spirit, a zeal and energy, proportionate to the gravity
and nobleness of the vocation to which they have been
set apart. Facing every thing, whether it be error, or
vice, or wretchedness, or the misleading pomps of the
world, without disguise or mistake, and planting them-
selves on unshrinking, unexaggerated truth, they are
to be simply and severely true to their message as the
Prophets and Priests of the Great Master of truth and
reality. They are to be as straightforward, thorough,
and complete, as are the facts of life. Upon riches,
business, learning, art, it matters not what, they are to
impose the serious and high view of conduct, never the
low and self-indulgent one. Let what will happen,
they are to hold up, in its inexorable claims, the noblest
ends of human action ; to drive home to the inmost soul
of this generation the truth that the greatest power, the
greatest knowledge, the greatest liberty, is the greatest
trust. They are to stand for the duties of men, in an
age which thinks chiefly of the rights of men. They
are to stand for authority, in an age bent upon having
its own way, and b^ing a law to itself. They are to
stand for the unseen and eternal world, for its warn-
ings, its mysteries, its imperishable realities, at a time
when men are turning itching ears to the new " gospel
of the secular life." They are to stand for fonts and
altars and pulpits and sanctuaries, and all that concerns
the worship of the Triune God, when the world is drift-
ing off into the worship of itself, finding the only god
it cares to know in its own mechanisms of matter and

Character. 407

force. Finally, they are to stand for the salvation of
humanity through Jesus Christ, in an age when hu-
manity is coming to believe more and more that it can
save itself

Here, too, our strength and sufficiency are of Christ,
the everlasting Son of God, the sovereign ideal of the
Ministry whereunto we are called. He saw, as they are,
all being and life. He knew, as it really is, what is
in man and nature. Past, present, and future were to
Him all one. To Him, the farthest ends, the remotest
destinies, were as things already consummated. The
plummet thrown by His hand went to the bottom ; the
measuring-rod he used scaled with absolute accuracy the
motives, the ends, the callings of men. In manifesting
the eternal life, He entered into, and held at its true
worth, this time-life, which was to be taken up into His
own life. Before His eye, the shows of things dissolved
as vapor before the sun, and their underlying reality,
their essential truth, came forth as the earth from the
darkness at the dawn of day. AVith such insight into
all, with such mastery over all, nothing in His character
or conduct, perhaps, so profoundly impresses us as the
matter-of-course way in which He treats as valueless
to Himself precisely those things which most stir the
desires and ambitions of mankind. As the Master of
truth, he seems to say to us that He cannot deal truth-
fully with human life without a radical reversal of its
aims and methods, making that to be greatest which
men hold to be least, and that to be least which men
hold to be greatest ; and this with regard to their rights
and duties, their callings and capabilities, their hopes

408 Character.

and ambitions, their successes and failures. When they
talk of the world, and of what it owes them or of what
they owe to it, He tells them, in words that seem vague
because they mean so much, about the treasure in heaven,
the single eye, the pearl of great price, the taking of
the kingdom of heaven by force, the impossibility of
giving any thing in exchange for the soul ; and in tell-
ing them so, He is only setting forth the reality, the
truth of things, and with this truth, the other truth,
the other reality, involved in the proportion in which
God has placed things, one as above or below another,
and in which human zeal and energy are to be expended
upon them. It is because of man's obstinate and fatal
neglect of what he says in this direction, that, as with
a cry of pain, the words are wrung from him, " Many
are called, but few are chosen ; " " Strait is the gate, and
narrow the way, and few there be that find it ; " " How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom
of God ! " It is this knowledge of human nature, this
view of its false leanings and its one-sided judgments,
that determine Christ's preference, and, if we be His,
our preference, for the hard lot and the bitter side of
life, for mourning, for poverty, for persecution, for the
blessing on those of whom men speak ill. The Master
was only simply, severely true, when He poured these
sharp words into the world's ear. It is well that we
should often hear them as we go on in our work of
building our own characters and the characters of those
to whom we minister. They stand for the price, that
in some shape, in some degree, sooner or later, each of
us must pay for all true and high living, for all attempts

Character. 409

at any thing above the dead level of custom, and in
accord with a truly Christian standard. " The higher
ends of life — higher because truer and more real —
may be the object of fervent effort where the eye of the
looker-on rests upon what seems too busy, too exalted,
or too humble to be the scene of the greatest of
earthly endeavors, the inward discipline of the soul.
And yet, masked behind the turmoil of outward life or
the busy silence of study, this discipline can and should
go on, with its bitter surrenders of will, its keen self-
control, its brave welcomings of trial, stern and high in
its choice, stern in its view of the world, stern in its
judgment of itself, stern in its humility ; and all this
while nothing is seen but the performance of the common
round of duty, nothing is shown but the playfulness
which seems to sport with life."

Se sub sercuis vultibus
Austera virtus occulit,
Timens videri, ne suum
Dum prodit, araittat decus.

III. We have now so far considered certain features
of life at the close of this century, as to show why and
in what ways the priestly character of the day needs
more of the faith which habitually discerns the unseen
Father of all in the on-goings and activities of the pres-
ent, and more of the truth-sense, the truth-power, which
pierces down to the reality of things, seeing them as
they are, not as they seem ; which adjusts conduct to the
pursuits and ends of life according to their ])roportiou-
ate value, and distinguishes, with a view to its practical

410 Character.

influence on the internal discipline of the soul, between
the solid and the vain, the essential and the accidental,
the permanent and the fleeting, in the processes of the
world and of human life.

We have now to notice a characteristic of the time,
and a corresponding need in the character of the Min-
istry, of even wider and deeper reach. And certainly
much that I shall say under this head would seem but
an ideal dream, had not the Son of God gone before,
and made attainable what otherwise had been impossi-
ble. I am to speak of that quality in the Ministry
which God himself has declared to be more than any
other the embodiment of His own being, and in our
Lord and Christ the very power of salvation, — love.
Love perfected, love in the final reach and use of its
energy as a motive working on the will, may be a simple
affection possessed of an absolute oneness of character
and power ; but here it will be treated in its manifold
relation to other spiritual gifts, as the living root of
other virtues, and especially as it circulates, as an ele-
ment of warmth and vigor and attraction, through all
the higher moral forces of our nature when created
anew in Christ Jesus. When, therefore, we speak of it
as thus regarded, we mean not only itself bounded by
the limitations of the word that names it, but also the
graces that it includes, and from which it never stands
apart, — as sympathy, tenderness, pity, brotherly kind-
ness, long-suffering, humility, self-sacrifice, joy in good-
ness, hatred of evil ; qualities of the supernatural life,
because taken out of nature, and enlarged, purified,
transfigured by the Divine life of the Son of God. Let

Character. 411

it, then, be understood that the field of thought opened
to us in discoursing on this theme is as wide as that
described by love and the affiliated virtues that it
nourishes.

All sin may be resolved into selfishness ; and, as the
world is always full of the one, so it is always full of
the other. Any thing so continuous and universal
might be left without comment or special illustration.
Each generation, however, develops it under fresh lights,
and discloses it from new angles of observation ; and
surely this one is no exception. Some might charge
me with being narrow and unfair, insensible even to
the so-called great law of evolution by which man is
said to be advancing to a wider and nobler life, were I
to say, that, in changing somewhat the tone of its moral
life, shifting a little its acknowledged centres of thought
and aspiration, this generation had only altered the
forms without lessening the intensity of the selfislniess
common to human nature in all ages. And yet just
this is what I affirm ; and I do so in spite of all the
philosophy, poetry, and eloquence affirming the con-
trary. These will be prompt to remind us of the mani-
fold betterments of man's condition worked out by this
century, of the vast sweep of the orbit along which he
has travelled away from a thousand dark and bad
things in the past, and of the great projects of reform
and amelioration which are to render illustrious in his-
tory the closing decades of this century. We shall be
told of the quickened sympathies between remote peo-
ples, of the active philanthropy that never rests from
its errands of help and mercy, of the thrill of pity sent

412 Character.

through the common heart of the would by calamity
and misfortune in any, the obscurest part of it. No
one, surely, with a spark of manliness or Christianity
in him, would rob this aspect of our modern life of a
single ray of the glory thus shed upon it ; but, on the
other hand, no one who means to take in all the facts
of our time, and to judge it by all the facts, will allow
himself to concede to these manifestations more than
they deserve. Let our judgment be charitable, sym-
pathetic ; but let it also be true and just. There is
more in the present estate of mankind to rejoice us
than ever before, and there is also more to sadden and
alarm us ; so much, indeed, of the latter, as to oblige
us, with the whole subject in view, to regard the boasted
humanities and tendernesses and ameliorations of the
time as little more than surface-eddies playing over
the vast throbbing sea of human selfishness. Looking
down into the black, abysmal depths of this sea, and
at the stupendous wreckage of rights, duties, hopes,
labors, fortunes, sinking into or floating over them, we
might well conclude, that, aside from the work done
and doing by the Church of God, the much-vaunted
progress of the recent ages had only clothed the selfish-
ness of man in more polished armor, and put into its
hands more death-dealing weapons. I may not even
glance at the problems crowding upon us for settlement,
which are the certain outgrowths from this principle as
it works in individuals, classes, communities, nations ;
problems of vice and crime, of poverty and wretched-
ness, of contention and anarchy, which cast the dark
portents of coming convulsions and revolutions over

Character. -ilS

the closing years of the century. That is a stormy and
threatening array of enemies to its peace and order,
which our civilization, in the day of its greatest pomp
and pretension, has raised along the highway over which
lies its future journey. No civilization of the past has
seen one more formidable. Who wonders, that, beneath
its garlands and trophies, the tears of remorse are some-
times on its cheeks, and a cry of agony often on its lips?
Since the Rome of the Caesars, some fifteen centuries
have counted themselves off. There is far less now
than then of coarse cruelty and heartless brutality,
less of beastly sensuality, less of chains and dungeons,
of swords and axes, at the command of irresponsible
tyrants ; but is there less of the moral causes that
always sooner or later create these things, — less of the
greed of riches, luxury, pleasure, less idolatry of wealth
and empire, less covetousness, less pride and self-asser-
tion, less of the disposition in man to be his own centre,
his own ideal, his own end, his own God? Who will
affirm it? And yet these are the chosen progeny of
selfishness, that, wherever they have borne sway, have
raised to the lips of nations the cup that has first ine-
briated, and then poisoned them unto death.

But, still further, the intellect as well as the heart of
the time, so far as it is true to its own instinct, is selfish,
— profoundly, noisily, proudly selfish. I speak of it as
a rule. No one will need to be told of the exceptions.
There are enough of them to keep up the spirit of
protest and rebuke ; enough to scatter over our cult-
ure the salt of an opposing principle, and so to save it
from the doom of the older cultures of pagan life.

414 Character.

Somehow our much-praised systems of education have
trained a vast amount of intellect that works for hire,
putting not only its gifts, but its opinions, its conscience,
in the market ; a vast amount that works for applause
and rej)utation, with no moral end ahead ; a vast amount
that unites the offices of the cynic and the sophist,
coldly, remorselessly critical and destructive, rejoiced
rather than alarmed at the ruin it works in the souls of
plain people or beneath the shadow of God's altars ; a
vast amount more, that, with a lifelong stare at the face
of nature and of man, sees nothing so great as itself.
Now, this, like every kindred evil, can be overcome only
by good. It will yield only to the expulsive power of a
motive stronger than itself; and the only motive that has
this power is the love that had its perfect revelation and
example in Christ Jesus, the High-Priest of humanity,
and the Author of the Priesthood committed to us. It
was not in man to discover this motive : it was God's
gift to man. It came to him with the gift of eternal
life. Love completing itself in sacrifice is life eternal ;
and Christ is the Saviour of man, because, as the perfect
manifestation of this love, He was also the perfect man-
ifestation of life eternal : and this life is in us only as
love, which is its animating soul, is in us. Love fulfill-
ing itself in the sacrifice of self was made, through the
incarnation and death of the Son of God, the redemptive
force of the world ; and no man is a complete sharer
of His Priesthood, except as in character and work, as
well as in office, he is a vehicle to others of this redemp-
tive force, this power of deliverance from the bondage
of selfishness, and of the sins which are its offspring.

Character. 415

As Christ loved us, and gave Himself for us, so we are
to love all for whom He died, and to give ourselves for
them ; and, in doing so, to supplant in them in Christ's
name, and through the operation of the Spirit, the
fallen life of nature with the risen life of a new creature.

It may be said, This motive may be admirable and
beneficent, but where is the evidence of the power
claimed for it ? It has had nearly two thousand years
of conflict with its antagonist ; and yet, by your own
showing, that antagonist is as prolific of evil as ever.
We reply : It has conquered enough hearts to show that
it can conquer all hearts ; and that it has not done so,
belongs to the double mystery of man's free will and
God's patience. One thing is sure : if this mind, this
love that was in Christ Jesus, be not the cure for the
world's selfishness and for all that springs out of it,
the universe has none, and the race is thrown back
upon the eternal dualism of good and evil. God has
brought to bear the supreme motive, the sovereign
energy of his own moral being ; and there is nothing
behind it. That is a mighty army of the redeemed
already camped in the heavenly places, but it is only
the vanguard of the host that is to follow. The genera-
tions drop off like leaves shaken from the tree of life.
The world grows old. The race stumbles and staggers
on its course. But this force of God, this living energy
of a Divine deliverance, this power of victory over evil,
works on in the undecaying freshness of its morning
hour ; and it is the strength and glory of the Christian
Priesthood, that it is the consecrated witness to this fact.

Now, if such be the selfishness, and consequently the

416 Character.

sin and sorrow, of these days, and if this be our line
of battle against it, this the sign under which we are
to conquer, what an appeal is there in these facts to
us to make the most of this Divine force in the disci-
pline and development of the character of the Ministry !
This love, reaching out until it consummates itself, not
merely in pity, or in patience, or in kindness, or in
resignation and humility, bat in all the countless forms
of self-sacrifice, may and ought to utter itself in teach-
ing, in sacramental functions, in pastoral duties, in
private studies, in inward discipline, in spiritual contem-
plation ; and yet beyond these there is a nobler and
mightier channel of its power, even character, or life
organized in all its faculties for the service and guidance
of humanity. This, and not words, or professions, or
badges and liveries of office, is what the practical in-
stinct of our time demands. The more strongly to com-
mend this love as the formative energy and crowning
glory of priestly character, I need not recall the exalted,
rapturous language in which it has been preached and
sung by the various schools of piety and devotion that
have adorned and blessed the Church in bygone ages,
— schools represented by Sts. Chrysostom and Bernard,
by a Kempis and Savonarola, by Pascal and Fenelon,
by Tauler and Spener, by Jeremy Taylor and Ken, by
Henry Martyn and Keble. It is enough that we fall
back upon the sober, serene, measured words of Evan-
gelists and Apostles, on whom was stamped the first
impression of the life and character of the Son of man ;
nay, upon the yet simpler words of our Lord Himself,
explained and certified as they were by His own exam-

Character 417

pie. Since He dealt with this principle, there has been
no room for conjecture or speculation concerning it.
He was new and without parallel in that He planted
it as a living heart at the centre of all life. With Him
all truth, duty, worship, sympathy, service, ended in
love, — love inexhaustible and infinitely varied in Jts
application. In Him the whole nature of man — spirit,
conscience, will, intellect, feeling — was fused into this
one commanding force, and as such poured itself forth
along all the avenues of practical goodness. At one
time this "power of salvation" showed itself in con-
descension, compassion, consolation ; at another, in
healing the sick, casting out devils, forgiving sins,
cleansing souls ; at another, in preaching the Gospel to
the poor, in binding up the broken-hearted, in setting
at liberty them that are bruised, in giving rest to the
heavj-laden; and, at last, in the absolute sacrifice of
self on the Cross. It is only as we rise to the level
of this conception of Christ, that the Sermon on the
Mount becomes to us what it really is : " not a code of
precepts, but the expression of a character ; not a chap-
ter of law, but the living interpretation of the Divine
power which had come with Christ to regenerate the
world." Oh, how deep, how real, how free, how uni-
versal is this power! How filled with the fulness of
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ! How sublime the Min-
istry commissioned to proclaim and exemplify it ! How
impossible that a Ministry faithful to this trust should
in this or any other century be less than the foremost
function among men in dignity and influence !

IV. Finally, the Priest's lips must keep knowledge.

418 Character.

In the character demanded of him in these days, he
must, to faith, truthfuhiess, and love, as they have been
portrayed, add the light that is born of the power to
think and to know. This comes last in the order of our
thought, not because it is the chief thing, but because
it i^ the essential condition of highest power in those
transcendent elements of character. To show what the
Priest ought to know and how he ought to think, or
to set forth generally the intellectual status at which he
should aim in order to lift his character, as a deputy of
Christ, to the required level in these last years of the
most remarkable of the ages, I need not catalogue the
departments of knowledge, or repeat the commonplaces
about the vigor and versatility of our nineteenth-century
intelligence. It will suffice to mark its animus, and out-
line its main currents. The human mind as a whole
is, more than ever before, conscious of its powers, and
eager to use them. It is active, bold, and hopeful ;
asking questions, pushing conclusions, examining foun-
dations, interpreting facts : doing all this in various
tempers and with various motives ; sometimes in honesty
and good-will, too often of envy and strife and wanton
mischief. Men's eyes are opening wider and wider on
the hitherto unknown works of God, and their ears are
more and more turned to catch fully and truly the voice
that is heard through all nature, and their hands are
grasping new and strange forces. Society itself is being
analyzed and sifted and catechised, to ascertain what in
its organism is divine and perpetual, and what is human
and subject to change ; what in it helps and what hin-
ders the well-being of its members ; what are the rela-

Character. 419

tions of classes and interests and vocations, and what
are the rights and duties growing out of them ; what
are the sources of pauperism and crime and misery,
and what the sources of prosperity, order, and happi-
ness. These are old questions, and men have handled
them in one way and another for ages ; but they have
never turned them up to the light or grappled with
them in such resolute, passionate earnestness as now.
In civil government there is less of serious agitation,
less of deep thoughtfulness, less fervor and restlessness,
only because men, in grounding the political fabric on
the democratic idea, can push the distribution of power
no farther. The central subject, however, to-day, as
always in periods of change and movement and mental
activity, is man's relations to God, — religion. This is
the real pivot of the intellectual conflicts of the time. It
involves what is deepest and highest, what is most hope-
ful, fearful, pathetic in life. The mind of this genera-
tion cannot dismiss it, cannot stand aloof from it. Now,
as ever, every battle with evil, every feeling of remorse,
every sagging of the will and conscience away from the
liberty and truth which are tlieii* heritage, every freshly
opened grave, every glance into the face of the sphinx-
like future, — these, and a thousand other nameless
things, compel men, however irreligious, to think of
religion, and to make all their knowledge subsidiary to
the solution of its problems.

Now, standing abreast of all this, and obliged to deal
with it, the ordained witness to God's greatest gift, the
Minister of unseen and eternal realities, must not only
remember who he is and for what he was sent, but

420 Character.

must be man enough, intellectually as well as morally,
to compel others to remember it. Believing himself,
he must know how to meet and enter into the thoughts
of men who can not or will not believe. Progress, ac-
tivity, energy of every sort, change, liberty, are around
and upon him. He cannot but be swayed by them ; and
he ought to know how to make room for them in his
own thought and teaching, while he keeps and guards
the faith which cannot change. The Priest of God is a
debtor, not only to Christ, who made him what he is,
but also to the time in which he lives, because it is at
once the theatre and the environment of his sacred
function. He owes it as well to his age and his country,
as to the Church of all ages and all countries, to be not
only a pains-taking and hard-working, but a learned.
Priest. He owes it to the ignorant, the restless, the
disquieted. He owes it to the doubt as well as the
belief of the day. He owes it to the young, who look to
him for guidance into the ways of truth and righteous-
ness ; to the mature, who, out on the unsteady sea of
inquiry and trial, strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of
the light that shall lead them to the Father's house ; to
the old, who are folding their tents for the march into
eternity ; and finally, and more than all, he owes it to
the Cross of the Son of God, which claims the right to
be enthroned on the heights of human intelligence.

I have nothing to urge as to the variety or compre-
hensiveness of this learning. He is not expected to
know every thing, or to know more than other well-
trained men know. But he is expected to know his
own special subject in itself, and its relations to the

Character. 421

great branches of knowledge, in the way that other
things are known by those who profess to cultivate and
teach them. " No man can know every thing ; but the
men who influence the thought of their time are not
those who try to know all things, but those who have
learned one thing so well that they know, and show
others also, what knowing means" It is the trained fac-
ulty of insight, the disciplined power of grappling with
knotty, troublesome themes, the mental poise, the com-
plete balance of judgment, that can hold opposing truths,
opposing questions, opposing interests, in the scale, and
so weigh them as not only to discern what they are in
themselves, but their mutual and necessary limitations.
This is higher and stronger than learning. It is the
flower and fruit of knowledge, the fine gold of the
intellect.

Brethren, " our awful Ministry starts from the foot of
the Cross on which Jesus Christ died, from the grave
from which lie rose, from the mountain whence He
went up ; and it looks forward, as to its close and goal,
to the day when we shall all stand before Him." We
are the messengers of a Divine forgiveness, ministers of
a Divine reconciliation, heralds of an everlasting peace.
We are sent to feed the flock of God, to be gatherers
of wandering souls into their Father's house, the stew-
ards of His mysteries, the preachers and prophets of the
Light of the World. There are many orders of work
in God's world, and this is our work. Whatever else we
fail in, let us not fail to do what we can, with God's help,
to bring our personal and official character into con-
formity with this work. To character and the influence

422 Character.

that grows out of it, more than to any thing else, our
Lord committed His cause. In personal service, per-
sonal devotion, personal purity, personal holiness, He
founded His Church. By these it was to stand ; apart
from these it cannot conquer. So far, then, as human
infirmity will allow, may we adopt as our own the words
of St. Paul to his fellow-laborers in the Church of
Corinth : " Giving no offence in any thing, that the
Ministry be not blamed : but in all things approving
ourselves as the Ministers of God, in much patience, in
afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in im-
prisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in
fastings ; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suifering,
by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by
the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of
righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by
honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report:
as deceivers, and yet true ; as unknown, and yet well
known ; as dying, and, behold, we live ; as chastened,
and not killed ; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ; as
poor, yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things." ^ As those ordained to speak for
Christ in these closing years of this Nineteenth Century,
may we so grow into the likeness of His Ministry, that
these words will not seem too strong or too great to
embody our parting message to the men who will take
up our work at the dawn of the Twentieth !

1 2 Cor. vi. 3-10.

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