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THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL
TO THE
THESSALONIANS, GALATIANS
ROMANS
DISSERTATIONS
HORACE HART. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
TViesS
THE
EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL
TO THE
THESSALONIANS, GALATIANS
AND EOMANS
ESSAYS AND DISSERTATIONS
BY THE LATE
BENJAMIN JOWETT, MA.
MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
BEGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN
EDITED BY
LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDRE
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1894
CONTEKTS
ESSAY ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE
Diflferences of interpretation partly traditional partlj
the result of growth in thought
Mystical and logical tendencies
Rhetorical tendencies
Illustration from classical literature
Difficulty of recovering the original meaning .
A history of interpretation ....
Inspiration
The apologetic temper .....
Anachronisms .......
The ideal and actual
Relation between Old and New Testaments
Preliminary questions .....
Necessity of inquiry .....
Interpret Scripture like any other book .
Interpret Scripture from itself .
Continuity of Scripture ....
Language of Scripture ....
Special features of New Testament language
Rhetorical or logical element
Modes of thought .....
Interpretation distinguished from application
Unity of Scripture .....
The words of Christ .....
Lessons of the Old Testament .
Apprehension of original meaning inconsistent witli
typical and conventional interpretations
Transitional conceptions of Christianity
Effect on Theology and on Life
Sectarian differences
Christian Missions
Scripture in education
Sermons .....
Bearing of the subject on the position of the clergy
a 3
PAGE
I-IOI
'-3
3,4
4, 5
6-S
8,9
9-14
14-22
22-24
24, 25
26-39
39) 40
40-42
42-46
47-51
.S2-54
54-58
58-65
65-68
68-70
70-72
73-80
80-82
82-85
85,86
87, 88
88-90
90-92
92-94
94, 95
95-97
97,98
VI
CONTENTS
ESSAY ON CONVERSION AND CHANGES OF CHAR
ACTER
Spiritual conflict described in Romans VII
Christianity in the modern world .
The suddenness and pei-manence of early conver
sions ...■••
Conversion of whole multitudes at once
Re-action in spiritual life .
Reality of conversion in modern times
Critical moments in life .
Changes of feeling ....
Impressions .....
Reasonable convictions
Influence of circumstances
Struggle between good and evil
The power of God . . . •
The love of Christ . . . •
Prayer
Reality of religious influences .
ESSAY ON CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY .
Conflicting statements of the Old Testament as
quoted by St. Paul .
Old Testament chronology
Misuse of prophecy
Aspects of prophecy .
Human element in prophecy
Real connexion of Old and New Testaments
The day of the Lord
Rejection and restoration of Israel .
Transition from the nation to the individual
Mercy and not sacrifice
ESSAY ON CASUISTRY
Morality and circumstances
Question of meats and drinks
Meats offered to idols
Things and persons common or unclean
The rule of Christian prudence
The law of Christian courtesy .
The law of individual conscience
The law of Christian freedom
A scrupulous conscience
Practical consistency
The truth shall make you free
Modern casuistry
102-132
102
X02, 103
103-106
107-110
110-112
112-117
117-121
121-123
123
123, 124
124
125, 126
126, 127
127-129
129, 130
130-132
133, 134
134. 135
13.5
135.136
136-138
139, 140
140-143
143-146
146-149
149-151
152-176
152
152,153
153,154
I54» 155
155-157
157,158
158. 159
159. 160
161-164
164, 165
166
166, 167
CONTENTS
Vll
PAGE
The counter-reformation 167, 168
Intricacy of human action 168,169
Casuistry become a science 169-171
The evils of casuistry ...... 171-176
>.ESSAY ON NATURAL RELIGION 177-246
St. Paul's point of view ... ... 177-179
Philosophical aspect of the same question . . 1 79-181
Ignorance and responsibility ..... 181-183
Christianity and Heathenism ..... 183-185
Religions of the world ...... 185-195
Missionary enterprise ...... 195-1 98
God in nature ........ 198-205
Natural and revealed religion ..... 205-208
Primitive man ........ 208-211
Growth of early religions . ..... 211-214
Relation to morality ...... 215-218
Stages of natural I'eligion . . . . . 218, 219
Greek religion ........ 219-221
Greek philosophy . . . . . . .221, 222
Roman religion ........ 222, 223
Stoic and Epicurean 223, 224
Unconscious influence of religion on men in general 225
Arguments for the being of a God . . . . 226, 227
Final Causes ........ 227-231
The great First Cause 231-234
Idea of Law ........ 234-239
The Church and the world 239-246
'> ESSAY ON RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH . . . 247-272
Revival of the doctrine at the Reformation . . 247-250
Statement of the question ..... 250,251
Luther and St. Paul 252, 253
Real significance ....... 253, 255
Jewish conception of righteousness .... 255,256
The oi>position of the Law and the Spirit . . 256,257
Grace and Faith in St. Paul 257, 258
Corresponding facts ....... 258, 259
St. Paul and Christ 259, 260
Liberty and assurance ...... 260,261
Modern aspect of the doctrine 262-265
Justification as an act on God's part . . . 265, 266
Faith the mainspring of religious life . . . 266, 267
Personal character of salvation .... 267, 268
Belief in the kingdom of Christ .... 268
Vlll
CONTENTS
Is unbelief sinful ?
Human imagery
Religious confidence
Faith and Love
ESSAY ON THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN
The Law at once the cause of sin and the prepara-
tion for the Gospel
The paradox in St. Paul
The Bible the easiest and hardest of bookj
St. Paul's conception of the Law
Old Testament notions and Alexandrian ideas
Conception of sin
' Conscientia peccati ' . . .
Personal experience of St. Paul
' Original sin ' .
Ilhistration from morality
Opposition of positive and moral
Analogies in the modern world
Society
The weak conscience ....
Speculative difficulties
Science and Faith ....
ESSAY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT .
The first believers had no New Testament
How they read the Old Testament .
Consequent interlacing of Old and New
The Old Testament cannot be dispensed with
ESSAY ON THE IMPUTATION OF THE SIN OF ADAM
Slender foundation in the New Testament
St. Paul's meaning in the passages quoted
Traces of the doctrine in the Apocrypha and Rib
binical writings .....
The doctrine can have no meaning now .
St. Paul intends to teach a nobler lesson .
> ESSAY ON ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION
* Substitution ' immoral and unscriptural
The argument from Scripture .
The prophetic view of sacrifice .
The teaching of Christ ....
The mysteriousness of the death of Christ
The language of the Epistles
The Epistle to the Hebrews
PAGE
269
269, 270
270, 271
271, 272
273-303
273, 274
274-276
276-279
279, 280
280, 281
281-283
283, 284
284-286
286, 287
287, 2S8
288-290
291, 292
292-296
296, 297
297-300
300-303
304-307
304, 305
305, 306
306, 307
307
30S-316
308-310
310-312
312,313
313-315
315.316
317-369
317,318
318-325
325, 326
326-329
329, 330
330-336
336-339
CONTENTS
IX
The history of Theology ....
Patristic period
Scholastic Theology from Anselm to Abelard
Doctrine of the I'eformers, Luther to Grotius
Logical and metaphysical theories .
Logical discussion in England .
German Theology, Kant, Schelling, Hegel
Not a new theory, but a new method
A sacrifice — but what sacrifice ?
The Divine Eansom .
Christ died for us
Less figurative views
Union with Christ
The greatest moral act in the world .
Personal religion .....
Eternal truths, and passing controversies
ESSAY ON PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL
A question of religion and philosophy
Dominant ideas ....
Historical considerations .
Predestination national or individual
Individuality and freedom
The elect of God ....
Calvinism and Romans IX.
Election transferred from the nation to
tian Church .....
Evidence of religious feeling
Philosophical fatalism
Infinity ......
Omnipotence
Omniscience and foreknowledge
Consciousness of dependence on God
Return to fact and nature .
Cause and effect ....
Illusions of language
Mind and body
Development .....
' Anima Mundi ' . . . .
Degrees of necessity ....
Uniformity of human actions : — statistics
Consciousness of freedom .
Freedom and obligation
Importance of cii'cumstances
the Chris-
340-342
343-347
347-350
350-352
352-359
353» 354
354-359
359> 360
360, 361
361, 362
362
362, 363
363, 364
364-366
366, 367
367-369
370-409
370, 371
371-375
375-378
379
379. 380
380, 381
381, 382
382-385
385, 386
386-388
388, 389
389. 390
390-392
392, 393
394, 395
395-399
399, 400
400
400, 401
401, 402
402-404
404-406
406, 407
407, 408
408, 409
DISSERTATIONS
ON
THEOLOGICAL SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH
THE STUDY OF
ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES
INCLUDING AN ESSAY ON
THE INTERPHETATION OF SCEIPTUEE
ESSAY
I]^TEEPRETATIOI^ OF SCRIPTURE
It is a strange, though familiai- fact, that great diiferences
of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture.
All Christians receive the Old and New Testament as
sacred writings, but they are not agreed about the meaning
which they attribute to them. The book itself remains
as at the first ; the commentators seem rather to reflect
the changing atmosphere of the world or of the Church.
Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different
point of view, to which their interpretation is narrowed or
made to conform. It is assumed, as natural and necessary,
that the same words will present one idea to the mind
of the Protestant, another to the Eoman Catholic; one
meaning to the German, another to the English interpreter.
The Ultramontane or Anglican divine is not supposed to be
impartial in his treatment of passages which afford an
apparent foundation for the doctrine of purgatory or the
primacy of St. Peter on the one hand, or the three orders of
clergy and the divine origin of episcopacy on the other. It
is a received view with many, that the meaning of the Bible
is to be defined by that of the Prayer-book ; while there are
others who interpret ' the Bible and the Bible only ' with a
VOL. II. B
a ESSAY ON
silent reference to the traditions of the Reformation. Philo-
sophical differences are in the background, into which the
differences about Scripture also resolve themselves. They
seem to run up at last into a difference of opinion respecting
Eevelation itself — whether given beside the human faculties
or through them, whether an interruption of the laws of
nature or their perfection and fulfilment.
This effort to pull the authority of Scripture in different
directions is not peculiar to our own day ; the same pheno-
menon appears in the past history of the Church. At the
Eeformation, in the Nicene or Pelagian times, the New
Testament was the ground over which men fought ; it
might also be compared to the armoury which furnished
them with weapons. Opposite aspects of the truth which
it contains were appropriated by different sides. ' Justified
by faith without works ' and 'justified by faith as well as
works ' are equally Scriptural expressions ; the one has
become the formula of Protestants, the other of Roman
CathoHcs. The fifth and ninth chapters of the Romans,
single verses such as i Cor. iii. 15 ; John iii. 3, still bear
traces of many a life-long strife in the pages of com-
mentators. The difference of interpretation which pre-
vails among ourselves is partly traditional, that is to say,
inherited from the controversies of former ages. The use
made of Scripture by Fathers of the Church, as well as by
Luther and Calvin, affects our idea of its meaning at the
present hour.
Another cause of the multitude of intei-pretations is the
growth or progress of the human mind itself. Modes of
interpreting vary as time goes on ; they partake of the
general state of literature or knowledge. It has not been
easily or at once that mankind have learned to realize the
character of sacred writings — they seem almost necessarily
to veil themselves from human eyes as circumstances
change ; it is the old age of the world only that has at
length understood its childhood. (Or rather perhaps is
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 3
beginning to understand it, and learning to make allowance
for its own deficiency of knowledge ; for the infancy of the
human race, as of the individual, affords but few indications
of the workings of the mind within.) More often than we
suppose, the great sayings and doings upon the earth,
' thoughts that breathe and words that burn,' are lost in
a sort of chaos to the apprehension of those that come after.
Much of past history is dimly seen and receives only a con-
ventional interpretation, even when the memorials of it
remain. There is a time at which the freshness of early
literature is lost ; mankind have turned rhetoricians, and no
longer write or feel in the spirit which created it. In this
unimaginative period in which sacred or ancient WT-itings
are partially unintelligible, many methods have been taken
at different times to adapt the ideas of the past to the wants
of the present. One age has wandered into the flowery
paths of allegory,
' In pious meditation fancy fed.'
Another has straitened the liberty of the Gospel by a rigid
application of logic, the former being a method which was
at first more naturally applied to the Old Testament, the
latter to the New. Both methods of interpretation, the
mystical and logical, as they may be termed, have been
practised on the Vedas and the Koran, as well as on the
Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the true glory and note of
divinity in these latter being not that they have hidden
mysterious or double meanings, but a simple and universal
one, which is beyond them and will survive them. Since
the revival of literature, interpreters have not unfrequently
fallen into error of another kind from a pedantic and mis-
placed use of classical learning ; the minute examination of
words often withdrawing the mind from more important
matters. A tendency may be observed within the last
century to clothe systems of philosophy in the phraseology
of Scripture. But ' new wine cannot thus be put into old
B 2
4 ESSAY ON
bottles.' Though roughly distinguishable by different ages,
these modes or tendencies also exist together ; the remains
of all of them may be remarked in some of the popular
commentaries of our own day.
More common than any of these methods, and not pecu-
liar to any age, is that which may be called by way of
distinction the rhetorical one. The tendency to exaggerate
or amplify the meaning of simple words for the sake of
edification may indeed have a practical use in sermons, the
object of which is to awaken not so much the intellect
as the heart and conscience. Spiritual food, like natural,
may require to be of a certain bulk to nourish the human
mind. But this 'tendency to edification' has had an
unfortunate influence on the interpretation of Scripture.
For the preacher almost necessarily oversteps the limits of
actual knowledge, his feelings overflow with the subject ;
even if he have the power, he has seldom the time for
accurate thought or inquiry. And in the course of years
spent in writing, perhaps, without study, he is apt to
persuade himself, if not others, of the truth of his own
repetitions. The trivial consideration of making a discourse
of sufiicient length is often a reason why he overlays the
words of Christ and his Apostles with commonplaces. The
meaning of the text is not always the object which he has
in view, but some moral or religious lesson which he has
found it necessary to append to it ; some cause which he is
pleading, some error of the day which he has to combat.
And while in some passages he hardly dares to trust himself
with the full force of Scripture (Matt. v. 34 ; ix. 13 ; xix.
21 : Acts V. 29), in others he extracts more from words
than they really imply (Matt. xxii. 21 ; xxviii. 20 : Rom.
xiii. I ; &c.), being more eager to guard against the abuse
of some precept than to enforce it, attenuating or adapting
the utterance of prophecy to the requirements or to the
measure of modern times. Any one who has ever written
sermons is aware how hard it is to apply Scripture to the
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 5
wants of his hearers and at the same time to preserve its
meaning.
The phenomenon which has been described in the pre-
ceding pages is so famihar, and yet so extraordinary, that it
requires an effort of thought to appreciate its true nature.
We do not at once see the absurdity of the same words
having many senses, or free our minds from the illusion
that the Apostle or Evangelist must have written with
a reference to the creeds or controversies or circumstances of
other times. Let it be considered, then, that this extreme
variety of interpretation is found to exist in the case of no
other book, but of the Scriptures only. Other writings are
preserved to us in dead languages — Greek, Latin, Oriental,
some of them in fragments, all of them originally in manu-
script. It is true that difficulties arise in the exj)lanation
of these %vritings, especially in the most ancient, from our
imperfect acquaintance with the meaning of words, or
the defectiveness of copies, or the want of some historical
or geographical information which is required to present
an event or character in its true bearing. In comparison
with the wealth and light of modern literature, our know-
ledge of Greek classical authors, for example, may be called
imperfect and shadowy. Some of them have another sort
of difficulty arising from subtlety or abruptness in the use of
language ; in lyric poetiy especially, and some of the earlier
prose, the greatness of the thought struggles with the
stammering lips. It may be observed that all these diffi-
culties occur also in Scripture ; they are found equally in
sacred and profane literature. But the meaning of classical
authors is known with comparative certainty ; and the
interpretation of them seems to rest on a scientific basis.
It is not, therefore, to philological or historical difficulties
that the greater part of the uncertainty in the interpretation
of Scripture is to be attributed. No ignorance of Hebrew
or Greek is sufficient to account for it. Even the Vedas
and the Zendavesta, though beset by obscurities of language
6 ESSAY ON
probably greater than are found in any portion of the Bible,
are interpreted, at least by European scholars, according to
fixed rules, and beginning to be clearly understood.
To bring the parallel home, let us imagine the remains
of some well-known Greek author, as Plato or Sophocles,
receiving the same treatment at the hands of the world
which the Scriptures have experienced. The text of such
an author, when first printed by Aldus or Stephens, would
be gathered from the imperfect or miswritten copies which
fell in the way of the editors ; after awhile older and better
manuscripts come to light, and the power of using and
estimating the value of manuscripts is greatly improved.
We may suppose, further, that the readings of these older
copies do not always conform to some received canons of
criticism. Up to the year 1550, or 1624, alterations, often
proceeding on no principle, have been introduced into the
text ; but now a stand is made — an edition which appeared
at the latter of the two dates just mentioned is invested
with authority ; this authorized text is a piece de resistance
against innovation. Many reasons are given why it is
better to have bad readings to which the world is accustomed
than good ones which are novel and strange — why the later
manuscripts of Plato or Sophocles are often to be preferred
to earlier ones — why it is useless to remove imperfections
where perfect accuracy is not to be attained. A fear of
disturbing the critical canons which have come down from
former ages is, however, suspected to be one reason for the
opposition. And custom and prejudice, and the nicety
of the subject, and all the arguments which are intelligible
to the many against the truth, which is intelligible only to
the few, are thrown into the scale to preserve the works
of Plato or Sophocles as nearly as possible in the received
text.
Leaving the text, we proceed to interpret and translate.
The meaning of Greek words is known with tolerable
certainty ; and the grammar of the Greek language has
THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCEIPTURE 7
been minutely analyzed both in ancient and modern times.
Yet the interpretation of Sophocles is tentative and uncer-
tain ; it seems to vary from age to age : to some the great
tragedian has appeared to embody in his choruses certain
theological or moral ideas of his own age or country ;
there are others who find there an allegory of the Christian
religion or of the history of modern Europe. Several
schools of critics have commented on his works ; to the
Englishman he has presented one meaning, to the French-
man another, to the German a third ; the interpretations
have also differed with the philosophical systems which
the interpreters espoused. To one the same words have
appeared to bear a moral, to another a symbolical mean-
ing ; a third is determined wholly by the authority of old
commentators ; while there is a disposition to condemn
the scholar who seeks to interpret Sophocles from himself
only, and with reference to the ideas and beliefs of the
age in which he lived. And the error of such an one
is attributed not only to some intellectual but even to a
moral obliquity which prevents his seeing the true meaning.
It would be tedious to follow into details the absurdity
which has been supposed. By such methods it would be
truly said that Sophocles or Plato may be made to mean
anything. It would seem as if some Novum Organum were
needed to lay down rules of interpretation for ancient
literature. Still one other supposition has to be introduced
which will appear, perhaps, more extravagant than any
which have preceded. Conceive then that these modes
of interpreting Sophocles had existed for ages ; that great
institutions and interests had become interwoven with
them, and in some degree even the honour of nations and
churches — is it too much to say that in such a case they
would be changed with difficulty, and that they would
continue to be maintained long after critics and philosophers
had seen that they were indefensible ?
No one who has a Christian feeling would place classical
8 ESSAY ON
on a level with sacred literature ; and there are other
particulars in which the preceding comparison fails, as, for
example, the style and subject. But, however different the
subject, although the interpretation of Scripture requires
*a vision and faculty divine,' or at least a moral and
religious interest which is not needed in the study of
a Greek poet or philosopher, yet in what may be termed
the externals of intei"pretation, that is to say, the meaning
of words, the connexion of sentences, the settlement of the
text, the evidence of facts, the same rules apply to the Old
and New Testaments as to other books. And the figure is
no exaggeration of the erring fancy of men in the use of
Scripture, or of the tenacity with which they cling to the
interpretations of other times, or of the arguments by which
they maintain them. All the resources of knowledge may
be turned into a means not of discovering the true rendering,
but of upholding a received one. Grammar appears to start
from an independent point of view, yet inquiries into the
use of the article or the preposition have been observed to
wind round into a defence of some doctrine. Rhetoric often
magnifies its own want of taste into the design of inspiration.
Logic (that other mode of rhetoric) is apt to lend itself to
the illusion, by stating erroneous explanations with a clear-
ness which is mistaken for truth. ' Metaphysical aid ' carries
away the common understanding into a region where it
must blindly follow. Learning obscures as well as illus-
trates ; it heaps up chaff when there is no more wheat.
These are some of the ways in which the sense of Scripture
has become confused, by the help of tradition, in the course
of ages, under a load of commentators.
The book itself remains as at the first, unchanged amid
the changing interpretations of it. The office of the inter-
preter is not to add another, but to recover the original one ;
the meaning, that is, of the words as they struck on the
ears or flashed before the eyes of those who first heard and
read them. He has to transfer himself to another age ; to
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 9
imagine that he is a disciple of Christ or Paul ; to disengage
himself from all that follows. The histoiy of Christendom
is nothing to him ; but only the scene at Galilee or Jerusalem,
the handful of believers who gathered themselves together
at Ephesus, or Corinth, or Eome. His eye is fixed on the
form of one like the Son of man, or of the Prophet who was
girded with a garment of camel's hair, or of the Apostle
who had a thorn in the flesh. The greatness of the Eoman
Empire is nothing to him ; it is an inner not an outer world
that he is stri\dng to restore. All the after-thoughts of
theology are nothing to him ; they are not the true lights
which light him in difficult places. His concern is with
a book in which, as in other ancient writings, are some
things of which we are ignorant ; which defect of our
knowledge cannot, however, be supplied by the conjectures
of fathers or divines. The simple words of that book he
tries to preserve absolutely pure from the refinements or
distinctions of later times. He acknowledges that they are
fragmentary, and would suspect himself, if out of fragments
he were able to create a well-rounded system or a continuous
history. The greater part of his learning is a knowledge of
the text itself ; he has no delight in the voluminous literatui'e
which has overgrown it. He has no theory of interpretation ;
a few rules guarding against common errors are enough for
him. His object is to read Scripture like any other book,
with a real interest and not merely a conventional one. He
wants to be able to open his eyes and see or imagine things
as they truly are.
Nothing would be more likely to restore a natural feel-
ing on this subject than a history of the Interpretation
of Scripture. It would take us back to the beginning ; it
would present in one view the causes which have darkened
the meaning of words in the course of ages ; it would clear
away the remains of dogmas, systems, controversies, which
are encrusted upon them. It would show us the 'erring
fancy ' of intei-preters assuming sometimes to have the
lO ESSAY ON
Spirit of God Himself, yet unable to pass beyond the limits
of their own age, and with a judgement often biassed by
party. Great names there have been among them, names
of men who may be reckoned also among the benefactors of
the human race, yet comparatively few who have understood
the thoughts of other times, or who have bent their minds
to * interrogate ' the meaning of words. Such a work would
enable us to separate the elements of doctrine and tradition
with which the meaning of Scripture is encumbered in our
own day. It would mark the different epochs of interpreta-
tion from the time when the living word was in process of
becoming a book to Origen and Tertullian, from Origen to
Jerome and Augustine, from Jerome and Augustine to
Abelard and Aquinas ; again, making a new beginning with
the revival of literature, from Erasmus, the father of Biblical
criticism in more recent times, with Calvin and Beza for his
immediate successors, through Grotius and Hammond, down
to De Wette and Meyer, our own contemporaries. We should
see how the mystical interpretation of Scripture originated
in the Alexandrian age ; how it blended with the logical
and rhetorical ; how both received weight and currency
from their use in support of the claims and teaching of the
Church. We should notice how the ' new learning ' of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries gradually awakened the
critical faculty in the study of the sacred writings ; how
Biblical criticism has slowly but surely followed in the
track of philological and historical (not without a remoter
influence exercised upon it also by natural science) ; how,
too, the form of the scholastic literature, and even of notes
on the classics, insensibly communicated itself to com-
mentaries on Scripture. We should see how the word
inspiration, from being used in a general way to express
what may be called the prophetic spirit of Scripture, has
passed, within the last two centuries, into a sort of technical
term ; how, in other instances, the practice or feeling of
earlier ages has been hollowed out into the theory or system
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE II
of later ones. We should observe how the popular ex-
planations of prophecy as in heathen (Thucyd. ii. 54), so
also in Christian times, had adapted themselves to the
circumstances of mankind. We might remark that in our
own country, and in the present generation especially, the
interpretation of Scripture had assumed an apologetic
character, as though making an effort to defend itself
against some supposed inroad of science and criticism ;
while among German commentators there is, for the first
time in the history of the world, an approach to agreement
and certainty. For example, the diversity among German
writers on prophecy is far less than among English ones.
That is a new phenomenon which has to be acknowledged.
More than any other subject of human knowledge, Biblical
criticism has hung to the past ; it has been hitherto found
truer to the traditions of the Church than to the words of
Christ. It has made, however, two great steps onward —
at the time of the Eeformation and in our day. The
diffusion of a critical spirit in history and literature is
affecting the criticism of the Bible in our own day in
a manner not unlike the burst of intellectual life in the
fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Educated persons are be-
ginning to ask, not what Scripture may be made to mean,
but what it does. And it is no exaggeration to say that he
who in the present state of knowledge will confine himself
to the plain meaning of words and the study of their context
may know more of the original spirit and intention of the
authors of the New Testament than all the controversial
writers of former ages put together.
Such a history would be of great value to philosophy
as well as to theology. It would be the histoiy of the
human mind in one of its most remarkable manifestations.
For ages which are not original show their character in the
interpretation of ancient writings. Creating nothing, and
incapable of that effort of imagination which is required
in a true criticism of the past, they read and explain the
12 ESSAY ON
thoughts of former times by the conventional modes of their
own. Such a history would form a kind of preface or pro-
legomena to the study of Scripture. Like the history of
science, it would save many a useless toil ; it would indicate
the uncertainties on which it is not worth while to speculate
further ; the by-paths or labyrinths in which men lose
themselves ; the mines that are already worked out. He
who reflects on the multitude of explanations which already
exist of the 'number of the beast,' 'the two witnesses,' 'the
little horn,' 'the man of sin,' who observes the manner
in which these explanations have varied with the political
movements of our own time, will be unwilling to devote
himself to a method of inquiry in which there is so little
appearance of certainty or progress. These interpretations
would destroy one another if they were all placed side by
side in a tabular analysis. It is an instructive fact, which
may be mentioned in passing, that Joseph Mede, the greatest
authority on this subject, twice fixed the end of the world in
the last century and once during his own lifetime. In like
manner, he who notices the circumstance that the explana-
tions of the first chapter of Genesis have slowly changed,
and, as it were, retreated before the advance of geology, will
be unwilling to add another to the spurious reconcilements
of science and revelation. Or, to take an example of another
kind, the Protestant divine who perceives that the types
and figures of the Old Testament are employed by Koman
Catholics in support of the tenets of their church, will be
careful not to use weapons which it is impossible to guide,
and which may with equal force be turned against himself.
Those who have handled them on the Protestant side have
before now fallen victims to them, not observing as they
fell that it was by their own hand.
Much of the uncertainty which prevails in the inter-
pretation of Scripture arises out of party efforts to wrest
its meaning to different sides. There are, however, deeper
reasons which have hindered the natural meaning of the
THE INTERPRETATION OP SCRIPTURE 1 3
text from immediately and universally prevailing. One of
these is the unsettled state of many questions which have
an important but indirect bearing on this subject. Some of
these questions veil themselves in ambiguous terms ; and
no one likes to draw them out of their hiding-place into the
light of day. In natural science it is felt to be useless to
build on assumptions ; in history we look with suspicion
on a priori ideas of what ought to have been ; in mathe-
matics, when a step is wrong, we pull the house down until
we reach the point at which the error is discovered. But in
theology it is otherwise ; there the tendency has been to
conceal the unsoundness of the foundation under the fairness
and loftiness of the superstructure. It has been thought
safer to allow arguments to stand which, although fallacious,
have been on the right side, than to point out their defect.
And thus many principles have imperceptibly grown up
which have overridden facts. No one would interpret
Scripture, as many do, but for certain previous suppositions
with which we come to the perusal of it. ' There can be no
error in the Word of God,' therefore the discrepancies in the
books of Kings and Chronicles are only apparent, or may be
attributed to differences in the copies: — 'It is a thousand
times more likely that the interpreter should err than
the inspired writer.' For a like reason the failure of a
prophecy is never admitted, in spite of Scripture and of
history (Jer. xxxvi. 30 : Isa. xxiii : Amos vii. 10-17) ;
the mention of a name later than the supposed age of the
prophet is not allowed, as in other writings, to be taken in
evidence of the date (Isa. xlv. i). The accuracy of the Old
Testament is measured not by the standard of primaeval
history, but of a modern critical one, which, contrary to
all probability, is supposed to be attained ; this arbitrary
standard once assumed, it becomes a point of honour or of
faith to defend every name, date, place, which occurs. Or to
take another class of questions, it is said that 'the various
theories of the origin of the three first Gospels are all
14 ESSAY ON
equally unknown to the Holy Catholic Church,' or as
another writer of a different school expresses himself, ' they
tend to sap the inspiration of the New Testament.' Again,
the language in which our Saviour speaks of His own union
with the Father is interpreted by the language of the creeds.
Those who remonstrate against double senses, allegorical
interpretations, forced reconcilements, find themselves met
by a sort of presupposition that ' God speaks not as man
speaks. ' The limitation of the human faculties is confusedly
appealed to as a reason for abstaining from investigations
which are quite within their limits. The suspicion of
Deism, or perhaps of Atheism, awaits inquiry. By such
fears a good man refuses to be influenced ; a philosophical
mind is apt to cast them aside with too much bitterness.
It is better to close the book than to read it under conditions
of thought which are imposed from without. Whether
those conditions of thought are the traditions of the Church,
or the opinions of the religious world— Catholic or Protes-
tant— makes no difference. They are inconsistent with
the freedom of the truth and the moral character of the
Gospel. It becomes necessary, therefore, to examine briefly
some of these prior questions which lie in the way of
a reasonable criticism.
§2.
Among these previous questions, that which first presents
itself is the one already alluded to — the question of inspira-
tion. Almost all Christians agree in the word, which use
and tradition have consecrated to express the reverence
which they truly feel for the Old and New Testaments.
But here the agreement of opinion ends ; the meaning of
inspiration has been variously explained, or more often
passed over in silence from a fear of stirring the difficulties
that would arise about it. It is one of those theological
terms which may be regarded as 'great peacemakers,' but
which are also sources of distrust and misunderstanding.
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 1 5
For while we are ready to shake hands with any one who
uses the same language as ourselves, a doubt is apt to
insinuate itself whether he takes language in the same
senses — whether a particular term conveys all the associa-
tions to another which it does to ourselves — whether it is
not possible that one who disagrees about the word may
not be more nearly agreed about the thing. The advice has,
indeed, been given to the theologian that he ' should take
care of words and leave things to themselves ;' the authority,
however, who gives the advice is not good — it is placed by
Goethe in the mouth of Mephistopheles. Pascal seriously
charges the Jesuits with acting on a similar maxim — ex-
communicating those who meant the same thing and said
another, holding communion with those who said the same
thing and meant another. But this is not the way to heal
the wounds of the Church of Christ ; we cannot thus ' skin
and film ' the weak places of theology. Errors about words,
and the attribution to words themselves of an excessive
importance, lie at the root of theological as of other con-
fusions. In theology they are more dangerous than in
other sciences, because they cannot so readily be brought to
the test of facts.
The word inspiration has received more numerous grada-
tions and distinctions of meaning than perhaps any other in
the whole of theology. There is an inspiration of super-
intendence and an inspiration of suggestion; an inspiration
which would have been consistent with the Apostle or
Evangelist falling into error, and an inspiration which
would have prevented him from erring ; verbal organic
inspiration by which the inspired person is the passive
utterer of a Divine Word, and an inspiration which acts
through the character of the sacred writer ; there is an
inspiration which absolutely communicates the fact to be
revealed or statement to be made, and an inspiration which
does not supersede the ordinary knowledge of human events ;
there is an inspiration which demands infallibility in
1 6 ESSAY ON
matters of doctrine, but allows for mistakes in fact. Lastly,
there is a view of inspiration which recognizes only its
supernatural and prophetic character, and a view of inspira-
tion which regards the Apostles and Evangelists as equally
inspired in their writings and in their lives, and in both
receiving the guidance of the Spirit of truth in a manner
not different in kind but only in degree from ordinary
Christians. Many of these explanations lose sight of the
original meaning and derivation of the word ; some of them
are framed with the view of meeting difficulties ; all perhaps
err in attempting to define what, though real, is incapable
of being defined in an exact manner. Nor for any of the
higher or supernatural views of inspiration is there any
foundation in the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appear-
ance in their writings that the Evangelists or Apostles had
any inward gift, or were subject to any power external
to them different from that of preaching or teaching which
they daily exercised ; nor do they anywhere lead us to sup-
pose that they were free from error or infirmity. St. Paul
writes like a Christian teacher, exhibiting all the emotions
and vicissitudes of human feeling, speaking, indeed, with
authority, but hesitating in difficult cases and naore than
once correcting himself, corrected, too, by the course of
events in his expectation of the coming of Christ. The
Evangelist ' who saw it, bare record, and his record is true :
and he knoweth that he saith true ' (John xix. 35). Another
Evangelist does not profess to be an original narrator, but
only ' to set forth in order a declaration of what eye-witnesses
had delivered,' like many others whose writings have not
been preserved to us (Luke i. i, 2). And the result is
in accordance with the simple profession and style in which
they describe themselves ; there is no appearance, that is to
say, of insincerity or want of faith ; but neither is there
perfect accuracy or agreement. One supposes the original
dwelling-place of our Lord's parents to have been Bethle-
hem (Matt. ii. I, 22), another Nazareth (Luke ii. 4) ; they
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 1 7
trace his genealogy in different ways ; one mentions the
thieves blaspheming, another has preserved to after-ages the
record of the penitent thief ; they appear to differ about the
day and hour of the Crucifixion ; the narrative of the vroraan
who anointed our Lord's feet with ointment is told in
all four, each narrative having more or less considerable
variations. These are a few instances of the differences
which arose in the traditions of the earliest ages respecting
the history of our Lord. But he who wishes to investigate
the character of the sacred writings should not be afraid
to make a catalogue of them all with the view of estimating
their cumulative weight. (For it is obvious that the answer
which would be admitted in the case of a single discrepancy,
will not be the true answer when there are many.) He
should further consider that the narratives in which these
discrepancies occur are short and partly identical — a cycle of
tradition beyond which the knowledge of the early fathers
never travels, though if all the things that Jesus said and
did had been written down, ' the world itself could not have
contained the books that would have been written ' (John
XX. 30; xxi. 25). For the proportion which these narratives
bear to the whole subject, as well as their relation to
one another, is an important element in the estimation
of differences. In the same way, he who would under-
stand the nature of prophecy in the Old Testament, should
have the courage to examine how far its details were
minutely fulfilled. The absence of such a fulfilment may
further lead him to discover that he took the letter for the
spirit in expecting it.
The subject will clear of itself if we bear in mind two
considerations : — First, that the nature of inspiration can
only be known from the examination of Scripture. There
is no other source to which we can turn for information ;
and we have no right to assume some imaginary doctrine
of inspiration like the infallibility of the Eoman Catholic
Church. To the question, ' What is inspiration ? ' the first
VOL. II. c
l8 ESSAY ON
answer therefore is, * That idea of Scripture which we gather
from the knowledge of it,' It is no mere a priori notion,
but one to which the book is itself a witness. It is a fact
which we infer from the study of Scripture — not of one
portion only, but of the whole. Obviously then it embraces
writings of very different kinds — the book of Esther, for
example, or the Song of Solomon, as well as the Gospel
of St. John. It is reconcileable with the mixed good and
evil of the characters of the Old Testament, which neverthe-
less does not exclude them from the favour of God, with the
attribution to the Divine Being of actions at variance with
that higher revelation, which He has given of himself in the
Gospel ; it is not inconsistent with imperfect or opposite
aspects of the truth as in the Book of Job or Ecclesiastes,
with variations of fact in the Gospels or the books of Kings
and Chronicles, with inaccuracies of language in the Epis-
tles of St. Paul. For these are all found in Scripture ;
neither is there any reason why they should not be, except
a general impression that Scripture ought to have been
written in a way different from what it has. A principle
of progressive revelation admits them all ; and this is already
contained in the words of our Saviour, ' Moses because of
the hardness of your hearts ; ' or even in the Old Testament,
' Henceforth there shall be no more this proverb in the
house of Israel.' For what is progressive is necessarily
imperfect in its earlier stages, and even erring to those who
come after, whether it be the maxims of a half-civilized
world which are compared with those of a civilized one, or
the Law with the Gospel. Scripture itself points the way to
answer the moral objections to Scripture. Lesser difficulties
remain, but only such as would be found commonly in writ-
ings of the same age or country. There is no more reason
Avhy imperfect narratives should be excluded from Scripture
than imperfect grammar ; no more ground for expecting
that the New Testament would be logical or Aristotelian in
form, than that it would be written in Attic Greek.
THE INTEKPEETATION OF SCEIPTURE 1 9
The other consideration is one which has been neglected
by writei-s on this subject. It is this— that any true doc-
trine of inspiration must conform to all well-ascertained
facts of history or of science. The same fact cannot be true
and untrue, any more than the same words can have twc
opposite meanings. The same fact cannot be true in religion
when seen by the light of faith, and untrue in science when
looked at through the medium of evidence or experiment.
It is ridiculous to suppose that the sun goes round the
earth in the same sense in which the earth goes round
the sun ; or that the world appears to have existed, but has
not existed during the vast epochs of which geology speaks
to us. But if so, there is no need of elaborate reconcile-
ments of revelation and science ; they reconcile themselves
the moment any scientific truth is distinctly ascertained.
As the idea of nature enlarges, the idea of revelation also
enlarges ; it was a temporary misunderstanding which
severed them. And as the knowledge of nature which is
possessed by the few is communicated in its leading features
at least to the many, they will receive with it a higher
conception of the ways of God to man. It may hereafter
appear as natural to the majority of mankind to see the
providence of God in the order of the world, as it once was
to appeal to interruptions of it.
It is true that there is a class of scientific facts with which
popular opinions on theology often conflict and which do
not seem to conform in all respects to the severer conditions
of inductive science : such especially are the facts relating
to the formation of the earth and the beginnings of the
human race. But it is not worth while to fight on this
debateable ground a losing battle in the hope that a genera-
tion will pass away before we sound a last retreat. Almost
all intelligent persons are agreed that the earth has existed
for myriads of ages ; the best informed are of opinion that
the history of nations extends back some thousand years
before the Mosaic chronology ; recent discoveries in geology
C 2
20 ESSAY ON
may perhaps open a further vista of existence for the human
species, while it is possible, and may one day be known,
that mankind spread not from one but from many centres
over the globe ; or as others say, that the supply of links
which are at present wanting in the chain of animal life
may lead to new conclusions respecting the origin of man.
Now let it be granted that these facts, being with the past,
cannot be shown in the same palpable and evident manner
as the facts of chemistry or physiology ; and that the proof
of some of them, especially of those last mentioned, is want-
ing ; still it is a false policy to set up inspiration or revela-
tion in opposition to them, a principle which can have no
influence on them and should be rather kept out of their
way. The sciences of geology and comparative philology
are steadily gaining ground ; many of the guesses of twenty
years ago have become certainties, and the guesses of to-day
may hereafter become so. Shall we peril religion on the
possibility of their untruth ? on such a cast to stake the
life of man implies not only a recklessness of facts, but
a misunderstanding of the nature of the Gospel. If it is
fortunate for science, it is perhaps more fortunate for Chris-
tian truth, that the admission of Galileo's discovery has for
ever settled the principle of the relations between them.
A similar train of thought may be extended to the results
of historical inquiries. These results cannot be barred by
the dates or narrative of Scripture ; neither should they
be made to wind round into agreement with them. Again,
the idea of inspiration must expand and take them in.
Their importance in a religious point of view is not that
they impugn or confirm the Jewish history, but that they
show more clearly the purposes of God towards the whole
human race. The recent chronological discoveries from
Egyptian monuments do not tend to overthrow revelation,
nor the Ninevite inscriptions to support it. The use of
them on either side may indeed arouse a popular interest
in them ; it is apt to turn a scientific inquiry into a semi-
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 21
religious controversy. And to religion either use is almost
equally injurious, because seeming to rest truths important
to human life on the mere accident of an archaeological
discovery. Is it to be thought that Christianity gains
anything from the deciphering of the names of some
Assyrian and Babylonian kings, contemporaries chiefly
with the later Jewish history? As little as it ought
to lose from the appearance of a contradictory narrative
of the Exodus in the chamber of an Egyptian temple
of the year b. c. 1500. This latter supposition may not
be very probable. But it is worth while to ask ourselves
the question, whether we can be right in maintaining
any view of religion which can be affected by such a
probability.
It will be a further assistance in the considei'ation of this
subject, to observe that the interpretation of Scripture has
nothing to do with any opinion respecting its origin. The
meaning of Scripture is one thing ; the inspiration of Scrip-
ture is another. It is conceivable that those who hold the
most different views about the one, may be able to agree
about the other. Eigid upholders of the verbal inspiration
of Scripture, and those who deny inspiration altogether,
may nevertheless meet on the common ground of the mean-
ing of words. If the term inspiration were to fall into
disuse, no fact of nature, or history, or language, no event
in the life of man, or dealings of God with him, would be in
any degree altered. The word itself is but of yesterday,
not found in the earlier confessions of the reformed faith ;.
the difiiculties that have arisen about it are only two or
three centuries old. Therefore the question of inspiration,
though in one sense important, is to the interpreter as
though it were not important ; he is in no way called upon
to determine a matter with which he has nothing to do, and
which was not determined by fathers of the Church. And
he had better go on his way and leave the more precise
definition of the word to the progress of knowledge and the
32 ESSAY ON
results of the study of Scripture, instead of entangling
himself with a theory about it.
It is one evil of conditions or previous suppositions in
the study of Scripture, that the assumption of them has led
to an apologetic temper in the interpreters of Scripture.
The tone of apology is always a tone of weakness, and
does injury to a good cause. It is the reverse of ' ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' It is
hampered with the necessity of making a defence, and also
with previous defences of the same side ; it accepts, with an
excess of reserve and caution, the truth itself, when it comes
from an opposite quarter. Commentators are often more
occupied with the proof of miracles than with the declaration
of life and immortality ; with the fulfilment of the details
of prophecy than with its life and power ; with the reconcile-
ment of the discrepancies in the narrative of the infancy,
pointed out by Schleiermacher, than with the importance
of the great event of the appearance of the Saviour —
' To this end was I horn and for this cause came I into the
world that I should bear witness unto the truth.' The same
tendency is observable also in reference to the Acts of the
Apostles and the Epistles, which are not only brought into
harmony with each other, but interpreted with a reference
to the traditions of existing communions. The natural
meaning of particular expressions, as for example : ' Why
are they then baptized for the dead?' (i Cor. xv. 29), or
the words 'because of the angels' (i Cor. xi. 10) ; or, ' this
generation shall not pass away until all these things be
fulfilled ' (Matt. xxiv. 34); or, 'upon this rock will I build
my Church ' (Matt. xvi. 18), is set aside in favour of others,
which, however improbable, are more in accordance with
preconceived opinions, or seem to be more worthy of the
sacred writers. The language, and also the text, are treated
on the same defensive and conservative principles. The
received translations of Phil. ii. 6 (' Who, being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God '), or of
THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE 23
Kom. iii. 25 (* Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood '), or Eom. xv. 6 {'■ God, even the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ'), though erroneous, are
not given up without a struggle ; the i Tim. iii. 16, and
I John V. 7 (the three witnesses), though the first ('God
manifest in the flesh,' 02 for 02 j is not found in the best
manuscripts, and the second in no Greek manuscript worth
speaking of, have not yet disappeared from the editions
of the Greek Testament commonly in use in England, and
still less from the English translation. An English com-
mentator who, with Lachmann and Tischendorf, supported
also by the authority of Erasmus, ventures to alter the
punctuation of the doxology in Eom. ix. 5 (' Who is over
all God blessed for ever ') hardly escapes the charge of
heresy. That in most of these cases the words referred to
have a direct bearing on important controversies is a reason
not for retaining, but for correcting them.
The temper of accommodation shows itself especially in
two ways : first, in the attempt to adapt the truths of Scrip-
ture to the doctrines of the creeds ; secondly, in the adapta-
tion of the precepts and maxims of Scripture to the language
or practice of our own age. Now the creeds are acknow-
ledged to be a part of Christianity ; they stand in a close
relation to the words of Christ and his Apostles ; nor can it
be said that any heterodox formula makes a nearer approach
to a simple and scriptural rule of faith. Neither is anything
gained by contrasting them with Scripture, in which the
germs of the expressions used in them are sufficiently
apparent. Yet it does not follow that they should be
pressed into the service of the interpreter. The growth of
ideas in the interval which separated the first century from
the fourth or sixth makes it impossible to apply the lan-
guage of the one to the explanation of the other. Between
Scripture and the Nicene or Athanasian Creed, a world of
the understanding comes in — that world of abstractions and
second notions ; and mankind are no longer at the same
24 ESSAY ON
point as when the whole of Christianity was contained in
the words, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
mayest be saved,' when the Gospel centred in the attach-
ment to a living or recently departed friend and Lord. The
language of the New Testament is the first utterance and
consciousness of the mind of Christ ; or the immediate
vision of the Word of life (i John i. i) as it presented itself
before the eyes of His first followers, or as the sense of
His truth and power grew upon them (Rom. i. 3, 4) ; the
other is the result of three or four centuries of reflection
and controversy. And although this last had a truth suited
to its age, and its technical expressions have sunk deep into
the heart of the human race, it is not the less unfitted to be
the medium by the help of which Scripture is to be ex-
plained. If the occurrence of the phraseology of the Nicene
age in a verse of the Epistles would detect the spuriousness
of the verse in which it was found, how can the Nicene or
Athanasian Creed be a suitable instrument for the inter-
pretation of Scripture? That advantage which the New
Testament has over the teaching of the Church, as repre-
senting what may be termed the childhood of the Gospel,
would be lost if its language were required to conform to
that of the Creeds.
To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract notion
of Christian truth, which afterwards sprang up in the
Catholic Church, is the same sort of anachronism as to
attribute to them a system of philosophy. It is the same
error as to attribute to Homer the ideas of Thales or Hera-
clitus, or to Thales the more developed principles of Aristotle
and Plato. Many persons who have no difficulty in tracing
the growth of institutions, yet seem to fail in recognizing
the more subtle progress of an idea. It is hard to imagine
the absence of conceptions with which we are familiar ; to
go back to the germ of what we know only in maturity ; to
give up what has grown to us, and become a part of our
minds. In the present case, however, the development is
THE INTERPRETATION OP SCRIPTURE 25
not difficult to prove. The statements of Scripture are
unaccountable if we deny it ; the silence of Scripture is
equally unaccountable. Absorbed as St. Paul was in the
person of Christ with an intensity of faith and love of which
in modern days and at this distance of time we can scarcely
form a conception — high as he raised the dignity of his
Lord above all things in heaven and earth — looking to Him
as the Creator of all things, and the head of quick and dead,
he does not speak of Him as 'equal to the Father,' or * of
one substance with the Father.' Much of the language of
the Epistles (passages for example such as Rom. i. 2 : Phil,
ii. 6) would lose their meaning if distributed in alternate
clauses between our Lord's humanity and divinity. Still
greater difficulties would be introduced into the Gospels by
the attempt to identify them with the Creeds. We should
have to suppose that He was and was not tempted ; that
when He prayed to His Father He prayed also to Himself ;
that He knew and did not know ' of that hour ' of which
He as well as the angels were ignorant. How could
He have said, * My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me ' ? or, ' Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me'? How could He have doubted whether 'when the Son
Cometh he shall find faith upon the earth ' ? These simple
and touching words have to be taken out of their natural
meaning and connexion to be made the theme of apolo-
getic discourses if we insist on reconciling them with the
distinctions of later ages.
Neither, as has been already remarked, would the substi-
tution of any other precise or definite rule of faith, as for
example the Unitarian, be more favourable to the interpreta-
tion of Scripture. How could the Evangelist St. John have
said 'the Word was God,' or 'God was the Word' (according
to either mode of translating), or how would our Lord Him-
self have said, 'I and the Father are one,' if either had
meant that Christ was a mere man, ' a prophet or as one of
the prophets ' ? No one who takes words in their natural
26 ESSAY ON
sense can suppose that 'in the beginning' (Johni. i) means,
'at the commencement of the ministry of Christ,' or that
'the Word was with God,' only relates 'to the withdrawal
of Christ to commune with God,' or that 'the Word is said
to be God,' in the ironical sense of John x. 35. But while
venturing to turn one eye on these (perhaps obsolete) per-
versions of the meanings of words in old opponents, we
must not forget also to keep the other open to our own.
The object of the preceding remark is not to enter into
controversy with them, or to balance the statements of one
side with those of the other, but only to point out the error
of introducing into the interpretation of Scripture the notions
of a later age which is common alike to us and them.
The other kind of accommodation which was alluded to
above arises out of the difference between the social and
ecclesiastical state of the world, as it exists in actual fact,
and the ideal which the Gospel presents to us. An ideal
is, by its very nature, far removed from actual life. It is
enshrined not in the material things of the external world,
but in the heart and conscience. Mankind are dissatisfied
at this sejDaration ; they fancy that they can make the
inward kingdom an outward one also. But this is not
possible. The frame of civilization, that is to say, institu-
tions and laws, the usages of business, the customs of
society, these are for the most part mechanical, capable only
in a certain degree of a higher and spiritual life. Christian
motives have never existed in such strength, as to make it
safe or possible to entrust them with the preservation of
social order. Other - interests are therefore provided and
other principles, often independent of the teaching of the
Gospel, or even apparently at variance with it. ' If a man
smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also,' is
not a regulation of police but an ideal rule of conduct, not to
be explained away, but rarely if ever to be literally acted
upon in a civilized country ; or rather to be acted upon
always in spirit, yet not without a reference to the interests
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 27
of the community. If a missionary were to endanger the
public i^eace and come like the Apostles saying, ' I ought to
obey God rather than man,' it is obvious that the most
Christian of magistrates could not allow him (say in India
or New Zealand) to shield himself under the authority of
these words. For in religion as in philosophy there are two
opposite poles ; of truth and action, of doctrine and practice,
of idea and fact. The image of God in Christ is over
against the necessities of human nature and the state of
man on earth. Our Lord Himself recognizes this dis-
tinction, when He says, 'Of whom do the kings of the
earth gather tribute ? ' and ' then are the children free '
(Matt. xvii. 26). And again, 'Notwithstanding lest we
should offend them,' itc. Here are contrasted what may be
termed the two poles of idea and fact.
All men appeal to Scripture, and desire to draw the
authority of Scripture to their side ; its voice may be heard
in the turmoil of political strife ; a merely verbal similarity,
the echo of a word, has weight in the determination of
a controversy. Such appeals are not to be met always by
counter-appeals ; they rather lead to the consideration of
deeper questions as to the manner in which Scripture is to
be applied. In what relation does it stand to actual life ?
Is it a law, or only a spirit ? for nations, or for individuals ?
to be enforced generally, or in details also ? Are its maxims
to be modified by experience, or acted upon in defiance
of experience ? Are the accidental circumstances of the first
believers to become a rule for us ? Is everything, in short,
done or said by our Saviour and His Apostles, to be re-
garded as a precept or example which is to be followed on
all occasions and to last for all time ? That can hardly be,
consistently with the changes of human things. It would
be a rigid skeleton of Christianity (not the image of Christ),
to which society and politics, as well as the lives of indivi-
duals, would be conformed. It would be the oldness of the
letter, on which the world would be stretched ; not ' the
28 ESSAY ON
law of the spirit of life' which St. Paul teaches. The
attempt to force politics and law into the framework of
religion is apt to drive us up into a corner, in which the
great principles of truth arid justice have no longer room to
make themselves felt. It is better, as well as safer, to
take the liberty with which Christ has made us free. For
our Lord Himself has left behind Him words, which contain
a principle large enough to admit all the forms of society
or of life ; ' My kingdom is not of this world ' (John
xviii. 36). It does not come into collision with politics
or knowledge ; it has nothing to do with the Eoman
government or the Jewish priesthood, or with corresponding
institutions in the present day ; it is a counsel of perfection,
and has its dwelling-place in the heart of man. That is
the real solution of questions of Church and State ; all else
is relative to the history or circumstances of particular
nations. That is the answer to a doubt which is also raised
respecting the obhgation of the letter of the Gospel on
individual Christians. But this inwardness of the words
of Christ is what few are able to receive ; it is easier to
apply them superficially to things without, than to be
a partaker of them fi-om within. And false and miserable
applications of them are often made, and the kingdom of
God becomes the tool of the kingdoms of the world.
The neglect of this necessary contrast between the ideal
and the actual has had a twofold effect on the Interpretation
of Scripture. It has led to an unfair appropriation of some
portions of Scripture and an undue neglect of others. The
letter is in many cases really or apparently in harmony
with existing practices, or opinions, or institutions. In
other cases it is far removed from them ; it often seems
as if the world would come to an end before the words
of Scripture could be realized. The twofold effect just
now mentioned, corresponds to these two classes. Some
texts of Scripture have been eagerly appealed to and made
(in one sense) too much of; they have been taken by
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 2g
force into the service of received opinions and beliefs ;
texts of the other class have been either unnoticed or
explained away. Consider, for example, the extraordinary
and unreasonable importance attached to single words,
sometimes of doubtful meaning, in reference to any of the
following subjects : — (i) Divorce ; (2) Marriage with a Wife's
Sister ; (3) Inspiration ; (4) the Personality of the Holy
Spirit ; (5) Infant Baptism ; (6) Episcopacy ; (7) Divine Eight
of Kings ; (8) Original Sin. There is, indeed, a kind of
mystery in the way in which the chance words of a simple
narrative, the occurrence of some accidental event, the use
even of a figure of speech, or a mistranslation of a word
in Latin or English, have affected the thoughts of future
ages and distant countries. Nothing so slight that it has
not been caught at ; nothing so plain that it may not be
explained away. What men have brought to the text
they have also found there ; what has received no inter-
pretation or witness, either in the customs of the Church
or in 'the thoughts of many hearts,' is still 'an unknown
tongue ' to them. It is with Scripture as with oratory,
its effect partly depends on the pi'eparation in the mind
or in circumstances for the reception of it. There is no
use of Scripture, no quotation or even misquotation of
a word which is not a power in the world, when it
embodies the spirit of a great movement or is echoed by
the voice of a large party.
(i) On the first of the subjects referred to above, it is
argued from Scripture that adulterers should not be allowed
to marry again ; and the point of the argument turns on
the question whether the words (efcros \6yov iropveias) ' saving
for the cause of fornication,' which occur in the first clause
of an important text on marriage, were designedly or
accidentally omitted in the second (Matt, v, 32 : 'Who-
soever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of
fornication, causeth her to commit adultery, and whosoever
shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery ; '
30 ESSAY ON
compare also Mark x. ii, 12). (2) The Scripture argument
in the second instance is almost invisible, being drawn
from a passage the meaning of which is irrelevant (Lev.
xviii. 18 : 'Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to
vex her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other in
her lifetime ') : and transferred from the Polygamy which
prevailed in Eastern countries 3000 years ago to the
Monogamy of the nineteenth century and the Christian
Church, in spite of the custom and tradition of the Jews
and the analogy of the brother's Avidow. (3) In the third
case the word {deoirvevaTos) ' given by inspiration of Grod '
is spoken of the Old Testament, and is assumed to apply
to the New, including that Epistle in which the expression
occurs (2 Tim. iii, 16). (4) In the fourth example the
words used are mysterious (John xiv, 26 ; xvi. 15), and
seem to come out of the depths of a divine consciousness ;
they have sometimes, however, received a more exact
meaning than they could truly bear ; what is spoken in
a figure is construed with the severity of a logical statement,
while passages of an opposite tenour are overlooked or set
aside. (5) In the fifth instance, the mere mention of a
family of a jailer at Philippi who was baptized ('he and
all his,' Acts xvi. 33), has led to the inference that in
this family there were probably young children, and hence
that infant baptism is, first, permissive, secondly, obligatory.
(6) In the sixth case the chief stress of the argument from
Scripture turns on the occurrence of the word (eirtaKOTTos)
bishop, in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which is
assisted by a supposed analogy between the position of
the Apostles and of their successors ; although the term
bishop is clearly used in the passages referred to as well
as in other parts of the New Testament indistinguishably
from Presbyter, and the magisterial authority of bishops
in after ages is unlike rather than like the personal
authority of the Apostles in the beginning of the Gospel.
The further development of Episcopacy into Apostolical
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 3 1
succession has often been rested on the promise, * Lo, I am
with you alway, even to the end of the world.' (7) In
the seventh case the precepts of order which are addressed
in the Epistle to the ' fifth monarchy men of those days,'
are transferred to a duty of obedience to hereditary princes ;
the fact of the house of David, 'the Lord's anointed,'
sitting on the throne of Israel is converted into a principle
for all times and countries. And the higher lesson which
our Saviour teaches : ' Kender unto Caesar the things which
are Caesar's, ' that is to say, ' Render unto all their
due, and to God above all,' is spoiled by being made into
a precept of political subjection. (8) Lastly, the justice of
God ' who rewardeth every man according to his works,'
and the Christian scheme of redemption, have been staked
on two figurative expressions of St. Paul to which there
is no parallel in any other part of Scripture (i Cor. xv.
22 : 'For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive,' and the corresponding passage in Rom. v.
12); notwithstanding the declaration of the Old Testament
as also of the New, ' Every soul shall bear its own
iniquity,' and 'neither this man sinned nor his parents.'
It is not necessary for our purpose to engage further in
the matters of dispute which have arisen by the way in
attempting to illustrate the general argument. Yet to
avoid misconception it may be remarked, that many of
the principles, rules, or truths mentioned, as for example.
Infant Baptism, or the Episcopal Form of Church Govern-
ment, have sufficient grounds ; the weakness is the attempt
to derive them from Scripture.
With this minute and rigid enforcement of the words
of Scripture in passages where the ideas expressed in them
either really or apparently agree with received opinions
or institutions, there remains to be contrasted the neglect,
or in some instances the misinterpretation of other words
which are not equally in harmony with the spirit of the
age. In many of our Lord's discourses He speaks of the
32 ESSAY ON
' blessedness of poverty : ' of the hardness which they that
have riches will experience 'in attaining eternal life.'
' It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, '
and ' Son, thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things,'
and again ' One thing thou lackest, go sell all that thou
hast.' Precepts like these do not appeal to our own
experience of life ; they are unlike anything that we see
around us at the present day, even among good men ; to
some among us they will recall the remarkable saying of
Lessing, — 'that the Christian religion had been tried for
eighteen centuries ; the religion of Christ remained to be
tried.' To take them litex'ally would be injurious to
ourselves and to society (at least, so we think). Religious
sects or orders who have seized this aspect of Christianity
have come to no good, and have often ended in extravagance.
It will not do to go into the world saying, ' Woe unto you,
ye rich men,' or on entering a noble mansion to repeat the
denunciations of the prophet about 'cedar and vermilion,'
or on being shown the prospect of a magnificent estate
to cry out, ' Woe unto them that lay field to field that
they may be placed alone in the midst of the eai-th.'
Times have altered, we say, since these denunciations
were uttered ; what appeared to the Prophet or Apostle
a violation of the appointment of Providence has now
become a part of it. It will not do to make a great
supper, and mingle at the same board the two ends of
society, as modern phraseology calls them, fetching in ' the
poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind,' to fill the vacant
places of noble guests. That would be eccentric in modern
times, and even hurtful. Neither is it suitable for us to
wash one another's feet, or to perform any other menial
office, because our Lord set us the example. The customs
of society do not admit it ; no good would be done by it,
and singularity is of itself an evil. Well, then, are the
precepts of Christ not to be obeyed? Perhaps in their
fullest sense they cannot be obeyed. But at any rate they
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTUEE ;^^
are not to be explained away ; the standard of Christ is
not to be lowered to ordinary Christian life, because ordinary
Christian life cannot rise, even in good men, to the standard
of Christ. And there may be * standing among us ' some
one in ten thousand 'whom we know not,' in whom there
is such a divine union of charity and prudence that he
is most blest in the entire fulfilment of the precept — ' Go
sell all that thou hast,' — which to obey literally in other
cases would be evil, and not good. Many there have been,
doubtless (not one or two only), who have given all that
they had on earth to their family or friends — the poor servant
' casting her two mites into the treasury,' denying herself
the ordinary comforts of life for the sake of an ex*ring
parent or brother ; that is not probably an uncommon
case, and as near an approach as in this life we make to
heaven. And there may be some one or two rare natures
in the world in whom there is such a divine courtesy, such
a gentleness and dignity of soul, that differences of rank
seem to vanish before them, and they look upon the face
of others, even of their own servants and dependents,
only as they are in the sight of God and will be in His
kingdom. And there may be some tender and delicate
woman among us, who feels that she has a divine vocation
to fulfil the most repulsive offices towards the dying
inmates of a hospital, or the soldier perishing in a foreign
land. Whether such examples of self-sacrifice are good
or evil, must depend, not altogether on social or economical
principles, but on the spirit of those who offer them, and
the power which they have in themselves of ' making all
things kin.' And even if the ideal itself were not carried
out by us in practice, it has nevertheless what may be
termed a truth of feeling. 'Let them that have riches
be as though they had them not.' 'Let the rich man
wear the load lightly; he will one day fold them up as
a vesture.' Let not the refinement of society make us
forget that it is not the refined only who are received
VOL. II. D
34 ESSAY ON
into the kingdom of God; nor the daintiness of life hide
from us the bodily evils of which the rich man and Lazarus
are alike heirs. Thoughts such as these have the power
to reunite us to our fellow-creatures from whom the
accidents of birth, position, wealth have separated us ;
they soften our hearts towards them, when divided not
only by vice and ignorance, but what is even a greater
barrier, difference of manners and associations. For if
there be anything in our own fortune superior to that of
others, instead of idolizing or cherishing it in the blood,
the Gospel would have us cast it from us ; and if there be
anything mean or despised in those with whom we have
to do, the Gospel would have us regard such as friends
and brethren, yea, even as having the person of Christ.
Another instance of apparent, if not real neglect of the
precepts of Scripture, is furnished by the commandment
against swearing. No precept about divorce is so plain,
so universal, so exclusive as this; 'Swear not at all.' Yet
we all know how the custom of Christian countries has
modified this ' counsel of perfection ' which was uttered
by the Saviour. This is the more remarkable because in
this case the precept is not, as in the former, practically
impossible of fulfilment or even difficult. And yet in this
instance again, the body who have endeavoured to follow
more nearly the letter of our Lord's commandment, seem
to have gone against the common sense of the Christian
world. Or to add one more example : Who, that hears
of the Sabbatarianism, as it is called, of some Protestant
countries, would imagine that the Author of our religion
had cautioned His disciples, not against the violation of
the Sabbath, but only against its formal and Pharisaical
observance ; or that the chiefest of the Apostles had warned
the Colossians to 'Let no man judge them in respect of
the new moon, or of the sabbath-days' (ii. i6).
The neglect of another class of passages is even more
surprising, the precepts contained in them being quite
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE ^^
practicable and in harmony with the existing state of the
world. In this instance it seems as if religious teachers
had failed to gather those principles of which they stood
most in need. ' Think ye that those eighteen upon whom
the tower of Siloam fell ? ' is the characteristic lesson of
the Gospel on the occasion of any sudden visitation. Yet
it is another reading of such calamities which is commonly
insisted upon. The observation is seldom made respecting
the parable of the good Samaritan, that the true neighbour
is also a person of a different religion. The words, ' Forbid
him not : for there is no man which shall do a miracle
in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me,' are often
said to have no application to sectarian differences in the
present day, when the Church is established and miracles
have ceased. The conduct of our Lord to the woman taken
in adultery, though not intended for our imitation always,
yet affords a painful contrast to the excessive severity with
which even a Christian society punishes the errors of
women. The boldness with which St. Paul applies the
principle of individual judgement, ' Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind,' as exhibited also in the words
quoted above, ' Let no man judge you in respect of the
new moon, or of the sabbath-days,' is far greater than would
be allowed in the present age. Lastly, that the tenet of
the damnation of the heathen should ever have prevailed
in the Christian world, or that the damnation of Catholics
should have been a received opinion among Protestants,
implies a strange forgetfulness of such passages as
Eom. ii. I- 1 6. 'Who reward eth every man according to
his work,' and 'When the Gentiles, which know not the
law, do by nature the things contained in the law,' &c.
What a difference between the simple statement which the
Apostle makes of the justice of God and the ' uncovenanted
mercies ' or ' invincible ignorance ' of theologians half
reluctant to give up, yet afraid to maintain the advantage
of denying salvation to those who are ' extra palum Ecdesiae ! '
D 2
36 ESSAY ON
The same habit of silence or misinterpretation extends to
words or statements of Scripture in which doctrines are
thought to be interested. When maintaining the Athana-
sian doctrine of the Trinity, we do not readily recall the
verse, ' of that hour knoweth no man, no not the Angels of
God, neither the Son, but the Father' (Mark xiii. 32). The
temper or feeling which led St. Ambrose to doubt the
genuineness of the words marked in italics, leads Christians
in our own day to pass them over. We are scarcely just to
the Millenarians or to those who maintain the continuance
of miracles or spiritual gifts in the Christian Church, in not
admitting the degree of support which is afforded to their
views by many passages of Scripture. The same remark
applies to the Predestinarian controversy ; the Calvinist is
often hardly dealt with, in being deprived of his real
standing ground in the third and ninth chapters of the
Epistle to the Eomans. And the Protestant who thinks
himself bound to prove from Scripture the very details of
doctrine or discipline which are maintained in his Church,
is often obliged to have recourse to harsh methods, and
sometimes to deny appearances which seem to favour some
particular tenet of Eoman Catholicism (Matt. xvi. 18, 19 ;
xviii. 18 : I Cor. iii. 15). The Eoman Catholic, on the other
hand, scarcely observes that nearly all the distinctive articles
of his creed are wanting in the New Testament ; the Cal-
vinist in fact ignores almost the whole of the sacred volume
for the sake of a few verses. The truth is, that in seeking
to prove our own opinions out of Scripture, we are con-
stantly falling into the common fallacy of opening our eyes
to one class of facts and closing them to another. The
favourite verses shine like stars, while the rest of the page
is thrown into the shade.
Nor indeed is it easy to say what is the meaning of
* proving a doctrine from Scripture.' For when we demand
logical equivalents and similarity of circumstances, when
we balance adverse statements, St. James and St. Paul, the
THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE 37
New Testament with the Old, it will be hard to demonstrate
from Scripture any complex system either of doctrine or
practice. The Bible is not a book of statutes in which
words have been chosen to cover the multitude of cases, but
in the greater portion of it, especially the Gospels and
Epistles, ' like a man talking to his friend.' Nay, more, it is
a book written in the East, which is in some degree liable
to be misunderstood, because it speaks the language and has
the feeling of Eastern lands. Nor can we readily determine
in explaining the words of our Lord or of St. Paul, how
much (even of some of the passages just quoted) is to be
attributed to Oriental modes of speech. Expressions which
would be regarded as rhetorical exaggerations in the Western
world are the natural vehicles of thought to an Eastern
people. How great then must be the confusion where an
attempt is made to draw out these Oriental modes with the
severity of a philosophical or legal argument ! Is it not
such a use of the words of Christ which He Himself rebukes
when He says ? ' It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh
profiteth nothing' (John vi. 52, 63).
There is a further way in which the language of creeds
and liturgies as well as the ordinary theological use of terms
exercises a disturbing influence on the interpretation of
Scripture. Words which occur in Scripture are singled
out and incorporated in systems, like stones taken out of
an old building and put into a new one. They acquire
a technical meaning more or less divergent from the original
one. It is obvious that their use in Scripture, and not their
later and technical sense, must furnish the rule of in-
terpretation. We should not have recourse to the meaning
of a word in Polybius, for the explanation of its use in
Plato, or to the turn of a sentence in Lycophron, to
illustrate a construction of Aeschylus. It is the same kind
of anachronism which would interpret Scripture by the
scholastic or theological use of the language of Scripture.
It is remarkable that this use is indeed partial, that is to
38 ESSAY ON
say it affects one class of words and not another. Love
and truth, for example, have never been theological terms ;
grace and faith, on the other hand, always retain an
association with the Pelagian or Lutheran controversies.
Justification and inspiration are derived from verbs which
occur in Scripture, and the later substantive has clearly
affected the meaning of the original verb or verbal in the
places where they occur. The remark might be further
illustrated by the use of Scriptural language respecting the
Sacraments, which has also had a reflex influence on its
interpretation in many passages of Scripture, especially in
the Gospel of St. John (John iii. 5 ; vi. 56, &c). Minds
which are familiar with the mystical doctrine of the
Sacraments seem to see a reference to them in almost
every place in the Old Testament as well as in the New,
in which the words 'water,' of 'bread and wine' may
happen to occur.
Other questions meet us on the threshold, of a different
kind, which also affect the interpretation of Scripture, and
therefore demand an answer. Is it admitted that the
Scripture has one and only one true meaning? Or are
we to follow the fathers into mystical and allegorical ex-
planations? or with the majority of modern interpreters
to confine ourselves to the double senses of prophecy, and
the symbolism of the Gospel in the law? In either case,
we assume what can never be proved, and an instrument
is introduced of such subtlety and pliability as to make
the Scriptures mean anything — ' Gallus in canipanili,' as the
Waldenses described it ; ' the weathercock on the church
tower,' which is turned hither and thither by every wind
of doctrine. That the present age has grown out of the
mystical methods of the early fathers is a part of its
intellectual state. No one will now seek to find hidden
meanings in the scarlet thread of Eahab, or the number of
Abraham's followers, or in the little circumstance men-
tioned after the resurrection of the Saviour that St. Peter
THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE 39
was the first to enter the sepulchre. To most educated
persons in the nineteenth century, these applications of
Scripture appear foolish. Yet it is rather the excess of
the method which provokes a smile than the method itself.
For many remains of the mystical interpretation exist
among ourselves ; it is not the early fathers only who have
read the Bible crosswise, or deciphered it as a book of
symbols. And the uncertainty is the same in any part of
Scripture if there is a departure from the plain and obvious
meaning. If, for example, we alternate the verses in which
our Lord speaks of the last things between the day of
judgement and the destruction of Jerusalem ; or, in the
elder prophecies, which are the countei'parts of these, make
a corresponding division between the temporal and the
spiritual Israel ; or again if we attribute to the details of
the Mosaical ritual a reference to the New Testament ;
or, once more, supposing the passage of the Eed Sea to
be regarded not merely as a figure of baptism, but as
a pre-ordained type, the principle is conceded ; there is
no good reason why the scarlet thread of Eahab should
not receive the explanation given to it by Clement. A
little more or a little less of the method does not make
the difference between certainty and uncertainty in the
interpretation of Scripture. In whatever degree it is prac-
tised it is equally incapable of being reduced to any rule ;
it is the interpreter's fancy, and is likely to be not less but
more dangerous and extravagant when it adds the charm of
authority from its use in past ages.
The question which has been suggested runs up into
a more general one, ' the relation between the Old and New
Testaments.' For the Old Testament will receive a different
meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself or from
the New. In the first case a careful and conscientious
study of each one for itself is all that is required ; in the
second case the types and ceremonies of the law, perhaps
the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to
40 ESSAY ON
be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the
things that were to be in the latter days. And this question
of itself stirs another question respecting the interpretation
of the Old Testament in the New. Is such interpretation
to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an
accommodation of it to the thoughts of other times ?
Our object is not to attempt here the determination of
these questions, but to point out that they must be deter-
mined before any real progress can be made or any agree-
ment arrived at in the interpretation of Scripture. With
one more example of another kind we may close this part of
the subject. The origin of the three first Gospels is an
inquiry which has not been much considered by English
theologians since the days of Bishop Marsh. The difficulty
of the question has been sometimes misunderstood ; the
point being how there can be so much agreement in words,
and so much disagreement both in words and facts ; the
double phenomenon is the real perplexity — how in short
there can be all degrees of similarity and dissimilarity, the
kind and degree of similarity being such as to make it
necessary to suppose that large portions are copied from
each other or from common documents ; the dissimilarities
being of a kind which seem to render impossible any know-
ledge in the authors of one another's writings. The most
probable solution of this difficulty is, that the tradition on
which the three first Gospels are based was at first presei"ved
orally, and slowly put together and written in the three
forms which it assumed at a very early period, those forms
being in some places, perhaps, modified by translation. It
is not necessary to develop this hypothesis farther. The
point to be noticed is, that whether this or some other
theory be the true account (and some such account is
demonstrably necessary), the assumption of such a theory,
or rather the observation of the facts on which it rests,
cannot but exercise an influence on interpretation. We can
no longer speak of three independent witnesses of the Gospel
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 41
narrative. Hence there follow some other consequences.
(i) There is no longer the same necessity as heretofore
to reconcile inconsistent narratives ; the harmony of the
Gospels only means the parallelism of similar words. (2)
There is no longer any need to enforce every^vhere the
connexion of successive verses, for the same words will be
found to occur in different connexions in the different
Gospels. (3) Nor can the designs attributed to their
authors be regarded as the free handling of the same subject
on different plans ; the difference consisting chiefly in the
occurrence or absence of local or verbal explanations, or the
addition or omission of certain passages. Lastly, it is
evident that no weight can be given to traditional state-
ments of facts about the authorship, as, for example, that
respecting St. Mark being the interpreter of St. Peter,
because the Fathers who have handed down these state-
ments were ignorant or unobservant of the great fact, which
is proved by internal evidence, that they are for the most
part of common origin.
Until these and the like questions are determined by
interpreters, it is not possible that there should be agree-
ment in the interpretation of Scripture. The Protestant
and Catholic, the Unitarian and Trinitarian will continue to
fight their battle on the ground of the New Testament.
The Preterists and Futurists, those who maintain that the
roll of prophecies is completed in past history, or in the
apostolical age ; those who look forward to a long series of
events which are yet to come [es acjyaves tov [ivOov aveviUas
ovK ex€t ekeyxov^, mayalike claim the authority of the Book
of Daniel, or the Eevelation. Apparent coincidences will
always be discovered by those who want to find them.
Where there is no critical interpretation of Scripture, there
will be a mystical or rhetorical one. If words have more
than one meaning, they may have any meaning. Instead
of being a rule of life or faith. Scripture becomes the
expression of the ever-changing aspect of religious opinions.
42 ESSAY ON
The unchangeable word of God, in the name of which we
repose, is changed by each age and each generation in
accordance with its passing fancy. The book in which we
believe all religious truth to be contained, is the most
uncertain of all books, because interpreted by arbitrary and
uncertain methods.
§ 3.
It is probable that some of the preceding statements may
be censured as a wanton exposure of the difficulties of
Scripture. It will be said that such inquii'ies are for the
few, while the printed page lies open to the many, and that
the obtrusion of them may offend some weaker brother,
some half-educated or prejudiced soul, 'for whom,' never-
theless, in the touching language of St. Paul, 'Christ died.'
A confusion of the heart and head may lead sensitive minds
into a desertion of the principles of the Christian life, which
are their own witness, because they are in doubt about facts
which are really external to them. Great evil to character
may sometimes ensue from such causes. ' No man can serve
two ' opinions without a sensible haim to his nature. The
consciousness of this responsibility should be always present
to writers on theology. But the responsibihty is really two-
fold ; for there is a duty to speak the truth as well as a duty
to withhold it. The voice of a majority of the clergy
throughout the world, the half sceptical, half conservative
instincts of many laymen, perhaps, also, individual interest,
are in favour of the latter course ; while a higher expediency
pleads that ' honesty is the best policy, ' and that truth alone
'makes free.' To this it may be replied, that truth is not
truth to those who are unable to use it ; no reasonable man
would attempt to lay before the illiterate such a question as
that concerning the origin of the Gospels. And yet it may
be rejoined once more, the healthy tone of religion among
the poor depends upon freedom of thought and inquiry
among the educated. In this conflict of reasons, individual
judgement must at last decide. That there has been no
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 43
rude, or improper unveiling of the difficvilties of Scripture
in the preceding pages, is thought to be shown by the
following considerations :
First, that the difficulties referred to are very well known ;
they force themselves on the attention, not only of the
student, but of every intelligent reader of the New Testa-
ment, whether in Greek or English. The treatment of
such difficulties in theological works is no measure of public
opinion respecting them. Thoughtful persons, whose minds
have turned towards theology, are continually discovering
that the critical observations which they make themselves
have been made also by others apparently without concert.
The truth is that they have been led to them by the same
causes, and these again lie deep in the tendencies of
education and literature in the present age. But no one is
willing to break through the reticence which is observed on
these subjects ; hence a sort of smouldering scepticism. It
is probable that the distrust is greatest at the time when
the greatest eiforts are made to conceal it. Doubt comes in
at the window, when Inquiry is denied at the door. The
thoughts of able and highly educated young men almost
always stray towards the first principles of things ; it is
a great injury to them, and tends to raise in their minds
a sort of incurable suspicion, to find that there is one book
of the fruit of the knowledge of which they are forbidden
freely to taste, that is, the Bible. The same spirit renders
the Christian Minister almost powerless in the hands of his
opponents. He can give no true answer to the mechanic or
artisan who has either discovered by his mother-wit or who
retails at second-hand the objections of critics ; for he is
unable to look at things as they truly are.
Secondly, as the time has come when it is no longer
possible to ignore the results of criticism, it is of importance
that Christianity should be seen to be in harmony with
them. That objections to some received views should be
valid, and yet that they should be always held up as the
44 ESSAY ON
objections of infidels, is a mischief to the Christian cause.
It is a mischief that critical observations which any intelli-
gent man can make for himself, should be ascribed to
atheism or unbelief. It would be a strange and almost
incredible thing that the Gospel, which at first made war
only on the vices of mankind, should now be opposed to
one of the highest and rarest of human virtues — the love
of truth. And that in the present day the great object
of Christianity should be, not to change the lives of men,
but to prevent them from changing their opinions ; that
would be a singular inversion of the purposes for which
Christ came into the world. The Christian religion is in
a false position when all the tendencies of knowledge are
opposed to it. Such a position cannot be long maintained,
or can only end in the withdrawal of the educated classes
from the influences of religion. It is a grave consideration
whether we ourselves may not be in an earlier stage of the
same religious dissolution, which seems to have gone further
in Italy and France. The reason for thinking so is not to
be sought in the external circumstances of our own or any
other religious communion, but in the progress of ideas
with which Christian teachers seem to be ill at ease. Time
was when the Gospel was before the age ; when it breathed
a new life into a decaying world— when the difficulties of
Christianity were difficulties of the heart only, and the
highest minds found in its truths not only the rule of their
lives, but a well-spring of intellectual delight. Is it to be
held a thing impossible that the Christian rehgion, instead
of shrinking into itself, may again embrace the thoughts
of men upon the earth ? Or is it true that since the
Eeformation ' all intellect has gone the other way ' ? and
that in Protestant countries reconciliation is as hopeless as
Protestants commonly believe to be the case in Catholic ?
Those who hold the possibility of svich a reconcilement or
restoration of belief, are anxious to disengage Christianity
from all suspicion of disguise or unfairness. They wish to
THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE 45
preserve the historical use of Scripture as the continuous
witness in all ages of the higher things in the heart of man,
as the inspired source of truth and the way to the better
life. They are willing to take away some of the external
supports, because they are not needed and do harm ; also,
because they interfere with the meaning. They have
a faith, not that after a period of transition all things will
remain just as they were before, but that they will all come
round again to the use of man and to the glory of God.
When interpreted like any other book, by the same rules of
evidence and the same canons of criticism, the Bible will
still remain unlike any other book ; its beauty will be
freshly seen, as of a picture which is restored after many
ages to its original state ; it will create a new interest and
make for itself a new kind of authority by the life which is
in it. It will be a spirit and not a letter ; as it was in the
beginning, having an influence like that of the spoken word,
or the book newly found. The purer the light in the
human heart, the more it will have an expression of itself
in the mind of Christ ; the greater the knowledge of the
development of man, the truer will be the insight gained
into the ' increasing purpose ' of revelation. In which also
the individual soul has a practical part, finding a sympathy
with its own imperfect feelings, in the broken utterance
of the Psalmist or the Prophet as well as in the fullness of
Christ. The harmony between Scripture and the life of
man, in all its stages, may be far greater than appears at
present. No one can foi-m any notion from what we see
around us, of the power which Christianity might have if
it were at one with the conscience of man, and not at
variance with his intellectual convictions. There, a world
weary of the heat and dust of controversy — of speculations
about God and man — weary too of the rapidity of its own
motion, would return home and find rest.
But for the faith that the Gospel might win again the
minds of intellectual men, it would be better to leave
46 ESSAY ON
religion to itself, instead of attempting to draw them
together. Other walks in literature have peace and pleasure
and profit ; the path of the critical Interpreter of Scripture
is almost always a thorny one in England. It is not worth
while for any one to enter upon it who is not supported by
a sense that he has a Christian and moral object. For
although an Interpreter of Scripture in modern times will
hardly say with the emphasis of the Apostle, ' Woe is me,
if I speak not the truth without regard to consequences,'
yet he too may feel it a matter of duty not to conceal the
things which he knows. He does not hide the discrepancies
of Scripture, because the acknowledgement of them is the
first step towards agreement among interpreters. He would
restore the original meaning because 'seven other ' meanings
take the place of it ; the book is made the sport of opinion
and the instrument of perversion of life. He would take
the excuses of the head out of the way of the heart ; there
is hope too that by drawing Christians together on the
ground of Scripture, he may also draw them nearer to one
another. He is not afraid that inquiries, which have for
their object the truth, can ever be displeasing to the God of
truth ; or that the Word of God is in any such sense a word
as to be hurt by investigations into its human origin and
conception.
It may be thought another ungracious aspect of the
preceding remarks, that they cast a slight upon the inter-
preters of Scripture in former ages. The early Fathers, the
Roman Catholic mystical writers, the Swiss and German
Reformers, the Nonconformist divines, have qualities for
which we look in vain among ourselves ; they throw an
intensity of light upon the page of Scripture which we
nowhere find in modern commentaries. But it is not the
light of interpretation. They have a faith which seems
indeed to have grown dim nowadays, but that faith is not
drawn from the study of Scripture ; it is the element in
which their own mind moves which overflows on the
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 47
meaning of the text. The words of Scripture suggest to
them their own thoughts or feeUngs. They are preachers,
or in the New Testament sense of the word, prophets rather
than interpreters. There is nothing in such a view deroga-
tory to the saints and doctors of former ages. That Aquinas
or Bernard did not shake themselves free from the mystical
method of the Patristic times or the Scholastic one which
was more peculiarly their own ; that Luther and Calvin
read the Scriptures in connexion with the ideas which were
kindling in the mind of their age, and the events which
were passing before their eyes, these and similar remarks
are not to be construed as depreciatory of the genius or
learning of famous men of old ; they relate only to their
interpretation of Scripture, in which it is no slight upon
them, to maintain that they were not before their day.
What remains may be comprised in a few precepts,
or rather is the expansion of a single one. Interpret the
Scripture liJce any other hook. There are many respects in
which Scripture is unlike any other book ; these will appear
in the results of such an interpretation. The first step is
to know the meaning, and this can only be done in the
same careful and impartial way that we ascertain the
meaning of Sophocles or of Plato. The subordinate prin-
ciples which flow out of this general one will also be
gathered from the observation of Scripture. No other
science of Hermeneutics is possible but an inductive one,
that is to say, one based on the language and thoughts and
narrations of the sacred writers. And it would be well to
carry the theory of interpretation no further than in the
case of other works. Excessive system tends to create an
impression that the meaning of Scripture is out of our reach,
or is to be attained in some other way than by the exercise
of manly sense and industry. Who would write a bulky
treatise about the method to be pursued in interpreting
Plato or Sophocles? Let us not set out on our journey so
heavily equipped that there is little chance of our arriving
48 ESSAY ON
at the end of it. The method creates itself as we go on,
beginning only with a few reflections directed against plain
errors. Such reflections are the rules of common sense,
which we acknowledge with respect to other works written
in dead languages ; without pretending to novelty they may
help us to 'return to nature' in the study of the sacred
writings.
First, it may be laid down, that Scripture has one
meaning — the meaning which it had to the mind of the
Prophet or Evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the
hearers or readers who first received it. Another view may
be easier or more familiar to us, seeming to receive a light
and interest from the circumstances of our own age. But
such accommodation of the text must be laid aside by the
interpreter, whose business is, to place himself as nearly as
possible in the position of the sacred writer. That is no
easy task — to call up the inner and outer life of the
contemporaries of our Saviour ; to follow the abrupt and
involved utterance of St. Paul or of one of the old Prophets ;
to trace the meaning of words when language first became
Christian. He will often have to choose the more difiicult
interpretation (Gal. ii. 20; Eom. iii. 15, &c.), and to refuse
one more in agreement with received opinions, because the
latter is less true to the style and time of the author. He
may incur the charge of singularity, or confusion of ideas,
or ignorance of Greek, from a misunderstanding of the
peculiarity of the subject in the person who makes the
charge. For if it be said that the translation of some
Greek words is contrary to the usages of grammar (Gal.
iv. 13), that is not in every instance to be denied ; the point
is, whether the usages of grammar are always observed.
Or if it be objected to some interpretation of Scripture that
it is difficult and perplexing, the answer is — ' that may very-
well be — it is the fact,' arising out of differences in the
modes of thought of other times, or irregularities in the use
of language which no art of the interpreter can evade. One
THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE 49
consideration should be borne in mind, that the Bible is the
only book in the world written in different styles and at
many different times, which is in the hands of persons of
all degrees of knowledge and education. The benefit of
this outweighs the evil, yet the evil should be admitted —
namely, that it leads to a hasty and partial interpretation
of Scripture, which often obscures the true one. A sort
of conflict arises between scientific criticism and popular
opinion. The indiscriminate use of Scripture has a further
tendency to maintain erroneous readings or translations ;
some which are allowed to be such by scholars have been
stereotyped in the mind of the English reader ; and it
becomes almost a political question how far we can venture
to disturb them.
There are difficulties of another kind in many parts of
Scripture, the depth and inwardness of which require
a measure of the same qualities in the interpreter himself.
There are notes struck in places, which like some discoveries
of science have sounded before their time ; and only after
many days have been caught up and found a response on
the earth. There are germs of truth which after thousands
of years have never yet taken root in the world. There are
lessons in the Prophets which, however simple, mankind
have not yet learned even in theoiy ; and which the
complexity of society rather tends to hide ; aspects of
human life in Job and Ecclesiastes which have a truth
of desolation about them which we faintly realize in ordinary
circumstances. It is, perhaps, the greatest difficulty of all
to enter into the meaning of the words of Christ — so gentle,
so human, so divine, neither adding to them nor marring
their simplicity. The attempt to illustrate or draw them
out in detail, even to guard against their abuse, is apt to
disturb the balance of truth. The interpreter needs nothing
short of ' fashioning ' in himself the image of the mind of
Christ. He has to be born again into a new spiritual or
intellectual world, from which the thoughts of this world
VOL. 11. E
50 ESSAY ON
are shut out. It is one of the highest tasks on which the
labour of a life can he spent, to bring the words of Christ
a little nearer the heart of man.
But while acknowledging this inexhaustible or infinite
character of the sacred writings, it does not, therefore,
follow that we are willing to admit of hidden or mysterious
meanings in them : in the same way we recognize the
wonders and complexity of the laws of nature to be far
beyond what eye has seen or knowledge reached, yet it is
not therefore to be supposed that we acknowledge the
existence of some other laws, different in kind from those
we know, which are incapable of philosophical analysis. In
like manner we have no reason to attribute to the Prophet
or Evangelist any second or hidden sense different from
that which appears on the surface. All that the Prophet
meant may not have been consciously present to his mind ;
there were depths which to himself also were but half
revealed. He beheld the fortunes of Israel passing into
the heavens ; the temporal kingdom was fading into an
eternal one. It is not to be supposed that what he saw at
a distance only was clearly defined to him ; or that the
universal truth which was appearing and reappearing in the
history of the surrounding world took a purely spiritual or
abstract form in his mind. There is a sense in which we
may still say with Lord Bacon, that the words of prophecy
are to be interpreted as the words of one 'with whom
a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand
years.' But that is no reason for turning days into years,
or for interpreting the things 'that must shortly come to
pass ' in the book of Eevelation, as the events of modern
history, or for separating the day of judgement from the
destruction of Jerusalem in the Gospels. The double
meaning which is given to our Saviour's discourse respecting
the last things is not that ' form of eternity ' of which Lord
Bacon speaks ; it resembles rather the doubling of an object
when seen through glasses placed at different angles. It is
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 5 1
true also that there are types in Scripture which were
regarded as such by the Jews themselves, as for example,
the scapegoat, or the paschal lamb. But that is no proof of
all outward ceremonies being types when Scripture is silent ;
— if we assume the New Testament as a tradition running-
parallel with the Old, may not the Eoman Catholic assume
with equal reason tradition running parallel with the New '?
Prophetic symbols, again, have often the same meaning in
different places (e. g, the four beasts or living creatures, the
colours white or red) ; the reason is that this meaning is
derived from some natural association (as of fruitfulness,
purity, or the like) ; or again, they are borrowed in some
of the later prophecies from earlier ones ; we are not,
therefore, justified in supposing any hidden connexion in
the prophecies where they occur. Neither is there any
ground for assuming design of any other kind in Scripture
any more than in Plato or Homer. Wherever there is
beauty and order, there is design ; but there is no proof of
any artificial design, such as is often traced by the Fathers,
in the relation of the several parts of a book, or of the several
books to each other. That is one of those mischievous notions
which enables us, under the disguise of reverence, to make
Scripture mean what we please. Nothing that can be said of
the greatness or sublimity, or truth, or depth, or tenderness,
of many passages, is too much. But that greatness is of
a simple kind ; it is not increased by double senses, or
systems of types, or elaborate structure, or design. If every
sentence was a mystery, every word a riddle, every letter
a symbol, that would not make the Scriptures more worthy
of a Divine author ; it is a heathenish or Rabbinical fancy
which reads them in this way. Such complexity would not
place them above but below human compositions in general ;
for it would deprive them of the ordinary intelligibleness of
human language. It is not for a Christian theologian to say
that words were given to mankind to conceal their thoughts,
neither was revelation given them to conceal the Divine.
£ 2
52 ESSAY ON
The second rule is an application of the general principle ;
'interpret Scripture from itself,' as iu other respects like
any other book written in an age and country of which little
or no other literature survives, and about which we know
almost nothing except what is derived from its pages. Not
that all the parts of Scripture are to be regarded as an indis-
tinguishable mass. The Old Testament is not to be identified
with the New, nor the Law with the Prophets, nor the
Gospels with the Epistles, nor the Epistles of St. Paul to be
violently harmonized with the Epistle of St. James. Each
writer, each successive age, has characteristics of its own, as
strongly marked, or more strongly than those which are
found in the authors or periods of classical literature. These
differences are not to be lost in the idea of a Spirit from
whom they proceed or by which they were overruled. And
therefore, illustration of one part of Scripture by another
should be confined to writings of the same age and the same
authors, except where the writings of different ages or
persons offer obvious similarities. It may be said further
that illustration should be chiefly derived, not only from the
same author, but from the same writing, or from one of the
same period of his life. For example, the comparison of
•St. John and the ' synoptic ' Gospels, or of the Gospel of
St. John with the Eevelation of St. John, will tend rather
to confuse than to elucidate the meaning of either ; while,
on the other hand, the comparison of the Prophets with one
another, and with the Psalms, offers many valuable helps
and lights to the interpreter. Again, the connexion between
the Epistles written by the Apostle St. Paul about the same
time (e. g. Eomans, i and 2 Corinthians, Galatians — Colos-
sians, Philippians, Ephesians — compared with Eomans,
Colossians — Ephesians, Galatians, &c.) is far closer than of
Epistles which are separated by an interval of only a few
years.
But supposing all this to be understood, and that by the
interpretation of Scripture from itself is meant a real inter-
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE ^^
pretation of like by like, it may be asked, what is it that we
gain from a minute comparison of a particular author or
writing? The indiscriminate use of parallel passages taken
from one end of Scripture and applied to the other (except
so far as earlier compositions may have afforded the material
or the form of later ones) is useless and uncritical. The
uneducated or imperfectly educated person who looks out
the marginal references of the English Bible, imagining
himself in this way to gain a clearer insight into the Divine
meaning, is really following the religious associations of his
own mind. Even the critical use of parallel passages is not
without danger. For are we to conclude that an author
meant in one place what he says in another? Shall we
venture to mend a corrupt phrase on the model of some
other phrase, which memory, prevailing over judgement,
calls up and thrusts into the text ? It is this fallacy which
has filled the pages of classical writers with useless and
unfounded emendations.
The meaning of the Canon ^ Non nisi ex Scriptwd Scrip-
tiirani potes interprefari, ' is only this, ' That we cannot under-
stand Scripture without becoming familiar with it.' Scripture
is a world by itself, from which we must exclude foreign
influences, whether theological or classical. To get inside
that world is an effort of thought and imagination, requiring
the sense of a poet as well as a critic — demanding, much
more than learning, a degree of original power and intensity
of mind. Any one who, instead of burying himself in the
pages of the commentators, would learn the sacred writings
by heart, and paraphrase them in English, will probably
make a nearer approach to their true meaning than he would
gather from any commentary. The intelligent mind will
ask its own questions, and find for the most part its own
answers. The true use of interpretation is to get rid of
interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the
author. When the meaning of Greek words is once known,
the young student has almost all the real materials which
54 ESSAY ON
are possessed by the greatest Biblical scholar, in the book
itself. For almost our whole knowledge of the history of
the Jews is derived from the Old Testament and the
Apocryphal books, and almost our whole knowledge of the
life of Christ and of the Apostolical age is derived from
the New ; whatever is added to them is either conjecture, or
veiy slight topographical or chronological illustration. For
this reason the rule given above, which is applicable to all
books, is applicable to the New Testament more than any
other.
Yet in this consideration of the separate books of Scripture
it is not to be forgotten that they have also a sort of
continuity. We make a separate study of the subject, of
the mode of thought, in some degree also of the language
of each book. And at length the idea arises in our minds of
a common literature, a pervading life, an overruling law.
It may be compared to the effect of some natural scene in
which we suddenly perceive a harmony or picture, or to
the imperfect appearance of design which suggests itself in
looking at the surface of the globe. That is to say, there is
nothing miraculous or artificial in the arrangement of the
books of Scripture ; it is the result, not the design, which
appears in them when bound in the same volume. Or if
we like so to say, there is design, but a natural design which
is revealed to after ages. Such continuity or design is best
expressed under some notion of progress or growth, not
regular, however, but with broken and miperfect stages,
which the want of knowledge prevents our minutely
defining. The great truth of the unity of God was there
from the first ; slowly as the morning broke in the heavens,
like some central light, it filled and afterwards dispersed
the mists of human passion in which it was itself enveloped.
A change passes over the Jewish religion from fear to love,
from power to wisdom, from the justice of God to the mercy
of God, from the nation to the individual, from this world
to another ; from the visitation of the sins of the fathers
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE ^^
upon the children, to 'every soul shall bear its own
iniquity ; ' from the fire, the earthquake, and the storm, to
the still small voice. There never was a time after the
deliverance from Egypt, in which the Jewish people did
not bear a kind of witness against the cruelty and licen-
tiousness of the surrounding tribes. In the decline of the
monarchy, as the kingdom itself was sinking under foreign
conquerors, whether springing from contact with the outer
world, or from some reaction within, the undergrowth of
morality gathers strength ; first, in the anticipation of
prophecy, secondly, like a green plant in the hollow rind
of Pharisaism — and individuals pray and commune with
God each one for himself. At length the tree of life
blossoms ; the faith in immortality which had hitherto
slumbered in the heart of man, intimated only in doubtful
words (2 Sam. xii. 23 ; Psalm xvii. 15), or beaming for an
instant in dark places (Job xix, 25), has become the
prevailing belief.
There is an interval in the Jewish annals which we often
exclude from our thoughts, because it has no record in the
canonical writings — extending over about four hundred years,
from the last of the prophets of the Old Testament to the
forerunner of Christ in the New. This interval, about
which we know so little, which is regarded by many as
a portion of secular rather than of sacred history, was
nevertheless as fruitful in religious changes as any similar
period which preceded. The establishment of the Jewish
sects, and the wars of the Maccabees, probably exercised
as great an influence on Judaism as the captivity itself.
A third influence was that of the Alexandrian literature,
which was attracting the Jewish intellect, at the same time
that the Galilean zealot was tearing the nation in pieces
with the doctrine that it was lawful to call ' no man master
but God.' In contrast with that wild fanaticism as well
as with the proud Pharisee, came One most unlike all that
had been before, as the kings or rulers of mankind. In
^6 ESSAY ON
an age which was the victim of its own passions, the
creature of its own circumstances, the slave of its own
degenerate religion, our Saviour taught a lesson absolutely
free from all the influences of a surrounding world. He
made the last perfect revelation of God to man ; a revelation
not indeed immediately applicable to the state of society
or the world, but in its truth and purity inexhaustible by
the after generations of men. And of the first application
of the truth which He taught as a counsel of perfection to
the actual circumstances of mankind, we have the example
in the Epistles.
Such a general conception of growth or development in
Scripture, beginning with the truth of the Unity of God
in the earliest books and ending with the perfection of
Christ, naturally springs up in our minds in the perusal
of the sacred writings. It is a notion of value to the
interpreter, for it enables him at the same time to grasp
the whole and distinguish the parts. It saves him from
the necessity of maintaining that the Old Testament is one
and the same everywhere ; that the books of Moses contain
truths or precepts, such as the duty of prayer or the faith
in immortality, or the spiritual interpretation of sacrifice,
which no one has ever seen there. It leaves him room
enough to admit all the facts of the ease. No longer is he
required to defend, or to explain away, David's imprecations
against his enemies, or his injunctions to Solomon, any
more than his sin in the matter of Uriah. Nor is he
hampered with a theory of accommodation. Still, the sense
of ' the increasing purpose which through the ages ran ' is
present to him, nowhere else continuously discernible or
ending in a divine perfection. Nowhere else is there found
the same interpenetration of the political and religious
, element — a whole nation, ' though never good for much at
any time,' possessed with the conviction that it was living
in the face of God — in whom the Sun of righteousness shone
upon the corruption of an Eastern nature — the 'fewest of
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 57
all people,' yet bearing the greatest part in the education
of the world. Nowhere else among the teachers and
benefactors of mankind is there any form like His, in
whom the desire of the nation is fulfilled, and ' not of that
nation only,' but of all mankind, whom He restores to His
Father and their Father, to His God and their God.
Such a growth or development may be regarded as a kind
of progress from childhood to manhood. In the child there
is an anticipation of truth ; his reason is latent in the form
of feeling ; many words are used by him which he im-
perfectly understands ; he is led by temporal promises,
believing that to be good is to be happy always ; he is
pleased by marvels and has vague terrors. He is confined
to a spot of earth, and lives in a sort of prison of sense,
yet is bursting also with a fulness of childish life : he
imagines God to be like a human father, only greater and
more awful ; he is easily impressed with solemn thoughts,
but soon ' rises up to play ' with other children. It is
observable that his ideas of right and wrong are very
simple, hardly extending to another life ; they consist
chiefly in obedience to his parents, whose word is his law.
As he grows older he mixes more and more with others ;
first with one or two who have a gi'eat influence in the
direction of his mind. At length the world opens upon
him ; another work of education begins ; and he learns to
discern more truly the meaning of things and his relation
to men in general. You may complete the image, by
supposing that there was a time in his early days when
he was a helpless outcast ' in the land of Egypt and the
house of bondage.' And as he arrives at manhood he
reflects on his former years, the progress of his education,
the hardships of his infancy, the home of his youth (the
thought of which is ineffaceable in after life), and he now
understands that all this was but a preparation for another
state of being, in which he is to play a part for himself.
And once more in age you may imagine him like the
58 ESSAY ON
patriarch looking back on the entire past, which he reads
anew, perceiving that the events of life had a purpose or
result which was not seen at the time ; they seem to him
bound 'each to each by natural piety.'
'Which things are an allegory,' the particulars of which
any one may interpret for himself. For the child born
after the flesh is the symbol of the child born after the
Spirit. 'The law was a schoolmaster to bring men to
Christ,' and now 'we are under a schoolmaster' no longer.
The anticipation of truth which came from without to the
childhood or youth of the human race is witnessed to
within ; the revelation of God is not lost but renewed in
the heart and understanding of the man. Experience has
taught us the application of the lesson in a wider sphere.
And many influences have combined to form the ' after life '
of the world. When at the close (shall we say) of a great
period in the history of man, we cast our eyes back on
the course of events, from the 'angel of his presence in
the wilderness' to the multitude of peoples, nations, lan-
guages, who are being drawn together by His Providence —
from the simplicity of the pastoral state in the dawn of
the world's day, to all the elements of civilization and
knowledge which are beginning to meet and mingle in
a common life, we also understand that we are no longer
in our early home, to which, nevertheless, we fondly look ;
and that the end is yet unseen, and the purposes of God
towards the human race only half revealed. And to turn
once more to the Interpreter of Scripture, he too feels that
the continuous growth of revelation which he traces in the
Old and New Testament, is a part of a larger whole extend-
ing over the earth and reaching to another world.
§4.
Scripture has an inner life or soul ; it has also an outward
body or form. That form is language, which imperfectly
expresses our common notions, much more those higher
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 59
truths which religion teaches. At the time when our
Saviour came into the world the Greek language was itself in
a state of degeneracy and decay. It had lost its poetic force,
and was ceasing to have the sway over the mind which
classical Greek once held. That is a more important revolu-
tion in the mental history of mankind, than we easily conceive
in modern times, when all languages sit loosely on thought,
and the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of one are corrected
by our knowledge of another. It may be numbered among
the causes which favoured the growth of Christianity. That
degeneracy was a preparation for the Gospel— the decaying
soil in which the new elements of life were to come forth —
the beginning of another state of man, in which language
and mythology and philosophy were no longer to exert the
same constraining power as in the ancient world. The
civilized portion of mankind were becoming of one speech,
the diffusion of which along the shores of the Mediterranean
sea made a way for the entrance of Christianity into the
human understanding, just as the Eoman empire prepared
the framework of its outward history. The first of all
languages, ' for gloiy and for beauty,' had become the
' common dialect ' of the Macedonian kingdoms ; it had
been moulded in the schools of Alexandria to the ideas
of the East and the religious wants of Jews. Neither was
it any violence to its nature to be made the vehicle of the
new truths which were springing up in the heart of man.
The definiteness and absence of reflectiveness in the eai'lier
forms of human speech, would have imposed a sort of limit
on the freedom and spirituality of the Gospel ; even the
Greek of Plato would have ^coldly furnished forth' the
words of 'eternal life.' A religion which was to be
universal required the divisions of languages, as of nations,
to be in some degree broken down. ['Poena Unguarum
dispersit Jiomines, donum Unguarum in unmn collegit.'] But
this community or freedom of language was accompanied
by corresponding defects ; it had lost its logical precision ;
6o ESSAY ON
it was less coherent, and nioi-e under the influence of
association. It might be compared to a garment which
allowed and yet impeded the exercise of the mind by being
too large and loose for it.
From the inner life of Scripture it is time to pass on
to the consideration of this outward form, including that
other framework of modes of thought and figures of speech
which is between the two. A knowledge of the original
language is a necessary qualification of the Interpreter of
Scripture. It takes away at least one chance of error in
the explanation of a passage ; it removes one of the films
which have gathered over the page ; it brings the meaning
home in a more intimate and subtle way than a translation
could do. To this, however, another qualification should
be added, which is, the logical power to perceive the mean-
ing of words in reference to their context. And there is
a worse fault than ignorance of Greek in the interpretation
of the New Testament, that is, ignorance of any language.
The Greek fathers, for example, are far from being the best
verbal commentators, because their knowledge of Greek
often leads them away from the drift of the passage. The
minuteness of the study in our own day has also a tendency
to introduce into the text associations which are not really
found there. There is a danger of raaking words mean
too much ; refinements of signification are drawn out of
them, perhaps contained in their etymology, which are lost
in common use and parlance. There is the error of inter-
preting every particle, as though it were a link in the
argument, instead of being, as is often the case, an ex-
crescence of style. The verbal critic magnifies his art,
which is really great in Aeschylus or Pindar, but not of
equal importance in the interpretation of the simpler lan-
guage of the New Testament. His love of scholarship will
sometimes lead him to impress a false system on words
and constructions. A great critic ^ who has commented on
' [G.] Hermann.
THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUKE 6 1
the three first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians, has
certainly afforded a proof that it is possible to read the
New Testament under a distorting influence from classical
Greek. The tendency gains support from the undefined
feeling that Scripture does not come behind in excellence
of language any more than of thought. And if not, as in
former days, the classic purity of the Greek of the New-
Testament, yet its certainty and accuracy, the assumption
of which, as any other assumption, is only the parent of
inaccuracy, is still maintained.
The study of the language of the New Testament has
suffered in another way by following too much in the track
of classical scholarship. All dead languages which have
passed into the hands of grammarians, have given rise to
questions which have either no result or in which the
importance of the result, or the certainty, if certain, is out
of proportion to the labour spent in attaining it. The field
is exhausted by great critics, and then subdivided among
lesser ones. The subject, unlike that of physical science,
has a limit, and unless new ground is broken up, as for
example in mythology, or comparative philology, is apt to
grow barren. Though it is not true to say that ' we know
as much about the Greeks and Eomans as we ever shall,'
it is certain that we run a danger from the deficiency of
material, of wasting time in questions which do not add
anything to real knowledge, or in conjectures which must
always remain uncertain, and may in tui-n give way to
other conjectures in the next generation. Little points
may be of great importance when rightly determined,
because the observation of them tends to quicken the
instinct of language ; but conjectures about little things
or rules respecting them which were not in the mind of
Greek authors themselves, are not of equal value. There is
the scholasticism of philology, not only in the Alexandrian,
but in our own times ; as in the middle ages, there was
the scholasticism of philosophy. Questions of mere ortho-
62 ESSAY ON
graphy, about which there cannot be said to have been
a right or wrong, have been pursued almost with a
Kabbinical minuteness. The story of the scholar who
regretted 'that he had not concentrated his life on the
dative case,' is hardly a caricature of the spirit of such
inquiries. The form of notes to the classics often seems
to arise out of a necessity for observing a certain propor-
tion between the commentary and the text. And the same
tendency is noticeable in many of the critical and philo-
logical observations which are made on the New Testament.
The field of Biblical criticism is narrower, and its materials
more fragmentary ; so too the minuteness and uncertainty
of the questions raised has been greater. For example, the
discussions respecting the chronology of St. Paul's life and
his second imprisonment : or about the identity of James,
the brother of the Lord, or in another department, respecting
the use of the Greek article, have gone far beyond the line
of utility.
There seem to be reasons for doubting whether any
considerable light can be thrown on the New Testament
from inquiry into the language. Such inquiries are popular,
because they are safe ; but their popularity is not the
measure of their use. It has not been sufficiently considered
that the difficulties of the New Testament are for the most
part common to the Greek and the English. The noblest
translation in the world has a few great errors, more than
half of them in the text ; but ' we do it violence ' to haggle
over the words. Minute corrections of tenses or particles
are no good ; they spoil the English without being nearer
the Greek. Apparent mistranslations are often due to
a better knowledge of English rather than a worse know-
ledge of Greek. It is true that the signification of a few un-
common expressions, e.g. (^ovata, kin^dkbiv, (TwaTrayoixevo,
k.tX, is yet uncertain. But no result of consequence would
follow from the attainment of absolute certainty respecting
the meaning of any of these. A more promising field
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 6^
opens to the interpreter in the examination of theological
terms, such as faith (TrtVrts), grace (xapi-s}, righteousness
(8tKato(n;i'7?),sanctification(ayta(r/^os),theIaw(:^o'juos), the spirit
{iTvevfxa), the comforter (Trapa/cATjros), &c., provided always
that the use of such terms in the New Testament is clearly-
separated (i) from their derivation or previous use in
Classical or Alexandrian Greek, (2) from their after use
in the Fathers and in systems of theology. To which may
be added another select class of words descriptive of the
offices or customs of the Apostolic Church, such as Apostle
(aTToVroAo?), Bishop (eTn'o-xoTro?), Elder (Trpeo-ySvrepos-), Deacon
and Deaconess (6 Kal 17 bLCLKOvoi). love-feast {aydirat), the Lord's
day (f] KvpiaKT} rjfxipa), &c. It is a lexilogus of these and
similar terms, rather than a lexicon of the entire Greek
Testament that is required. Interesting subjects of real
inquiry are also the comparison of the Greek of the New
Testament with modern Greek on the one hand, and the
Greek of the LXX on the other. It is not likely, however,
that they will afford much more help than they have
already done in the elucidation of the Greek of the New
Testament.
It is for others to investigate the language of the Old
Testament, to which the preceding remarks are only in
part applicable. And it may be observed in passing of
this, as of any other old language, that not the later form
of the language, but the cognate dialects, must ever be
the chief source of its illustration. For in every ancient
language, antecedent or contemporary forms, not the sub-
sequent ones, afford the real insight into its nature and
structure. It must also be admitted, that very great and
real obscurities exist in the English translation of the Old
Testament, which even a superficial acquaintance with the
original has a tendency to remove. Leaving, however, to
others the consideration of the Semitic languages, which
raise questions of a different kind from the Hellenistic
Greek, we will offer a few remarks on the latter. Much
64 ESSAY ON
has been said of the increasing accuracy of our knowledge
of the language of the New Testament ; the old Hebraistic
method of explaining difficulties of language or construction
has retired within very narrow limits ; it might probably
with advantage be confined to still narrower ones — [if it
have any place at all except in the Apocalj'pse or the
Gospel of St. Matthew]. There is, perhaps, some confusion
between accuracy of our knowledge of language, and the
accuracy of language itself; which is also strongly main-
tained. It is observed that the usages of barbarous as
well as civilized nations conform perfectly to grammatical
rules ; that the uneducated in all countries have certain
laws of speech as much as Shakespeare or Bacon ; the usages
of Lucian, it may be said, are as regular as those of Plato,
even when they are different. The decay of language
seems rather to witness to the permanence than to the
changeableness of its structure ; it is the flesh, not the
bones, that begins to drop off. But such general remarks,
although just, afford but little help in determining the
character of the Greek of the New Testament, which has
of course a certain system, failing in which it would cease
to be a language. Some further illustration is needed of
the change which has passed upon it. All languages do
not decay in the same manner ; and the influence of decay
in the same language may be different in different countries ;
when used in writing and in speaking — when applied to
the matters of ordinary life and to the higher truths of
philosophy or religion. And the degeneracy of language
itself is not a mere princij^le of dissolution, but creative
also ; while dead and rigid in some of its uses, it is elastic
and expansive in others. The decay of an ancient language
is the beginning of the construction of a modern one. The
loss of some usages gives a greater precision or freedom
to others. The logical element, as for example in the
Medieval Latin, will probably be strongest when the poetical
has vanished. A great movement, like the Keformation
THE INTERPKETATION OF SCEIPTUEE 65
in Grermany, passing over a nation, may give a new birth
also to its language.
These remarks may be applied to the Greek of the New
Testament, which although classed vaguely under the
'common dialect,' has, nevertheless, many features which
are altogether peculiar to itself, and such as are found in
no other remains of ancient literature, (i) It is more
unequal in style even in the same books, that is to say,
more oi'iginal and plastic in one part, more rigid and
unpliable in another. There is a want of the continuous
power to frame a paragraph or to arrange clauses in sub-
ordination to each other, even to the extent in which it
was possessed by a Greek scholiast or rhetorician. On the
other hand there is a fullness of life, ' a new birth, ' in the
use of abstract terms, which is not found elsewhere after
the golden age of Greek philosophy. Almost the only
passage in the New Testament which reads like a Greek
period of the time, is the first paragraph of the Gospel
according to St. Luke, and the corresponding words of the
Acts. But the power and meaning of the characteristic
words of the New Testament is in remarkable contrast with
the vapid and general use of the same words in Philo about
the same time. There is also a sort of lyrical passion in
some passages (i Cor. xiii. ; 2 Cor. vi. 6-10; xi. 21-33)
which is a new thing in the literature of the world ; to
which, at any rate, no Greek author of a later age furnishes
any parallel. (2) Though written, the Greek of the New
Testament partakes of the character of a spoken language ;
it is more lively and simple, and less structural than
ordinary writing — a peculiarity of style which further agrees
with the circumstance that the Epistles of St. Paul were
not written with his own hand, but probably dictated to
an amanuensis, and that the Gospels also probably originate
in an oral narrative. (3) The ground colours of the language
may be said to be two ; first, the LXX. ; which is modified,
secondly, by the spoken Greek of eastern countries, and by
VOL. II. . F
66 ESSAY ON
the differences which might be expected to arise between
a translation and an original ; many Hebraisms would occur
in the Greek of a translator, which would never have come
to his pen but for the influence of the work which he
was translating. (4) To which may be added a few Latin
and Chaldee words, and a few Kabbinical formulae. The
influence of Hebrew or Chaldee in the New Testament is
for the most part at a distance, in the background, acting
not directly, but mediately, through the LXX. It has
much to do with the clausular structure and general form,
but hardly anything with the grammatical usage. Philo, too,
did not know Hebrew, or at least the Hebrew Scriptures,
yet there is also a ' mediate ' influence of Hebrew traceable
in his writings. (5) There is an element of constraint in
the style of the New Testament, arising from the cir-
cumstance of its authors writing in a language which was
not their own. This constraint shows itself in the repe-
tition of words and phrases ; in the verbal oppositions and
anacolutha of St. Paul ; in the short sentences of St. John.
This is further increased by the fact that the writers of
the New Testament were 'unlearned men,' who had not
the same power of writing as of speech. Moreover, as has
been often remarked, the difficulty of composition increases
in proportion to the greatness of the subject; e.g., the
narrative of Thucydides is easy and intelligible, while his
reflections and speeches are full of confusion ; the effort to
concentrate seems to interfere with the consecutiveness and
fluency of ideas. Something of this kind is discernible
in those passages of the Epistles in which the Apostle
St. Paul is seeking to set forth the opposite sides of God's
dealing with man, e.g., Rom. iii. 1-9 ; ix., x. ; or in which
the sequence of the thought is interrupted by the conflict
of emotions, i Cor. ix. 20; Gal. iv. 11-20. (6) The power
of the Gospel over language must be recognized, showing
itself, first of all, in the original and consequently variable
signification of words {ttlcttls, x^P'-^y cr^^TripCa), which is also
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 67
more comprehensive and human than the heretical usage
of many of the same terms, e.g., yvS)(ri.s{ knowledge), (To(pia
(wisdom), KTicTLS (creature, creation) ; secondly, in a peculiar
use of some constructions, such as bLKatoavvr] ©eor (righteous-
ness of God), TTtcrns 'IrjcTov XpicTTov (faith of Jesus Christ), ^v
XpL<TT<2 (in Christ), iv ©ew (in God), virep i)ix(^v (for us), in
which the meaning of the genitive case or of the preposition
almost escapes our notice, from familiarity with the sound
of it. Lastly, the degeneracy of the Greek language is
traceable in the failure of syntactical power ; in the insertion
of prepositions to denote relations of thought, which classical
Greek would have expressed by the case only ; in the
omission of them when classical Greek would have required
them ; in the incipient use of tva with the subjunctive for
the infinitive ; in the confusion of ideas of cause and effect ;
in the absence of the article in the case of an increasing
number of words which are passing into proper names ; in
the loss of the finer shades of difference in the negative
particles ; in the occasional confusion of the aox-ist and
perfect ; in excessive fondness for particles of reasoning or
inference ; in various forms of apposition, especially that
of the word to the sentence ; in the use, sometimes emphatic,
sometimes only pleonastic, of the personal and demonstrative
pronouns. These are some of the signs that the language
is breaking up and losing its structure.
Our knowledge of the New Testament is derived almost
exclusively from itself. Of the language, as well as of
the subject, it may be truly said, that what other writers
contribute is nothing in comparison of that which is gained
from observation of the text. Some inferences which may
be gathered from this general fact are the following : —
First, that less weight should be given to lexicons, that
is, to the authority of other Greek writers, and more to
the context. The use of a word in a new sense, the
attribution of a neuter meaning to a verb elsewhere passive
(Rom. iii. 9 TTpo^x^jxida), the resolution of the compound
F 2
68 ESSAY ON
into two simple notions (Gal. iii. i irpocypdcfiri), these, when
the context requires it, are not to be set aside by the scholar
because sanctioned by no known examples. The same
remark applies to grammars as well as lexicons. We
cannot be certain that bid with the accusative never has
the same meaning as bed with the genitive (Gal. iv. 13 ;
Phil. i. 15), or that the article always retains its defining
power (2 Cor. i. 17 ; Acts xvii. i), or that the perfect is
never used in place of the aorist (i Cor. xv. 4 ; Eev. v. 7,
&c.) ; still less can we afi&rm that the latter end of a sentence
never forgets the beginning (Eom. ii. 17-21; v. 12-18;
ix. 22 ; xvi. 25-27 ; &c. &c.). Foreign influences tend to
derange the strong natural perception or remembrance of
the analogy of our own language. That is very likely to
have occurred in the case of some of the writers of the New
Testament; that there is such a derangement is a fact.
There is no probability in favour of St. Paul writing in
broken sentences, but there is no improbability which
should lead us to assume, in such sentences, continuous
grammar and thought, as appears to have been the feeling
of the copyists who have corrected the anacolutha. The
occurrence of them further justifies the interpreter in using
some freedom with other passages in which the syntax does
not absolutely break down. When 'confusion of two con-
structions,' 'meaning to say one thing and finishing with
another,' 'saying two things in one instead of disposing
them in their logical sequence,' are attributed to the Apostle;
the use of these and similar expressions is defended by the
fact that more numerous anacolutha occur in St. Paul's
writings than in any equal portion of the New Testament,
and far more than in the writings of any other Greek author
of equal length.
Passing from the grammatical structure, we may briefly
consider the logical character of the language of the New
Testament. Two things should be here distinguished, the
logical form and the logical sequence of thought. Some
THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE 69
ages have been remarkable for the former of these two
characteristics ; they have dealt in oiDposition, contradiction,
climax, pleonasm, reason within reason, and the like ; mere
statements taking the form of arguments — each sentence
seeming to be a link in a chain. In such periods of
literature, the appearance of logic is rhetorical, and is to
be set down to the style. That is the case with many
passages in the New Testament which are studded with
logical or rhetorical formulae, especially in the Epistles of
St. Paul. Nothing can be more simple or natural than the
object of the writer. Yet 'forms of the schools' appear
(whether learnt at the feet of Gamaliel, that reputed master
of Greek learning, or not) which imply a degree of logical
or rhetorical training.
The observation of this rhetorical or logical element has
a bearing on the Interpretation of Scripture. For it leads
us to distinguish between the superficial connexion of w^ords
and the real connexion of thoughts. Otherwise injustice
is done to the argument of the sacred writer, who may be
supposed to violate logical rules, of which he is unconscious.
For example, the argument of Eom. iii. 19 may be classed
by the logicians under some head of fallacy ('Ex aliquo non
sequitur omnis ') ; the series of inferences which follow one
another in Eom. i. 16-18 are for the most part different
aspects or statements of the same truth. So in Kom. i. 32
the climax rather appears to be an anticlimax. But to
dwell on these things interferes with the true perception
of the Apostle's meaning, which is not contained in the
repetitions of yap by which it is hooked together ; nor are
we accurately to weigh the proportions expressed by his
ov fxovov — a\Xa KaC or ttoAA-w fxaXkov : neither need we
suppose that where jxev is found alone, there was a reason for
the omission of bi (Eom. i. 8 ; iii. 2) ; or that the opj)osition
of words and sentences is always the opi^osition of ideas
(Eom. V. 7 ; X. 1 o). It is true that these and similar forms
or distinctions of language admit of translation into
70 ESSAY ON
English ; and in every case the interpreter may find some
point of view in which the simplest truth of feeling may
be drawn out in an antithetical or argumentative form.
But whether these points of view were in the Apostle's
mind at the time of writing may be doubted ; the real
meaning, or kernel, seems to lie deeper and to be more
within. When we pass from the study of each verse to
survey the whole at a greater distance, the form of thought
is again seen to be unimportant in comparison of the truth
which is contained in it. The same remark may be extended
to the opposition, not only of words, but of ideas, which
is found in the Scriptures generally, and almost seems to be
inherent in human language itself. The law is opposed to
faith, good to evil, the spirit to the flesh, light to darkness,
the world to the believer ; the sheep are set * on his right
hand, but the goats on the left.' The influence of this
logical opposition has been great and not always without
abuse in practice. For the opposition is one of ideas only
which is not realized in fact. Experience shows us not that
there are two classes of men animated by two opposing
principles, but an infinite number of classes or individuals
from the lowest depth of misery and sin to the highest
perfection of which human nature is capable, the best not
wholly good, the worst not entirely evil. But the figure or
mode of representation changes these diff'erences of degree
into differences of kind. And we often think and speak
and act in reference both to ourselves and others, as though
the figure were altogether a reality.
Other questions arise out of the analysis of the modes
of thought of Scripture. Unless we are willing to use
words without inquiring into their meaning, it is necessary
for us to arrange them in some relation to our own minds.
The modes of thought of the Old Testament are not the
same with those of the New, and those of the New are only
partially the same with those in use among ourselves at the
present day. The education of the human mind may be
THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCEIPTURE 7 1
traced as clearly from the Book of Genesis to the Epistles
of St. Paul, as from Homer to Plato and Aristotle. When
we hear St. Paul speaking of 'body and soul and spirit,'
we know that such language as this would not occur in
the Books of Moses or in the Prophet Isaiah. It has the
colour of a later age, in which abstract terms have taken
the place of expressions derived from material objects.
When we proceed further to compare these or other words
or expressions of St. Paul with 'the body and mind,' or
'mind' and 'matter,' which is a distinction, not only of
philosophy, but of common language among ourselves, it
is not easy at once to determine the relation between them.
Familiar as is the sound of both expressions, many questions
arise when we begin to compare them.
This is the metaphysical difficulty in the Interpretation
of Scripture, which it is better not to ignore, because the
consideration of it is necessary to the understanding of
many passages, and also because it may return upon us in
the form of materialism or scepticism. To some who are
not aware how little words affect the nature of things it
may seem to raise speculations of a very serious kind.
Their doubts would, perhaps, find expression in some such
exclamations as the following : — ' How is religion possible
when modes of thought are shifting? and words changing
their meaning, and statements of doctrine, though " starched"
with philosophy, are in perpetual danger of dissolution from
metaphysical analysis ? '
The answer seems to be, that Christian truth is not
dependent on the fixedness of modes of thought. The
metaphysician may analyze the ideas of the mind just as
the physiologist may analyze the powers or parts of the
bodily frame, yet morality and social life still go on, as in
the body digestion is uninterrupted. That is not an illus-
tration only ; it represents the fact. Though we had no
words for mind, matter, soul, body, and the like, Christianity
would remain the same. This is obvious, whether we think
72 ESSAY ON
of the case of the poor, who understand such distinctions
very imperfectly, or of those nations of the earth, who have
no precisely corresponding division of ideas. It is not of
that subtle or evanescent character which is liable to be lost
in shifting the use of terms. Indeed, it is an advantage at
times to discard these terms with the view of getting rid of
the oppositions to which they give rise. No metaphysical
analysis can prevent ' our taking up the cross and following
Christ,' or receiving the kingdom of heaven as little children.
To analyze the 'trichotomy' of St. Paul is interesting as
a chapter in the history of the human mind and necessary
as a part of Biblical exegesis, but it has nothing to do with
the religion of Christ. Christian duties may be enforced,
and the life of Christ may be the centre of our thoughts,
whether we speak of reason and faith, of soul and body, or
of mind and matter, or adopt a mode of speech which
dispenses with any of these divisions.
Connected with the modes of thought or representation in
Scripture are the figures of speech of Scripture, about which
the same question may be asked : ' What division can we
make between the figure and the reality?' And the answer
seems to be of the same kind, that ' We cannot precisely
draw the line between them.' Language, and especially
the language of Scripture, does not admit of any sharp
distinction. The simple expressions of one age become the
allegories or figures of another ; many of those in the New
Testament are taken from the Old. But neither is there
anything really essential in the form of these figures ; nay,
the literal application of many of them has been a great
stumblingblock to the reception of Christianity. A recent
commentator on Scripture appears willing to peril religion
on the literal truth of such an expression as ' We shall be
caught up to meet the Lord in the air.' Would he be
equally ready to stake Christianity on the literal meaning of
the words, 'Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is
not quenched ' ?
THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCEIPTUEE 73
Of what has been said this is the sum : — ' That Scripture,
like other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered
from itself without reference to the adaptations of Fathers or
Divines ; and without regard to a priori notions about its
nature and origin. It is to be interpreted like other books,
with attention to the character of its authors, and the
prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, with allow-
ance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of
thought and figures of speech. Yet not without a sense
that as we read there grows upon us the witness of God in
the world, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the truth
that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect day
in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different
points of view in the teaching of His Apostles. '
§ 4.
It has been a principal aim of the preceding pages to
distinguish the interpretation from the application of Scrip-
ture. Many of the errors alluded to arise out of a confusion
of the two. The present is nearer to us than the past ; the
circumstances which surround us pre-occupy our thoughts ;
it is only by an effort that we reproduce the ideas, or events,
or persons of other ages. And thus, quite naturally, almost
by a law of the human mind, the application of Scripture
takes the place of its original meaning. And the question
is, not how to get rid of this natural tendency, but how we
may have the true use of it. For it cannot be got rid of, or
rather is one of the chief instruments of religious usefulness
in the world : ' Ideas must be given through something ; '
those of rehgion find their natural expression in the words
of Scripture, in the adaptation of which to another state of
life it is hardly possible that the first intention of the writers
should be always preserved. Interpretation is the province
of few ; it requkes a finer perception of language, and
a higher degree of cultivation than is attained by the
majority of mankind. But applications are made by all.
74 ESSAY ON
from the philosopher reading 'God in History,' to the poor
woman who finds in them a response to her prayers, and
the solace of her daily life. In the hour of death we do not
want critical explanations; in most cases, those to whom
they would be offered are incapable of understanding them.
A few words, breathing the sense of the whole Christian
world, such as ' I know that my Kedeemer liveth ' (though
the exact meaning of them may be doubtful to the Hebrew
scholar) ; ' I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me ; '
touch a chord which would never be reached by the most
skilful exposition of the argument of one of St. Paul's
Epistles.
There is also a use of Scripture in education and literature.
This literary use, though secondary to the religious one, is
not unimportant. It supplies a common language to the
educated and uneducated, in which the best and highest
thoughts of both are expressed ; it is a medium between
the abstract notions of the one and the simple feelings of
the other. To the poor especially, it conveys in the foim
which they are most capable of receiving, the lesson of
history and life. The beauty and power of speech and
writing would be greatly impaired, if the Scriptures ceased
to be known or used among us. The orator seems to catch
from them a sort of inspiration ; in the simple words of
Scripture which he stamps anew, the philosopher often finds
his most pregnant expressions. If modern times have been
richer in the wealth of abstract thought, the contribution
of earlier ages to the mind of the world has not been less,
but, perhaps greater, in supplying the poetry of language.
There is no such treasury of instmments and materials
as Scripture. The loss of Homer, or the loss of Shakespeare,
would have affected the whole series of Greek or English
authors who follow. But the disappearance of the Bible
from the books which the world contains, would produce
results far greater ; we can scarcely conceive the degree in
which it would alter literature and language — the ideas
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 75
of the educated and philosophical, as well as the feelings
and habits of mind of the poor. If it has been said,
with an allowable hyperbole, that ' Homer is Greece, '
with much more truth may it be said, that ' the Bible is
Christendom.'
Many by whom considerations of this sort will be little
understood, may, nevertheless, recognize the use made of
the Old Testament in the New. The religion of Christ
was first taught by an application of the words of the
Psalms and the Prophets. Our Lord Himself sanctions
this application. 'Can there be a better use of Scripture
than that which is made by Scripture ? ' 'Or any more
likely method of teaching the truths of Christianity than
that by which they were first taught?' For it may be
argued that the critical intei'pretation of Scripture is a
device almost of yesterday ; it is the vocation of the scholar
or philosopher, not of the Apostle or Prophet, The new
truth which was introduced into the Old Testament, rather
than the old truth which was found there, was the salvation
and the conversion of the world. There are many quotations
from the Psalms and the Prophets in the Epistles, in
which the meaning is quickened or spiritualized, but hardly
any, probably none, which is based on the original sense
or context. That is not so singular a phenomenon as may
at first sight be imagined. It may appear strange to us
that Scripture should be interpreted in Scripture, in a
manner not altogether in agreement with modern criticism ;
but would it not be more strange that it should be
interpreted otherwise than in agreement with the ideas
of the age or country in which it was written? The
observation that there is such an agreement, leads to two
conclusions which have a bearing on our present subject.
First, it is a reason for not insisting on the applications
which the New Testament makes of passages in the Old,
as their original meaning. Secondly, it gives authority and
precedent for the use of similar applications in our own day.
7 6 ESSAY ON
But, on the other hand, though interwoven with literature,
though common to all ages of the Church, though sanctioned
by our Lord and His Apostles, it is easy to see that such an
employment of Scripture is liable to error and perversion.
For it may not only receive a new meaning ; it may be
applied in a spirit alien to itself. It may become the
symbol of fanaticism, the cloke of malice, the disguise of
policy. Cromwell at Drogheda, quoting Scripture to his
soldiers ; the well-known attack on the Puritans in the
State Service for the Eestoration, ' Not every one that saith
unto me. Lord, Lord ; ' the reply of the Venetian Ambassador
to the suggestion of Wolsey, that Venice should take a lead
in Italy, ^lohkh was only the Earth is the Lord's and the
fulness thereof,' are examples of such uses. In former
times, it was a real and not an imaginary fear, that the
wars of the Lord in the Old Testament might arouse a fire
in the bosom of Franks and Huns. In our own day such
dangers have passed away ; it is only a figure of speech
when the preacher says, ' Gird on thy sword, 0 thou most
mighty.' The warlike passions of men are not roused by
quotations from Scripture, nor can states of life such as
slavery or polygamy, which belong to a past age, be
defended, at least in England, by the example of the Old
Testament. The danger or error is of another kind ; more
subtle, but hardly less real. For if we are permitted to
apply Scripture under the pretence of interpreting it, the
language of Scripture becomes only a mode of expressing
the public feeling or opinion of our own day. Any j^assing
phase of politics or art, or spurious philanthropy, may have
a kind of Scriptural authority. The words that are used
are the words of the Prophet or Evangelist, but we stand
behind and adapt them to our purpose. Hence it is
necessary to consider the limits and manner of a just
adaptation ; how much may be allowed for the sake of
ornament ; how far the Scripture, in all its details, may
be regarded as an allegory of human life— where the true
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 77
analogy begins — how far the interpretation of Scripture will
serve as a corrective to its practical abuse.
Truth seems to require that we should separate mere
adaptations from the original meaning of Scripture. It
is not honest or reasonable to confound illustration with
argument, in theology, any more than in other subjects.
For example, if a preacher chooses to represent the condi-
tion of a church or of an individual in the present day,
under the figure of Elijah left alone among the idolatrous
tribes of Israel, such an allusion is natural enough ; but
if he goes on to argue that individuals are therefore justified
in remaining in what they believe to be an erroneous
communion — that is a mere appearance of argument which
ought not to have the slightest weight with a man of sense.
Such a course may indeed be perfectly justifiable, but not
on the ground that a prophet of the Lord once did so, two
thousand five hundred years ago. Not in this sense were
the lives of the Prophets written for our instruction. There
are many important morals conveyed by them, but only
so far as they themselves represent universal principles
of justice and love. These universal principles they clothe
with flesh and blood : they show them to us written on
the hearts of men of like passions with ourselves. The
prophecies, again, admit of many applications to the
Christian Church or to the Christian life. There is no
harm in speaking of the Church as the Spiritual Israel,
or in using the imagery of Isaiah respecting Messiah's
kingdom, as the type of good things to come. But when
it is gravely urged, that from such passages as * Kings
shall be thy nursing fathers,' we are to collect the relations
of Church and State, or from the pictorial description of
Isaiah, that it is to be inferred there will be a reign of
Christ on earth — that is a mere assumption of the forms
of reasoning by the imagination. Nor is it a healthful or
manly tone of feeling which depicts the political opposition
to the Church in our own day, under imagery which is
78 ESSAY ON
borrowed from the desolate Sion of the captivity. Scripture
is apt to come too readily to the lips, when we are pouring
out our own weaknesses, or enlarging on some favourite
theme — perhaps idealizing in the language of prophecy the
feebleness of preaching or missions in the present day,
or from the want of something else to say. In many
discussions on these and similar subjects, the position of
the Jewish King, Church, Priest, has led to a confusion,
partly caused by the use of similar words in modern senses
among ourselves. The King or Queen of England may
be called the Anointed of the Lord, but we should not
therefore imply that the attributes of sovereignty are the
same as those which belonged to King David. All these
are figures of speech, the employment of which is too
common, and has been injurious to religion, because it
prevents our looking at the facts of history or life as they
truly are.
This is the first step towards a more truthful use of
Scripture in practice — the separation of adaptation from
interpretation. No one who is engaged in preaching or
in religious instruction can be required to give up Scripture
language ; it is the common element in which his thoughts
and those of his hearers move. But he may be asked to
distinguish the words of Scripture from the truths of
Scripture — the means from the end. The least expression
of Scripture is weighty ; it affects the minds of the hearers
in a way that no other language can. Whatever responsi-
bility attaches to idle words, attaches in still greater degree
to the idle or fallacious use of Scripture terms. And there
is surely a want of proper reverence for Scripture, when
we confound the weakest and feeblest applications of its
words with their true meaning — when we avail ourselves
of their natural power to point them against some enemy
— when we divert the eternal words of charity and truth
into a defence of some passing opinion. For not only in
the days of the Pharisees, but in our own, the letter has
I
THE INTEKPEETATION OF SCEIPTUKE 79
been taking the place of the spirit ; the least matters, of
the greatest, and the primary meaning has been lost in
the secondary use.
Other simple cautions may also be added. The applica-
tions of Scripture should be harmonized and, as it were,
interpenetrated with the spirit of the Gospel, the whole
of which should be in every part ; though the words may
receive a new sense, the new sense ought to be in agreement
with the general truth. They should be used to bring
home practical precepts, not to send the imagination on
a voyage of discovery ; they are not the real foundation
of our faith in another world, nor can they, by pleasant
pictures, add to our knowledge of it. They should not
confound the accidents with the essence of religion— the
restrictions and burdens of the Jewish law with the freedom
of the Gospel — the things which Moses allowed for the
hardness of the heart, with the perfection of the teaching of
Christ. They should avoid the form of arguments, or they
will insensibly be used, or understood to mean more than
they really do. They should be subjected to an overruling
principle, which is the heart and conscience of the Christian
teacher, who indeed ' stands behind them,' not to make
them the vehicles of his own opinions, but as the expressions
of justice, and truth, and love.
And here the critical interpretation of Scripture comes in
and exercises a corrective influence on its popular use. We
have already admitted that criticism is not for the multitude ;
it is not that which the Scripture terms the Gospel preached
to the poor. Yet, indirectly passing from the few to the
many, it has borne a great part in the Eeformation of
religion. It has cleared the eye of the mind to under-
stand the original meaning. It was a sort of criticism
which supported the struggle of the sixteenth century
against the Eoman Catholic Church ; it is criticism that
is leading Protestants to doubt whether the doctrine that
the Pope is Antichrist, which has descended from the same
8o ESSAY ON
period, is really discoverable in Scripture. Even the isolated
thinker, against whom the religious world is taking up
arms, has an influence on his opponents. The force of
observations, which are based on reason and fact, remains
when the tide of religious or party feeling is gone down.
Criticism has also a healing influence in clearing away what
may be termed the Sectarianism of knowledge. Without
criticism it would be impossible to reconcile History and
Science with Eevealed Religion ; they must remain for ever
in a hostile and defiant attitude. Instead of being like
other records, subject to the conditions of knowledge which
existed in an early stage of the world, Scripture would be
regarded on the one side as the work of organic Inspiration,
and as a lying imposition on the other.
The real unity of Scripture, as of man, has also a relation
to our present subject. Amid all the differences of modes
of thought and speech which have existed in different ages,
of which much is said in our own day, there is a common
element in human nature which bursts through these dif-
ferences and remains unchanged, because akin to the first
instincts of our being. The simple feeling of truth and
right is the same to the Greek or Hindoo as to ourselves.
However great may be the diversities of human character,
there is a point at which these diversities end, and unity
begins to appear. Now this admits of an application to the
books of Scripture, as well as to the world generally.
Written at many different times, in more than one language,
some of them in fragments, they, too, have a common
element of which the preacher may avail himself. This
element is twofold, partly divine and partly human ; the
revelation of the truth and righteousness of God, and
the cry of the human heart towards Him. Every part of
Scripture tends to raise us above ourselves — to give us
a deeper sense of the feebleness of man, and of the wisdom
and power of God. It has a sort of kindred, as Plato would
say, with religious truth everywhere in the world. It
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 01
agrees also with the imperfect stages of knowledge and
faith in human nature, and answers to its inarticulate cries.
The universal truth easily breaks through the accidents
of time and place in which it is involved. Although we
cannot aj^ply Jewish institutions to the Christian world,
or venture in reliance on some text to resist the tide of
civilization on which we are borne, yet it remains, never-
theless, to us, as well as to the Jews and first Christians,
that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation,' and that 'love is
the fulfilling not of the Jewish law only, but of all law. '
In some cases, we have only to enlarge the meaning of
Scripture to apply it even to the novelties and peculiarities
of our own times. The world changes, but the human
heart remains the same : events and details are different,
but the princiijle by which they are governed, or the rule
by which we are to act, is not different. When, for example,
our Saviour says, ' Ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free,' it is not likely that these words would
have conveyed to the minds of the Jews who heard Him
any notion of the perplexities of doubt or inquiry. Yet
we cannot suppose that our Saviour, were He to come again
upon earth, would refuse thus to extend them. The
Apostle St. Paul, when describing the Gospel, which is
to the Greek foolishness, speaks also of a higher wisdom
which is known to those who are perfect. Neither is it
unfair for us to apply this passage to that reconcilement
of faith and knowledge, which may be termed Christian
philosophy, as the nearest equivalent to its language in our
own day. Such words, again, as ' Why seek ye the living
among the dead ? ' admit of a great variety of adaptations
to the circumstances of our own time. Many of these
adaptations have a real germ in the meaning of the words.
The precept, ' Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,' may be
taken generally as expressing the necessity of distinguishing
the divine and human — the things that belong to faith
82 ESSAY ON
and the things that belong to experience. It is worth
remarking in the application made of these words by Lord
Bacon, ' Da fidei quae fidei sunt ; ' that, although the terms are
altered, yet the circumstance that the form of the sentence
is borrowed from Scripture gives them point and weight.
The portion of Scripture which more than any other is
immediately and universally applicable to our own times
is, doubtless, that which is contained in the words of Christ
Himself The reason is that they are words of the most
universal import. They do not relate to the circumstances
of the time, but to the common life of all mankind. You
cannot extract from them a political creed ; only, ' Render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' and ' The Scribes and
Pharisees sit in Moses' seat ; whatsoever, therefore, they
say unto you do, but after their works do not.' They
present to us a standard of truth and duty, such as no one
can at once and immediately practise — such as, in its
perfection, no one has fulfilled in this world. But this
idealism does not interfere with their influence as a religious
lesson. Ideals, even though unrealized, have effect on our
daily life. The preacher of the Gospel is, or ought to be,
aware that his calls to repentance, his standard of obligations,
his lamentations over his own shortcomings or those of
others, do not at once convert hundreds or thousands, as
on the day of Pentecost. Yet it does not follow that they
are thrown away, or that it would be well to substitute
for them mere prudential or economical lessons, lectures
on health or sanitary improvement. For they tend to raise
men above themselves, providing them with Sabbaths as
well as working days, giving them a taste of ' the good word
of God ' and of ' the powers of the world to come.' Human
nature needs to be idealized ; it seems as if it took a dislike
to itself when presented always in its ordinary attire ; it
lives on in the hope of becoming better. And the image
or hope of a better life — the vision of Christ crucified —
which is held up to it, doubtless has an influence ; not like
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 83
the rushing mighty wind of the day of Pentecost ; it may
rather be compared to the leaven * which a woman took and
hid in three measures of meal, tUl the whole was leavened.'
The Parables of our Lord are a portion of the New
Testament, which we may apply in the most easy and
literal manner. The persons in them are the persons
among whom we live and move ; there are times and
occasions at which the truths symbolized by them come
home to the hearts of all who have ever been impressed
by religion. We have been prodigal sons returning to our
Father ; servants to whom talents have been entrusted ;
labourers in the vineyard inclined to murmur at our lot,
when compared with that of others, yet receiving every
man his due ; well-satisfied Pharisees ; repentant Publicans :
— we have received the seed, and the cares of the world
have choked it — we hope also at times that we have found
the pearl of great price after sweeping the house — we are
ready like the Good Samaritan to show kindness to all
mankind. Of these circumstances of life or phases of
mind, which are typified by the parables, most Christians
have experience. We may go on to apply many of them
further to the condition of nations and churches. Such
a treasury has Christ provided us of things new and old,
which refer to all time and all mankind — may we not say
in His own words— 'because He is the Son of Man?'
There is no language of Scripture which penetrates the
individual soul, and embraces all the world in the arms of
its love, in the same manner as that of Christ Himself. Yet
the Epistles contain lessons which are not found in the
Gospels, or, at least, not expressed with the same degree of
clearness. For the Epistles are nearer to actual life — they
relate to the circumstances of the first believers, to their
struggles with the world without, to their temptations and
divisions from within — their subject is not only the doc-
trine of the Christian religion, but the business of the early
Church. And although their circumstances are not our
G 2
84 ESSAY ON
circumstances — we are not afflicted or persecuted, or driven
out of the world, but in possession of the blessings, and
security, and property of an established religion — yet there
is a Christian spirit which infuses itself into all circum-
stances, of which they are a pure and living source. It is
impossible to gather from a few fragmentary and apparently
not always consistent expressions, how the Communion was
celebrated, or the Church ordered, what was the relative
position of Presbyters and Deacons, or the nature of the gift
of tongues, as a rule for the Church in after ages ; — such
inquiries have no certain answer, and, at the best, are only
the subject of honest curiosity. But the words, 'Charity
never faileth,' and 'Though I speak with the tongues of
men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing,' —
these have a voice which reaches to the end of time. There
are no questions of meats and drinks nowadays, yet the
noble words of the Apostle remain : ' If meat make my
brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.' Moderation in
controversy, toleration towards opponents or erring mem-
bers, is a virtue which has been thought by many to belong
to the development and not to the origin of Christianity,
and which is rarely found in the commencement of a
religion. But lessons of toleration may be gathered from
the Apostle, which have not yet been learned either by theo-
logians or by mankind in general. The persecutions and
troubles which awaited the Apostle no longer await us ;
we cannot, therefore, without unreality, except, perhaps, in
a very few cases, appropriate his words, ' I have fought the
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.'
But that other text still sounds gently in our ears : ' My
strength is perfected in weakness,' and ' when I am weak,
then am I strong.' We cannot apply to ourselves the lan-
guage of authority in which the Apostle speaks of himself as
an ambassador for Christ, without something like bad taste.
But it is not altogether an imaginary hope that those of us
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 85
who are ministers of Christ, may attain to a real imitation
of his great diligence, of his sympathy with others, and con-
sideration for them — of his willingness to spend and be
spent in his Master's service.
Such are a few instances of the manner in which the
analogy of faith enables us to apply the words of Christ and
His Apostles, with a strict regard to their original meaning.
But the Old Testament has also its peculiar lessons which
are not conveyed with equal point or force in the New. The
beginnings of human history are themselves a lesson, having
a freshness as of the early dawn. There are forms of evil
against which the Prophets and the prophetical spirit of the
Law carry on a warfare, in terms almost too bold for the
way of life of modern times. Thei'e, more plainly than in
any other portion of Scripture, is expressed the antagonism
of outward and inward, of ceremonial and moral, of mercy
and sacrifice. There all the masks of hypocrisy are rudely
torn asunder, in which an unthinking world allows itself to
be disguised. There the relations of rich and poor in the
sight of God, and their duties towards one another, are most
clearly enunciated. There the religion of suffering first
appears — ' adversity, the blessing ' of the Old Testament, as
well as of the New. There the sorrows and aspirations of
the soul find their deepest expression, and also their conso-
lation. The feeble person has an image of himself in the
'bruised reed ;' the suffering servant of God passes into the
'beloved one, in whom my soul delighteth.' Even the
latest and most desolate phases of the human mind are
reflected in Job and Ecclesiastes ; yet not without the
solemn assertion that ' to fear God and keep his command-
ments ' is the beginning and end of all things.
It is true that there are examples in the Old Testament
which were not written for our instruction, and that, in
some instances, precepts or commands are attributed to
God Himself, which must be regarded as relative to the
state of knowledge which then existed of the Divine nature,
86 ESSAY ON
or given 'for the hardness of men's hearts.' It cannot be
denied that such passages of Scripture are liable to misun-
derstanding ; the spirit of the Old Covenanters, although no
longer appealing to the action of Samuel, ' hewing Agag in
pieces before the Lord in Grilgal,' is not altogether extin-
guished. And a community of recent origin in America
found their doctrine of polygamy on the Old Testament.
But the poor generally read the Bible unconsciously ; they
take the good, and catch the prevailing spirit, without
stopping to reason whether this or that practice is sanc-
tioned by the custom or example of Scripture. The child is
only struck by the impiety of the children who mocked the
prophet ; he does not think of the severity of the punish-
ment which is inflicted upon them. And the poor, in this
respect, are much like children ; their reflection on the
morality or immorality of characters or events is suppressed
by reverence for Scripture. The Christian teacher has a
sort of tact by which he guides them to perceive only the
spirit of the Gospel everywhere ; they read in the Psalms of
David's sin and repentance ; of the never-failing goodness
of God to Him, and his never-failing trust in Him, not of
his imprecations against his enemies. Such difficulties are
greater in theory and on paper, than in the management of
a school or parish. They are found to affect the half-
educated, rather than either the poor, or those who are
educated in a higher sense. To be above such difficulties is
the happiest condition of human life and knowledge, or to
be below them ; to see, or think we see, how they may
be reconciled with Divine power and wisdom, or not to see
how they are apparently at variance with them.
§ 5.
Some application of the preceding subject may be further
made to theology and life.
Let us introduce this concluding inquiry with two
remarks.
I
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 87
First, it may be observed, that a change in some of the
prevailing modes of interpretation is not so much a matter
of expediency as of necessity. The original meaning of
Scripture is beginning to be clearly understood. But the
apprehension of the original meaning is inconsistent with
the reception of a typical or conventional one. The time
will come when educated inen will be no more able to
believe that the words, 'Out of Egypt have I called my son'
(Matt. ii. 15; Hos. xi. i ), were intended by the prophet to
refer to the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt, than
they are now able to believe the Eoman Catholic explana-
tion of Gen. iii. 15, 'Ipsa conteret caput tuum.' They will
no more think that the first chapters of Genesis relate the
same tale which Geology and Ethnology unfold than they
now think the meaning of Joshua x. 12, 13, to be in
accordance with Galileo's discovery.
From the circumstance that in former ages there has been
a fourfold or a sevenfold interpretation of Scripture, we
cannot argue to the possibility of upholding any other than
the original one in our own. The mystical explanations of
Origen or Philo were not seen to be mystical ; the reason-
ings of Aquinas and Calvin were not supposed to go beyond
the letter of the text. They have now become the subject
of apology ; it is justly said that we should not judge the
greatness of the Fathers or Eeformers by their suitableness
to our own day. But this defence of them shows that their
explanations of Scripture are no longer tenable ; they belong
to a way of thinking and speaking which was once diffused
over the world, but has now passed away. And what we
give up as a general principle we shall find it impossible to
maintain partially, e. g. , in the types of the Mosaic Law and
the double meanings of prophecy, at least, in any sense in
which it is not equally applicable to all deep and suggestive
writings.
The same observation may be applied to the historical
criticism of Scripture. From the fact that Paley or Butler
88
ESSAY ON
were regarded in their generation as supplying a triumphant
answer to the enemies of Scripture, we cannot argue that
their answer will be satisfactory to those who inquire into
such subjects in our own. Criticism has far more power
than it formerly had ; it has spread itself over ancient, and
even modern, history ; it extends to the thoughts and ideas
of men as well as to words and facts ; it has also a great
place in education. Whether the habit of mind which has
been formed in classical studies will not go on to Scripture ;
whether Scripture can be made an exception to other ancient
writings, now that the nature of both is more understood ;
whether in the fuller light of history and science the views
of the last century will hold out — these are questions
respecting which the course of religious opinion in the past
does not afford the means of truly judging.
Secondly, it has to be considered whether the intellectual
forms under which Christianity has been described may not
also be in a state of transition and resolution, in this respect
contrasting with the never-changing truth of the Christian
life (i Cor. xiii. 8). Looking backwards at past ages, we
experience a kind of amazement at the minuteness of
theological distinctions, and also at their permanence.
They seem to have borne a part in the education of the
Christian world, in an age when language itself had also
a greater influence than nowadays. It is admitted that
these distinctions are not observed in the New Testament,
and are for the most part of a later growth. But little is
gained by setting up theology against Scripture, or Scripture
against theology ; the Bible against the Church, or the
Church against the Bible. At different periods either has
been a bulwark against some form of error: either has
tended to correct the abuse of the other. A true inspiration
guarded the writers of the New Testament from Gnostic or
Manichean tenets ; at a later stage, a sound instinct pre-
vented the Church from dividing the humanity and Divinity
of Christ. It may be said that the spirit of Christ forbids us
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 89
to determine beyond what is written ; and the decision of
the council of Nicaea has been described by an eminent
English prelate ^ as ' the greatest misfortune that ever befel
the Christian world.' That is, perhaps, true ; yet a different
decision would have been a greater misfortune. Nor does
there seem any reason to suppose that the human mind
could have been arrested in its theological course. It is
a mistake to imagine that the dividing and splitting of
words is owing to the depravity of the human heart ; was it
not rather an intellectual movement (the only phenomenon
of progress then going on among men) which led, by a sort
of necessity, some to go forward to the completion of the
system, while it left others to stand aside ? A veil was on
the human understanding in the great controversies which
absorbed the Church in earlier ages ; the cloud which the
combatants themselves raised intercepted the view. They
did not see — they could not have imagined — that there was
a world which lay beyond the range of the controversy.
And now, as the Interpretation of Scripture is receiving
another character, it seems that distinctions of theology,
which were in great measure based on old interpretations,
are beginning to fade away. A change is observable in the
manner in which doctrines are stated and defended ; it is no
longer held sufficient to rest them on texts of Scripture, one,
two, or more, which contain, or appear to contain, similar
words or ideas. They are connected more closely with our
moral nature ; extreme consequences are shunned ; large
allowances are made for the ignorance of mankind. It is
held that there is truth on both sides ; about many questions
there is a kind of union of opposites ; others are admitted
to have been verbal only ; all are regarded in the light
which is thrown upon them by church history and religious
experience. A theory has lately been put forward, apparently
as a defence of the Christian faith, which denies the objective
character of any of them. And there are other signs that
' [Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, d. 1853.]
i
9° ESSAY ON
times are changing, and we are changing too. It would be
scarcely possible at present to revive the interest which was
felt less than twenty years ago ' in the doctrine of Baptismal
Kegeneration ; nor would the arguments by which it was
supported or impugned have the meaning which they once
had. The communion of the Lord's Supper is also ceasing,
at least in the Church of England, to be a focus or centre of
disunion —
' Our greatest love turned to our greatest hate.'
A silence is observable on some other points of doctrine
around which controversies swarmed a generation ago.
Persons begin to ask what was the real difference which
divided the two parties. They are no longer within the
magic circle, but are taking up a position external to it.
They have arrived at an age of reflection, and begin to
speculate on the action and reaction, the irritation and
counter-irritation, of religious forces ; it is a common obser-
vation that * revivals are not permanent ; ' the movement is
criticized even by those who are subject to its influence.
In the present state of the human mind, any consideration
of these subjects, whether from the highest or lowest or
most moderate point of view, is unfavourable to the stability
of dogmatical systems, because it rouses inquiiy into the
meaning of words. To the sense of this is probably to be
attributed the reserve on matters of doctrine and controversy
which characterizes the present day, compared with the
theological activity of twenty years ago\
These reflections bring us back to the question with
which we began— 'What effect will the critical interpreta-
tion of Scripture have on theology and on life?' Their
tendency is to show that the result is beyond our control,
and that the world is not unprepared for it. More things
than at first sight appear are moving towards the same end.
Keligion often bids us think of ourselves, especially in later
life, as, each one in his appointed j^lace, carrying on a work
' [Written in i860.]
THE INTEEPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE Ql
which is fashioned within by unseen hands. The theologian,
too, may have peace in the thought, that he is subject to
the conditions of his age rather than one of its moving
powers. When he hears theological inquiry censured as
tending to create doubt and confusion, he knows very well
that the cause of this is not to be sought in the writings of
so-called rationalists or critics who are disliked partly because
they unveil the age to itself ; but in the opposition of reason
and feeling, of the past and the present, in the conflict
between the Calvinistic tendencies of an elder generation,
and the influences which even in the same family naturally
affect the young.
This distraction of the human mind between adverse
influences and associations, is a fact which we should have
to accept and make the best of, whatever consequences
tnight seem to follow to individuals or Churches. It is
not to be regarded as a merely heathen notion that ' truth
is to be desired for its own sake even though no "good"
result from it.' As a Christian paradox it may be said,
' What hast thou to do with "good ? " follow thou Me.' But
the Christian revelation does not require of us this Stoicism
in most cases ; it rather shows how good and truth are
generally coincident. Even in this life, there are number-
less links which unite moral good with intellectual truth.
It is hardly too much to say that the one is but a narrower
form of the other. Truth is to the world what holiness of
life is to the individual — to man collectively the source of
justice and peace and good.
There are many ways in which the connexion between
truth and good may be traced in the Interpretation of
Scripture. Is it a mere chimera that the different sections
of Christendom may meet on the common ground of the
New Testament ? Or that the individual may be urged by
the vacancy and unprofitableness of old traditions to make
the Gospel his own— a life of Christ in the soul, instead of
a theory of Christ which is in a book or written down ? Or
92 ESSAY ON
that in missions to the heathen Scripture may become the
expression of universal truths rather than of the tenets of
particular men or churches? That would remove many
obstacles to the reception of Christianity. Or that the
study of Scripture may have a more important place in
a liberal education than hitherto ? Or that the ' rational
service' of interpreting Scripture may dry up the crude
and dreamy vapours of religious excitement? Or, that in
preaching, new sources of spiritual health may flow from
a more natural use of Scripture? Or that the lessons of
Scripture may have a nearer way to the hearts of the poor
when disengaged from theological formulas ? Let us consider
more at length some of these topics.
I. No one casting his eye over the map of the Christian
world can desire that the present lines of demarcation
should always remain, any more than he will be inclined
to regard the division of Christians to which he belongs
himself, as in a pre-eminent or exclusive sense the Church
of Christ. Those lines of demarcation seem to be political
rather than religious ; they are dififerences of nations, or
governments, or ranks of society, more than of creeds or
forms of faith. The feeling which gave rise to them has,
in a great measure, passed away ; no intelligent man
seriously inclines to believe that salvation is to be found
only in his own denomination. Examples of this 'sturdy
orthodoxy,' in our own generation, rather provoke a smile
than arouse serious disapproval. Yet many ex^Deriments
show that these differences cannot be made up by any formal
concordat or scheme of union ; the parties cannot be brought
to terms, and if they could, would cease to take an interest
in the question at issue. The friction is too great when
persons are invited to meet for a discussion of differences ;
such a process is like ojiening the doors and windows to
put out a slumbering flame. But that is no reason for
doubting that the divisions of the Christian world are
beginning to pass away. The progress of politics, acquaint-
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 93
ance with other countries, the growth of knowledge and
of material greatness, changes of opinion in the Church of
England, the present position of the Eoman Communion —
all these phenomena show that the ecclesiastical state of
the world is not destined to be perpetual. Within the
envious barriers which ' divide human nature into very
little pieces' (Plato, Rep. iii. 395\ a common sentiment is
springing up of religious truth ; the essentials of Christianity
are contrasted with the details and definitions of it ; good
men of all religions find that they are more nearly agreed
than heretofore. Neither is it impossible that this common
feeling may so prevail over the accidental circumstances of
Christian communities, that their political or ecclesiastical
separation may be little felt. The walls which no adversary
has scaled may fall down of themselves. We may perhaps
figure to ourselves the battle against error and moral evil
taking the place of one of sects and parties.
In this movement, which we should see more clearly
but for the divisions of the Christian world which partly
conceal it, the critical interpretation of Scripture will have
a great influence. The Bible will be no longer appealed to
as the witness of the opinions of particular sects, or of our
own age ; it will cease to be the battle-field of controversies.
But as its true meaning is more clearly seen, its moral
power will also be greater. If the outward and inward
witness, instead of parting into two, as they once did, seem
rather to blend and coincide in the Christian consciousness,
that is not a source of weakness, but of strength. The
Book itself, which links together the beginning and end
of the human race, will not have a less inestimable value
because the spirit has taken the place of the letter. Its
discrepancies of fact, when we become familiar with them,
will seem of little consequence in comparison vrith the
truths which it unfolds. That these truths, instead of
floating down the stream of tradition, or being lost in ritual
observances, have been preserved for ever in a book, is one
94 ESSAY ON
of the many blessings which the Jewish and Christian
revelations have conferred on the world— a blessing not
the less real, because it is not necessary to attribute it to
miraculous causes.
Again, the Scriptures are a bond of union to the whole
Christian world. No one denies their authority, and could
all be brought to an intelligence of their true meaning, all
might come to agree in matters of religion. That may
seem to be a hope deferred, yet not altogether chimerical.
If it is not held to be a thing impossible that there should
be agreement in the meaning of Plato or Sophocles, neither
is it to be regarded as absurd that there should be a like
agreement in the interpretation of Scripture. The disap-
pearance of artificial notions and systems will pave the way
to such an agreement. The recognition of the fact, that
many aspects and stages of religion are found in Scripture ;
that different, or even opposite parties existed in the Apos-
tolic Church; that the first teachers of Christianity had
a separate and individual mode of regarding the Gospel of
Christ ; that any existing communion is necessarily much
more unlike the brotherhood of love in the New Testament
than we are wilHng to suppose — Protestants in some respects,
as much so as Catholics — that rival sects in our own day —
Calvinists and Arminians— those who maintain and those
who deny the final restoration of man— may equally find
texts which seem to favour their respective tenets (Mark ix.
44-48 ; Romans xi. 32) — the recognition of these and similar
facts will make us unwilling to impose any narrow rule of
religious opinion on the ever-varying conditions of the
human mind and Christian society.
II. Christian missions suggest another sphere in which
a more enlightened use of Scripture might offer a gi'eat
advantage to the teacher. The more he is himself pene-
trated with the universal spirit of Scripture, the more he
will be able to resist the literal and sei-vile habits of mind
of Oriental nations. You cannot transfer English ways of
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 95
belief, and almost the history of the Church of England
itself, as the attempt is sometimes made — not to an
uncivilized people, ready like children to receive new im-
pressions, but to an ancient and decaying one, furrowed
with the lines of thought, incapable of the principle of
growth. But you may take the purer light or element
of religion, of which Christianity is the expression, and
make it shine on some principle in human nature which
is the fallen image of it. You cannot give a people who
have no history of their own, a sense of the importance
of Christianity, as an historical fact ; but, perhaps, that
very peculiarity of their character may make them more
impressible by the truths or ideas of Christianity. Neither
is it easy to make them understand the growth of Eevela-
tion in successive ages — that there are precepts of the Old
Testament which are reversed in the New— or that Moses
allowed many things for the hardness of men's hearts.
They are in one state of the world, and the missionary who
teaches them is in another, and the Book through which
they are taught does not altogether coincide with either.
Many difficulties thus arise which we are most likely to be
successful in meeting when we look them in the face. To
one inference they clearly point, which is this : that it is
not the Book of Scripture which we should seek to give
them, to be reverenced like the Vedas or the Koran, and
consecrated in its words and letters, but the truth of the
Book, the mind of Christ and His Apostles, in which all
lesser details and differences should be lost and absorbed.
We want to awaken in them the sense that God is their
Father, and they His children ; — that is of more importance
than any theory about the inspiration of Scripture. But to
teach in this spirit, the missionary should himself be able
to separate the accidents from the essence of religion ; he
should be conscious that the power of the Gospel resides
not in the particulars of theology, but in the Christian life.
III. It may be doubted whether Scripture has ever been
g6 ESSAY ON
sufficiently regarded as an element of liberal education.
Few deem it worth while to spend in the study of it the
same honest thought or pains which are bestowed on
a classical author. Nor, as at present studied, can it be
said always to have an elevating effect. It is not a useful
lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture principles
which he would hesitate to apply to other books ; to make
formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not
think of reconciling in ordinary history ; to divide simple
words into double meanings ; to adopt the fancies or con-
jectures of Fathers and Commentators as real knowledge.
This laxity of knowledge is apt to infect the judgement when
transferred to other subjects. It is not easy to say how
much of the unsettlement of mind which prevails among
intellectual young men is atti*ibutable to these causes ; the
mixture of truth and falsehood in religious education,
certainly tends to impair, at the age when it is most needed,
the early influence of a religious home.
Yet Scripture studied in a more liberal spmt might
supply a part of education which classical literature fails
to provide. 'The best book for the heart might also be
made the best book for the intellect.' The noblest study of
history and antiquity is contained in it ; a poetry which is
also the highest form of moral teaching ; there, too, are
lives of heroes and prophets, and especially of One whom
we do not name with them, because He is above them.
This history, or poetry, or biography, is distinguished from
all classical or secular writings by the contemplation of man
as he appears in the sight of God. That is a sense of
things into which we must grow as well as reason our-
selves, without which human nature is but a truncated,
half-educated sort of being. But this sense or conscious-
ness of a Divine presence in the world, which seems to be
natural to the beginnings of the human race, but fades
away and requires to be renewed in its after history, is not
to be gathered from Greek or Eoman literature, but from
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 97
the Old and New Testament. And before we can make the
Old and New Testament a real part of education, we must
read them not by the help of custom or tradition, in the
spirit of apology or controversy, but in accordance with the
ordinary laws of human knowledge.
IV. Another use of Scripture is that in sermons, which
seems to be among the tritest, and yet is far from being
exhausted. If we could only be natural and speak of
things as they truly are, with a real interest and not merely
a conventional one ! The words of Scripture come readily
to hand, and the repetition of them requires no effort of
thought in the writer or speaker. But, neither does it produce
any effect on the hearer, which will always be in proportion
to the degree of feeling or consciousness in ourselves. It
may be said that originality is the gift of few ; no Church
can expect to have, not a hundred, but ten such preachers as
Eobertson or Newman. But, without originality, it seems
possible to make use of Scripture in sermons in a much
more living way than at present. Let the preacher make it
a sort of religion, and proof of his reverence for Scripture,
that he never uses its words without a distinct meaning ;
let him avoid the form of argument from Scripture, and
catch the feeling and spirit. Scripture is itself a kind of
poetry, when not overlaid with rhetoric. The scene and
country has a freshness which may always be renewed ;
there is the interest of antiquity and the interest of home or
common life as well. The facts and characters of Scripture
might receive a new reading by being described simply as
they are. The truths of Scripture again would have greater
reality if divested of the scholastic form in which theology
has cast them. The universal and spiritual aspects of
Scripture might be more brought forward to the exclusion
of questions of the Jewish law, or controversies about the
sacraments, or exaggerated statements of doctrines which
seem to be at variance with morality. The life of Christ,
regarded quite naturally as of one ' who was in all points
VOL. II. H
98 ESSAY ON
tempted like as we are, yet without sin,' is also the life and
centre of Christian teaching. There is no higher aim which
the preacher can propose to himself than to awaken what
may be termed the feeling of the presence of Grod and the
mind of Christ in Scripture ; not to collect evidences about
dates and books, or to familiarize metaphysical distinctions ;
but to make the heart and conscience of his hearers bear him
witness that the lessons which are contained in Scripture —
lessons of justice and truth — lessons of mercy and peace — of
the need of man and the goodness of God to him, are indeed
not human but divine.
V. It is time to make an end of this long disquisition —
let the end be a few more words of application to the
circumstances of a particular class in the present age. If
any one who is about to become a clergyman feels, or thinks
that he feels, that some of the preceding statements cast
a shade of trouble or suspicion on his future walk of life,
who, either from the influence of a stronger mind than his
own, or from some natural tendency in himself, has been
led to examine those great questions which lie on the
threshold of the higher study of theology, and experiences
a sort of shrinking or dizziness at the prospect which is
opening upon him ; let him lay to heart the following
considerations: — First, that he may possibly not be the
person who is called upon to pursue such inquiries. No
man should busy himself with them who has not clearness
of mind enough to see things as they are, and a faith strong
enough to rest in that degree of knowledge which God has
really given ; or who is unable to separate the truth from his
own religious wants and experiences. For the theologian as
well as the philosopher has need of 'dry light,' 'unmingled
with any tincture of the aff"ections,' the more so as his
conclusions are oftener liable to be disordered by them.
He who is of another temperament may find another work
to do, which is in some respects a higher one. Unhke
philosophy, the Gospel has an ideal life to offer, not to
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 99
a few only, but to all. There is one word of caution,
however, to be given to those who renounce inquiry ; it is,
that they cannot retain the right to condemn inquirers.
Their duty is to say with Nicodemus, 'Doth the Gospel
condemn any man before it hear him ? ' although the answer
may be only 'Art thou also of Galilee ? ' They have chosen
the path of practical usefulness, and they should acknow-
ledge that it is a narrow path. For any but a ' strong
swimmer ' will be insensibly drawn out of it by the tide of
public opinion or the current of party.
Secondly, let him consider that the difficulty is not so
great as imagination sometimes paints it. It is a difficulty
which arises chiefly out of differences of education in
different classes of society. It is a difficulty which tact,
and prudence, and, much more, the power of a Christian
life may hope to surmount. Much depends on the manner
in which things are said ; on the evidence in the writer or
preacher of a real good will to his opponents, and a desire
for the moral improvement of men. There is an aspect of
truth which may always be put forward so as to find a way
to the hearts of men. If there is danger and shrinking
from one point of view, from another there is freedom and
sense of relief. The wider contemplation of the religious
world may enable us to adjust our own place in it. The
acknowledgement of churches as political and national
institutions is the basis of a sound government of them.
Criticism itself is not only negative ; if it creates some
difficulties, it does away others. It may put us at variance
with a party or section of Christians in our own neighbour-
hood. But, on the other hand, it enables us to look at all
men as they are in the sight of God, not as they appear to
human eye, separated and often interdicted from each other
by lines of religious demarcation ; it divides us from the
parts to unite us to the whole. That is a great help to
religious communion. It does away with the supposed
opposition of reason and faith. It throws us back on the
H 2
lOO ESSAY ON
conviction that religion is a personal thing, in which cer-
tainty is to be slowly won and not assumed as the result
of evidence or testimony. It places us, in some respects
(though it be deemed a paradox to say so), more nearly
in the position of the first Christians to whom the New
Testament was not yet given, in whom the Gospel was
a living word, not yet embodied in forms or supported by
ancient institutions.
Thirdly, the suspicion or difficulty which attends critical
inquiries is no reason for doubting their value. The
Scripture nowhere leads us to suppose that the circumstance
of all men speaking well of us is any ground for supposing
that we are acceptable in the sight of God. And there is
no reason why the condemnation of others should be wit-
nessed to by our own conscience. Perhaps it may be true
that, owing to the jealousy or fear of some, the reticence of
others, the terrorism of a few, we may not always find it
easy to regard these subjects with calmness and judgement.
But, on the other hand, these accidental circumstances have
nothing to do with the question at issue ; they cannot have
the slightest influence on the meaning of words, or on the
truth of facts. No one can carry out the principle that
public opinion or church authority is the guide to truth,
when he goes beyond the limits of his own church or
country. That is a consideration which may well make
him pause before he accepts of such a guide in the journey
to another world. All the arguments for repressing in-
quiries into Scrijiture in Protestant countries hold equally
in Italy and Spain for repressing inquiries into matters of
fact or doctrine, and so for denying the Scriptures to the
common people.
Lastly, let him be assured that there is some nobler idea
of truth than is supplied by the opinion of mankind in
general, or the voice of parties in a church. Every one,
whether a student of theology or not, has need to make
war against his pi-ejudices no less than against his passions ;
THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE lOI
and, in the religious teacher, the first is even more necessary
than the last. For, while the vices of mankind are in a great
degree isolated, and are, at any rate, reprobated by public
opinion, their prejudices have a sort of communion or
kindred with the world without. They are a collective
evil, and have their being in the interest, classes, states of
society, and other influences amid which we live. He who
takes the prevailing opinions of Christians and decks them
out in their gayest colours — who reflects the better mind of
the world to itself — is likely to be its favourite teacher.
In that ministiy of the Gospel, even when assuming forms
repulsive to persons of education, no dovibt the good is far
greater than the error or harm. But there is also a deeper
work which is not dependent on the opinions of men, in
which many elements combine, some alien to religion, or
accidentally at variance with it. That work can hardly
expect to win much popular favour, so far as it runs counter
to the feelings of religious parties. But he who bears a part
in it may feel a confidence, which no popular caresses or
religious sympathy could inspire, that he has by a Divine
help been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond the
waves of time. He may depart hence before the natural
term, worn out with intellectual toil ; regarded with sus-
picion by many of his contemporaries ; yet not without
a sure hope that the love of truth, which men of saintly
lives often seem to slight, is, nevertheless, accepted before
God.
oisr co]srYERsioi^
AND
CHA]N"GES OF CHAEACTEE
EOMANS VII.
Thus have we the image of the lifelong struggle gathered
up in a single instant. In describing it we pass beyond the
consciousness of the individual into a world of abstractions ;
we loosen the thread by which the spiritual faculties are
held together, and view as objects what can, strictly speak-
ing, have no existence, except in relation to the subject.
The divided members of the soul are ideal, the combat
between them is ideal, so also is the victory. What is real
that corresponds to this is not a momentary, but a con-
tinuous conflict, which we feel rather than know — which
has its different aspects of hope and fear, triumph and
despair, the action and reaction of the Spirit of God in the
depths of the human soul, awakening the sense of sin and
conveying the assurance of forgiveness.
The language in which we describe this conflict is very
different from that of the Apostle. Our circumstances are
so changed that we are hardly able to view it in its simplest
elements. Christianity is now the established religion of
the civilized portion of mankind. In our own country it
has become part of the law of the land ; it speaks with
authority, it is embodied in a Church, it is supported by
ESSAY ON CONVEKSION IO3
almost universal opinion, and fortified by wealth and pre-
scription. Those who know least of its spiritual life do
not deny its greatness as a power in the world. Analogous
to this relation in which it stands to our history and social
state, is the relation in which it stands also to the minds of
individuals. We are brought up in it, and unconsciously
receive it as the habit of our thoughts and the condition
of our life. It is without us, and we are within its circle ;
we do not become Christians, we are so from our birth.
Even in those who suppose themselves to have passed
through some sudden and violent change, and to have
tasted once for all of the heavenly gift, the change is hardly
ever in the form or substance of their belief, but in its
quickening power ; they feel not a new creed, but a new
spirit within them. So that we might truly say of
Christianity, that it is ' the daughter of time ; ' it hangs
to the past, not only because the first century is the era
of its birth, but because each successive century strengthens
its form and adds to its external force, and entwines it with
more numerous hnks in our social state. Not only may
we say, that it is part and parcel of the law of the land,
but part and parcel of the character of each one, which even
the worst of men cannot wholly shake off.
But if with ourselves the influence of Christianity is
almost always gradual and imperceptible, with the first
believers it was almost always sudden. There was no
interval which separated the preaching of Peter on the day
of Pentecost, from the baptism of the three thousand. The
eunuch of Candace paused for a brief space on a journey,
and was then baptized into the name of Christ, which a few
hours previously he had not so much as heard. There was
no period of probation like that which, a century or two
later, was appropriated to the instruction of the Catechumens.
It was an impulse, an inspu'ation passing from the lips of
one to a chosen few, and communicated by them to the ear
and soul of listening multitudes. As the wind bloweth
I04 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof; as the
lightning shineth from the one end of the heaven to the
other ; so suddenly, fitfully, simultaneously, new thoughts
come into their minds, not to one only, but to many, to
whole cities almost at once. They were pricked with the
sense of sin ; they were melted with the love of Christ ; their
spiritual nature 'came again like the flesh of a little child.'
And some, like St. Paul, became the very opposite of their
former selves ; from scoffers, believers ; from persecutors,
preachers ; the thing that they wei-e was so strange to
them, that they could no longer look calmly on the earthly
scene, which they hardly seemed to touch, which was
already lighted up with the wrath and mercy of God.
There were those among them who ' saw visions and
dreamed dreams,' who were 'caught up,' like St. Paul, 'into
the third heaven,' or, like the twelve, 'spake with other
tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.' And some-
times, as in the Thessalonian Church, the ecstasy of con-
version led to strange and wild opinions, such as the daily
expectation of Christ's coming. The ' round world ' itself
began to reel before them, as they thought of the things
that were shortly to come to pass.
But however sudden were the conversions of the earliest
believers, however wonderful the circumstances which
attended them, they were not for that reason the less
lasting or sincere. Though many preached ' Christ of con-
tention,' though ' Demas forsook the Apostle,' there were
few who, having once taken up the cross, turned back from
' the love of this present world. ' They might waver between
Paul and Peter, between the circumcision and the uncircum-
cision ; they might give ear to the strange and bewitching
heresies of the East ; but there is no trace that many
returned to 'those that were no gods,' or put off Christ;
the impression of the truth that they had received was
everlasting on their minds. Even sins of fornication and
uncleanness, which from the Apostle's frequent warnings
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER I05
against them we must suppose to have lingered, as a sort
of remnant of heathenism in the early Church, did not
wholly destroy their inward relation to God and Christ.
Though 'their last state might be worse than the first,'
they could never return again to live the life of all men
after having tasted ' the heavenly gift and the powers of the
world to come.'
Such was the nature of conversion among the early
Christians, the new birth of which by spiritual descent we
are ourselves the offspring. Is there anything in history
like it ? anything in our own lives which may help us to
understand it ? That which the Scripture describes from
within, we are for a while going to look at from a different
point of view, not with referencp to the power of God, but
to those secondary causes through which He works — the
laws which experience shows that He himself imposes on
the operations of His Spirit. Such an inquiry is not a mere
idle speculation ; it is not far from the practical question,
' How we are to become better. ' Imperfect as any attempt
to analyze our spiritual life must ever be, the changes which
we ourselves experience or observe in others, compared with
those greater and more sudden changes which took place in
the age of the Apostle, will throw light upon each other.
In the sudden conversions of the early Christians we
observe three things which either tend to discredit, or do
not accompany, the working of a similar power among
ourselves. — First, that conversion was marked by ecstatic
and unusual phenomena ; secondly, that, though sudden, it
was permanent ; thirdly, that it fell upon whole multitudes
at once.
When we consider what is implied in such expressions
as ' not many wise, not many learned ' were called to the
knowledge of the truth, we can scarcely avoid feeling that
there must have been much in the early Church which
would have been distasteful to us as men of education ;
much that must have worn the appearance of excitement
I06 ESSAY ON CONVEESION
and enthusiasm. Is the mean conventicle, looking almost
like a private house, a better image of that first assembly of
Christians which met in the 'large upper room,' or the
Catholic church arrayed in all the glories of Christian art ?
Neither of them is altogether like in spirit perhaps, but in
externals the first. Is the dignified hierarchy that occupy
the seats around the altar, more like the multitudes of first
believers, or the lowly crowd that kneel upon the pavement ?
If we try to embody in the mind's eye the forms of the first
teachers, and still more of their followers, we cannot help
reading the true lesson, however great may be the illusions
of poetry or of art. Not St. Paul standing on Mars' hill in
the fullness of manly strength, as we have him in the cartoon
of Eaphael, is the true image ; but such a one as he himself
would glory in, whose bodily presence was weak and speech
feeble, who had an infirmity in his fiesh, and bore in his
body the marks of the Lord Jesus.
And when we look at this picture, 'full in the face,'
however we might by nature be inclined to turn aside from
it, or veil its details in general language, we cannot deny
that many things that accompany the religion of the
uneducated now, must then also have accompanied the
Gospel preached to the poor. There must have been,
humanly speaking, spiritual delusions where men lived so
exclusively in the spiritual world ; there were scenes which
we know took place such as St. Paul says would make the
unbeliever think that they were mad. The best and holiest
persons among the poor and ignorant are not entirely free
from superstition, according to the notions of the educated ;
at best they are apt to speak of religion in a manner not
quite suited to our taste ; they sing with a loud and excited
voice ; they imagine themselves to receive Divine oracles,
even about the humblest cares of life. Is not this, in
externals at least, very like the appearance which the first
disciples must have presented, who obeyed the Apostle's
injunction, ' Is any sad ? let him pray ; is any merry ? let
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER I07
him sing psalms ' ? Could our nerves have borne to
witness the speaking with tongues, or the administration
of Baptism, or the love feasts as they probably existed in
the early Church ?
This difference between the feelings and habits of the first
Christians and ourselves, must be borne in mind in relation
to the subject of conversion. For as sudden changes are
more likely to be met with amongst the poor and uneducated
in the present day, it certainly throws light on the subject
of the first conversions, that to the poor and uneducated the
Gospel was first preached. And yet these sudden changes
were as real, nay, more real than any gradual changes
which take place among ourselves. The Stoic or Epicurean
philosopher who had come into an assembly of believers
speaking with tongues, would have remarked, that among
the vulgar religious extravagances were usually short-lived.
But it was not so. There was more there than he had eyes
to see, or than was dreamed of in a philosophy like his. Not
only was there the superficial appearance of poverty and
meanness and enthusiasm, from a nearer view of which we
are apt to shrink, but underneath this, brighter from its
very obscurity, purer from the meanness of the raiment in
which it was apparelled, was the life hidden with Christ and
God. There, and there only, was the power which made
a man humble instead of proud, self-denying instead of
self-seeking, spiritual instead of carnal ; which made him
embrace, not only the brethren, but the whole human race
in the arms of his love.
But it is a further difference between the power of the
Gospel now and in the first ages, that it no longer converts
whole multitudes at once. Perhaps this very individuahty
in its mode of working may not be without an advantage in
awakening us to its higher truths and more entire spiritual
freedom. Whether this be so or not ; whether there be any
spmtual law by which reason, in a measure, takes the place
of faith, and the common religious impulse weakens as the
Io8 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
power of reflection grows, we certainly observe a diminution
in the collective force which religion exercises on the hearts
of men. In our own days the preacher sees the seed which
he has sown gradually spring up ; first one, then another
begins to lead a better life ; then a change comes over the
state of society, often from causes over which he has no
control ; he makes some steps forwards and a few back-
wards, and trusts far more, if he is wise, to the silent
influence of religious education than to the power of
preaching ; and, perhaps, the result of a long life of minis-
terial labour is far less than that of a single discourse from
the lips of the Apostles or their followers. Even in
missions to the heathen the vital energies of Christianity
cease to operate to any great extent, at least on the effete
civilization of India and China ; the limits of the kingdoms
of light and darkness are nearly the same as heretofore.
At any rate it cannot be said that Christianity has wrought
any sudden amelioration of mankind by the immediate
preaching of the word, since the conversion of the
barbarians. Even within the Christian world there is
a parallel retardation. The ebb and flow of reformation
and counter-reformation have hardly changed the permanent
landmarks. The age of spiritual crises is past. The growth
of Christianity in modern times may be compared to the
change of the body, when it has already arrived at its full
stature. In one half-centuiy so vast a progress was made,
in a few centuries more the world itself seemed to 'have
gone after Him,' and now for near a thousand years the
voice of experience is repeating to us, ' Hitherto shalt thou
go, but no further.'
Looking at this remarkable phenomenon of the conversion
of whole multitudes at once, not from its Divine but from its
human aspect (that is, with reference to that provision that
God himself has made in human nature for the execution of
His will), the first cause to which we are naturally led to
attribute it is the power of sympathy. Why it is that men
AND CHANGES OF CHAEACTER IO9
ever act together is a mystery of which our individual self-
consciousness gives no account, any more than why we
speak a common language, or form nations or societies, or
merely in our physical nature are capable of taking diseases
from one another. Nature and the Author of nature have
made us thus dependent on each other both in body and
soul. Whoever has seen human beings collected together
in masses, and watched the movements that pass over them,
like 'the trees of the forest moving in the wind,' will have
no difficulty in imagining, if not in understanding, how the
same voice might have found its way at the same instant to
a thousand hearts, without our being able to say where the
fire was first kindled, or by whom the inspiration was first
caught. Such histoi'ical events as the Reformation, or the
Crusades, or the French Revolution, are a sufficient evidence
that a whole people, or almost, we may say, half a world,
may be 'drunk into one spirit,' springing up, as it might
seem, spontaneously in the breast of each, yet common to
all. A parallel yet nearer is furnished by the history of the
Jewish people, in whose sudden rebellion and restoration
to God's favour, we recognize literally the momentary
workings of, what is to ourselves a figure of speech,
a national conscience.
In ordinary cases we should truly say that there must
have been some predisposing cause of a great political or
religious revolution ; some latent elements acting alike upon
all, which, though long smouldering beneath, burst forth at
last into a flame. Such a cause might be the misery of
mankind, or the intense corruption of human society, which
could not be quickened except it die, or the long-suppressed
yearnings of the soul after something higher than it had
hitherto known upon earth, or the reflected light of one
religion or one movement of the human mind upon another.
Such causes were actually at work, preparing the way for
the diffusion of Christianity. The law itself was beginning
to pass away in an altered world, the state of society was
no ESSAY ON CONVERSION
hollow, the chosen people were hopelessly under the Eoman
yoke. Good men refrained from the wild attempt of the
Galilean Judas ; yet the spirit which animated such attempts
was slumbering in their bosoms. Looking back at their
own past history, they could not but remember, even in an
altered world, that there was One who ruled among the
kingdoms of men, 'beside whom there was no God,' Were
they to suppose that His arm was straitened to save ? that
He had forgotten His tender mercies to the house of David ?
that the aspirations of the prophets were vain? that the
blood of the Maccabean heroes had sunk like water into the
earth ? This was a hard saying ; Avho could bear it ? It
was long ere the nation, like the individual, put off the old
man — that is, the temporal dispensation — and put on the
new man — that is, the spiritual Israel. The very misery
of the people seemed to forbid them to acquiesce in their
present state. And with the miserable condition of the
nation sprang up also the feeling, not only in individuals
but in the race, that for their sins they were chastened, the
feeling which their whole history seemed to deepen and
increase. At last the scales fell from their eyes ; the veil
that was on the face of Moses was first transfigured before
them, then removed ; the thoughts of many hearts turned
simultaneously to the Hope of Israel, ' Him whom the law
and the prophets foretold. ' As they listened to the preaching
of the Apostles, they seemed to hear a truth both new and
old ; what many had thought, but none had uttered ; which
in its comfort and joyousness seemed to them new, and yet,
from its familiarity and suitableness to their condition, not
the less old.
Spiritual life, no less than natural life, is often the very
opposite of the elements which seem to give birth to it.
The preparation for the way of the Lord, which John the
Baptist preached, did not consist in a direct reference to the
Saviour. The words ' He shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost and with fire,' and 'He shall burn up the chaff with
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER III
fire unquenchable,' could have given the Jews no exact
conception of Him who 'did not break the bruised reed,
nor quench the smoking flax.' It was in another way that
John prepared for Christ, by quickening the moral sense of
the people, and sounding in their ears the voice ' Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Beyond this useful
lesson, there was a kind of vacancy in the preaching of
John. He himself, as ' he was finishing his course,' testified
that his work was incomplete, and that he was not the
Christ. The Jewish people were prepared by his preaching
for the coming of Christ, just as an individual might be
prepared to receive Him by the conviction of sin and the
conscious need of forgiveness.
Except from the Gospel history and the writings of
Josephus and Philo, we know but little of the tendencies
of the Jewish mind in the time of our Lord. Yet we
cannot doubt that the entrance of Christianity into the
world was not sudden and abrupt ; that is an illusion
which arises in the mind from our slender acquaintance
with contemporary opinions. Better and higher and holier
as it was, it was not absolutely distinct from the teaching
of the doctors of the law either in form or substance ; it was
not unconnected with, but gave life and truth to, the mystic
fancies of Alexandrian philosophy. Even in the counsels of
perfection of the Sermon on the Mount, there is probably
nothing which might not be found, either in letter or spirit,
in Philo or some other Jewish or Eastern writer. The
peculiarity of the Gospel is, not that it teaches what is
wholly new, but that it draws out of the treasure-house of
the human heart things new and old, gathering together in
one the dispersed fragments of the truth. The common
people would not have 'heard Him gladly,' but for the
truth of what He said. The heart was its own witness to
it. The better nature of man, though but for a moment,
responded to it, spoken as it was with authority, and not as
the scribes ; with simplicity, and not as the great teachers of
112 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
the law ; and sanctified by the life and actions of Him from
whose lips it came, and 'Who spake as never man spake.'
And yet, after reviewing the circumstances of the first
preaching of the Gospel, there remains something which
cannot be resolved into causes or antecedents ; which eludes
criticism, and can no more be explained in the world than
the sudden changes of character in the individual. There
are processes of life and organization about which we know
nothing, and we seem to know that we shall never know
anything. ' That which thou sowest is not quickened,
except it die ; ' but the mechanism of this new life is too
complex and yet too simple for us to untwist its fibres.
The figure which St. Paul applies to the resurrection of the
body is true also of the renewal of the soul, especially in
the first ages of which we know so little, and in which the
Gospel seems to have acted with such far greater power than
among ourselves.
Leaving further inquiry into the conversion of the first
Christians at the point at which it hides itself from us in
mystery, we have now to turn to a question hardly less mys-
terious, though seemingly more familiar to us, which may
be regarded as a question either of moral philosophy or of
theology — the nature of conversion and changes of character
among ourselves. What traces are there of a spiritual power
stUl acting upon the human heart? What is the inward
nature, and what are the outward conditions of changes
in human conduct ? Is our life a gradual and insensible
progress from infancy to age, from birth to death, governed
by fixed laws ; or is it a miracle and mystery of thirty,
or fifty, or seventy years' standing, consisting of so many
isolated actions or portions knit together by no common
principle ?
Were we to consider mankind only from without, there
could be no doubt of the answer which we should give to
the last of these questions. The order of the world would
scarcely even scan to be infringed by the free will of man.
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER II3
In morals, no less than in physics, everything would appear
to proceed by regular law. Individuals have certain capaci-
ties, which gi'ow with their growth and strengthen with
their strength ; and no one by taking thought can add
one cubit to his stature. As the poet says — 'The boy is
father to the man.' The lives of the great majority have
a sort of continuity : as we know them by the same look,
walk, manner ; so when we come to converse with them,
we recognize the same character as formerly. They may
be changed ; but the change in general is such as we expect
to find in them from youth to maturity, or from maturity
to decay. There is something in them which is not changed,
by which we perceive them to be the same. If they were
weak, they remain so still ; if they were sensitive, they
remain so still ; if they were selfish or passionate, such
faults are seldom cured by increasing age or infirmities.
And often the same nature puts on many veils and disguises ;
to the outward eye it may have, in some instances, almost
disappeared ; when we look beneath, it is still there.
The appearance of this sameness in human nature has led
many to suppose that no real change ever takes place. Does
a man from a drunkard become sober ? from a knight errant
become a devotee ? from a sensualist a believer in Christ ?
or a woman from a life of pleasure pass to a romantic and
devoted religion? It has been maintained that they are
the same still ; and that deeper similarities remain than
the differences which are a part of their new profession.
Those who make the remark would say, that such persons
exhibit the same vanity, the same irritability, the same
ambition ; that sensualism still lurks under the disguise of
refinement, or earthly and human passion transfuses itself
into devotion.
This 'practical fatalism,' which says that human beings
can be what they are and nothing else, has a certain degree
of truth, or rather, of plausibility, from the circumstance
that men seldom change wholly, and that the part of their
VOL. II. I
114 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
nature which changes least is the weakness and infirmity
that shows itself on the surface. Few, comparatively, ever
change their outward manner, except from the mere result of
altered circumstances ; and hence, to a superficial observer,
they appear to change less than is really the fact. Probably
St. Paul never lost that trembling and feebleness, which
was one of the trials of his life. Nor, in so far as the
mind is dependent on the body, can we pretend to be
wholly free agents. Who can say that his view of life and
his power of action are unaffected by his bodily state ? or
who expects to find a firm and decided character in the
nervous and sensitive frame? The commonest facts of
daily life sufficiently prove the connexion of mind and
body ; the more we attend to it the closer it appears. Nor,
indeed, can it be denied that external circumstances fix for
most men the path of life. They are the inhabitants of
a particular country ; they have a certain position in the
world ; they rise to their occupations as the morning comes
round ; they seldom get beyond the circle of ideas in which
they have been brought up. Fearfully and wonderfully as
they are made, though each one in his bodily frame, and
even more in his thoughts and feelings, is a miracle of
complexity, they seem, as they meet in society, to reunite
into a machine, and society itself is the great automaton
of which they are the parts. It is harder and more conven-
tional than the individuals which compose it ; it exercises
a kind of regulating force on the wayward fancies of their
wills ; it says to them in an unmistakable manner that
'they shall not break their ranks.' The laws of trade, the
customs of social life, the instincts of human nature, act
upon us with a power little less than that of physical
necessity.
If from this external aspect of human things we turn
inward, there seems to be no limit to the changes which we
deem possible. We are no longer the same, but different
every hour. No physical fact interposes itself as an obstacle
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER Il5
to our thoughts any more than to our dreams. The world
and its laws have nothing to do with our free determina-
tions. At any moment we can begin a new life ; in idea
at least, no time is required for the change. One instant we
may be proud, the next humble ; one instant sinning, at
the next repenting ; one instant, like St. Paul, ready to
persecute, at another to preach the Gospel ; full of malice
and hatred one hour, melting into tenderness the next.
As we hear the words of the preacher, there is a voice
within telling us, that ' now, even now, is the day of salva-
tion ; ' and if certain clogs and hindrances of earth could
only be removed, we are ready to pass immediately into
another state. And, at times, it seems as though we had
actually passed into rest, and had a foretaste of the heavenly
gift. Something more than imagination enables us to
fashion a divine pattern to which we conform for a little
while. The 'new man' unto which we become trans-
formed, is so pleasant to us that it banishes the thought
of 'the old.' In youth especially, when we are ignorant
of the compass of our own nature, such frames of mind
are perpetually recurring ; perhaps, not without attendant
evils ; certainly, also, for good.
But besides such feelings as these, which we know to be
partly true, partly illusive, every one's experience of himself
appears to teach him, that he has gone through many
changes and had many special providences vouchsafed to
him ; he says to himself that he has been led in a mys-
terious and peculiar way, not like the way of other men,
and had feelings not common to others ; he compares
different times and places, and contrasts his own conduct
here and there, now and then. In other men he remarks
similarity of character ; in himself he sees chiefly diversity.
They seem to be the creatures of habit and circumstance ;
he alone is a free agent. The truth is, that he observes
himself ; he cannot equally observe them. He is not
conscious of the inward struggles through which they have
I 2
Il6 ESSAY ON CONVEESION
passed ; he sees only the veil of flesh which conceals them
from his view. He knows when he thinks about it, but
he does not habitually remembei', that, under that calm
exterior, there is a like current of individual thoughts,
feelings, interests, which have as great a charm and inten-
sity for another as the workings of his own mind have for
himself.
And yet it does not follow, that this inward fact is to be
set aside as the result of egotism and illusion. It may be
not merely the dreamy reflection of our life and actions in
the mirror of self, but the subtle and delicate spring of the
whole machine. To purify the feelings or to move the will,
the internal sense may be as necessary to us as external
observation is to regulate and sustain them. Even to the
formula of the fatalist, that ' freedom is the consciousness of
necessity,' it may be replied, that that very consciousness,
as he terms it, is as essential as any other link in the chain
in which ' he binds fast the world. ' Human nature is beset
by the contradiction, not of two rival theories, but of many
apparently contradictory facts. If we cannot imagine how"
the world could go on without law and order in human
actions, neither can we imagine how morality could subsist
unless we clear a space around us for the freedom of
the will.
But not in this place to get further into the meshes of
the great question of freedom and necessity, let us rather
turn aside for a moment to consider some practical aspects
of the reflections which precede. Scripture and reason alike
require that we should entirely turn to God, that we should
obey the whole law. And hard as this may seem at first,
there is a witness within us which pleads that it is possible.
Our mind and moral nature are one ; we cannot break our-
selves into pieces in action any more than in thought. The
whole man is in every part and in every act. This is not
a mere mode of thought, but a truth of great practical
importance. 'Easier to change many things than one,' is
\
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER II 7
the common saying. Easier, we may add, in religion or
morality, to change the whole than the part. Easier
because more natural, more agreeable to the voice of con-
science and the promises of Scripture. God himself deals
with us as a whole ; He does not forgive us in part any more
than He requires us to serve Him in part. It may be true
that, of the thousand hearers of the appeal of the preacher,
not above one begins a new life. And some persons will
imagine that it might be better to make an impression on
them little by little, like the effect of the dropping of water
upon stone. Not in this way is the Gospel written down
on the fleshy tables of the heart. More true to our own
experience of self, as well as to the words of Scripture, are
such ideas as renovation, renewal, regeneration, taking up
the cross and following Christ, dying with Christ that we
may also live with Him.
Many a person wdll tease himself by counting minutes
and providing small rules for his life, who would have
found the task an easier and a nobler one, had he viewed it
in its whole extent, and gone to God in a ' large and liberal
spirit,' to offer up his life to Him. To have no arriere
pensee in the service of God and virtue is the great source
of peace and happiness. Make clean that which is within,
and you have no need to purify that which is without.
Take care of the little things of life, and the great ones will
take care of themselves, is the maxim of the trader, which
is sometimes, and with a certain degree of truth, applied to
the service of God. But much more true is it in religion
that we should take care of the great things, and the trifles
of life will take care of themselves. ' If thine eye be single,
thy whole body will be full of light.' Christianity is not
acquired as an art by long practice ; it does not carve and
polish human nature with a graving tool ; it makes the
whole man ; first pouring out his soul before God, and then
'casting him in a mould.' Its workings are not to be
measured by time, even though among educated persons,
Il8 ESSAY ON CONTERSION
and in modern times, sudden and momentary conversions
can rarely occur.
For the doctrine of conversion the moralist substitutes
the theory of habits. Good actions, he says, produce good
habits ; and the repetition of good actions makes them easier
to perform, and ' fortifies us indefinitely against temptation. '
There are bodily and mental habits — habits of reflection and
habits of action. Practice gives skill or sleight of hand ;
constant attention, the faculty of abstraction ; so the practice
of virtue makes us virtuous, that of vice vicious. The more
meat we eat, to use the illustration of Aristotle, in whom
we find a cruder form of the same theory, the more we are
able to eat meat ; the more we wrestle, the more able we
are to wrestle, and so forth. If a person has some duty
to perform, say of common and trivial sort, to rise at
a particular hour in the morning, to be at a particular place
at such an hour, to conform to some rule about abstinence,
we tell him that he will find the first occasion difficult, the
second easy, and the difficulty is supposed to vanish by
degrees until it wholly disappears. If a man has to march
into a battle, or to perform a surgical operation, or to do
anything else from which human nature shrinks, his nen^es,
we say, are gradually strengthened ; his head, as was said of
a famous soldier, clears up at the sound of the cannon ; like
the grave-digger in Hamlet, he has soon no ' feeling of his
occupation.'
From a consideration of such instances as these, the rule
has been laid down, that, ' as the passive impression
weakens, the active habit strengthens.' But is not this
saying of a great man founded on a narrow and partial con-
templation of human nature? For, in the first place, it
leaves altogether out of sight the motives of human action ;
it is equally suited to the most rigid formalist and to
a moral and spiritual being. Secondly, it takes no account
of the limitation of the power of habits, which neither in
mind nor body can be extended beyond a certain point ;
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER II9
nor of the original capacity or peculiar character of indi-
viduals ; nor of the different kinds of habits, nor of the
degrees of strength and weakness in different minds ; nor
of the enormous difference between youth and age, child-
hood and manhood, in the capacity for acquiring habits.
Old age does not move with accumulated force, either
upwards or downwards ; they are the lesser habits, not
the great springs of life, that show themselves in it with
increased power. Nor can the man who has neglected to
form habits in youth, acquire them in mature life ; like the
body, the mind ceases to be capable of receiving a particular
form. Lastly, such a description of human nature agrees
with no man's account of himself ; whatever moralists may
say, he knows himself to be a spiritual being. ' The wind
bloweth where it listeth,' and he cannot 'tell whence it
Cometh, or whither it goeth.'
All that is true in the theory of habits seems to be
implied in the notion of order or regularity. Even this
is inadequate to give a conception of the structure of human
beings. Order is the beginning, but freedom is the perfec-
tion of our moral nature. Men do not live at random, or
act one instant without reference to their actions just before.
And in youth especially, the very sameness of our occupa-
tions is a sort of stay and support to us, as in age it may
be described as a kind of rest. But no one will say that
the mere repetition of actions until they constitute a habit,
gives any explanation of the higher and nobler forms of
human virtue, or the finer moulds of character. Life cannot
be explained as the working of a mere machine, still less
can moral or spiritual life be reduced to merely mechanical
laws.
But if, while acknowledging that a great proportion of
mankind are the creatures of habit, and that a great part
of our actions are nothing more than the result of habit,
we go on to ask ourselves about the changes of our life,
and fix our minds on the critical points, we are led to view
130 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
human nature, not only in a wider and more generous spirit,
but also in a way more accordant with the language of
Scripture. We no longer measure ourselves by days or by
weeks ; we are conscious that at particular times we have
undergone great revolutions or emotions ; and then, again,
have intervened periods, lasting perhaps for years, in which
we have pursued the even current of our way. Our progress
towards good may have been in idea an imperceptible and
regular advance ; in fact, we know it to have been other-
wise. We have taken plunges in life ; there are many eras
noted in our existence. The greatest changes are those of
which we are the least able to give an account, and which
we feel the most disposed to refer to a superior power.
That they were simply mysterious, like some utterly un-
known natural phenomena, is our first thought about them.
But although unable to fathom their true nature, we are
capable of analyzing many of the circumstances which
accompany them, and of observing the impulses out of
which they arise.
Every man has the power of forming a resolution, or,
without previous resolution, in any particular instance,
acting as he will. As thoughts come into the mind one
cannot tell how, so too motives spring up, without our being
able to trace their origin. Why we suddenly see a thing
in a new light, is often hard to explain ; why we feel an
action to be right or wrong which has previously seemed
indifferent, is not less inexplicable. We fix the passing
dream or sentiment in action, the thought is nothing,
the deed may be everything. That day after day, to use
a familiar instance, the drunkard will find abstinence
easier, is probably untrue ; but that from once abstaining
he will gain a fresh experience, and receive a new strength
and inward satisfaction, which may result in endless con-
sequences, is what every one is aware of. It is not the
sameness of what we do, but its novelty, which seems to
have such a peculiar power over us ; not the repetition of
I
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER 121
many blind actions, but the performance of a single conscious
one, that is the birth to a new life. Indeed, the very same-
ness of actions is often accompanied with a sort of weariness,
which makes men desirous of change.
Nor is it less true, that by the commission, not of malny,
but a single act of vice or crime, an inroad is made into
our whole moral constitution, which is not proportionably
increased by its repetition. The first act of theft, falsehood,
or other immorality, is an event in the life of the perpe-
trator which he never forgets. It may often happen that
no account can be given of it ; that there is nothing in the
education, nor in the antecedents of the person, that would
lead us, or even himself, to suspect it. In the weaker sort
of natures, especially, suggestions of evil spring up we
cannot tell how. Human beings are the creatures of habit ;
but they are the creatures of impulse too ; and from the
greater variableness of the outward circumstances of life,
and especially of particular periods of life, and the greater
freedom of individuals, it may, perhaps, be found that
human actions, though less liable to wide-spread or sudden
changes, have also become more capricious, and less reducible
to simple causes, than formerly.
Changes in character come more often in the form of
feeling than of reason, from some new affection or attach-
ment, or alienation of our former self, rather than from
the slow growth of experience, or a deliberate sense of
right and duty. The meeting with some particular person,
the remembrance of some particular scene, the last words
of a parent or friend, the reading of a sentence in a book,
may call forth a world within us of the very existence of
which we were previously unconscious, New interests arise
such as we never before knew, and we can no longer lie
grovelling in the mire, but must be up and doing ; new
affections seem to be drawn out, such as warm our inmost
soul and make action and exertion a delight to us. Mere
human love at first sight, as we say, has been known to
122 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
change the whole character and produce an earthly effect,
analogous to that heavenly love of Christ and the brethren,
of which the New Testament speaks. Have we not seen
the passionate become calm, the licentious pure, the weak
strong, the scoffer devout ? We may not venture to say
with St. Paul, 'This is a great mystery, but I speak con-
cerning Christ and the church.' But such instances serve,
at least, to quicken our sense of the depth and subtlety of
human nature.
Of many of these changes no other reason can be given
than that nature and the Author of nature have made men
capable of them. There are others, again, which we seem
to trace, not only to particular times, but to definite actions,
from which they flow in the same manner that other effects
follow from their causes. Among such causes none are
more powerful than acts of self-sacrifice and devotion.
A single deed of heroism makes a man a hero ; it becomes
a part of him, and, strengthened by the approbation and
sympathy of his fellow-men, a sort of power which he gains
over himself and them. Something like this is true of the
lesser occasions of life no less than of the greatest ; provided
in either case the actions are not of such a kind that the
performance of them is a violence to our nature. Many
a one has stretched himself on the rack of asceticism, without
on the whole raising his nature ; often he has seemed to
have gained in self-control only what he has lost in the
kindlier affections, and by his very isolation to have wasted
the opportunities which nature offered him of self-improve-
ment. But no one with a heart open to human feelings,
loving not man the less, but God more, sensitive to the
happiness of this world, yet aiming at a higher — no man
of such a nature ever made a great sacrifice, or performed
a great act of self-denial, without impressing a change on
his character, which lasted to his latest breath. No man
ever took his besetting sin, it may be lust, or pride, or love
of rank and position, and, as it were, cut it out by volun-
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER I23
tarily placing himself where to gratify it was impossible,
without sensibly receiving a new strength of character. In
one day, almost in an hour, he may become an altered
man ; he may stand, as it were, on a different stage of
moral and religious life ; he may feel himself in new
relations to an altered world.
Nor, in considering the effects of action, must the influence
of impressions be lost sight of. Good resolutions are apt to
have a bad name ; they have come to be almost synonymous
with the absence of good actions. As they get older, men
deem it a kind of weakness to be guilty of making them ;
so often do they end in raising ' pictures of virtue, or going
over the theory of virtue in our minds.' Yet this contrast
between passive impression and active habit is hardly
justified by our experience of ourselves or others. Valueless
as they are in themselves, good resolutions are suggestive
of great good ; they are seldom wholly without effect on
our conduct ; in the weakest of men they are still the
embryo of action. They may meet with a concurrence of
circumstances in which they take root and grow, coinciding
with some change of place, or of pursuits, or of companions,
or of natural constitution, in which they acquire a peculiar
power. They are the opportunities of virtue, if not virtue
itself. At the worst they make us think ; they give us an
experience of ourselves ; they prevent our passing our lives
in total unconsciousness. A man may go on all his life
making and not keeping them ; miserable as such a state
appears, he is perhaps not the worse, but something the
better for them. The voice of the preacher is not lost, even
if he succeed but for a few instants in awakening them.
A further cause of sudden changes in the moral con-
stitution is the determination of the will by reason and
knowledge. Suppose the case of a person living in a narrow
circle of ideas, within the limits of his early education,
perplexed by difficulties, yet never venturing beyond the
wall of prejudices in which he has been brought up, or
124 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
changing only into the false position of a rebellion against
them. A new view of his relation to the world and to
God is presented to him ; such, for example, as in St. Paul's
day was the grand acknowledgement that God was ' not
the God of the Jews only ; ' such as in our own age would
be the clear vision of the truth and justice of God, high
above the clouds of earth and time, and of His goodwill to
man. Convinced of the reasonableness of the Gospel, it
becomes to him at once a self-imposed law. No longer does
the human heart rebel ; no longer has he ' to pose his
understanding' with that odd resolution of Tertullian —
' certum quia impossibile.' He perceives that the per-
plexities of religion have been made, not by the appointment
of God, but by the ingenuity of man.
Lastly. Among those influences, by the help of which
the will of man learns to disengage itself from the power of
habit, must not be omitted the influence of circumstances.
If men are creatures of habit, much more are they creatures
of circumstances. These two, nature without us, and ' the
second nature' that is within, are the counterbalancing
forces of our being. Between them (so we may figure to
ourselves the working of the mind) the human will inserts
itself, making the force of one a lever against the other, and
seeming to rule both. We fall under the power of habit,
and feel ourselves weak and powerless to shake off the
almost physical influence which it exerts upon us. The
enfeebled frame cannot rid itself of the malady ; the palsied
springs of action cannot be strengthened for good, nor
fortified against evil. Transplanted into another soil, and
in a different air, we renew our strength. In youth
especially, the character seems to respond kindly to the
influence of the external world. Providence has placed
us in a state in which we have many aids in the battle
with self ; the greatest of these is change of circumstances.
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER 1^5
We have wandered far from the subject of conversion
in the early Church, into another sphere in which the
words 'grace, faith, the spirit,' have disappeared, and notions
of moral philosophy have taken their place. It is better,
perhaps, that the attempt to analyze our spiritual nature
should assume this abstract form. We feel that words
cannot express the life hidden with Christ and God ; we
are afraid of declaring on the housetop, what may only be
spoken in the closet. If the rites and ceremonies of the
elder dispensation, which have so little in them of a spiritual
character, became a figure of the true, much more may the
moral world be regarded as a figure of the spiritual world
of which religion speaks to us.
There is a view of the changes of the characters of men
which begins where this ends, which reads human nature
by a different light, and speaks of it as the seat of a great
struggle between the powers of good and evil. It would
be untrue to identify this view with that which has pre-
ceded, and scarcely less untrue to attempt to interweave
the two in a system of 'moral theology.' No addition of
theological terms will transfigure Aristotle's Ethics into
a ' Summa Theologiae.' When St, Paul says — ' O wretched
man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord;' he
is not speaking the language of moral philosophy, but of
religious feeling. He expresses what few have truly felt
concentrated in a single instant, what many have deluded
themselves into the belief of, what some have experienced
accompanying them through life, what a great portion even
of the better sort of mankind are wholly unconscious of.
It seems as if Providence allowed us to regard the truths
of religion and morality in many ways which are not wholly
unconnected with each other, yet parallel rather than
intersecting ; providing for the varieties of human character,
and not leaving those altogether without law, who are
incapable in a world of sight of entering within the veil.
126 ESSAY ON CONVEESION
As we return to that * hidden life ' of which the Scripture
speaks, our analysis of human nature seems to become more
imperfect, less reducible to rule or measure, less capable
of being described in a language which all men understand.
What the believer recognizes as the record of his experience
is apt to seem mystical to the rest of the world. We do
not seek to thread the mazes of the human soul, or to draw
forth to the light its hidden communion with its Maker,
but only to present in general outline the power of religion
among other causes of human action.
Directly, leligious influences may be summed up under
three heads : — The power of God ; the love of Christ ; the
efficacy of prayer.
( I ) So far as the influence of the first of these is capable
of analysis, it consists in the practical sense that we are
dependent beings, and that our souls are in the hands of
God, who is acting through us, and ever present with us,
in the trials of life and in the work of life. The believer
is a minister who executes this work, hardly the partner
in it ; it is not his own, but God's, He does it with the
greatest care, as unto the Lord and not to men, yet is
indifferent as to the result, knowing that all things, even
through his imperfect agency, are working together for
good. The attitude of his soul towards God is such as to
produce the strongest effects on his power of action. It
leaves his faculties clear and unimpassioned ; it places him
above accidents ; it gives him courage and freedom. Trust-
ing in God only, like the Psalmist, 'he fears no enemy;'
he has no want. There is a sort of absoluteness in his
position in the world, which can neither be made better nor
worse ; as St. Paul says, *A11 things are his, whether life
or death, or things present, or things to come.'
In merely human things, the aid and sympathy of others
increase our power to act : it is also the fact that we can
work more effectually and think more truly, where the
issue is not staked on the result of our thought and work.
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER 127
The confidence of success would be more than half the
secret of success, did it not also lead to the relaxation of
our efforts. But in the life of the believer, the sympathy,
if such a figure of speech may be allowed, is not human
but Divine ; the confidence is not a confidence in ourselves,
but in the power of God, which at once takes us out of
ourselves and increases our obligation to exertion. The
instances just mentioned have an analogy, though but
a faint one, with that which we are considering. They are
shadows of the support which we receive from the Infinite
and Everlasting. As the philosopher said that his theory
of fatalism was absolutely required to insure the repose
necessary for moral action, it may be said, in a far higher
sense, that the consciousness of a Divine Providence is
necessary to enable a rational being to meet the present
trials of life, and to look without fear on his future destiny.
(2) But yet more strongly is it felt that the love of Christ
has this constraining power over souls, that here, if any-
where, we are unlocking the twisted chain of sympathy,
and reaching the inmost mystery of human nature. The
sight, once for all, of Christ crucified, recalling the thought
of what, more than 1 800 years ago, He suffered for us, has
ravished the heart and melted the affections, and made the
world seem new, and covered the earth itself with a fair
vision, that is, a heavenly one. The strength of this feeling
arises from its being directed towards a person, a real being,
an individual like ourselves, who has actually endured all
this for our sakes, who was above us, and yet became one
of us and felt as we did, and was like ourselves a true man.
The love which He felt towards us, we seek to return to
Him ; the unity which He has with the Divine nature, He
communicates to us ; His Father is our Father, His God
our God. And as human love draws men onwards to make
sacrifices, and to undergo sufferings for the good of others,
Divine love also leads us to cast away the interests of this
world, and rest only in the noblest object of love. And
128 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
this love is not only a feeling or sentiment, or attachment,
such as we may entertain towards a parent, a child, or
a wife, in which, pure and disinterested as it may be, some
shadow of earthly passion unavoidably mingles ; it is also
the highest exercise of the reason, which it seems to endow
with the force of the affections, making us think and feel at
once. And although it begins in gentleness, and tenderness,
and weakness, and is often supposed to be more natural
to women than men, yet it grows up also to ' the fulness
of the stature of the perfect man.' The truest note of the
depth and sincerity of our feelings towards our fellow
creatures is a manly — that is, a self-controlled — temper :
still more is this true of the love of the soul towards Christ
and God.
Every one knows what it is to become like those whom
we admire or esteem ; the impress which a disciple may
sometimes have received from his teacher, or the servant
from his Lord. Such devotion to a particular person can
rarely be thought to open our hearts to love others also ;
it often tends to weaken the force of individual character.
But the love of Christ is the conducting medium to the
love of all mankind ; the image which He impresses upon
us is the image not of any particular individual, but of the
Son of Man. And this image, as we draw nearer to it, is
transfigured into the image of the Son of God. As we
become like Him, we see Him as He is ; and see ourselves
and all other things with true human sympathy. Lastly,
we are sensible that more than all we feel towards Him, He
feels towards us, and that it is He who is drawing us to
Him, while we seem to be drawing to Him ourselves.
This is a part of that mystery of which the Apostle sjDoaks,
'of the length, and depth, and breadth of the love of Christ,'
which passeth knowledge. Mere human love rests on
instincts, the working of which we cannot explain, but
which nevertheless touch the inmost springs of our being.
So, too, we have spiritual instincts, acting towards higher
AND CHANGES OP CHARACTER 129
objects, still more suddenly and wonderfully capturing our
souls in an instant, and making us indifferent to all things
else. Such instincts show themselves in the weak no less
than in the strong ; they seem to be not so much an original
part of our nature as to fulfil our nature, and add to it, and
draw it out, until they make us different beings to ourselves
and others. It was the quaint fancy of a sentimentalist
to ask whether any one who remembers the first sight of
a beloved person, could doubt the existence of magic. We
may ask another question, Can any one who has ever
known the love of Christ, doubt the existence of a spiritual
power ?
(3) The instrument whereby, above all others, we realize
the power of God, and the love of Christ, which carries
us into their presence, and places us within the circle of
a Divine yet personal influence, is prayer. Prayer is the
summing up of the Christian life in a definite act, which
is at once inward and outward, the power of which on the
character, like that of any other act, is proportioned to its
intensity. The imagination of doing rightly adds little to
our strength ; even the wish to do so is not necessarily
accompanied by a change of heart and conduct. But in
prayer we imagine, and wish, and perform all in one. Our
imperfect resolutions are offered up to God ; our weakness
becomes strength, our words deeds. No other action is
so mysterious ; there is none in which we seem, in the
same manner, to renounce ourselves that we may be one
with God.
Of what nature that prayer is which is effectual to the
obtaining of its requests is a question of the same kind as
what constitutes a true faith. That prayer, we should reply,
which is itself most of an act, which is most immediately
followed by action, which is most truthful, manly, self-
controlled, which seems to lead and direct, rather than to
follow, our natural emotions. That prayer which is its own
answer because it asks not for any temporal good, but for
VOL. II. K
130 ESSAY ON CONVERSION
union with God. That prayer which begins with the con-
fession, ' We know not what to pray for as we ought ; '
which can never by any possibility interfere with the laws
of nature, because even in extremity of danger or suffering,
it seeks only the fulfilment of His will. That prayer which
acknowledges that our enemies, or those of a different faith,
are equally with ourselves in the hands of God ; in which
we never unwittingly ask for our own good at the expense
of others. That prayer in which faith is strong enough to
submit to experience ; in which the soul of man is never-
theless conscious not of any self-produced impression, but
of a true communion with the Author and Maker of his
being.
In prayer, as in all religion, there is something that it is
impossible to describe, and that seems to be untrue the
moment it is expressed in words. In the relations of man
with God, it is vain to attempt to separate what belongs to
the finite and what to the infinite. We can feel, but we
cannot analyze it. We can lay down practical rules for it,
but can give no adequate account of it. It is a mystery
which we do not need to fathom. In all religion there
is an element of which we are conscious — which is no
mystery, which ought to be and is on a level with reason
and experience. There is something besides, which, in
those who give way to every vague spiritual emotion, may
often fall below reason (for to them it becomes a merely
physical state) ; which may also raise us above ourselves,
until reason and feeling meet in one, and the life on earth
even of the poor and ignorant answers to the description of
the Apostle, * Having your conversation in heaven.'
This partial indistinctness of the subject of religion, even
independently of mysticism or superstition, may become to
intellectual minds a ground for doubting the truth of that
which will not be altogether reduced to the rules of human
knowledge, which seems to elude our grasp, and retires
into the recesses of the soul the moment we ask for
AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER I3I
the demonstration of its existence. Against this natural
suspicion let us set two observations : first, that if the
Gospel had spoken to the reason only, and not to the
feelings— if ' the way to the blessed life ' had to be won
by clearness of ideas, then it is impossible that 'to the
poor the Gospel should have been first preached.' It would
have begun at the other end of society, and probably
remained, like Greek philosophy, the abstraction of educated
men. Secondly, let us remark that even now, judged by
its effects, the power of religion is of all powers the
greatest. Knowledge itself is a weak instrument to stir
the soul compared with religion ; morality has no way
to the heart of man ; but the Gospel reaches the feelings
and the intellect at once. In nations as well as individuals,
in barbarous times as well as civilized, in the great crises of
history especially, even in the latest ages, when the minds
of men seem to wax cold, and all things remain the same
as at the beginning, it has shown itself to be a reality
without which human nature would cease to be what it is.
Almost every one has had the witness of it in himself. No
one, says Plato, ever passed from youth to age in unbelief
of the gods, in heathen times. Hardly any educated person
in a Christian land has passed from youth to age without
some aspiration after a better life, some thought of the
country to which he is going.
As a fact, it would be admitted by most, that, at some
period of their lives, the thought of the world to come and
of future judgement, the beauty and loveliness of the truths
of the Gospel, the sense of the shortness of our days here,
have wrought a more quickening and powerful effect than
any moral truths or prudential maxims. Many a one would
acknowledge that he has been carried whither he knew not ;
and had nobler thoughts, and felt higher aspirations, than
the course of his ordinary life seemed to allow. These
were the most important moments of his life for good or
for evil ; the critical points which have made him what he
K 2
1^2 ESSAY ON CONVERSION AND CHANGES OF CHARACTER
is, either as he used or neglected them. They came he
knew not how, sometimes with some outward and apparent
cause, at other times without — the resixlt of affliction or
sickness, or * the wind blowing where it listeth. '
And if such changes and such critical points should be
found to occur in youth more often than in age, in the poor
and ignorant rather than in the educated, in women more
often than in men — if reason and reflection seem to weaken
as they regulate the sprmgs of human action, this veiy fact
may lead us to consider that reason, and reflection, and
education, and the experience of age, and the force of
manly sense, are not the Hnks which bind us to the
communion of the body of Christ ; that it is rather to those
qualities which we have, or may have, in common with our
fellow-men, that the Gospel is promised ; and that it is with
the weak, the poor, the babes in Christ — not with the
strong-minded, the resolute, the consistent — that we shall
sit down in the kingdom of heaven.
ESSAY
ON
COISTTEASTS OF PEOPHECY
ROMANS XI.
Every reader of the Epistles must have remarked the
opposite and apparently inconsistent uses, which the Apostle
St. Paul makes of the Old Testament. This appearance of
inconsistency arises out of the different and almost conflict-
ing statements, which may be read in the Old Testament
itself. The law and the prophets are their own witnesses,
but they are witnesses also to a truth which is beyond them.
Two spirits are found in them, and the Apostle sets aside
the one, that he may establish the other. When he says
that 'the man that doeth these things shall live in them,'
X. 5, and again two verses afterwards, 'the word is very
nigh unto thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart,' he
is using the authority of the law, first, that out of its own
mouth he may condemn the law ; secondly, that he may
confirm the Gospel by the authority of that which he
condemns. Still more striking are the contrasts of prophecy
in which he reads, not only the rejection of Israel, but its
restoration ; the over-ruling providence of God, as well as
the free agency of man ; not only as it is written, ' God
gave unto them a spirit of heaviness,' but, 'who hath
believed our report ; ' nor only, * all day long I have
134 ESSAY ON
stretched forth my hand to a disobedient and gainsaying
people, ' but ' there shall come out of Sion a deliverer and
he shall turn away iniquities from Jacob.' Experience and
faith seem to contend together in the Apostle's own mind,
and alike to find an echo in the two voices of prophecy.
It were much to be wished that we could agree upon
a chronological arrangement of the Old Testament, which
would approach more nearly to the true order in which the
books were written, than that in which they have been
handed down to us. Such an arrangement would throw
great light on the interpretation of prophecy. At present,
we scarcely resist the illusion exercised upon our minds by
' four prophets the greater, followed by twelve prophets the
less ; ' some of the latter being of a prior date to any of the
former. Even the distinction of the law and the prophets
as well as of the Psalms and the prophets leads indirectly
to a similar error. For many elements of the prophetical
spirit enter into the law, and legal precepts are repeated by
the prophets. The continuity of Jewish history is further
broken by the Apocrypha. The four centuries before Christ
were as fruitful of hopes and struggles and changes of
thought and feeling in the Jewish people as any preceding
period of their existence as a nation, perhaps more so. And
yet we piece together the Old and New Testament as if the
interval were blank leaves only. Few, if any, English writers
have ever attempted to form a conception of the growth of
the spirit of prophecy, from its first beginnings in the law
itself, as it may be traced in the lives and characters of
Samuel and David, and above all, of Elijah and his unme-
diate successor ; as it reappears a few years later, in the
written prophecies respecting the house of Israel, and the
surrounding nations (not even in the oldest of the prophets,
without reference to Messiah's kingdom) ; or again after the
carrying away of the ten tribes, as it concentrates itself in
Judah, uttering a sadder and more mournful cry in the hour
of captivity, yet in the multitude of sorrows increasing the
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY 1 35
comfort ; the very dispersion of the people widening the
prospect of Christ's kingdom, as the nation ' is cut short in
righteousness,' God being so much the nearer to those who
draw near to Him.
The fulfilment of prophecy has been sought for in a series
of events which have been sometimes bent to make them
fit, and one series of events has frequently taken the place
of another. Even the passing circumstances of to-day or
yesterday, at the distance of about two thousand years,
and as many miles, which are but shadows flitting on the
mountains compared with the deeper foundations of human
history, are thought to be within the range of the prophet's
eye. And it may be feared that, in attempting to establish
a claim which, if it could be proved, might be made also for
heathen oracles and prophecies, commentators have some-
tmies lost sight of those great characteristics which distin-
guish Hebrew prophecy from all other professing revelations
of other rehgions : ( i ) the sense of the truthfulness, and
holiness, and loving-kindness of the Divine Being, with which
the prophet is as one possessed, which he can no more
forget or doubt than he can cease to be himself ; (2) their
growth, that is, their growing perception of the moral
nature of the revelation of God to man, apart from the
commandments of the law or the privileges of the house of
Israel.
There are some prophecies more national, of which the
fortunes of the Jewish people are the only subject ; others
more individual, seeming to enter more into the recesses of
the human soul, and which are, at the same time, more
universal, rising above earthly things, and passing into the
distant heaven. At one time the prophet embodies ' these
thoughts of many hearts ' as present, at another as future ; in
some cases as following out of the irrevocable decree of God,
in others as dependent on the sin or repentance of man. At
one moment he is looking for the destruction of Israel, at
another for its consolation ; going from one of these aspects
136 ESSAY ON
of the heavenly vision to another, like St. Paul himself in
successive verses. And sometimes he sees the Lord's house
exalted in the top of the mountains, and the image of the
' Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty Prince, the Everlasting
God.' At other times, his vision is of the Servant whom it
' pleased the Lord to bruise, ' whose form was ' marred more
than that of the sons of men,' who was 'led as a lamb to
the slaughter.'
National, individual, — spiritual, temporal, — present,
future, — rejection, restoration, — faith, the law, — Providence,
freewill, — mercy, sacrifice, — Messiah suifering and trium-
phant,— are so many pairs of opposites with reference to
which the structure of prophecy admits of being examined.
It is true that such an examination is nothing more than
a translation or decomposition of prophecy into the modes
of thought of our own time, and is far from reproducing the
living image which presented itself to the eyes of the
prophet. But, like all criticism, it makes us think ; it
enables us to observe fresh points of connexion between the
Old Testament and the New ; it keeps us from losing our way
in the region of allegory or of modern history. Many things
are unlearnt as well as learnt by the aid of criticism ; it
clears the mind of conventional interpretations, teaching us
to look amid the symbols of time and place for the higher
and universal meaning.
Proj)hecy has a human as well as a Divine element : that
is to say, it partakes of the ordinary workings of the mind.
There is also something beyond which the analogy of
human knowledge fails to explain. Could the prophet him-
self have been asked what was the nature of that impulse by
which he was carried away, he would have replied that ' the
God of Israel was a living God ' who had ' ordained him
a prophet before he came forth from the womb.' Of the
Divine element no other account can be given — ' it pleased
God to raise up individuals in a particular age and countiy,
who had a purer and loftier sense of truth than their fellow
CONTRASTS OF PEOPHECY 1 37
men.' Prophecy would be no longer prophecy if we could
untwist its soul. But the human part admits of being
analyzed like poetry or history, of which it is a kind of
union ; it is written with a man's pen in a knowTi language ;
it is cast in the imaginative form of early language itself.
The truth of God comes into contact with the world,
clothing itself in human feelings, revealing the lesson of
historical events. But human feelings and the lesson of
events vary, and in this sense the prophetic lesson varies
too. Even in the workings of our own minds we may per-
ceive this ; those who think much about themselves and
God cannot but be conscious of great changes and transi-
tions of feeling at different periods of life. We are the
creatures of impressions and associations ; and although
Providence has not made our knowledge of himself depen-
dent on these impressions, He has allowed it to be coloured
by them. We cannot say that in the hours of prosperity
and adversity, in health and sickness, in poverty and wealth,
our sense of God's dealings with us is absolutely the same ;
still less, that all our prayers and aspirations have received
the answer that we wished or expected. And sometimes
the thoughts of our own hearts go before to God ; at other
times, the power of God seems to anticipate the thoughts of
our hearts. And sometimes, in looking back at our past
lives, it seems as if God had done everything ; at other
times, we are conscious of the movement of our own will.
The wide world itself also, and the political fortunes of our
country, have been enveloped in the light or darkness which
rested on our individual soul.
Especially are we liable to look at religious truth under
many aspects, if we live amid changes of religious opinions,
or are witnesses of some revival or reaction in religion, or
supposing our lot to be cast in critical periods of history,
such as extend the range and powers of human nature, or
certainly enlarge our experience of it. Then the germs of
new truths will subsist side by side with the remains of old
138 ESSAY ON
ones ; and thoughts, that are really inconsistent, will have a
place together in our minds, without our being able to per-
ceive their inconsistency. The inconsistency will be traced
by posterity ; they will remark that up to a particular point
we saw clearly ; but that no man is beyond his age — there
was a circle which we could not pass. And some one living
in our own day may look into the future with ' eagle eye ; '
he may weigh and balance with a sort of omniscience the
moral forces of the world, perhaps with something too much
of confidence that the right will ultimately prevail even on
earth ; and after ages may observe that his predictions were
not always fulfilled or not fulfilled at the time he said.
Such general reflections may serve as an introduction to
what at first appears an anomaly in prophecy — that it has
not one, but many lessons ; and that the manner in which
it teaches those lessons is through the alternations of the
human soul itself. There are failings of prophecy, just as
there are failings in our own anticipations of the future.
And sometimes when we had hoped to be delivered it has
seemed good to God to afflict us still. But it does not
follow that religion is therefore a cunningly devised fable,
either now or then. Neither the faith of the people, nor of
the prophet, in the God of their fathers is shaken because
the prophecies are not realized before their eyes ; because
'the vision,' as they said, 'is delayed;' because in many
cases events seem to occur which make it impossible that
it should be accomplished. A true instinct still enables
them to separate the prophets of Jehovah from the number-
less false prophets with whom the land swarmed ; they are
gifted with the ' same discernment of spirits ' which distin-
guished Micaiah from the four hundred whom Ahab called.
The internal evidence of the true prophet we are able to
recognize in the written prophecies also. In the earHest as
well as the latest of them there is the same spmt one and
continuous, the same witness of the invisible God, the same
character of the Jewish people, the same law of justice and
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY 1 39
mercy in the dealings of Providence with respect to them,
the same ' walking with God ' in the daily life of the prophet
himself.
'Novum Testamentum in vetere latet/ has come to be
a favourite word among theologians, who have thought they
saw in the truths of the Gospel the original design as well
as the evangelical application of the Mosaical law. With
a deeper meaning, it may be said that prophecy grows out
of itself into the Gospel. Not, as some extreme critics have
conceived, that the facts of the Gospel history are but the
ciystallization of the imagery of prophecy. Say, rather, that
the river of the water of life is beginning again to flow.
The Son of God himself is ' that prophet ' — the prophet, not
of one nation only, but of all mankind, in whom the parti-
cularity of the old prophets is finally done away, and the
ever-changing form of the 'servant in whom my soul de-
lighteth ' at last finds rest. St. Paul, too, is a prophet who
has laid aside the poetical and authoritative garb of old
times, and is wrapped in the rhetorical or dialectical one of
his own age. The language of the old prophets comes
unbidden into his mind ; it seems to be the natural expres-
sion of his own thoughts. Separated from Joel, Amos,
Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah by an interval of about eight
hundred years, he finds their words very near to him ' even
in his mouth and his heart ; ' that is the word which he
preached. When they spoke of forgiveness of sins, of non-
imputation of sins, of a sudden tui-ning to God, what did this
mean but righteousness by faith ? when they said ' I will
have mercy, and not sacrifice,' here also was imaged the
great truth, that salvation was not of the law. If St. Paul
would have 'no man judged for a new moon or sabbath,' the
prophets of old time had again and again said in the name of
Jehovah ' Your new moons and sabbaths I cannot away
with.' Like the elder prophets, he came not ' to build up
a temple made with hands,' but to teach a moral truth ; like
them he went forth alone, and not in connexion with the
140 ESSAY ON
Church at Jerusalem. His calling is to be Apostle of the
Gentiles ; they also sometimes pass beyond the borders of
Israel, to receive Egypt and Assyria into covenant with God.
It is not, however, this deeper unity between St. Paul
and the prophets of the old dispensation that we are about
to consider further, but a more superficial parallelism, which
is afforded by the alternation or successive representation of
the purposes of God towards Israel, which we meet with
in the Old Testament, and which recurs in the Epistle
to the Eomans. Like the elder prophets, St. Paul also
'prophesies in part,' feeling after events rather than seeing
them, and divided between opposite aspects of the dealings
of Providence with mankind. This changing feeling often
finds an expression in the words of Isaiah or the Psalmist,
or the author of the book of Deuteronomy. Hence a kind of
contrast springs up in the writings of the Apostle, which
admits of being traced to its source in the words of the
prophets. Portions of his Epistles are the disjecta membra
of prophecy. Oppositions are brought into view by him,
and may be said to give occasion to a struggle in his own
mind, which were unobserved by the prophets themselves.
For so far from prophecy setting forth one unchanging
purpose of God, it seems rather to represent a succession
of purposes conditional on men's actions ; speaking as
distinctly of the rejection as of the restoration of Israel ;
and of the restoration almost as the correlative of the
rejection ; often, too, making a transition from the temporal
to the spiritual. Some of these contrasts it is proposed
to consider in detail as having an important bearing on
St. Paul's Epistles, especially on the Epistles to the Thessa-
lonians, and on chapters x.-xii. of the Epistle to the
Romans.
(i) All the prophets are looking for and hastening to 'the
day of the Lord,' the 'great day,' 'which there is none like,'
'the day of the Lord's sacrifice,' the 'day of visitation,' of
'the great slaughter,' in which the Lord shall judge 'in the
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY I4I
valley of Jehoshaphat, ' in wliich Hliey shall go into the
clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for
fear of the Lord, and for the gloiy of his majesty, when he
ariseth to shake terribly the earth.' That day is the fulfil-
ment and realization of prophecy, without which it would
cease to have any meaning, just as rehgion itself would
cease to have any meaning to ourselves, were there no
future life, or retribution of good and evil. All the prophets
are in spirit present at it ; living alone with God, and hardly
mingling with men on earth, they are fulfilled with its
terrors and its glories. For the earth is not to go on for
ever as it is, the wickednesses of the house of Israel are not
to last for ever. First, the prophet sees the pouring out of
the vials of wrath upon them ; then, more at a distance,
follows the vision of mercy, in which they are to be com-
forted, and their enemies, the ministers of God's vengeance
on them, in turn punished. And evil and oppression every-
where, so far as it comes within the range of the prophet's
eye, is to be punished in that day, and good is to prevail.
In these 'terrors of the day of the Lord,' of which the
prophets speak, the fortunes of the Jewish people mingle
with another vision of a more universal judgement, and it
has been usual to have recourse to the double senses of
prophecy to separate the one from the other, an instrument
of interpretation which has also been applied to the New
Testament for the same purpose. Not in this way could
the prophet or apostle themselves have conceived them.
To them they were not two, but one ; not ' double one
against the other,' or separable into the figure and the thing
signified. For the figure is in early ages the mode of con-
ception also. More true would it be to say that the judge-
ments of God on the Jewish people were an anticipation
or illustration of His dealings with the world generally. If
a separation is made at all, let us rather separate the
accidents of time and place from that burning sense of
the righteousness of God, which somewhere we cannot tell
L
142 ESSAY ON
where, at some time we cannot tell when, must and will
have retribution on evil ; M^hich has this other note of its
Divine character, that in judgement it remembers mercy,
pronouncing no endless penalty or irreversible doom, even
upon the house of Israel. This twofold lesson of goodness
and severity speaks to us as well as to the Jews. Better
still to receive the words of prophecy as we have them, and
to allow the feeling which it utters to find its way to our
hearts, without stopping to mark out what was not separated
in the prophet's own mind and cannot therefore be divided
by us.
Other contrasts are traceable in the teaching of the
prophets respecting the day of the Lord. In that day the
Lord is to judge Israel, and He is to punish Egypt and
Assyria ; and yet it is said also, the Lord shall heal Egypt,
and Israel shall be the third with Egypt and Assyria whom
the Lord shall bless (Is. xix. 25). In many of the prophecies
also the judgement is of two kinds ; it is a judgement on
Israel, which is executed by the heathen ; it is a judgement
against the heathen, and in favour of Israel, in which God
himself is sometimes said to be their advocate as well as
their judge ' in that day.' A singular parallel with the New
Testament is presented by another contrast which occurs in
a single passage. That the day of the Lord is near, 'it
Cometh, it cometh,' is the language of all the prophets;
and yet there were those who said also in Ezekiel's time,
'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth. Tell
them therefore. Thus saith the Lord God ; I will make this
proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb
in Israel ; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the
effect of every vision' (xii. 22). (Compare 2 Pet. iii. 4,
'Where is the promise of his coming?') On the other
hand, in the later chapters of Isaiah (xl. seq.) we seem to
trace the same feeling as in the New Testament itself : the
anticipation of prophecy has ceased ; the hour of its fulfil-
ment has arrived ; men seem to be conscious that they are
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY 1 43
living during the restoration of Israel as the disciples at the
day of Pentecost felt that they were living amid the things
spoken of by the prophet Joel.
(2) A closer connexion with the Epistle to the Romans
is furnished by the double and, on the surface, inconsistent
language of prophecy respecting the rejection and restora-
tion of Israel. These seem to follow one another often in
successive verses. It is true that the appearance of incon-
sistency is greater than the reality, owing to the lyrical and
concentrated style of prophecy (some of its greatest works
being not much longer than this ' cobweb ^ ' of an essay) ;
and this leads to opposite feelings and trains of thought
being presented to us together, without the preparations
and joinings which would be required in the construction
of a modern poem. Yet, after making allowance for this
peculiarity of the ancient Hebrew style, it seems as if there
were two thoughts ever together in the prophet's mind :
captivity, restoration, — judgement, mercy, — sin, repentance,
— 'the people sitting in darkness, and the great light.'
There are portions of prophecy in which the darkness is
deep and enduring, 'darkness that may be felt,' in which
the prophet is living amid the sins and sufferings of the
people ; and hope is a long way off from them — when they
need to be awakened rather than comforted ; and things
must be worse, as men say, before they can become better.
Such is the spirit of the greater part of the book of Jeremiah.
But the tone of prophecy is on the whole that of alterna-
tion ; God deals with the Israelites as with children ; he
cannot bear to punish them for long ; his heart comes back
to them when they are in captivity ; their very helplessness
gives them a claim on him. Vengeance may endure for
a time, but soon the full tide of His mercy returns upon
them. Another voice is heard, saying, ' Comfort ye, comfort
ye, my people.' ' Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and
say unto her that she hath received of the Lord's hand
1 Carlyle.
144 ESSAY ON
double for all her sins.' So from the vision of Grod on
Mount Sinai, at the giving of the Law amid storms and
earthquakes, arises that tender human relation in which the
Gospel teaches that He stands, not merely to His Church as
a body, but to each one of us.
Naturally this human feeling is called forth most in the
hour of adversity. As the affliction deepens, the hope also
enlarges, seeming often to pass beyond the boundaries of
this life into a spiritual world. Though their sins are as
scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; when Jerusalem is
desolate, there shall be a tabernacle on Mount Sion. The
formula in which this enlargement of the purposes of God
is introduced, is itself worthy of notice. ' It shall be no
more said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children
of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; but. The Lord liveth,
that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the
North, and from all the lands whither he had driven them.'
Their old servitude in Egypt came back to their minds now
that they were captives in a strange land, and the remem-
brance that they had akeady been delivered from it was an
earnest that they were yet to return. Deeply rooted in the
national mind, it had almost become an attribute of God him-
self that He was their deliverer from the house of bondage.
With this narrower view of the return of the children
of Israel from captivity, not without a remembrance of that
great empire which had once extended from the Eiver of
Egypt to the Euphrates, there blended also the hope of
another kingdom in which dwelt righteousness — the kingdom
of Solomon ' become the kingdom of Christ and God.' The
children of Israel had been in their origin ' the fewest of all
people,' and the most alien to the nations round about. The
Lord their God was a jealous God, who would not suffer them
to mingle with the idolatries of the heathen. And in that
early age of the world, when national life was so strong and
individuals so feeble, we cannot conceive how the worship
of the true God could have been otherwise preserved. But
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY 1 45
the day had passed away when the nation could be trusted
with the preservation of the faith of Jehovah ; ' it had never
been good for much at any time.' The prophets, too, seem
to withdraw from the scenes of political events ; they are no
longer the judges and leaders of Israel ; it is a part of their
mission to commit to writing for the use of after ages the
predictions which they utter. We pass into another country,
to another kingdom in which the prospect is no more that
which Moses saw from Mount Pisgah, but in which the
' Lord's horn is exalted in the top of the mountains and all
nations flock to it.'
In this kingdom the Gentiles have a place, still on the
outskirts, but not wholly excluded from the circle of God's
providence. Sometimes they are placed on a level with
Israel, the 'circumcised with the uncircumcised,' as if only
to teach the Apostle's lesson, 'that there is no respect of
persons with God ' (Jer. ix. 25, 26 ; compare Eom. ii. 12-28).
At other times they are themselves the subjects of promises
and threatenings (Jer. xii. 14-17). It is to them that God
will turn when His patience is exhausted with the rebellions
of Israel ; for whom it shall be ' more tolerable ' than for
Israel and Judah in the day of the Lord. They are those
upon whom, though at a distance, the brightness of Jehovah
must overflow ; who, in the extremities of the earth, are
bathed with the light of His presence. Helpers of the joy
of Israel, they pour with gifts and offerings through the
open gates of the city of God. They have a part in
Messiah's kingdom, not of right, but because without them
it would be imperfect and incomplete. In one passage only,
which is an exception to the general spirit of prophecy,
Israel 'makes the third' with Egypt and Assyria, 'whom
the Lord of Hosts shall bless' (Is. xix. 18-25).
It was not possible that such should be the relation of
the Gentiles to the people of God in the Epistles of St. Paul.
Experience seemed to invert the natural order of Providence
— the Jew first and aftei-wards the Gentile. Accordingly,
VOL. II. L
146 ESSAY ON
what is subordinate in the prophets, becomes of principal
importance in the application of the Apostle. The dark
sayings about the Grentiles had more meaning than the
utterers of them were aware of. Events connected them
with the rejection of the Jews, of which the same prophets
spoke. Not only had the Gentiles a place on the outskirts
of the people of God, gathering up the fragments of promises
' under the table ; ' they themselves were the spiritual Israel.
When the prophets spoke of the Mount Sion, and all
nations flowing to it, they were not expecting literally the
restoration of the kingdom to Israel. They spoke of they
knew not what — of something that had as yet no existence
upon the earth. What that was, the vision on the way to
Damascus, no less than the history of the Church and the
world, revealed to the Apostle of the Gentiles.
(3) Another characteristic of Hebrew prophecy is the
transition from the nation to the individual. That is to
say, first the nation becomes an individual ; it is spoken of,
thought of, dealt with, as a person, it ' makes the third '
with God and the prophet. Almost a sort of drama is
enacted between them, the argument of which is the mercy
and justice of God ; and the Jewish nation itself has many
parts assigned to it. Sometimes she is the 'adulterous
sister,' the 'wife of whoredoms,' who has gone astray with
Chaldean and Egj^tian lovers. In other passages, still
retaining the same personal relation to God, the ' daughter
of my people' is soothed and comforted ; then a new vision
rises before the prophet's mind — not the same with that of
the Jewish people, but not wholly distinct from it, in which
the suffering prophet himself, or Cyrus the prophet king,
have a part — the vision of 'the sei-vant of God,' 'the
Saviour with dyed garments' from Bosra — 'he shall grow
up before him as a tender plant ; ' 'he is led as a lamb to
the slaughter' (Is. liii. 2, 7; compare Jer. xi. ig\ Yet
there is a kind of glory even on earth in this image of
gentleness and suffering : ' A bruised reed shall he not
CONTKASTS OF PEOPHECY 1 47
break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, until he hath
brought forth judgement unto victoiy.' We feel it to be
strange, and yet it is true. So we have sometimes seen the
image of the kingdom of God among ourselves, not in noble
churches or scenes of ecclesiastical power or splendour,
but in the face of some child or feeble person, who, after
overcoming agony, is about to depart and be with Christ.
Analogies from Greek philosophy may seem far-fetched
in reference to Hebrew prophecy, yet there are particular
points in which subjects the most dissimilar receive a new
light from one another. In the writings of Plato and
Aristotle, and the philosophers who were their successors,
moral truths gradually separate from politics, and the man
is acknowledged to be different from the mere citizen : and
there arises a sort of ideal of the individual, who has a
responsibility to himself only. The growth of Hebrew pro-
phecy is so different ; its figures and modes of conception are
so utterly unlike ; there seems such a wide gulf between
morality which almost excludes God, and religion which
exists only in God, that at first sight we are unwilling to
allow any similarity to exist between them. Yet an im-
portant point in both of them is really the same. For the
transition from the nation to the individual is also the
more perfect revelation of God himself, the change from
the temporal to the spiritual, from the outward glories of
Messiah's reign to the kingdom of God which is within.
Prophets as well as apostles teach the near intimate per-
sonal relation of man to God. The prophet and psalmist,
who is at one moment inspired with the feelings of a whole
people, returns again to God to express the lowliest sorrows
of the individual Christian. The thought of the Israel of
God is latent in prophecy itself, not requiring a great
nation or company of believers ; ' but where one is ' there is
God present with him.
There is another way also in which the individual takes
the place of the nation in the purposes of God ; ' a remnant
L 2
148 ESSAY ON
shall be saved.' In the earlier books of the Old Testament,
the whole people is bound up together for good or for evil.
In the law especially, there is no trace that particular tribes
or individuals are to be singled out for the favour of God.
Even their great men are not so much individuals as repre-
sentatives of the whole people. They serve God as a
nation ; as a nation they go astray. If, in the earlier times
of Jewish history, we suppose an individual good man
living 'amid an adulterous and crooked generation,' we can
scarcely imagine the relation in which he would stand to
the blessings and cursings of the law. Would the righteous
perish with the wicked? That be 'far from thee, 0 Lord.'
Yet 'prosperity, the blessing of the Old Testament,' was
bound up with the existence of the nation. Gradually the
germ of the new dispensation begins to unfold itself ; the
bands which held the nation together are broken in pieces ;
a fragment only is preserved, a branch, in the Apostle's
language, cut off from the patriarchal stem, to be the
beginning of another Israel.
The passage quoted by St. Paul in the eleventh chapter
of the Komans is the first indication of this change in God's
mode of dealing with His people. The prophet Elijah
wanders forth into the wilderness to lay before the Lord
the iniquities of the people : ' The children of Israel have
forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain
thy prophets with the sword.' ' But what,' we may ask
with the Apostle, ' saith the answer of God to him ? ' Not
'They are corrupt, they are altogether become abominable,'
but ' Yet I have seven thousand men who have not bowed
the knee to Baal.' The whole people were not to be
regarded as one ; there were a few who still preserved, amid
the general corruption, the worship of the true God.
The marked manner in which the answer of God is intro-
duced, the contrast of the 'still small voice' with the
thunder, the storm, and the earthquake, the natural sym-
bols of the presence of God in the law— the contradiction
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY 1 49
of the words spoken to the natural bent of the prophet's
mind, and the greatness of Elijah's own character — all tend
to stamp this passage as marking one of the epochs of
prophecy. The solitude of the prophet and his separation
in 'the mount of God,' from the places in which 'men
ought to worship,' are not without meaning. There had
not always ' been this proverb in the house of Israel ; ' but
from this time onwards it is repeated again and again. We
trace the thought of a remnant to be saved in captivity, or
to return from captivity, through a long succession of pro-
phecies— Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel ;
— it is the text of almost all the prophets, passing, as
a familiar word, from the Old Testament to the New. The
voice uttered to Elijah was the beginning of this new
Eevelation.
(4) Coincident with the promise of a remnant is the
precept, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice,' which, in
modern language, opposes the moral to the ceremonial law.
It is another and the greatest step onward towards the
spiritual dispensation. Moral and religious truths hang
together ; no one can admit one of them in the highest
sense, without admitting a principle which involves the
rest. He who acknowledged that God was a God of mercy
and not of sacrifice, could not long have supposed that He
dealt with nations only, or that He raised men up for no
other end but to be vessels of His wrath or monuments of
His vengeance. For a time there might be ' things too hard
for him,' clouds resting on his earthly tabernacle, when he
' saw the ungodly in such prosperity ; ' yet had he know-
ledge enough, as he ' went into the sanctuary of God,' and
confessed himself to be *a stranger and pilgrim upon the
earth. '
It is in the later prophets that the darkness begins to be
dispelled and the ways of God justified to man. Ezekiel is
above all others the teacher of this ' new commandment.'
The familiar words, ' when the wicked man turneth away
15° ESSAY ON
from his wickedness, and doeth that which is lawful and
right, he shall save his soul alive,' are the theme of a great
part of this wonderful book. Other prophets have more of
poetical beauty, a deeper sense of Divine things, a tenderer
feeling of the mercies of God to His people ; none teach so
simply this great moral lesson, to us the first of all lessons.
On the eve of the captivity, and in the midst of it, when
the hour of mercy is past, and no image is too loathsome to
describe the iniquities of Israel, still the prophet does not
forget that the Lord will not destroy the righteous with the
wicked ; ' Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the land,
as I live, saith the Lord, they shall deliver neither son nor
daughter ; they shall deliver but their own souls by their
righteousness' (xiv. 20). 'Yet, behold, therein shall be left
a remnant ; and they shall know that I have not done with-
out cause all that I have done, saith the Lord ' (ver. 22, 23).
It is observable that, in the Book of Ezekiel as well as of
Jeremiah, this new principle on which God deals with
mankind, is recognized as a contradiction to the rule by
which he had formerly dealt with them. At the com-
mencement of chap, xviii, as if with the intention of
revoking the words of the second commandment, ' visiting
the sins of the fathers upon the children,' it is said : —
* The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying,
* What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the
land of Israel, saying. The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children's teeth are set on edge ?
' As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel.
' Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so
also the soul of the son is mine : the soul that sinneth, it
shall die.'
Similar language occurs also in Jer. xxxi. 29, in a con-
nexion which makes it still more remarkable, as the new
truth is described as a part of that fuller revelation which
God will give of himself, when He makes a new covenant
CONTRASTS OF PROPHECY I5I
with the house of Israel. And yet the same prophet, as if
not at all times conscious of his own lesson, says also in his
prayer to God (Lam. v. 7), ' Our fathers have sinned and are
not, and we have borne their iniquities. ' The truth which
he felt was not one and the same always, but rather two
opposite truths, like the Law and the Gospel, which, for
a while, seemed to struggle with one another in the teaching
of the prophet and the heart of man.
And yet this opposition was not necessarily conscious to
the prophet himself. Isaiah, who saw the whole nation
going before to judgement, did not refrain from preaching
the lessons, 'If ye be willing and obedient,' and 'Let the
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts.' Ezekiel, the first thought and spirit of whose
prophecies might be described in modern language as the
responsibility of man, like Micaiah in the Book of Kings,
seemed to see the false prophets inspired by Jehovah him-
self to their own destruction. As in the prophet, so in the
Apostle, there was no sense that the two lessons were in
any degree inconsistent with each other. It is an age of
criticism and philosophy, which, in making the attempt to
conceive the relation of God to the world in a more abstract
way, has invented for itself the perplexity, or, may we ven-
ture to say, by the veiy fact of acknowledging it, has also
found its solution. The intensity with which the prophet
felt the truths that he revealed, the force with which he
uttered them, the desire with which he yearned after their
fulfilment, have passed from the earth ; but the truths them-
selves remain an everlasting possession. We seem to look
upon them more calmly, and adjust them more truly. Thej""
no longer break through the world of sight with unequal
power ; they can never again be confused with the accidents
of time and place. The history of the Jewish people has
ceased to be the only tabernacle in which they are en-
shrined; they have an independent existence, and a light
and order of their own.
ESSAY
ON
OASUISTET
ROMANS XIV.
Keligion and morality seem often to become entangled
in circumstances. The truth which came, not 'to bring
peace upon earth, but a sword,' could not but give rise to
many new and conflicting obligations. The kingdom of
God had to adjust itself with the kingdoms of this world ;
though * the children were free,' they could not escape the
fulfilment of duties to their Jewish or Eoman governors ;
in the bosom of a family there were duties too ; in society
there were many points of contact with the heathen.
A new element of complexity had been introduced in all
the relations between man and man, giving rise to many
new questions, which might be termed, in the phraseology
of modern times, ' cases of conscience. '
Of these the one which most frequently recurs in the
Epistles of St. Paul, is the question respecting meats and
drinks, which appears to have agitated both the Koman and
Corinthian Churches, as well as those of Jerusalem and
Antioch, and probably, in a greater or less degree, every
other Christian community in the days of the Apostle.
The scruple which gave birth to it was not confined to
ESSAY ON CASUISTRY 153
Christianity ; it was Eastern rather than Christian, and
originated in a feeling into which entered, not only Oriental
notions of physical purity and impurity, but also those of
caste and of race. With other Eastern influences it spread
towards the West, in the flux of all religions, exercising
a peculiar power on the susceptible temper of mankind.
The same tendency exhibited itself in various forms.
In one form it was the scruple of those who ate herbs,
while others * had faith ' to eat anything. The Essenes
and Therapeutae among the Jews, and the Pythagoreans in
the heathen world, had a similar feeling respecting the use
of animal food. It was a natural association which led to
such an abstinence. In the East, ever ready to connect, or
rather incapable of separating, ideas of moral and physical
impurity — where the heat of the climate rendered animal
food unnecessary, if not positively unhealthful ; where
corruption rapidly infected dead organized matter ; where,
lastly, ancient tradition and ceremonies told of the sacred-
ness of animals and the mysteriousness of animal life —
nature and religion alike seemed to teach the same lesson,
it was safer to abstain. It was the manner of such
a scruple to propagate itself. He who revolted at animal
food could not quietly sit by and see his neighbour partake
of it. The ceremonialism of the age was the tradition of
thousands of years, and passed by a sort of contagion
from one race to another, from Paganism or Judaism to
Christianity. How to deal with this ' second nature ' was
a practical difficulty among the first Christians. The Gospel
was not a gospel according to the Essenes, and the church
could not exclude those who held the scruples, neither
could it be narrowed to them ; it would not pass judgement
on them at all. Hence the force of the Apostle's words :
* Him that is weak in the faith receive, not to the decision
of his doubts.'
There was another point in reference to which the same
spirit of ceremonialism propagated itself, viz. meats offered
154 ESSAY ON
to idols. Even if meat in general were innocent and
a creature of God, it could hardly be a matter of indifference
to partake of that which had been ' sacrificed to devils ; '
least of all, to sit at meat in the idol's temple. True, the
idol was * nothing in the world ' — a block of stone, to which
the words good or evil were misapplied ; ' a graven image '
which the workman made, 'putting his hand to the
hammer/ as the old prophets described in their irony.
And such is the Apostle's own feeling (i Cor. viii. 4 ; x. 19).
But he has also the other feeling which he himself regards
as not less true (i Cor. x. 20), and which was more natural
to the mind of the first believers. When they saw the
worshippers of the idol revelling in impurity, they could
not but suppose that a spirit of some kind was there.
Then- warfare, as the Apostle had told them, was not
'against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.'
Evil angels were among them ; where would they more
naturally take up their abode than around the altars and
in the temples of the heathen? And if they had been
completely free from superstition, and could have regarded
the heathen religions which they saw enthroned over the
world simply with contempt, still the question would have
arisen, What connexion were they to have with them and
with their worshippers ? a question not easy to be answered
in the bustle of Eome and Corinth, where every cu-cumstance
of daily life, every amusement, every political and legal
right, was in some way bound up with the heathen
religions. Were they to go out of the world ? if not, what
was to be their relation to those without ?
A third instance of the same ceremonialism so natural to
that age, and to ourselves so strange and unmeaning, is
illustrated by the words of the Jerusalem Christians to the
Apostle — 'Thou wentest in unto men uncircumcised, and
didst eat with them ; ' a scruple so strong that, probably,
St. Peter himself was never entkely free from it, and at
I
CASUISTRY 155
any rate yielded to the fear of it in others when withstood
by St. Paul at Antioch. This scruple may be said in one
sense to be hardly capable of an explanation, and in another
not to need one. For, probably, nothing can give our
minds any conception of the nature of the feeling, the
intense hold which it exercised, the concentration which it
was of every national and religious prejudice, the constraint
which was required to get rid of it as a sort of horror
naturalis in the minds of Jews ; while, on the other hand,
feelings at the present day not very dissimilar exist, not
only in Eastern countries, but among ourselves. There is
nothing strange in human nature being liable to them, or
in then- long lingering and often returning, even when
reason and charity alike condemn them. We ourselves are
not insensible to differences of race and colour, and may
therefore be able paiiially to comprehend (allowing for
the difference of East and West) what was the feeling
of Jews and Jewish Christians towards men uncircumcised.
On the last point St. Paul maintains but one language : —
'In Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor un-
circumcision.' No compromise could be allowed here,
without destroying the Gospel that he preached. But
the other question of meats and drinks, when separated
from that of circumcision, admitted of various answers and
points of view. Accordingly there is an appearance of
inconsistency in the modes in which the Apostle resolves
it. All these modes have a use and interest for ourselves;
though our difficulties are not the same as those of the
early Christians, the woi-ds speak to us, so long as prudence,
and faith, and charity are the guides of Christian life. It is
characteristic of the Apostle that his answers run into one
another, as though each of them to different individuals,
and all in theii- turn, might present the solution of the
difficulty.
We may begin with i Cor. x. 25, which may be termed
the rule of Christian prudence : ' Whatsoever is sold in
156 ESSAY ON
the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience
sake.' That is to say: 'Buy food as other men do;
perhaps what you purchase has come from the idol's
temple, perhaps not. Do not encourage your conscience
in raising scruples, life will become impossible if you do.
One question involves another and another and another
without end. The manly and the Christian way is to cut
them short ; both as tending to weaken the character and
as inconsistent with the very nature of spiritual religion.'
So we may venture to amplify the Apostle's precept,
which breathes the same spirit of moderation as his decisions
respecting celibacy and marriage. Among ourselves the
remark is often made that ' extremes are practically untrue. '
This is another way of putting the same lesson : — If I may
not sit in the idol's temple, it may be plausibly argued,
neither may I eat meats offered to idols ; and if I may not
eat meats offered to idols, then it logically follows that
I ought not to go into the market where idols' meat is sold.
The Apostle snaps the chain of this misapplied logic : there
must be a limit somewhere ; we must not push consistency
where it is practically impossible. A trifling scruple is
raised to the level of a religious duty, and another and
another, until religion is made up of scruples, and the light
of life fades, and the ways of life nari'ow themselves.
It is not hard to translate the Apostle's precept into the
language of our time. Instances occur in politics, in theology,
in our ordinary occupations, in which beyond a certain point
consistency is impossible. Take for example the following :
A person feels that he would be wrong in carrying on his
business, or going to public amusements, on a Sunday. He
says : If it be wrong for me to work, it is wrong to make
the servants in my house work ; or if it be wrong to go to
public amusements, it is wrong to enjoy the recreation of
walking on a Sunday. So it may be argued that, because
slavery is wrong, therefore it is not right to purchase the
produce of slaveiy, or that of which the produce of slavery
CASUISTRY 157
is a part, and so on without end, until we are forced out of
the world from a remote fear of contagion with evil. Or
I am engaged in a business which may be in some degree
deleterious to the health or injurious to the morals of those
employed in it, or I trade in some articles of commerce
which are unwholesome or dangerous, or I let a house or
a ship to another whose employment is of this description.
Numberless questions of the same kind relating to the
profession of a clergyman, an advocate, or a soldier, have
been pursued into endless consequences. Is the mind of
any person so nicely balanced that ' every one of six
hundred disputed propositions ' is the representative of his
exact belief ? or can every word in a set form of prayer at
all times reflect the feeling of those who read or follow it ?
There is no society to which we can belong, no common act
of business or worship in which two or three are joined
together, in which such difficulties are not liable to arise.
Three editors conduct a newspaper, can it express equally
the conviction of all the three? Three lawyers sign an
opinion in common, is it the judgement of all or of one or
two of them ? High-minded men have often got themselves
into a false position by regarding these questions in too
abstract a way. The words of the Apostle are a practical
answer to them which may be paraphrased thus : ' Do as
other men do in a Christian country,' Conscience will say,
' He who is guilty of the least, is guilty of all. ' In the
Apostle's language it then becomes 'the strength of sin,'
encouraging us to despair of all, because in that mixed
condition of life in which God has placed us we cannot
fulfil all.
In accordance with the spirit of the same principle of
doing as other men do, the Apostle further implies that
believers are to accept the hospitality of the heathen
(i Cor. x. 27). But here a modification comes in, which
may be termed the law of Christian charity or courtesy : —
Avoid giving offence, or, as we might say, 'Do not defy
158 ESSAY ON
opinion.' Eat what is set before you ; but if a person
sitting at meat pointedly says to you, ' This was offered to
idols,' do not eat. 'All things are lawful, but all things
are not expedient,' and this is one of the not-expedient
class. There appears to be a sort of inconsistency in this
advice, as there must always be inconsistency in the rules
of practical life which are relative to circumstances. It
might be said : ' We cannot do one thing at one time, and
another thing at another ; now be guided by another man's
conscience, now by our own. ' It might be retorted, * Is not
this the dissimulation which you blame in St. Peter?' To
which it may be answered in turn : ' But a man may do
one thing at one time, another thing at another time,
''becoming to the Jews a Jew," if he do it in such a
manner as to avoid the risk of misconstruction.' And this
again admits of a retort : ' Is it possible to avoid miscon-
struction ? Is it not better to dare to be ourselves, to act
like ourselves, to speak like ourselves, to think like our-
selves?' We seem to have lighted unawares on two
varieties of human disposition ; the one harmonizing and
adapting itself to the perplexities of life, the other rebelling
against them, and seeking to disentangle itself from them.
Which side of this argument shall we take ; neither or
both ? The Apostle appears to take both sides ; for in the
abrupt transition that follows, he immediately adds, ' Why
is my liberty to be judged of another man's conscience?
what right has another man to attack me for what I do in
the innocency of my heart?' It is good advice to say,
' Eegard the opinions of others ;' and equally good advice to
say, ' Do not regard the opinions of others.' We must
balance between the two ; and over all, adjusting the
scales, is the law of Christian love.
Both in I Cor. viii. and Kom. xiv. the Apostle adds
another principle, which may be termed the law of indi-
vidual conscience, which we must listen to in ourselves and
regard in others. ' He that doubteth is damned ; whatso-
CASUISTRY 159
ever is not of faith is sin.' All things are lawful to him
who feels them to be lawful, but the conscience may be
polluted by the most indifferent things. When we eat, we
should remember that the consequence of following our
example may be serious to others. For not only may our
brother be offended at us, but also by our example be drawn
into sin ; that is, to do what, though indifferent in itself, is
sin to him. And so the weak brother, for whom Christ
died, may perish through our fault ; that is, he may lose his
peace and harmony of soul and conscience void of offence,
and all through our heedlessness in doing some unnecessary
thing, which were far better left undone.
Cases may be readily imagined, in which, like the pre-
ceding, the rule of conduct here laid down by the Apostle
would involve dissimulation. So many thousand scruples
and opinions as there are in the world, we should have ' to
go out of the world' to fulfil it honestly. All reserve, it may
be argued, tends to break up the confidence between man
and man ; and there are times in which concealment of
our opinions, even respecting things indifferent, would be
treacherous and mischievous ; there are times, too, in which
things cease to be indifferent, and it is our duty to speak
out respecting the false importance which they have
acquired. But, after all qualifications of this kind have
been made, the secondary duty yet remains, of considera-
tion for others, which should form an element in our
conduct. If truth is the first principle of our speech and
action, the good of others should, at any rate, be the second.
' If any man (not see thee who hast knowledge sitting in
the idol's temple, but) hear thee discoursing rashly of the
Scriptures and the doctrines of the Church, shall not the
faith of thy younger brother become confused ? and his con-
science being weak shall cease to discern between good and
evil. And so thy weak brother shall perish for whom
Christ died.'
The Apostle adds a fourth principle, which may be
l6o ESSAY ON
termed the law of Christian freedom, as the last solution
of the difficulty : * Therefore, whether ye eat or drink, do
all to the glory of God.' From the perplexities of casuistry,
and the conflicting rights of a man's own conscience and
that of another, he falls back on the simple rule, 'Whatever
you do, sanctify the act.' It cannot be said that all contra-
dictory obligations vanish the moment we try to act with
simplicity and truth ; we cannot change the current of life
and its circumstances by a wish or an intention ; we cannot
dispel that which is without, though we may clear that
which is within. But we have taken the first step, and
are in the way to solve the riddle. The insane scruple, the
fixed idea, the ever-increasing doubt begins to pass away;
the spirit of the child returns to us ; the mind is again free,
and the road of life open. ' Whether ye eat or drink, do all
to the glory of God ;' that is, determine to seek only the
will of God, and you may have a larger measure of Christian
liberty allowed to you ; things, perhaps wrong in others,
may be right for you.
Questions of meats and drinks, of eating with washen or
unwashen hands, and the like, have passed from the stage
of religious ordinances to that of proprieties and decencies
of life. The purifications of the law of Moses are no longer
binding upon Christians. Nature herself teaches ail things
necessary for health and comfort. But the spirit of casuistry
in every age finds fresh materials to employ itself upon,
laying hold of some question of a new moon or a sabbath,
some fragment of antiquity, some inconsistency of custom,
some subtlety of thought, some nicety of morality, analyzing
and dividing the actions of daily life ; separating the letter
from the spirit, and words from things ; winding its toils
around the infirmities of the weak, and linking itself to the
sensibility of the intellect.
Out of this labyrinth of the soul the believer finds
his way, by keeping his eye fixed on that landmark which
the Apostle himself has set up : 'In Christ Jesus neither
CASUISTRY l6l
circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but
a new creature.'
There is no one probably, of any religious experience,
who has not at times felt the power of a scrupulous con-
science. In speaking of a scrupulous conscience, the sense
of remorse for greater offences is not intended to be included.
These may press more or less heavily on the soul ; and the
remembrance of them may ingrain itself, with different
degrees of depth, on different temperaments ; but whether
deep or shallow, the sorrow for them cannot be brought
under the head of scruples of conscience. There are ' many
things in which we offend all, ' about which there can be no
mistake, the impression of which on our minds it would
be fatal to weaken or do away. Nor is it to be denied
that there may be customs almost universal among us
which are so plainly repugnant to morality, that we can
never be justified in acquiescing in them ; or that indi-
viduals of clear head and strong will have been led on by
feelings which other men would deride as conscientious
scruples into an heroic struggle against evil. But quite
independently of real sorrows for sin, or real protests against
evil, most religious persons in the course of their lives have
felt unreal scruples or difficulties, or exaggerated real but
slight ones ; they have abridged their Christian freedom,
and thereby their means of doing good ; they have cherished
imaginary obligations, and artificially hedged themselves in
a particular course of action. Honour and truth have seemed
to be at stake about trifles light as air, or conscience has
become a burden too heavy for them to bear in some doubt-
ful matter of conduct. Scruples of this kind are ever liable
to increase ; as one vanishes, another appears ; the circum-
stances of the world and of the Church, and the complica-
tion of modern society, have a tendency to create them.
The very form in which they come is of itself sufficient to
put us on our guard against them ; for we can give no
account of them to ourselves ; they are seldom affected by
VOL. II. M
1 62 Ei^AY OX
the opinion of others : they are more often put down by
the exercise of authority than by reasoning or judgement.
Thev gain hold on the weaker sort of men. or on those not
naturally weak, in moments of weakness. They often run
counter to our wish or interest, and for this very reason
acquire a kind of tenaciry. They seem innocent, mistakes.
at worst, on the safe side, characteristic of the ingenuous-
ness of youth, or indicative of a heart uncorrupted by the
world. But this is not so. Creatures as we ai-e of circum-
stances, we cannot safely afford to give up things indif-
ferent means of usefulness, instruments of happiness to
ourselves, which may affect our lives and those of our chil-
dren to the latest posterity. Thei>e are few greater dangers
in religion than the indulgence of such scruples, the conse-
quenc-es of which can rarely be seen until too late, and
which affect the moral character of a man at least as much
as his temporal interests.
Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that
scruples about lesser matters almost always involve some
dereliction of duty in greater or more obvious ones. A
tender c-onscience is a conscience unequal to the struggles of
life. At first sight it seems as if. when lesser duties were
eared for. the greater would take care of themselves. But
this is not the lesson which experience teaches. In our
moral as in our physical nature, we are finite beings,
capable ordy of a certain degree of tension, ever liable to
suffer disorder and derangement, to be over-exercised in one
pkart and weakened in another. No one can fix his mind
intentlv on a trifling scruple or become absorbed in an
eceentric fancy, without finding the great principles of truth
and justice insensibly depart from him. He has been
looking through a microscope at life, and cannot take in its
general scope. The moral proportions of things are lost to
him : the question of a new moon or a Sabbath has taken
the place of diligence or of honesty. There is no limit to
the illusions which he may practise on himself. There are
CASmSTEY 163
those, all whosie interests and prejudices at once take the
form of duties and scruples. i>artly from dishonesty, but also
from weakness, and because that is the form in which they
can with the best grace maintain them against other men.
and conceal their true nature from themselves.
Scruples are dangerous in another way, as they tend to
drive men into a comer in which the performance of our
duty becomes so difficult as to be almost impossible.
A virtuous and religious life does not consist merely in
abstaining from evil, but in doing what is good- It has to
find opportunities and occasions for itself, without which it
languishes. A man has a scruple about the choice of a pro-
fession ; as a Christian, he believes war to be unlawful ; in
familiar language, he has doubts respecting orders, difficul-
ties about the law. Even the ordinary ways of conducting
trade appear deficient to his nicer sense of honesty ; or
perhaps he has already entered on one of these lines of life.
and finds it necessary to quit it. At last, there comes the
difficulty of ' how he is to live. ' There cannot be a greater
mistake than to suppose that a good resolution is sufficient
in such a case to carry a man through a long life.
But even if we suppose the case of one who is endowed
with every earthly good and instrument of prosperity, who
can afford, as is sometimes said, to trifle with the oppor-
tunities of life, still the mental consequences will be hardly
less injurious to him. For he who feels scruples about
the ordinary enjoyments and oc-cupations of his fellows,
does so far cut himself off from his common nature. He is
an isolated being, incapable of acting with his fellow-men.
There are plants which, though the sun shine upon them,
and the dews w^ater them, peak and pine from some internal
disorder, and appear to have no sympathy with the in-
fluences around them. So is the mind corroded by scruples
of conscience. It cannot expand to sun or shower : it
belongs not to the world of light : it has no intelligence of
or harmony with mankind aroimd. It is insensible to the
K 2
1 64 ESSAY ON
great truth, that though we may not do evil that good may
come, yet that good and evil, truth and falsehood, are bound
together on earth, and that we cannot separate ourselves
from them.
It is one of the peculiar dangers of scruples of conscience,
that the consequence of giving way to them is never felt at
the time that they press upon us. When the mind is
worried by a thought secretly working in it, and its trial
])ecomes greater than it can bear, it is eager to take the
plunge in life that may put it out of its misery ; to throw
aside a profession it may be, or to enter a new religious
communion. We shall not be wrong in promising our-
selves a few weeks of peace and placid enjoyment. The
years that are to follow we are incapable of realizing ;
whether the weary spirit will require some fresh pasture,
will invent for itself some new doubt ; whether its change
is a return to nature or not, it is impossible for us to antici-
pate. Whether it has in itself that hidden strength which,
under every change of circumstances, is capable of bearing
up, is a question which we are the least able to determine
for ourselves. In general we may observe, that the weakest
minds, and those least capable of enduring such conse-
quences, are the most likely to indulge the scruples. We
know beforehand the passionate character, hidden often
under the mask of reserve, the active yet half-reasoning
intellect, which falls under the power of such illusions.
In the Apostolic Church * cases of conscience ' arose out
of religious traditions, and what may be termed the cere-
monial cast of the age ; in modern times the most frequent
source of them may be said to be the desire of logical or
practical consistency, such as is irreconcilable with the
mixed state of human affairs and the feebleness of the
human intellect. There is no lever like the argument from
consistency, with which to bring men over to our opinions.
A particular system or view, Calvinism perhaps, or Catho-
licism, has taken possession of the mind. Shall we stop
CASUISTRY 1 65
short of pushing its premises to their conclusions? Shall
we stand in the midway, where we are liable to be over-
ridden by the combatants on either side in the struggle ?
Shall we place ourselves between our reason and our affec-
tions ; between our practical duties and our intellectual con-
victions ? Logic would have us go forward, and take our
stand at the most advanced point — we are there already, it is
urged, if we were true to ourselves — but feeling, and habit,
and common sense bid us stay where we are, unable to give
an account of ourselves, yet convinced that we are right.
We may listen to the one voice, we may listen also to the
other. The true way of guiding either is to acknowledge
both ; to use them for a time against each other, until
experience of life and of ourselves has taught us to
harmonize them in a single principle.
So, again, in daily life cases often occur, in wliich we must
do as other men do, and act upon a general understanding,
even though unable to reconcile a particular practice to the
letter of truthfulness or even to our individual conscience.
It is hard in such cases to lay down a definite rule. But in
general we should be suspicious of any conscientious scruples
in which other good men do not share. We shall do x'ight
to make a large allowance for the perplexities and entangle-
ments of human things ; we shall observe that persons of
strong mind and will brush away our scruples ; we shall
consider that not he who has most, but he who has fewest
scruples approaches most nearly the true Christian. The
man whom we emphatically call 'honest,' 'able,' 'upright,'
who is a religious as well as a sensible man, seems to have
no room for them ; from which we are led to infer that such
scruples are seldom in the nature of things themselves, but
arise out of some pecuKarity or eccentricity in those who
indulge them. That they are often akin to madness, is an
observation not without instruction even to those whom God
has blest with the full use of reason.
So far we arrive at a general conclusion like St. Paul's : —
1 66 ESSAY ON
' Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God ; ' and,
' Blessed is he who condemneth not himself in that which
he alloweth.' 'Have the Spirit of truth, and the truth
shall make you free ; ' and the entanglements of words and
the perplexities of action will disappear. But there is
another way in which such difficulties have been resolved,
which meets them in detail ; viz. , the practice of confession
and the rules of casuistry, which are the guides of the
confessor. When the spirit is disordered within us, it may
be urged that we ought to go out of ourselves, and confess
our sins one to another. But he who leads, and he who is
led, alike require some rules for the examination of con-
science, to quicken or moderate the sense of sin, to assist
experience, to show men to themselves as they really are,
neither better nor worse. Hence the necessity for casuistry.
It is remai-kable, that what is in idea so excellent that it
may be almost described in St. Paul's language as 'holy,
just, and good,' should have become a byword among
mankind for hypocrisy and dishonesty. In popular esti-
mation, no one is supposed to resort to casuistry, but with
the view of evading a duty. The moral instincts of the
world have risen up and condemned it. It is fau-ly put
down by the universal voice, and shut up in the darkness
of the tomes of the casuists. A kind of rude justice has
been done upon the system, as in most cases of popular
indignation, probably with some degree of injustice to the
individvials who were its authors. Yet, hated as casuistry
has deservedly been, it is fair also to admit that it has an
element of truth which was the source of its influence.
This element of truth is the acknowledgement of the diffi-
culties which arise in the relations of a professing Christian
world to the Church and to Christianity. How, without
lowering the Gospel, to place it on a level with daily life is
a hard question. It will be proper for us to consider the
system from both sides — in its origin and in its perversion.
Wliy it existed, and why it has failed, furnish a lesson in
CASUISTRY 167
the history of the human mind of great interest and im-
portance.
The unseen power by which the systems of the casuists
were brought into being, was the necessity of the Koman
Catholic Church. Like the allegorical interpretation of
Scripture, they formed a link between the present and the
past. At the time of the Eeformation the doctrines of the
ancient, no less than of the Reformed, faith awakened into
life. But they requii'ed to be put in a new form, to reconcile
them to the moral sense of mankind. Luther ended the
work of self-examination by casting all his sins on Christ.
But the casuists could not thus meet the awakening of
men's consciences and the fearful looking for of judgement.
They had to deal with an altered world, in which never-
theless the spectres of the past, purgatory, penance, mortal
sin, were again rising up ; hallowed as they were by authority
and antiquity they could not be cast aside ; the preacher of
the Counter-reformation could only explain them away. If
he had placed distinctly before men's eyes, that for some
one act of immorality or dishonesty they were in a state of
mortal sin, the heart true to itself would have recoiled from
such a doctrine, and the connexion between the Church and
the world would have been for ever severed. And yet the
doctrine was a part of ecclesiastical tradition ; it could not
be held, it could not be given up. The Jesuits escaped the
dilemma by holding and evading it.
So far it would not be untrue to say that casuistry had
originated in an effort to reconcile the Roman Catholic faith
with nature and experience. The Roman system was, if
strictly carried out, horrible and impossible ; a doctrine not,
as it has been sometimes described, of salvation made easy,
but of universal condemnation. From these fearful con-
clusions of logic the subtilty of the human intellect was
now to save it. The analogy of law, as worked out by
jurists and canonists, supplied the means. What was re-
pugnant to human justice could not be agreeable to Divine.
1 68 ESSAY ON
The scholastic philosophy, which had begun to die out and
fade away before the light of classical learning, was to revive
in a new form, no longer hovering between heaven and
earth, out of the reach of experience, yet below the region
of spiritual truth, but, as it seemed, firmly based in the life
and actions of mankind. It was the same sort of wisdom
which defined the numbers and order of the celestial
hierarchy, which was now to be adapted to the infinite
modifications of which the actions of men are capable.
It is obvious that there are endless points of view in
which the simplest duties may be regarded. Common
sense says — ' A man is to be judged by his acts,' ' there can
be no mistake about a lie,' and so on. The casuists proceed
by a different road. Fixing the mind, not on the simplicity,
but on the intricacy of human action, they study every
point of view, and introduce every conceivable distinction.
A first most obvious distinction is that of the intention and
the act : ought the one to be separated from the other ?
The law itself seems to teach that this maj^ hardly be ;
rather the intention is held to be that which gives form and
colour to the act. Then the act by itself is nothing, and the
intention by itself ahnost innocent. As we play between
the two different points of view, the act and the intention
together evanesce. But, secondly, as we consider the in-
tention, must we not also consider the circumstances of the
agent ? For plainly a being deprived of free will cannot be
responsible for his actions. Place the murderer in thought
under the conditions of a necessary agent, and his actions
are innocent ; or under an imperfect necessity, and he loses
half his guilt. Or suppose a man ignorant, or partly
ignorant, of what is the teaching of the Church, or the
law of the land — here another abstract point of view arises,
leading us out of the region of common sense to diflicult and
equitable considerations, which may be determined fairly,
but which we have the greatest motive to decide in favour
of ourselves. Or again, try to conceive an act without
CASUISTRY 169
reference to its consequences, or in reference to some single
consequence, without regarding it as a violation of morality
or of nature, or in reference solely to the individual con-
science. Or imagine the will half consenting to, half
withdrawing from its act ; or acting by another, or in
obedience to another, or with some good object, or under
the influence of some imperfect obligation, or of opposite
obligations. Even conscience itself may be at last played
off against the plainest truths.
By the aid of such distinctions the simplest principles
of morality multiply to infinity. An instrument has been
introduced of such subtilty and elasticity that it can accom-
modate the canons of the Church to any consciences, to any
state of the world. Sin need no longer be confined to the
dreadful distinction of moral and venial sin ; it has lost its
infinite and mysterious character ; it has become a thing of
degrees, to be aggravated or mitigated in idea, according to
the expediency of the case or the pliability of the confessor.
It seems difficult to perpetrate a perfect sin. No man need
die of despair ; in some page of the writings of the casuists
will be found a difference suited to his case. And this
without in any degree interfering with a single doctrine of
the Church, or withdrawing one of its anathemas against
heresy.
The system of casuistry, destined to work such great
results, in reconciling the Church to the world and to human
nature, like a torn web needing to be knit together, may be
regarded as a science or profession. It is a classification of
human actions, made in one sense without any reference to
practice. For nothing was further from the mind of the
casuist than to inquire whether a particular distinction
would have a good or bad effect, was liable to pervex^sion or
not. His object was only to make such distinctions as the
human mind was capable of perceiving and acknowledging.
As to the physiologist objects in themselves loathsome and
disgusting may be of the deepest interest, so to the casuist
170 ESSAY ON
the foulest and most loathsome vices of mankind are not
matters of abhorrence, but of science, to be arranged and
classified, just like any other varieties of human action. It
is true that the study of the teacher was not supposed to be
also open to the penitent. But it inevitably followed that
the spirit of the teacher communicated itself to the taught.
He could impart no high or exalted idea of morality or
religion, who was measuring it out by inches, not deepening
men's idea of sin, but attenuating it ; ' mincing into non-
sense ' the first principles of right and wrong.
The science was further complicated by the ' doctrine of
probability,' which consisted in making anything approved
or approvable that was confirmed by authority; even, as
was said by some, of a single casuist. That could not be
very wrong which a wise and good man had once thought
to be right — a better than ourselves perhaps, surveying the
circumstances calmly and impartially. Who would wish
that the rule of his daily life should go beyond that of
a saint and doctor of the Church? Who would require
such a rule to be observed by another ? Who would refuse
another such an escape out of the labyrinth of human
difficulties and perplexities? As in all the Jesuit distinc-
tions, there was a kind of reasonableness in the theory of
this ; it did but go on the principle of cutting short scruples
by the rule of common sense.
And yet, what a door was here opened for the dishonesty
of mankind ! The science itself had dissected moral action
until nothing of life or meaning remained in it. It had
thrown aside, at the same time, the natural restraint which
the moral sense itself exercises in determining such ques-
tions. And now for the application of this system, so
difficult and complicated in itself, so incapable of receiving
any check from the opinions of mankind, the authority not
of the Church, but of individuals, was to be added as a new
lever to overthrow the last remains of natural reUgion and
morality.
CASUISTRY 171
The marvels of this science are not yet ended. For the
same changes admit of being rung upon speech as well as
upon action, until truth and falsehood become alike impos-
sible. Language itself dissolves before the decomposing
power ; oaths, like actions, vanish into air when separated
from the intention of the speaker ; the shield of custom
protects falsehood. It would be a curious though needless
task to follow the subject into further details. He who has
read one page of the casuists has read all. There is nothing
that is not right in some particular point of view — nothing
that is not true under some previous supposition.
Such a system may be left to refute itself. Those who
have strayed so far away from truth and virtue are self-
condemned. Yet it is not without interest to trace by what
false lights of philosophy or religion good men, revolting
themselves at the commission of evil, were led step by step
to the unnatural result. We should expect to find that
such a result originated not in any settled determination
to corrupt the morals of mankind, but in an intellectual
error ; and it is suggestive of strange thoughts respecting
our moral nature, that an intellectual error should have had
the power to produce such consequences. Such appears to
have been the fact. The conception of moral action on which
the system depends, is as erroneous and imperfect as that
of the scholastic philosophy respecting the nature of ideas.
The immediate reduction of the error to practice through
the agency of an order made the evil greater than that of
other intellectual errors on moral and religious subjects,
which, springing up in the brain of an individual, are often
corrected and purified in the course of nature before they
find their way into the common mind.
I. Casuistry ignores the difference between thought and
action. Actions are necessarily external. The spoken word
constitutes the lie ; the outward performance the crime.
The Highest Wisdom, it is true, has identified the two :
' He that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath already
17a ESSAY ON
committed adulteiy with her in his heart.' But this is not
the rule by which we are to judge our past actions, but to
guard our future ones. He who has thoughts of lust or
passion is not innocent in the sight of God, and is liable to
be carried on to perform the act on which he suffers himself
to dwell. And, in looking forward, he will do well to
remember this caution of Christ : but in looking backward,
in thinking of others, in endeavouring to estimate the actual
amount of guilt or trespass, if he begins by placing thought
on the level of action, he will end by placing action on the
level of thought. It would be a monstrous state of mind
in which we regarded mere imagination of evil as the same
with action ; hatred as the same with murder ; thoughts of
impurity as the same with adultery. It is not so that we
must learn Christ. Actions are one thing and thoughts
another in the eye of conscience, no less than of the law of
the land ; of God as well as man. However important it
may be to remember that the all-seeing eye of God tries the
reins, it is no less important to remember also that morality
consists in definite acts, capable of being seen and judged
of by our fellow-creatures, impossible to escape ourselves.
2. What may be termed the frame of casuistry was sup-
plied by law, while the spirit is that of the scholastic
philosophy. Neither afforded any general principle which
might correct extravagancies in detail, or banish subtilties,
or negative remote and unsafe inferences. But the applica-
tion of the analogy of law to subjects of morality and
religion was itself a figment which, at every step, led deeper
into error. The object was to realize and define, in every
possible stage, acts which did not admit of legal definition,
either because they were not external, but only thoughts
or suggestions of the mind, or because the external pai-t of
the action was not allowed to be regarded separately from
the motives of the agent. The motive or intention which
law takes no account of, except as indicating the nature of
the act, becomes the principal subject of the casuist's art.
CASUISTRY 173
Casuistry may be said to begin Avhere law ends. It goes
where law refuses to follow with legal rules and distinctions
into the domain of morality. It weighs in the balance of
precedent and authority the impalpable acts of a spiritual
being. Law is a real science which has its roots in history,
which grasps fact ; seeking, in idea, to rest justice on truth
only, and to reconcile the rights of individuals with the
well-being of the whole. But casuistry is but the ghost
or ape of a science ; it has no history and no facts corre-
sponding to it ; it came into the world by the ingenuity of
man ; its object is to produce an artificial disposition of
human affairs, at which nature rebels.
3. The distinctions of the casuist are far from equalling
the subtilty of human life, or the diversity of its conditions.
It is quite true that actions the same in name are, in the
scale of right and wrong, as different as can be imagined ;
varying wath the age, temperament, education, circumstances
of each individual. The casuist is not in fault for maintain-
ing this difference, but for supposing that he can classify
or distinguish them so as to give any conception of their
innumerable shades and gradations. All his folios are but
the weary effort to abstract or make a brief of the indi-
viduality of man. The very actions which he classifies
change their meaning as he writes them down, like the
words of a sentence torn away from their context. He is
ever idealizing and creating distinctions, splitting straws,
dividing hairs ; yet any one who reflects on himself will
idealize and distinguish further still, and think of his whole
life in all its circumstances, with its sequence of thoughts
and motives, and, withal, many excuses. But no one can
extend this sort of idealism beyond himself ; no insight of
the confessor can make him clairvoyant of the penitent's
soul. Know ourselves we sometimes truly may, but we
cannot know others, and no other can know us. No other
can know or understand us in the same wonderful or
mysterious way; no other can be conscious of the spirit
174 ESSAY ON
in which we have lived ; no other can see us as a whole or
get within. God has placed a veil of flesh between our-
selves and other men, to screen the nakedness of our soul.
Into the secret chamber He does not require that we should
admit any other judge or counsellor but himself. Two
eyes only are upon us — the eye of our own soul — the eye
of God, and the one is the light of the other. That is the
true light, on the which if a man look he will have a know-
ledge of himself, different in kind from that which the
confessor extracts from the books of the casuists.
4. There are many cases in which our first thoughts, or.
to speak more correctly, our instinctive perceptions, are true
and right ; in which it is not too much to say, that he who
deliberates is lost. The very act of turning to a book, or
referring to another, enfeebles our power of action. Works
of art are produced we know not how, by some simultaneous
movement of hand and thought, which seem to lend to each
other force and meaning. So in moral action, the true view
does not separate the intention from the act, or the act from
the circumstances which surround it, but regards them as
one and absolutely indivisible. In the performance of the
act and in the judgement of it, the will and the execution,
the hand and the thought are to be considered as one. Those
who act most energetically, who in difficult circumstances
judge the most truly, do not separately pass in review the
rules, and principles, and counter principles of action, but
grasp them at once, in a single instant. Those who act
most truthfully, honestly, firmly, manfully, consistently,
take least time to deliberate. Such should be the attitude
of our minds in all questions of right and wrong, truth and
falsehood : we may not inquire, but act.
5. Casuistry not only renders us independent of our own
convictions, it renders us independent also of the opinion
of mankind in general. It puts the confessor in the place
of ourselves, and in the place of the world. By making the
actions of men matters of science, it cuts away the supports
CASUISTRY 175
and safeguards which public opinion gives to morality; the
confessor in the silence of the closet easily introduces
principles from which the common sense or conscience of
mankind would have shrunk back. Especially in matters
of truth and falsehood, in the nice sense of honour shown
in the unwillingness to get others within our power, his
standard will probably fall short of that of the world at
large. Public opinion, it is true, drives men's vices inwards ;
it teaches them to conceal their faults from others, and if
possible from themselves, and this very concealment may
sink them in despair, or cover them with self-deceit. And
the soul — whose ' house is its castle ' — has an enemy within,
the strength of which may be often increased by communi-
cations from without. Yet the good of this privacy is on
the whole greater than the evil. Not only is the outward
aspect of society more decorous, and the confidence between
man and man less liable to be impaired ; the mere fact of
men's sins being known to themselves and God only, and
the support afforded even by the undeserved opinion of
their fellows, are of themselves great helps to a moral and
religious life. Many a one by being thought better than
he was has become better ; by being thought as bad or
worse has become worse. To communicate our sins to
those who have no claim to know them is of itself a diminu-
tion of our moral strength. It throws upon others what
we ought to do for ourselves ; it leads us to seek in the
sympathy of others a strength which no sympathy can give.
It is a greater trust than is right for us commonly to repose
in our fellow-creatures ; it places us in their power ; it may
make us their tools.
To conclude, the errors and evils of casuistry may be
summed vip as follows : — It makes that abstract which is
concrete, scientific which is contingent, artificial which is
natural, positive which is moral, theoretical which is in-
tuitive and immediate. It puts the parts in the place of
the whole, exceptions in the place of rules, system in the
176 ESSAY ON CASUISTKY
place of experience, dependence in the place of responsi-
bility, reflection in the place of conscience. It lowers the
heavenly to the earthly, the principles of men to their
practice, the tone of the preacher to the standard of ordinary
life. It sends us to another for that which can only be
found in ourselves. It leaves the highway of public
opinion to wander in the labyrinths of an imaginary science ;
the light of the world for the darkness of the closet. It is
to human nature what anatomy is to our bodily frame ;
instead of a moral and spiritual being, preserving only
' a body of death. '
ESSAY
ON
I^ATUEAL EELIGIOJSr
The revelation of righteousness by faith in the Epistle to
the Eomans is relative to a prior condemnation of Jew and
Gentile, who are alike convicted of sin. If the world had
not been sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, there
would have been no need of the light. And yet this very
darkness is a sort of contradiction, for it is the darkness of
the soul, which, nevertheless, sees itself and God. Such
' darkness visible ' St. Paul had felt in himself, and, passing
from the individual to the world, he lifts up the veil partially,
and lets the light of God's wrath shine upon the corruption
of man. What he himself in the searchings of his own
spirit had become conscious of was ' written in large
letters' on the scene around. To all Israelites at least,
the law stood in the same relation as it had once done to
himself ; it placed them in a state of reprobation. Without
law Hhey had not had sin,' and now, the only way to do
away with sin is to do away the law itself.
But, if 'sin is not imputed where there is no law,' it
might seem as though the heathen could not be brought
within the sphere of the same condemnation. Could we
suppose men to be like animals, ' nourishing a blind life
within the brain,' 'the seed that is not quickened except it
VOL. II. N
178 ESSAY ON
die ' would have no existence in them. Common sense
tells us that all evil implies a knowledge of good, and that
no man can be responsible for the worship of a false God
who has no means of approach to the true. But this was
not altogether the case of the Gentile ; ' without the law sin
was in the world ; ' as the Jew had the law, so the Gentile
had the witness of God in creation. Nature was the Gentile's
law, witnessing against his immoral and degraded state,
leading him upward through the visible things to the unseen
power of God. He knew God, as the Apostle four times
repeats, and magnified Him not as God ; so that he was
without excuse, not only for his idolatry, but because he
worshipped idols in the presence of God himself.
Such is the train of thought which we perceive to be
working in the Apostle's mind, and which leads him, in
accordance with the general scope of the Epistle to the
Romans, to speak of natural religion. In two passages in
the Acts he dwells on the same subject. It was one that
found a ready response in the age to which St. Paul
preached. Reflections of a similar kind wei'e not un-
common among the heathen themselves. If at any time in
the history of mankind natural religion can be said to have
had a real and independent existence, it was in the twilight
of heathenism and Christianity. * Seeking after God, if
haply they might feel after him and find him,' is a touching
description of the efforts of philosophy in its later period.
That there were principles in Nature higher and purer than
the creations of mythology was a reflection made by those
who would have deemed ' the cross of Christ foolishness, '
who ' mocked at the resmrrection of the dead.' The Olympic
heaven was no longer the air which men breathed, or the
sky over their heads. The better mind of the world was
turning from ' dumb idols.' Ideas about God and man were
taking the place of the old heathen rites. Rehgions, like
nations, met and mingled. East and West were learning
of each other, giving and receiving spiritual and political
NATURAL RELIGION I 79
elements ; the objects of Gentile worship fading into a more
distant and universal God ; the Jew also travelling in thought
into regions which his fathers knew not, and beginning to
form just conceptions of the earth and its inhabitants.
While we remain within the circle of Scripture language,
or think of St. Paul as speaking only to the men of his own
age in words that were striking and appropriate to them,
there is no difficulty in understanding his meaning. The
Old Testament denounced idolatry as hateful to God, It
was away from Him, out of His sight ; except where it
touched the fortunes of the Jewish people, hardly within
the range either of His judgements or of His mercies. No
Israelite, in the elder days of Jewish history, supposed the
tribes round about, or the individuals who composed them,
to be equally with himself the objects of God's care. The
Apostle brings the heathen back before the judgement seat
of God. He sees them sinking into the condition of the old
Canaanitish nations. He regards this corruption of Nature
as a consequence of then- idolatry. They knew, or might
have known, God, for creation witnesses of Him. This is
the hinge of the Apostle's argument : ' If they had not
known God they had not had sin ; ' but now they know
Him, and sin in the light of knowledge. Without this
consciousness of sin there would be no condemnation of the
heathen, and therefore no need of justification for him — no
parallelism or coherence between the previous states of Jew
and Gentile, or between the two parts of the scheme of
redemption.
But here philosophy, bringing into contrast the Scriptural
view of things and the merely historical or human one, asks
the question, ' How far was it possible for the heathen to
have seen God in Nature?' Could a man anticipate the
true religion any more than he could anticipate discoveries
in science or in art ? Could he pierce the clouds of
mythology, or lay aside language as it were a garment?
Three or four in different ages, who have been the heralds
N 2
l80 • ESSAY ON
of great religious revolutions, may have risen above their
natural state under the influence of some divine impulse.
But men in general do as others do ; single persons in India
or China do not dislocate themselves from the customs,
traditions, prejudices, rites, in which they have been
brought up. The mind of a nation has its own structure,
which receives and also idealizes in various degrees the
forms of outward Nature. Keligions, like languages,
conform to this mental structure ; they are prior to the
thoughts of individuals ; no one is responsible for them.
Homer is not to blame for his conception of the Grecian
gods ; it is natural and adequate to his. age. For no one in
primitive times could disengage himself from that world of
sense which grew to him and enveloped him ; we might as
well imagine that he could invent a new language, or change
the form which he inherited from his race into some other
type of humanity.
The question here raised is one of the most important, as
it is perhaps one that has been least considered, out of the
many questions in which reason and faith, historical fact
and religious belief, come into real or apparent conflict with
each other. Volumes have been written on the connexion
of geology with the Mosaic account of the creation — a ques-
tion which is on the outskirts of the great difficulty — a sort
of advanced post, at which theologians go out to meet the
enemy. But we cannot refuse seriously to consider the
other difficulty, which affects us much more nearly, and in
the present day almost forces itself upon us, as the spirit of
the ancient religions is more understood, and the forms of
religion still existing among men become better known.
It sometimes seems as if we lived in two, or rather many
distinct worlds— the world of faith and the world of ex-
perience—the world of sacred and the world of profane
history. Between them there is a gulf; it is not easy
to pass from one to the other. They have a different set of
words and ideas, which it would be bad taste to intermingle ;
NATURAL EELIGION 1 01
and of how much is this significant ? They present them-
selves to us at different times, and call up a different train of
associations. When reading Scripture we think only of the
heavens 'which are made by the word of God,' of 'the
winds and waves obeying his will, ' of the accomplishment of
events in history by the interposition of His hand. But in
the study of ethnology or geology, in the records of our own
or past times, a curtain drops over the Divine presence ;
human motives take the place of sj)iritual agencies ; effects
are not without causes ; interruptions of Nature repose in
the idea of law. Eace, climate, physical influences, states
of the human intellect and of society, are among the chief
subjects of ordinary history ; in the Bible there is no allusion
to them ; to the inspired writer they have no existence.
Were men different, then, in early ages, or does the sacred
narrative show them to us under a different point of view ?
The being of whom Scripture gives one account, philosophy
anotlier — who has a share in Nature and a place in history,
who partakes also of a hidden life, and is the subject of
an unseen power — is he not the same ? This is the difficulty
of our times, which presses upon us more and more, both
in speculation and practice, as different classes of ideas
come into comparison with each other. The day has passed
in which we could look upon man in one aspect only,
without interruption or confusion from any other. And
Scripture, which uses the language and ideas of the age
in which it was written, is inevitably at variance with the
new modes of speech, as well as with the real discoveries
of later knowledge.
Yet the Scriptures lead the way in subjecting the purely
supernatural and spiritual view of human things to the laws
of experience. The revocation in Ezekiel of the ' old proverb
in the house of Israel,' is the assertion of a moral principle,
and a return to fact and Nature. The words of our Saviour
— ' Think ye that those eighteen on whom the tower of
Siloam fell, were sinners above all the men who dwelt in
1 83 ESSAY ON
Jerusalem ? ' and the parallel passage respecting the one
born blind — 'Neither this man did sin, nor his parents/
are an enlargement of the religious belief of the time in
accordance with experience. When it is said that faith is
not to look for wonders ; or ' the kingdom of God cometh
not with observation, ' and ' neither will they be persuaded
though one rose from the dead,' here, too, is an elevation
of the order of Nature over the miraculous and uncommon.
The preference of charity to extraordinary gifts is another
instance, in which the Spirit of Christ speaks by the lips
of Paul, of a like tendency. And St. Paul himself, in
recognizing a world without the Jewish, as responsible to
God, and subject to His laws, is but carrying out, according
to the knowledge of his age, the same principle which
a wider experience of the world and of antiquity compels
us to extend yet further to all time and to all mankind.
It has been asked : ' How far, in forming a moral estimate
of an individual, are we to consider his actions simply as
good or evil ; or how far are we to include in our estimate
education, country, rank in life, physical constitution, and
so forth '? ' Morality is rightly jealous of our resolving evil
into the influence of circumstances : it will no more listen
to the plea of temptation as the excuse for vice, than the
law will hear of the same plea in mitigation of the penalty
for crime. It requires that we should place ourselves within
certain conditions before we pass judgement. Yet we cannot
deny a higher point of view also — of ' him that judged not
as a man judgeth,' in which we fear to follow only because
of the limitation of our faculties. And in the case of
a murderer or other great criminal, if we were suddenly
made aware, when dwelling on the enormity of his crime,
that he had been educated in vice and misery, that his act
had not been unprovoked, perhaps that his physical con-
stitution was such as made it nearly impossible for him
to resist the provocation which was offered to him, the
knowledge of these and similar circumstances would alter
NATURAL RELIGION 1 83
our estimate of the complexion of his guilt. We might
think him guilty, but we should also think him unfortunate.
Stern necessity might still require that the law should take
its course, but we should feel pity as well as anger. We
should view his conduct in a larger and more comprehensive
way, and acknowledge that, had we been placed in the same
circumstances, we might have been guilty of the same act.
Now the difference between these two views of morality
is analogous to the difference between the way in which
St. Paul regards the heathen religions, and the way in
which we ourselves regard them, in proportion as we become
better acquainted with their true nature. St. Paul conceives
idolatry separate from all the circumstances of time, of
country, of physical or mental states by which it is accom-
panied, and in which it may be almost said to consist. He
implies a deliberate knowledge of the good, and choice of
the evil. He supposes each individual to contrast the truth
of Grod with the error of false religions, and deliberately
to reject God. He conceives all mankind, 'creatm-es as
they are one of another,' and
' Moving all together if they move at all,'
to be suddenly freed from the bond of nationality, from the
customs and habits of thought of ages. The moral life
which is proper to the individual, he breathes into the
world collectively. Speaking not of the agents and their
circumstances, but of their acts, and seeing these reflected
in what may be termed in a figure the conscience, not of an
individual but of mankind in general, he passes on all men
everywhere the sentence of condemnation. We can hardly
venture to say what would have been his judgement on the
great names of Greek and Roman history, had he familiarly
known them. He might have felt as we feel, that there is
a certain impropriety in attempting to determine, with
a Jesuit writer, or even in the spirit of love and admiration
which the great Italian poet shows for them, the places of
.184 ESSAY ON
the philosophers and heroes of antiquity in the world to
come. More in his own spirit, he would have spoken of
them as a part of ' the mystery which was not then revealed
as it now is.' But neither can we imagine how he could
have become familiar with them at all without ceasing
to be St. Paul.
Acquainted as we are with Greek and Eoman literature
from within, lovers of its old heroic story, it is impossible
for us to regard the religions of the heathen world in the
single point of view which they presented to the first
believers. It would be a vain attempt to try and divest
ourselves of the feelings towards the great names of Greek
and Koman history which a classical education has implanted
in us ; as little can we think of the deities of the heathen
mythology in the spirit of a Christian of the first two
centuries. Looking back from the vantage ground of ages,
we see more clearly the proportions of heathenism and
Christianity, as of other great forms or events of history,
than was possible for contemporaries. Ancient authors are
like the inhabitants of a valley who know nothing of the
countries beyond : they have a narrow idea either of their
own or other times ; many notions are entertained by them
respecting the past history of mankind which a wider
prospect would have dispelled. The horizon of the sacred
writers too is limited ; they do not embrace the historical
or other aspects of the state of man to which modern
reflection has given rise ; they are in the valley still, though
with the ' light of the world ' above. The Apostle sees the
Athenians from Mars' Hill ' wholly given to idolatry : ' to
us, the same scene would have revealed wonders of art and
beauty, the loss of which the civilized nations of Europe
still seem with a degree of seriousness to lament. He
thinks of the heathen religions in the spirit of one of the
old prophets ; to us they are subjects of philosophy also.
He makes no distinction between theii' origin and their
decline, the dreams of the childhood of the human race and
NATURAL RELIGION 1 85
the fierce and brutal lusts with which they afterwards
became polluted ; we note many differences between Homer
and the corruption of later Greek life, between the rustic
simplicity of the old Eoman religion and the impurities
of the age of Clodius or Tiberius. More and more, as they
become better known to us, the original forms of all religions
are seen to fall under the category of nature and less under
that of mind, or free will. There is nothing to which they
are so much akin as language, of which they are a sort of
after-growth — in their fantastic creations the play or sport
of the same faculty of speech ; they seem to be also based
on a spiritual affection, which is characteristic of man
equally with the social ones. Eeligions, like languages, are
inherent in all men everywhere, having a close sympathy
or connexion with political and family life. It would be
a shallow and imaginary explanation of them that they are
corruptions of some primaeval revelation, or impostures
framed by the persuasive arts of magicians or priests. There
are many other respects in which our first impressions
respecting the heathen world are changed by study and
experience. There was more of true greatness in the con-
ceptions of heathen legislators and philosophers than we
readily admit, and more of nobility and disinterestedness
in their character. The founders of the Eastern religions
especially, although indistinctly seen by us, appear to be
raised above the ordinary level of mortality. The laws of
our own country are an inheritance partly bequeathed to
us by a heathen nation ; many of our philosophical and
most of our political ideas are derived from a like source.
What shall we say to these things? Are we not under-
going, on a wider scale and in a new way, the same change
which the Fathers of Alexandria underwent, when they
became aware that heathenism was not wholly evil, and
that there was as much in Plato and Aristotle which was
in harmony with the Gospel as of what was antagonistic
to it.
1 86 ESSAY ON
Among the many causes at present in existence which
will influence 'the Church of the future,' none is likely
to have greater power than our increasing knowledge of
the religions of mankind. The study of them is the first
step in the philosophical study of revelation itself. For
Christianity or the Mosaic religion, standing alone, is hardly
a subject for scientific inquiry : only when compared with
other forms of faith do we perceive its true place in history,
or its true relation to human nature. The glory of Chris-
tianity is not to be as unlike other religions as possible,
but to be their perfection and fulfilment. Those religions
are so many steps in the education of the human race.
One above another, they rise or grow side by side, each
nation, in many ages, contributing some partial ray of
a divine light, some element of morality, some principle
of social life, to the common stock of mankind. The
thoughts of men, like the productions of Nature, do not
endlessly diversify ; they work themselves out in a few
simple foi-ms. In the fullness of time, philosophy appears,
shaking off, yet partly retaining, the nationality and particu-
larity of its heathen origin. Its top 'reaches to heaven,'
but it has no root in the common life of man. At last,
the crown of all, the chief corner-stone of the building,
when the impressions of Nature and the reflections of the
mind upon itself have been exhausted, Christianity arises
in the world, seeming to stand in the same relation to the
inferior religions that man does to the inferior animals.
When, instead of painting harsh contrasts between Chris-
tianity and other religions, we rather draw them together
as nearly as truth will allow, many thoughts come into our
minds about their relation to each other which are of great
speculative interest as well as of practical importance. The
joyful words of the Apostle : ' Is he the God of the Jews
only, is he not also of the Gentiles ? ' have a new meaning
for us. And this new application the Apostle himself may
be regarded as having taught us, where he says : ' When
NATURAL EELIGION 1 87
the Gentiles which know not the law do by nature the
things contained in the law, these not having the law ai'e
a law unto themselves. ' There have been many schoolmasters •
to bring men to Christ, and not the law of Moses only.
Ecclesiastical history enlarges its borders to take in the
preparations for the Gospel, the anticipations of it, the
parallels with it ; collecting the scattered gleams of truth
which may have revealed themselves even to single indivi-
duals in remote ages and countries. We are no longer
interested in making out a case against the heathen religions
in the spirit of party — the superiority of Christianity Avill
appear sufficiently without that — we rather rejoice that, at
sundry times and in divers manners, by ways more or less
akin to the methods of human knowledge, ' God spake in
time past to the fathers,' and that in the darkest ages, amid
the most fanciful aberrations of mythology, He left not
himself wholly without a witness between good and evil
in the natural affections of mankind.
Some facts also begin to appear, which have hitherto
been unknown or concealed. They are of two kinds, relat-
ing partly to the origin or development of the Jewish or
Christian religion ; partly also independent of them, yet
affording remarkable parallels both to their outward form
and to their inner life. Christianity is seen to have partaken
much more of the better mind of the Gentile world than the ^
study of Scripture only would have led us to conjecture :
it has received, too, many of its doctrinal terms from the
language of philosophy. The Jewish religion is proved to
have incorporated with itself some elements which were
not of Jewish origin ; and the Jewish history begins to be
explained by the analogy of other nations. The most
striking fact of the second kind is found in a part of the
world which Christianity can be scarcely said to have
touched, and is of a date some centuries anterior to it.
That there is a faith ^ which has a greater number of
' Buddhism.
loo ESSAY ON
worshippers than all sects of Christians put together, which
originated in a reformation of society, tyrannized over by
tradition, spoiled by philosophy, torn asunder by caste —
which might be described, in the words of Scripture, as
a ' preaching of the Gospel to the poor ; ' that this faith,
besides its more general resemblance to Christianity, has
its incarnation, its monks, its saints, its hierarchy, its
canonical books, its miracles, its councils, the whole system
being ' full blown ' before the Christian era ; that the
founder of this religion descended fi*om a throne to teach
the lesson of equality among men — ('there is no distinction
of Chinese or Hindoo, Brahmin or Sudra, such at least
was the indirect consequence of his doctrine) — that, himself
contented with nothing, he preached to his followers the
virtues of poverty, self-denial, chastity, temperance, and
that once, at least, he is described as * taking upon himself
the sins of mankind : ' — these are facts which, when once
known, are not easily forgotten ; they seem to open an
imdiscovered world to us, and to cast a new light on
Christianity itself. And it 'harrows us with fear and
wonder,' to learn that this vast system, numerically the
most universal or catholic of all religions, and, in many of
its leading features, most like Christianity, is based, not on
the hope of eternal life, but of complete annihilation.
The Greek world presents another parallel with the
Gospel, which is also independent of it ; less striking, yet
coming nearer home, and sometimes overlooked because it
is general and obvious. That the political virtues of courage,
patriotism, and the like, have been received by Christian
nations from a classical source is commonly admitted. Let
us ask now the question, Wlience is the love of knowledge ?
who first taught men that the pursuit of truth was a reli-
gious duty? Doubtless the words of one greater than
Socrates come into our minds : ' For this end was I born,
and for this cause came I into the world, that they might
know the truth.' But the truth here spoken of is of another
NATURAL EELIGION 189
and more mysterious kind ; not truth in the logical or
speculative sense of the word, nor even in its ordinary use.
The earnest inquiry after the nature of things, the devotion
of a life to such an inquiry, the forsaking all other good in
the hope of acquiring some fragment of true knowledge, — this
is an instance of human virtue not to be found among the
Jews, but among the Greeks. It is a phenomenon of religion,
as well as of philosophy, that among the Greeks too there
should have been those who, like the Jewish prophets, stood
out from the world around them, who taught a lesson, like
them, too exalted for the practice of mankind in general ;
who anticipated out of the order of nature the knowledge of
future ages ; whose very chance words and misunderstood
modes of speech have moulded the minds of men in remote
times and countries. And that these teachers of mankind,
' as they were finishing their course ' in the decline of
Paganism, like Jewish prophets, though vmacquainted with
Christianity, should have become almost Christian, preach-
ing the truths which we sometimes hold to be ' foolishness
to the Greek,' as when Epictetus spoke of humility, or
Seneca told of a God who had made of one blood all nations
of the earth, — is a sad and touching fact.
But it is not only the better mind of heathenism in East
or West that affords parallels with the Christian religion :
the corruptions of Christianity, its debasement by secular
influences, its temporary decay at particular times or places,
receive many illustrations from similar phenomena in
ancient times and heathen countries. The manner in
which the Old Testament has taken the place of the New ;
the tendency to absorb the individual life in the outward
church ; the personification of the principle of separation
from the world in monastic orders ; the accumulation of
wealth with the profession of poverty ; the spiritualism, or
childlike faith, of one age, and the rationalism or formalism
of another ; many of the minute controversial disputes
which exist between Christians respecting doctrines both
190 ESSAY ON
of natural and revealed religion ; — all these errors or corrup-
tions of Christianity admit of being compared with similar
appearances either in Buddhism or Mahomedanism. Is not
the half-believing half-sceptical attitude in which Socrates
and others stood to the ' orthodox ' pagan faith very similar
to that in which philosophers, and in some countries educated
men, generally have stood to established forms of Chris-
tianity? Is it only in Christian times that men have
sought to consecrate art in the service of religion ? Did not
Paganism do so far more completely ? or was it Plato only
to whom moral ideas represented themselves in sensual
forms ? Has not the whole vocabulary of art, in modern
times, become confused with that of morality ? The modern
historian of Greece and Eome draws our attention to other
religious features in the ancient world, which are not with-
out their counterpart in the modern,—* old friends with new
faces,' — which a few words are enough to suggest. The
aristocratic character of Paganism, the influence which it
exerted over women, its galvanic efforts to restore the past,
the ridicule with which the sceptic assails its errors, and the
manner in which the antiquarians Pausanias and Dionysius
contemptuously reply ; also the imperfect attempts at recon-
cilement of old and new, found in such writers as Plutarch,
and the obscure sense of the real connexion of the Pagan
worship with political and social life, the popularity of its
temporary hierophants ; its panics, wonders, oracles, mys-
teries,— these features make us aware that however unlike
the true life of Christianity may have been even to the better
mind of heathenism, the corruptions and weaknesses of
Christianity have never been without a parallel under the sun.
Those religions which possess sacred books furnish some
other curious, though exaggerated, likenesses of the use
which has been sometimes made of the Jewish or Christian
Scriptures. No believer in organic or verbal inspiration has
applied more high-sounding titles to the Bible than the
Brahmin or Mussulman to the Koran or the Vedas. They
NATURAL RELIGION I9I
have been loaded with commentaries — buried under the
accumulations of tradition ; no care has been thought too
great of their words and letters, while the original meaning
has been lost, and even the language in which they were
written ceased to be understood. Every method of inter-
pretation has been practised upon them ; logic and mysticism
have elicited every possible sense ; the aid of miracles has
been called in to resolve difficulties and reconcile contra-
dictions. And still, notwithstanding the perverseness with
which they are interpreted, these half-understood books
exercise a mighty spell ; single verses, misapplied words,
disputed texts, have affected the social and political state of
millions of mankind during a thousand or many thousand
years. Even without reference to their contents, the mere
name of these books has been a power in the Eastern world.
Pacts like these would be greatly misunderstood if they were
supposed to reduce the Old and New Testament to the level
of other sacred books, or Christianity to the level of other
religions. But they may guard us against some forms of
superstition which insensibly, almost innocently, spring up
among Christians ; and they reveal weaknesses of human
nature, from which we can scarcely hope that our own age
or country is exempt.
Let us conclude this digression by summing up the use
of such inquiries ; as a touchstone and witness of Christian
truth ; as bearing on our relations with the heathens
themselves.
Christianity, in its way through the world, is ever taking
up and incorporating with itself Jewish, secular, or even
Gentile elements. And the use of the study of the heathen
religions is just this : it teaches us to separate the externals
or accidents of Christianity from its essence ; its local,
temporary type from its true spirit and life. These ex-
ternals, which Christianity has in common with other
religions of the East, may be useful, may be necessary, but
they are not the truths which Christ came on earth to
19.2 ESSAY ON
reveal. The fact of the possession of sacred books, and the
claim which is made for them, that they are free from all
error or imperfection, if admitted, would not distinguish
the Christian from the Mahomedan faith. Most of the
Eastern religions, again, have had vast hierarchies and
dogmatic systems ; neither is this a note of divinity. Also,
they are witnessed to by signs and wonders ; we are com-
pelled to go further to find the characteristics of the Gospel
of Christ. As the Apostle says : ' And yet I show you
a more excellent way,' — not in the Scriptures, nor in the
church, nor in a system of doctrines, nor in miracles, does
Christianity consist, though some of these may be its neces-
sary accompaniments or instruments, but in the life and
teaching of Christ.
The study of 'comparative theology' not only helps to
distinguish the accidents from the essence of Christianity ;
it also affords a new kind of testimony to its truth ; it shows
what the world was aiming at through many cycles of human
history — what the Gospel alone fulfilled. The Gentile reli-
gions, from being enemies, became witnesses of the Christian
faith. They are no longer adverse positions held by the
powers of evil, but outworks or buttresses, like the courts
of the Temple on Mount Sion, covering the holy place.
Granting that some of the doctrines and teachers of the
heathen world were nearer the truth than we once supposed,
such resemblances cause no alarm or uneasiness ; we have
no reason to fable that they are the fragments of some
primaeval revelation. We look forwards, not backwards ;
to the end, not to the beginning ; not to the garden of Eden,
but to the life of Christ. There is no longer any need to
maintain a thesis ; we have the perfect freedom and real
peace which is attained by the certainty that we know all,
and that nothing is kept back. Such was the position of
Christianity in former ages ; it was on a level with the
knowledge of mankind. But in later years unworthy fear
has too often paralyzed its teachers : instead of seeking to
NATURAL RELIGION 1 93
readjust its relations to the present state of history and
science, they have clung in agony to the past. For the
Gospel is the child of light ; it lives in the light of this
world ; it has no shifts or concealments ; there is no
kind of knowledge which it needs to suppress ; it allows
us to see the good in all things ; it does not forbid us to
observe also the evil which has incrusted upon itself. It is
willing that we should look calmly and steadily at all the
facts of the history of religion. It takes no offence at the
remark, that it has drawn into itself the good of other reli-
gions ; that the laws and institutions of the Koman Empire
have supplied the outer form, and heathen philosophy some
of the inner mechanism which was necessary to its growth
in the world. No violence is done to its spirit by the
enumeration of the causes which have led to its success.
It permits us also to note, that while it has purified the
civilization of the West, there are soils of earth on which
it seems hardly capable of living without becoming corrupt
or degenerate. Such knowledge is innocent and a ' creature
of God.' And considering how much of the bitterness of
Christians against one another arises from ignorance and
a false conception of the nature of religion, it is not
chimerical to imagine that the historical study of religions
may be a help to Christian charity. The least differences
seem often to be the greatest ; the perception of the greater
differences makes the lesser insignificant. Living within
the sphere of Christianity, it is good for us sometimes to
place ourselves without ; to turn away from ' the weak and
beggarly elem.ents ' of worn-out controversies to contemplate
the great phases of human existence. Looking at the reli-
gions of mankind, succeeding one another in a wonderful
order, it is hard to narrow our minds to party or sectarian
views in our own age or country. Had it been known that
a dispute about faith and works existed among Buddhists,
would not this knowledge have modified the great question
of the Eeformation ? Such studies have also a philosophical
VOL. II. o
194 ESSAY ON
value as well as a Christian use. They may, perhaps, open
to us a new page in the history of our own minds, as well
as in the history of the human race. Mankind, in primitive
times, seem at first sight very unlike ourselves : as we look
upon them with sympathy and interest, a likeness begins to
appear ; in us too there is a piece of the primitive man ;
many of his wayward fancies are the caricatures of our
errors or perplexities. If a clearer light is ever to be thrown
either on the nature of religion or of the human mind, it
will come, not from analyses of the individual or from
inward experience, but from a study of the mental histoiy
of mankind, and especially of those ages in which human
nature was fusile, still not yet cast in a mould, and rendered
incapable of receiving new creations or impressions.
The study of the religions of the world has also a bearing
on the present condition of the heathen. We cannot act
upon men unless we understand them : we cannot raise or
elevate their moral character unless we are able to draw
from its concealment the seed of good which they already
contain. It is a remarkable fact, that Christianity, springing
up in the East, should have conquered the whole western
world, and that in the East itself it should have scarcely
extended its border, or even retained its original hold.
' Westward the course of Christianity has taken its way ; '
and now it seems as if the two ends of the world would
no longer meet ; as if differences of degree had extended to
differences of kind in human nature, and that we cannot
pass from one species to another. Whichever way we look,
difficulties appear such as had no existence in the first ages :
either barbarism, paling in the presence of a superior race,
so that it can hardly be kept alive to receive Christianity, or
the mummy-like civilization of China, which seems as though
it could never become instinct with a new life, or Brahmin-
ism, outlasting in its pride many conquerors of the soil, or
the nobler form of Mahomed anism ; the religion of the
patriarchs, as it were, overliving itself, preaching to the
NATURAL RELIGION 1 95
sons of Ishmael the God of Abraham, who had not yet
revealed himself as man. These great systems of religious
belief have been subject to some internal changes in
a shifting world : the eifect produced upon them from
without is as yet scarcely perceptible. The attempt to
move them is like a conflict between man and nature.
And in some places it seems as if the wave had receded
again after its advance, and some conversions have been
dearly bought, either by the violence of persecution or the
corruption or accommodation of the truth. Each sect of
Christians has been apt to lend itself to the illusion that the
great organic differences of human nature might be bridged
over, could the Gospel of Christ be preached to the heathen
in that precise form in which it is received by themselves ;
' if we could but land in remote countries, full armed in
that particular system or way after which we in England
worship the God of our Fathers.' And often the words
have been repeated, sometimes in the spirit of delusion,
sometimes in that of faith and love : * Lift up your eyes,
and behold the fields, that they are already white for
harvest,' when it was but a small corner of the field that
was beginning to whiten, a few ears only which were ready
for the reapers to gather.
And yet the command remains : ' Go forth and preach
the Gospel to every creature.' Nor can any blessing be
conceived greater than the spread of Christianity among
heathen nations, nor any calling nobler or higher to which
Christians can devote themselves. Why are we unable to
fulfil this command in any effectual manner? Is it that
the Gospel has had barriers set to it, and that the stream no
longer overflows on the surrounding territory ; that we have
enough of this water for ourselves, but not enough for us
and them ? or that the example of nominal Christians, who
are bent on their own trade or interest, destroys the lesson
which has been preached by the ministers of religion ? Yet
the lives of believers did not prevent the spread of
196 ESSAY ON
Christianity at Corinth and Ephesus. And it is hard to
suppose that the religion which is true for ourselves has
lost its vital power in the world.
The truth seems to be, not that Christianity has lost its
power, but that we are seeking to propagate Christianity
under circumstances which, during the eighteen centuries of
its existence, it has never yet encountered. Perhaps there
may have been a want of zeal, or discretion, or education in
the preachers ; sometimes there may have been too great
a desire to impress on the mind of the heathen some peculiar
doctrine, instead of the more general lesson of 'righteous-
ness, temperance, judgement to come.' But however this
may be, there is no reason to believe that even if a saint or
apostle could rise from the dead, he would produce by his
preaching alone, without the use of other means, any wide
or deep impression on India or China. To restore life to
those countries is a vast and complex work, in which many
agencies have to co-operate — political, industrial, social ; and
missionary efforts, though a blessed, are but a small pai-t ;
and the Government is not the less Christian because it
seeks to rule a heathen nation on principles of truth and
justice only. Let us not measure this great work by the
number of communicants or converts. Even when wholly
detached from Christianity, the true spirit of Christianity
may animate it. The extirpation of crime, the administra-
tion of justice, the punishment of falsehood, maybe regarded,
without a figure of speech, as ' the word of the Lord ' to
a weak and deceitful people. Lessons of purity and love too
flow insensibly out of improvement in the relations of social
life. It is the disciple of Christ, not Christ himself, who
would forbid us to give these to the many, because we can
only give the Gospel to a very few. For it is of the millions,
not of the thousands, in India that we must first give an
account. Our relations to the heathen are different from
those of Christians in former ages, and our progress in their
conversion slower. The success which attends our efforts
NATURAL EELIGION I97
may be disparagingly compared with that of Boniface or
Augustine ; but if we look a little closer, we shall see no
reason to regret that Providence has placed in our hands
other instruments for the spread of Christianity besides the
zeal of heroes and martyrs. The power to convert multitudes
by a look or a word has passed away ; but God has given us
another means of ameliorating the condition of mankind,
by acting on their circumstances, which works extensively
rather than intensively, and is in some respects safer and
less liable to abuse. The mission is one of governments
rather than of churches or individuals. And if, in carrying
it out, we seem to lose sight of some of the distinctive marks
of Christianity, let us not doubt that the increase of justice
and mercy, the growing sense of truth, even the progress of
industry, are in themselves so many steps towards the
kingdom of heaven.
In the direct preaching of the Gospel, no help can be
greater than that which is gained from a knowledge of the
heathen religions. The resident in heathen countries readily
observes the surface of the world ; he has no difficulty in
learning the habits of the natives ; he avoids irritating their
fears or jealousies. It requires a greater effort to understand
the mind of a people ; to be able to rouse or calm them ; to
sympathize with them, and yet to rule them. But it is
a higher and more commanding knowledge still to com-
prehend their religion, not only in its decline and corrvip-
tion, but in its origin and idea, — to understand that which
they misunderstand, to appeal to that which they reverence
against themselves, to turn back the currents of thought and
opinion which have flowed in their veins for thousands of
years. Such is the kind of knowledge which St. Paul had
when to the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might win
some ; which led him while placing the new and old in
irreconcilable opposition, to bring forth the new out of the
treasure-house of the old. No religion, at present existing
in the world, stands in the same relation to Christianity
198 ESSAY ON
that Judaism once did ; there is no other religion which is
prophetic or anticipatory of it. But neither is there any
religion which does not contain some idea of truth, some
notion of duty or obligation, some sense of dependence on
God and brotherly love to man, some human feeling of
home or country. As in the vast series of the animal
creation, with its many omissions and interruptions, the eye
of the naturalist sees a kind of continuity — some elements
of the higher descending into the lower, mdiments of the
lower appearing in the higher also — so the Christian
philosopher, gazing on the different races and religions of
mankind, seems to see in them a spiritual continuity, not
without the thought crossing him that the God who has
made of one blood all the nations of the earth may yet
renew in them a common life, and that our increasing
knowledge of the present and past history of the world,
and the progress of civilization itself, may be the means
which He has provided, working not always in the way
which we expert — 'that his banished ones be not expelled
from him.'
§2.
Natural religion, in the sense in which St. Paul appeals
to its witness, is confined within narrower limits. It is
a feeling rather than a philosophy; and rests not on argu-
ments, but on impressions of God in nature. The Apostle,
in the first chapter of the Eomans, does not reason from
first causes or from final causes ; abstractions like these
would not have been understood by him. Neither is he
taking an historical survey of the religions of mankind ;
he touches, in a word only, on those who changed the glory
of God into the ' likeness of man, and birds, and four-footed
beasts, and creeping things ' (Eom. i. 23), as on the differ-
ences of nations, in Acts xviii, 26, More truly may we
describe him in the language of the Psalmist, the very
vacancy of which has a peculiar meaning : ' He lifts up his
eyes to the hills from whence cometh his salvation.' He
NATURAL RELIGION 199
wishes to inspire other men with that consciousness of God
in all things which he himself feels : * in a dry and thirsty-
land where no water is,' he would raise their minds to think
of Him 'who gave them rain from heaven and fruitful
seasons ; ' in the city of Pericles and Phidias he bids them
turn from gilded statues and temples formed with hands, to
the God who made of one blood all the nations of the earth,
'who is not far from every one of us.' Yet it is observable
that he also begins by connecting his own thoughts with
theirs, quoting 'their own poets,' and taking occasion, from
an inscription which he found in their streets, to declare
' the mystery which was once hidden, but now revealed.'
The appeal to the witness of God in nature has passed
from the Old Testament into the New ; it is one of the many
points which the Epistles of St. Paul and the Psalms and
Prophets have in common. ' The invisible things from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made,' is another way of saying,
' The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament
showeth his handywork.' Yet the conception of the Old
Testament is not the same with that of the New : in the
latter we seem to be more disengaged from the things of
sense ; the utterance of the former is more that of feeling,
and less of reflection. One is the poetry of a primitive age,
full of vivid immediate impressions ; in the other nature is
more distant— the freshness of the first vision of earth has
passed away. The Deity himself, in the Hebrew Scriptures,
has a visible form : as He appeared ' with the body of
heaven in his clearness ; ' as He was seen by the prophet
Ezekiel out of the midst of the fire and the whirlwind,
' full of eyes within and without, and the spirit of the living
creature in the wheels.' But in the New Testament, 'No
man hath seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.'
And this difference leads to a further difference in His
relation to His works. In what we term nature, the pro-
300 ESSAY ON
phet beheld only the covering cherubim that veil the face
of God : as He moves, earth moves to meet Him ; ' He
maketh the winds his angels,' 'the heavens also bow before
him.' His voice, as the Psalmist says, is heard in the
storm : ' The Highest gives his thunder ; at thy chiding,
0 Lord, the foundations of the round world are discovered.'
The wonders of creation are not ornaments or poetical
figures, strewed over the pages of the Old Testament by the
hand of the artist, but the frame in which it consists. And
yet in this material garb the moral and spiritual nature of
God is never lost sight of : in the conflict of the elements
He is the free Lord over them ; at His breath — the least
exertion of His power — 'they come and flee away.' He is
spirit, not light — a person, not an element or principle ;
though creating all things by His woi-d, and existing with-
out reference to them, yet also, in His condescension, the
God of the Jewish nation, and of individuals who serve
Him. The terrible imageiy in which the Psalmist delights
to array His power is not inconsistent with the gentlest
feelings of love and trust, such as are also expressed in the
passage just now quoted : ' I will love thee, 0 Lord, my
strength.' God is in nature because He is near also to the
cry of His servants. The heart of man expands in His
presence ; he fears to die lest he should be taken from it.
There is nothing Kke this in any other religion in the world.
No Greek or Eoman ever had the consciousness of love
towards his God. No other sacred books can show a pas-
sage displaying such a range of feeling as the eighteenth or
twenty-ninth Psalm — so awful a conception of the majesty
of God, so true and tender a sense of His righteousness and
lovingkindness. It is the same God who wields nature,
who also brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt ; who,
even though the mother desert ' her sucking child,' will not
' forget the work of his hands. '
But the God of nature in the Old Testament is not the
God of storms or of battles only, but of peace and repose.
NATUEAL RELIGION 201
Sometimes a sort of confidence fills the breast of the Psalmist,
even in that land of natural convulsions : ' He hath set the
round world so fast that it cannot be moved.' At other
times the same peace seems to diffuse itself over the scenes
of daily life : ' The hills stand round about Jerusalem, even
so is the Lord round about them that fear him.' 'He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me
beside the still waters.' Then again the Psalmist wonders
at the contrast between man and the other glories of creation :
' When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands, the
moon and the stars, that thou hast ordained ; what is man,
that thou art mindful of him ? or the son of man, that thou
visitest him?' Yet these 'glories' are the images also of
a higher glory: Jerusalem itself is transfigured into a city
in the clouds, and the tabernacle and temple become the
pavilion of God on high. And the dawn of day in the
prophecies, as well as in the Epistles, is the light which is
to shine 'for the healing of the nations.' There are other
passages in which the thought of the relation of God to
nature calls forth a sort of exulting irony, and the prophet
speaks of God, not so much as governing the world, as
looking down upon it and taking His pastime in it : ' It is
he that sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; ' or ' he measureth
the waters in the hollow of his hand ; ' or 'he taketh up
the isles as a very little thing : ' the feeling of which may
be compared with the more general language of St. Paul :
'We are the clay and he the potter.' The highest things
on earth reach no farther than to suggest the reflection of
their inferiority : ' Behold even the sun, and it shineth not ;
and the moon is not pure in his sight.'
It is hard to say how far such meditations belong only to
particular ages, or to particular temperaments in our own.
Doubtless, the influence of natural scenery differs with
difference of climate, pursuits, education. ' The God of the
hills is not the God of the valleys also ; ' that is to say, the
202 ESSAY ON
aspirations of the human heart are roused more by the
singular and uncommon, than by the quiet landscape which
presents itself in our own neighbourhood. The sailor has
a different sense of the vastness of the great deep and the
infinity of the heaven above, from what is possible to
another. Dwellers in cities, no less than the inhabitants
of the desert, gaze upon the stars with different feelings
from those who see the ever-varying forms of the seasons.
What impression is gathered, or what lesson conveyed,
seems like matter of chance or fancy. The power of these
sweet influences often passes away when language comes
between us and them. Yet they are not mere dreams of
our own creation. He who has lost, or has failed to acquire,
this interest in the beauty of the world around, is without
one of the greatest of earthly blessings. The voice of God
in nature calls us away from selfish cares into the free air
and the light of day. There, as in a world the face of which
is not marred by human passion, we seem to feel ' that the
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'
It is impossible that our own feeling towards nature in
the present day can be the same with that of the Psalmist ;
neither is that of the Psalmist the same with that of the
Apostle ; while, in the Book of Job and Ecclesiastes we
seem to catch the echo of a strain different from either. To
us, God is not in the whirlwind nor in the storm, nor in the
earthquake, but in the still small voice. Is it not for the
attempt to bring God nearer to us in the works of nature
that we can truly conceive Him to be, that a poet of our
own age has been subject to the charge of pantheism ? God
has removed himself out of our sight, that He may give us
a greater idea of the immensity of His power. Perhaps it is
impossible for us to have the wider and the narrower con-
ception of God at the same time. We cannot see Him
equally in the accidents of the world, when we think of
Him as identified with its laws. But there is another way
into His presence through our own hearts. He has given
NATURAL RELIGION 203
US the more circuitous path of knowledge ; He has not
closed against us the door of faith. He has enabled us, not
merely to gaze with the eye on the forms and colours of
Nature, but in a measure also to understand its laws, to
wander over space and time in the contemplation of its
mechanism, and yet to return again to ' the meanest flower
that breathes,' for thoughts such as the other wonders of
earth and sky are unable to impart.
It is a simpler, not a lower, lesson which we gather from
the Apostle, First, he teaches that in Nature there is some-
thing to draw us from the visible to the invisible. The
world to the Gentiles also had seemed full of innumerable
deities ; it is really full of the presence of Him who made
it. Secondly, the Apostle teaches the universality of God's
providence over the whole earth. He covered it with
inhabitants, to whom He gave their times and places of
abode, ' that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might
feel after him, and find him.' They are one family, 'his
ofl'spring,' notwithstanding the varieties of race, language,
religion. As God is one, even so man is one in a common
human nature — in the universality of sin, no less than the
universality of redemption. A third lesson is the con-
nexion of immorality and idolatry. They who lower the
nature of God lower the nature of man also. Greek philo-
sophy fell short of these lessons. Often as Plato speaks of
the myths and legends of the gods, he failed to perceive the
immorality of a religion of sense. Still less had any Greek
imagined a brotherhood of all mankind, or a dispensation of
God reaching backwards and forwards over all time. Its
limitation was an essential principle of Greek life ; it was
confined to a narrow spot of earth, and to small cities ; it
could not include others besides Greeks ; its gods were not
gods of the world, but of Greece.
Aspects of Nature in different ages have changed before
the eye of man ; at times fruitful of many thoughts ; at
other times either unheeded or fading into insignificance iu
204 ESSAY ON
comparison of the inner world. When the Apostle spoke of
the visible things which ' witness of the divine power and
glory,' it was not the beauty of particular spots which he
recalled ; his eye was not satisfied with seeing the fairness
of the country any more than the majesty of cities. He did
not study the Sittings of shadows on the hills, or even the
movements of the stars in their courses. The plainest pas-
sages of the book of nature were, equally with the sublimest,
the writing of a Divine hand. Neither was it upon scenes
of earth that he was looking when he spoke of the ' whole
creation groaning together until now. ' Whatever associations
of melancholy or pity may attach to places or states of the
heavens, or to the condition of the inferior animals who
seem to suffer for our sakes ; it is not in these that the
Apostle traces the indications of a ruined world, but in the
misery and distraction of the heart of man. And the pros-
pect on which he loves to dwell is not that of the promised
land, as Moses surveyed it far and wide from the top of
Pisgah, but the human race itself, the great family in
heaven and earth, of v/hich Christ is the head, reunited to
the God who made it, when ' there shall be neither bar-
barian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all one in Christ,' the
Apostle himself also waiting for the fuller manifestation of
the sons of God, and sometimes carrying his thoughts yet
further to that mysterious hour, when 'the Son shall be
subject to him that put all things under him, that God may
be all in all. '
When thoughts like these fill the mind, there is little
room for reflection on the world without. Even the
missionary in modern times hardly cares to go out of his
way to visit a picturesque country or the monuments of
former ages. He is ' determined to know one thing only,
Christ crucified.' Of the beauties of creation, his chief
thought is that they are the work of God. He does not
analyze them by rules of taste, or devise material out of
them for literary discourse. The Apostle, too, in the abun-
NATURAL EELIGHON 205
dance of his revelations, has an eye turned inward on
another world. It is not that he is dead to Nature, but
that it is out of his way ; not as in the Old Testament, the
veil or frame of the Divine presence, but only the back-
ground of human nature and of revelation. When speaking
of the heathen, it comes readily into his thoughts ; it never
seems to occur to him in connexion with the work of
Christ. He does not read mysteries in the leaves of the
forest, or see the image of the cross in the forms of the tree,
or find miracles of design in the complex structures of
animal life. His thoughts respecting the works of God are
simpler, and also deeper. The child and the philosopher
alike hear a witness in the first chapter of the Eomans, or
in the discourse of the Apostle on Mars' Hill, or at Lystra,
which the mystic fancies of Neoplatonism, and the modern
evidences of natural theology, fail to convey to them.
§3.
In the common use of language natural religion is
opposed to revealed. That which men know, or seem to
know, of themselves, which if the written word were to be
destroyed would still remain, which existed prior to revela-
tion, and which might be imagined to survive it, which
may be described as general rather than special religion, as
Christianity rationalized into morality, which speaks of God,
but not of Christ — of nature, but not of grace — has been
termed natural religion. Philosophical arguments for the
being of a God are comprehended under the same term. It
is also used to denote a supposed primitive or patriarchal
religion, whether based on a primaeval revelation or not,
from which the mythologies or idolatries of the heathen
world are conceived to be offshoots.
The line has been sometimes sharply drawn between
natural and revealed religion ; in other ages of the world,
the two have been allowed to approximate, or be almost
identified with each other. Natural religion has been often
206 ESSAY ON
depressed with a view to the exaltation of revealed ; the
feebleness of the one seeming to involve a necessity for the
other. Natural religion has sometimes been regarded as
the invention of human reason ; at other times, as the
decaying sense of a primaeval revelation. Yet natural and
revealed religion, in the sense in which it is attempted to
oppose them, are contrasts rather of words than of ideas.
For who can say where the one begins and the other ends ?
Who will determine how many elements of Scriptural
truth enter into modern philosophy or the opinions of the
world in general? Who can analyze how much, even in
a Christian country, is really of heathen origin ? Eevealed
religion is ever taking the form of the voice of Nature
within ; experience is ever modifying our application of the
truths of Scripture. The ideal of Christian life is more
easily distinguishable from the ideal of Greek and Eoman,
than the elements of opinion and belief which have come
from a Christian source are from those which come from
a secular or heathen one. Education itself tends to obli-
terate the distinction. The customs, laws, principles of
a Christian nation may be regarded either as a compromise
between the two, or as a harmony of them. We cannot
separate the truths of Christianity from Jewish or heathen
anticipations of them ; nor can we say how far the common
sense or morality of the present day is indirectly dependent
on the Christian religion.
And if, turning away from the complexity of human life
in our own age to the beginning of things, we try to con-
ceive revelation in its purity before it came into contact
with other influences, or mingled in the great tide of
political and social existence, we are still unable to distin-
guish between natural and revealed religion. Our difficulty
is like the old Aristotelian question, how to draw the line
between the moral and intellectual faculties. Let us ima-
gine a first moment at which revelation came into the
world ; there must still have been some prior state which
NATURAL RELIGION 207
made, revelation possible : in other words, revealed religion
presupposes natural. The mind was not a tabula rasa, on
which the characters of truth had to be inscribed ; that is
a mischievous notion, which only perplexes our knowledge
of the origin of things, whether in individuals or in the
race. If we say that this prior state is a Divine preparation
for the giving of the Law of Moses, or the spread of Chris-
tianity, the difference becomes one of degree which admits of
no sharp contrast. Revealed religion has already taken the
place of natural, and natural religion extended itself into the
province of revealed. Many persons who are fond of dis-
covering traces of revelation in the religions of the Gentile
world, resent the intrusion of natural elements into Scrip-
ture or Christianity. Natural religion they are willing to
see identified with revealed, but not revealed with natural ;
all Nature may be a miracle, but miracles are not reducible
to the course of Nature. But here is only a play between
words which derive their meaning from contrast ; the phe-
nomena are the same, but we read them by a different
light. And sometimes it may not be without advantage to
lay aside the two modes of expression, and think only of
that 'increasing purpose which through the ages ran.'
Religious faith strikes its roots deeper into the past, and
wider over the world, when it acknowledges Nature as well
as Scripture.
But although the opposition of natural and revealed
religion is an opposition of abstractions, to which no facts
really correspond, the term natural religion may be con-
veniently used to describe that aspect or point of view in
which religion appears when separated from Judaism or
Christianity. It will embrace all conceptions of religion or
morality which are not consciously derived from the Old
or New Testament. The favourite notion of a common or
patriarchal religion need not be excluded. Natural religion,
in this comprehensive sense, may be divided into two heads,
which the ambiguity of the word nature has sometimes
2o8 ESSAY ON
helped to confuse. First, (i.) the religion of nature before
revelation, such as may be supposed to have existed among
the patriarchs, or to exist still among primitive peoples,
who have not yet been enlightened by Christianity, or
debased by idolatry ; such (ii.) more truly, as the religions
of the Gentile world were and are. Secondly, the religion
of nature in a Christian country ; either the evidences of
religion which are derived from a source independent of the
written word, or the common sense of religion and morality,
which affords a rule of life to those who are not the subjects
of special Christian influences.
i. Natural religion in the first sense is an idea and net
a fact. The same tendency in man which has made him
look fondly on a golden age, has made him look back also to
a religion of nature. Like the memory of childhood, the
thought of the past has a strange power over us ; imagina-
tion lends it a glory which is not its own. What can be more
natural than that the shepherd, wandering over the earth
beneath the wide heavens, should ascend in thought to the
throne of the Invisible ? There is a refreshment to the fancy
in thinking of the morning of the world's day, when the sun
arose pure and bright, ere the clouds of error darkened the
earth. Everywhere, as a fact, the first inhabitants of earth
of whona history has left a memorial are sunk in helpless
ignorance. Yet there must have been a time, it is con-
ceived, of which there are no memorials, earlier still ; when
the Divine image was not yet lost, when men's wants were
few and their hearts innocent, ere cities had taken the place
of fields, or art of nature. The revelation of God to the
first father of the human race must have spread itself in an
ever-widening circle to his posterity. We pierce through
one layer of superstition to another, in the hope of catching
the light beyond, like children digging to find the sun in
the bosom of the earth.
The origin of an error so often illustrates the truth, that
it is worth while to pause for an instant and consider the
NATUEAL RELIGION 209
source of this fallacy, which in all ages has exerted a great
influence on mankind, reproducing itself in many different
forms among heathen as well as Christian writers. In
technical language, it might be described as the fallacy of
putting what is intelligible in the place of what is true. It
is easy to draw an imaginary picture of a golden or pastoral
age, such as poetry has always described it. The mode of
thought is habitual and familiar, the phrases which delineate
it are traditional, handed on from one set of poets to another,
repeated by one school of theologians to the next. It is
a different task to imagine the old world as it truly was,
that is, as it appears to us, dimly yet certainly, by the
unmistakable indications of language and of mythology. It
is hard to picture scenes of external nature unlike what
we have ever beheld : but it is harder far so to lay aside
ourselves as to imagine an inner world unlike our own,
forms of belief, not simply absurd, but indescribable and
unintelligible to us. No one, probably, who has not realized
the differences of the human mind in different ages and
countries, either by contact with heathen nations or the
study of old language and mythology, with the help of such
a parallel as childhood offers to the infancy of the world,
will be willing to admit them in their full extent.
Instead of this difficult and laborious process, we readily
conceive of man in the earliest stages of society as not
different, but only less than we are. We suppose him
deprived of the arts, unacquainted with the truths of Chris-
tianity, without the knowledge obtained from books, and
yet only unlike us in the simplicity of his tastes and
habitudes. We generalize what we are ourselves, and drop
out the particular circumstances and details of our lives, and
then suppose ourselves to have before us the dweller in
Mesopotamia in the days of Abraham, or the patriarchs
going down to gather corn in Egypt. This imaginary
picture of a patriarchal religion has had such charms for
some minds, that they have hoped to see it realized on the
VOL. II. p
aiO ESSAY ON
wreck of Christianity itself. They did not perceive that
they were deluding themselves with a vacant dream which
has never yet filled the heart of man.
Philosophers have illustrated the origin of government by
a picture of mankind meeting together in a large plain, to
determine the rights of governors and subjects ; in like
manner we may assist imagination, by conceiving the mul-
titude of men with their tribes, races, features, languages,
convoked in the plains of the East, to hear from some
inspired legislator as Moses, or from the voice of God
himself, a revelation about God and nature, and their future
destiny ; such a revelation in the first day of the world's
history as the day of judgement will be at the last. Let
us fix our minds, not on the Giver of the revelation, but on
the receivers of it. Must there not have been in them some
common sense, or faculty, or feeling, which made them
capable of receiving it ? Must there not have been an appre-
hension which made it a revelation to them ? Must they
not all first have been of one language and one speech?
And, what is implied by this, must they not all have had
one mental structure, and received the same impressions
from external objects, the same lesson from nature ? Or,
to put the hypothesis in another form, suppose that by
some electric power the same truth could have been made
to sound in the ears and flash before the eyes of all, would
they not have gone their ways, one to tents, another to
cities ; one to be a tiller of the ground, another to be
a feeder of sheep ; one to be a huntsman, another to be
a warrior ; one to dwell in woods and forests, another in
boundless plains ; one in valleys, one on mountains, one
beneath the liquid heaven of Greece and Asia, another in
the murky regions of the north ? And amid all this diversity
of habits, occupations, scenes, climates, what common truth
of religion could we expect to remain while man was man,
the creature in a great degree of outward ch'cumstances ?
Still less reason would there be to expect the presei-vation
NATURAL EELIGION 211
of a primaeval truth throughout the world, if we imagine
the revelation made, not to the multitude of men, but to
a single individual, and not committed to writing for above
two thousand years.
ii. The theory of a primitive tradition, common to all
mankind, has only to be placed distinctly before the mind,
to make us aware that it is the fabric of a vision. But, even
if it were conceivable, it would be inconsistent with facts.
Ancient history says nothing of a general religion, but of
particular national ones ; of received beliefs about places
and persons, about animal life, about the sun, moon, and
stars, about the Divine essence permeating the world, about
gods in the likeness of men appearing in battles and direct-
ing the course of states, about the shades below, about
sacrifices, purifications, initiations, magic, mysteries. These
were the religions of nature, which in historical times have
received from custom also a second nature. Early poetry
shows us the same religions in a previous stage, while they
are still growing, and fancy is freely playing around the
gods of its own creation. Language and mythology carry
us a step further back, into a mental world yet more distant
and more unlike our own. That world is a prison of sense,
in which outward objects take the place of ideas ; in which
morality is a fact of nature, and ' wisdom at one entrance
quite shut out.' Human beings in that pre-historic age seem
to have had only a kind of limited intelligence ; they were
the slaves, as we should say, of association. They were
rooted in particular spots, or wandered up and down upon
the earth, confusing themselves and God and nature, gazing
timidly on the world around, starting at their very shadows,
and seeing in all things a superhuman power at the mercy
of which they were. They had no distinction of body and
soul, mind and matter, physical and moral. Their con-
ceptions were neither here nor there ; neither sensible
objects, nor symbols of the unseen. Their gods were very
near ; the neighbouring hill or passing stream, brute matter
P 2
213 ESSAY ON
as we regard it, to them a divinity, because it seemed in-
spired with a life like their own. They could not have
formed an idea of the whole earth, much less of the God
who made it. Their mixed modes of thought, their figures
of speech, which are not figures, their personifications of
nature, their reflections of the individual upon the world,
and of the world upon the individual, the omnipresence to
them of the sensuous and visible, indicate an intellectual
state which it is impossible for us, with our regular divisions
of thought, even to conceive. We must raze from the table
of the mind their language, ere they could become capable
of a universal religion.
But although we find no vestiges of a primaeval revelation,
and cannot imagine how such a revelation could have been
possible consistently with those indications of the state of
man which language and mythology supply, it is true,
nevertheless, that the j^rimitive peoples of mankind have
a religious principle common to all. Religion, rather than
reason, is the faculty of man in the earliest stage of his
existence. Reverence for powers above him is the first
principle which raises the individual out of himself ; the
germ of political order, and probably also of social life. It
is the higher necessity of nature, as hunger and the animal
passions are the lower. ' The clay ' falls before the rising
dawn ; it may stumble over stocks and stones ; but it is
struggling upwards into a higher day. The worshipper is
drawn as by a magnet to some object out of himself. He
is weak and must have a god ; he has the feeling of a slave
towards his master, of a child towards its parents, of the
lower animals towards himself. The being whom he serves
is, like himself, passionate and capricious ; he sees him
starting up everywhere in the unmeaning accidents of life.
The good which he values himself he attributes to him ;
there is no proportion in his ideas ; the great power of
nature is the lord also of sheep and oxen. Sometimes, with
childish joy, he invites the god to drink of his beverage or
NATURAL RELIGION 213
eat of his food ; at other times, the orgies which he enacts
before him, lead us seriously to ask the question ' whether
religion may not in truth have been a kind of madness.'
He propitiates him and is himself soothed and comforted ;
again he is at his mercy, and propitiates him again. So
the dream of life is rounded to the poor human creature :
incapable as he is of seeing his true Father, religion seems
to exercise over him a fatal overpowering influence ; the
religion of nature we cannot call it, for that would of itself
lead to a misconception, but the religion of the place in
which he lives, of the objects which he sees, of the tribe
to which he belongs, of the animal forms which range in
the wilds around hun, mingling strangely with the witness
of his own spirit that there is in the world a being above
him.
Out of this troubled and perplexed state of the human
fancy the g]-eat religions of the world arose, all of them in
different degrees affording a rest to the mind, and reducing
to rule and measure the wayward impulses of human
nature. All of them had a history in antecedent ages ;
there is no stage in which they do not offer indications
of an earlier religion which preceded them. Whether they
came into being, like some geological formations, by slow
deposits, or, like others, by the shock of an earthquake, that
is, by some convulsion and settlement of the human mind,
is a question which may be suggested, but cannot be
answered. The Hindoo Pantheon, even in the antique
form in which the world of deities is presented in the
Vedas, implies a growth of fancy and ceremonial which
may have continued for thousands of years. Probably at
a much earlier period than we are able to trace them,
religions, like languages, had their distinctive characters
with corresponding differences in the first rude constitution
of society. As in the case of languages, it is a fair subject
of inquiry, whether they do not all mount uj) to some
elementary type in which they were more nearly allied to
214 ESSAY ON
sense ; a primaeval religion, in which we may imagine the
influence of nature was analogous to the first impressions
of the outward world on the infant's wandering eyesight,
and the earliest worship may be compared with the first
use of signs or stammering of speech. Such a religion we
may conceive as springing from simple instinct ; yet an
instinct higher, even in its lowest degree, than the instinct
of the animal creation ; in which the fear of nature com-
bined with the assertion of sway over it, which had already
a law of progress, and was beginning to set bounds to the
spiritual chaos. Of this aboriginal state we only ' entertain
conjecture;' it is beyond the horizon, even when, the eye
is strained to the uttermost.
But if the first origin of the heathen religions is in the
clouds, their decline, though a phenomenon with which we
are familiar in history, of which in some parts of the world
we are living witnesses, is also obscure to us. The kind of
knowledge that we have of them is like our knowledge of
the ways of animals ; we see and observe, but we cannot
get inside them ; we cannot think or feel with their wor-
shippers. Most or all of them are in a state of decay ; they
have lost their life or creative power ; once adequate to the
wants of man, they have ceased to be so for ages. Naturally
we should imagine that the religion itself would pass away
when its meaning was no longer understood ; that with the
spirit, the letter too would die ; that when the circumstances
of a nation changed, the rites of worship to which they had
given birth would be forgotten. The reverse is the fact.
Old age affords examples of habits which become insane and
inveterate at a time when they have no longer an object ;
that is an image of the antiquity of religions. Modes of
worship, rules of purification, set forms of words, cling with
a greater tenacity when they have no meaning or purpose.
The habit of a week or a month may be thrown oif ; not
the habit of a thousand years. The hand of the past lies
heavily on the present in all religions ; in the East it is
NATURAL EELIGION ZI^
a yoke which has never been shaken off. Empire, freedom,
among the educated classes belief may pass away, and yet
the routine of ceremonial continues ; the political glory of
a religion may be set at the time when its power over the
minds of men is most ineradicable.
One of our first inquiries in reference to the elder religions
of the world is how we may adjust them to our own moral
and religious ideas. Moral elements seem at first sight to
be wholly wanting in them. In the modern sense of the
term, they are neither moral nor immoral, but natural ; they
have no idea of right and wrong, as distinct from the
common opinion or feeling of their age and country. No
action in Homer, however dishonourable or treacherous,
calls forth moral reprobation. Neither gods nor men are
expected to present any ideal of justice or virtue ; their
power or splendour may be the theme of the poet's verse,
not their truth or goodness. The only principle on which
the Homeric deities reward mortals, is in return for gifts
and sacrifices, or from personal attachment. A later age
made a step forwards in morality and backwards at the
same time ; it acquired clearer ideas of right and wrong, but
found itself encumbered with conceptions of fate and destiny.
The vengeance of the Eumenides has but a rude analogy
with justice ; the personal innocence of the victim whom
the gods pursued is a part of the interest, in some instances,
of Greek tragedy. Higher and holier thoughts of the Divine
nature appear in Pindar and Sophocles, and philosophy
sought to make religion and mythology the vehicles of
moral truth. But it was no part of their original meaning.
Yet, in a lower sense, it is true that the heathen religions,
even in their primitive form, are not destitute of morality.
Their morality is unconscious morality, not ' man a law to
himself,' but ' man bound by the will of a superior being.'
Ideas of right and wrong have no place in them, yet the
first step has been made from sense and appetite into the
ideal world. He who denies himself something, who offers
2l6 ESSAY ON
up a prayer, who practises a penance, performs an act, not
of necessity, nor of choice, but of duty; he does not simply
follow the dictates of passion, though he may not be able
to give a reason for the j)erformance of his act. He whose
God comes first in his mind has an element within him
which in a certain degree sanctifies his life by i-aising him
above himself. He has some common interest with other
men, some unity in which he is comprehended with them.
There is a preparation for thoughts yet higher ; he contrasts
the permanence of divine and the fleeting nature of human
things ; while the generations of men pass away ' like
leaves,' the form of his God is unchanging, and grows not
old.
Differences in modes of thought render it difficult for us
to appreciate what spiritual elements lurked in disguise
among the primitive peoples of mankind. Many allowances
must be made before we judge them by our own categories.
They are not to be censured for indecency because they had
symbols which to after ages became indecent and obscene.
Neither were they mere fetish worshippers because they
use sensuous expressions. Eeligion, like language, in early
ages takes the form of sense, but that form of sense is also
the embodiment of thought. The stream and the animal
are not adored by man in heathen countries because they
are destitute of life or reason, but because they seem to him
full of mystery and power. It was with another feeling
than that of a worshipper of matter that the native of the
East fii'st prostrated himself before the rising sun, in whose
beams his nature seemed to revive, and his soul to be
absorbed. The most childish superstitions are often nothing
more than misunderstood relics of antiquity. There are
the remains of fetishism in the charms and cures of Chris-
tian countries ; no one regards the peasant who uses them
as a fetish worshipper. Many other confusions have their
parallel among ourselves ; if we only knew it. For indeed
our own ideas in religion, as in everything else, seem clearer
I
NATURAL EELIGION 217
to US than they really are, because they are our own. To
expect the heathen religions to conform to other modes of
thought, is as if the inhabitant of one country were to com-
plain of the inhabitant of another for not speaking the same
language with him. Our whole attitude towards nature is
different from theirs : to us all is ' law ; ' to them it was all
life and fancy, inconsecutive as a dream. Nothing is more
deeply fixed to us than the dualism of body and soul, mind
and matter ; they knew of no such distinction. But we
cannot infer from this a denial of the existence of mind or
soul ; because they use material images, it would be ridi-
culous to describe the Psalmist or the prophet Isaiah as
materialists ; whether in heathen poets or in the Jewish
Scriptures, such language belongs to an intermediate state,
which has not yet distinguished the spheres of the spiritual
and the sensuous. Childhood has been often used as the
figure of such a state, but the figure is only partially true,
for the childhood of the human race is the childhood of
grown up men, and in the child of the nineteenth century
there is a piece also of the man of the nineteenth centuiy.
Less obvious differences in speech and thought are more
fallacious. The word ' God ' means something as dissimilar
among ourselves and the Greeks as can possibly be
imagined ; even in Greek alone the difference of meaning
can hardly be exaggerated. It includes beings as unlike
each other as the muscular, eating and drinking deities of
Homer, and the abstract Being of Parmenides, or the
Platonic idea of good. All religions of the world use it,
however different their conceptions of God may be — poly-
theistic, pantheistic, monotheistic : it is universal, and also
individual ; or rather, from being universal, it has become
individual, a logical process which has quickened and helped
to develop the theological one. Other words, such as
prayer, sacrifice, expiation, in like manner vaiy in meaning
with the religion of which they are the expression. The
Homeric sacrifice is but a feast of gods and men, destitute
31 8 ESSAY ON
of any sacrificial import. Under expiations for sin are
included two things which to us are distinct, atonement for
moral guilt and accidental pollution. Similar ambiguities
occur in the ideas of a future life. The sapless ghosts in
Homer are neither souls nor bodies, but a sort of shadowy
beings. A like uncertainty extends in the Eastern religions
to some of the first principles of thought and being :
whether the negative is not also a positive ; whether the
mind of man is not also God ; whether this world is not
another ; whether privation of existence may not in some
sense be existence still.
These are a few of the differences for which we have to
allow in a comparison of our own and other times and
countries. We must say to ourselves, at eveiy step, human
nature in that age was unlike the human nature with which
we are acquainted, in language, in modes of thought, in
morality, in its conception of the world. Yet it was more
like than these differences alone would lead us to suppose.
The feelings of men draw nearer than their thoughts ; their
natural affections are more uniform than their religious
systems. Marriage, burial, worship, are at least common
to all nations. There never has been a time in which the
human race was absolutely without social laws ; in which
there was no memory of the past ; no reverence for a higher
power. More defined religious ideas, where the understand-
ing comes into play, grow more different ; it is by comparison
they are best explained ; like natural phenomena, they derive
their chief light from analogy with each other. Travelling
in thought from China, by way of India, Persia, and Egypt,
to the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, we distin-
guish a succession of stages in which the worship of nature
is developed ; in China as the rule or form of political life,
almost grovelling on the level of sense ; in India rising into
regions of thought and fancy, and allowing a corresponding
play in the institutions and character of the people ; in
Egypt wrapping itself in the mystery of antiquity, becoming
NATUEAL EELIGION 21 9
the religion of death and of the past ; in Persia divided
between light and darkness, good and evil, the upper and
the under world ; in Phoenicia, fierce and licentious, imbued
with the spirit of conquest and colonization. These are the
primary strata of the religions of mankind, often shifting
their position, and sometimes overlapping each other ; they
are distinguished from the secondary strata, as the religions
of nations from the inspirations of individuals. Thrown
into the form of abstraction, they express the various
degrees of distinctness with which man realizes his own
existence or that of a Divine Being and the relations between
them. But they are also powers which have shaped the
course of events in the world. The secret is contained in
them, why one nation has been free, another a slave ; why
one nation has dwelt like ants upon a hillock, another has
swept over the earth ; why one nation has given up its life
almost without a struggle, while another has been hewn
limb from limb in the conflict with its conquerors. All
these religions contributed to the polytheism of Greece ;
some elements derived from them being absorbed in the
first origin of the Greek religion and language, others acting
by later contact, some also by contrast.
'Nature through five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.'
We may conclude this portion of our subject with a few
remarks on the Greek and Roman religions, which have
a peculiar interest to us for several reasons : first, because
they have exercised a vast influence on modern Europe, the
one through philosophy, the other through law, and both
through literature and poetry ; secondly, because, almost
alone of the heathen religions, they came into contact with
early Christianity ; thirdly, because they are the religions of
ancient, as Christianity is of modern civilization.
The religion of Greece is remarkable for being a literature
as well as a religion. Its deities are ' nameless ' to us before
320 ESSAY ON
Homer ; to the Greek himself it began with the Olympic
family. Whatever dim notions existed of chaos and prim-
aeval night — of struggles for ascendency between the elder
and younger gods, these fables are buried out of sight before
Greek mythology begins. The Greek came forth at the
dawn of day, himseK a youth in the youth of the world,
drinking in the life of nature at every pore. The form
which his religion took was fixed by the Homeric poems,
which may be regarded as standing in the same relation to
the religion of Greece as sacred books to other forms of
religion. It cannot be said that they aroused the conscience
of men ; the more the Homeric poems are considered, the
more evident it becomes that they have no inner life of
morality like Hebrew prophecy, no Divine presence of good
slowly purging away the mist that fills the heart of man.
What they implanted, what they preserved in the Greek
nation, was not the sense of truth or right, but the power
of conception and expression — hai-monies of language and
thought which enabled man to clothe his ideas in forms of
everlasting beauty. They stamped the Greek world as the
world of art ; its religion became the genius of art. And
more and more in successive generations, with the co-opera-
tion of some political causes, the hand of art impressed
itself on religion ; in poetry, in sculpture, in architecture,
in festivals and dramatic contests, until in the artistic phase
of human life the religious is absorbed. And the form of
man, and the intellect of man, as if in sympathy with this
artistic development, attained a symmetry and power of
which the world has never seen the like.
And yet the great riddle of existence was not answered :
its deeper mysteries were not explored. The strife of man
with himself was healed only superficially ; there was
beauty and proportion everywhere, but no 'true being.'
The Jupiter Olympius of Phidias might seem worthy to
preside over the Greek world which he summoned before
him ; the Olympic victor might stand godlike in the full-
NATURAL RELIGION 221
ness of manly vigour ; but where could the weak and mean
appear ? what place was found for the slave or captive ?
Could bereaved parents acquiesce in the 'sapless shades'
of Homer, or the moral reflections of Thucydides? Was
there not some deeper intellectual or spiritual want which
man felt, some taste of immortality which he had some-
times experienced, which made him dissatisfied with his
earthly state?
No religion that failed to satisfy these cries of nature
could become the religion of mankind. Greek art and
Greek literature, losing something of their original refine-
ment, spread themselves over the Eoman world ; except
Christianity, they have become the richest treasure of
modern Europe. But the religion of Greece never really
grew in another soil, or beneath another heaven ; it was
local and national : dependent on the fine and subtle per-
ceptions of the Greek race ; though it amalgamated its
deities with those of Egypt and Eome, its spirit never
swayed mankind. It has a truer title to permanence and
universality in the circumstance that it gave birth to
philosophy.
The Greek mind passed, almost unconsciously to itself,
from polytheism to monotheism. While offering up wor-
ship to the Dorian Apollo, performing vows to Esculapius,
panic-stricken about the mutilation of the Hermae, the
Greek was also able to think of God as an idea, ©eo's not
Zev9. In this generalized or abstract form the Deity pre-
sided over daily life. Not a century after Anaxagoras had
introduced the distinction of mind and matter, it was the
belief of all philosophic inquirers that God was mind, or the
object of mind. The Homeric gods were beginning to be
out of place ; philosophy could not distinguish Apollo from
Athene, or Leto from Here. Unlike the saints of the
middle ages, they suggested no food for meditation ; they
were only beautiful forms, without individual character.
By the side of religion and art, speculation had arisen and
222 ESSAY ON
waxed strong, or rather it might be described as the inner
life which sprang from their decay. The clouds of mytho-
logy hung around it ; its youth was veiled in forms of
sense ; it was itself a new sort of poetry or religion.
Gradually it threw off the garment of sense ; it revealed
a world of ideas. It is impossible for us to conceive the
intensity of these ideas in their first freshness ; they were
not ideas, but gods, penetrating into the soul of the disciple,
sinking into the mind of the human race ; objects, not of
speculation only, but of faith and love. To the old Greek
religion, philosophy might be said to stand in a relation not
wholly different from that which the New Testament bears
to the Old ; the one putting a spiritual world in the place
of a temporal, the other an intellectual in the place of
a sensuous ; and to mankind in general it taught an ever-
lasting lesson, not indeed that of the Gospel of Christ, but
one in a lower degree necessary for man, enlarging the
limits of the human mind itself, and providing the
instruments of every kind of knowledge.
What the religion of Greece was to philosophy and art,
that the Eoman religion may be said to have been to
political and social life. It was the religion of the family ;
the religion also of the empire of the world. Beginning in
rustic simplicity, the traces of which it ever afterwards
retained, it grew with the power of the Koman state, and
became one with its laws. No fancy or poetry moulded the
forms of the Koman gods ; they are wanting in character
and hardly distinguishable from one another. Not what
they were, but their worship, is the point of interest about
them. Those inanimate beings occasionally said a patriotic
word at some critical juncture of the Eoman affairs, but
they had no attributes or qualities ; they are the mere
impersonation of the needs of the state. They were easily
identified in civilized and literary times with the Olympic
deities, but the transformation was only superficial. Greece
never conquered the religion of its masters. Great as was
NATURAL EELIGION 223
the readiness in later times to admit the worship of foreign
deities, endless as were the forms of private superstition,
these intrusions never weakened or broke the legal hold of
the Eoman religion. It was truly the 'established' religion.
It represented the greatness and power of Eome. The deifi-
cation of the Emperor, though disagreeable to the more
spiritual and intellectual feelings of that age of the world,
was its natural development. While Kome lasted the
Roman religion lasted ; like some vast fabric which the
destroyers of a great city are unable wholly to demolish, it
continued, though in ruins, after the irruption of the Goths,
and has exercised, through the medium of the civil law,
a power over modern Europe.
More interesting for us than the pursuit of this subject
into further details is the inquiry, in what light the philoso-
pher regarded the religious system w^ithin the circle of
which he lived ; the spirit of which animated Greek and
Roman poetry, the observance of which was the bond of
states. In the age of the Antonines, more than six hundred
years had passed away since the Athenian people first
became conscious of the contrariety of the two elements ;
and yet the wedge which philosophy had inserted in the
world seemed to have made no impression on the deeply
rooted customs of mankind. The ever-flowing stream of
ideas Vv as too feeble to overthrow the intrenchments of
antiquity. The course of individuals might be turned by
philosophy ; it was not intended to reconstruct the world.
It looked on and watched, seeming, in the absence of any
real progress, to lose its original force. Paganism tolerated ;
it had nothing to fear. Socrates and Plato in an earlier,
Seneca and Epictetus in a later age, acquiesced in this
heathen world, unlike as it was to their own intellectual
conceptions of a divine religion. No Greek or Roman phi-
losopher was also a great reformer of religion. Some, like
Socrates, were punctual in the observance of religious rites,
paying their vows to the gods, fearful of offending against
224 ESSAY ON
the letter as well as the spirit of divine commands ; they
thought it was hardly worth while to rationalize the Greek
mythology, when there were so many things nearer home
to do. Others, like the Epicureans, transferred the gods
into a distant heaven, where they were no more heard of ;
some, like the Stoics, sought to awaken a deeper sense of
moral responsibility. There were devout men, such as
Plutarch, who thought with reverence of the past, seeking
to improve the old heathen faith, and also lamenting its
decline ; there were scoffers, too, like Lucian, who found
inexhaustible amusement in the religious follies of mankind.
Others, like Herodotus in earlier ages, accepted with child-
like faith the more serious aspect of heathenism, or con-
tented themselves, like Thucydides, with ignoring it. The
world, ' wholly given to idolatry, ' was a strange inconsistent
spectacle to those who were able to reflect, which was seen
in many points of view. The various feelings with which
different classes of men regarded the statues, temples, sacri-
fices, oracles, and festivals of the gods, with which they
looked upon the conflict of religions meeting on the banks
of the Tiber, are not exhausted in the epigrammatic formula
of the modern historian : 'All the heathen religions were
looked upon by the vulgar as equally true, by the philosopher
as equally false, by the magistrate as equally useful.'
Such was the later phase of the religion of nature, with
which Christianity came into conflict. It had supplied
some of the needs of men by assisting to build up the fabric
of society and law. It had left room for others to find
expression in philosophy or art. But it was a world divided
against itself. It contained two nations or opinions ' strug-
gling in its womb ; ' the nation or opinion of the many, and
the nation or opinion of the few. It was bound together in
the framework of law or custom, yet its morality fell below
the natural feelings of mankind, and its religious spirit was
confused and weakened by the admixture of foreign super-
stitions. It was a world of which it is not difiicult to find
NATURAL RELIGION 225
traces that it was self-condemned. It might be compared
to a fruit, the rind of which was hard and firm, while
within it was soft and decaying. Within this outer rind
or circle, for two centuries and a half, Christianity was
working ; at last it appeared without, itself the seed or
kernel of a new organization. That when the conflict was
over, and the world found itself Christian, many elements
of the old rehgion still remained, and reasserted them-
selves in Christian forms ; that the ' ghost of the dead
Eoman Empire ' lingered ' about the grave thereof ; ' that
Christianity accomplished only imperfectly what heathenism
failed to do at all, is a result unlike pictures that are some-
times drawn, but sadly in accordance with what history
teaches of mankind and of human nature.
§4.
Natural religion is not only concerned with the history of
the religions of nature, nor does it only reflect that ' light
of the Gentiles ' which philosophy imparted ; it has to do
with the present as well as with the past, with Christian
as well as heathen countries. Eevealed religion passes
into natural, and natural religion exists side by side with
revealed ; there is a truth independent of Christianity ; and
the daily life of Christian men is very difl'erent from the
life of Christ. This general or natural religion may be
compared to a wide-spread lake, shallow and motionless,
rather than to a living water — the overflowing of the Chris-
tian faith over a professing Christian world, the level of
which may be at one time higher or lower ; it is the
religion of custom or prescription, or rather the unconscious
influence of religion on the minds of men in general ; it
includes also the speculative idea of religion when taken off"
the Christian foundation. Natural religion, in this modern
sense, has a relation both to philosophy and life. That is to
say (i), it is a theory of religion which appeals to particular
evidences for the being of a God, though resting, perhaps
VOL. II. Q
226 ESSAY ON
more safely, on the general conviction that ' this universal
frame cannot want a mind.' But it has also a relation to life
and practice (2), for it is the religion of the many ; the
average, as it may be termed, of religious feeling in a Chris-
tian land, the leaven of the Gospel hidden in the world.
St. Paul speaks of those ' who knowing not the law are
a law unto themselves.' Experience seems to show that
something of the same kind must be acknowledged in
Christian as well as in heathen countries ; which may be
conveniently considered under the head of natural religion.
Arguments for the being of a God are of many kinds.
There are arguments from final causes, and arguments
from first causes, and arguments from ideas ; logical
forms, as they appear to be, in which different meta-
physical schools mould their faith. Of the first sort
the following may be taken as an instance : — A person
walking on the seashore finds a watch or other piece of
mechanism ; he observes its parts, and their adaptation to
each other ; he sees the watch in motion, and comprehends
the aim of the whole. In the formation of that senseless
material he perceives that which satisfies him that it is the
work of intelligence, or, in other words, the marks of design.
And looking from the watch to the world around him,
he seems to perceive innumerable ends, and innumerable
actions tending to them, in the composition of the world
itself, and in the structure of plants and animals. Advan-
cing a step further, he asks himself the question, why he
should not acknowledge the like marks of design in the
moral world also ; in passions and actions, and in the great
end of life. Of all there is the same account to be given —
'the machine of the world,' of which God is the Maker.
This is the celebrated argument from final causes for the
being of a God, the most popular of the arguments of
natural religion, partly because it admits of much ingenious
illustration, and also because it is tangible and intelligible.
Ideas of a Supreme Being must be given through something.
NATUEAL RELIGION 227
for it is impossible that we should know Him as He is.
And the truest representation that we can form of God is,
in one sense, that which sets forth His nature most vividly ;
yet another condition must also be remembered, viz. that this
representation ought not only to be the most distinct, but
the highest and holiest possible. Because we cannot see
Him as He is, that is no reason for attributing to Him the
accidents of human personality. And, in using figures of
speech, we are bound to explain to all who are capable of
understanding, that we speak in a figure only, and to remind
them that names by which we describe the being or attri-
butes of God need a correction in the silence of thought.
Even logical categories may give as false a notion of the
Divine nature in our own age, as graven images in the days
of the patriarchs. However legitimate or perhaps necessary
the employment of them may be, we must place ourselves
not below, but above them.
(a) In the argument from final causes, the work of the
Creator is compared to a work of art. Art is a poor figure
of nature ; it has no freedom or luxuriance. Between the
highest work of art and the lowest animal or vegetable pro-
duction, there is an interval which will never be spanned.
The miracle of life derives no illustration from the handi-
craftsman putting his hand to the chisel, or anticipating in
idea the form which he is about to carve. More truly might
we reason, that what the artist is, the God of nature is not.
For all the processes of nature are unlike the processes of
art. If, instead of a watch, or some other piece of curious
and exquisite workmanship, we think of a carpenter and
a table, the force of the argument seems to vanish, and the
illustration becomes inappropriate and unpleasing. The
ingenuity and complexity of the structure, and not the mere
appearance of design, makes the watch a natural image of
the creation of the world.
(a) But not only does the conception of the artist supply
no worthy image of the Creator and His work ; the idea of
Q 2
228 ESSAY ON
design which is given by it requires a further correction
before it can be transferred to nature. The complication
of the world around us is quite different from the complexity
of the watch. It is not a regular and finite structui'e, but
rather infinite in irregularity ; which instead of design often
exhibits absence of design, such as we cannot imagine any
architect of the world contriving ; the construction of which
is far from appearing, even to our feeble intelligence, the
best possible, though it, and all things in it, are very good.
If we fix our minds on this very phrase ' the machine of
the world,' we become aware that it is unmeaning to us.
The watch is separated and isolated from other matter ;
dependent indeed on one or two general laws of nature,
but otherwise cut off from things around. But nature, the
more we consider it, the more does one part apj)ear to be
linked with another ; there is no isolation here ; the plants
grow in the soil which has been preparing for them through
a succession of geological eras, they are fed by the rain and
nourished by light and air ; the animals depend for their
life on all inferior existences.
(y) This difference between art and nature leads us to
observe another defect in the argument from final causes —
that, instead of putting the world together, it takes it to
pieces. It fixes our minds on those parts of the world
which exhibit marks of design, and withdraws us from
those in which marks of design seem to fail. There are
formations in nature, such as the hand, which have a kind
of mechanical beauty, and show in a striking vv^ay, even to
an uneducated person, the wonder and complexity of crea-
tion. In like manner we feel a momentary surprise in
finding out, through the agency of a microscope, that the
minutest creatures have their fibres, tissues, vessels. And
yet the knowledge of this is but the most fragmentary and
superficial knowledge of nature ; it is the wonder in which
philosophy begins, very different from the comprehension
of this universal frame in all its complexity and in all its
NATUEAL RELIGION 229
minuteness. And from this elementary notion of nature,
we seek to form an idea of the Author of nature. As
though God were in the animal frame and not also in the
dust to which it turns ; in the parts, and not equally in the
whole ; in the present world, and not also in the antecedent
ages which have prepared for its existence.
(S) Again, this teleological argument for the being of
God gives an erroneous idea of the moral government of
the world. For it leads us to suppose that all things are
tending to some end ; that there is no prodigality or waste,
but that all things are, and are made, in the best way
possible. Our faith must be tried to find a use for barren
deserts, for venomous reptiles, for fierce wild beasts, nay.
for the sins and miseries of mankind. Nor does ' there
seem to be any resting place,' until the world and all things
in it are admitted to have some end impressed upon them
by the hand of God, but unseen to us. Experience is cast
aside while our meditations lead us to conceive the world
under this great form of a final cause. All that is in nature
is best ; all that is in human life is best. And yet every
one knows instances in which nature seems to fail of its
end — in which life has been cut down like a flower, and
trampled under foot of man.
(f) There is another way in Avhich the argument from
final causes is suggestive of an imperfect conception of the
Divine Being. It presents God to vis exclusively in one
aspect, not as a man, much less as a spirit holding com-
munion with our spirit, but only as an artist. We conceive
of Him, as in the description of the poet, standing with
compasses over sea and land, and designing the wondrous
work. Does not the image tend to make the spii'itual
creation an accident of the material ? For although it is
possible, as Bishop Butler has shown, to apply the argument
from final causes, as a figure of speech, to the habits and
feelings, this adaptation is unnatural, and open even to
greater objections than its application to the physical world.
230 ESSAY ON
For how can we distinguish true final causes from false
ones ? how can we avoid confusing what ought to be with
what is — the fact with the law ?
[C) If we look to the origin of the notion of a final cause,
we shall feel still further indisposed to make it the category
under which we sum up the working of the Divine Being
in creation. As Aristotle, who probably first made a philo-
sophical use of the term, says, it is transferred from mind
to matter ; in other words, it clothes facts in our ideas.
Lord Bacon offers another warning against the employment
of final causes in the service of religion : ' they are like the
vestals consecrated to God, and are barren.' They are
a figure of speech which adds nothing to our knowledge.
When applied to the Creator, they are a figure of a figure ;
that is to say, the figurative conception of the artist
embodied or idealized in his work, is made the image of the
Divine Being. And no one really thinks of God in nature
under this figure of human skill. As certainly as the man
who found a watch or piece of mechanism on the seashore
would conclude, ' here are marks of design, indications of
an intelligent artist,' so certainly, if he came across the
meanest or the highest of the works of nature, would he
infer, 'this was not made by man, nor by any human art.'
He sees in a moment that the seaweed beneath his feet is
something different in kind from the productions of man.
What should lead him to say, that in the same sense that
man made the watch, God made the seaweed ? For the
seaweed grows by some power of life, and is subject to
certain physiological laws, like all other vegetable or animal
substances. But if we say that God created this life, or
that where this life ends there His creative power begins,
our analogy again fails, for God stands in a different relation
to animal and vegetable life from what the artist does to the
work of His hands. And, when we think further of God,
as a Spirit without body, creating all things by His word,
or rather by His thought, in an instant of time, to whom
NATURAL RELIGION 23 1
the plan and execution are all one, we become absolutely
bewildered in the attempt to apply the image of the artist
to the Creator of the world.
These are some of the points in respect of which the
argument from final causes falls short of that conception of
the Divine nature which reason is adequate to form. It is
the beginning of our knowledge of God, not the end. It is
suited to the faculties of children rather than of those who
are of full age. It belongs to a stage of metaphysical philo-
sophy, in which abstract ideas were not made the subject
of analysis ; to a time when physical science had hardly
learnt to conceive the world as a whole. It is a devout
thought which may well arise in the grateful heart when
contemplating the works of creation, but must not be
allowed to impair that higher intellectual conception which
we are able to form of a Creator, any more than it should
be put in the place of the witness of God within.
Another argument of the same nature for the being of
a God is derived from first causes, and may be stated as
follows :— All things that we see are the results or effects of
causes, and these again the effects of other causes, and so
on through an immense series. But somewhere or other
this series must have a stop or limit ; we cannot go back
from cause to cause without end. Otherwise the series will
have no basis on which to rest. Therefore there must be
a first cause, that is, God. This argument is sometimes
strengthened by the further supposition that the world must
have had a beginning, whence it seems to follow, that it
must have a cause external to itself which made it begin ;
a principle of rest, which is the source of motion to all
other things, as ancient philosophy would have expressed
it — hovering in this as in other speculations intermediate
between the physical and metaphysical world.
The difficulty about this argument is much the same as
that respecting the preceding. So long as we conceive the
world under the form of cause and effect, and suppose the
232 ESSAY ON
first link in the chain to be the same with those that suc-
ceed it, the argument is necessary and natural ; we cannot
escape from it without violence to our reason. Our only
doubt will probably be, whether we can pass from the
notion of a first cause to that of an intelHgent Creator, But
when, instead of resting in the word ' cause, ' we go on to
the idea, or rather the variety of ideas which are signified
by the word 'cause,' the argument begins to dissolve.
When we say, ' God is the cause of the world,' in what
sense of the word cause is this ? Is it as life or mind is
a cause, or the hammer or hand of the workman, or light
or air, or any natural substance ? Is it in that sense of the
word cause, in which it is almost identified with the eifect ?
or in that sense in which it is wholly external to it ? Or
when we endeavour to imagine or conceive a common cause
of the world and all things in it, do we not perceive that we
are using the word in none of these senses ; but in a new
one, to which life, or mind, or many other words, would be
at least equally applicable ? ' God is the life of the world.'
That is a poor and somewhat unmeaning expression to indi-
cate the relation of God to the world ; yet life is a subtle
and wonderful power, pervading all things, and in various
degrees animating all things. ' God is the mind of the
world.' That is still inadequate as an expression, even
though mind can act where it is not, and its ways are
past finding out. But when we sa)^, ' God is the cause
of the world,' that can be scarcely said to express miore
than that God stands in some relation to the world touching
which we are unable to determine whether He is in the
world or out of it, ' immanent ' in the language of philosophy,
or 'transcendent.'
There are two sources from which these and similar proofs
of the being of a God are derived : first, analogy ; secondly,
the logical necessity of the human mind. Analogy supplies
an image, an illustration. It wins for us an imaginary
world from the void and formless infinite. But whether
NATURAL RELIGION 233
it does more than this must depend wholly on the nature of
the analogy. We cannot argue from the seen to the unseen,
unless we previously know their relation to each other. We
cannot say at random that another life is the double or
parallel of this, and also the development of it ; we cannot
urge the temporary inequality of this world as a presump-
tion of the final injustice of another. Who would think of
arguing from the vegetable to the animal world, except in
those points where he had already discovered a common
principle ? Who would reason that animal life must follow
the laws of vegetation in those points which were peculiar to
it ? Yet many theological arguments have this fundamental
weakness ; they lean on faith for their own support ; they
lower the heavenly to the earthly, and may be used to prove
anything.
The other source of these and similar arguments is the
logical necessity of the human mind. A first cause,
a beginning, an infinite Being limiting our finite natures,
is necessary to our conceptions. 'We have an idea of God,
there must be something to correspond to our idea,' and so
on. The flaw here is equally real, though not so apparent.
While we dwell within the forms of the understanding and
acknowledge their necessity, such arguments seem unanswer-
able. But once ask the question. Whence this necessity?
was there not a time when the human mind felt no such
necessity ? is the necessity really satisfied ? or is there not
some further logical sequence in which I am involved which
still remains unanswerable? the whole argument vanishes
at once, as the chimera of a metaphysical age. The seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries have been peculiarly fertile
in such arguments ; the belief in which, whether they have
any value or not, must not be imposed upon us as an article
of faith.
If we say again, ' that our highest conception must have
a true existence,' which is the well-known argument of
Anselm and Des Cartes for the being of God, still this is no
234 ESSAY ON
more than saying, in a technical or dialectical form, that we
cannot imagine God without imagining that He is. Of no
other conception can it be said that it involves existence ;
and hence no additional force is gained by such a mode of
statement. The simple faith in a Divine Being is cumbered,
not supported, by evidences derived from a metaphysical
system which has passed away. It is a barren logic that
elicits the more meagre conception of existence from the
higher one of Divinity. Better for philosophy, as well as
faith, to think of God at once and immediately as ' Perfect
Being.'
Arguments from first and final causes may be regarded as
a kind of poetry of natural religion. There are some minds
to whom it would be impossible to conceive of the relation
of God to the world under any more abstract form. They,
as well as all of us, may ponder in amazement on the infinite
contrivances of creation. We are all agreed that none but
a Divine power framed them. We differ only as to whether
the Divine power is to be regarded as the hand that fashioned,
or the intelligence that designed them, or an operation incon-
ceivable to us which we dimly trace and feebly express in
words.
That which seems to underlie our conception both of first
and final causes, is the idea of law which we see not broken
or intercepted, or appearing only in particular spots of
nature, but everywhere and in all things. All things do
not equally exhibit marks of design, but all things are
equally subject to the operation of law. The highest mark
of intelligence pervades the whole ; no one part is better than
another ; it is all 'very good.' The absence of design, if we
like so to turn the phrase, is a part of the design. Even the
less comely parts, like the plain spaces in a building, have
elements of use and beauty. He who has ever thought in the
most imperfect manner of the universe which modern science
unveils, needs no evidence that the details of it are incapable
of being fx'amed by anything short of a Divine power. Art,
NATURAL RELIGION 235
and nature, and science, these three — the first giving us the
conception of the relation of parts to a whole ; the second,
of endless variety and intricacy, such as no art has ever
attained ; the third, of uniform laws which amid all the
changes of created things remain fixed as at the first,
reaching even to the heavens — are the witnesses of the
Creator in the external world.
Nor can it weaken our belief in a Supreme Being, to
observe that the same harmony and uniformity extend also
to the actions of men. Why should it be thought a thing
incredible that God should give law and order to the
spiritual, no less than the natural creation? That human
beings do not ' thrust or break their ranks ; ' that the life of
nations, like that of plants or animals, has a regular grovrth ;
that the same strata or stages are observable in the religions,
no less than the languages of mankind, as in the structure of
the earth, are strange reasons for doubting the Providence of
God. Perhaps it is even stranger, that those who do not
doubt should eye with jealousy the accumulation of such
facts. Do we really wish that our conceptions of God should
only be on the level of the ignorant ; adequate to the passing
emotions of human feeling, but to reason inadequate ? That
Christianity is the confluence of many channels of human
thought does not interfere with its Divine origin. It is
not the less immediately the word of God because there
have been preparations for it in all ages, and in many
countries.
The more we take out of the category of chance in the
world either of nature or of mind, the more present evidence
we have of the faithfulness of God. We do not need to have
a chapter of accidents in life to enable us to realize the exist-
ence of a personal God, as though events which we can
account for were not equally His work. Let not use or
custom so prevail in our minds as to make this higher notion
of God cheerless or uncomfortable to us. The rays of His
presence may still warm us, as well as enlighten us. Surely
236 ESSAY ON
He, in whom we live and move and have our being, is nearer
to us than He would be if He interfered occasionally for our
benefit.
' The curtain of the physical world is closing in upon us : '
What does this mean but that the arms of His intelHgence
are embracing us on every side ? We have no more fear of
nature ; for our knowledge of the laws of nature has cast out
fear. We know Him as He shows himself in them, even as
we ai'e known of Him, Do we think to draw near to God
by returning to that state in which nature seemed to be
without law, when man cowered like the animals before the
storm, and in the meteors of the skies and the motions of
the heavenly bodies sought to read the purposes of God
respecting himself ? Or shall we rest in that stage of the
knowledge of nature which was common to the heathen
philosophers and to the Fathers of the Christian Church ? or
in that of two hundred years ago, ere the laws of the heavenly
bodies were discovered ? or of fifty years ago, before geology
had established its truths on sure foundations ? or of thirty
years ago, ere the investigation of old language had revealed
the earlier stages of the history of the human mind. At
which of these resting-places shall we pause to renew the
covenant between Eeason and Faith ? Rather at none of
them, if the first condition of a true faith be the belief in all
true knowledge.
To trace our belief up to some primitive revelation, to
entangle it in a labyrinth of proofs or analogies, will not
infix it deeper or elevate its character. Why should we be
willing to trust the convictions of the father of the human
race rather than our own, the faith of primitive rather than
of civilized times ? Or why should we use arguments about
the Infinite Being, which, in proportion as they have force,
reduce him to the level of the finite ; and which seem to
lose their force in proportion as we admit that God's ways
are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts ? The
belief is strong enough without those fictitious supports ;
NATURAL RELIGION 237
it cannot be made stronger with them. While natm-e still
presents to us its world of unexhausted wonders ; while sin
and sorrow lead us to walk by faith, and not by sight ; while
the soul of man departs this life not knowing whither it
goes ; so long will the belief endure of an Almighty Creator,
from whom we came, to whom we return.
Why, again, should we argue for the immortality of the
soul from the analogy of the seed and the tree, or the state
of human beings before and after birth, when the ground
of proof in the one case is wanting in the other, namely,
experience ? Because the dead acorn may a century hence
become a spreading oak, no one would infer that the
corrupted remains of animals will rise to life in new forms.
The error is not in the use of such illustrations as figures of
speech, but in the allegation of them as proofs or evidences
after the failure of the analogy is perceived. Perhaps it
may be said that in popular discourse they pass unchallenged ;
it may be a point of honour that they should be maintained,
because they are in Paley or Butler. But evidences for the
many which are not evidences for the few are treacherous
props to Christianity. They are always liable to come back
to us detected, and to need some other fallacy for their
support.
Let it be considered, whether the evidences of religion"'
should be separated from religion itself. The Gospel has
a ti'uth perfectly adapted to human nature ; its origin and
diffusion in the world have a history like any other history.
But truth does not need evidences of the truth, nor does
history separate the proof of facts from the facts themselves.
It was only in the decline of philosophy the Greeks began
to ask about the criterion of knowledge. What would be
thought of an historian who should collect all the testimonies
on one side of some disputed question, and insist on their
reception as a political creed ? Such evidences do not
require the hand of some giant infidel to pull them down ;
they fall the moment they are touched. But the Christian
338 ESSAY ON
faith is in its holy place, uninjured by the fall ; the truths
of the existence of God, or of the immortality of the soul,
are not periled by the observation that some analogies on
which they have been supposed to rest are no longer tenable.
There is no use in attempting to prove by the misapplication
of the methods of human knowledge, what we ought never
to doubt.
'There are two things,' says a philosopher of the last
century ; * of which it may be said, that the more we think
of them, the more they fill the soul with awe and wonder —
the stariy heaven above, and the moral law within, I may
not regard either as shrouded in darkness, or look for or
guess at either in what is beyond, out of my sight. I see
them right before me, and link them at once with the
consciousness of my own existence. The former of the two
begins with place, which I inhabit as a member of the
outward world, and extends the connexion in which I stand
with it into immeasurable space ; in which are worlds upon
worlds, and systems upon systems ; and so on into the
endless times of their revolutions, their beginning and
continuance. The second begins with my invisible self ;
that is to say, my personality, and presents me in a world
which has true infinity, but which the lower faculty of the
soul can hardly scan ; with which I know myself to be not
only as in the world of sight, in an accidental connexion,
but in a necessary and universal one. The first glance at
innumerable worlds annihilates any importance which I may
attach to myself as an animal structure ; whilst the matter
out of which it is made must again return to the earth (itself
a mere point in the universe), after it has been endued, one
knows not how, with the power of life for a little season.
The second glance exalts me infinitely as an intelligent
being, whose personality involves a moral law, which reveals
in me a life distinct from that of the animals, independent
of the world of sense. So much at least I may infer from
the regular determination of my being by this law, which
NATUEAL RELIGION 239
is itself infinite, free from the limitations and conditions of
this present life.'
So, in language somewhat technical, has Kant described
two great principles of natural religion. 'There are two
witnesses,' we may add in a later strain of reflection, ' of the
being of God ; the order of nature in the world, and the
progress of the mind of man. He is not the order of nature,
nor the progress of mind, nor both together ; but that which
is above and beyond them ; of which they, even if conceived
in a single instant, are but the external sign, the highest
evidences of God which we can conceive, but not God
himself. The first to the ancient world seemed to be the
work of chance, or the personal operation of one or many
Divine beings. We know it to be the result of laws endless
in their complexity, and yet not the less admirable for their
simplicity also. The second has been regarded, even in our
own day, as a series of errors capriciously invented by the
ingenuity of individual men. We know it to have a law of
its own, a continuous order which cannot be inverted ; not
to be confounded with, yet not wholly separate from, the
law of nature and the will of God. Shall we doubt the
world to be the creation of a Divine power, only because it
is more wonderful than could have been conceived by " them
of old time ; " or human reason to be in the image of God,
because it too bears the marks of an overruling law or
intelligence ? '
§5.
Natural religion, in the last sense in which we are to
consider it, carries us into a region of thought more practical,
and therefore more important, than any of the preceding ;
it comes home to us ; it takes in those who are near and
dear to us ; even ourselves are not excluded from it. Under
this name, or some other, we cannot refuse to consider
a subject which involves the religious state of the greater
portion of mankind, even in a Christian country. Every
Sunday the ministers of religion set before us the ideal of
240 ESSAY ON
Christian life ; they repeat and expand the words of Christ
and his Apostles ; they speak of the approach of death, and
of this world as a preparation for a better. It is good to be
reminded of these things. But there is another aspect of
Christianity which we must not ignore, the aspect under
which experience shows it, in our homes and among our
acquaintance, on the level of human things ; the level of
education, habit, and circumstances on which men are, and
on which they will probably remain while they live. This
latter phase of religion it is our duty to consider, and not
narrow ourselves to the former only.
It is characteristic of this subject that it is full of con-
tradictions ; we say one thing at one time about it, another
thing at another. Our feelings respecting individuals are
different in their lifetime, and after their death, as they are
nearly related to us, or have no claims on our affections.
Our acknowledgement of sin in the abstract is more willing
and hearty than the recognition of particular sins in our-
selves, or even in others. "We readily admit that ' the world
lieth in wickedness ; ' whei"e the world is, or of whom it is
made up, we are unable to define. Great men seem to be
exempt from the religious judgement which we pass on our
fellows ; it does not occur to persons of taste to regard them
under this aspect ; we deal tenderly with them, and leave
them to themselves and God. And sometimes we rest on
outward signs of religion ; at other times we guard our-
selves and others against trusting to such signs. And
commonly we are ready to acquiesce in the standard of
those around us, thinking it a sort of impertinence to inter-
fere with their religious concerns ; at other times we go
about the world as with a lantern, seeking for the image
of Christ among men, and are zealous for the good of others,
out of season or in season. We need not unravel further
this tangled web of thoughts and feelings, which religion,
and affection, and habit, and opinion weave. A few words
will describe the fact out of which these contradictions arise.
NATURAL RELIGION 24 1
It is a side of the world from which we are apt to turn
away, perhaps hoping to make things better by fancying
them so, instead of looking at them as they really are.
It is impossible not to observe that innumerable persons —
shall we say the majority of mankind ? — who have a belief
in God and immoi-tality, have nevertheless hardly any
consciousness of the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. They
seem to live away from them in the routine of business or
of society, 'the common life of all men,' not without a sense
of right, and a rule of truth and honesty, yet insensible to
what our Saviour meant by taking up the cross and following
Him, or what St. Paul meant by 'being one with Christ.'
They die without any great fear or lively faith ; to the last
more interested about concerns of this world than about the
hope of another. In the Christian sense they are neither
proud nor humble ; they have seldom experienced the sense
of sin, they have never felt keenly the need of forgiveness.
Neither on the other hand do they value themselves on their
good deeds, or expect to be saved by their own merits.
Often they are men of high moral character ; many of them
have strong and disinterested attachments, and quick human
sympathies ; sometimes a stoical feeling of uprightness, or
a peculiar sensitiveness to dishonour. It would be a mistake
to say they are without religion. They join in its public
acts ; they are oifended at profaneness or impiety ; they are
thankful for the blessings of life, and do not rebel against
its misfoi-tunes. Such persons meet us at every turn. They
are those whom we know and associate with ; honest in
their dealings, resjjeetable in their lives, decent in their
conversation. The Scripture speaks to us of two classes
represented by the Church and the world, the wheat and
the tares, the sheep and the goats, the friends and enemies
of God. We cannot say in which of these two divisions we
should find a place for them.
The picture is a true one, and, if we turn the light round,
some of us may find in it a resemblance of ourselves no less
VOL. II. R
242 ESSAY ON
than of other men. Others will include us in the same
circle in which we are including them. What shall we say
to such a state, common as it is to both us and them ? The
fact that we are considering is not the evil of the Avorld, but
the neutrality of the world, the indifference of the world,
the inertness of the world. There are multitudes of men
and women everywhere, who have no peculiarly Christian
feelings, to whom, except for the indirect influence of Chris-
tian institutions, the life and death of Christ would have
made no difference, and who have, nevertheless, the common
sense of truth and right almost equally with true Christians.
You cannot say of them * there is none that doeth good ;
no, not one.' The other tone of St. Paul is more suitable,
' When the Gentiles that know not the law do by nature
the things contained in the law, these not knowing the law
are a law unto themselves.' So of what we commonly term
the world, as opposed to those who make a profession of
Christianity, we must not shrink from saying, * When men
of the world do by nature whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good
report, these not being conscious of the grace of God, do by
nature what can only be done by His grace, ' Why should we
make them out worse than they are ? We must cease to speak
evil of them, ere they will judge fairly of the characters of
religious men. That, with so little recognition of His personal
relation to them, God does not cast them off, is a ground of
hope rather than of fear — of thankfulness, not of regret.
Many strange thoughts arise at the contemplation of this
intermediate world, which some blindness, or hardness, or
distance in nature, separates from the love of Christ. We
ask ourselves * what will become of them after death ? '
' For what state of existence can this present life be a pre-
paration ? ' Perhaps they will turn the question upon us ;
and we may answer for ourselves and them, ' that we throw
ourselves on the mercy of God.' We cannot deny that in
the sight of God they may condemn us ; their moral worth
NATUEAL RELIGION 243
may be more acceptable to Him than our Christian feeling.
For we know that Grod is not like some earthly sovereign,
who may be offended at the want of attention which we
show to him. He can only estimate us always by our
fulfilment of moral and Christian duties. When the balance
is struck, it is most probable, nay, it is quite certain, that
many who are first will be last, and the last first. And this
transfer will take place, not only among those who are
within the gates of the Christian Church, but from the
world also into the Chui'ch. There may be some among
us who have given the cup of cold -water to a brother, ' not
knowing it was the Lord.' Some again may be leading
a life in their own family which is ' not far from the king-
dom of heaven.' We do not say that for ourselves there
is more than one way ; that way is Christ. But, in the
case of others, it is right that we should take into account
their occupation, character, circumstances, the manner in
which Christianity may have been presented to them, the
intellectual or other difficulties which may have crossed
their path. We shall think more of the unconscious Chris-
tianity of their lives, than of the profession of it on their
lips. So that we seem almost compelled to be Christian
and Unchristian at once : Christian in reference to the
obligations of Christianity upon ourselves ; Unchristian — if
indeed it be not a higher kind of Christianity — in not judging
those who are unlike ourselves by our own standard.
Other oppositions have found their way into statements
of Christian truth, which we shall sometimes do well to
forget. Mankind are not simply divided into two classes ;
they pass insensibly from one to the other. The term world
is itself ambiguous, meaning the world very near to us, and
yet a long way off from us ; which we contrast with the
Church, and which we nevertheless feel to be one with
the Church, and incapable of being separated. Sometimes the
Church bears a high and noble witness against the world,
and at other times, even to the religious mind, the balance
R 2
344 ESSAY ON
seems to be even, and the world in its turn begins to bear
witness against the Church. There are periods of history
in which they both grow together. Little cause as there
may be for congratulation in our present state, yet we cannot
help tracing, in the last half-century, a striking amelioration
in our own and some other countries, testified to by changes
in laws and manners. Many reasons have been given for
this change : the efforts of a few devoted men in the last,
or the beginning of the present, century ; a long peace ;
diffusion of education ; increase of national wealth ; changes
in the principles of government ; improvement in the lives of
the ministers of religion. No one who has considered this
problem will feel that he is altogether able to solve it. He
cannot venture to say that the change springs from any bold
aggression which the Church has made upon the vices of
mankind ; nor is it certain that any such effort would have
produced the result. In the Apostle's language it must still
remain a mystery ' why mankind collectively often become
better ;' and not less so, ' why, when deprived of all the means
and influences of virtue and religion, they do not always be-
come worse.' Even for evil. Nature, that is, the God of nature,
has set limits ; men do not corrupt themselves endlessly.
Here, too, it is, * Hitherto shalt thou go, but no further. '
Reflections of this kind are not a mere speculation ; they
have a practical use. They show us the world as it is,
neither Kghted up with the aspirations of hope and faith,
nor darkened beneath the shadow of God's wrath. They
teach us to regard human nature in a larger and more
kindly way, which is the first step towards amending and
strengthening it. They make us think of the many as well
as of the few ; as ministers of the Gospel, warning us against
preaching to the elect only, instead of seeking to do good to
all men. They take us out of the straits and narrownesses of
religion, into wider fields in which the analogy of faith is
still our guide. They help us to reconcile nature with
grace ; they prevent our thinking that Christ came into the
NATURAL RELIGION 245
world for our sakes only, or that His words have no meaning
when they are scattered beyond the limits of the Christian
Church. They remind us that the moral state of mankind
here, and their eternal state hereafter, are not wholly depen-
dent on our poor efforts for their religious improvement ; and
that the average of men who seem often to be so careless
about their own highest interest, are not when they pass
away uncared for in His sight.
Doubtless, the lives of individuals that rise above this
average are the salt of the earth. They are not to be
confounded with the many, because for these latter a place
may be found in the counsels of Providence. Those who
add the love of their fellow-creatures to the love of God.
who make the love of truth the rule of both, bear the image
of Christ until His coming again. And yet, probably, they
would be the last persons to wish to distinguish themselves
from their fellow-creatures. The Christian life makes all
things kin ; it does not stand out ' angular ' against any part
of mankind. And that humble spirit which the best of men
have ever shown in reference to their brethren, is also the
true spirit of the Church towards the world. If a tone of
dogmatism and exclusiveness is unbecoming in individual
Christians, is it not equally so in Christian communities?
There is no need, because men will not listen to one motive,
that we should not present them with another ; there is no
reason, because they will not hear the voice of the preacher,
that they should be refused the blessings of education ; or
that we should cease to act upon their circumstances, because
we cannot awaken the heart and conscience. We are too
apt to view as hostile to religion that which only takes
a form different from religion, as trade, or politics, or pro-
fessional life. More truly may religious men regard the
world, in its various phases, as in many points a witness
against themselves. The exact appreciation of the good as
well as the evil of the world is a link of communion with
our fellow-men ; may it not also be, too, with the body of
24^ ESSAY ON NATURAL RELIGION
Christ ? There are lessons of which the world is the keeper
no less than the Church. Especially have earnest and sincere
Christians reason to reflect, if ever they see the moral senti-
ments of mankind directed against them.
The God of peace rest upon you, is the concluding benedic-
tion of most of the Epistles. How can He rest upon us, who
draw so many hard lines of demarcation between ourselves
and other men ; who oppose the Church and the world,
Sundays and working days, revelation and science, the past
and present, the life and state of which religion speaks and
the life which we ordinarily lead ? It is well that we should
consider these lines of demarcation rather as representing
aspects of our life than as corresponding to classes of mankind.
' It is well that we should acknowledge that one aspect of life
or knowledge is as true as the other. Science and revelation
touch one another : the past floats down in the present. We
are all members of the same Christian world ; we are all
members of the same Christian Church. Who can bear to
doubt this of themselves or of theii- family ? What parent
would think otherwise of his child? — what child of his
parent ? Eeligion holds before us an ideal which we are far
from reaching ; natural affection softens and relieves the cha-
racters of those we love ; experience alone shows men what
they truly are. All these three must so meet as to do violence
to none. If, in the age of the Apostles, it seemed to be the
duty of the believers to separate themselves from the world
and take up a hostile position, not less marked in the present
age is the duty of abolishing in a Christian country what has
now become an artificial distinction, and seeking by every
means in our power, by fairness, by truthfulness, by know-
ledge, by love unfeigned, by the absence of party and prejudice,
by acknowledging the good in all things, to reconcile the
/ Church to the world, the one half of our nature to the other ;
drawing the mind off from speculative difficulties, or matters
of party and opinion, to that which almost all equally acknow-
ledge and almost equally rest short of — the life of Christ.
ESSAY
RIGHTEOUSJ^ESS BY FAITH
No doctrine in later times has been looked at so exclu-
sively through the glass of controversy as that of justification.
From being the simplest it has become the most difficult ;
the language of the heart has lost itself in a logical tangle.
Differences have been drawn out as far as possible, and then
taken back and reconciled. The extreme of one view has
more than once produced a reaction in favour of the other.
Many senses have been attributed to the same words, and
simple statements carried out on both sides into endless
conclusions. New formulas of conciliation have been put
in the place of old-established phrases, and have soon died
away, because they had no root in language or in the
common sense or feeling of mankind. The difficulty of the
subject has been increased by the different degrees of
importance attached to it : while to some it is an articulus
stantis aut cadentis ecdesiae, others have never been able to
see in it more than a verbal dispute.
This perplexity on the question of righteousness by faith
is partly due to the character of the age in which it began
to revive. Men felt at the Eeformation the need of
a spiritual religion, and could no longer endure the yoke
248 ESSAY ON
which had been put upon their fathers. The heart rebelled
against the burden of ordinances ; it wanted to take a nearer
way to reconciliation with God. But when the struggle
was over, and individuals were seeking to impart to others
the peace which they had found themselves, they had no
simple or natural expression of their belief. They were
alone in a world in which the human mind had been long
enslaved. It was necessary for them to go down into the
land of the enemy, and get their weapons sharpened before
they could take up a position and fortify their camp.
In other words, the Scholastic Logic had been for six
centuries previous the great instrument of training the
human mind ; it had grown up with it, and become a part
of it. Neither would it have been more possible for the
Reformers to have laid it aside than to have laid aside the use
of language itself. Around theology it lingers still, seeming
reluctant to quit a territory which is peculiarly its own. No
science has hitherto fallen so completely under its power ;
no other is equally unwilling to ask the meaning of terms ;
none has been so fertile in reasonings and consequences.
The change of which Lord Bacon was the herald has hardly
yet reached it ; much less could the Reformation haA'e
anticipated the New Philosophy.
The whole mental structure of that time rendered it
necessary that the Reformers, no less than their opponents,
should resort to the scholastic methods of argument. The
difference between the two parties did not lie here. Per-
haps it may be said with truth that the Reformers were
even more schoolmen than their opponents, because they
dealt more with abstract ideas, and were more concentrated
on a single topic. The whole of Luther's teaching was
summed up in a single article, ' Righteousness by Faith. '
That was to him the Scriptural expression of a Spiritual
religion. But this, according to the manner of that time,
could not be left in the simple language of St. Paul. It
was to be proved from Scripture first, then isolated by
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 249
definition ; then it might be safely drawn out into remote
consequences.
And yet, why w^as this ? Why not repeat, with a slight
alteration of the words rather than the meaning of the
Apostle, Neither justification by faith nor justification by
w^orks, but ' a new creature ' ? Was there not yet ' a more
excellent way' to oppose things to words — the life, and
spirit, and freedom of the Gospel, to the deadness, and
powerlessness, and slavery of the Eoman Church ? So it
seems natural to us to reason, looking back after an interval
of three centuries on the weary struggle ; so absorbing to
those who took part in it once, so distant now either to us
or them. But so it could not be. The temper of the times,
and the education of the Reformers themselves, inade it
necessary that one dogmatic system should be met by
another. The scholastic divinity had become a charmed
circle, and no man could venture out of it, though he might
oppose or respond within it.
And thus justification by faith, and justification by works,
became the watchword of two parties. We may imagine
ourselves at that point in the controversy when the Pelagian
dispute had been long since hushed, and that respecting
Predestination had not yet begun ; when men were not
differing about original sin, and had not begun to diff'er
about the Divine decrees. What Luther sought for was
to find a formula which expressed most fully the entire,
unreserved, immediate dependence of the believer on Christ.
What the Catholic sought for was so to modify this formula
as not to throw dishonour on the Church by making reli-
gion a merely personal matter ; or on the lives of holy men of
old, who had wrought out their salvation by asceticism ; or
endanger morality by appearing to undervalue good works.
It was agreed by all, that men are saved through Christ —
[that men are saved j not of themselves, but of the grace of
God, was equally agi'eed since the condemnation of Pelagius
— that faith and works imply each other, was not disputed
250 ESSAY ON
l)y either. A narrow space is left for the combat, which has
to be carried on within the outworks of an earher creed, in
which, nevertheless, great subtlety of human thought and
differences of character admit of being displayed.
On this narrow ground the first question that naturally
arises is, how faith is to be defined ? is it to include love
and holiness, or to be separated from them ? If the former,
it seems to lose its apprehensive dependent nature, and to
be scarcely distinguishable from works ; if the latter, the
statement is too refined for the common sense of mankind ;
though made by Luther, it could scarcely be retained even
by his immediate followers. Again, is it an act or a state ?
are we to figure it as a point, or as a line ? Is the whole of
our spiritual life anticipated in the beginning, or may faith
no less than works, justification equally with sanctification,
be conceived of as going on to perfection ? Is justification
an objective act of Divine mercy, or a subjective state of
which the believer is conscious in himself? Is the right-
eousness of faith imputed or inherent, an attribution of the
merits of Christ, or a renewal of the human heart itself?
What is the test of a true faith ? And is it possible for
those who are possessed of it to fall away ? How can we
exclude the doctrine of human merit consistently with
Divine justice ? How do we account for the fact that some
have this faith, and others are without it, this difference
being apparently independent of their moral state ? If
faith comes by grace, is it imparted to few or to all ? And
in what relation does the whole doctrine stand to Pre-
destinarianism on the one hand, and to the Catholic or
Sacramental theory on the other?
So at many points the doctrine of righteousness by faith
touches the metaphysical questions of subject and object,
of necessity and freedom, of habits and actions, and of
human consciousness, like a magnet drawing to itself
philosophy, as it has once drawn to itself the history of
Europe. There were distinctions also of an earlier date,
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 25 1
with which it had to struggle, of deeper moral import than
their technical form would lead us to suppose, such as that
of congruity and condignity, in which the analogy of Chris-
tianity is transferred to heathenism, and the doer of good
works before justification is regarded as a shadow of the
perfected believer. Neither must we omit to observe that,
as the doctrine of justification by faith had a close connexion
with the Pelagian controversy, carrying the decision of
the Church a step further, making Divine Grace not only
the source of human action, but also requiring the conscious-
ness or assurance of grace in the believer himself : so it put
forth its roots in another du-ection, attaching itself to Anselm
as well as Augustine, and comprehending the idea of satis-
faction ; not now, as formerly, of Christ offered in the
sacrifice of the mass, but of one sacrifice, once offered for
the sins of men, whether considered as an expiation by
suffering, or implying only a reconciliation between God
and man, or a mere manifestation of the righteousness of
God.
Such is the whole question, striking deep, and spreading
far and wide with its offshoots. It is not our intention to
enter on the investigation of all these subjects, many of
which are interesting as phases of thought in the history of
the Church, but have no bearing on the interpretation of
St. Paul's Epistles, and would be out of place here. Our
inquiry will embrace two heads : ( i ) What did St. Paul
mean by the expression ' righteousness of faith, ' in that age
ere controversies about his meaning arose ? and (2) What do
we mean by it, now that such controversies have died away,
and the interest in them is retained only by the theological
student, and the Church and the world are changed, and
there is no more question of Jew or Gentile, circumcision or
uncircumcision, and we do not become Christians, but are
so from our birth? Many volumes are not required to
explain the meaning of the Apostle ; nor can the words of
eternal life be other than few and simple to ourselves.
252 ESSAY ON
There is one interpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul
which is necessarily in some degree false ; that is, the
interpretation put upon them by later controversy. When
the minds of men are absorbed in a particular circle of ideas
they take possession of any stray verse, which becomes the
centre of their world. They use the words of Scripture, but
are incapable of seeing that they have another meaning and
are used in a different connexion from that in which they
employ them. Sometimes there is a degree of similarity in
the application which tends to conceal the difference. Thus
Luther and St. Paul both use the same term, ' justified by
faith ; ' and the strength of the Reformer's words is the
authority of St. Paul. Yet, observe how far this agreement
is one of words : how far of things. For Luther is speaking
solely of individuals, St. Paul also of nations ; Luther of
faith absolutely, St. Paul of faith as relative to the law.
With St. Paul faith is the symbol of the universality of the
Gospel. Luther excludes this or any analogous point of
view. In St, Paul there is no opposition of faith and love ;
nor does he further determine righteousness by faith as
meaning a faith in the blood or even in the death of Christ ;
nor does he suppose consciousness or assurance in the
person justified. But all these are prominent features of
the Lutheran doctrine. Once more : the faith of St. Paul
has reference to the evil of the world of sight ; which was
soon to vanish away, that the world in which faith walks
might be revealed ; but no such allusion is implied in the
language of the Reformer. Lastly : the change in the use
of the substantive ' righteousness ' to ' justification ' is the
indication of a wide difi'erence between St, Paul and
Luther ; the natural, almost accidental, language of St, Paul
having already passed into a technical formula.
These contrasts make us feel that St, Paul can only be
interpreted by himself, not from the systems of modern
theologians, nor even from the writings of one who had so
much in common with him as Luther. It is the spirit and
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 253
feeling of St. Paul which Luther represents, not the meaning
of his words, A touch of nature in both ' makes them kin.'
And without bringing down one to the level of the other,
we can imagine St. Paul returning that singular affection,
almost like an attachment to a living friend, which the
great Eeformer felt towards the Apostle. But this personal
attachment or resemblance in no way lessens the necessary
difference between the preaching of Luther and of St. Paul,
which arose in some degree perhaps from their individual
character, but chiefly out of the different circumstances and
modes of thought of their respective ages. At the Eeforma-
tion we are at another stage of the human mind, in which
system and logic and the abstractions of Aristotle have
a kind of necessary force, when words have so completely
taken the place of things, that the minutest distinctions
appear to have an intrinsic value.
It has been said (and the remark admits of a peculiar
application to theology), that few persons know sufficient
of things to be able to say whether disputes are merely
verbal or not. Yet. on the other hand, it must be admitted
that, whatever accidental advantage theology may derive
from system and definition, mere accurate statements can
never form the substance of our belief No one doubts that
Christianity could be in the fullest sense taught to a child
or a savage, without any mention of justification or satis-
faction or predestination. Why should we not receive the
Gospel as ' little children ? ' Why should we not choose
the poor man's part in the inheritance of the kingdom of
heaven? Why elaborate doctrinal abstractions which are
so subtle in their meaning as to be in great danger of being-
lost in their translation from one language to another?
which are always running into consequences inconsistent
with our moral nature, and the knowledge of God derived
from it ? which are not the prevailing usage of Scripture,
but technical terms which we have gathered from one or
two passages, and made the key-notes of our scale ? The
254 ESSAY ON
words satisfaction and predestination nowhere occur in
Scripture ; the word regeneration only twice, and but once
in a sense at all similar to that which it bears among our-
selves ; the word justification twice only, and nowhere as
a purely abstract term.
But although language and logic have strangely trans-
figured the meaning of Scripture, we cannot venture to say
that all theological controversies are questions of words. If
from their winding mazes we seek to retrace our steps, we
still find differences which have a deep foundation in the
opposite tendencies of the human mind, and the corre-
sponding division of the world itself. That men of one
temper of mind adopt one expression rather than another
may be partly an accident ; but the adoption of an expres-
sion by persons of marked character makes the difference of
words a reality also. That can scarcely be thought a matter
of words which cut in sunder the Church, which overthrew
princes, which made the line of demarcation between Jewish
and Gentile Christians in the Apostolic age, and is so, in
another sense, between Protestant and Catholic at the
present day. And in a deeper way of reflection than this,
if we turn from the Church to the individual, we seem to
see around us opposite natures and characters, whose lives
really exhibit a difference corresponding to that of which
we are speaking. The one incline to morality, the other to
religion ; the one to the sacramental, the other to the
spiritual ; the one to multiplicity in outward ordinances,
the other to simplicity ; the one consider chiefly the
means, the other the end ; the one desire to dwell upon
doctrinal statements, the other need only the name of
Christ ; the one turn to ascetic practices, to lead a good life,
and to do good to others, the other to faith, humility, and
dependence on God. We inay sometimes find the opposite
attributes combine with each other (there have ever been
cross-divisions on this article of belief in the Christian
world ; the great body of the Eeformed Churches, and
EIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 255
a small minority of Roman Catholics before the Reforma-
tion, being on the one side ; and the whole Roman Catholic-
Church since the Reformation, and a section of the Pro-
testant Episcopalians, and some lesser communions, on the
other) ; still, in general, the first of these characters answers
to that doctrine which the Roman Church sums up in the
formula of justification by works ; the latter is that temper
of mind which finds its natural dogmatic expression in the
words ' We are justified by faith.'
These latter words have been carried out of their original
circle of ideas into a new one by the doctrines of the Refor-
mation. They have become hardened, stiffened, sharpened
by the exigencies of controversy, and torn from what may
be termed their context in the Apostolical age. To that age
we must return ere we can think in the Apostle's language.
His conception of faith, although simpler than our own, has
nevertheless a peculiar relation to his own day ; it is at
once wider, and also narrower, than the use of the word
among ourselves — wider in that it is the symbol of the
admission of the Gentiles into the Church, but narrower also
in that it is the negative of the law. Faith is the proper
technical term which excludes the law ; being what the law
is not, as the law is what faith is not. No middle term
connects the two, or at least none which the Apostle admits,
until he has first widened the breach between them to the
uttermost. He does not say, ' Was not Abraham our father
justified by works (as well as by faith), when he had offered
up Isaac his son on the altar?' but only, 'What saith the
Scripture ? Abraham beheved God, and it was counted to
him for righteousness.'
The Jewish conception of righteousness was the fulfil-
ment of the Commandments. He who walked in all the
precepts of the law blameless, like Daniel in the old Testa-
ment, or Joseph and Nathanael in the New, was righteous
before God. 'What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit adul-
256 ESSAY ON
tery, do not steal, do not bear false witness. All these have
I kept from my youth up.' This is a picture of Jewish
righteousness as it presents itself in its most favourable
light. But it was a righteousness which comprehended the
observance of ceremonial details as well as moral precepts,
which confused questions of a new moon or a sabbath with
the weightier matters of common honesty or filial duty. It
might be nothing more than an obedience to the law as
such, losing itself on the surface of religion, in casuistical
distinctions about meats and drinks, or vows or forms of
oaths, or purifications, without any attempt to make clean
that which is within. It might also pierce inward to the
dividing asunder of the soul. Then was heard the voice of
conscience crying, 'All these things cannot make the doers
thereof perfect.' When every external obligation was ful-
filled, the internal began. Actions must include thoughts
and intentions — the Seventh Commandment extends to the
adultery of the heart ; in one word, the law must become
a spirit.
But to the mind of St. Paul the spirit presented itself not
so much as a higher fulfilment of the law, but as anta-
gonistic to it. From this point of view, it appeared not
that man could never fulfil the law perfectly, but that he
could never fulfil it at all. What God required was some-
thing different in kind from legal obedience. What man
needed was a return to God and nature. He was burdened,
straitened, shut out from the presence of his Father —
a servant, not a son ; to whom, in a spiritual sense, the
heaven was become as iron, and the earth brass. The new
righteousness must raise him above the burden of ordi-
nances, and bring him into a living communion with God.
It must be within, and not without him — written not on
tables of stone, but on fleshy tables of the heart. But
inward righteousness was no peculiar privilege of the Israel-
ites ; it belonged to all mankind. And the revelation of it,
as it satisfied the need of the individual soul, vindicated
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 257
also the ways of God to man ; it showed God to be equal in
justice and mercy to all mankind.
As the symbol of this inward righteousness, St. Paul
found an expression — righteousness by faith — derived from
those passages in the Old Testament which spoke of Abra-
ham being justilied by faith. It was already in use among
the Jews ; but it was the Apostle who stamped it first with
a permanent and universal import. The faith of St. Paul
was not the faith of the Patriarchs only, who believed in the
promises made to their descendants ; it entered within the
veil — out of the reach of ordinances — beyond the evil of
this present life ; it was the instrument of union with
Christ, in whom all men were one ; whom they were ex-
pecting to come from heaven. The Jewish nation itself
was too far gone to be saved as a nation : individuals had
a nearer way. The Lord was at hand ; there was no time
for a long life of laborious service. As at the last hour,
when we have to teach men rather how to die than how to
live, the Apostle could only say to those who would receive
it, ' Believe ; all things are possible to him that believes. '
Such are some of the peculiar aspects of the Apostle's
doctrine of righteousness by faith. To our own minds it
has become a later stage or a particular form of the more
general doctrine of salvation through Christ, of the grace of
God to man, or of the still more general truth of spiritual
religion. It is the connecting link by which we appropriate
these to ourselves — the hand which we put out to apprehend
the mercy of God. It was not so to the Apostle. To him
grace and faith and the Spirit are not parts of a doctrinal
system, but different expressions of the same truth.
' Beginning in the Spirit ' is another way of saying ' Being
justified by faith.' He uses them indiscriminately, and
therefore we cannot suppose that he could have laid any
stress on distinctions between them. Even the apparently
precise antithesis of the prepositions ey, 8ta varies in
different passages. Only in reference to the law, faith,
VOL. II. s
358 ESSAY ON
rather than grace, is the more correct and natural expres-
sion. It was Christ or not Christ, the Spirit or not the
Spirit, faith and the law, that were the dividing principles :
not Christ through faith, as opposed to Christ through
works ; or the Spirit as communicated through grace, to
the Spirit as independent of grace.
Illusive as are the distinctions of later controversies as
guides to the interpretation of Scripture, there is another
help, of which we can hardly avail ourselves too much — the
interpretation of fact. To read the mind of the Apostle, we
must read also the state of the world and the Church by
which he was surrounded. Now, there are two great facts
which correspond to the doctrine of righteousness by faith,
which is also the doctrine of the universality of the Gospel :
first, the vision which the Apostle saw on the way to
Damascus ; secondly, the actual conversion of the Gentiles
by the preaching of the Apostle. Righteousness by faith,
admission of the Gentiles, even the rejection and restoration
of the Jews, are — himself under so many different points of
view. The way by which God had led hun was the way
also by which he was leading other men. When he preached
righteousness by faith, his conscience also bore him witness
that this was the manner in which he had himself passed
from darkness to light, from the burden of ordinances to the
power of an endless life. In proclaiming the salvation of
the Gentiles, he was interpreting the world as it was ; their
admission into the Church had already taken place before
the eyes of all mankind ; it was a purpose of God that was
actually fulfilled, not waiting for some future revelation.
Just as when doubts are raised respecting his Apostleship,
he cut them short by the fact that he was an Apostle, and
did the work of an Apostle ; so, in adjusting the relations of
Jew and Gentile, and justifying the ways of God, the facts,
read aright, are the basis of the doctrine which he teaches.
All that he further shows is, that these facts were in accord-
ance with the Old Testament, with the words of the Prophets,
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 259
and the dealings of God with the Jewish people. And the
Apostles at Jerusalem, equally with himself, admitted the
success of his mission as an evidence of its truth.
But the faith which St. Paul preached was not merely the
evidence of things not seen, in which the Gentiles also had
part, nor only the reflection of ' the violence ' of the world
around him, which was taking the kingdom of heaven by
force. The source, the hidden life, from which justification
flows, in which it lives, is — Christ. It is true that we
nowhere find in the Epistles the expression 'justification by
Christ ' exactly in the sense of modern theology. But, on
the other hand, we are described as dead with Christ, we
live with Him, we are members of His body, we follow Him
in all the stages of His being. All this is another way of
expressing * We are justified by faith.' That which takes us
out of ourselves and links us with Christ, which anticipates
in an instant the rest of life, which is the door of every
heavenly and spiritual relation, presenting us through a glass
with the image of Christ crucified, is faith. The difference
between our own mode of thinking and that of the Apostle
is mainly this — that to him Christ is set forth more as in
a picture, and less through the medium of ideas or figures
of speech ; and that while we conceive the Saviour more
naturally as an object of faith, to St. Paul He is rather the
indwelling power of life which is fashioned in him, the
marks of whose body he bears, the measure of whose
sufferings he fills up.
When in the Gospel it is said, * Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved,' this is substantially the
same truth as 'We are justified by faith.' It is another
way of expressing 'Therefore being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Yet
we may note two points of difference, as well as two of
resemblance, in the manner in which the doctrine is set
forth in the Gospel as compared with the manner of the
Epistles of St. Paul. First, in the omission of any connexion
S 2
a5o ESSAY ON
between the doctrine of faith in Christ, and the admission of
the Gentiles. The Saviour is within the borders of Israel ;
and accordingly little is said of the 'sheep not of this fold,'
or the other husbandmen who shall take possession of the
vineyard. Secondly, there is in the words of Christ no
antagonism or opposition to the law, except so far as the
law itself represented an imperfect or defective morality, or
the perversions of the law had become inconsistent with
every moral principle. Two points of resemblance have
also to be remarked between the faith of the Gospels and of
the Epistles. In the first place, both are accompanied by
forgiveness of sins. As our Saviour to the disciple who
affirms his belief says, ' Thy sins be forgiven thee ; ' so
St. Paul, when seeking to describe, in the language of the
Old Testament, the state of justification by faith, cites the
words of David, ' Blessed is the man to whom the Lord
will not impute sin.' Secondly, they have both a kind of
absoluteness which raises them above earthly things. There
is a sort of omnipotence attributed to faith, of which the
believer is made a partaker. ' Whoso hath faith as a grain
of mustard seed, and should say unto this mountain. Be
thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be
done unto him,' is the language of our Lord. ' I can do all
things through Christ that strengtheneth me, ' are the words
of St. Paul.
Faith, in the view of the Apostle, has a further aspect,
which is freedom. That quality in us which in reference
to God and Christ is faith, in reference to ourselves and our
fellow-men is Christian liberty. ' With this freedom Christ
has made us free ; ' ' where the spirit of the Lord is, there
is liberty.' It is the image also of the communion of the
world to come. ' The Jerusalem that is above is free, ' and
' the creature is waiting to be delivered into the glorious
liberty of the children of God.' It applies to the Church as
now no longer confined in the prison-house of the Jewish
dispensation ; to the grace of God, which is given irrespec-
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 26 1
tively to all ; to the individual, the power of whose will is
now loosed ; to the Gospel, as freedom from the law, setting
the conscience at rest about questions of meats and drinks,
and new moons and sabbaths ; and, above all, to the freedom
from the consciousness of sin : in all these senses the law of
the spirit of life is also the law of freedom.
In modern language, assurance has been deemed necessary
to the definition of a true faith. Thei'e is a sense, too, in
which final assurance entered into the conception of the
faith of the Epistles. Looking at men from without, it was
possible for them to fall away finally ; it was possible also
to fall without falling away ; as St. John says, there is a sin
unto death, and there is a sin not unto death. But looking
inwards into their hearts and consciences, their salvation
was not a matter of probability ; they knew whom they had
believed, and were confident that He who had begun the
good work in them would continue it unto the end. All
calculations respecting the future were to them lost in the
fact that they were already saved ; to use a homely expres-
sion, they had no time to inquire whether the state to which
they were called was permanent and final. The same
intense faith which separated them from the present world,
had already given them a place in the world to come. They
had not to win the crown — it was already won : this life,
when they thought of themselves in relation to Christ, was
the next ; as their union with Him seemed to them more
true and real than the mere accidents of their temporal
existence.
A few words will briefly recapitulate the doctrine of
righteousness by faith as gathered from the Epistles of
St. Paul.
Faith, then, according to the Apostle, is the spiritual
principle whereby we go out of ourselves to hold communion
with God and Christ ; not like the faith of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, clothing itself in the shadows of the law ; but
opposed to the law, and of a nature purely moral and
263 ESSAY ON
spiritual. It frees man from the flesh, the law, the world,
and from himself also ; that is, from his sinful nature, which
is the meeting of these three elements in his spiritual con-
sciousness. And to be 'justified' is to pass into a new
state ; such as that of the Christian world when compared
with the Jewish or Pagan ; such as that which St. Paul
had himself felt at the moment of his conversion ; such as
that which he reminds the Galatian converts they had ex-
perienced, ' before whose eyes Jesus Christ was evidently
set forth crucified ; ' an inward or subjective state, to which
the outward or objective act of calling, on God's part,
through the preaching of the Apostle, corresponded ; which,
considered on a wider scale, was the acceptance of the
Gentiles and of every one who feared God ; corresponding
in like manner to the eternal purpose of God ; indicated in
the case of the individual by his own inward assurance ;
in the case of the world at large, testified by the fact ;
accompanied in the first by the sense of peace and forgive-
ness, and implying to mankind generally the last final
principle of the Divine Government — 'God concluded all
under sin that he might have mercy upon all.'
We acknowledge that there is a difference between the
meaning of justification by faith to St. Paul and to our-
selves. Eighteen hundred years cannot have passed away,
leaving the world and the mind of man, or the use of
language, the same as it was. Times have altered, and
Christianity, partaking of the social and political progress
of mankind, receiving, too, its own intellectual develop-
ment, has inevitably lost its simplicity. The true use of
philosophy is to restore this simplicity ; to undo the per-
plexities which the love of system or past philosophies, or
the imperfection of language or logic, have made ; to lighten
the burden which the traditions of ages have imposed upon
us. To understand St. Paul we found it necessary to get
rid of definitions and deductions, which might be compared
to a mazy undergrowth of some noble forest, which we
KIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 263
must clear away ere we can wander in its ranges. And it
is necessary for ourselves also to return from theology to
Scripture ; to seek a truth to live and die in— not to be the
subject of verbal disputes, which entangle the religious sense
in scholastic refinements. The words of eternal life are few
and simple, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved.'
Kemaining, then, within the circle of the New Testament,
which we receive as a rule of life for ourselves, no less
than for the early Church, we must not ignore the great
differences by which we are distinguished from those for
whom it was written. Words of life and inspiration, heard
by them with ravishment for the first time, are to us words
of fixed and conventional meaning ; they no longer express
feelings of the heart, but ideas of the head. Nor is the
difference less between the state of the world then and now ;
not only of the outward world in which we live, but of that
inner world which we ourselves are. The law is dead to us,
and we to the law ; and the language of St. Paul is relative
to what has passed away. The transitions of meaning in
the use of the word law tend also to a corresponding
variation in the meaning of faith. We are not looking
for the immediate coming of Christ, and do not anticipate,
in a single generation, the end of human things, or the
history of a life in the moment of baptism or conversion.
To us time and eternity have a fixed boundary, between
them there is a gulf which we cannot pass ; we do not
mingle in our thoughts earth and heaven. Last of all, we
are in a professing Christian world, in which religion, too,
has become a sort of business ; moreover, we see a long way
off truths of which the first believers were eye-witnesses.
Hence it has become difiicult for us to conceive the simple
force of such expressions as 'dead with Christ,' 'if ye then
be risen with Christ,' which are repeated in prayers or
sermons, but often convey no distinct impression to the
minds of the hearers.
264 ESSAY ON
The neglect of these differences between ourselves and
the first disciples has sometimes led to a distortion of
doctrine and a perversion of life ; where words had nothing
to correspond to them, views of human nature have been
invented to suit the supposed meaning of St. Paul. Thus,
for example, the notion of legal righteousness is indeed
a fiction as applied to our own times. Nor, in truth, is the
pride of human nature, or the tendency to rebel against the
will of God, or to attach an undue value to good works,
better founded. Men are evil in all sorts of ways : they
deceive themselves and others ; they walk by the opinion
of others, and not by faith ; they give way to their passions ;
they are imperious and oppressive to one another. But if
we look closely, we perceive that most of their sins are not
consciously against God ; the pride of rank, or wealth, or
power, or intellect, may be shown towards their brethren,
but no man is proud towards God. No man does wrong
for the sake of rebelling against God. The evil is not that
men are bound under a curse by the ever-present conscious-
ness of sin, but that sins pass unheeded by : not that they
wantonly offend God, but that they know Him not. So,
again, there may be a false sense of security towards God, as
is sometimes observed on a death-bed, when mere physical
weakness seems to incline the mind to patience and resigna-
tion ; yet this more often manifests itself in a mistaken
faith, than in a reliance on good works. Or, to take another
instance, we are often surprised at the extent to which men
who are not professors of religion seem to practise Christian
virtues ; yet their state, however we may regard it, has
nothing in common with legal or self-righteousness.
And besides theories of religion at variance with ex-
perience, which have always a kind of unsoundness, the
attempt of men to apply Scripture to their own lives in
the letter rather than in the spirit, has been very injurious
in other ways to the faith of Christ. Persons have confused
the accidental circumstances or language of the Apostolic
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 265
times with the universal language of morality and truth.
They have reduced human nature to very great straits ;
they have staked salvation upon the right use of a word ;
they have enlisted the noblest feelings of mankind in
opposition to their ' Gospel. ' They have become mystics
in the attempt to follow the Apostles, who were not mystics.
Narrowness in their own way of life has led to exclusive-
ness in their judgements on other men. The undue stress
which they have laid on particular precepts or texts of
Scripture has closed their minds against its general pur-
pose ; the rigidness of their own rules has rendered it
impossible that they should grow freely to ' the stature of
the perfect man. ' They have ended in a verbal Christianity,
which has preserved words when the meaning of them had
changed, taking the form, while it quenched the life, of the
Grospel.
Leaving the peculiar and relative aspect of the Pauline
doctrine, as well as the scholastic and traditional one, we
have again to ask the meaning of justification by faith. We
may divide the subject, first, as it may be considered in the
abstract ; and, secondly, as personal to ourselves.
I. Our justification may be regarded as an act on God's
part. It may be said that this act is continuous, and com-
mensurate with our whole lives ; that although ' known
unto God are all his works from the beginning,' yet that,
speaking as men, and translating what we term the acts
of God into human language, we are ever being more and
more justified, as in theological writers we are said also to
be more and more sanctified. At first sight it seems that
to deny this involves an absurdity ; it may be thought
a contradiction to maintain that we are justified at once,
but sanctified all our life long. Yet perhaps this latter
mode of statement is better than the other, because it
presents two aspects of the tmth instead of one only ;
it is also a nearer expression of the inward consciousness of
the soul itself. For must we not admit that it is the
266 ESSAY ON
unchangeable will of God that all mankind should be saved ?
Justification in the mind of the believer is the pei'ception
of this fact, which always was. It is not made more a fact
by our knowing it for many years or our whole life. And
this is the witness of experience. For he who is justified
by faith does not go about doubting in himself or his future
destiny, but trusting in God. From the first moment that
he turns earnestly to God he believes that he is saved ; not
from any confidence in himself, but from an overpowering
sense of the love of God and Christ.
II. It is an old problem in philosophy. What is the
beginning of our moral being ? What is that prior principle
which makes good actions produce good habits ? Which of
those actions raises us above the world of sight? Plato
would have answered, the contemplation of the idea of
good. Some of ourselves would answer, by the substitution
of a conception of moral growth for the mechanical theory
of habits. Leaving out of sight our relation to God, we can
only say, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, with
powers which we are unable to analyze. It is a parallel
difficulty in religion which is met by the doctrine of right-
eousness by faith. We grow up spiritually, we cannot tell
how ; not by outward acts, nor always by energetic effort,
but stilly and silently, by the grace of God descending upon
us, as the dew falls upon the earth. When a person is
apprehensive and excited about his future state, straining
every nerve lest he should fall short of the requirements of
God, overpowered with the memory of his past sins, that is
not the temper of mind in which he can truly serve God,
or work out his own salvation. Peace must go before as
well as follow after ; a peace, too, not to be found in the
necessity of law (as philosophy has sometimes held), but in
the sense of the love of God to His creatures. He has no
right to this peace, and yet he has it ; in the consciousness
of his new state there is more than he can reasonably
explain. At once and immediately the Gospel tells him
EIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 267
that he is justified by faith, that his pardon is simultaneous
with the moment of his belief, that he may go on his way
rejoicing to fulfil the duties of life ; for, in human language,
God is no longer angry with him.
III. Thus far, in the consideration of righteousness by
faith, we have obtained two points of view, in which, though
regarded in the abstract only, the truth of which these words
are the symbol has still a meaning ; first, as expressing the
unchangeableness of the mercy of Grod ; and, secondly, the
mysteriousness of human action. As we approach nearer,
we are unavoidably led to regard the gift of righteousness
rather in reference to the subject than to the object, in
relation to man rather than God. What quality, feeling,
temper, habit in ourselves answers to it ? It may be more
or less conscious to us, more of a state and less of a feeling,
showing itself rather in our lives than our lips. But for
these differences we can make allowance. It is the same
faith still, under various conditions and circumstances, and
sometimes taking different names.
IV. The expression ' righteousness by faith ' indicates the
personal character of salvation ; it is not the tale of works
that we do, but we ourselves who are accepted of God.
Who can bear to think of his own actions as they are seen
by the eye of the Almighty? Looking at their defective
performance, or analyzing them into the secondary motives
out of which they have sprung, do we seem to have any
ground on which we can stand ; is there anything which
satisfies ourselves? Yet, knowing that our own works
cannot abide the judgement of God, we know also that His
love is not proportioned to them. He is a Person who deals
with us as persons over whom He has an absolute right,
who have nevertheless an endless value to Him. When He
might exact all, He forgives all ; ' the kingdom of heaven '
is like not only to a Master taking account with his sei-vants,
but to a Father going out to meet his returning son. The
symbol and mean of this personal relation of man to God
268 ESSAY ON
is faith ; and the righteousness which consists not in what
we do, but in what we are, is the righteousness of faith.
V. Faith may be spoken of, in the language of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, as the substance of things unseen. But
what are the things unseen ? Not only an invisible world
ready to flash through the material at the appearance of
Christ ; not angels, or powers of darkness, or even God
Himself 'sitting,' as the Old Testament described, 'on the
circle of the heavens ; ' but the kingdom of truth and
justice, the things that are within, of which God is the
centre, and with which men everywhere by faith hold
communion. Faith is the belief in the existence of this
kingdom ; that is, in the truth and justice and mercy of
God, who disposes all things — not, perhaps, in our judge-
ment for the greatest happiness of His creatures, but
absolutely in accordance with our moral notions. And that
this is not seen to be the case here, makes it a matter of
faith that it will be so in some way that we do not at
present comprehend. He that believes on God believes,
first, that He is ; and, secondly, that He is the Rewarder
of them that seek Him.
VI. Now, if we go on to ask what gives this assurance
of the truth and justice of God, the answer is, the life and
death of Christ, who is the Son of God, and the Revelation
of God. We know what He himself has told us of God,
and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from per-
fect truth ; nay, this goodness itself is the only conception
we can form of God, if we confess what the mere immensity
of the material world tends to suggest, that the Almighty
is not a natural or even a supernatural power, but a Being
of whom the reason and conscience of man have a truer
conception than imagination in its highest flights. He is
not in the storm, nor in the thunder, nor in the earthquake,
but ' in the still small voice.' And this image of God as He
reveals himself in the heart of man is ' Christ in us the
hope of glory ; ' Christ as He once was upon earth in His
EIGHTEOUSXESS BY FAITH 369
sufferings rather than His miracles— the image of goodness
and truth and peace and love.
We are on the edge of a theological difficulty; for who
can deny that the image of that goodness may fade from the
mind's eye after so many centuries, or that there are those
who recognize the idea and may be unable to admit the
fact ? Can we say that this error of the head is also a cor-
ruption of the will ? The lives of such unbelievers in the
facts of Christianity would sometimes refute our explanation.
And yet it is time that Providence has made our spiritual
life dependent on the belief in certain truths, and those
truths run up into matters of fact, with the belief in which
they have ever been associated ; it is true, also, that the
most important moral consequences flow from unbelief. We
grant the difficulty : no complete answer can be given to it
on this side the grave. Doubtless God has provided a way
that the sceptic no less than the believer shall receive his
due ; He does not need our timid counsels for the protection
of the truth. If among those who have rejected the facts of
the Gospel history some have been rash, hypercritical, in-
flated with the pride of intellect, or secretly alienated by
sensuality from the faith of Christ — there have been others,
also, upon whom we may conceive to rest a portion of that
blessing which comes to such as ' have not seen and yet have
believed.'
VII. In the Epistles of St. Paul, and yet more in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, the relation of Christ to mankind is
expressed under figures of speech taken from the Mosaic
dispensation : He is the Sacrifice for the sins of men, ' the
Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world ; ' the
Antitype of all the types, the fulfilment in His own person
of the Jewish law. Such words may give comfort to those
who think of God under human imagery, but they seem to
require explanation when we rise to the contemplation of
Him as the God of truth, without parts or passions, who
knows all things, and cannot be angry with any, or see
270 ESSAY ON
them other than they truly are. What is indicated by them,
to us ' who are dead to the law, ' is, that God has manifested
himself in Christ as the God of mercy ; who is more ready
to hear than we to pray ; who has forgiven us almost before
we ask Him ; who has given us His only Son, and how will
He not with Him also give us all things ? They intimate,
on God's part, that He is not extreme to mark what is done
amiss ; in human language, ' he is touched with the feeling
of our infirmities : ' on our part, that we say to God, ' Not of
ourselves, but of thy grace and mercy, O Lord.' Not in the
fullness of life and health, nor in the midst of business, nor
in the schools of theology ; but in the sick chamber, where
are no more earthly interests, and in the hour of death, we
have before us the living image of the truth of justification
by faith, when man acknowledges, on the confines of another
world, the unprofitableness of his own good deeds, and the
goodness of God even in afflicting him, and his absolute
reliance not on works of righteousness that he has done, but
on the Divine mercy.
VIII. A true faith has been sometimes defined to be not
a faith in the unseen merely, or in God or Christ, but a per-
sonal assurance of salvation. Such a feeling may be only
the veil of sensualism ; it may be also the noble confidence
of St. Paul. ' I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things pre-
sent, nor things to come, nor height, nor death, nor any
other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' It may be an
emotion, resting on no other ground except that we believe ;
or, a conviction deeply rooted in our life and character.
Scripture and reason alike seem to require this belief in our
own salvation : and yet to assume that we are at the end of
the race may make us lag in our course. Whatever danger
there is in the doctrine of the Divine decrees, the danger is
nearer home, and more liable to influence practice, when
our faith takes the form of personal assurance. How, then,
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH 27 1
are we to escape from the dilemma, and have a rational
confidence in the mercy of God ?
IX. Thi^ confidence must rest, first, on a sense of the
truth and justice of God, rising above perplexities of fact in
the world around us, or the tangle of metaphysical or theo-
logical difficulties. But although such a sense of the truth
or justice of God is the beginning of our peace, yet a link
of connexion is wanting before we can venture to apply to
ourselves that which we acknowledge in the abstract. The
justice of God may lead to our condemnation as well as
to our justification. Are we then, in the language of the
ancient tragedy, to say that no one can be counted happy
before he dies, or that salvation is only granted when the
end of our course is seen ? Not so ; the Gospel encourages
us to regard ourselves as already saved ; for we have com-
munion with Christ and appropriate His work by faith.
And this appropriation means nothing short of the re-
nunciation of self and the taking vip of the cross of Christ
in daily life. Whether such an imitation or appropriation
of Christ is illusive or real, a new mould of nature or only
an outward and superficial impression, is a question not to
be answered by any further theological distinction, but by
Sin honest and good heart searching into itself. Then only,
when we surrender ourselves into the hands of God, when
we ask Him to show us to ourselves as we truly are, when
we allow ourselves in no sin, when we attribute nothing to
our own merits, when we test our faith, not by the sincerity
of an hour, but of months and years, we learn the true
meaning of that word in which, better than any other, the
nature of righteousness by faith is summed up — peace.
' And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three ; but
the greatest of these is love.' There seems to be a contra-
diction in love being the ' greatest,' when faith is the
medium of acceptance. Love, according to some, is pre-
ferred to faith, because it reaches to another life ; when
faith and hope are swallowed up in sight, love remains still.
272 ESSAY ON EIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH
Love, according to others, has the first place, because it is
Divine as well as human ; it is the love of God to man, as
well as of man to God. Perhaps, the order of precedence
is sufficiently explained by the occasion ; to a Church torn
by divisions the Apostle says, ' that the first of Christian
graces is love.' Another thought, however, is suggested by
these words, which has a bearing on our present subject.
It is this, that in using the received terms of theology, we
must also acknowledge their relative and transient cha-
racter. Christian truth has many modes of statement ; love
is the more natural expression to St. John, faith to St. Paul.
The indwelling of Christ or of the Spirit of God, grace, faith,
hope, love, are not parts of a system, but powers or aspects
of the Christian life. Human minds are different, and the
same mind is not the same at different times ; and the best
of men nowadays have but a feeble consciousness of spiritual
truths. We ought not to dim that consciousness by insist-
ing on a single formula ; and therefore while speaking of
faith as the instrument of justification, because faith indi-
cates the apprehensive, dependent character of the believer's
relation to Chiist, we are bound also to deny that the Gospel
is contained in any word, or the Christian life inseparably
linked to any one quality. We must acknowledge the
imperfection of language and thought, and seek rather to
describe than to define the work of God in the soul, which
has as many forms as the tempers, capacities, circumstances,
and accidents of our nature.
ESSAY
ON
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH
OF SK^
'The strength of sin is the law.' — i Cor. xv. 56.
These words occur parenthetically in the fifteenth chapter
of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. They may be
regarded as a summary of the seventh chapter of the
Romans. The thought contained in them is also the
undercurrent of several other passages in the Epistles of
St. Paul, as, for example, Rom. v. 20 ; xiv. 22, 23 ; Gal.
ii. 17-21 ; Col. ii. 14. The Apostle is speaking of that
prior state out of which he passed into the liberty of the
Gospel. When he asked himself what preceded Christ in
his own life and in the dispensations of Providence, what
he had once felt within warring against his soul, what he
saw without contending against the cross, the answer to all
was given in the same word, ' the Law.'
But the singular description of the law as the strength of
sin goes further, and has a deeper meaning ; for it seems to
make the law the cause of sin. Here is the difficulty. The
law may have been defective— adapted, as we should say,
to a different state of society, enforcing in some passages
the morality of a half-civilized age, such as could never
render the practisers thereof perfect, powerless to create
a new life either in the Jewish nation collectively, or in the
VOL. II. T
274 ESSAY ON
individuals who composed the nation ; yet this imperfection
and ' unprofitableness ' of the law are not what the Apostle
means by the strength of sin. If we say, in the words of
James, quoted in the Acts, that it was a burden too heavy
for men to bear, still language like this falls short of the
paradox, as it appears to us, of St. Paul. There is no trace
that the law was regarded by him as given ' because of the
hardness of men's hearts,' as our Saviour says ; or that he
is speaking of the law as corrupted by the Pharisee, or
overlaid by Jewish traditions. The Apostle is not con-
trasting, as we are apt to do, Moses and the prophets with
the additions of those who sat in Moses' seat. The same
law which is holy, and good, and just, is also the strength
of sin.
There is another kind of language used respecting the
law in Scripture which is very familiar, and seems to be as
natural to our preconceived notions as the passage which
we are now considering is irreconcilable with them. The
law is described as the preparation of the Gospel ; the first
volume of the book, the other half of Divine Revelation.
It is the veil on the face of Moses which obscured the
excess of light, as the Apostle himself says in the Epistle to
the Corinthians ; or the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ,
as in the Galatians ; or the shadow of good things to come,
as in the Hebrews. But all these figures of speech can
only be cited here to point out how different the conception
in them is from that which is implied in such words as
'The strength of sin is the law.' In these latter we have
not the light shining more and more unto the perfect day,
but the light and darkness ; that is, the Gospel and the law
opposed, as it were two hemispheres, dividing time and the
world and the human heart.
Nor, again, if we consider the law in its immediate
workings on the mind, as it might seem to be struggling
within for mastery over the Gospel, as we may imagine
Catholicism and Protestantism in the mind of Luther or
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 27.5
of a modern convert, do we make a nearer approach to the
solution of our difficulty. Even Luther, when denouncing
the Pope as Antichrist, would not have spoken of the
Catholic faith as the strength of sin. Still less would he
have one instant described it as 'holy, just, and good,' and
in the next as deceiving and slaying him. The struggle
between one religion and another, or, even without any
conflict of creeds, between hope and despair, may trouble
the conscience, may enfeeble the will, may darken the
intellect ; still no sober-minded man would think of attri-
buting his sins to having passed through such a struggle.
Once more, parallels from heathen authors, such as
' Nitimur in vetitum semper, ' and the witness of the heart
against itself, 'that it is evil continually,' have been quoted
in illustration of the verse placed at the beginning of this
Essay. The aphorisms alluded to are really metaphorical
expressions, intended by satirists and moralists to state
forcibly that men are pi'one to err, not that law is provo-
cative or the cause of sin. Mankind offend in various ways,
and from different motives — ambition, vanity, selfishness,
passion — but not simply from the desire to break the law.
or to offend God. So, again, as we multiply laws, we may
seem to multiply offences : the real truth is, that as offences
multiply the laws multiply also. To break the law for the
sake of doing so, is not crime or sin, but madness. Nor,
again, will it do to speak of the perversity of the human
will — of men like children, doing a thing because, as we
say in familiar language, they are told not to do it. This
perversity consists simply in knowing the better and choosing
the worse, in passion prevailing over reason. The better is
not the cause of their choosing the worse, nor is reason
answerable for the dictates of passion, which would be the
parallel required.
All these, then, we must regard as half-explanations,
which fail to reach the Apostle's meaning. When we ask
what he can mean by saying that ' the law is the strength of
T 2
276 ESSAY ON
sin,' it is no answer to reply, that the law was imperfect or
transient, that it could not take away sin, that it had been
made of none effect by tradition, that its ceremonial observ-
ances were hypocritical and unmeaning ; or that we, too, use
certain metaphorical expressions, which, however different
in sense, have a sound not unlike the words of the Apostle.
We require an explanation that goes deeper, which does
not pare away the force of the expression, such as can be
gathered only from the Apostle himself, and the writings of
his time. The point of view from which we regard things
may begin to turn round ; to understand the meaning of the
law, we may have to place ourselves within the circle of its
influences ; to understand the nature of sin, we may be
compelled to imagine ourselves in the veiy act of sinning :
this inversion of our ordinary modes of thought may be the
only means of attaining the true and natural sense of the
Apostle's words.
We are commencing an inquiry which lacks the sustaining
interest of controversy, the data of which are metaphysical
reasonings and points of view which cannot be even imagined
without a considerable effort of mind, and which there will
be the more indisposition to admit, as they run counter to
the popular belief that the Bible is a book easily and super-
ficially intelligible. Such feelings are natural ; we are
jealous of those who wrap up in mystery the Word of life,
who carry us into an atmosphere which none else can
breathe. We cannot be too jealous of Kant or Fichte,
Schelling or Hegel, finding their way into the interpretation
of Scripture. As jealous should we be also of any patristic
or other system which draws away its words from their
natural meaning. Still the Scripture has difficulties not
brought but found there, a few words respecting which will
pave the way for the inquiry on which we are entering.
The Bible is at once the easiest and the hardest of books.
The easiest, in that it gives us plain rules for moral and
religious duties which he that runs can read, an example
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 277
that every one can follow, a work that any body may do.
But it is the hardest also, in that it is fragmentary, written
in a dead language, and referring to times and actions of
wliich in general we have no other record, and, above all,
using modes of thought and often relating to spiritual states,
which amongst ovirselves have long ceased to exist, or the
influence of institutions which have passed away. Who can
supply the external form of the primitive Church of the
first century, whether in its ritual or discipline, from the
brief allusions of the Gospels and Epistles? Who can
imagine the mind of the first believers, as they sat 'with
their lamps lighted and their loins girded,' waiting for the
reappearance of the Lord ? Who describe the prophesyings
or speaking with tongues, or interpretation of tongues?
Who knows the spirit of a man who consciously recognizes
in his ordinary life the inward workings of a Divine power ?
The first solution of such difficulties is to admit them, to
acknowledge that the world in which we live is not the
world of the first century, and that the first Christians were
not like ourselves.
Nor is this difficulty less, but greater, in reference to
words which are common to us and to them, which are used
by both with a certain degree of similarity, and with a sort
of analogy to other words which puts us off our guard, and
prevents our perceiving the real change of meaning. Such
is the case with the words church, priest, sacrifice, and in
general with words taken from the Mosaic dispensation ;
above all, with the word 'law.' Does not common sense
teach us that whatever St. Paul meant by law, he must
have meant something hard to us to understand, to whom
the law has no existence, who are Europeans, not Orientals ?
to whom the law of the land is no longer the immediate
direct law of God, and who can form no idea of the
entanglements and perplexities which the attempt to adapt
the law of Mount Sinai to an altered world must have caused
to the Jew ? Is it not certain that whenever we use the
■ZyS ESSAY ON
word 'law' in its theological acceptation, we shall give it
a meaning somewhat different from that of the Apostle?
We cannot help doing so. Probably we may sum it up
under the epithet 'moral or ceremonial,' or raise the question
to which of these the Apostle refers, forgetting that they
are distinctions which belong to us, but do not belong to
him. The study of a few pages of the Mischna, which
mounts up nearly to the time of the Apostles, would reveal
to us how very far our dim indefinite notion of the 'law'
falls short of that intense life and power and sacredness
which were attributed to it by a Jew of the first century ;
as well as how little conception he had of the fundamental
distinctions which theologians have introduced respecting it.
But the consideration of these difficulties does not ter-
minate with themselves ; they lead us to a higher idea of
Scripture ; they compel us to adapt ourselves to Scripture,
instead of adapting Scripture to ourselves. In the ordinary
study of the sacred volume, the chief difficulty is the accurate
perception of the connexion. The words lie smoothly on
the page ; the road is trite and worn. Only just here and
there we stumble over an impediment ; as it were a stone
lying not loose, but deeply embedded in the soil ; which is
the indication of a world below just appearing on the surface.
Such are many passages in the Epistles of St. Paul. There
is m.uch that we really understand, much that we appear to
undei'stand, which has, indeed, a deceitful congruity with
words and thoughts of our own day. Some passages remain
intractable. From these latter we obtain the pure ore ;
here, if anywhere, are traces of the peculiar state and
feelings of the Church of the Apostles, such as no after age
could invent, or even understand. It is to these we turn,
not for a rule of conduct, but for the inner life of Apostles
and Churches ; rejecting nothing as designedly strange or
mysterious, satisfied with no explanation that does violence
to the language, not suffering our minds to be diverted from
the point of the difficulty, comparing one difficulty with
THE LAW AS THE STRENQTH OF SIN 279
another ; seeking the answer, not in ourselves and in the
controversies of our own day, but in the Scripture and the
habits of thought of the age ; collecting eveiy association
that bears upon it, and gathering up each fragment that
remains, that nothing be lost ; at the same time acknow-
ledging how defective our knowledge really is, not merely
in that general sense in which all human knowledge is feeble
and insufficient, but in the particular one of our actual
ignorance of the facts and persons and ways of thought of
the age in which the Gospel came into the world.
The subject of the present Essay is suggestive of the
following questions: — 'What did St. Paul mean by the
law, and what by sin'?' 'Is the Apostle speaking from
the experience of his own heart and the feelings of his age
and country, or making an objective statement for mankind
in general, of what all men do or ought to feel ? ' 'Is there
anything in his circumstances, as a convert from the law to
the Gospel, that gives the words a peculiar force?' And
lastly, we may inquire what application may be made of
them to ourselves : whether, ' now that the law is dead to
us, and we to the law,' the analogy of faith suggests any-
thing, either in our social state or in our physical constitution
or our speculative views, which stands in the same relation
to us that the law did to the first converts ?
First, then, as has been elsewhere remarked, the law
includes in itself different and contradictory aspects. It
is at once the letter of the book of the law, and the
image of law in general. It is alive, and yet dead ; it is
holy, just, and good, and yet the law of sin and death. It
is without and within at the same time ; a power like that
of conscience is ascribed to it, and yet he who is under its
power feels that he is reaching towards something without
him which can never become a part of his being. In its
effect on individuals it may be likened to a sword entering
into the soul, which can never knit together with flesh
and blood. In relation to the world at large, it is a prison
a8o ESSAY ON
in which men are shut up. As the Jewish nation is
regarded also as an individual ; as the kingdom of heaven is
sometimes outward and temporal, sometimes inward and
spiritual, used in reference either to the spread of the
Gospel, or the second coming of Christ ; as the parables of
Christ admit of a similar double reference ; in like manner,
the law has its ' double senses.' It is national and indi-
vidual at once ; the law given on Mount Sinai, and also
a rule of conduct. It is the schoolmaster unto Christ, and
yet the great enemy of the Gospel ; added to make men
transgress, and yet affording the first knowledge of truth
and holiness ; applying to the whole people and to the world
of the past, and also to each living man ; though a law, and
therefore concerned with actions only, terrible to the heart
and conscience, requiring men to perform all things, and
enabling them to accomplish nothing.
This ambiguity in the use of the word ' law ' first occurs
in the Old Testament itself. In the prophecies and psalms,
as well as in the writings of St. Paul, the law is in a great
measure ideal. When the Psalmist spoke of ' meditating
in the law of the Lord,' he was not thinking of the five
books of Moses. The law which he delighted to contem-
plate was not written down (as well might we imagine that
the Platonic idea was a treatise on philosophy) ; it was the
will of God, the truth of God, the justice and holiness
of God. In later ages the same feelings began to gather
around the volume of the law itself. The law was ideal
still ; but with this idealism were combined the reference to
its words, and the literal enforcement of its precepts. That
it was the law of God was a solemn thought to those who
violated the least of its commandments ; and yet its com-
mandments were often such as in a changed world it was
impossible to obey. It needed interpreters before it could
be translated into the language of daily life. Such a law
could have little hold on practice ; but it had the greatest
on ideas. It was the body of truth, the framework of
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 28 1
learning and education, the only and ultimate appeal in all
controversies. Even its entire disuse did not prevent the
Rabbis from discussing with animosity nice questions of
minute detail. In Alexandria especially, which was far
removed from Jerusalem and the scenes of Jewish history,
such an idealizing tendency was carried to the uttermost.
Whether there was a temple or not, whether there were
sacrifices or not, whether there were feasts or not, mattered
little ; there was the idea of a temple, the idea of feasts, the
idea of sacrifices. Whether the Messiah actually came or not
mattered little, while he was discernible to the mystic in
every page of the law. The Jewish religion was beginning
to rest on a new basis which, however visionary it may seem
to us, could not be shaken any more than the clouds of
heaven, even though one stone were not left upon another.
This idealizing tendency of his age we cannot help
tracing in St. Paul himself. As to the Jew of Alexandria
the law became an ideal rule of trnth and right, so to
St. Paul after his conversion it became an ideal form of
evil. As there were many Antichrists, so also there were
many laws, and none of them absolutely fallen away from
their Divine original. In one point of view, the fault was
all with the law ; in another point of view, it was all with
human nature ; the law ideal and the law actual, the law as
it came from God and the law in its consequences to man,
are ever crossing each other. It was the nature of the law
to be good and evil at once ; evil, because it was good ;
like the pillar of cloud and fire, which was its image, light
by night and darkness by day — light and darkness in
successive instants.
But, as the law seems to admit of a wider range of
meaning than we should at first sight have attributed to it,
so also the word * sin ' has a more extended sense than our
own use of it implies. Sin with us is a definite act or state.
Any crime or vice considered in reference to God may be
termed sin ; or, according to another use of it, which is
282 ESSAY ON
more general and abstract, sin is the inherent defect of
human nature, or that evil state in which, even without
particular faults or vices, we live. None of these senses
includes that peculiar aspect in which it is regarded by
St. Paul. Sin is with him inseparable from the conscious-
ness of sin. It is not only the principle of evil, working
blindly in the human heart, but the principle of discord
and dissolution piercing asunder the soul and spirit. He
who has felt its power most is not the perpetrator of the
greatest crimes, a Caligula or Nero ; but he who has suf-
fered most deeply from the spiritual combat, who has fallen
into the abyss of despair, who has the sentence of death in
himself, who is wringing his hands and crying aloud in his
agony, ' 0 wretched man that I am ! ' Sin is not simply
evil, but intermediate between evil and good, implying
always the presence of God within, light revealing dark-
ness, life in the corruption of death ; it is the soul reflecting
upon itself in the moment of commission of sin. If we are
surprised at St. Paul regarding the law — holy, just, and
good as it was — as almost sin, we must remember that sin
itself, if the expression may be excused, as a spiritual state,
has a good element in it. It is the voice of despair praying
to God, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death ! ' It approximates to the law at the very instant in
which it is repelled from it.
There are physical states in which the body is exquisitely
sensitive to pain, which are not the sign of health, but of
disease. So also there are mental states in which the sense
of sin and evil, and the need of forgiveness, press upon
us with an unusual heaviness. Such is the state which the
Scriptures describe by the words, ' they were pricked to the
heart,' when whole multitudes m sympathy with each
other felt the need of a change, and in the extremity of
their suffering were saved, looking on the Lord Jesus. No
such spiritual agonies occur in the daily life of all men.
Crimes and vices and horrid acts there are, but not that of
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 283
which the Apostle speaks. That which he sums up in
a moment of time, which may be compared to the last
struggle when we are upon the confines of two worlds, of
which we ai-e so intensely conscious that it is impossible
for us permanently to retain the consciousness of it, is
•Sin.'
As there could be no sin if we were wholly unconscious
of it, as children or animals are in a state of innocence, as
the heathen world we ourselves regard as less guilty or
responsible than those who have a clearer light in the
dispensation of the Gospel, so in a certain point of view sin
may be regarded as the consciousness of sin. It is this
latter which makes sin to be what it is, which distinguishes
it from crime or vice, which links it with our personality.
The first state described by the Eoman satirist —
' At stupet hie vitio et fibris increvit opimum
Pingue ; caret culpa ; nescit quid perdat,' —
is the reverse of what the Apostle means by the life of sin.
In ordinary language, vices, regarded in reference to God,
are termed sins ; and we attempt to arouse the child or the
savage to a right sense of his unconscious acts by so
terming them. But, in the Apostle's language, conscious-
ness is presupposed in the sin itself ; not reflected on it
from without. That which gives it the nature of sin is
conscientia pcccati. As Socrates, a little inverting the
ordinary view and common language of mankind, declared
all virtue to be knowledge ; so the language of St. Paul
implies all sin to be the knowledge of sin. Conscientia
peccati peccatum ipsum est.
It is at this point the law enters, not to heal the wounded
soul, but to enlarge its wound. The law came in that the
offence might abound. Whatever dim notion of right and
wrong pre-existed ; whatever sense of physical impurity
may have followed, in the language of the Book of Job, one
born in sin ; whatever terror the outpouring of the vials of
284 ESSAY ON
God's wrath, in the natural world, may have infused into
the sovil — all this was heightened and defined by the law of
God. In comparison with this second state, it might be
said of the previous one, ' Sin is not imputed where there is
no law,' and man 'was alive without the law once ; but
when the law came, sin revived, and he died.' The soul
condemned itself, it was condemned by the law, it is in the
last stage of decay and dissolution.
If from the Apostle's ideal point of view we regard the
law, not as the tables given on Mount Sinai, or the books of
Moses, but as the law written on the heart, the difficulty is,
not how we are to identify the law with the consciousness
of sin, but how we are to distinguish them. They are
different aspects of the same thing, related to each other as
positive and negative, two poles of human nature turned
towards God, or away from Him. In the language of
metaphysical philosophy, we say that 'the subject is
identical with the object ;' in the same way sin implies the
law. The law written on the heart, when considered in
reference to the subject, is simply the conscience. The
conscience, in like manner, when conceived of objectively,
as words written down in a book, as a rule of life which we
are to obey, becomes the law. For the sake of clearness we
may express the whole in a sort of formula. ' Sin = the
consciousness of sin = the law.' From this last conclusion
the Apostle only stops short from the remembrance of the
Divine original of the law, and the sense that what made it
evil to him was the fact that it was in its own nature good.
Wide, then, as might at first have seemed to be the
interval between the law and sin, we see that they have
their meeting point in the conscience. Yet their oj^position
and identity have a still further groundwork or reflection in
the personal character and life of the Apostle.
I. The spiritual combat, in the seventh chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans, which terminates with the words,
' 0 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 285
body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ
our Lord,' is the description, in a figure, of the Apostle's
journey to Damascus. Almost in a moment he passed from
darkness to light. Nothing could be more different or con-
trasted than his after life and his former life. In his own
language he might be described as cut in two by the sword
of the Spirit ; his present and previous states were like good
and evil, light and darkness, life and death. It accords
with what we know of human feelings, that this previous
state should have a kind of terror for him, and should be
presented to his mind, not as it appeared at the time when
he 'thought, verily, that he ought to do many things against
Jesus of Nazareth,' but as it afterwards seemed, when he
counted himself to be the least of the Apostles, because
twenty years before he had persecuted the Church of God ;
when he was amazed at the goodness of God in rescuing the
chief of sinners. The life which he had once led was ' the
law.' He thought of it, indeed, sometimes as the inspired
word, the language of which he was beginning to invest with
a new meaning ; bvit more often as an ideal form of evil,
the chain by which he had been bound, the prison in which
he was shut up. And long after his conversion the shadow
of the law seemed to follow him at a distance, and
threatened to overcast his heaven ; when, with a sort of
inconsistency for one assured of 'the crown,' he speaks of
the trouble of spirit which overcame him, and of the
sentence of death in himself.
II. In another way the Apostle's personal history gives
a peculiar aspect to his view of the law. On every occasion,
at every turn of his life, on his first return to Jerusalem,
when preaching the Gospel in Asia and Greece, in the great
struggle between Jewish and Gentile Christians — his perse-
cutors were the Jews, his great enemy the law. Is it
surprising that this enmity should have been idealized by
him ? that the law within and the law without should have
blended in one ? that his own remembrances of the past
286 ESSAY ON
should be identified with that spirit of hatred and fana-
ticism which he saw around him ? Not only when he
looked back to his past life, and ' the weak and beggarly
elements ' to which he had been in bondage, but also when
he saw the demoniac spirit which, under the name of
Judaism, arrayed itself against the truth, might he repeat
the words — 'the strength of sin is the law.' And, placing
these words side by side with other expressions of the
Apostle's, such as, ' We wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against principalities, against powers, against spiritual
wickedness in heaven! j^ places,' we can understand how-
heretics of the second century, who regarded the law and
the Old Testament as the work of an evil principle, were
induced to attach themselves specially to St. Paul.
III. The Gospel of St. Paul was a spirit, not a law ; it
nowhere enjoined the observance of feasts and sacrifices, and
new moons and sabbaths, but was I'ather antagonistic to
them ; it was heedless of externals of any kind, except as
matter of expediency and charity. It was a Gospel which
knew of no distinction of nations or persons ; in which all
men had the offer of ' grace, mercy, and peace from the
Lord Jesus Christ ;' which denounced the oldness of the
letter ; which contrasted ' the tables of stone with fleshy
tables of the heart ;' wliich figured Christ taking the hand-
writing of ordinances and nailing them to His cross ; which
put faith in the place of works, and even prohibited circum-
cision. Such a Gospel was in extreme antagonism to the
law. Their original relation was forgotten ; the opposition
between them insensibly passed into an opposition of good
and evil. And yet a new relation sprang up also. For the
law, too, witnessed against itself; and, to the Apostle
interpreting its words after the manner of his age, became
the allegory of the Gospel.
IV. Once more : it may be observed (see note on the
Imputation of the Sin of Adam), that the place which the
law occupies in the teaching of St. Paul is analogous to
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 287
that which the doctrine of original sin holds in later
writings. It represents the state of wrath and bondage out
of which men pass into the liberty of the children of God.
It is the state of nature to the Jew ; it is also a law of sin
to him ; he cannot help sinning, and this very impotency
is the extremity of guilt and despair. Similar expressions
respecting original sin are sometimes used among ourselves ;
though not wholly parallel, they may nevertheless assist in
shadowing forth the Apostle's meaning.
V. It is not, however, to the life of the Apostle, or to the
circle of theological doctrines, that we need confine our-
selves for illustration of the words, ' the strength of sin
is the law.' Morality also shoAvs us many ways in which
good and evil meet together, and truth and error seem
inseparable from each other. We cannot do any thing good
without some evil consequences indirectly flowing from it ;
we cannot express any truth without involving ourselves in
some degree of error, or occasionally conveying an impres-
sion to others wholly erroneous. Human characters and
human ideas are always mixed and limited ; good and truth
ever drag evil and error in their train. Good itself may be
regarded as making evil to be what it is, if, as we say, they
are relative terms, and the disappearance of the one would
involve the disappearance of the other. And there are
many things, in which not only may the old adage be
applied — 'Corruptio optimi pessima,' but in which the
greatest good is seen to be linked with the worst evil, as,
for example, the holiest affections with the grossest sensual-
ities, or a noble ambition with crime and unscrupulousness :
even religion seems sometimes to have a dark side, and
readily to ally itself with immorality or with cruelty.
Plato's kingdom of evil (Eep. I. ) is not unlike the state
into which the Jewish people passed during the last few
years before the taking of the city. Of both it might be
said, in St. Paul's language, 'the law is the strength of sin.'
A kingdom of pure evil, as the Greek philosopher observed,
288 ESSAY ON
there could not be ; it needs some principle of good to be
the minister of evil ; it can only be half wicked, or it would
destroy itself. We may say the same of the Jewish people.
Without the law it never could have presented an equally
signal example either of sin or of vengeance. The nation,
like other nations, would have yielded quietly to the power
of Rome ; ' it would have died the death of all m.en. ' But
the spirit which said, ' We have a law, and by our law he
ought to die, ' recoiled upon itself ; the intense fanaticism
which prevented men from seeing the image of love and
goodness in that Divine form, bound together for destruction
a whole people, to make them a monument to after ages of
a religion that has outlived itself.
VI. The law and the Gospel may be opposed, according
to a modern distinction, as positive and moral. * Moral
precepts are distinguished from positive, as precepts the
reasons of which we see from those the reasons of which
we do not see.' Moral precepts may be regarded as the
more general, while positive precepts fill up the details of
the general principle, and apply it to circumstances. Every
positive precept involves not merely a moral obligation to
obey it so far as it is just, but a moral law, which is its
ultimate basis. It will often happen that what was at first
just and right may in the course of ages become arbitrary
and tyrannical, if the enforcement of it continue after the
reason for it has ceased. Or, as it may be expressed more
generally, the positive is ever tending to become moral, and
the moral to become positive ; the positive to become moral,
in so far as that which was at first a mere external command
has acquired such authority, and so adapted itself to the
hearts of men, as to have an internal witness to it, as in the
case of the fourth commandment ; the moral to become
positive, where a law has outlived itself, and the state of
society to which it was adapted and the feelings on which it
rested have passed away.
The latter was the case with the Jewish law. It had once
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 289
been moral, and it had become positive. Doubtless, for the
minutest details, the colours of the sanctuary, the victims
offered in sacrifice, there had once been reasons ; but they
had been long since forgotten, and if remembered would
have been unintelligible. New reasons might be given for
them ; the oldness of the letter might be made to teach
a new lesson after the lapse of a thousand years ; but in
general the law was felt to be 'a burden that neither they
nor their fathers were able to bear.' Side by side with it
another religion had sprung up, the religion of the prophets
first, and of the zealots afterwards ; religions most different
indeed from each other, yet equally different from the law ;
in the first of which the voice of God in man seemed to cry
aloud against sacrifice and offering, and to proclaim the only
true offering, to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with God ; while in the second of them the national
faith took the form of a fanatical patriotism. And yet the
law still remained as a body of death, with its endless
routine of ceremonial, its numberless disputes, its obsolete
commands, never suffering the worshipper to be free, and
enforcing its least detail with the curses of the book of the
law and the terrors of Mount Sinai.
Much of this burden would have been taken off, had there
existed among the Jews the distinction which is familiar to
ourselves of a moral and ceremonial law. They would then
have distinguished between the weightier mattei's of the law
and the ' tithe of mint, anise, and cumin. ' Such distinctions
are great ' peace-makers ; ' they mediate between the present
and the past. But in Judaism all was regarded as alike of
Divine authority, all subjected the transgressor to the same
penalty. ' He who offended in one point was guilty of all ; '
the least penalty was, in a figure, 'death,' and there was no
more for the greatest offences. The infringement of any
positive command tortured the conscience with a fearful
looking for of judgement ; the deepest moral guilt could do
no more. Such a religion could only end in hypocrisy and
VOL. II. u
290 ESSAY ON
inhumanity, in verily believing that the law demanded His
death, in whom only ' the law was fulfilled. '
Let us imagine, in contrast with this, the Gospel with its
spiritualizing humanizing influences, soothing the soul of
man, the source of joy, and love, and peace. It is a super-
natural power, with which the elements themselves bear
witness, endowed with a fullness of life, and imparting life
to all who receive it. It is not a law to which the wUl must
submit, but an inward principle which goes before the will ;
it is also a moral principle to which the heart and conscience
instantly assent, which gives just what we want, and seems
to set us right with the world, with ourselves, and with God.
Yet, in a figure, it is a law also ; but in a very different sense
from that of Moses : a law within, and not without us ; a law
of the Spirit of life, not of death ; of freedom, not of slavery ;
of blessing, not of cursing ; of mercy, not of vengeance :
a law which can be obeyed, not one to which, while it
exacts punishment, obedience is impossible. When we
look upon this picture, and upon that, is it strange that one
who was filled with the mind of Christ should have regarded
the law as the strength of sin ?
Of what has been said, the sum is as follows : — When
St. Paul speaks of ' the law as the strength of sin, ' he uses
the term law partly for law in general, but more especially
for the burden of the Jewish law on the conscience ; when
he speaks of sin, he means chiefly the consciousness of sin,
of which it may be truly said, ' Where there is no law, there
is no transgression ; and sin is not imputed where there is
no law.' Thirdly, he speaks of the law from his own
spiritual experience of ' fears within, and of fightings vnth-
out ; ' and from a knowledge of his own countrymen, who
'please not God, but are contrary to all men.' Fourthly,
he conceives the law as an ideal form of evil, analogous to
original sin in the language of a later theology. Lastly, if
there be anything apparently contradictory or to us unin-
telligible in his manner of speaking of the law, we must
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 29 1
attribute this to the modes of thought of his age, which
blended many things that are to us separate. Had St. Paul
distinguished between the law and conscience, or between
the law and morality, or between the moral and ceremonial
portions of the law itself, or between the law in its first
origin and in the practice of his own age, he would perhaps
have confined the law to a good sense, or restricted its use
to the books of Moses, and not have spoken of it in one verse
as ' holy, just, and good,' and in the next as being the means
of deceiving and slaying him.
In another sense than that in which the Apostle employs
the words, ' the law is dead to us, and we to the law,' The
lapse of ages has but deepened the chasm which separates
Judaism from Christianity. Between us and them there is
a gulf fixed, so that few are they who pass from them to us,
nor do any go from us to them. The question remains,
What application is it possible for us to make of that which
has preceded ? Is there anything in the world around
standing in the same relation to us that the law did to the
contemporaries of St. Paul ?
One answer that might be given is, ' the Eoman Catholic
Church.' The experience of Luther seems indeed not unlike
that struggle which St. Paul describes. But whatever re-
semblance may be found between Komanism and the ancient
Jewish religion — whether in their ceremonial or sacrificial
character, or in the circumstance of their both resting on
outward and visible institutions, and so limiting the worship
of Spirit and truth — it cannot be said that Romanism stands
in the same relation to us individually that the law did to
the Apostle St. Paul. The real parallels are more general,
though less obvious. The law St. Paul describes as with-
out us, but not in that sense in which an object of sense is
without us : though without us it exercises an inward
power ; it drives men to despair ; it paralyzes human
u 2
292 ESSAY ON
nature ; it causes evil by its very justice and holiness. It
is like a barrier w^hich we cannot pass ; a chain vrherewith
a nation is bound together ; a rule which is not adapted
to human feelings, but which guides them into subjection
to itself.
It has been already remarked that a general parallel to
' the law as the strength of sin ' is to be found in that
strange blending of good and evil, of truth and error, which
is the condition of our earthly existence. But there seem
also to be cases in which the parallel is yet closer ; in which
good is not only the accidental cause of evil, but the limiting
principle which prevents man from working out to the
uttermost his individual and spiritual nature. In some
degree, for example, society may exercise the same tjrranny
over us, and its conventions be stumbling-blocks to us of the
same kind as the law to the contemporaries of St. Paul ; or,
in another way, the thought of self and the remerabrance of
our past life may 'deceive and slay us.' As in the descrip-
tion of the seventh chapter of the Eomans — 'It was I, and
it was not I ; and who can deliver me from the influence of
education and the power of my former self ? ' Or faith and
reason, reason and faith may seem mutually to limit each
other, and to make the same opposition in speculation that
the law and the flesh did to the Apostle in practice. Or, to
seek the difficulty on a lower level, while fully assured of
the truths of the Gospel, we may seem to be excluded from
them by our mental or bodily constitution, which no
influences of the Spirit or power of habit may be capable of
changing.
I. The society even of a Christian country — and the same
remark applies equally to a Church — is only to a certain
extent based upon Christian principle. It rests neither on
the view that all mankind are evil, nor that they are all
good, but on certain motives, supposed to be strong enough
to bind mankind together ; on institutions handed down
from former generations ; on tacit compacts between opposing
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 293
parties and opinions. Every government must tolerate,
and therefore must to a certain degree sanction, contending
forms of faith. Even in reference to those more general
principles of truth and justice which, in theory at least,
equally belong to all religions, the government is limited
by expediency, and seeks only to enforce them so far as
is required for the preservation of society. Hence arises
a necessary opposition between the moral principles of the
individual and the political principles of a state. A good
man may be sensitive for his faith, zealous for the honour
of God, and for every moral and spiritual good ; the states-
man has to begin by considering the conditions of human
society. Aristotle raises a famous question, whether the
good citizen is the good man ? We have rather to raise
the question, whether the good man is the good citizen?
If matters of state are to be determined by abstract prin-
ciples of morality and religion — if, for the want of such
principles, whole nations are to be consigned to the ven-
geance of heaven — if the rule is to be not 'my kingdom is
not of this world,' but, 'we ought to obey God rather than
man'— there is nothing left but to supersede civil society,
and found a religious one in its stead.
It is no imaginary spectre that we are raising, but one
that acts powerfully on the minds of religious men. Is
it not commonly said by many, that the government is
unchristian, that the legislature is unchristian, that all
governments and all legislatures are the enemies of Christ
and His Church ? Herein to them is the fixed evil of the
world ; not in vice, or in war, or in injustice, or in false-
hood ; but simply in the fact that the constitution of their
country conforms to the laws of human society. It is not
necessary to suppose that they will succeed in carrying out
their principles, or that a civilized nation will place its
liberties in the keeping of a religious party. But, without
succeeding, they do a great deal of harm to themselves and
to the world. For they draw the mind away from the
394 ESSAY ON
simple truths of the Gospel to manifestations of opinion
and party spirit ; they waste their own power to do good ;
some passing topic of theological controversy drains their
life. We may not ' do evil that good may come,' they say ;
and ' what is morally wrong cannot be politically right ; '
and with this misapplied ' syllogism of the conscience ' they
would make it impossible, in the mixed state of human
affairs, to act at all, either for good or evil. He who
seriously believes that not for our actual sins, but for some
legislative measure of doubtful expediency, the wrath of
God is hanging over his country, is in so unreal a state
of mind as to be scarcely capable of discerning the real evils
by which we are surrounded. The remedies of practical
ills sink into insignificance compared with some point in
which the interests of religion appear to be, but are not,
concerned.
But it is not only in the political world that imaginary
forms of evil present themselves, and we are haunted by
ideas which can never be carried out in practice ; the diffi-
culty comes nearer home to most of us in our social life.
If governments and nations appear unchristian, the appear-
ance of society itself is in a certain point of view still more
unchristian. Suppose a person acquainted with the real
state of the world in which we live and move, and neither
morosely depreciating nor unduly exalting human nature,
to turn to the image of the Christian Church in the New
Testament, how great would the difference appear ! How
would the blessing of poverty contrast with the real, even
the moral advantages of wealth ! the family of love, with
distinctions of ranks ! the spiritual, almost supernatural,
society of the first Clmstians, with our world of fashion,
of business, of pleasure ! the community of goods, with our
meagre charity to others ! the prohibition of going to law
before the heathen, with our endless litigation before judges
of all religions ! the cross of Christ, with our ordinary life !
How little does the world in which we live seem to be
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OP SIN 395
designed for the tabernacle of immortal souls ! How large
a portion of mankind, even in a civilized countiy, appears
to be sacrificed to the rest, and to be without the means of
moral and religious improvement ! How fixed, and stead-
fast, and regular do dealings of money and business appear !
how transient and passing are religious objects ! Then,
again, consider how society, sometimes in self-defence, sets
a false stamp on good and evil ; as in the excessive punish-
ment of the errors of women, compared with Christ's conduct
to the woman who was a sinner. Or when men are
acknowledged to be in the sight of God equal, how strange
it seems that one should heap up money for another, and
be dependent on him for his daily life. Susceptible minds,
attaching themselves, some to one point some to another,
may carry such reflections very far, until society itself
appears evil, and they desire some primitive patriarchal
mode of life. They are tired of conventionalities ; they
want, as they say, to make the Gospel a reality ; to place
all men on a religious, social, and political equality. In
this, as in the last case, 'they are kicking against the
pricks ; ' what they want is a society which has not the
very elements of a social state ; they do not perceive that
the cause of the evil is human nature itself, which will not
cohere without mixed motives and received forms and dis-
tinctions, and that Providence has been pleased to rest the
world on a firmer basis than is supplied by the fleeting
emotions of philanthropy, viz. self-interest. We are not,
indeed, to sit with our arms folded, and acquiesce in human
evil. But we must separate the accidents from the essence
of this evil : questions of taste, things indifferent, or cus-
tomary, or necessary, from the weightier matters of oppres-
sion, falsehood, vice. The ills of society are to be struggled
against in such a manner as not to violate the conditions of
society ; the precepts of Scripture are to be applied, but not
without distinctions of times and countries ; Christian duties
are to be enforced, but not identified with political principles.
2<)6 ESSAY ON
To see the world — not as it ought to be, but as it is — to be
on a level with the circumstances in which God has placed
them, to renounce the remote and impossible for what is
possible and in their reach ; above all, to begin within —
these are the limits which enthusiasts should set to their
aspirations after social good. It is a weary thing to be all
our life long warring against the elements, or, like the slaves
of some eastern lord, using our hands in a work which can
only be accomplished by levers and machines. The physician
of society should aid nature instead of fighting against it ;
he must let the world alone as much as he can ; to a certain
degree, he will even accept things as they are in the hope of
bettering them.
II. Mere weakness of character will sometimes afford an
illustration of the Apostle's words. If there are some whose
days are 'bound each to each by natural piety,' there are
others on whom the same continuous power is exercised
for evil as well as good ; they are unable to throw off their
former self ; the sins of their youth lie heav}'^ on them ; the
influence of opinions which they have ceased to hold dis-
colours their minds. Or it may be that their weakness takes
a different form, viz. that of clinging to some favourite re-
solve, or of yielding to some fixed idea which gets dominion
over them, and becomes the limit of all their ideas. A
common instance of this may be found in the use made by
many persons of conscience. Whatever they wish or fancy,
whatever course of action they are led to by some influence
obvious to others, though unobserved by themselves, imme-
diately assumes the necessary and stereotyped form of the
conscientious fulfilment of a duty. To every suggestion
of what is right and reasonable, they reply only with the
words — ' their consciences will not allow it. ' They do what
they think right ; they do not observe that they never seem
to themselves to do otherwise. No voice of authority, no
opinion of others, weighs with them when put in the scale
against the dictates of what they term conscience. As they
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 297
get older, their narrow ideas of right acquire a greater
tenacity ; the world is going on, and they are as they
were. A deadening influence lies on their moral nature, the
peculiarity of which is, that, like the law, it assumes the
appearance of good, difi^ering from the law only in being
unconscious. Conscience, one may say, putting their own
character into the form of a truth or commandment, ' has
deceived and slain them.'
Another form of conscience yet more closely resembles
the principle described in the seventh chapter of the Komans.
There is a state in which man is powerless to act, and is,
nevertheless, clairvoyant of all the good and evil of his own
nature. He places the good and evil principle before him,
and is ever oscillating between them. He traces the
labyrinth of conflicting principles in the world, and is yet
further perplexed and entangled. He is sensitive to every
breath of feeling, and incapable of the performance of any
duty. Or take another example : it sometimes happens
that the remembrance of past suffering, or the conscious-
ness of sin, may so weigh a man down as fairly to paralyze
his moral power. He is distracted between what he is and
what he was ; old habits and vices, and the new character
which is being fashioned in him. Sometimes the balance
seems to hang equal ; he feels the earnest wish and desire
to do rightly, but cannot hope to flnd pleasure and satis-
faction in a good life ; he desires heartily to repent, but
can never think it possible that God should forgive. 'It
is I, and it is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me.' ' I have,
and have never ceased to have, the wish for better things,
even amid haunts of infamy and vice.' In such language,
even now, though with less fervour than in 'the first
spiritual chaos of the affections,' does the soul cry out to
God — ' 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death ? '
III. There is some danger of speculative difficulties pre-
senting the same hindrance and stumbling-block to our
298 ESSAY ON
own generation, that the law is described as doing to the
contemporaries of St. Paul. As the law was holy, just,
and good, so many of these difficulties are true, and have
real grounds : all of them, except in cases where they
spring from hatred and opposition to the Gospel, are at
least innocent. And yet, by undermining received opinions,
by increasing vanity and egotism, instead of strengthening
the will and fixing the principles, their promulgation may
become a temporary source of evil ; so that, in the words
of the Apostle, it may be said of them that, taking occasion
by the truth, they deceive and slay men. What then ?
is the law sin ? is honest inquiry wrong ? God forbid !
it is we ourselves who are incapable of receiving the results
of inquiry ; who will not believe unless we see ; who
demand a proof that we cannot have ; who begin with
appeals to authority, and tradition, and consequences, and,
when dissatisfied with these, imagine that there is no other
foundation on which life can repose but the loose and sandy
structure of our individual opinions. Persons often load
their belief in the hope of strengthening it ; they escape
doubt by assuming certainty. Or they believe 'under an
hypothesis ; ' their worldly interests lead them to acquiesce ;
their higher intellectual convictions rebel. Opinions, hardly
won from study and experience, are found to be at variance
with early education, or natural temperament. Opposite
tendencies grow together in the mind ; appearing and
reappearing at intervals. Life becomes a patchwork of new
and old cloth, or like a garment which changes colour in
the sun.
It is true that the generation to which we belong has
difficulties to contend with, perhaps greater than those of
any former age ; and certainly different from them. Some
of those difficulties arise out of the opposition of reason and
faith ; the critical inquiries of which the Old and New
Testament have been the subject, are a trouble to many ;
the circumstance that, while the Bible is the word of life
THE LAW AS THE STEENGTH OF SIN 299
for all men, such inquiries are open only to the few,
increases the irritation. The habit of mind which has been
formed in the study of Greek or Koman history may be
warned off the sacred territory, but cannot really be pre-
vented from trespassing ; still more impossible is it to keep
the level of knowledge at one point in Germany, at another
in England. Geology, ethnology, historical and metaphysical
criticism, assail in succession not the Scriptures themselves,
but notions and beliefs which in the minds of many good
men are bound up with them. The eternal strain to keep
theology where it is while the world is going on, specious
reconcilements, political or ecclesiastical exigencies, recent
attempts to revive the past, and the reaction to which they
have given birth, the contrast that everywhere arises of old
and new, all add to the confusion. Probably no other age
has been to the same extent the subject of cross and contra-
dictory influences. What can be more unHke than the tone
of sermons and of newspapers ? or the ideas of men on art,
politics, and rehgion, now, and half a generation ago ? The
thoughts of a few original minds, like wedges, pierce into all
received and conventional opinions and are almost equally
removed from either. The destruction of 'shams,' that is,
the realization of things as they are amid all the conventions
of thought and speech and action, is also an element of
unsettlement. The excess of self-reflection, again, is not
favourable to strength or simplicity of character. Every
one seems to be employed in decomposing the world, human
nature, and himself. The discovery is made that good and
evil are mixed in a far more subtle way than at first sight
would have appeared possible ; and that even extremes of
both meet in the same person. The mere analysis of moral
and religious truth, the fact that we know the origin of many
things which the last generation received on authority, is
held by some to destroy their sacredness. Lastly, there are
those who feel that all the doubts of sceptics put together,
fall short of that great doubt which has insinuated itself into
300 ESSAY ON
their minds, from the contemplation of mankind — saying one
thing and doing another.
It is foolish to lament over these things ; it would be
still more foolish to denounce them. They are the mental
trials of the age and country in which God has placed us.
If they seem at times to exercise a weakening or unsettling
influence, may we not hope that increasing love of truth,
deeper knowledge of ourselves and other men, will, in the
end, simplify and not perplex the path of life. We may
leave oif in mature years where we began in youth, and
receive not only the kingdom of God, but the world also,
as 'little children.' The analysis of moral and religious
truth may correct its errors without destroying its obliga-
tions. Experience of the illusions of religious feeling at
a particular time should lead us to place religion on
a foundation which is independent of feeling. Because
the Scripture is no longer held to be a book of geology or
ethnology, or a supernatural revelation of historical facts,
it will not cease to be the law of our lives, exercising an
influence over us, different in kind from the ideas of philo-
sophical systems, or the aspirations of poetry or romance.
Because the world (of which we are a part) is hypocritical
and deceitful, and individuals go about dissecting their
neighbours' motives and lives, that is a reason for cherish-
ing a simple and manly temper of mind, which does not
love men the less because it knows human nature more ;
which pierces the secrets of the heart, not by any process
of anatomy, but by the light of an eye from which the mists
of selfishness are dispersed.
IV. The relation in which science stands to us may seem
to bear but a remote resemblance to that in which the law
stood to the Apostle St. Paul. Yet the analogy is not
fanciful, but real. Traces of physical laws are discernible
everywhere in the world around us ; in ourselves also,
whose souls are knit together with our bodies, whose bodies
are a part of the material creation. It seems as if nature
THE LA.W AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 3OI
came so close to us as to leave no room for the motion of
our will : instead of the inexhaustible grace of God enabling
us to say, in the language of the Apostle, ' I can do all
things through Christ that strengtheneth me,' we become
more and more the slaves of our own physical constitution.
Our state is growing like that of a person whose mind is
over sensitive to the nei-vous emotions of his own bodily
frame. And as the self-consciousness becomes stronger and
the contrast between faith and experience more vivid, thei'e
arises a conflict between the spirit and the flesh, nature
and grace, not unlike that of which the Apostle speaks.
No one who, instead of hanging to the past, will look
forward to the future, can expect that natural science should
stand in the same attitude towards revelation fifty years
hence as at present. The faith of mankind varies from age
to age ; it is weaker, or it may be stronger, at one time
than at another. But that which never varies or turns
aside, which is always going on and cannot be driven back,
is knowledge based on the sure ground of observation and
experiment, the regular progress of which is itself matter
of obsei-vation. The stage at which the few have arrived
is already far in advance of the many, and if there were
nothing remaining to be discovered, still the diffusion of
the knowledge that we have, without new addition, would
exert a great influence on religious and social life. Still
greater is the indirect influence which science exercises
through the medium of the arts. In one century a single
invention has changed the face of Europe ; three or four
such inventions might produce a gulf between us and the
future far greater than the interval which separates ancient
from modern civilization. Doubtless God has provided
a way that the thought of Him should not be banished
from the hearts of men. And habit, and opinion, and
prescription may ' last our time,' and many motives may
conspire to keep our minds off the coming change. But if
ever our present knowledge of geology, of languages, of the
302 ESSAY ON
races and religions of mankind, of the human frame itself,
shall be regarded as the starting-point of a goal which has
been almost reached, supposing too the progress of science
to be accompanied by a corresponding development of the
mechanical arts, we can hardly anticipate, from what we
already see, the new relation that will then arise between
reason and faith. Perhaps the very opposition between
them may have died away. At any rate experience shows
that religion is not stationary when all other things are
moving onward.
Changes of this kind pass gradually over the world ; the
mind of man is not suddenly thrown into a state for which
it is unprepared. No one has more doubts than he can
carry ; the way of life is not found to stop and come to an
end in the midst of a volcano, or on the edge of a precipice.
Dangers occur, not from the disclosure of any new, or
hitherto unobserved, facts, for which, as for all other bless-
ings, we have reason to be thankful to God ; but from our
concealment or denial of them, from the belief that we can
make them other than they are ; from the fancy that some
a priori notion, some undefined word, some intensity of
personal conviction, is the weapon with which they are to
be met. New facts, whether bearing on Scripture, or on
religion generally, or on morality, are sure to win their
way ; the tide refuses to recede at any man's bidding. And
there are not wanting signs that the increase of secular
knowledge is beginning to be met by a corresponding
progress in religious ideas. Controversies are dying out ;
the lines of party are fading into one another ; niceties of
doctrine are laid aside. The opinions respecting the in-
spiration of Scripture, which are held in the present day
by good and able men, are not those of fifty years ago ;
a change may be observed on many points, a reserve on
still more. Formulas of reconciliation have sprung up :
'the Bible is not a book of science,' 'the inspired writers
were not taught supernaturally what they could have
THE LAW AS THE STRENGTH OF SIN 303
learned from ordinary sources,' resting-places in the argu-
ment at which travellers are the more ready to halt, because
they do not perceive that they are only temporary. For
there is no real resting-place but in the entire faith, that
all true knowledge is a revelation of the will of God. In
the case of the poor and suffering, we often teach resigna-
tion to the accidents of life ; it is not less plainly a duty
of religious men, to submit to the progress of knowledge.
That is a new kind of resignation, in which many Christians
have to school themselves. When the difficulty may seem,
in anticipation, to be greatest, they will find, with the
Apostle, that there is a way out : * The truth has made them
free.'
ESSAY
ON
THE OLD TESTAMENT
ROMANS IV.
'HviKa 8' av eiriaTpf^r) irpus Kvpiov, nepiaipuTai to KaKv/x/ia. — 2 Cor. iii. 16.
Thus we have reached another stage in the development
of the great theme. The new commandment has become
old ; faith is taught in the Book of the Law. ' Abraham
had faith in God, and it was counted to him for righteous-
ness.' David spoke of the foi'giveness of sins in the very-
spirit of the Gospel. The Old Testament is not dead, but
alive again. It refers not to the past, but to the present.
The truths which we daily feel, are written in its pages.
There are the consciousness of sin and the sense of accept-
ance. There is the veiled remembrance of a former world,
which is also the veiled image of a future one.
To us the Old and New Testaments are two books, or two
parts of the same book, which fit into one another, and can
never be separated or torn asunder. They are double one
against the other, and the New Testament is the revelation
of the Old. To the first believers it was otherwise : as yet
there was no New Testament ; nor is there any trace that
the authors of the New Testament ever expected their own
writings to be placed on a level with the Old. We can
scarcely imagine what would have been the feeling of
St. Paul, could he have foreseen that later ages would look
not to the faith of Abraham in the law, but to the Epistle
to the Eomans, as the highest authority on the doctrine of
justification by faith ; or that they would have regarded the
ESSAY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT 305
allegory of Hagar and Sarah, in the Epistle to the Galatians,
as a difficulty to be resolved by the inspiration of the
Apostle. Neither he who wrote, nor those to whom he
wrote, could ever have thought that words which were
meant for a particular Church were to give life also to all
mankind ; and that the Epistles in which they occurred
were one day to be placed on a level with the Books of
Moses themselves.
But if the writings of the New Testament were regarded
by the contemporaries of the Apostle in a manner different
from that of later ages, there was a difference, which it is
far more difficult for us to appreciate, in their manner of
reading the Old Testament. To them it was not half, but
the whole, needing nothing to be added to it or to counter-
act it, but containing everything in itself. It seemed to
come home to them ; to be meant specially for their age ;
to be understood by them, as its woi'ds had never been
understood before. ' Did not their hearts burn within
them ? ' as the Apostles expounded to them the Psalms and
Prophets. The manner of this exposition was that of the
age in which they lived. They brought to the understand-
ing of it, not a knowledge of the volume of the New Testa-
ment, but the mind of Christ. Sometimes they found the
lesson which they sought in the plain language of Scripture ;
at other times, coming round to the same lesson by the
paths of allegory, or seeming even in the sound of a word
to catch an echo of the Redeemer's name. Various as are
the writings of the Old Testament, composed by such
numerous authors, at so many different times, so diverse
in style and subject, in them all they read only — the truth
of Christ. They read without distinctions of moral and
ceremonial, type and antitype, history and prophecy, with-
out inquiries into the original meaning or connexion of
passages, without theories of the relation of the Old and
New Testaments. Whatever contrast existed was of another
kind, not of the parts of a book, but of the law and faith ;
VOL. II. X
306 ESSAY ON
of the earlier and later dispensations. The words of the
book were all equally for their instruction ; the whole
volume lighted up with new meaning.
What was then joined cannot now be divided or put
asunder. The New Testament will never be unclothed of
the Old. No one in later ages can place himself in the
position of the heathen convert who learnt the name of
Christ first, afterwards the Law and the Prophets. Such
instances were probably rare even in the first days of the
Christian Church. No one can easily imagine the manner
in which St. Paul himself sets the Law over against the
Gospel, and at the same time translates one into the lan-
guage of the other. Time has closed up the rent which the
law made in the heart of man ; and the superficial resem-
blances on which the Apostle sometimes dwells, have not
the same force to us which they had to his contemporaries.
But a real unity remains to ourselves as well as to the
Apostle, the unity not of the letter, but of the spirit, like
the unity of life or of a human soul, which lasts on amid
the changes of our being. The Old Testament and the New
do not dovetail into one another like the parts of an inden-
ture ; it is a higher figure than this, which is needed to
describe the continuity of the Divine work. Or rather, the
simple fact is above all figures, and can receive no addition
from philosophical notions of design, or the observation of
minute coincidences. What we term the Old and New
dispensation is the increasing revelation of God, amid the
accidents of human history : first, in himself ; secondly, in
His Son, gathering not one nation only, but all mankind
into His family. It is the vision of God himself, true and
just, and remembering mercy in one age of the world ; not
ceasing to be true and just, but softening also into human
gentleness, and love, and forgiveness, and making His dwell-
ing in the human heart in another. The wind, and the
earthquake, and the fire pass by first, and after that 'the
still small voice.' This is the great fulfilment of the Law
THE OLD TESTAMENT 307
and the Prophets in the Gospel. No other religion has
anything like it. And the use of language, and systems of
theology, and the necessity of ' giving ideas through some-
thing,' and the prayers and thoughts of eighteen hundred
years, have formed another connexion between the Old and
New Testament, more accidental and outward, and also
more intricate and complex, which is incapable of being
accurately drawn out, and ought not to be imposed as an
article of faith ; which yet seems to many to supply a want
in human nature, and gives expression to feelings which
would otherwise be unuttered.
It is not natural, nor perhaps possible, to us to cease to
use the figures in which 'holy men of old' spoke of that
which belonged to their peace. But it is well that we
should sometimes remind ourselves, that 'all these things
are a shadow, but the body is of Christ.' Framed as our
minds are, we are ever tending to confuse that which is
accidental with that which is essential, to substitute the
language of imagery for the severity of our moral ideas,
to entangle Divine truths in the state of society in which
they came into the world or in the ways of thought of
a particular age. ' All these things are a shadow ; ' that is
to say, not only the temple and tabernacle, and the victim
laid on the altar, and the atonement offered once a year for
the sins of the nation ; but the conceptions which later
ages express by these words, so far as anything human or
outward or figurative mingles with them, so far as they
cloud the Divine nature with human passions, so far as
they imply, or seem to imply, anything at variance with
our notions of truth and right, are as much, or even more
a shadow than that outward image which belonged to the
elder dispensation. The same Lord who compared the
scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven to a house-
holder who brought forth out of his treasure things new
and old, said also in a figure, that ' new cloth must not be
put on an old garment' or 'new wine into old bottles.'
x 2
ESSAY
ON THE
IMPUTATIOI^ OF THE SI^ OF ADAM
ROMANS V.
That so many opposite systems of Theology seek their
authority in Scripture is a fair proof that Scripture is
different from them all. That is to say, Scripture often
contains in germ what is capable of being drawn to either
side ; it is indistinct, where they are distinct ; it presents
two lights, where they present only one ; it speaks inwardly,
while they clothe themselves in the forms of human know-
ledge. That indistinct, intermediate, inward point of view
at which the truth exists but in germ, they have on both
sides tended to extinguish and suppress. Passing allusions,
figures of speech, rhetorical oppositions, have been made the
foundation of doctrinal statements, which are like a part of
the human mind itself, and seem as if they could never be
uprooted, without uprooting the very sentiment of religion.
Systems of this kind exercise a constraining power, which
makes it difficult for us to see anything in Scripture but
themselves.
For example, how slender is the foundation in the New
Testament for the doctrine of Adam's sin being imputed to
his posterity — two passages in St. Paul at most, and these
of uncertain interpretation. The little cloud, no bigger than
ii man's hand, has covered the heavens. To reduce such
THE IMPUTATION OF THE SIN OF ADAM 3O9
subjects to their proper proportions, we should consider : —
first, what space they occupy in Scripture ; secondly, how
far the language used respecting them is literal or figurative ;
thirdly, whether they agree with the more general truths
of Scripture and our moral sense, or are not ' rather repug-
nant thereto ; ' foiu'thly, whether their origin may not be
prior to Christianity, or traceable in the after history of the
Church ; fifthly, whether the words of Scripture inay not be
confused with logical inferences which are appended to them ;
sixthly, in the case of this and of some other doctrines,
whether even poetry has not lent its aid to stamp them in
our minds in a more definite and therefore different form
from that in which the Apostles taught them ; lastly, how
far in our own day they are anything more than words.
The two passages alluded to are Eom. v. 12-21 ; i Cor.
XV. 21, 22, 45-49, in both of which parallels are drawn
between Adam and Christ. In both the sin of Adam is
spoken of, or seems to be spoken of, as the source of death
to man : ' As by one man's transgression sin entered into
the world, and death by sin,' and 'As in Adam all die.'
Such words appear plain at first sight ; that is to say, we
find in them what we bring to them : let us see what
considerations modify their meaning. If we accept the
Pelagian view of the passage, which refers the death of
each man to actual sin, there is an end of the controversy.
But it does not equally follow that, if what is termed the
received interpretation is given to the words, the doctrine
which it has been attempted to ground upon them would
have any real foundation.
We will suppose, then, that no reference is contained in
either passage to ' actual sin. ' In some other sense than
this mankind are identified with Adam's transgression.
But the question still remains, whether Adam's sin and
death are merely the type of the sin and death of his
posterity, or, more than this, the cause. The first explana-
tion quite satisfies the meaning of the words, ' As in Adam
310 ESSAY ON THE IMPUTATION OP
all die ; ' the second seems to be required by the parallel
passage in the Eomans : ' As by one man sin came into the
world,' and 'As by one man many were made sinners,' if
taken literally.
The question involves the more general one, whether the
use of language by St. Paul makes it necessary that we
should take his words literally in this passage. Is he speak-
ing of Adam's sin being the cause of sin and death to his pos-
terity, in any other sense than he spoke of Abraham being
a father of circumcision to the uncircumcised ? (chap, iv.)
Yet no one has ever thought of basing a doctrine on these
words. Or is he speaking of all men dying in Adam in
any other sense than he says in 2 Cor. v. 15, that if one
died for all, then all died ? Yet in this latter passage, while
Christ died literally, it was only in a figure that all died.
May he be arguing in the same way as when he infers from
the word ' seed ' being used in the singular, that ' thy seed
is Christ ' ? Or, if we confine ourselves to the passage under
consideration — Is the righteousness of Christ there imputed
to believers, independently of their own inward holiness ?
and if so, should the sin of Adam be imputed independently
of the actual sins of men ?
I. A very slight difference in the mode of expression
would make it impossible for us to attribute to St. Paul the
doctrine of the imputation of the sin of Adam. But we
have seen before how varied, and how different from our
own, are his modes of thought and language. Compare i. 4 ;
iv. 25. To him, it was but a slight transition, from the
identification of Adam with the sins of all mankind, to the
representation of the sin of Adam as the cause of those sins.
To us, there is the greatest difference between the two
statements. To him, it was one among many figures of the
same kind, to oppose the first and second Adam, as else-
where he opposes the old and new man. With us, this
figure has been singled out to be made the foundation of
a most exact statement of doctrine. We do not remark
THE SIN OF ADAM 3II
that there is not even the appearance of attributing Adam's
sin to his posterity, in any part of the Apostle's writings
in which he is not drawing a parallel between Adam and
Christ.
II. The Apostle is not speaking of Adam as fallen from
a state of innocence. He could scarcely have said, ' The
first man is of the earth, earthy,' if he had had in his mind
that Adam had previously existed in a pure and perfect
state. He is only drawing a parallel between Adam and
Christ. The moment we leave this parallel, all is uncertain
and undetermined. What was the nature of that innocent
life ? or of the act of Adam which forfeited it ? and how was
the effect of that act communicated to his posterity ? The
minds of men in different ages of the world have strayed
into these and similar inquu'ies. Difficulties about 'fate,
predestination, and free-will' (not food for angels' thoughts)
cross our path in the garden of Eden itself. But neither
the Old or New Testament give any answer to them.
Imagination has possessed itself of the vacant spot, and
been busy, as it often is, in proportion to the slenderness of
knowledge.
III. There are other elements of St. Paul's teaching,
which are either inconsistent with the imputation of Adam's
sin to his posterity, or at any rate are so prominent as to
make such a doctrine if held by him comparatively un-
important. According to St. Paul, it is not the act of
Adam, but the law that
'Brought sin into the world and all our woe.'
And the law is almost equivalent to 'the knowledge of sin,'
But original sin is, or may be, wholly unconscious — the
fault of nature in the infant equally with the man. Not so
the sin of which St. Paul speaks, which is inseparable from
consciousness, as he says himself: 'I was alive without
the law once,' that is, before I came to the consciousness
of sin.
312 ESSAY ON THE IMPUTATION OF
IV. It will be admitted that we ought to feel still greater
reluctance to press the statement of the Apostle to its strict
logical consequences, if we find that the language which he
here uses is that of his age and country. From the circum-
stance of our first reading the doctrine of the imputation of
Adam's sin to his posterity in the Epistles of St. Paul, we
can hardly persuade ourselves that this is not its original
source. The incidental manner in which it is alluded to
might indeed lead us to suppose that it would scarcely have
been intelligible, had it not been also an opinion of his time.
But if this inference should seem doubtful, there is direct
evidence to show that the Jews connected sin and death,
and the sins and death of mankind, with the sin of Adam,
in the same way as the Apostle. The earliest trace of such
a doctrine is found in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom,
ii. 24: 'But God created man to be immortal, and made
him to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless,
through envy of the devil came death into the world ; and
they that do hold of his side do find it.' And Eccles.
XXV. 24: 'Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and
through her we all die.' It was a further refinement of
some of their teachers, that when Adam sinned the whole
world sinned ; because, at that time, Adam was the whole
world, or because the soul of Adam comprehended the souls
of all, so that Adam's sin conveyed a hereditary taint to his
posterity. It was a confusion of a half physical, half logical
or metaphysical notion, arising in the minds of men who
had not yet learnt the lesson of our Saviour — 'That which
is from without defileth not a man.' That human nature
or philosophy sometimes rose up against such inventions is
certainly true ; but it seems to be on the whole admitted,
that the doctrine of Augustine is in substance generally
agreed to by the Eabbis, and that there is no trace of their
having derived it from the writings of St. Paul. Compare
the passages quoted in Fritzsche, vol. i. pp. 293-296, and
Schoettgen.
THE SIN OF ADAM 313
But not only is the connexion of sin and death with each
other, and with the sin of Adam, found in the Eabbinical
writings ; the type and antitype of the first and second
Adam are also contained in them. In reading the first
chapters of Genesis, the Jews made a distinction between
the higher Adam, who was the light of the world, and had
control over all things, who was mystically referred to
where it is said, ' they two shall be one flesh ; ' and the
inferior Adam, who was Lord only of the creation ; who
had 'the breath of life,' but not 'the living soul.'
(Schoettgen, i. 512-514, 670-673.) By some, indeed, the
latter seems to have been identified with the Messiah. By
Philo, on the other hand, the Ao'yos is identified with the
TipGiTos 'A8a/x, who is without sex, while the avOpcoTtos xo'ko's
is created afterwards by the help of the angels {De Great
Mund. p. 30). It is not the object of this statement to
reconcile these variations, but merely to indicate, first, that
the idea of a first and second Adam was familiar to the
Jews in the time of St, Paul, and that one or other of them
was regarded by them as the Word and the Messiah.
V. A slighter, though not less real foundation of the
doctrine has been what may be termed the logical symmetry
of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and of the
sin of Adam. The latter half is the correlative of the
former ; they mutually support each other. We place the
first and second Adam in juxtaposition, and seem to see
a fitness or reason in the one standing in the same relation
to the fallen as the other to the saved.
VI. It is hardly necessary to ask the further question,
what meaning we can attach to the imputation of sin and
guilt which are not our own, and of which we are un-
conscious. God can never see us other than we really are,
or judge us without reference to all our circumstances and
antecedents. If we can hardly suppose that He would allow
a fiction of mercy to be interposed between ourselves and
Him, still less can we imagine that He would interpose
314 ESSAY ON THE IMPUTATION OP
a fiction of vengeance. If He requires holiness before He
will save, much more, may we say in the Apostle's form of
speech, will He require sin before He dooms us to perdition.
Nor can anything be in spirit more contrary to the living
consciousness of sin of which the Apostle everywhere speaks,
than the conception of sin as dead unconscious evil, origi-
nating in the act of an individual man, in the world before
the flood.
VII. A small part of the train of consequences which
have been drawn out by divines can be made to hang even
upon the letter of the Apostle's words, though we should
not take into account the general temper and spirit of his
writings. Logical inferences often help to fill up the aching
void in our knowledge of the spiritual world. They seem
necessary ; in time they receive a new support from habit
and tradition. They hide away and conceal the nature of
the original premisses. They may be likened to the super-
structure of a building which the foundation has not strength
to bear ; or, rather, perhaps, when compared to the serious
efforts of human thought, to the plaything of the child who
places one brick upon another in wondering suspense, until
the whole totters and falls, or his childish fancy pleases
itself with throwing it down. So, to apply these remarks
to our present subject, we are contented to repeat the simple
words of the Apostle, ' As in Adam aU die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive.' Perhaps we may not be able to
recall all the associations which they conveyed to his mind.
But neither are we willing to affirm his meaning to be that
the sin of one man was the cause of other men's sins, or
that God condemned one part of the human race for a fault
not their own, because He was going to save another part ;
or that original sin, as some say, or the guilt of original sin,
as is the opinion of others, is washed away in baptism.
There is a terrible explicitness in such language touching
the realities of a future life which makes us shrink from
trusting our own faculties amid far-off deductions like these.
THE SIN OF ADAM 315
We feel that we are undermining, not strengthening, the
foundations of the Gospel. We fear to take upon ourselves
a burden which neither 'we nor our fathers are able to bear.'
Instead of receiving such statements only to explain them
away, or keep them out of sight, it is better to answer
boldly in the words of the Apostle, ' God forbid ! for how
shall God judge the world.'
On the whole, then, we are led to infer that in the
Augustinian interpretation of this passage, even if it agree
with the letter of the text, too little regard has been paid to
the extent to which St. Paul uses figurative language, and
to the manner of his age in interpretations of the Old
Testament. The difficulty of supposing him to be alle-
gorizing the narrative of Genesis is slight, in comparison
with the difficulty of supposing him to countenance a
doctrine at variance with our first notions of the moral
nature of God.
But when the figure is dropped, and allowance is made
for the manner of the age, the question once more returns
upon us — ' What is the Apostle's meaning ? ' He is arguing,
we see, kut avOpcoirov, and taking his stand on the received
opinions of his time. Do we imagine that his object is no
other than to set the seal of his authority on these traditional
behefs ? The whole analogy, not merely of the writings of
St. Paul, but of the entire New Testament, would lead us
to suppose that his object was not to reassert them, but to
teach, through them, a new and nobler lesson. The Jewish
Kabbis would have spoken of the first and second Adam ;
but which of them would have made the application of the
figure to all mankind? Which of them would have breathed
the quickening Spirit into the dry bones ? The figure of the
Apostle bears the impress of his own age and country ; the
interpretation of the figure is for every age, and for the whole
world. A figure of speech it remains still, an allegory after
the manner of that age and country, but yet with no
uncertain or ambiguous signification. It means that 'God
31 6 THE IMPUTATION OF THE SIN OF ADAM
hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth ; ' and
that 'he hath concluded all under sin, that he may have
mercy upon all.' It means a truth deep yet simple — the
fact which we recognize in ourselves and trace everywhere
around us — that we are one ia a common evil nature, which,
if it be not derived from the sin of Adam, exists as really as
if it were. It means that we shall be made one in Christ,
by the grace of God, in a measure here, more fully and
perfectly in another world. It means that Christ is the
natural head of the human race, the author of its spiritual
life. It shows Him to us as He enters within the veil, in
form as a man, the ' first fruits of them which sleep. ' It is
a sign or intimation which guides our thoughts in another
direction also, beyond the world of which religion speaks,
to observe what science tells us of the interdependence of
soul and body — what history tells of the chain of lives and
events. It leads us to reflect on ourselves not as isolated,
independent beings ;— not such as we appear to be to our
own narrow consciousness ; but as we truly are — the
creatures of antecedents which we can never know, fashioned
by circumstances over which we have no conti'ol. The
infant, coming into existence in a wonderful manner, inherits
something, not from its parents only, but from the first
beginning of the human race. He too is born into a family
of which God in Christ is the Father. There is enough here
to meditate upon — 'a mysteiy since the world was ' — without
the ' weak and beggarly ' elements of Rabbinical lore. We
may not encumber St. Paul 'with the things which he
destroyed.'
ESSAY
ON
ATONEMENT ANT> SATISFACTION
' Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not . . . Then said I, Lo, I come
to do thy will, 0 God.'— Ps. xl. 6-8.
The doctrine of the Atonement has often been explained
in a way at which our moral feelings revolt. God is repre-
sented as angiy with ns for what we never did ; He is
ready to inflict a disproportionate punishment on us for
what we are ; He is satisfied by the sufferings of His Son
in our stead. The sin of Adam is first imputed to us ; then
the righteousness of Christ. The imperfection of human
law is transferred to the Divine ; or rather a figment of law
which has no real existence. The death of Christ is also
explained by the analogy of the ancient rite of sacrifice. He
is a victim laid upon the altar to appease the wrath of God.
The institutions and ceremonies of the Mosaical religion are
applied to Him. He is further said to bear the infinite
punishment of infinite sin. When He had suffered or paid
the penalty, God is described as granting Him the salvation
of mankind in return.
I shall endeavour to show, i. that these conceptions of
the work of Christ have no foundation in Scripture ; 2. that
their growth may be traced in ecclesiastical history ; 3. that
the only sacrifice, atonement, or satisfaction, with which
31 8 ESSAY ON
the Christian has to do, is a moral and spiritual one ; not
the pouring out of blood upon the earth, but the living
sacrifice * to do thy will, O God ; ' in which the believer has
part as well as his Lord ; about the meaning of which there
can be no more question in our day than there was in the
first ages.
§1.
It is difficult to concentrate the authority of Scripture on
points of controversy. For Scripture is not doctrine but
teaching ; it arises naturally out of the circumstances of the
writers ; it is not intended to meet the intellectual refine-
ments of modern times. The words of our Saviour, ' My
kingdom is not of this world,' admit of a wide application,
to systems of knowledge, as well as to systems of govern-
ment and pontics. The * bread of life ' is not an elaborate
theology. The revelation which Scripture makes to us of
the will of God, does not turn upon the exact use of lan-
guage. ('Lo, O man, he hath showed thee what he required
of thee ; to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God.') The books of Scripture were written by
different authors, and in different ages of the world ; we
cannot, therefore, apply them with the minuteness and
precision of a legal treatise. The Old Testament is not on
all points the same with the New ; for ' Moses allowed of
some things for the hardness of their hearts ; ' nor the Law
with the Prophets, for there were ' proverbs in the house of
Israel ' that were reversed ; nor does the Gospel, which is
simple and universal, in all respects agree with the Epistles
which have reference to the particular state of the first
converts ; nor is the teaching of St. James, who admits
works as a coefficient with faith in the justification of man,
absolutely identical with that of St. Paul, who asserts
righteousness by faith only ; nor is the character of all the
Epistles of St. Paul, written as they were at different times
amid the changing scenes of life, precisely the same ; nor
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 3I9
does he himself claim an equal authority for all his precepts.
No theory of inspiration can obliterate these differences ; or
rather none can be true which does not admit them. The
neglect of them reduces the books of Scripture to an un-
meaning unity, and effectually seals up their true sense.
But if we acknowledge this natural diversity of form, this
perfect humanity of Scripture, we must, at any rate in''
some general way, adjust the relation of the different parts
to one another before we apply its words to the establishment
of any doctrine.
Nor again is the citation of a single text sufficient to prove
a doctrine ; nor must consequences be added on, which are
not found in Scripture, nor figures of speech reasoned about,
as though they conveyed exact notions. An accidental
similarity of expression is not to be admitted as an autho-
rity ; nor a mystical allusion, which has been gathered from
Scripture, according to some method which in other writings
the laws of language and logic would not justify. When
engaged in controversy with Koman Catholics, about the
doctrine of purgatory, or transubstantiation, or the authority
of the successors of St. Peter, we are willing to admit these
principles. They are equally true when the subject of
inquiry is the atoning work of Christ. We must also dis-
tinguish the application of a passage in religious discourse
from its original meaning. The more obvious explanation
which is received in our own day, or by our own branch of
the Church, will sometimes have to be set aside for one
more difficult, because less familiar, which is drawn from
the context. Nor is it allowable to bar an interpretation of
Scripture from a regard to doctrinal consequences. Further,
it is necessary that we should make allowance for the
manner in which ideas were represented in the ages at
which the books of Scripture were written which cannot
be so lively to us as to contemporaries. Nor can we deny
that texts may be quoted on both sides of a controversy, as
for example, in the controversy respecting predestination.
320
ESSAY ON
For in religious, as in other diiferences, there is often truth
on both sides.
The drift of the preceding remarks is not to show that
there is any ambiguity or uncertainty in the witness of
Scripture to the great truths of morality and religion. Nay,
rather the universal voice of the Old Testament and the
New proclaims that there is one God of infinite justice,
goodness, and truth : and the writers of the New Testament
agree in declaring that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the
Saviour of the world. There can never, by any possibility,
be a doubt that our Lord and St. Paul taught the doctrine
of a future life, and of a judgement, at which men would
give an account of the deeds done in the body. It is no
matter for regret that the essentials of the Gospel are within
the reach of a child's understanding. But this clearness of
Scripture about the great truths of religion does not extend
to the distinctions and developments of theological systems ;
it rather seems to contrast with them. It is one thing to
say that 'Christ is the Saviour of the world,' or that 'we
are reconciled to God through Christ,' and another thing to
affirm that the Levitical or heathen sacrifices typified the
death of Christ ; or that the death of Christ has a sacrificial
import, and is an atonement or satisfaction for the sins of
men. The latter positions involve great moral and intel-
lectual difficulties ; many things have to be considered,
before we can allow that the phraseology of Scripture is to
be caught up and applied in this way. For we may easily
dress up in the externals of the New Testament a doctrine
which is really at variance with the Spirit of Christ and His
Apostles, and we may impart to this doctrine, by the help
of living tradition, that is to say, custom and religious use,
a sacredness yet greater than is derived from such a falla-
cious application of Scripture language. It happens almost
unavoidably (and our only chance of guarding against the
illusion is to be aware of it) that we are more under the
influence of rhetoric in theology than in other branches of
1
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 32 1
knowledge ; our minds are so constituted that what we
often hear we are ready to believe, especially when it falls
in with previous convictions or wants. But he who desires
to know whether the statements above referred to have any
real objective foundation in the New Testament, will carefully
weigh the following considerations : — Whether there is any
reason for interpreting the New Testament by the analogy
of the Old? Whether the sacrificial expressions which
occur in the New Testament, and on which the question
chiefly turns, are to be interpreted spiritually or literally ?
Whether the use of such expressions may not be a figurative
mode of the time, which did not necessarily recall the thing
signified any more than the popular use of the term ' Sacri-
fice ' among ourselves ? He will consider further whether
this language is employed vaguely, or definitely ? Whether
it is the chief manner of expressing the work of Christ, or
one among many ? Whether it is found to occur equally
in every part of the New Testament ; for example, in the
Gospels, as well as in the Epistles? Whether the more
frequent occurrence of it in particular books, as for instance,
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, may not be explained by the
peculiar object or circumstances of the writer ? Whether
other figures of speech, such as death, life, resurrection with
Christ, are not equally frequent, which have never yet been
made the foundation of any doctrine ? Lastly, whether this
language of sacrifice is not applied to the believer as well as
to his Lord, and whether the believer is not spoken of as
sharing the sufferings of his Lord ?
I. All Christians agree that there is a connexion between
the Old Testament and the New : ' Novum Testamentum in
vetere latet ; Vetus Testamentum in novo patet : ' 'I am not
come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil.'
But, respecting the nature of the revelation or fulfilment
which is implied in these expressions, they are not equally
agreed. Some conceive the Old and New Testaments to be
' double one against the other ; ' the one being the type, and
VOL. II. Y
323 ESSAY ON
the other the antitype, the ceremonies of the Law, and the
symbols and imagery of the Prophets, supplying to them
the forms of thought and religious ideas of the Gospel.
Even the history of the Jewish people has been sometimes
thought to be an anticipation or parallel of the history of
the Christian world ; many accidental circumstances in the
narrative of Scripture being likewise taken as an example
of the Christian life. The relation between the Old and
New Testaments has been regarded by others from a different
point of view, as a continuous one, which may be described
under some image of growth or development ; the facts and
ideas of the one leading on to the facts and ideas of the
other ; and the two together forming one record of ' the
increasing purpose which through the ages ran.' This
continuity, however, is broken at one point, and the parts
separate and reunite like ancient and modern ci\ilization,
though the connexion is nearer, and of another kind ; the
Messiah, in whom the hopes of the Jewish people centre,
being the first-born of a new creation, the Son of Man and
the Son of God. It is necessary, moreover, to distinguish
the connexion of fact from that of language and idea ;
because the Old Testament is not only the preparation for
the New, but also the figure and expression of it. Those
who hold the first of these two views, viz. the reduplication
of the Old Testament in the New, rest their opinion cliiefly
on two grounds. First, it seems incredible to them, and
repugnant to their conception of a Divine revelation, that
the great apparatus of rites and ceremonies, , with which,
even at this distance of time, they are intimately acquainted,
should have no inner and symbolical meaning ; that the
Jewish nation for many ages should have carried with it
a load of forms only ; that the words of Moses which they
'still hear read in the synagogue every sabbath-day,' and
which they often read in their own households, should
relate only to matters of outward observance ; just as they
are unwilling to believe that the prophecies, which they also
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 323
read, have no reference to the historical events of modern
times. And, secondly, they are swayed by the authority
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the writer of which has
made the Old Testament the allegory of the New.
It will be considered hereafter what is to be said in
answer to the last of these arguments. The first is perhaps
sufficiently answered by the analogy of other ancient reli-
gions. It would be ridiculous to assume a spiritual meaning
in the Homeric rites and sacrifices ; although they may be
different in other respects, have we any more reason for
inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic ? Admitting the
application which is made of a few of them by the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews to be their original intention,
the great mass would still remain unexplained, and yet they
are all alike contained in the same Eevelation. It may seem
natural to us to suppose that God taught His people like
children by the help of outward objects. But no a priori
supposition of this kind, no fancy, however natural, of
a symmetry or coincidence which may be traced between
the Old Testament and the New, nor the frequent repetition
of such a theory in many forms, is an answer to the fact.
That fact is the silence of the Old Testament itself. If the
sacrifices of the Mosaical religion were really symbolical of
the death of Christ, how can it be accounted for that no
trace of this symbolism appears in the books of Moses them-
selves ? that prophets and righteous men of old never gave
this interpretation to them? that the lawgiver is intent
only on the sign, and says nothing of the thing signified ?
No other book is ever supposed to teach truths about which
it is wholly silent. We do not imagine the Iliad and
Odyssey to be a revelation of the Platonic or Socratic philo-
sophy. The circumstances that these poems received this
or some other allegorical explanation from a school of
Alexandrian critics, does not incline us to believe that such
an explanation is a part of their original meaning. The
human mind does not work in this occult manner ; language
Y 2
324 ESSAY ON
was not really given men to conceal their thoughts ; plain
precepts or statements do not contain hidden mysteries.
It may be said that the Leyitical rites and offerings had
a meaning, not for the Jews, but for us, ' on whom the ends
of the world are come.' Moses, David, Isaiah were unac-
quainted with this meaning ; it was reserved for those who
lived after the event to which they referred had taken place
to discover it. Such an afterthought may be natural to
us, who are ever tracing a literary or mystical connexion
between the Old Testament and the New ; it would have
been very strange to us, had we lived in the ages before the
coming of Christ. It is incredible that God should have
instituted rites and ceremonies, which were to be observed
as forms by a whole people throughout their history, to
teach mankind fifteen hundred years afterwards, uncertainly
and in a figure, a lesson which Christ taught plainly and
without a figure. Such an assumption confuses the appli-
cation of Scripture with its original meaning ; the use of
language in the New Testament with the facts of the Old.
Further, it does away with all certainty in the interpretation
of Scripture. If we can introduce the New Testament into
the Old, we may with equal right introduce Tradition or
Church History into the New.
The question here raised has a very important bearing on
the use of the figures of atonement and sacrifice in the New
Testament. For if it could be shown that the sacrifices
which were offered up in the Levitical worsliip were antici-
patory only ; that the law too declared itself to be * a shadow
of good things to come ;' that Moses had himself spoken 'of
the reproach of Christ ; ' in that case the slightest allusion
in the New Testament to the customs or words of the law
would have a peculiar interest. We should be justified in
referring to them as explanatoiy of the work of Christ, in
studying the Levitical distinctions respecting offerings with
a more than antiquarian interest, in 'disputing about purify-
ing ' and modes of expiation. But if not ; if, in short, we are
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 325
only reflecting the present on the past, or perhaps confusing
both together, and interpreting Christianity by Judaism,
and Judaism by Christianity ; then the sacrificial language
of the New Testament loses its depth and significance, or
rather acquires a higher, that is, a spiritual one.
11. Of such an explanation, if it had really existed when
the Mosaic religion was still a national form of worship,
traces would occur in the writings of the Psalmists and the
Prophets ; for these furnish a connecting link between the
Old Testament and the New. But this is not the case ;
the Prophets are, for the most part, unconscious of the law,
or silent respecting its obligations.
In many places, their independence of the Mosaical reli-
gion passes into a kind of opposition to it. The inward and
spii-itual truth asserts itself, not as an explanation of the
ceremonial observance, but in defiance of it. The 'under-
growth of morality ' is putting forth shoots in spite of the
deadness of the ceremonial hull. Isaiah i. 1 3 : ' Bring no
more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ;
the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies,
I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. '
Micah vi. 6 : ' Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, or
bow myself before the high God ? shall I come before him
with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the
Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thou-
sands of rivers of oil ? ' Psalm 1. 10 : 'All the beasts of the
forests are mine, and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills :
If I were hungry I would not tell thee.' We cannot doubt
that in passages like these we are bursting the bonds of the
Levitical or ceremonial dispensation.
The spirit of prophecy, speaking by Isaiah, does not say
*I will have mercy as well as sacrifice,' but 'I will have
mercy and not (or rather than) sacrifice.' In the words of
the Psalmist, ' Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not ;
Then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God ; ' ' The sacri-
fices of God are a broken spirit : ' or again, ' A bruised reed
3a6 ESSAY ON
shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench ;
he shall bring forth judgement unto truth : ' or again, accord-
ing to the image both of Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isa. liii. 7 ;
Jer. xi. 1 9), which seems to have passed before the vision of
John the Baptist (John i. 36), ' He is brought as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.'
These are the points at which the Old and New Testaments
most nearly touch, the (tuttoi) types or ensamples of the
one which we find in the other, the pre-notions or prepara-
tions with which we pass from Moses and the Prophets to
the Gospel of Christ.
III. It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer
expression of the Gospel than the words of Christ himself,
or that any truth omitted by Him is essential to the Gospel.
' The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant greater
than his lord.' The philosophy of Plato was not better
understood by his followers than by himself, nor can we
allow that the Gospel is to be interpreted by the Epistles,
or that the Sermon on the Mount is only half Christian and
needs the fuller inspiration or revelation of St. Paul or the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. There is no trace in
the words of our Saviour of any omission or imperfection ;
there is no indication in the Epistles of any intention to
complete or perfect them. How strange would it have
seemed in the Apostle St. Paul, who thought himself un-
worthy * to be called an Apostle because he persecuted the
Church of God,' to find that his own words were preferred
in after ages to those of Christ himself !
There is no study of theology which is likely to exercise
a more elevating influence on the individual, or a more
healing one on divisions of opinion, than the study of the
words of Christ himself. The heart is its own witness to
them ; all Christian sects acknowledge them ; they seem
to escape or rise above the region or atmosphere of contro-
versy. The form in which they exhibit the Gospel to us
is the simplest and also the deepest ; they are more free
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 327
from details than any other part of Scripture, and they are
absolutely independent of personal and national influences.
In them is contained the expression of the inner life, of man-
kind, and of the Church ; there, too, the individual beholds,
as in a glass, the image of a goodness which is not of this
world. To rank their authority below that of Apostles
and Evangelists is to give up the best hope of reuniting
Christendom in itself, and of making Christianity a universal
religion.
And Christ himself hardly even in a figure uses the word
' sacrifice ; ' never with the least reference to His own life
or death. There are many ways in which our Lord describes
His relation to His Father and to mankind. His disciples
are to be one with Him, even as He is one with the Father ;
whatsoever things He seeth the Father do He doeth. He
says, ' I am the resurrection and the life ; ' or, ' I am the
way, the truth, and the life ; ' and, ' No man cometh unto
the Father but by me ; ' and again, ' Whatsoever things ye
shall ask in my name shall be given you ; ' and once again,
' I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another com-
forter.' Most of His words are simple, like 'a man talking
to his friends ; ' and their impressiveness and beauty partly
flow from this simplicity. He speaks of His ' decease too
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem,' but not in sacri-
ficial language. ' And now I go my way to him that sent
me ; ' and ' Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.' Once indeed He says,
* The bread that I give is my flesh, which I give for the
salvation of the world ; ' to which He himself adds, ' The
words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are
truth,' a commentary which should be applied not only to
these but to all other figurative expressions which occur in
the New Testament. In the words of institution of the
Lord's supper. He also speaks of His death as in some way
connected with the remission of sins. But among all the
figures of speech under which He describes His work in the
328 ESSAY ON
world, — the vine, the good shepherd, the door, the light of
the world, the bread of life, the water of life, the corner
stone, the temple, — none contains any sacrificial allusion.
The parables of Christ have a natural and ethical charac-
ter. They are only esoteric in as far as the hardness or
worldliness of men's hearts prevents their understanding or
receiving them. There is a danger of our making them
mean too much rather than too little, that is, of winning
a false interest for them by applying them mystically or
taking them as a thesis for dialectical or rhetorical exercise.
For example, if we say that the guest who came to the
marriage supper without a wedding-garment represents
a person clothed in his own righteousness instead of the
righteousness of Christ, that is an explanation of which
there is not a trace in the words of the parable itself. That
is an illustration of the manner in which we are not to
gather doctrines from Scripture. For there is nothing
which we may not in this way superinduce on the plainest
lessons of our Saviour.
Eeading the parables, then, simply and naturally, we
find in them no indication of the doctrine of atonement or
satisfaction. They form a very large portion of the sayings
which have been recorded of our Saviour while He was on
earth ; and they teach a great number of separate lessons.
But there is no hint contained in them of that view of
the death of Christ which is sometimes regarded as the
centre of the Gospel. There is no * difficulty in the nature
of things ' which prevents the father going out to meet the
prodigal son. No other condition is required of the justifi-
cation of the publican except the true sense of his own
unworthiness. The work of those labourers who toiled for
one hour only in the vineyard is not supplemented by the
merits and deserts of another. The reward for the cup of
cold water is not denied to those who are unaware that He
to whom it is given is the Lord. The parables of the Good
Samaritan, of the Fig-tree, of the Talents, do not recognize
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 329
the distinction of faith and works. Other sayings and
doings of our Lord while He was on earth implied the
same unconsciousness or neglect of the refinements of later
ages. The power of the Son of Man to forgive sins is not
dependent on the satisfaction which He is to offer for them.
The Sermon on the Mount, which is the extension of the
law to thought as well as action, and the two great com-
mandments in which the law is summed up, are equally
the expression of the Gospel. The mind of Christ is in
its own place, far away from the oppositions of modern
theology. Like that of the prophets. His relation to the
law of Moses is one of neutrality ; He has another lesson to
teach which comes immediately from God. ' The Scribes
and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat — ' or, ' Moses, because of
the hardness of your hearts — ' or, ' Which of you hath an
ox or an ass — ' or, ' Ye fools, did not he that made that
which is without make that which is within.' He does not
say, 'Behold in me the true Sacrifice ;' or, 'I that speak
unto you am the victim and priest.' He has nothing to do
with legal and ceremonial observances. There is a sort of
natural irony with which He regards the world around
Him. It was as though He would not have touched the
least of the Levitical commandments; and yet 'not one
stone was to be left upon another ' as the indirect effect of
His teaching. So that it would be equally true : ' I am not
come to destroy the law but to fulfil ; ' and ' Destroy this
temple and in three days I will raise it up again.' 'My
kingdom is not of this world,' yet it shall subdue the king-
doms of this world ; and, the Prince of Peace will not
' bring peace on earth, but a sword.'
There is a mystery in the life and death of Christ ; that
is to say, there is more than we know or are perhaps
capable of knowing. The relation in which He stood both
to His Father and to mankind is imperfectly revealed to
us ; we do not fully understand what may be termed in
a figure His inner mind or consciousness. Expressions
;^^0 ESSAY ON
occur which are like flashes of this inner self, and seem to
come from another world. There are also mixed modes
which blend earth and heaven. There are circumstances in
our Lord's life, too, of a similar nature, such as the trans-
figuration, or the agony in the garden, of which the Scrip-
ture records only the outward fact. Least of all do we
pretend to fathom the import of His death. He died for us,
in the language of the Gospels, in the same sense that He
lived for us; He 'bore our sins' in the same sense that He
' bore our diseases ' (Matt. viii. 1 7). He died by the hands
of sinners as a malefactor, the innocent for the guilty,
Jesus instead of Barabbas, because it was necessary ' that
one man should die for that nation, and not for that nation
only ; ' as a righteous man laying down his life for his
friends, as a hero to save his country, as a martyr to bear
witness to the truth. He died as the Son of God, free to
lay down His life ; confident that He would have power
to take it again. More than this is meant ; and more than
human speech can tell. But we do not fill up the void of
our knowledge by drawing out figures of speech into conse-
quences at variance with the attributes of God. No external
mode of describing or picturing the work of Christ realizes
its inward nature. Neither will the reproduction of our
own feelings in a doctrinal form supply any objective
support or ground of the Christian faith.
IV. Two of the General Epistles and two of the Epistles
of St. Paul have no bearing on our present subject. These
are the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and the two
Epistles to the Thessalonians. Their silence, like that of
the Gospels, is at least a negative proof that the doctrine of
Sacrifice or Satisfaction is not a central truth of Chris-
tianity. The remainder of the New Testament will be
sufficiently considered under two heads : first, the re-
maining Epistles of St. Paul ; and, secondly, the Epistle to
the Hebrews. The difficulties which arise respecting these
are the same as the difficulties which apply in a less degree
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 33 1
to one or two passages in the Epistles of St, Peter and
St. John, and in the book of Revelation.
It is not to be denied that the language of Sacrifice and
Substitution occurs in the Epistles of St. Paul. Instances
of the former are furnished by Rom. iii. 23, 25 ; i Cor. v. 7 :
of the latter by Gal. ii. 20 ; iii. 13.
Rom. iii. 23-25 : ' For all have sinned, and come short of
the glory of God ; being justified freely by his grace,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus : whom God
hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith by his
blood, to declare his righteousness.'
I Cor. V. 7 : ' Christ our passover is sacrificed [for us] ;
therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither
wdth the leaven of malice and wickedness ; but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. '
These two passages are a fair example of a few others.
About the translation and explanation of the first of them
interpreters differ. But the differences are not such as to
affect our present question. For that question is a general
one, viz. whether these, and similar sacrificial expressions,
are passing figures of speech, or appointed signs or symbols
of the death of Christ. On which it may be observed :—
First : That these expressions are not the peculiar or
characteristic modes in which the Apostle describes the
relation of the believer to his Lord. For one instance of
the use of sacrificial language, five or six might be cited of
the language of identity or communion, in which the be-
liever is described as one with his Lord in all the stages of
His life and death. But this language is really inconsistent
with the other. For if Christ is one with the believer, He
cannot be regarded strictly as a victim who takes his place.
And the stage of Christ's being which coincides, and is
specially connected by the Apostle, with the justification of
man, is not His death, but His resurrection (Rom. iv. 25).
Secondly : These sacrificial expressions, as also the vica-
rious ones of which we shall hereafter speak, belong to the
^^2 ESSAY ON
religious language of the age. They are found in Philo ;
and the Old Testament itself had already given them
a spiritual or figurative application. There is no more
reason to suppose that the word ' sacrifice ' suggested the
actual rite in the Apostolic age than in our own. It was
a solemn religious idea, not a fact. The Apostles at
Jerusalem saw the smoke of the daily sacrifice ; the Apostle
St. Paul beheld victims blazing on many altars in heathen
cities (he regarded them as the tables of devils). But there
is no reason to suppose that they led him to think of Christ,
or that the bleeding form on the altar suggested the
sufferings of his Lord.
Therefore, thirdly, We shall only be led into error by
attempting to explain the application of the word to Christ
from the original meaning of the thing. That is a question
of Jewish or classical archaeology, which would receive
a different answer in different ages and countries. Many
motives or instincts may be traced in the worship of the
first children of men. The need of giving or getting rid
of something ; the desire to fulfil an obligation or expiate
a crime ; the consecration of a part that the rest may be
holy ; the Homeric feast of gods and men, of the living
with the dead ; the mystery of animal nature, of which the
blood was the symbol ; the substitution, in a few instances,
of the less for the greater ; in later ages, custom adhering
to the old rituals when the meaning of them has passed
away ; — these seem to be true explanations of the ancient
sacrifices. (Human sacrifices, such as those of the old
Mexican peoples, or the traditional ones in pre-historic
Greece, may be left out of consideration, as they appear to
spring from such monstrous and cruel perversion of human
nature.) But these explanations have nothing to do with
our present subject. We may throw an imaginary light
back upon them (for it is always easier to represent former
ages like our own than to realize them as they truly were) ;
they will not assist us in comprehending the import of the
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION ^^^
death of Christ, or the nature of the Christian religion.
They are in the highest degree opposed to it, at the other
end of the scale of human development, as ' the weak and
beggarly elements ' of sense and fear to the spirit whereby
we cry, Abba, Father ; almost, may we not say, as the
instinct of animals to the reasoning faculties of man. For
sacrifice is not, like prayer, one of the highest, but one of
the lowest acts of religious worship. It is the antiquity,
not the religious import of the rite, which first gave it
a sacredness. In modern times, the associations which are
conveyed by the word are as far from the original idea as
those of the cross itself. The death of Christ is not a sacri-
fice in the ancient sense (any more than the cross is to
Christians the symbol of infamy) ; but what we mean by
the word ' sacrifice ' is the death of Christ.
Fourthly : This sacrificial language is not used with any
definiteness or precision. The figure varies in different
passages ; Christ is the Paschal Lamb, or the Lamb without
spot, as well as the sin-oifering ; the priest as well as the
sacrifice. It is applied not only to Christ, but to the be-
liever who is to present his body a living sacrifice ; and the
offering of which St. Paul speaks in one passage is 'the
offering up of the Gentiles.' Again, this language is every-
where broken by moral and spiritual appHcations into which
it dissolves and melts away. When we read of 'sacrifice,'
or 'purification,' or 'redemption,' these words isolated may
for an instant carry our thoughts back to the Levitical
ritual. But when we restore them to their context, a sacri-
fice which is a ' spiritual sacrifice, ' or a ' spiritual and mental
service, ' a purification which is a ' purging from dead works
to serve the living God,' a redemption 'by the blood of
Christ from your vain conversation received by tradition
from your fathers' — we see that the association offers no
real help ; it is no paradox to say that we should rather
forget than remember it. All this tends to show that these
figures of speech are not the eternal symbols of the Christian
334 ESSAY ON
faith, but shadows only which lightly come and go, and
ought not to be fixed by definitions, or made the founda-
tion of doctrinal systems.
Fifthly : Nor is any such use of them made by any of the
writers of the New Testament. It is true that St. Paul
occasionally, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
much more frequently, use sacrificial language. But they
do not pursue the figure into details or consequences ; they
do not draw it out in logical form. Still less do they
inquire, as modern theologians have done, into the objective
or transcendental relation in which the sacrifice of Christ
stood to the will of the Father. St. Paul says, 'We thus
judge that if one died, then all died, and he died for all,
that they which live shall not henceforth live to themselves,
but unto him which died for them and rose again.' But
w^ords like these are far indeed from expressing a doctrine
of atonement or satisfaction.
Lastly : The extent to which the Apostle employs figura-
tive language in general, may be taken as a measure of the
force of the figure in particular, expressions. Now there
is no mode of speaking of spiritual things more natural to
him than the image of death. Of the meaning of this word,
in all languages, it may be said that there can be no doubt.
Yet no one supposes that the sense which the Apostle gives
to it is other than a spiritual one. The reason is, that the
word has never been made the foundation of any doctrine.
But the circumstance that the term ' sacrifice ' has passed
into the language of theology, does not really circumscribe
or define it. It is a figure of speech still, which is no more
to be interpreted by the Mosaic sacrifices than spiritual death
by physical. Let us consider again other expressions of
St. Paul : ' I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'
' Who hath taken the handwriting of ordinances that was
against us, and nailed it to his ci'oss.' 'Filling up that
which is behind of the afilictions of Christ in my flesh, for
his body's sake, which is the church.' The occurrence of
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION ^^^
these and many similar expressions is a sufficient indica-
tion that the writer in whom they occur is not to be inter-
preted in a dry or Kteral manner.
Another class of expressions, which may be termed the
language of substitution or vicarious suffering, are also
occasionally found in St. Paul. Two examples of them,
both of which occur in the Epistle to the Galatians, will
indicate their general character.
Gal. ii. 20 : 'I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless
I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life
which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.'
iii. 13: ' Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us.'
This use of language seems to originate in what was
termed before the language of identity. First, *I am
crucified with Christ,' and secondly, 'Not I, but Christ
liveth in me.' The believer, according to St. Paul, follows
Christ until he becomes like Him. And this likeness is
so complete and entire, that all that he was or might have
been is attributed to Christ, and all that Christ is, is attri-
buted to him. With such life and fervour does St. Paul
paint the intimacy of the union between the believer and
Christ: They two are 'One Spirit.' To build on such ex-
pressions a doctrinal system is the error of ' rhetoric turned
logic' The truth of feeling which is experienced by a few
is not to be handed over to the head as a form of doctrine
for the many.
The same remark applies to another class of passages, in
which Christ is described as dying ' for us, ' or ' for our sins. '
Upon which it may be further observed, first, that in these
passages the preposition used is not avTL but virep ; and,
secondly, that Christ is spoken of as living and rising again,
as well as dying, for us ; whence we infer that He died
for us in the same sense that He lived for us. Of what
is meant, perhaps the nearest conception we can form is
^^6 ESSAY ON
furnished by the example of a good man taking upon him-
self, or, as we say, identifying himself with, the troubles
and sorrows of others. Christ himself has sanctioned the
comparison of a love which lays down life for a friend. Let
us think of one as sensitive to moral evU as the gentlest
of mankind to physical suffering ; of one whose love identi-
fied Him with the whole human race as strongly as the souls
of men are ever knit together by individual affections.
Many of the preceding observations apply equally to the
Epistle to the Hebrews and to the Epistles of St. Paul.
But the Epistle to the Hebrews has features peculiar to
itself. It is a more complete transfiguration of the law,
which St. Paul, on the other hand, applies by way of
illustration, and in fragments only. It has the interest of
an allegory, and, in some respects, admits of a comparison
with the book of Eevelation. It is full of sacrificial allusions,
derived, however, not from the actual rite, but from the
description of it in the books of Moses. Probably at Jeru-
salem, or the vicinity of the actual temple, it would not have
been written.
From this source chiefly, and not from the Epistles of
St. Paul, the language of sacrifice has passed into the
theology and sermons of modern times. The Epistle to
the Hebrews affords a greater apparent foundation for the
popular or Calvinistical doctrines of atonement and satis-
faction, but not perhaps a greater real one. For it is not
the mere use of the terms 'sacrifice' or 'blood,' but the
sense in which they were used, that must be considered.
It is a fallacy, though a natural one, to confuse the image
with the thing signified, like mistaking the colour of
a substance for its true nature.
Long passages might be quoted from the Epistle to the
Hebrews, which describe the work of Christ in sacrificial
language. Some of the most striking verses are the
following: — ix. 11-14: 'Christ being come an high priest
of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 337
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of
this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves,
but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if
the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer
sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the
flesh : how much more shall the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot
to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve
the living God.' x. 12 : 'This man, after he had offered
one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand
of God.'
That these and similar passages have only a deceitful re-
semblance to the language of those theologians who regard
the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ as the central truth of the
Gospel, is manifest from the following considerations : —
1. The great number and variety of the figures. Christ
is Joshua, who gives the people rest (iv. 8) ; Melchisedec, to
whom Abraham paid tithes (v. 6, vii. 6) : the high priest
going into the most holy place after he had offered sacrifice,
which sacrifice He himself is, passing through the veil,
which is His flesh.
2. The inconsistency of the figures : an inconsistency
partly arising from their ceasing to be figures and passing
into moral notions, as in chap. ix. 14: ' the blood of Christ,
who offered himself without spot to God, shall purge your
conscience from dead works ; ' partly from the confusion
of two or more figures, as in the verse following : ' And for
this cause he is the mediator of the new testament,' where
the idea of sacrifice forms a transition to that of death
and a testament, and the idea of a testament blends with
that of a covenant.
3. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews dwells on
the outward circumstance of the shedding of the blood of
Christ, St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians makes
another application of the Old Testament, describing our
VOL. II. z
338 ESSAY ON
Lord as enduring the curse which befell ' One who hanged
on a tree.' Imagine for an instant that this latter had been
literally the mode of our Lord's death. The figure of the
Epistle to the Hebrews would cease to have any meaning ;
yet no one supposes that there would have been any
essential difference in the work of Christ.
4. The atoning sacrifice of which modern theology speaks,
is said to be the great object of faith. The author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews also speaks of faith, but no such
expression as faith in the blood, or sacrifice, or death of
Christ is made use of by him, or is found anywhere else
in Scripture. The faith of the patriarchs is not faith in
the peculiar sense of the term, but the faith of those who
confess that they are ' strangers and pilgrims, ' and * endure
seeing him that is invisible.'
Lastly : The Jewish Alexandrian character of the Epistle
must be admitted as an element of the inquiry. It inter-
prets the Old Testament after a manner then current in
the world, which we must either continue to apply or admit
that it was relative to that age and country. It makes
statements which we can only accept in a figure, as, for
example, in chap, xi, 'that Moses esteemed the reproach
of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.' It
uses language in double senses, as, for instance, the two
meanings of biadriKri and of 17 Trpcorrj in chap. viii. 13 ; ix, i ;
and the connexion which it establishes between the Old
Testament and the New, is a verbal or mystical one, not
a connexion between the temple and offerings at Jerusalem
and the offering up of Christ, but between the ancient ritual
and the tabernacle described in the book of the law.
Such were the instruments which the author of this great
Epistle (whoever he may have been) employed, after the
manner of his age and country, to impart the truths of the
Gospel in a figure to those who esteemed this sort of
figurative knowledge as a kind of perfection (Heb. vi. 1).
' Ideas must be given through something ; ' nor could
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 339
mankind in those days, any more than our own, receive the
truth except in modes of thought that were natural to them.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is writing to
those who lived and moved in the atmosphere, as it may be
termed, of Alexandrian Judaism. Therefore he uses the
figures of the law, but he also guards against their literal
acceptation. Christ is a priest, but a priest for ever after
the order of Melchisedec ; He is a sacrifice, but He is also
the end of sacrifices, and the sacrifice which He offers is the
negation of sacrifices, 'to do thy will, O God.' Everywhere
he has a 'how much more,' 'how much greater,' for the
new dispensation in comparison with the old. He raises
the Old Testament to the New, first by drawing forth the
spirit of the New Testament from the Old, and secondly by
applying the words of the Old Testament in a higher sense
than they at first had. The former of these two methods of
interpretation is moral and universal, the latter local and
temporary. But if we who are not Jews like the persons
to whom the Epistle to the Hebrews is addressed, and who
are taught by education to receive words in their natural
and prima facie meaning, linger around the figure instead of
looking forward to the thing signified, we do indeed make
' Christ the minister ' of the Mosaic religion. For there is
a Judaism not only of outward ceremonies or ecclesiastical
hierarchies, or temporal rewards and punishments, but of
ideas also, which impedes the worship of spirit and truth.
The sum of what has been said is as follows : —
Firstly : That our Lord never describes His own work in
the language of atonement or sacrifice.
Secondly : That this language is a figure of speech bor-
rowed from the Old Testament, yet not to be explained by
the analogy of the Levitical sacrifices ; occasionally found in
the writings of St. Paul ; more frequently in the Epistle to
the Hebrews ; applied to the believer at least equally -with
his Lord, and indicating by the variety and uncertainty
with which it is used that it is not the expression of any
z 2
34° ESSAY ON
objective relation in which the work of Christ stands to His
Father, but only a mode of speaking common at a time
when the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law were
passing away and beginning to receive a spiritual meaning.
Thirdly : That nothing is signified by this language, or at
least nothing essential, beyond what is implied in the
teaching of our Lord himself. For it cannot be supposed
that there is any truer account of Christianity than is to be
found in the words of Christ.
§2.
Theology sprang up in the first ages independently of
Scripture. This independence continued afterwards ; it
has never been wholly lost. There is a tradition of the
nineteenth century, as well as of the fourth or fourteenth,
which conies between them. The mystical interpretation
of Scripture has further parted them ; to which may be
added the power of system : doctrines when framed into
a whole cease to draw their inspiration from the text.
Logic has expressed 'the thoughts of many hearts' with
a seeming necessity of form ; this form of reasoning has led
to new inferences. Many words and formulas have also
acquired a sacredness from their occurrence in liturgies and
articles, or the frequent use of them in religious discourse.
The true interest of the theologian is to restore these formulas
to their connexion in Scripture, and to their place in eccle-
siastical history. The standard of Christian truth is not
a logical clearness or sequence, but the simplicity of the
mind of Christ.
The history of theology is the history of the intellectual
life of the Christian Church. All bodies of Christians,
Protestant as well as Catholic, have tended to imagine that
they are in the same stage of religious development as the
first believers. But the Church has not stood still any
more than the world ; we may trace the progress of doctrine
as well as the growth of philosophical opinion. The thoughts
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 34 1
of men do not pass away without leaving an impress, in
religion, any more than in politics or literature. The form
of more than one article of faith in our own day is assignable
to the effort of mind of some great thinker of the Nicene or
mediaeval times. The received interpretation of texts of
Scripture may not unfrequently be referred to the applica-
tion of them first made in periods of controversy. Neither
is it possible in any reformation of the Church to return
exactly to the point whence the divergence began. The
pattern of Apostolical order may be restored in externals ;
but the threads of the dialectical process are in the mind
itself, and cannot be disposed of at once. It seems to be
the nature of theology that while it is easy to add one
definition of doctrine to another, it is hard to withdraw
from any which have been once received. To believe too
much is held to be safer than to believe too little, and the
human intellect finds a more natural exercise in raising the
superstructure than in examining the foundations. On
the other hand, it is instructive to observe that there has
always been an under-current in theology, the course of
which has turned towards morality, and not away from it.
There is a higher sense of truth and right now than in the
Nicene Church — after than before the Keformation. The
laity in all Churches have moderated the extremes of the
clergy. There may also be remarked a silent correction in
men's minds of statements which have not ceased to appear
in theological writings.
The study of the doctrinal development of the Christian
Church has many uses. First, it helps us to separate the
history of a doctrine from its truth, and indirectly also the
meaning of Scripture from the new reading of it, which has
been given in many instances by theological controversy.
It takes us away from the passing movement, and out of
our own particular corner into a world in which we see
religion on a larger scale and in truer proportions. It
enables us to interpret one age to another, to understand
342 ESSAY ON
our present theological position by its antecedents in the
past ; and perhaps to bind all together in the spirit of
charity. Half the intolerance of opinion among Christians
arises from ignorance ; in history as in life, when we know
others we get to like them. Logic too ceases to take us by
force and make us believe. There is a pathetic interest and
a kind of mystery in the long continuance and intensity of
erroneous ideas on behalf of which men have been ready to
die, which nevertheless were no better than the dreams or
fancies of children. When we make allowance for differences
in modes of thought, for the state of knowledge, and the
conditions of the ecclesiastical society, we see that individuals
have not been altogether responsible for their opinions ;
that the world has been bound together under the influence
of the past ; moreover, good men of all persuasions have
been probably nearer to one another than they supposed,
in doctrine as well as in life. It is the attempt to preserve
or revive erroneous opinions in the present age, not their
existence in former ages, that is to be reprobated. Lastly,
the study of the history of doctrine is the end of controversy.
For it is above controversy, of which it traces the growth,
clearing away that part which is verbal only, and teaching
us to understand that other part which is fixed in the deeper
differences of human nature.
The history of the doctrine of the atonement may be
conveniently divided into four periods of unequal length,
each of which is marked by some peculiar features. First,
the Patristic period, extending to the time of Anselm, in
which the doctrine had not attained to a perfect or complete
form, but each one applied for himself the language of
Scripture. Secondly, the Scholastic period, beginning with
Anselm, who may be said to have defined anew the con-
ceptions of the Christian world respecting the work of
Christ, and including the great schoolmen who were his
successors. Thirdly, the century of the Eeformation,
embracing what may be termed the after-thoughts of
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 343
Protestantism, when men began to reason in that new
sphere of religious thought which had been called into
existence in the great struggle. ' Fragments of the great
banquet' of the schoolmen survive throughout the period,
and have floated down the stream of time to our own age.
Fourthly, the last hundred years, during which the doctrine
of the atonement has received a new development from the
influences of German philosophy \ as well as from the
speculations of English and American writers.
I. The characteristics of the first period may be summed
up as follows. All the Fathers agreed that man was re-
conciled to God through Christ, and received in the Gospel
a new and divine life. Most of them also spoke of the death
of Christ as a ransom or sacrifice. When we remember that
in the first age of the Church the New Testament was ex-
clusively taught through the Old, and that many of the first
teachers, who were unacquainted with our present Gospels,
had passed their lives in the study of the Old Testament
Scriptures, we shall not wonder at the early diffusion of
this sort of language. Almost every application of the
types of the law which has been made since, is already
found in the writings of Justin Martyr. Nor indeed, on
general grounds, is there any reason why we should feel
surprise at such a tendency in the first ages. For in all
Churches, and at all times of the world's histoiy, the Old
Testament has tended to take the place of the New ; the
law of the Gospel ; the handmaid has become the mistress ;
and the development of the Christian priesthood has de-
veloped also the idea of a Christian sacrifice.
The peculiarity of the primitive doctrine did not lie here,
but in the relation in which the work of Christ was supposed
to stand to the powers of evil. In the first ages we are
beset with shadows of an under world, which hover on the
confines of Christianity. From Origen downwards, with
' In the following pages I have derived great assistance from the
excellent work of Baur iiber die Versohnungslehre.
344 ESSAY ON
some traces of an earlier opinion of the same kind, perhaps
of Gnostic origin, it was a prevailing though not quite
universal belief among the Fathers, that the death of Christ
was a satisfaction, not to God, but to the devil. Man, by
having sinned, passed into the power of the evil one, who
acquired a real right over him which could not be taken
away without compensation. Christ offered himself as this
compensation, which the devil eagerly accepted, as worth
more than all mankind. But the deceiver was in turn
deceived ; thinking to triumph over the humanity, he was
himself triumphed over by the Divinity of Christ. This
theory was characteristically expressed under some such
image as the following : ' that the devil snatching at the
bait of human flesh, was hooked by the Divine nature, and
forced to disgorge what he had already swallowed.' It is
common in some form to Origen, Augustine, Ambrose,
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville,
and much later writers ; and there are indications of it in
Irenaeus {Adv. Haer. v. i. i). The meaning of this
transaction with the devil it is hardly possible to explain
consistently. For a real possession of the soul of Christ
was not thought of : an imaginary one is only an illusion.
In either case the absolute right which is assigned to the
devil over man, and which requires this satisfaction, is as
repugnant to our moral and religious ideas, as the notion
that the right could be satisfied by a deception. This
strange fancy seems to be a reflection or anticipation of
Manicheism within the Church. The world, which had
been hitherto a kingdom of evil, of which the devil was the
lord, was to be exorcised and taken out of his power by the
death of Christ.
But the mythical fancy of the transaction with the devil
was not the whole, nor even the leading conception, which
the Fathers had of the import of the death of Christ. It
was the negative, not the positive, side of the doctrine of
redemption which they thus expressed ; nobler thoughts
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 345
also filled their minds. Origen regards the death of Christ
as a payment to the devil, yet also as an offering to God ;
this offering took place not on earth only, but also in
heaven ; God is the high priest who offered. Another
aspect of the doctrine of the atonement is presented by the
same Father, under the Neo-Platonist form of the Xoyos
(word), who reunites with God, not only man, but all
intelligences. Irenaeus speaks, in language more human
and more like St. Paul, of Christ ' coming to save all, and
therefore passing through all the ages of man ,• becoming
an infant among infants, a little one among little ones,
a young man among young men, an elder with the aged (?),
that each in turn might be sanctified, until He reached
death, that He should be the first-born from the dead '
(ii. 22, 147). The great Latin Father, though he believed
equally with Origen in the right and power of the devil
over man, dehghts also to bring forward the moral aspect
of the work of Christ. 'The entire life of Christ,' he says,
'was an instruction in morals' {De Ver. Bel e. 16). 'He
died in order that no man might be afraid of death ' {De Fide
et Symbolo, c. 5). 'The love which He displayed in his
death constrains us to love Him and each other in return '
{De Cat. Rud. c. 4). Like St. Paul, Augustine contrasts the
second Adam with the first, the man of righteousness with
the man of sin {De Ver. Relig. c. 26). Lastly, he places
the real nature of redemption in the manifestation of the
God-man.
Another connexion between ancient and modern theology
is supplied by the writings of Athanasius. The view taken
by Athanasius of the atoning work of Christ has two
characteristic features : First, it is based upon the doctrine
of the Trinity ; — God only can reconcile man with God.
Secondly, it rests on the idea of a debt which is paid, not to
the devil, but to God. This debt is also due to death, who
has a sort of right over Christ, like the right of the devil in
the former scheme. If it be asked in what this view differs
34<5 ESSAY ON
from that of Anselm, the answer seems to be, chiefly in the
circumstance that it is stated with less distinctness ; it is
a form, not the form, which Athanasius gave to the doctrine.
In the conception of the death of Christ as a debt, he is
followed, however, by several of the Greek Fathers. Ehetoric
delighted to represent the debt as more than paid ; the
payment was "even as the ocean to a drop in comparison
with the sins of men' (Chrys. on Rom. Horn. x. 17). It is
pleasing further to remark that a kind of latitudinarianism
was allowed by the Fathers themselves. Gregory of Nazi-
anzen (Orat xxxiii. p. 536) numbers speculations about
the sufferings of Christ among those things on which it is
useful to have correct ideas, but not dangerous to be
mistaken. On the whole the doctrine of the Fathers of the
first four centuries may be said to oscillate between two
points of view, which are brought out with different degrees
of clearness, i. The atonement was effected by the death
of Christ ; which was a satisfaction to the devil, and an
offering to God : 2. The atonement was effected by the
union in Christ of the Divine and human nature in the
'logos,' or word of God, That neither view is embodied in
any creed is a proof that the doctrine of atonement was not,
in the first centuries, what modern writers often make it,
the corner-stone of the Christian faith.
An interval of more than 700 years separates Athanasius
from Anselm. One eminent name occurs during this in-
terval, that of Scotus Erigena, whose conception of the
atonement is the co-eternal unity of all things with God ;
the participation in this unity had been lost by man, not in
time, but in eternity, and was restored in the person of
Christ likewise from eternity. The views of Erigena present
some remarkable coincidences with very recent speculations ;
in the middle ages he stands alone, at the end, not at the
beginning, of a great period ; — he is the last of the Platonists,
not the first of the schoolmen. He had consequently little
influence on the centuries which followed. Those centuries
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 347
gradually assumed a peculiar character ; and received in
after times another name, scholastic, as opposed to patristic.
The intellect was beginning to display a new power ; men
were asking, not exactly for a reason of the faith that was
in them, but for a clearer conception and definition of it.
The Aristotelian philosophy furnished distinctions which
were applied with a more than Aristotelian precision to
statements of doctrine. Logic took the place of rhetoric ;
the school of the Church ; figures of speech became abstract
ideas. Theology was exhibited under a new aspect, as
a distinct object or reality of thought. Questions on
which Scripture was silent, on which councils and Popes
would themselves pronounce no decision, were raised and
answered within a narrow sphere by the activity of the
human mind itself. The words * sacrifice,' 'satisfaction,'
'ransom,' could no longer be used indefinitely; it was
necessary to determine further to whom and for what the
satisfaction was made, and to solve the new difficulties
which thereupon arose in the effort to gain clearer and
more connected ideas.
2. It was a true feeling of Anselm that the old doctrine
of satisfaction contained an unchristian element in attri-
buting to the devil a right independent of God. That man
should be delivered over to Satan niay be just ; it is
a misrepresentation to say that Satan had any right over
man. Therefore no right of the devil is satisfied by the
death of Christ. He who had the real right is God, who
has been robbed of His honour ; to whom is, indeed, owing
on the part of man an infinite debt. For sin is in its
nature infinite ; the world has no compensation for that
which a good man would not do in exchange for the world
{Cur Beus Homo, i. 21). God only can satisfy himself.
The human nature of Christ enables Him to incur, the
infinity of his Divine nature to pay, this debt (ii. 6, 7).
This payment of the debt, however, is not the salvation of
mankind, but only the condition of salvation ; a link is
34^ ESSAY ON
still wanting in the work of grace. The two parties are
equalized ; the honour of which God was robbed is returned,
but man has no claim for any further favour. This further
favour, however, is indirectly a result of the death of Christ.
For the payment of the debt by the Son partakes of the
nature of a gift which must needs have a recompense
(ii. 20) from the Father, which recompense cannot be
conferred on himself, and is therefore made at His request
to man. The doctrine ultimately rests on two reasons or
grounds ; the first a noble one, that it must be far from
God to suffer any rational creature to perish entirely {Cur
Deus Homo, i. 4, ii. 4) ; the second a trifling one, viz. that
God, having created the angels in a perfect number, it was
necessary that man, saved through Christ, should fill up
that original number, which was impaired by their fall.
And as Anselm, in the spirit of St. Paul, though not quite
consistently with his own argument, declares, the mercy of
God was shown in the number of the saved exceeding the
number of the lost (Cur Deus Homo, i. 16, 1 8).
This theory, which is contained in the remarkable treatise
Cur Deus Homo, is consecutively reasoned throughout ;
yet the least reasons seem often sufficient to satisfy the
author. While it escapes one difficulty it involves several
others ; though conceived in a nobler and more Christian
spirit than any previous view of the work of Christ, it
involves more distinctly the hideous consequence of punish-
ing the innocent for the guilty. It is based upon analogies,
symmetries, numerical fitnesses ; yet under these logical
fancies is contained a true and pure feeling of the relation
of man to God. The notion of satisfaction or payment
of a debt, on the other hand, is absolutely groundless,
and seems only to result from a certain logical position
which the human mind has arbitrarily assumed. The
scheme implies further two apparently contradictory notions ;
one, a necessity in the nature of things for this and no
other means of redemption ; the other, the free will of God
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 349
in choosing the salvation of man. Anselm endeavours to
escape from this difficulty by substituting the conception of
a moral for that of a metaphysical necessity (ii. 5). God
chose the necessity and Christ chose the fulfilment of His
Father's commands. But the necessity by which the death
of Christ is justified is thus reduced to a figure of speech.
Lastly, the subjective side of the doctrine, which afterwards
became the great question of the Eeformation, the question,
that is, in what way the death of Christ is to be appre-
hended by the believer, is hardly if at all touched upon
by Anselm.
No progress was made during the four centuries which
intervened between Anselm and the Eeformation, towards
the attainment of clearer ideas respecting the relations of
God and man. The view of Anselm did not, however,
at once or universally prevail ; it has probably exercised
a greater influence since the Reformation (being the basis
of what may be termed the evangelical doctrine of the
atonement) than in earlier ages. The spirit of the older
theology was too congenial to those ages quickly to pass
away. Bernard and others continued to maintain the right
of the devil : a view not wholly obsolete in our own day.
The two great masters of the schools agreed in denying the
necessity on which the theory of Anselm was founded.
They differed from Anselm also respecting the conception
of an infinite satisfaction ; Thomas Aquinas distinguishing
the ' infinite ' Divine merit, and ' abundant ' human satis-
faction ; while Duns Scotus rejected the notion of infinity
altogether, declaring that the scheme of redemption might
have been equally accomplished by the death of an angel
or a righteous man. Abelard, at an earlier period, attached
special importance to the moral aspect of the work of
Christ ; he denied the right of the devil, and declared the
love of Christ to be the redeeming principle, because it calls
forth the love of man. Peter Lombard also, who retained,
like Bernard, the old view of the right of the devil, agreed
350 ESSAY ON
with Abelard in giving a moral character to the work of
redemption.
3. The doctrines of the Reformed as well as of the
Catholic Church were expressed in the language of the
scholastic theology. But the logic which the Catholic
party had employed in defining and distinguishing the body
of truth already received, the teachers of the Reformation
used to express the subjective feelings of the human soul.
Theology made a transition, such as we may observe at one
or two epochs in the history of philosophy, from the object
to the subject. Hence, the doctrine of atonement or satis-
faction became subordinate to the doctrine of justification.
The reformers begin, not with ideas, but with the con-
sciousness of sin ; with immediate human interests, not
with speculative difficulties ; not with mere abstractions,
but with a great struggle ; ' without were fightings, vidthin
were fears.' As of Socrates and philosophy, so it may be
also said truly of Luther in a certain sense, that he brought
down the work of redemption * from heaven to earth. ' The
great question with him was, ' how we might be freed from
the punishment and guilt of sin,' and the answer was,
through the appropriation of the merits of Christ. All that
man was or might have been, Christ became, and was ; all
that Christ did or was, attached or was imputed to man :
as Grod, he paid the infinite penalty ; as man, he fulfilled
the law. The first made redemption possible, the second
perfected it. The first was termed in the language of that
age, the ' obedientia passiva, ' the second, the ' obedientia
activa. '
In this scheme the doctrine of satisfaction is far from
being prominent or necessary ; it is a remnant of an older
theology which was retained by the Reformers and prevented
their giving a purely moral character to the work of Christ.
There were differences among them respecting the two
kinds of obedience; some regarding the 'obedientia passiva'
as the cause or condition of the 'obedientia activa,' while
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 35 1
others laid no stress on the distinction. But all the great
chiefs of the Eeformation agreed in the fiction of imputed
righteousness. Little had been said in earlier times of
a doctrine of imputation. But now the Bible was reopened
and read over again in one light only, ' justification by faith
and not by works.' The human mind seemed to seize with
a kind of avidity on any distinction which took it out of
itself, and at the same time freed it from the burden of
ecclesiastical tyranny. Figures of speech in which Christ
was said to die for man or for the sins of man were
understood in as crude and literal a sense as the Catholic
Church had attempted to gain from the words of the
institution of the Eucharist. Imputation and substitution
among Protestant divines began to be formulas as strictly
imposed as transubstantiation with their opponents. To
Luther, Christ was not only the Holy One who died for
the sins of men, but the sinner himself on whom the vials
of Divine wrath were poured out. And seeing in the
Epistles to the Galatians and Eomans the power which
the law exercised in that age of the world over Jewish
or half-Jewish Christians, he transferred the state which
the Apostle there describes to his own age, and imagined
that the bui-den under which he himself had groaned
was the same law of which St. Paul spoke, which
Christ first fulfilled in His own person and then abolished
for ever.
It was not unnatural that in the middle ages, when
morality had no free or independent development, the
doctrine of the atonement should have been drawn out on
the analogy of law. Nor is there any reason why we
should feel surprised that, with the revival of the study
of Scripture at the Eeformation, the Mosaic law should
have exercised a great influence over the ideas of Protestants.
More singular, yet an analogous phenomenon, is the attempt
of Grotius to conceive the work of Christ by the help of the
principles of political justice. All men are under the
^^2 ESSAY ON
influence of their own education or profession, and they
are apt to conceive truths which are really of a different
or higher kind under some form derived from it ; they
require such a degree or kind of evidence as their minds are
accustomed to, and political or legal principles have often
been held a sufficient foundation for moral truth.
The theory of the celebrated jurist proceeds from the
conception of God as governor of the universe. As such,
He may forgive sins just as any other ruler may remit the
punishment of offences against positive law. But although
the ruler possesses the power to remit sins, and there is
nothing in the nature of justice which would prevent his
doing so, yet he has also a duty, which is to uphold his
own authority and that of the laws. To do so, he must
enforce punishment for the breach of them. This punish-
ment, however, may attach not to the offender, but to the
offence. Such a distinction is not unknown to the law
itself. We may apply this to the work of Christ. There
was no difficulty in the nature of things which prevented
God from freely pardoning the sins of men ; the power
of doing so was vested in His hands as governor of the
world. But it was inexpedient that He should exercise
this power without first making an example. This was
effected by the death of Christ. It pleased God to act
according to the pedantic rules of earthly jurisprudence.
It is useless to criticize such a theory further ; almost all
theologians have agi-eed in reprobating it ; it adopts the
analogy of law, and violates its first principles by considering
a moral or legal act without reference to the agent. The
reason which Grotius assigns for the death of Christ is
altogether trivial.
4. Later theories on the doctrine of the atonement may
be divided into two classes, English and German, logical
and metaphysical ; those which proceed chiefly by logical
inference, and those which connect the conception of the
atonement with speculative philosophy.
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION ^^^
Earlier English writers were chiefly employed in defining
the work of Christ ; later ones have been most occupied
with the attempt to soften or moderate the more repulsive
features of the older statements ; the former have a dog-
matical, the latter an apologetical character. The nature
of the sufferings of Christ, whether they were penal or only
quasi penal, whether they were physical or mental, greater
in degree than human sufferings, or different in kind ; in
what more precisely the compensation offered by Christ
truly consisted ; the nature of the obedience of Christ,
whether to God or the law, and the connexion of the
whole question with that of the Divine decrees : — these
were among the principal subjects discussed by the great
Presbyterian divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Continuing in the same line of thought as their
predecessors, they seem to have been unconscious of the
difficulties to which the eyes of a later generation have
opened.
But at last the question has arisen within, as well as
without, the Church of England : * How the ideas of ex-
piation, or satisfaction, or sacrifice, or imputation, are recon-
cilable with the moral and spiritual nature either of God
or man ? ' Some there are who answer from analogy, and
cite instances of vicarious suffering which appear in the
disorder of the world ai-ound us. But analogy is a broken
reed ; of use, indeed, in pointing out the way where its
intimations can be verified, but useless when applied to the
unseen world in which the eye of observation no longer
follows. Others affirm revelation or inspiration to be above
criticism, and, in disregard alike of Church history and of
Scripture, assume their own view of the doctrine of the
atonement to be a revealed or inspired truth. They do not
see that they are cutting off the branch of the tree on which
they are themselves sitting. For, if the doctrine of the
atonement cannot be criticized, neither can it be determined
what is the doctrine of the atonement ; nor, on the same
VOL. II. A a
354 ESSAY ON
principles, can any true religion be distinguished from any
false one, or any truth of religion from any error. It is
suicidal in theology to refuse the appeal to a moral criterion.
Others add a distinction of things above reason and things
contrary to reason ; a favourite theological weapon, which
has, however, no edge or force, so long as it remains
a generality. Others, in like manner, support their view
of the doctrine of the atonement by a theory of accommoda-
tion, which also loses itself in ambiguity. For it is not
determined whether, by accommodation to the human
faculties, is meant the natural subjectiveness of know-
ledge, or some other limitation which applies to theology
only. Others regard the death of Christ, not as an atone-
ment or satisfaction to God, but as a manifestation of His
righteousness, a theory which agrees with that of Grotius
in its general character, when the latter is stripped of its
technicalities. This theory is the shadow or surface of
that of satisfaction ; the human analogy equally fails ; the
punishment of the innocent for the guilty is not more unjust
than the punishment of the innocent as an example to the
guilty. Lastly, there are some who would read the doctrine
of the atonement ' in the light of Divine love only ; ' the
object of the sufferings and death of Christ being to draw
men's hearts to God by the vision of redeeming love (com-
pare Abelard), and the sufferings themselves being the
natural result of the passage of the Saviour through a world
of sin and shame. Of these explanations the last seems to
do the least violence to our moral feelings. Yet it would
surely be better to renounce any attempt at inquiry into
the objective relations of God and man, than to rest the
greatest fact in the history of mankind on so slender
a ground as the necessity for arousing the love of God in
the human heart, in this and no other way.
German theology during the last hundred years has pro-
ceeded by a different path ; it has delighted to recognize the
doctrine of the atonement as the centre of religion, and also
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 355
of philosophy. This tendency is first obsei'vable in the
writings of Kant, and may be traced through the schools
of his successors, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, as well as in
the works of the two philosophical theologians Daub and
Schleierniacher. These great thinkers all use the language
of orthodoxy ; it cannot be said, however, that the views
of any of them agree with the teaching of the patristic or
mediaeval Church, or of the Reformers, or of the simpler
expressions of Scripture. Yet they often bring into new
meaning and prominence texts on this subject which have
been pushed aside by the regular current of theology. The
difficulties which they all alike experience are two : first,
how to give a moral meaning to the idea of atonement ;
secondly, how to connect the idea with the historical fact.
According to Kant, the atonement consists in the sacri-
fice of the individual ; a sacrifice in which the sin of the
old man is ever being compensated by the sorrows and
virtues of the new. This atonement, or reconcilement of
man with God, consists in an endless progress towards
a reconcilement which is never absolutely completed in this
life, and yet, by the continual increase of good and diminu-
tion of evil, is a sufficient groundwork of hope and peace.
Perfect reconcilement would consist in the perfect obedience
of a free agent to the law of duty or righteousness. For
this Kant substitutes the ideal of the Son of God. The
participation in this ideal of humanity is an aspect of the
reconcilement. In a certain sense, in the sight of God, that
is, and in the wish and resolution of the individual, the
change from the old to the new is not gradual, but sudden :
the end is imputed or anticipated in the beginning. So
Kant ' rationalizes ' the ordinaiy Lutheran doctrine of justi-
fication ; unconscious, as in other parts of his philosophy,
of the influence which existing systems are exercising over
him. Man goes out of himself to grasp at a reflection which
is still — himself. The mystical is banished only to return
again in an arbitrary and imaginative form — a phenomenon
A a 2
35 6 ESSAY ON
which we may often observe in speculation as well as in the
characters of individuals.
Sehleiermacher's view of the doctrine of the atonement is
almost equally different from that of Kant who preceded
him, and of Hegel and others who were his contemporaries
or successors : it is hardly more like the popular theories.
Keconciliation with God he conceives as a participation in
the Divine nature. Of this participation the Church, through
the Spirit, is the medium ; the individual is redeemed and
consoled by communion with his fellow-men. If in the
terminology of philosophy we ask which is the objective,
which the subjective part of the work of redemption, the
answer of Schleiermacher seems to be that the subjective
redemption of the individual is the consciousness of union
with God ; and the objective part, which corresponds to
this consciousness, is the existence of the Church, which
derives its life from the Spirit of God, and is also the
depository of the truth of Christ. The same criticism,
however, applies to this as to the preceding conception of
the atonement, viz. that it has no real historical basis. The
objective truth is nothing more than the subjective feeling
or opinion which prevails in a particular Church. Schleier-
macher deduces the historical from the ideal, and regards
the ideal as existing only in the communion of Christians.
But the truth of a fact is not proved by the truth of an
idea. And the personal relation of the believer to Christ,
instead of being immediate, is limited (as in the Catholic
system) by the existence of the Church.
Later philosophers have conceived of the reconciliation of
man with God as a reconciliation of God with himself.
The infinite must evolve the finite from itself ; yet the true
infinite consists in the return of the finite to the infinite.
By slow degrees, and in many stages of morality, of religion,
and of knowledge, does the individual, according to Fichte,
lay aside isolation and selfishness, gaining in strength and
freedom by the negation of freedom, until he rises into the
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 357
region of the divine and absolute. This is reconcilement
with God ; a half Christian, half Platonic notion, which it
is not easy to identify either with the subjective feeling
of the individual, or with the histoi-ical fact. Daub has
also translated the language of Scripture and of the Church
into metaphysical speculation. According to this thinker,
atonement is the realization of the unity of man with God,
which is also the unity of God with himself. 'Deus
Deum cum mundo conjunctum Deo manifestat.' Perhaps
this is as near an approach as philosophy can make to
a true expression of the words, ' That they all may be one,
as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may
be one in us.' Yet the metaphysical truth is a distant and
indistinct representation of the mind of Christ which is
expressed in these words. Its defect is exhibited in the
image under which Fichte described it — the absolute unity
of light ; in other words, God, like the being of the Eleatics,
is a pure abstraction, and returning into himself is an
abstraction still.
It is characteristic of Schelling's system that he conceives
the nature of God, not as abstraction, but as energy or action.
The finite and manifold are not annihilated in the infinite ;
they are the revelation of the infinite. Man is the son of
God ; of this truth Christ is the highest expression and the
eternal idea. But in the world this revelation or incarnation
of God is ever going on ; the light is struggling with
darkness, the spirit with nature, the universal with the
particular. That victory which was achieved in the person
of Christ is not yet final in individuals or in history. Each
person, each age, carries on the same conflict between good
and evil, the triumphant end of which is anticipated in the
life and death of Christ.
Hegel, beginning with the doctrine of a Trinity, regards
the atonement as the eternal reconciliation of the finite and
the infinite in the bosom of God himself. The Son goes
forth from the Father, as the world or finite being, to exist
358 ESSAY ON
in a difference which is done away and lost in the absoluteness
of God. Here the question arises, how individuals become
partakers of this reconciliation ? The answer is, by the
finite receiving the revelation of God. The consciousness
of God in man is developed, first, in the worship of nature ;
secondly, in the manifestation of Christ ; thirdly, in the
faith of the Church that God and man are one, of which
faith the Holy Spirit is the source. The death of Christ is
the separation of this truth from the elements of nature and
sense. Hegelian divines have given this doctrine a more
Pantheistic or more Christian aspect ; they have, in some
instances, studiously adopted orthodox language ; they have
laid more or less stress on the historical facts. But they
have done little as yet to make it intelligible to the world at
large ; they have acquired for it no fixed place in histoiy,
and no hold upon life.
Englishmen, especially, feel a national dislike at the
' things which accompany salvation ' being perplexed with
philosophical theories. They find it easier to caricature
than to understand Hegel ; they prefer the most unintelli-
gible expressions with which they are familiar to great
thoughts which are strange to them. No man of sense
i-eally supposes that Hegel or Schelling is so absurd as they
may be made to look in an uncouth English translation, or
as they unavoidably appear to many in a brief summary of
. their tenets. Yet it may be doubted whether this philosophy
can ever have much connexion with the Christian life. It
seems to reflect at too great a distance what ought to be
very near to us. It is metaphysical, not practical ; it creates
an atmosphere in which it is difficult to breathe ; it is useful
as supplying a light or law by which to arrange the world,
rather than as a principle of action or warmth. Man is
a microcosm, and we do not feel quite certain whether the
whole system is not the mind itself turned inside out, and
magnified in enormous proportions. Whatever interest it
may arouse in speculative natures (and it is certainly of
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 359
great value to a few), it will hardly find a home or welcome
in England.
§ 3-
The silence of our Lord in the Gospels respecting any
doctrine of atonement and sacrifice, the variety of expressions
which occur in other parts of the New Testament, the
fluctuation and uncertainty both of the Church and indivi-
duals on this subject in after ages, incline us to agree with
Grregory Nazianzen, that the death of Christ is one of those
points of faith 'about which it is not dangerous to be
mistaken.' And the sense of the imperfection of language
and the illusions to which we are subject from the influence
of past ideas, the consciousness that doctrinal perplexities
arise chiefly from our transgression of the limits of actual
knowledge, will lead us to desire a very simple statement of
the work of Christ ; a statement, however, in accordance
with our moral ideas, and one which will not shift and
alter with the metaphysical schools of the age ; one, more-
over, which runs no risk of being overthrown by an inci*easing
study of the Old Testament or of ecclesiastical history.
Endless theories there have been (of which the preceding
sketch contains only a small portion), and many more there
will be as time goes on, like mystery plays, or sacred dramas
(to adapt Lord Bacon's image), which have passed before
the Church and the world. To add another would increase
the confusion : it is ridiculous to think of settling a disputed
point of theology unless by some new method. That other
method can only be a method of agreement ; little progress
has been made hitherto by the method of difference. It
is not reasonable, but extremely unreasonable, that the most
sacred of all books should be the only one respecting the
interpretation of which there is no certainty ; that religion
alone should be able to perpetuate the enmities of past ages ;
that the influence of words and names, which secular
knowledge has long shaken off, should still intercept the
natural love of Christians towards one another and their
360 ESSAY ON
Lord. On our present subject there is no difficulty in
finding a basis of reconciliation ; the way opens when
logical projections are removed, and we look at the truth
in what may be rightly termed a more primitive and
Apostolical manner. For all, or almost all, Christians
would agree that in some sense or other we are reconciled
to God through Christ ; whether by the atonement and
satisfaction which He made to God for us, or by His
manifestation of the justice of God or love of God in the
world, by the passive obedience of His death or the active
obedience of His life, by the imputation of His righteousness
to us or by our identity and communion with Him, or
likeness to Him, or love of Him ; in some one of these
senses, which easily pass into each other, all would join in
saying that ' He is the way, the truth, and the life. ' And
had the human mind the same power of holding fast points
of agreement as of discerning differences, there would be an
end of the controversy.
The statements of Scripture respecting the work of Christ
are very simple, and may be used without involving us in
the determination of these differences. We can live and
die in the language of St. Paul and St. John ; there is
nothing there repugnant to our moral sense. We have
a yet higher authority in the words of Christ himself. Only
in repeating and elucidating these statements, we must
remember that Scripture phraseology is of two kinds, simple
and figurative, and that the first is the interpretation of the
second. We must not bring the New Testament into
bondage to the Old, but ennoble and transfigure the Old
by the New.
First ; the death of Christ may be described as a sacrifice.
But what sacrifice ? Not ' the blood of bulls and of goats,
» nor the ashes of an heifer sprinking the unclean,' but the
living sacrifice 'to do thy will, O God,' It is a sacrifice
which is the negation of sacrifice ; ' Christ the end of the
law to them that believe.' Peradventure, in a heathen
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 36 1
country, to put an end to the rite of sacrifice * some one
would even dare to die ; ' that expresses the relation in
which the offering on Mount Calvary stands to the Levitical
offerings. It is the death of what is outward and local, the
life of what is inward and spiritual : ' I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, shall draw all men after me ; ' and ' Neither
in this mountain nor at Jerusalem shall ye worship the
Father.' It is the offering up of the old world on the cross ;
the law with its handwriting of ordinances, the former man
with his affections and lusts, the body of sin with its
remembrances of past sin. It is the New Testament
revealed in the blood of Christ, the Gospel of freedom,
which draws men together in the communion of one spirit,
as in St. Paul's time without respect of persons and nations,
so in our own day without regard to the divisions of
Christendom. In the place of Churches, priesthoods, cere-
monials, systems, it puts a moral and spiritual principle
which works with them, not necessarily in opposition to
them, but beside or within them, to renew life in the
individual soul.
Again, the death of Christ may be described as a ransom.
It is not that God needs some payment which He must
receive before He will set the captives free. The ransom is
not a human ransom, any more than the sacrifice is a Levi-
tical sacrifice. Kightly to comprehend the nature of this
Divine ransom, we must begin with that question of the
Apostle : ' Know ye not that whose servants ye yield
yourselves to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey,
whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteous-
ness ? ' There are those who will reply : ' We were never
in bondage at any time.' To whom Christ answers :
' Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin ; ' and,
' If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.'
Eansom is 'deliverance to the captive.' There are mixed
modes here also, as in the use of the term sacrifice — the
word has a temporary allusive reference to a Mosaical figure
362 ESSAY ON
of speech. That secondary allusive reference we are con-
strained to drop, because it is unessential ; and also because
it immediately involves further questions — a ransom to
whom ? for what ? — about which Scripture is silent, to
which reason refuses to answer.
Thirdly, the death of Christ is spoken of as a death for
us, or for our sins. The ambiguous use of the preposition
'for,' combined with the figure of sacrifice, has tended to
introduce the idea of substitution ; when the real meaning
is not 'in our stead,' but only 'in behalf of,' or 'because
of us,' It is a great assumption, or an unfair deduction,
from such expressions, to say that Christ takes our place,
or that the Father in looking at the sinner sees only Christ.
Christ died for us in no other sense than He lived or rose
again for us. Scripture affords no hint of His taking our
place in His death in any other way than He did also in
His life. He himself speaks of His ' decease which He
should accomplish at Jerusalem,' quite simply: 'greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends.' The words of Caiaphas, 'It is expedient
that one man should die for this nation,' and the comment
of the Evangelist, ' and not for that nation only, but that he
should gather together in one the children of God that are
scattered abroad,' afford a measure of the meaning of such
expressions. Here, too, there are mixed modes which seem
to be inextricably blended in the language of Scripture, and
which theology has not always distinguished. For the
thing signified is, partly, that Christ died for our sakes,
partly that He died by the hands of sinners, partly that He
died with a perfect and Divine sympathy for human evil
and suffering. But this ambiguity (which we may silently
correct or explain) need not prevent our joining in words
which, more perhaps than any others, have been consecrated
by religious use to express the love and affection of Christians
towards their Lord.
Now suppose some one who is aware of the plastic and
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION ^6;^
accommodating nature of language to observe, that in what
has been M^ritten of late years on the doctrine of the atone-
ment he has noticed an effort made to win for words new
senses, and that some of the preceding remarks are liable to
this charge ; he may be answered, first, that those new
senses are really a recovery of old ones (for the writers
of the New Testament, though they use the language of the
time, eveiywhere give it a moral meaning) ; and, secondly,
that in addition to the modes of conception already men-
tioned, the Scripture has others which are not open to his
objection. And those who, admitting the innocence and
Scriptural character of the expressions already referred to,
may yet fear their abuse, and therefore desire to have them
excluded from articles of faith (just as many Protestants,
though aware that the religious use of images is not idolatry,
may not wish to see them in churches) — such persons may
find a sufficient expression of the work of Christ in other
modes of speech which the Apostle also uses, (i) Instead
of the language of sacrifice, or ransom, or substitution, they
may prefer that of communion or identity. (2) Or they
may interpret the death of Christ by His life, and connect
the bleeding form on Mount Calvary with the image of Him
who went about doing good. Or (3) they may look inward
at their own souls, and read there, inseparable from the
sense of their own unworthiness, the assurance that God
will not desert the work of His hands, of which assurance
the death of Christ is the outward witness to them. There
are other ways, also, of conceiving the redemption of man
which avoid controversy, any of which is a sufficient stay of
the Christian life. For the kingdom of God is not this or
that statement, or definition of opinion, but righteousness,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. And the cross of
Christ is to be taken up and borne ; not to be turned into
words, or made a theme of philosophical speculation.
I. Everywhere St. Paul speaks of the Christian as one
with Christ. He is united with Him, not in His death
364 ESSAY ON
only, but in all the stages of His existence ; living with
Him, suffering with Him, crucified with Him, buried with
Him, rising again with Him, renewed in His image, glorified
together with Him ; these are the expressions by which
this union is denoted. There is something meant by this
language which goes beyond the experience of ordinary
Christians, something, perhaps, more mystical than in these
latter days of the world most persons seem to be capable
of feeling, yet the main thing signified is the same for all
ages, the knowledge and love of Christ, by which men pass
out of themselves to make their will His and His theirs,
the consciousness of Him in their thoughts and actions,
communion with Him, and trust in Him. Of every act
of kindness or good which they do to others His life is the
type ; of every act of devotion or self-denial His death is
the type ; of every act of faith His resurrection is the type.
And often they walk with Him on earth, not in a figure
only, and find Him near them, not in a figure only, in the
valley of death. They experience from Him the same kind
of support as from the sympathy and communion of an
earthly friend. That friend is also a Divine power. In
proportion as they become like Him, they are reconciled
to God through Him ; they pass with Him into the relation-
ship of sons of God. There is enough here for faith to
think of, without sullying the mirror of God's justice, or
overclouding His truth. We need not suppose that God
ever sees us other than we really are, or attributes to us
what we never did. Doctrinal statements, in which the
nature of the work of Christ is most exactly defined, cannot
really afford the same support as the simple conviction of
His love.
Again (2), the import of the death of Christ may be
interpreted by His life. No theological speculation can
throw an equal light on it. From the other side we cannot
see it, but only from this. Now the life of Christ is the
life of One who knew no sin, on whom the shadow of evil
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION ^6^
never passed ; who went about doing good ; who had not
where to lay His head ; whose condition was in all respects
the reverse of earthly and human greatness ; who also had
a sort of infinite sympathy or communion with all men
eveiywhere ; whom, nevertheless, His own nation betrayed
to a shameful death. It is the life of One who came to bear
witness of the truth, who knew what was in man, and never
spared to rebuke him, yet condemned him not ; himself
without sin, yet One to whom all men would soonest have
gone to confess and receive forgiveness of sin. It is the
life of One who was in constant communion with God as
well as man ; who was the inhabitant of another world
while outwardly in this. It is the life of One in whom
we see balanced and united the separate gifts and graces
of which we catch glimpses only in the lives of His
followers. It is a life which is mysterious to us, which
we forbear to praise, in the earthly sense, because it is
above praise, being the most perfect image and embodiment
that we can conceive of Divine goodness.
And the death of Christ is the fulfilment and consumma-
tion of His life, the greatest moral act ever done in this
world, the highest manifestation of perfect love, the centre
in which the rays of love converge and meet, the extremest
abnegation or annihilation of self. It is the death of One
who seals with His blood the witness of the truth which
He came into the world to teach, which therefore confirms
our faith in Him as well as animates our love. It is the
death of One, who says at the last hour, ' Of them that
thou gavest me, I have not lost one ' - of One who, having
come forth from God, and having finished the work which
He came into the world to do, returns to God. It is a death
in which all the separate gifts of heroes and martyrs are
united in a Divine excellence— of One who most perfectly
foresaw all things that were coming upon Him — who felt
all, and shrank not — of One who, in the hour of death, set
the example to His followers of praying for His enemies.
366 ESSAY ON
It is a death which, more even than His life, is singular and
mysterious, in which nevertheless we all are partakers —
in which there was the thought and consciousness of man
kind to the end of time, which has also the power of drawing
to itself the thoughts of men to the end of time.
Lastly, there is a true Christian feeling in many other
ways of regarding the salvation of man, of which the heart
is its own witness, which yet admit, still less than the
preceding, of logical rule and precision. He who is con-
scious of his own infirmity and sinfulness, is ready to confess
that he needs reconciliation with God. He has no proud
thoughts : he knows that he is saved ' not of himself, it
is the gift of God ; ' the better he is, the more he feels, in
the language of Scripture, ' that he is an unprofitable
servant.' Sometimes he imagines the Father ' coming out
to meet him, when he is yet a long way off,' as in the
parable of the Prodigal Son ; at other times the burden
of sin lies heavy on him ; he seems to need more support —
he can approach God only through Christ. All men are not
the same ; one has more of the strength of reason in his
religion ; another more of the tenderness of feeling. With
some, faith partakes of the nature of a pure and spiritual
morality ; there are others who have gone through the
struggle of St. Paul or Luther, and attain rest only in
casting all on Christ. One will live after the pattern of the
Sermon on the Mount, or the Epistle of St. James. Another
finds a deep consolation and meaning in a closer union with
Christ; he will 'put on Christ,' he will hide himself in
Christ ; he will experience in his own person the truth of
those words of the Apostle, ' I am crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'
But if he have the spirit of moderation that there was in
St. Paul, he will not stereotype these true, though often
passing feelings, in any formula of substitution or satisfac-
tion ; still less will he draw out formulas of this sort into
remote consequences. Such logical idealism is of another
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 367
age ; it is neither faith nor philosophy in this. Least of all
will he judge others by the circumstance of their admitting
or refusing to admit the expression of his individual feelings
as an eternal truth. He shrinks from asserting his own
righteousness ; he is equally unwilling to affirm that the
righteousness of Christ is imputed to him. He is looking
for forgiveness of sins, not because Christ has satisfied the
wrath of God, but because God can show mercy without
satisfaction : he may have no right to acquittal, he dare not
say, God has no right to acquit. Yet again, he is very
far from imagining that the most merciful God will in-
discriminately forgive ; or that the weakness of human
emotions, groaning out at the last hour a few accustomed
phrases, is a sufficient ground of confidence and hope. He
knows that the only external evidence of forgiveness is the
fact, that he has ceased to do evil ; no other is possible.
Having Christ near as a friend and a brother, and making
the Christian life his great aim, he is no longer under the
dominion of a conventional theology. He will not be
distracted by its phrases from communion with his fellow-
men. He can never fall into that confusion of head and
heart, which elevates matters of opinion into practical
principles. Difficulties and doubts diminish with him, as
he himself grows more like Christ, not because he forcibly
suppresses them, but because they become unimportant in
comparison with purity, and holiness, and love. Enough
of truth for him seems to radiate from the person of the
Saviour. He thinks more and more of the human nature
of Christ as the expression of the Divine. He has found
the way of life — that way is not an easy way — but neither
is it beset by the imaginary perplexities with which a false
use of the intellect in religion has often surrounded it.
It seems to be an opinion which is gaining ground among
thoughtful and religious men, that in theology, the less we
define the better. Definite statements respecting the relation
of Christ either to God or man are only figures of speech ;
368 ESSAY ON
they do not really pierce the clouds which ' round our little
life,' When we multiply words we do not multiply ideas ;
we are still within the circle of our own minds. No greater
calamity has ever befallen the Christian Church than the
determination of some uncertain things which are beyond
the sphere of human knowledge. A true instinct prevents
our entangling the faith of Christ with the philosophy of
the day; the philosophy of past ages is a still more imperfect
exponent of it. Neither is it of any avail to assume revela-
tion or inspiration as a sort of shield, or Catholicon, under
which the weak points of theology may receive protection.
For what is revealed or what inspired cannot be answered
a priori ; the meaning of the word Kevelation must be
determined by the fact, not the fact by the word.
If our Saviour were to come again to earth, which of all
the theories of atonement and sacrifice would he sanction
with His authority ? Perhaps none of them, yet perhaps all
may be consistent with a true service of Him. The question
has no answer. But it suggests the thought that we shrink
from bringing controversy into His presence. The same
kind of lesson may be gathered from the consideration of
theological differences in the face of death. Who, as he
draws near to Christ, will not feel himself drawn towards
his theological opponents ? At the end of life, when a man
looks back calmly, he is most likely to find that he exag-
gerated in some things ; that he mistook party spirit for
a love of truth. Perhaps, he had not sufficient consideration
for others, or stated the truth itself in a manner which was
calculated to give offence. In the heat of the struggle, let
us at least pause to imagine polemical disputes as they will
appear a year, two years, three years hence ; it may be, dead
and gone — certainly more truly seen than in the hour of
controversy. For the truths about which we are disputing
cannot partake of the passing stir ; they do not change even
with the gi'eater revolutions of human things. They are in
eternity ; and the image of them on earth is not the move-
ATONEMENT AND SATISFACTION 369
ment on the surface of the waters, but the depths of the
silent sea. Lastly, as a measure of the value of such
disputes, which above all other interests seem to have for
a time the power of absorbing men's minds and rousing
their passions, we may carry our thoughts onwards to the
invisible world, and there behold, as in a glass, the great
theological teachers of past ages, who have anathematized
each other in their lives, resting together in the communion
of the same Lord.
VOL. II. B b
ESSAY
ON
PREDESTIWATIOl^ AI^D FREE WILL
The difficulty of necessity and free will is not peculiar to
Christianity. It enters into all religions at a certain stage
of their progress ; it reappears in philosophy and is a question
not only of speculation but of life. Wherever man touches
nature, wherever the stream of thought which flows within,
meets and comes into conflict with scientific laws, reflecting
on the actions of an individual in relation to his antecedents,
considering the balance of human actions in many indi-
viduals ; when we pass into the wider field of histoiy, and
trace the influence of circumstances on the course of events,
the sequence of nations and states of society, the physical
causes that lie behind all ; in the region of philosophy, as
we follow the order of human thoughts, and observe the
seeming freedom and real limitation of ideas and systems ;
lastly in that higher world of which religion speaks to us,
when we conceive man as a finite being, who has the witness
in himself of his own dependence on God, whom theology
too has made the subject of many theories of grace, new
forms appear of that famous controversy which the last
century discussed under the name of necessity and free will.
I shall at present pursue no further the train of reflections
which are thus suggested. My first object is to clear the
I
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 37 1
way for the consideration of the subject within the limits
of Scripture. Some preliminary obstacles offer themselves,
arising out of the opposition which the human mind every-
where admits in the statement of this question. These will
be first examined. We may afterwards return to the modern
aspects of the contradiction and of the reconcilement.
§1.
In the relations of God and man, good and evil, finite and
infinite, there is much that must ever be mysterious. Nor
can any one exaggerate the weakness and feebleness of the
human mind in the attempt to seek for such knowledge.
But although we acknowledge the feebleness of man's brain
and the vastness of the subject, we should also draw a dis-
tinction between the original difficulty of our own ignorance,
and the puzzles and embarrassments which false philosophy
or false theology have introduced. The impotence of our
faculties is not a reason for acquiescing in a metaphysical
fiction. Philosophy has no right to veil herself in mystery
at the point where she is lost in a confusion of words. That
we know little is the real mystery ; not that we are caught
in dilemmas or surrounded by contradictions. These con-
tradictions are involved in the slightest as well as in the
most serious of our actions, which is a proof of their really
trifling nature. They confuse the mind but not things.
To trace the steps by which mere abstractions have acquired
this perplexing and constraining power, though it cannot
meet the original defect, yet may perhaps assist us to
understand the misunderstanding, and to regard the question
of predestination and free will in a simpler and more natural
light.
A subject which claims to be raised above the rules and
requirements of logic, must give a reason for the exemption,
and must itself furnish some other test of truth to which it
is ready to conform. The reason is that logic is inapplicable
to the discussion of a question which begins with a contra-
B b 2
372 ESSAY ON
diction in terms : it can only work out the opposite aspects
or principles of such a question on one side or the other,
)jut is inadequate to that more comiDrehensive conception of
the subject which embraces both. We often speak of
language as an imperfect instrument for the expression
of thought. Logic is even more imperfect ; it is wanting
in the plastic and multiform character of language, yet
deceives us by the appearance of a straight rule and
necessary principle. Questions respecting the relation of
God and man, necessity and free will, the finite and the
infinite — perhaps every question which has two opposite
poles of fact and idea — are beyond the sphere of its art.
But if not logic, some other test must be found of our
theories or reasonings, on these and the like metaphysical
subjects. This can only be their agreement with facts,
which we shall the more readily admit if the new form of
expression or statement of them be a real assistance to our
powers of thought and action.
The difficulties raised respecting necessity and free will
partake, for the most part, of the same nature as the old
fallacies respecting motion and space of Zeno and the
Eleatics, and have their ' solvitur ambulando ' as well.
This is the answer of Bishop Butler, who aims only at
a practical solution. But as it is no use to say to the lame
man, ' rise up and walk,' without a crutch or helping hand,
so it is no use to offer these practical solutions to a mind
already entangled in speculative perplexities. It retorts
upon you — ' I cannot walk : if my outward actions seem like
other men's ; if I do not throw myself from a precipice, or
take away the life of another under the fatal influence of the
doctrine of necessity, yet the course of thought within me
is different. I look upon the world with other eyes, and
slowly and gradually, differences in thought must beget
differences also in action.' But if the mind, which is bound
by this chain, could be shown that it was a slave only to its
own abstract ideas — that it was below where it ought to be
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 373
above them — that, considering all the many minds of men
as one mind, it could trace the fiction -this world of
abstractions would gradually disappear, and not merely in
a Christian, but in a philosophical sense, it would receive
the kingdom of Heaven as a little child, seeking rather foi-
some new figure under which conflicting notions might be
represented, than remaining in suspense between them.
It may be as surprising to a future generation that the
nineteenth century should have been under the influence
of the illusion of necessity and free will, or that it should
have proposed the law of contradiction as an ultimate
test of truth, as it is to ourselves that former ages have
been subjected to the fictions of essence, substance, and
the like.
The notion that no idea can be composed of two con-
tradictory conceptions, seems to arise out of the analogy of
the sensible world. It would be an absurdity to suppose
that an object should be white and black at the same time ;
that a captive should be in chains and not in chains at the
same time, and so on. But there is no absurdity in sup-
posing that the mental analysis even of a matter of fact or
an outward object should involve us in contradictions.
Objects, considered in their most abstract point of view,
may be said to contain a positive and a negative element :
everything is and is not ; is in itself, and is not, in relation
to other things. Our conceptions of motion, of becoming,
or of beginning, in like manner involve a contradiction.
The old puzzles of the Eleatics are merely an exemplification
of the same difiiculty. There are objections, it has been
said, against a vacuum, objections against a plenum, though
we need not add, with the writer who makes the remark,
'Yet one of these must be true.' How a new substance
can be formed by chemical combination out of two other
substances may seem also to involve a contradiction, e. g.
water is and is not oxygen and hydrogen. Life, in like
manner, has been defined as a state in which every end is
374 ESSAY ON
a means, and every means an end. And if we turn to any
moral or political subject, we are perpetually coming across
different and opposing lines of argument, and constantly in
danger of passing from one sphere to another ; of applying,
for example, moral or theological principles to politics, and
political principles to theology. Men form to themselves
first one system, then many, as they term them different,
but in reality opposite to each other. Just as that nebulous
mass, out of which the heavens have been imagined to be
formed, at last, with its circling motion, subsides into rings,
and embodies the ' stars moving in their courses,' so also in
the world of mind there are so many different orbits which
never cross or touch each other, and yet which must be
conceived of as the colours of the rainbow, the result of
a single natural phenomenon.
It is at first sight strange that some of these contradictions
should seem so trivial to us, while others assume the
appearance of a high mystery. In physics or mathematics
we scarcely think of them, though speculative minds may
sometimes be led by them to seek for higher expressions,
or to embrace both sides of the contradiction in sonae
conception of flux or transition, reciprocal action, process
by antagonism, the Hegelian vibration of moments, or the
like. In common life we acquiesce in the contradiction
almost unconsciously, merely remarking on the difference
of men's views, or the possibility of saying something on
either side of a question. But in religion the difficulty
appears of greater importance, partly from our being much
more under the influence of language in theology than in
subjects which we can at once bring to the test of fact and
experiment, and partly also from our being more subject to
our own natural constitution, which leads us to one or the
other honi of the dilemma, instead of placing us between or
above both. As in heathen times it was natural to think of
extraordinary phenomena, such as thunder and lightning,
as the work of gods rather than as arising from physical
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL ^J^
causes, so it is still to the religious mind to consider the
bewilderments and entanglements which it has itself made
as a proof of the unsearchableness of the Divine nature.
The immoveableness of these abstractions from within
will further incline us to consider the metaphysical con-
tradiction of necessity and free will in the only rational
way ; that is, * historically. ' To say that we have ideas of
fate or freedom which are innate, is to assume what is at
once disproved by a reference to history. In the East and
West, in India and in Greece, in Christian as well as heathen
times, whenever men have been sufficiently enlightened to
form a distinct conception of a single Divine power or
overruling law, the question arises. How is the individual
related to this law ? The first answer to this question is
Pantheism ; in which the individual, dropping his proper
qualities, abstracts himself into an invisible being, in-
distinguishable from the Divine. God overpowers man ;
the inner life absorbs the outer ; the ideal world is too
much for this. The second answer, which the East has
also given to this question, is Fatalism ; in which, without
abstraction, the individual identifies himself, soul and
body, in deed as well as thought, with the Divine will.
The first is the religion of contemplation ; the second,
of action. Only in the last, as the world itself alters, the
sense of the overruling power weakens ; and faith in the
Divine will, as in Mahometan countries at the present day,
shows itself, not in a fanatical energy, but in passive
compliance and resignation.
The gradual emergence of the opposition is more clearly
traceable in the Old Testament Scriptures or in Greek
poetry or philosophy. The Israelites are distinguished
from all other Eastern nations — certainly from all con-
temporary with their eax'ly history — by their distinct recog-
nition of the unity and personality of God. God, who is
the Creator and Lord of the whole earth, is also in a peculiar
sense the God of the Jewish people whom He deals with
376 ESSAY ON
according to His own good pleasure, which is also a law
of truth and right. He is not so much the Author of good
as the Author of all things, without whom nothing either
good or evil can happen ; not only the permitter of evil,
but in a few instances, in the excess of His power, the
cause of it also. With this universal attribute He combines
another, ' the Lord our God, who brought us out of the land
of bondage.' The people have one heart and one soul with
which they worship God and have dealings with Him.
Only a few individuals among them, as Moses or Joshua,
draw near separately to Him. In the earliest ages they
do not pray each one for himself. There is a great difference
in this respect between the relation of man to God which is
expressed in the Psalms and in the Pentateuch. In the
later Psalms, certainly, and even in some of those ascribed
to David, there is an immediate personal intercourse between
God and His servants. At length in the books of Job and
Ecclesiastes, the human spirit begins to strive with God,
and to ask not only, how can man be just before God?
but also, how can God be justified to man ? There was
a time when the thought of this could never have entered
into their minds ; in which they were only, as children
with a father, doing evil, and punished, and returning
once more to the arms of His wisdom and goodness. The
childhood of their nation passed away, and the remembrance
of what God had done for their fathers was forgotten ;
religion became the religion of individuals, of Simeon and
Anna, of Joseph and Mary. On the one hand, there was
the proud claim of those who said, 'We have Abraham
to our Father ; ' on the other hand, the regretful feeling
'that God was casting off Israel,' which St. Paul in the
manner of the Old Testament rebukes with the words,
' Who art thou, 0 man ? ' and ' We are the clay, and He
the potter.'
We may briefly trace the progress of a parallel struggle
in Grecian mythology. It presents itself, however, in
I
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 377
another form, beginning with the Fates weaving the web
of life, or the Furies pursuing the guilty, and ending in the
pure abstraction of necessity or nature. Many changes
of feeling may be observed between the earlier and later
of these two extremes. The Fate of poetry is not like that
of philosophy, the chain by which the world is held together ;
but an ever-living power or curse — sometimes just, some-
times arbitrary — specially punishing impiety towards the
Gods or violations of nature. In Homer, it represents also
a determination already fixed, or an ill irremediable by
man ; in one aspect it is the folly which ' leaves no place
for repentance. ' In Pindar it receives a nobler form, ' Law
the king of all.' In the tragedians, it has a peculiar interest,
giving a kind of measured and regular movement to the
whole action of the play. The consciousness that man is
not his own master, had deepened in the course of ages ;
there had grown up in the mind a sentiment of overruling
law. It was this half-religious, half-philosophical feeling,
which Greek tragedy embodied ; whence it derived not only
dramatic irony or contrast of the real and seeming, but also
its characteristic feature — repose. The same reflective tone
is observable in the ' Epic ' historian of the Persian war ;
who delights to tell, not (like a modern narrator) of the
necessary connexion of causes and effects, but of effects
without causes, due only to the will of Heaven. A sadder
note is heard at intervals of the feebleness and nothingness
of man ; ttclv kariv avOpoDiros a-vixcfyopi]. In Thucydides, (who
was separated from Herodotus by an interval of about
twenty years) the sadness remains, but the religious element
has vanished. Man is no longer in the toils of destiny, but
he is still feeble and helpless. Fortune and human enter-
prise divide the empire of life.
Such conceptions of fate belong to Paganism, and have
little in common with that higher idea of Divine predes-
tinatoin of which the New Testament speaks. The Fate of
Greek philosophy is different from either. The earlier
37^ ESSAY ON
schools expressed their sense of an all-pervading law in
rude, mythological figures. In time this passed away, and
the conceptions of chance, of nature, and necessity became
matters of philosophical inquiry. By the Sophists first the
question was discussed, whether man is the cause of his
own actions ; the mode in which they treated of the subject
being to identify the good with the voluntary, and the evil
with the involuntary. It is this phase of the question
which is alone considered by Aristotle. In the chain of the
Stoics the doctrine has arrived at a further stage, in which
human action has become a part of the course of the world.
How the free will of man was to be reconciled either with
Divine power, or Divine foreknowledge, was a difiiculty
pressed upon the Stoical philosopher equally as upon the
metaphysicians of the last century ; and was met by various
devices, such as that of the confatalism of Chrysippus,
which may be described as a sort of identity of fate and
freedom, or of an action and its conditions.
Our inquiry has been thus far confined to an attempt
to show, first, that the question of predestination cannot
be considered according to the common rules of logic ;
secondly, that the contradictions which are involved in this
question, are of the same kind as many other contrasts of
ideas ; and, thirdly, that the modern conception of necessity
was the growth of ages, whether its true origin is to be
sought in the Scriptures, or in the Greek philosophy, or
both. If only we could throw ourselves back to a prior
state of the world, and know no other raodes of thought
than those which existed in the infancy of the human mind,
the opposition would cease to have any meaning for us ;
and thus the further reflection is suggested, that if ever we
become fully conscious that the words which we use respect-
ing it are words only, it will again become unmeaning.
Historically we know when it arose, and whence it came.
Already we are able to consider the subject in a simpler
way, whether presented to us (i) in connexion with the
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 379
statements of Scripture, or (2) as a subject of theology and
philosophy.
§ 2.
Two kinds of predestination may be distinguished in the
writings of St. Paul, as well as in some parts of the Old
Testament. First, the predestination of nations ; secondly,
of individuals. The former of these may be said to flow
out of the latter, God choosing at once the patriarchs and
their descendants. As the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrew^s expresses it, ' By faith Abraham offered up Isaac ;
and therefore sprang there of one, and him as good as dead,
so many as the stars of heaven in multitude.' The life of
the patriarchs was the type or shadow of the history of their
posterity, for evil as well as good. ' Simeon and Levi are
brethren ; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations ;
Joseph is a goodly bough ; ' Moab and Ammon are children
of whoredom ; Ishmael is a wild man, and so on. There is
also the feeling that whatever extraordinary thing happens
in Jewish history is God's doing, not of works nor even of
faith, but of grace and choice : ' He took David from the
sheep-folds, and set him over His people Israel.' So that
a double principle is discernible : first, absolute election ;
and, secondly, the fulfilment of the promises made to the
fathers, or the visitation of their sins upon the children.
The notion of freedom is essentially connected with that
of individuality. No one is truly free who has not that
inner circle of thoughts and actions in which he is wholly
himself and independent of the will of others. A slave,
for example, may be in this sense free, even while in the
service of his lord ; constraint can apply only to his out-
ward acts, not to his inward nature. But if, in the language
of Aristotle, he were a natural slave, whose life seemed to
himself defective and imperfect, who had no thoughts or
feelings of his own, but only instincts and impulses, we
could no more call him free than a domestic animal which
attaches itself to a master. So, in that stage of society in
380 ESSAY ON
which the state is all in all, the idea of the individual has
a feeble existence. In the language of philosophy the whole
is free, and the parts are determined by the whole. So the
theocracy of the Old Testament seems to swallow up its
members. The Jewish commonwealth is governed by Grod
himself ; this of itself interferes with the personal relation
in which He stands to the individuals who compose it.
Through the law only, in the congregation, at the great
feasts, through their common ancestors, the people draw
near to God ; they do not venture to think severally of
their separate and independent connexion with Him. They
stand or fall together ; they go astray or return to Him as
one man. It is this which makes so much of their history
directly applicable to the struggle of Christian life. Eeligion,
which to the believer in Christ is an individual principle, is
with them a national one.
The idea of a chosen people passes from the Old Testament
into the New. As the Jews had been predestined in the
one, so it appeared to the Apostle St. Paul that the Gentiles
were predestined in the other. In the Old Testament he
observed two sorts of predestination ; first, that more general
one, in which all who were circumcised were partakers of
the privilege — which was applicable to all Israelites as the
children of Abraham ; secondly, the more particular one,
in reference to which he says, ' All are not Israel who are
of Israel. ' To the eye of faith ' all Israel were saved ; ' and
yet within Israel, there was another Israel chosen in a more
special sense. The analogy of this double predestination
the Apostle transfers to the Christian society. All alike
were holy, even those of whom he speaks in the strongest
terms of reprobation. The Church, like Israel of old,
presents to the Apostle's mind the conception of a definite
body, consisting of those who are sealed by baptism and
have received 'the first fruits of the Spirit.' They are
elect according to the foreknowledge or predisposition
of God ; sealed by God unto the day of redemption ;
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 38 1
a peculiar people, a royal priesthood, taken alike from Jews
and Gentiles. The Apostle speaks of their election as of
some external fact. The elect of God have an offence among
them not even named among the Gentiles, they abuse the
gifts of the Spirit, they partake in the idol's temple, they
profane the body and blood of Christ. And yet, as the
Israehtes of old, they bear on their foreheads the mark that
they are God's people, and are described as 'chosen saints,'
'sanctified in Christ Jesus.'
Again, the Apostle argues respecting Israel itself, ' Hath
God cast off his people whom he foreknew ? ' or rather,
whom He before appointed. They are in the position of
their fathers when they sinned against Him. If we read
their history we shall see, that what happened to them in
old times is happening to them now ; and yet in the Old
Testament as well as the New the overruling design was
not their condemnation but their salvation — ' God concluded
all under sin that he might have mercy upon all.' They
stumbled and rose again then ; they will stumble and rise
again now. Their predestination from the beginning is
a proof that they cannot be finally cast off ; beloved as they
have been for their father's sakes, and the children of so
many promises. There is a providence which, in spite of
all contrary appearance, in spite of the acceptance of the
Gentiles, or rather so much the more in consequence of it,
makes aU things work together for good to the chosen
people.
In this alternation of hopes and fears, in which hope
finally prevails over fear, the Apostle speaks in the strongest
language of the right of God to do what He will with His
own ; if any doctrine could be established by particular
passages of Scripture, Calvinism would rest immoveable on
the ninth chapter of the Eomans. It seemed to him no
more unjust that God should reject than that He should
accept the Israelites ; if, at that present time He cut them
short in righteousness, and narrowed the circle of election,
382 ESSAY ON
He had done the same with the patriarchs. He had said
of old, ' Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated : ' and
this preference, as the Apostle observes, was shown before
either could have committed actual sin. In the same spirit
He says to Moses, ' I will have mercy on whom I will have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion.' And to Pharaoh, Tor this cause have I raised
thee up.' Human nature, it is true, rebels at this, and says,
' Why does he yet find fault ? ' To which the Apostle only
replies, ' Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed
it. Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter
power over the clay ? ' Some of the expressions which have
become the most objectionable watchwords of predestinarian
theology, such as 'vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy,'
are in fact taken from the same passage in the Epistle to
the Eomans.
It is answered by the opponents of Calvinism, that the
Apostle is here speaking not of individual but of national
predestination. From the teaching of the Old Testament
respecting the election of the Jewish people we can infer
nothing respecting the Divine economy about persons. To
which in turn it may be replied, that if we admit the
principle that the free choice of nations is not inconsistent
with Divine justice, we cannot refuse to admit the free
choice of persons also. A little more or a little less of the
doctrine cannot make it more or less reconcilable with the
perfect justice of God. Nor can we argue that the election
of nations is a part of the Old Testament disj)ensation, which
has no place in the New ; because the Apostle speaks of
election according to the purpose of God as a principle which
was at that time being manifested in the acceptance of the
Gentiles.
Yet the distinction is a sound one if stated a little differ-
ently, that is to say, if we consider that the predestination
of Christians is only the continuance of the Old Testament
in the New. It is the feeling of a religious Israelite re-
PREDESTINATION AND FEEE WILL 383
specting his race ; this the Apostle enlarges to comprehend
the Gentiles. As the temporal Israel becomes the spiritual
Israel, the chosen people are transfigured into the elect.
Why this is so is only a part of the more general question,
' why the New Testament was given through the Old ? '
It was natural it should be so given ; humanly speaking,
it could not have been otherwise. The Gospel would have
been unmeaning, if it had been ' tossed into the world '
separated from all human antecedents ; if the heaven of its
clearness had been beyond the breath of every human feel-
ing. Neither is there any more untruthfulness in St. Paul's
requiring us to recognize the goodness of God in the
election of some and the rejection of others, than in humility
or any act of devotion. The untruth lies not in the devout
feeling, but in the logical statement. When we humble
ourselves before God, we may know, as a matter of common
sense, that we are not worse than others ; but this, however
true (' Father, I thank thee I am not as other men '), is not
the temper in which we kneel before Him, So in these
passages, St. Paul is speaking, not from a general considera-
tion of the Divine nature, but with the heart and feelings of
an Israelite. Could the question have been brought before
him in another form — could we have been asked whether
God, according to His own pleasure, chose out individual
souls, so that some could not fail of being saved while others
were necessarily lost— could he have been asked whether
Christ died for all or for the chosen few— whether, in short,
God was sincere in his offer of salvation — can we doubt
that to such suggestions he would have replied in his own
words, ' God forbid ! for how shall God judge the world ? '
It has been said that the great error in the treatment of
this subject consists in taking chap. ix. separated from chaps.
X. xi. We may say more generally, in taking parts of
Scripture without the whole, or in interpreting either apart
from history and experience. In considering the question
of predestination, we must not forget that at least one-half
384 ESSAY ON
of Scripture tells not of what God does, but of what man
ought to do ; not of grace and pardon only, but of holiness.
If, in speaking of election, St. Paul seems at times to use
language which implies the irrespective election of the Jews
as a nation ; yet, on the other hand, what immediately fol-
lows shows us that conditions were understood throughout,
and that, although we may not challenge the right of God
to do what He would with His own, yet that in all His
dealings -with them the dispensation was but the effect of
their conduct. And although the Apostle is speaking
chiefly of national predestination, with respect to which
the election of God is asserted by him in the most uncon-
ditional terms ; yet, as if he were already anticipating the
application of his doctrine to the individual, he speaks of
human causes for the rejection of Israel ; ' because they
sought not righteousness by the way of faith ; ' ' because
they stumble at the rock of offence.' God accepted and
rejected Israel of His own good pleasure ; and yet it was by
their own fault. How are we to reconcile these conflicting
statements ? They do not need reconciliation ; they are but
the two opposite expressions of a religious mind, which says
at one moment, ' Let me try to do right,' and at another,
' God alone can make me do right.' The two feelings may
involve a logical contradiction, and yet exist together in fact
and in the religious experience of mankind.
In the Old Testament the only election of individuals is
that of the great leaders or chiefs, who are identified with
the nation. But in the New Testament, where religion has
become a personal and individual matter, it follows that
election must also be of persons. The Jewish nation knew,
or seemed to know, one fact, that they were the chosen
people. They saw, also, eminent men raised up by the
hand of God to be the deliverers of His servants. It is not
in this ' historical ' way that the Christian becomes conscious
of his individual election. From within, not from without,
he is made aware of the purpose of God respecting himself.
PKEDESTINATION AND FEEE WILL 385
Living in close and intimate union with God, having the
mind of the Spirit and know^ing the things of the Spirit, he
begins to consider with St. Paul, 'When it pleased God,
who separated me from my mother's womb, to reveal his
Son in me.' His whole life seems a sort of miracle to him ;
supernatural, and beyond other men's in the gifts of grace
which he has received. If he asks himself, ' Whence was
this to me ? ' he finds no other answer but that God gave
them 'because he had a favour unto him.' He recalls the
hour of his conversion, when, in a moment, he was changed
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God. Or, perhaps, the dealings of God with him have been
insensible, yet not the less real ; like a child, he cannot
remember the time when he first began to trust the love of
his parent. How can he separate himself from that love or
refuse to believe that He who began the good work will also
accomplish it unto the end ? At which step in the ladder
of God's mercy will he stop ? ' Whom he did foreknow,
them he did predestinate ; whom he did predestinate, them
he also called ; whom he called, them he justified ; whom
he justified, them he also glorified.'
A religious mind feels the difference between saying,
' God chose me ; I cannot tell why ; not for any good that
I have done ; and I am persuaded that he will keep me
unto the end ; ' and saying, ' God chooses men quite irre-
spective of their actions, and predestines them to eternal
salvation ; ' and yet more, if we add the other half of the
doctrine, ' God refuses men quite irrespective of their actions,
and they become reprobates, predestined to everlasting
damnation.' Could we be willing to return to that stage of
the doctrine which St. Paul taught, without comparing con-
tradictory statements or drawing out logical conclusions —
could we be content to rest our belief, as some of the
greatest, even of Calvinistic divines have done, on fact and
experience, theology would be no longer at variance with
morality.
VOL. II. c c
386 ESSAY ON
* Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ;
for it is God that worketh in you both to do and to will of
his good pleasure,' is the language of Scripture, adjusting
the opposite aspects of this question. The Arminian would
say, ' Work out your own salvation ; ' the Calvinist, ' God
worketh in you both to do and to will of his good pleasure,'
However contradictory it may sound, the Scripture unites
both ; work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ;
for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of
His good pleasure.
§3.
I. We have been considering the question thus far within
the limits of Scripture. But it has also a wider range.
The primary relations of the will of man to the will of God
are independent of the Christian revelation. Natural religion,
that is to say, the Greek seeking after wisdom, the Indian
wandering in the expanse of his own dreamlike conscious-
ness, the Jew repeating to himself that he is Abraham's
seed ; each in their several ways at different stages of the
world's history have asked the question, 'How is the
freedom of the human will consistent with the infinity and
omnipotence of God ? ' These attributes admit of a further
analysis into the power of God and the knowledge of God.
And hence arises a second form of the inquiry, 'How is
the freedom of the human will reconcilable with Divine
omniscience or foreknowledge ? ' To which the Christian
system adds a third question, 'How is the freedom of the
human will reconcilable with that more immediate presence
of God in the soul which is termed by theologians Divine
grace ? '
( I ) God is ever5rwhere ; man is nowhere. Infinity exists
continuously in every point of time ; it fills every particle
of space. Or rather, these very ideas of time and space are
figures of speech, for they have a 'here' and a 'there,'
a future and a past — which no effort of human imagination
PREDESTINATION AND FEEE WILL 387
can transcend. But in God there is no future and no past,
neither ' here nor there ; ' He is all and in all. Where,
then, is room for man ? in what open place is he permitted
to live and move and have his being ?
God is the cause of all things ; without Him nothing is
made that is made. He is in history, in nature, in the
heart of man. The world itself is the work of His power ;
the least particulars of human life are ordained by Him.
'Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet your
heavenly Father feedeth them ; ' and ' the hairs of your
head are all numbered.' Is there any point at which this
Divine causalty can stop ? at which the empire of law
ceases ? at which the human will is set free ?
The answer is the fact ; not the fact of consciousness as
it is sometimes termed, that we are free agents, which it
is impossible to see or verify ; but the visible tangible fact
that we have a place in the order of nature, and walk about
on the earth, and are ourselves causes drawing effects after
them. Does any advocate of freedom mean more than
this ? Or any believer in necessity less ? No one can deny
of himself the restrictions which he observes to be true
of others ; nor can any one doubt that there exists in others
the same consciousness of freedom and responsibility which
he has himself. But if so, all thesQ things are as they were
before ; we need not differ about the unseen foundation
whether of necessity or free will, spirit or body, mind or
matter, upon which the edifice of human life is to be reared.
Just as the theory of the ideality of matter leaves the world
where it was — they do not build houses in the air who
imagine Bishop Berkeley to have dissolved the solid
elements into sensations of the mind — so the doctrine of
necessity or predestination leaves morality and religion
unassailed, unless it intrude itself as a motive on the sphere
of human action.
It is remarkable that the belief in predestination, both
in modern and in ancient times, among Mahometans as well
c c 2
388 ESSAY ON
as Christians, has been the animating principle of nations
and bodies of men, equally, perhaps more than of in-
dividuals. It is characteristic of certain countries, and has
often arisen frora sympathy in a common cause. Yet it
cannot be said to have been without a personal influence
also. It has led to a view of religion in which man has
been too much depressed to form a true conception of God
himself. For it is not to be supposed that the lower we
sink human nature in the scale of being, the higher we
raise the Author of being ; worthy notions of God imply
worthy notions of man also.
' God is infinite.' But in what sense ? Am I to conceive
a space without limit, such as I behold in the immeasurable
ether, and apply this viewless form to the thought of the
Almighty ? Any one will admit that here would be a figure
of speech. Yet few of us free our notions of infinity from
the imagery of place. It is this association which gives
them their positive, exclusive character. But conceive of
infinity as mere negation, denying of God the limits which
are imposed upon finite beings, meaning only that God is
not a man or comprehensible by man, without any suggestion
of universal space, and the exclusiveness disappears ; there
is room for the creature side by side with the Creator. Or
again, press the idea of the infinite to its utmost extent, till
it is alone in the universe, or rather is the universe itself,
in this heaven of abstraction, nevertheless, a cloud begins to
appear ; a limitation casts its shadow over the formless
void. Infinite is finite because it is infinite. That is to
say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable of
creating what is external to itself. Deny infinity in this
sense, and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new
power ; God is greater by being finite than by being infinite.
Proceeding in the same train of thought, we may observe
that the word finite is the symbol, to our own minds as to
the Greek, of strength and reality and truth. It cannot be
these which we intend to deny of the Divine Being. Lastly,
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 389
when we have freed our minds from associations of place
and from those other solemn associations which naturally
occur to us from its application to the Almighty, are we
sure that we intend anything more by the ' Infinite ' than
mere vacancy, the * indefinite, ' the word ' not ? '
It is useful to point out the ambiguities and perplexities
of such terms. Logic is not to puzzle us with inferences
about words which she clothes in mystery ; at any rate,
before moving a step she should explain their meaning.
She must admit that the infinite overreaches itself in
denying the existence of the finite, and that there are some
'limitations,' such as the impossibility of evil or falsehood,
which are of the essence of the Divine nature. She must
inquire whether it be conceivable to reach a further infinite,
in which the opposition to the finite is denied, which may
be a worthier image of the Divine Being. She must acknow-
ledge that negative ideas, while they have often a kind of
solemnity and mystery, are the shallowest and most trifling
of all our ideas.
So far the will may be free unless we persist in an idea of
the Divine which logic and not reason erroneously requires,
and which is the negative not only of freedom but of all
other existence but its own. More serious consequences
may seem to flow from the attribute of omnipotence. For
if God is the Author of all things, must it not be as a mode
of Divine operation that man acts ? We can get no further
than a doctrine of emanation or derivation. Again, we are
caught unwittingly in the toils of an ' illogical ' logic. For
why should we assume that because God is omnipotent He
cannot make beings independent of himself ? A figure of
speech is not generally a good argument ; but in this
instance it is a sufficient one, what is needed being not an
answer but only an image or mode of conception. (For in
theology and philosophy it constantly happens that while
logic is working out antinomies, language fails to supply an
expression of the intermediate truth.) The caipenter makes
390 ESSAY ON
a chair, which exists detached from its maker ; the mechani-
cian constructs a watch, which is wound up and goes by the
action of a spring or lever ; he can frame yet more complex
instruments, in which power is treasured up for other men to
use. The greater the skill of the artificer the more perfect
and independent the work. Shall we say of God only that
He is unable to separate His creations from himself ? That
man can produce works of imagination which live for ages
after he is committed to the dust ; nay, that in the way of
nature he can bring into existence another being endowed
with life and consciousness to perpetuate His name ? But
that God cannot remove a little space to contemplate His
works ? He must needs be present in all their movements,
according to the antiquated error of natural philosophers,
' that no body can act where it is not.'
{2) Yet although the freedom of the will may be con-
sistent with the infinity and omnipotence of God, when
rightly understood and separated from logical consequences,
it may be thought to be really interfered with by the Divine
omniscience. ' God knows all things ; our thoughts are
His before they are our own ; what I am doing at this
moment was certainly foreseen by Him ; what He certainly
foresaw yesterday, or a thousand years ago, or from ever-
lasting, how can I avoid doing at this time? To-day He
sees the future course of my life. Can I make or unmake
what is already within the circle of His knowledge ? The
imperfect judgement of my fellow-creatures gives me no
disquietude— they may condemn me, and I may reverse
their opinion. But the fact that the unerring judgement of
God has foreseen my doom renders me alike indifferent to
good and evil.'
What shall we say to this? First, that the distinction
between Divine and human judgements is only partially
true. For as God sees with absolute unerringness, so a wise
man who is acquainted with the character and circumstances
of others may foretell and assure their future life with
PEEDESTINATION AND FEEE WILL 39 1
a great degree of certainty. He may perceive intuitively
their strength and vreakness, and prophesy their success or
failure. Now, here it is observable, that the fact of our
knowing the probable course of action which another will
pursue has nothing to do with the action itself. It does not
exercise the smallest constraint on him ; it does not pro-
duce the slightest feeling of constraint. Imagine ourselves
acquainted with the habits of some animal ; as we open the
door of the enclosure in which it is kept, we know that it
will run up to or away from us ; it will show signs of
pleasure or irritation. No one supposes that its actions,
whatever they are, depend on our knowledge of them. Let
us take another example, which is at the other end of the
scale of freedom and intelligence. Conceive a veteran
statesman casting his eye over the map of Europe, and
foretelling the parts which nations or individuals would
take in some coming struggle, who thinks the events when
they come to pass are the consequences of the prediction ?
Every one is able to distinguish the causes of the events
from the knowledge which foretells them.
There ai'e degrees in human knowledge or foreknowledge
proceeding from the lowest probability, through increasing
certainty, up to absolute demonstration. But as faint pre-
sumptions do not affect the future, nor great probability, so
neither does scientific demonstration. Many natural laws
cannot be known more certainly than they are ; but we do
not therefore confuse the fact with our knowledge of the
fact. The time of the rising of the sun, or of the ebb and
flow of the tide, are foretold and acted upon without
the least hesitation. Yet no one has imagined that these
or any other natural phenomena are affected by our previous
calculations about them.
Why, then, should we impose on ourselves the illusion
that the unerring certainty of Divine knowledge is a limit or
shackle on human actions ? The foreknowledge which we
possess ourselves in no way produces the facts which we
392 ESSAY ON
foresee ; the circumstance that we foresee them in distant
time has no more to do with them than if we saw them in
distant space. So, once more, we return from the dominion
of ideas and trains of speculative consequences to rest in
experience. God sits upon the circle of the heavens,
present, past, and future in a figure open before Him, and
sees the inhabitants of the earth like grasshoppers, coming
and going, to and fro, doing or not doing their appointed
work : His knowledge of them is not the cause of their
actions. So might we ourselves look down upon some wide
prospect without disturbing the peaceful toils of the villagers
who are beneath. They do not slacken or hasten their
business because we are looking at them. In like manner
God may look upon mankind without thereby interfering
with the human will or influencing in any degree the actions
of men.
(3) But the difficulty with which Christianity surrounds,
or rather seems to surround us, winds yet closer ; it rests
also on the Christian consciousness. The doctrine of grace
may be expressed in the language of St. Paul : ' I can do
nothing as of myself, but my sufficiency is of God : ' that
which is truly self, which is peculiarly self, is yet in another
point of view not self but God. He who has sought most
earnestly to fulfil the will of God refers his efforts to some-
thing beyond himself ; he is humble and simple, seeming to
fear that he will lose the good that he has, when he makes
it his own.
This is the mind of Christ which is formally expressed in
theology by theories of grace. Theories of grace have
commonly started from the transgression of Adam and the
corruption of human nature in his posterity. Into the
origin of sin it is not necessary for us to inquire ; we may
limit ourselves to the fact. All men are very far gone
from original righteousness, they can only return to God by
His grace preventing them ; that is to say, anticipating and
co-operating with the motions of their will. ( t ) God wills
PREDESTINATION AND FREE "WILL 393
that some should be saved, whom He elects without re-
ference to their deserts ; (2) God wills that some should be
saved, and implants in them the mind of salvation ; (3) God
calls all men, but chooses some out of those whom He calls ;
(4) God chooses all alike, and shows no preference to any ;
(5) God calls all men, even in the heathen world, and some
hear His voice, not knowing whom they obey. Such are
the possible gradations of the question of election. In the
first of them grace is a specific quality distinct from holiness
or moral virtue ; in the second it is identical with holiness
and moral virtue, according to a narrow conception of them
which denies their existence in those who have not received
a Divine call ; in the third an attempt is made to reconcile
justice to all men with favour to some ; in the fourth
the justice of G*i extends equally to all Christian men ;
in the fifth we pass the boundaries of the Christian world
and expression is given to the thought of the Apostle,
* Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons,
but that in every nation he that feareth God is accepted
of him.'
All these theories of grace affect at various points the
freedom of the will, the first seeming wholly to deny it,
while all the others attempt some real or apparent recon-
cilement of morality and religion. The fourth and fifth
meet the difiiculties arising out of our ideas of the justice of
God, but fall into others derived from experience and fact.
Can we say that all Christians, nominal and real, nay, that
the most degraded persons among the heathen, are equally
the subjects of Divine grace? Then grace is something
unintelligible ; it is a word only, to which there is no
corresponding idea. Again, how upon any of these theories
is grace distinguishable from the better consciousness of the
individual himself? Can any one pretend to say where
grace ends and the movement of the will begins ? Did
any one ever recognize in himself those lines of demarcation
of which theology sometimes speaks ?
394 ESSAY ON
These are difficulties in which we are involved by ' oppo-
sitions of knowledge falsely so called.' The answer to them
is simple — a return to fact and nature. When, instead of
reading our own hearts, we seek, in accordance with a pre-
conceived theory, to determine the proportions of the divine
and human — to distinguish grace and virtue, the word of
God and man — we know not where we are, the difficulty
becomes insuperable, we have involved ourselves in artificial
meshes, and are bound hand and foot. But when we look
by the light of conscience and Scripture on the facts of
human nature, the difficulty of itself disappears. No one
doubts that he is capable of choosing between good and evil,
and that in making this choice he may be supported, if he
will, by a power more than earthly. The movement of that
Divine power is not independent of the movement of his
own will, but coincident and identical with it. Grace and
virtue, conscience and the Spirit of God, are not different
from each other, but in harmony. If no man can do what
is right without the aid of the Spirit, then every one who
does what is right has the aid of the Spirit.
Part of the difficulty originates in the fact that the Scrip-
ture regards Christian truth from a Divine aspect, 'God
working in you,' while ordinary language, even among
religious men in modern times, deals rather with human
states or feelings. Philosophy has a third way of speaking
which is different from either. Two or more sets of words
and ideas are used which gradually acquire a seemingly
distinct meaning ; at last comes the question — in what
relation they stand to one another ? The Epistles speak of
grace and faith at the same time that heathen moralists
told of virtue and wisdom, and the two streams of language
have flowed on without uniting even at our own day. The
question arises, first, whether gx-ace is anything more than
the objective name of faith and love ; and again, whether
these two latter are capable of being distinguished from
virtue and truth ? Is that which St. Paul called faith
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 395
absolutely different from that which Seneca termed virtue or
morality ? Is not virtue, -npos 6e6v, faith ? Is faith any-
thing without vii'tue? But if so, they are not opposed at
all, or opposed only as part and whole. Christianity is not
the negative of the religions of nature or the heathen ; it
includes and purifies them.
Instead, then, of arranging in a sort of theological dia-
gram the relations of the human will to Divine grace, we
deny the possibility of separating them. In various degrees,
in many ways, more or less consciously in different cases,
the Spirit of God is working in the soul of man. It is an
erroneous mode of speaking, according to which the free
agency of man is represented as in conflict with the Divine
will. For the freedom of man in the higher sense is the
grace of God ; and in the lower sense (of mere choice) is not
inconsistent with it. The real opposition is not between
freedom and predestination, which are imperfect and in
some degree misleading expressions of the same truth, but
between good and evil.
II. Passing out of the sphere of religion, we have now to
examine the question of free agency within the narrower
limits of the mind itself. It will confirm the line of argu-
ment hitherto taken, if it be found that here too we are
subject to the illusions of language and the oppositions of
logic.
(i) Every effect has a cause ; every cause an effect. The
drop of rain, the ray of light does not descend at random on
the earth. In the natural world though we are far from
understanding all the causes of phenomena, we are certain
from that part which we know, of their existence in that
part which we do not know. In the human mind we
perceive the action of many physical causes ; we are there-
fore led to infer, that only our ignorance of physiology
prevents our perceiving the absolute interdependence of
body and soul. So indissolubly are cause and effect bound
together, that there is a mental impossibility in conceiving
396 ESSAY ON
them apart. Where, then in the endless chain of causes
and eifect can the human will be inserted, or how is the
insertion of the will, as one cause out of many, consistent
with the absolute freedom which we ascribe to it ?
The author of the Critic of pure Reason is willing to accept
such a statement as has been just made, and yet believes
himself to have found out of time and space, independent of
the laws of cause and eifect, a transcendental freedom. Our
separate acts are determined by previous causes ; our whole
life is a continuous 'effect,' yet in spite of this mechanical
sequence, freedom is the overruling law which gives the
form to human action. It is not necessary to analyze the
steps by which Kant arrived at this paradoxical conclusion.
Only by adjusting the glass so as to exclude from the sight
everything but the perplexities of previous philosophers,
can we conceive how a great intellect could have been led
to imagine the idea of a freedom from which the notion of
time is abstracted, of which nevertheless we are conscious
in time. For what is that freedom which does not apply
to our individual acts, hardly even to our lives as a whole,
like a point which has neither length nor breadth, wanting
both continuity and succession ?
Scepticism proceeds by a different path in reference to
our ideas of cause and effect ; it challenges their validity, it
denies the necessity of the connexion, or even doubts the
ideas themselves. There was a time when the world was
startled out of its propriety at this verbal puzzle, and half
believed itself a sceptic. Now we know that no innovation
in the use of words or in forms of thought can make any
impression on solid facts. Nature and religion, and human
life remain the same, even to one who entirely renounces
the common conceptions of cause and effect.
The sceptic of the last century, instead of attempting to
invalidate the connexion of fact which we express by the
terms cause and effect, should rather have attacked language
as * unequal to the subtlety of nature. ' Facts must be de-
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 397
scribed in some way, and therefore words must be used, but
always in philosophy with a latent consciousness of their
inadequacy and imperfection. The very phrase, ' cause and
effect,' has a dire influence in disguising from us the com-
plexity of causes and effects. It is too abstract to answer
to anything in the concrete. It tends to isolate in idea
some one antecedent or condition from all the rest. And
the relation which we deem invariable is really a most
various one. Its apparent necessity is only the necessity of
relative terms. Every cause has an effect, in the same sense
that every father has a son. But while in the latter case
the relation is always the same, the manifold application of
the terms, cause and effect, to the most different phenomena
has led to an ambiguity in their use. Our first impression
is, that a cause is one thing and an effect another, but soon
we find them doubling up, or melting into one. The
circulation of the blood is not the cause of life, in the same
sense that a blow with the hammer may be the cause of
death ; nor is virtue the cause of happiness, in precisely the
same sense that the circulation of the blood is the cause of
life. Every^vhere, as we ascend in the scale of creation,
from mechanics to chemistry, from chemistry to physiology
and human action, the relative notion is more difficult and
subtle, the cause becoming inextricably involved with the
effect, and the effect with the cause, ' every means being an
end, and every end a means.'
Hence, no one who examines our ideas of cause and effect
will believe that they impose any limit on the will ; they
are an imperfect mode in which the mind imagines the
sequence of nature or moral actions ; being no generalization
from experience, but a play of words only. The chain which
we are wearing is loose, and when shaken will drop off.
External circumstances are not the cause of which the will
is the effect ; neither is the will the cause of which circum-
stances are the effect. But the phenomenon intended to be
described by the words ' cause and effect ' is itself the will.
398 ESSAY ON
whose motions are analyzed in language borrowed from
physical nature.
The same explanation applies to another formula : ' the
strongest motive.' The will of every man is said to be only
determined by the strongest motive : what is this but another
imaginary analysis of the will itself? For the motive is
a part of the will, and the strongest motive is nothing more
than the motive which I choose. Nor is it true as a fact
that we are always thus determined. For the greater
proportion of human actions have no distinct motives ; the
mind does not stand like the schoolmen's ass, pondering
between opposite alternatives. Mind and will, and the
sequence of cause and effect, and the force of motives, are
different ways of speaking of the same mental phenomena.
So readily are we deceived by language, so easily do we
fall under the power of imaginary reasonings. The author
of the Novum Organum has put men upon their guard against
the illusions of words in the study of the natural sciences.
It is true that many distinctions may be drawn between the
knowledge of nature, the facts of which are for the most
part visible and tangible, and morality and religion, which
run up into the unseen. But is it therefore to be supposed
that language, which is the source of half the exploded
fallacies of chemistry and physiology, is an adequate or
exact expression of moral and spiritual truths? It is
probable that its analysis of human nature is really as
erring and inaccurate as its description of physical phe-
nomena, though the error may be more difficult of detection.
Those 'inexact natures' or substances of which Bacon speaks
exist in moral philosophy as in physics ; their names are
not heat, moisture, form, matter and the like, but necessity,
free will, predestination, grace, motive, cause, which rest
upon nothing and yet become the foundation-stones of many
systems. Logic, too, has its parallels, and conjugates, and
differences of kind, which in life and reahty are only
differences of degree, and remote inferences lending an
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 399
apparent weight to the principle on which they really drag,
which spread themselves over every field of thought and are
hardly corrected by their inconsistency with the commonest
facts.
III. Difficulties of this class belong to the last generation
rather than to the present ; they are seldom discussed now
by philosophical writers. Philosophy in our own age is
occupied in another way. Her foundation is experience,
which alone she interrogates respecting the limits of human
action. How far is man a free agent ? is the question still
before us. But it is to be considered from without rather
than from within, as it appears to others or ourselves in the
case of others, and not with reference to our internal con-
sciousness of our own actions.
The conclusions of philosophers would have met with
more favour at the hands of preachers and moralists, had
they confined themselves to the fact. Indeed, they would
have been irresistible, like the conclusions of natural science,
for who can resist evidence that any one may verify for
himself? But the taint of language has clung to them ;
the imperfect expression of manifest truths has greatly
hindered the general acceptance of them even among the
most educated. It was not understood that those who
spoke of necessity meant nothing which was really incon-
sistent with free will ; when they assumed a power of
calculating human actions, it was not perceived that all
of us are every day guilty of this imaginary impiety. The
words, character, habit, force of circumstances, temperament
and constitution imply all that is really involved in the idea
that human action is subject to uniform laws. Neither is
it to be denied that expressions have been used equally
repugnant to fact and morality ; instead of regularity, and
order, and law, which convey a beneficent idea, necessity
has been set up as a constraining power tending to destroy,
if not really destroying, the accountability of man. History,
too, has received an impress of fatalism, which has doubtless
400 ESSAY ON
affected our estimate of the good and evil of the agents who
have been regarded as not really responsible for actions
which the march of events forced upon them.
According to a common way of considering this subject,
the domain of necessity is extending every day, and liberty
is already confined to a small territory not yet reclaimed by
scientific inquiry. Mind and body are in closer contact ;
there is increasing evidence of the interdependence of the
■ mental and nervous powers. It is probable, or rather
^certain, that every act of the mind has a cause and effect
in the body, that every act of the bodj'^ has a cause and effect
in the mind. Given the circumstances, parentage, education,
temperament of each individual ; we may calculate, with an
approximation to accuracy, his probable course of life.
Persons are engaged every day in making such observa-
tions ; and whatever uncertainty there may be in the
determination of the future of any single individual, this
uncertainty is eliminated when the inquiry is extended to
many individuals or to a whole class. We have as good
data for supposing that a fixed proportion of a million
persons in a country will commit murder or theft as that
a fixed proportion will die without reaching a particular age
and of this or that disease under given circumstances. And
it so happens that we have the power of testing this order
or uniformity in the most trifling of human actions. Nor
can we doubt that were it worth while to make an abstract
of human life, arranging under heads the least minutiae of
action, all that we say and do would be found to conform to
numerical laws.
So, again, history is passing into the domain of philosophy.
Nations, like individuals, are moulded by circumstances ; in
their first rise, and ever after in their course, they are de-
pendent on country and climate, like plants or animals,
embodying the qualities which have dropped upon them
from surrounding influences in national temperament ; in
their later stages seeming to react upon these causes, and
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 4OI
coming under a new kind of law, as the earth discloses its
hidden treasures, or the genius of man calls forth into life
and action the powers which are dormant in matter. Nature,
which is, in other words, the aggregate of all these causes,
stamps nations and societies, and ci-eates in them a mind,
that is to say, ideas of order, of religion, of conquest, which 1
they maintain, often unimpaired by the changes in their
physical condition. She infuses among the mass a few <
great intellects, according to some law unknown to us, to
' instrument this lower world. ' Here is a new power which
is paiiially separated from the former, and yet combines
with it in national existence, like body and soul in the
existence of man. Partly isolated from their age and
nation, partly also identified with them, it is a curious
observation respecting great men that while they seem to
have more play and freedom than others, in themselves
they are often more enthralled, being haunted with the
sense of a destiny which controls them. The 'heirs of all'
the ages' who have subjected nature to the dominion of
science are also nature's subjects ; the conquerors who have
poured over the earth have only continued some wave or
tendency in the history of the times which preceded them.
From the thin vapour which first floated, as some believe,
in the azure vault, up to that miracle of complexity which
we call man, and again from man the individual to the
whole human race, with its languages and religions, and
other national characteristics, and backwards to the begin-
ning of human history, in the works of mind too as well
as in the material universe, there is not always development,
but order, and uniformity, and law.
It is a matter of some importance in what way this con-
nexion or order of nature is to be expressed. For although
words cannot alter facts, the right use of them greatly affects
the readiness with which facts are admitted or received.
Now the world may be variously imagined as a vast
machine, as an animal or living being, as a body endowed
VOL. II. D d
402 ESSAY ON
with a rational or divine soul. All these figures of speech,
and the associations to which they give rise, have an in-
sensible influence on our ideas. The representation of the
world as a machine is a more favourite one, in modern
times, than the representation of it as a living being ; and
with mechanism is associated the notion of necessity. Yet
[the machine is, after all, a mere barren unity, which gives
no conception of the endless fertility of natural or of moral
life. So, again, when we speak of a 'soul of the world,'
there is no real resemblance to a human soul ; there is no
centre in which this mundane life or soul has its seat, no
individuality such as characterizes the soul of man. But
the use of the word invariably recalls thoughts of Pan-
theism :
'deum namque ire per omnes terrasque tractusque maris,
coelumque profundum.'
So the term * law ' carries with it an association, partly of
compulsion, partly of that narrower and more circum-
scribed notion of law, in which it is applied to chemistry
or mechanics. So again the word ' necessity ' itself always
has a suggestion of external force.
All such language has a degree of error, because it intro-
duces some analogy which belongs to another sphere of
thought. But when, laying aside language, we consider
facts only, no appearance of external compulsion arises,
whether in nature, or in history, or in life. The lowest,
and therefore the simplest idea, that we are capable of
forming of physical necessity, is of the stone falling to the
ground. No one imagines human action to be necessary
in any such sense as this. If this be our idea of necessity,
the meaning of the term must be enlarged when it is
applied to man. If any one speaks of human action as the
result of necessary laws, to avoid misunderstanding, we may
ask at the outset of the controversy, ' In what degree neces-
sary ? ' And this brings us to an idea which is perhaps the
readiest solution of the apparent perplexity — that of degrees
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 4O3
of necessity. For, although it is true, that to the eye of
a superior or divine being the actions of men would seem
to be the subject of laws quite as much as the falling stone,
yet these laws are of a far higher or more delicate sort ;
we may figure them to ourselves truly, as allowing human
nature play and room within certain limits, as regulating
only and not constraining the freedom of its movements.
How degrees of necessity are possible may be illustrated
as follows : The strongest or narrowest necessity which we
ever see in experience is that of some very simple mechanical
fact, such as is furnished by the law of attraction. A greater
necessity than this is only an abstraction ; as, for example,
the necessity by which two and two make four, or the three
angles of a triangle equal two right angles. But any relation
between objects which are seen is of a much feebler and less
absolute kind ; the strongest which we have ever observed
is that of a smaller body to a larger. The physiology even
of plants opens to our minds freer and nobler ideas of law.
The tree with its fibres and sap, drawing its nourishment
from many sources, light, air, moisture, earth, is a complex
structure : rooted to one particular spot, no one would think
of ascribing to it free agency, yet as little should we think
of binding it fast in the chains of a merely mechanical
necessity. Animal life partaking with man of locomotion
is often termed free ; its sphere is narrowed only by instinct ;
indeed the highest grade of irrational being can hardly be
said, in point of freedom, to differ from the lowest type of
the human species. And in man himself are many degrees
of necessity or freedom, from the child who is subject to its
instincts, or the drunkard who is the slave of his passions, ,
up to the philosopher comprehending at a glance the wonders!
of heaven and earth, the freeman 'whom the truth makes
free,' or the Christian devoting himself to God, whose
freedom is ' obedience to a law ; ' that law being ' the law
of the Spirit of life,' as the Apostle expresses it ; respecting
which, nevertheless, according to another mode of speaking
D d 2
404 ESSAY ON
(so various is language on this subject), 'necessity is laid
upon him.' And between these two extremes are many
half freedoms, or imperfect necessities : one man is under
the influence of habit, another of prejudice, a third is the
creature of some superior will ; of a fourth it is said, that
it was ' impossible for him to act otherwise ; ' a fifth does
by effort what to another is spontaneous ; while in the case
of all, allowance is made for education, temperament, and
the like.
The idea of necessity has already begun to expand ; it is
no longer the negative of freedom, they almost touch. For
freedom, too, is subject to limitation ; the freedom of the
human will is not the freedom of the infinite, but of the
finite. It does not pretend to escape from the conditions of
human life. No man in his senses imagines that he can fly
into the air, or walk through the eai-th ; he does not fancy
that his limbs will move with the expedition of thought.
He is aware that he has a less, or it may be a greater, power
than others. He learns from experience to take his own
measure. But this limited or measured freedom is another
form of enlarged necessity. Beginning with an imaginary
freedom, we may reduce it within the bounds of experience ;
beginning with an abstract necessity, we may accommodate
it to the facts of human life.
Attention has been lately called to the i)henomena (already
noticed) of the uniformity of human actions. The observa-
tion of this uniformity has caused a sort of momentary
disturbance in the moral ideas of some persons, who seem
unable to get rid of the illusion, that nature compels
a certain number of individuals to act in a particular way,
for the sake of keeping up the average. Their error is, that
they confuse the law, which is only the expression of the
fact, with the cause ; it is as though they affirmed the uni-
versal to necessitate the particular. The same uniformity
appears equally in matters of chance. Ten thousand throws
of the dice, ceteris paribus, will give about the same number
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 405
of twos, threes, sixes : what compulsion was there here ? So
ten thousand human lives will give a nearly equal number
of forgeries, thefts, or other extraordinaiy actions. Neither
is there compulsion here ; it is the simple fact. It may be
said, Why is the number uniform? In the first place, it
is fiot uniform, that is to say, it is in our power to alter the
proportions of crime by altering its circumstances. And this
change of circumstances is not separable from the act of the
legislator or private individual by which it may be accom-
plished, which is in turn suggested by other circumstances.
The will or the intellect of man still holds its place as the
centre of a moving world. But, secondly, the imaginary
power of this uniform number affects no one in particular ;
it is not required that A, B, C, should commit a crime,
or transmit an undirected letter, to enable us to fill up a
tabular statement. The fact exhibited in the tabular state-
ment is the result of all the movements of all the wills
of the ten thousand persons who are made the subject of
analysis.
It is possible to conceive great variations in such tables ;
it is possible, that is, to imagine, without any change of
circumstances, a thousand persons executed in France during
one year for political offences, and none the next. But the
world in which this phenomenon was observed would be
a very different sort of world from that in which we live.
It would be a world in which 'nations, like individuals,
went mad ;' in which there was no habit, no custom; almost,
we may say, no social or political life. Men must be no
longer different, and so compensating one another by their
excellencies and deficiencies, but all in the same extreme ;
as if the waves of the sea in a storm instead of returning to
their level were to remain on high. The mere statement of
such a speculation is enough to prove its absurdity. And,
perhaps, no better way could be found of disabusing the
mind of the objections which appear to be entertained to
the fact of the imiformity of human actions, than a distinct
406 ESSAY ON
effort to imagine the disorder of the world which would
arise out of the opposite principle.
But the advocate of free will may again return to the
charge, with an appeal to consciousness. 'Your freedom,'
he will say, 'is but half freedom, but I have that within
which assures me of an absolute freedom, without which
I should be deprived of what I call responsibility.' No man
has seen facts of consciousness, and therefore it is at any
rate fair that before they are received they shall be subjected
to analysis. We may look at an outward object which is
called a table ; no one would in this case demand an examina-
tion into the human faculties before he admitted the existence
of the table. But inward facts are of another sort ; that they
really exist, may admit of doubt ; that they exist in the
particular fol-m attributed to them, or in any particular form,
is a matter very difficult to prove. Nothing is easier than
to insinuate a mere opinion, under the disguise of a fact of
consciousness.
Consciousness tells, or seems to tell, of an absolute free-
dom ; and this is supposed to be a sufficient witness of the
existence of such a freedom. But does consciousness tell
also of the conditions under which this freedom can be
exercised? Does it remind us that we are finite beings?
Does it present to one his bodily, to another his mental con-
stitution ? Is it identical with self-knowledge ? No one
imagines this. To what then is it the witness ? To a dim
and unreal notion of freedom, which is as different from the
actual fact as dreaming is from acting. No doubt the human
mind has or seems to have a boundless power, as of thinking
so also of willing. But this imaginary power, going as it
does far beyond experience, varying too in youth and age,
greatest often in idea when it is really least, cannot be
adduced as a witness for what is inconsistent with experience.
The question, How is it possible for us to be finite beings,
and yet to possess this consciousness of freedom which has
no limit ? may be partly answered by another question :
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 407
How is it possible for us to acquire any ideas which tran-
scend experience ? The answer is, only, that the mind has
the power of forming such ideas ; it can conceive a beauty,
goodness, truth, which has no existence on earth. The con-
ception, however, is subject to this law, that the greater the
idealization the less the individuality. In like manner that
imperfect freedom which we enjoy as finite beings is mag-
nified by us into an absolute idea of freedom, which seems
to be infinite because it drops out of sight the limits with
which nature in fact everywhere surrounds us ; and also
because it is the abstraction of self, of which we can never
be deprived, and which we conceive to be acting still when
all the conditions of action are removed.
Freedom is absolute in another sense, as the correlative
of obligation. Men entertain some one, some another, idea
of right, but all are bound to act according to that idea.
The standard may be relative to their own circumstances,
but the duty is absolute ; and the power is also absolute of
refusing the evil and choosing the good, under any possible
contingency. It is a matter (not only of consciousness but)
of fact, that we have such a power, quite as much as the
facts of statistics, to which it is sometimes opposed, or rather,
to speak more correctly, is one of them. And when we
make abstraction of this power, that is, when we think of
it by itself, there arises also the conception of an absolute
freedom.
So singularly is human nature constituted, looking from
without on the actions of men as they are, witnessing in-
wardly to a higher law. ' You ought to do so ; you have
the power to do so,' is consistent with the fact, that in
practice you fail to do so. It may be possible for us to
vmite both these aspects of human nature, yet experience
seems to show that we commonly look first at one and then
at the other. The inward vision tells us the law of duty
and the will of God ; the outward contemplation of ourselves
and others shows the trials to which we are most subject.
408 ESSAY ON
Any transposition of these two points of view is fatal to
morality. For the proud man to say, 'I inherited pride
from my ancestors ; ' or for the licentious man to say, ' It is
in the blood ; ' for the weak man to say, ' I am weak, and
will not strive ;' for any to find the excuses of their vices in
y their physical temperament or external circumstances, is the
^ corruption of their nature.
Yet this external aspect of human affairs has a moral use.
It is a duty to look at the consequences of actions, as well
as at actions themselves ; the knowledge of our own tem-
perament, or strength, or health, is a part also of the know-
ledge of self. We have need of the wise man's warning,
about 'age which will not be defied ' in our moral any more
than in our physical constitution. In youth, also, there are
many things outward and indifferent, which cannot but
exercise a moral influence on after life. Often opportunities
of virtue have to be made, as well as virtuous efforts ; there
are forms of evil, too, against which we struggle in vain by
mere exertions of the will. He who trusts only to a moral
or religious impulse, is apt to have aspirations, which never
realize themselves in action. His moral nature may be
compared to a spirit without a body, fluttering about in the
world, but unable to comprehend or grasp any good.
, Yet more, in dealing with classes of men, we seem to find
that we have greater power to shape their circumstances
1 than immediately to affect their wills. The voice of the
preacher passes into the air ; the members of his congrega-
tion are like persons 'beholding their natural face in a glass ;'
they go their way, forgetting their own likeness. And often
the result of a long life of ministerial work has been the
conversion of two or three individuals. The power which
is exerted in such a case may be compared to the unaided
use of the hand, while mechanical appliances are neglected.
Or to turn to another field of labour, in which the direct
influence of Christianity has been hitherto small, may not
the reason why the result of missions is often disappointing
PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL 4O9
be found in the circumstance, that we have done little to
improve the political or industrial state of those among
whom our missionaries are sent ? We have thought of the
souls of men, and of the Spirit of God influencing them, in
too naked a way ; instead of attending to the complexity
of human nature, and the manner in which God has ever
revealed himself in the history of mankind.
The great lesson, which Christians have to learn in the
present day, is to know the world as it is ; that is to say, to
know themselves as they are ; human life as it is ; nature as
it is ; history as it is. Such knowledge is also a power, to
fulfil the will of God and to contribute to the happiness
of man. It is a resting-place in speculation, and a new
beginning in practice. Such knowledge is the true recon-
cilement of the opposition of necessity and free will. Not
that spurious reconcilement which places necessity in one
sphere of thought, freedom in another ; nor that pride of
freedom which is ready to take up arms against plain facts ;
nor yet that demonstration of necessity in which logic,
equally careless of facts, has bound fast the intellect of man.
The whole question, when freed from the illusions of lan-
guage, is resolvable into experience. Imagination cannot
conquer for us more than that degree of freedom which we
truly have ; the tyranny of science cannot impose upon us
any law or limit to which we are not really subject ; theology
cannot alter the real relations of God and man. The facts
of human nature and of Christianity remain the same,
whether we describe them by the word ' necessity ' or ' free-
dom,' in the phraseology of Lord Bacon and Locke, or in
that of Calvin and Augustine.
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