The foundations of our faith : papers read before a mixed audience of men

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BV 4501 .A892

Auberlen, Karl August, 1824

1864.
The foundations of our faith

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THE FOUNDATIONS OF
OUR FAITH

^m H^jptrs |lea^ hdm e "^ktii %x\Vm\tt of |B^n

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By PEOFESSOES AIJBEELEN, GESS

AND OTHERS.

alexa:n'dee STEAHAN", PUBLISHEE
london and new york

1866

EDIXBURGH : T. CONSTABLE,
PKINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
INTRODFCTION. BY PROFESSOR RTGGENBACH, . . 1

I.
WHAT IS FATTH ? BY THE SAME, .... 5

NATURE OR GOD ? BY WOLFGANG FRIEDRICH GESS, . 27

III.
SIN, ITSy^ATURE AND CONSEQUENCES, BY ERNST

'STAHELTN, 46

f, ITS >ffi!

IV.

THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATIOJJ^ND THE HEATHEN

WORLD. BY PROFESSOR^UBERLEN, . . 74

V.
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. BY PROFESSOR RIGGEN-

BACH, 96

VI.

Christ's atonb!i6:ent for sin. by wolfgang fried-

rich GESS, 134

vn.

THE RESURRECTION ANp^SCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST.

BY PROFESSORyiuBERLEN, . . . .157

viil CONTENTS.

VIII.
/ PA.OK

THE HOLY/SPIRIT AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. BY

S. PREISWERK, . . . . . .183

IX.

THE DOCTRINE OF O^STIFICATION BY FAITH. BY DR.

IMMANUEL^TOCKMEYER, . . . .201

THE FUTURE. BY ERNST STAHELIN

PART I. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, . . 221

n. ETERNAL LIFE, 250

INTRODUCTORY.

As I have been chosen to deliver the first of the
proposed series of Theological Lectures, it devolves
upon me to explain the nature and aim of our under-
taking. We have arranged to deliver a course of ten
fortnightly lectures on the great foundations of our
faith, the subjects discussed to follow the order in
which they are presented in the Apostles' Creed, so
that there should be a systematic and progressive con-
nexion between them, while, at the same time, each
lecturer endeavours to treat his particular theme in
such a manner as to give it all possible completeness.

This undertaking has been suggested more especially
by the experiences of the last year. These have tended
to convince us that neither the public statement from
the pulpit of Christian truths to mixed congregations,
nor the religious instruction given to our young people,
adequately meets the requirements of the day. There
are undeniably many youths and many grown men in
whom the trials and vicissitudes of life have awakened
a desire more and more clearly to understand the faith
they hold, in order to give a satisfactory account of it
to all objectors. There are others, again, who no longer

&

2 INTKODUCTORY.

stand firm themselves in the religious beliefs of their
childhood ; doubts suggested from without have shaken
their position; objections have sprung up within their
own secret consciousness ; they are perplexed with ques-
tions for which they can find no answer, which even
the best course of religious instruction has failed to
grapple with ; they cannot escape from the spirit of the
times ; they shrink from exposing themselves to the
ridicule of the many who treat a belief in the Bible as
an obsolete prejudice ; the increasingly bold tone of
historical criticism fills their minds with a pleasant
sense of freedom; the ever- widening sphere of modern
science results in discoveries they hold to be irrecon-
cilable with the tiiith of Scripture, so that, although
they still retain a certain reverence for the spirit of the
Bible, they can find no solution for the contradictions
it seems to present.

We cannot, indeed, suppose that there are not some
whose speculative difficulties are strengthened by a
darker motive, to whom doubt, nay, even rejection of
Christianity is welcome ; because it is an irksome dis-
cipline, a disturbing influence to conscience, a weighty
obligation to holiness of life, a barrier to sinful plea-
sure, that they are casting away as a foolish prejudice.
For such men as these, the great essential is to renounce
the evil and turn to the good ; let them resolve to break
with sin, and they will find new light break in upon
their understandings.

But, at the same time, all doubters do not belong to
this class. I can well believe that there are many who,
so far from wilfully encouraging their doubts as a sanc-
tion to misconduct, can conscientiously assert that,
since these very doubts have arisen, they are far more
in earnest, both as regards morality and even piety,

INTRODUCTORY. J

than they were in the days when they held a tradi-
tional faith lifelessly though implicitly. It is not ours
to judge those who occupy this critical position ; later,
the Spirit of God may discover to them that their
motives are more mixed than they now suppose, and
at the present time many a one amongst their number
feels uncertain, restless, and unhappy in his heart's
core.

It is such as these whom we fain would serve. But
it is desirable that, at the outset, we should mutually
guard against delusive hopes. You must not come
with the expectation or the desire to hear something
startling, unexpected, novel, free from all human im-
perfection or error ; what you do find, however, of
error or imperfection j^ou must lay to our charge, not
to that of God's Truth. And we, again, when we have
set forth the most important truths in the best way we
can, must not imagine that we can take your convic-
tions as it were by storm. In all that relates to mind,
most especially in all that relates to God, we can never
attain to mathematical certainty, to such evidence as
forces immediate belief from every reasonable mind.
The maturing of religious faith must necessarily be
progressive.

What lies within our power is only this : to attest our
own inward experience of the truth of God's Word ; to
adduce proofs of it ; to give a rational explanation of
it, and then to invite all to examine it theoretically and
experimentally for themselves. And surely it is well
worth testing the comparative value, for life and death,
time and eternity, of a self-made religion, more espe-
cially if this consist rather in knowing what we do not,
than what we do believe, and be founded less on our
own experience than on hearsay. For incontrovertibly

4 INTRODUCTORY.

the very essence of religion must be positive, not nega-
tive ; must be, not a mere consciousness of what we do
7iot hold, but a simple and confident answer to these
three questions : What do you believe ? What are
you sure of ? What conception have you of God ?

WHAT IS FAITH?

AS we have to pass under review the principal verities
of Christian faith, it is evident that we should first of
all attain a right comprehension of what is meant by Faith.
Accordingly, the question that I have now to discuss is
the nature of faith, with special reference to the declara-
tion, " He who believeth not shall be damned :" — A
declaration this which has offended many, ourselves
amongst the number : " He who believeth not shall be
damned " ! What harsh and horrible words are these !
And this is a declaration of the God of love ! Nay, this
can be nothing else than a gloomy, tyrannical fanati-
cism. This is a doctrine which, could it find accept-
ance now-a-days, would pledge us to irreconcihxble
hatred towards the unbelieving, while " amongst the
genuine children of the present century, it is considered
barbarism to be prejudiced against any one on account
of his religious opinions, much more to persecute him."

And yet this is Bible language ; this is an expression
of our Lord himself ! Or can it be that this is a mis-
take altogether ; and will some tell us that this intoler-
ably hard sentence has no need to burden our spirits,
since it belongs to that portion of the Gospel of St.
Mark which is not authentic, and cannot, therefore, be
proved to be the language of Christ ?

It is indeed true that this sixteenth chapter ends with
the eighth verse in one of the oldest and most valuable
of our long-known manuscript versions ; as also in that
version lately discovered by Tischendorf in one of the
Sinaitic monasteries ; and that, according to indisput-
able contemporary testimony, the last twelve verses were

6 WHAT IS FAITH ?

also wanting in several manuscripts no longer extant.
This is a problem, which cannot be very certainly
solved, but yet we incline to believe that the oldest
manuscripts must in some way have got mutilated, for
it appears quite improbable that the Gospel could ori-
ginally have ended with the eighth verse, in which it is
said of the women, — " Neither said they anything to
any man ; for they were afraid." It is evident l^hat this
is not a conclusion ; we therefore infer that the right
conclusion was in many cases lost.

I will not lay any particular stress just now upon the
fact of such a critic as Lachmann accepting our read-
ing of the New Testament, and giving these twelve
verses in his edition ; more important evidence of their
authenticity exists in the harmony of our text with
other indisputably genuine passages of Scripture. " He
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life," saith
the Baptist ; " He that believeth not shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John iii. 36).
And the apostle Paul, in like manner, speaks of the
wrath of God coming upon the children of disobedience
or unbelief (Eph. v. 6); and, in 1 Cor. i. 18, after
saying, \ The preaching of the cross is to them that
/ perish foolishness ; but unto us who are saved it is the
power of God," he gives, in the 21st verse, the con-
ditions of the salvation : " It pleased God through the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe;"
whence we must infer, that those who perish are those
who do not believe. Thus we see that there is no
escape from the position : it is a constantly recurring
truth in Scripture, which finds its most concise expres-
sion in the words of our text, " He who believeth not
shall be damned."

But still there are, it may be, some among us to
whom this Bible statement is perfectly intolerable.
Let such once grant that there is a life after death,
and that this life is not the same in all cases, but an
alternative of blessedness or misery ; and then grant this
for the moment — without binding yourself down to the
conclusion — that what qualifies a man for misery or
blessedness, is in point of fact his belief or his unbelief ;

WHAT IS FAITH ? y

then, I ask you, whicli would be the more cruel, the
more loveless conduct, to warn us in time, or to give us
no warning at all ? If a man were walking in darkness
where the very next step might plunge him into the
abyss, and one stood by him who knew his danger,
say which were the greater cruelty, to startle him by
screams, and drag him back were it even by the hair
of bis head, or to let him quietly wander on ? You will
all allow, that granted that blessedness or misery hinge
on faith and unbelief, it is love, not unlovingness,
that warns, and that the sin against love would be the
withholding of the warning. But this very inference
will but strengthen your opposition to the doctrine, to
which we have for the moment assumed your agree-
ment, the doctrine that links our eternal destiny to
our belief. The Scripture indeed lays it dov/n ; you,
however, reject it, and declare it intolerable. But may
not your opposition arise from j^our conception of faith
differing from the scriptural conception of it ? Let us
look into the matter, and consent patiently to follow me
during a somewhat dry investigation.

What do we understand in our everyday life by faith ?
" I believe that such or such a thing has happened," we
are in the habit of saying, meaning thereby, " I do not
know it for a certainty, but I have sufficient ground for
receiving it as a fact." It would be better, indeed, if
I could say, " I know it ; I know it positively ; I have
seen it ; or I have some other equally indisputable
source of certainty. '\^ Here, you perceive, there is a
contrast drawn between believing and knowing ; the
word believing is used as tlie equivalent of uncertain or
partial knowledge ; is, therefore, something not much
higher than an imperfectly founded opinion ; and ac-
cordingly we have just heard that no one should be looked
down upon for his religious opinions. But it is only
writers of the present day who speak of these religious
opinions ; the Scriptures never do so. Such belief or
opinion as this is in no way whatever to be identified
with what the Bible calls faith.

In order to search deeper into the matter, we must
now ask ourselves, How do we generally attain to any

8 WHAT IS FAITH ?

cognition whatever, whetlier it be a knowledge of ex-
ternal things, or a conviction as to some given truth ?
If we reflect upon it a little, we soon perceive that we
must distinguish between the objects of our cognition
as belonging to essentially different classes.

There are cognitions internal in the human mind it-'
self, as for instance, and above all, the mathematical.
Here, from the most simple, fundamental ideas of
number and space, the laws of all reckoning and all
measurement are step by step evolved, and any one
who possesses good faculties can follow the process.
This mathematical science is the most exact of all, nay,
the only completely exact ; but at the same time it gives
us no living substance, no reality, nothing but distinct,
precise, yet empty and abstract forms ; and it would be
a mere perversion to suppose that all other sciences
could or ought to proceed upon mathematical principles,
and that nothing was to be received as truth but what
was capable of mathematical proof. The greatest ma-
thematicians, who were at the same time decided Chris-
tians, Pascal, Euler, Newton, knew better.

K now we turn to the cognition of living realities,
we find that these latter must reveal themselves, and
we must receive their revelation ; that is, we must
have an organ which is capable of apprehending the
evidence they give of their reality, and we must place
trust in this apprehensive or verifying faculty, in order
to build oar conclusions thereon, and understand by
thinking the fact verified. In this sense we may truly
affirm that all our cognitions imply belief, and that
without some sort of belief we could not establish any
one of them. Groethe once called himself a believer in
the five senses, and thereby expressed a truth which
has a wider and higher range than he was perhaps
aware of.

For, in point of fact, is it not a belief, a reliance,
that you place in your senses ? A light-giving body evi-
dences its existence by its light. Your eye is the organ
appropriated to the reception of that evidence. Accord-
ingly, you perceive the light, and you believe the testi-
mony of your eye-sight. You even believe it, though

WHAT IS FAITH ? 9

you know experimentally that there are such things as
optical delusions. When a stick dipped into water
appears to be broken, you are convinced by other
sources of information, probably by touch, that it is
not really so, but that the appearance is only caused
by the refraction of the light by the water.

Again, the setting and rising of the sun is a daily op-
tical illusion. How many observations, both connected
and unconnected with it, had to be compared and men-
tally elaborated before Copernicus could arrive at the
discovery of the real facts which underlie this optical
delusion. But for all that, the human eye had perceived
a reality, and you trust its evidence as much as ever.
You are not shaken in your belief by your knowledge
that disease of the optic nerve may simulate flashes of
light ; you take means to distinguish between the sub-
jective efiects of disease, and the revelation of external
realities. Thus you do not lose faith in your own
senses, and whatever you see, hear, or touch, is, you
are convinced, real, without demanding further proof.
You are, we all are, in this respect, believers in the
five senses.

But is this the only method of cognition, is this ap-
plicable to all realities, so that we may affirm that
there is no reality but such as we can apprehend
through one of the five senses ? Not so. In the spoken
words which you hear, which are a sound that strikes
upon your ear, there is yet something more than a
sound ; there is a thought also, and he who speaks, and
they who hear and understand him, have something
within them, nay, are something that lies beyond the
jurisdiction ot the five senses. You say 7, I think —
but you have never seen your thought ; you can per-
ceive it neither with the eye nor with any other of your
five senses, and yet you do perceive it, as certainly,
nay, more certainly than you see — you perceive it by
your immediate consciousness. You are thus aware
of the"lnvTsfble within you, of your spirit, of your soul.
You are not indeed ignorant that there is a modern
science which would teach us that this spirit or soul is
nothing but a temporary peculiarity or activity of the

T O WHAT IS FAITH ?

brain, entirely dependent upon the conTolutions of the
cerebral substance ; whence it follows that a man does
whatever his brain necessitates, and that there is no
such thing as free-will or reponsibility. It is not neces-
sary to dwell at greater length upon this doctrine, which
is not only wicked but miserably foolish ; we shall re-
turn by and by to something connected with it ; at
present it may suffice us that we are made cognisant
of the in visible~^ower of thought within us not by the
perception of the five senses, but through our imme-
diate consciousness. This is a perception which no
one doubts or can doubt without madness. It is on this
point that every system must be wrecked which is
founded on a determination to doubt whatever cannot
be proved. For here every one believes without fur-
ther proof, and without the perception of the senses.

This truth pervades all human life and human action.
"We rejoice in whatever is beautiful either to the eye or
the ear, but it is not the eye or the ear that decides upon
this beauty ; many hear or see the same thing, and fail
to remark its beauty, — they have not the special sense
requisite. Again, we see the external action of another
man, but the inner nature, the significance of that
action, — whether it was well or ill done, just or not, noble
or not, — this we do not see with our bodily eye, this it
requires a developed faculty of correct moral judgment
to appreciate. To this we must bring spiritual percep-
tion and comprehension. One who was only a believer
in the five senses, would lack the sense wanted here.
But if we possess it, we place confidence in it, al-
though delusions in such matters are manifestly more
frequent than in optics ; and on the strength of our own
perception, we believe a man to be upright, intelligent,
loveable, or the reverse.

Now let us take one further step. The world around
us, and the body which is our instrument, both alike
show us most admirable wisdom and order in all their
arrangements, small and great ; an exquisite adaptation
of each organism for its life purpose ; a surprising inter-
dependence between separate existences, so that each
creature lives for itself, yet not for itself alone, but for

WHAT IS FAITE ? II

tiie advantage of other creatures ; and the eye of the
embrjo is most carefully prepared in its ante-natal dark-
ness to receive the light that shall break on it after birth
— ^but why go on citing instances? A lifetime were not
long enough for this ! This wondrous design then we
perceive, so that if we were not taught to do so, we
mxjist needs ask ourselves whence this proceeds, and
must conclude, even were it not revealed, that the uni-
verse owes its origin to the highest wisdom and intelli-
gence. Of this design we see only a small fragment :
we cannot exhaust its resources ; but what we do see
suffices to convince us that all is intelligently ordered,
and enables us to hold fast that conviction even in
presence of what might almost seem occasional discre-
pancy ; and if this be the case, it is consequently plain
that this wise order can proceed only from a conscious
P'Ower : for, to deduce the rational from the irrational,
would be the height of irrationality.

Thus^our own per "'jentjilan leads

us to believe in an :: ^ . ^ Author of .the

jiniyerse. which, as Socrates said of old, is an,.,^SUJ,=J>*
purpose not chance.^ And we have the same good
ground for trusting this perception, as we have for be-
lieving on the evidence of om* senses in the reality of the
external world.

For what we see is not the alone real. Most real
is the Originator ot this wisely-ordered world, wliom
we do not see. any more than we see our own souls ;
but whose eternal power and Godhead we p^erceive by
rational attention to the visible, as the apostle says.
Rom. i. 20 ; this we must perceive, must seek after,
and seeking find. For we find that although the five
senses may indeed suffice to apprehend Hie material,
they are useless as re^rards the immaterial and vet the
latter is as real, nay. far more real than the former, and
our cognition of it by the inner perception of our rea-
son, affords us as posi^lve. as reliable, nay, a far more
positive certainty than any cognition of the senses ; for
our eyes may deceive us, but our self-consciousness
never can. — that which says to us, '* I am, and I think,"'
1 Xencphon, Memor. L A.

1 2 WHAT IS FAITH ?

that does not deceive. Still higher and still more
certain must be our reliance in the existence of the
invisible Creator of the world and of ourselves ; for the
unconscious material world is not ordered by itself nor
by us, nor do we order our own being, but the world
and we ourselves are alike dependent on Him in whom
we are compelled to believe as the Lord of the world
and our Lord also.

But it is possible, as we see, to resist even this be-
lief; possible to say that the world is thrown together
by chance. Yes, this is indeed possible. Only we
will never allow that this is the knowledge which is the
antithesis to belief. We perceive an intelligent plan,
we believe that this cannot be self-originated, we deduce
thence an invisible but a real and intelligent God ; this
is our knowledge of God founded on our rational belief.
He who can say of this intelligent plan which appeals
to his belief, that it is the result of chance ; who will
not believe, and does not therefore perceive, cannot
have any pretensions to knowledge, but rather to utter
ignorance. And yet this ignorant man is not entirely
/without a certain faith of his own, for he has not seen
that Chance is the creator of the universe, and yet he
asserts it to be so ; this then is his faith, Chance is the
God in whom he believes. We Christians have a more
rational belief.

Or is it much better than this belief in Chance, to
hold the doctrine of unconscious yet wisdom-fraught
Nature-power ? Is it in very deed rational to attribute
the creation to the spirit before it becomes self-consci-
ous in humanity, and to speak of that " which it wrought
as an unconscious Nature-power, ordering the relations
of the planetary system, forming the earths and metals,
and the organic construction of plants and animals." ^
Is this the teaching of reason ? Not we think of a rea-
sonable reason. In practical life, at all events, a man
would be considered mad who should attribute a
mechanical invention, or thoughtful work of art, to an
unconsciously working intelligence. And is this to be
the rational deduction from the evidences of intelligence
1 Strauss on Christian Doctrine, i 351.

WHAT IS FAITH ? I 3

displayed in the universe ? We prefer the Christian
faith as the more reasonable of the two.^ For if any
one believes in this unconscions Nature-power, it is a
faith still, not a knowledge, and hardly a faith to prefer
to our own !

We have now seen what faith is in its most universal
sense ; faith is the reliance that we place in the evi-
dence of our senses with regard to those things that
come within their range. In regard to the Immaterial,
more especially with regard to God and things divine,
faith is the reliance we place on our perception of
immaterial reality ; a perception not attained to by the
medium of the five senses, but by means of the higher
sense of our reason. Not that the truth is inherent in
this our reason ; its office is to take cognisance of that
immaterial reality which lies open to its perception,
and we place reliance upon this perception. Thus the
Scripture describes faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews
xi. 3 (we quote from De Wette's translation) : " But \
faith is confidence in what we hope for ; conviction of
things we do not see. Through faith we perceive that
the world was prepared by God's word, so that not out j
of the apparent came the visible."

Now in what relation do we stand to this God whom
we recognise and believe in ? What do we owe him ?
For the question of questions must be this which
relates to the law and purpose of our life, since, as
Socrates himself declared, the more glorious the God
who wills that we should serve him, the more highly is
he to be honoured. ^ We now begin to discern that
this question respecting the knowing and honouring
God is not merely an affair of the head, but of the
conscience ; that this is the central point of all that
conscience demands of us.

What a wonderful thing this conscience is ! No \
doubt we may talk of it incorrectly. Many represent \/
conscience as the infallible inner lawgiver, nay, even
the source ot all knowledge of God and of divine truth.
But to this an objection at once occurs : Whence then

1 Compare Gess on The Person of Christ, 1856, s. 145.

2 XenophoB, Memor. i. 4.

14 WHAT IS FAITH ?

the instability and variability of all social ordinances "?
whence the fact that in one age and amongst one nation
acts and customs are reputed moral which in another
age and another land are held to be immoral ? I may
instance the marriage of two sisters, which obtained
amongst many of the nations of antiquity ; or polygamy,
which was not forbidden by the Old Testament. Does
it not appear as though, instead of a fixed law of con-
science, we had nothing before us but variable opinions
— the product of a given age and climate ?

What shall we reply ? In the first place, we must
acknowledge that it is just as possible to doubt of moral
truth as of the existence of God. It is by no means
more philosophical to doubt of Grod than to doubt the
sanctity and inviolability of the moral law. Nor will it
ever be possible to remain unshakeably convinced of
the last apart from its root, its central point, — the cer-
tainty, namely, of our responsibility to God and our
dependence upon him. And if that which is best
within us, protests against doing away with the moral
law, this be it known is closely connected with the
bond that unites us to God. You will not, you say,
part with this belief in a moral law ? you do well, hold
it fast, and you will become convinced that it is only in
God that you can be sure of it.

But the observations we have just made upon the
variable standard of morals among men, proves to us
at least that untenable expressions are often used with
regard to conscience. Conscience does not most cer-
tainly itself lay down for us the special laws we have to
obey. But it declares in a general way, even among
the most degraded and most savage nations, that there
is a diflTerence between good and evil ; a difi"erence
according to which we decide when we are unprejudiced
by any considerations of utility, a difference, therefore,
other than the mere difference between the useful and
the hurtful ; a difference that every one recognises,
however debased and corrupted his own character may
be, for every one will characterize this action as evil,
that action as good, call this man upright, that man
dishonest ; and every one is conscious of something or

WHAT IS FAITH ? 1 5

other in himself of which he is ashamed ; nay, this
verdict of our own conscience as to whether or no we
have done what we knew and acknowledged to be right,
is so incorruptible, so independent of human influences,
so ineradicable, that even when it has long been\
silenced, whether the man will or no, it may break out |
at the very last with a quite irresistible strength. /
Whence comes this? whence but because it is im-f
planted in us ; or, in other words, because the author
of our physical life is also the author of our moral
sense ; our Creator, is also our lawgiver and our judge.
Plence the activity of conscience in all who have not
ceased to deserve the very name of man. It is true
that only in the element of truth can conscience de-
velop itself, very tenderly and sensitively, very freely
and joyously, very deeply and enduringly. But even
when the intellect is fettered by many errors, the exist-
ence of conscience is evidence to itself of the bond
that unites men with God.

If, therefore, we duly reflect upon this, we shall
perceive how that denial of a Creator of which we
spoke just now, is something worse than merely irra-
tional. In fact, to say that Chance has compounded
the world, or that it is the result of a creative energy
which is unconscious of its own operations, can only
be possible through a contradiction not merely of reason,
but of the inward voice of conscience as well.

Let us take another example to illustrate the above.
A man who intentionally takes away the life of another
without being forced to do this in virtue of his office,
we call a murderer ; a man who unjustly appropriates
his neighbour's goods, must submit to the appellation of
thief. Now there may be people whose passions pre-
vent their allowing this. They do not lack plausible
arguments by which to place these actions in such a
light that the actor can no longer be called a murderer
or a thief. These arguments may be lucidly expounded,
but they are in no way convincing to the simple sense
of truth. At bottom they contradict our reason, and
what is more, they contradict conscience ; nay, the
very man who brings forward the argument cannot do

1 6 WHAT IS FAITH ?

so without opposing and resisting the inner voice within
him. And is it not the very same with a denial of
God, as the self-conscious and world-conscious Creator?
Can a man honestly, de bonne foi, express such a nega-
tion as this ? He may indeed point out difficulties in
any definition man can give of the Divine self-con-
sciousness. But can he in good truth assert that the
denial of the Divine self- consciousness is not fraught
with still greater difficulties ? No, verily, he can only
do this by resisting the testimony to the truth afforded
by his own conscience.

We now begin to see why the apostle repeatedly
speaks of obedience to the faith, which he was called to
establish (Rom. i. 5). The point in question indeed is
an act of the will, a subjection to an acknowledged
truth, as we shall understand more clearly by and by.

Hence it follows that no one may take refuge in the
excuse that he was not organized for faith ; that for
others indeed it may be right, nay, admirable, but that
for him it is impossible ; does not even the apostle
allow that all men have not faith ? True, he says so
(2 Thess. iii. 2) ; but it is only of unreasonable and
wicked men that he says it, so that at least you had
better not appeal to him. And, above all, do not use
this expression till you have thoroughly and honestly
examined whether you have really conformed to all the
claims made on you by your conscience.

When I remarked just now that man was often for a
long time able to silence his conscience, I implied the
fact that in this region of moral self- consciousness defects
of insight were especially common. AVe know what wick- ]
edness is in others, every one can bring forward plenty I
of examples of worthless people ; whereas with regard I
to our own condition, self-complacency not unfrequently/
prevails ; we have the same delusions about our charac-j
ter as that which inflated the Pharisee of old above the'
publican. Even the various misfortunes we are called
upon to suffer are by no means certain to help us to
self-knowledge ; on the contrary, they often render hard
and defiant, lead us to entrench ourselves in a certain
dogged obstinacy. The right discernment of our sinful

WHAT IS FAITH ? I 7

condition before God is only to be learnt in tbe way
the Scripture describes : the Holy Ghost shall reprove
or convince the world of sin (John xvi. 8). It is thus
the inner eye must be cleared and sharpened. And
this is only thoroughly done by a man's attaining a
deeper perception of the Divine will and being.

When, however, this is done, then the human heart
learns what real misery is ; its cry is now, Who will
help me, who will forgive me ? I must have forgiveness,
peace, and deliverance from evil; where shall I find these,
how shall I attain to them ? For this^ conscience does
not of itself reveal. It_discovers the disease indeed, it
convinces the man of sin ; but it does not show him the
healing of the disease, the removal of the sin. T9__try
and comfort himself with believing " that no one can
overstep the barrier of his defects and evil tendencies,
but that yet each in his weakness and his limitations
plays his own appointed part in the eternal destiny of
the human race," affords no true calm, is only a miser-
able suppression of conscience. Wherever conscience
is alive, it will require some better comfort than this.
It occasions the most intense need to be felt of for-
£iYeness,'"but_jJEJ^^^cannot itself satisfy tbat need ; in-
deed, any foi'giveness which we could ourselves devise,
a forgiveness thought out only by ourselves, would
amount to no forgiveness at all. Forgiveness can only
come from God against whom we have sinned.

But the knowledge of the Being of God, which we
have deduced from the creation, does not bring with it
this message of forgiveness. On the contrary, this natu-
ral revelation leaves many a question unanswered, many
a dark mystery unsolved. How much disorder meets us
in all the domains of creation ; in how ghastly a man-
ner Death, with its pains and terrors, reigns therein !
It was with reference to this that we spoke a little while
ago of apparent discrepancies. True, we are in a mea-
sure able to perceive how each disturbance of order but
promotes a higher order, how each death subserves a
new life. But this consideration does not suffice to
still the cry of the wounded heart, oppressed by the
sadness of death all around. It is true that even the

I 8 WHAT IS FAITH ?

heathen were more or less aware, that between the ills
that we suffer and the evilthat we do there is a close
and intimate connexion. But the more earnestly we
examine into this, the more we find ourselves involved
in fresh and insoluble problems, and deliverance from
sin is clearly not to be found in this direction.

The case then stands as follows : either there is no
deliverance and no forgiveness, and so no solution to
this dark problem of human life ; or that which we need
can only come to us from God, revealing himself to
us as the Deliverer. And he is thei^e and invites :
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will refresh you (Matt. xi. 28) ; lam come to
seek and to save that which was lost (Luke xix. 10).
Here we have a new discovery of God ; one which the
stars never hinted at. No man knoweth the Son but
the Father, and no man knoweth the Father but the
Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him (Matt,
xi. 27). It is only through the Son that we learn to
know God as a Father^ as our merciful, forgiving Fa-
ther. But no man can call Jesus Lord but through the
Holy Ghost (1 Cor. xii. 3).

Such then is the testimony of the Sacred Scrip-
tures ; not only that God is the Creator of all things,
but that he is the just and holy One, and at the same
time the tenderly merciful, and that he is this not only
in himself, but towards us. Now this last fact we
could never gain from our knowledge of God drawn
from the works of Nature. Be the argument for the
necessary belief in a Creator ever " so well conducted, it
leaves the truth as it were still in a measure outside of
us ; in spite of our agreement we are not thoroughly
at one with it ; we see, indeed, that we are bound to
believe in the reality of God, but none of the proofs
of it fill us with that full, tranquil certainty of reality,
on which we build. It may be true ; but it is not, so to
speak, positively true for us. This God in whom we
are compelled to believe, is dumb towards us ; he does
not speak plainly to us of grace or reconciliation, so long
as we do not know or wish to know the testimony of the
witnesses of God. The question then is : Have we the

WHAT IS FAITH ? I 9

purified and opened inward sense for tlie reception of
this testimony ? Do we employ it to apprehend this
testimony ? De we trust it, or do we not trust it ? Do
we believe or do we not believe ? This cannot possibly
be an immaterial thing. Man can deny this testimony.
But also lofty spirits can heartily assent to it, and I
adduce as an example the epitaph which Copernicus
chose for his tomb, giving a faithful translation of the
meaning of the Latin verse —

Not such grace as PaiiFs do I require.
Not Peter's pardon do I ask ; but that
Which on the cross tliou .savest to the thief
I earnestly pray tor.

Thus we see the great astronomer did not seek for
the salvation and blessedness of his soul in the stars,
but in the grace ot Jesus Christ ; he was not only a be-
liever in the five senses, but a believer also in that
inward sense awaked by Grod in the consciousness of
man.

Such a faith as this, however, we clearly perceive is
no more only an affair of the intellect ; it becomes evi-
dent that the will^ nay the whole man, must share in it.
^ It is a mutilation of faith to suppose it>a mere lifeless
opinion of the mind, an indifi'erent holding of the mere
fact that there is a God. Such faith as this the devils
have and tremble, says Scripture (James ii. 19). By
a saving faith, the Bible invariably understands an
active, practical principle founded on the knowledge of
God. This the very word itself shows. The Hebrew
word for "believing," in the Old Testament, signifies to
lean firmly upon something ; the Greek word means to
trust in. Nothing can be further removed from mere
opinion. The Bible conception of believing is com-
pounded of Trust and Faith.

I will give another word of Latin derivation, which
conveys the same meaning^the word credit. Yes, cre-
dit is the faith, credit is the trust that a merchant en-
joys; and you know well that he can get on in business
as little, nay, less without credit than without money.
And if no mercantile enterprise can prosper without
faith, so too no friendship can; no marriage, no blessed

20 WHAT IS FAITH ?

relation betvreen parents and children, no upright, hon-
ourable, peaceful intercourse of any kind, can exist
without reciprocal conSdence. All human relations
require trust and faith. Shall our God then, our
Creator and Redeemer, have a less claim upon us ? No
great undertaking, no important discovery ever came to
pass "without a mighty faith which filled the soul, and
taught it to hope for what seemed beyond hope. Co-
lumbus could never have reached America but for this
confidence of a mighty faith. And is less than this
required in order to reach the eternal aim of human
life ? We are now in a position more fully to under-
stand why it is said both in the Old and New Testa-
ments, The just shall live hj faith.

The prophet Habakkuk is bewailing the manifold
imquitie.5, and the spoiling and violence that prevail
among the people of Israel. Grod answers him by de-
claring that he will raise up the Chaldeans, that hasty
and bitter nation, to execute judgment upon Israel.
This only dismays the prophet the more. Are these
heathens, who are worse than ourselves, to have power
over us ? 0 let us not die ! And this is the answer he
receives : The vision or prophecy will not tarry (the
prophecy, that is, of the terrible events which are or-
dained only as temporary judgments, those who are
really and heartily humbled finding favour at the last) ;
though it tarry, wait for it ; it shall surely come, it
shall not tarry. Behold, his (the powerful adversary's)
soul is lifted up within him (therefore, though he is
employed as the instrument of God's judgment, his own
fearful judgment will eventually overtake him) ; hut
the just shall live hy faith (Hab. ii. 4).

It is the same in the New Testament. Faith, trust, i
is that upon which all depends. Christ ever demands I
faith, confidence in his person. When about to heal /
the sick, he asks, " Believest thou that I am able to'
do this?" (Matt. ix. 28.) But it is not only to the
sick in body, to the pardoned sinner as well he says,
" Go thy way ; thy faith has saved thee " (Luke vii. 50).
And St. Paul especially preaches faith, because through
the works of the law can no man be justified ; for by

WHAT IS FAITH ? 2 1

the law is the knowledge of pin; therefore God has
manifested his righteousness; — the rio-hteousness which
is of him, as being through faith in Jesus Christ, unto
all and upon all them that believe" (Rom. iii. 20-22).
J- The just shall live bi/ faith'' (Rom. i. 17).

JThis Jfaithjis confidence, reliance in God's mercj
through Christ. But such confidence is not easy, na-
tural, self-evident to the human heart. In this higher
province there is also needed an obedience of faiths an
overcoming of distrust, a submission to acknowledged
truth, a profound earnestness, a willingness to live by
this faith.

God is willing to give us his grace ; we must be
willing to receive it. Not to believe, signifies not to
accept his saving, forgiving, helping, healing grace.
Now, if we do not believe the testimony to God's grace,
if we remain obdurate in our non -believing and non-
accepting, we ourselves make God's work of salvation
of none efiect, so far as we are concerned. Can this
result in anything else but our ruin^

It is thus the Bible speaks of faith ; it is thus that
our fathers understood the Bible, and preached faith, in
our Reformed Church. Let me cite one only, but one
very important passage in evidence of this, the 2 1st
question in the excellent Heidelberg Catechism. This
is how it runs : " What is Faith?" Answer^ " Faith is v
not only a certain perception through which I receive as
true whatever God has revealed in his Word, it is also a
hearty trust which the Holy Spirit works in me through
the gospel, that not alone to the sins of others, but to
my sins forgiveness will be granted, and eternal right-
eousness and blessedness bestowed on me by God, out
of free grace, and for the atoning merits of Christ."

You see plainly that the faith here spoken of does
not mean a mere opinion, or semi-knowledge, but a firm
andlofty confidence in the grace of Christ as the reality
of^L^aUties. But there is probably something besides
in this clause of the Catechism which is repugnant to
some among you : I allude to what is said therein about
a certain peTception through w;hich we receive as true
whatever God has revealed in his Word. Is this not,

22 WHAT IS FAITH?

it may be asked, tliat Bibliolatrj, that belief in the
letter, which would constrain us to receive as literally
true even the speaking of Balaam's ass, and the stand-
ing still of the sun at Joshua's command, with other
incredible and unbearable things of the kind, and would
make blessedness or perdition hinge upon our doing so ?
x\nd here I should need to speak more at length about
the Bible, in order to determine that it is this Bible
that witnesses to us of God's saving work. But you
will understand, that of such an extensive and com-
prehensive theme I can only give the merest outline.
In the first place, it must be laid down that the ground
of our faith is not a literal belief, such as might result
from external evidence, without reference to the nature
of the revelation, as thus : these Scriptures have come
from God ; therefore you must receive as true whatever a
is contained in them. Not so ; the root of our faith is
personal trust in Christ. Then, indeed, we learn to
understand that we cannot believe on him without be-
lieving him. We cannot rightly trust in God^ without
trusting the truth of God.

Now if God is, which our observation of the outer
world and our own consciousness compel us to believe,
how could he be without making himself known ? How
could he be love, whence should we know confidently
that he was love, if he had not revealed himself more
fully than in the outer world, or in our own conscious-
ness ? This may indeed tell us that we need love ; but
that God really is love, as we require it, forgiving, re-
deeming, saving love, how should we know this but
for the testimony of the prophets and apostles, to whom
he revealed it through his Spirit, and, above all, the
testimony of Christ, who is to us the incarnation of this
love ? What nation is there, that, not having had the
Bible, knows that God is love? Where do we find the^
eternal fundamental truths on which our salvation rests,
the truth of God's justice and judgment, the truth of
God's grace and mercy, as we find them in this Book ?

And remark once more, that these Divine truths are
not mere ideas, but God's thoughts are at the same
time acts of judgment and mercy, discipline and de-

WHAT IS FAITH ? 2^

liverance, developing thein selves in an ascending scale
from the beginning of the human race till the coming
of Christ. Consequently, the history of G od's acts can-
not be an immaterial matter safely to be thrown aside.
Everything contained in the Bible is not alike nearly
and vitally connected with the main point, namely, sal-
vation. There is much in which we can hardly trace
this connexion at all, much which is, at first sight, re-
pugnant to us, but a careful examination shows us how
closely even this is interwoven with other parts which
are not only historically essential, but of highest moral
importance. What is wanted is a careful, patient,
laborious, but self-rewarding and thoroughly conscien-
tious searching of the Scriptures. But how many reject
the Bible without ever having searched it, merely on
account of a few stumbling-blocks which they are con-
tinually bringing forward. If, however, it be not a
matter of indiflerence whether we believe or believe
not in God's truth, can such conduct be right ? Is it
right in those who have the Bible within reach to neg-
lect it ? For of course I am not speaking of those who
have never received the Bible revelation, we may safely
leave them to God's mercy, for he is no unrighteous
Judge to require what he has not given. We, however,
are not in that position, and our responsibility is, there-
fore, of quite a different character. ' \

Let me sum up what has been already said. We have v
seen that if it be really true that everything depends
upon_ faith^ then it is nothing butjth^love of_^o,^ tj^^
utters the warning cry, " He that believeth not shall
Be damned." You will now, perhaps, be less surprised
than you would have been at first at my saying, It is
also nothing but the love of God that has ordained that
all should depend upon faith. It is, indeed, love which
leads him to put such honour upon us, as only to have
us his free servants aiid children ; for the God of love
will have free love. In the beo-innins: he said to man :
Thou art at liberty to obey or not. And with regard to
his work of redemption also, he says to us, You have
liberty granted you to receive my salvation or not. To
such, however, as obstinately resist all his judgments

/

-24 WHAT IS FAITH ?

and all his mercies, — all tlie warnings and leadings of
Ills Spirit, all his paternal and gracious knocking at the
door of their hearts, and who consciously resist their
own conscience as well, — to them he must say at the
last, Thou hast not believed^ thou hast not willed to be-
lieve. Nothing is left but this : " He that believeth not
shall be damned." For Grod will not constrain us, just
because he is the God of free love. The dignity con-
ferred by God on man consists in this his power to
stand upright or fall ; to lay hold of deliverance, or
destroy himself completely.

But if this awfully severe sentence that must be
passed on the resisting does not impugn the love of
God, neither does it in any way pledge us to hatred
against unbelievers. On the contrary, the God of love
educates us for love also. Truth compels me to con-
fess that, from olden times till now, many sins against
the loving character of God have been committed in
the name of Orthodoxy. It is possible to know the
truth of Christ, and to use that knowledge without the
love of Christ. And yet he himself has cast eternal
disgrace upon unloving orthodoxy by the example of
the Good Samaritan. But all unbelievers, however,
are not good Samaritans. Still less are we to be misled
by the statement, hear it often as we may, that the
same pious feelings and dispositions may co-exist Avith
the most opposite forms of theoretical belief; or even
that a high and pure morality is compatible with a de-
nial of God, and of a future life.

It is true, we must admit, that there are men who
are upright and irreproachable in all their relations to
their fellow- men ; nay, who, by their nobleness of mind,
put many of the nominally pious to shame, and yet are
resolutely opposed to the Christian faith. We must
not underrate this fact. But who knows how much
these men are unconsciously indebted to gospel influ-
ences, and to early religious education ? For, after all,
we must once more earnestly ask, If God be God, do
we owe nothing to him ? Should we place so high a
value upon unbelieving rectitude of conduct, upon a
morality which is even compatible with a denial of God ?

WHAT IS FAITH ?

25

Are there many who exhibit a high moralitj in com-
bination with this denial ? Would such morality hold
good under the secretest, hardest, extremest trials ?
Can it produce any other salvation, any other forgive-
ness of sins, any other eternal deliverance, than that
which God has offered us in Christ?

Or will any one assert, assert in good earnest, that
we do not need such ? Can there be true virtue if we
have not God ; and what will be the fate of him who
owns himself not virtuou.. but sinful ? Or if you con-
cede that a faith is essential to man, but not exactly
the Christian faith, then tell us what other faith ? but
tell it us plainly, so that we may be able to perceive
whether it will do to build on in life and in death.
Show" us the well-founded subjects of faith that surpass
the fundamental truths of Holy Scripture. We mean-
while assert, that all morality that unites itself with a
denial of God, wants its vital centre. This does not
imj)ly that there is no such thing. After the setting of
the sun there is still light, the Alpine peaks still glow •
but by and by it grows dark and cold. And so isTW'
with the moral man without the firm foundations of I
God's truth, without humility before God, without \
prayer to God, without gratitude towards God, without )
the fear and love of the living God.

We cannot read the heart, and are not called upon
to judge our fellow- servants. We should learn more
and more of Christ's infinite mercy. How patiently
and meekly he knows to wait for faith ! How inexpres-
sibly merciful the answer he returns to his enemies
after they have blasphemed him by the malignity of the
imputation : He casteth out devils through the prince
of the devils. All manner of sin and blasphemy, says
he, shall be forgiven unto men, and he that speaketh
against the Son of man shall be forgiven ; but blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost hath n^ver forgiveness (Matt.
xii. 31, 32). Thus freely does he admit that it is pos-
sible to mistake him, the Son of man, through what is,
after all, pardonable ignorance. But at the last, when
all the Divine means of mercy are exhausted ; when
all the light that shows a sinner his own sins and God's

26 WHAT IS FAITH ?

salvation has shone in vain ; when all the chastenings
and all the drawings of the Spirit have been alike de-
spised, and pure unbelief has come to opposing itself
to the Spirit, and saying I will not, what else can
ensue but ruin ? what remains to the God of truth and
holiness but to execute upon the resolutely defiant
soul the sentence, " He who believeth not shall be
damned."

From this, however, we are far from deducing the
duty of hatred to unbelievers, but rather the duty of
love. It is this which Christ's patience should teach
.us, a love which, however, from its very nature, must
be united with truth. Yes, it is for love's sake that
we bear witness to a truth which, to the discerning
mind, should be as self-evident as the assertion : He
who eats not must die of hunger ; the truth : " He that
believeth not shall be damned."

For, once more, faith is no insignificant thing ; faith
is no mere opinion or partial knowledge ; faith is no as-
sumption of unimportant matters on insufficient grounds;
yfaith is the conviction of invisible realities not_capable
of mathematical proof, not to be verified by the senses,
but real nevertheless, with a higher reality than any
sensible object can ever claim ; faith, in J_ts_Jbighest
sensCj is the conviction of God's grace in Christ Jesus,
as being within our reach, the acceptance of what God
has offered us in him, the reliance thereon as on God's
truth ; the obedience thereto of a perfectly free heart.
How can this be a matter of indifi'erence ? How can
it be all one whether we have any heart towards God or
not, whether we seek him or seek him not, inquire after
him or not, depend upon him or not, pray to him or
not, love him or love him not, — in a word, believe or
believe not ? Xerilx_love must needs warn and testify.
" He that believeth not sliall be damned.^' 13ut why
hearken to these words alone ? Why not to the pro-
mise that precedes them? " He that believeth shall be
saved.''

IT.

NATURE OR GOD.

NATURE or God ? Is the universe self-existent, or
does it derive its origin from a being distinct from
itself? And supposing this latter hypothesis the true
one, and that the universe by its very existence refers
us to God as the cause of that existence, what opinions
are we to hold respecting Him? Is He a self-conscious
being ? Does He concern himself about us ? Is He
present with us ? Does He speak to us, and can we
pray to Him so as to be heard of Him ? Or is the
being from whom the world is derived, too high and
distant to interfere in the insignificant concerns of
earth ? Or, still further, is it altogether a mistake to
attribute to the being from whom the universe springs,
self-consciousness, liberty, or personality ? In what
manner, in short, are we to think this origin of all
things ? I enumerate these questions, not with the
view of entering at length into them all, but to give
you a general idea of the nature of the inquiry we are
about to enter upon.

There are two different methods of inquiring into
the nature of God. The one is based upon those acts
of God, whereby he revealed himself in the midst of the
people of Israel, and accomplished the salvation of the
human race. From God's acts it is possible to draw a
deduction of God's nature, more especially since the
appearing of Christ, whose coming into the world, life
in the world, and departure from the world, afford the
climax of Gods revelation of himself in action. This is
the royal road to the knowledge of God's existence, and

27

28 NATURE OR GOD.

the one that leads us most deeply into the knowledge
of the Divine nature. Indeed, what the apostle Paul
calls the deep things of God, are only attainable by this
method ; nor is it by any means true that none but the
credulous make choice of it. Theology can adduce
strictly scientific reasons for believing what the Scrip-
tures relate of God's revelation of himself in action.
But for all that, we will not on this occasion adopt the
theological method, but the philosophical ; we will seek
to discover the being of God from the consideration of
the universe. For it is a want, a necessity of human
nature, to search after the highest truth by the inde-
pendent method of reason ; and by the evidences of
God in our world- contemplating reason, to prove the
revelation of God contained in Scripture ; philosophy
belongs to the noblest portion of human nature ; only
it must not be a mere wanton opposition, nor a slavish
repetition of the current maxims of the ever-changing
spirit of the day ; but a genuine philosophy, that is, a
genuine love for wisdom, and hence, an earnest, sober,
profound examination of ultimate principles. There is
an old and frequently quoted saying, to the effect that
philosophy when it sets to work superficially, leads
away from God, but when it examines more deeply,
leads back to him ; and I trust that we shall find this
saying true.

We will set out then from the easily intelligible
/ admission in which we shall all concur, that the exter-
I nal world is pervaded by profound intelligence. At the
first sight of any working-machine, say, for example, a
locomotive engine, all decide that it must needs be a
work of the intellect, because we find that everything in
it is a means to an end. But nature is not less pervaded
with purpose. Not that this is to be understood in a
sense to which it has often been perverted, as implying
that everything which we find in nature is adapted for
the use of man ; this is a low point of view, and must
lead to many absurd conclusions. Both in the plant
and in the animal, we find that every detail subserves
the development of that plant or that animal's peculiar
existence. In our own bodies, more especially, we

NATUEE OR GOD. 29

admire the ada tation of every part to the development
of our physical life, and not only so, but to the require-
ments of our intellectual life also, ^^ut further, this
earth on which we live is more and more recognised by
science as a great organic whole, whose parts all tend
to one great aim, namely, the progressive intellectual
development of humanity. But this law of inter-
dependence extends even beyond the earth ; the earth
is only what it is through its relation to the sun, round
which it moves. And when we consider that our solar
system is also related to the other solar systems, so
that they all interdepend, what a display of Omnipotent
intelligence opens out before us !

But here we must not fail to notice one essential
difference between the adaptation of any humanly con-
structed machine to the particular end it is destined to
serve, and the adaptation of the forms of nature to
their final purpose. You will all readily apprehend
the distance between the most elaborate mechanism,
and a plant, or the human body. This diflfereuce does
not consist alone in the machine remaining what it was
originally made, without growth or life, while the plant
shows its life by growing ; but the plant is far more
intimately and universally pervaded with unity of pur-
pose than any machine can possibly be. If we take
the different parts of machinery to pieces, no doubt the
purpose of that machinery can no longer be fulfilled,
but the parts remain what they were, they are in them-
selves unaffected by the purpose they subserved.
Whereas if we take a plant to pieces, this is death to
every part of that plant ; thus the life of all their parts
consists in their unity ; and if they are deprived of their
pervading unity of purpose they die. Still further, in
order to construct machinery the materials are taken
from different sources, those materials have first of all
an existence, then they are wrought and combined in
the manner requisite for the purpose in hand. But the
tissues of the plant are not there before the plant
itself; the plant evolves itself, and what it derives from
without it assimilates most completely in its own special
manner : no purpose is skilfully infused into the plant

30 NATURE OR GOD.

from without, but the primal germ is, equally with the
developed tree, pervaded by its own particular law of
being ; the apple-pip is already thoroughly impregnated
with the nature of the apple-tree, and if placed favour-
ably for its development, can develop into nothing but
an apple-tree, just as, from the first moment of concep-
tion, the human embryo is adapted to be the instrument
of a personal and intellectual life. We give the name
organism to that which thus evolves itself ; developing
its germ into a number of limbs or parts, which are all
suitably related, and which all tend to the accomplish-
ment of one common life-purpose. In plants, animals,
and in the human body, we perceive organic life in an
ascending scale of organization. Again, in the intel-
lectual life of man, whether of individuals or nations,
up to the whole of humanity, we see an ever new, ever
higher organization, which increased organic perfection
both consists in the increasing complexity of the parts,
and in their more intimate and vital unity. So essen-
tial is this conception of an organism to the right
understanding of the world, that we may pronounce
the highest discovery of natural science to be this of
systematic gradation in organic nature. And even the
study of human history can hardly propose itself a
higher task than to establish how the original constitu-
tion of man, and the progress of mankind during the
centuries past, tends to make of different nations and
countless multitudes of individuals one great organism,
in which each nation and each individual has its special
bearing upon the whole.

Thus the universe is all pervaded by one purpose,
displayed alike in the relations between its giant mem-
bers— the suns and planets — and in the least vein of
its least living creature ; nay, we may call the whole
universe itself a great organism. Thus the whole is
pervaded by one intelligence. We learn the same truth,
too, from the beauty of the world. We call a picture
beautiful if it represent some significant thought, some
tender emotion, or some strong inward struggle, in such
a manner, that the sight of it at once convinces us of
the feeling by which the mind of the artist was moved.

NATURE OR GOD. 3I

And so we call a man beautiful if form and counte-
nance are the liarmonious expression of a noble soul,
an energetic intellect. A soulless man may be well
made, may even be handsome, but cannot be beautiful.
Now if beauty in works of art, or in human beings,
presuppose intelligence, this cannot be less true of the
beauty of nature. Impressions of tenderness, of sub-
limity, of peace, are made upon our minds by nature,
and it is because of these that we call a landscape
lovely, sublime, beautiful. Now love, sublimity, peace,
and repose belong to Mind ; if therefore there was no
reason, no intelligence in Nature, we could not speak
of its beauty.

Now let us take one other step. How is this fulness
of design, this beauty in the world, to be explained ?
The purpose or design of a machine is given to it by /
its inventor ; the meaning which the picture expresses
has been transferred from the mind of the painter to the
canvas ; but whence the reason, the meaning of the ex-
ternal world ? We Christians indeed answer this ques-
tion in the words the Psalmist sang three thousand years
ago, and in those of our Lord himself : The heavens
declare the glory of God, and it is our heavenly Father
who clothes the lilies of the field. God's Spirit has from
the beginning brooded over, developed, and shaped
the life-germs scattered by God's hand, and at the pre-
sent time this self-same spirit of the living God per-
vades, animates, and develops the immeasurable realm
of Being, so that everything in its appointed place and
appointed number, moves in its pre-ordained orbit, and
all living things grow and mature according to their
appointed laws.

For God, the Self- Existent, is the only source of all
existence, all movement, all vitality, all order and har-
mony, all beauty and joy. This is the scriptural view
of the world, and by the side of it there is another view,
and a very ancient one too, at least in India, and among
a portion of the Greeks ; and this view seventeen cen-
turies ago ranged itself under the name of the Greco-
Roman paganism, in opposition to the Christian faith,
was then conquered in the war of mind, and slept silent

32 NATURE OR GOD.

in the West for about a thousand years, till about two
centuries ago it once more began to lift up its voice.
I allude to so-called Pantheism. The Glreek word ex-
presses its own meaning, according to this view, the
All is God. Thus Pantheism also speaks of a Grod, but
it uses the word in a quite different sense to the Chris-
tian. It says, you must not look for God outside of the
universe ; on the contrary, the universe, the All is
itself Grod. Of course, this does not mean to imply that
everything in the world, every tree, every animal is God ;
in that case we should have the utter absurdity of a
world consisting of countless deities. The language of
Pantheism is this : You must distinguish between the
world of Phenomena, and the inner Formative Energy,
from which the phenomena spring. A tree bears fruit
yearly. That fruit falls as soon as it is matured, but
the vital force of the tree remains, and in spring it will
break forth anew. Our earth has abeady undergone
many revolutions, but the formative energy which has
worked for ages is still at work, though in a different
way, and may work on indefinitely. If then the mul-
titude of spheres be one whole, one constantly active
life must pervade it all, a life of which the formative
energies of individual spheres are only separate rays.
This one Essence, or Substance, which lives in all living
things, and itself invisible, reveals itself in a sense that
is visible : this is what Pantheism calls God. Goethe
makes this One describe himself as follows : —

In the waves of life,

In the storm of action,

I roll np and down,

I weave here and there,

Birth and death,

An eternal ocean,

A changing web,

A glowing life,
riins I work at the roaring loom, of time.
And weave the living garment of the Deity.

This is an excellent imitation of the Pantheistic Idea,
but only an imitation, a poetical rendering, not the exact
expression of the idea that the language of philosophy
aims at conveying. There are two inaccuracies therein,
first that which rolls in the waves of life to weave the

NATURE OR GOD.

33

living garment of the Deity, appears to be something
distinct from the Deity, whereas Pantheism affirms that
it is by Deity itself that the phenomenal world is woven ;
and, secondly, this working, weaving, rolling agency
speaks in this poetical representation of itself, names
itself /, comes forward as a personality, while Pan-
theism explicitly denies personality to the Deity, main-
tains that he is not an Ego, but calls the unconscious
world itself its God. Pantheistic philosophers have
characterized in different ways this One and yet All-
animating, this unconscious yet all -organizing agency ;
but the most striking, and at the same time intelligible
name has been given to it by Spinoza, the gifted Jew,
who two hundred years ago revived Pantheism in Europe.
Spinoza distinguished between natura naturans and
natura naturata : the latter he understands as the con-
stantly changing world of phenomena ; the former as
the cause out of which and into which every effect is
constantly emerging and sinking. This natura naturans
is, according to Spinoza's view, God.

And here let us remark, that this confusion of God
with Nature does not seem to be quite confined to the
schools. Many men in our day have, without being in
any way philosophers, acquired a habit of constantly
referring to Nature only ; it is from Nature that they
expect recovery from sickness, fruitful harvests ; it is
the powers of Nature that they admire when they con-
template the shining world of stars ; it is on these
powers they seem to depend, as though Nature were
indeed the highest that we know of. I am aware
that all who use this phraseology do not mean to as-
sert thereby that Nature is God, and to deny the
existence of a supernatural God ; but the latter, it ap-
pears to them, is so remote from the world that he
created long ago, that virtually man has now only got
to do with Nature. They, however, who are acquainted
with the history of philosophy, at all events of German
philosophy, from Kant to Schelling and Hegel, need
not to be informed that amongst scientific men, one
never now hears of this remote god of the English
deists ; if any voice be raised to revive that doctrine, it

c

34. NATURE OR GOD.

is at once assumed that the speaker is unacquainted with
the progressive development of modern philosophy. At
the present day the choice can only lie between the God
of the Bible or the god of Pantheism, whether he be
named natura naturans, or, according to Hegel's kin-
dred expression, " absolute idea." And any one, even
if unaccustomed to these speculations, may convince
himself by serious reflection that a God remote, or not
universally present, not actively beneficial, can be no
longer considered God, — neither the Living, the Loving,
nor yet the Absolute.

Well then, the question before us is this. Is it from
this aW-engendering, but also all- devour ing Nature, from
this God of Pantheism, that we derive our existence, or
from that God in whom our fathers hoped, to whom the
Lord Jesus Christ prayed as to his Father, and on whom
he has taught us also to call in a filial spirit? The
advocates of Pantheism often assure us that there is no
important difference between the two views ; but in
point of fact, we can hardly imagine a greater contrast.
No rational man can pray to Nature, whereas the
Christian looks upon his communion with God by prayer
as the highest blessing of his life. If Nature be the
source of all life, and so of man's spiritual life, why,
then, whatever happens, sin included, is the result of an
iron necessity, growth in holiness is an impossibility, and
our faith in a holy Saviour a mere dream ; whereas the
most earnest desire of the Christian is to become holy,
and his rejoicing in the holy Son of man is his strength.
Finally, if this all-engendering and destroying Nature
is the ultimate cause, life after death is out of the ques-
tion altogether ; whereas heaven is the Christian's goal,
and this earthly life is but the way to that goal.

Before I proceed to a further examination of Pan-
theism, I would point out that the very assumption of
Nature being its own cause, being self-existent, involves
a contradiction, the idea of self- causation implying self-
consciousness. I might further show, that if God be
only the underlying substance, or the formative energy
of the phenomenal world, the origin of the world -
material, the existence of this vast organic whole remains

NATURE OR GOD.

35

quite inexplicable ; and we shall be obliged, if we try to
shape our conceptions in words, to presuppose, as the
Pantheists of Grecian antiquity expressly declared they
did, the eternity of matter. But in order to confine
myself strictly to the admission from which we set out,
I will only ask whether Pantheism is able to explain to
us the wisdom and beauty we see in the material world
before us ; for example, the harmonious order in which
the several thousand stars rotate so regularly that as-
tronomers are able to predict the very hour at which
they will become visible and invisible to us, their con-
junction and opposition.

Pantheism tells us, that it is Nature itself which is
pervaded by this ordering wisdom ; but Nature knows
nothing of itself, has no self-consciousness, is no Ego,
no self- existing personality. And Pantheism attributes
perfect wisdom in action, works of beauty, and wonders
of design, to an agency that knows nothing of itself !
To unconscious wisdom, in short ! But is not this as
self-contradictory a conception as a triangular circle ?

We will not, however, be precipitate in our answer.
If the possibility of unconscious wisdom is to be main-
tained at all, it must be so on the ground of a twofold
experience, one relating to the animal kingdom, the
other to human life. I allude to the range of animal
instincts, and to the origin of human language. For
instance, does not the way in which the spider spins its
web, and the bee makes its cell, exhibit the most per-
fect adaptation of means to an end ? And yet no one
will assert that these creatures ply their relative arts
with self-conscious reflection ; neither do they acquire
them from teaching, but they practise them from the
force of an indwelling instinct. And again, how does
a nation get its language? It is the national spirit
which produces the national mode of speech. But this
is not effected according to any premeditated plan, not
by definite and conscious contrivance. Man cannot
think except in words ; a people must already have a
language before they can attain to thought-life. Never-
theless, languages are an intellectual product, an arti-
ficially woven web ; at least the languages of the most

^6 NATURE OR GOD.

cultivated nations, — of the Greeks, tlie Germans, are this.
Nay, more, the languages of those races that have never
as yet learned to express their ideas in writing, are at
all events fraught with certain rules and principles.
There are tribes in different parts of Africa, to whom
most certainly it has never occurred to reflect upon the
construction of their language ; yet when the ambassa-
dors of Christ visit them, they are able to lay down
grammatical rules regarding even the poorest of those
African dialects, able to discover the laws by which
these people have unconsciously been guided in the
formation of their language. It is, therefore, indis-
putable, that there is such a thing as a half- conscious
exercise of the human mind ; nay, more, that there is
a dreamy working of the animal intelligence which is
capable of producing effects full of beauty, adaptation,
and law. Moreover, it is just in this scarce con-
scious working, that we hardly ever discover a mistake
or failure of any kind, while, on the contrary, the
thoroughl}^- conscious labours of the mechanic, the philo-
sopher, and the statesman, abound in errors.

May not Pantheists, therefore, be justified by this
analogy in ascribing the design and beauty of the organi-
zation of the universe to the agency of unconscious wis-
dom ? K the human intellect, if even the animal intel-
lect can produce such results without self- consciousness,
are we not authorized in attributing to the universe a
self- unconscious, a merely dreaming soul ; and deducing
from this universal soul, although it be not self-con-
scious, the wisdom-fraught organization of the whole
world ? AYe reply, that to one who merely bestows a
superficial consideration upon the subject in hand, this
view may indeed seem plausible, but on closer exami-
nation the plausibility vanishes. We could only be
justified in inferring the unconsciously wise agency of
a world- soul from the unconscious wisdom of the ani-
mal mind, in the event of such wisdom being really
inherent in the animal mind itself; in other words, to
give any force to our argument, the purpose -fraught
working of animal instinct would need to be actually
self-originated. But this is not the case. The instinct

NATURE OR GOD. 37

which impels every creature to certain works of art,
and the unvarying perfection of the art it displays, like
the impulse and the power to sing possessed by the
singing-bird, is inherent in its bodily organization,
which organization it has not produced, but has from
some source or other received. In the same "way,
man's impulse to speak, and faculty of speaking, are
inherent in the duality of his nature ; and the pecu-
liarity of different languages springs from the pecu-
liarity of natural constitution in different people. If
then the wisdom which displays itself in animal labour,
and the higher wisdom displayed in the construction of
languages, does not primarily belong to the animal nor
to the national intelligence, but rather to that power
from which men and animals alike have derived their
organization, it follows that the want of self-conscious-
ness, which we find in the wisdom of their several
instincts, does not authorize us in drawing the conclu-
sion that the first originating cause of human, and ani-
mal, and all life whatsoever, works unconsciously.

Again, neither animal nor human life is a thing apart
and complete in itself. The life -activity of men, and
still more of animals, is intermingled with the universal
stream of natural life, is excited and guided thereby, so
that we must describe the wisdom displayed in animal
life as belonging not to it, but to the universal life with
which animal life is inextricably intertwined. Now,
unconsciously working intelligence, as implanted by a
higher power, is, as we have seen, a matter of experi-
ence, but unconscious wisdom, as the final cause by
which the universe has organized itself, is an idea which
fades away before steady thought, is a mere phan-
tasm. What a strange anomaly it would be, that
the intensely conscious mind of the natural historian
should, with delighted admiration, continue throughout
life to search into the wisdom of a blindly working
power, should be ever learning from it, ever bowing
down before it ! No ; as in mathematics there are cer-
tain axioms, certain ultimate principles, which afford
proof for the whole structure of mathematical science,
without themselves requiring proof, or even being

38 NATURE OR GOD.

capable of it ; so in order to attain to a truly philoso-
phical view of the world, we must proceed from the
self-evident proposition that the original intelligence,
from which all other existing intelligence is derived, is
not and cannot be itself blind and unconscious, must
be self-conscious, in the most exalted sense of the
term. In other words, so surely as the world is a
wisdom-fraught and beauteous organism, so surely does
it refer us to a creative Spirit, who knows himself as
he manifests himself, — to a personal God, in short,
such as the Bible reveals, unconscious creative wisdom
being as palpable a contradiction as a triangular circle.
But now let us turn to that portion of the universe
with which we are best acquainted, to our own earth
and its inhabitants, and we shall find that it abundantly
confirms the view of God's nature to which we have
arrived. We would lay especial stress upon the evi-
dence afibrded by a science which many have looked
upon as a formidable enemy to the Christian faith —
upon the history of the progressive development of our
earth. Now, if there be anything firmly laid down by
geological science it is this, that the vegetable and
animal world, still more the human race, are far more
recent than the earth itself, the first conditions of this
globe of ours having been quite incompatible with veget-
able, animal, or human life. Since, then, these arose at
successive epochs, we naturally inquire how it was that
they did arise. Natural philosophers, on their side,
confess that they do not see how organic life (whether
vegetable or animal) could have developed itself out of
inorganic, and in its earlier stages our earth consisted
simply of inorganic matter. Now this fact places Pan-
theism in an awkward predicament. With its assertion
that Nature is the final cause of all, there is united this
other assertion, that Nature never produces an imme-
diate and isolated eifect, but that it is in the collective
unity of all individual things that the World- Soul
dwells, and that this collective unity of whatever is
related in time and space, forms an indissoluble sequence
of cause and effect, so that nothing which was not in-
cluded in the original plan ever comes to pass, while

NATURE OR GOD. 39

nothmg so included is ever omitted. In other words,
Pantheism does not allow the possibility of a miracle,
and it looks upon this exclusion of the miraculous as its
peculiar boast. Well then, if there be no miracles,
how did vegetable and animal life arise ? above all, how
arose the spiritual life of the human race, self-con-
scious and free ? Are men the descendants of apes, or
have they sprung directly out of mud ?

The well-known David Strauss, seventy years ago,
hazarded the desperate conclusion, that since the tape-
worm, which has been known to exceed seventy feet (so
that in point of length it far out-does man), was pro-
duced by spontaneous generation, out of the alien sub-
stance of human intestines, it was not impossible that
man should have been originally developed from some
earthly material, however unlike in composition that ma-
terial might have been ! Especially, he adds, since in
those remote periods the formative energies of the earth
were undoubtedly greater than at the present time ! ^ I
will not now dwell upon the fact that the science of our
day entirely denies to the tape-worm the spontaneous
generation above assumed ; I will only observe, that
Alexander von Humboldt, who was certainly not pre-
disposed in favour of Christian truth, writes as follows :
" What displeases me in Strauss is the scientific levity
which leads him to see no difficulty in the organic
springing from the inorganic, nay, man himself from
Chaldean mud."^ I have only to add that it would be
a strange thing if men who parallel tape-worms with
the human race were to prove the leaders of exalted
humanity. Nevertheless Strauss, in this passage, rea-
sons logically enough from the standpoint of Pan-
theism. If Nature be the final cause of all life, then
there can be no miracle. If there is no miracle, man
must have arisen in some such fashion as he presumes.

But, on the other hand, if man be not a descendant of
apes, nor a child of mud, then man is a miracle ; and if
there are miracles, then there lives a personal God ; for
miracles, as is universally acknowledged, presuppose a

1 Strauss On Christian Doctrine, vol. i. p. 602.

2 Humboldt's Letters to Varnhagen, First Edition, p. 117.

40 NATURE OR GOD.

personal G-od. We now see that men who reject tlie
Bible because it narrates miracles regarding nature, or
at least human nature, cannot have reflected very
deeply, otherwise they would have discovered that the
book of nature also tells of miracles. These remarks,
however, have led us to a new train of thought, upon
which I pray you to follow me for a few moments.

The point from which we set out was the fact that
the whole of natural life, from the gigantic spheres that
harmoniously circle in space, down to the least of the
grasses that sprout on the earth, are pervaded by a law
infinitely varied, and yet identically one, on the exer-
cise of which all vital development, all adaptation of
interworking means and ends, all beauty and har-
mony, depend. But besides this law of nature, the
investigation of which is the never-ending task and de-
light of the man of science, there is another law, the
moral, and this is certainly deserving of equal atten-
tion and admiration. The mere comparing and con-
trasting of these two laws has the greatest possible
charm for the inquiring mind. The stars in heaven
and the grasses on earth obey the law of nature with
undeviating punctuality, century after century; and
even the comets, those vagabonds of the sky, which
appeared to be an exception, are found to be no ways
exempted from an obedience of their own to the same
law. True, this natural law, so faithfully followed, is
unknown to these its subjects ; they fulfil it unconsci-
ously, or rather it fulfils itself. It is otherwise with
the moral law, which dwells in the consciences of men.
This cannot get itself accomplished before it has been
realized in consciousness. Now, in some way or other,
it is realized in the consciousness of every human being ;
but in some it shines like a bright star, from childhood
upwards ; in thousands it only exists as a faint reflec-
tion ; thousands, again, are aware that at times it has
died down within them to a weak glimmer, while at
j»ther times it has burst out into a vivid flame. If we
inquire into the cause of this increased light, experience
vrill return a twofold answer. Sometimes the brighter
radiance succeeds a steadfast and determined fixing of

NATURE OR GOD. 4 1

the eye upon the light ; sometimes the fire will kindle
into flame without, or even against a man's will.

But this brightening of the moral law in the human
consciousness by no means insures the accomplishment
of this law. And what constitutes the second point of
difterence between the law of nature and the moral law
is, that the former must be fulfilled, while the latter,
though doubtless its aim is to get itself fulfilled, yet
depends for its fulfilment or its non-fulfilment upon
the free choice of man. And every man has the con-
sciousness of not having so fulfilled the law of his con-
science as he ought. Now, if at the first glance it
should appear as though this moral law were not equally
fraught with power as the natural law, since the latter
is irresistibly accomplished in the vast system of the
universe, while the former is left dependent upon the
human will, a little fuller consideration will serve to
transmute this apparent weakness into strength. We
men are subject to both of these laws ; our physical
life is governed by natural law, while the moral law
addresses itself to our will, and between these two
laws a conflict may arise. For example, the natural
law enjoins the satisfaction of our hunger ; the moral
law commands. Thou shalt not steal, shalt not kill.
An animal so unconditionally obeys the natural law,
that, in so far as his strength allows it, he will always
procure himself food by violence, and thousands of
human beings will, if pressed by want, act in like man-
ner as the animal ; but there are other men who would
prefer dying of starvation to infringing the moral law,
which forbids theft and murder. Neither is it by con-
straint but by gentle persuasion that this moral law suc-
ceeds in counteracting the natural impulse to satisfy
hunger and preserve life. But it may be asked, how
does this moral law assert its majesty with regard to the
myriads who, without concerning themselves therewith,
follow only their natural impulses ? For a long time, in-
deed, it may keep silence, but sooner or later it will begin
to hold a tribunal within the soul, and then the man will
be bowed beneath the burden of his guilt, his conscience
having pronounced sentence of death upon him.

42 NATURE OK GOD.

Now let us turn again to our first question respect-
ing the being of God, and inquire what fresh light
has been thrown upon that subject by our glance at
the nature of this second law, the law of conscience.
First, we have it thereby established that it is not from
unconscious nature, but froru a personal Grod that all
life is derived : for we now see most clearly that man
cannot have arisen as the highest product of natural
life, but miraculously, through a creative act of a per-
sonal God. Man is capable of hearing the silent speech
of the moral law ; he is conscious of being bound to
obey his conscience in despite of his natural impulses,
and if he fails to obey it, he is painfully aware that his
disobedience has degraded him. Now, every intel-
lectual system based upon a belief in Nature as the
highest power, is absolutely incapable of explaining the
origin of this law, which ventures to contradict man's
natural impulses, and often, with gentle supremacy,
triumphs over the pressure of the law of nature. We
may most confidently assert, that no Pantheist will be
found able to bring forward any views on this point
scientifically correct or satisfactory. Thus, as ev«ry
one acquainted with the course of philosophical develop-
ment during the last decade knows well, without my
reminding him, the new impulse given to Pantheism
has been followed by the revival of Materialism, the
most irrational of all cosmical theories whatsoever ; for
if the Natura Naturans be the source of all life, mate-
rial life alone can proceed from that source, therefore
liberty and spirit must be mere figures of speech; phos-
phorus is the noblest agent in existence, and self-love is
the only lawgiver, the only source of all that men esteem
holy.

But if, on the other hand, a personal God be the
Creator of man, and if a soul be, as the Scripture
teaches, spirit of the Divine Spirit, it is self-evident
that our soul must be free and amenable to a difiiirent
code of laws than that which regulates our natural life.
And here new views of the Divine Being open out to
us. K the Eternal Original Spirit, whose omnipotent
wisdom has given laws to natural life, and to whose in-

NATURE OE GOD. 43

herent harmony and exalted blessedness all the beauty
of the universe testifies, has given to man liberty, that
is, the power to determine by the choice of his will
whether he will follow the impulses of nature or the law
of conscience, why, then, this God, who is the creator
of liberty, must be a God of liberty, and not bound by
an iron necessity, as must inevitably be the case with
the Natura Naturans.

And how fraught with inferences this proposition is !
Since God is a God of liberty, we can readily understand
that power of prayer which so many utterly repudiate.
And fm'ther, since the law of conscience addresses
itself to us with such majesty, that the conscientious
man recognises his obligation to give up his life rather
than refuse it obedience ; and since the consciousness
of disobedience thereto inflicts within us the sufi'ering
of self- contempt, while the consciousness of having
been faithful in obeying it fills our souls with the highest
rapture, — must we not conclude that the God from
whom all these laws are derived must be in perfect
harmony with these laws ; must he not, in other words,
be absolutely good, his will absolutely holy ?

Finally, we inquire what could have been the motive
that moved such a God as this to create? That he should
have, by the exercise of his will, called into existence all
the infinite wealth of life which we compress into the
word " universe," gives us some idea of that ocean of
life inherent in his own being. And He himself is the
fountain of that ocean ; his life is a self- derived and
self- containing circle ; consequently he, the source of
all life, must have been self-satisfying, self- delighting.
Why, then, since he was self- satisfying, should he have
created ? The answer can only be : He who had life in
himself created, because he would have external to him-
self, and through himself, beings who also rejoice in their
lives ; in other words, God creates because God is Love.
If then he be love, how can he possibly fail to call
the soul-endowed human race to fellowship with him-
self? For it is only in fellowship with the Eternal
Creative Spirit that the created spirit can meet with
the satisfaction of its desires ; and, therefore, what a

44 NATUKE OR GOD.

degradation of humanity it is to seek, as is done in our
day, under the pretext of exalting the dignity of man,
to dissever him from that Original Spirit who is our
Creator !

And now, having been led step by step to form these
views of God, it is difficult to break off here without
proceeding both to draw further inferences as to his
nature, and to fill up the outline we have traced, with
more living colours. We might, for instance, having
cast a glance at the world of nature and the intellect of
man, go on to consider the argument afforded us by the
history of the human race. Its progressive develop-
ment depends on the countless arbitrary resolves of
countless minds, and nevertheless the philosophical his-
torian discovers therein a fixed plan. How often in
the course of history, it has seemed as, through the
waywardness and passion, the apathy and unreason of
the human race, all further progress were rendered
impossible, when suddenly unexpected occurrences,
new powers, great men, have changed the whole aspect
of affairs, solved the problem, and opened out the way.
It were easy to show that this intelligential progress of
history, accomplished through all the confusion and
clashing of wills of millions of free agents, is only to be
explained by the superintendence and providence of an
omnipotent Divine Personality; the unconscious wis-
dom of nature pitted against the liberty of man, being
incapable of insuring this historical progress. How-
ever, as time to carry out this argument fails me, I
will only ask leave to make one further observation.

We have seen that to make a god of Nature offers no
intelligible theory of the world as it is, and is therefore
quite unsatisfactory to an earnest thinker; that the world
as it is, is only explicable as being created by the power
of the will of an eternal and self-conscious spirit ; that
such a Grod must be a God of miraculous power, for facts
prove to us the introduction into the already created of
new creations such as cannot be considered mere develop-
ments of the previously existent ; that such a God must
also be a God of liberty, since he has created mankind
free ; must be a holy God, since the law that he has

NATUEE OR GOD. 45

written in our hearts reveals itself to us as a holy law ;
thatj finally, this God must be love, for it is only a bene-
volent will to impart his own life that could move a seif-
blessed God to create at all. Many amongst you will
perhaps be disposed to say : " What necessity can there
be to prove all this ? It is self-evident ; it needs no
skill to convince the simple mind that it is not Nature,
but an eternally self-complete and self-conscious God
who is the original cause of the universe." I reply :
Yea, verily, so it is, and one of the triumphant proofs
of the truth of our faith is, that the glance of a simple
eye can overtake its flight ; but still there are those to
whom it is indispensable to follow truth by the measured
steps of severe reasoning, and it is to those that I would
prove that earnest, exact, and thorough examination of
the subject will find itself shut up to one conclusion
alone, the conclusion announced by the first article of
our venerable creed — " I believe in God the Almighty
Creator of heaven and earth."

And, further, I would urge : If this eternal Creative
Spirit indeed lives, and calls us to fellowship with him,
he being holy and each one of us unhol}^, where then is
the way by which the unholy are to be led to the holy ?
For of a truth, the more deep and earnest the researches
of human thought, the more momentous must this ques-
tion become, and the more anxiously will the inquiring
spirit direct its inquiry to Him who has spoken those
incommensurable words of himself: " I am the way ; No
man cometh to the Father but by me." And therefore
it is that even this primary belief leaves us with a pre-
sentiment that besides that truth of an almighty Creator
of the world upon which we have been dwelling, there
must be another truth which shall bring us tidings of a
Mediator between God and man, a presentiment that
the gifted Roman TertuUian was right, when having, in
his ripe manhood, turned from heathenism to Christi-
anity, he summed up the result of his researches and
his experiences in these words, — " The soul of man is
naturally Christian," which means that it is drawn by
its very constitution to find the way, the truth, and the
life, in the Lord Jesus Christ.

in.

Sm, ITS NATUEE AND CONSEQUENCES.

" TT is no especial deptli of reflection," says a well-
J. known theologian, in his work on our present sub-
ject,^ "it is merely an average degree of moral earnest-
ness that we need, to keep us steadfastly gazing on one
aspect of human life, and constantly renewing our re-
searches into its nature. I speak of human life's evil
aspect; of the presence of an element of disturbance
and discord just where we most intensely feel the need
for unity and harmony. This element meets us where-
ever and whenever our minds review the history of the
human race, and its progressive development as a
luhole. It reveals itself no less clearly in countless
ways when we fix our attention upon the particular
relations of human society, nor can we conceal from
ourselves its existence, when we look within the re-
cesses of our own breasts. It is a dark shadow which
casts its gloom over every circle of human life, and
constantly swallows up its gayest and brightest forms."
We may confidently venture to assert, that if there
be any one point in our nature and our condition re-
specting which all men whatsoever are agreed in their
estimate, it is upon this great fact of the existence of
Evil, in us and around us ; of the radical incomplete-
ness of human nature, and consequently of all that
proceeds from or is connected with it. First of all,
each one of us experiences this personally. While feel-
ing in the very core of his being a consciousness of a
Divine origin, of being created for peace and joy, and
fuU enjoyment, he sees himself in point of fact en-
1 Julius Mixller.

SIN, ITS NATURE AND CONSEQUENCES. 47

tangled in and given up to a diametrically opposite
destiny.

Men in their social existence are set one against the
other, and mutually hem in and hinder free activity.
The judgment of the reason opposes the wish of the
heart, the aspirations and efforts of the mind are kept
down and frustrated by the flesh ; our best thoughts and
motives, the accomplishment of which would, we feel,
satisfy our inmost needs, these we are not in a position
to accomplish. From some cause, in some way or other,
our constant and abiding experience is that of the
Apostle : " What I would that I do not, but what I
would not that do I." And as this discord in our
innermost nature never allows any one of us to attain
to full enjoyment, or perfect and abiding peace, so this
universal experience gets itself outspoken as by one
voice wherever human lips open to bear their testimony
to the joy and the sorrow, the destiny and experience
of our race. " The best is never to be born," cried the
greatest of the Greek poets at a time when his native
city was in the fullest bloom of prosperity and splen-
dom- ; and " Whom the gods love, die young." The
singers of Israel proclaim human life to be " labour
and sorrow, full of trouble and unrest ; at its best estate
altogether vanity." Solomon, in close agreement with
the Greek poet, praises " the dead which are already
dead more than the living which are yet alive ; yea,
better is he than both they, which hath not been." And
there is no need to tell you how these declarations have
been repeated, unchanged in spirit, though in varying
words, during the course of centuries, and how it is in
no way necessary to adopt the Christian view of man's
fall and man's depravity, to feel most acutely that our
nature is disturbed and shattered to its very centre,
and, to burst out into the heart-rending acknowledg-
ment of Schiller : —

** The world is jjerfect everywhere.
Where man comes not with his grief and care."

Nay, even say that there were among us some one or
other who did not unqualifiedly feel this ; say that he
had so far relinquished and ignored his claim to inward

48 SIN, ITS NATURE

contentment and satisfaction as to disregard his own
heart's unrest, and to satisfy himself with mere external
pleasures, possessions, and enjoyments; and say that
these were always attainable, and he always in a condi-
tion to appreciate them, — would not such a one still find
in the world without, in the society of other men, the
same sorrowful experience from which he was attempt-
ing to escape, the bitterness he would fain put away ?
Would not a perversity and a confusion confront him
there, frustrating and disappointing his wishes, poisoning
his enjoyment, forcing upon him the evil and the repul-
sive instead of the good after which he was reaching ?
Selfishness, envy, hatred, falsehood, duplicity, anger,
injustice, uncharitableness, and all other sins that shake
and taint human intercourse, would meet him on all
sides, turn which way he would, and cause him most sen-
sibly to feel the nature of the moral condition of our race.
And it is a significant fact, yea, verily, significant as to
his own true state, that the very man we are supposing
would by no means treat the offences of his neighbours,
the wrong done to him, in the same light-hearted man-
ner that he treats his own short-comings and offences ;
on the contrary, he would be perfectly ready to concede
with respect to others, that we meet with little that is
good among men, but with much unkindness, injury,
and untruthfulness. He would ascribe all manner of
evil to those who in any way opposed him, nowise ex-
tending to them his favourable opinion of human nature,
but rather agreeing with prophets and apostles so far as
they were concerned, that there is " none that doeth
good, no, not one ! " And yet such a man might all the
time forget that others on their side would be justified
in holding the same opinion respecting him ; that his
conduct to his neighbours is pretty much the same as
that of those neighbours towards him ; and that their
errors, for which he has so keen an eye, may in a word
be taken as the reflection of his own, which he is so
determined to ignore.

Thus, then, so much is certain and indisputable, and
established in one way or other by the testimony of all,
a perversion, a corruption, is existent in the race of

AND CONSEQUENCES. 40

men ; nor is there any part of their condition, nor any
relation in which they stand exempt therefrom. And as
the very words " perversion and corruption" imply,
this melancholy state of things cannot have belonged to
the original nature of man, but must have sprung up in
despite of and in contradiction to that original nature,
else we should never be sensible of it as a discordant,
alien, and anomalous element in our moral being. If
we were from the first framed for selfishness, what
should we know of love, and love's claims, and how
should we be painfully aiFected by their violation ? If
we had never had experience of a harmonious person-
ality, of inward jo}^, of perfect heart-satisfaction, never
been called and fitted to seek after and finally to attain
them, whence that spirit-yearning, spirit hunger and
thirst after these blessings, by which we are all in our
measure impelled and consumed ? Whence would arise
that incurable discomfort produced by the discord be-
tween our judgment and our will ? Whence that most
painful unrest of every individual among us, and of
the whole race? Whence these sad and heavy hours
which come unsparingly to us all, so soon as we are
removed out of the world's distracting uproar, and
face to face with ourselves? Whence that inward dis-
satisfiedness and incapability of satisfaction, which we
may indeed appease for a while by fresh possessions,
but can never really overcome ; which breaks out ever
anew, and extorts from each one of us at intervals,
throughout life, the cry and confession of St. Paul,
" 0 wretched man that I am !"

How indeed could we possibly account for all this,
if our present condition were the original one for
which our nature was adapted, and the only one it
could ever attain to ? How could we miss that which
we never possessed, of which we were ignorant, which
our natural disposition and capacities did not require ?
If, therefore, we never do feel satisfied in our pre-
sent state, if we sufi'er therein and long for something
better, it is self-evident that we must once have been
in a different condition, must have lost that which once
we possessed ; evident that our actual state fails to re-

D

50 SIN, ITS NATURE

spond to this peculiar constitution of our being and
our inner wants.

" Sin i:self," says St. Augustine, in one of his deeply
significant passages, "bears witness to the originally
diflferent and higher destiny and existence of man,
since even in sin he seeks out for himself not evil, but
rather good, pleasure, happiness, joy." We must some-
where and somehow have sustained a fall ; we must
have forfeited our best possessions ; we must be deposed
kings, who wander about in exile, and eat their bread
in the dust. " Yea, verily, thou art not here below in
thy rightful place or order," exclaims the great French
thinker St. Martin ; "a single good heartrimpulse
which tends to raise thee, a single hour of inward un-
rest, proves this to thee more clearly than all the argu-
ments of philosophers can ever prove the converse."
And another writer observes : " Neither the state of
mere nature in which the savage lives, nor om* own
corrupt civilisation, can be right ; our inward being
points us to a simple life, led in God, consisting in fel-
lowship with him. Our present condition speaks in-
controvertibly of a fall of man, which is the only key
to the whole of his history. And therefore it is that
the world (that is, the uuchristianized, unredeemed)
ever retrogrades in a moral sense, while the intellect is
ever striving to progress ; consequently, in our present
state, man's highest wisdom is only a looking back, a
recalling the past, and virtue itself only a return to
God. This great truth appears more or less distinctly
in all religions. There is, indeed, no science occupied
with spiritual matters which is not based upon it."

Any one possessing even a superficial knowledge of
the various religions and philosophical systems of the
world (not including Christianity), will be perfectly
aware of the truth of this last assertion. Amongst
every people possessing traditions and a literature oi
any kind, we meet with legends of a " golden age," as
the Greek and Roman authors call it, when the earth
brought forth spontaneously whatever its inhabitants
required ; when the gods walked among men, were be-
loved by them, and held converse with them ; when

AND CONSEQUENCES. 5 I

hearts were still pure and innocent, not desecrated by
vice or passion; when peace and joy everywhere pre-
vailed, and the wolf pastured beside the lamb, and did
him no injury. This golden age, they go on to say,
was followed by one of silver, the silver age by one of
brass, the brass by the age of iron, the hard, unjust,
perturbed age in which we find ourselves now. But as
to the liow and wherefore of this ; as to the reason of
the degeneration of our race, no satisfactory answer
was ever returned by Greek or Roman. They stood
before the fact of the existence of evil as before a
mighty and gloomy problem, and finally they carried
sin and guilt and conflict up even into their heaven
and its deities, in order to give some sort of explana-
tion of the dark mystery under which the whole uni-
verse confessedly lies.

There is only one tradition that goes to the root of
the matter, and presents us with a solution of the pro-
blem in perfect accordance with the history and the
consciousness of man. I speak of the tradition of the
people of Israel, the tradition of the Bible, which, how-
ever, is no mere human tradition, but a revelation
from God to our race, of its heavenly inheritance and
the way that leads thereto. And the tenor of this
tradition is briefly this : The reason and cause of the
thoroughly shattered and ruined state in which man
finds himself is sin, and sin in its essential nature is
the creature's attempt to sever itself, and its actual
severance from the Creator ; the creature, willing to
be something through and for itself, and yet to reach
the end for which it longs, the being content and glo-
rious and blessed, while, in point of fact, out of God
this end is unattainable, the creature being able to find
in God alone the peace and full enjoyment to which
its nature is adapted.

Let us then proceed to examine this universal ex-
perience somewhat more closely, and from a Biblical
point of view, combining therewith, as far as our limits
allow, what we know respecting the origin of this
same sin, and the cause of its universal prevalence
amongst men. You may easily convince yourselves how

52 SIN, ITS NATURE

thoroughly reasonable and conformable to the wants of
our nature the Scriptural answer to the momentous
question is, if only you take counsel with your con-
science and your experience, the two great authorities
upon this subject.

Grod, who is love — as was so forcibly and logi-
cally proved in the last lecture — called the human
race into existence, in order that it might enter into
loving fellowship with him, let itself be loved by him,
and love him in return, finding in this mutual love the
same eternal blessedness with which he is blessed. For,
as we all know, to love and to be beloved is blessedness.
Even earthly love, the reciprocal love of created be-
ings, is rightly acknowledged to be the source of the
highest rapture of which the heart is capable ; how
much more then must this be true of the pure, all-
embracing love of Grod, to which there can be no hind-
rance, into which no imperfection of any kind can enter,
and which includes every other love, so that through it
we stand in one great bond of love with all that has the
power of loving, and is worthy of being beloved in earth
and heaven. Hence it is that the law of the Old Tes-
tament, and later the Redeemer, were wont to repeat :
" All that is enjoined thee, 0 man, all that is needful
to the fulfilling of thy destiny, is comprehended in one
word, Have love, love to Grod, and love to thy fellow-
man; Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thy-
self. This is the first and great commandment ; herein
are contained the law and the prophets."

Now it will be at once evident to every one of you,
that real, genuine love can only be the product of
liberty, — must be essentially free. Wherever there is
constraint or necessity, whether external or internal,
there love, in the proper sense of the word, cannot
exist. It is only owing to the poverty of language that
we say of the domestic animal that caresses and obeys
his master, because it is in his nature so to do, that he
loves that master, for his attachment is merely instinc-
tive ;. merely dependent upon the relation in which he

AND CONSEQUENCES. ^^

stands ; he could transfer it from one master to another ;
and he gives it as fully to the lowest and most degraded
of men as to the best. Such love as this does not con-
stitute blessedness, cannot enter into fellowship with
God or embrace him. If we would have loving rela-
tions with Grod, we must adopt these with definite con-
sciousness and from free choice, because we discern him.
to be the best and most love-deserving portion. And
that man should be capable of such relations arises from
man having being created a free agent, with free will
to fulfil or to frustrate this his highest destiny ; free
will to love or to love not. In man's heavenly calling,
in his very capacity for fellowship with God, there is,
accordingly, inherent, a possibility of falling away, of
rejecting the calling, of missing the highest end of his
being. And it is just this which is more immediately
expressed by the word sin. The Hebrew and Greek
correlatives for sin used in the Bible almost exclusively
imply a departure from the right and prescribed way ;
a walking along crooked and mistaken paths which do
not lead to the goal aimed at, and therefore a missing
of the end, such as happens to the wanderer who has
lost his way, or to the careless and unskilful marks-
man.

Hence we at once see in what sin most especially
consists. If the rightful aim of the human being be
love, and if sin be the straying from or missing of that
aim, why, sin must necessarily be the want of love,
lovelessness, or, to use its most significant and exhaus-
tive epithet, selfishness. Man becomes a sinner, and
forfeits his high destiny, because, instead of having his
being in loving fellowship with God, and seeking in
him all he needs : life, joy, blessedness ; he determines
to have his being in himself, and to reach all he requires
by his own efi'orts. He will not surrender, himself;
will not be dependent ; he misuses his freedom so as to
have a will of his own, contrary to the will of God, and
he directs his steps according to that blind self-will.
This is the special root, the germ, and, so to speak, the
vital principle of all and every sin. But how many
ramifications proceed from this one root ; in how mary

54 SIN, ITS NATURE

shapes this principle, this spirit, incarnates itself ! ' For
even in the sinful and selfish heart the desire for hap-
piness and perfect satisfaction continues to exist, and, ac-
cordingly, it must unavoidably seek to gratify itself with
all possessions external to God which lie within its scope,
and require no submissive love on its part, but rather
seem passively to offer themselves to its use and service.
The heart turns, then, from the Creator to the creature,
from God to the world ; from the invisible to the visible,
in order to attain here below what it imperatively needs,
and to still the painful hunger and thirst it feels.

Every individual, each according to his tempera-
ment and his circumstances, seeks to satisfy himself:
one by the lusts of the flesh ; another by the greatest
amount possible of worldly possessions ; a third by a
high and commanding position among his fellow-men,
and so on. A few less sensually minded, who find no
delight in any of these aims, leave externals altogether ;
leave, so to speak, the material nature of such things
alone, and seek to enjoy them merely in a spiritual
fashion. Intellectually, they embrace and contemplate
the fulness of creation and the riches of the world, and
endeavour to win their inmost heart's desire by what
earthly arts and sciences call the perception of the
beautiful.

And now there arises a quite peculiar, unexpected,
unforeseen fact, which is yet at bottom thoroughly natu-
ral, inherent indeed in the very constitution of our
being. For since this our being is originally adapted
to fellowship with God, that is, to loving self-surrender
and dependence, we may at once perceive that by
severing ourselves from God we do not and cannot
attain to the independence we hoped for, but can only
exchange the object of our submission and dependence.
We thought to use and enjoy the world as free agents,
as rulers over that world ; but lo, and behold ! so soon
as we begin to deal with it, man, who by his departure
from God has limited himself to his own strength only,
and thrown himself from off his proper inward centre
of gravity, finds himself far too weak to obtain or keep
mastery over this world. That portion of our nature

AND CONSEQUENCES. 55

most intimately connected with it, that flesh and blood,
as the Scriptm'e calls it, which the soul if united with
God could easily have subjected to itself, glorifying and
spiritualizing it by that very subjection — now tears itself
away from the control of its enfeebled ruler, as that
ruler has torn himself away from God ; makes common
cause with worldly objects, which our perversion has
caused to assume a perverted relation to us, and so
drags us away with irresistible might. We thought to
win the world, we lose ourselves in the world ; we hoped
from the height of our own free unbiassed will to choose
out for ourselves what most pleased us, and we are in-
wardly conscious that whenever we come for this pur-
pose into contact with the world, it invariably gets the
better of us. Even though we are forced to own that
we do not find what we seek, that the w^orld cannot offer
us the satisfaction and blessedness which we crave, yet
we are no longer able to escape from it, and we become
more and more powerless with regard to it, the more —
through its intercourse therewith — the sensual element
within us strengthens, and finally sensualizes and secu-
larizes the spiritual. Pleasures and selfish efforts of
every kind, to which we first willingly surrendered our-
selves, become pain to us, become passions which never
indeed afibrd us what we expected from them, and yet
will not let us go. As a mighty stream overpowers the
swimmer who, in presumptuous reliance on his own
strength, dared to plunge into its rush of waters, so we
are swept ever farther and farther away from our ori-
ginal goal, ever separated more widely from God, our
eternal destiny ever more hidden out of our sight, till
finally we sink into a vortex where we completely forget
all that is above us. Therefore it is that the Scripture
proclaims, " He that doeth sin is the servant of sin."
He who will not be God's is not on that account his own ;
rather he makes a God of, and belongs to, that which
is not God, and therefore cannot possibly satisfy man's
own essential nature, can only oppress and destroy it.

And here is it necessary that I should seek to prove
how, from such a state as this, a disturbance of all
God-instituted relations must ensue, not only in the

56

SIN, ITS NATURE

human heart, but the world around ? Since selfishness
is the only impulse that governs individual thought and
action, it follows that selfishness everywhere clashes
with selfishness, and the possessions and enjoyments of
the world not being illimitable, but having to be par-
celled out among mankind, and the selfishness of the
one being hindered and limited by the selfishness of the
other, offences, quarrels, and conflicts of necessity arise.
And thus selfishness develops into enmity against all
who oppose it. It turns to hatred, envy, bitterness,
in all their forms. " We not only do not love our
neighbour, but we are by nature disposed to hate
him," says the Catechism of our Church. And if we
consider the matter a little more closely, we shall be
obliged to admit that this is no exaggerated statement.
For even in those cases where we do love our neigh-
bour, as we say, this is often no real love, but rather
a form of selfishness. We love our fellow- creatures
either because they are members of our own family, and
we are drawn to them by a certain natural impulse, or
because we receive pleasure and satisfaction of some
kind from them, and hope by their society to fill up the
aching void within us.

Hitherto all that we have advanced has only touched
one side of our subject. We come now to observe
that sin is not only a wandering out of the way, a miss-
ing of the mark, an absence of happiness, but is also
debt and transgression ; a debt which, if there be a
righteous government of the universe, must necessarily
be brought home to us. For we do not wander as those
might do who knew not the right way ; nor do we reject
God's will and our own high calling as being ignorant
of these ; but in some degree or other, each one of us
is conscious of his wanderings and his failures ; con-
scious that he has turned aside out of the way marked
out for him, and persisted in thus diverging; conscious
that both in conduct and condition he finds himself in
constant opposition to that which is in the highest sense
Right and Law^ and therefore that he has done wrong,
and been guilty of a breach of duty. Even where men
are without any external revelation of the Divine will,

AND CONSEQUENCES. 57

it is, we all know, conscience that writes that will in their
heart, and keeps alive within them the sense of having
offended against the highest and best. This conscience,
this most wonderful and supernatural power in human
nature, differs from all other of our faculties in this, that
while the rest serve us and are liable to be controlled
at our pleasure, conscience, on the contrary, is inde-
pendent of our will, and puts forward a claim of its own,
which we can never entirely suppress, to direct that will
and guide it to its own aims. And these aims of con-
science are, we well know, the very opposite to those of
our perverted wills and our fleshly inclinations.

True, conscience itself shares the deterioration of
our nature, and is often clouded ; but still it never
ceases, in the midst of confusion and sinfulness, to point
us to the opposite of these, to the good, and so to
the ojie highest good from whence all goodness flows,
namely, to God. And while it lives and witnesses
within us, no man can remain entirely unconscious of
being, through his selfish and carnal feelings and actions,
in opposition to some higher and holier order of things,
of ofi'ending against some eternal law, of incurring some
responsibility towards a superior power, which is right-
eous and wills righteousness. And if, nevertheless, man
persists in the feelings and the actions which awaken
this consciousness, does not our moral sense at once
tell us that his perverted condition cannot in such a case
be only an evil, a misfortune, such as sickness is (which
is a view of sin man is prone to take) ; but a conscious
transgression, a conscious contempt of a power which
he ought to obey ; an abnegation of his calling, and a
denial of him from whence it proceeds, against his better
knowledge and coJiscience. It is this which constitutes
guilt in the most special and emphatic sense of the
word, as is unmistakably affirmed by the same con-
science that at the first warned us of the fact of our
deviation. It is no empty figure we use, when we
speak of a bad, a guilt-laden conscience, — a conscience
self- terrified, that like Adam after his fall would fain
hide itself in darkness.

Again, it is scarcely necessary that I should re-

5 8 SIN, ITS NATURE

mind _you, for tliis also is a self-evident truth, that the
more clearly and definitely we are instructed as to what
we should do and be, the greater and the darker our
guilt, if we nevertheless persist in disobedience and
resistance. It is in this sense that the apostle speaks
iof sin, " by the commandment, becoming exceeding sin-
ful ;" and this must apply most of all to the perfect
revelation of the divine love in Christ. Henceforward,
there is a possibility of the open and thoroughly con-
scious opposition to the leadings from above, which our
Lord characterizes as that sin against the Holy Ghost
which has never forgiveness. Well therefore may the
apostle say, that if the gospel be not a " savour of life
unto life, it is a savour of death unto death;" and we
have but to reflect how we view and judge the disobe-
dience of our own children when they not only do what
is wrong in itself, but utterly disregard our most ex-
plicit prohibitions, thus rebelling against the parental
will, and shaking off the parental authority : we need
only, I say, think of this to make us most keenly con;
scious of the aspect our sins must wear to him who has
enjoined us to lead a loving and holy life, and who con-
tinually reminds us from within and from without, that
this is indeed his will and commandment respecting us.

Thus, then, the sinner stands in the position of one
who is both erring and guilty, subject both to evil and
to punishment ; for that there is and must be Divine
punishments, will be evident to the simplest mind, un-
less we are content to throw contempt on the nature of
God. What should we — to use once more a familiar
illustration — what should we think of a father who daily
delivered some command or prohibition to his children
without ever giving them a hint of his displeasure in
the event of their direct disobedience to either ? To
every onlooker, as to the children themselves, such a
man would appear lamentably weak ; one whose person
and whose words would only provoke ridicule and scorn.
And shall we dare to transfer this weakness, this ab-
surdity, to our God ? Shall we not rather acknowledge
that the sense of justice inherent in ourselves, which

AND CONSEQUENCES. 59

claims expiation and punishment for every offence, must
dwell in far higher and holier measure in him after
whose image we are created, and therefore in a certain
sense may, and indeed must, deduce his nature from
our own ?

But further, as nothing arbitrary can be attributed
to God. but all that he does is grounded in the very
nature of things themselves, and necessarily comes to
pass, so also the punishment that he has connected with
sin is no arbitrary, externally-imposed punishment, but
one whose perfect justice is self-evident, because it
proceeds out of the very nature of sin, and is indeed no-
thing else but its fruit and completion, as the Scrip-
ture comprehensively expresses it, " AVhatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap." Now if sin sows
selfishness, z.e., the tearing one's self away from God,
and making one's-self dependent on the created, what
else can be reaped but separation, an ever-increasing and
finally complete separation from him, and a submersion
in the perishable creature whose destiny we must hence-
forth share, having voluntarily made common cause
with it? But God is indisputably the one and only
source of all life and all good ; to be separated from
him, therefore, implies a separation from all goodness
and all life : in one word, implies death. " The wages
of sin is death," exclaims the apostle Paul; and St.
James declares, that " when lust hath conceived it
bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth
forth death." Nor can anything exceed the logical
correctness of the statement ; for if sin be the effort to
sever one's-self from God, and to depart from him more
and more, the result sin at last reaches can be no-
thing else than such severance and departure real-
ized; and this involves at the same time a severance
from everything that truly deserves the name of life.
Our temporal and natural death is an evident image of
the eternal ; the other death, as Scripture calls it, that
which is the ultimate and extremest consequence of
what sin, without knowing or wishing it, has striven
after and attained to. We cannot, however, enlarge
upon this subject, particularly as we shall have here-

6o SIN, ITS NATURE

after the opportunity of doing so in our Lecture on the
Future Life. For the present it may suffice to observe,
that this eternal death is what the Scripture, viewing
it as proceeding from the punitive justice of God, calls
damnation ; that fearful sentence, " Depart from me
into darkness," to be spoken by the Lord. God pun-
ishes man hy his sin, by allowing sin to have its way,
and attain to its end. The sinner both condemns and
punishes himself, and is punished and condemned ; both
separates himself, and is separated from life ; nor can
any one say that he is overtaken by a doom uncon-
nected with the nature of his transgression, each one
experiencing that alone which he willed.

Which he willed, and yet, however, did not will ; for
it is a further characteristic of sin (and one so inti-
mately involved in its very nature that we cannot even
think it otherwise) that it is also falsehood. How, in-
deed, could sin ever mislead men's wills, if it appeared
to them in its true form, presented them with its actual
consequences, and allowed them to discern that it ruined
their capacities for happiness, and subjected them to
the despotism of evil ? No one wills to choose such a lot
as this, but rather one diametrically opposite ; it is after
good and after enjoyment that each one is striving. It
is only by picturing to us and promising us what we
wish, that it allures us to its ways. Sin never comes
before us but in the form of some gain, some fuller life
and fuller liberty, and this it invariably proffers at a
small price; some isolated act, say of wilful disobedience,
which is to remain unlinked with consequences or with
further acts of the kind. Sin invariably feigns to abne-
gate its comprehensive character, and conceals its might
to capture and to tyrannize from its victim. It does
not at first allow us to discover that the individual evil
action to which it invites, contains in itself the principle
of universal evil ; on the contrary, it affects still to
acknowledge the law of goodness, and to honour and
obey it on all points save this one. And thus it is that
it deceives us, veils from us its true nature, and leads
us to expect from it the satisfaction of our needs and
wishes, while, on the contrary, we are reaching out our

AND CONSEQUENCES. 6 1

sadly deluded hand to receive the frustration and blight-
ing of all these. By promising us pleasure for the flesh,
and satisfaction for our sensuous requirements, it lures
us into its toils ; and once there, it actually robs us of
legitimate and God-ordained bodily gratifications, shat-
ters health, deadens the senses, takes the external means
of enjoyment away. By the prospect of a position that
will satisfy all personal rights and claims, it impels us
to ambitious efl'orts, and what we actually attain to is
the fate of Tantalus, the position fraught with this
imagined satisfaction, ever receding as v.e advance, till
at length we are landed, not on the promised heights,
but in the abyss. And if at length we, the long de-
ceived, do open our eyes ; if we become inwardly con-
vinced how in every instance the exact opposite of what
was promised is what really falls to our share ; when
the bitter dregs have succeeded to the sweetness of the
first draught, and evil has dropped the mask it wore at
the beginning, and stands before us in its own thoroughly
hateful aspect of enmity against God and our own souls,
even this discovery may come too late. Sin has reached
its aim. The toils into which it lured us by its deceit,
may still hold us so fast we cannot escape from them,
though we know them now to be the toils of misery as
well. " The devil is a liar and a murderer from the
beginning," exclaims our Lord, " When he speaketh
a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the
father of it." He promises life, the fulness of life, the
joy of life ; promises us each delight in larger measure
than before, and meanwhile he is actually destroying
life, the life to come as well as the life that now is, till
finally we attain to eternal death.

I am well aware that in quoting these words of our
Lord, I have spoken a name which will probably pro-
voke in many among you a laugh of compassion. No
doctrine of Scripture has in these latter days excited
more contemptuous opposition, or been more utterly
repudiated, than this doctrine of the existence of the
devil, and in numberless circles he who should in any
sense adhere to it, would hardly escape the imputation
of benighted superstition. Time does not permit me to

6 2 SIN, ITS NATURE

enter upon any lengthened refutation of current objec-
tions, but you will allow me to make one passing obser-
vation : Most certainly the Scripture nowhere admits
the existence of such a devil as the popular imagination
has constructed, and popular legends describe, a " teeth-
gnashing, tailed and horned subordinate deity." In
Scripture, Satan intrinsically appears as the head of
the preter-human domain of evil, the tempter and mis-
leader of creatures originally adapted to abide in God.
And what is there in the belief in such a preter-human
evil one, and in his influence over us, which is contrary
to reason or to experience ? Or who is there who has
ever so remotely succeeded in proving the impossibility
of the existence of such ? Nay, further, if we dwell
seriously upon what we have just been proving, that
sin is, in its essential nature, falsehood^ and can only
get a hold over us by plausible and deceiving lies, why,
then, we must necessarily assume a personal liar and
misleader, who in this way gains admittance to our
spirit. But for this, would not human sinfulness be
itself devilish, that is, a rebellion against God out of
original self-will and self-consciousness, and so one
from which there could be no deliverance ; while, on
the contrary, we have the comfort of knowing that we,
who were deceived at the first, and who continue to be
deceived again and again by lies and semblances, are
yet capable of being restored to liberty by that Truth
which maketh free.

And now having considered the nature of sin under
both its aspects, it remains to us to dwell awhile upon
so-called original sin, and the various opinions that
differ from our own concerning it. But before we enter
upon this topic, you will allow me some brief parenthe-
tical remarks, nay, you will even require them of rae ;
for, as one question, that, namely, of the origin of evil
and its first beginnings amongst us, becomes the more
pressing the more fully the horrors of evil are disclosed,
the remarkable chapter at the beginning of the Bible,
which professes to give an account of this origin of evil,
must occur to the minds of us all, nor must we fail to

A^D CONSEQUENCES. 6^

examine how it tallies with what we have already said.
And nothing is more wondrous than the fact, that in
this very chapter, simple as it is, and intelligible to any
child, all and everything is to be found concerning the
nature of sin, which we may have gathered from the
later developments of Biblical thought, or from our own
experience. The narrative seems a nursery- story, yet
the researches of the greatest thinkers have been di-
rected to it, and failed to exhaust it, so that we are
forced to inquire where we shall find, even considered
from the stand-point merely of reason, a more lucid
explanation of the problem in question ? What old
tradition, what last result of human wisdom, will help us
further ? Of all passages of Scripture, this chapter most
emphatically illustrates the truth, " that the Bible is a
stream through which a lamb may wade, but which an
elephant cannot fathom."

First, let us observe, that what is told us of the
blessedness of the first pair in their communion with
God, and the first commandment enjoined them by
Him, manifestly agrees with our assertion at the begin-
ning of our discourse, that man was formed for loving
fellowship with God ; and further, that he must choose
and enter upon this loving fellowship of his own free
will, beginning with that believing and obedient con-
formity to the Divine precepts, by which that will in-
creases in energy, and becomes more and more one
with the holy will of the Creator. Now, this free will
of man had to be subjected to a test by a command of
God's. Man was to decide whether he would seek his
standing and his happiness in truthful, filial submission
to God, or in some self-elected way which should even
dare a departure from the Divine will. " Thou shalt
not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil," was
the command ; in other words, " Thou shalt not gain the
knowledge of evil by evil-doing ; gain it experimentally,
know it, so as to become a sharer in it ; but by my pro-
hibition, placing the possibility of obedience or disobe-
dience before thy mind, thy good shall become a self-
conscious good, and shall stand out to thee in clear and
recognised opposition to the evil from which thou turnest

64 SIN, ITS NATURE

away." The will of man, in short, was not only to
remain good and holy, but to be exalted to a con-
sciously holy will ; and this was the first step that he
had to take towards his eternal destiny.

But since man, following the dictates of his origin-
ally pure nature, would have conformed to this, the
evil temptation had to come from without, from the
divinely permitted instrument of the divinely appointed
probation ; and the mode of its procedure was the very
one we might have anticipated, having a thousand times
experienced it. First, there was the coarse falsehood,
which would throw doubt upon Grod's commandments :
" Yea, hath Grod said ;" and when the woman replies to
this by simply narrating the facts of the case, and treat-
ing obedience as a thing of course, then follows the
more subtle insinuation, meant to shake her confidence
in the benevolent meaning of that commandment given,
" God has commanded thus that you may not be equal
to him ; that you may not become too highly exalted ;
only make the experiment ; only eat, and you shall be
as gods, knowing good and evil." Just as in the pre-
sent day, Grod's saving ordinance, Christianity and its
claims, is represented as a scheme to stultify the human
race, to keep it down, to prevent it from reaching to its
full happiness and greatest height.

And see further, how in every clause, black and
white, truth and falsehood, are mixed up in this
typical serpent -speech ! It freely acknowledges the
divinely ordained aim of man's existence, and appa-
rently seconds it; for verily, to know good and evil,
and to be like God, is the very end for which man is
adapted. " We know that when he shall appear, we
shall be like him," exclaims the apostle. But it is
about the way to that end that the temptation lies.
*• Seek it not through God, not through abiding in his
word but rather seek and win it by your own inde-
pendent will and power. This is the only possible and
worthy way of development. Disobedience to God will
be a transitional stage to perfection and completeness ;
without it you will never reach them, but must ever
remain in a state of childhood, and ignorance, and de-

AND CONSEQUENCES. 6 ^

gradation." The whole system of Pantheism, the most
subtle of all falsehoods, is contained herein : " Yes,
there is a highest good," so runs the pleading now as
then ; " yes, you are fitted for that highest good, and
will ultimately attain it, but not through obedient faith
and submissive love ; on the contrary, you must rise
out of this lowly condition to a higher one of independ-
ence and self- exertion." And this deceived the woman.
The pleasure of pitting her own will and power against
the will of God fascinated her : " When the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to the
eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she
took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also
unto her husband, and he did eat."

And no sooner was this done than the consequences
which we have represented as inevitably linked with
such departure from God began to ensue : First came
the emancipation of the flesh from the spirit, with which
it had been up to this moment unconstrainedly and
perfectly one. Now the body began to put forth its
own separate claim ; now there was forced on the
beings who wanted to exist independently, such a
view of their own physically limited, mortal, animally
organized individuality, as, contrasting with their newly-
awakened pride, created in them a sense of shame.
Yes, their eyes were indeed opened, as the serpent pro-
mised, only not opened to look around them as gods ;
rather to look around in most ungodlike degradation
and subserviency to the creature ; " they knew that they
were naked," and they sought to cover their nakedness.
Moreover, the impulse to untruthfulness, the delusive
falsehood of sin, has eaten into their nature. They
now deceive themselves as sinners ever do, they seek to
deceive God, and yet they are not able to shake nfi" the
terror of an evil conscience, and the sense of guilt and
profound alienation from him. They flee from God ;
they endeavour to hide from him, to excuse themselves
before him by specious pretences. And finally, they
undergo that which had been foretold them as tlie un-
avoidable result of self-separation from the original
source of life : "In the day that thou eatest thereof

£

66 SIN, ITS NATURE

thou slialt surely die." The tree of life in the garden
of Eden, typifies the constant flow of living energy im-
parted by Grod to man, so long as man abides in fellow-
ship with Grod. The driving of the fallen pair out of
Paradise, and away from this tree of life, denotes that
in their present state of separation from God, their
earthly bodies must undergo the condition attached to
all earthly created things of perishableness and decay,
and their organism having degenerated from its original
unity and normal development, must be now fretted
and destroyed by the conflict of its own divided ele-
ments, unless it can be in some way restored to union
with Grod, and thereby to harmony with itself.

kjuch is what Scripture, with incomparable clear-
ness and truth, teaches us respecting the entrance
of sin amongst us. It does not, however, proceed to
afford us an explanation of the origin of evil, and we
would just observe that any explanation which should
really enlighten our understanding, is neither possible
nor indeed conceivable. For evil, as the opposite of true
reason, the reason namely of Grod, is essentially the reason-
less, the im-reasonable, that which blindly and arbitra-
rily averts itself from the law of Reason. How then
could its origin be explained on reasonable grounds, its
possibility and actuality demonstrated by any intellec-
tual process? Vie can indeed contemplate evil as an
existing fact, we can observe its appearance and its
influence among and over ourselves, but we cannot say,
why it appeared, nor why the first free will that turned
away from God chose that fatal direction.

There is, however, another far plainer and more in-
telligible subject, that now challenges our attention, and
to which the Church has affixed the technical appella-
tion of Original Sin. We all know what is meant by
the phrase. It expresses the conviction that All who
belong to our race, without any exception whatsoever,
appear as aliens and sinners before God, and prove
themselves so from the very beginning of their life ;
and it explains this truth of which we are convinced by
a reference to that law of connexion between parent

AND CONSEQUENCES. 67

and offspring, owing to which the perverted will and dis-
position which manifested itself as sin in the former, is
handed down to the latter. This, too, is one of the
doctrines peculiarly repugnant to many in our day.
This assumption of original sinfulness is often declared
to be a glaring degradation of human nature, a narrow-
ing, if not a denial of human liberty, a blasphemy
against Divine justice, and much more of the kind.
But can these and such like declamations against the
theory do anything to alter the fact upon which the
theory is based ? Can our opponents anywhere show
us a man who is thoroughly perfect even as our Father
in heaven is perfect, who loves God with all his heart
and all his power, and his neighbour as himself, as the
ideal of human perfection requires ? And if they can-
not do this, what other explanation have they to offer
of this universal sinfulness of the race? Will they
suggest the singular idea that each man undergoes his
own special fall, and sins as Adam did ? Or will they
adopt that most superficial notion that it is defective
education and bad example alone, which pervert ori-
ginally pure and well-inclined creatures into practical
sinners? But do we not daily see in the case of our
own children, even before they can sin coiisciously^
before education or example can have had any effect
upon them, that their very first feelings and impulses
are those of anger, selfishness, resistance, disobedience,
even though it is true, that as contrasted with adults,
they are relatively innocent ? Yea, in their very
earliest days, before they are cognizant of anything,
still less of good and evil, do they, while uttering
their angry, uncontrolled cries, make upon us the im-
pression of pure, holy, and complete beings ? or do they
not much rather most vividly recall to the shame of us
their parents, those words of the Psalmist, " Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me ?" And if this be so, can there be any-
thing irrational, anything contrary to experience, in
deducing this defective and perverted condition from
their relation to defective and perverted parents ? Does
not the most universal and incontrovertible experience

68 SIN, ITS NATURE

suggest such an explanation ? Do we not see children
bear the impress of their parents in every other point?
Is not the form transmitted, — the features, the talents,
temperament, disposition ? And is the si7iful element
in all these to be omitted ? Is the will to be inherited,
but not the discordant and perverted direction of the
will ? Is the natural character to be handed down, but
not its disturbances and defects ? Nay rather, are not
the very bodily ailments so constantly transmitted from
father to son, through several generations, sufficient to
oppose such a theory as this ? You see yourselves into
what contradictions and improbabilities we wander when
we try to contradict the teaching of Scripture, which
harmonizes so perfectly with observation and experi-
ence.

There is only one objection to this doctrine of the
universal and hereditary corruption of human nature
through the fall of our first parents, to which I can
concede any sort of plausibility. It is an objection of
the following kind : "If this be true, every one of us
is innocent of his own sinfulness, and it is a crying
injustice on God's part that we should be born in a
condition that leads us to miss our eternal goal, and
subjects us to eternal misery. Why," continue the
objectors, " is not each man created afresh, immediately
by the hand of God, with the same liberty of choice our
first parents possessed ? Then only would it be true of
each that he reaped what he had sown, whereas we have
to reap and to eat a bitter harvest we never planted ?"
But even this objection will be found easy enough
to reply to. For if we possess any insight whatsoever
into the nature of religion, we shall soon see that the
whole of it is adapted to and presupposes a social and
interdependent state. Humanity is to be and form a
whole, an intimately connected organism ; and in order
to this it is essential it should have a common origin,
should not cocsisfc of innumerable and independent
humanities. It is not as single indioiduals, but as
members of a bod?/ corporate, as humanity as a whole,
that we are elected to fellowship with God. Scripture
speaks of a fulness, a completeness appertaining to the

AND CONSEQUENCES. 6^

heirs of salvation ; the heavenly inhabitants are to make
up one body, of which all the members are to be intimately
connected, and Christ the Son of man the head. And
therefore the fundamental condition of fitness for the
kingdom of heaven is not only, " Thou shalt Icve the
Lord thy God ;" but this as well, " Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself."

But, again, this doctrine of original sin in no way
impugns the justice of God, since for this sin, and all
that it entails, he has instituted a deliverance and a
remedy, and he alone can fail of his high eternal des-
tiny who self-consciously and resolutely wills to refuse
this remedy and its conditions. Redemption has con-
nected with hereditary sin a hereditary blessing, which
we impart to our children in baptism ; and the strength
of the latter, if it be appropriated and used, exceeds
that of the former. Together with the first Adam, we
have now a second Adam, from whom a new, God-
pleasing, and eternal life proceeds, as from the first
Adam a sinful and death-tending life. Nothing, there-
fore, has any longer power to ruin or condemn us, but
a persistent turning away from the Redeemer, for which
each man is alone responsible. " I judge no man,"
says Christ. He that believeth not on me is self-con-
demned.

From this doctrine of original sin, however, it neces-
sarily follows that w^e are incapable of delivering our-
selves from our sinfulness, incapable of attaining to the
moral condition essential to heavenly happiness ; for if
sin consists in a perverted direction of the will, and
this perverted direction is from the first inherent and
dominant in us, how can we find within our own nature
a capacity for withstanding and rectifying it ? Can the
corrupted, and, at the same time, enfeebled will, help
itself? This were as absurd and impossible an idea as
that of a man extricating himself from a quicksand by
his own strength ; and since all our other faculties are
subservient to the will, and receive from it their
direction, and consequently all obey its selfish impulse,
where, in the whole scope of our being, are we to find
that still pure, intact, and healthy energy, by which it

70 SIN, ITS NATURE

were possible to bend this will to the right direction ?
No ; sin requires a conqueror and deliverer whose posi-
tion is outside of its domain, and who, standing on firm
ground, can reach out to us a helping hand, and so
raise us from the quicksands in which we sink.

And now let me very briefly proceed to contrast
with this scriptural doctrine of sin, — logically conclusive,
concurrent with reason, conscience, and experience, as
you have yourselves seen it to be, — some of the principal
counter-teachings current amongst us. We will not
dwell at any length upon the views of those who pro-
nounce it degrading to human dignity and worth to
speak of a Fall, a moral deterioration sustained by man,
and who, to restore his injured honour, simply deny his
sinfulness altogether, and insist upon his still being
actually good and well-inclined. To such reasoners we
would only reply, " Ye know not what ye say." It is
not the Scriptures, it is you yourselves, who, by such
assertions as these, most deeply dishonour man's capa-
bilities and destiny, and steal from him his royal crown ;
for, in saying as you do, " Man is good enough as he
is ; even in his incompleteness we discover in him
moral energies which perfectly satisfy us that he will
attain to a high destiny without foreign assistance ;" in
saying this, what poor and miserable conceptions must
you entertain of man's destiny and worth and being,
as well as of the nature of moral excellence, and the
degree of it to which he is called. Very different is the
language of the Bible concerning him. The Bible
affirms his nature to be so elected and adapted to the
highest, that even the least failure, the least taint, is in
him unbearable, and in contradiction to his destiny.
So long as he is not holy as God is holy, like him in
the purity and the glory of perfect love, so long is he
not what he should be, what he can be, what he will be !
Yes, it is just because God's revelation sets us upon
this loftiest, this almost inconceivable pinnacle, that it
considers us in our present state to be so deeply sunk
in poverty, misery, and darkness. The human race
never is, never can be more highly honoured than when

AND CONSEQUENCES. y I

it is said, " Ye are not yet in any sense what ye shall
be !" — so infinitely does the royalty destined for you
transcend your present broken-down and slavish state.

But there is another conception of sin, which more
or less, indeed, acknowledges this, only proceeds to
opine, that the present condition of man is an inevit-
able, nay, an essential transitional stage towards this
highest height; that what the Scripture calls sin, is
in fact neither guilt nor wandering, but merely a want
of development and maturity, just as childhood is a
lower stage in the progress to manhood ; that just as
the child fails at present to possess those manly facul-
ties to which one day it will attain, without being held
culpable or even responsible for that failure, so is it
with the human race and its so-called depravity. Men
only need to develop their being on all sides, and to
progress in all directions, and they will gradually work
themselves free from carnality and selfishness, and will
attain to that condition of perfect knowledge, love, and
happiness, which the Bible describes as the Kingdom
of Heaven.

But, after all, it is to our conscience that we must
appeal respecting this question, and does not this
view most definitely contradict its voice ? For, ac-
cording to this theory, sin is nothing but a lower
stage of development ordered and willed by God him-
self, and therefore not wrong, not transgression at all !
Wherefore is it, then, that we invariably feel it to be
such, so that the commission of it entails upon us an
uneasy conscience, and destroys our rest and peace ?
And wherefore is it that we mutually condemn each
other, and condemn our own selves on account of it, if it
be after all nothing but deficiency and partial develop-
ment? No one reproaches the child with its childish
measure of intelligence, no one requires from a less
advanced stage the fruits of the more advanced ; but we
do, and are inwardly constrained to make a reproach of
sin, and right conduct is demanded of us in every
stage of life alike, both by our own consciousness and
that of others. And further, does it in any way accord
with our conceptions of a holy God, that he should him-

72 SIN, ITS NATURE

self ordain and decree sin [i.e., contradiction to him-
self and disturbance to his laws), even as a transitory
and transitional state ? It is self-evident that such a
theory as this is only consistent with a view of God that
differs essentially from that Christian, that holy con-
ception of Him, the necessity of which the preceding
Lecture established.

This is one reason that lays a veto upon the accept-
ance of this theory. But there is another — our expe-
rience. Let us inquire. Is it then really true, that in
proportion as man develops physically and intellec-
tually, he becomes more and more free from sin?
From certain low and animal forms of it he indeed
may free himself by increasing intelligence and higher
cultivation ; but selfishness^ its peculiar germ, selfish-
ness as displayed against God and man, does he over-
come and lay aside this by his intellectual growth ?
Does it not rather increase as he increases, so that the
child comes confessedly more near to loving God with
his whole heart, and his neighbour as himself, than the
full-grown man ? And if this be true of the individual,
how should it fail to be true of the race at large ? We
hear much said of progress even in a moral sense ; but
men forget, that in that picture of humanity which lies
immediately before them, there has been the interven-
tion of Christianity, which in a thousand ways breaks
and represses the power of sin even in those who are
not themselves believers. If, however, we look at other
portions of our race, we nowhere find the moral progress
spoken of, but rather universal moral retrogression, the
longer the more complete. We have all-sufficient evi-
dence how incomparably better off the aborigines of
America, the South Sea Islands, China, and India, for-
merly were, in a moral point of view, to enable us to speak
positively on this subject. Now, how could we possibly
account for such a phenomenon as this if the above
theory were true, if, without the Divine power in re-
demption, the mere natural course of things tended to
bring about an increased freedom from sin, and a
progress to ever higher and higher degrees of moral
excellence ?

AND CONSEQUENCES. 73

No, we must just come back to the truth first
laid down, " Sin is enmity against God," and in this
respect there is no difference, we are all alike sinful,
we are therefore by nature all children of wrath. Our
own will, our own powers, are impotent to alter the
past : hut we are not on this account lost heyond power
of rescue. When the first man sinned, and sentence
was pronounced upon him, there was heard simultane-
ously the mysterious promise of a future triumph over
sin, a future redemption from it : " I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel." That is, thenceforward there shall be strife
imd opposition between the power of evil, between sin,
and the special, essential, God-adapted nature of the
human race. The task, the need, the great life-effort
of humanity, so long as its history endures, shall be to
wrestle with the ruin which sin has introduced into our
midst, and to trample over it. But in this agonizing
conflict victory shall not finally remain with the Evil
One, with Sin, but with the Seed of the woman. Out of
the human race one who belongs to it shall arise, one
born of woman like the rest, who shall tread down the
powerful foe, and rob it of its conquering strength,
though not without wounds and blood. And as the
first part of this prophecy has been accomplished, and
is still going on before our eyes, — the ceaseless strife,
namely, between humanity and evil ; so also we know
that the second part of it has not remained unfulfilled,
that the Conqueror has already appeared, and that we
through him stand opposed to a baflQed and vulnerable
foe, tread a redeemed world, and behold the way once
more opened that leads up to our God and our heavenly
home.

74 TilE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

IV.

THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION AND THE
HEATHEN WORLD.

F we trace back the history of our race to its dim
and distant commencement, we shall find that it was
even then divided into different peoples, each having their
ownspeciallanguagesand religions, and that these peoples
were not only mutually unintelligible, but in a state of
enmity and warfare. Now, this is no normal condition,
but one arguing disorder and disruption. Its worst
feature, however, was not the inimical separation of
these peoples from each other, but their being separated
from the living God, steeped in polygamy and idolatry ;
so that, according to the language of Scripture, the
very word Gentiles signified heathens. For God is the
source of all life and all true life -enjoyment ; without
him the nations, be their external existence ever so
ornate and brilliant, are but as sheep without a shep-
herd, lost children without a home ; and God is not only
the source of all creatures, but also their bond of union.
It is because humanity severed itself from God that it
lost this true point of union, and became itself internally
divided. Tlius we discover that there must have been
some great original cause, some world-embracing cata-
strophe, in which humanity as such rebelled against God,
and was therefore parcelled out into different languages,
nations, and religions ; so that enmity, opposition, and
exclusiveness replaced that beautiful many-sided unity
in which the different races were to constitute one
great family of God. The people of Israel, who, pos-
sessing the true knowledge of God, possessed also the
true knowledge of mankind, and retained a correct
memory of their primeval state, in their sacred records

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. "J ^

refer this great historical fact to the building of the tower
of Babel. For after the deluge we again find mankind
in a state of universal apostasy ; and their disruption
into heathen and inimical nations, is the great historical
manifestation of the sinful condition described to us in
the previous lecture.

But amidst all these nations one people stands out
before us essentially diiferent from the rest, the people,
namely, of Israel. While all others worshipped several,
and hence necessarily false gods, we find here the know-
ledge and the worship of the one true God. How are
we to explain this singular fact ? Can the Israelites
have been by their natural constitution adapted to deve-
lop correct religious ideas, as the Greeks were to attain
the highest place in art ? But the parallel will scarcely
hold, for all other nations had some artistic faculties or
other, the Greeks only brought them to the greatest per-
fection ; whereas the religion of the Jews differed essen-
tially from heathen religion, in that it was true while
they were false ; and just as religion is a different thing
altogether from art, so the difi"erence in kind between
truth and falsehood is quite other than the difference of
degree between the imperfect and the perfect in art ;
and moreover, we know that all error, religious error
more particularly, is a consequence of sin, and that the
Israelites were as little exempt from sin as the other
nations of the earth. Therefore the people of Israel
could no more have evolved the true religion by their
own natural powers, than we can gather grapes from
thorns, or figs from thistles.

And this the self- consciousness of the people them-
selves, as expressed in their sacred records, perfectly
confirms. The Jews never claim the honour of having
originated their own religion ; on the contrary, the Old
Testament Scriptures represent them as naturally re-
bellious to God, and prone to idolatry ; in short, as
heathenish in their tendencies as any other nation. Their
knowledge of God, and their religion, both at the first
and throughout all stages of its development, is invari-
ably ascribed to Divine Revelation. The assertions in
the Old Testament respecting the nature and the origin

76 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

of the Divine Idea they held, are inextricably connected,
and if we acknowledge the truth of the first, we cannot
without inconsistency reject the latter.

Another point in which the Jews differed from every
other nation, was their expectation of a Messiah. As
God was the origin of the Old Testament life, Israel
having from the first recognised itself to be the people
and the kingdom of Jehovah, so the Messiah was its
end. While heathen nations and empires decayed
and fell without hope of deliverance, in Israel, on
the contrary, political decline was attended by an
increasingly clear expectation of a high and God- sent
Deliverer, who should restore the Divine kingdom to
a new and far greater holiness and glory than it had
ever known before. This idea, too, was always referred
by its enunciators, the prophets, to divine revelation,
and we have every reason to receive their testimony.
For not only is it mere folly to suppose that the an-
nouncers of the highest truths of humanity could be
themselves mistaken as to whence these truths came,
but it is contrary to the very nature of things that such
golden fruit as this should grow on the barren thorn
of the sinful human heart. Could this have been, surely
the great and noble spirits of other nations, Socrates,
Plato, Zoroaster, Confucius, would also have confidently
expected salvation, whereas we only hear from their lips
a few dim and obscure yearnings of the kind. It was
only as a powerless ideal, that, in times of decadence,
heathen philosophers and other earnest men, as for in-
stance, Tacitus, held out a higher condition to the
enervated race around them ; it was only as a vanished
epoch, a poetical dream or a political panegyric, that
heathen poets ever sang of the golden age. The hea-
then were without hope, because they were without God
in the world (Eph. ii. 12). Amongst the Israelites, on
the contrary, this Messianic idea did not appear as a
mere yearning or poetical ideal ; but from the first as a
definite, and as centuries rolled on, ever more and more
definite prophecy. Now such a prophecy transcends
human power. The predictions of even so pious a man
as Savonarola were not prophecies, for they remained

AND THE HEATHEN WOKLD. 77

unfulfilled ; whereas we have a fulfilment of this pro-
phecy, which is without a historical parallel ; we have,
centuries later, Jesus of Nazareth declaring himself to
be this promised Messiah, and announcing the dawn of
that kingdom of heaven which the prophets foretold.

This leads us to a third peculiarity which distin-
guishes the Jews from the heathen, I mean the relation
of their religion to the Christian, which is represented
in both divisions of the Scriptures as connected with
the old Covenant ( Jer. xxx. 31 ; Luke xxii. 20 ;
2 Cor. iii. 6-14). Christianity recognises in the old
dispensation its divinely- ordained preparatory stage ;
while in heathenism it sees the power and bondage
of an alien principle (Acts xxvi. 18 ; 1 Cor. x. 20).
This peculiar connexion between the two Testaments,
their difi'erent stages of revelation being fraught with
one and the same spirit, and constituting a marvellous
whole, is a witness to the Divine origin of the Jewish
(as well as the Christian) religion. And when with
conscientious thoroughness of research we examine
into the books of the two Testaments, we find, both
in their history and their doctrine, a connexion ex-
tending through centuries, a gradual progress which
points to one comprehensive plan, which could by no
possibility have had its origin in the mind of short-
lived man, but can only be reasonabl}' explained by
that Divine causation to which the Bible itself refers
all things ; and if we proceed further to test this con-
clusion, by comparing it with our knowledge of other
kinds, we shall find, that not only do the Divine reve-
lations intimately agree together, but with the condition
and needs of our human nature, with the fundamental
relations of the universe, and with the being of God.
Incomparable wisdom, holiness, and love breathe on us
from the Scripture pages, and perfectly satisfy the de-
mands of conscience and the search of the intellect after
the highest truth. " Nothing has so convinced me,"
says a very exact and intelligent theological thinker,
who has thoroughly studied the whole of Biblical His-
tory, I allude to the respected Hess of Zurich ; — " no-
thing has so sincerely convinced me of the truth of

7 8 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

Christianity, its revelation, history, and doctrine, as
the having found in the sacred records, on one hand,
what perfectly satisfies the needs of humanity both for
time and eternity, and, on the other hand, in the Divine
provision towards this end, such a connected progress
from small to great, from the particular to the universal,
as would have been impossible to human invention."

Accordingly, we now find ourselves not only autho-
rized but bound to contrast with the heathen the people
of Israel as the people of God, in the undiluted, the
Biblical sense of the word. The history of the Israelites
is the history of Divine revelation ; that of the heathen
the history of humanity left to itself. The former shows
us the positive, the latter the negative preparation for
Christianity ; in other words, it affords us a practical
illustration of what humanity without God becomes.
To use the pregnant expression of the latest historical
commentator on the Old Testament, J. H. Kurz, " In
the former, we have salvation prepared for humanity ; in
the latter, humanity prepared for salvation." And the
more closely we examine into both these processes, the
more we shall discover in the universal history of the
Old World a preparation, and so an argument for Chris-
tianity. Let us, then, in the first place, direct our atten-
tion to the development of the Divine revelation to
Israel, as we find it recorded in the Bible annals.

Over the whole world sits enthroned the eternal God,
who is love. Because of his love he has from eternity
determined to reveal and impart himself ever more and
more completely to his intelligent creatures, that they,
being filled with his own life and glory, may attain to
the perfecting of their existence in him, and thus God
be all in all. Nor did God relinquish this loving plan
upon the entrance of sin into the world ; on the con-
trary, he revealed his love all the more gloriously, as
that grace which saves the lost, and brings about the
perfecting of the world by the process of redemption ;
and because of his free and inconceivable mercy, he held
fast his thoughts of peace respecting humanity against
all heathenish apostasy, and determine to accomplish
first the redemption, and finally the perfection, the

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD.

79

glorification of the world by means of continuous reve-
lations of himself.

But now what position is this Divine revelation to
occupy with regard to the false paths into which the
nations have wandered ? There is to be no fresh deluge
to exterminate the ungodly race, this, God — having
given, once for all, at the commencement of human
history, that fearful example of his judgments — has ex-
pressly declared (Gen. viii. 21 ; ix. 15). Neither was
the whole of humanity to be miraculously brought back
to the livinc; God, for that would have been a violent and
enforced deliverance, while God, on the contrary, most
carefully respects the liberty of man. Thus, He could
neither annihilate nor convert the human race as a
whole ; it only remained, therefore, that at certain
points of greatest susceptibility to Divine manifesta-
tions, he should begin to work for the deliverance of
all. God had to adopt individual expedients to accom-
plish general salvation ; therefore, he set apart, — as
formerly, Noah, — the Semitic Abraham, to be the espe-
cial recipient of his revelation. Abraham, during the
early nomadic period, when national life was in process
of formation, was chosen the ancestor of one particular
family who were eventually to become a particular na-
tion. AVhile God suffered the heathen to walk in their
own ways (Acts xiv. 16), he chose Israel for his own
inheritance, and by the historical destiny of that one
people, prepared the way for the final purpose of all
revelation, — the redemption of the human race. This
was done by three great successive stages.

In order to bring about redemption, it was first of
all necessary that sin should be recognised in its
essential nature of a contradiction to the holy will of
God, and consequently to the ideal and the destiny of
humanity as well. Now, this could never come to pass
unless man felt himself inwardly bound to God, and
knew it to be his duty to walk before him and to be
perfect (Gen. xvii. 1). It was, therefore, necessary to
take out and set apart from the heathen godlessness and
worldliness around, a holy section of humanity, in which
God might once more re -unite the severed bond between

8o THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

himself and his creatures, and thus lead them back to
faith. This was done in the patriarchal dispensation
under which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived. Upon
the basis of this dispensation, it now became possible,
the family having developed into the people, that,
secondly, God's holy will should be revealed in the
law, by which came the knowledge of sin (Rom. iii. 20).
To this stage succeeded, thirdly, the foretelling of re-
demption by the prophets, who led from the law to the
gospel, from Moses to Christ. The patriarchal dis-
pensation, the law, and the prophets, are thus the three
stages of revelation in the Old Testament, which now
claim our more close consideration. But before we
enter upon them, there are a few obstacles in our way
which it were well to remove.

In the Old Testament, as in the Bible generally,
we find numerous miracles, and to these the think-
ing of the present day is peculiarly averse. Now,
the question of the possibility of miracles reduces it-
self to that other question of the existence of a God
who created the world, and in whose power it must
therefore be to introduce into it new creations. That
we all have abundant reason, nay, are even con-
strained by the laws of correct thinking, to believe in
such a God, has been proved to us in the first two of
this series of Lectures ; and therefore, the possibility
and the existence of miracles may be looked upon as
already briefly and inferentially proved. In fact, that
simple declaration by which Gabriel proved to the
Virgin IMary the possibility of the miraculous concep-
tion of the Saviour, " With God nothing shall be im-
possible" (Luke i. 37), is the best argument for the
miraculous that severe and profound thought on God's
relation to the world can discover. It is in this sense
that the noted free-thinker, J. J. Bousseau, declares
in his forcible way, that it is blasphemous to deny the
possibility of miracles, and that he who does so deserves
to be imprisoned. And one of the most acute of our
modern thinkers, Bichard Bothe, remarks, in his Stiidien
unci Kritiken, '' I will candidly confess, that up to this
present time I have never been able to understand why

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. • 8 1

the idea of miracles should be repugnant to my reason.
This may proceed from my being originally of so
thoroughly theistic a nature, which has never detected
in itself the slightest tendency of a Pantheistic or
Atheistic kind." Miracles, indeed, belong to the very
nature of divine revelation, and are its necessary
phenomena; for revelation consists in God himself
acting and speaking directly in humanity, so as to
create in it something new which humanity could never
have produced out of its own resources, and thereby
to bring back the world to its original ideal of perfec-
tion in God. Neither should it any way surprise us,
that the miracles recorded in the Old Testament are
different in character and more marvellous than those
in the New ; for, from the sensuous, externally-directed
spirit of that olden time, and of the still childish people
(see Gal. iv. 1), it was necessary that startling and
colossal miracles should be brought to bear, having the
more exclusively external character of violent and ab-
normal physical occurrences.

There are, however, other difficulties in the Old
Testament which appear more formidable, because they
not only threaten to offend our laws of thought, but
our moral consciousness ; as, for instance, the polygamy
of the patriarchs, the command to exterminate the
Canaanites, and so forth. Now, in dealing with questions
of this kind, it behoves us to be candid and thoughtful
enough to judge the part from the spirit of the whole.
It is as unfair as it is unscientific to detach particular
passages from their context, and to use them as wea-
pons against the Old Testament. Before we venture
to accuse it of defective morality, we should remember
that those Ten Commandments lie at its very founda-
tion, which have been transplanted into every Christian
catechism, learnt by heart by all Christian people, and
' still form the basis of the morality of the whole civilized
world. But though this proves how much of undying
divine truth is contained in the Old Covenant, we are
still to remember, on the other hand, that it is but the
Old Covenant, not the New , only the preparation for,
not the perfect revelation itself. Therefore, an unpre-

8 2 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

judicecl and genuinely historical criticism measures the
facts of the Old Testament by its own standard, not by
that of the New Testament, nor of modern times. It
takes up the idea expressed by Lessing, an idea founded
on Scripture, that, namely, of a divine education of
the human race. Now, it is perfectly reconcilable
with the divine educational wisdom, that certain con-
ditions which, after the work of redemption had been
accomplished, fell under moral condemnation, as, for
instance, polygamy and slavery, should be still tolerated
under the earlier dispensation, just as a judicious teacher
or parent will only attempt to wean the children under
his care gradually from their faulty ways, proceeding
from requirements easily fidfiUed to those which require
greater efforts of self-control. As to the extermination
of the Canaanites, it only exemplifies the universal his-
torical sentence that new and vigorous nations have
invariably been called to execute upon the worn-out
and degenerate ; which, for example, the Babylonians
and the Romans executed at a later period upon the
Jews themselves, the Persians on the Babylonians, the
Grermans on the Romans. Only in Israel we read that
" the Lord laid bare his arm;" in other words, this
righteous judgment, which he usually accomplishes by
his unseen guidance of the course of historical events,
was expressly committed to his chosen people, who
found themselves in presence of a peculiarly degraded,
ripe for destruction, and yet ensnaring heathenism.
Naturally I cannot in the space allotted to me clear
up specifically all objections and difficulties that may
be found in the Old Testament ; it will be enough,
in contradistinction to a widely-spread and superficial
Rationalism, to lay down the truly scientific method of
examination, and to indicate to all earnest seekers after
truth, that here, too, faith and knowledge are easily
reconcilable, nay, are much more than reconcilable
merely.

To return. Abraham then is separated by God's
command from all connexion with his previous circum-
stances and surroundings, and their heathenish ten-
dency ; he is to leave his own family, his own country,

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 8 J

and to go into a strange land, that of Canaan, which, is
henceforth to be the chief scene of the divine mani-
festations. And that it might be made evident that
this emio-ration of Abraham's was not an isolated or
accidental occurrence, but rather the ground and begin-
ning of a series of further manifestations, God attaches
a promise to the calling of the father of the faithful
(G-en. xii. 1-3, 7) ; which, at a later period, to enforce
its significance, he frequently repeated both to Isaac
and Jacob. The nature of this promise is threefold :
Is^, The childless Abraham is to become the ancestor
of a mighty nation ; Idly^ The land of Canaan is to
belong to that nation ; %dly^ Through Abraham and his
seed all generations of the earth are to be blessed.
Thus the promise from the very first embraces the whole
of the Old and New Testament future, and while the
appointed way is seen to begin with the choice of one
individual man and one race, the universality of the aim
— blessing and salvation for all humanity, — is already
revealed, and to Abraham personally, rich recompense
was made in this promise for all that he had to sacrifice
for God's sake. He was to leave his family indeed, but
in return he was in his advanced age to have a family
of his own, nay, to become the father of a great nation :
he was to forsake his home, but to him and to his pos-
terity a wide and beautiful land was to be given as
inheritance. It is thus our God rewards. But this
reward was not to be as yet actually possessed by Abra-
ham, he had only the promise of it. Both external
circumstances, and the calculations of reason and ex-
perience seemed to tend in a quite opposite direction.
Abraham's wife is barren, both are old ; how then can
he expect posterity as the sands of the sea for number ?
And in Canaan he has to wander as a stranger all his
life long, and can call no portion of the land his own, but
as much as serves for a grave ! Thus Abraham was
referred only to possessions to come, which had no pre-
sent existence for him save in the words of the promise.
He was not merely called upon to break through natural
ties of kinship for God's sake, he had to do something
harder still, to trust unconditionally in God and his

84 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

word, for a compensation contrary to nature and appa-
rently to reason. It was necessary, in order that
Abraham should open a new historical period, that of
redemption, that he should be entirely removed out
of the soil of nature, and thoroughly rooted in God, in
his might and his grace. In other words, he must learn
to believe. This requisite belief Abraham possessed ;
and throughout life, even under the severest tests, he
ever rendered a believing obedience. This is that faith
of our father Abraham, which the apostles of the New
Testament, St. Paul above all, contemplate with the
deepest reverence, — that faith which G od counted to him
for righteousness. The whole narrative is so sublime
and yet so full of holy simplicity, that it bears the unmis-
takable stamp of truth and historical actuality. No
later Jew could possibly have invented the history of
Abraham, for no other ever reached to his eminence of
faith, and even the greatest saints of the Old Testament
have only walked in the footsteps of the father of the
faithful.

Thus then a living relationship was once more estab-
lished between the true God and man ; resting on God's
side upon Promise, on man's upon Faith. God en-
tered into a covenant with Abraham, that is, he solemnly
instituted an especial fellowship with him above all
other men and people, promising to be his God and the
God of his seed in a special sense, even as they were on
their side in a special sense to serve him. This cove-
nant of grace is on God's side expressed in the words,
" Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceed-
ing great reward :" on the side of Abraham, by the com-
mand, " I am the almighty God ; walk thou before
me, and be perfect;" these sentences being the intro-
duction to the two solemn ratifications of the covenant
recorded in Gen. xv. 11 ; xvii. 1. And as sign of this
covenant, God enjoined upon Abraham and his descen-
dants circumcision, which was the first initiation into
legal ritualism. Since faith could not be inherited by
natural generation, with the latter there was to be at
least connected an external sign that should indicate
that Abraham's seed was not to be merely his natural

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 8 5

posterity, his children after the flesh ; thus pointing
typically to the true and spiritually-begotten seed of
Abraham, that is, to Christ. This is the higher and
more sacred significance which the rite of circumcision,
— used, no doubt, by other nations, — possessed among
the people of God. The Old Testament had many forms
and customs in common with the heathen, because it
spoke to the people in a symbolic language, peculiarly
suitable to that olden time, just as we teach children
by pictures ; but all these forms will be found to be
imbued in the Old Testament with a different and holier
spirit and character than belongs to them in the natural
religions of the heathen. Promise and faith, covenant
and circumcision, are then, we see, the basis of the
patriarchal dispensation of the Old Testament.

It was in Egypt that the patriarchal family grew into
a people ; and it was under Moses, one of the greatest
and most gifted men the earth ever bore, that this
people as such entered into the light of Revelation.
God wooed Israel to be his own inheritance by wonders
in Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness.
But in so great a multitude it was evidently impossible
to reckon upon the faith and obedience of each indivi-
dual. Yet all the people were to bear a divine im-
press ; this then could only be done incompletely and
externally by that legal method already introduced in
circumcision, which would but bring more clearly to
light inward deficiencies and ofi"ences. Now the life of
a people shapes itself necessarily into a constitution and
laws of some kind. Therefore by a new creative act of
love, God condescends to conform to this groundwork
of national existence, reveals himself as the King of
Israel, and gives them a church and state constitution,
a law whereby natural, social, political, moral, and reli-
gious life is so governed as in the very smallest detail
to bear the impress of the divine election, and col-
lectively to express the holy divine will. Upon the
basis of this law, whose core, namely, the ten command-
ments, the Divine Being personally delivered in awful
majesty, and to the obedience of which the people
voluntarily pledged themselves, a covenant was entered

86 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

into at Sinai between Jeliovali and Israel, which we are
accustomed in a restricted sense to call the Old Testa-
ment. Its motto is, " Ye shall be holy, even as I am
holy." But no inward sanctification, no holy and
living renewal of the whole man, was conferred thereby.
The law, although as being the wall of God, it must
needs be holy, nay, spiritual, is yet itself no life-giving
spirit ; it stands as a mere letter in opposition to the
flesh, chastening and restraining it without bestowing
on it a new birth, or having power to produce the true
righteousness that avails before God. Thus the law
does not itself bring salvation ; it is only a school-
master to bring us to Christ the Saviour.

More narrowly considered the import of the law was,
we shall find, threefold : 1st, It was a barrier whereby
the people of God were separated from the unholy
heathen nations around them, and kept under strict dis-
cipline in service to God. Thus a consecrated national
soil was set apart from the rest of humanity, like a gar-
den enclosed from out the curse-laden ground, for sal-
vation to grow up in. Hence that Old Testament joy of
pious men in the law of the Lord, as the distinguishing
and gracious gift of God to his people, the most costly
possession of Israel, the way of life to the upright, which
we find expressed in the Psalms, as, for instance, Ps.
xix. and cxix. And since Israel was thereby distin-
guished from all other nations as a holy people, a theo-
cracy and special inheritance to the Lord (Ex. xix. 5,
6), the law served, in the second place, to convince the
people themselves of their own uuholiness in contrast
to the divine will. The law entered, as St. Paul says
(Gal. iii. 19, compared with Rom. v. 20), between the
patriarchal promises and their fulfilment in Christ, that
the ofi'ence might abound, i.e., partly that it should be
more fully manifested (as we, for instance, sometimes
throw out a disease in order to cure it), partly that a full
consciousness, an undisguised and humiliating confession
of it should be brought about in the minds of men. Nor
is this second purpose of the law inconsistent with the
first, as it might at the first blush appear to be. To
the great and carnal mass of the people the yoke of the

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 87

law was often grievous, the barrier tempted to infringe-
ment, and the repeated falls into idolatry which marked
the history of Israel for centuries, show in it an ex-
cess of sinfulness above that of the heathen ; for the
higher the revelation, the greater the apostasy. And
therefore the sins of Israel met with denunciation and
rebuke, such as we find nowhere else ; the calls to re-
pentance, and the threats of judgment by the prophets
stand alone in ancient, nay, in universal literature ;
never was the truth spoken with such impressive and
sacred earnestness to any peof)le and its rulers. Thus
the law bore fruit in the conscience of the prophets, and
rendered them susceptible of the divine revelation for
which they were appointed.

Nor was the barrier of the law in vain for the people at
large. It impressed upon them a peculiar religious char-
acter. We find Israel, after its apostasies and its judg-
ments, again and again returning to its God ; and after
the Bab^donish Captivity, the law was observed with
such scrupulous conscientiousness, that the Messiah
could grow up and develop in the observance of all
Old Testament ordinances. But still more did the
life of certain pious Israelites, who were the very
essence, so to speak, of the people, prove that the in-
stitution of an external holiness, and the revelation of
internal unholiness, by one and the same law, were
perfectly reconcilable. The more pure these kept
themselves from the abominations of the heathen, the
more earnestly they endeavoured to keep the com-
mandments of God, the more they discovered that their
sanctification was but an external one, which might
indeed satisfy the eyes of men, but was incapable of
fulfilling the law in the inward parts that God beholds ;
nay, that the law rather wrought in them all manner
of concupiscence (Rom. iv. 2 ; ii. 28, 29 ; vii. 7, 8).
Accordingly in the Psalms, which reveal to us the in-
fluence of the law upon the spirits of pious Jews, we
find a depth and clearness of the sense of sin, which
we meet with in no other ancient record. The peni-
tential Psalms are the fruit of the law in the conscience
of Old Testament believers, who were thus prepared

8 8 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

for the singing of " new songs" in the spirit. And
those righteous men and women with whom we meet
on the threshold of the New Testament, walking in all
the commandments and ordinances of the law blameless,
Zacharias and Elisabeth, Simeon and Anna, were no
self-righteous Pharisees, but the very people who waited
for the consolation of Israel, and for redemption at
Jerusalem (Luke i. 6, 11, 25, 38) ; so that it was just
in those who most conscientiously observed the law
that it produced the deepest knowledge of sin, and the
yearning for atonement and redemption. In this sense
the law served as the necessary preparation and foun-
dation for the fui'ther development of the promises in
the prophecies.

But not only so, the law itself offered, if not actual
redemption and atonement, at least an external atoning
and purifying ; and this was its third object, which is
made more especially apparent in the priestly and sacri-
ficial rites. These showed, in the external and symbolic
manner peculiar to the Old Testament, that only by the
expiation of sin by death, only by a free-will and un-
spotted sacrifice, can fellowship be restored between a
holy God and sinful men. Under this aspect of the law,
the emblematic presents itself as the prefiguring, the
symbolic as the t3rpical, the Old Testament, by its
sensuous and visible representations, was the prepara-
tion for the spiritual and essential blessings of the
New.

And now let us briefly review this threefold purport
of the law. It served to separate the people of Israel
from the rest of the nations of the earth, to lead them
to a knowledge of sin, and to afford them a type of
redemption. The first of these purposes is connected
more particularly with the law's political aspect, the
second with its moral, the third with its ritualistic. In
the first respect the Old Testament dispensation was
the circumstantial way to that of the New ; in the second
its necessary condition ; in the third its type and shadow.
And it is in this intimate connexion between the Old
and the New Covenants, between the law and the gospel,
that we discover a sublime plan which constrains every

kNB THE HEATHEN "VYORLD. 89

severe and rational thinker to refer it to the love and
wisdom of a personal G! od. The fault of our sceptics is
not too much, but too little thought.

We now pass to the third stage of revelation, — the
prophetic. It needed a long course of time to establish
the people in the condition aimed at by the law. This
was only thoroughly done under David and Solomon,
whose reigns mark the glorious culminating point of
Jewish history, which was itself typical and prophetic,
as the Messianic Psalms show, of a still more glorious
future. But to that period succeeded one of declen-
sion. Even under Solomon degeneration began, and it
increased in the divided kingdom. The northern por-
tion strengthened itself against the south by apostatizing
from the pure worship at Jerusalem, and giving in its
adherence to half or wholly idolatrous rites. The king-
dom of Judah still indeed possessed the Holy City and
the Temple, as well as the consecrated royal house of
David, from which several pious monarchs sprung. The
evil began therefore here, in the mere externality of
religious observances and hypocritical lip service, with
which, gradually, idolatrous tendencies associated them-
selves. These defections were met by the remonstrances
of the prophets, who, since the days of Samuel (com-
pare Acts iii. 24), had stood beside the kings as mes-
sengers of the Divine King, and exponents of his will.
These prophets were men taken out of various classes,
whom God had called by special revelations, who were
from time to time mightily inspired by his Spirit, and
commanded by him to appear before king and people
as bold and incorruptible witnesses of divine truth.

It will be plain from the above, that these prophets
had first to enter upon their public career in the apos-
tate kingdom of Israel. It was here, at the time that,
under Ahab and Jezebel, the worship of Baal most
grossly prevailed, that Elijah and Elisha sought to
bring about a reformation in favour of the true God
and his law. The immense strength of the apostasy,
which threatened to spread from the court through the
whole people, required an extraordinary display of
Jehovah in his omnipotence and majesty, and hence

90 THE OLD TESTAIVIENT DISPENSATION

both these prophets were armed with the same mira-
culous power exercised by Moses in the presence of the
Egyptians. On the other hand, while working thus by
deeds, their words were not of such importance as to
lead them to write down the revelations they had re-
ceived. The written prophecies date from a later period,
when Amos and Hosea arose in the north, and Joel,
Isaiah, and Micah in the south, and from that time the
prophets appear to have lost the power of miracles,
while their prophetic insight, the results of which were
to be preserved for races yet to come, was increased.
But even these later prophets had for their immediate
office the personally and verbally testifying before king
and people, and calling backsliders to return to God. In
Judah, where with much sinful practice a show of holiness
was still observed, the prophetic office was more especially
to insist upon true conversion and its genuine fruits.
" To what purpose is the multitude of your offerings
unto me ?" cries the Lord, in the first chapter of Isaiah.
" Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomina-
tion to me, the new moons and sabbaths, the calling
of assemblies, I cannot away with : it is iniquity, even
the solemn meeting. Wash you, make you clean ; put
away the evil of your doings before mine eyes ; cease to
do evil, learn to do well ; seek judgment ; relieve the
oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow."
Thus it was that the prophets contended with the people
for a better and more spiritual righteousness, as, later,
Jesus did with the Pharisees (Matt. v. 20). While
they recalled men to God's rule of order and duty,
they became more and more penetrated not only with
the external character, but the inward nature and spirit
of the law.

Thus, while pro23hecy rests upon the basis of the
law, it is itself a new, progressive, more and more heart
and soul affecting stage of revelation. It forms the
transitional epoch between the law and the gospel, the
bridge from the Old Testament to the New ; and, as we
plainly see, the prophets were enabled to get an in-
sight into the new and better covenant and its spiritual
character.

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 9 I

This leads us to that most prominent, but by no
means only and exclusive aspect of prophetic activity —
the prophecies properly so called. These, again, have
a twofold aspect of their own ; they denounce judgment,
and announce salvation. The calls to repentance had,
to the great majority of the people, been sounded in
vain ; the awful words had even been spoken to Isaiah
at the time of his calling ; " Make the heart of this
people fat, and make their ears heavy" (Isa. vi. 10).
There was consequently no thorough and enduring im-
provement of character and condition to be hoped for,
and so the unrepented sin became liable to punishment.
God, who has united the world's history with the his-
tory of redemption, had already prepared the rod of
his anger for the rebellious people. The rise of the
great Asiatic kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon, and
their extension to the west, significantly synchronize
with the apostasy of Israel. The more, therefore, the
people of God strengthened itself in its idolatrous and
ungodly position, the more definitely had the prophets
to announce that it would become a prey to the hea-
then, to which it had assimilated itself, and would be
carried away out of the holy land of its ancestors. We
know how these threats of judgment were fulfilled in
the Assyrian and Babylonian captivity.

But nevertheless the covenant of God with Israel
still stood fast ; the old promises made at the first to
Abraham and renewed to David were not yet fulfilled,
and could not possibly fail. God's people and kingdom
could not be annihilated, and given over for ever as a
prey to those heathen w^ho so presumptuously abused
the power lent to them. When, therefore, Israel had
been chastened by the heathen, these last were to go
themselves into judgment, and then when all flesh
should have learned to humble itself before the Lord
of lords, he would establish his kingdom in new,
loftier, and eternal glory. Like to the dawn of a bril-
liant day, the image of the perfected divine kingdom,
the Messianic age, rose before the prophetic gaze from
out the stormy night of judgment. That which, begin-
ning even in paradise, had been the light of the whole

92 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

pre-Christian revelation, — although, so long as the Old
Testament dispensation was itself advancing, it could
only be the accompanying element of its progressive
stages, — ^the Messianic prophecy namely, now became
more and more the principal feature. The old dispen-
sation had now no other office than to point to the new,
the no longer typical but actual kingdom of God.
The prophets foretold that the Messiah, that is, the
anointed King of Israel, was, by an all-sufficient sacri-
fice, to make satisfaction for the sins of the people.
Jehovah was to appear in his own person, and to be
the Shepherd and King of humanity. The reign of
peace, righteousness, and glory was to spread out of
Sion over the whole inhabited world, and even the
material creation was to have its share in the revival
and redemption, the fulness of power and blessedness
of this truly divine kingdom.

With promises such as these, the Old Testament
concludes, and must needs conclude ; beyond this it
had nothing more to give, for here we have the very
ideal of the New verbally present. Our place is ap-
pointed us in that dispensation of fulfilment which has
itself historical stages, as the preparatory dispensation
had. But that which has been up to this present time
fulfilled in and by Jesus Christ, so eloquently witnesses
to the divinity both of the prophecy and the accomplish-
ment, of the Old and the New Testaments, that, respect-
ing the prophetic dispensation, as before respecting the
legal, we can confidently challenge each man only to
open wide the eyes of his understanding, and bring to
bear his utmost thinking powers, in order to convince
himself that the cause of revelation is a good cause.
He who thinks rationally must inevitably cease to think
rationalistically.

On the part of God then, as we have seen, every-
thing had been done to prepare for the new dispensa-
tion by the old. We might, indeed, have expected
that a people in possession of so many and glorious
divine testimonies would have adorned itself as a bride
for Messiah, the coming Bridegroom. But such an
expectation would contradict the tenor of all history.

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 93

" Many are called, few are chosen :" this is the almost
universal axiom. Number and rank go for nothing in
the kingdom of God. Just as in the days of Elijah
there were but seven "thousand in Israel who had not
bowed the knee to Baal, and as in our own time we
are wont to distinguish between the visible and the in-
visible Church of true Christians, so was it amongst the
Jews during the period of expectation that intervenes
between the close of prophecy and the beginning of
the fulfilment. The externally restored nationality
that succeeded to the exile, was the husk in which
grew the kernel, that little flock of the elect who were
being educated by the law and the prophets for a secret
life in the fear of Grod, and the confident waiting for
the consolation of Israel. This little flock was the liv-
ing fruit of the Old Testament dispensation. It is here
that, foremost of all, we meet with Mary, the repre-
sentative, as it were, of believing Israel, who, by her
humility and simplicity of faith, was fitted to become
the mother of the Messiah. It is here we find Zacha-
rias and Elisabeth, who were chosen to be the parents
of the forerunner of Christ ; here, too, were a number
of fishermen and other Israelites without guile, whom
the Lord afterwards chose to be the witnesses and
apostles of his gospel. Such is ever the Divine method ;
with the least possible show an inward wealth, of which,
it is especially true, that to him who hath shall be
given ; while, on the side of heathenism, we have the
inverted human method, uniting with a high degree of
external power and civilisation, inward emptiness and
nothingness.

We must now contemplate those Grentile nations,
which God left to their own devices. These innumer-
able multitudes may be divided into three classes, the
unhistorical, semi-historical, and historical peoples. The
unhistorical are those who in a more or less degree are
degraded almost below the level of humanity, and have
hardly attained to the faintest beginnings of culture.
Such in our day are the millions of Southern and Central
Africa, the American Indians, the aborigines of Austra-
lia and of the South Sea Islands, and the countless

94 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

hordes of the north and the interior of Asia. Although
not without religious ideas and customs, these people
are yet so thoroughly sensual, that, generally speaking,
they appear like the animals, to care only for the imme-
diate wants of the present. They have no clear and
connected consciousness of their own past, they know
nothing of their own history ; whereas it is just this
unity of consciousness and memory through which life
is apprehended as a connected whole, that constitutes
the nature of a reasonable being or a historical people.
Hordes and tribes who possess no history of their own,
can, of course, take no part in the history of the world.
One can only say that they vegetate on, propagating
themselves from century to century, till some mighty divine
impulse shall restore in them the human dignity they
have nearly lost. But it is a heavy mystery weighing
upon our race, an aAvful thought, which is very seldom
pondered deeply enough, that so large a portion of the
human race should be given over for ages to such an
existence as this.

Among the semi-historical nations should be classed
the Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as the
Mexicans and other ancient American civilized peoples.
Here there is no want of culture or history. These
people reached a rapid and important elevation in the
early period of their existence ; they possessed the art of
writing, a literature, and many other elements of civi-
lisation ; they are acquainted with their own past, and
more or less clearly conscious of its history. But the
remarkable fact here is, that after reaching that first
elevation they seem to have come to a perpetual stand-
still. These nations still carefully shut themselves from
contact with others, as though retaining something of
the old dread that actuated the builders of Babel ; " lest
we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth."
National egotism is, in its highest degree, stamped upon
them all ; there is an utter deficiency of that universal
human sympathy which draws one nation towards an-
other, and brings about historical events by friendly or
inimical contact. Thus we have the wonderful spectacle
of a history, begun indeed, but stationary, as it were

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD. 93

arrested in its course ; and this, too, is a mystery to
which, taken up as we are with the great historical
nations, we have not as yet given due importance, al-
though these semi-historical nations constitute the
largest section of the human race.

But these unhistorical and semi-historical nations dwell
far away from us in different quarters of the globe ; we
find the historical grouped round that specially histori-
cal people of Israel : in Northern Africa, Greece, and
Italy. If we compare the unhistorical races to a mass
of stones and fragments; the half-historical races, to
some specimen of ancient elaborate architecture, that
endures for centuries in stony repose ; the historical
people may remind us of a city full of life and movement.
What the unhistorical nations could never attain to at
all, and the semi-historical only imperfectly, is brought
to its highest perfection. We have in these last the
three principal departments of the natural life of man,
Arts, Science, and Politics, developed on a grand
scale. In the first two, Greece ; in the last, Rome ;
completed the civilizing process that had begun in the
East. The remains of Grecian architecture and sculp-
ture that we still possess, are ideals for all time. What
Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles accomplished in poetry,
Herodotus and Thucydides in history, is so classical in
form that later centuries have ever returned to these
sources, and ever will return. The Romans are pre-
eminently the juridico-political nation. Within, they
fixed their code with so much tact, circumspection, and
equity, that even at the present day Roman law is of
gi'eat importance to all civilized nations. Without, they
conquered the whole east and west ; it seems as if they
had appropriated all the secrets of universal dominion
from Assyria and Babylon, Cyrus and Alexander, in
order to excel by far their teachers. In imperial Rome
under Augustus, it may be said that we behold the
heritage of the efforts and attainments of all historical
nations. All that the culture of east and west had
during many centuries produced, centred and culmi-
nated in the capital of the world. Augustan Rome may

96 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

be looked upon as tlie historical result of the collective
development of heathen antiquity.

If, however, we contemplate the inward side of this
brilliant world of power and civilisation, we shall find
therein a profound void and discontent. There is a
want of the very heart of human life, a want of faith.
The great developing elements of Rome's history, of
politics and civilisation, necessarily exercised a destruc-
tive influence in this direction. The convulsions of
disruption most deeply shook the nations during the
last centuries before Christ, and uprooted on many sides
national consciousness, that foundation of antique life,
together with the religious element, intimately connected
with it. Still more influential was the progress of scien-
tific thought, which set gradually extending philosophical
and historical convictions in opposition to faith in the
popular mythology. The rich world of culture in
the period immediately preceding Christ was a godless
world.

Nevertheless man cannot long live without any re-
ligion, and accordingly even then the religious wants
of his nature showed themselves in most varied and
often in the strangest manners. Instead of the old lost
faith, men sought to construct a new one of one kind or
other. The secret teaching of the East was explored ;
the old mysteries of the Greeks revived ; an attempt
was made to gather truth out of all possible religions
and philosophies ; recourse was had to conjuration,
astrology, fortune -telling, and secret arts of all kinds.
The most opposite streams, whether pure or impure,
were to flow into one great river, from which the thirst-
ing soul was to drink light and life. The world-empire
seemed engaged in giving birth to a world-religion.
But no new garment was to be woven out of these old
heathen rags ; and the internal bankruptcy of Paganism,
its incapacity to satisfy the deepest needs of humanity,
was more and more revealed. We know from the Acts
of the Apostles, as well as from the Roman satirists,
that there were in the Roman empire many, distinguished
women more particularly, who earnestly sougbt after

AND THE HEATHEN WOELD.

97

God, and joined tliemselves to the Jews, with whom
they found a pure worship and a true Scripture. And
when Christianity appeared, spite of all persecution, it
found in the Roman empire a proportionately favour-
able reception and rapid extension. Now then the
religion long yearned after had appeared !

Thus the ages of heathen development show us
whereto humanity, left to itself, without God in the
world, was able to attain. A great proportion sunk
down to a nearly animal condition ; another section
made a promising start towards the unfolding of its
natural energies, but in the midst of its career it
stopped short, its strength was paralysed ; the semi-
historical people became prematurely old and weary, — a
notable result this of living without God in the world ; —
and even that third portion of Pagan humanity, which,
by the strenuous exercise of all its powers, strove after
and attained the highest development, when it had
reached its goal felt itself unhappy. It was without
that inner life- spring of human wellbeing, peace; and
it acknowledged that it could not procure itself that
peace, — that salvation was of the Jews. Bethlehem,
which signifies Bread-house, that least of all the cities
of Judah, was the place where proud, yet in the midst
of her abundance hungry Rome, must consent to re-
ceive the bread of life.

We are tempted to draw a parallel between the
three stages of Jewish development, which we may
designate as Patriarchism. Nationalism, and Universal-
ism, and the three stages which we observe in the
national life of Heathenism. The unhistorical peoples
stand essentially on the patriarchal level. But while
the family life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, unfold-
ing in covenant with God, and supported by his pro-
raise, joyously expanded and bore within itself the
germ of a mighty national life, the corresponding stage
of heathen existence either remained within the limita-
tions of family and tribe, or having lost all ideal stand-
ard whatever, sank to the miserable condition of nomadic
hordes. The semi -historical peoples, again, remind us

G

98 THE OLD TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

of the Mosaic stage in Israelitish life, -wlien the people
of God bogan to have an independent and national
culture of their own, which developed itself in strict
separation from the rest of the nations. This union of
internal civilisation, and jealousy of external influence,
is just what we have seen to be characteristic of the
Chinese, etc. But these latter remain in this condition,
decay in it ; they lack the impulse to universalisra,
which pervaded the people of Israel from the first,
because they were tae people of that God to whom
the whole earth belonged (Exod. xix. 5) ; and knew
themselves from their earliest origin appointed to be a
blessing to the whole human race (Gen. xii. 3). This
impulse towards universalism is the peculiarity of the
heathen nations of the third class, namely, the histo-
rical. They realized it in the form of a great world-
empire, or universal monarchy. But while the nations
were in this manner brought out of isolation, they only
in point of fact attained to a reciprocal destruction
and deprival of national existence. Thus, every great
monarchy in its turn destroyed many smaller states, while,
on the other hand, Cyrus overthrew the T^abylonians,
Alexander the Persians, Rome the Greeks. In the
same way, Israel too lost its national independence
when drawn into the great current of the empire of
the world. But to a crushing political universalism it
could oppose the new life-giving religious universalism
of its prophecies. All the great historical peoples have
sunk without a promise, and are buried in the ruins of
their former glory, but from Israel, according to the
promise, a new divine universal kingdom has arisen
out of the ruins of its material political existence ; a
kingdom that, originally founded in the Spirit, shall
hereafter be manifested in external glory. AVhile the
people of God lay, like the rest of the nations as to
outward condition, beneath the domination of the world-
empire, its existence was not only preserved and spared
for a better future, as was the case with no other, but
in relation to the inmost and highest life of humanity,
the law went forth to the rest of the world out of Zion,
and Japhefc still dwells in the tents of Shem.

AND THE HEATHEN WORLD.

99

At that period, when a meek and lowly maiden was
dwelling at Nazareth, and at Kome a world swaying
Csesar, beneath whose sceptre heathen humanity had
reached its fulness of power and civilisation, and at the
same time revealed most completely its inward empti-
ness and poverty, then, on the side of the people of
God, and on that of the people of the world, the period
of preparation had alike run its course. It is thus we
understand the Christmas message, — " In the fulness
of time God sent forth his Son."

Y.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

IT is of the person of Jesus Christ that I would now
speak to you. You feel with me that we enter
here into the sanctuary. If God be holy, and we un-
holy, we are constrained to inquire. Who will lead us
to him, so that we may not only know of him, but enter
once more into his living and blessedness- conferring
fellowship? For we are not to look upon our sinful
condition as a status quo, in which we have only to do
the best we can. Unless we determine to ignore the
solemn problem of life altogether, we must needs seek
after deliverance and redemption. 7\ccordingly, from
the very first this has been promised to us. In the
people of the Old Testament, who were elected to that
end, we behold the law and the prophets preparing the
way for this redemption. The New Testament announces
the fulfilment of the original promise in i\\Q person of
Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and men ;
and also declares this to be no matter of human inven-
tion, having its origin in the heart of man, but the work
of God for us ; not a product of our reason, but a God-
given fact for reason to receive. The eye must indeed
be related to the solar l^ght, or it could not perceive it ;
but it is not itself that light, nor can it produce light.
Thus no speculations of the human understanding, but
only the message of the gospel, can announce to us
Christ, what for our sakes he became, and still is.

It is a solemn thing to speak of this. How shall we
be so bold as to appear as the Lord's advocate, when
needing rather that he should be ours? All we shall
venture to do, is briefly to adduce the most prominent

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 0 1

reasons we have for refusing to give up our belief in
the Christ of our Gospels.

It is well for me that my proposed sketch does not
embrace the whole of this great subject. I am not at
present called upon to go into the atoning work of Christ,
nor into his resurrection, ascension, and celestial reign.
This will be the task of succeeding Lectures. I have
now to limit myself to the person of Jesus Christ ; to
the great features of his character as revealed to us in
his exalted career.

Regarding this subject, as indeed regarding neces-
sarily all that is historical, we can have no other evi-
dence but the narrative of contemporaries. The great
question that at once arises, therefore, is. Whether this
evidence be sufficient to substantiate so much that is
marvellous and abnormal? A spirit of distrust on this
head has become widely spread amongst us at the pre-
sent day, and this distrust recommends itself as liberty
and independence of thought ; but thoughtful, serious,
and candid examination is a far higher thing than mere
doubt or distrust, and indeed it is our positive and
appointed duty. Our consciences should recognise it as
imperative to beware of rel34ng for salvation upon any-
thing unauthentic and unreliable. To such an exami-
nation, the alone genuine examination, beginning with,
" If any man will do his will," the Lord himself invites
us, as do also his apostles (John vii. 17 ; 1 Thess, v. 21.)
We are not required in matters of faith to throw con-
tempt upon reason and science, and to stifle rational
thinking ; on the contrary, we need to have thought set
free from the prevailing prejudices of the time. We
are not to forfeit any of the honour put upon us by
God of being his free, his personally -convinced ser-
vants. And what does this conviction mean ? It means
the being overpowered by the strength of his testimony.

The very opposite of conviction is a state of mind
which we sometimes hear confessed much as follows : —
" How can we be required to place implicit faith in
Jesus, when there are no means of positively ascer-
taining what he was, what he did, or what he said ?" y^
But is this indeed so ? Christendom has for eighteen

I02 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHEIST.

centuries held, that on all these points sufficient cer-
tainty was attainable, although beneath them all there
lay a divine mystery, which we could never thoroughly
exhaust, any more than we can the mystery of many
comparatively unimportant natural facts around us. It
was faith that led Christendom to knowledge ; the want
of faith, on the contrary, leads merely, as we see, to
want of knowledge. Is this, then, to constitute the
triumph of advancing intelligence ?

Allow me here a few introductory observations. Pro-
fessor Schmidt of Strasburg, a profound historian, wrote
a few years back a beautiful work, on which the French
Academy bestowed the crown. Its subject was, " Civil
and Social Life in the old Roman world, and its trans-
formation by Christianity." The author began by
painting Pagan society in ancient Greece and Home.
Of course he exulted in the beautiful ideas, the noble
characters, the brilliant deeds, which are so abundantly
found therein, for which reason he felt himself all the
more free to disclose the dark side of the picture ; and,
accordingly, out of the laws and written documents of the
ancients themselves, he gives us incontrovertible proof
of the grievous evils of their whole condition, — their
political constitution, marriage, the relations between
parents and children, the treatment of the poor, of
slaves, of strangers, — life being, in fact, in all its cir-
cumstances, essentially based upon selfishness, and
therefore liable to inevitable disorder.

With this melancholy picture he proceeds to contrast
the Christian Church, which, recruiting itself chiefly
from the poor and despised, always threatened, and often
heavily oppressed b}'' persecution, nevertheless held its
ground, and offered to the world a new and hitherto
unseen spectacle, the spectacle of a society based on
perfectly new principles, based in all its relations, not
on selfishness, as was heathenism, but, on the contrary,
on love and mercy. And more than this, not only was
the Christian community founded on unselfish love, but
its influence became even over those who hated, per-
secuted, and sought by most cruel violence to blot it
from the face of the earth, so great and irresistible ; it

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 03

SO progressed, by slow degrees indeed, silent and un-
remarked, but irresistible, that even before the time of
Constautiue many elements appear both in laws and
customs, Avhich we can only explain by Christian in-
fluence, till at length that great emperor himself con-
sidered it the wisest and most politic measure, openly
to declare himself on the side of this bloodily persecuted
but indestructible sect.

But whence, we would ask, comes this incomparable
power that triumphs by suffering and death ? — the
power which has worked such marvels, which, without
outward might, has conquered the world's mighty ones ;
nay, which has effected what the wisdom of the wise, ^
the strength of the strong, could never accomplish — l^"^
what neither emperors nor philosophers attained to or
even strove after — effected the transformation of the 1
world, and introduced into a social fabric, raised and
resting upon selfishness, the new and active principle
of unselfish love. From whence does this wondrous
power proceed ? To what origin are we to refer it ?
What affects the everyday collective life of humanity
must indeed spring simultaneously and independently
in many hearts and minds ; but the greater any cause, I
the more certainly do we find that there are few, nay, \
perhaps only one, who first grasps the thought, first /
speaks the word, or does the deed which afterwards |
others appropriate, because they find therein realized '
what all vaguely sought, and none could of themselves
attain.

Now, this has been in the highest degree exemplified
in Christianity. If we inquire what it was that so
fundamentally transformed society, whether we direct
our inquiries to Christendom itself, which was the in-
strument of this great achievement, or to the distin-
guished Christians who were foremost in the struggle,
all agree in not ascribing their religion to themselves,
all profess to have derived it from the one Jesus. He
is become as even they who do not believe in him allow, v'
" the great turning-point of the world's history." ^ And
is it regarding Him that advancing science has to con-
^ Horler On Faith and Knowledge in Religion, p. 46.

1 04 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHEIST.

fess that it is without certainty as to what He was, did,
or said? Is it before Him that it must •' silently stand
as before an eternal problem?"^ Not as before the
manifested mystery of God, in which we believe, but
before a problem about which we do not know what to
think ! Surely, even in a scientific point of view, this
were a lamentable result of so much examination and so
much learning. Let us see whether something better
be not really attainable.

We will set out with what is least open to contro-
versy, with what, indeed, is almost universally allowed.
Who, then, was Jesus considered simply in his human

J character, and for the time entirely apart from the mira-
culous element P He grew up, we find, in humble cir-
cumstances, in the small and despised city of Nazareth,
whose inhabitants, whenever they are mentioned, im-
press us as a rough and limited race. He v»^as so poor
that even during his public career he seems to have
been in great measure dependent upon the gifts of his
friends. The people spoke of him as the carpenter's
son (Matt. xiii. 55), nay, even as himself a carpenter
(Mark vi. 3) ; therefore we conclude that he helped his
father in his daily work. He had not passed through
any school of the Rabbis : " Whence hath this man this
wisdom?" was the astonished query raised as soon as
he began to teach (Matt. xiii. 54 ; John vii, 15). We
can neither presuppose nor trace in him the many-sided
culture springing from intercourse with distinguished
men, or the study of choice books. We only observe

y ' that he is thoroughly acquainted with the Scriptures of
the Old Testament.

Now these are circumstances that would hardly have
Deen invented by those whose wish it was to do him espe-
cial honour. These are facts, at all events, that an
Israelite would never have dreamed of associating with
his Messiah. No doubt they were circumstances in
which a man might become, humanly speaking, a worthy
character, conscientious, upright, capable, and be advan-
tageously separated from evil surroundings. But, on

1 Horler On Faith and Knowledge in Belirjion, p. 47.

2 See Tlie Christ of History, by John Young.

THE PEESON OF JESUS CHlllST. I05

the other hant"!, Ave should hardly h.ave expected to see
a man who could thoroughly transform a world emerge
from such a position. How could he, in a condition of
such obscurity, have acquired the culture and the know- ;
ledge of human nature, without which influence seems
impossible ? How could he have gained sufficient self-
reliance to appear amongst men, and with keen, free
glance to penetrate into their character and their actions ?

Nevertheless, Jesus did so appear, this poor, un-
learned, unknown, and inexperienced carpenter ; and
his appearance was made when he was only thirty year^
of age. He had not attained to the experience of age.
Neither do we find in him the violence or precipitation
of fervent youth. He appeared without any powerful
friends, without support of any kind from the power of
those in authority; nay more, he at once excited against
himself the prejudice and the jealousy of the powerful.
He appeared, and he worked for only a few years, then
he died the disgraceful death of a criminal. And in
this short time what was it he did ? We leave out of
the question his miracles, which many doubt or reject r
altogether. With their exception, he accomplished few *
positive deeds, in the common acceptation of the word ;
he conquered no lands, ruled no people, founded no
specific social organization, arrived at no results of
learned inquiry, produced no heart-stirring poems. All
that we know of him beside his disputed miracles, are
a few simple sayings, without art or system, spoken in-
cidentally, now in the chamber, then in the highway,/
here to one or to a few, there to great multitudes, — most'
simple words ; and these have transformed the world^
and are still, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, dearer
to thousands than their very life. Truly this is a mar-
vellous thing !

But further, he appeared in the midst of a genera-
tion that not only the evangelists, whom we might sus-
pect of partiality, represent as corrupt and degraded, but
the Jewish historian, Josephus, paints in by no means
favourable colours. And this young, unknown, and
uncultured journeyman appears as a reprover of these
countrymen of his, holds up their sins to view insists

1 06 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

upon a fundamental change of character and disposi-
tion, and not merely rebukes the evil and adulterous
generation, but more especially and severely its highest
and most learned class, the Pharisees, with their ap-
parently holy pmictiliousness, the men who gave the
tone to the rest ; and this he does without having the
prestige of years, or the vantage-ground of a secure ex-
ternal position, and he is, nevertheless, tolerated for
three whole years ; and he does this with an inward
security in which we never trace the faintest influence
of a lowly origin, or the evidence of his having grown
up in narrow circumstances and homely surroundings.
Calmly and majestically he goes upon his way. No
touch of servile fear impedes him. He confronts men
alike without timidity and boastfulness. What induced
him to come forth from his obscure home in Nazareth ?
No one knew him, no one called him, not the people,
not his disciples, for as yet he had none ; nor was it any
accidental occurrence which brought him forward, and
was the commencement of an activity that afterwards
transcended its original aims. Nothing of all this ;
there was within him a pure, inward impulse, which, in
spite of his want of the learning of the schools, or any
customary preparation, necessitated his coming forward.
A It was h/'s thought, his will, his deed, which alone in-
sured him such attention and recognition as he received.

But what kind of recognition was this ? Even un-
moved, indifferent Jewish people, agreed at least so
far with his disciples as to call him a prophet (Matt.
xxi. 16) ; and in our own day, even those who will not
I be his disciples, acknowledge him to have been " a man
/of impressive prophetic power." Now, what is a pro-
I phet ? Many associate the word with one who foretells
things to come, it matters not of what nature. But
such a one would be rather a fortune-teller than a pro-
phet. It does, indeed, belong to the character of a
true prophet to foretell certain facts that afterwards
come to pass, but this is not his principal office, not the
basis of his character and his calling.

A prophet is rather one who directly expresses the
hidden counsel and will of God ; who reveals what had

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. IO7

been before a mystery hid in God, wlio announces his
Being, his work, and his government, and does this
alike on the side of righteousness as on that of grace,
of judgment as of mei'cy. It is true that the preacher
of the gospel has the same truths to declare. But the
authority for his preaching is the written word. In him
there is no original divine revelation such as the pro-
phet knows himself to have received ; one of the most
remarkable features in the self-consciousness of the
genuine prophet, being the positiveness with which he
distinguishes between himself and the false prophets, to
whom the Lord has not spoken ( Jer. xiv. 14 ; xxiii.
and xxviii.), while he, on the other hand, testifies of
judgment as of grace in the name of the Lord.

On the side of judgment, the prophet declares to
the people the character and the claims of God ; he
enforces the law, and the law in its internal bearing ;
he rebukes transgression and points to punishment.
Thus his word is the voice cf God quickening the con-
science of the people. " Your offerings are an abomi-
nation to me," says God by the mouth of Isaiah,
(i. 11-15), iniquity and solemn meetings together I
cannot away with ; I will not have the people draw near
me with their mouth only (xxix. 13). It was not for
this I spake unto their fathers (Jer. vii. 2'2). In har-
mony with these prohibitions were the fundamental prin-
ciples inculcated ; dependence upon the living God and
not upon idols, practising simple truth and love to their
neighbours, learning to do well, judging righteously,
relieving the oppressed, judging the fatherless, plead-
ing for the widow (Isa. i. 17). Upon these condi-
tions forgiveness and favour were promised to the
penitent.

But, on the other side, the prophets never fail to place
in sight of the people new life and salvation in the grace
of their covenant God. " I am the Lord, I change not,
therefore ye children of Jacob are not consumed" (Mai.
ill. 6). " ]\Iy thoughts towards you are thoughts of
peace not of evil" (Jer. xxix. 11). It is true, that the
decision lies between conversion and destruction, life
or death, and the Searcher of hearts knows how many

Io8 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

will not listen to the deciding word, and on that account
will grow ever more and more dull and hardened (Isa.
vii. 9, 10). They have moved me to jealousy with that
which is not God, and I will move them to jealousy
with those who are not a people, which I shall bring
upon them (Deut. xxxii. 21). The heathen whose
idolatries they have shared, shnll be to them a heavy
rod of chastisement. But after they have exercised and
abused the power committed to them for a time, the
heathen shall themselves be cast away. In Israel, on
the other hand, a remnant shall be left. The whole
people is not to have a share in the promised salvation
by its natural strength, " though they be as the sand of
the sea," that will avail them nothing; it is only a
remnant that is to " return and to be saved" (Isa. x.
22). This remnant signified those who under the heavy
judgments that fell on them thoroughly repented, hum-
bled, and purified themselves ; " an afflicted and poor
people that trust in the name of the Lord" (Zeph. iii.
12). These shall be holpen, so as to have a share in
the promised kingdom of peace (Isa. ii. 2-5) ; whose
King is to be that wonderful Child who is to come forth
out of the stem of Jesse (Isa. ix. 6 ; xi. 1).

At times the representation of his triumphs sounds as
though he were to be a mighty warlike hero ; but yet the
description given of the suffering servant of God, who
was to give his soul an offering for sin (Isa. liii.), re-
minds us that deliverance is to come, " not by might
nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts"
(Zech. iv. 6). And thus this warrior of the stem of
David is to smite not with the iron sword of his adver-
saries, but with the rod of his mouth, and the breath of
his lips (Isa. xi. 4). He is to be the deliverer who
will judge the ungodly, establish the kingdom in Israel,
and allow to an anointed remnant of the Gentiles a
participation in its glories. These also shall be called
l3y the name of the living God whom they serve (Amos
ix. 12) ; and then the whole earth shall be filled with
the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas,
for the branch out of the root of Jesse shall be for an
ensign of the people (Isa. xi. 9, 10).

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. lOg

Such are briefly the fundamental ideas developed in
prophecy. It. is on these that the various prophetic
utterances are based, however modified they may be
by varying circumstances. In all of them, threats and
promises alike are placed within the choice of man's
free will. " At what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and to
pull down, and to destroy it ; if that nation against
whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will
repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation
and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it ; if
it do evil in my sight I will repent of the good where-
with I said I would benefit them" (Jer. xviii. 7-10).
Thus it may sometimes happen that a prophet promises
a certain definite deliverance out of a definite peril, con-
ditionally upon faith, and if the recipient of the promise
have faith the deliverance is accomplished. Thus He-
zekiah w^as saved precisely in the wonderful manner
predicted by Isaiah, the King of Assyria did not come
into the city of Jerusalem, nor shoot an arrow against it
(Isa. xxxvii. 33). If, on the contrary, certain predic-
tions were nullified by the unbelief of those to whom
they were conditionally made, the ultimate principles
of God's counsel and of prophecy were never departed
from.

Such then is a prophet. And it was exactly in this
prophetic character that Jesus appeared. He, like his
Forerunner the Baptist, began with the cry, " Repent
ye ! Change your ways, for the kingdom of God is at
hand." And what the true character of children of this
kingdom is to be, he proceeds to lay to the heart and
conscience of his hearers in the simple noble words of
the Sermon on the Mount, — words which have not only ^
made on his contemporaries, but upon men of all times, '
an irresistible impression of having been spoken by one
possessing omnipotence. How, in his character of
genuine prophet, he enlightens the conscience: " Except
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the
Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the king-
dom of heaven" (Matt. v. 20). How he expounds the

T lO THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

law as relating not only to the outward action, but to
the very thoughts and intents of the heart ; " He that
looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed
adultery with her in his heart" (Matt. v. '28). Nothing
short of the highest may suffice : " Be ye perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt. v.
48) ; and this perfection is to be especially manifested
in love to enemies (ver. 44-47). It is thus the law was
to be fulfilled (Matt. v. 17), by a twofold love, a loving
Grod with all the heart, and our neighbours as ourselves
(Matt. xxii. 37) ; but this love is to be in very deed, not
in appearance, not in hypocritical alms-givings, prayers,
and fastings to be seen of men (Matt, iv.) ; not in
lip service (Matt. xv. 7); nor in keeping the Sabbath-
day by mere inaction (Mark iii. 4).

The announcement of this promised kingdom of
heaven, kingdom of God, is intended to move the hearts
of the people to render a free and sincere obedience to
the Divine law. But Jesus has the same knowledge as
well as the same experience as the prophets of old. He
knows and he experiences that many are only rendered
harder and duller by his glad tidings of the kingdom of
heaven ; and it is in accordance with the justice of God,
that on those who iv'dl not hearken, this should be the
effect produced. They must be hardened and dulled
by preaching. " He wills that his word should have
on them the effect of rain upon the already saturated
ground." If it be the purpose of their stiff-neckedness
not to return, why, it is God's purpose also ; it must be
be so. What they will not receive to their salvation
must subserve their ruin (Matt. xiii. 13). Therefore
it is that Christ concludes his preaching with de-
nouncing woe against the Pharisees (Matt, xxiii.) ; and
prophesying against Jerusalem and the Temple, that not
one stone of it shall be left upon another (Matt, xxiv.)

If, however, this last prophecy was most strikingly
fulfilled, and fulfilled indubitably against the will and
actual command of the Roman general Titus, I must not,
on the other hand, disguise that the same prophecy con-
tains difficulties which are painfully perplexing to some,
to others a glad pretext for rejecting the whole. I

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. I 1 £

allude to the verses, " There are some standing here
who shall not taste of death till they shall see the Son of
man coming in his kingdom" (Matt. xvi. 28). '' This
generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled"
(Matt. xxiv. 34). When Jesus so spake, does it not
appear as if he gave his disciples cause to expect not
only that this doom would fall upon Jerusalem in their
lifetime, but Christ himself return to judgment?

There is confessedly a difficulty here such as often
meets us in the case of the old prophets ; but the main
point which we must keep in view in order to clear it
up, is, that these divine matters are not to be measured
by the narrow scale of short-lived man, and also that a
particular prophecy may often have a many-sided ful-
filment, differing from the apparent tenor of the words,
its accomplishment being committed to the action of
human free-will, and contingent upon faith or unbelief.
The old prophets, as we have seen, expressly declare
this fact. Thus it may happen that the first stage of
judgment may begin at a period very far removed from
the execution of that judgment as a whole, and the
establishment of the promised kingdom of peace.
" Henceforth," he says to his enemies, " ye shall see
the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming to judgment" (Matt. xxvi. (54). These words
indicate a gradual coming by stages of indefinite length.
But this does not in the smallest degree affect the
eternal and unchangeable fundamental laws of judgment
and mercy, as they were laid down by the old prophets,
and for ever confirmed and enlarged in the prophecies
of Jesus.

For finally, Christ, too, promises the kingdom only to
the little flock (Luke xii. 32) ; as Isaiah did to the
remnant that should return. " The gate is strait,
and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few
there be that find it." Such is the declaration of the
prophet of the New Covenant (Matt. vii. 14). But all
who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt. xxiv.
13) ; and if many of the children of the kingdom, the
Israelites who had the first claims to it, are cast out
through their own fault (Matt. viii. 12) ; on the other

112 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

hand, the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached to the
whole world, and out of all nations some shall be saved
(Matt. xxiv. 14).

Such, then, is the preaching of the Prophet of Naza-
reth ! Thus he speaks, not hypothetically, dubiously,
inquiringly, argumentatively, like the philosophers of
old, but with gentle certainty, uttering simple, pro-
found, powerful words, striking home alike to the rea-
son and the conscience, living words, not phrases, not
formulas. Even those who see in them much to object
to — often probably because they do not understand
them, and fail to understand by reason of unbelief —
still affirm that " our moral life finds its highest ideal
presented there in visible forms," and that " even the
religious knowledge and thought of the present time
sees its deepest truths expressed in many of thesp
maxims."

And this will be our experience, too — if only we
bestow earnest reflection upon them, — with regard even
to those words which might at first somewhat surprise
us by their appearance of harshness ; as, for instance,
the prohibition to bury his father, imposed under pecu-
liar circumstances upon a disciple (Luke ix. 60) ; or
the severe check which the help-imploring father re-
ceives, " Unless ye see signs and wonders, ye will not
believe" (John iv. 48); or the apparently Jewish ex-
clusiveness with which Jesus treats the Canaanitish
mother (Matt. xv. 21). Everywhere, when we care-
fully examine the whole context, we find light where
there seemed to be darkness ; we discover how strik-
ingly his words apply to the character of the case in
point, and express, besides their more immediate and
particular application, a universal truth that proves
itself suggestive of a hundred other applications, and
thus our confidence grows in that which still remains
uncomprehended.

In the same manner, in his Sermon on the Mount,
he lays down the principles of his kingdom by parti-
cular illustrations intelligible to any child, and yet such
that the mature man finds in them inexhaustible pro-
fandities, — feels, for instance, inwardly convinced that

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

113

there are cases in ■whicli he would fail to conform to
the spirit of the words, if he were scrupulously to
adhere to their letter. This applies evideutly to the
plucking out the right eye and cutting off the right
hand, and it equally applies to giving alms to some
begging impostor, — to do which would be no true alms-
giving, that is, no work of mercy; — and to many other
cases of the kind. The words of Christ, in fact, are
spirit and life. They have a foretaste of eternity,
whether, for instance, we take the benedictions with
which he opened the sermon on the mount, or that
address to his disciples on the evening before he
suffered, which St. John has preserved for us (xiv.-xvii).

But is it not indeed marvellous, that a young, inex-
perienced, and obscure man, in the course of three 1
years' teaching at most, should succeed in doing what \
the fairest efforts, the most admirable views, the most \
distinguished writings of the sages of Greece, of a Plato
and an Aristotle, failed to do ? That he, and he alone,
should bring the deepest truths concerning God and
man, and man's divine destiny, — concerning the love of
God to us, and our love to God and to our neighbour,
— within the reach of the Jewish people at large, nay, of
all the nations upon earth ? Whence hath the man these
doctrines '? Who is he that doeth such things ? We
must needs begin to think greatly, and ever more greatly
of this prophet.

But the greatest thing of all is, that he himself pos-
sesses in full measure the meekness and love that he *
enjoins. His word is confirmed by his character. This,
in some degree or other, was also the rule with other
prophets. They too announced God not only by their
words, but by their personal conduct. Balaam stands
out as an evil exception, when, spite of his insincerity,
he is constrained to serve God, and prophetically to
announce his councils. For the rest, they whom the
Lord employed as his instruments, were men of faith,
of holy zeal, of obedience to the truth, at a cost of heavy
suffering. " Behold," says Isaiah, " here am I, and
the children the Lord has given me, for signs and for
wonders in Israel" (viii. 18). How much Jeremiah

H

1 1 4 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

had to bear in tlie discharge of his office, and how
nobly he bore it ! How hard Hosea must have felt it
to be commanded, just as he entered upon his prophetic
career, to go and marry a woman who was an adul-
teress,— a most striking injunction, by the way, which
has given occasion to much impure ridicule, and which,
nevertheless, when we rightly understand the whole
context, is one of the passages where the holy majesty
and grace of God shine forth most gloriously.

But it is in no way inconsistent with the holy char-
acter of these servants of God, nay, rather it belongs
to it, that they should occasionally most thoroughly
confess the taint of sin that cleaves to their hearts by
nature. " Woe is me !" exclaims Isaiah, " for I am a
man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of
unclean lips" (vi. 5). Now this was not the case
with Jesus. His disciples are unanimous in testify-
ing that he impressed them as fulfilling the prophetic
description (Isa. liii. 9). " He did no sin, neither
was guile found in his mouth" ( 1 Pet. ii. 22). " He,"
that is in his personal experience, " knew no sin"
(2 Cor. v. 21).

Indeed his whole character makes upon us the im-
pression of pure and spotless holiness. It is true that
we every now and then meet with passages that at the
first glance surprise us ; as, for instance, a speech to his
mother, which sounds like a lack of filial reverence,
" Woman, what have I to do with thee?" (John ii. 4) ;
or again, his impetuous anger against the money-
changers in the Temple (John ii. 15, 16) ; or his
attack upon the Pharisee, whose guest he was (Luke
xi. 39) ; or that injury done to the property of the Gada-
renes (Mark v. 43) ; the cursing of the barren fig-tree,
and such like. These are incidents that we do not at
first comprehend ; but gradually, with regard to one or
the other, new light breaks in upon us, so that what at
first shocked us, not only shocks us no more, but shines
out as a new instance of his pure and holy nature. For
instance, those words spoken to his mother are, we
discover, not hard or irreverent, though distant, and
intended to convey to her, at the beginning of his

A

THE PEKSON OF JESUS CHEIST.

115

public career, that henceforth she is no more to use a
mother's authority, but to let him rest upon his own
judgment, when the hour that he knows to be his shall
have come. " When Jesus, with apparent severity,
admonished his mother to be patient, and not to inter-
fere with his calling, he bestowed on her the lesson she
needed, in order to have faith in him. It is evident
that, for Mary above all others, it must have been diffi-
cult to submit to him as to her Redeemer, on whom she
must believe like the rest. Therefore, his very love to
her, which must needs be truthful, could not display
itself otherwise than by proving to her that when he
spoke or acted in his great vocation he no more belonged
to her than to others. And by thus placing her in what
she herself soon felt her proper place, he made faith in
him as easy to her as possible, and gave a counterpoise
to the effect of their habitual domestic life. He hon-
oured her as his mother, indeed, but not at the cost of
his heavenly Father, his calling, and the love he bore
to her soul." ^ And so in other cases, careful con-
sideration easily rectifies our first impressions, while
each new light strengthens our confidence even with
regard to what still perplexes us. It is not within my
power to go further into details in this lecture, but I
may be permitted to refer you to what I have else-
where done in this direction. ^

There is one point, however, to which I would now
call your attention. Even those who demur and criti-
cise such imperfectly understood passages as these, do
not, with the exception of a few openly profane among
them, venture to assert, that in any instance Jesus
sinned, — they only suggest that, if such and such an in-
cident were historically true, it would be a flaw in his
perfections, a weakness, or a limitation. Such is the
power exercised, over even their spirits, by the " exceed-
ingly grand and exalted image of Christ."

But, nevertheless, it does not suffice to concede to
him this indefinite though exceeding exaltation, — the
gospel positively declares that he was without sin.

1 Dorner On the Sinless Perfection of Jesus, p. 11. Gotha, 1862.

2 In my Lectures upon the Life of the Lord Jesus. Basle, 1858.

I I 6 THE PEESON OF JESUS CUEIST.

Sceptics can doubtless continue to repl}'-, that no one
can know this for a certainty ; can remind us how little
information after all we have about him ; a few frag-
ments merely of his public life, and one siDgle incident
out of the thirty years of his obscure youth. Even
though his enemies, spite of all their endeavours, could
find no well-grounded accusation to bring against him,
but only calumnies, perversions, false witness ; even
though Pilate could find no fault in him ; even though
the despair of Judas arose from his having betrayed
innocent blood, what, they ask, could all these have
known of the depths of his heart ? For even his dis-
ciples, who received a permanent impression of blame-
less purity from the spectacle of his daily walk, did not
know the whole of his life, and could not read his
inmost thoughts.

True, but certainly we ought not to under-estimate
the fact that of all which these eye-witnesses did observe
or record, there is not the least incident liable to censure
except through misapprehension or ill-will. Now we
know how liable even those who exercise the greatest
self-control are to failure in small things, but here
there is no record of such. At the same time, his whole
character is far removed from anything of calculation,
— anything put on, constrained, artificial. "Word and
deed are alike simple and majestic. He is most acute
and precise in his appeals to conscience ; he discovers
the very ground of the heart, for he thoroughly knows
sinners in their sins, and rebukes them for their good.
And yet for all his keen insight, he is no despiser of
men, but very pitiful towards them. What tender love
he has for the degraded woman of Samaria : for her who
anointed his feet, being a sinner ; for the fallen disciple
that denied him ; for Jerusalem that rejected him ! He
is moved with compassion for the sheep that have no
shepherd. " Father, forgive them ;" this is the breath
of his whole hfe. Meekness and humility, grace and
truth, make up his being ; this was the impression re-
ceived by susceptible hearts, and there was not a pas-
sage in his life to disturb that impression.

And this experience of theu's they have handed down

THE PEESON OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 1 7

to us in a representation that testi6es to its own faith-
fulness. Whence could they have derived it, if they
had not seen and known it ? In such a case they
must have drawn the idea from themselves, their in-
ward views, their own actual character. But do
men afford such an example of spotless purity as this ?
Our conscience, indeed, may demand it, but who that
looks within finds there the fulfilment of conscience's
demands ? What poet or historian, ever before or after,
sketched so perfect a form. True, Xenophon says,
speaking of his noble master Socrates, " No one ever
saw Socrates do, or heard him say anything that was
irreligious or unholy." But how external and low was
the standard of holiness among the Greeks compared to
that of the evangelists.

We repeat it, a description such as that of the holy
character and conduct of Jesus is without a parallel ; so ^
spotlessly pure, and — let us observe this well — at the
same time so life-like, so true to nature, so individually
personified, that no human imagination could ever
have created it. AYhat should we men do if we sought, ^,
from our own resources, to draw the image of a sinless \
man ? Why, we should harp upon his sinlessness, we
should insist upon his freedom from tbis sin and from ,'
that sin, and we should heap superlatives of virtues and /
excellencies one on the other. But to produce a living, i
personal, individual character such as that of our Lord
in the Gospels allowedly is, and moreover to invent a
history in which this personality should be retained
throughout most widely varying circumstances, and to
do all this simply, naturally, plainly, grandly, this were
beyond the reach of the greatest poet. This, however,
the evangelists have done ; they have done it artlessly,
without being highly gifted poets ; they have done it so
that misapprehension may stumble at much, till further
light breaking in upon the mind, each stumbling-block
is seen to be a fresh trait of moral grandeur ; they have
done it so as not to conceal from us how much there
was in his character which contradicted their own pre-
conceptions of legal piety, and of what became the
Messiah ; they have done it, have been able to do it in

I 1 8 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

short, because they speak of that which they have seen
and heard and experienced.

And it is in strict conformity with this character of
the real and the experienced that they represent this
spotless holiness of Christ, not as an unassailed incapa-
bility of all temptation, but as a purity which, though
inherent, had to struggle and resist to the very end.
The most painful part of this struggle consisted in
Jesus not finding himself in the condition of original
humanity, not growing up in undisturbed peace, but
being, from the earliest period of his life, surrounded
by temptation, seeing forms of sinful pleasure, bearing
the burden of the sorrows of others, scared by sufferings
of all kinds which in their totality are called death, and
which the Scripture teaches us to consider as the wages
of sin. The more pure his nature, the more repugnant
and contrary to it must all these have been. This was
not sin, this belonged to his very holiness. " I have a
baptism to be baptized with," he says, " and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished !" (Luke xii. 50.)
"Thou art an offence to me" (Matt. xvi. 23); it is
thus he rebukes Peter, because he felt how the tempta-
tion to avoid suffering might enter into his heart. Thus
he bore continually a burden laid upon him by his in-
tercourse with sinners (Matt. viii. 17).

This agony rose at length to trembling and dismay,
and to a sense of being forsaken by God. So little is
Christ a mere ideal hero. So deeply and naturally
human is he in his feelings. But in everything he
overcomes. Never is there any assertion of himself,
save as a child pouring out his heart before his Father.
This pure, this holy impulse of his nature to resist suf-
fering and death, how truly, how entirely he surrenders
it : " Not my will, but thine be done." He who does
not acknowledge this victory greater than any won on
battle-plain, knows nothing of what is great before God.
He who can confound this, being made perfect through
suffering, as the epistle to the Hebrews has it, with the
apprehension and timidity of a sinner, has as yet no
discriminating faculty whatsoever.

Such is that perfectly holy Being whom the evan-

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. I 1 9

gelists paint from the life of which they were eye-
witnesses. Do you, however, still insist that our know-
ledge of him is too incomplete, fragmentary, uncertain,
wanting fuller proof, since even the most intimate of
the disciples could not vouch for the inward life ? I
reply, we have a witness that sets a seal to all that has
been hitherto said ; we have Christ's own account of
himself: " Which of you accuseth me of sin ?" (John
viii. 46) was the challenge he once made to his enemies,
who could only answer him by groundless insults. Not
one of them could bring a specific charge against him.
Yet, what they said, or even what they had not got to
say, is comparatively little. What decides the point
was his daring io put such a question. What man is
there, even the noblest amongst us, who could venture
to ask such a thing of the rudest of his contemporaries ?
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves ; nay,
we make the holy God himself a liar (1 John i. 8, 10).
Thus, then, nothing could have been more impious than
a question like this, if, in the inmost recesses of the
heart of Jesus, there had been the slightest consciousness
of sin.

There may, perhaps, be some among you in whom
the critical researches of the present day have infused
some doubt as to the authenticity of the Gospel of St.
John, and consequently of the passage in question. But
even this will hardly enable you to escape the teaching
of the three earlier evangelists, and they attribute
parallel expressions to Jesus. In his sermon on the
mount, he says to his hearers, " If ye, then, being evil"
(Matt. vii. 11), but he does not range himself among
these evil ones, rather places himself in contradistinction
to them as one who is not so. His enemies exalt him by
the very reproach they bring against him : " This man
receiveth sinners" (Luke xv. 2) ; but no one pretends
that he is himself one. " He is come to seek and to save
those who were lost" (Luke xix. 10) ; no need that any
should seek and save him. He teaches all his disciples
without exception to pray : " Forgive us our trespasses."
But however clear and correct his insight into the sin-
fulness of the human heart, we never hear from him an

120 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

admission of personal consciousness of sin. In none of
his prayers does lie ever humble himself and implore
mercy : whereas it is in the most distinguished saints
that we usually meet with the deepest convictions of
natural corruption, the strongest statements of guilt, the
most striking expressions of self- accusation. But in
all his expressions concerning himself, Jesus invariably
appears holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners.

It is thus he represents himself. If then he had not
been this in truth, what inconceivable self-delusion,
nay, what blasphemous impiety, would he have been
chargeable with. It is this that constitutes the strength
of his own testimony to himself; testimony to which in
other c;ises we should object, for which of us is impar-
tial in his own cause. But it was necessary that Jesus
should bear that witness to his own nature which none
other could bear, since none other could penetrate into
that holiest place. And we needs must believe the
evidence of his own words, since self-delusion, or rather
an insane and impious falsehood, united with the subli-
mity of his being, the exalted holiness of all that comes
within the sphere of our powers of judgment, would be
simply inconceivable.

But there remains one objection which I may not
suppress ; it would be the strongest of all, if only it
were cogent ; that is, if it succeeded in proving a con-
/ sciousness of sin in Jesus, from any practical admission
of his own. Why, we are asked, did Jesus submit to
baptism at the hands of that Baptist who preached and
conferred the baptism of repentance, and to whom the
people came confessing their sins. To this I would
reply, that it is most inconsistent to insist upon this fact
of baptism without, at the same time, insisting upon the
circumstances that preceded and attended it. If we
consider these, we shall find that the words exchanged
between Jesus and the Baptist, most definitely prove
that Jesus in receiving baptism made no confession of
any sins of his own ; that he submitted to the ordinance
not as a sinner but only as a mediator ; in the sense,
namely, of thus entering upon his ofl&ce, entering, that
is, into sympathy with the wants of the sinner, and by

THE PEESON OF JESUS CHRIST. I 2 I

the way of suffering for the sins of the world, fulfilling
all righteousness (Matt. iii. 13-17).

But if this objection be relinquished, there is still
another and more important one to be made ; his own
words in answer to the rich young man who asked him
(Matt. xix. 17), " Good Master, what shall I do to have
eternal life. Jesus said to him. Why callest thou me
good ; there is none good but one, God." What do we
need further, say many ; Have we not heard it out of
his own mouth ? There is none good but one, God !
What can be the true and simple inference from this,
but, Thou art mistaken if thou callest me good ; keep
the epithet for God, to whom alone it belongs.

But is this indeed the true inference ? It would
certainl}^ be so if one like ourselves had spoken these
words. But we may not so understand them in the
mouth of Jesus, so long as a whole series of quite oppo-
site expressions retain their force. Nay, this very pas-
sage, if it be considered together with the context,
forbids such a conclusion. For, immediately after-
wards follows that declaration about the rich, how hardly
they enter the kingdom of heaven, and when the dis-
ciples start at it, that other declaration of more univer-
sal range, the things that are impossible with men are
possible with God.

But according to the tenor of the whole gospel, Jesus
is never to be reckoned amongst those who can only enter
in not of themselves, but by God's saving might,
since the kingdom of heaven is in him, and when he
comes, then the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and it
is he himself who gives rest to the weary and heavy
laden (Matt. xi. 28, 29). Thus he cannot upon this
occasion have meant to say. Why callest thou me good ?
I am not good^ but only. Why callest thou me good ?
Thou shouldst not call me so. Being good is not a
thing that can be attained by words, as if thou shouldst
need only to name me good master, and I had only
to tell thee in a few easy sentences what good things to
do, in order to be thyself as good as the good master.
Not so ; for none is good but the one, God. That he,
Jesus, was himself good because he was always in God,

122 THE PEKSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

and Grod in him, this very passage proves to the under-
standing mind. But it veiled for a while both his
goodness and his Grodhead together from the rich young
man. A superficial acknowledgment of the first, with-
out a recognition of the second, will never avail.

If then, Jesus, according to his own testimony, which
we are constrained to receive, be perfectly holy, per-
;■ fectly free from sin, what inferences are to be drawn ?
We must needs confess him to be a moral miracle. And
f who can venture to assert this an impossibility, because
; sin is inherent in humanity ? In its present condition
this is indeed the case, as a former lecture has taught
us ; but he who would assert that this inherent sinfulness
belonged originally to humanity, must have very inade-
quate ideas of the evil of sin, and must, moreover, im-
piously accuse the Creator, to whom, according to such
a theory, sin would have to be originally referred.

Now the Christian doctrine, on the contrary, com-
mends itself to the conscience by invariably charging
the guilt of sin upon man himself, and also commends
itself to the understanding by its logical deductions,
consistently maintaining, as it does, the fundamental
principle that that which is born of the flesh is flesh,
and for that very cause insisting that the sinless must
have entered upon life in some other way ; in other
words, proclaiming according to the oldest of our
creeds, and in perfect agreement with the gospels, that
he was conceived of the Holy Ghost ^ horn of the Virgin
Mary. This is undoubtedly a miracle. But he who
really believes in the miracle of the spotless holiness of
Jesus, would be very illogical if he refused to assent to
his miraculous conception. He would only have as an
alternative to invent a divine interference with the
ordinary course of nature, so far as to preclude the
transmission of sin ; to hold, in short, with regard to
Jesus, the same doctrine of immaculate conception
which the Pope decreed with regard to the Virgin Mary
in 1854 ; that is to say, to adopt a miracle of his own
discovery, instead of the miracle Scripture records, and
moreover a far more exceptional miracle. For that
sinful parents should beget sinful children, and that a

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. I 23

sinless being should not be begotten by sinful parents,
are perfectly harmonious facts ; whereas that sinful
parents should on one occasion fail to beget in their
own nature, would be a far less intelligible interruption
of a universal law.

However, the mode of thought which more especially
claims the name of modern culture, most positively sets
itself in opposition to all miracles whatsoever. This
breaking through of eternal world-laws, as though God
could only attain his ends by supplementary acts, im-
provements introduced into his originally inadequate
creation, is a doctrine they deprecate in the strongest
language. It is this element of the miraculous which
is so repugnant to them in the Biblical Jesus, and cer-
tainly it meets them on every side in the Gosp^els.

For the present, however, we leave all consideration
of the wondrous works of Christ to dwell on what must
already have become apparent. There was a time, and
its influence is not yet quite over, when many whose
belief in the miracles of Christ was shaken, were wont
to congratulate themselves all the more that they pos-
sessed at least intact his holy teaching, and, more, his
pure and sublime ideal. But is it really possible to main-
tain such a position as this? I pass over the fact that such
a mere ideal could have no power to save us, but rather
as, being unattained, only to condemn. We must look
more closely at his teaching. It will not be found prac-
ticable simply to rejoice in its pure morality. The person
of Jesus is the great leading fact, the central point of
all his teaching. Although lowly of heart, in all that he
is acknowledging his Father, he nevertheless openly and
freely puts forth the highest claims. He does not only
preach the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God,
but he declares himself to be the King of that realm.
The kingdom of heaven is his, he is Christ, which is the
the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word Messiah, the
anointed King. In this he is consistent from the very
first, and he only holds back because the earthly spirit
of the people has in so many ways forgotten the pro-
phetic word, " Not by might, nor by power, but by my
Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zech. iv. 6). For this

124 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

reason they were only too much inclined to use the
carnal weapons of insurrection to make him a temporal
king, and even his own disciples would scarcely have
been proof against such a temptation. This it was
which imposed upon him the most sacred reserve. But
in himself there is no wavering upon this point. He is
the Soii_^.jnjyi, as he calls himself, by preference.
This is a mysterious title, of simj^le sound, but high
significance. Lowliness and majesty are marvellously
blended therein. It is an appellation which carries us
back to the prophecies of Daniel (chap, vii.) Daniel
beheld the kingdoms of the world under the form of a
terrible and devouring beast. In the great heathen
secular powers, it h the animal nature of man that dis-
plays its might and also its cruelty. Then there enters
into the presence of the Ancient of days, one like the
Son of man, and to him is given a dominion that is the
alone everlasting dominion. This Son of man is in
appearance of small power, compared to the beast, but
he it is who alone can subdue the sway of the animal
in man, and establish a truly human reign. It is this
Son of man that Jesus names himself, at once veiling
and revealing his glory. " The Son of man hath not
where to lay his head" (Matt. viii. 20). " The Son of
man shall be betrayed into the hands of men ; and they
shall kill him" (Matt. xvii. 22). Nay, such his lowli-
ness and humiliation, that it shall be possible for men
to mistake his character, and oppose him, without com-
mitting the unpardonable sin (Matt. xii. 32). But yet
this very Son of man, lowly as he now is, shall return as
a king to judge the whole world (Matt. xxv. 31). " He
will come in his glory, and in the glory of his Father,"
that is of God (Matt. xvi. 27). Thus, then, the Son of
man is at the same time the Son of God.

Son of God ! you may say. Tliis is only the epithet
V bestowed in the Old Testament to the people of Israel
"* as a whole (Ex. iv. 22), as well as upon Israelites in
particular (Deut. xiv. 1 ; Isa. i. 2), and more especially
upon their rulers (2 Sara. vii. 14). It is never under-
stood to express the original natural relationship of a
son to a father, but always a new beginning of spiritual

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHEIST. I 2 5

and God-derived life, and with regard to the sovereign,
this distinguished name signified his being anointed
with God's Spirit, in order to execute the judgments of
God.

But the evangelists, and the New Testament writers
generally, apply this term to Christ in a yet higher
sense ; they name him thus as drawing in a peculiar and
unparalleled manner his life from the life, his nature
from the nature, of his Father. The evangelist St. John
does so most decidedly of all, when he calls him the only
begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth ; the
Word of God, who in the beginning was with God, and
was God, but who in the fulness of time took flesh and
dwelt among us.

There may, however, be some amongst you who have
been persuaded that the doctrine of Christ being in
this highest sense the Son of God, was not the doctrine
originally taught, but was superadded at a later period
by the apostle Paul, and the author of the so-called
Gospel of St. John, whoever he might be. It is the
fashion with many now-a-days — and really it is a mere
fashion — to regard the Gospel of St. John with peculiar
prejudice, as being a late invention. But even were
this the case, of what avail to their cause ? If we ex-
amine the three first Gospels carefully, we shall find /
that they claim for Jesus the very same dignity as that/
of John. We will now confine ourselves to citing the \
testimony of these three earlier Gospels. \

We have already heard of the Son of man, who is to \
to come in the glory of his Father (Matt. xvi. 27).
This Son of man calls himself repeatedly in discourses,
which are least of all open to dispute, the Bridegroom
(Matt. ix. 15; xxv. 1). Now this, from olden times,
was the appellation of that heavenly Lord and God
who was to betroth his people to himself in righteous- )
ness and in judgment, and in loving-kindness and in
mercies (Hos. ii. 19). Again, this Son of man was ex-
pressly declared, by a voice from heaven, both at his "
baptism and transfiguration, to be God's beloved Son
(Matt, iii., xvii). Or even if we set aside this evidence,
because the doubters we have in view doubt most of all of

126 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

sucTi miracles as these, let us at least hear how he describes
himself in uncontested passages. After the Lord of
the vineyard has in yain sent his servants to the wicked
workers in his vineyard, to them he sends at last his
i well-beloved Son (Mark xii. 6), who is thus expressly
distinguished from those servants. Again, he is the
King of the heavenly kingdom, and the angels are his
servants, whom he will send to execute his judgments,
by separating the tares from the wheat, the wicked
from the just (Matt. xiii. 41-49). Nay, he exalts
himself above the angels, even in that other passage,
where he says : "Of that day and hour knoweth no
one, no, not the angels, nor yet the Son, but the Father
only" (Mark xiii. 32) ; for it is plain that while as con-
cerning his humanity the Son here places himself below
the Father, he asserts, at the same time, his superiority
to the angels. And even as early as in the course of
his sermon on the mount, he speaks of himself as the
Judge of the world. It is he in whose name those false
disciples are to preach and to do wonders, and to call
him in vain Lord, Lord, whom he shall bid to depart
from him (Matt. vii. 21-23). It is he who is to come
and gather all nations before his throne (Matt. xxv. 31).
And it is a far more important question than any con-
cerning a mere date, whether he could without actual
impiety put forth such lofty pretensions as these. If
we decide that he could, then the question as to the
exact time of the occurrence loses all its weight.

But he does not merely promise, at the future judgment,
to manifest his glory ; even during his earthly career he
speaks with omnipotent majesty. Ye have heard it said
by men of olden time, but / say unto you (Matt. v). Who
is he who dares thus to institute a new law of God in ad-
dition to the former ? Who is this that dares to say of
himself that the Son of man is Lord also of the Sab-
bath ; greater than the Temple, greater than Solomon
or Jonah (Matt. xii. 8, 6, 41, 42). Who is this that
presumes to place himself in the same position that
God occupies in the Old Testament? For just as there
the vital question hinges upon faithfulness to the living
God, or apostasy from him, so in the New Testament

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 12'J

Jesus asserts, " He who is not with me is against me" y
(Matt. xii. 30) ; " He who loveth father or mother,
son or daughter, more than me, is not wortliy of me"
(Matt. X. 37). What man, I ask, being only man,
could dare so to speak, dare to annex heavenly rewards
to the suffering of his disciples for righteousness' sake,
which was tantamount to being persecuted for his sake
(Matt. V. 10, 11). A^erily this is the language of one
omnipotent. So, again, when he speaks of the Baptist
as being his Elias (Matt. xi. 14, 15), and exclaims :
" He that hath ears to hear, let him hear !" Who was
he of whom Elias was to be the fore-runner, but the
Lord of hosts himself (Mai. iv. 5 ; iii. 1), and whose )
fore-runner was John ? Neither is it less an utterance
of omnipotence when Jesus granted forgiveness of sins
to the leper (Matt. ix. 2-6), or when he gave that gra-
cious general invitation to the weary and heavy-laden :
Come unto me, I will refresh j^ou (Matt. xi. 28).

This last passage has for context one that sounds like
an extract from St. John (v. 27 ; Luke x. 22) : " All
things are delivered to me of my Father : and no man
knoweth the Son, save the Father ; and no man knoweth
the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son will
reveal him." If he did once actually so speak, must he
not necessarily have done so much oftener than the
earlier evangelists report ? Do they not themselves
seem here to require that the fourth should come and
complete them ?

For in all these passages, which we have only col-
lected from the three first Gospels, what is it that Jesus
assumes but divine dignity and divine power? Now
these necessarily presuppose a divine nature, such as
St. John most clearly and definitely announces. But
indeed the other evangelists announce it too. When
our Lord says to his disciples, " Where two or three '
are gathered together in my name, there am I in the
midst of them" (Matt, xviii. 20) ; when he tells them,
" Behold I send the promise of my Father (namely,
the Holy Ghost) upon you" (Luke xxiv. 49) ; we at
once exclaim, what mere mortal could dare so to
speak ? Take, more especially, those lofty words at the

1 28 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHEIST.

close of St. Matthew's Gospel (xxviii. 18-20) : " All
power is given me in heaven and in earth. Go ye
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you : and, lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world." Why, what loftier
language than this does John use ? Since the days of
the apostles we have baptized all members of the Church
of Christ ; that is a continuous fact. The apostles bap-
tized according to the command of Christ, the Risen
One ; for he did not institute the ordinance before his
death. When he did institute it, he placed his name
between the Father and the Spirit, as one in divine
nature with them. He commands that men be baptized
in his name, as well as in that of the Father and the
Spirit ; he pledges men to himself equally as to the
Father and the Spirit. The most sublime expressions
that we find in St. John cannot transcend in dignity
this one command. " I am the bread of life" (John vi.
\ 35); " I am the light of the world" (John viii. 12);
" I am the way, the truth, and the life ; no one cometh
to the Father but through me" (xiv. 6); "I am the
resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live" (xi. 25) ; nay,
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9) ;
" For I and the Father are one" (x. 30), — what do
all these sayings convey, but what we equally hear in
the parting injunction, " Baptize them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
What greatest man, loftiest prophet, holiest apostle,
durst approach these words ever so remotely without
extremest impiety ?

This, then, is how the general question stands. We
see that it is in vain to do away with, in vain to cut
short, in vain to exclude this or that passage, for the
doctrine runs alike through every phase of the Gospels.
The same Jesus, then, who makes upon us such an
impression of perfect candour and gentleness, meek-
ness and humility, wisdom and holiness ; the same
Jesus who " created a moral ideal in the conscience of

THE PEKSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

129

humanity, and embodied it in his life, so that whoever
■would acknowledge, contemplate, or practise what is
good, must ever keep returning afresh to the word and
the image of Jesus;" — this same Jesus has claimed
divine majesty, divine power, nay, divine nature ; and
were then all these claims indeed false ? Was he either
a crazy enthusiast or a blasphemous liar? Could such
impious deceit as this proceed from the lips of him who
did no sin ?

This is the problem before which unbelievers needs
must stand ; nor would they escape it even if, by the
critical subtleties of a learning which is only a misuse
of mind, they could succeed in throwing suspicion upon
the testimony of all the evangelists alike. For the
apostle Paul, — that powerful intellect in those epistles
of his, the genuineness of which no rational man can
controvert, — is a sufficient and a most trustworthy
witness, not only to that crowning miracle, the re-
surrection of Christ, but also to the divinity of Christ.
" A man in whom the yearning of the soul after
moral sanctification connects itself with the person of
Jesus ; a man who, for decades, labours as a missionary
in all patience and self-denial, in countless perils by
land and water ; a man who, by the depth of his own\
convictions, affects the consciences of other men, and
to whom his hearers put the most searching questions,
— such a man as this used, we may be sure, every oppor-
tunity afforded him of proving the grounds of his be-
lief." In point of fact, no reasonable person, who is
capable of appreciating Paul's character, can believe
that this man, who kept himself so independent of the
earlier apostles, would ever have based his own salva-
tion, and his whole career of activity and influence,
upon the divinity of Christ, without the most indis-
putable certainty that the historical Christ did indeed
in very truth speak of himself as divine.

And then, again, there are in these very Gospels,
together with all those miracles that the children of our
time despise, such deeply impressive, such unexampled
touches of sublimity, — touches that bear so incontrovert-
ibly the impress of historical truth, — which it is so

I

I 7 0 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

utterly impossible to dissever from the marvellous and
the repugnant, that every opponent of the faith must
needs stand in fresh and growing perplexity before the
riddle they present.

Thus we see Caiaphas stood. When nothing definite
was to be proved by all the false witnesses procurable,
he conjured Jesus to confess whether he was the Christ,
the Son of the living God, or no ; and Jesus answered,
" Thou hast said : hereafter (or henceforth) shall ye
see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power,
and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Matt. xxvi. 64).
It is thus the bound prisoner bears witness in presence
of the angry judge, knowing well that his words will
bring him to death ! Henceforth he openly declares
himself to share the royal power of Grod, and to be the
Judge of the whole world ; and this he asserts to one
who was in a position, before the day was over, to
contradict, and in appearance put his words to shame.
Were they really put to shame ? Who was right, the
High Priest or Christ ? This is in point of fact the
great, the momentous alternative. If we take up the
position of the High Priest, and proceed upon the
axiom, he is not the Son of the living God, equal with
the Father, and Judge of the world ; he is not, and he
cannot be this, and yet he declares it of himself, and
. elevates himself to this loftiest altitude without really
'^ reaching it, — why, then, we cannot stigmatize his con-
duct as less than blasphemy against God ; nay, it was
the most daring appropriation of God's majesty that
insane presumption ever attempted ; and this crime
I was committed by the very man who makes upon us
such an unparalleled impression of perfect holiness !
This is a problem, indeed, that no unbeliever can solve.
Thus highly, thus divinely, then, does this lowly,
youthful, uncultivated, unesteemed carpenter of Naza-
reth characterize himself ! This prophet, we see accord-
ing to his own declaration, is more than a prophet. He
is not only the keystone of the whole series of prophets,
he is in his own person the subject and the end of all
prophetic enunciations. He it is who, by word and
deed, has made known to us the paternal name and

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHEIST. I 3 I

paternal character of God (John xvii. 6), In him, in
his teaching, and in his work, God's will to renew the
creature is practically announced. If we receive his
own account of himself, we have acknowledged him as
the miracle that personally he is ; and if so, it is nothing
else than the natural consequence of the miracle that
he is, that he should also do miraculous works.

This then is the main point of our controversy with
you who stand on the opposite side ; you cannot fairly
treat it as though it related merely to a few isolated
facts, the swine of the Gergesenes, or the breaking of
bread to the multitudes, and the seven basketfuls over.
Our controversy relates to the Saviour himself. It
relates to the God of the Christians, who is not yours,
and to nothing less. Why is it that you stand so help-
lessly there, before the eternal problem of this person- \
ality ? Because you proceed upon the assumption that
Jesus can only be a man like ourselves, and yet the
original documents that bear record of him, invariably
represent a man who is higher than a mere man ; re-
present the Son of man as the Son of God in a sense
in which we cannot be so, and moreover as being this
for us, in order to raise, to redeem, and to perfect us.
But you will not acknowledge such a miracle as this,
and yet, God be praised for you! you have not the im-
pious daring to say with Caiaphas, he hath spoken blas-
phemy ; he is guilty of death. Therefore it is that you
stand before the problem as before a closed door, the •
only key to which you have thrown away, but which is
far too strong for you ever to break down.

We would, however, remind you of what has been
said before in the second of these lectures ; and then
would ask you whence came man himself ? He is here
incontrovertibly, but he has not always been ; his ap-
pearance was an interruption to the till then existing
law. He is composed of elements that are unlike him,
and which can never explain his existence. He arose
miraculously, the work of that God who does miracles.
How will you prove that the Son of man may not also
have appeared in humanity as a higher miracle still ?
Whence do you derive that comfortless conviction, neces-

132

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

sary to assert that this is not possible, that nothing can
transcend man, nothing can be superadded to his pre-
sent position, nothing can interfere with the present
order of things ? For this is what you say, and must say.
Even Jesus you will not allow to have been perfectly
holy. If he was not, he could not have been a Redeemer ;
nay, he must himself have needed one. Or, rather,
according to your teaching, there is no Redeemer, and
need not to be any ; you need no Saviour to " die in
peace," no Saviour to forgive you your sins and awaken
you out of death. It is enough that the history of the
world is a " triumphant march of moral and intellectual
culture" (though it may well be questioned if it could
have been so, had not Christ the Saviour appeared in
it) ; and that no world history outside of Christ tends
to a reign of perfection, but without him, sin and death
maintain an unbroken dominion, beneath which we must
spend the few years we have as well as we can, till we
pass away, and become mere dust and corruption. This
is the human dignity promised you by your Grod, that
universal and original Spirit, which as true Being per-
vades the universe and ourselves, unconscious of himself,
knowledge being too low and limited. We only know
him, only in us does he know himself, because we are
one with him !

But we Christians have a different God, and in him
a different human dignity. It may indeed be humbling
to need a Saviour. It implies the consciousness of
being sick unto death, unable to deliver ourselves from
the extremest danger. But even this disgrace is an
honour. The Bible tells us our state is not good, is
not right ; that we are fallen from our original nobility,
that we are called to something better ; the highest and
most glorious point to which you without a Saviour can
hope to attain, is far beneath that to which God has
appointed us, — to holy, blessed, and eternal life. It is
thus that the God of the Christian honours sinful men ;
the Holy God, with whom we are not by nature one, as
the delusive faith of Pantheism would teach, but with
whom we are to become and do become one in Christ.

And further, we honour humanity in submitting to

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 33

this holy and gracious will of God concerning us. If
we really are sinners, how can we degrade ourselves
more deeply than by refusing to hear of repentance,
determining to call wrong right, denying sin altogether, '
or making light of and painting it fair. What, on the
other hand, can be more sublime, what can better reveal
the dawn of human grandeur, than the publican striking ^
on his breast, and crying, Grod be merciful to me a sin- ^
ner ! and the monarch bending beneath the prophet's
rebuke, and confessing before Grod, Against thee only
have I sinned !

This moral grandeur Jesus Christ will bring to per-
fection. He heals and he glorifies humanity ; yea, the
world itself. He is what Christendom, in accordance
with the gospel, expresses, when saying in her creed :
/ believe in Jesus Christy God's only begotten Son^ our
Lord. This is iho, manifestation of divine mystery .be-
fore which we bow. The endeavour to see how much
we can by our own efforts succeed in gaining of the
knowledge of the person of Christ, of his divine and
human nature, is indeed self- rewarding ; but not while
we set aside his own expressions about himself, rather
while we make these the basis of all our knowledge ;
neither is it any disturbance to us, nor any reproach that
this knowledge should remain fragmentary till we come
to know even as we are known. Meanwhile we live in his
fellowship, and know without visible proof, or extraor-
dinary experience, that this is a holy and blessed reality.
For, as the Scripture says (John iii. 33), and as those
referred to experimentally know, " He that hath re-
ceived his testimony, hath set to his seal that God is
true."

VI.

CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOR SIK

THE atonement of Christ for the sins of men, the
blessed mystery to the contemplation of which we
devote one solemn week in every year, this is to be the
subject of this Lecture.

God has given Free-will to man ; it is with him a
matter of choice whether he shall act in this way or in
that, more especially whether he shall follow the voice
of his conscience or not. But how if man perverts
this his liberty to a consciously sinful course of action ?
And, in truth, fearful is the stream of unrighteousness
which has for ages run through the history of humanity.
What an amount of cruelty of man to man, not only on
the battle-field of the invader, or in the markets of the
slaveholder, but in the stately houses and the lowly
cottages of our own land ! And what an amount of
wrong inflicted by the licentiousness of man ! But how
immeasurably greater would this dark tide of sin appear
could we pierce below the surface of action into the
thoughts and motives of the heart ! Plato on one occa-
sion divided human beings into three classes. He
placed the unjust and the dissolute in the lowest class,
as deserving to be transformed, after their death, into
wolves and apes. The second class was made up of
moral and well-behaved people, who were temperate
and upright indeed, but lacked the spiritual sense, and
held no communion with the Eternal ; these he, in his
half-jesting, half-earnest strain, pronounced well-quali-
fied for transmigration into wasps and ants. We see,
therefore, that the Glreek philsopher had no very pro-
found respect for mere outward propriety of conduct. It

CHRIST S ATONEMENT FOR SIN. I 3 5

was only those belonging to the third class, those who
occupied their lives with the contemplation of the Eternal,
and departed this world free from stain of any sort, who
were after their death to be admitted among the gods.
Thus this wonderfully gifted man anticipated in a
measure the great Christian verity, that not mere mo-
rality of conduct, but inward and spiritual righteousness
leads to blessedness. We seldom find this recognised
amongst ourselves. We are far too ready to judge
character from without. This tendency to rest in the
external is a very prevalent evil now-a-days in theory
and practice.

" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;"
this is the eternally stringent law for beings made in
the image of God. Now, if this be the law, how heavy
the condemnation that attends upon our actual condi-
tion ! The law of God is holy. Consequently, from the
opposition of our lives to this law, a fearful alienation,
a profound unhappiness, must needs ensue. And so
indeed it is, and we each know by experience how
heavy a burden of woe rests upon our race.

This burden of woe is ordained by God for a two-
fold purpose ; for the purpose of discipline, and the
purpose of retribution.

The purpose of discipline : — The wretchedness which
proceeds from sin is intended to lead us to see the folly
of ungodliness ; they who will not take it upon trust shall
feel experimentally that out of God there is no life : and it
is thus that the Holy One, who delighteth not in the death
of the sinner, would recall us to himself, the only fount
of life and joy. The inspired writers are unwearied in
their forcible declarations of this purpose of divine love
to improve us by suifering. But God's chastening has
also another aim. The sin of man is a violation of the
divine law, a dishonouring of the divine name. This is
especially evident in the case of perjury, but it is true
also of all sin ; God has made himself known to man,
he has revealed his name in our midst ; sin is an
ignoring of God, a desecration of the Divine Spirit
who dwells or desires to dwell in the human soul, just

136 Christ's ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

as impurity is a desecration of tlie Temple of the Holy
Spirit, whose temple the human body should be. Now,
as surely as God is a living God, so surely must lie
support his holy law and name ; the consequence of
such desecration must fall on him who has attacked
the sanctuary ; the sinner must, in the language of
Scripture, " bear his sins;" God must recompense sin
by punishment.

This purpose of retribution is not less emphatically
dwelt on by the prophets, apostles, and our Lord Jesus
Christ himself, than that other purpose of discipline.
Take, for instance, the passage, " With what measure
ye mete it shall be measured to you again ;" and where
is the man whose conscience does not at once recognise
the incontrovertible truth and justice of these words?
The necessity of retribution is most deeply imprinted
upon the human mind. When misfortune comes, how
frequently is it accompanied by a flash of conviction
that it is the righteous reward of some evil action or
other. This law of retribution is the fundamental idea
of many of our noblest poetical works ; not only do we
trace it in the lives of individual men, but in the life of
nations also. Whoever sets himself in good earnest to
gain a comprehensive view of the history of humanity,
will infallibly find, on the one hand, such clear traces
of a fixed and wise plan, as in spite of co-existing con-
fusion force upon him the conviction that the course of
human events is ordered by the wisdom of a personal
God ; on the other hand, such disturbances and hind-
rances as can only be viewed as punitive acts of this
same God. I would instance the fearful sway per-
mitted for many centuries to the fanaticism of the
followers of Mahomet. How many lands that might
else have yielded a rich harvest of spiritual life
they have trodden down into barrenness ! But, above
all, the law of retribution has been displayed in
the history of the Jewish people, the people of reve-
lation as we may emphatically call them. A long
series of prophets down to Jeremiah had foretold
(this every critic concedes) their carrying away by
the Assyrians first, and then by the Babylonians, as

CHRIST S ATONEMENT FOR SIN. 1 3 7

God's judgment upon their disloyalty ; and this really
did come to pass 600 and 700 years before Christ.
Again, Christ himself prophesied their overthrow as the
retribution for their rejection of the Messiah, and in the
following generation Jerusalem was destroyed, and for
1800 years Israel has been scattered abroad among the
nations ; still retaining so marked an individuality, that
wherever they may meet Jew recognises Jew ; a people
without land or home, indestructible limbs of a torn
and scattered body, a body from which the spirit has
fled, because they sinned against the Spirit of life.
Schiller has missed the truth in saying that the history
of the world is the judgment of the world ; the true
statement is rather this : The world's history is a judg-
ment upon the world, — " The wrath of God is declared
from heaven upon all ungodliness of men who hold the
truth in unrighteousness." In these words St. Paul
deliberately states the nature of that relation of things
and events which history records for us.

What follows, then ? If each one of us individually,
and the race as a whole, lies under the retributive jus-
tice of God, how are we to escape its sentence ? Many
have their answer ready prepared : " God is Love, con-
sequently God will forgive us." But this is too hasty
a conclusion. Doubtless God is love ; he, the God of
life, has called us into existence that we might enjoy it,
and he is willing to call the dead in sin out of that
death into life again. Eut, on the other hand, huma-
nity lies under the retributive government of God. The
sorrow that weighs upon the sinner practically teaches
him, that joy, well-being, life itself is inconsistent with
alienation from God, since he alone is the source of
these blessings. Thus must the majesty of God be glori-
fied in those who have desecrated it. Every one who
has reflected upon the Divine Being will acknowledge
that God's actions are not as ours, arbitrary, but that
which he does is necessary. And it is equally clear from
the very nature of God, that he cannot enter upon any
course of action and then relinquish it, as is often the
case with us changeable mortals. God's purpose cannot
fail of its accomjjlishment. Hence it follows inevitably.

1 3 8 Christ's atonement foe sin.

that since men lie under the divine law of retribution,
that law must take its full course, and attain its ultimate
purpose, which is no other than the triumph of the Divine
Majesty over the sins of men. God is indeed love ; he
delights not in killing, but in making alive ; but his
quickening and saving of those who have dishonoured
his great Name can only be brought about by a full dis-
play of that Name's inalienable glory. Imagine a man
called to the death-bed of a friend ; imagine that dying
friend confiding to him that his conscience is heavily
laden by guilt, and entreating some consolation ; what
would he say to him ? We are often told, that accord-
ing to the fundamental principles of Protestantism, all
Christians should be priests, and doubtless this ought to
be the case ; what priestly word then would you have to
utter on an occasion like this ? Imagine yourself igno-
rant of all connected with Christ's atonement, and retain-
ing at the same time a firm hold of the truth that Grod by
his very nature can neither be arbitrary nor changeable,
and you will find that this alone remains for you to say :
" My friend, God's justice must indeed mete to you
that measure with which you yourself have measured ;
you must needs bear whatever retribution you have
incurred. But submit yourself humbly to God's sen-
tence, acknowledge its justice, let your heart be melted
in the fire of the divine judgments, and turn under
their influence to the Lord, so will he who is still
Love — after his majesty has been manifested in you,
as well as practically acknowledged by your humble
submission — manifest also his quickening and saving
power in your behalf." This is the only answer that
you could possibly — of course I am now excluding
Christ's atonement — make to your sorrowful and dying
friend.

But is this a comforting answer? He who looks
deeper into the human heart will find no comfort here.
" Bear ye the weight of the divine judgments !" Surely
these are fearful and melancholy words. " Be con-
verted by the divine judgments !" Good ; but Christ
has said, " He that doeth sin is the servant of sin;"
and even the heathens of antiquity were well aware

Christ's atonement for sin. 139

that nothing is so difficult as to gain the empire over
one's own heart. " Let your hearts be softened by the
chastening tires." That were well, did not experience
teach us that a self-seeking heart — and this is what a
sinful heart is sure to be— does not become softened by
the farnace of tribulation, but rather embittered, rather
kindled with hatred and even blasphemy against its
judge. " The law worketh wrath" (Rom. iv, 15), says
St. Paul. " The people when hungry and hardly bestead
shall fret themselves and curse their king and their
God," wrote Isaiah nearly three thousand years ago ;
and as it was in his day, so is it experience teaches us
in our own. And as it is on this side death, so will it be
on the other, for death can in no way change the heart
of man.

How then do we stand ? On one side, so certainly
as the voice of conscience which proclaims the fact of
a divine law of retribution to be no self-delusion, and
so certainly as the hallowing of the divine name is the
highest law of all, that is, so certainly as God is a living
God, even with equal certainty must the sinner remain
separated from God, that is, from the source of life,
till he bears the divine judgments in a fitting spirit, —
in other words, till he is sanctified by them ; and on
the other side, if we must needs bear the judgment our
dishonouring of God's name has incurred, to the end,
we shall infallibly wax worse and worse, and add new
debts and new guilt to our old. And taking these two
truths in connexion, we must needs come to the con-
clusion, that no one can show us a way of escape from
the penalty we lie under.

But now let us look to Christ. He tells us that he
is come to seek and to save the lost. In what way then
does Christ propose to save these ? Even his first step
towards such an end is of the utmost importance. He
submits, we find, to that very baptism in Jordan which
the Baptist instituted as a typical confession of sin for
the sinful people to whom Messiah came. While the
baptism of the people in the Jordan typically declared
that only in the way of deep repentance could they
meet their Messiah, the Messiah's own participation in

1 40 Christ's atonement for sin.

the rite testified, that only by the way of Death could
he bring help to the people. Messiah must die to save
the lost ; with this conviction Jesus went on his saving
way. But how does this death of the Messiah bring
salvation within the reach of the lost ? I will content
myself with citing some of the Lord's most striking
statements upon this subject. On his last journey to
Jerusalem, two of his disciples entreat, as a mark of
favour, to be placed the one on his right hand, and the
other on his left, when he shall come in his kingdom.
He, however, replies that they must leave domination
to the princes of this world, that their greatness must
consist in serving, " even as the Son of man came, not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his
life a ransom for many." This expression clearly de-
notes the significance of his death. Are any disposed
to inquire how it was that a just God could deliver over
Jesus to death ? He himself gives the answer : " the Son
of man came to give away his life for you." And for
what purpose did the Son of man give his life away?
Hear his own words : " To be a ransom for many."
Now, where a ransom is needed there must needs be
prisoners. And where the ransom is a life, clearly the
life of those prisoners must be involved. And if this
ransom has to be paid for many, it is plain that they
are unable to pay it themselves, though they owe it ;
and therefore He steps into their place.

A few days later the Lord was keeping the holy festival
of the Passover, the memorial of the gracious sparing of
Israel in Egypt at the time of the slaying of the first-born
in every Egyptian family, as well as of their deliverance
from Egyptian bondage. This supper was the last, the
parting meal of Jesus and his disciples, for his death
was to take place on the morrow. The Lord therefore
took bread and said, " Take, eat, for this is my body ;
and after that the cup, and said, Drink ye all thereof,
for this is my blood, the blood of the new covenant
which was shed for many for the remission of sins :
this do in remembrance of me." He substituted the
feast of the new testament for that of the old, and this
feast was to commemorate his death. But why should

CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOR SIN. 1 4. 1

the remembrance of Christ be most especiall}^ a re-
membrance of his death? He answers, " Mj blood is
the blood of the new testament." But how can Christ's
blood ratify the new testament? He says, " It is shed
for many, for the remission of sins." Thus it is the
forgiveness of sins that leads to a new covenant, this
forgiveness being brought about through the shedding
of Christ's blood. It was on the selfsame evening that
Christ offered up that prayer (John xvii.), which we
are accustomed to call the sacerdotal prayer. I may here
mention that even De Wette speaks of this as the most
exalted portion of the gospel, the purest expression of
the divine consciousness and divine peace of Jesus,
having previously observed of several others of our
Lord's discourses, recorded by the same evangelist,
that they ray forth a greater than earthly brightness,
so that it is inconceivable that John should have him-
self invented them. In this prayer, then, the Lord says,
in reference to his death, " For their sakes I sanctify
myself, that they also might be sanctified through the
truth." And this significant expression, interpreted
by the sacrificial language of the Old Testament, is to
be understood thus : I devote myself as a sacrifice for
them ; this being the only way by which even the dis-
ciples of Jesus became holy men.

The last allusion made by Christ to his death, which I
shall here quote, belongs to the same occasion. When he
was about, as he was wont, to set out with his disciples to
the Mount of Olives, he said : " This that is written must
yet be accomplished in me : ' and he was numbered
among the transgressors,' for the things concerning me
have an end." Christ here alludes to a most remarkable
prophecy in the 53d of Isaiah, concerning that servant
of the Lord who was to come forth as a root out of dry
ground, without form or comeliness, despised and re-
jected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,
taken out of the land of the living, but bearing the
people's grief and carrying their sorrows, the Lord
having laid their iniquity upon him, who, like a sheep
before the shearers, was dumb, opening not his mouth,
but making his soul an offering for sin, interceding for

1 42 CHRIST S ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

the transgressors, being the righteous servant by whom
many should be justified because of his having borne
their iniquities. It is not possible to set forth in plainer
words than these that sinners are saved through the
vicarious suffering of one who has borne their penalty
in their stead ; and Christ, we have seen, declares that
these words are accomplished by his death.

You know that a few years after Christ's death,
Stephen died a martyr for his faith. After a few
years followed James, Peter, Paul. And who can
count the numbers down to the time of Wycliffe and
Huss, who sealed their witness with their blood ?
Well, the enemies of Christian truth at the present
day would make the death of Jesus nothing more than
a martyrdom. The Pharisees, they say, who hated him
because of his reproval of their hypocrisy, accused him
to Pilate ; Jesus remained unshaken in his testimony to
the truth, and this cost him his life. Now, it is doubt-
less a glorious thing to lay down one's life for the truth,
and there are not many in this age of ours whose souls
are lofty enough for such a sacrifice. But Jesus is so
exalted, that a deed which confers the highest renown
on mere men, would be in him poor, and small, and in-
adequate. If Jesus be the great witness for the truth,
and if the most important revolution in the world's his-
tory be brought about by him, those who have any proper
historical discernment should first of all ask of Jesus him-
self the meaning of his own death. His answer we find
far transcends language applicable to mere martyrdom.
" My life, he declares, is a ransom ; my blood is the
blood of the new covenant, — it is shed for the forgive-
ness of sins. Thus the Saviour reveals the atoniyig
character of his death ; for, whatever act of suffering is
a quality to expiate offences is called atonement for
those offences, and it is through atoning for human
guilt that Jesus brings about the reconciliation of man
with God, — his restoration to the character and privi-
leges of a son.

But how does his death atone for our sins ? In order
to understand this, we must be careful clearly to distin-
guish between the two fundamental ideas found in our

Christ's atonement for sin. i 43

Lord's own words. When he says that at his death
he sanctifies himself for his disciples, he characterizes
his dying as a free-will and holy offering of his life to
God. And when he declares that the Son of man came
to give his life a ransom for many, this giving his life
is represented as a perfectly free act, and the life given
as a costly gift, for a ransom must needs be costly.
This is the first fundamental idea in all our Lord's
statements concerning his death, — in free love he gave
up his holy life to the glory of God. But, on the other
hand, Christ describes his death as the fulfilment of that
prophecy which declares, that the righteous servant dies
because God has laid on him the iniquity of the un-
righteous,— their sentence being executed upon him, —
their transgressions the burden under which he sinks.
This is the second point of view in which the Lord
teaches us to consider his dying. K, then, we would
know the real truth and the whole truth, we must grasp
both points of view in their vital unity. And if this be
done, one class of objections, often adduced, will die
away of themselves. For, with regard to all profounder
truths, the great desideratum, but at the same time the
most serious difficulty, is to apprehend by a living glance
the essential oneness in which two different truths con-
verge, and from whence they radiate ; — the beating
heart, so to speak, from which, and to which, the streams
of truth flow ; superficial minds discerning often nothing
but contradictions in the profound subjects which reward
a deeper insight with the highest intellectual enjoyment,
because it is just in those profoundest depths that it
recognises harmony.

I must now revert to our supposed answer to the
dying man, convinced by his awakened conscience that
for a guilty sinner it is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God. We have imagined ourselves
telling him that he must needs submit to the conse-
quences of his actions, be they what they may ; but that
if he, in another world, bows humbly to the just judg-
ment of his God, and turns in penitence to him, his
Creator will, after the expiation of his sentence due,
cause his face to shine upon him once more. But, in

1 44 CHKISr S ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

point of fact, tlie retributive justice of God Joes not
begin in another world : the life that now is, is often
fearfully shattered by sin, and the weight on the con-
science most oppressive here : nay, we trace the effects
of this law of retribution in national as well as indivi-
dual life, and through the whole progressive history of
the race. Now, there are two points which must be
taken into consideration, before we can rightly under-
stand the nature of this retributive justice. The holy
men who spake by inspiration of God, both in the Old
and New Testament, most distinctly state that physical
death is the wages of sin. Not that we can suppose,
that even had we been sinless, these earthly bodies of
ours could eternally have clothed our immortal spirits.
But the manner in which our earthly life now ends, in
complete severance of the spirit from all material orga-
nization whatsoever, this, the Scripture teaches, is not
the original ordinance of the Creator. According to
that original ordinance our spirits would, during our
mortal life, have evolved for themselves out of these
earthly and material bodies a higher and an undying
corporeity. But physical death as it exists now, or, to
adopt the language of St. Paul, the '' being unclothed''''
instead of the " being clothed upon,^^ this it is which is
the wages of sin. Now, what is it that constitutes the
distinctive character of the judgment which sinners
have incurred, — what is the special root out of which
death grows ? It is the alienation of the sinner from
that communion with God which is the only source of
life. If we take a tree out of the soil from whence its
roots derive their nourishment, it will die ; and so it is
with our own life, which we have, by reason of our sin
taken out of the very element of life — that is to say, out
of fellowship with the living God.

Thus we see that the sentence of death treads on the
heels of sin by invincible necessity. And now remem-
ber, also, that since there is no shadow of repentance
or turning, with God, this sentence cannot end before it
has accomplished its aim, its purpose, which purpose is
the manifestation of the Divine Majesty. Just as the
symptoms of bodily disease will not disappear, till the

ciirist's atonement for sin. 145

cause of the disease be remoyed, so the processes by
which death saps human life cannot disappear till the
separation of man from the Source of life be done away
with, and the Spirit of the living God be restored to the
human race. Yet how shall the Divine Spirit be ours
till we have in humble submission borne God's judg-
ment, borne it in a holy frame of mind, and borne it to
the end? This brings us back to the very point we
stood at before : there is no human way of escape from
the sentence of condemnation under which we lie ! But
we stand in a different attitude than before, for now we
have heard the words of Christ, The judgment which
we had to bear has been already borne, for Christ de-
clares himself to be that righteous servant who was, ac-
cording to prophecy, while bearing the sins of many, to
give his life as a sacrifice for their guilt. And thus God's
judgment has been holily borne, for he who bore it
sanctified himself, as he himself says, " I sanctify my-
self for them." Christ has not merely suffered death in
consequence of sin. He has suffered it with the full
consciousness that Death was the wages of sin, submit-
ting with holy, loving, and reverent submission to the
conditions of Divine justice ; and hence is it that his
death has power and virtue to atone for our sins. *

But I must show, with still greater distinctness, what
we are to understand by Christ's holy bearing of the
Divine judgment. Jesus the Holy One, who could de-
clare that no one knoweth the Father but the Son —
Jesus might have had joy (Heb. xii. 2), uninterrupted ;
he might have withdrawn himself from the guilty race
who did not desire him, and have lived solely in the
blessed contemplation of his heavenly Father. For,
as he himself says, " This is life eternal, to know thee, the
only true God" (John xvii. 3). It was his zeal for
God's glory, his love for mankind, that forbade this ; he
desired to reveal his Father to men. Why, we may ask,
did he not limit this revelation to the true Israelites, to
a Nathanael, a Peter, a John ? His love could tolerate
no such limitation ; it impelled him to seek the publicans
and sinners. But why, at least, did he not remain at
a distance from the Pharisees, who had been already

K

1 46 CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOE SIN.

declared by the Baptist to have rejected the counsel of
God ? ^ Because his love could tolerate no limitations
of any sort : the Son of Man had come to seek the lost,
wherever and whatever they might be. Now, any one
who is feelingly alive, on the one hand, to the sinless
purity of him who condescended to sit and eat with sin-
ners ; and, on the other hand, to the fact, that this pure
and sinless one was very man, — not a mere, but still a
true man ; in all things susceptible of pain, sorrow, and
temptation, even as we are, — will at once discern how
great an eflfort of absolute self-denial is implied in this
companionship of Christ with sinners, and will see that
his inward agonies, inward crucifixion, must have begun
long before his bodily death. If an unholy man feels
constrained and distressed in the company of the holy,
surely the fellowship of worldly men must have been a
deep grief to the divine holiness of the Saviour. But
when we further take into consideration the practical
bondage of men to sin, and the hatred of men to God's
judgment upon sin, we may well say that Christ, in his
intercourse with men, bore the punishment which God
has affixed to human guilt.

Christ knew well the inward anguish that awaited
him, when he appeared as a Prophet in the midst of
rebellious men ; but, for the glory of God and the wel-
fare of those men, he willingly took upon him all the
miseries which Divine Justice has associated with human
intercourse ever since the Fall ; he, so to speak, accepted
the conditions under which alone, according to God's
ordinance, it is possible for a holy being to act and work
amongst sinners, and in this manner he practically ac-
knowledged the holiness and justice of God, in evolving
out of human sinfulness itself the penalty that attends
upon all human intercourse. On the other hand, we
have seen that Christ gave up his life voluntarily. As
he himself said, no one took his life away from him ; he
gave it up of himself. At the very moment of his cap-
ture in the garden, he might have prayed to his Father,
and he would have sent him down legions of angels ;
those even who came to take him fell to the earth at his
^ See Christ's own words, Luke vii. 30.

CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOE SIN. 1 47

words, " I am he." This voluntariness of the sacrifice
of Christ appears pre-eminently from the narrative of his
Transfiguration ; the Holy Jesus might have returned
from the Mount to the invisible world, without under-
going death. Wherefore, then, was it that he submitted
to die ? It was that amidst the myriads of men who
must of necessity die, being sinners, and who, before
Christ's spirit was shed abroad, never rightly understood
either their sinfulness, or the sentence of death that
they lay under, — to say nothing of their powerlessness
to undergo that sentence in a right spirit, — it was that
amongst all these myriads there should be one who suf-
fered death with full comprehension both of the nature
and penalty of sin ; full comprehension that the law of
mortality is a holy judgment of God passed upon sin ;
that one amongst the many should suffer death in holy
submission of his soul to the justice of this divinely-
appointed penal law.

Again, in the third place : the root from which death
springs is, as we have before seen, the separation of the
sinful soul from life-giving communion with the living
God. The bitterest drop in the cup of the lost will be
that they have lost their God, torn for ever with their
own hands the bond between themselves and him. For
— for him who hath sinned against the Holy Spirit there
remaineth no forgiveness, and his will be a fearful iso-
lation when it is finally decreed that he is and must
continue separated from him who created him, and who
is the alone source of life. Even now, the men who
are without God in the world, know something of this
terrible loneliness ; but what has only faintly begun
here, will be fully developed hereafter ; what is now
felt in secret will then be made manifest. On the other
hand, the highest happiness of the Christian, even now,
is that of which St. Paul speaks, the Spirit bearing
witness with his spirit that he is the Son of God. x\nd
now consider these words of Christ : " My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" Not, indeed, that
this forsaking of the Son by the Father could resemble
the forsaking of the wicked by the God whom they
have rejected. Christ expressly states, the very even-

1 48 Christ's atonement for sin.

ing before liis death, " I am not alone, becaufe tlie
Father is with me," and his cry on the cross is, " My
God, my God !" But for the dread time during which
he was given over into his adversaries' hands, the
Father's inner voice, witnessing of his communion with
the Son, was hushed, that so the Son might, in this
silence of the Father, experience the darkest portion,
the very essence of God's judgment against sin, and,
by believing and humble submission, recognise the link-
ing of even tliis awful consequence with sin, to be a
righteous law of the Righteous Judge ; thus, by his
holy bearing of the sentence accomplishing its purpose,
and by fulfilling it to the end, doing it away. For the
atoning power of all our Lord's sufferings lies in this
holy bearing of the judgment which God has indis-
solubly linked with human sin ; not in his physical
pains, his wounds, his blood as such, but in the holy
travail of his soul, when he voluntarily underwent the
penalty affixed by God to sin, received the bitter cup
from God's hand into his, the Son of man's, thus, by
fulfilling its purpose, accomplishing its aims — exhaust-
ing the judgment. This is what is included in the
atonement of Christ ; a profound suffering, not merely
external suffering and submission, but inner and in-
tense ; the most free and most absolute spiritual act
of sacrifice that ever was recorded in the history of
humanity.

Any one who has followed the above train of thought
with deep attention and spiritual recollection, will find
in it an answer to the two following questions : Why
could not God's forgiveness be obtained except through
the death of Christ ? and in what manner does Christ's
death bring about the forgiveness of sins ? But there
are two other questions which spring out of the above
statements, to which I have yet to reply : and these
are, first. How can the holy sufferings of the one man
Christ Jesus atone for the sins of hundreds and thou-
sands of millions ? and, secondly. In what way can
Jesus appear before God as the representative of huma-
nity? And these two questions I the more willingly
propose to answer, because of the deeper insight we

CHPtlST S ATONEMENT FOR SIN. 1 49

shall tlius gain both into the wisdom of God, and into
the mystery of the Saviour's person.

How, then, can one man's holy endurance of the
Divine judgment upon sin atone for the sins of millions?
The briefest answer I can give to this question is as
follows : If you compare humanity to a tree, Christ's
relation to this tree with countless leaves, is not that of
a leaf like other leaves ; and if you compare humanity
to a body with many limbs, Christ is not a limb like
other limbs. In all organic life, each part is doubtless
vitally related to the whole, but the different parts are
not alike vitally important to that whole. Look at the
facts of Nature ; the tree includes root, trunk, several
arms, a multitude of smaller branches, a countless
abundance of leaves ; if of these leaves you take away
numbers, your eye will scarcely note their loss, the
tree will not suffer ; but if you take away the root,
what becomes of the tree ? So with regard to the body
— we deprecate the loss of a limb, yet how many a
soldier retm'ns, seriously maimed indeed, but in good
health and spirits, to his home : whereas if the bullet
reach the heart, all is over with him. And so it is in
the organism of human society. The members of the
family are father, mother, children, but we call the father
the head: the duty of the children is to obey, even when
they do not understand him ; while his part is to under-
stand the wants of wife and children better even than
they themselves can ; and not only to understand, but
to supply. The State, too, is divided into members,
into citizens and governing authorities, and every citizen
is of use to the State, but in the most free Republic it
has never been imagined that each citizen could be a
statesman. We call statesmen those who have insight
to discern, and power to execute, that which is best for
the many-sided life of the people at large. So, too, in
ecclesiastical organization ; each member is of use to
the whole body, but there are some who have more
especially the cure of souls ; whose vocation it is to
assist and support in all questions relating to spiritual
life, men of various ages, positions, callings, gifts, and
temperaments ; and this can only be rightly and really

150 Christ's ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

done by one wlio can connect his own experience with
the experience of men of every shade of character, and
take by sympathy the varied life of others into his own:
only such a one can speak the appropriate word of help
to each separate case that comes before him. But how
remarkable the extension of the horizon both of thought
and action in those highly-gifted spirits that God sends
among us from time to time. Some live in the nar-
rowest sphere, and hardly understand themselves ;
others have not only a deep insight into their own life,
as well as into the lives of a wide circle of their fellow-
men, but are able to enrich all alike with special and
appropriate gifts. This may, in some degree, prepare
us to understand the relation of Christ to the whole of
humanity. Christ was an Israelite according to the
flesh, and he remained dutifully subject to the law
which made the Jews what they were. But the name
by which he was wont to name himself was, " the Son
of man ;" the field in which he sowed the seed was the
world; all nations were to be his disciples, and of all
his disciples alike he required that they should love him
with their whole power of loving.

And, in point of fact, how wondrous the might with
which for these eighteen hundred years one Jew has
actually subjected to his mild yoke thousands and thou-
sands of souls out of every nation ! Syrians, Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans, Saxons, Celts, Sclaves, have said to
him, as said his Jewish disciples of old : " Lord, to whom
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life !" Yea,
not only hast thou the words of life, but thou thyself art
the life. " He who hath the Son of God hath life." For
wherever the religious life of Christians really exists,
there will be found a fellowship with Christ's person, there
the language held will be : " Thou art the Vine, we will
be the branches." All such souls have acknowledged
that it was this Jesus, this personal Saviour, who
awakened and quickened their inner man ; that it is
this fellowship with him which enables their better
nature so to triumph over their lower, that they can
partly reach the goal towards which their conscience
strives. This intimate and indissoluble bond which unites

Christ's atonement foe sin. 151

all sucli spirits to Christ, to his person — and the closer
the bond, the completer the liberty — this is the most
remarkable fact in the history of the human race, the
highest problem with which psychology can possibly
occupy itself. Now, the only possible explanation of this
fact lies in this, that he who calls himself the Son of man
was not a mere man, but the eternal and incarnate Lord,
for whom and by whom all human spirits were created.
But, however, I will not dwell further here on the
person of Christ ; I will only show in what way this
one man can be the priestly representative of the
whole race. He who appears before Grod as the priest
of sinful men must be able to take an adequate view
of the guilt of the people whom he represents ; he
must not look upon it as less than it is in the eyes of a
holy God ; he must apprehend its depth, its full extent,
its wide-spreading ramifications. I say its ramifications,
because, as humanity in God's sight is not a mere ag-
gregate of separate men, but an organic whole, having
a common moral sense implanted in it by its Creator,
sin has necessarily a common and corporate existence,
the ivorld lies in wickedness, the spirit of the world is
become a spirit of evil. Now no man, except Christ,
has ever yet been able rightly to discern the nature and
extent of sin, because only one who is sinless can see
how black its stain ; only one who himself stands in the
light can truly know what darkness is. And this Son
of man is also the only one whose penetrating gaze can
apprehend the whole of the glory and worth of which
God created humanity capable, the whole tenor of its
downward way, and the high end it may yet attain ;
none but Jesus has ever sounded the whole extent of
the aberrations, degradations, and disorder of our race.
He, however, has sounded all these depths, his heart
has been pierced with adequate sorrow for all that dis-
honouring of God's holy name of which the beings
whose brother he became were guilty ; and consequently
he has fully apprehended the righteous severity of
divine justice in connecting sin with death, death in its
various forms. And because he has manifested the
righteousness and justice of the divine sentence — not

152 CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOE SIN.

in words only, but practically by bis silent and boly
endurance of its penalt}^ — be bas accomplisbed tbe
purpose of divine punisbment, and bas terminated it —
on bebalf of wbom? On bebalf of all tbose wbo by
faitb appropriate tliis bis boly endurance of tbe divine
judgment as tbeir own.

Tbis last sentence contains also an answer to tbe
second question — In wbat sense is it tbat Cbrist stands
in tbe place of otber men, or bow is be to be my repre-
sentative, and bow am I to avail myself of bis work ?
It is in and by faith, living faitb, tbat I appropriate
tbat work, and make it mine. Of course it is essential
to tbe satisfactoriness of tbis answer tbat we sbould
tborougbly understand wbat is meant by faitb. No
doubt, to any wbo bold, as tbe opponents of Christian
truth in our day generally do, tbe fundamental error
that faith is a mere belief or opinion, tbe whole of
Christianity, but most especially tbe doctrine of tbe
atonement, must remain hopelessly unintelligible. But
are these enemies of faith, wbo would willingly give
themselves out to be theologians, quite unacquainted
with the writings of tbe Reformers, or if they know
them — if, for instance, they only know Luther's famous
Introduction to tbe Epistle to the Komans, or bis work
upon Christian Liberty — bow is it possible that they
can now attribute to us tbat poor and inadequate con-
ception of tbe nature of faitb with which tbe Church
of Ptome sought to oppose tbe Reformation ? Are not
these theologians aware that one of tbe fundamental
differences between the Church of Eome and tbe Re-
formed Church lies in tbis, tbat the former confounds
faith with mere belief, i.e., the assent of the under-
standing to a fact or facts ; whereas tbe Reformers
understand thereby an affair of the heart, the will,
the very core, so to speak, of personal consciousness.
When our Lord said to tbe woman wbo was a sinner,
" Thy sins are forgiven thee, thy faitb bas saved thee;"
u-re we to understand by this, " Thy opinion, thy mere
belief, bas saved thee ?" Yv^ben St. Paul writes to tbe
Galatians, "It is no more I that live, but Cbrist tbat
liveth in me ; and the life tbat I now live in tbe flesh

cheist's atonement for sin. 153

I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself for me;" are we to cut down these
beautiful words to " I live by mere theoretical belief
in the Son of God?" And again, are we to affix this
lamentably inadequate interpretation to those other
words of St. Paul to the Philippians : "I count all
things loss, that I may win Christ, and be found in
him, not having my own righteousness which is by the
law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the right-
eousness of God by faith ; that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his
sufferings." Truly we need not be theologians, we
need only have a sound intelligence, to discover at
once from expressions such as these, that to have faith
in Christ means to trust him, to draw near to him, to
be found in him, to live in him. To have faith in
Christ implies such an experimental knowledge of our
own unrighteousness, as leads us to distrust our own
wisdom with regard to the things of God ; such deep
and dominant conviction of Christ's wisdom, Christ's
holiness, Christ's spiritual majesty, and such inward
experience of his quickening power, as makes us trust
only in his word, and experience in ourselves a real
communion with him who was dead, but who now liveth
for evermore. It is self-evident that those who believe
in Christ assent to the truth of his mission ; but they
do this, not from hearsay, not on outward evidence, but
from personal spiritual experience, just as he who
walks in the sunshine is convinced by his sensations
that the sun is up there in the sky, even if — his sight
having been weak from childhood — he has never gazed
full at the radiant orb.

Now, it is this personal experience which is the very
soul of faith, and without which the mere assent of the
understanding is a lifeless thing, which the enemies of
evangelical truth ignore in their description of faith,
although it is surely illogical and unfair to omit the
main point of a definition. But, on the other hand,
they who know what is really implied in believing in
Christ, living by faith of the Son of God, being found
in Christ, have no difficulty in understanding how the

154 Christ's ATONEMENT FOR SIN.

believer has a property in all Christ is and has, more
especially in his holy bearing of the divine punishment
of sin. We take an illustration : Christ has given us
the Lord's Prayer, a prayer so short, so simple, and
yet so perfectly complete, that surely no man will pre-
sume to say he himself could ever have invented such
a one. Thousands repeat these words thouglitlessly
every day, and call this repetition prayer ; and at last
fifty repetitions of it at a time are called a rosary, and
held to be meritorious, though every intelligent mind
knows well what a wide difference there is between
parrot-like repetition and prayer. Such saying over
the Lord's Prayer as this, of course, is alike without
virtue or result. But how is it when a man whose soul
thirsts for the living God hears this filial prayer of the
Lord Jesus, and feels at the same time the Holy Spirit
of Adoption dwelling within him ? It may be that for
a long time he fails to apprehend all the depths and
heights there are in this prayer, but he breathes its
spirit; the Spirit that maketh intercession therein is
blended with his own, and when he approaches his
Father which is in Heaven in those words which did
not, indeed, spring from his mind, but from that of
Christ, — think you that, in the eyes of that Father, it
is not all one as though from that praying human soul
the prayer had originated ? Yea, verily, by the very
equity of the divine holiness it must needs be so. Here
we sec that Christ's act of prayer is the property of
mankind ; just so is it with the work of suffering by
which he acknowledged and satisfied the justice of
God's sentence upon sin. As the Lord's Prayer was
originally not ours but his, so are his holy sufferings
his not ours. And as his prayer may be repeated
mechanically, and to such repetition the name of prayer
be given, so may a lifeless assent be paid to the fact of
his atoning work, and that assent may be confounded
with faith. And as such repetition of the Lord's Prayer
is a useless and barren thing, so this assent of the
understanding to the fact of the atonement may leave
the soul of the man year by year unatoned for.

But, on the other hand, just as the holy spirit of the

CHRIST'S ATONEMENT FOR SIN. I 5 5

Lord's Prayer may take such hold of a human soul
that the man's whole delight is in it, that he inhales its
spirit as the sick man inhales the pure mountain air, so
also may the holy spirit in which Christ submitted to
God's just anger against sin, become the spirit of the
sinful man who is bowed beneath the sense of personal
guilt and divine displeasure. And now, how does such
a one stand in relation to Christ's act of expiatory
suffering ? Christ's death fills him with the keenest
sorrow^ for he truly says : It is owing to the sins of the
world, and to my sins also, that this sentence of death,
which the holy Saviour bore, came upon the world ;
but, at the same time, the sacredness of Christ's death
inspires him with a joy equally keen ; he praises and
blesses the Son of man who bore righteously and holily
the punishment of sin, and thereby acknowledged and
submitted to God's justice, and thus did what the whole
world never could have done, endured and exhausted
the penalty, and magnified God's moral government, so
that the sentence having accomplished its purpose, was
done away with. Such a man will say : " I ought to
have done what Christ did, but I was not able. I
thank the Saviour that he did it." Such a man will
confess that his whole being is nothingness and un-
worthiness. It is the holy sufferings of Christ with
which he identifies himself, in which he delights, and
which he takes for his only portion. So that hence-
forth he lives not to himself, but to Him by whom the
saving work was done. Of a truth, a very different
relation to Christ's death is herein implied than that
mere belief in the fact, which the unenlightened con-
found with faith, could possibly afford ; this faith is
nothing short of a dying with Christ in order to live
with him, and he who thus identifies himself with the
atoning work of Christ, must needs be held by the
divine justice to have a property in it ; for not to for-
give a man who thus, in the sufferings of Christ dis-
cerns, confesses, and magnifies God's holy judgments
upon his own sins, would be to continue the sentence
after it has been undergone, the penalty after its pur-
pose had been fulfilled.

T56 Christ's ATONEMENT FOE SIN.

It was thus that the apostles believed in the death of
Christ, and history tells us what great things they gladly
did in the strength of such a faith. Let, then, the
Church of our day so believe therein, and it will once
more be strong and joyful as the Apostolic Church was.
For the foolishness of the Cross is wiser than men ;
and as the great poet said of the works of God's crea-
tion— of the rushing of the rivers, the flash of the
lightning, the waves of the sea, the rotation of the
earth, the triumphal march of the sun — "these incom-
prehensibly great works are glorious as on the first
day," so is it true of all Christ's works ; it is true of
his atoning work (to-day, yesterday, and for ever), that
" its love is incomprehensibly great and glorious now,
as on its first da3^"

VII.

THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION" OF
JESUS CHRIST.

THERE is hardly any fact in the history of the world
so well attested and corroborated as the Resurrec-
tion of Jesus.

This assertion may, to some readers, sound a bold
one. My task must be to justify it. The New Testa-
ment records afford us a fourfold proof of this great
fact, — two different apostles, John and Paul, and two
bodies of men, the first Christian community, and the
apostolic band who made it the fundamental theme of
the preaching on which the whole Church rests, pre-
senting themselves as witnesses of the resurrection of
Jesus.

Out of the evidence afforded by the Evangelists, we
shall only cite that of John, because the latter so con-
vincingly conveys the impression of eye-witness to an
unprejudiced mind. It is very true, that of late this
Gospel of St. John has been rejected as not genuine,
though only by a small number of writers who occupy
the extreme left, — by Baur and his school. They are,
moreover, opposed by incomparably the majority of
biblical students. Even De Wette himself does not
venture to deny the genuineness of the fourth Gospel ;
and men like Ewald, who are most free in their criti-
cism of the Scriptures, have of late maintained this
genuineness in opposition to Baur. Now, there are two
ways of carrying on the controversy with the opponents
of the resurrection. We may either say to them, You
reject the Gospels, we receive them ; but we will for
once go over to your stand-point, and seek our evi-

158 THE RESUEKECTION AND

dence only from the records you yourselves consider
authentic, namely, from the universally acknowledged
Pauline epistles, which will afford us three out of the
four proofs that we have already alluded to ; or we may
adopt another mode, and prove that we have a good
and scientific right to use the Gospels as som'ces of his-
torical truth, and, in these Lectures, the intent of which
is to give reasons for the faith we hold, this is the
course we choose. Time, however, compels me, to limit
myself to the Gospel of John, to which, as we have
already said, the present tone of critical inquiry is
decidedly favourable, and which is not only rich in
external testimony aiforded to it by the Fathers, but
possesses internal peculiarities which must invariably
impress the unprejudiced seeker for truth with its apos-
tolic origin.

We will not dwell upon the fact that this especially
pneumatic or spiritual Gospel, as old Clement of
Alexandria calls it, — this tender, genuine chief Gospel,
in the language of Luther, — discloses to us the inner
mystery of the nature of Christ in a manner only intel-
ligible from one whom Jesus loved, and who had lain
on his breast ; but we would especially recall to you the
self-witness of this disciple standing below the Cross :
" And he that saw it bare record, and his record is
true ; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might
believe" (John xix. 35). There is indeed an amazing
degree of subtlety and evasion of the plain, straight-
forward meaning of words required to pass over so
lightly, as certain critics do, such a declaration from
the mouth of the author of such a work as this. We
see that we should have to suppose a narrative, pressing
on our conscience with all the sanctifying force of
truth, to be itself chargeable with falsehood ; and the
writer, while expressly asserting the truth of the testi-
mony he bore, to have been consciously lying all the
while.

But with the force of the moral evidence, we have
combined that of the aesthetic to verify the statement :
" He that saw it bare record, and his record is true."
From the first chapter onwards this Gospel bears the

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHEIST. I 59

most unmistakable traces of ocular testimony, so that
even such a rationalistic critic as Credner observes,
" If we were without any historical data whatever as to
the authorship of the fourth Gospel, we should on in-
ternal grounds, — from the freshness and vividness of the
narrative, the preciseness and minuteness of the details,
the peculiar mention made of the Baptist and of the
son of Zebedee, the inspiration of love and devotedness
which the writer evinces towards Jesus, the irresistible
charm that pervades the whole evangelical history, —
have been led to the conclusion that the writer could
only have been a native of Palestine, an immediate eye-
witness, an apostle, a favourite of Jesus, could only in
a word have been John." Lachmann, that acute, not
seldom over- acute critic, says, he for his part has left
off reading works against the genuineness and historical
character of the Gospel of John, for he knows before-
hand that they are worthless.

It is in the account given by St. John of the Easter
morning that this impress of personal experience is
more especially noticeable. Mary Magdalene had been
at the sepulchre in the early dawn, and had found it
empty. In her agitation she hurries back to Peter and
John, the thought of the resurrection not having oc-
curred to her. She exclaims, " They have taken away
the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we (I and the other
women, by whom, according to the other evangelists,
she was accompanied) know not where they have laid
him." Filled with kindred perplexities, Peter and
John forthwith hasten to the grave. On this occasion
the impulse in the heart of the loving disciple is even
stronger than that of the usually more impetuous Peter,
and he is first to reach the spot. But when there, he
stands, in his contemplative way, by the sepulchre, and
only looks in, and, looking, discovers the linen-cloth in
which the body had been wrapped. Peter follows him,
and at once, as might have been expected from his
fiery nature, goes in, and sees not only the linen- cloth,
but also the napkin which had been bound round the
head of Jesus, and which was carefully wrapped to-
gether in a place by itself. This little circumstance, of

I 60 THE RESUERECTION AND

wliicli John convinced himself by going in also, was
euougli to dispel the idea of the removal of the Lord's
body. If that had been the case, the clothes would have
been taken too, or at all events they would not have
been thus deliberately arranged. This incident at once
led John to a truer train of thought ; faith in the resur-
rection dawned upon his soul. But he blames himself
for having required to see in order to be convinced,
and owns that they had not known, that is, understood
the Scriptures, according to which the resurrection of
the Messiah had long before been a foretold and a
divine necessity.

If the slight rebuke, here implied to both apostles,
comes best from the mouth of John, much more does
the extraordinary vividness with which apparently
trivial matters, such as the slower or swifter running to
the grave, the standing without or going in, and the
actual position of the napkin, prove distinctly that the
narrator was one of the two actors in the scene. To
no one else would such details have seemed of any im-
portance, to say nothing of the improbability of any
one having invented them; whereas to John they were
of the highest value, as having served to awaken his
faith in the resurrection. It was equally as decisive a
time in his life, as that in which he first met Jesus, and
describes with such inimitable life and truth in the first
chapter of his gospel.

Whoever is capable of appreciating the natural truth-
fulness of a narrative, will find himself more and more
irresistibly compelled to acknowledge that such passages
are self-evidencing as the light of day, and that their
peculiar colour and significance can only be explained
as the result of the personal experience of the narrator.
I Thus, then, in the apostle John, we have an indis-
putable witness of the resurrection of Jesus. The value
of his testimony consists especially in his giving us the
circumstances in their original freshness and liveliness,
in his transporting us back to the very Easter morning
and the empty sepulchre. It is true that John only
certifies us in this passage of the sepulchre being
^mpty ; he had not yet at that time himself seen the

ASCENSION OF JESUS CimiST. 1 6 I

Risen One. But not only are these preliminary facts
important as having served to develop faith in the resur-
rection in the apostle's heart, but it is in immediate
connexion with them that he tells us of that first appear-
ance of the risen Saviour, at the same place and in the
same hour, to Mary Magdalene, and then of three other
appearances at which he was himself present. If^ then,
the first narrative, and the Gospel, as a whole, be de-
serving of faith, these further reports must equally be
so. But we will not at present pursue this subject.
We leave John in order to hear St. Paul, the second
witness we have cited of the resurrection of Jesus. His
testimony will be the more weighty, because it trans-
ports us to a quite different place and period, and
throws light upon the question from a quite different
point of view.

^ Paul, in his Epistle to the Gralatians, had to defend
his apostolic claims against those who maintained that
he had not been himself directly a disciple of Jesus,
but had received the gospel at second-hand, as it were'
and through human instrumentality. In refutation of
this charge, he begins his epistle by calling himself an
apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus
Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the
dead; that is, he derives his apostleship, not indeed
from Jesus during his earthly career, but from the risen
Lord. This he goes on still more distinctly to declare
in the 12th verse ; he had not received the gospel he
preached, of man, neither was taught it but by the
revelation of Jesus Christ. That in speaking of this
revelation, he referred most especially to the occur-
rence before Damascus is plain from the 17th verse,
in which he expressly names that city. Thus, then^
Paul deduces his apostolic character and doctrine from
a supernatural revelation of the Risen One on his way
to Damascus. Only he does not on this occasion dis-
tinctly state whether this revelation was subjective
merely, or objectively visible. The first theory would
seem to be supported by the fact of Paul elsewhere
speaking of visions and revelations of the Lord which
he had experienced, as well as by his saying in the

L

I 62 THE RESUREECTION AND

context of this passage in Galatians (16tli verse), " It
pleased God to reveal his Son in me^ Yet, on the other
hand, we cannot hence fairly conclude the mere sub-
jectivity of the event, for the apostle evidently intends,
in these words, to express the result, which was to re-
veal the Son of God in his inmost heart and conscience.
Without this internal conviction, a mere external ap-
pearance would have remained inoperative. Indeed,
we should be disposed a 'priori to conchide that such a
persecutor and destroyer of the Church of God as Paul
represents himself to have been, must have needed
some objective and powerfully-impressive circumstance
to bring about the radical and remarkable transforma-
tion that he underwent. And that such was really
vouchsafed, he himself expressly states in two places in
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ix. 1, xv. 8.

In the last passage, after mentioning some of the
dijfferent appearances of the risen Lord, he says :
" And last of all, he was seen by me also, as of one
born out of due time. For I am the least of the
apostles, who am not meet to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the Church of God," Here again
he is speaking of his marvellous conversion from a per-
secutor to an apostle, and he ascribes it to an appear-
ance of the risen Jesus, whom he describes as visible
in the ordinary sense of the word. And in chap. ix.
ver. 1., he exclaims in the same tone : " Am I not an
apostle? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord."

Thus Paul testifies that the transformation of his
whole life and character was effected by the visible
appearing of the risen Jesus, whereby he revealed
himself outwardly and inwardly to Paul as the Son of
God. Nay, he insists upon this fact of his having re-
ceived his calling and commission as an apostle directly
from the risen and ascended Lord, as that which con-
stituted the strength of the apostolic position and claim
which he had to defend. For, he argues, he whom the
Lord has called to bear witness of him, and instructed
in the way of salvation, is an apostle indeed.

But how then if Jesus were not risen after all ? If
Paul had deluded himself both as to having seen the

I

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. I 63

eternally li\'ing Son of God before Damascus, and as
to his subsequent wonderful inward communion with
him ? Is it at all probable, we reply, that so powerful
an intellect should be transformed, by a mere self-delu-
sion, from a persecutor of Jesus into his most zealous
advocate ? Is it probable that so sagacious a man in
other matters, so acute and clear a thinker as from his
writings we know Paul to have been, should, for the •
sake of a mere imagination, have braved countless I
pains and perils, and finally have suffered death ? Is
it possible that a man who (setting apart Christ him-
self) has had more influence in the history of the world
than any other man whatever, — the whole standing of
our Christian world being based on the exertions of the
apostle of the Grentiles, — is it possible, I ask, that such
a man should be under a mistake as to that which he
himself affirmed to be the especial foundation of his
life and his efi'orts ? I appeal confidently to all who
are well acquainted with the writings of Paul, Does the
man who wrote the Epistle to the Romans make upon
you the impression of a dreamer ? Is it conceivable to
you that, as to the very main point of all, he should have
leaned upon a mere chimera? Have not his sayings
been to each one of us a light shining on our life-path ?
Do not the hours that we have spent sitting at his feet
reading or listening to his words rank amongst our best
hours ? If he has already raised millions of men above
earthly cares, above the anguish of remorse and the
fear of death, how can this have been done but by the
energy of that spiritual life which he derived from the
risen Lord ?

Thus the influence daily exerted by the epistles of
Paul, and indeed by the whole Bible, practically prove
the truth of the witnesses to the resurrection. Shall
all this go for nothing ? Are we still to keep doggedly
repeating. Resurrection from the dead is contrary to \
our experience, is inconceivable to us ; consequently
Paul, distinguished man as he confessedly was in other
respects, must have been self-deluded in what was to
him confessedly the most important point of all, in a
manner that is undoubtedly very remarkable.

I 64 THE RESURRECTION AND

We, on the contrary, maintain that Paul, as well as
John, is a most credible witness of the matter in hand.
And now mark the advance in this second witness over
the first. John only comes forward as an eye-witness
to the external fact ; Paul is a Z/fe-witness to the in-
ward significance of this fact. The Living One has
revealed himself to him as the life-giving, so that hence-
j forth the man Paul is a practical proof of the resurrec-
1 tion life of Jesus ; and is able to express the nature of
his inmost being by the words : "I live, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20). If Christ be not
risen, the whole historical aspect of St. Paul is a riddle
and a contradiction.

A similar relation to that between the witness of
John and Paul will also be found to exist between the
two collective testimonies, which we now proceed to
consider.

There were in Corinth those who denied the resur-
rection of the dead altogether. To this false doctrine
which was then prevalent, as it is to-day, Paul, in the
15th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians,
opposes the resurrection of Christ. That this was a
positive fact he calls upon several eye-witnesses who
had seen the risen Lord to vouch for. He was seen,
we read in vers. 5-8, " of Cephas, then of the twelve.
After that he was seen of above five hundred brethren
at once, of whom the greater part remain unto the pre-
sent, but some have fallen asleep. After that he was
seen of James, then of all the apostles, and last of all
he was seen of me also."

These five hundred brethren or more must have con-
stituted the whole of those who had been brought to
believe by the ministry of Jesus himself. In other
places, the only numbers given in addition to the
twelve, are those of the seventy disciples whom the
Lord sent out, and the one hundred and twenty who
were gathered together at Jerusalem between the As-
cension and the day of Pentecost (Luke x. i ; Acts i. 15).
Hence it seems probable that the aggregate number of
believers, whom Jesus left behind, including the Glali
leans, could not have exceeded a few hundreds, and

I

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. I 65

that Paul accordingly cites as witnesses of the resurrec-
tion nearly the whole of the original Church, with the
apostles at its head.

But some among you may be inclined to declare that
this bringing forward only disciples and brethren, and
not indiflPerent and impartial witnesses, to prove the
fact, is the very circumstance that excites suspicion.
Why, you ask, if Jesus had indeed risen, did he not
manifest himself in glory to all the world ? Then the
whole question would have been decided once for all,
and there would have been no need to be constantly
reviving and strengthening the arguments for faith in
him, and in his resurrection. We reply, that the Risen
One will yet show himself in his glory to the whole
world, to the dismay of his foes, and the eternal joy
of his brethren and disciples. But this was not, and
ought not to have been the condition of his first appear-
ing; he did not then design to convince the world of
his divine majesty, by an external display of omni-
potence. It was just such a method as this that the
tempter suggested when he challenged him to throw
himself from the pinnacle of the temple, and by this
marvellous spectacle convince the people of his Mes-
siahship. But Christ was no magician ; he was the
Redeemer ; he would not outwardly overpower huma-
nity, and bind it to him by mere wonder, he would
rather inwardly convince and renew it. This is the
sublime, free, only truly moral method which Jesus has
carried out by the spiritual instrumentality of his word
and holy life. He did not, indeed, lack the power of
working miracles to authenticate his divine mission ;
there was a sufficient display of these to remove all
pretext for unbelief in his contemporaries ; but these
were never independent and isolated occurrences, but
had always a close connexion with the holy person and
doctrine of Jesus taken as a whole. And hence the
Risen One could not appear to the world, but only to
those who had believed his simple word, and discerned
the divine glory through the disguise of the form of a
servant ; to these he now showed himself in his risen
majesty as a reward of their faith.

1 66 THE EESURRECTION AND

But these men, who had the true sense for the divine,
and afterwards became not only eye-witnesses, but life
and death witnesses to the fact, afford us irresistible
evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. These repeated
appearances, not merely to individuals, but to dozens,
to hundreds, have a peculiarly convincing power.
Granted that an individual might easily deceive him-
self, or fall into some abnormal and visionary state in
which he could fancy that he saw a dead man still
living, here we have more than five hundred reliable
men, who, being in their sound senses, saw the crucified
alive before them ; or, even granted that on some one
occasion several men might be deluded, here is a whole
series of different cases happening at different times,
where now one, now twelve, now hundreds, see the
risen Saviour. There must, indeed, exist a strong pre-
judice, to say the very least, where such evidence as
this can be explained away as hallucination, i. e., mere
imagination of diseased minds.

Again, there is another notable fact to be taken into
consideration. We know that in the first Christians,
and especially in the twelve, a decided change was
effected by the appearance of the risen Christ, not in-
deed so marvellous a change as that experienced by
^ Paul, but still a deep and influential one. The death
j fe)f Jesus had, as was inevitable, deeply depressed them,
i ^nd shaken their faith ; but soon after we see them
appear full of confidence and joy, as witnesses to this
same Jesus, ready to undergo, on account of their faith
in him, shame, imprisonment, and death. If then the
Lord did not rise from the dead, how are we to explain
this mighty transformation ? How are we to understand
the early Christians making this very fact of his resur-
rection the groundwork of their doctrine, nay, their
professing their vocation essentially to lie in witnessing
to it?

This leads us to our fourth and last proof. We find
the two apostles, John and Paul, not only testifying to
the fact of the resurrection, but to its significance and
its consequences ; and this indeed is the case with the
primitive Church in general. Paul reminds the Co-

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 67

rinthians (xv. 1) of the gospel v»^liich lie preaclied unto
them, which also they had received, wherein thej stood,
by which also they were saved. The import, then, of
these good tidings, upon which the whole life and
blessedness of Christians rest, is that Christ died for
our sins, and that he was buried, and that he rose again
the third day. To which Paul adds : " Therefore,
whether it were I or they (the other twelve apostles),
so we preach, and so ye believed."

Here then we have it plainly declared that all the
apostles, and together with them the whole primitive
Church, held the death and resurrection of Christ as
the central fact of the gospel, as the essential foundation
of Christian faith, Christianity is indeed nothing else
but the fact and the doctrine, that through the death of
Christ the sins of the world were judged and expiated ;
and through his resurrection spiritual life and glory
restored to humanity. He who denies the resurrection
of Christ, does not deny this or that main feature of
Christianity ; he denies Christianity as a whole. For,
as says St. Paul (vers. 14, 15), " If Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain ;
ye are yet in your sins, and we are found false wit-
nesses of God : because we have testified of God that he
raised up Christ; whom he raised not up."

It is therefore an untrue and misleading idea that\
some of our unbelievers put forth, when they profess to \
retain the essentials of Christianity, its moral element,
namely, and merely to eliminate from it a few external
and minor details connected with wonders and dogmas /
that no longer suit our enlightened times. In the same /
spirit we sometimes hear it said : " We will firmly retain-
the sayings of Jesus, on account of their indisputable
moral truth and excellence ; we will only dispense with
faith in his miraculous works." But, as has been more
fully put forth in the previous Lecture, the sayings of
our Lord abound in testimony to the great all-inclusive
miracle of his person, the source of all individual miracles
whatsoever, and to his superhuman and divine nature.
And so too is it here. It is impossible to dissever the
morality taught by Christianity from the faith it teaches.

I 68 THE RESURRECTION AND

Ghristian morality depends on faith, and faitli depends
on the fact — the miraculous, divinely- wrought historical
fact — of the resurrection of Jesus ; nay, Christian mo-
rality itself is nothing else than the new life which the
risen Lord imparts to us by his Holy Spirit.

If then Christ be not risen, not only the apostles
and early Christians, but the Christianity of all time is
in error respecting precisely the chief article of its faith.
What Paul says of himself applies to the whole Church ;
it becomes a perfect riddle and self-contradiction, since,
in spite of the world-renewing vital energy which facts
prove it to possess, it is all the time based upon a
merely imaginary life. Surely, if it had been a house
thus built upon the sand, it would, like so many other
fanatical sects, have gone to pieces long ago beneath
the countless storms that have beat upon it during more
than eighteen centuries ; instead of which the Church
of Christ still stands, the gates of hell not having pre-
vailed against it, and numbers amongst its members
not only all the civilized nations of the earth, but also
a countless number of those who are life-witnesses of
the resurrection of the Lord, being able to say with
Paul : " We who were dead in sins, hath he quickened
together with Christ, and hath raised us up together,
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus."

On the ground, then, of the fourfold testimony borne
by John and Paul ; by the first Christians who had seen
the risen Jesus ; and by the apostolic doctrine on which
the Church is founded ; we may now more confidently
than before assert the resurrection of Christ to be a
fact. If anything whatever in the world be suscept-
ible of historical proof by contemporary evidence, we
are obliged to confess this marvellous occurrence to
have really happened. Even a member of the Baur
school. Dr. Volkmar of Zurich, in his in other respects
unqualifiedly negative work on the Religion of Jesus
(p. 76), finds himself constrained to admit : " One of
the most certain facts in the world's history is, that
Jesus, the Crucified, appeared in glory to his disciples,
whether wo understand or not, understand thoroughly, or

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 69

imperfectly understand this fact." We, therefore, con-
sider the assertion, with which we began our Lecture,
to have been satisfactorily established, and may now
turn to the second branch of our subject, the putting
forth of the most important of the necessary inferences
from this fact of the resurrection. We deduce a double
series of these inferences, retrospective and prospective,
and each of these series may be divided into three
heads. Retrospectively, we find that light is thrown
on the being of God, the being of Christ, and on the
preparatory dispensation of the Old Testament.

In the first place, if we ask how the resurrection of
Jesus is to be explained, what can be thought to have been
its efficient cause, there is only one rational answer.
We find ourselves referred to the power of an almighty
God, who alone can quicken the dead. Both Jesus
and Paul attribute the denial of a resurrection to
ignorance of God, and of his power (Matt. xxii. 29 ;
1 Cor. XV. 34). The resurrection of Jesus is a prac-
tical contradiction of Pantheism, which denies a super-
mundane and miracle-working God. But together with
the form of error respecting God prevalent at the pre-
sent time, it equally opposes the mode of thought of
our earlier Bationalism, in which some of the older
amongst us were educated ; that so-called Deism, which,
while accepting a super-mundane personal God and
Creator, maintained that, after completing the creation,
he either led an existence entirely apart from the
world, or ruled it only by natural and uninterrupted
laws, so that the dead must remain dead, and all
miracles generally be impossible. Both of these errors,
though theoretically contrasted, have one and the same
result, in their denial of the miraculous, and of the
resurrection ; therefore the establishment of the latter
fact must alike silence them both. Truth, however,
does not conquer error by simply sweeping it away ;
but rather by separating the component parts of truth
and falsehood which constitute error, and by freeing
from the veil of falsehood the truthful elements latent in
that error, enabling them to assert their rights. Generally
speaking, error consists in giving prominence simply to

I 70 THE EESUKEECTION AND

one side of truth, and mistaking tlie part for tlie whole,
while some conflicting error adopts tlie other side with
equal exclusiveness. The truth lies in a third higher
conception, which embraces both sides of the truth
(one sidedness being error), and joins them in a living
unity. This is the case with the true Christian Theistic
idea of God, in contradistinction to the Pantheistic and
Deistic. It embraces both the supermundane nature
of God, which is held by Deism, and his intermundane
nature held by Pantheism. God is the absolutely in-
dependent, personally-living supermundane Spirit, who
yet, at the same time, as the Spirit of the world, evolves
it from within, and fills it with life, so that he both is
in the world, and the world lives, moves, and has its
being in him. Because he is in the world, as its source
of life, he can continually work and create therein ; and
because he is above the world, and has in himself a
higher life than that of the world, he can create new
things in it, quicken what is dead, and impart to it
his own higher life. This he has done in the resurrec-
tion of Christ, through which the perfect spiritual life
of God in the Son of man is represented to the world,
just as out of the darkness and coniiision of chaos the
world was framed a harmoniously- ordered Cosmos ; and,
as by the creation, iu the image of God, of the free
agent, man, the domain of history was superadded to
that of nature, so again, by the resurrection of Christ,
a new kingdom was based upon the existence of hu-
manity, the kingdom of a glorified and perfected life.
Hence we must needs have a living and life-giving
God, since he is not only the creator, but also the
renewer and perfecter of the world.

Next, what does this resurrection of Christ teach us
concerning himself? This fact, by which his whole ex-
istence is exalted to a new and higher stage, reveals him
as a personal miracle. If Christ be risen, there can be
no rational ground to doubt his divine origin, but rather
the strongest reason to believe in it, his supernatural
birth into the new life by the Spirit, harmonizing closely
with his supernatural incarnation in the womb of the
Virgin Mary. And it is equally natural that we should

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. I 7 1

find narrated between the initial and the final miracle
connected with the person of Christ, a succession of
miracles done by him. Thus the resurrection of Christ
is the essential proof of the authenticity of the evan-
gelical records of miraculous works. What might in-
deed well have perplexed us would have been to find
that such a one as Jesus, whom God called into natural
and supernatural life in a miraculous manner, was not
himself furnished with superhuman might. In short,
Jesus Christ is, as St, Paul says, by the resurrection
from the dead, declared to be the Son of God with
power (Rom. i. 4). And, further, since this very Jesus
teaches us to understand his divine Sonship in the
sense of his having been, before his appearance on earth,
nay, before the foundation of the world, with the Father,
sharing his glory, and beloved by him (John xvii. 5,
24) ; since he introduces himself between the Father
and the Spirit as one of the three divine sources of salva-
tion to humanity (Matt, xxviii, 19), it is only rational
to repose belief in the self-assertions of one whose testi-
mony has been so miraculously authenticated. It is
not only in its vitally Theistic, but in its Trinitarian
aspect, that the Christian conception of God finds its
confirmation in the resurrection of Christ.

Let me now very briefly point out the inferences
respecting the Old Testament dispensation to be drawn
from this resurrection. All that I remarked to you on
a former occasion touching the miracles of the Old
Testament, finds further support in this great fac'^. If
Christ be the light from which the Old Testament re-
ceived its enlightenment and its deeper meaning, so is
his resurrection the crowning miracle which afi'ords
corroboration to all the miracles related in the Old
Testament. I cannot here enlarge upon how the two
modes of its preparatory revelation, the condescension
of the divine in the heavenly manifestations, and the
exaltation of the human in the prophecies, meet in
Christ the Risen One. I will only remind you that in
him all the prophecies of the Old Covenant begin to
have their fulfilment, from that first gospel of the
bruising the serpent's head by the seed of the woman,

I 72 THE RESUERECTION AND

down to Isaiah's declaration of the swallowing np of
death in victory, and of that servant of the Lord who
after his sacrificial death should prolong his days, and
the pleasure of the Lord prosper in his hand (Gen, iii.
15 ; Isaiah xxv. 8, liii. 10). But so much is logically
conclusive ; Grod having by the raising up of his Son
shown himself to be a miraculous Grod, we are bound to
recognise his miraculous power in the domain of the
introductory revelation. And if the miracles recorded
there be different, be more externally amazing than those
in the New, this not only was inherent, as has been
already shown, in the very nature of the Old Testa-
ment, but it surely does not become creatures to draw
a line as to how far the miracles of the Creator and Lord
of the universe ought to go. Rather should this resur-
rection of Jesus inspire us with fresh confidence in the
earlier dispensation, and lead us utterly to relinquish
that miserable logic which will in some measure assent
to God's miraculous dealings in the New Testament
but not in the Old.

We turn to the second series of inferences to be
drawn from this great fact. They supply answers to
three questions, namely. What does the resurrection of
Jesus teach us as to his present existence ? What as to
his influence in our own times ? and What as regards
the future ?

Christ is risen ; that is, not only has his soul or spirit
survived death, but his body has been reunited with that
spirit, and this not only in the manner of an earthly,
material existence, such as previous to his death Jesus
himself was subjected to, and after their revival the
widow of Nain's son and Lazarus continued to lead
(compare 1 Cor. xv. 42-44). The spiritual body is
no longer so oppressed by the burden of matter as to
weigh, drag down, and impede the very spirit itself;
rather it is the perfectly free and facile instrument of
the spirit to which it is unconditionally subordinated.
Accordingly we see the Risen One enter through shut
doors, change his actual appearance, and vanish at
will. And yet in spite of this perfect independence of
the limits of matter and space, he is still on the other

ASCENSION or JESUS CHRIST. I J 2)

side capable of being touched and of eating with mortal
men ; for such the free sway of the spirit over the
spiritual body, that it can mould and adapt it to every
kind of circumr.tance and purpose.

This is certainly something strange and new to our
customary range of ideas. But so indeed it ought to
be. It relates to a new, a more exalted life for humanity,
degraded as it at present is beneath the ban of the
world and the flesh. If we reflect somewhat more
deeply, these scripturally attested miracles will reveal
themselves to us as most truly consistent with reason,
in that they raise human nature to the full perfection
of its ideal and its destiny. The perversion of our
sinful condition consists in the higher elements of our
being, the spiritual, having fallen under the dominion of
the lower elements, which are sensual. This condition
the Bible pointedly expresses by the word flesh, which
has death for inevitable consequence, while it is in the
spiiHt alone (wherein lies our relation with God), that
we can have life. If then the great fact of the resur-
rection certifies us that the higher, better portion of
our nature shall be made free from the ban of the
lower, the animal portion, — nay, shall attain to perfect
unlimited sway over it, — how should we fail to receive
such a message with a joyful welcome ? Doubtless, we
of ourselves were powerless to bring about such a re-
sult, the resources of our reason could never have
devised it; but since God, by means of his creative
power and love, has done this, surely the thankful
agreement of our reason should not be wanting. For
it is not something obscure, arbitrary, unreasonable,
that he presents to us in this risen Christ, but, on the
contrary, he is the Light of the world, who alone dis-
pels all gloom and darkness, and solves all the problems
and perplexities of our existence. In him the gloomy
spell that held humanity enthralled is done away ; in
him humanity is rendered free, restored to its true
nature, because restored to full and unclouded life-
communion with God. He is the glory of our race,
the pledge of an eternal perfection. Surely we should
rejoice and be glad, since the Prince of life comes

174 THE RESUREECTIOX AND

forth to meet us in tlie radiance of the Easter morning,
instead of scanning and criticising his appearance by the
narrow and inadequate measure of an earthly horizon.

There are many among us who rightfully revolt from
the idea that death ends all, and that man has no per-
sonal duration beyond it, but who yet take exception
at the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and
profess themselves satisfied with the immortality of the
soul. This again was the opinion of the earlier Ration-
alists, and it is still held by many who imbibed it in
youth. Doubtless this view is a far higher one than the
later Pantheistic-materialist delusion, that man dies out
like the beasts. But still it is an error, a one-sidedness,
which only duly honours one part of human nature —
the soul — and depreciates the worth of the body. This
spiritualistic view, which contemplates man exclusively
as immaterial, appears as the antithesis to materialism,
which asserts the claims of the body in so exaggerated
a strain as to reduce the soul to a mere product of
the highest forces of that body, so that obviously the
dissolution of these involves that of the spirit also. It
is easy to see that these two theories, spiritualism and
materialism, are antithetical errors with regard to the
nature of man, analogous to Deism and Pantheism with
relation to God. Pantheism merges God in the world ;
Materialism merges the soul in the body ; whereas
Deism, on the other hand, contemplates Grod apart from
the world, and spiritualism the soul apart from the
body in lifeless separation. The true, the scriptural
view, combines the elements of truth in both extremes,
while rejecting their errors. It deprives neither soul
nor body of its due worth, but in spirit it recognises an
independent, higher, God- derived being, which finally
so fills the body with its might and glory that the body
itself as a glorified spiritual body gains an eternal and
incorruptible life (1 Cor. xv. 42-47). Thus in the
resurrection not one alone but all sides of human nature
attain to perfection. And this is what we see typi-
cally represented in the risen body of Christ, and
secured to all those who in faith and spirit are one
with him.

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST.

175

This glorified spiritual life, upon -vrliich the risen
Saviour has entered, is essentially heavenly life, in
contradistinction to earthly and material. Accord-
ingly, the earth can no longer hold him, and the ascen-
sion of Jesus is the natural consequence of his resur-
rection. Here, however, we are met by an objection
derived from modern astronomy. " We know now," say
our opponents, " that the heaven, which an obsolete view
of the universe was wont to place in opposition to the
earth, consists of numberless star-worlds, solar systems,
amongst whose planets our earth is one of the least.
Thus that contradistinction between earth and heaven
that obtained in earlier conceptions of the universe is
now at an end, and we can no longer speak of an as-
cension into heaven." But we only need a little closer
examination to find out and dispel the fallacy of this
plausible but erroneous assertion. The heaven into
which Christ is gone is the invisible spiritual heaven,
while the starry heaven belongs to the visible and ma-
terial universe. There is, therefore, between the two
the essential difference of the visible and the invisible.
Let the starry universe extend far as it may, that does
not prevent there being an essentially diff'ereut and
higher sphere of existence, in which God specially
manifests the fulness of his glory, a reign of perfect
spiritual life, a Father's house with many mansions,
which belong to the angels, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect (John xiv. 2; Heb. xii. 22-24).
Thither Jesus went when, in the words of St. Paul, he
ascended up far above all heavens (Eph. iv, 10). Just
as the law of gravitation cannot hinder the bird's flight,
the fact of the Copernican system or Herschel's later
discoveries in no way interferes with the ascension of
Christ. Where higher forces and laws come in, the
lower must necessarily give way.

Above all heavens then hath Christ ascended, and
there he hath sat down at the right hand of the Majesty
on high. No inferior place becomes the Son of God.
He hath entered into the perfect glory and absolute
dominion of the divine throne. The Father hath said
to him. All that is mine is thine (John xvii, 10; xvi.

I 76 THE RESURRECTION AND

15). Thus, then, we think with certainty of him above,
not only as living an eternal life, but dwelling in all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily (Rom. vi. 9 ; Col. ii. 9).
No man hath raised him to the throne of God, but God
himself hath highly exalted him, and given him a name
which is above every name (Phil. ii. 9). Therefore,
no man can ever depose him from that throne ; no
power of any kind can be brought to bear against him ;
he is invulnerable by spiritual as by carnal weapons.
It is on this that we base our conlBdence in Christianity.
For what, indeed, is Christianity but this very Christ
himself, living at the right hand of God ? To assault
him is to seek to overthrow a rock by paper pellets.
To all such attempts the language of that psalm of old
applies, " He that sitteth in heaven shall laugh ; the
Lord shall have them in derision," and again, " Sit
thou at my right hand, till I shall make thy foes thy
footstool (Ps. ii. 4; ex. 1).

Our second question relates to the present office of
the ascended Saviour. He is in his heavenly glory
the Mediator still between God and man. He appears
on behalf of humanity as a Priest before God, and on
God's behalf before men, as a King, who has to sub-
ject the whole world to himself, that he may fill it with
divine life. In his whole personality as God and man,
he represents before God the perfect propitiation for
the w^orld, yea, he is himself the atonement for our sins,
so that his people have in him a priestly intercessor,
who can save to the uttermost those who come to God
by him (1 John ii. 1, 2 ; Rom. viii. 34 ; Heb. vii. 25).
But while his priestly influence is hidden in the pro-
fundities of heaven, and only recognisable by faith,
his kingly sway, on the other hand, is openly made
manifest on the earth.

But is this indeed the case ? some may ask. Nearly
two thousand years have rolled away since Christ sat
down at the right hand of God, and we see not yet that
all things are put under him (comp. Heb. ii. 8). On
the contrary, we still see prevail, and that in an eminent
degree, much that is evil, ungodly, and unchristian.
How does this accord with the sovereignty of him

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST.

177

whose sway should be divinely omnipotent ? We reply :
In this world of ours, the whole is subject to the law of
development, of gradual growth from within. Thus
Jesus himself underwent a process of development out
of the manger and the cross up to the glory of the
resurrection and the sitting down at the right hand
of God.

His kingdom is now undergoing the same law; it
is gradually advancing from its lowliness, its crucified
aspect, to the highest perfection and splendour, because
Jesus is, by great periodical stages of development,
subjecting the world ever more and more to himself.

^ And already we may trace many bright signs of his
kingly power in the history of mankind. A king has
two ways of displaying the might and wisdom of his
government : by its beneficent efiects upon the internal
life of his people, and its triumphant conquest of all
external foes. Thus too does Christ, in the history of
the world, assert his sovereignty, both by blessing and
judging.

We reckon years and centuries from the birth of our
Lord. ^ Universal history is placed beneath his influ-
ence, divided into the periods before and after Christ.
The whole of the civilized world celebrates his birth,
his death, his resurrection, and ascension, and i\\e year
is divided according to these festivals. Each week be-
gins with the Sunday, the memorial-day of his resur-
i^ection. Thus, to begin with, our whole life is out-
wardly pervaded and governed by his name. Such
honour and homage as this was never paid to any other
either in ancient or in modern times. An attempt was
openly made about seventy years ago by the French
people to discard the Christian mode of reckoning time ;
but after a few years this new system died away of
Itself. Again, is there not a regal sway of Christ over
the nations? And whicii are the nations which own
It? They are not a few, insignificant, uncivilized
peoples, hid away here or there in corners of the
earth ; no, the nations that confess the name of Christ
combine the greatest power and the highest culture in
the world ; they alone represent humanity in its loftier

M

I 78 THE RESURRECTION AND

aspect. We need only dwell by contrast ou the con-
dition of the Turks and the Chinese, who in their way
are also great and cultivated empires, but based upon
Mahometanism and heathenism. The Turks only
continue to exist by the sufferance of the Christian
Powers ; and in the so-called Celestial Empire we have
recently seen a handful of Christian soldiers succeed
in driving the Emperor from his throne, plundering his
palace, and taking possession of his capital. We need,
indeed, only to spend a few years in a land that is not
Christian, even if it be the much-lauded Greece of old,
to estimate the privilege of a Christian atmosphere.
But we need not occupy more time in proving the
moralizing and civilizing influence of Christianity ; its
opponents are themselves the most convincing witnesses
of this, laying as they do such stress upon the retaining
of the moral truths of the gospel. Their error only
consists in believing it possible to cut down the tree,
and yet to gather its fruits in coming years.

Thus we see the heavenly King exercises his power
to bless even over those who are but outwardly subject
to his sceptre. And he equally proves himself to be a
judge by overcoming all his enemies, one after the
other, whether they oppose him by political or merely
intellectual weapons. First of all, Judaism rose against
Christianity. It was at Jerusalem that the earliest
martyrs died ; but that city was destroyed, and to the
present day the Jewish people remain scattered over
all the earth. Then heathenism entered the lists,
armed with the whole might of the Roman Empire, and
the persecution of the Christians continued from the
first to the fourth century ; but the result was, that the
whole Roman empire, as well as the Grermanic nations
that replaced it, finally embraced Christianity. In the
seventh century, Islamism arose, and soon became a
considerable power, that for fully a thousand years op-
pressed the Christian Church in different places, and
tore great sections away from her ; but in the present
day, we see the Mahometan power in ruins, and the
world belongs to Christians.

Thus, too, has it been with the intellectual assailants

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST.

179

of Christianity. In the first century of our era, it was
attacked by heathen philosophers, such as Celsus and
Porphyry, with all the resources of their ingenuity, but
they were unable to check the world-subduing progress
of the kingdom of Christ. In later times, the attempts
to undermine have been made from within the nominal
Church, and have gone the round of all the most civil-
ized peoples. In the sixteenth century, the field was
taken against Christianity by Humanitarianism in Italy ;
in the seventeenth, by Deism in England ; in the eigh-
teenth, by Materialism in France; in the nineteenth,
by Rationalism in Germany. But all these modes of
thought have passed by, the gospel is still living and
powerful, and in our day spreading itself to the very
ends of the earth. The sharpest weapons of criticism
and philosophy have been blunted, the most promising
systems succeed each other on the arena, but they only
reciprocally destroy and dispel each other ; they are, in
short, gone by. They have merely led to Christian truth
being more thoroughly inquired into, more deeply based,
more freely developed, more convincingly proved.'
And thus, too, when Antichristianity shall at some
future time gather together all its resources, and unveil
its last mystery, the Lord himself will appear in his
majesty as judge, and the breath of his mouth shall
destroy his enemies.

Thus, then, the whole of Christian history is a fulfil-
ment of that word spoken by Jesus in the day of his
deepest humiliation : " Hereafter shall ye see the Son
of man sitting at the right hand of power (as king),
and coming in the clouds of heaven" (as judge)!
Nevertheless it is true that this subjection of the world
to the sceptre of Christ, which we have been dwelling
upon, is not yet what it shall be ; that even the Chris-
tian world is still the world in which much that is un-
godly and unchristian in character, both in small things
and great, continues in vogue.

But the happy influence of Christianity upon the man-
ners and customs of nations is, after all, only an influ-
ence of a secondary order. That which the heavenly
King primarily designs and efi"ects is something much

1 8o THE RESUEllECTION AND

higher : the regeneration of mankind by the Holy Spirit.
Now that Christ is exalted at God's right hand, and has
received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the
Father, he has shed forth this that ye see and hear.
So spake Peter at the feast of Pentecost (Acts ii. 33),
and in these words he expressed the inmost and essential
nature of the royal rule of Christ. Because the glori-
fied Son of man is now spirit, even as God is spirit
(2 Cor. iii. 17 ; John iv. 24) ; because he has taken
his human nature into the divine spiritual glory, he is
become the personal source of spiritual life for huma-
nity. It is through him that the everlasting energies
of God flow into humanity ; it is because he is gone to
the Father that the Comforter can come to us (John

xvi. 7).

Since that first Whitsuntide, when Peter spoke those
sublime words, the Holy Spirit has been in humanity
so far as it has believed in Christ, and this is more
especially the great and new dispensation which we are
to^look upon as the result of his resurrection and ascen-
sion. He in whom this Holy Spirit dwells is, in the
full sense of the word, a subject of the heavenly King,
a member of him who is the head. This Holy Spirit,
shedding abroad divine light and life into the hearts of
humanity, is the continuous proof that Jesus was not
holden of death, but lives in eternal glory. For this
Spirit is a reality, yea, the reality of realities in this
world. Whosoever will, may know this by experience. It
is through this Spirit that the gates of hell never could,
nor can prevail against the Church; it is his might
that transforms all heresies and perversions into re-
formatory agencies and witnesses to the truth. We in
Basle, who "have had so many proofs of this Spirit's
power, should indeed be readily convinced of his re-
ality. I, as one not belonging to the place, may at least
state, not to the praise of man, but of God, what has
been my experience, and what students from other coun-
tries have remarked to me : that there is here in our
churches, our Christian societies, institutions, and in-
dividual men, in the labours of love which follow after
the lost in all corners of the globe, a manifest breath-

ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST. I 8 1

ing of the Holy Spirit. No doubt a man may, in broad
day, resolutely close his eyes, and assert that it is night.
Blindness is much the same as darkness, only the sun
still shines in the sky. So is it with the influence of
the Holy Spirit.

But although the risen Lord does, as we have shown,
both inwardly and outwardly, manifest himself as King,
yet, nevertheless, this is by no means the full revela-
tion of his kingly power. There are still great anta-
gonisms to be done away with; the antagonism be-
tween the Church and the world, — as well as that within
the Church itself, between inward spiritual glory and
outward weakness and imperfection, — and in every indi-
vidual Christian there is the antagonism between the
flesh and the Spirit. Nevertheless, the risen Lord is
our personal security for the removal of all these con-
tradictions and obstacles, and for the shedding abroad
in all the world of the perfect life which he himself is
living. It is not my task to dwell more particularly
upon the different stages of resurrection and world-
perfection, which St. Paul gives as the result of the
great event of the latter day : Christ the first-fruits ;
afterward they that are Christ's at his coming, then
the end (1 Cor. xv. 23, 24). But suffer me, in a few
words, to call your attention to this end^ this final stage
of the world's gradual development.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the living cause
and commencement of a glorified world ; a new heaven
and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ; a con-
dition of internal and external completeness of life,
where tears shall be wiped away from all faces, sin and
death, and all the antagonistic influences of the world
being done away ; and God, with his inexpressible glory,
being all in all (1 Cor. xv. 28 ; 2 Pet. iii. 13 ; Rev.
xxi. 1). This view is the only one that sheds true
light both on our own individual lives, and on the
historical, moral, and religious aspect of the world at
large. It is this alone that points to any satisfactory
conclusion to the history of the world, or calms the
perplexities of our thoughts respecting its problems and
intricacies. Our moral consciousness demands that evil

1 82 chpjst's resurrection and ascension.

should be actually overcome some time or other, and
that good should absohitely prevail in the world. It
demands an identity of virtue and happiness ; a perfect
harmony between the inner and the outer, the spiritual
and the material. These demands ought to be fulfilled ;
every ideal engraved in our conscience ought to be
realized. But had Christ not risen, we could have had
no positive security for all this. In the Christian's hope
of a glorified world lies the true Theodicea ; that is, the
justification of God regarding the many sins and im-
perfections in the world. The glory of God requires
that he should allow free scope to the liberty of the
creature, should allow evil to attain its extremest growth,
and first discover to us the inconceivable fulness of his
perfections, by making all instances of opposition to
himself but new opportunities of grander and grander
revelations of his life and love, and by attaining the
original purpose of his creation in spite of all apparent
obstacles.

For our own parts, this glance of hope into the new
world should teach us properly to value the present,
and thus alike afi"ord us the true rule of life, and the true
consolation for death. This world, with its possessions,
enjoyments, occupations, and cares, is not our abiding
city ; it is soon over ; the fashion of it passeth away
(1 Cor. vii. 31). To reach our inheritance in the new,
the eternal world, is our earthly task, is the genuine
wisdom of this present life. Further, we are consoled
for the necessity we are under to leave it, to see our
loved ones leave it before us. They who sleep in the
Lord depart not to death, but to life, life everlasting.
The risen Lord will fulfil his own word concerning us :
" Because I live, ye shall live also" (John xiv. 19).

vin.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH.

THE doctrine of the Holy Spirit is most intimately
connected with the doctrine of the Christian
Church, the Spirit being the vital principle of the
Church. But, first of all then, we must inquire. Is
there indeed a Holy Spirit ? A superficial mind may
throw off the question, and return a confident denial,
because, from his very nature, the Spirit is not per-
ceptible to the bodily sense. We ask again, however.
Is there a Christian Church ? And here ocular de-
monstration forbids the returning any other answer
than one of decided assent. The Christian Church
stands before us as a historical fact ; nay, as the most
influential fact in the history of the world. A new era
of national life arose with its first appearance, which
forms so decided a turning-point, that even purely
secular history reckons time from the birth of its
founder. Our whole life, not merely religious, but
social and political, is pervaded by its influence, even
where we scarcely suspect it. It has consecrated all
our family ties ; based the relation between husband
and wife, parent and child, upon purely moral prin-
ciples ; from it have proceeded popular culture and
public instruction ; it has originated the recognised
obligation to care for the old, the poor, the sick, the
widow, and the orphan ; and the now universally ac-
knowledged laws of humanity are laws that it first laid
down. They are the positive fruits of the faith that this
Church holds, and by her preaching of this faith, as
well as by its practical application to all social rela-

I 84 THE HOLY SPIEIT AND

tions, she has displayed an inexhaustible vital energy
that endures for century after century.

Since then we find here ideas and principles, since
we must confess to an inward world-subduing power of
life and faith, which, in changing times and different
nations and individuals, remains essentially the same,
and bears the same noble fruits, we are irresistibly led
to acknowledge that a Spirit must have ruled within
this Church from its earliest beginning till now, and
undoubtedly one only Spirit, powerful and essentially
good. We constantly come to a conclusion as to the
nature of the indwelling spirit of this or that man
among us ; we speak of the spirit that prevails in an
assembly, a body corporate, a nation ; and we also see,
in a far higher sense, a spirit pervading and controlling
the Christian Church. Just as the universe, by its
existence and laws, presupposes a creative eternal
Spirit, so the continuance and progress of the Church
proves to us the existence of a Spirit by which she is
what she is. A Church without a Spirit were an in-
conceivable and impossible thing. Nor can we reason-
ably think of this Spirit as a mere idea ; the abstract
sum and unity of thoughts and deeds found in the
Church ; an impersonal idea under which was com-
prehended the many- coloured mosaic of Christian life,
that Jews, G-reeks, Romans, and Germans evolved.
On the contrary, we must confess this Spirit to be a
definite and conscious personality, who stamps and
develops his own peculiar impress on these various
peoples, races, and generations. The countless divi-
sions and offences within the Church must not mislead
us ; rather should we confess it to be a marvellous fact,
that in the course of nearly two thousand years, so
much human folly, hypocrisy, and sinfulness should not
have quenched this Spirit, and hindered the Church
from reaching its aim. A Spirit never led away by
the spirit of humanity, but opposing to it, and exercis-
ing over it, a definite and ennobling influence, can only
be sought and found in God himself. And this is what
the consciousness of the Church clearly expresses in that
clause of her creed : I believe in the Holy Ghost,

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. I 85

Nevertheless, it was not through: her own unaided re-
flection and reasoning that she came to this conclusion :
she received it from above by revelation from God — a
truth that both her historical career, and the personal
experience of each of her members, unqualifiedly attest.
This revelation is most intimately connected with the
whole of God's great plan for the redemption of man-
kind from sin and its consequences, with the revelation
of God as the Father, and in the Son.

The Old Testament is the expression of one funda-
mental idea — the sovereignty of God. To represent
this idea, one kingdom was to be established, wherein
God himself should be King, and men his subjects ; and
in conformity to the typical and preparatory character
of that period, one peculiar people in one particular
land was to be chosen to this end. Hence the Israel-
itish Theocracy. It might indeed have seemed as
though this plan had failed of its primary purpose,
since, after the return from the Babylonian Captivity,
the people of Israel led a miserable existence, both
religiously and politically, and at last fell beneath the
Roman sway, their own royal house having sunk into
obscurity and poverty. Then however it was, that,
according to the promises of God through the prophets,
Messiah himself appeared,

Jesus at once took up this seemingly unaccomplished
divine plan, not only as one which had not failed, but
which had been throughout wisely carried on, and was
just about to reach its fulfilment. His first announce-
ment was " the glad tidings of the kingdom of God ; "
the time is fulfilled, and " the kingdom of God is at
hand." But not only was his office to restore and to
establish, but to extend and glorif}'^ ; to carry out into
actuality and perfection what had been typical. What,
in the preparatory dispensation, had applied to one
people (as first-fruits) in one land, was now to hold
good of humanity as a whole throughout all the earth.
The doctrine of Jesus was not specially Jewish, but
universal, adapted alike to all men and all times ; his
character is the perfect model, not only of Jewish
morality and Jewish customs, but of universal human

I 86 THE HOLY SPIEIT AOTD

morality; in his sufferings and death, as also in his
resurrection, he appears not only as Israel's Kedeemer,
but the Saviour of the world. He is not only the Son
of David, but the Son of man.

This character of universality is stamped also upon
his own sayings respecting that kingdom of God or of
heaven which he introduced, sayings that almost in-
variably assume the garb of parables. We remark two
different classes of these parables, recorded by St.
Matthew in the 13th, and 24th, and 25th chapters of his
Grospel. In the first class, Jesus presents this kingdom
under two aspects, of which one is the complement of
the other. On one side, it appears as seed scattered by
a higher hand, as a treasure, a pearl, briefly, a good
that humanity never could itself have produced, and
could only receive by revelation from God ; on the
other side, as something not already complete, not, ac-
cording to the Jewish idea, coming with observation
and outward splendour ; not a thing to be at once pos-
sessed, like a rich inheritance or a costly garment ; but
rather a precious germ which must needs find its de-
velopment and its growth on earth. This double cha-
racter is especially indicated in the parable of the four
kinds of ground on which the good seed fell, and of the
tares in the wheat, — the field in the last case not desig-
nating the people of Israel but the world ; — while the
external process of this development, from the smallest
beginnings to the most comprehensive results is imaged
by the grain of mustard seed, and its inward nature by
the leaven which noiselessly but effectually leavens the
whole lump, that is, essentially transforms its character.
The second class of parables are those spoken at the close
of his career by Jesus to his disciples more immediately,
it being necessary that they should now have a deeper
insight afforded them. Here we observe a significant ad-
vance in the ideas conveyed. In the earlier parables,
Jesus had not distinguished between his kingdom and his
person, but now a marked distinction is drawn between
the Lord and the servants, the Bridegroom and the virgins.
In close connexion with this, we observe that human
efforts and responsibility are now more strongly insisted

THE CHKISTIAN CIIUECII. I SV

upon. And consequently the probation, the period of
expectation, which was before merely hinted at, is placed
in stronger relief, the conclusion of which, however
stands not in the will or power of the servants, but is
to be brought about by the Lord through a new revela-
tion of himself.

Thus the sayings of our Lord more and more clearly
indicate that the kingdom of heaven as a glorious whole
is a future thing ; that now it is indeed begun, indeed
growing, but as a perfect kingdom of God " neither here'
nor there." Nor is this, as some have insinuated, a for-
tunate expedient by which Jesus explained the failure
of his original idea, but rather we see throughout the
course of his sufferings and his life, as well as through-
out all his sayings, a uniform and consistent plan. The
fact of redemption is the triumph over this world and
its prince. Henceforth the partition wall between
mankind and God is taken away — men are reconciled
and reunited to him. But this can as little be done by
external force and might as — in a narrower sphere —
Israel could be truly healed and delivered by a Messiah
according to its own expectation. The process must
ever begin within. It would contradict the essential
nature of the kingdom of God, to include subjects who
only belonged to it by constraint : the primary idea of
it implies its consisting only of members who have been
made such by inward conviction, who are partakers of
it not from necessity but choice. God is the God of
love and liberty, and thus it is only through free-will
and unconstrained love that mankind can be united to
him and made like him. It results, then, that " except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God." Therefore Jesus not only declined all external
dominion over Israel, but did not after his resurrection
appear in open triumph to humanity at large ; on the
contrary, he withdrew his visible presence, and assigned
to his kingdom — as not of this world — a purely spiritual
career. All that he left behind was a small band of
disciples who knew neither the day nor the hour of the
end, but had received from him the commission to
witness of him to Israel and to all other nations, to

1 88 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND

spread the glad tidings of redemption over tlie world,
and to make of all people disciples like themselves, by
baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever he had commanded them.

Thus the disciples being formed into a society, hav-
ing the Redeemer for their common centre, were (like
leaven) to gather man after man, people after people,
into their circle. And this community, appointed from
that small beginning to grow and spread inwardly and
outwardly, and to ripen towards that perfection which
the Lord was to usher in at his coming again, — this is
the Christian Church.

Nor was it any miscalculation that Jesus made when
he trusted this task to the hands of weak and sinful
men ; far otherwise. When such simple witnesses as
these appeared with the tidings of Jesus the Saviour,
there was indeed neither constraint nor illusion prac-
tised upon their hearers ; on the contrary, their own
convictions, and their free choice, were most scrupu-
lously respected ; and nevertheless, no more powerful,
no more engaging testimony could be afforded, than
from the lives of men who — by nature sinful as them-
selves— yet showed forth the fruits of peace, and a
holy sense of reconciliation to Grod in word, deed, and
character. What Christ needed to found his Church
were confessors, who were willing to stake their per
sons, their lives, on the truth of their confession. It
was in this sense that he had said to Simon, the boldest
confessor of all the disciples, " Thou art Peter, and
upon this rock will I build my Church." Of course the
foundation-stone of the kingdom of heaven could be
none other than Christ himself; but the society on earth
which was to bear witness throughout the world, needed
for its foundation and support, a man firm as a rock, as
confessor of the truth ; and this Peter proved himself
in the first instance to the mother Church at Jerusalem,
and through her to the Church at large. This of course
is not the place to enter upon the Romish misconcep-
tion of these words of Christ's ; I would only point out,
in passing, how little apprehension it shows of the
meaning and spirit of the Saviour, to ascribe to Peter

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 1 89

over his fellow-disciples, or to the Bishop of Rome over
his brother disciples, any pre-eminence in rank, and
how far removed Peter himself was from such an
opinion when he wrote ; " neither as lords over God's
heritage, but as examples to the flock" (1 Pet. v. 3).

In placing his Church upon this foundation, however,
Jesus concealed neither from himself nor from her,
that she was to be a suffering and a struggling Church ;
that hell, opening wide its gates, would send forth its
hosts to ]3attle with her ; but he at the same time pro-
mised her with divine certainty that she should stand
firm, like a lighthouse tower, amidst the foaming
breakers.

Yes ; Jesus has prescribed for his Church the way
he himself trod : from a lowly beginning, through opposi-
tion, mockery, and apparent defeat, to final triumph
and everlasting life. And in this we discern a majes-
tically great idea, that bears the impress of internal
truth and divine origin. It is true that the prophecies
of the Old Testament had already spoken of a share
borne by the Gentiles in Messiah and in his kingdom :
but that by such a company of confessors this kingdom
should be brought home to these Gentiles (and even to
the people of Israel itself) ; brought home to their
understandings, consciences, and affections ; carried on
in its character of a pre-eminently spiritual, outwardly
despised and oppressed kingdom, to glory and triumph ;
nay, humanity at large shown its highest development
and the attainment of its highest aspirations within this
very Church ; — this is indeed a sublimely original idea,
or, let us rather say, one of Divine profundity and
wisdom. We know, too, how narrowly those former
promises had been restricted to the Jews by even the
most pious among them, and that it was only gradually
that the loved and trusted disciples themselves attained
to a full comprehension of their Master's marvellous
plan.

Hitherto we have been dwelling upon the task which
the Lord set before his Church ; we must now seek to
show how, in the Holy Spirit, he bestowed upon them
the only and adequate means for fulfilling that task.

1 90 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND

If by setting such an aim before the Church, Jesus
gave the highest authority to mankind, as well as the
highest task of which in accordance with its divine
origin they were capable ; in the means towards the
attainment of that aim, he has evinced the wisest and
tenderest consideration for the humiliations and errors
to which sin had subjected them. We see on each
side the gradual up- springing and converging of that
mighty arch whose bold firm span is to bridge over the
abyss between the ideal and the real. Great thinkers
had in former ages devised fair systems and high ideals,
but these ever lacked the living and generating energy
to get themselves accomplished. But the creative words
of Jesus were not the product of abstract thought, but
the fruit of the Holy Spirit, by which he had in the
first instance fully realized in his own person the ideal
of human perfection. Thus, on one side, he had, from
his own inmost experience, the knowledge that his sub-
lime thought would have been, without the living power
of Grod's Spirit, a mere still-born ideal ; and on the
other, he could lay down the mighty plan on centuries
to come, the more confidently and calmly because con-
scious of his ability to carry it out, this omnipotent Spirit
being his own to promise and to bestow.

Hitherto, personal intercourse with Jesus had been to
the disciples a constant source of increasing knowledge
of Grod, and also a means to uphold and confirm their
moral character. This pulse of divine life was not to
be interrupted even when their Master departed ; and
hence he promises, I will not leave you orphans, I will
come to yon ; but henceforth in God's new dispensation,
that of the Holy Spirit.

This Holy Spirit had already been known and named
in the old dispensation, but in each of its successive
stages, the Spirit had only been imparted to a few espe-
cially chosen men ; as, for instance, the prophets, and
this only at certain seasons of inward enlightenment.
Now, on the contrary, he was to come to all the disciples
of Jesus, and this as an abiding gift of glorification for
their spirit, soul, and finally their body ; as had been
the case with our great exemplar, the Lord himself.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 1 9 1

Now such a purely spiritual fellowship as this with Gocl,
one so independent of bodily presence, required evi-
dently an incomparably higher measure of independent
spiritual exertion and free will on the part of the dis-
ciples. This was just what Christ desired. They were
henceforth to be for the first time his thoroughly
genuine disciples, united with their Grod and Saviour by
nothing but the closest and tenderest bond of essential
union by free love.

Yes, the Lord describes the inner transformation his
disciples were to undergo, as of necessity to be carried
out in this way alone : It is good for you, he says,
that I should go away ; for if I go not away, the Com-
forter will not come to you, and not to you alone, but
to mankind generally. This Comforter he promises as
the Spirit of truth, the one who will lead the disciples
into all truth, and testify to them of the Lord him-
self, thus transforming them into spiritual and moral
comj)leteness, into the divine nature. On the world at
large, Jesus, on the contrary, describes the effect of the
agency of the Spirit to be its conviction, by the light
of his testimony, of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
These words ascribe to the Spirit a peculiar influence,
which, wherever the influence of Jesus extends, makes
an ignoring of him, a mere attitude of indifi"erence to-
wards him, an impossible thing ; and inwardly constrains
the world to assume in regard to him a positive rela-
tion of one kind or other; the want of faith in him
amounting to enmity against the human incarnation of
truth and love, and being sin in fact and principle, so
that they must needs be conscious of it ; while in the
going of Jesus to his Father, in his death and his ascen-
sion, the righteousness of the sinner in the sight of the
holy God is established by an all-sufficient expiation,
and by this too the Prince of the world (and in him
evil in its essential nature) is judged as untenable for
eternity.

Thus the preached gospel is the immediate agent, the
vessel through whose intervention the Holy Spirit, after
he has been received by the disciples on the day of Pen-
tecost, is to be extended over mankind. Without him

192 THE HOLY SPIEIT AND

even the gospel would be a dead and deatli-dealing let-
ter ; only when he breathes through it does it become the
word of eternal life, and it puts forth its first vital in-
fluence in change of mind (repentance), this first-fruit
of the combined action of the truth preached and the
conviction of the hearers. Accordingly Jesus has asso-
ciated baptism with this word, as the solemn celebration
of that implanting in the new spiritual life of the indivi-
dual, by which he becomes a disciple — a member of the
body of Christ.

What we have said indicates the organs by which the
human spirit apprehends and receives the divine, viz.,
lleason and Conscience. As the bodily eye needs
light from without, so these organs of the human spirit
have not light inherent in them, they too must receive
it from the Holy Spirit. By him the reason appropri-
ates the pure knowledge of G-od afforded in the Gospels ;
by him the conscience attains to an acute and correct
moral discernment, which we find neither in heathenism,
nor yet in Judaism, and which as common jDroperty only
belongs to Christendom ; this, again, leads to the purifi-
cation of the will, and to its being, by the new living
energy of the Holy Spirit, exalted into the love of God.
Thus divine truth becomes the personal spiritual pos-
session of a man, nay, becomes his very being, his new
nature ; what my reason discerns in the light of the
Holy Spirit, is most essentially my own knowledge ;
the decision of my conscience is no strange super-
imposed decision, but that of my inmost convictions ; it
is what my will now demands ; it is my will, my love.
Again, the moral perception of my sinfulness and my
repentant rejection of evil is my Own personal mental
act, and so is the believing acceptance of reconciliation
with God in Christ ; the will and the power to take a
divine view of life, and to lead a new course of life, are
made mine, so that I recognise myself in my own con-
sciousness as a new man born again into the nature of
God ; and yet all this is not of myself, but owing to the
life-power of the Spirit of God shining through my
spirit. This is that inward conviction of being God's
children by the Spirit, which teaches us to cry, Abba,

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 1 93

Father ! And even when man (as his free will leaves
open to him to do) resolutely hardens himself against the
influence of the Holy Spirit, the testimony of the gospel,
owing to the indwelling strength of the Spirit, is yet so
mighty because divinely true, that in point of fact no
intelligence can entirely evade Jesus and his work of
sa:lvation, but sin must needs take the form of unbelief
in the Son of God, the Saviour, and register itself as
enmity against him, and no conscience have power to
call evil good, except as a conscious lie.

Thus we see in the action of the Holy Spirit, the
highest power of conquest and transformation united
with a perfect recognition of human personality and
freedom; whole peoples are changed by Christianity both
as to their religious and moral life, and nevertheless
the new element leaves the national impress unaltered.
An individual becomes a new creature, and yet he re-
tains his own character, peculiarities, temperament, but
all these are purified, ennobled, sanctified by God's
Spirit. Each nature, each period has its own special
Christian life ; every individual knows and apprehends
the eternal God according to his personal mode of ap-
prehension,— has in bim most significantly his God and
Saviour ; and thousands upon thousands of sanctified
human spirits reflect back each in his own individuality
the one infinite Spirit, who is all in all. Such is God's
creation, — inconceivable variety, yet unity in him.

This unity, moreover, is not merely one discerned of
God alone, but each individual is naturally — through
the Spirit — conscious of it, and it constitutes in all who
belong to God in Christ, the closest tie of spiritual blood
relationship, so to speak ; for the children of the same
Father must know and feel themselves to be brethren,
and that without relation to the barriers interposed by
tbeir earthly life, whether of nature, sex, or position.
The Spirit which, as regards man's position towards God,
appears as a spirit of renewal and adoption, manifests
itself in the reciprocal relation of saints to each other
as a Spirit of communion. In this communion of saints
we have the realization of the truth, which, without the
Holy Spirit, is a mere shadow or caricature, nay, a mere

N

I 94 THE HOLY SPIEIT AND

powerless figure of speech, — the truth that all men are
brethren. This communion of Christians with their Grod
and each other, finds its fullest expression in the sacra-
ment of the Lord's Supper, and at the same time its
support, its means of growth and increased intensity.

It is evident that while this influence of the Holy
Spirit can, and at the last must display itself as abso-
lute and complete, it may also be exercised and progress
relatively and gradually. Humanity can neithei- as a
whole, nor in its individual members, attain at one
bound to the heavenly height of full divine knowledge
and unspotted holiness ; but on the ground of the reve-
lation it has received, and by the confluence of divine
vital energies, it is capable of development even to per-
fection. Ii is in the Lord Jesus that the highest type
of divinely informed humanity appears, and the Church
is sent by him into the world with no less lofty an aim
and promise than the final attainment of the measure of
Christ. The Holy Spirit, on his part, appoints to the
human being his shorter stages of gradual development ;
fills him, as water fills a vessel, according to his capacity
for holding ; affords from time to time just as much
light and inward power as he has knowledge and holi-
ness to appropriate and use, — and thus it is ever to him
that hath, that more is given till he has abundance.

It now remains that we take a short general survey
of the development of the Church under the Holy
Spirit's dispensation of Life and Light.

The day of Pentecost was the Christian Church's day
of birth. Up to that time the company of believers
had resembled an unborn child, whose life is as yet
dependent on that of its mother ; thenceforth it was to
enter upon its individual, independent, self-conscious
life and growth. At first it was a thing apart. The
line of demarcation between it and the outer world very
sharply defined, — a drop of oil on the water, so to speak ;
and even when after its first persecutions it grew in
numbers, and new churches were founded here and
there, they were all consciously parts of one whole, they
were "the" Church, the universal Church potentially,
though not as yet actually embracing all nations. The

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. I 95

members of this Church were holy in the sense in which
St. Paul wrote, " Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye
are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the
Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. vi. 11). And between these
holy members there was a communion of faith and love,
which last showed itself practically in reciprocal sup-
port, hospitality, and kindred services.

In accordance with the spirit of the period, we now
find in this early apostolic Church prominence given —
not as it had been by Jesus to the doctrine of the king-
dom of God, but — to the doctrine of the Church. Her
nature and her relation to Christ are generally repre-
sented in the epistles of the New Testament under
three figures : She is likened to a building ; she is the
temple of the Lord ; her members are stones of this
building. Here she is described as a whole, the parts
of which, according to a well-ordered plan, are joined
together for a iioly purpose ; and it is indicated at the
same time that she has an externally visible form, in
which God in Christ lives and dwells. This whole
appears again as a living organism, having different
members ; under the figure of a body, whose limbs are
all vitally connected by their dependence upon Christ
the Head. Finally, the Church is called the bride of
Christ. It is instructive to see how this image includes
the two former ones, and superadds to them another
important idea ; it represents the consciousness the
Church has of an independent existence of her own, as
contrasted with that of her Lord, and yet of her perfect
union with him in love. And, further, we have therein
an allusion to a future and final completeness : for
though the bride enjoys perfect security and happiness,
yet she is vstill in an attitude of expectation and longing.

The Church, at her first appearing, possessed in very
deed all the characteristics of a holy, universal Chris-
tian communion of saints, as she is called in the apo-
stolic creed. But she was not yet that in an absolute
sense ; the first-fruits only were there, not the full har-
vest ; it was but the blossoming season of the Church.
Between the fragrant, promise -fraught blossoms and
the sweet fruit, a long and tedious season of ripening

ig6 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND

had to intervene. This throws a h'ght upon a pheno-
menon that we must not overlook ; the display of pecu-
liar spiritual gifts — the charism — which we observe after
the day of Pentecost in the earlier decades of the
Church, and which gradually retreated (although they
have never entirely disappeared). It lies in the nature
of the case, that if man were to be transfigured into
the image of God, his spirit would have its share of
light, holy joy, penetrating and comprehensive (pro-
phetic) insight, healing power for soul and body ; the
fulness of spiritual gifts, in short, would be his own.
Now this was to find its expression in the early Church,
agreeably to its character of first-fruits and type of
future completeness. The apostles needed these gifts,
likewise, to establish and cultivate their inner life, and
to aflPord strong confirmation of their divine mission.
But such gifts were not to be an abiding nor a common
possession ; this they will only become in the kingdom
of heaven, when mankind shall have been, by the slow
but thorough method of sanctification, made capable of
their universal use and enjoyment.

Thus, then, the Church stood before the world as the
company of Jesus Christ's witnesses, testifying of him
by their preaching and their lives, and sealing their
testimony with their blood. The vital force of the
Spirit grew both inwardly and outwardly, but that
growth, that influence of divine revelation on human
reason, that new form given to the inward moral life,
could only proceed through great conflicts. The human
miad develops itself by resisting and overcoming anta-
gonist influences ; and just as of old, when the Spirit
of Grod brooded over the waters, so now, when at this
second creation, the same Spirit spread over the nations,
and the " Let there be light" of the gospel rung through
the chaos of the sinful world, the new day was made up
of the evening and the morning, of the night and of the
dawn.

Partly the false assertions of her enemies, and partly
the errors arising from false conceptions among her own
children, obliged the Church to express her faith in
distinct dogmas ; each period having its own measure

THE CHllISTIAN CHURCH. 1 97

of energy and knowledge for the task, and each succes-
sive period treading in the footsteps of the last, widen-
ing and deepening them, and at the same time opening
new veins in the great mine of Christian truth. But
as soon as a unity of faith was formularized into a
humanly limited dogma, there was danger lest it should
stiffen into a mere lifeless form, or be perverted by false
deductions and additions ; nay, one whole branch of
the Christian stream, the Eastern Church collectively,
did fall into this stagnation and distortion, and the
Western too seemed threatened with the same fate, so
that Christianity, like a suddenly-cooled lava stream,
would at the present time have shared the fate of Islam-
ism, if the quickening breath of the Holy Spirit, after
many preparatory movements of the kind, had not, with
triumphant might, burst the hardening, confining crust,
and asserted the right as well as the necessity of private
reflection and judgment, and of a personal and spiritual
laying hold upon salvation.

The Reformation brought once more to light the
fundamental evangelical truth of justification by grace,
insisted upon the personal and the spiritual regenera-
tion of the individual, and placed the Bible in the
hands of the people at large. It is evident how mighty
an advance was thus made in the task appointed to the
Church, that of becoming a company of free disciples,
inwardly and thoroughly persuaded, and consciously
living in God. Nevertheless, even now there is to
be no progress made without resistance and struggle,
and the evangelical Church may not as yet sit under
her own fig-tree and vine ; rather is she more than ever
the Church militant, more than ever reminded of the
declaration of her founder : "I am not come to send
peace on earth, but rather a sword."

She has to fight for no slighter cause than her spiri-
tual rights and existence, and her triumph insures her
eternal duration. Above all, she must guard against
the old danger of growing stiff and inert in her settled
dogmas, against having a name to live and yet being
dead, for the kingdom of God consists not in ecclesias-
tical traditions and formulas. Nor does it consist any

198 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND

more in philosophical formulas. Philosophy, indeed,
lends powerful aid to the Church in her spiritual appro-
priation of the truth of revelation, but she is not herself
revelation, nor can she ever become religion. For the
Church is not a product of human thought and intelli-
gence, but a historical reality, brought about by the
Raving power of the living God ; the need of redemp-
tion is no mere idea, but an awful objective fact, like
the pain of the poisoned and the hunger of the famished,
and therefore the fact of a redemption was essential ;
and to bear witness to this fact, accomplished by the
historical Son of man, — and to set forth its result in the
pardon and moral elevation of mankind, — this it is that
constitutes the work of the Church, as the great apostle
"of the Gentiles proclaimed in defiance of all philoso-
phical opposition : " We preach Christ crucified, to the
Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,
but to them that are called, the power of God and the
wisdom of God, that your faith may not stand in the
wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

It is inevitable that the more decidedly the Church
insists upon the free, self-conscious faith and holy life
of individuals, the less any outward pressure is em-
ployed, and any outward assent is felt to sufiace, the
more openly and decidedly will indifference and enmity
appear ; and accordingly we now have the remarkable
phenomenon before us of a Church growing in the
earnestness and thoroughness of the inner life, and
displaying that life in renewed missionary efforts, as
becomes her vocation, while, at the same time, there is
among her members a great falling away from her faith
and practice, partly into open Materialism, partly into
scientific disguises of it. That which the Lord of the
Church foretold is coming to pass : " Iniquity shall pre-
vail, and the love of many shall wax cold;" the tares
are to grow and ripen with the wheat. Here we tread
upon the borders of the task appointed to the earthly
Church. When she has attained the full maturity of
her spiritual life, the Lord has promised his return in
glory to judgment ; and then and thereby the now ex-
isting spiritual reality shall find its corresponding em-

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 1 99

bodiment. For then first shall the company of saints
have become capable of that complete communion be-
tween the Godhead and humanity; whose highest reach
and profoundest intimacy is expressed in the promise :
" To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with me
in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set
down with my Father on his throne" (Rev. iii, 21).

Further, as the Church had to penetrate with her
message into the dark winding ways of human know-
ledge and human will, to exalt and to purify them, so
too had she to enter into the political and civil life of
humanity, to enlighten all its different departments, to
draw thence all good elements into her own sphere, and
to sanctify them ; in other words, she had to become a
State Church. But in this capacity it was not her
office to rule and constrain ; rather, after the example
of her Master, to reach her aim and victory by serving
and humiliations. Here, too, she has only advanced
through the antagonism of human errors, and the wise
leading of the Holy Spirit.

It was a brilliant idea that crossed the mind of the
Papacy in the Middle Ages, and appeared to have
reached its realization under Innocent in., that of
making the Church the mistress of the world, and the
power of the State only her proxy ; but the truth that
lay in that idea was distorted to a violent anticipation
of the kingdom of God, in positive contradiction to the
example of the Lord of the Church, of whom it is
written, that however exalted his claims he humbled
himself. In close connexion with this false attitude,
rose the most unevangelical separation between a
spiritually ignorant laity and a privileged clerical body.
Such an inward degeneracy of the Church led infallibly
to an outward fall. The Reformation brought about
the recognition of the spiritual vocation of the Church,
and the universal priesthood of all her members ; but it
was not able to prevent a disruption of the universal
Church into many separate national Churches, neither
could it bring about a purely Presbyterial institution,
but these Churches fell under the protection and rule
of the State power.

200 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH.

Thus we now find in the Church much internal
apostasy united with external dependence upon the
secular power. This is the twofold reproach that she
has to bear from many who have on these accounts
separated themselves from her into diiferent sects, and
who stigmatize her as a worldly Babylon. But this
belongs to her crucified condition, and fulfils the pro-
phetic declaration of her Lord. For her part she knows
that she is equally removed from a Papal temporal power
and from the Hegelian conceptions of a State, and she
rejoices that it is so ; but she also knows to how many
waverers she offers just the helping hand they need ;
knows that she acts as a dyke and a support to much
that is weak ; knows that she is the Church of Him who
ate with publicans and sinners. And while she does not
presume to break the yoke of the State before her Lord
himself frees her from it, she reaches nevertheless the
right hand of fellowship to all who in other churches
and communions love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.
She knows, too, that in every circle, and often where
the tares are thickest, there are genuine ears of wheat
to be found, and that, in the great day of his appearing,
the Lord will gather from the four corners of the earth
all who bear the impress of his Spirit, and own them as
members of his risen and glorified body. Then shall
be fulfilled that which is only in progress now ; then
shall we see what now we believe, the one universal
Christian Church, the true communion of saints, the
kingdom of Grod.

Therefore, if in our days there be great agitation
both in spiritual and temporal spheres, and on all sides
the waves rise high, yet let the living members of the
Church discern in these grave signs of the times no
tokens of fear, but rather welcome in them, while lifting
up their heads, the morning breezes of the coming day.

IX.

THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

THE subject that is now to occupy us, the doctrine
of justification by faith, is, in a dogmatic point of
view, based upon the foregoing Lectures, more especially
those that treated respectivaly of Sin and of the Atone-
ment. We are now, however, about to consider this
subject from the moral point of view. For, apart from
the dogmatic objections which have been already com-
bated, this doctrine has often been objected to in the
supposed interests of morality. Now it is a doctrine
which, in the New Testament, appears with especial
prominence in the epistles of St. Paul, and which, at
the time of the Reformation, constituted the funda-
mental point of difference between Protestantism and
Catholicism. To prove this latter assertion, we have
only to review a few passages of Protestant Confessions
of faith. First, we will take the Basle Confession of
the year 1634 : " We acknowledge the remission of
sins by faith in Jesus Christ the crucified. And
although this faith be continually practised, proved,
and confirmed by works of love, yet we attribute justi-
fication and satisfaction for our sins not to these works
which are the fruits of faith, but only to our true reliance
on and faith in the blood- shedding of the Lamb of God.
For we freely acknowledge that in Christ, who is our
justification, sanctification, redemption, way, truth,
wisdom, and life, all things are given to us. Hence
the good works of believers do not expiate their sins,
but are done solely out of gratitude to God the Lord for
his great benefits to usward in Christ." The Heidel-
berg Confession also gives a most striking and hearty

201

202 THE DOCTEINE OF

popular expression to this doctrine. Here is the
answer to the sixtieth question, as to the mode of
justification before God : " Only by true faith in Jesus
Christ, whereby, although my conscience accuses me of
having grievously transgressed all God's command-
ments, and never having kept one, as well as of being
continually inclined to all that is evil, yet God, without
any merit of mine, of pure grace, bestows on me, im-
putes to me, the perfect satisfaction, justification, and
sanctification of Christ, as fully as though I had never
committed any sin, and had myself rendered the obe-
dience Christ rendered in my stead, if only I will accept
all these benefits with a believing heart." As to the
teaching of the Lutheran Church on this point, I only
need to recall the fourth article of the Augsburg Con-
fession : " On justification. — Further, be it enjoined,
that we are unable to attain to forgiveness of sin or
righteousness before God through any merits, works, or
expiation of our own, but that w^e obtain forgiveness
and are counted righteous before him through grace by
faith, and for the sake of Christ, we believing that
Christ has sulfered for us, and that on that account our
sins are forgiven, and righteousness and eternal life
bestowed on us. For this faith, God will look upon,
and reckon to us, as righteousness, as St. Paul says to
the Romans (chap. iii. 4)."

In direct opposition to this Protestant testimony, we
will only here adduce on the side of Catholicism, the
twelfth canon of the sixth session of the Council of
Trent : " If any man shall say that justifying faith is
nothing else than trust in the Divine mercy which for-
gives the sinner for the sake of Christ, or that it is by
this trust alone that man is justified — let him be ac-
cursed."

This Protestant doctrine it was which, at the time of
the Reformation, not only formed a fundamental differ-
ence, but, at the manifold negotiations to which it led,
was the chief hindrance to a reunion of both Confessions.
It was vehemently attacked from a moral point of view,
not merely by its Romish opponents, but by many who,
in other respects, were inclined to Protestantism ; and

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 203

we may safely assert that numbers who were violent
against the night of error and abuse in the Church of
liome, and who highly estimated the merits of Luther,
yet in relation to this doctrine, which was in fact the
essential point at issue, remained — perhaps without
suspecting it — very good Catholics all the time. Now
men are perfectly justified in applying the standard of
morality to an article of faith, and it ought to be
acknowledged a step in the right direction when any
doctrine, which cannot legitimize itself both by its own
moral character and its influence on mankind, awakens
suspicion. Only we must be careful to draw our moral
standard not from a superficial survey, but a profound
search into the real moral needs of our nature.

The attacks which have been made in the interests
of morality upon the doctrine in question, may be re-
duced to two questions — 1. Is it not in itself an immoral
idea that Grod should, on account of a man's faith, pro-
nounce him to be righteous, when in point of fact he is
not so ? 2. Would not such an imputed righteousness
as this necessarily destroy all moral effort ?

This charge of immorality naturally suggests to us an
easy, practical refutation ; for as Christians, we cannot
admit that Pauline Christianit}^, and as Protestants, we
cannot admit that the Reformation, rests upon an
immoral basis. Neither has the doctrine called in
question, whether as exemplified in Paul, or in the
champions of the Reformation — a Luther, a Melanch-
thon, a Calvin, etc. — or in the social history of Protes-
tantism generally, had practically any immoral tendency.
However, we will not allow this train of thought to in-
terfere with the examination of the doctrine, but rather
encourage us to carry it on very carefully, and to enter
more deeply into the question, before we allow ourselves
to come to a decision.

It is evident that, within our present limits, we can-
not set before you an account of all the controversies to
which our doctrine gave rise, or a special defence of all
that has been said on this side, and a special contradic-
tion of all brought forward on that. This would lead
us into a web of occasionally most subtle distinctions.

204 THE DOCTKINE OF

The conflict has been actively renewed within the last
thirty years, by the appearance of a very spirited and
learned work of the Catholic theologian Mohler ; and in
defence of the Protestant doctrine, several have taken
up the pen who certainly cannot be reproached with a
narrow orthodoxy : I may instance Marheineke, and
the recently deceased Professor Baiir of Tubingen. A
closer examination of the controversy shows how in the
Protestant camp, in the heat of argument and opposi-
tion, several maxims, expressions, and illustrations have
been employed, which certainly betray a rather one-
rsided, strained, and harsh spirit, and must therefore be
sometimes qualified ; as, for instance, when the Lutheran
Nicolaus of Amsdorf undertakes to prove that the propo-
sition, " Grood works are injurious to salvation," is a true
and a Christian one. On the other side, we observe
how those Catholics who feel anxious to grasp the deeper
meaning of the doctrines of their church, and to defend
them by scientific weapons, have unconsciously drawn
nearer in many respects to Protestant views. But all
these points we must at present leave untouched, con-
fining ourselves to the thorough examination of the true
Protestant doctrine, and seeking to justify it from the
charges made against its morality.

I. First, then, "According to the Protestant doc-
trine," say some, " a righteousness external to man —
alien to him, is imputed to him ; he is declared righteous
by God without actually being so. This is an untrue
and immoral principle." Here we must set out by re-
minding our opponents that it is necessary for them to
understand the idea of this reckoning, or imputing, in
the sense that we hold it. In this, as in all cases where
divine actions are represented by expressions borrowed
from human life, it is essential to make allowance for
the inadequacy inherent in these expressions. Thus
this reckoning or imputing of which we spe£ik, is not an
external affair, as in the business of daily life, when a
discharge is written out and given and reckoned to B.,
because A. has undertaken to be a surety for him,
whether as to work to be done or payment to be made.
This is, indeed, a purely external matter to B., however

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. lOf

closely it may affect him, affect him even while he knows
nothing of it. Not so, however, is it with Christ's re-
presentation of humanity. Here we are not treating of
a certain amount of virtue, of good works which have
got to be done, it matters not by whom, and Christ has
done them ; or, again, of a certain amount of punish-
ment which has got to be endured, it matters not by
whom, and Christ has endured it. Most assuredly we
are to entertain no such lifeless conception of Christ's
representative righteousness, and of the active and
passive obedience he has rendered. Rather Christ's
holy life and holy works on the one side ; his holy
sufferings and holy death on the other, — constitute that
work of redemption and expiation, which brings about
a decided reaction against sin and its consequences ;
atones at once for the sins of mankind, and is to man-
kind both a new origin of life — whence Christ is called
the second Adam, — and a new condition of life — man-
kind having now through Christ fellowship with God.

But at the same time, every man is not, as a matter of
course, without anything further, a sharer in this new
life ; faith in Christ is the necessary condition to its
attainment. By faith, however, as has already in these
Lectures been frequently observed, in connexion with
different subjects, and from different points of view, — by
faith we are hj no means to understand a theoretical pro-
cess, which only affects the human intellect ; but rather,
a specially practical relative position ; the energetic lay-
ing hold by man of that grace of God which was by
Christ realized in humanity, and is now in Christ offered
to humanity ; or, more briefly, it is the energetic laying
hold of Christ himself ; and consequently, it is a process
which affects spiritual life in its very core, a process
by which the man is implanted or incorporated into
Christ, and thus has, by fellowship with him, a share in
that reaction brought about b}^ Christ against the sin
and guilt of humanity.

Thus are the believer's personal sins and guilt now
atoned for by Christ, and he stands in that fellowship
with the divine life which Christ has restored in huma-
nity. Luther, in his famous treatise on the liberty of a

206 THE DOCTEINE OF

Christian, has treated this truth in a most profound man-
ner, mystically if you will, but mystical!}' in the best
sense of the word, mystically in so far as he was dis-
cussing the tenderest and intimate mystery of godliness.
These are his words : " Faith unites the soul with Christ
as a bride to the bridegroom. From which union it
follows, as St. Paul says (Eph. v. 20), that Christ and
the soul become one body ; and also that they have their
possessions, their mischances, and all things in common,
that which is Christ's belonging to the believing soul,
that which is the soul's belonging to Christ. If Christ
has all holiness and blessedness, these belong to the
soul. If the soul has all unrighteousness and sin, these
belong to Christ. Here then we see a glad exchange and
emulation. Because Christ is God and man, who never
iinned, and his holiness unconquerable, eternal, and al-
mighty, he, through the bridal ring, which is faith, appro-
priates the sins of the believing soul as his own, as though
they had been committed by him, and thus the sins must
needs be swallowed up and drowned in him. For his
unconquerable holiness is too strong for any or all sin.
Thus the soul is purified from all sin through its dowry ;
that is, on account of its faith, and not only goes per-
fectly free, but is endowed with the righteousness of its
bridegroom, Christ."

Thus it appears that to the believer the righteous-
ness of Christ is no more an external and foreign thing
that can only be arbitrarily imputed to him ; but rather
it is something appropriated by him, essentially his own,
by reason, if I may so speak, of the solidarity which has
been brought about between himself and Christ. The
believer has no longer a separate existence, but lives
henceforth in fellowship with Christ, as a member incor-
porated in him, and accordingly he is looked upon by
God, not as what he is in and by himself, but as what he
is in that relation to Christ which faith has occasioned.

And further, it follows that faith cannot possibly be
indifferent to morality, as is presumed by that often
repeated charge : " Very convenient, indeed ! no matter
how a man thinks and feels and lives, he believes, and
therefore is declared righteous." On the contrary,

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 20/

faitli in its energetic laying liokl of Christ and his right-
eousness, is a spiritual action of a positiyelj moral char-
acter. " Faith," says Luther, in his preface to the
Epistle to the Romans, " is a living, well considered
reliance on God's grace, so sure and certain that I could
die for it a thousand times."

Again, the Heidelberg Catechism calls faitli " a hearty
trust, worked in us by the Holy Spirit, through the
gospel." Now, if according to Protestant doctrine it is
the Holy Ghost who produces faith in men, and with-
out whom they never could attain to it (as Paul himself
had already declared, " No man can call Jesus Lord,
but by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 3), it is equally
true that it is the human spirit in which he works, and
whose energies he sets in motion, and it is the human
will to which he imparts this decided direction towards
Christ, so that faith can in no sense be a purely passive
relation, but rather a condition of the highest activity.
Only it behoves our Protestant doctrine vigorously to
guard against faith itself having a certain kind of merit
attributed to it, as though, as the subjective condition and
indwelling quality of a man, it made that man so well
pleasing in the eyes of God, that therefore God counted
him to be righteous, in which case man would indeed
have a righteousness in himself, that is, in his faith.
Whereas the believer has no righteousness in himself,
but only in Christ, his faith being but the means
whereby he appropriates to himself Christ and his right-
eousness. It is against this mistaken estimation of faith
that the Heidelberg Catechism expressly guards when
it follows up the 60th question, the answer to which we
have already given, by the following words : ' Where-
fore sayest thou, that thou art justified by faith only ?'
and replies to them, " Not because I, on account of the
worthiness of my faith, am well pleasing to God ; for the
satisfaction, justification, and sanctification of Christ
are my only righteousness before God, and I do no-
thing by my faith, but receive these and make them my
own."

But the moral character of faith will appear still
more distinctly, if we consider how inseparable faith is

208 THE DOCTEINE OF

from the negative moment — Repentance; repentance
in the biblical sense, which nowhere means expiation of
guilt by punishment, but change of mind with regard
to sin ; a condemning of sin, not merely in a general
way, but a condemning of a man's own personal sin,
which takes the form of regret ; of a sorrowful con-
sciousness both of individual sinful actions, in thought,
word, and deed, and of the sinful nature from which
these actions have proceeded ; of a sorrowful conscious-
ness, too, of personal inability to make up for past evil,
or even to shake off all connexion with evil in the future ;
of a sorrowful consciousness, in short, of how hateful
sin is in the eyes of the holy God, and how it separates a
man from him. A consciousness this, whose intensity in
no way depends upon the relative greatness or uncom-
mon nature of these individual sins, but upon the depth
of the moral feeling and the measure of susceptibility
to the contrast between a holy God and sinful man.
But still less here than with regard to faith, should
there be any idea entertained of merit, as though a
man's repentance were in some sense his righteousness.
Rather, repentance is that painful sense and acknow-
ledgment of utter want of any righteousness whatever
of a man's own, which drives him to seek a righteous-
ness external to himself, and is consequently the pre-
paratory condition of that faith which finds it in Christ.
These observations indeed contain the peculiar fea-
tures of the Protestant doctrine of justification, but
still we have not as yet brought them out with sufficient
prominence. That men become righteous and are
saved by the merits of Christ, and that faith is neces-
sary to the appropriation of these, both Churches con-
cur in affirming. The difference between them first
makes itself apparent in their conception of the process
of appropriation, in their definition of what justification
is in itself, and how man attains to it. According to
Catholic theology, justification is not a declaring^ but a
making of the sinner righteous, i e., through the merits
of the holy sufferings of Christ the Holy Spirit pours
the love of God into the heart of man ; man becomes
inwardly renewed, and can and will now keep the law

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 2O9

of Grod, and do sucli good works as are conformalbie
thereto. All this together, they hold, constitutes justifi-
cation. '' In justification itself," says the Council of
Trent, in the seventh chapter of the sixth session,
" man receives through Christ, in whom he is engrafted,
together with forgiveness of sins, faith, hope, and love."
At first sight this view may not seem to diiFer very
essentially from the Protestant ; but if we look at it
closely, we shall perceive how much here the moment
of pardon, of forgiveness of sins, is pushed into the
background, justification being confounded with what
we distinguish as sanctification, — never, therefore, com-
ing to an end, but understood as a subjective process
which goes on throughout life, for the justified, as the
tenth chapter of the same Session expressly declares,
are ever more and more justified. The Protestant
doctrine, on the contrary, distinguishes justification as
an independent moment, from the sanctification which
is its immediate consequence; justification itself, accord-
ing to this doctrine, consisting in God declaring man
righteous, i.e., judicially absolved from all guilt, so that
from that time forth, man may be fully conscious of
being reconciled to God, assured of his pardon, and in the
enjoyment of his peace ; and, further, if with this experi-
ence in his heart he should immediately die, he would be
certain of dying saved, and of escaping judgment ; and
all this, not on the ground of any worthiness whatever
of his own, as though his righteousness were in himself ;
but for the sake of Christ, with whom he is so incor-
porated by faith, that he no longer lives in himself but
in Christ, and thus is no more viewed by God as exist-
ing independently, but as connected with Christ, as a
member of the spiritual body of which Christ is the
head.

It is possible, indeed, that at the first glance this
Catholic doctrine may appear the more comprehensible
and clear of the two to what one calls man's common
sense ; but still the closer examination to which our
deeper religious and moral wants invite us, will reveal
truth on the side of the Protestant. Let us make this
evident by reverting to the experience of the two men

0

2 I O THE DOCTRINE OF

in whom this doctrine of justification by faith appears
to be equally embodied : to that of the apostle Paul,
who first defined it in all its distinctness, and of Luther,
who not only made it the principle of his own Christian
life, but of his whole work of Reformation. When
Paul, after the appearance of the Lord to him on his
way to Damascus, underwent a three days' mental con-
flict, his bodily eyes being sealed, but the eyes of his
understanding opened to recognise the whole of his
former life as mistaken, — spent in unbelief and resist-
ance to that God whom by his bloody persecuting zeal
he had thought to serve, — pardon was already bestowed
upon him, he being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
He, on his side, brought nothing to insure it, except
sorrow for his past life and faith in Christ ; he was
only conscious, as far as he was himself concerned, of
being laden with guilt, and of seeking righteousness in
Christ, and yet he could thenceforth feel certified of
God's grace, for the sake of that Jesus whom he had
persecuted. While his repentance could discover no-
thing in himself but wrath-deserving unrighteousness,
he already knew by experience what it was to be found
in Christ, and to have for righteousness that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is
of God by faith (Phil. iii. 9) ; for his being in Christ
was owing to faith alone. This was his justification, an
independent act of divine mercy, which was antecedent
to the new life he was now entering upon, and the origin
and the source of all that followed. This consciousness
of justifying grace, laid hold of only through faith in
Christ, is henceforth the key-note of his whole life, and
sounds throughout all his epistles ; this his conviction
once for all and for ever, that man is justified without
,the works of the law, — justified by faith.

Let us now glance at the spiritual history of the
reformer, Martin Luther. He is living in his cell at
Erfurth, a pious monk, in the best sense of the word.
He keeps the rules of his Order with conscientious
strictness, and he does this not with the hypocritical
intent to make up as it were to God, by outward observ-
ances and mortifications, for neglect of far more im-

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 2 I I

portant moral duties ; no, he is seeking in earnest to
please God and make his peace with him ; and, accord-
tng to the belief of the age, he considers this monastic
life, with all its privations, the most certain way of
attaining that end ; asceticism is to be to him a means
of sanctification and subjugation of all evil tendencies.
This course, however, in no way leads him to peace with
Grod ; on the contrary, he becomes only more strongly
convinced of the wide gulf between his sinful nature
and the divine, and he sinks into profound anxiety and
gloom. Nothing comforts him but a speech of an old
brother monk, who reminds him that the Christian
creed contains the words, " I believe in the remission
of sins." The significance of this remission of sins, as
an independent moment, already dawns upon his mind,
and his office of doctor of the Holy Scriptures giving
him an opportunity of thoroughly studying the epistles
of St. Paul, he soon enjoys the full light of truth and con-
solation. In them he finds laid down as a fact, — ex-
perimentally verified and most clearly impressed on the
writer's consciousness, — the mode of man's justification
and attainment of spiritual peace. His own experience
assents to the declaration of the apostle, " Therefore being
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ" (Kom. v. 1). Henceforth this is for
him essentially the gospel of salvation. This certainty
of being forgiven by God, not on account of any righteous-
ness of his own, not because of the measure of love and
holiness to which he had already attained ; but looking
away altogether from his own moral condition (so little
satisfying in his own eyes, so much less so, therefore,
in the eyes of a Holy God), and looking to Christ alone,
and being bold to say, " Whatever Christ has is mine,
because I am his through faith;" this certainty it was
which gave him that cheerful heroic strength in which he
triumphantly waged war not only against all hindrances
to his own personal sanctification, but against the Papal
power so dominant in his time. The energy with which
he was inspired by the thought, " If God be for us,
who can be against us?" rested on this justifying faith.
He knew it experimentally, as " the living, deliberate,

2 I 2 THE DOCTEINE OF

reliance on Glod's grace, so certain that I would die for
it a thousand times."

These two examples strikingly illustrate the impor-
tance of justification considered according to our Pro-
testant doctrine as an independent act of grace. The
greater the truth and intensity of the moral sense in
any man, the more aware will he be of the difference
between the ever-sinful and utterly imperfect creature,
and the holy Grod, and therefore the more compelled to
seek for righteousness not in his own imperfections, but
in the perfections of Christ. And again, the very
possibility of loving Grod from the heart, and l^ecause of
this love striving after holiness with that freedom and
joy which constitute the very essence of love — in other
words, all truly moral efforts at self-improvement, — must
be based upon a justification not dependent upon the
measure of sanctification already attained, but inde-
pendently bestowed on us as the very condition of this
sanctification. For so long as I am not certain that
God has pardoned me, that I have peace with him,
that the sins that still so easily beset me form no wall
of partition between me and my God, so long I am
unable to love him with all my heart. It is the expe-
rience of the love of God as having freely forgiven me
a sinner, for Christ's sake, that first calls out in me
free, pure, active, and influential reciprocal love. Now
this happy certainty of being forgiven is the very point
at which the Catholic Church takes especial mnbrage.
The Council of Trent, in the ninth chapter of the sixth
Session expressly states : — " Every man by reason of
his own weakness and defects, must be in fear and
anxiety about his state of grace, nor can any one know
with infallible certainty oi faith that he has received
forgiveness of God."

II. This leads us to our second question, which is
this : — Will justification by faith — in other words, the
certainty of being forgiven and declared righteous by
God through faith in Christ's merits, — will this actually
have sanctification for its result ? Will it not rather
paralyse moral effort, man being satisfied with immunity

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 2 I 3

from Grod's judgment, and not careful or desirous to
strive after progressive sanctification ?

This question may be very simply answered, if only
"we bear in mind that Protestantism invariably insists
upon justiiScation being dependent upon faith, and
understands faith as placing us in living relation to
Christ. He then only is justified who is virtually re-
lated to Christ, and when this is the case, it is wholly
inconceivable that a man should remain as he is, that
he should not become sanctified. For Christ, through
his Spirit, lives in all the living members of the Church,
which is his spiritual body, and the efiect of this life is
their sanctification.

That this inseparable connexion between justification
and sanctification may be clearly and distinctly repre-
sented without identifying or confusing the two, or in
any way encroaching upon the Protestant doctrine of
justification as an independent moment, Calvin has
shown us in the third book of his Institutes. Thus, in
the eleventh chapter, and sixth paragraph, he says, " As
Christ himself cannot be divided, so these two, justi-
fication and sanctification, which we receive together
from him, are alike indivisible. For whom God receives
into his favour, to them he also gives the Spirit of adop-
tion, by which power they are transformed into his
image. But should we, because the heat of the sun is
inseparable from its light, speak of the earth being
warmed by its light, and lighted by its warmth ? This
comparison is well adapted to illustrate the subject,
the sun both by its heat making the earth fruitful, and
lighting it by its rays ; here then we see a reciprocal
and inseparable connexion, but still reason forbids our
attributing the peculiar nature of one of these processes
to the other."

How closely, connected justification and sanctification
are, how the last is the necessary consequence of the
first, shines out brightly from the testimony of St. Paul
to the facts of his personal experience. " K any man
be in Christ" — that is, be by faith placed in that relation
to Christ to which we owe justification — " he is a new
creature ; old things are passed away, behold all things

1 1 4 THE DOCTRINE OF

are become new !" (2 Cor. v. 17.) Now this renewal
is not to be thought of as taking place at once, but the
decisive beginning of it synchronizes with the being
engrafted into Christ, and progresses continually in
sanctification. The ruling motive in the souls of those
who are justified by the death of Christ is the love first
shown by the Lord himself, and now felt for him.
" The love of Christ constraineth us," writes the
apostle ; " because we thus judge, that if one died for
all, then were all dead : and that he died for all, that
they which live should not henceforth live unto them-
selves, but unto him which died for them, and rose
again" (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). This love to Cod and
Christ, which governs the souls of the justified, is the
principle of all moral life.

Again, we are not to think of this subject as though
the Christian, in his own person, had a repugnance to
all that was holy and good, to virtue and good works
of every kind, but yet, out of personal love to God and
Christ, was enabled to make the effort, and do good.
Kather are goodness and holiness God's essential na-
ture. " God is light, and in him is no darkness at all "
(1 John i. 5). To love God signifies, therefore, to love
the source and sum of all goodness ; and to love Christ
signifies to love the most perfect revelation of this good-
ness in the form of human life. By means of this love
is that prophecy fulfilled (Jer. xxxi. 31-34) which pro-
mises a new covenant between God and his people,
consisting of his law put into their inward parts, and
written in their minds. And according to the epistle
to the Galatians, as soon as we are engrafted through
faith into Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit, and he is
a powerful, vital impulse within us, his fruit being
" Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, good-
ness, faith, meekness, temperance : against such thef^e
is no law."

Thus, through the Spirit of God as ruling motive and
vital principle, if we surrender ourselves to him, and
follow him, and in his strength overcome the impulses
of the flesh, we are placed in a position, and enabled
to lead a life, which is in conformity with the law : the

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

215

expression of the Divine will concerning us. Thus far
the apostle Paul. And now let us hear how Luther in
his Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans, lays down
man's moral renewal as the inevitable consequence of
true and justifying faith. " Faith," he says, " is not the
mere human delusion and dream that some hold it to be.
And hence, when they see no improvement of life, nor
good works following therefrom, and yet hear a great
deal said about faith, they fall into error, and declare
that faith is not sufl5cient, that a man must have works
also in order to be holy and saved. Whereas this is only
a hearing the gospel and being struck by it, and calling
up thoughts by their own strength, and exclaiming, I
believe. Now, this being but a human idea and ima-
gination, which never stirs the ground of the heart, it
has no influence, and no improvement follows thereupon.
But Faith is a divine work in us, that changes us,
and begets us anew, and kills the old Adam, and makes
us different in heart and spirit, mind and strength, and
brings the Holy Spirit with it. Oh ! it is a living,
creative, active, mighty thing this faith, to which it
would be impossible not to bring forth good works con-
tinually ! It does not inquire whether there are any
good works to be done ; before the question can be
put, it has done, and ever is doing them. He who
does not do these good works is an unbelieving man,
who may indeed keep groping and peering about faith
and good works, but knows neither what faith is, nor
what good works really are, however much he may
chatter about them both." And again, " Therefore
(that is, by reason of his faith) the man is without con-
straint of any kind, ready and delighted to do good to
any one, to serve any one, to suffer anything for the
love and to the praise of God, who has shown him so
great mercy. For it is impossible to separate good
works from faith, as impossible as to separate from flame
its burning and shining properties. Therefore, beware
of thine own false thoughts, and of useless chatterers,
who pretend to be very wise in deciding as to faith and
good works, and are all the while great fools. Pray to
God to work faith within thee, else thou wilt remain

2 1 6 THE DOCTRINE OF

eternally without it, think or do what thou wilt or
canst."

According to these statements we may reduce the
whole of the previous argument to this alternative :
Either a man is really justified by true faith, and then
sanctification and good works will inevitably ensue ; or
sanctification and good works do not ensue, therefore
there has been no true faith, and so no justification.
What, in such a case as this, a man may still call his
faith, is something to which Paul positively denies the
honour of such an appellation altogether, while James
calls it a dead faith, a form which may indeed retain
the sharply-cut features impressed on it by doctrine,
but which is only a pale, cold, lifeless thing. It is — if
such a name be to be given to it in any sense — a faith
which, because it is dead, is perfectly powerless, and as
it cannot morally renew man, so it cannot procure him
justification either, because it can in no way bring him
into living relation to Christ.

If enough has already been said to refute the charge
of often paralysing and impeding moral effort brought
against this our doctrine of justification by faith, it still
remains that we call attention to two points which prove
how, on the contrary, it is this very principle that gua-
rantees to moral eff"ort its purity and earnestness. One
of these points relates to the undeniable amount remain-
ing, even in the regenerate, of fleshly lusts or inclination
to sin. The Catholic doctrine, which makes justifica-
tion dependent not upon faith, and the righteousness of
Christ imputed and granted thereto, but on the actual
condition of the man himself, is consequently constrained
to assert of these lusts [concupiscentia) that they are
not in themselves sinful, or objects of divine displea-
sure. According to this doctrine, they are allowed to
remain in man that he may struggle against them,
and the apostle Paul designates them as sinful only
because they are derived from and incite to sin. But
they only become positive sin by the concurrence with
them of the human will. — Trid. Sess. v.. Deer. 5.
But how, we ask, can that which is derived from sin
and incites to sin, and which is not external to the

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 2 I 7

man, but internal in him, how can that be otherwise than
itself sin, and therefore displeasing to God ? Again,
how are we to draw such a hair-breadth line of de-
marcation between lust and will ? If a man feels
conscious of some intensely ardent desire, even if it be
never shaped by a formal act of the will into a bad re-
solve or purpose, still, must not the will be in a measure
influenced and implicated ? Where does the domain of
mere desire end, and that of the will begin ? How
easy, how almost unavoidable, the temptation to draw
the line of distinction in our own favour, and to set
down many lesser sins of the will to the score of mere
lust or inclination ! Whereas, according to Protestant
principles, the regenerate man, although waging the
genuine warfare of the Spirit against the flesh, and
advancing in sanctification, yet owes his justification,
in Grod's sight, neither to his individual conduct nor
character, but to that relation to Christ into which he
has been brought by faith, and owing to which Christ's
perfect righteousness is imputed to him. The more
pure and earnest therefore, the more ideal (to use a
modern expression) can he now be in the work of sancti-
fication set before him. His aim is not merely to pre-
vent the will from formally coinciding with the evil desire,
but to kill that very desire. He sorrows for and regrets
not only every actual sin of thought, deed, or word, into
which he falls, and which must deeply grieve him as
being symptomatic of a relapse into his old disease ;
but every rising of a sinful desire excites in him sorrow
and repentance, as symptomatic of that diseased nature
that still cleaves to him, as something that must be in
him most especially displeasing to God, and he feels him-
self so much the more bound to cling with all his energy
to Christ, who of God is made to us both righteousness
and sanctification.

The second point touches the merit of good works.
We need here only to contrast the two doctrines to see
on which side the essential nature of morality — unselfish
love in all its purity and profundity — is best guarded.
According to the Catholic doctrine, no doubt, all good
that the regenerate soul is able to do, is in so far the gift

2 1 8 THE DOCTKINE OF

of grace that it can only be done in the power of the Holy
Ghost, which God has bestowed for Christ's sake. But
by means of this gift (so Catholics teach), a man is able
to do such good works as satisfy the divine law as re-
gards this life, and, in the true sense of the word, de-
serve increase of grace, eternal life, and increase of
heavenly glory. And from this ground there has sprung
the doctrine of supererogatory merits, which, although
not formally sanctioned by the Catholic Church, has
still less been repudiated by her, but, on the contrary,
practically acknowledged by the system of indulgences.
This doctrine implies (so are Catholics taught) that they
who not only do what the divine law requires, but who
also follow the so-called evangelical counsels, more parti-
cularly as to voluntary poverty, celibacy, penances, etc.,
performing so many of these good works that the Church
canonizes them, that is, enrolls them among the saints,
— that these have deserved more grace than they need
for themselves, and therefore these works of supereroga-
tion, united with the equally supererogatory merits of
Christ, form a fund, a treasury of merit, out of which
the Church has the power of drawing indulgences, that
is, of remitting to her members the penances or fasts, or
temporal obligations of any kind, that would otherwise
be necessary. This sketch of the Catholic doctrine
will at once convince you how dubious it is in general,
and also how it degrades the true nature of vital and
inward morality, to suppose that there can be any merit
in man in the sight of a holy God. If the doctrine of
creature merit before a God who is absolutely almighty,
and to whose love and mercy we owe all we have, if
the idea that He can be indebted in any way to us, be
wholly untenable, still more hopeless must the case
seem v/hen we remember that he is a holy God, in
whose sight our best works are impure and imperfect.

Nor, again, does our individual character ever reach
such conformity with the divine law, ?.e., the holy law
of God, as to empower us to say that we have deserved
eternal life and heavenly happiness. To acknowledge
this in sincerity and humility, to confess the imperfec-
tion and sinfulness of all they do and are, and thus to

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 2 I 9

be morally correct and just in their estimate of them-
selves, is rendered imperative by conscience upon ail
who are justified by faith. While building confidently
upon Christ and his perfect righteousness, they disclaim
all merit of their own in the sight of God. The good
works they do are done not to merit eternal life, but
out of thankful love to God who has given them eternal
life in Christ. And while they gratefully allow that
the Holy Scriptures do indeed promise a reward to good
works, they look upon this reward not as a right or a
thing deserved, but only as a happy result or conse-
quence. If they persevere in faith and holiness to the end,
the consequence will indeed be their blessedness in eter-
nity ; but this does not imply that they have deserved
eternal blessedness. If in this life they grow in grace,
and thus in peace and true happiness, they see in this
no merit of their own, they only exclaim with the
apostle : " Being made free from sin, and become ser-
vants to God, we have our fruit unto holiness, and the
end everlasting life." And if they experience the joy
of seeing that their labour is not in vain in the Lord,
but that what they do the Lord maketh it to prosper,
they neither speak nor think of merit of their own, but
give praise to God, who has used such imperfect in-
struments and feeble efi"orts to accomplish his gracious
ends. Thus the Heidelberg Catechism answers the
question, " Have then our good works no merit, since
God rewards them in this life and that to come?" by
the simple truthful words, " This reward is not of merit
but of grace." Or to put the same thought into modern
language, we may say that, according to the Protestant
conception. The reward of good works is the conse-
quence of the grace shown on the one side, conditioned
by the consequence of Faith on the other side.

I have thus endeavoured to answer both the ques-
tions brought before us by our subject, and now that I
have come to an end, I see too plainly how little ex-
haustive my treatment of it has been. God grant that
I may at least have succeeded in some measure in making
you feel how this doctrine of justification by faith alone

2 20 THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

truly and completely satisfies not only the requirements
of deep and logical reasoning, but more especially the
deeper moral need of reconciliation with Grod, and re-
newal in his image. If I have so succeeded, I may
confidently close this lecture by the entreaty that, as
we all have cause to hold fast the precious privileges of
various kinds conferred on us by the Reformation, so
from henceforth this doctrine of justification by faith
may be cherished by us as having been the very life-
blood of that Reformation, and as being, in its prac-
tical application, the chief jewel of our evangelical
Church.

X.

THE FUTURE.

PART I, THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

IT is on the old question of the immortality of the
human being that we have now to dwell. A ques-
tion this, which I at first believed so little to stand in
need of argument amongst us, that assuming its uni-
versal recognition, I was prepared to pass at once to
the consideration of the nature of the future life. But
to my deep sorrow I discover that this is not the case ;
that even with regard to this subject, the ground of a
once general conviction is undermined, broken up, and
that, therefore, it will be necessary to relay the founda-
tion of all that deserves the name of divine communion,
salvation, peace, life, before we proceed to meditate
upon those lofty blessings themselves.

The task that is thus appointed me is by no means
an easy one. For not only am I more restricted as to
space than I could wish in opening up such a subject as
this, but we all know by old experience that it is just
those truths which appear the most self-evident and
incontrovertible, which are the least amenable to scien-
tific proof. But, on the other hand, one circumstance
encourages me, and that is my conviction that on this
question, less perhaps than any other, is there any need
to excite your interest or solicit your attention.

For so much is indeed indisputable : no knowledge
is more important to man, and none can concern him
so nearly, as that which relates to his ^"^n destiny, nay,
to his very existence, in the truest and fullest sense of
the word ; which gives him decisive information as to

222 THE FUTURE :

whether he, with all his living and striving energies,
his inmost being and feeling, are to be swallowed up in
death by the silent night of annihilation ; or whether
there is within him something destined to outlast this
great catastrophe, which death only transplants into
another form of existence. " To be, or not to be, that
is the question," exclaims the poet, when representing a
highly gifted and deeply-perplexed human soul, occupied
with the problem that was to decide his whole life, and
five a definite direction to his collective thinking and
: 3ting. And he goes on to wonder if there be indeed
'" something after death ;" if there be an " undiscovered
country from whose bourn no traveller returns," what
is it that awaits us there ? " To die ; to sleep ! To
sleep? perchance to dream," —

" Ay, there's tlie rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off" this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. "

That in these words this great poet, who knew the human
heart better than any other, expressed the universal
searching and straining of humanity at large, and not
that of any one individual or class in particular, we all
know perfectly well. From the ignorant child return-
ing from the grave of his mother to the empty home,
and trying to picture to himself where she can now be
who hitherto had always loving words and deeds for
him, up to the most philosophically-minded man who
strives unceasingly to discover, and perhaps to compre-
hend the cause of all things, this question is revolved as
the highest and greatest of all, — What becomes of us
when this living form, in which we now move, falls into
decay, as we know it inevitably must ? What is death,
this dark and solemn riddle which we all have to solve ?
What becomes of those relationships and unions of every
kind in which we at present stand ; which form the
richest element of our life, and which yet in the course
of years we have to see one by one severed and dis-
solved ?

And just as in this question the most ignorant and
most wise concur, — uttering it, as it were, with one lip, —

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 223

SO also is it with the answer which they immediately
give and receive. For it is an indisputable fact, that
amongst all nations of the earth, so far back as their
history extends and our knowledge can embrace, we
meet with the faith in human immortality, in a new life
after death. And, further, this is no mere popular
superstition, which fades away before the highest attain-
ments of science and efforts of intellect ; but just the
reverse. Amongst those whom, according to their time
and circumstances, we may pronounce greatest ; among t
those whom the human race — whatever its epoch (. r
clime — reveres as its leaders and benefactors in the
sphere of spiritual and moral life, holding their names
sacred still, — amongst all these there is not, we dare
affirm, one who did not assert this doctrine of man's
immortality, or at all events assume it as a fundamental
principle of his own knowledge and teaching. In this
the Confucius of China is at one with the Zoroaster of
Persia, the Buddha of India with the Socrates of
Greece, the philosophers of Rome with the apostle
Paul, and if only we read the Old Testament intelli-
gently, we shall admit with Moses also, not to speak of
Him who stood in a different position from all these,
since he could say of himself, " He who is come down
from heaven — the Son of man — knows what is in
heaven."

And truly one of the most remarkable, the most sug-
gestive of facts, is just this universal knowledge, this
universal agreement. For we are speaking at present of
men in their natural estate, men to whom no revelation
on this point had been vouchsafed. In the world around
them they saw no trace of everlasting life ; on the con-
trary, passing away, decay, and annihilation, seemed the
general law. Even creatures who were in a special
sense living — the anim^als — were subject to this doom;
man himself, the highest and noblest of all animals,
was in no way exempt from it. In the same way as
the grass of the field and the creeping thing, man
entered upon existence, had for a while his being, then
felt his strength fail, and at length gave way, and went
to the dust from whence he came. No power of mind,

2 24 THE FUTURE:

no moral worth, no strong bond of affection, availed to
avert this destiny. On all sides it met the eye as an
inevitable ordinance, alike for the individual and the
species, that all being was only a transitory phenomenon,
the very least trace of which was doomed to vanish
away. And yet despite this invariable experience,
despite all this indisputable testimony of the senses in
ail members of our race whenever and wheresoever they
existed, we find the certain, the ineradicable condition,
that as far as they were themselves concerned, this
decay and dissolution was only apparent, only affected
their bodily form ; that their inmost being was un-
touched by it, and that unlike whatever else they saw,
or knew, or experienced, that being would endure with-
out ever becoming subject to annihilation.

Now whence comes such a marvellous conviction, and
how is it to be explained ? A difficult question to reply
to this, with the very meagre records that we possess
of the spiritual life of primitive man. The first explana-
tion that suggests itself is this — that those great leaders
of the race in spiritual matters, of whom we have made
mention, were those to whom the mass of the people
owed this transcendental doctrine. But this answer
can in no way stand the test of history. For some of
those men, as for example Moses and Confucius, did
not expressly teach the immortality of the soul^ nay,
they seemed purposely to avoid entering upon the sub-
ject; they simply took it for granted; Moses when he
spoke of the tree of life in Paradise, of which if the
man took he should live for ever, and called God the
(rod of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, thus implying
their continued existence, since God could not be a
God of the dead, but only of the living ; and Confucius,
while in other respects avoiding all mention of future
things, nevertheless enjoining honours to be paid to
departed spirits (thus assuming their life after death),
as one of the chief duties of a religious man. And
although others, as for instance Socrates and the
Roman philosophers, appear to occupy a different posi-
tion in this respect, and to argue and prove the doc-
trine of the soul's duration as if new; yet still they

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

225

only did this because their age had grown sceptical
on the subject ; no one pretends to date from them
the earliest, the original entrance of the idea. On the
contrary, it is lost in the darkness of prehistoric times.
All that we know is merely this, that the very first
intellectual utterances amongst the nations that we are
now alluding to, seem to have proceeded upon the
assumption that the immortality of man was a doctrine
self-evident and universally received. I will only recall
to you in proof of this, the description of Hades intro-
duced into the Odyssey, and the Pythagorean doctrine
of the nature and destiny of the soul.

Another explanation of the universality of this con-
viction has been attempted. It has been suggested on
the biblical side, that it must have had its origin in some
brighter era of humanity than the rude, perturbed, histo-
rical era ; in some period nearer the beginning, and so
having a purer and more powerful consciousness of divine
things than existed amidst the desolating confusion and
disruptions of idolatry. With all the prestige of a holy
tradition from a better time, the faith in immortality
m.ay, it is suggested, have been handed down to follow-
ing ages, and may have maintained itself through them
in spite of all the distortions and disguises to which it
was exposed from the gradually darkening human con-
sciousness. But this, again, is a solution of the ques-
tion which I, for my part, dare not accept. For, in
in the first place, it is entirely without any support or
authority from biblical sources. Nowhere in the Bible
do we read of a revelation from God on this point to the
early race of men. nor even of any clear conceptions
obtaining among them concerning it. And, in the
second place, it seems to lie in the very nature of such a
cognition as this, that instead of at once appearing in full
maturity, even in the deeper and purer spirits, it should
begin there as a presentiment, as an almost uncon-
scious, a latent knowledge, out of which it was to
develop only gradually, only step by step, and by the
united spiritual efforts of many, into a definite view and
a conscious conviction. And, in so far as I can judge
of the history of this doctrine, it seems to me to corro-

P

2 26 THE FUTURE :

borate this latter theory. For, to confine myself tc the
most familiar example we have, it is plain that, to the
people of Israel in the early period of their existence
and culture, this doctrine of the immortality of the soul
was only as a rough unpolished jewel, the value of
which the possessor scarcely knows ; while during the
later days of their development, in the book of Job,
the Psalms, and the Prophets, it assumed more and
more a definite shape, and entered more actively into
their mode of thought, till at last, even long before the
appearance of Christ, it had been elaborated into a
certain, an indisputable conviction amongst all believ-
ing Israelites.

But in what way, and by what spiritual agency, was
this development carried on from a mere foreboding to
a definite conviction ; from an unconscious feeling to a
conscious knowledge ?

The essential point for us to grasp firm hold of in
our inquiries — else the whole phenomenon will be inex-
plicable— is, that such a foreboding (the germ of future
knowledge) is universally met with in humanity, nay,
essentially belongs to, and forms part of it. Nor need
we long remain in doubt as to why this remarkable pos-
session of the human mind exists, or on what grounds it
rests. One word explains it. Man feels and knows
himself to be a spiritual being, having self-consciousness,
able to think, and to will, and therefore he feels himself
placed in a difierent life- sphere altogether from that visible
and material one to which all things around him belong.
This gives him an inherent right, nay, this compels
him to draw a distinction between himself and those
things, to claim for himself a difi"erent law of being and
of action from that which they obey. It is only as re-
gards the physico- animal side of his form of existence,
through which he is related to and homogeneous with
them, that he can conceive of, and acknowledge sharing
their destiny, and being as transitory as the}'-. As regards
that other element of his being so thoroughly different
in character, and so in every sense transcending them
all, he must inevitably feel that its existence has quite
different conditions, and is subject to quite different

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 227

laws. And the more he learns to distinguish between
himself and surrounding nature, the more clear and
distinct must this consciousness become. In the ear-
liest stage of our race, it is evident that this conscious
distinction must have existed in a very slight degree,
since intellectual life was only beginning, while natural
life was already mature, and could thus assert its pre-
dominance ; man must needs have then been chiefly
conscious of his material being and his relationship to
nature. But it became otherwise as the race pro-
gressed. Step by step the sum of intellectual life
grew, one accretion led to another ; thoughts, ideas,
perceptions, arose, which had nothing in common with
physical nature, and which led man to conclude that
he belonged essentially to a different order of existence.
And now, while reflecting more closely upon what it
was that constituted the difference, it must have burst
upon him that he was a person^ self-conscious, self-
deciding, free, in short, to choose and to do. While
each individual animal existed only as an exemplar of
the species, and was therefore, after having filled its
appointed functions, subjected to the annihilation of its
individuality, he found on the contrary that the human
individual was a separate entity, perfectly distinct from
the rest of the species, one who existed for himself, and
had his aim in himself. Yes, on deeper reflection, it
must soon have become apparent that this peculiarity
not only appertained to man in the same manner as the
physical portion of his nature did, but that it was essen-
tially the basis, the core of his being, essentially that
which made him what he felt himself to be. He learned
to say /, in the emphatic sense of the word, designating
by this /, not merely his natural frame, but rather his
inmost personality of self-consciousness and self-agency.
" I think, therefore I am," as a comparatively recent
philosopher expresses it, must have become the conclusion
of the earlier thinker we are imagining, respecting him-
self; that is to say, " in this capacity for thought, with
all that it includes, lies my peculiar being ; if I could
not think I should not know that I was, and hence I
should not be ; that is, I should not be an Ego, a being

22 8 THE FUTUEE :

that is able to distinguisli between himself and others,
but only a part of the whole of nature."

And this perception once attained to, that other per-
ception of the immortality of this /, this human being,
must have grown up spontaneously. It became evident
to man, when once consciously differentiated in being
from the rest of nature, that his destiny could no longer
be confounded with hers. He who had once learned
to say, " I think, therefore I am," must necessarily
have gone on to say further, " I shall think, therefore
I shall be." For just make the experiment of trying
to conceive your conscious, thinking spirit as other
than perpetually conscious and thinking. See whether
this whole inner life- — that has thus in its self- conscious-
ness apprehended itself in opposition to nature — see
whether it is capable of entertaining the idea of its
existence dissolving into a non-existence ; of its being,
in point of fact, nothing more than a type of the species
like any other animal, whose individuality is of no im-
portance, but is simply to be absorbed again into the
race at large. Without being able to afford any mathe-
matical demonstration of the fact, which indeed must
always be unattainable in the spiritual domain, do we
not all feel with one of the speakers in Plato's Flicedo :
'' The soul is something more powerful and enduring
than the body, for in everything it far exceeds it." To
the inner being, filled as it is with such wealth, life,
and individuality, it is intolerable, nay, impossible to
believe that all these have no actual life, but are only
transitory phenomena, like a bubble on the water, to
form for a moment, and then vanish away. So long as
we love, know, cultivate spiritual fellowship, feel within
us those religious and artistic propensities, which lead
us out of ourselves towards some ideal, so long will it
become more and more certain to us that all these
imply the gift of something that cannot do other than
live and work on, and strive towards an end in which
it IS to find its fulfilment.

It is these feelings, this consciousness, and the rea-
i^oniiigs connected with them, that I hold to constitute
the primeval source from whence the human race drew

THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL.

229

the conviction of the immortality of its inward being.
And indeed, the method by which recent philosophers
have conducted the argument for this great truth en-
tirely supports this conclusion.

But, together with this primeval source, we must also
take a second into the account. I allude to that which lies
in the moral feeling, in the conscience of human beings.
We have already been shown in one of the earlier lec-
tures (in that on the Being and Nature of God), that every
man, even the most deeply degraded, has some power
of distinguishing between good and evil. And since
he is able to make such a distinction, it follows neces-
sarily that he is able to make a distinction also between
the destiny of the good and the bad. For every one
feels in his conscience that by doing good he incurs
good, by doing evil, punishment. And yet it is, at the
same time, certain that, in the present life, the course
of things by no means invariably follows this law. Nay,
even when it does, the reward or the punishment in-
curred, is far from satisfying the idea of retribution
which the mind entertains. In the midst of his happi-
ness, the highest joy of the good man consists in an
inward promise of some still higher happiness ; while, in
the midst of his punishment, the bitterest pang of the
bad man is the threat that his conscience holds out
of fuller and more terrible punishment. Now these
feelings imperatively proclaim another life, in which
both these previsions will have their full accomplish-
ment, and so surely as these feelings exist, that other
life exists also. " So then it is quite certain," says
Socrates, at the conclusion of an argument of the kind,
" and we have not been deceived in believing, that
there is another life, and that the souls of the dead
have still an existence, and this of such a kind that
w^ith the good it fares better, and with the wicked
worse."

And not only in the arguments of philosophers, but in
all popular religions whatsoever, we see that from this
train of thought the conviction of another life after
death immediately arose, for everywhere we find ifc con-
ceived of as a life of retribution. It was felt that the

230 THE FUTURE :

beneficent, heroic life of a Heraclius could have no
other result than an ascension to the gods, and an ad-
mission into their glorj and blessedness. The crimes
of a Sisyphus, of a Tantalus, of the Danaides, instantly
suggested the punishment that awaited them in the
under world ; and on account of those punishments
which the inborn sense of justice unconditionally de-
manded, it was felt impossible that the end of their
existence on earth should be looked upon as the end ol"
their existence altogether.

Thus it was from both these sources that the convic-
tion of our being's immortality arose ; first from the
perception of its spiritual nature, its self-conscious per-
sonality, by which it is so essentially separated from all
that constitutes the perishable nature around ; and,
secondly, from the inevitable feeling that each must
reap what he has sowed, that it must needs be that
good is reserved for the good, and evil for the evil.
And these are the two points, as it appears to me, on
which the argument for the truth in question must be
based.

Of course, therefore, it is just here that its opponents
direct their attacks. With regard to the first point,
they positively dispute that the soul has any such in-
dwelling consciousness of its immortality ; and " least
of all," says the author of Five Discourses on Faith and
Knowledge, " can believers in the Bible appeal to this,
since according to their creed, the minority only attain
heaven, i.e., eternal life, the rest incurring hell, that is,
another death, so that they have to renounce all which
we can affirm to be desirable to our nature." With
regard to the last observation, the frivolous distortion
of the case that it implies, will, I am sure, be evident
to every one. For believers in the Bible nowhere
assert hell, or a condition of desolated and unhappy
existence, to be the original destination of the majority ;
on the contrary, they proclaim eternal life to be that for
which all are originally destined, and they speak of their
lost estate as including the most utter failure and per-
version of what lay in their nature, and was required of
them. But to draw the inference, that because such

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 2 2 I

failure and perversion are possible, and exemplified in
many, there is therefore no general consciousness and
need of eternal blessedness, is just as unreasonable as
to pretend that it is not in the nature of man to wish
for a good government because so many are ill governed ;
or that it does not belong to his constitution to desire,
and that he has no claim to enjoy his lawful daily bread,
because there are so many who have no share in it. "We
are not appointed to wrath, but to obtain salvation through
Christ Jesus," is the language of Scripture. And that
the consciousness of this, despite all disguise and ob-
scuration, does still reveal itself in a thousand ways in
the heart of each man, reflecting itself in most varied
previsions and hopes, is a fact that we, believers in the
Bible, are above all others entitled to appeal to.

But further, this consciousness, these hopes and pre-
visions themselves, are denied their real significance.
It is asserted that in these faculties of our soul there is
nothing that gives it any right to expect endless dura-
tion. If we allege that the feeling of mankind revolts
against annihilation, that our inmost consciousness, our
communion with our loved ones, all assure us of eter-
nal life indwelling in us, these, we are informed, are
merely sentimentally agreeable phrases, which cannot
stand rigorous examination. The animal, too, even the
worm, revolts and defends itself against death, and yet
it dies.

We answer that we perfectl}^ concur in this last ob-
servation, and avail ourselves of it to carry on our
argument. Thus, then, it lies in the nature of life to
revolt against death, and to feel it to be something un-
suitable, contradictory to its essential being. Even
with regard to life in its lowest scale, to the life of a
worm, or some less highly organized creature even, we
find this the case. Therefore it follows necessarily that
the higher the scale of life, the more powerful, inten-
sive, perfect, the more decidedly must it feel this oppo-
sition to death, and seek to guard against it. And if
we reflect a little further upon the subject, we shall of
ourselves come to the conclusion that somewhere and
somehow life must reach such a height and strength as

23 2 THE FUTUEE :

to be actually able to offer au availing resistance, and
to be no more liable to interruption. For, if indeed
this were not so, if there were no such thing as a life
that did actually exclude death, how should we be able
to explain this universal repugnance felt towards death
by all living creatures ? In such a case it would be
part of the very nature of life itself to include a liability
to death, and no being can feel repugnance or strive
against that which is actually inherent in its nature.

And now, is it not most evident that this higher de-
gree and energy of life, that so resists and repudiates
death, begins just there where life passes over from
merely natural life into that quite other, infinitely
higher, specifically different form of which we spoke
before, — into the form of the self-conscious, free-willing,
or, as we are accustomed to express it in one word,
spiritual personal life ? That this life cannot be com-
pared with that of the worm, or of any unconscious or
soulless creature whatever, we have already seen ; but
we may further inquire whether it does not contain a
living consciousness, and repudiate annihilation in a
manner which bears no relation to the repugnance our
earthly nature feels towards death? " Our outward
man perisheth," says the Apostle, " but our inward man
is renewed day by day." And our own experience has
afforded each one of us numberless corroborations of the
truth of his words.

We might now proceed to take up a line of argument
used by philosophy both in ancient and modern times
— from Socrates down to Fichte — to prove the im-
mortality of the inner being ; an argument derived
from the assertion that the soul being a unity, is, as
such, incapable of decay, it being only in the case
of the complex that a falling to pieces, or a disso-
lution, is conceivable. But the limits assigned to us,
as well as the abstruse nature of this method, lead us to
renounce a line of argument from which we freely con-
fess we expect little profitable result. For, after all,
what absolute proof have we of this unity of the soul ?
Can we subject it to the microscope or the scalpel, as
we can the visible and the tangible ? It must content

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

233

US for the present, simply to indicate that the instinct
and consciousness of immortality have nothing to fear
from the most searching examination of the reason, but
find far more of confirmation and additional proof than
of contradiction in the profoundest thinking. And fur-
ther, that this instinct and consciousness do actually
exist, and are traceable through all the stages and rami-
fications of the human race, — as the brief historical survey
with which we began proved, — is confirmed to us by our
opponents themselves ; as, for instance, when the author
before alluded to, laments that so many, who in other
respects are free-thinking in religious matters, should
not be able to shake ofiPthe old ideas on this subject, but go
on insisting that the humanmind feels an irresistible need
to believe in its eternal duration. If such men do this, as
the same authority affirms, " in spite of reason and in-
telligence," what are we to infer thence but that there
is in man something which is deeper and stronger than
the maxims of a self- invented philosophy, namely, the
divinely-created nobility of his nature, the inherent
breath of life breathed into him by Grod, the relation to
the Eternal, which secures to him Eternity. And surely
to trace and feel these energies within us, and to be con-
vinced and decided by them, is no slavish subjection
of which we need to be ashamed, any more than those are
to be envied the mournful victory they have won, who
have crushed their eternal forebodings under the yoke
of their temporal demonstrations, and confess that they
do not esteem themselves worthy of eternal life, and
know nothing of the imperishable portion of their
nature.

And here you will allow me to call your attention to
the diff'erent tone in which the so-called humanitarian-
ism of the Pantheists, and the religion of the Bible, speak
of and estimate man. This modern view of the uni-
verse seeks in the lowest orders of animal life for ana-
logies with the human being. It appeals to the tape-
worm and to the earth-worm, to illustrate man's origin
and his end. And indeed why should it not do so, if man
and worm alike are held the products of the same natura
naturans, which evolves the whole out of the same ele-

2 34 THE FUTURE :

ments, and for the same destiny ? The Scripture, on
the other hand, knows of nothing on earth, not even the
highest and the most beautiful, that is worthy to be
compared to the being of man. Scripture rises to the
heavenly, to the fulness of the divine life itself, when
seeking an image for it, or throwing light upon its
nature and its faculties. " And God created man in
his own image, in the image of God created he him,"
is the testimony that it bears ; and again, " we shall be
like him, for we shall see him as he is." I think we have
every reason to be thankful that such a mighty and
undying advocate has undertaken to defend the honour
of our race against the presumptuous folly of its own
members, who would tear the crown from its brow !

But it behoves us to inquire whether we may
not be doing injustice to the opponents of immorta-
lity, when we affirm that they know nothing of an
imperishable portion of our being ? For, with the ex-
ception of the materialists, who indeed will not hear of
any spiritual element at all in man, but regard all that
we include under that category as the mere activities
of his physical nature, doomed therefore to decay, and
die therewith, — with the exception of these, the oppo-
nents of our doctrine are the so-called Pantheists, whose
views have been fully described to us in the earlier
Lecture upon the Being of God, Now these hold that
the World- soul, which in their opinion produces and
fills the universe, also fills and rules man ; nay, that it
is only in him that it reaches its special end, which is
self-consciousness, and attains to thought and will. It
is true they go on to say, that at the death of the indivi-
dual this World-soul retreats from him, just as the setting
sun seems to draw back its rays into itself; and that
what had been for a period individual existence and
self-consciousness, now sinks once more into the great,
unconscious, undistinguished spirit- ocean of the whole.
But still they call this eternal life ; they deny that there
can be any question here of annihilation, since nothing
is lost of the sum-total of spiritual being, but the indi-
vidual has merely been merged once more into the
general, out of which it proceeded.

THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 235

But is this really the case ? Is it true that such a
process implies no loss of that which forms the basis of
our spiritual nature, and belongs to the being of spirit
in general ? To me it appears that much, on the con-
trary, nay, to speak out at once, that all is lost which
really concerns us, and in which our life consists. For
manifestly in such a case we lose ouv self- consciousness^
our personality, our ego, in other words, just that which
essentially constitutes our being. The substance
indeed remains out of which we were formed, but we
ourselves are no longer there, we ourselves are as com-
pletely annihilated as though we had never been. That
life that knew itself, felt itself, thought itself, distin-
guished between itself and others, has vanished into
unconscious and indistinguishable universality ; in other
words, into annihilatio7i and death. For, if it be true,
that if " I think, therefore I am," it must also be true
that if " I think no more, therefore I am no more."

Or can it be any compensation to know that our
substance at least is imperishable, and will endure ?
Our substance ! Why, we no longer are, therefore we
have no longer any substance ! Can it be anything
more than an empty, delusive play of words to tell us,
that " we have nevertheless an eternal life, and are of
an eternal nature." If I myself no longer am, how can
my nature be spoken of ? / am not, what life then can
there be for me ?

Again, do not these very men, who would feed us with
such unmeaning phrases, judge exactly as we are now
doing, and call things by their right names, when they
treat of our bodily existence ? For with our bodies that
process actually does go on which they would transfer
to the soul. Our bodies are not lost at death, in the
sense of their substance being annihilated ; on the con-
trary, they simply return to the mass from whence they
were taken, dust to dust, earth to earth, and new forms
of life spring from the mouldering bones. But does
any one ajfirm, on this account, that bodily life is im-
perishable? Is this return into the sum-total of the
material world anything else than death to the individual?
Does it remove from any one the feeling and the fact

236 THE FUTURE :

of his annihilation on that side of his nature ? Is any
one at all reconciled to it by those words of Schiller's,
which the author so often quoted holds forth to us : —

" Thou fearest death, thou wouldest live eternally.
Live in the whole ; it remains, though thou hast long passed
away."

Nay, the same authority seems himself not to be much
influenced by them, but, on the contrary, to discern
— when the bodi/ is concerned — a very serious differ-
ence indeed between life and death, and to hold the
latter to be the cessation of all that our nature values ;
for he says, "It is not necessary to believe in a future
retribution ; mere prudence teaches us to set limits to
individual sensual enjoyments, in order to enjoy life
as long and as completely as possible." Thus, then,
gome value is to be attached and some care taken of
the preservation of bodily life, for when the body is
once more absorbed in universal nature, all is at an
end with it ; but this does not hold good, forsooth, with
the spiritual life ! This can be quite comfortably sur-
rendered to precisely the same absorption, and yet it
can be pretended that its death is not thereby implied,
and its eternal duration can still be spoken of; no philo-
sophy feeling itself strong enough to oppose and openly
contradict the inexterminable need in our spirits for eter-
nal life, but rather seeking to mislead and deceive it by
all manner of plausible delusions. And in relation to
this, it is significant that even the most acute Panthe-
istic philosophers, when they touch upon the subject
of their " eternal life," seem as it were to lose their
head, and in almost comic contrast to their general
tone, take refuge in sentimental enthusiasm ; a poem of
some kind, as, for instance, Eiickert's Dying Flower,
or an extract out of Schefer's Lay Breviary, taking the
place of a clear philosophical analysis.

We therefore maintain that we do the Pantheists no
injustice when we say that they attribute to our inner
being exactly the same annihilation as to our outer;
that they know not eternal life, that they do no justice
to the consciousness that our souls have of their own
immortality.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 237

But having come to this conclusion, there is still
another objection brought against us, which must just be
touched upon, though you will hardly be disposed to
give it much weight. We are reproached with the
immorality, because the egotism of this hope of a con-
tinued personality after death, — told that it only arises
from a selfish wish, from a " sentimental tenderness
for one's own ego^ The opposite view is presented to
us as evidently a far more lofty one ; we are called
upon to admire its readiness without more ado, to share
the universal doom of instabilit}^, to surrender individu-
ality to absorption into universal life, after it has ac-
complished the purposes for which it was appointed.

What shall we reply to such a charge as this ? In
order to show the strained and artificial character of the
whole objection, and of its pretended morality, it will
be enough to quote a reply that has already been made.
" If it be egotism to desire to live eternally, it is just
as much egotism to desire to live the next moment, and
every one is an egotist who eats or drinks, or does
anything whatever with a view to the preservation of
his life."

But there is far more to be said in refutation than
this ; we can prove that the hope of eternal life, in the
Christian sense, is the very reverse of egotism, and
overcomes the radical principle of this perversion of our
nature. Allow me first of all, however, to appeal to
your own feelings and consciousness. One of the most
acute of the French philosophers and critics of the pre-
sent day, Ernest Renan, himself nothing less than an
adherent of Christianity, as is unfortunately but too ex-
plicable in an educated French Catholic, has in his late
work on the Future of Religion, very earnestly pro-
tested against a positive religious faith, grounded on
God and immortality being looked upon as a low and
subordinate stage in the spiritual life of mankind, and
in corroboration of this protest, he adds, " It is in his
best moments that man is religious ; it is when he is
good that he feels that virtue corresponds w.'th an eter-
nal order ; it is when he contemplates things from a
disinterested point of view that he finds death revolting

«•

22,S THE FUTURE :

and absurd. Let us then boldly declare that man comes
nearest to the truth when he is most religious and most
sure of an infinite destiny." ^

And now I would ask you, whether this be not
your own experience ? Put it to the test : In which
mood do all the good and noble elements of your
nature most stir within you? When do your duties of
every kind come before you in the most earnest light,
and your inner being thirst and strive after a higher
moral condition than you at present possess, after holi-
ness and love and completeness ; when, I ask, is all
this the case ? When you represent to yourself that
death is to be the end of all ; of your personality, your
activity, your mental and moral acquisitions ; or when,
on the contrary, you look upon yourself as destined to
transplantation into a wider existence, where all that is
good, beautiful, loveable, and true, shall reach its end
and its perfection : where love will rest in love ; where
holiness shall be satisfied with holiness ; where the ful-
ness of God will open out to embrace all that are made
like unto him, and capable of enjoying his fellowship ?
Yes ; I ask you, which of these two theories most tends
to your moral earnestness, and kindles within your
hearts that holy flame of aspiration after the highest,
and love to all that is love-deserving, by which the
selfishness of our nature is consumed ? We affirm that
never are we more selfish, never does that which is low
and mean have such free play within us, as when we
forget that we are called to an eternal communion of
love ; when we forget that we are destined to behold
the Holy and Perfect One as he is — that thus behold-
ing we may become like unto him — and look upon our-
selves as related merely to this world, as earthly beings
who may therefore well be earthly-minded.

And this result is most natural and explicable. Here,
too, Pantheism has only the word and the semblance,
— the deed and the reality belong to Christianity. We
allow that self-surrender does stand higher than self-
holding, and that it must indeed appear egotistical to
insist in preserving one's own life, merely because it is
1 Revue des Deux-Mondes, l5tli October 1860.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 239

one's own. But such self-surrender as Pantheism pro-
pounds can have no moral worth. For it is not a
voluntary one, but a constrained, an inevitable natural
necessity ; and we might just as reasonably call our
physical death an act of self-denial as this self-loss of
the soul. Christianity, on the contrary, does place be-
fore us a veritable and actual self-surrender, not such
a one as the ego must passively undergo (not having
the power to surrender itself even if it had the will) ;
but a self-surrender which is self-consciously accom-
plished, which is voluntary, which actually involves
self-denial. For how does Christianity represent eternal
life ? In one word ; as an eternal love, which, as is
implied in the primary idea of love, is perfectly divested
of all selfishness, all living in self, and willing for self;
and henceforth lives only in and for God and Christ,
in and for the fellowship of its glorified fellow-creatures.
And where such love begins, eternal life begins also.
" I live, but henceforth it is no more I that live," the
apostle declares, " but Christ that liveth in me ;" and,
again, " Christ died for all, that they which live should
not henceforth live unto themselves, but to him who died
for them, and rose again!" " He who will save his
life" (or love his life), exclaims the Lord to his dis-
ciples, " shall lose it." " If any man will be mine, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross."

I refer it to your own decision, whether this language
implies any reprehensible " sentimental tenderness" for
the ego ; whether rather this self-losing, and at the same
time self-gaining in perfect love for free and personal
beings, be not the only worthy as well as the only pos-
sible self-surrender to which a moral character can be
attributed. It is indeed ofi"ensive to hear Pantheism,
which destroys and reduces all that is ethical into a
metaphysical process, afi"ect nevertheless to oppose
Christianity as the advocate of a higher morality than
hers.

And this affectation comes out even more fully with
regard to the next and last point which we have to
consider, viz., the strong arguments for our immortality
afi'orded by the claims of our moral consciousness.

240 THE FUTUEE :

Our opponents themselves point out that, in our estima-
tion, this proof throws all others into the shade, and
that it is brought forward most prominently in the Scrip-
tures. For, indeed, St. Paul himself declares that " if
Christ be not risen" (and so mankind be left without the
expectation of a resurrection and eternal life), " we are
of all men most miserable ; let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die." But it is just against this very
expression, and the whole train of thought from whence
it proceeds, that they protest with a certain degree of
bitterness, declaring such a stand-point to be very low
and degrading, one only tolerable to the weak, who
still need external support to their moral life, while
" truly moral, and at the same time thinking men "
have long got beyond it. Such, they urge, find their
motive for morality within them, and need not. the pro-
spect of a future reward or future punishment to incite
or to deter.

But I think the first feeling that rises within us
will be one of surprise to hear the apostle Paul,
that man of profoundest discernment, and, at the same
time, intensest zeal for all that is great, holy, and
divine, — he who, in an unparalleled fervour of love,
could exclaim, in words no other has ever repeated, " I
could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren,
my kinsmen's sake," — we shall, I say, feel some sur-
prise to find him treated as morally weak, and deficient in
correct thinking ; nor will it be without a touch of irony
that we shall observe how some who really have not the
very slightest pretensions to qualities of the kind, coolly
rank themselves above him in spiritual discernment and
moral susceptibility. And this surprise will increase if
we further consider that the same language is held not
only by the apostle Paul, as we have heard, but by all
those to whom mankind has ever looked up as greatest
and noblest in this sphere of thought, as the sources of
their highest spiritual insight and their moral life. Of
Him who, according to the testimony of his most decided
opponents, stands out alone and incomparable in this
respect, G-od-inspired and holy as no other man ever
was, — of Christ, I have no need to tell you that this

THE IMMOETALITY OF THE SOUL. 24 I

holds good ; you will all spontaneously recall those
words from his lips which most closely link exhortations
to holiness with the promise of eternal life, " Keep the
commandments, believe on me, that thou mayest enter
into lifeT

But to turn to quite another quarter, we have the
same testimony borne wherever pagan thought and
pagan morality reach their highest perfection. " For
we must remember, 0 men," said Socrates in his last
speech, before he drained the poison-cup, " that it de-
pends upon the immortality of the soul whether we have
to live to it and to care for it or not. For the danger
seems fearfully great of not caring for it. Yea, were
death to be the end of all, it would be truly a fortunate
thing for the wicked to get rid of their body and at
the same time of their wickedness. But now since the
soul shows itself to us as immortal, there can be for it
no refuge from evil, and no other salvation, than to
become as good and intelligent as possible.'' Now this
is, in other words, the very same statement as St. Paul's.
K there was to be an end of everything at death, then
we might do what we liked ; it was only because there
is a future life that there arose the duty of caring for
our souls, and following after wisdom and goodness.

And surely what two such voices agree in declaring,
is not to be nullified by a few easily manufactured
phrases about higher and lower stand-points, but may
well deserve and claim to have its meaning honestly
inquired into, clearly understood, and thoroughly
sifted.

For, first of all, it is evident that our opponents
inadequately apprehend the meaning of these expres-
sions of our Lord and his apostles, if they imagine them
to convey the idea that, without the 'promise of a re-
ward^ eating and drinking and unrestrained indulgence
would be the only aim of human nature. Every one to
whom the words of the Eedeemer, and the epistles of
his witnesses, are familiar, know well how, on the con-
trary, their whole spirit is, in the most positive manner,
opposed to such a greed for reward, such a mean and
slavish spirit, and how they nowhere say, " Let us love

Q

242 THE FUTUEE :

God, that lie may love us in return ;" but rather, " Let
us love him, because he first loved us." The truth to
which tbey boar witness is rather this : " If man has
no future destiny, he can live to no future destiny;"
in that case he must be made only for this earth, and
the simplest logic demands that he should accordingly
live for this earth only.

Now what is implied in this idea, living only for this
earth ? Does it mean to revel in every species of sen-
sual enjoyment ? By no means ! Can any one imagine,
for instance, that the apostle Paul, even if he had had
no belief in a future existence, could, with his lofty,
essentially spiritual nature, have led such a life as this ?
Most assuredly not ! To live merely for earth means
only this : to plan and lead such a life career as seems
to us most enjoyable, advantageous, best, without refer-
ence to anything besides the circumstances of our
earthly existence.

Each would then follow, of course, quite unreserT-
edly the impulses and desires of his nature. The
sensual man would, as the apostle says, eat and drink,
and minister in every way to the gratification of the
flesh. Characters of a nobler and more intellectual
type, who found no pleasure in such things, would seek
to satisfy their intellectual needs, and move in an atmos-
phere of spiritual delights. The rude and uncultivated,
in whom unbridled passions held riot, would yield them-
selves up to their impulses, and thereby very possibly
disturb the order of external morality. The wiser and
more finely organized, who understood the evil conse-
quences such conduct must entail, would strive to gain
a certain control over these natural elements of their
being, and to go through life under this self-control.
The unloving and envious would keep up galling and
aggressive relations with their fellow-men ; the kind-
hearted and love- desiring would show kindness and
love to others, and find happiness in making them
happy. In short, each would construct and order his
own life according to his taste, his disposition, his intel-
ligence, his idiosyncrasy : the one in carnal, violent,
immoral fashion ; the other morally, in the usual accep-

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 243

tation of the word, respectably — in much that is lovely
and of good report. Together with a Sardanapalus
and a Tiberius we should have a Titus and a Marcus
Aurelius, side by side with a Caesar Borgia and a Philip
of Orleans, a Spinoza and a Schiller. But still all
would proceed upon the same fundamental principle,
nor could we blame those for their immoral excesses,
or praise these for their moral restraint ; for neither the
one nor the other could have any other law or principle
of conduct than just this : to satisfy as much as possible
the requirements of their own temperament, — for the
peculiarities of which they are not responsible, — and
thereby to secure the greatest possible amount of hap-
piness.

And, indeed, what other motive could come into
play ? We could no longer speak of a moral duty in a
case like this. For to a duty there must always belong
two moments ; first, one that imposes it ; and secondly,
a reasonable aim proportionate to the efforts required
to carry out what is imposed. But according to the
theory whose consequences we are now expounding,
there is neither a God by whom such a duty can be
imposed, nor any future destiny for which we need to
prepare ourselves by moral efforts and actions. Ac-
cordingly, there is no longer any room for the idea of
good in the absolute sense of the word, and we must
hold, with the Epicureans of olden time, " the good to
be what does me good, and reckon as good and wise
whoever, clearly discerning what tends to his well-being,
and what on the contrary disturbs his calm enjo3mient
of life, knows how to pursue the one and avoid the
other." For it is self-evident that the claims of mora-
lity would have nothing to depend upon but this one
saving clause, " Be moral in order to be happy." Nor
do the advocates of Pantheism shrink from admitting
this. To quote again from the author we have so often
alluded to : " Man must practise moderation and virtue,
since it is only by so doing that he preserves the capacity
for external enjoyments, or is able to taste the highest
joys of which his inward nature is capable : enthusiasm
for the beautiful, the good, and the true."

244 THE FUTUEE :

Now, it will be observed in the first place, that, bj
their own admission, those who, in the promise of future
blessedness, held out by Christianity, descry an un-
worthy appeal to man's self-interested desire of reward,
have themselves nothing to allege in support of their
recommendations to morality, but just this same pro-
spect of reward, and surely of a reward infinitely below
that essentially unselfish and holy joy in the life-fellow-
ship of God, which the gospel sets before the Chris-
tian. And secondly, we have to ask them, If, to your
admonition, "Be moral in order to be happy," some
one should reply, " Moral efforts and limftations do not
make me happy ; they may indeed be the law of your
nature, but mine, on the contrary, feels happiest in the
perfectly free indulgence of all its passions ; and even
if the evil consequences with which you threaten me
on account of this my idiosyncrasy, do come to pass,
and health breaks down, and my fellow-men despise
me, etc., why, I have still power over my own life, and
can end it as soon as it becomes burdensome." If this
reply chance to be made, and there are many natures
of this stamp; by what arguments, we ask, can Panthe-
ists meet it ? As to what is happiness or unhappiness
to him individually, the man himself must be the best
judge, and as to any other motive to morality besides
this appeal to his own advantage, Pantheism knows of
none, nor can it know. Nay, truly, Paul is not mis-
taken, as our opponents assert, but unqualifiedly right
and justified in declaring, that if there be no future life,
we may at least, and probably shall say, even though
we be not compelled to say, " Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die."

Let me set this before you from another point of
view. You remember that passage in the lecture upon
Nature or God, in which the natural and the moral law
were represented as antagonistic. " For it is very pos-
sible," said the lecturer, " that they should actually
come into conflict with each other. The natural law
may, for example, demand the satisfaction of hunger,
while the moral law enjoins, ' Thou shalt not steal, thou
shalt not kill.' And which of the two are we to obey ?"

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 245

If we believe in no personal immortality after death,
there is absolutely no ground for our preferring to obey
the moral law, while there is the very strongest ground
for following the dictates of the law of nature. For
that this last has a claim upon us, and corresponds
with the needs of our being, is incontestable. We must,
to abide by the above illustration, satisfy our hunger in
order to preserve not only health but even life itself.
But as to the moral law, what claim can that urge ? It
incites us to act against the interests of our own being,
and to sacrifice our very lives, and we may reasonably
ask. Why and wherefore ? The only answer that can
be returned must be : out of consideration for others,
for the general good. But what is it which really
pledges me to this consideration ? In many cases it is
nothing but care for my own welfare, seeing that it
would be impossible for the world to go on, and so for
me to go on in it, without this reference to the good of
others, without respect for their opposite personalities
and opposite interests. But if the case in point actu-
ally involve my very existence, if I am in danger of
dying of hunger, how can the care of my own welfare
still pledge me to greater anxiety for the rights of
others than for my own support ? Evidently this argu-
ment can no longer hold good. Every other considera-
tion must give place to self-preservation ; my nature
most plainly and imperatively impels me thereto. I
do only what, according to its clearest and most rightful
dictates, I must do, when I procure for myself, by any
means whatsoever, what is essential to the maintenance
of my life. And if my conscience protests against these
means, without giving me any reasonable grounds for
such a protest, if still it says, " That is not right, that
will not tend to thy welfare," offering me, at the same
time, no explanation of why it is not right ; while I, on
the other hand, see that, from obedience to its injunc-
tions, sufTering and death must follow ; to what other
conclusion can I possibly come but to this, that con-
science itself is foolish and unsuitable, a morbid element
in my nature that must be resisted and eliminated like
any other defect which interferes with that nature's free

246 THE FUTURE :

development and well-being? And such, indeed, we
find the most determined and consistent advocates of
the so-called "modern theory of the Avorld" openly
proclaiming it. Conscience and religious feeling are,
according to them, sources of disease in man, which
continually interfere with his proper and natural use
and enjoyment of life ; and this position is really in-
controvertible if there be nothing beyond death. For
conscience, in countless instances, is in positive opposi-
tion to the claims of earthly existence, and each indivi-
dual life has a need, and a right, and a duty, to defend
itself against such disturbing influence, unless, indeed,
this right contravene some other right, derived from
higher authority.

You see then that the moral law can only have a
positive and insuperable claim on our obedience when
it has for basis the belief, both that while we obey it we
are serving our life in the true sense, preserving and
gaining our life even when our obedience apparently
leads to our forfeiting it ; and also, on the other hand,
are really and truly losing it whenever, by disobedience
to the moral law, we seek to preserve life by following
the dictates of the law of nature.

In other words : the moral law can only claim a supe-
rior right over us to that exercised by the natural law,
as being the law of a higher, more important and more
abiding life than the physical life, as having the power
to hold this language towards us : " Compensation
for the self-denials that I enjoin, awaits you in a future
state, in every sense far transcending the present. It
is not in the present order of things that thy special
destiny, happiness, life, lies, and therefore the claims
that this order urges are not the highest and final ;
whereas mine are those supremest and ultimate claims
that concern the truth of thy being, and hence when
the two are discordant, it is mine that should be un-
conditionally obeyed." For even in the daily life of us
men, any law that opposes and restrains our natural
impulses and desires, is justified only because the aim
it has in view is that of our higher advantage. How
could we parents bear to deprive our children of much

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 247

play and enjoyment adapted to their years, in order to
send them to the perhaps hated schooh^ooms, if this
were an aimless infliction ; if it were not necessary, nay
indispensable to their after life and higher destiny ? How
could any ideal, were it ever so fair, excite us to make
any sacrifices if it were confessedly without a future ?
No one undertakes a work knowing beforehand that he
will not be able to finish it ; no one lives and dies for
a cause which is undoubtedly to die and decay with
himself. If we are never to attain to the goal of moral
perfection, if our loving endeavours are never to find
reciprocal love, if there is never to be a realization of
that idea of the good which seeks to influence us —
and all these allowedly stand or fall with the existence
of a personal God and a future life — how can we be
reasonably expected, still less bound to laborious and
self denying efforts after these, — efibrts which we know
beforehand to be powerless, hopeless, and in vain ? In
such a case the moral law in our conscience, which
prompts these efforts, must be not only something use-
less and unaccountable, but a torture and delusion, and
we could not do better than to follow the leading of
some of our modern philosophers, and seek to get rid of
it as rapidly and thoroughly as possible.

Thus we see that, considered from the most different
points of view, we come to the same decision which a
healthy natural instinct has long ago anticipated ;
namely, that with the belief in the continuance of our
personal being after death, all essential difl'erence be-
tween good and evil must stand or fall ; if we give up
that belief we lose all absolute ground for moral endea-
vour, the impulses of nature become the highest, nay,
the only laws we have to follow, the doing right, the
leading of a loving and unselfish life, may be a matter
of taste, but not of obligation ; everything within the
sphere of morality must be referred to subjective pre-
ference,— since there is no longer anything objective,
neither a God, nor a destiny set before us by him, which
is to serve as the rule of our conduct. For the whole
of my argument presupposes that to each of you it is self-
evident that the existence of a personal God, and the

248 THE FUTURE :

immortality of our personal being, are so inseparably
connected, that as a German philosopher has ventured
to affirm, It is easier to believe in the immortality of
the soul without God, than in God without the immor-
tality of the soul.-^ But who is there that will, that can
in any truth draw the deductions that we are now enu-
merating ? Who is able even to picture to himself a
state of things like this, to think human existence from
this point of view ? Who can shake off not only in-
wardly but outwardly the habit of calling one person
good, the other bad ; valuing one man highly for his
moral worth, and condemning another for his immora-
lity ? We boldly affirm that no one can do this, not
even those who, according to our previous demonstra-
tion, are logically constrained to such a course. When
Carl Vogt, confessedly one of the most out-spoken ad-
vocates of the " Modern Theories," according to whom
the whole spiritual life of man depends so exclusively
upon his perishable corporeity, that his thoughts and
feelings of every kind are to be looked upon only as in-
voluntary activities of the nerves, just as saliva is a
secretion of certain glands, and phlegm of certain others
— even this man, I say, when upon a late political occa-
sion, he expressed his enmity to crowned heads, spoke
of them, not as unfortunately organized nervous sys-

■ Should this not appear sufBciently clear, the following points
may be taken into consideration : The immortality of our being is
demanded, Isi, by the truthfulness of God, since he has instilled the
instinct of, and the longing for, this immortality in the universal
heart of humanity. " God is not a man that he shoiild lie, neither
the son of man that he should rej)ent." 2dly, by his wisdoyn. He
creates nothing without a purpose, and everywhere we observe an
economy of means to an end. But if man ceased with the present
life^to say nothing of his personality being entirely lost— many
faculties of his soul which have not been developed fully, or at all
here below, would exist unused and decay unused, there being no
further development reserved for them ; as, for instance, in the
case of those dying before maturity. Thus there would be the
most senseless waste of the highest endowments. Zdly, by God's
love and goodness. For how would these be shown, if the loving and
love-needing creature were never to be permitted to attain the full
enjoyment of love, but to be annihilated as a mere toy ? Athly,
by God's justice. For what, were there no immortality, would
become of retribution and judgment ? 5thly, by his omnipotence.
Each would, in such a case, have the power of withdrawing himself
at pleasure by means of suicide, from the Divine control, etc.

THE IMMOr.TAIITY OF THE SOUL. 249

terns, incapable of evolving any but tyrannical and un-
just ideas, but spoke of them very decidedly as morally
responsible and blameable persons who even, in some
wholly incomprehensible way, had it in their power to
be and act otherwise !

Yes, these wild theorists are better than their theo-
ries ; these spring from themselves, but their nature
has sprung from God's hand and God's loving spirit,
and his work is better than theirs ! But can they not
see that every sentence they utter containing a moral
judgment, witnesses against their own teaching ; wit-
nesses that in every man whatsoever, even in those who
most positively deny it, there lives and speaks a moral
law, which is stronger than he? That hence there
must necessarily exist an order of things with which this
moral law is connected, from whence it proceeds, to
which it tends ; an order of things with which the inner-
most depths of our nature correspond ? In so far as we
all experience this, we all have an ineradicable and un-
dying witness to our own immortality, and destiny to
share this higher order of things. He only who feels
within him no conscience whatsoever, who knows no-
thing of good or evil ; or to whom the voice of the
moral law which he hears in his heart, speaks with no
higher authority, no deeper earnestness, no more attrac-
tive suasion than the voice of his material nature, — he
alone is justified in considering himself a being for
whom no other future exists but what earth can offer.
But such a one would no longer belong to our race ; he
would lack that which makes man to be man.

The nature of this future, which we thus feel and
know to be our life's end and aim, will form the subject
of the next and last of this series of Lectures.

250 THE FUTURE

PART 11. ETERNAL LIS'E.

Having in our last discourse proved, by arguments
drawn from widely opposite sources, the certainty of
man's being outlasting this earthly existence, methinks
all that Christianity teaches respecting that life to come
for which man must inevitably be reserved, follows of
necessity to any logical thinking upon the faculties of
human nature, and the influence moral relations exer-
cise upon it. I do not indeed mean to assert that hu-
man intelligence would ever have been, if left to itself,
capable of developiug a correct theory of future things ;
such an assertion would be instantly contradicted by
facts. But my observation aims at pointing out how,
with regard to this subject as well as others. Reve-
lation imparts to us nothing essentially new, improb-
able, alien to our nature and habits of thought ; nothing
which we have to receive with amazement, and only to
believe in because of its lofty origin ; but rather that it
is pre-eminently a revelation to us of our own being,
which clearly reveals that which already lived and
stirred within our oumselves, that which we had ima-
gined and yearned after. " We know nothing of our-
selves," says the apostle, " we know not what we should
pray for, but the Spirit teaches us." So, too, we know
not of ourselves what it is that lives and moves in the
depth of our soul ; we know not how to conceive of it
clearly, to express it, to account for it, till Revelation
comes to our aid, and furnishes us with the proper clue.

While we contemplate the picture that she holds up
before us, while we listen to her utterance respecting
ourselves, and compare it carefully with our own inner
nature, it is as though this inner nature were interpret-
ing itself, as though its hampered thoughts and percep-
tions were set free, its chained and stammering tongue
loosed ; it receives the immediate impression of this
revelation that comes from without, being essentially
its OLvn, and this truth its truth. It is indeed wjth the
purport of Revelation that we are filled, in her footsteps
that we follow, but it appears as though we were follow-

ETEENAL LIFE. 2 5 I

ing our own thoughts, and being filled from fountains
that spring within our own being. This is what Ter-
tullian alluded to when he called the human soul inhe-
rently Christian ; and it is in this sense that I assert that
our own reason ought to lead to all that divine revela-
tion holds out to us concerning the future life ; that
while following her guidance step by step, it is only
conscious of following its oivn lead and its own laws,
that which revelation vouchsafes being but the natural
develojjDient of what reason itself contains in the germ.
And, to begin with, this certainly holds good respect-
ing those statements popularly described as the doctrine
of Heaven and Hell, blessedness and condemnation ;
the plain purport of which is that the conditions of an-
other life cannot be the same for all, but rather that
they must be most positively connected with the con-
duct of each one in this present life, so that the good man
will enjoy good, the wicked endure evil. Indeed nothing
can appear more self evident than this to our reason
and our sense of justice, nothing more conformable to
our whole nature and whole experience. That we must
reap what we have sowed, is a law that we daily see put
in practice in a thousand ways, in things small and
great ; that each becomes what he makes himself, is an
equally familiar fact which must needs hold as good
with regard to the future life as it does to the present.
For the laying aside of the body can of itself effect no
change in the disposition of the soul ; if our personality
is to survive physical death, it must needs survive as
the same in thought, feeling, preferences, tendencies,
character. And what is it that forms character but
conduct, which, in the fullest sense, includes not only
acts, but thoughts, feelings, and words. It would be a
very superficial and thoughtless way of considering the
subject, to suppose that conduct had only external
effects, and did not re- act upon our inward nature.
The truth, on the contrary, is, that not the very slight-
est action of a moral character can proceed from us
without exercising an influence over us, and leaving its
impress upon our soul and our spiritual life. And it is
from these re-actions and influences that our inward

252 THE FUTURE :

man gradually acquires form and disposition. Even in
respect of physical life, we are accustomed to speak of
a second nature, brought about by some special way of
life, some habitual course of action, or habitual relations
of whatever kind. And this must be the case in a far
higher degree where the processes of moral formation
and growth are concerned.

Now, with regard to certain gross and pre-eminently
carnal tendencies, drunkenness, licentiousness, etc., it
is universally acknowledged that they re-act upon the
soul of such as yield to them to such a degree that at
length it has no longer sensibility or room for any im-
pulses or imaginations unconnected with them ; so that
by a course of sinful practice the soul itself becomes
sensualized, materialized, sinks to a mere organ of the
besetting lust. And what is true in this case is also
true in an opposite, and applies equally to right as to
evil doing. He who strives to follow the law of love,
gradually forms a soul that habitually loves, and has its
delight in loving ; he who obeys the impulses of selfish-
ness and hatred will inevitably become more and more
selfish, and the spirit of hate will grow within him, till
its dark influence pervades and subjugates the whole of
his nature.

Thus, then, it is undoubtedly true that human souls
must, when they enter upon another life, difier essen-
tially in character, and as goodness includes peace and
well-being, and wickedness, discomfort and suffering, it
is perfectly impossible that the same destiny should
await them in that life ; but it must be well with one
and ill with the other, the one must be happy, the other
miserable.

I have before observed that these truths, which form
the basis of Christian teaching respecting Heaven and
Hell, certainly appear self-evident, nay, seem abso-
lutely required by our laws of thought so soon as we
believe in a future life. But it is a very striking
fact — and testifies convincingly to the urgent need
we have of a revelation from above to set thought
free, and prepare its way — that, at a time when Re-
velation had not uttered its illuminating word, in the

ETERNAL LIFE. 253

era before Christ the Light of the world, man's ima-
gination had not got beyond mere hints and previ-
sions of these necessary truths. We do, indeed, find
everywhere a belief in the duration of the soul after
death, but that this enduring soul was necessarily en-
dowed with the determining conditions of a happy or
unhappy life — to this wider generalization men had no-
where attained. Even the most philosophically cultured,
like the Greeks, merely recognised opposite destinies in
the case of those who had reached the climax of good
or of evil, of the wholly excellent or the wholly corrupt.
The more prominent of their heroes, and sons of the
immortals, went, indeed, to the Elysian fields, where
they led the life of the gods ; whilst a Tantalus or a
Sisyphus were plunged into Tartarus, there, in inex-
haustible torment, to receive the reward of their crimes ;
but with regard to the innumerable majority belonging
to neither of these extreme classes, — for average souls,
distinguished by no special endowments or remarkable
career, there was to be no difi'erence in their future, how-
ever great the difi'erence between their moral character.
And this arose from there being indeed no actual life
reserved for them at all. In the dark, joyless under-
world to which they sank in the mass, they were
deprived of all that belongs to active existence ; no
sunbeam irradiated the grey night of that desolate con-
dition, no communion of spirits with spirits, no occu-
pation to bring about change and stir of some kind
in the mournful stillness. The shades press upon and
crowd each other in a pale, dim, dreamy state, half-
conscious indeed, and yet without any definite feeling
or thought, somewhat like fever- stricken suff"erers who
toss from side to side in a painful semi- slumber, which
neither calms down into sleep, nor can be roused to
wakefulness. Homer makes the soul even of an
Achilles exclaim, " Rather would I be the poorest
man, tilling the fields all day long, on the earth above,
than reign over the whole swarm of the vanished dead."
It was only when they drank the blood of sacrifices that
they were able for a short time to resume a human
semblance, their souls, instead of having life in them-

2 54 THE FUTURE :

selves, borrowing for a space from the realms of life
without, the glow and activity of their lost vitality.

Nor was any other nation, previous to Christianity,
able to attain beyond these low and melancholy views of
the state of the departed. Indeed, generally speaking,
we meet with darker views still, as, for instance, among
the sava/ijes of Asia, America, and Africa, and indeed
among our own heathen ancestors. Departed spirits
were conceived of by them as continuing to exist on
this earth, as dismal spectres haunting graves, forests,
desolate swamps, miserable in themselves, and an object
of dread and horror to the living, who had to exorcise
them by holy words and sacrifices, lest they should
sustain injury from the malicious influence of these
forlorn ghosts.

Nay, further ; — and at first sight this may well sur-
prise us — even the chosen people, who, with regard to
spiritual knowledge, were a light amidst the general
darkness and confusion ; even they, who were not left
to their own devices, but favoured with an actual reve-
lation of the one true Grod, even the people of Israel,
the people of the Old Testament, did not on this point
differ essentially from the rest. For the Sheol into
which the souls of the departed descended (being through
Adam's fall cut off from the tree of life in Paradise),
scarcely differs from the Hades of the Greeks. True,
rest and stillness dwell there, as Job comforts himself
by remembering, but it is the stillness of insensibility,
the rest of a pale shadowy life. None of the inhabitants
of that house of midnight gloom can ever experience
joy ; in order to hold its prisoners fast, it is necessary
that it should be barred and bolted with bands that are
strong* as love. Even the souls of the godly, though
patiently submissive to their Creator's will, are no longer
able to stir themselves up to praise his glory, or to
retain a lively recollection of his grace and mercy
shown them during life. We read in Psalm cxv.,
" The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go
down into silence." And King Hezekiah, when restored
from a sickness that seemed mortal, exclaims, in Isaiah
xxxviii., " The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot

ETERNAL LIFE.

255

celebrate tliee ; tliey that go clown into the pit cannot
hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall
praise thee, as I do this day."

But dark as this shadow of death appears, even in
the pages of the Old Testament, it is not there en-
tirely without rays of light. For there we find the
knowledge and faith of a living God, and to pious souls
such knowledge must necessarily have prompted the
inference clearly expressed by our Lord : a living God
cannot be the God of the dead, or half-dead; he must
be the God of the living. Although indeed the, Israelites
had no definite knowledge of a future life, yet they did
know, many of them experimentally, that they were
capable of communion with the eternal God ; and this
experience must have excited within them a j^resenti-
ment, nay, a certainty, that nothing could dissolve such
a communion, not even death itself, — that this Eternal
would hold fast that which had consciously become his
own throughout eternity, and never cast away the nature
that had once claimed fellowship with his. The singer
of the 49th psalm held this faith, and while declaring of
the foolish that, " Like sheep they are laid in the grave,
where death shall feed upon them ;" he goes on to say,
" But God will redeem my soul from the power of the
grave ; for he shall receive 7??e." And while in the
prophecies of Isaiah we meet indeed with the mournful
cr}', wrung from the consciousness and lips of the people
at larse, '" The dead shall not live, the deceased shall
not rise ;" we meet also the pious and comforting reply,
" Thy dead shall live ; with my dead bod}^ shall they
arise ! Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in dust ! The
earth shall no more cover her slain ! "

Nor was it only the truly God-fearing and loving
souls amongst the people of Israel who thus rose above
the dread of death to the certainty of another life ; we
see the same fact repeated, though of course more im-
perfectly, amongst the righteous heathen. We have
before cited the testimony of Socrates to the immor-
tality of the soul, but the passage that we are about to
give from his last conversation with his friends has a
still loftier and fuller tone, and proves to us not only

256 THE FUTURE:

that he believed in the enduring nature of man's spiritual
being, but in an eternal life that awaited those that
loved tlie gods, and of a condemnation impending upon
such as had lived regardless of them. What else could
possibly be his meaning, when, turning to Cebes and
Symmias, he assures them that he who had really
spent his life in lofty meditations, might well be com-
forted at the approach of death, and cherish the joyful
hope that he would after his death attain to the highest
blessings? " Yea, it is evident," he adds, and as we
listen we are involuntarily reminded of the apostolic
declaration, " that all tends to death. And why should
it not, since something much better awaits the good
yonder ? They shall meet again with friendly instruc-
tors and companions, incredible as this may seem to the
great majority."^ And in another place he states still
more definitely the entire doctrine of blessedness and
punishment, as it must needs present itself to human
thought when restricted merely to its own efforts, but
yet forced thereby to a recognition of the beginning of
truth : " No," he affirms, " not to annihilation tends
my soul, which is formed for a noble place, for a good
and wise God, and must without delay, according to his
will, go to him. For when the soul leaves the body
in a state of purity, dragging nothing that pertains to
the latter after it, but fleeing from it and gathering
itself into itself ; after it has always lived in this man-
ner, it goes to that which is akin to itself, to the in-
visible, the divine, and immortal, and rational, to
which it belongs, there to be happy, being freed from
error and irrationality, and fear and lust, and it lives
the rest of its time with the gods. But it is cer-
tainly otherwise when, polluted and impure, it leaves
the body, having been always mixed with it, having
served and loved it, having been bewitched by its
appetites and enjoyments, and held nothing to be
true, thought of nothing but only the material, that
which could be touched and seen, eaten and drunk,
and turned to sensual gratification ; while, on the
other hand, it feared and hated and shunned what was

1 Pfusdo.

ETERNAL LIFE. 257

invisible to the bodily eye, what could only be seized
and apprehended through faith and through the love of
wisdom. Such a soul manifestly does not leave the
body as independent and purely spiritual, but rather
as swathed and encumbered with that which is material ;
and as this is heavy and earthly, so a soul of this stamp
is laden and dragged down into the sphere of the vis-
ible, in which it wanders about among the tombs and
monuments of the dead, and suifers punishment for its
former evil way of life, until, through its strong desire
for the corporeal element, it can once more unite itself
to a body of some kind, which corresponds with its
previous habits of life and inward disposition. The
luxurious and gluttonous are changed into asses, or
beasts of that kind ; the unjust and oppressive into
wolves, vultures, and the like ; the commonplace, good
sort of people, who lived in moderation and social virtue,
but yet without seeking after anything higher or really
spiritual, will again appear among social and political
creatures either as bees or ants, or perhaps as men
again of a respectable stamp. But to attain to the
ranks of the gods is only permitted to those who strive
after the highest wisdom, and depart this life perfectly
pure ; and therefore we eschew bodily desires and the
anxious pursuit of wealth, and care for our souls and
not our bodies, and aim at the love of wisdom, and of
the liberation and purification she gives." ^

But methinks I hear you inquire for what purpose it
is that 1 have set before you, first the gloomy popular
conceptions of the after-life that prevailed before the
introduction of Christianity, and secondly, the widely
different testimony of a few individuals in whom the
reli.iiious knowledge of their age had attained to its
highest pitch ? By this historical retrospect, you may
urge, I have done nothing towards proving the truth of
the Christian doctrine regarding a future state, but only
broken the course of my lectm-e by a digression which
confuses my argument.

I, however, think otherwise. I, for my part, be-
lieve that this apparent digression has been a step in

'■ PluBdo.

258 THE FUTUKE :

advance towards the end I have in view, and casts a
flood of light on the path we must take to understand
aright the very spirit and essence of the gospel an-
nouncements respecting our present subject. In the
first place, this historical retrospect has served to re-
mind us of the literal truth of the apostolic statements :
" Out of Christ, we are without hope in the world. We
sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death, as those
who had no hope, till the true Light that lighteth all
men came into the world ;" and again, " Through
fear of death, ye would have been all your life long
subject unto bondage, but that he hath redeemed you,
and deprived death of his sting." Now it is especially
with regard to the nature of the future life, a subject
above all others calculated to excite general attention,
and to call forth the most strenuous eiForts of thought,
that we can best judge how far the much-boasted reason
of man could of itself reach. What results then was
this reason able to offer in this confessedly most inter-
esting and most stimulating sphere of inquiry ? Where
has it proved itself able to set our race at large, free
from the most limited and contradictory views ? When
did it avail to light up the gloomiest and mournfullest
darkness by a ray of brightness sufficient to inspire the
spirit with confident hope and peace ? Or did this reason,
in the course of centuries, bringing such increase of
knowledge and power in the range of material things, at
least approximate more nearly to this happy result ? No !
The words we have quoted from St. Paul apply directly
to his own contemporaries. Of those who lived at the
close of the pre-Christian dispensation, and had known
and enjoyed the last results of its culture, he declared
that they " sorrowed as without hope."

And further, what was it but Christ and his gospel
that wrought so marvellous a change (and this not
gradually, not by the natural progress of development,
but all at once), that thenceforth, in opposition to the
semblance of things, this earthly/ life appeared to be
gloomy, sad, joyless, compared to the fulness of light
and happiness that shone around the life to come f That
this future life became the goal of the best hopes, re-

ETERNAL LIFE. 259

cognised as the true life, and true life's joy f That
while Achilles must needs lament that the sorrows and
troubles of this present life were as nothing to the
wretchedness of the future, the apostles could, on the
contrary, exclaim : " I reckon that the sufferings of
this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the glory that shall be revealed."

Nor was it only a few pre-eminently gifted spirits, a
Paul, a John, who held this faith, and whose life was
based on its certainty, but all, without exception, who
received the gospel declarations, — even the meanest
and the most ignorant, — at once felt their truth and
their intelligibility; was comforted and made free there-
by, and taught to look upon the future world as a world
of blessedness and repose in the bosom of God. Now,
wherever the name of Christ is named, even the little
child, who scarcely knows how to think or speak, wears
a joyous face when asked, " Where is thy dead mother,
thy brother, or thy little sister?" and pointing above
replies, " With God Almighty, as a holy angel, and
happy there." Verily, to such as contemplate with an
intelligent eye the sudden transformation thus wrought,
it is as when the sun has risen, and the darkness vanishes
before its rays, and men move gladl}^ on their way, and
stumble not, because they walk in light.

Neither is it in the least inconsistent with this fact, that
even before Christ's appearance, some of the wisest and
best should have been able partially to see their way, for
ever the dawn precedes the sun-rising, and they inferred
this eternal life only because they aspired after and be-
lieved in that capacity of man for fellowship with God,
which in Christ became " deed and truth." It was com-
bined with the hope of a future redemption that pious
Israelites entertained the hope of not being holden by
death, but seeing God in righteousness when they should
awake after his likeness ; and even in the account of
the last conversation of Socrates, preserved for us by
Plato, we have something analogous to this when Sim-
mias, the Theban, uses the remarkable words : " Truly,
it is difl&cult to know anything definite as to future things;
nothing remains to us but to depend upon the best and

26o THE FUTUEE :

most plausible of human words, till man becomes able,
with a certain security and safety, to make the passage
upon the safe hark of a divine wordP

The second point which this historical retrospect de-
cidedly establishes is this, that by a mere abstract con-
viction of the immortality of the soul nothing is gained,
but that this immortality must have a definite character
in order to have any importance for us. This is a more
important conclusion than may at first sight appear.
For it not unfrecpently happens that a faith in immor-
tality, merely as such, is looked upon as something
Christian and religious, and indeed almost felt to be
matter of boast ; as, for instance, in the case of Ration-
alists, whose whole creed is contained in three words :
Grod, Liberty, Immortality.

But what is meant by this immortality, by men who
hold their opinions ? What indeed can be meant ? One
holds this, another that, as experience shows us ; each
according to his individual character and bias. It is
true, that the gloomy pre-Christian conceptions are
universally discarded, and all alike adopt some elements
of the Christian school of thought into their own views ;
generally speaking, the after-life is looked upon as an
exalted and beatified continuance of this, the chief
stress being laid upon meeting again with those one has
loved on earth, and upon freedom from the hindrances,
sorrows, and struggles which have embittered and marred
our walk here below.

But where do we find any ground or right for expec-
tations like these ? Most certainly it is not to Scripture
that we can appeal in their favour ; for Scripture, as you
know, lays the chief stress upon quite other things, and
does not even mention this much talked of meeting each
other again. If then we do not draw from Scripture
sources, what others are open to our inquiries ? Do we
seek them in our own inward feelings and consciousness ?
That these by no means hold any such clear and definite
language, we have proved by the example of the ages
before Christ ; and when we come to examine a little
more deeply, we shall be forced to confess that we find
nothing in ourselves that authorizes these rambling con-

ETERNAL LIFE. 26 1

ceptions, that they are really mere unsubstantial and
unfounded castles in the air ; nay, that they even in-
volve hopeless contradictions, which renders them un-
tenable by exact thought. For, to confine ourselves to one
point, what is meant by this our present existence being
continued in glorified fashion, and set free from all the
hindrances and oppositions that beset it now ? Do not
these hindrances and oppositions pre-eminentlj^ lie in
our own being — in our selfishness, our discontent, our
foibles, and our sins ?

And if in that other world we are simply to continue to
live on without having undergone a redemption, a moral
transformation ; without a higher life being inspired into
us and embracing us in its fulness, how can our after
condition differ essentially from our present ? It must
be a mere sequel to it ; a sequel full of the same sorrows
and strifes, labours, achievements, and failures through-
out all eternity. And inasmuch as no one can realize
such a repulsive, aimless, and comfortless theory as
this, the author of those five lectures, on the senses to
which we have so often alluded, is perfectly right in
affirming that the only idea that natural religion can con-
nect with a belief in immortality, is of an eternally empty
and wearisome monotony, making upon us the impres-
sion of death rather than life ; that idea, in short, which
we recognise as prevailing in the world before the ap-
pearance of Christ.

And this leads us to the third point, incontrovertibly
established by our historical retrospect, that there can
be no other explanation of a future existence as an actual
life^ than Christ and our fellowship with him. It is one
of the deepest and most striking peculiarities of Holy
Writ, that nowhere does it assert the mere continued
existence of the soul after death, although it invariably
assumes it, until this fact of immortality had first gained
its true significance, until it could point us to eternal
life in iha full and perfect sense of the words.

For what is the universal conception of life ? A steady
contemplation of this our eartbl}'- life will enable us to
gain a clear comprehension of it. We at once feel that
the chief characteristic of life consists in receiving, in

262 THEFUTUEE:

appropriating forces, nay, even matter, foreign to our-
selves, and returning these in an exalted condition, in
the shape of activities and tendencies of most various
kinds. Life is an incessant receiving^ an incessant ap-
propriation, and an incessant exaltation and giving hack
of the received. Thus no life, it is evident, can exist
by and for itself ; at all events, no created life, as we
know and experience it ; but always it requires another
life external to itself, with which it stands in relations
of constant reciprocity, constant giving and taking;
from which it nourishes itself, through which it fills
itself, which is the source and object of all its activity.

Now, if we apply this definition to human life, it is
apparent that man can only possess and enjoy life on
condition that there be afforded him from without, some-
thing that he may receive and appropriate, and with
which he may hold fellowship. In barren, objectless
space none of us could live, none of us could find mate-
rials for life. For we resemble vessels, capable indeed
of containing in themselves the most manifold and pre-
cious substances, but incapable of originating these, and
requiring to be filled from without. We have the capa-
city for thought and cognition, but we could neither
think nor know if no external objects were presented
to our knowledge and our thought. We have the capa-
city for love, but we could not actually love if we were
without objects to call forth love ; if our heart never
met the response of another heart. And the same holds
good of every faculty of our nature.

You see, therefore, what inevitably follows with regard
to our future existence. It is indisputable, that in this
future existence as well, we can have no life unless there
meet us some other Life external to our own, with
which ours can be united, towards which we stand related
by that process of reciprocal giving and receiving, which
we have before described. Of what nature then must
this life be ? Immortal, since we are immortal ; the ful-
ness of love, wisdom, peace, holiness, since we feel in
ourselves the need and the capacity for all these ; and
as we have already seen, no one can think of the future
state as an aimless and continued hungering and thirst-

ETERNAL LIFE. 263

ing, but each must necessarily conceive of it as the fulfil-
ment and perfection of whatever his nature requires.

Now such a life as we all know exists only, and
can only exist in God^ and there can only be an eternal
life for men upon condition of there being for them a
fellowship with Grod, Grod inspiring them, sharing him-
self with them, receiving them unto himself, entering
into a reciprocity of giving and taking, of in-pouring
and out-pouring — in one word, into a reciprocity of love.

Now, experimentally, this reciprocity has been pro-
cured for and proifered to us in and by Christ alone. I
say experimentally, because before him, and indepen-
dently of him, confessedly, no one exemplified in himself
or even knew of this kindredship of nature with God,
of which we speak ; while, as soon as he appeared, all
who received him could as with one mouth declare :
'' We live, but it is no more we who live, but Christ (in
whom God lives) who lives in us ; the Spirit of God is
shed abroad in our hearts ; our conversation is no
more on earth but in heaven, where Christ sitteth
at the right hand of God." And, on \\\q other hand,
Christ himself most clearly and explicitly testifies to
the truth of this relation. " No man," he afiirms,
" Cometh to the Father but by me ; I am the way,
the truth, and the life. He that believeth in me,
to him will the Father come, and abide with him.*'
x\nd when we proceed to examine more closely how
this is to be brought about, we find him declaring fur-
ther,— He who is one with the Father, he in whom
dwells the fulness of God, — that he was able and willing
to share his own God-pervaded being with those who
believed in him, and by their belief identified them-
selves with him; so that henceforth their humanity should
so have all its needs divinely supplied as to be raised
out of the condition of mere empty existence into the
condition of true and perfect life^ the necessary require-
ments of which we have already enumerated. Every-
thing, indeed, in our Lord's word and work refers to
this fellowship, this actual personal fellowship, this iden-
tification of the human soul with himself. " For this,"
he saith, " hath the Father sent me, that I should give

264 THE FUTURE :

you my flesh to eat, and my blood to drink ;" that is,
that the whole of my special nature should as actually
and positively enter into, and be assimilated by you, as
the food you partake of, enters into and becomes assi-
milated with your body. He in whom this does not
take place, remains necessarily without the true source
of life ; remains a mere possibility, a mere potentiality,
which never becomes realized, never reaches the per-
fection for which it was adapted. " Verily, verily, I
say unto you, If ye eat not the flesh, and drink not the
blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you. There
is no bread that can give life to the world but my flesh,
which I give for the life of the world. Whosoever eateth
this bread shall live for ever. He that abideth not in
me, and I in him, brings forth no fruit, dries up and
withers, shall be cut off and cast away."

What a light do these words cast upon that fact of
the pre-Christian world knowing nothing of eternal life,
but only of endless being! We can now understand
how this was : It did not result from any guilty want of
reflection or knowledge on the part of that world, but
it could not have been otherwise, for the true life had
not then appeared, did not exist for it. The noblest
spirits hoped for it, indeed searched after it in vague
and sorrowful yearning, but they saw it not, they pos-
sessed it not. To us it now sounds like a striking pro-
phecy, to hear the lifeless shades of the under-world
entreating Odysseus for life-bringing blood from the
world of the living, in order .that they might for a
while be once more pervaded with vital energy. It
seems as though they prophetically confirmed the as
yet unspoken words of the Lord, " He who drinketh
not my blood hath no life in him," as though they had
some foreknowledge that there was indeed a blood in
the realm of true life that actually and abidingly gave
life to its recipients.

And now it is scarcely necessary that I should pro-
ceed more minutely to describe the nature of this true,
this eternal life. From what has been already said, it
must be evident that it is not only a future, but a pre-
sent life, beginning from the moment of our receiving

ETERNAL LIFE. 265

Christ, and with him the actual indwelling of God ;
nor is it less evident that it must consist in oneness
with God through Christ, even as God himself, Father,
Son, and Spirit are one. " I pray for them," exclaims
the Lord in his sacerdotal intercession, " that they may
be one in us, as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee ;"
and again, " I in them, and thou in me, that they may
be perfect in us, and that the love wherewith thou hast
loved me may be in them, and that they may share my
glory which thou hast given me." Would it be possible
to any human lips to bring this life nearer, to explain
its details more thoroughly ? God be thanked that it is
appreciable and intelligible to our inmost consciousness,
though it far transcends our as yet earthly faculties of
ratiocination and language. It is enough that we know
and can assure ourselves of this : " We shall live and
be blessed eternally, as God is blessed and eternally
lives ; for we are in him and he is in us : one joy, one
love, one possession, one activity, one knowledge ; an
inexhaustible receiving and giving back of what we re-
ceive, as in the visions of the Apocalypse the bands of
the blessed cast down the crowns of righteousness with
which their heads are decked before the throne of the
Lamb, and in never-ceasing love and praise ascribe
again and again to him the salvation that they have
received from him."

Such is the heaven of the Christian, the heaven that
the Gospel announces, of which assuredly each one
must at least confess that it represents to man the
highest conceivable by human thought, nay, more than
human thought, left to itself, could ever have attained
to. That which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man to con-
ceive," the apostle tells us, " God hath prepared for
them that love him."

And this view of what eternal life essentially and
fundamentally is, at once dispels all those petty in-
quiries that curiosity and earthly-mindedness so often
raise as to the conditions of heavenly happiness, as, for
example, whether we shall meet again, know each other,
belong to each other again as we have done here below ;

266 THE FUTURE :

what will be our occupation throughout the infinite
eternity, and other details of the kind. I say such
inquiries vanish away of themselves ; for, if we know
even as God knows, we must know whatever he knows ;
and if we love as he loves, we must love whatever he
loves, and love in the same inconceivably lofty manner;
and if we are to work as he works, and to be blessed
with his blessedness, we must be occupied in las v/ork
and enjoy his inexpressible joy, and the infinity of that
work and that joy will be inexhaustible in us as in him.
Those who would, on the contrary, maintain that this
blessed life of Holy Scripture is in point of fact a mere
nonentity, life being only a struggle, a conflict, an oppo-
sition of finite forces, and, apart from these, an eternal
blank, eternal stagnation, with such indeed we can carry
on no further controversy ; for what is their position but
one that maintains the very condition of the eternal Grod
to be a condition of endless stagnation and emptiness ! —
A conception this, the philosophical and religious value
of which I confidently refer to your own appreciation.

But this word Heaven at once presupposes the anti-
thesis Hell ; the reaching the goal, implies of necessity
the possibility of t\ie failing to reach it. And as Scrip-
ture speaks of both alike, paints to us the character of
the one as well as the other, I should feel myself want-
ing in my duty towards you were I not briefly to dwell
upon this awful subject.

I am well aware that it is against this doctrine of
hell, or of the misery of a human soul continuing to
exist in a state of alienation from Grod, that the greatest
opposition of the Antichristian, or I may say of the
modern spirit of thought generally, is directed. Let
us hear the author so often quoted declare himself on
this point. " Finally, when we are required," says he,
" to represent to ourselves, in contrast with heaven
and its blessedness, the Hell where, according to the old
faith, the great majority of human beings are burning
in eternal flames, we must needs take leave altogether
of all conceptions of physical and spiritual things. For
this reason, at the present time, it is only that thorough-

ETERNAL LIFE. 267

going Orthodox faith that speaks of hell, -which feels no
scruple in proclaiming the conclusions of human reason
to be mere delusions of Satan, whose interest it neces-
sarily is to blind men to the existence of this hellish
state."

We will not criticise the tone and bearing of such
polemics, we will only remind you of what we advanced
at the beginning of our lectui'e ; of the fact, namely,
that the doctrine of heaven and hell rests on nothing
else than that old axiom, alike of reason and experi-
ence, that each must reap what he has sown, and be
what he has made himself, and I think we may some-
what more reasonably than the author above quoted,
maintain that he who should dispute this position must
needs take leave of all conceptions whatever, alike of
temporal and spiritual things.

But as, in the course of our historical survey, we
have found that the practical application of this uni-
versal truth was exceedingly imperfect as regards the
blessedness of the good, so also was it with the misery
of the wicked. With the exception of a few of the
most prominent criminals, the great mass of the un-
godly were represented as sinking into the insensible
existence of the realm of shadows, and it was only
those leading religious and intellectual minds before
mentioned, some of the Jewish prophets, or a Socrates
and Plato, who definitely perceived that (according to
the expression of the latter) just as the good must
necessarily fare better in a futm^e life, so the bad must
fare worse.

It was, however, the gospel revelation alone that first
brought this truth home to the utiiversal consciousness
and reason of our race. For only then, when it has
been once seen and understood what life is and in-
cludes, can there be any adequate conception of the
loss of that life, and the remaining in death.

The doctrine then presented to us by the New Tes-
tament, as indissolubly connected with its announce-
ment of eternal life, and logically deduced from our
moral and psychological conception thereof, is, in its
essential features, as follows • —

268 THE FUTURE :

Human nature, as we have seen, has no true and
abiding principle of life without communion, fellowship
with God through Christ. If man declines to enter
into this fellowship, preferring that self-seeking depend-
ence on and dealing with the creature, which we have
depicted in our former Lecture upon sin, he not only
evidently deprives himself of all that we have described
as constituting the fulness of eternal life, but he also
incurs the most utter dislocation and distortion of his
whole personality (intended and adapted as it was for
fellowship with Grod), by diverting it from its proper
purpose and end. Its various faculties, which would
have found their union and satisfaction in God, dis-
cordant and dissatisfied as they now are, turn against
each other, hinder and destroy each other in unceasing
opposition. " The flesh," says the apostle, " lustetli
against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."
The spirit destroys, in so far as it can, the soul and the
body, because, by its divine consciousness, it opposes
and condemns their fleshly nature. The soul (the car-
nal mind), in so far as it can, destroys the spirit and
the body, by seeking to blunt and silence the former,
and to excite the latter to serve its lusts, and be the
slave of its sinful will. And finally, the body exer-
cises a destructive influence on spirit and soul, not only
by declining to be the organ of the spirit, and thereby
injuring the unity of the personality, but by degrading
the soul whose lusts it fulfils, by its own degradation,
and continually diminishing its energy to desire and to
enjoy.

Nevertheless, so long as man lives here below, this
fearful process of death is not carried on undisguisedly
and sensibly. For he still possesses, both within and
without, much that is innately good, independent of his
own will, and capable of profi"ering him a certain amount
of life and joy.

No man here below can live exclusively in evil, and
practise evil entirely unmixed with the good that lies
in his God-created nature. But at death, on the con-
trary, his personality (as he has constituted it during
the God- estranged, sinful condition of his earthly life)

ETERNAL LIFE. 269

is deprived of its exteruality, thrown back on itself,
and restricted to itself alone. Thus he undergoes the
fearful decree of retaining the evil which was the result
of his will, apart from the good which involuntarily
pertained to him ; of the accidental good that was in
him being swallowed up of evil, since that only which
his will constituted him may now endure. " Take from
the unprofitable servant the one talent that he has,"
exclaims our Lord; " for from him who hath not, even
that he hath shall be taken away." In this second
death, there is no one endowed with anything but what
tends to his own woe, and the woe of others. The
knowledge of God that the soul still possesses only im-
pels it to a fierce and yet eternally fruitless warring
against that God, of which it is conscious as the original
cause of its fearful existence, the Avenger and Judge
that fixes its dark lot ; gladly would this soul annihi-
late in itself this indelible thought of God that disturbs
its repose ; yea, it would free itself from its God created
being, and sink into nothingness, but ever on and on
must burn that awful light, that shines into the dark-
ness, and from which it w^ould vainly bury itself in that
outer darkness, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, as
the Lord expresses it.

And the same holds good with all the divinely-
appointed relations of man to man, as members of one
body, destined to bear and forbear in reciprocal love.
The perversion which all God-ordained social ties,
whether of marriage, family, friendship, or country,
have undergone through sin on earth, is now fully
manifest. As, in point of fact, it was selfishness in-
stead of genuine love that filled all these relations, they
Dow exist (after the removal of all adventitious good in
them) only as relations of unmixed selfishness, and this
selfishness necessarily leads to a mutual repulsion that
grows and grows (as we see typified on earth) into the
most glowing hatred. Each soul would cast off these
ties, and not one may ever do so !

To this we add, in the third place, that of all the
former possessions which the soul enjoyed on earth,
only that remains to it which each unrighteous indul-

270 THE FUTURE:

gence fostered ; namely, tlie burning lust and desire
which can never more be satisfied, and therefore must
glow ever more and more fiercely. The rich glutton in
the parable can in the other world think only of the
enjoyment of his palate : " Give me at the least a drop
of water to cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this
flame." The lost soul would continually recall, by
imagination, the fleshly life, but it is unable to do so ;
would continue its sins in memory, and cannot any
longer enjoy their fruits. Its spiritual nature ever
deprives it of the possibility of illusory enjoyment ; all
that it can and must do, is perpetually to contemplate
that which brought it into perdition ; but it is perfectly
incapable of dreaming back the pleasant corporeal exist-
ence of earth and time. This is what the heathen
imaged by the significant tortures they assigned to a
Tantalus and Ixion ; this is the worm in the soul that
dieth not ; this is the inward fire that is not quenched.
That dies not, that is not quenched ! For there is
no longer any time to such, seeing that there are no sen-
suous perceptions, no changes of condition by which alone
we have the consciousness of time conveyed. Even in
this world there are states and circumstances which
supersede the normal relation of the soul to time ;
agony lengthens, as rapture contracts it. Consequently
when suffering has reached its greatest possible intensity,
and every mitigation of it is withdrawn — past, present,
and future, alike absorbed in a consciousness of pain
and an inevitable expectation of pain — time, which the
soul still strives to think, must dilate itself to monstrous
proportions, and between a second and a century there
can no longer be any difi'erence. How can there still
be a ray of hope for a soul in such a state as this ? To
escape from its misery it must escape from itself, and
that it refused to do while it was still possible, and
persisted in this refusal till at length — not through
compulsion from without, but by its own qualitj^ — this
has become absolutely impossible. " There is a sin,"
says Christ, and he calls it " the sin against the Holy
Ghost," which has " never forgiveness, neither in this
world, nor in that which is to come." For this sin con-

ETERNAL LIFE. 2 7 1

sists in a corruption of the inner man, so that whatever
is good and makes for peace no longer finds place j
within him, but only excites him to hatred and bitterness. J

And it is self evident that to this inward condition
the outward condition must conform, both as regards
the saved and the lost. No doubt the expressions used
in Scripture, " Fire, darkness, chains," and so forth,
are figurative expressions describing in human speech,
and enabling us in measure to apprehend, what far
transcends our human experience. But, nevertheless,
they do express an absolute truth and reality. The
fire is the burning desire that is never satisfied, the
self- consuming hatred that is never stilled. The dark-
ness is that feeling intensified to the utmost, of which
we know something even here when we say, " All is
gloom within me, nowhere a ray of light." The chains
are that indissoluble consciousness of being bound to a
personality and to a misery, which are one and the
same thing. And all this pervaded by the unceasing
conviction, " This is my own doing, I reap that only
which I sowed;" a conviction, however, not involving
an admission of the justice of God, but in raging de-
fiance denying it still, and for ever kicking against the
pricks by which it is for ever torn.

Such is the Christian doctrine respecting hell, re-
specting the perdition of those who will not seek after
God. A fearful doctrine, we allow, but not more fear-
ful than sin, of which it is the necessary goal, the self-
chosen result ; not more fearful than the daring rejec-
tion of the God of our life, and election to walk on
without him and in opposition to him ; not more fearful
than the contemptuous indifference to the Love which
so loved us as to give itself to us in Christ, to seek to
receive us into itself, and with us to share all things.
And if, when all has been said, the old question should
still arise, " How is it possible that God's plan of salva-
tion should not include all ?" we have but to return the
old answer, " Leave that mystery to God ; and see
that thou for thy part layest hold on the salvation
oiFered thee. Enough that thou knowest that none,
none are eternally lost but by their own fault, none who

272 THE FUTURE :

might not have been saved had they but willed to be
so." Yea, we may still farther affirm that none are
lost while they have any capacity for being saved,
while still any longing and yearning for salvation stirs
within them, while they are still free from that sin
against the Holy Ghost to which every sinner must
ultimately attain, " except he repent." That repent-
ance, however, becomes more and more difficult the
longer we cultivate the sinful nature, and fill our souls
with its ends and aims, is a fact patent alike to om* own
reason and experience.

It is difficult to break off here, although required by
our limits so to do, leaving wholly untouched many
points that are equally, with those we have dwelt upon,
subjects of doubt and inquiry. And though unable to
go into them at length, I feel I shall best consult your
wishes by cursorily touching upon the most prominent
of these.

First, then, there is the question of the resurrection
of the hody. I confess that it seems to me a striking
instance of the lamentable superficiality of so-called
Rational inquiry, that this doctrine, on account of a few
difficulties which attend its representation^ should be
summarily dismissed as impossible. " Here is the point,"
says the writer so often alluded to, " where the Church
requires /azY^ of the utmost potency; i.e., faith in con-
tradiction to all that reason can think or maintain."
But this is a misrepresentation. What the " Church"
(to use his own expression) here demands, is, that
reason should really exercise itself on this subject,
should bring to it the severest logic and the most search-
ing investigation of which the human mind is capable.
For why ? Does the body then not belong to this human
being ? Is the body something foreign from the spirit,
a mere external clothing to it, so that the latter may
not only continue to exist independoutly of the former,
but continue to live, to act, in the full sense of the
words ? Does not our earthly existence teach us that
our inner being necessarily requires an organism of
externaliLy and activity to give it an objective reality ;

ETERNAL LIFE. 273

that man is constituted a personality by being thus
compounded of soul and body, and that neither portion
of his being could exist apart without undergoing an
essential change of nature and capacity? And there-
fore, if in the other world we are to continue to be, not
as different creatures but as men, we must necessarily
have the same vital capacities, only in an exalted de-
gree. Even did not Scripture tell us of the renewal of
our bodies, our own exact thinking would lead us to, nay,
would demand this conclusion, so soon as the duration
of our personality after death was once established, and
would demand it under the very same conditions affixed
by the apostle : " Sown in corruption, raised in incor-
ruption ; sown in weakness, raised in power ; sown in
dishonour, raised in glory." As the body is one por-
tion of one's own self, which must not remain in ruin
and imperfection, so must there also be for it a redemp-
tion, a completeness, a glorification to its ideal, if we
may so speak, — a redemption and glorification effected,
as in the case of the inner man, by the dying off of the
old and the transplantation into the new ; this inner and
outer transformation being most intimately connected.

The resurrection of the believer, like that of Christ,
seems not so much an external act that he under-
goes, as an act of his own, new God-filled life, which
assimilates that which belongs to its perfected state,
forming the organism that best corresponds with its
nature, and by which its nature is best expressed. For
there will then be the most perfect harmony between
the inward being and the outward semblance. What is
already in a measure true of our earthly bodies, that they
are the image and mirror of the inner nature, will be un-
qualifiedly true in the case of the resurrection body. It
will exist as the fully adequate expression of the spiritual
character ; it will be a faithful embodiment of every
feature, every peculiarity thereof. All will then be
truth, and all truth will be open and manifest ; " the
wise shall shine as the firmament,'' as the prophet de-
clares while " some shall awake to shame and ever-
lasting contempt" in their undisguised hideousness; all
their hidden evil, corruption, and distortion being out-

s

2 74 THE FUTURE :

wardly revealed and made apparent to the whole
world.

It will already appear from these brief hints, that by
the resurrection of the body, we do not understand
those materials of our physical frame, which even in
this life are in a state of perpetual flux and transforma-
tion, but rather the external 6«s/s of being, the essential
identity of the new and the old body ; and that, there-
fore, we necessarily hold it to be this very bodily indi-
viduality which is to be raised and glorified to its ideal.
"It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual
body;" for, as in the case of the dying plant, whose
perishable portions are scattered in all directions, there
yet remains a living germ, which, assimilating new ma-
terials under the influence of creative energies from
without, forms for itself a new plant-body, which, through
that germ is the same with the former plant, and yet
another^ so, says the apostle, shall it be with the human
corporeal life. While its earthly elements fall asunder
and dissolve, and enter into new combinations, there
still remains a germ, the subtlest and innermost — to
our senses imperceptible as the principle of growth in
a seed — and this will unfold, through the power of
Christ's indwelling Spirit, into a new bodily form,
equally adapted to its new condition as the former body
was to its former estate.

You will at least grant me that there is nothing in
these views that contradicts our experience gathered
from the natural life around us; and should some one
say, " You must show me that imperishable germ of
which you speak, and describe more minutely that
superhuman coporeity, before I can believe in its possi-
bility," to such a one I simply reply, " Can you, then,
even in the lower realm of material nature, precon-
ceive from seeing the germ the vegetable organism
that is to arise out of it ? If experience had not taught
you that plants grow out of seeds, would you, at the
sight of an acorn, have ever supposed that from that
small dead-looking thing a tree of such might and
majesty as the oak would spring? Or would you have
been in a condition to describe beforehand the aspect

ETERNAL LIFE. 275

of that tree ? Well may we say with our Lord, ' If ye
understand not earthly things, how shall ye understand
and tell of heavenly things?' "

One thing is certain, this liberation and perfection
of human life can only coincide with that of the whole
material world, the whole of nature ; with the new
heavens and the new earth, and the universal trans-
formation, of which these form part. Till then the
condition of departed souls must necessarily be a tran-
sitional one, respecting which we, in this rapid survey,
can only affirm two things : first, that during it the
maturing of the soul is going on, whether it be a ma-
turing to Grod's image, or to complete reprobation ;
and, secondly, that for those who are once incorporate
with Christ, there can exist no separation from him,
but that they must already be living with him in an
incomparably freer and higher condition than ours.
The Lord, speaking of this state to the thief on the
cross, calls it expressly " Paradise."

Again, if we are called upon to answer the mocking
questions of unbelief as to the locality of this transi-
tional state, as well as of that of heaven and hell, we must
be very careful to guard against the idea of there being
necessarily an external space, a barrier of matter and
time between them and us. Rather is their existence
removed far out of all sensuous space-categories whatso-
ever. The tendency of the soul, after death, as an in-
telligent theologian well observes, is not towards ex-
ternal things, but is rather an internal, an introverted
tendency; and far more complete than the modern
image of the soul soaring to the stars, is that other
view that represents it returning to the underlying
innermost mystical chambers of existence. If, how-
ever, it be absolutely necessary to think of some locali-
zation in space in connexion with spirits made perfect
or perfecting, will our doubters permit me, on the other
hand, to ask them what precise knowledge they them-
selves possess of the universe external to our own earth ;
of that universe which their best telescopes fail to give
them the slightest indication of? If, as the poet says.
" there are even on this earth more things than ai\

276 THE FUTURE:

dreamt of in their philosophy," how much more must
this hold good of that infinity of worlds, the mere num-
ber of which neither our eyes nor our intellect can
avail to grasp ; and finally, as to the realm Qi fulfilment^
both as regards the saved and the lost, the Scripture
plainly lays it in that new heaven and new earth, of which
our astronomers give us no intelligence whatsoever.

For this is the ultimate and highest, and, if we may
so speak, the most glorious and exalted feature of the
Christian view of the universe, that it recognises for the
great ivhole, for all existence whatsoever, a liberation
and transfiguration, an exaltation and perfectionment to
its ideal ; for the least, the most seeming unimportant
thing has for its basis an ideal, that is, the Divine
thought that called it into existence, and, in the first
instance, realized it in earthly matter as a type and
image, but never ceases to work within it till it passes
through its typical condition to its true being. " All
temporal things are a similitude," says Goethe, in
deeply significant words, a similitude of what finally
they shall really be. " The unattainable," he adds,
" will become the actual." It will then be manifest
that not one single Divine creative thought, not one
Divine work was of only temporal purport, and therefore
lost and relinquished ; that God destroys nothing that
he has ever called into being, but acts according to the
declaration of the prophet of the New Testament :
'• Behold, I make all things new." The veil of earthly
materiality and perishableness, which now lies over this
rich world, with all its substances and forces, will then
be lifted away, together with all the desolation of dis-
turbance and corruption attached to it, and the now
veiled and disguised universe shall come forth in the
imperishable splendour of its pure form and its real
being.

And further, this renovation and perfection will not
only proceed from without, but also it will be necessarily
evolved out of the innermost spirit of the world, and its
original destination. What has been already stated
respecting the renewal of the individual body, namely,
that it is the indwelling and perfected spirit that in-

ETEKNAL LIFE. 277

eludes it (as the organ of that spirit) in its own perfec-
tion, is true also on a greater scale as regards the great
whole ; for as the body is related to the individual soul,
so is the world to collective humanity. For it the
world was created, belonging to it as its dwelling-place
and its organ, and therefore it must follow and share
throughout the destiny of this humanity. " The crea-
ture was made subject to vanity," says the apostle,
" not willingly, but by reason of him who hath sub-
jected the same in hope. For the earnest expectation
of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the
sons of God. The creature also shall be freed from
the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of
the children of God," into an existence where, as St.
Peter adds, " there dwelleth only righteousness."

And just as the body is, as it were, burnt away by
the process of corruption, while its germinal principle,
out of which the new body is to spring, being connected
with the spirit, still abides, so will it be with this our
world-system. Its elements will be decomposed by fire,
dissolved, as the Scripture says, and out of that disso-
lution it will rise again, according to its indwelling
ideal, in glorified form, to true existence. As one of
the most profound theological thinkers of our time re-
marks, " Chemistry, or the transmutation of matter,
will then complete what now it only does piecemeal,
and solemnize its highest triumph."

But, as we have before indicated, this will only take
place when humanity as a whole has attained to its
fulfilment and final destiny. For as for each indivi-
dual, so for humanity collectively, a day of conclusions,
of consequences, must come ; a day when all shall have
reached the term of their development, and must now
stand forth as results of its character ; when the gospel
has once been preached to the whole world, and all
those who would, have entered into the peace of re-
demption; when sin has reached its ultimate conse-
quences, and those who are voluntarily untouched by
Christ's healing hand, have banded themselves together
no longer in indifi"erence, but open enmity against him,
as Antichrist (which we see growing more defined

278 THE future:

century by century) ; when, on the other side, the be-
lievers, thus opposed and driven out of fellowship with
the world, are, by this very experience, matured into
the true exemplification of their life of faith ; — more
thorough separation from the world, and more complete
surrender and reliance on the Saviour ; — ^when each of
these different tendencies in humanity shall have fully
revealed its character, and borne all its fruits ; then,
when no further development is conceivable, the end
must come, the end that actually appoints to each of
these tendencies that which it has striven after and
attained to, and which is therefore the last judgment
upon them. When wheat and tares have, according to
the parable, grown side by side to maturity, then
cometh the harvest, when they are separated, and each
is taken to the place to which it belongs.

It is evident, however, that this can only be brought
about by the immediate action of the Lord himself, by his
personal appearing to judge and to complete. And it is
equally evident that, in the results of this judging and
completing, all that ever lived on earth, and belonged to
humanity, must have their share. For the dead have been,
meanwhile, in those transitional states before mentioned,
maturing to the last results of their being, either to full
capacity for the divine fellowship, or to entire estrange-
ment therefrom, and nothing more remains than the
appointment of the definite conditions to which those
opposite natures belong. On the one side, the kingdom
of God, of which we read : " Then cometh the end, when
Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to G-od,
even the Father ; when he hath put all enemies under his
feet, and the last enemy shall be destroyed, death ; and
when all things shall be subdued under him, then shall
the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all
things under him, that God may be all in all." And,
on the other side, the realm of death, of which it is
declared, that it is "the other death," that "he who is
unrighteous shall be unrighteous still," shall have fellow-
ship with Satan and his angels, with evil and evil ones,
so that no germ of possible improvement any longer
remains.

ETERNAL LIFE.

279

" And I saw," spake the Seer of the New Testament,
as everything else vanished from his gaze before the
image of redeemed humanity having reached its goal, and
found the fulfilment of its destiny : " I saw a new heaven
and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first
earth were passed away ; and there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride
adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice
out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is
with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall
be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and
be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more
pain : for the former things are passed away. And he
that sat upon the throne said. Behold, I make all things
new. And he said unto me, Write : for these words
are true and faithful" (Rev. xxi. 1-5).

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